I Thought the Great Barrier Reef Was Dying?

Great Barrier Reef experiencing ‘record high’ levels of coral coverage – Watts Up With That?

“This is data that’s been accumulated over a little while now and it shows … it’s actually at record high coral cover,” [JCU Marine Physicist Peter Ridd] told Sky News Australia.

“We’ve got more coral on the Great Barrier Reef now than we did when records began in 1985.

“We’ve got twice as much coral as we had after huge cyclones went through the reef in about 2011 and 2012, and this record-high coral cover is despite supposedly having three catastrophic unprecedented bleaching events in just the last five years.

That doesn’t sound like to me that it’s dying. That sounds like completely the opposite.

FYI

The U.N. Says America Is Already Cutting So Much Carbon It Doesn’t Need The Paris Climate Accord (forbes.com)

But for the United States, the real value in this report is as an advisory that it need not join the Paris Climate Accord. This report is evidence that, instead, the U.S. should just keep doing what it is doing to cut its own emissions. The U.S. is the most successful major country at mitigating its own pollution, and the U.N. shows this.

According to the report, “the United States of America emits 13 per cent of global GHG emissions.” Comparatively, “China emits more than one-quarter of global GHG emissions.” The U.S. still contributes the most greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the world, but, over the last decade, the country’s GHG emissions have been in decline (0.4 per cent per year).“ Greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the U.S. are dropping precipitously while those of China, India and Russia continue to rise. With the world’s most successful economy (over $21 trillion in 2019), it is not a surprise that the U.S. pollutes more per person, but the U.S. is making great strides in changing this.

Huh. And all the smartest people told me that we’re killing the planet.

I’d Laugh if it weren’t Just So Very Sad

This is an actual headline at The Hill.

Biden's climate plan will not address gender and racial inequality | TheHill

Ok, even if you believe that gender and racial inequality are problems that need to be addressed, you’d have to be a complete idiot to think that a climate plan would be the vehicle for such a thing.

Biden and the Keystone XL Pipeline

Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on 1st day in office, sources confirm | CBC News

There’s really no reason to do this unless you’re just being a d*ck.

There’s no scientific reason for it. The EPA studies showed that it is not a threat to the environment.

It will help the economy both Canada and the United States, and create thousands of jobs.

It’s not even really going to cost us anything.

The only reason to cancel the project is to cater to the hard left wing of your party.

Brilliant start to your Presidency, Joe.

“Despite”

Aussie ABC: Coral Islands are Growing Larger, Despite Climate Change – Watts Up With That?

What A Surprise, AGW Alarmists Are Wrong

I have a large backlog of blog topics due to this ongoing debt ceiling issue. I’m going to try to ignore the debt for a little bit and catch up on some things that you may have missed recently, if you were, you know, out having a life or something.

First on deck, AGW suffers another severe blow this week. Two of them as a matter of fact.

Well, let’s just take a look. From the first, via Forbes.

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

And that’s just the first paragraph of the article. It gets better.

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA's ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

Emphasis from the preceding paragraph is mine. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

And from the actual press release for the report:

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks. Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak.

“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained,” Spencer said.

This is the first time scientists have looked at radiative balances during the months before and after these transient temperature peaks.

But that’s not all that came out this week. The polar bears have been saved!

From the AP:

Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.

Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.

In case you haven’t been following the ups and downs of the AGW hysteria fiasco, let me sum up.

1. The “hockey stick graph” isn’t “junk science”, it’s just junk.
   To wit:
   • The “tree ring” data used to create it was washed to eliminate the data that disagreed from the conclusion
   • The computer models used are incapable of generating valid results.
   • Others have shown that using “white noise” as input data produces, wait for it, a hockey stick!
   • The general premise behind the entire hockey stick idea would get you flunked out of any 100 level college statistics class. You can’t assume a correlation between two unrelated sets of data. You must define the relation first.
2. The AGW leaders have acted as a cabal to keep research showing problems with their claims out of peer reviewed journals and the media.
3. They have destroyed data to keep from turning it over to FOI requests.
4. They have ignored urban heat islands where convenient.
5. They have artificially changed the data to support their conclusions.
6. And now we know the carbon dioxide models are wrong as well.
7. And now it appears they lied about the polar bears.

