Academic Fraud at the University of Arizona? Updated to Include the Smoking Gun.

By now you have probably heard about this bombshell.

The biggest news story of the day is one that has barely begun to break and will continue to reverberate for months or years to come. Someone hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre, one of the main centers of anthropogenic global warming research. The hacker downloaded 62 megabytes of data from the server, consisting of around 1,000 emails and a variety of other documents. He uploaded them to an FTP server, where they were available to the public, apparently, for only a few hours.

I'm not all that familiar with the Scientific Method, but I'm very familiar with running political campaigns and the emails have the look and feel of James Carvil's War Room. 

One email in particular is getting a lot of attention because it seems to show climate scientists manipulating the data to achieve a desired result--classic political spin.  Here's a key line.

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

Click here to read the full email.

"Mike's nature trick" appears to be a reference to Michael Mann's now famously debunked "Hockey Stick" graph.    I don't usually weigh in on national stories, but this one has a local connection--one of the researchers who participated in this email exchange in which they discuss using a "trick" to "hide" the decline is Malcolm Hughes who is the "meso-climatologist and Regents' Professor of Dendrochronology* in the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona."

I'm sure that Malcolm Hughes and his friends are a true believers and would be shocked that people will look at the these thousands of emails and conclude that he has been part of a massive research fraud. But even the most charitable reading of "using Mike's trick" to "hide the decline" shows that Hughes and his associates are engaging in politics instead of research--and with the amount of money that they have received from the federal government, their deceptions seem to surpass mere politics and PR and have moved into outright fraud. 

Footnote:  Will "Dendrochronology" Go the way of Phrenology?

Our own Mr. Hughes is a "Dendrochronologist."   That means that he studies tree rings to learn about climate history.  Powerline has an interesting analysis of the emails behind one of the tree ring paper that turned out to have used bad data, and one of the emails questions the basic premises behind what I predict will turn out to be a pseudoscience.

This is clearly not some kook who wants to convince an engineer about a perpetual motion machine.  The email is written by a Ph. D. in environmental plant physiology who has some basic questions about "Dendrochronology".  The researchers decide that the best response was to ignore the email and its follow up.  Here's the professor's question.

As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;

1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.

Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.

There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Don Keiller.

Those seem like really good questions.  In fact, question number three seems really obvious.  What makes us think that the tree ring width is based on historic global climate rather than the local climate?

Frankly, it seems like the reporters who coverDr. Hughes understand the, shall we say, "ephemeral" nature of his research. 

Bristlecones have long been the gold standard for dendrochronologists — researchers who tease scientific information from the number and width of rings deposited annually by growing trees.

The emails make it clear just how much "teasing" it takes to get the right answer.

I think Professor Hughes should provide the answer to Dr. Keiller's questions as part of the package in which he explains why he didn't blow the whistle when he found out that his fellow researchers were using "Mike's nature trick" to "hide the decline".

As for the Arizona reporters who have been quoting Malcolm Hughes findings as Gospel all these years...maybe it's time for them to ask a few questions of their own.

Update:  Here's the Smoking Gun. 

The emails show that the researchers are manipulating their data in an overt attempt to bolster predetermined conclusions. I pointed out earlier that UA's Malcolm Hughes was copied on one of the emails in which a researcher was "using a trick to hide the decline."

Check out this astonishing email from the UA's Gary Funkhouser. It is so devastating that I want to print it in its entirety.  

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.

Cheers, Gary
Gary Funkhouser
Lab. of Tree-Ring Research
The University of Arizona

Comments

[todd]

"But even the most charitable reading of "using Mike's trick" to "hide the decline" shows that Hughes and his associates are engaging in politics instead of research"

Not really, it's rather simple. see here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/

[Stewie]

What? Global warming is a fraud? I'm shocked, shocked to see gambling going on this establishment.

[Brian Smith]

Hey, let's not let this get in the way of a massive carbon tax on all Americans that even the White House says will cost the average American family over $3,000 a year in extra taxes.

Anyone who disputes global warming is on the same moral level as a Holocaust-denier. There's no time to question it, we need to move quickly t implement cap-and-tax in order to save the planet.

[Simon says:]

I don't doubt global warming I just suspect anything about U of A.

Go Devils!

[B. Kalafut]

This is the first loutish post I've seen on this 'blog...a real disappointment.

Surely you understand
(1) That paleoclimate reconstructions are far from a central matter in the case for anthropogenic global warming.

