back to article Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler?

A paper published in scientific journal Nature this week has reignited the debate about Global Warming, by predicting that the earth won't be getting any warmer until 2015. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences have factored in cyclical oceanic into their climate model, and produced a different forecast to the …

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  1. PeteB

    Remarkable Information

    Satellites don't measure latitudes above 82.5N or below 70S at all (as your link shows ! remember the map is a projection !) , GISTEMP analysis does include direct measurements south of 70S latitude, and interpolation estimates north of 82.5N latitude

    StevenG - what was your response to my original point that there is very good agreement between all the datasets ? :-

    http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/global2.jpg

    http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/75-08.jpg

  2. Mark
    Flame

    Re: "scientific proof"

    Arrhenius about 200 years ago proved CO2 was a greenhouse gas.

    We have proof that the combustion of hydrocarbons in an oxygenated atmosphere produces CO2.

    Join the dots.

  3. Eddie
    Pirate

    1st NASA graph

    Why has nobody noticed the first NASA graph has a wonky scale - below 0 degrees it's in 1 degree steps, then above 0 it's only tenths of a degree - no wonder it shoots up so dramatically. Classic!

    Not being a climate scientist I can't help notice the supposed increase/decrease are less than 1 degree from average WORLD temperature, yet in the places we actually measure the annual temperature ranges from -40C in the chilly bits to +40C in the odd desert, so how can anyone say what the actual annual temperate is? Some of the august climate change bodies say around 13C, some say 16C, so +/-1 degree seems irrelevant.

    Furthermore I presume the latest satellite measuring equipment is more accurate than some bloke looking at a thermometer in the 1920's.

    BTW I personally might do something when Al Gore stops spending $30k a month on electric & gas for his mansion - he doesn't seem too bothered about CO2 emissions - I will follow his lead.

  4. Simon Smith

    Re: Re: "scientific proof"

    Does that mean that Arrhenius was -51 years old when he made this discovery?

    God Mark, I know , all this nit-picking is tiresome.

    I

  5. sc
    Coat

    Your government and scientists are after you

    Many of the comments above make me believe that their authors have never worked or even been in a scientific environment. To the person saying you should look at raw data: where do you think the data comes from and why would your or my interpretation be any better than that of someone who's been studying the subject for many years, knows how information was acquired, knows the history of his field of knowledge and has access to colleagues woldwide who can give him a second opinion?

    You got to love all those remarks about how the government and scientists are there to scare us all so they can stay in power/make a living/whatever.

  6. Steven Goddard
    Linux

    More on the 2000 mystery data shift

    I made a more detailed comparison of the NASA graph http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif

    vs. the NASA published data tables http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt

    The time stamp of the graph is - Wednesday, August 25, 1999 3:55:56 PM

    The left column of the tables represents the 1999 version of the data. Time stamp is Friday, September 14, 2007 11:35:08 AM

    The data should be identical between the left column of the table and the graph - but they are not even close. During the period 1979-1998, at least fifteen of the years are higher in the table than in the graph. Three years are lower. The average yearly difference between the tables and the graph is +0.15 degrees.

    This is a problem because Dr. Hansen has often used the small magnitude of the "Y2K adjustment" as an argument that Steve McIntyre's error discovery is irrelevant. In fact, there is a large (undocumented?) adjustment to the 1999 data which took place sometime after 1999. The 1999 column of the table does reconcile with the graph from the same year..

    If anyone has any more information on this, please let me know.

  7. Ainteenbooty

    Careful

    > perhaps future generations will be able to reduce the alarming increase in the number of climate alarms.

    Global warming paranoia is a way of life for people like DZ-Jay, Grahm Bartlett and many others. You can't just come in here and tell everybody that their faith is wrong! Who the hell do you think you are?! Infidel!!!

  8. Mark
    Pirate

    Re: "Nuclear Winter' scenario "

    Well when we have an all-out thermonuclear war, let's see whether it gets cold or not.

    We have however been pumping out CO2 at rather a greater rate than we've been shooting nuclear warheads.

  9. Paul Clark
    Linux

    Interactive graphs

    I thought my fellow IT folk might enjoy a programmer's playing in this area:

    All four temperature series (5-year running means)

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:60/plot/uah/mean:60/plot/rss/mean:60/plot/gistemp/mean:60

    Detail of last ten years

    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:120/plot/uah/last:120/plot/rss/last:120/plot/gistemp/last:120

    Bear in mind that the different sources use different baselines to calculate the anomaly values so it's only the slope that counts.

    (Tux because that's what it runs on)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    These graphs are not really convincing me

    I've kind of lost interest in this debate since it became so political, but as a scientist looking at these graphs from various sources simply as an exercise in data analysis they do send me a clear message:

    THEY DO NOT AGREE WITHIN THE CLAIMED ERRORS

    That's always a big warning for any data analyst. It says there are errors you haven't accounted for and that means any claims based on these data have to be viewed with suspicion.