The question is no longer whether the AGW alarmists and politicians are lying about their “science”. That has proven to be unequivocally true. The question now is why.

Hint: Like watermelons, they’re green on the outside, but red on the inside.

CRU Hack “Deniers” Read Here

You know who you are. You have written things like this in the last few days:

This excerpt of excerpts demonstrates my point about e-mail conversations being "out of context" even when messages are quoted in full. People writing to colleagues about "using a trick" to "hide a temperature decline," or that the death of a pesky annoyance is "cheering news," are engaging in things we all do with friends and colleagues.

That’s an actual quote from a mailing list I participate in. I’ve removed the name of the author out of a sense of fair play.

Here’s my response on the mailing list in it’s entirety.

No, I'm tired of seeing this defense. Yes, there are lots of the e-mails that are no big deal, and at the worst just show petty childishness. But, to get the idea that that's the worst of it, you'd have to selectively choose only the least damaging e-mails to review.
Jones and Mann deserve to go down in history right beside Charles Dawson, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, and Clonaid. I'm not engaging in hyperbole here. There's some really bad stuff here, and only willful blindness would allow anyone to come to any other conclusion.

Warning, this is going to be very long. I'm going to quote a lot of stuff in-line.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=146&filename=939154709.txt

From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,imacadam@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Briffa et al. series for IPCC figure
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:18:29 +0100
Cc: k.briffa@uea,p.jones@uea
Dear Mike and Ian
Keith has asked me to send you a timeseries for the IPCC multi-proxy
reconstruction figure, to replace the one you currently have. The data are
attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually
stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that
is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use.

Why is this a big deal? Simply put, the reason tree ring data is used is to extrapolate past temperature by comparing ring width with known temperature variations (i.e. after 1960). The recent data IS the link between thermometers and tree rings. Without the link, there's no reason to assume the older data is in any way representational of anything.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=891&filename=1212063122.txt

From: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
Reply-to: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

<x-flowed>
Hi Phil,

laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would
have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to
have been true.

I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is:
generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

talk to you later,

mike

Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't
> have his new email address.

Here Phil Jones is encouraging people to delete emails related to an FOI (freedom of information) request. At the very least this is unethical. At the most, it's criminal. You can't put a positive or even a non-negative spin on this.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=622&filename=1139521913.txt

From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa
<k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: update
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:51:53 -0500
Reply-to: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

<x-flowed>
guys, I see that Science has already gone online w/ the new issue, so we
put up the RC post. By now, you've probably read that nasty McIntyre
thing. Apparently, he violated the embargo on his website (I don't go
there personally, but so I'm informed).

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use RC in any way
you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about
what comments we screen through, and we'll be very careful to answer any
questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you
might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold
comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think
they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd
like us to include.

You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a
resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put
forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our
best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont'get to use the RC
comments as a megaphone...

RealClimate.org is supposed to be a clearinghouse blog for AGW. It was originally designed to be a rebuttal site to Steve McIntyre's
ClimateAudit.org, but it is also allegedly devoted to science, not opinion. And, as such, should be independent. Basically, what is being admitted here is that it is not an independent blog, and is under the control of CRU, and that Gavin and Mann will censor comments that don't fit the narrative. This has been a common complaint all over the blogosphere for years, that relevant, non-inflammatory, informative skeptic comments get censored. This one doesn't really make CRU look bad, but casts serious doubts on RealClimate.org. Are they a mouthpiece or interested in science? It's also interesting to compare, as ClimateAudit doesn't moderate comments at all. And here I thought healthy debate was part of science? Which side is engaging in debate, and which side is trying to shut it down?

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=485&filename=1106338806.txt

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: FOIA
Date: Fri Jan 21 15:20:06 2005
Cc: Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

Tom,
I'll look at what you've said over the weekend re CCSP.
I don't know the other panel members. I've not heard any
more about it since agreeing a week ago.
As for FOIA Sarah isn't technically employed by UEA and she
will likely be paid by Manchester Metropolitan University.
I wouldn't worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get
used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well.
Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people,
so I will be hiding behind them. I'll be passing any
requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to
deal with them.

