The Telegraph reports alarmists have been caught “adjusting” temperature readings to create warming that did not actually occur.
UPDATE. This site shows the data much better.
This leads to a greater question for our subjectivist friends: If the fraud did in fact occur, and the warmist who committed the fraud sincerely subjectively believed that committing scientific fraud is a good thing if it serves the greater good of environmentalism, was the scientific fraud then good?
Christopher Booker can deny six things before breakfast. You’ll be pleased to know that he’s also an ID sympathiser.
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/puerto-casado/
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/guest-post-skeptics-demand-adjustments/
(Just passing by — I don’t intend to stay.)
Barry,
Would you like some asbestos, mad cow disease and some cigarettes with your whine?
‘Cause Christopher Booker also denies the science that any of those are the least bit harmful.
Piotr and REC, engage in the genetic fallacy much? Do you have ANY information that leads to the conclusion that the report is false? If “Christopher Booker is a poopyhead” is all you’ve got, you aint’ got much and should just move along.
For people who seem to pride themselves in appeals to cold rational logic and reason, you show a surprising lack of it sometimes. Especially REC, who allows that the Holocaust might not have been evil.
Come on Barry–how many retracted articles, total BS and monetary settlements does one journalist need before being discredited?
Also, since you bring it up, several of your supporters allow that God must have willed the Holocaust for some greater good. Mind going to yell at them? I know that thread is a near-total loss for you, but do be consistent.
REC, talk about being discredited. You say the Holocaust might not have been evil. Pot, meet kettle.
Also, your only argument in this thread relies exclusively on the genetic fallacy. As I’ve said, if that is all you have you should move on.
If you have anything — anything whatsoever — that relies on silly outdated concepts like, you know, evidence and logic, we would be happy to hear it. And if the report is false, we will retract this thread and issue an apology. Until then, kindly desist from injecting fallacious arguments into the discussion.
It’s hard to take seriously scientific claims of a guy who thinks asbestos is as harmless as talcum powder.
And note Barry, that we’re not just dismissing Booker because he is a known crank. Have you followed Piotr’s links? They are quite relevant to the current story.
Funny to hear it from a guy who relies on an ad hominem fallacy to dismiss his opponents’ arguments.
Barry, Piotr @1 has already provided excellent links that refute the story. I was just making fun of your ability to find the crankyest of cranks, the bottom of the barrel in support of your beliefs.
@BA
“If “Christopher Booker is a poopyhead” is all you’ve got, you aint’ got much and should just move along.”
They are very childish Barry but we can be assured that their content free ankle biting is just an admission of the weakness of their position when it comes to this article.
The adjustments are supposed to have been done for scientific reasons such as to correct for increasing urbanization, which caused heat around a measurement station. So you have to examine the issue carefully and consider each adjustment individually. But if you click through the telegraph article to the blog it is based on some of the adjusters refuse to explain their adjustments … which is grounds for suspicion.
Alarmists:
Practically 100% of the quality control “adjustments” increase the temperatures. And you swallow that right down? Why don’t you just come out and say that evidence does not matter, that truth and integrity do not matter, that the only thing that matters is that data is manipulated to show what your politics want it to show?
Pathetic.
Jim Smith @ 10: As I mentioned in 11, also grounds for suspicion is the fact that the “adjustments” are, for all practical purposes, 100% one way. One would assume that if there were errors the errors would be distributed randomly between too high and too low. Nope. Almost all of the errors are “too low.” And the denizens of The “Skeptical” Zone swallow that right down. Pathetic.
Here’s the blog that Booker’s article is based on.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/massive-tampering-with-temperatures-in-south-america/
Let the GW alarmists debate the results shown there. There is a very wholesale revision of “raw” data that is alleged to have taken place. Did this, or did this not, happen?
So stop with the ad hominem’s and address Homewood’s allegations, please.
PaV @ 13. They will decline your invitation to engage the evidence. That is why one should always put irony quote marks around “Skeptical” when one speaks of The “Skeptical” Zone. They are skeptical all right, skeptical of anything that challenges their dogmas and prejudices. Pathetic.
