www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall More Proof of Global Warming?

"As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began,".

Individual companies and industry associations — representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance — formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact".

In 1998, John H. Cushman of the New York Times reported on a memorandum written by a public relations specialist for the American Petroleum Institute. The leaked memo described a plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry's views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases." As part of a US$ 5,000,000 strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences," the document mentioned:

A proposed media-relations budget of US $600,000, not counting any money for advertising, [which] would be directed at science writers, editors, columnists and television network correspondents, using as many as 20 "respected climate scientists" recruited expressly "to inject credible science and scientific accountability into the global climate debate, thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'"

Several journalists have argued that the strategy resembles the one adopted by tobacco lobbyists after being confronted with new data linking cigarettes to cancer — to shift public perception of the discoveries toward that of a myth, unwarranted claim, or exaggeration rather than mainstream scientific theory. In 2006, The Guardian reported:

There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. "Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

Former National Academy of Sciences president Dr.Frederick Seitz earned "approximately US$ 585,000" in the 70s and 80s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company while continuing "to draw a salary as 'president emeritus' at Rockefeller University". R.J. Reynolds contributed $45 million to the medical research co-ordinated by Seitz and others. Although the research did not touch upon the health effects of tobacco smoking, "the industry frequently ran ads in newspapers and magazines citing its multi-million-dollar research program as proof of its commitment to science—and arguing that the evidence on the health effects of smoking was mixed."

Seitz went on to chair groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute alleged to have made efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz stated in the 1980s that "Global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate." He stated in an April 2006 interview that he believes "we're having a natural change, whatever that means, due to natural causes as yet unexplored." He elaborated by saying that "I would say it's unlikely that we face serious danger from global warming" and "Any good scientist would recognize that it cannot be ignored, but I think, under present circumstances, the only thing we can do is proceed as we are and wait to see what the result is." Seitz authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall and Oregon Institutes in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed:

The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. … We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.

The Guardian has reported that, in 1993, Philip Morris established the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) in conjunction with the APCO public relations firm as part of a plan to combat proposed regulation of secondhand smoke: "Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a 'grassroots' movement—one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight 'overregulation'. It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one 'unfounded fear' among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones." Within ten years, the group was also receiving funds from Exxon:

TASSC, the ‘coalition’ created by Philip Morris, was the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the campaign to halt it than any other body.

Several think tanks funded by Exxon or, later, ExxonMobil, to contest climate change have also reputedly received funding from Philip Morris such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation, George Mason University's Law and Economics Center, and the Independent Institute.

A survey carried out by the Royal Society found that in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society said "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".


there are many instances of climate change denial within the Public sector. A report by NASA's Office of the Inspector General has revealed that personnel in the agency's public affairs office were guilty of "inappropriate political interference" in their attempts to play down climate change findings.

In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the influential Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the GOP, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view."In 2006, Luntz stated that he still believes "back '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but he currently agrees with the scientific consensus.

In 2005, the New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents." The George W. Bush administration had hired Cooney in 2001 as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, "the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues." The New York Times reported:

Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.

The newspaper also claimed that "[e]fforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home." Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon an oil lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job."

Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke. A few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.

The Washington Post reported: [I]n April, the Supreme Court ... rebuked the administration for not regulating greenhouse gases associated with global warming, issuing its ruling less than two months after Cheney declared that 'conflicting viewpoints' remain about the extent of the human contribution to the problem.

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney's connections to the Energy Lobby, and to ExxonMobil in particular, have fueled speculation that his characterization of climate change science is linked to the "denial industry." In 2000, Cheney’s Energy Task Force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group, invited the executives of various major oil companies, including Exxon, Conoco, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell, to consult with the White House regarding the development of a national energy policy, although this was initially denied by the participating companies. An Exxon lobbyist - among others - was thanked by the U.S. Undersecretary of Global Affairs for Exxon's role in convincing President Bush to reject the Kyoto accords. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists:

In her talking points for a 2001 meeting with a group that included ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol (uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request), U.S. Undersecretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky thanked the group for their input on global warming policy, noting, ‘POTUS [the president of the United States] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.’