(2) That far from being "debunked", the Mann Bradley Hughes study (which the vulgar call the "hockey stick") was vindicated both by the NRC investigation and by subsequent research.

(3) That in private communication between friends or colleagues there is much "assumed knowledge" and often conversational shorthand or slang.

(4) That what is meant by such slang here has already been explained on the Web, by Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate and others.

(5) That it is incumbent on you to read such explanations--by people who know what the slang means--before accusing anyone of "fraud".

Scientists have been rather generous in this matter--the number of libel suits filed against people like you is very low. But if Hughes decides to file and wins a nice sum off of you, I can say that you had it coming. "Fraud" in one's professional life is not something one accuses another of on a whim--but you do so here!

And here you accuse Malcolm Hughes and co. of fraud for using the proxy record in one part of a graph and an instrumental record in another part of a graph, without deception on their part (as the paper states that this is going on). Not only do you have it coming, I'm hoping you get hit with a suit or two. You seem to have no shame or reservation about making false accusations against others, when those others are scientists.

[Nick]

Secrets exposed are good when
new york times prints them.

A hacker exposing Government windbags must be very bad.

The game is over!
Warming Skeptics win!

Warmers massive government funding
in tha hallowed halls of IVY and
lesser scrools. Billions wasted!

Senator Inhoff, dedicated anti-warmers, and some Poor persons like me sending funds have sent the warmers to the showers.

The Senate will not deliberate Waxman and
Markey this year. If not now, when?

[Nick]

The October 2009 average temperature for the contiguous United States was the third coolest on record for that month according to NOAA's State of the Climate report issued today. Based on data going back to 1895, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services provided by NOAA.

[todd]

This email is quite clearly not research fraud. He is trying to make sense of the data collected in the region. The samples provided are too varied to determine much. He thinks more data needs to be collected before anything useful can be gained from the data collected in Kyrgyzstan. Sounds like good science to me.

[Travis]

Greg, Kalafut just slapped you across the face with white latex dueling gloves.

You must now meet him at dawn so that he may defend the honor of the scientific community.

[Ben Kalafut]

"Travis": Best laugh I've had all day.

[Nick]

Perhaps this can be spun as someone
wishing to save mankind!

"Excerpts include a CRU scientist welcoming the death of a prominent sceptic."

No one should question the Warmers.

[fortbuckley]

"Not only do you have it coming, I'm hoping you get hit with a suit or two."

Ahhh...the beauty of discovery---the discovery that comes when a defendant's lawyers get to depose plaintiffs and subpoena their records.

Especially if those plaintiffs work for public universities, and have disbursed or influenced the disbursement of monies provided by state and federal government agencies. Or private benefactors.

Private benefactors who feel that they've been snookered tend to close their pocketbooks. Governments, on the other hand, indict.

And, history shows that governments are headed by politicians, who must stand for election. Voters, who (a) see college tuition costs for their children rising out of reachability AND(b)perceive that sheltered academics have diverted precious education dollars into less-than-credible schemes can get very mad, very fast.

Are you REALLY sure you wanna start suing, Mr. Kalafut?

[Nick]

A commenter named Neal on climate audit writes:

People are talking about the emails being smoking guns but I find the remarks in the code and the code more of a smoking gun. The code is so hacked around to give predetermined results that it shows the bias of the coder. In other words make the code ignore inconvenient data to show what I want it to show. The code after a quick scan is quite a mess.

[Nick]

BALDERDASH pays well!

The various grants CRU chief PD Jones has received since 1990. It lists 55 such endowments from agencies ranging from the U.S Department of Energy to NATO and worth a total of 13,718,547 pounds or approximately 22.6 million USD

[todd]

Nick, this is getting absurd if people are going to start being slammed for the quality of their code documentation. I doubt most of the commenters on climate audit have a clue.

[Jack]

So, they are using selectively determined data in order to support a pre-determined theory or world view? Sounds like they would make good bloggers then.

[RonB]

Yes, Jack, bloggers, perhaps; scientists--never.

[Nick]

George Monbiot, one of the fiercest media propagandists of the warming faith, admits he should have been more sceptical.

"It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them."