    The usual procedure is to take the dispersion between independent results as an indication of the true errors. On that basis, there seems to be little justification for a global warming claim, even though some of the datasets appear to show one.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @Bad Maths

    ""That would be equivalent to flipping a penny 70 times and having it come up heads 55 times. It will never happen - one trillion to one odds (2 raised to the power 40.)"

    Err... that result is precisely as likely as any other, or do you believe the penny has a memory? Clever penny."

    No! 55 heads is considerably less likely than (say) 35 heads (haven't worked out the probabilities, though). That's because there are many more ways of 35 heads turning up than there are of 55 heads turning up. The point you miss is that they can turn up in any order and only the total number of heads counts. There are more sequences that give 35 heads than there are sequences that give 55 heads.

    This is usually covered in about the second lesson of any probability course. Pretty basic stuff.

  12. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
    Coat

    Chasing the money

    A lot of you commenting on a scientific gravy train obviously don't know how scientific grants are awarded.

    If you are a Research Scientist in a UK educational or Goverment sponsored science establishment, you must enter a funding circus to get money for your projects. This works by you outlining a proposal for the research you want to carry out, together with the resources required. This then enters the evaluation process run by the purse string holders (UK Government, Science councils, EU funding organisation etc.) Enivatably, the total of all of the proposals would cost more money than is available (just look at the current UK physics crisis), so a choice must me made.

    The evaluation panels, which are made up of other scientists with reputations (see later) but often also contain civil servants, or even Government Ministers. They look at the proposals and see which ones they are prepared to fund. As there is politics involved, there is an adgenda to the approvals.

    If there is a political desire to prove man-made climate change, the panel can choose to only approve the research that is likely to show that this is the case.

    So as a scientist, if you want to keep working (because a research scientist without funding is unemployed - really, they are), you make your proposal sound like it will appeal to the panel. So if climate change is in vogue, you include an element of it in every proposal.

    The result is funded research which starts with a bias. And without a research project, a scientist does not publish creditable papers, does not get a reputation, and is not engaged in peer review, one of the underlying fundamentals of the science establishment. Once all of the Scientists gaining reputations in climate study come from the same pro-climate change background, and the whole scientific process gets skewed, and doubters are just ignored as having no reputation.

    If there was more funding available, then it is more likely that balanced research would be carried out, but at the moment, the only people wanting to fund research against manmade climate change are the energy companies, particularly the oil companies. This research is discounted by the government sponsored Scientists and Journalists as being biased by commercial pressures.

    More money + less Government intervention = more balanced research. Until this happens, we must be prepared to be a little sceptical of the results. We ABSOLUTLY NEED correctly weighted counter arguments to allow the findings to be believable.

    Please do not get me wrong. I believe in climate change, but as a natural result of reasons we do not yet understand properly (and may never as proved by the research of the recently deceaced Edward Lorentz), one of which could well be human. Climate change has been going on for much longer than the human race has been around, and will continue until the Earth is cold and dead.

    I am a product of the UK Science education system to degree level, and have taught in one such establishment too, so please pass me the tatty corduroy jacket, the one with the leather elbow patches.

  13. Dr Stephen Jones

    @ ratfink

    "Huh?... Did you just imply the human species is great because we invented ECONOMIC SYSTEMS??"

    No, you inferred that. Only an idiot venerates the processes, or thinks our economic management is anywhere near good enough.

    "Paris, because I have more respect for her than for the economic models."

    We're agreed then.

    Since you are already skeptical of the value of climate models (garbage in - magic out) you've already identified the means. Now you can identify the motive.

  14. Marco

    Re: Adjustment vs. fitting

    >>> There is a big difference between adjusting data and fitting data. All of the data presented in this article is directly from the NASA, Hadley, UAH, RSS, and ORNL web sites. The video is a demonstration of a fit - where one version of NASA data is "fitted" to another, in an effort to reverse engineer the "adjustment" which was done at NASA. I did not change any of the data points - just applied a simple rotation to the entire graph as a visual tool.

    ROFL, that's what they call cherrypicking from the available data now?

    >>> Benoit, you are using Dr. Hansen's data. I've already proven Dr. Hansen has the will and the power to put bias into NASA data.

    Mr. Burchett, you haven proven nothing, you only argued that.

    But anyway, these discussions on the Register are getting ridiculous. While I was always able, for example, to see a connection between repeated criticism of Wikipedia and the Register, it is harder to see why it suddenly has taken a fierce position on global warming, giving the likes of Mr. Goddard a platform.

  15. Evan Jones

    And if you have any reason to mistrust it, we'll adjust it!

    Excellent article. We "mercury monkeys" have been pounding the table over questionable "adjustments" for quite some time.

    One error: At the end of page 1, you post a graph claiming it to be NASA's upward adjustments from NOAA data. What it actually is is NOAA's upward adjustment of the raw data.