The Government Accountability Project's "Climate Science Watch" has questioned the administration's appointment of officials with private-sector ties to climate change denial:

Jeffrey Salmon is the Associate Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to moving to DOE, from 1991–2001 he was Executive Director of the George C. Marshall Institute, a key actor in the global warming disinformation campaign. In 1998 he participated in the development of a now-notorious oil industry-sponsored plan to wage a campaign against the mainstream science community on global warming. Before that, he was senior speechwriter for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense. The Office of Science oversees roughly $4 billion a year in DOE-supported research, including a roughly $140 million climate change research budget. What does Salmon do in this position—for example, on matters of climate change research, assessment, and communication?

After the IPCC released its February 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute reportedly offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses, to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute, which had received more than $US 1.6 million from Exxon and whose vice-chairman of trustees is Lee Raymond, former head of Exxon, sent letters that "attack the UN's panel as 'resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work' and ask for essays that 'thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs'." More than 20 AEI employees have worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration. Despite her initial conviction that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered," Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, "I realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

The British Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change," 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". In 2006, the British Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter, which was leaked to the media, drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball and others, who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."

ExxonMobil has denied the accusations that it has been trying to mislead the public about global warming:

"The recycling of this type of discredited conspiracy theory diverts attention from the real challenge at hand: how to provide the energy needed to improve global living standards while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Individual and political action on climate change
Former Democratic Senator Tim Wirth has claimed that the denial effort affected both the Congressional political climate as well as the general public opinion. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. [...] Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." In an interview with the journal Science, physicist and U.S. Representative Rush Holt called the opposition in the climate debate a "denial machine":

"...for more than two decades scientists have been issuing warnings that the release of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2), is probably altering Earth's climate in ways that will be expensive and even deadly. The American public yawned and bought bigger cars. Statements by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others underscored the warnings and called for new government policies to deal with climate change. Politicians, presented with noisy statistics, shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."[48]
A 2006 Newsweek poll reported that only one third of Americans believed climate change is "mainly caused by things people do" and 64 percent believed scientists disagree "a lot" about it. A 2007 Newsweek poll found 42 percent of the general public believed scientists disagree "a lot" that "human activities are a major cause of global warming." A May 2007 CNN poll, in contrast, found a 54 percent majority agree with the IPCC that "Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories." A 2007 CBS News poll found that 49 percent think "global warming is having a serious impact now" and 36 percent think it "will in the future". It also reported that 78 percent of Americans "think that it is necessary to take steps to counter global warming right away".

Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek has argued that "Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it." Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has asserted that "human ingenuity, directed towards clean technology and wise institutional design, remains our best weapon against climate change." Alexander Cockburn of The Nation accused "climate spokesmen" such as Al Gore of being "shills" for nuclear energy, arguing that "the best documented conspiracy of interest is between the fearmongers and the nuclear industry" and "Hysteria rules the day, drowning useful initiatives such as environmental cleanup, while smoothing the way for the nuclear industry to reap its global rewards." Carbon taxes such as the one advocated by Al Gore as Vice President have faced bipartisan Congressional opposition. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat, stated that "That's going to be passed on; the consumer would end up paying for that."

American public opinion is relatively split on possible measures to combat global warming. A March 2006 ABC News poll found that "Six in 10 think much can be done to reduce both the amount of global warming", but it also found that only 45 percent think that government should require "Cars that use less gasoline" and only 42 percent think it should require "Appliances that use less electricity". However, the poll's opinions regarding voluntary measures are far more positive, even though 56 percent "oppose giving companies tax breaks to build nuclear power plants". A CBS News poll reported that Americans support some compulsory regulations, for example, 64 percent would be willing to pay higher gasoline taxes if the money is used for renewable energy research. Peter Aldhous at New Scientist has argued that "policies to combat global warming can command majority public support in the US, as long as they don't hit people's pockets too hard."

I.F.

My dear Jean Francois,

it is considered very bad form to crib articles without attribution. It is equally bad form to ignore your opponents' arguments and simply keep posting polemics that bypass the main issues. Saying that Global Warming is real does not make it so. Ignoring evidence against it by appeals to authority unbacked by peer reviewed data doesn't help your case.