[todd]

Nick - link to the full article next time
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/

[Chuck Blanchard]

To folks that really care about the science, and are willing to do the hard work to understand what these emails are saying (as opposed to using them as sound-bites in a political battle, here are some good explanations for the Joes email:

"No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens." [Ref: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/]

"Specifically, what do climatologists mean when they write about "hiding the decline" in tree-ring proxies? It sounds bad, but it really isn't. The Real Climate gang explained it, and rather well I think. But many remain unconvinced. So let's turn to the text, specifically the section titled "Proxy limitations -- Divergence and Segment Length Curse," shall we?

... no tree ring-based reconstructions of northern hemisphere temperatures that includes the 1990s is able to capture the range of late 20th century warming seen in the instrumental records. This means that instrumental records show warming, but reconstructed temperatures from trees show cooling or no change.
That excerpt appears immediately above a graph that shows how temperatures inferred from tree-ring records since about 1850 (the "proxies") are a pretty good match for actual temperature records derived from thermometers right up until the 1980s. After that, the tree-ring data begin to show lower temperatures than were actually recorded.

Just why tree rings no longer provide useful proxy data for temperatures is not known. There are several theories, many of which suggest that climate change itself is the problem. Trees no longer grow as they once did before the climate started changing so rapidly. But the point is, there is no question that tree-ring growth rates of the past -- before we had thermometers -- can serve as useful proxies for historical temperature data. They are much less useful now, but that doesn't matter so much because we have actual temperature records. All of this was sorted out back in 1998. It's not new, nor even particularly interesting, to anyone familiar with the science.

This is why those working with tree-ring data want to "hide" the decline in recent decades; they know the data aren't useful.
" [Ref: http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/hacked_emails_tree-ring_proxie.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss]

[Trent Humphries]

SO we are to believe that for some unexplained reason the correlation between tree ring size and temperature worked perfectly for hundreds of years but has completely stopped working for the last twenty?

Lets be scientific for a minute. There are four possible reasons for this:

1. The tree ring to temperature match was completely incidental and held no real correlation.

2. The data could have showed correlation, but the formulas and models were flawed and are now not reproducible.

3. Outright fraud.

4. The laws of nature have completely changed in the last 20 years miraculously without any explanation.

It appears that you are going with "4," divine intervention.

Tell me this is not a religion for you.

[Travis]

If there's a "problem" with tree-ring data during a period where scientists were measuring it, then why assume that all other past data is useful as proxie data? As usual, the scientific community ignores information that does not support their theories, especially when it concerns money.

The Climate Change Church cannot continue to fill the plates if the science priests admit that there is no Warming God.

This kind of nonsense was well documented in the scientific/academic community in the movie,"Expelled".

Americans are getting tired of those who consider themselves "the chosen" telling us what to think. "They" must find, interpret and proclaim all matter of information, telling us that we may not see all the data because we couldn't possibly understand it. We need "the chosen" to clean up the data, write a paper with long words and short exposure and then tell us what to think about it.

I think that time is coming to an end. As a matter of fact, they should check their inbox, it is probably spelled out there.

[mahtso]

Mr. Blanchard's post might make sense if there was only one email, but there is so much more than that. Also, I've read that the "Real Climate folks" purge any comments that question their orthodoxy, so citing them carries little weight with me. Finally, as to why the trees don't match the warming: how about the known deficiencies with the gauging stations? http://www.surfacestations.org/

[Chuck Blanchard]

Travis and Trent:

Tree rings are not the only data for temperature in years past. There are other sources of data as well--all of which correlate quite well with data in the period before 1960. There is quite a bit of scientific discussion and deabte about the reasons for the difference--and whether tree rings should or should not be used as a result. There are no secrets here--this is open science, discussed in published peer reviewed papers since 1998. (The second post is quaoting from a leading text ont he subject). The fact that the climate change deniers (including my friend Greg and those commenting here) didn't know any of this is telling.

You are free to make judgments about science from film-makers and those with a vested interest in the status qua. I'll rely on folks who know what they are talking about.

[Chuck Blanchard]

Mahtso:

This email is the only one in which Greg relies on to accuse a respected climate scientist of fraud, and it the focus of almost all the climate denial energy. And Todd has done an admirable job in other comments debunking the other grossly unfair attacks on climate scientists. (I can tell, by the way, that the folks getting so excited by many of these emails have never been in a research lab. For example, I would be hard pressed to find a serious scientist that had not used the term "fudge factor" in an analysis).

And I really don't understand why it is of any concern that Real Climate moderates its comments to remove ignorant drivel.