    So any adjustment of NASA over NOAA is on top of NOAA's upward adjustments.

    Part of the NOAA adjustment is justifiable. Outliers can and should be removed. TOBS must needs be adjusted (though even that has ben called into question owing to adjustments being made to stations where no TOBS problem is in the record). Their other adjustments, namely FILENET (fill-in of missing data) and SHAP (Station History Adjustment Procedure) and UHI (Urban Heat Island) are an outrage for the magpies.

    FILENET should be a neutral adjustment. You guessed it; it's upward. SHAP, considering the scandalous microsite violations (of the rural stations) should be a sharply downward adjustment. You guessed right again: it's upward. And the UHI is lowballed severely: It's a measly minus 0.06C! Yikes!

    So, perhaps the followup article should be: BESIDES NASA, what in heck is with the NOAA hotfoot historical adjustment process in the FIRST place? Get scribbling on it, guys!

    Evan Jones, USA

  16. Evan Jones

    For whatever it's worth . . .

    "The Greenhouse Effect theory posits that carbon dioxide, methane and the like in the atmosphere reduces the amount of heat lost to space."

    Bear in mind that it's not the GH effects themselves that have any real upward push. It's the positive feedbacks from the GH effect. But instead of positive feedback from high-altitude GH water vapor, the Aqua Satellite shows that instead there is an increase in low-level cloud cover, which has significantly increased albedo, resulting in negative feedback and homeostasis.

    The Argo bouys show a slight ocean cooling as well. (And now the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has "flipped" to a cool phase. The last PDO cool phase lasted from 1951-1976. We have been in the PDO warm phase since then.)

    "Satellites say the world is getting cooler. Are they saying this based on the amount of heat they are detecting escaping Earth's atmosphere?"

    Satellites measure microwave reflection in the lower troposphere from the earth's surface, and this is converted to temperature. So what is coming off the surface is what's being measured. This conforms with radiosonde measurements. (Sats separately measure all layers of the lower atmosphere.)

    Sats have the advantage of getting the full sweep, while surface stations are very badly distributed (in spite of honest efforts to grid them) and in deplorable condition. "Issues" with sats have included "conversion" and orbital drift.

    "Are we really saying that the Greenhouse Effect, less heat lost to space, is a myth because satellites are detecting... less heat lost to space?"

    More heat is being reflected into space without ever having reached the surface.

    "Explanation very much appreciated."

    Happy to oblige. Keep an eye out for the new NOAA/CRN system measurements. That will be the first truly "clean" and well sited ground station data ever available. Due to start up later this summer. And it won't need adjustment! Data a tartar! (Hats off to the CRN.)

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    for the love of it all...

    I find it incredible that a person (including the genius’s at NASA) is willing to buy into the hype behind the THEORY of global warming, or as it’s now known: “Climate Change”. Especially when temperature records have been relatively accurate for the past 40-60 years and that weather related records, in general, have been kept for approximately 220 years.

    Scientific estimations of what the weather was like 1000 years ago, let alone 100,000 or even 100,000,000 years ago are just educated guesses. The earth has been around for almost 5 billion years & things change; sometimes it gets warmer, sometimes it gets colder and things die and go away. That is about the only constant in life on this rock.

    Remember, not 30 years ago, society was absolutely convinced that we were going through a period of global cooling, ironically right around the same time as the acid rain crisis.

    This is just the cause de jour, regardless of whether or not it is true, and the only people really benefiting are those who perpetuate the hysteria. Case in point: the limousine environmentalists who take their private jets everywhere to preach their gospel.

    I, for one, am stocking up on firewood, incandescent & halogen lamps, in anticipation of the asteroid hitting the earth. That has happened before, little things like giant craters all over the place seem to be a little more in terms of concrete evidence than profit driven hypotheses.

    I chose the flame because I hate the cold!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I knew it

    Global Warming is a lie. Thanks for letting me know El Reg, I am now going to sue the government for "demanding money with menaces" for all their green-tax crap as it is obviously based on bullshit.

    Rejoice people of the world! It's all a myth after all!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Who Controls NASA?

    If you ask me the American Government wanted Proof from NASA that temperatures are rising and NASA duly obliged by "doctor"ing the Figures. How can NASA justify altering the figures. Surely the raw data can't be wrong, can it?

  20. Eric Werme

    Re: More on the 2000 mystery data shift

    I couple weeks ago there was a discussion at http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com about how missing months in USHCN ground data are filled. Adjustments are made from the two other months in the DJF/MAM/JJA/SON meterological seasons and from average temperature for that month over all the years covered, I think even those outside of the baseline. This has the interesting effect that we don't know the past temperatures until the end of time or a change in the backfilling procedure.

    Unfortunately, I can't find that discussion, nor am I certain it's relevant to the issue at hand. I can dig deeper if you wish.