More about ways to avoid responding to FOI requests. Once again, I have to ask why a legitimate scientific organization should be afraid of FOI? Here hey discuss that the code is intellectual property, and that they don't own the data so they can't release it. If so, CRU should never have entered into such agreements. I can't say this too often. If you don't have reproducible results, you don't have science. If you can't release the data and code, even under NDA (non-disclosure agreement), then your results are not reproducible. If you're afraid of FOI, then you're afraid of the truth.

The FOI e-mails are exceptionally damning, and there's a lot of them. Read the FOI link (http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/) I gave in another post. CRU can't spin their way out of this, and pretending it's not extremely bad is just that: pretending.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=813&filename=1188557698.txt

From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: review of E&E paper on alleged Wang fraud
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 06:54:58 -0600

<x-flowed>
Phil,

Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers
that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW
at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect.

Whether or not this makes a difference is not the issue here.

Tom.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Phil Jones wrote:
>
> Tom,
> Just for interest! Keep quiet about both issues.
>
> In touch with Wei-Chyung Wang. Just agreed with him
> that I will send a brief response to Peiser. The allegation by Keenan
> has
> gone to SUNY. Keenan's about to be told by SUNY that submitting this has
> violated a confidentiality agreement he entered into with SUNY when he
> sent the complaint. WCW has nothing to worry about, but it still
> unsettling!

This is about covering up fraud. There's no other way to describe it. One of the problems with CRU's thermometer data has been the concept of "urban heat islands" (UHI). In other words, for various reasons, the temperature is higher in cities than in the country. No big deal. If you're interested in long term temperature data, just use thermometers from outside cities. Of course, you'd have to use thermometers that stay outside cities, and don't become inside the cities over time as the cities grow. That might make the data unreliable. Well, Wang's (WCW) paper in question said that there was no issue with such thermometers. It turned out to be fraudulent research. Wigley is agreeing here that it's fraudulent, but Jones is telling him to keep quiet about it and that WCW has nothing to worry about.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=136&filename=938018124.txt

This one is long, but is useful for context.

From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Folland, Chris"
<ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, 'Phil Jones' <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: IPCC revisions
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:35:24 -0400
Cc: tkarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Thanks for your response Keith,

For all:

Walked into this hornet's nest this morning! Keith and Phil have both
raised some very good points. And I should point out that Chris, through no
fault of his own, but probably through ME not conveying my thoughts very
clearly to the
others, definitely overstates any singular confidence I have in my own
(Mann et al) series. I believe strongly that the strength in our discussion
will be the fact that certain key features of past climate estimates are
robust among a number of quasi-independent and truly independent estimates,
each
of which is not without its own limitations and potential biases. And I
certainly don't want to abuse my lead authorship by advocating my own work.

I am perfectly amenable to keeping Keith's series in the plot, and can ask
Ian Macadam (Chris?) to add it to the plot he has been preparing (nobody
liked my own color/plotting conventions so I've given up doing this
myself).
The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a
reasonable
way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith's,
we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding
mean
values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline.

So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, I would be happy to add Keith's
series. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate
(through comparining an exatropical averaging of our nothern hemisphere
patterns with Phil's more extratropical series) that the major
discrepancies between Phil's and our series can be explained in terms of
spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis (seasonality seems to be secondary
here, but probably explains much of the residual differences). But that
explanation certainly can't rectify why Keith's series, which has similar
seasonality
*and* latitudinal emphasis to Phil's series, differs in large part in
exactly the opposite direction that Phil's does from ours. This is the
problem we
all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this
was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably
concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al
series.

So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment that
"something else" is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps
Keith can
help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series
and the potential factors that might lead to it being "warmer" than the
Jones
et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this
regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting
doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these
estimates
and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don't think that
doubt is scientifically justified, and I'd hate to be the one to have
to give it fodder!

This is a case of politics trumping science. By itself, it's not awful. It's not good, but it's not awful. However, note the bit about Keith's series showing the late 20th century decline. This is the decline that Jones talks about hiding in one of the more infamous e-mails from this series, and is the link that shows you that the phrase "hide the decline" is not just an innocent turn of phrase, but an example that the process has been corrupted. The problem here is that they have some actual data that doesn't fit their agenda, so they're working on making it fit, and for justifying why it doesn't fit. Perhaps a scientist without an agenda might wonder if the fact that it doesn't fit is significant and further wonder if it means that incorrect assumptions have been made. Mann doesn't seem to want to go there, and wants to make sure that no one else goes there either.