[RonB]

Sorry, Chuck, you Climate Defrauders have been caught with your temperatures down. And all the clever wordsmithing will not change the facts that these "scientists" have an agenda, sought only the data (or simply made it up) to satisfy their preconceived notions, did not allow true peer reviews, and now have been exposed as the liars many of us thought they were in the first place. When I was in high school and college ('60's and '70's) the lefties were screaming about global cooling--a new ice age. For the past 20 years they've been screaming about global warming. They then miraculously re-name it "Climate Change" in order to fit in whatever may (or may not ) happen. Didn't buy it then; not buying it now.

[todd]

RonB,
What data has been made up? Point to it please.

[Chuck Blanchard]

RonB: I am with Todd. I have read a big chunk of the emails and I am at a loss to understand your reference to evidence of data being made up.

I would love for climate change to be wrong. I work as a very senior leader at the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels. But the evidence is strongly to the contrary

[Trent Humphries]

Chuck,

Measurable data doesn't just stop correlating unexpectedly. If it does, it calls into question the correlation in the first place. To say otherwise is crap no matter how "peer reviewed" it is. It is also fishy that as the methods of recording temperature become more accurate, the correlation becomes more tenuous. If it went the opposite way, where the correlation became more clear as measurable accuracy increased, I might give it to you.

Occam's razor would suggest that the method used to establish the correlation pre-1960 is flawed. I'm not even suggesting that this is on purpose, but it certainly makes more sense than all of nature starting to work differently at that point.

Here is someone else that is pulling a different string from the released info that is singing the same tune.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-computer-codes-are-the-real-story/

CRU's data integrity is crap. Period. This is why they are dodging freedom of info requests and probably why the information was leaked (not hacked.)

[Trent Humphries]

Todd,

Relevant information from the article I referenced (from the programming notes of a routine used to previously gather data)

" AGREED APPROACH for cloud (5 Oct 06).

For 1901 to 1995 – stay with published data. No clear way to replicate process as undocumented.

For 1996 to 2002:

1. convert sun database to pseudo-cloud using the f77 programs;

2. anomalise wrt 96-00 with anomdtb.f;

3. grid using quick_interp_tdm.pro (which will use 6190 norms);

4. calculate (mean9600 – mean6190) for monthly grids, using the published cru_ts_2.0 cloud data;

5. add to gridded data from step 3.

This should approximate the correction needed."

The programmer cannot get the program to work on the older data so he is giving up trying. He cannot reproduce the results IN HOUSE let alone separately.

and. . .

"I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more."

"manual and semi-automated interventions"

That means that when the model isn't generating the needed numbers, you hard code the variable to get the information you are looking for. That is cheating.

[todd]

Trent,
I have read that whole file already (http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-35g.html) and it is clearly documentation of what the programmer has had to do to work with data from several sources in various formats. This can certainly be frustrating as data from many types of instruments are not output in some nice excel spreadsheet but are in a wide variety of , likely incompatible, formats.

The section you cite seems to be about inferring cloud cover from measurements of sun brightness (or some other measured feature related to this sun). They have a record of data for observed cloud cover from 1901 - 1995 that has been published but want to add in what has been happening since1995 but don't have access to cloud data that was taken in the same way. They clearly want to make sure the way they are determining this for the post 1995 readings by seeing how to get approximately the same numbers from the sun database. In other words, they are trying to develop a model that one can insert the sun measurements from 1905-1996 to and will output data that matches the cloud data. This will mean that their model is correct and they can then use the modeled cloud data from sun data for the time after 1996 and will be looking at the same thing. These seems to me to be a rather difficult task and I assume they have readings from many locations of different qualities so I could see why it was so frustrating. Further in the document it shows that in fact there was an initial confusion about what data was needed and when that was cleared up it turned out to be easier. Nothing in this indicates they were attempting to make numbers up or, in your words, cheat. What they were trying to do is verify their model against historical data to see if it was correct. To me, this seems like good science.

I hope my reading is helpful to you because I think it indicates the errors that come from reading these documents without looking at the context.

[Chuck Blanchard]

Trent:

i will rely on Todd's post, but I read the file the same way. They are attempting to verify a model and are tring to test the model gainst historical data (so that it has higher propensity to predict future climate). The whole point of a model is to make appropriate changes to fit the data.