    BTW, I have a nice intro to the basic issues behind current climatology research at http://wermenh.com/climate/science.html . It's a good starting point to understanding some of the controversy and why the future looks a lot brighter than it has over the last 15 years or so.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IT workers say climate change not real, everyone... listens?

    Isn't it worthy of independently-funded scientific investigation to ascertain why so many hardcore climate change sceptics are to be found lurking in IT Departments the world over hunched over laptops taking a disproportionate but no doubt effective (for them) amount of comfort from one article on The Register website?

    As they're notorious for not getting out much, should I pay much heed to these people who spend large amounts of time in chilled server rooms and in virtual worlds where temperature is irrelevant and only raised on a personal level when some sad super-boobed female avatar turns up in a chat willing to talk dirty (even if she turns out, as likely, to be a 50-year-old man typing on a keyboard in his garage)?

  22. Michael Searcy
    Alert

    HadCRUT and NASA GISS - Not so different

    http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/scentofpine/temps_HadCRUTvGISS.jpg

    http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh103/scentofpine/temps_HadCRUTvGISS_98-07.jpg

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Michael

    "Well, I know that the scientists thought for a long time that the earth was flat and that Gordon will use climate change as an excuse to raise taxes."

    Actually, Scientists haven't believed the world was flat since Aristotle proved it was spherical in 330 BC

  24. Chris Fox
    Stop

    The real conspiracy here

    The adjustments in satellite temperature date are well document. They were made to correct for shifts and decays in satellite orbits. Previously the raw sat data had been used by climate change deniers as it suggested stable or declining temperatures. A major source of systematic error was then detected and removed.

    Now climate change deniers have lost a major plank in their argument, they appear to have decided that the only rational explanation is that there must be a conspiracy.

    In truth, the only real conspiracy is The Register's editorial agenda for arguing against climate change by peddling half-baked pseudo-science in the face of overwhelming evidence.

  25. Eric Werme
    Dead Vulture

    Re: More on the 2000 mystery data shift

    I found the data adjustment link I was looking for, see

    http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/rewriting-history-time-and-time-again

    The original discussion is at

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2964

    That page has an update that sums up the problem pretty well:

    "As noted in the comments below, GISS updated the GLB.Ts+dSST anomalies which show a large 0.67 degC value for March. This addition of March 2008 temperature data to the record caused a corresponding drop in annual average temperature for the years 1946 and 1903. According to GISS, 1946 is now colder than 1960 and 1972, and 1903 dropped into a tie with 1885, 1910 and 1912.

    That’s really neat."

    I'm still not sure if it's relevant to this discussion, but it is worth knowing about the next time you see a graph of GISS data. History will change net month.

    Vulture head because it read the articles and its brain exploded in amazement.

  26. Simon Smith
    IT Angle

    Re: IT workers say climate change not real, everyone... listens?

    "Isn't it worthy of independently-funded scientific investigation to ascertain why so many hardcore climate change sceptics are to be found lurking in IT Departments the world over hunched over laptops taking a disproportionate but no doubt effective (for them) amount of comfort from one article on The Register website?"

    That sounds a wheeze. Apply for a grant now! Go for it! Look forward to hearing about your Nobel prize.

  27. Mark
    Alien

    WTF? "Who Controls NASA?"

    Do you REALLY think that Shrub wants to believe that Man can affect God's Green Earth?

    Heck, he and his cronies are still sacking people who post pro-AGW messages.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Consensus?

    Graham Bartlett wrote:

    >The joke is that for people who actually work in the area, there *is* no controversy.

    Dr. Edward Wegman--former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences--demolishes the famous "hockey stick" graph that launched the global warming panic.

    Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."

    Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

    Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute--states "there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies" used for global warming forecasts.

    Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones--says "there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity."

    Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter--calls global warming models "incoherent and invalid."

    Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski--world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research--says the U.N. "based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false."

    Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo--says "most leading geologists" know the U.N.'s views "of Earth processes are implausible."

    Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the "1,000 Most Cited Scientists," says much "Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change."

    Dr. Claude Allegre--member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."

    Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."

    Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project says "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

    Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time "preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent."

    Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun's state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: "The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."

    Prof. Freeman Dyson--one of the world's most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are "full of fudge factors" and "do not begin to describe the real world."

    Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun's behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.

    And many more, all in Lawrence Solomon's book, The Deniers

  29. fishman

    Al Gore Money Machine

    Al Gore has been raking in the cash - on the order of tens of millions of dollars - on the issue of global warming. He makes at least $100K per speech, and he has extensive investments in areas related to global warming. So every time he opens his mouth, it's money in the bank. And the more he can scare, the better he does.

    Ca-ching!

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scientists in it for the money?

    Honestly, anyone who thinks researchers are in making this up

    for the money hasn't looked at scientist's wages recently.

    Research just doesn't pay. You don't go into research because

    you want to make money. You work in pure science to learn the

    truth.

