Science

One of the things which irks me the most about the Global Warming, Climate Change, Global Climate Disruption (or whatever they're calling it today), is the concept of a "global average temperature".

I'm no mathematician, I barely graduated high school, but the idea of a GAT never sat right with me. It just didn't make any sense. I was never able to quantify why, until someone mentioned the concepts of Intensive and Extensive properties of a system. And because the Earth is not a blackbody, not a system in equilibrium, the temperature of one part has little or no relevance to the temperature of another part.

Essex et al explains the whole situation very nicely here.

Their abstract states:

Physical, mathematical and observational grounds are employed to show that there
is no physically meaningful global temperature for the Earth in the context of the issue
of global warming. While it is always possible to construct statistics for any given set of
local temperature data, an infinite range of such statistics is mathematically permissible
if physical principles provide no explicit basis for choosing among them. Distinct and
equally valid statistical rules can and do show opposite trends when applied to the
results of computations from physical models and real data in the atmosphere. A given
temperature field can be interpreted as both “warming” and “cooling” simultaneously,
making the concept of warming in the context of the issue of global warming physically
ill-posed.

And their conclusion states:

There is no global temperature. The reasons lie in the properties of the equation of state

Climate Audit: McKitrick and Nierenberg 2010 Rebuts Another Team Article

Steve McIntyre exposes yet another damning example of how key members of the "climate science" community are dishonest brokers, at best.

As we saw in the CRU Emails, peer review for "climate science" is broken, and continues to be. Those of you who said the emails were taken out of context (even though plenty of proper context was provided), here you go. Context, and an apparent biased journal editor for the International Journal of Climatology, Andrew Comrie.

Essentially, an outside reviewer, and primary author of the paper being rebutted, was allowed to provide comments to the journal, but the paper's authors (McKittrick and Nierenberg) were not given the opportunity to reply, and their paper was rejected. They were forced to publish in another (non-climate) journal over which the "Hockey Team" had no control. According to McKittrick, none of the criticisms of the paper showed technical flaws, but merely dismissed the paper.

And, get this, Gavin Schmidt, the adversarial outside reviewer, asked McKittrick for his data and code, and McKittrick gave it to him. Why doesn't this happen in the opposite direction? There are STILL climate papers out there, which are used by the IPCC, that have no been replicated by anyone outside "the Team", and are therefore suspect and should not be considered for major policy decisions.

Remember Phil Jones' response to Bishop Hill when asked for data:

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

Found this story on MSN about "Most memorable professional mistakes."

So I read through them, and didn't find them particularly memorable; wrong videotape in the VCR for a presentation, pron 800 number instead of the right customer number on promotional materials, stuff like that. I think Phil Jones and other members of the "Hockey Team" could add some zingers to the list.

Here are a few choice quotes from Michael Mann from the ClimateGate emails.

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: He has engaged in some very nasty, and in my opinion unprofessional email exchanges with some close colleagues of mine who have established some fundamental undisclosed errors in work he co-published with von Storch.

Of course, all of Mann's email exchanges and postings at RealClimate are professional...

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: There are some similarly problematic issues with Cubasch, who, like von Storch, … has engaged in inflammatory and personal public commentary. There is no room for that on any side of the debate.

Except when it's Mann himself accusing everyone who disagrees with him of being in the pocket of "big oil".

April 26, 2006: email 1146062963 : [Mike Mann referring to data requests from Steve McIntyre] I’m saddened to hear that this bozo is bothering you too, in addition to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and everyone else. Rest assured that I won’t ever respond to McIntyre should he ever contact me, but I will forward you any email he sends related to this. I assume Scott feels the same way…

Another totally professional comment by The Mann! Is "bozo" a climate science term?

May 12, 2006: email 1147435800: [Again, Mann referring to McIntyre] Personally, I don’t see why you should make any concessions for this moron.

Ditto...

Inspired by ClimateGate...