Also, if you must crib articles, please try to get more up-to-date ones. This one was obviously written some time between the last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, because a lot of things happened after that, and your article mentions none of them.

Consider that I do this for a living, and do not try to pull fast ones on me, please.

Also, try addressing some of the substantive arguments, instead of merely parroting mindless left-wing talking points. One might begin to think you were a troll.

Dear Stuart,

I consider it bad form to copy-&-paste anything - with or without credits - but you seem to constantly do it, and frankly you have been mucking up this threads. Highlighting certain parts in red does not meann you understand it better, it simply means you have the ability to get excited about certain 'sound bites'. Your endless copy-&-pastes (with credits) means in my opinion that you simply can't formulate an argument yourself probably because you don't understand the underlying science. I could be wrong, but my guess is your educational background is not in the sciences. I only have a bachelors of Science (Molecular biology) and as such I'm limited in what I can understand in the environmental sciences. It would appear to me your formal education is not at all in the sciences. I could be wrong, but based on all of your responses I would gather you studied history, political science, or some other non-science area.

You have in the past made several statements which I believed you were wrong, and in each case you simply ignored me. When I challenged you would ignore the challenge or copy&-paste something from your favorite Republican blog. The Administrator and I agree on some issues and not other, but he does have good debating skills. He articulates 'his' ideas and addresses 'mine'. Perhaps in the future you too can do the same.

Thanks,

I.F.

"I consider it bad form to copy-&-paste anything - with or without credits - but you seem to constantly do it, and frankly you have been mucking up this threads."

I post articles--properly cited--that have information relevant to the discussion. In other words, factual materials. I am sorry if you feel facts muck up the thread. Most people who don't have the facts on their side feel that way.

"Your endless copy-&-pastes (with credits) means in my opinion that you simply can't formulate an argument yourself probably because you don't understand the underlying science"

On the contrary, because I am quite conversant with the science, I feel the necessity of bolstering my assertions by citing scientists.

"I could be wrong, but my guess is your educational background is not in the sciences. I only have a bachelors of Science (Molecular biology) and as such I'm limited in what I can understand in the environmental sciences."

My own educational background is in history, but for thirty years I have worked closely with scientists and engineers on a broad range of problems, involving many different disciplines. As a systems analyst, I'm used to analyzing complex systems and how they work. But you have not demonstrated any comprehension of complexity whatsoever, nor even of logical discourse. Instead, you choose to insinuate that I lack expertise, originality and even intelligence, thus:

"You have in the past made several statements which I believed you were wrong, and in each case you simply ignored me. When I challenged you would ignore the challenge or copy&-paste something from your favorite Republican blog."

You seem to be projecting some of your techniques onto me. The sources of my information are not of particular importance to me, but their scientific credibility is. In particular, you have not mentioned at all the draft EPA study which was suppressed by the Obama Administration, nor addressed any of the shortcomings in the "scientific consensus" to which you keep referring. If, indeed, there is a scientific consensus anymore.

In the meanwhile, keep posting your polemics, and I will keep posting references to peer-reviewed scientific research that casts doubt upon the dogmatic position you seem to have staked out for yourself.

With all due respect to J.F., I find it difficult to believe that he has a Bachelor of Science degree. Someone with such a degree would know about the value of scientific evidence. J.F. has totally ignored the scientific data and the facts of the matter. I would ask him again to finally start responding with demonstrable science rather then continuing with his "chicken little" approach. If J.F. cannot provide the hard science to back up his claims then he ought not to post.

Stuart's style of posting may have a hard edge but Stuart's facts are indisputable. Anyone who looks up his sources can see that the science is sound. J.F. has not yet offered any science to back up his claims. Until he does his claims should and will be dismissed by anyone who respects science and truth.

I will again invite J.F. to answer the four questions raised by Stuart, and to respond with valid, demonstrable data and not with "chicken little" 'group think'.