PaV, did you read the first link of the first comment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRFz8merXEA#t=146
I thought this was old news.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....r-records/
Why don’t you just come out and say that evidence does not matter
Um Barry … you are pulling our leg, right ? right ?
Graham2, you are not the least bit skeptical that almost all of the adjustments adjusted temps up?
Lubos Motl, formerly a professor of physics at Harvard, a global warming skeptic, and generally a conservative contrarian, has these words of caution for Barry:
Mosher’s post, by the way, is link number 2 in Piotr’s first comment on this thread.
Will you, guys, read the links and calm the heck down?
UDEditors: Did you even read the sentence that we’ve highlighted for you. This does not support your “nothing to see here” dismissal.
Barry,
1/3 of northern Canadian ice is missing coz it melted… For the first time in like forever the Canadian northern passage has been safe and it has been opened to regular ship voyages… few… but still some religious people think the Earth is being gradually converted to what it was when the paradise condition were all over the globe…
UDEditors: And the Canadian ice was even lower 76 years ago before all of the so-called global warming occurred. This year the antarctic ice reached a record high. Yes, some people are letting their religious views cloud their judgment. I agree with you on that part.
Thanks to Darwinists and Warmists, the scientific community can no longer be trusted. Crooks and liars, all of them. LOL.
UDEditors, Mapou, this really is the tragedy of the whole thing. When this myth is finally exploded beyond the slightest doubt, the public’s confidence will be irreparably damaged. And after falsely crying wolf so long, what will happen if there really is a crisis? No one will believe them. They have sold their credibility for a mess of pottage. Very sad.
In regards to the Global Warming scare, it is interesting to note that life has continually been on earth, unabated, for almost 4.0 billion years.
In fact, contrary to materialistic thought, we now have evidence for extremely complex photosynthetic life suddenly appearing on earth, as soon as water appeared on the earth, in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth.
The geologic and fossil record also reveals, during this time, many of these very first bacterial life-forms lived in irreducibly complex, symbiotic, (i.e. mutually beneficial), colonies called Microbial Mats and/or Stromatolites.
,,,Please note, that if even one type of bacteria group did not exist in this complex cycle of biogeochemical interdependence, that was illustrated on the preceding sites, then all of the different bacteria would soon die out.
This essential biogeochemical interdependence, of the most primitive different types of bacteria that we have evidence of on ancient earth, makes the origin of life ‘problem’ for neo-Darwinists that much worse. For now not only do neo-Darwinists have to explain how the ‘miracle of life’ happened once with the origin of photosynthetic bacteria, but they must now also explain how all these different types bacteria, that photosynthetic bacteria are dependent on, in this irreducibly complex biogeochemical web, miraculously arose just in time to supply the necessary nutrients, in their biogeochemical link in the chain, for photosynthetic bacteria to continue to survive.
Moreover, the first photosynthetic bacterial life on earth, (and sulfate reducing bacteria), were not just randomly trying out one thing and then trying out another thing, as would be expected on a neo-Darwinian view. The Stromatolite fossils, Microbial Mat fossils, and the oldest bacterium fossils, found on earth demonstrate an extreme conservation of morphology throughout time. A extreme conservation which, very contrary to evolutionary thought, simply means they have not changed through time and look very similar to Stromatolites, Microbial Mats, and bacteria of today.
Moreover, not only have Stromatolite fossils, Microbial Mat fossils, and the oldest bacterium fossils, not changed for as far back as has been measured, this first life on earth has been shown to be continually preparing the earth, (i.e. terraforming the earth), for higher life forms to later appear on earth.
From 3.8 to .6 billion years ago photosynthetic bacteria, and sulfate-reducing reducing bacteria, dominated the geologic and fossil record (that’s over 80% of the entire time life has existed on earth). Photosynthetic bacteria, besides producing oxygen that would one day support higher lifeforms on earth, also detoxified the ocean of excess iron and deposited it as iron ore:
While the photosyntheic bacteria were detoxifying the oceans of iron, and depositing them as ores that would be of future benefit for man, sulfate reducing bacteria were also detoxifing the earth of toxic levels of heavy metal and depositing them as useful ores that would someday be of benefit to modern man:
To this day, various types of bacteria maintain an essential minimal level of these heavy metals in the ecosystem which are high enough so as to be available to the biological systems of the higher life forms that need them yet low enough so as not to be poisonous to those very same higher life forms.