• 10. Rorschach tests
• 9. Paper cutout dolls
• 8. Make funny hats
• 7. Confuse Al Gore
• 6. Paint people as less than human
• 5. Confuse Al Gore
• 4. Cause thousands of species to go extinct just by saying they're extinct
• 3. Cause polar ice caps to melt without them actually melting
• 2. Make fudge

And, the number one thing you can do with climate data: Scare the hell out of billions of people for no good reason.

Here is an example of the "settled science" of AGW. In one of the emails from the CRU "hack", Dendrochronologist Edward Cook states the following:

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year
extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we
believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fu**-all about what
the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know
with certainty that we know fu**-all).

I guess "fu**-all" is a sciency term for "the science is settled".

If someone feels I've taken this out of context, please enlighten me

In an interview for Investigatemagazine.com, Dr. Phil Jones of the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU), says the following:

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I’ll have to talk to other people here. In fact, we were changing all our passwords overnight and I can’t get to my email, as I’ve just changed my password. I’ve gone into the Climate Audit website because I can’t get into my own email.
“It’s completely illegal for somebody to hack into our system.”

Hey Dr. Phil, isn't it also completely illegal to destroy information which is the subject of an FOIA request, as you imply here, and here:

Email 555-5555):

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann :

Mike,
…
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 !

Here is a link to an excellent post at Bishop Hill's blog, which has a good, concise compilation of some of the more egregious emails from the CRU file reported previously.

I'll comment on some of them separately in coming days.

I'm sure everyone passing by here has heard of the recent CRU "hack" and release of email and data as reported at various blogs.

Some are over-reacting, in both directions, others are being prudently cautious, and yet others are trying to ignore it. A lot of questions remain to be answered, but what IS clear is that the emails appear to be legitimate.

Of course context is important, and I'm sure much of this is not taking that into account, or assuming a certain context. However, some of the more incriminating emails would be damning in any context.

What has been revealed is indeed a catastrophe, a catastrophe of elitist science and corruption of the peer-review process. At the very least, these "scientists" stand accused of hiding inconvenient results, gross hyperbole against other scientists, and probably outright fraud.

For what it's worth, I am willing to believe that CO2 might be a problem, but when we see incompetence and espionage such as these "scientists" have engaged in, it's difficult for me to take anything they say seriously ever again. They HAVE betrayed the public trust, and they don't seem to care. They have engaged in unethical practices made famous by "green" groups such as WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, RAN, and others, by grossly overstating their case, manipulating results, and creating something that isn't there.

My hope out of all this, that one of the "elite" in these emails will step forward and tell the truth. But I'm not holding my breath.

Update: Just found this quote at the end of the "Rules of the Game" PDF included with the "hacked" file compilation:

“First they ignore you; then they laugh
at you; then they fight you; then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi

NOAA: Global Ocean Surface Temperature Warmest on Record for June

Some excerpts from the press release:

The world’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for June, breaking the previous high mark set in 2005, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Additionally, the combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest on record. The global records began in 1880.

Couple of things here. First, it shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that it's warmer now than it was 150 years ago. I think we're all glad it is.

Second, since the oceans are warmer, according to NOAA, it's pretty obvious that the oceans are warming the atmosphere, not the other way around.

The global land surface temperature for June 2009 was 1.26 degrees F (0.70 degree C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 degrees F (13.3 degrees C), and ranked as the sixth-warmest June on record.

Wow, I'm sure glad we're not near the "average". 55.9 F would suck in the summer. Of course, I'm not sure why the 20th century average is any more important than the 19th, 18th, 17th, etc.

NOAA doesn't come to any conclusions on this press release, but it really seems like useless information, especially the concept of a "global surface temperature". Some places warm, some places cool, some remain relatively static. And until NOAA and NWS address their surface stations for collecting temperature data, the land surface record is fairly meaningless.

I'm also curious as to why a half a degree C over 150 years is a big deal. The weekly variation in temperature in Western Washington over the last week was over 30 degrees F. There were no mass extinctions, no droughts, no floods, just hot, then cool.

Where's the catastrophe?