I'm going to cut and paste again, this time a commentary by [ Steven McIntyre [climateaudit.org] , the climatologist who first debunked MIT's famous "hockey stick" chart, and then James Hansen's spurious temperature data. The article is short but makes an excellent case for the tendentious nature of the temperature data being used to make the case for "global warming". And, contrary to everything I am sure Jean Francois is going to say, McIntyre is no political hack, but a serious and independent minded scientist.

Does Hansen's Error "Matter"?
by Steve McIntyre on August 11th, 2007

There's been quite a bit of publicity about Hansen's Y2K error and the change in the U.S. leaderboard (by which 1934 is the new warmest U.S. year) in the right-wing blogosphere. In contrast, realclimate has dismissed it a triviality and the climate blogosphere is doing its best to ignore the matter entirely.

My own view has been that matter is certainly not the triviality that Gavin Schmidt would have you believe, but neither is it any magic bullet. I think that the point is significant for reasons that have mostly eluded commentators on both sides.

Station Data

First, let's start with the impact of Hansen's error on individual station histories (and my examination of this matter arose from examination of individual station histories and not because of the global record.) GISS provides an excellent and popular online service for plotting temperature histories of individual stations. Many such histories have been posted up in connection with the ongoing examination of surface station quality at surfacestations.org. Here's an example of this type of graphic:

[Linked Image]
Figure 1. Plot of Detroit Lakes MN using GISS software (from Anthony Watts.)

But it's presumably not just Anthony Watts and surfacestations.org readers that have used these GISS station plots; presumably scientists and other members of the public have used this GISS information. The Hansen error is far from trivial at the level of individual stations. Grand Canyon was one of the stations previously discussed at climateaudit.org in connection with Tucson urban heat island. In this case, the Hansen error was about 0.5 deg C. Some discrepancies are 1 deg C or higher.

[Linked Image]
Figure 2. Grand Canyon Adjustments

Not all station errors lead to positive steps. There is a bimodal distribution of errors reported earlier at CA here , with many stations having negative steps. There is a positive skew so that the impact of the step error is about 0.15 deg C according to Hansen. However, as you can see from the distribution, the impact on the majority of stations is substantially higher than 0.15 deg. For users of information regarding individual stations, the changes may be highly relevant.
GISS recognized that the error had a significant impact on individual stations and took rapid steps to revise their station data (and indeed the form of their revision seems far from ideal indicating the haste of their revision.) GISS failed to provide any explicit notice or warning on their station data webpage that the data had been changed, or an explicit notice to users who had downloaded data or graphs in the past that there had been significant changes to many U.S. series. This obligation existed regardless of any impact on world totals.

[Linked Image]
Figure 3. Distribution of Step Errors

GISS has emphasized recently that the U.S. constitutes only 2% of global land surface, arguing that the impact of the error is negligible on the global averagel. While this may be so for users of the GISS global average, U.S. HCN stations constitute about 50% of active (with values in 2004 or later) stations in the GISS network (as shown below). The sharp downward step in station counts after March 2006 in the right panel shows the last month in which USHCN data is presently included in the GISS system. The Hansen error affects all the USHCN stations and, to the extent that users of the GISS system are interested in individual stations, the number of affected stations is far from insignificant, regardless of the impact on global averages.

[Linked Image]
Figure 4. Number of Time Series in GISS Network. This includes all versions in the GISS network and exaggerates the population in the 1980s as several different (and usually similar) versions of the same data are often included.

U.S. Temperature History

The Hansen error also has a significant impact on the GISS estimate of U.S. temperature history with estimates for 2000 and later being lowered by about 0.15 deg C (2006 by 0.10 deg C). Again GISS moved quickly to revise their online information changing their US temperature data on Aug 7, 2007. Even though Gavin Schmidt of GISS and realclimate said that changes of 0.1 deg C in individual years were "significant", GISS did not explicitly announce these changes or alert readers that a "significant" change had occurred for values from 2000-2006. Obviously they would have been entitled to observe that the changes in the U.S. record did not have a material impact on the world record, but it would have been appropriate for them to have provided explicit notice of the changes to the U.S. record given that the changes resulted from an error.

