Q&A: Professor Phil Jones (BBC)

The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA's press office.

Q - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

A- So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

Read more at the link above, and see What Did Phil Jones Actually Admit? Was He Correct? and Phil Jones Confesses to Climate Fraud

More Australian Temperature Data Manipulation

Another Smoking Gun from Australia?   How GISS adjusts temperature records in two adjacent sites from kenskingdom blog.

Despite its assurances, GISS has adjusted the temperature records of two sites at Mackay to reverse a cooling trend in one and increase a warming trend in another.   This study presents evidence that this is not supportable and is in fact an instance of manipulation of data.

In other news today:

• Global warming snow job - Climate-change pseudoscience is fraught with fraud (Washington Times) 
• Inside the Climate Bunker
• Shoveling into the wind: Blizzards and global warming
• The Latest on the Ethanol Scam: US Ethanol Industry’s Grain Consumption in 2009 Was Enough to Feed 330 Million People
• MSNBC's Ratigan Blames 'Snowpocalypse' on Global Warming
• Warmists' Stupefying Sense of Snow

Heated Debate

From the Wall Street Journal Online: Climate Group Admits Mistakes

Some IPCC Officials Say the U.N.-Sponsored Group Must Improve Procedures for Reviewing Reports

The Kaufman Correction, Part 2

As noted in the prior post, thanks to the work of Steven McIntyre and others posting at climateaudit.org, the paleoclimate reconstruction of Kaufman et al was shown to have numerous data reconstruction and statistical errors including data flipped upside down for 2 of the proxies. Kaufman's revised spreadsheets with the corrected proxies were posted 10/09 (no longer available on the web) and 12/09. The primary change between the 10/09 and 12/09 spreadsheet is stated as "Record 17 was revised to reflect the interpretation of Geirsdóttir et al. (S29) that temperature is related more strongly to BSi than to the BSi:OM ratio."


Interesting that the one proxy that was changed (between 10/09 & 12/09) was the one showing the greatest warming anomaly 2000 years ago in the original paper. This new interpretation using BSi (biogenic silica) instead of using the ratio of BSi:OM (OM=organic matter=TOC=total organic content) resulted in large changes to the reconstructed temperature anomaly as shown in the prior post, flattening out the anomaly in the earlier portion, resulting the the combined proxies conforming more to a hockey stick shape. How is the science settled if one uses BSi:OM in the original paper and then when the hockey stick doesn't appear, conveniently switches to BSi in the correction?


But lets take a look at the work cited as the reason for this change in interpretation. The graph below from A 2000 year record of climate variations reconstructed from Haukadalsvatn, West Iceland, Geirsdóttir et al , shows (in graph A) that the BSi:TOC was higher than the present 2000 years ago and much higher during the Medieval Warming Period. It also shows that the BSi alone (graph C) shows approximately the same temperature anomaly 2000 years ago as today, and much higher temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period than today. Graph D is the "discredited" Mann/Jones (2003) temperature reconstruction and Graph E is "Moberg et al. (2005) reconstructed Northern Hemisphere temperatures calculated by combining low-resolution proxies with tree-ring data, using a wavelet transform technique to achieve timescale-dependent processing of the data", which also shows the Medieval Warming Period to have higher temperatures than the present. In sum, Geirsdóttir et al and Moberg et al find the Medieval Warming Period hotter than today and do not find a Kaufman/Mann-like hockey stick.  Geirsdóttir et al also do not find a hockey stick using either interpretation of the data with BSi or BSi:OM.

More Unsettled Science

More evidence the IPCC squelches the opinions of it's own reviewers which are contrary to the political party line from Bishop Hill: Hansen's colleague eviscerates AR4 Chapter 9

"While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen's at GISS. Lacis's is not a name I've come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC's report is simply breathtaking. Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report - it's the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made. Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:

There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn't the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community - instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.

I'm speechless. The chapter authors, however weren't. This was their reply (all of it):

Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.

Simply astonishing. This is a consensus?"

New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin on this topic:

"I have yet to see anyone provide definitive evidence — with no error bars — that the fingerprint of human-generated greenhouse gases (or other emissions or actions) is unequivocal. The only thing described as “unequivocal” in the report was the warming, not the cause, unless I really haven’t been paying attention for the last two decades."