    Academic/pure scientific research doesn't pay. If you want money, you

    go into industry. It's that simple. You double your salary over night.

  31. Rob
    Thumb Down

    @Steven Goddard

    I'm a bit concerned, as some others appear to be, that you've ignored the difference between a systematic error and random error.

    All the calculations you present for the reduction of early temperatures assume that the errors were random and independent - thus you reach a large figure of 55/70 heads. You then use this figure to 'prove' that the figures have been manipulated and demonstrate it by comically rotating a graph.

    When pressed on this, you've so far ignored it - and I can only suspect that you're doing this on purpose.

    I used to enjoy the Reg, frankly - it just sank like a stone...

  32. Kanhef

    What's the agenda

    of the people who throw terms like "climate cult" around? Why are they so desperate to disprove every bit of evidence that climate change is actually happening? How many are shills for industries that don't want to be regulated?

    @ Peter Gathercole:

    "More money + less Government intervention = more balanced research."

    Without government funding, where's all that money going to come from? The utilities that run all those coal-burning power plants, perhaps? The tobacco and pharmaceutical industries have already been shown to only publish favorable studies and suppress the unfavorable ones. There may be some bias in government-funded research, but do you really thing you'll get impartial work from companies whose livelihood, even existence, depends on the results?

    @ AC:

    "theory of global warming"

    Gravity is a theory. As are the 'laws' of electromagnetism by which your computer functions. Must be an interesting world where only a priori knowledge is accepted.

    It's curious how some people claim there's a massive, decades-long global conspiracy, and at the same time complain that the government is too incompetent to even, say, keep air marshals off the no-fly list.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re:Andy

    Ooooo, ouch Andy! Your witty repartee is droll beyond words. I see BSoD's and exploding keyboards in your immediate future.

  34. Charles Manning

    New sensors in rural areas won't help much

    The NASA press announcement says that new sensors will be placed in rural areas because the urban sensors are meaningless. Wow. Great we have the white lab coated PhDs help figure that out! Anyone with half a rock for a brain could tell them that urban areas have changed remarkably in the last 100 years and that taking temperature measurements in urban areas is not going to be indicative of the rest of the planet.

    Before going into rural areas, I hope that they talk to farmers. But they probably don't want to get their lab coats and Cray keyboards dirty and won't. Rural areas have undergone large environmental changes in the last 100 years and continue to do so. Land use patterns change the temperatures. Thick lush meadows of yesterday get grazed shorter - meaning less moisture is preserved in the ground and higher temperature fluctuations. Changes from grazing to cropping change the land cover and temperatures. Forests come and go.

    Thus, to get good info they should really be making measurements in pristine areas. Wilderness (including sea and ice) make up the bulk of our planet and probably are the best places to measure.

    To get any useful data requires an apples-to-apples comparison. Unfortunately there is very little historic data from unchanged areas.

  35. Evan Jones

    "Lights=0" (as the audience explodes with derisive laughter)

    "Isn't it worthy of independently-funded scientific investigation to ascertain why so many hardcore climate change sceptics are to be found lurking in IT Departments the world over hunched over laptops taking a disproportionate but no doubt effective (for them) amount of comfort from one article on The Register website?"

    Hmm.

    Maybe the reason is that IT guys are good analysts and have a basic understanding quality control? Just a thought.

    Actually, I would be interested in the results of a study to determine which demographics disproportionately favor or disfavor GW theory

    I bet the liberal arts crowd ("my people") disproportionately favor the theory. That used to be true of scientists, too, but that is changing faster than a hockey-stick graph.

    But then again the term "Lights=0" (Hansen, 2001) didn't used to be considered a standing joke . . .

    Consensus OFF.

    Debate ON.

  36. Herbys
    Thumb Down

    @Tanya Cumpston

    You know that the Southern Hemisphere is a bit more than Australia, don't you?

    While in Australia you were cooking yourselves, in the rest of the southern hemisphere we were cold, very cold. So yes, the southern hemisphere had a record cold march, even if a specific small region had a different situation.

  37. Herbys
    Thumb Down

    Mars

    I think there's enough evidence that there's some global warming, and we can see that in the reduction of the polar icecaps. Now, I wonder if the source is human, why exactly the same amount of reduction can be seen in the other pair of icecaps we can measure, those of mars. http://www.mars-ice.org/_more/about/sphistory222.php

    Is the source of global warming human? If so, then we should stop sending those gas guzzling rovers to mars, as they are making an impact there.

  38. Anteaus
    Thumb Up

    A convincing piece of research.

    IMHO an excellent piece of scientific research, and one which doesn't attempt to discredit or debunk global warming per se, but which attempts to expose flaws in the arguments for it. In particular, this analysis reveals that temperature trends, like so many statistics, are vulnerable to 'massaging' of the figures. Massaging being adjustment of the tolerance, or allowances for error in such a way as to favour a desired result, when in fact that desired result is only one of many which fit within the allowed tolerances. It then continues to uncover that the figures even show symptoms of alteration which might not only indicate massagng, but even hint at the way in which this was done.