And on top of the fact that poisonous heavy metals on the primordial earth were brought into ‘life-enabling’ balance by complex biogeochemical processes, there was also an explosion of minerals on earth which were a result of that first life, as well as being a result of each subsequent ‘Big Bang of life’ there afterwards.
As well, the long term tectonic cycle, of the turnover the Earth’s crustal rocks, must also be fine-tuned to a certain degree with the bacteria, and thus the tectonic cycle also plays a important foundational ‘biogeochemical role’ in the overall ecology of the earth. In other words, there are good reasons to believe that the tectonic cycle, rate of erosion and bacterial life, are ‘fine-tuned’ so as to eventually allow higher life to exist on earth and then maintain a balance once that higher life appears:
Since oxygen readily reacts and bonds with many of the solid elements making up the earth itself, and since the slow process of tectonic activity controls the turnover of the earth’s crust, it took photosynthetic bacteria a few billion years before the earth’s crust was saturated with enough oxygen to allow a sufficient level of oxygen to be built up in the atmosphere as to allow higher life:
Moreover tectonic activity, besides being crucial for bringing the atmosphere on earth to a point where it can host human life, also now plays a crucial role in keeping the atmosphere in balance (i.e. keeping the atmosphere stable):
Interestingly, for the last 10 million years the oxygen percentage has been holding steady around 21%. 21% happens to be a ‘very comfortable’ percentage for humans to exist. If the oxygen level was only a few percentage lower, large mammals would become severely hampered in their ability to metabolize energy; if only a few percentage higher, there would be uncontrollable outbreaks of fire across the land (Denton; Nature’s Destiny).
Even nitrogen, which makes up 70% of the atmosphere, is shown to be extremely fine-tuned for life. Just how crucial, and finely tuned, the nitrogen cycle is is revealed by this following study:
Dr. Ross points out that the extremely long amount of time it took to prepare a suitable place for humans to exist in this universe, for the relatively short period of time that we can exist on this planet, is actually a point of evidence that argues strongly for Theism:
As a Christian, I like the metaphor of ‘preparing for a wedding’ that Dr. Ross uses in the following video to illustrate the disparity that ‘The Anthropic Inequality’ presents in terms of time:
There is much more that could be brought out in regards to the fine-tuned ecology of the earth, but for a brief sketch on a blog, I think the point has been made. i.e. When taking the bigger picture of earth’s entire climate history into consideration, the Global warming argument loses much of its steam.
Verse and Inspirational video:
We return to our regular programming.
Barry: It wasn’t the climate thing, it was your sudden discovery of the value of ‘evidence’. Slippery thing, this ‘evidence’ thing, isn’t it ? Sometimes its real useful, sometimes we just don’t need it.
UDEditors: G2, this may be the most idiotic thing you’ve ever written. Impressive, because the bar there is really high.
correction to post 26.
nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere instead of 70% as I mistakenly typed
Oh Barry, you are just a charmer.
Similar news:
Food fat warnings ‘should not have been introduced’
Official warnings against the consumption of saturated fats are based on flawed data and should not have been introduced, claims new research
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....duced.html
Barry, through the loudspeaker in the ceiling:
Yes, I did.
Did you read the next sentence? Let me highlight it here for you:
And maybe a full paragraph further down:
Anti-science nut jobs—Motl is looking at you.
Judith Curry is another warming skeptic with strong credentials in climate studies. Head to her blog and read a guest post by Robert Rohde, Zeke Hausfather, and Steve Mosher Berkeley Earth: raw versus adjusted temperature data.
The post begins:
I’ll skip the technical details and go straight to the summary:
So, as has been said multiple times on this thread, Christopher Booker is a conspiracy nut who sees fraud where there is none.
Barry, I say it is a good answer… However, I have made some friends up north of Canada they may not agree with your assumptions. They live there… I have asked them to provide a full report… I hope you don’t mind…?