Once again, what this shows is that CRU is an organization where opinions rule, not science.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Revised version the Wengen paper
Date: Wed Aug 20 09:32:52 2008
Cc: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

Gavin,
Almost all have gone in. Have sent an email to Janice re the regional
freshening.
On the boreholes I've used mostly Mike's revised text, with bits of
yours making it read a little better.
Thinking about the final bit for the Appendix. Keith should be in later, so
I'll check with him - and look at that vineyard book. I did rephrase the
bit
about the 'evidence' as Lamb refers to it. I wanted to use his phrasing -
he
used this word several times in these various papers. What he means is his
mind and its inherent bias(es).
Your final sentence though about improvements in reviewing and
traceability is a bit of a hostage to fortune. The skeptics will try to
hang on to
something, but I don't want to give them something clearly tangible.
Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our
FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions
not to respond - advice they got from the Information Commissioner. As an
aside and just between us, it seems that Brian Hoskins has withdrawn
himself
from the WG1 Lead nominations. It seems he doesn't want to have to deal
with
this hassle.
The FOI line we're all using is this. IPCC is exempt from any countries
FOI - the
skeptics
have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant
info
the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we
don't
have an obligation to pass it on.
Cheers
Phil

More on hiding from FOI requests. They sound like the mob trying to figure out how to weasel out of subpoenas. And they've received advice from the "Information Commissioner" on how to deal with them. My understanding is that the Information Commissioner should be enforcing FOI requests, not telling people how to get around them.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=12&filename=843161829.txt

From: Gary Funkhouser <gary@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700

Keith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central
and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send
it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material,
but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk
something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm
what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating
the response functions - he laughed and said that's what he thought
at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation
even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle
the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just
are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have
to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be
optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time
collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like
to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably
someday though.

Here Funkhouser is admitting that there's no way he can twist this particular data set into showing global warming. He's tried everything he can think of, but the data refuses to budge. Now, in real science, you don't try to twist the data to fit your theory, you adjust your theory to fit the data. Once again, CRU shows that what they are engaging in is not science.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1016&filename=1254108338.txt

From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

<x-flowed>
Phil,

Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
explain the 1940s warming blip.

If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know).

So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean -- but
we'd still have to explain the land blip.

I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.

More on adjusting the data to fit the theory. Wigley seems to think it's ok to adjust the ocean temperature by .15 degC. This way it still looks plausible, but might make it easier to explain this "blip" in temperatures in the 1940s. There's a word for what Wigley is doing here. Fraud.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1003&filename=1249503274.txt

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Grant Foster
<tamino_9@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: ENSO blamed over warming - paper in JGR
Date: Wed Aug 5 16:14:34 2009
Cc: "J. Salinger" <j.salinger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Annan
<jdannan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, >b.mullan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Gavin Schmidt
<gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Mike Mann ><mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
j.renwick@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Hi all,
Agree with Kevin that Tom Karl has too much to do. Tom Wigley is semi
retired and like Mike Wallace may not be responsive to requests from JGR.
We have Ben Santer in common ! Dave Thompson is a good suggestion.
I'd go for one of Tom Peterson or Dave Easterling.
To get a spread, I'd go with 3 US, One Australian and one in Europe.
So Neville Nicholls and David Parker.
All of them know the sorts of things to say - about our comment and
the awful original, without any prompting.

Cheers
Phil
At 15:50 05/08/2009, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi all
I went to JGR site to look for index codes, and I see that the offending
article has
been downloaded 128 times in past week (second). All the mnore reason to
get on with
it.
see below
Kevin
Grant Foster wrote:

Gentlemen,
I've completed most of the submission to JGR, but there are three
required entries I
hope you can help me with.
1) Keyword
Please provide 1 unique keyword

global temperatures, statistical methods, El Nino-Southern Oscillation,
global warming

2) Index Terms
Please provide 3 unique index terms

1600 GLOBAL CHANGE
1616 Climate variability
3309 Climatology
1694 Instruments and techniques



3) Suggested Reviewers to Include
Please list the names of 5 experts who are knowledgeable in your area and
could give
an unbiased review of your work. Please do not list colleagues who are
close associates,
collaborators, or family members. (this requires name, email, and
institution).