    I'm a scientist and a sceptic, and I'm pretty-much convinced.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Tactics of denial

    Amazingly, climate change deniers, these self appointed "experts" can interpret data

    better than the top scientists in the particular field.

    The next move, when the reality of sceintific opinion and the real facts are pointed out to the self appointed experts, they try and smear the real experts by accusing them of "distorting their results to get funding". Then they cherry pick the available data, find an small anomally and then say that proves all the theory wrong.

    This is the tried and true methodology of those who wish to discredit the majority of scientists in the climate field. The only reason to spout this crap is fear of economic loss, and lo and behold the deniers bleat about this continually.

    You have to be a total moron to think we can keep pouring huge ammounts of CO2

    into the atmosphere without any side effects.

    If the sceintists are wrong and CO2 is not causing changes, and we reduce emissions, there will be no harm done at worst. If nothing is done and they are right,

    we are screwed, so why not err on the side of caution?

    Deniers, try and think of someone other than yourself and your personal finances, like the future of our race!

    Paris cause she has more brains than the all the deniers put together!

  40. john Durrant

    Lies,damn lies & statistics

    Nuff said?

  41. John Philip
    Alert

    Just a few points ...

    Steve,

    While you're chasing Hansen's 'adjustment' down could you answer this for me?

    You wrote "The UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut data shows worldwide temperatures declining since 1998. According to Hadley’s data, the earth is not much warmer now than it was than it was in 1878 or 1941. By contrast, NASA data shows worldwide temperatures increasing at a record pace - and nearly a full degree warmer than 1880."

    1. Why did you choose different dates for the two data series? The NASA data starts in 1880 but you chose to go back to 1878 for Hadley, is it because 1878 happened to be >0.2C warmer?

    2. Historically you use whole year means. Fair enough, except for Hadley 'present day' you seem to be using the 2008 YEAR TO DATE anomaly of 0.232, which is distorted by the unusually cool (La Nina) Feb 08. Is this legitimate?

    3. Why did you use NASA's own plot, but 'roll your own' for Hadley (on a different scale). There's a perfectly good Hadley graph here: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.gif

    4. If the NASA figures show 'record pace warming' since 1998, why does their website say ..."2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the "El Niño of the century"? http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

    5. Here are the numbers from the relevant years ...

    Hadley : NASA

    1878 -0.018

    1880 -0.249 : -0.25

    1941 0.062 : 0.11

    1998 0.526 : 0.57

    2007 0.396 : 0.57

    2008 0.232 :

    Point-to-point comparisons really are not that legitimate, but using the Hadley full year figure for 2007 as 'present day' it is clear that

    - NASA does not show temperatures 'increasing at record pace since 1998', the delta is zero.

    - NASA 1880 to 2007 +0.82C, Hadley +0.64

    - NASA 1941 to 2007 +0.46C. Hadley +0.33

    Do you really see anything too troublesome there?

    6. Would it not be closer to the truth to say that since the (anomalously warm) 1998, a linear fit for both datasets show a modest warming, with the small difference entirely explicable by the difference in methodology? Something like this http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/t1998.jpg ?

    Minor points: global mean temperatures are quoted with an uncertainty of around 0.1C, not 0.01C, The IPCC does not issue projections on a scale as short as a single decade (nor should they). US temperatures are a tiny fraction of the global mean.

    cheers

    JP

  42. Mark
    Alien

    @Herbys, Re: Mars

    Do you have anything that says the change on mars is the same as here, or did you make that up?

    Because you could have heard that there's global warming on mars and just JUMPED to the conclusion that it was the same amount of warming as here on earth.

    The increased solar activity, if you read the IPCC report, is a cause of possibly 1/3 the warming we have seen. So we would see some warming of mars. However,

    a) it's in only one hemisphere of mars, so hardly "global"

    b) Mars has a different orbit, so it's summer will be different (hey, it's warmer in summer thanin winter! Stop the press!)

    c) the warming on mars is considerably less than the warming here on earth (though we don't have manned weather stations on mars and the satellite images are a LOT less detailed)

  43. Mark
    Black Helicopters

    Re: "Al Gore Money Machine"

    Do you have anything that says the change on mars is the same as here, or did you make that up?

    Now compare that figure for Tony Blair's payment for a two-hour talk...

  44. Eric Werme
    Go

    Re: IT workers say climate change not real, everyone... listens?

    Andy Anon writes:

    "Isn't it worthy of independently-funded scientific investigation to ascertain why so many hardcore climate change sceptics are to be found lurking in IT Departments the world over hunched over laptops taking a disproportionate but no doubt effective (for them) amount of comfort from one article on The Register website?"