What is interesting to me is that what began as a wild accusation of "fraud" has now evolved into a discussion of whether the use of tree ring data is scientificaly justifiable. No one refuts the thrust of my argument that the "hide the decline" is not some super secret conspiracy to hide data but is instead a widely known term of art in the field. In other words, the claim of fraud was a wild, uninformed accusation that any one familiar with the field should have known. The fact that no one trumpeting "climategate" knew that this was the case is strong evidence that they have no idea what they are talking about. Even if you still think this is bunk, it seems to me that the good professor is owed an apology.

The tree ring data is also hardly at the heart of climate science. We could discount this evidence altogether and still face strong evidence that climate change is occuring.

[Trent Humphries]

Todd,

The problem is that the "published" data was generated by the problem code and cannot be backward engineered or used for new data without clearly throwing errors. The fact that there is no documentation for this skunkwork code would also lead me to believe that this research has not been replicated by another group or organization or the documentation for the code would exist. The "published" data is very suspect based on this.

The thing is you plug this "model" into the tree ring stuff and it clearly explains the data discrepancy better than the "something in nature has changed" theory.

Quick question for you climate scientists. Are the CRU code and models readily available for open source inspection? If not, why not?

I never said the scientists were guilty of fraud. I do think there is a lot of sloppiness and hubris, especially on the political front.

[todd]

Trent - where do you get the idea that the published data the doc refers to is from them?

The code being referred to here had nothing to do with temperatures and tree rings so I don't get your point about that.

I am not a climate scientist but there has never been a requirement that code should be published because the code is merely a tool and not the product. The process and the models need to be clearly described in the scientific literature. Because the process for working with data and the exact mathematical models used need to be described or referenced others should be able to replicate the same findings.

[Nick]

Ecotretas writes in to say that he has made a compendium of programming code segments that show comments by the programmer that suggest places where data may be corrected, modified, adjusted, or busted. Some the HARRY_READ_ME comments are quite revealing. For those that don’t understand computer programming, don’t fret, the comments by the programmer tell the story quite well even if the code itself makes no sense to you.

[Nick]

Dr. Richard Keen, University of Colorado
debunks the NCAR Meehl etal study of record highs and lows that cherry-picked the starting year as 1950.

"MORE THAN HALF of the state and provincial maximum temperature records were set during the single decade of the 1930’s, and only 29 percent of these records were set since 1950. This means that by considering temperatures after 1950, Meehl et al. removed most of the really good heat records from the data pool, and artificially inflated the number of maximum temperature records (and thus, the max to min ratio). In other words, many of the maximum temperature records since 1950 would not be daily records for the entire period of record for these stations.

since 1940 minimum records have outnumbered maximum records by a ratio of 3 to 2 (or 1.5 to 1, if you prefer). Meehl et al. achieved opposite ratios by removing the extremes of the 1930’s."

MEEHL PRODUCES MORE SOLID SCIENCE!

[Nick]

Study by New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

There have been strident claims that New Zealand is warming up for over 100 years.

But now, a simple check of publicly-available information proves these claims wrong. In fact, New Zealand’s temperature has been remarkably stable for a century and a half. So what’s going on?

There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made. About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend!

[todd]

"For those that don’t understand computer programming, don’t fret, the comments by the programmer tell the story quite well even if the code itself makes no sense to you."

Do you understand computer programming? Because I do, and I would never claim the comments of the programmer 'tell the story.'

One thing occurred to me, even though I see nothing wrong with the README people keep pointing to, even before that I haven't seen explained if the data used in the one program was ever actually used for anything published.

Keen's claims - not peer reviewed published articles - have been shown to be wrong for several reasons, including the fact that Meehal looked at all state records and Keen looked and 11 US states and some of Canada.

Nick - may I suggest you spend some time looking at all the evidence.

[Nick]

Good show Todd.Wrong again!

Dr. Richard Keen STATES
"I’m sure that by now the usual suspects have accused us of picking all of their cherries by showing only the western half of North America. Therefore, I spent the evening creating more charts for all 50 US states and 12 Canadian provinces and territories (excluding Nunavut, which was part of the Northwest Territories until recently).
I’ve created one more graph - a tally of the records for the seven continents, including Asia, which includes Siberia, where the Yamal Peninsula resides. What’s it show? Since 1950, 3 maximum and 4 minimum records have been set for the continents, a fairly even break.

The bottom line is that if one wishes to express climate change by the varying number of temperature extremes, there has been no climate change for over 100 years."

[Nick]

"Nick - may I suggest you spend some time looking at all the evidence."

