Hands in the cookie jar about to get slapped

[Seth]

Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry
The Yavari Valley rainforest, Peru
The Yavari Valley rainforest, Peru Photo: Alamy
Christopher Booker

By Christopher Booker

8:14PM BST 25 Apr 2015

CommentsComments

Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).

But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.

An adjusted graph from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were “Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming” and “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal”.

My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA’s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.

So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.

The panel is chaired by Terence Kealey, until recently vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. His team, all respected experts in their field with many peer-reviewed papers to their name, includes Dr Peter Chylek, a physicist from the National Los Alamos Laboratory; Richard McNider, an emeritus professor who founded the Atmospheric Sciences Programme at the University of Alabama; Professor Roman Mureika from Canada, an expert in identifying errors in statistical methodology; Professor Roger Pielke Sr, a noted climatologist from the University of Colorado, and Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist whose many papers on climatology have included studies in the use of “homogenisation” in data records.

Their inquiry’s central aim will be to establish a comprehensive view of just how far the original data has been “adjusted” by the three main surface records: those published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), the US National Climate Data Center and Hadcrut, that compiled by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (Cru), in conjunction with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction. All of them are run by committed believers in man-made global warming.

Below, the raw data in graph form

For this the GWPF panel is initially inviting input from all those analysts across the world who have already shown their expertise in comparing the originally recorded data with that finally published. In particular, they will be wanting to establish a full and accurate picture of just how much of the published record has been adjusted in a way which gives the impression that temperatures have been rising faster and further than was indicated by the raw measured data.

Already studies based on the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic and South America have suggested that this is far too often the case.

But only when the full picture is in will it be possible to see just how far the scare over global warming has been driven by manipulation of figures accepted as reliable by the politicians who shape our energy policy, and much else besides. If the panel’s findings eventually confirm what we have seen so far, this really will be the “smoking gun”, in a scandal the scale and significance of which for all of us can scarcely be exaggerated.

More details of the Global Warming Policy Foundation's International Temperature Data Review Project are available on the inquiry panel's website www.tempdatareview.org

[Hermit]

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is the United Kingdom's most high-profile climate change denier group.

Terence Kealey lectured in clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is well known for his outspoken opposition to public funding of science.

Petr Chylek is a researcher for Space and Remote Sensing Sciences at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a bona fide climatologist. In 2009 he also wrote an open letter in which he calls for an end to making "unjustified claims and exaggerated projections about the future even if the editors of some eminent journals are just waiting to publish them."

Richard McNider has dismissed the scientific consensus on global warming on the grounds that there has been a scientific consensus concerning scurvy that turned out to be wrong.

Roger Pielke, a noted climatologist, said: "The added greenhouse gases from human activity clearly have a role in increasing the heat content of the climate system from what it otherwise would be", but "there are other equally or even more important significant human climate forcings" and furthermore "We now know, however, that the natural variations of atmospheric and ocean circulation features within the climate system produces global average heat changes that are substantially larger than what was known in 2005."

William van Wijngaarden is on record for disputing the effect of contrails.


So, altogether we can be confident that this high powered panel of perfectly neutral and objective men in regard to anthropomorphic global climate change, convened by an institution that has nothing but finding the truth in mind will come up with the right result.

[cronus]

Almost certainly right here Seth. Too many greenies who want to slow economic growth for the sake of a wigwam lifestyle choice being foisted on all and everyone. Noticed all these graphs seem a wee bit obscure. Designed to roll over a credible audience to the direction of wigwam joe and his five piece drum band. Not saying there are no issues. Sustainable and diverse biological what nots need preserving and encouraging. Since we are all dead in the long run it is important to do as much as we can to change things for the better in our one lifetime. That is a greater motivator for change than some doomsday in five hundred years. And who knows economic activity might save that day too? I say frack and be damned.

[Animavore]

Funny.

[Svartalf]

Hermit, if you keep breaking my sarcasmeter, I'll have ot charge you for parts.

[Tero]

Christopher Booker has about as much credibility as Seth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker

cookie jars, payrolls, it's all the same


Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
http://www.skepticalscience.com/zombies ... rains.html

[Seth]

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is the United Kingdom's most high-profile climate change denier group.

Terence Kealey lectured in clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is well known for his outspoken opposition to public funding of science.

Petr Chylek is a researcher for Space and Remote Sensing Sciences at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a bona fide climatologist. In 2009 he also wrote an open letter in which he calls for an end to making "unjustified claims and exaggerated projections about the future even if the editors of some eminent journals are just waiting to publish them."

Richard McNider has dismissed the scientific consensus on global warming on the grounds that there has been a scientific consensus concerning scurvy that turned out to be wrong.

Roger Pielke, a noted climatologist, said: "The added greenhouse gases from human activity clearly have a role in increasing the heat content of the climate system from what it otherwise would be", but "there are other equally or even more important significant human climate forcings" and furthermore "We now know, however, that the natural variations of atmospheric and ocean circulation features within the climate system produces global average heat changes that are substantially larger than what was known in 2005."

William van Wijngaarden is on record for disputing the effect of contrails.


So, altogether we can be confident that this high powered panel of perfectly neutral and objective men in regard to anthropomorphic global climate change, convened by an institution that has nothing but finding the truth in mind will come up with the right result.

Circumstantial ad hominem fallacy.