    No, the reason why there are many IT folk posting here is because this is an IT news, rumor, and discussion site. Duh. A few people have come here from some of the climatology sites following links to the story at El Reg, some place they've never heard of. (E.g. "posted at the Register UK.")

    Andy also fantasizes "As they're notorious for not getting out much, should I pay much heed to these people who spend large amounts of time in chilled server rooms and in virtual worlds where temperature is irrelevant and only raised on a personal level when some sad super-boobed female avatar turns up in a chat willing to talk dirty (even if she turns out, as likely, to be a 50-year-old man typing on a keyboard in his garage)?"

    Oh come on. I live and work in New Hampshire on systems located in chilled server rooms in Massachusetts and Texas. The last computer game I was any good at was Lunar Lander, though I did by a copy of Myst after the price dropped. I don't have a garage.

    I have been interested in weather since I was a kid, and am more interested in wild flowers than cultivated gardens. I haven't had time for that geekist of outdoors activities, Geocaching, because my wife and I bought property on a NH mountainside and that is going to take a lot of time. I've only gotten reinterested in this sorry science because the recent reduction of solar activity means we can finally figure out how both CO2 (et al) and solar (et al) affect climate and temperature. The more I look into things, the more disturbing things I see about the IPCC reports. There are some great avenues for solar related research, some are being pursued, some need to be pursued.

    Fifty years from people are going to look back at this decade and call it the Golden Era of Climatology. I was lucky to be part of Computer Science's golden era. Look at all the sides of this debate and watch what may (or may not) be the most impressive change in scientific thought since plate tectonics.

  45. Anne van der Bom
    Thumb Up

    @Steven Goddard: clarification

    Like Rob and other other posters I would like to address the issue of the random temperature corrections.

    I think you owe us an explanation. You depict the fact that the temperature corrections are not random as proof of bias or tampering on the side of NASA. What about systematic errors? This is much more likely, as random errors are, by the nature of randomness, impossible to correct.

    Are you ignoring this inconvenient question?

  46. Evan Jones

    A wider perspective

    "New sensors in rural areas won't help much "

    They won't be perfect, and will only cover the US (for a start) but they will help a LOT. I have seen some pics of the new CRN sites, and they are primo. They are all are kept well away from nearby heat sinks and have very consistent, clean micro-environments. With triple-redundant instrumentation and (joy of joys), no humans collecting and recording the data--all done automatically. They are correctly dispersed, so no more grossly artificial gridding procedures. No TOBS issues, either. No ridiculous, arcane adjustment procedures. All data to be raw.

    And the new system will be run in tandem with the old for some time, so a comparison of methods can be made.

    "Amazingly, climate change deniers, these self appointed "experts" can interpret data

    better than the top scientists in the particular field."

    Mmm. Some of them, yes.

    It was a statistician, not a climatologist, that utterly demolished the hockey stick. When Dr. Mann defended it, one of his opening comments was, I am not a statistician," and he said it with pride. It was a meteorologist, not a climatologist who discovered the ubiquitous and sever nature of weather station microsite violations.

    But climate study has a strong interdisciplinary aspect which straight the climatology/earth science side does not address. It includes, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, statistics, archeology, astronomy, engineering, and even history/literature. Not unlike detective work. Unfortunately, many climatologists seem to resent the "intrusion" as much as the old-style detectives (at first) resented the CSI guys. Time to get it all together!

    "Deniers, try and think of someone other than yourself and your personal finances, like the future of our race!"

    Yes, think. THINK. We demographers are doing just that. There is another side you may not have considered sufficiently.

    If trillions of dollars in wealth is to be expended (or, worse, never to be created), and an entire generation in the third and fourth world (India, China, Africa, etc.) are to be denied affluence accepted as second-nature by we in the west, there had better be a darn good reason for it.

    It is often said, "Take strong measures, they cost nothing and may save us." They do NOT cost nothing. They come at a very heavy cost in misery and death. There had better be strong scientific collateral that such sacrifices are necessary.

    It occurs to me that in terms of economics, technology, and demographics, we cannot "dodge" this crisis (if it IS a crisis). But we can "outrun" it by producing as much wealth and tech as fast as the free market can.

    "I think there's enough evidence that there's some global warming, and we can see that in the reduction of the polar icecaps. Now, I wonder if the source is human, why exactly the same amount of reduction can be seen in the other pair of icecaps we can measure, those of mars."

    Mars orbit may be undergoing eccentricity. So we must be cautious in out conclusions.

    But consider that The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Arctic Oscillation are ALL at maximum warm phase of their cycle. And until the end of last year the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was in a warm phase (since c. 1977).

    The Atlantic worm will turn.

    (Not to mention that solar cycle 24 is the very model of a modern major minimum.)

  47. Mark
    Pirate

    Re: "Consensus?"

    So consensus doesn't mean it's true and if there's no consensus it means it can't be true.

    Is that what you're saying?