#34 Skram
Thanks for that link (from a technically literate but sceptical community) which pretty much clears up why the adjustments are made and shows they have no net effect globally. As one of the (clearly sceptical) commenters said:
Skram:
Judity Curry does not believe she is a warming skeptic. In fact, she says in this letter that skeptics need to be “countered.”
In my objectivist ethical framework, trying to win an argument by misrepresenting the viewpoint of experts I cite is unethical.
Does your subjectivism help you do that? Of course, I suppose we should not be surprised. You recently suggested that it is possible that the Holocaust might have been an affirmatively good thing. I guess we shouldn’t put anything past someone who could say that.
At any rate, nothing you say has any credibility. Did you really think I wouldn’t check on this?
Barry
Scepticism is a matter of degree and comes in all sorts of flavours. Curry may not regard herself as a sceptic but it would be hard to find a climatologist who is more sceptical.
But instead of scoring debating points against Skram why not address the points in the link he gave? Or do you now accept that Booker was wrong?
The 19th century saw an end to the little ice age. That we are warmer now should not be any surprise because we are no longer in that cooler era. The warming anomaly is less than the daily temperature variation. AND we have daily temperature changes that dwarf the warming anomaly.
The climate changes- that is what it does and it does so regardless of us. When the next Maunder minimum occurs the alarmists will see the real driver of our climate doing its thing.
And if skram wants to talk about conspiracy nuts it doesn’t have to look ant further than his own ilk who scream “CONSPIRACY” at the mention of Academic Freedom bills. Talk about seeing stuff tat isn’t there- Booker has nothing on evolutionists.
Barry:
Nice of you to quote a single word from a 2009 letter, Barry! Curry’s position has been evolving: she has been steadily distancing herself from consensus. To such a degree that she now appears on the Wikipedia’s list of scientists questioning the accuracy of IPCC climate projections, along with Richard Lindzen and Freeman Dyson. None of them denies the reality of warming. All three disagree with the consensus that the warming will be substantial and that we need to do anything about it.
Here is an extended quote from a recent (2013) interview at NPR:
I think that’s enough for an informed person to understand where Judith Curry stands on climate change. She is not a fire-breathing critic like McIntyre or Goddard, but she is in the same category as Lindzen.
Barry:
There we go with the genetic fallacy again. And who was it on this thread that said
May I call you a hypocrite?
And note, Barry, that our side didn’t simply call Booker a nut and stopped at that. We provided links to a substantial rebuttal by technically competent people. Here is, once again, a summary of that rebuttal:
What do you have to say to this? Nothing so far, except throwing ad hominem bombs.
OK Scram, if you want to use Wikipedia as a source, this is what Wikipedia says concerning her:
Suggesting, as she does, that skeptics should not be tarred and feathered, does not make her a skeptic.
As for your facile charges of hypocrisy, this is not a matter of the genetic fallacy. You ask the readers to believe you when you say Curry is a skeptic (for the obvious reason of attempting to insulate her views from a charge of bias). Should we believe you? This is a matter of evaluating your credibility as a witnesses. You have none Mr. “the Holocaust might be alright for all I know.”
Failed Climate Predictions
EnjoY! Be sure to check out all of the categories…
Barry, we can argue all day about Curry’s position on the skeptic scale. That would be an interesting diversion.
What do you have to say on the substance of the technical rebuttal?
skram @ 46,
I see a skeptic saying that the temps have been monkeyed with. I see a conformist say yes, the temps have been monkeyed with but you can trust the guys doing the monkeying; it makes no difference. Well, if it makes no difference, why do it?
One thing I do know, after climategate, “hide the decline,” refuse to show the source data, almost uniformly wrong computer projections, the hockey stick, etc., etc., etc. the alarmists have zero credibility. In that respect, they are kind of like you. So, when I see a conformist come in and say, “don’t worry; all is well; we would never mislead you,” I am skeptical.
Barry:
Go ahead and reread the rebuttal for you don’t understand its substance.
It wasn’t the “conformists” who adjusted the data with their own bias. It was done by an unbiased code. That is why some adjustments are up, some down, and the net is close to zero.