This e-mail discusses the perversion of the peer review process. The peers are supposed to be anonymous and unknown. The fact that we're getting names here is somewhat disturbing, as is the comment that they "know the sorts of things to say ... without any prompting". This isn't peer review, it's advocacy. Now Grant was specifically asked to provide names of potential peers, so the first is perhaps forgivable, but Jones' comment is still terrible.

Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: For your eyes only
Date: Thu Feb 3 13:11:46 2005

Mike,
It would be good to produce future series with and without the long
instrumental series and maybe the documentary ones as well. The long
measurements can then be used to validate the low-freq aspects at least
back to 1750, maybe earlier with the documentary. There are some key
warm decades (1730s, some in the 16th century) which the Moberg
reconstruction completely misses and gives the impression that all
years are cold between 1500 and 1750.
Away Feb 6-10 and 12-20 and 22-25 (last in Chicago - on the panel to
consider the vertical temp work of CCSP).
Cheers
Phil
Cheers
Phil
At 15:26 02/02/2005, you wrote:

Thanks Phil,
Yes, we've learned out lesson about FTP. We're going to be very careful in
the future
what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established
that directory
so that Tim could access the data.
Yeah, there is a freedom of information act in the U.S., and the
contrarians are going
to try to use it for all its worth. But there are also intellectual
property rights
issues, so it isn't clear how these sorts of things will play out
ultimately in the U.S.
I saw the paleo draft (actually I saw an early version, and sent Keith
some minor
comments). It looks very good at present--will be interesting to see how
they deal w/
the contrarian criticisms--there will be many. I'm hoping they'll stand
firm (I believe
they will--I think the chapter has the right sort of personalities for
that)...
Will keep you updated on stuff...
talk to you later,
mike
At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !
Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents
everything better
this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never
know who is
trawling
them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they
ever hear
there
is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the
file rather than
send
to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to
enquiries within
20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request
will test it.
We also
have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent
me a worried
email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model
code. He
has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be
relevant
here,
but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say
we must adhere
to it !

More on data hiding and fear of FOI requests, including an admission from Jones that he'd delete the data before complying with one. The timeline is interesting here, because this specific data was eventually requested under FOI, and CRU claimed that it had been accidentally deleted. I think Jones would have a tough time convincing a jury that the deletion was in fact, accidental.

Now let's look at some of the comments from the code or from people working on it. This is a very small smattering of comments. I could write a book on the problems with this code.

I don't have links to the code. Either download the whole file yourself and look at it, or trust me that these files exist and have these comments.

From the file data4alps.pro:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring
density' records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer
temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this
"decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means
that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but
have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.

This is pretty much a smoking gun. It's admitting that the tree ring data doesn't match temperature observations recorded elsewhere. The purpose of using tree ring data is to establish temperature variations. If it doesn't do that, it can't be used!

From the file HARRY_READ_ME.txt:

OH **** THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I
thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the
hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's
just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.

Remember science must be reproducible. Their data corruption makes their work unreproducible, even by them!

From the file mkp2correlation.pro:

    function
mkp2correlation,indts,depts,remts,t,filter=filter,refperiod=refperiod,$
    datathresh=datathresh
    ;
    ; THIS WORKS WITH REMTS BEING A 2D ARRAY (nseries,ntime) OF MULTIPLE
TIMESERIES
    ; WHOSE INFLUENCE IS TO BE REMOVED. UNFORTUNATELY THE IDL5.4
p_correlate
    ; FAILS WITH >1 SERIES TO HOLD CONSTANT, SO I HAVE TO REMOVE THEIR
INFLUENCE
    ; FROM BOTH INDTS AND DEPTS USING MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION AND THEN
USE THE
    ; USUAL correlate FUNCTION ON THE RESIDUALS.
    ;

    pro maps12,yrstart,doinfill=doinfill
    ;
    ; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD
reconstructions
    ; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't
usually
    ; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look
closer to
    ; the real temperatures.
    ;

    ;
    ; Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not)
MXD
    ; reconstructions
    ; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't
usually
    ; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look
closer to
    ; the real temperatures.

"Shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures"???

Another smoking gun admitting to changing the data to fit the theory. This kind of comment appears all over the source code, as does the phrase "applies a very artificial correction for decline".

Look, if the data doesn't stand on its own merits and has to be artificially adjusted then it's useless. Let's say I have a room with walls that are 6', 5'8", 6'2", and 5'6". I've claimed for years that the room is square. But I get the actual measurements and it's not. Well, all I have to do is apply a very artificial correction to the data and all the walls are 5'10" and I can continue to say that it's a square. I'd be lying, but what's wrong with that?

Amateur Hour at the CRU

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the CRU documents, from a file called “HARRY_READ_ME.txt”. The author appears to be someone trying to analyze/debug their code.

17. Inserted debug statements into anomdtb.f90, discovered that
a sum-of-squared variable is becoming very, very negative! Key
output from the debug statements:

OpEn=   16.00, OpTotSq=    4142182.00, OpTot= 7126.00
DataA val =       93, OpTotSq=       8649.00
DataA val =      172, OpTotSq=      38233.00
DataA val =      950, OpTotSq=     940733.00
DataA val =      797, OpTotSq=    1575942.00
DataA val =      293, OpTotSq=    1661791.00
DataA val =       83, OpTotSq=    1668680.00
DataA val =      860, OpTotSq=    2408280.00
DataA val =      222, OpTotSq=    2457564.00
DataA val =      452, OpTotSq=    2661868.00
DataA val =      561, OpTotSq=    2976589.00
DataA val =    49920, OpTotSq=-1799984256.00
DataA val =      547, OpTotSq=-1799684992.00
DataA val =      672, OpTotSq=-1799233408.00
DataA val =      710, OpTotSq=-1798729344.00
DataA val =      211, OpTotSq=-1798684800.00
DataA val =      403, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00
OpEn=   16.00, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00, OpTot=56946.00
forrtl: error (75): floating point exception
IOT trap (core dumped)

..so the data value is unbfeasibly large, but why does the
sum-of-squares parameter OpTotSq go negative?!!

The author here is apparently a high school student, or a McDonald’s reject. The problem is apparently a sum of squares, i.e. x*x + y*y + z*z + a*a, etc. And the person here is stunned that the values go negative. The answer is that the algorithm is obviously using 32-bit signed integers, and he’s experiencing overflow. The result at the point of overflow is 2,494,982,989. The maximum 32-bit signed integer is 2,147,483,647.

Here’s another blogger’s take, with an example of how this could happen, using 4-bit arithmetic for simplicity.

I’m a software developer. I’d hope that any person we’d hire out of college would know this, but the person here is clueless.

And we’re supposed to trust these people’s code and their math. We’re supposed to trust the entire future of the world to it.

Global Warming IS Man-made After All…

…and now we know which men. Their names are Jones, Mann, Osborn, Wigley, and Briffa.

When I was a 20-something, a couple men announced they had achieved “cold fusion”. This turned out to be a hoax. In the early part of this decade, a company called Clonaid announced that they had cloned a human being. This also turned out to be a hoax.

If you haven’t been paying attention the last few days, you’ve missed the biggest science story since these two. E-mails and data from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) were published without their knowledge or consent. This has been referred to constantly by what little media coverage it’s received as a “hack”. That seems to be wrong to me. This has all the smells of a “whistleblower” incident if you ask me. Someone on the inside decided they’d heard/seen enough. I could be wrong. We’ll see.

The folks at CRU are the prime movers and shakers of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) crowd. There’s barely a speech given or paper written on the subject that doesn’t reference their work. Why does this matter?

Well, to put it bluntly, these folks can’t be trusted.

These e-mails discuss elimination of data that doesn’t support the thesis, destruction of records requested under Freedom of Information requests, discrediting critics and prevention of publication of their works.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that a couple months ago, I wrote a post about possible faking of data in one of the main “hockey stick” graphs. The text of the e-mails pretty much confirms this speculation, and this exact issue is even discussed in this e-mail.