The changes in the U.S. history were not brought to the attention of readers by GISS itself, but in this post at climateaudit. As a result of the GISS revisions, there was a change in the "leader board" and 1934 emerged as the warmest U.S. year and more warm years were in the top ten from the 1930s than from the past 10 years. This has been widely discussed in the right-wing blogosphere and has been acknowledged at realclimate as follows:


In my opinion, it would have been more appropriate for Gavin Schmidt of GISS (who was copied on the GISS correspondence to me) to ensure that a statement like this was on the caption to the U.S. temperature history on the GISS webpage, rather than after the fact at realclimate.

Obviously much of the blogosphere delight in the leader board changes is a reaction to many fevered press releases and news stories about year x being the "warmest year". For example, on Jan 7, 2007, NOAA announced that

This press release was widely covered as you can determine by googling "warmest year 2006 united states". Now NOAA and NASA are different organizations and NOAA, not NASA, made the above press release, but members of the public can surely be forgiven for not making fine distinctions between different alphabet soups. I think that NASA might reasonably have foreseen that the change in rankings would catch the interest of the public and, had they made a proper report on their webpage, they might have forestalled much subsequent criticism.

In addition, while Schmidt describes the changes atop the leader board as "very minor re-arrangements", many followers of the climate debate are aware of intense battles over 0.1 or 0.2 degree (consider the satellite battles.) Readers might perform a little thought experiment: suppose that Spencer and Christy had published a temperature history in which they claimed that 1934 was the warmest U.S. year on record and then it turned out that they had been a computer programming error opposite to the one that Hansen made, that Wentz and Mears discovered there was an error of 0.15 deg C in the Spencer and Christy results and, after fiixing this error, it turned out that 2006 was the warmest year on record. Would realclimate simply describe this as a "very minor re-arrangement"?

So while the Hansen error did not have a material impact on world temperatures, it did have a very substantial impact on U.S. station data and a "significant" impact on the U.S. average. Both of these surely "matter" and both deserved formal notice from Hansen and GISS.

Can GISS Adjustments "Fix" Bad Data?

Now my original interest in GISS adjustments did not arise abstractly, but in the context of surface station quality. Climatological stations are supposed to meet a variety of quality standards, including the relatively undemanding requirement of being 100 feet (30 meters) from paved surfaces. Anthony Watts and volunteers of surfacestations.org have documented one defective site after another, including a weather station in a parking lot at the University of Arizona where MBH coauthor Malcolm Hughes is employed, shown below.

[Linked Image]
Figure 5. Tucson University of Arizona Weather Station

These revelations resulted in a variety of aggressive counter-attacks in the climate blogosphere, many of which argued that, while these individual sites may be contaminated, the "expert" software at GISS and NOAA could fix these problems, as, for example here.


or here:


"Fixing" bad data with software is by no means an easy thing to do (as witness Mann's unreported modification of principal components methodology on tree ring networks.) The GISS adjustment schemes (despite protestations from Schmidt that they are "clearly outlined") are not at all easy to replicate using the existing opaque descriptions. For example, there is nothing in the methodological description that hints at the change in data provenance before and after 2000 that caused the Hansen error. Because many sites are affected by climate change, a general urban heat island effect and local microsite changes, adjustment for heat island effects and local microsite changes raises some complicated statistical questions, that are nowhere discussed in the underlying references (Hansen et al 1999, 2001). In particular, the adjustment methods are not techniques that can be looked up in statistical literature, where their properties and biases might be discerned. They are rather ad hoc and local techniques that may or may not be equal to the task of "fixing" the bad data.

Making readers run the gauntlet of trying to guess the precise data sets and precise methodologies obviously makes it very difficult to achieve any assessment of the statistical properties. In order to test the GISS adjustments, I requested that GISS provide me with details on their adjustment code. They refused. Nevertheless, there are enough different versions of U.S. station data (USHCN raw, USHCN time-of-observation adjusted, USHCN adjusted, GHCN raw, GHCN adjusted) that one can compare GISS raw and GISS adjusted data to other versions to get some idea of what they did.