UDEditors: You say the code was unbiased. That, in itself, is reason to believe that it was biased.
Barry Arrington: the temps have been monkeyed with but you can trust the guys doing the monkeying; it makes no difference.
Nowadays, the process of homogenization is done by statistical methods, subject to review, and confirmed by more than one methodology.
And the code doing adjustments is openly available. No need to blindly “trust the guys doing the monkeying.” Anyone with time and minimal expertise can check what the code does.
Your move, Arrington.
What do you mean, your move? He already stomped his foot on the ground and whined about the nefarious and incompetent climate scientists. What more do you want him to do?
Yes, hrun0815, it seems like Barry and others have no interest in discussing the rebuttal presented on Curry’s blog by Rohde, Hausfather, and Mosher. Maybe we can pique their interest with a few more excerpts, this time from thread comments.
Mosher writes:
Where do you see fraud, Barry? The adjustments have been done not manually, not in one direction, but by a transparent algorithm, with the net effect close to zero globally. The code of the algorithm is available, so is the data, and anyone with a minimum technical ability can check that. This is as transparent as it can be.
What is your response?
… and this round ended like all the other ones about global warming. A ridiculous OP, after a little while a sound refuting of the ridiculous OP, and everybody moves one.
OK skram and hrun , stop patting each other on the back
http://drtimball.com/blog/
I would like to add that selecting individual press reports that seem to confirm one’s position while ignoring tons of peer-reviewed literature that contradicts it is also a fallacy (cherry-picking).
The problem I have with this manipulation of data is that there is no way to know if they are doing correctly. If you doubt the scientists, you are labeled a “denier” or “anti-science” or a ludite. I know from experience that it is easy to get things wrong if you have no way to test your calculations before using them. There has been no discussion of this, the “climate change” proponents are just saying that it is an ajustment for the heat island effect. So we are just supposed to trust them because they are “scientists” and we aren’t? Sorry, but I am not doing that. There is too much at stake just to let people get away with passing off untested theories as fact.
alanbrad: The problem I have with this manipulation of data is that there is no way to know if they are doing correctly.
That is incorrect. You can study the raw data and the methodology yourself. Here’s one such study:
http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings
From the article you posted: “The conclusion
of the three groups is that the urban heat island contribution to their
global averages is much smaller than the observed global warming.
The topic is not without controversy.” Of course there is a contraversy, because these temps were measured too close to the city in the past. How do you know you are right unless you go back in time and measure the temp further away, calculate the error, then compare it to what you are calculating now?
alanbrad: From the article you posted: “The conclusion …
So they cite three groups that find the urban heat effect is not significant. Then the study you quote does it’s own study, using an independent methodology. Do you understand the study and what they found?
Zachriel: it just shows that there is no credibility left in the theory of Global Warming. Its pretty obvious at this point. The defenders of the “modifications” are saying it is because of the heat island effect, and the study is saying its contravercial, then does its own modifications. The reality is, the whole thing is just a lame attempt to cover up some very obvious manipulation done to get more grant money.
Translation: I have no clue what the hell is going on, but I do know that those scientists are bunch of greedy lying liars who lie because they are greedy!
alanbrad: it just shows that there is no credibility left in the theory of Global Warming. Its pretty obvious at this point.
It’s pretty obvious at this point. It just shows you didn’t read the study, not even the abstract.
alanbrad: the study is saying its contravercial, then does its own modifications
They didn’t do “modifications”, but looked for the trend at rural stations, ignoring urban stations.
hrun0815 and Zachriel: You are ignoring the main point of my origional post. There is simply no way to prove the “modifications” done to the South American data was done correctly. And, conviently, the “modifications” do end up supporting the Global Warming theory. I simply cannot support a theory that is dependent on untested calculations to be then used to make my electic bill more expensive. You can trust these men to do things correctly, but I don’t. It is too easy to make up a bunch of data that supports your theory.
alanbrad: There is simply no way to prove the “modifications” done to the South American data was done correctly.
As the modifications are public and based on statistical and metrological methods, it is possible to show whether or not the modifications were done correctly. Alternatively, you could analyze the original data with your own independent methodology.