Does this mean that AGW isn’t real? No. In fact, the sad thing is these people have made real debate on this subject even harder. I wouldn’t believe any of them now if they told me “2+2=4”. With or without proof. I’ve seen their idea of “proof”.

Of course, this issue has been met with deafening silence from the MSM. The NYT has decided to comment, with one of the most laughable comments I have ever read from a “news organization”.

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

The NYT’s problem isn’t that these documents “were never intended for the public eye”. It’s that they’re An Inconvenient Truth.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I wanted to call this post “They Faked the Whole Thing” but the current title fits my background better and doesn’t make the assumption that the problems here are deliberate. You decide for yourself.

I also considered calling it “An Inconvenient Truth” for a whole host of good reasons.

Anyway, we have a saying in the world of software development. The saying is “garbage in, garbage out”, meaning that no matter how good a program is, it’s still subject to the reliability of the data. If you input bad data, you’re going to get bad results.

Please read this article on global warming. Or if you have the math/science skills, read the article it’s based upon here.

But if you’re in a hurry, let me sum up. The models showing global warming are based upon bad data. When the real problems with the data are corrected, there is no evidence of global warming.

I’ll quote the first article:

Let me repeat this. The statistical models used by the High Priests of Global Warming are using a newly identified and specific data set which wrongly produces decades of warming where none exists in the raw temperature data 0r other data sets.

Basically, an unrepresentative data sample was used which improperly skews the results. Replacing the unrepresentative sample with a better one fixes the problem. The sample data in question is a set of tree cores in Russia which show a high degree of warming recently.

Look at the chart below:

 

The Y-axis sets 1 as an established baseline, or norm.

The red line indicates the data used in the global warming doom and gloom scenarios. It’s a variation of the well known “hockey stick” graph, and uses 12 suspect tree cores. The black line replaces this suspect data with 34 cores from other trees in the area and appears to actually show global cooling.

But wait, haven’t I done just the same thing I’m accusing the IPCC of? I took out some data I called suspect and replaced it with some other data that might be suspect as well.

Good point. Rather than picking and choosing, let’s look at all the data, shall we?

 

Same graph with a new line. The green line uses all available data. And guess what? No hockey stick. No evidence of any sort of climate change at all.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Happy Lenin’s Birthday!

Today (April 22) is the birthday of the Father of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. As we continue our march to socialism, we should celebrate the lives of it’s founding fathers.

Lenin oversaw the executions of possibly a quarter of a million of his own people, and had the model of forced labor camps later used by Nazi Germany.

Even the clergy did not escape his tyrannical methods:

Lenin remained an advocate of mass terror, according to Richard Pipes. In a letter of 19 March 1922, to Molotov and the members of the Politburo, following an uprising by the clergy in the town of Shuia, Lenin outlined a brutal plan of action against the clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables: “We must (…) put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. (…) The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing (…) the better.”^[68] Estimates of the numbers of the clergy killed vary. According to Orlando Figes^[69] and The Black Book of Communism^[70], 2,691 priests, 1,962 monks and 3,447 nuns were executed as a result of Lenin's aforementioned directives. Historian Christopher Read estimates from the records that a grand total of 1,023 clergy were killed in the whole period 1917-23.^[71] However, the late Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) and later head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, cites documents that confirm nearly 3,000 were shot in 1918 alone.^[72] Yakovlev stated that Lenin was "By every norm of international law, posthumously indictable for crimes against humanity."^[73]

I won’t speculate on what it means that today is also “Earth Day”.

For How Many Years…?

Interesting article.

Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, currently at Uppsala University in Sweden asks, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”
That’s a vital question for Americans to ask. Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it’s not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming.

As they say, read the whole thing.

"Consensus" On Global Warming? Apparently Not

The Petition Project:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. 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 gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

But has anyone signed the bloody thing?  You bet.

[M]ore than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

It is evident that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,021 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,072 American scientists are not "skeptics."

Ok, this is still science by democracy, which is ludicrous, but at least it lays to rest the idea that all reputable scientists are on board with the idea of human-caused global warming.

Check out the Petition Project here.