    1) Hockey stick debunk has been debunked years ago. It had some validity but that issue was solved with more time to make the signal higher than the noise

    2) Because you can't see change in the middle of the antartic isn't saying there isn't change

    3) your quote ends early, and that doesn't say AGW is wrong, just that it may not cause more malaria.

    4) Doesn't say there's no AGW but disagrees that we can be certain just from models.

    5) Doesn't say there's no AGW and says that higher temps won't necessarily cause more hurricanes

    6) He's not a climatologist and merely says that he doesn't think models will help

    7) What assumptions? CO2 not a GG? Still doesn't say there's no AGW but doesn't believe models will show us how to chaneg

    8) Geologists aren't climatologists and he's talking as one on behalf of many (and incorrectly)

    9) "Much warming .. natural" So some not.

    10) In his opinion.

    11) Bought lock stock and barrel by big oil. Doesn't put his own money up on a bet about it

    12) Hmmm. So Arrhenius was wrong? God warmed the flask and that releases CO2?

    13) His opinion

    14) And the IPCC agrees. It isn't enough to make the change that is MEASURED (not modeled).

    15) Yes because this is a MODEL not a SIMULATION. The drag effect of trees, towns etc can't be simulated it has to be guessed to give the right answers based on MEASUREMENT. So he's misunderstood modeling.

    16) A space scientist thinks the sun could have done most of it. Big surprise. Has he modeled it?

    So most of your points are not countering AGW models. Most of the rest are descriptions not results. A few are just self-evidently wrong (#12)

    And please remember, the deniers had to resort to a petition that included dead people and people who only exist in cartoons. If we're going to talk about bias, lying and fighting hard to keep your job, lets look there!

    Here's hoping the shill moderating lets THIS one through.

  48. Evan Jones

    Who Decides?

    "Hockey stick debunk has been debunked years ago."

    Actually, the debunk has been debunked. BCPs are miserable proxies for temperature and the Grayson series was grossly overweighted. The Loehle reconstruction (with his subsequent corrections) which avoid tree rings (which are better proxies for precip. than temperatures) show a completely different story. Archeological studies in Greenland (and organic matter under the ice) tends to confirm a very warm Medieval interval.

    "This is absolute, unmitigated bullshit. This "analysis" is a simple case of someone pretending to be knowledgable about a subject they clearly know nothing about."

    One would have more confidence in the adjustments if there were not so much reluctance to make public full data and methods. Falsifiability is primary to the scientific method. Per review simply won't do. There must be independent review.

    Besides, laymen have often made major scientific contributions. And it is the laymen, not the experts who must formulate policy decisions--and who "have the vote". An expert witness can and must inform. But it is the jury who decides. (It is not by accident that "experts" are rigidly excluded from the jury.)

  49. Tom
    Flame

    The Climate data being discussed are clearly not science

    By my count, there are three instances in which Mr. Goddard asks "Can some shed more light on this particular data correction?"

    If the data were science, Mr. Goddard wouldn't be asking that question, because the raw data, the corrections, and the reasoning (physics, comp sci, math mistake) for the corrections would be PUBLICLY published. Mr. Goddard would KNOW why the correction was made, and if his statistical expertise were relevant, he could comment on why, statistically speaking, this is a questionable correction, data point, or whatever. If it was outside his area of expertise, he might editorialize or simply leave it to another expert.

    Now, what other areas of human interaction do we obscure the source of the data for? Hmmm... Prestidigitation comes to mind, three card monte, and oh yeah, and ancient religions where the gods speak only to the high priests who then tell the unwashed masses what they need to know. Yep, AGW = religion.

  50. R Cox

    random versus systematic error.

    Quoteth:From a statistical viewpoint, data recalculation should cause each year to have a 50/50 probability of going either up or down - thus the odds of all 70 adjusted years working in concert to increase the slope of the graph

    This statement is only valid concerning random errors. Such errors are quantified by statistics and are shown by error bars. All data has random error, and most properly reported data includes an indication of random error, most often in the form of error bars. Certainly one does not flip a coin to choose which side of the random error one will choose for each point. It is random, it is a confidence level, so all that can be done is to state the theoretical error.

    There is a second type of error. This is systematic error. This error occurs not by random chance, but by some material error in the measurement process. Systematic error can be caused by a bad reading, an improper zero offset, or a bad calibration curve. Systematic errors can sometimes be detected through statistical analysis, for instance one might discard all 'outliers', at one's own peril, but most often these errors either remain undetected, or, upon detection, require exactly the kind of recalculation condemned in the article.

    In the present case, there is no credible reason presented in the article to indicate that some older data might be preferentially treated with respect to some new data. Certainly, one can imagine that older instruments might have systematic errors that are different from those on newer instruments. We can even suggest that an analysis of the random error on older instruments might be such that the states skewing of the graph might occur.

    I am not saying that the NASA analysis is correct. However, the authors argument seems sufficiently invalid to be ignored.

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