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kudos to Andrew Revkin, you have been paying attention and are indeed "not as predictable as [the climategate gang] would like", to quote a Michael Mann email. 
Read comment #42 on the New York Times blog, by John R. Christy, Director, Earth System Science Center, Distinguished Professor, Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama State Climatologist


Other news today:
New research into greenhouse effect challenges theory of global warming

The end is not near 
Droughtgate: Study Finds IPCC had Temperature - Drought Connection Backwards
The case for climate action must be remade from the ground upwards
Climate scientists hit out at 'sloppy' melting glaciers error
Climate Wars: Guardian special investigation
'Climategate' was PR disaster that could bring healthy reform of peer review

Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick

From The Register:

Interview: In 2001 the IPCC published its Third Assessment report prominently featuring a graph that became "the logo of global warming". Previous historical reconstructions didn't show our modern warm climate as particularly anomalous. This was very different, and was hailed as a "call to action". Yet Michael Mann's studies were deeply flawed. Omit one or two proxies, for example, and the scary warming 'spike' disappears. Mann's model could produce hockey stick shapes using random data, such as baseball scores, or red noise. Critics alleged that Mann's choices of data and statistical tools all cooled the Medieval Warm Period, and emphasised late 20th Century warming. Read more

Related picture from the Penn State Young Americans for Freedom Rally:

Global Cooling is the New Global Warming

Express.co.uk: Global warming to become global cooling, claims expert

GLOBAL warming is set to become global cooling this century, a leading analyst claimed yesterday. Professor Michael Beenstock said theories of climate change are wrong. He warned climatologists have misused statistics, leading them to the mistaken conclusion global warming is ­evidence of the greenhouse effect. He told London’s Cass Business School that the link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures is “spurious”, adding: “The greenhouse effect is an illusion.”

The Kaufman Correction: Before & After

UPDATE: The "new corrected spreadsheet" from Kaufman 12/09 was just located online and therefore this post revised & updated to reflect the comparison of raw data from the "draft corrected spreadsheet" of 10/09 to the "new corrected spreadsheet" of 12/09 rather than estimating data from the graphs.

Science has published the "Correction & Clarification" to Kaufman et al 2009. Comparing the "draft corrected spreadsheet 10/09"  used to prepare the draft Correction to the "new corrected spreadsheet 12/09" used to prepare the published Correction shows only one difference between draft and published on Record 17:

Update (December 2009)                                                                   
Record 2 was revised using the correct time scale of McKay et al. (S16)                                              
Record 12 was revised to omit the high-pass filter used by Andersen et al. (S25), as was done in subsequent studies (S37)                                    
Record 17 was revised to reflect the interpretation of Geirsdóttir et al. (S29) that temperature is related more strongly to BSi than to the BSi:OM ratio                                         Record 20 was corrected to reflect the interpretation of Tijander et al. (S32) that X-ray density is related inversely to temperature                                                                
Record 21 was corrected to reflect the interpretation of Haltia-Hovi et al. (S33) that varve thickness is related inversely to temperature                                                                   
Records 3 and 10 were revised to correct rounding errors           
Record 19 was truncated at 1799 to exclude the 1805 bin, which was based on only one year (1800)   

A plot of the differences on the sediment proxy temperature anomalies in Record 17 between the old and new spreadsheets shows the old version with significantly higher anomalies especially in the earlier data, and that considerable differences exist between the old and new interpretations of the data:

 

This change affected the average of the 23 proxies as as follows:  temperature anomaly change from year 0 to year 2000 in the 10/09 spreadsheet=.46 and new spreadsheet=.57, and the corresponding graphs:

Corrected temperature anomaly graph from the draft version:

Corrected temperature anomaly from the published version:

In addition, the highest peak (1.49) was in year 1975 in the draft  data, the highest peak in year 2000 in the published graphs, but 1975=2000 (1.47) in the data contained in the new corrected spreadsheet (12/09).
And here's the dramatic presentation for the public, which improperly tacks on "Mike's Nature Trick" - the instrumental record, shrinks the error bars, and makes the latest "anomaly"~1.2°C for the "trick", sets the 2000 anomaly higher than the 1975 anomaly (even though the 12/09 spreadsheet says they were the same), and adds the backdrop of melting ice for subliminal effect:

2009 Paper: Water Vapor Feedback is Negative on CO2

From the paper: "Water vapor feedback in climate models is positive mainly because of their roughly constant relative humidity in the mid- to upper-troposphere as the planet warms. Negative trends in [relative humidity] in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative -that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2."