You fail.

[Hermit]

Pointing out that the organisation that commissioned the panel and selected its members is not neutral on the subject of climate change and stacked it accordingly is not an ad hominem of any sort. It's highlighting the fact that the panel's findings is entirely predictable.

[Tero]

Ad hominems are perfectly OK when you find out the journalist is a highly paid denialist with nothing but $$$$ in mind. No science of any sort is involved. "They changed numbers!"

[Seth]

Pointing out that the organisation that commissioned the panel and selected its members is not neutral on the subject of climate change and stacked it accordingly is not an ad hominem of any sort. It's highlighting the fact that the panel's findings is entirely predictable.

Of course it is. It's a classic example of the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy because it attacks the character of the individuals, and not their arguments. Just because they belong to a particular group of skeptics or critics does not mean that their statements are false. That is the very essence of the fallacy. If you believe their statements are false, then you attack their statements, not their persons, to avoid such fallacious reasoning.

Their claim is that the powers that be (specifically NOAA) have been fudging the numbers from past temperature readings in very subtle ways that make it hard to detect their manipulations in order to falsely show that temperatures in the past were ever so slightly lower than they actually were so that todays measurements appear to point to an overall increase in temperature.

This is a valid concern for those of us who are skeptical of the honesty of those who thump the global warming drum, and our skepticism has been proven to be quite valid by recent events that show that "climate scientists" have indeed engaged in outright scientific fraud, not to mention betraying the entire scientific community to the detriment of science and the public trust.

Therefore, it's perfectly appropriate to question this jiggery-pokey with the numbers and to demand independent review so as to determine the depth of the fraud that's being perpetrated by the Warmist religion.

Who would you expect to challenge the "consensus" but the skeptics? Your excoriation is exactly like saying that because there is a global "consensus" about the existence of God, held by billions of people, that any challenge to or questioning of that proposition by atheists is invalid and should be scoffed at merely because they are skeptics.

Do you see now how easy it is to turn your own agenda back on you?

If Warmists are honest, they will welcome such an examination. Indeed they would INSIST on it and do everything in their power to ensure that the reviewers are in fact ethical and neutral and remain unaffected by the political pressures that have corrupted the climate science community.

The public doesn't trust climate alarmists anymore, and with good reason. Therefore, I'd think that those who believe the climate researchers are being honest would be the first ones to agree to such a review of recent "adjustments" to historic temperature readings, in order to maintain and restore the credibility of the scientific community as a whole.

And that is why your circumstantial ad hominem fallacy is not helpful to your cause, but is in fact harmful to it.

[Seth]

Ad hominems are perfectly OK when you find out the journalist is a highly paid denialist with nothing but $$$$ in mind. No science of any sort is involved. "They changed numbers!"

And "they" did in fact change the numbers. That much is known. The only question is whether they did so deliberately to make past temperatures appear to be lower than they actually were in order to skew the temperature curve upwards to support their hypothesis.

And the only people who are going to question those actions are the skeptics of global warming because the Warmist religion does not permit skepticism or apostasy, and any deviation from the Warmist dogma is punished by excommunication.

[Hermit]

Just because they belong to a particular group of skeptics or critics does not mean that their statements are false. That is the very essence of the fallacy. If you believe their statements are false, then you attack their statements, not their persons, to avoid such fallacious reasoning.

This is a faultless argument, Seth. Now you'll just have to show me where I said that the conclusions of the panel is bound to be false. If you go on to claim that that is what I implied, please keep in mind that nowhere in this forum, any other forum or anywhere else for that matter have I ever opined that anthropocentric global warming is a fact. Furthermore, keep in mind that I am of the opinion that even if it was a fact, it would be rather insignificant in terms of long term changes that we have a very good and reliable record of, and which go back a lot further than human industrialisation.

In particular I am not convinced that the increase in CO2 content in the atmosphere causes global warming. The ice core taken in the Antarctic indicates that warming precedes that increase by 700 to 900 years. A few years ago Macdoc tried to tell me that CO2 is a cause in so far as it has an amplifying effect on warming. It did not convince me because this claim is a scientifically untestable ad hoc modification of the original thesis that CO2 causes warming.

[mistermack]

It's no surprise to me.

The entire ''climate science'' industry is biased. Not by conspiracy, but by natural selection.
Unbiased people are not welcome, and it's such a well-known fact that anybody who didn't feel part of the current ''consensus'' would of course choose a different profession.

So when it comes to producing figures, and ''interpreting'' old ones, there is only one direction in which they will be interpreted.
Even allowing for the fiddled figures though, the climate still isn't warming.

And the politicians are quietly burying it as an issue. It's going farther and farther back onto the outside edge of the back burner.

[Animavore]

The last time a group of skeptics went in after the data they came out no longer skeptics.

The main question for me is; if this group end up the same; will the denialists continue on their campaign of denial?

I'm pretty sure of at least the answer to this in advance.

That said, I don't know if this group shares the same integrity of the last group, so I have doubts that they'll come out with anythng of value.

[Animavore]

The entire ''climate science'' industry is biased. Not by conspiracy, but by natural selection.
Unbiased people are not welcome, and it's such a well-known fact that anybody who didn't feel part of the current ''consensus'' would of course choose a different profession.

Back this up with evidence. And I mean real evidence. Not some opinion piece from a right-wing blog.