In the course of reviewing quality problems at various surface sites, among other things, I compared these different versions of station data, including a comparison of the Tucson weather station shown above to the Grand Canyon weather station, which is presumably less affected by urban problems. This comparison demonstrated a very odd pattern discussed here. The adjustments show that the trend in the problematic Tucson site was reduced in the course of the adjustments, but they also showed that the Grand Canyon data was also adjusted, so that, instead of the 1930s being warmer than the present as in the raw data, the 2000s were warmer than the 1930s, with a sharp increase in the 2000s.

[Linked Image]
Figure 6. Comparison of Tucson and Grand Canyon Versions

Now some portion of the post-2000 jump in adjusted Grand Canyon values shown here is due to Hansen's Y2K error, but it only accounts for a 0.5 deg C jump after 2000 and does not explain why Grand Canyon values should have been adjusted so much. In this case, the adjustments are primarily at the USHCN stage. The USHCN station history adjustments appear particularly troublesome to me, not just here but at other sites (e.g. Orland CA). They end up making material changes to sites identified as "good" sites and my impression is that the USHCN adjustment procedures may be adjusting some of the very "best" sites (in terms of appearance and reported history) to better fit histories from sites that are clearly non-compliant with WMO standards (e.g. Marysville, Tucson). There are some real and interesting statistical issues with the USHCN station history adjustment procedure and it is ridiculous that the source code for these adjustments (and the subsequent GISS adjustments - see bottom panel) is not available/

Closing the circle: my original interest in GISS adjustment procedures was not an abstract interest, but a specific interest in whether GISS adjustment procedures were equal to the challenge of "fixing" bad data. If one views the above assessment as a type of limited software audit (limited by lack of access to source code and operating manuals), one can say firmly that the GISS software had not only failed to pick up and correct fictitious steps of up to 1 deg C, but that GISS actually introduced this error in the course of their programming.

According to any reasonable audit standards, one would conclude that the GISS software had failed this particular test. While GISS can (and has) patched the particular error that I reported to them, their patching hardly proves the merit of the GISS (and USHCN) adjustment procedures. These need to be carefully examined. This was a crying need prior to the identification of the Hansen error and would have been a crying need even without the Hansen error.
One practical effect of the error is that it surely becomes much harder for GISS to continue the obstruction of detailed examination of their source code and methodologies after the embarrassment of this particular incident. GISS itself has no policy against placing source code online and, indeed, a huge amount of code for their climate model is online. So it's hard to understand their present stubbornness.

The U.S. and the Rest of the World

Schmidt observed that the U.S. accounts for only 2% of the world's land surface and that the correction of this error in the U.S. has "minimal impact on the world data", which he illustrated by comparing the U.S. index to the global index. I've re-plotted this from original data on a common scale. Even without the recent changes, the U.S. history contrasts with the global history: the U.S. history has a rather minimal trend if any since the 1930s, while the ROW has a very pronounced trend since the 1930s.

[Linked Image]
Re-plotted from GISS Fig A and GFig D data.

These differences are attributed to "regional" differences and it is quite possible that this is a complete explanation. However, this conclusion is complicated by a number of important methodological differences between the U.S. and the ROW. In the U.S., despite the criticisms being rendered at surfacestations.org, there are many rural stations that have been in existence over a relatively long period of time; while one may cavil at how NOAA and/or GISS have carried out adjustments, they have collected metadata for many stations and made a concerted effort to adjust for such metadata. On the other hand, many of the stations in China, Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere are in urban areas (such as Shanghai or Beijing). In some of the major indexes (CRU,NOAA), there appears to be no attempt whatever to adjust for urbanization. GISS does report an effort to adjust for urbanization in some cases, but their ability to do so depends on the existence of nearby rural stations, which are not always available. Thus, ithere is a real concern that the need for urban adjustment is most severe in the very areas where adjustments are either not made or not accurately made.

In its consideration of possible urbanization and/or microsite effects, IPCC has taken the position that urban effects are negligible, relying on a very few studies (Jones et al 1990, Peterson et al 2003, Parker 2005, 2006), each of which has been discussed at length at this site. In my opinion, none of these studies can be relied on for concluding that urbanization impacts have been avoided in the ROW sites contributing to the overall history.