NASA's "Variable Sun" Mission

February 5, 2010: For some years now, an unorthodox idea has been gaining favor among astronomers. It contradicts old teachings and unsettles thoughtful observers, especially climatologists. "The sun," explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, "is a variable star."

But it looks so constant...
That's only a limitation of the human eye. Modern telescopes and  spacecraft have penetrated the sun's blinding glare and found a maelstrom of unpredictable turmoil. Solar flares explode with the power of a billion atomic bombs. Clouds of magnetized gas (CMEs) big enough to swallow planets break away from the stellar surface. Holes in the sun's atmosphere spew million mile-per-hour gusts of solar wind. And those are the things that can happen in just one day.

 

'Solar Constant' is an Oxymoron

Astronomers were once so convinced of the sun's constancy, they called the irradiance of the sun "the solar constant," and they set out to measure it as they would any constant of Nature. By definition, the solar constant is the amount of solar energy deposited at the top of Earth's atmosphere in units of watts per meter-squared. All wavelengths of radiation are included—radio, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and so on. The approximate value of the solar constant is 1361 W/m2.

Clouds, atmospheric absorption and other factors complicate measurements from Earth's surface, so NASA has taken the measuring devices to space. Today, VIRGO, ACRIM and SORCE are making measurements with precisions approaching 10 parts per million per year. Future instruments scheduled for flight on NASA's Glory and NOAA's NPOESS spacecraft aim for even higher precisions.

To the amazement of many researchers, the solar constant has turned out to be not constant.

Unprecedented Climate Change On.........Pluto

"It's a little bit of a surprise to see these changes happening so big and so fast," said astronomer Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "This is unprecedented." 

In other news:

• How Met Office blocked questions on its own man's role in 'hockey stick' climate row
  
  The AGW Gravy Train
  
  

  EPA: ethanol harms air quality but we’re mandating it anyway

  Melt from Alaskan Glaciers Largely Overestimated in Previous Studies, Glaciologists Show 

  IPCC: Beyond the Himalayas   

  Indian Gov't Forms its own Body to Monitor Climate since it "cannot rely" on IPCC 

  Penn State Probe into Mann's Wrongdoing a 'Total Whitewash'

  The Great Global Warming Collapse

  Climate Scientists Shut out sceptics 

  IPCC: International Panel of Climate Crooks 

  The global warming guerrillas 

  Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues 

  Climategate: Penn State Moves to Protect Its Own

  Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review 

  Surprise, Surprise, Many Scientists Disagree On Global Warming

  

More Unsettled Climate Science

New research findings challenge the notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth's orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change.

New Paper: CO2 plays very limited role in interglacial temperature.

Interglacials, Milankovitch Cycles, and Carbon Dioxide

"variations in solar surface magnetic activity cause changes in the Earth’s climate on a 100-ka timescale”
It has been shown above that low altitude cloud cover closely follows cosmic ray flux; that the galactic cosmic ray flux has the periodicities of the glacial/interglacial cycles; that a decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux was coincident with Termination II [the warming that initiated the Eemian, the last interglacial] ; and that the most likely initiator for Termination II was a consequent decrease in Earth’s albedo.

The temperature of past interglacials was higher than today most likely as a consequence of a lower global albedo due to a decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth’s atmosphere. In addition, the galactic cosmic ray intensity exhibits a 100 kyr periodicity over the last 200 kyr that is in phase with the glacial terminations of this period. Carbon dioxide appears to play a very limited role in setting interglacial temperature.”

The Complete List of Things Caused by Global Warming

Hilarious compilation of everything from acne to yellow fever supposedly due to global warming (with links).

Of course, one hardly finds mention of the huge benefits to man and the rest of the biosphere fortunate to live during the current interglacial.

Penn State on Mann: Further Inquiry Warranted

From Penn State press release 2/3/10

"In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."

It’s time to stop worshipping the false gods behind global warming

From The Irish Examiner

also in the news today (but really old news): Trees growing faster as planet warms
-more good news about increased CO2 and GW

Climate Frauds of the Day: More Missing & Tampered Data

1. From The Guardian (UK), strangely enough written by a very-pro-AGW journalist. The tide is shifting...

It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China? But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.
It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming. The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed. Details

2.NIWA Unable To Justify Official Temperature Record (Records used to adjust raw data lost for New Zealand as well. N.B. The raw data shows no GW while the adjusted data shows GW, as usual)

and see Wheels fall off global-warming hysteria (National Post)