One more story to conclude. Non-compliant surface stations were reported in the formal academic literature by Pielke and Davey (2005) who described a number of non-compliant sites in eastern Colorado. In NOAA's official response to this criticism, Vose et al (2005) said in effect -


In most businesses, the identification of glaring problems, even in a restricted region like eastern Colorado, would prompt an immediate evaluation to ensure that problems did not actually exist. However, that does not appear to have taken place and matters rested until Anthony Watts and the volunteers at surfacestations.org launched a concerted effort to evaluate stations in other parts of the country and determined that the problems were not only just as bad as eastern Colorado, but in some cases were much worse.

Now in response to problems with both station quality and adjustment software, Schmidt and Hansen say in effect, as NOAA did before them -

Dear Mr Administrator,

I think most of the arguments, including many scientific ones have already been made in this thread. I will make my final summary.

There has been a dramatic rise in global greenhouse gas, notably Carbon Dioxide over the past 30 years, primarily due to the sudden and rapid industrialization of China and other Asian nations. There has also been dramatic global deforestization over this same period of time. The combination has created an atmopheric ecology which has dramatically increased CO2 levels.

Greenhouse gases are thought to raise atmospheric temperatures. However, our planet has not experienced any dramatic temperature increases because the polar ice caps have been keeping the atmospheric temperature at a relative equilibrium much like an ice pack in a cooler.

What many scientists find alarming is the rapid shrinking rate of the Northern ice caps over the past 30 years. Although it is possible that the planet is experiecing a natural atmospheric temperature change (or none at all), paleoecological evidence suggests that a catalyst is responsible for the current unprecedented rapid demise of Northern ice. The concern is that when the Northern ice completely melts, there will be no more counter balance to the rising atmospheric temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. Many believe that is when dramatic climate change will take place.

Governments of Canada, the USA, Norway, Sweeden, Russia, and many other nations which claim the far North as their own have no illusions of an ice free Northern passage in our generation. Many government are concerned about the atmospheric consequences of all the Northern ice melting and for this reason they are engaged in a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions.

I hope I didn't come off as being anti-Republican, because I'm not. In fact, both major parties have pros and cons. Neither has a hold on the absolute truth. Contrary to what many posters believe, neither party is closer to Christ than the other.

I.F.

Dear Stuart,

I'm sorry you think I'm a "troll" because I don't agree with you on the issue of global climate chage. Based on your deductive reasoning, the majority of US citizens would be "trolls", and of course they are not.

In the future try to post only your own analysis and/or interpretation of scientific studies or those of policy groups (think groups). Your endless cut-&-paste postings makes the thread less interesting for everyone, and really shows that you have not been able to interpret various forms of information for yourself.

I.F.

Actually, you've made no scientific arguments whatsoever. You made claims that are unsubstantiated by science.

Note your own posts are full of "are thought to", "[m]any believe", "are concerned", etc. You have offered no science. If someone came along and accused someone you know of a crime you'd rightly insist on seeing the evidence. Yet you are not concerned about evidence in the case of global warming. You've convicted without evidence. The evidence shows the earth's temperature at the end of 2007 was the same as in the 1930s is of no interest to you. The scientific evidence does not support the claims of man-caused global warming. Even global warming claims about CO2 are not supported by science since the scientists tell us that the CO2 issue is far more complex then the hype (scientists only hold consensus that there must be additional factors that they do not yet understand - the scientific studies suggest that CO2 levels may do noting more then affect the length of the natural arming and cooling trends, but they are not convinced that it is CO2 and not something entirely different!).

I'm sorry. I know you are a true believer in global warming. But you've offered no science. You've offered claims that are easily shown to be false by basic science. That others embrace the "chicken little" approach is sad, but not surprising. I invite you again to answer Stuart's questions with data, and not merely with more false claims.

I'm not a Republican. I belong to no political party. Read what I've written in this thread and it is all about science and the need to base environmental policy on solid science. That you seem to be linking solid science with Republicans is strange, but not accurate. There is plenty of misinformation and disinformation in all political parties. What I advocate and have always advocated is good, solid stewardship of the environment based on good, demonstrated science.

I do not remember once anyone ever claiming that Christ is closer to one party or another. I have said in other threads that Christ is far from those who support abortion rights (and protection of the innocent), and from those who do not stand up for them (by voting for Pro-Death candidates), regardless of political affiliation. I stand by that for it is true.

John

1. What the majority of people think about climate change is irrelevant to the science of climate change. Everyone could believe the earth is flat. They would all be wrong. If people were lining up to jump off the Empire State building would you recommend people join them because someone said they was a consensus to do so?

2. Polls are polls and the answers are dependent on the questions. The Pew Center for People & the Press has a poll from January 2009 that shows that the issue of global warming ranked at the bottom of 20 issues Americans wanted to see addressed. And the polls were very iffy on what people actually believed about climate change. Even after media support the majority of people are not "true believers". They appear to be on the same page as me - act responsibly according to good science.

Again, what is necessary is good, solid stewardship of the environment based on good, demonstrated science. False claims by well-intentioned people who reject science only harms the cause of good environmental stewardship.

"I'm sorry you think I'm a "troll" because I don't agree with you on the issue of global climate chage. Based on your deductive reasoning, the majority of US citizens would be "trolls", and of course they are not."

I'm sorry also, but I don't think the "majority of US citizens buy into global warming. I wonder what survey or other source you get this notion from... I would be willing to wager that most do not buy into the religion of global warming. In fact even the global warming crowd has recently switched to global climate change due to the fact that there really is no evidence of rising temperatures.

An example of the modus operandi used by far too many people in the global warming debate, from The Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk]

Polar bear expert barred by global warmists
Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful’

Christopher Booker
Published: 5:20PM BST 27 Jun 2009
[Linked Image]
According to the world's leading expert on polar bears, their numbers are higher than they were 30 years ago Photo: AP

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

Of course they're "extremely unhelpful:" research scientists survive by getting government grants for their projects. Who wants to bite the hand that feeds them?


On the other hand, it's always edifying to see people who are willing to take a stand based on what they believe to be the truth, even when it's not in their interest financially to do so.

The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic

The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Wherever Jim Hansen is right now -- whatever speech the "censored" NASA scientist is giving -- perhaps he'll find time to mention the plight of Alan Carlin. Though don't count on it.

Mr. Hansen, as everyone in this solar system knows, is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Starting in 2004, he launched a campaign against the Bush administration, claiming it was censoring his global-warming thoughts and fiddling with the science. It was all a bit of a hoot, given Mr. Hansen was already a world-famous devotee of the theory of man-made global warming, a reputation earned with some 1,400 speeches he'd given, many while working for Mr. Bush. But it gave Democrats a fun talking point, one the Obama team later picked up.

So much so that one of President Barack Obama's first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science. The nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, joined in, exclaiming, "As administrator, I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and program, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." In case anyone missed the point, Mr. Obama took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over."

Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin, a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 35-year veteran of the agency. In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.

Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she's yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn't ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

The Bush administration's great sin, for the record, was daring to issue reports that laid out the administration's official position on global warming. That the reports did not contain the most doomsday predictions led to howls that the Bush politicals were suppressing and ignoring career scientists.

The Carlin dustup falls into a murkier category. Unlike annual reports, the Obama EPA's endangerment finding is a policy act. As such, EPA is required to make public those agency documents that pertain to the decision, to allow for public comment. Court rulings say rulemaking records must include both "the evidence relied upon and the evidence discarded." In refusing to allow Mr. Carlin's study to be circulated, the agency essentially hid it from the docket.

Unable to defend the EPA's actions, the climate-change crew -- , led by anonymous EPA officials -- is doing what it does best: trashing Mr. Carlin as a "denier." He is, we are told, "only" an economist (he in fact holds a degree in physics from CalTech). It wasn't his "job" to look at this issue (he in fact works in an office tasked with "informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences.") His study was full of sham science. (The majority of it in fact references peer-reviewed studies.) Where's Mr. Hansen and his defense of scientific freedom when you really need him?

Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition.

Write to kim@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

We must act immediately to end global warning, before it's too late!

If we don't, it could stop happening before we do anything about it!



hawk