Meehl etal study of record highs and lows that cherry-picked the starting year as 1950.

Todd,
Why are you willing to buy into a report
that excludes information from 1930 to 1940?

Courtillot and his colleagues calculated temperature averages for the United States. The warmest period was during 1930-1934.

[todd]

Nick -
The Meehl study is only one of many reports and it explicitly states the period of time it is looking at. It may very well be flawed but was just published and no doubt people may have valid criticisms. I am not 'buying into it' but merely think Keen's criticisms are wrong.

There is a fundamental problem with this criticism - if you go back to the 1880's you will again see an overall trend of increasing temperatures. Does this mean Keen is cherry-picking because he didn't start then? The truth is, there is no time one can start and not be accused of 'cherry-picking' and Meehal is trying to do an analysis of contemporary time with an understanding that collection methods, etc, have changed (Keen doesn't bother to do any of that, by the way). Of course, the whole point is to try to reconstruct much more lengthy records of data which necessitates trying to get temperature estimates through modeling from a combination of other sources, such as tree-ring data.

Just curious Nick, you only seem to be quoting other people's arguments, does that mean you haven't really looked at any of this yourself but are just relying on what people who meet your political agenda? It certainly seems that way.

[Trent Humphries]

Todd,

What I am trying to do is come up with a valid reason that tree ring science stopped working sometime between 1960 and 1990. Chuck tried to play it off as "nature changed." I call bunk and ascribe it to bad data, which makes more sense. I don't have solid evidence, but I am not the one ascribing to the tenet that previous laws of nature no longer apply, which should make any true scientist doubt the previous tree ring "science." If the science doesn't work now, I maintain that it never worked correctly.

And you never answered my question about the availability of the data for those outside of CRU, or the fact that the previous data in the example I cited is not reproducible. I'm not willing to enter that data as the official record if it cannot be verified independently after the fact by more than the originator. CRU seems to have no issue with that as long as it fits the narrative.

[todd]

Trent - I don't know enough about the tree-ring stuff to answer your question. It sounds like an interesting question to me and would like to find out more.

As to data there seems to be a public page at CRU - http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/ - which provides all sorts of data. In fact, there is a wealth of data provided by most all of the organizations studying this.

I do not know the provenance of the cloud cover data they were relying on and I don't know whether it was something that had been verified in the past and the raw data was no longer available. It is also not clear to me at all that this data was ever even used in a publication or was something they were looking into and then dropped.

[Nick]

Todd,

You seem to belong to the camp that states
all warming climate is proven and we are
doomed if we do not destroy the ecomony.

I favor the large group in science that
say lets take a better look. I posted a list
of many groups that avow warming is not proved. Gregg removed that list for some rason.

I sent a chart to Gregg that shows hottest
decade as the 1930-1940 decade. CO2 was much
lower then. The chart is too large to post.

[Nick]

HISTORY

ARTIC Heats Up. Spitsbergen 1919 to 1939
On the 2nd of November 1922, The Washington Post published the following story: Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt”. The corresponding report in the Monthly Weather Review of November 1922 had also stated that the ice conditions in the Northern North Atlantic were exceptional; in fact, so little ice has never before been noted. Only 16 year later the meteorologist C.E.P. Books thought it necessary to explain the situation more complex:

In recent years attention is being directed more and more towards a problem which may possibly prove of great significance in human affairs, the rise of temperature in the northern hemisphere, and especially in the Arctic regions. (Brooks, 1938) At the time of the writing of these lines in 1938, the Arctic had got as warm as in the first decade of the 21st Century. How much do we know about the mechanism that caused the previous arctic warming? Not very much, as Bronnimann et a. acknowledged: “Our understanding of the climate mechanism operating in the Arctic on different timescales is still limited” (Bronnimann, 2008). Is it reasonable and fair to dramatize the shrinking sea ice during a recent time period, if one is not fully aware of what happened in the early years of the last century?

[Nick]

Renowned statistician and software engineer Eric S. Raymond (ESR) says the global warming “hockey stick” graph data was “hard-coded” or purposefully “fudged.”

Eric S. Raymond ("esr") is an open source luminary partly because of his industry changing book The Cathedral & the Bazaar.

On 11/24, esr examined the code that, quite literally, creates the hockey stick graph.

"This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.
They didn’t even bother to fudge the data? They hard-coded a hockey stick carrier right into the program."

[Nick]

June 2,2009 the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

[todd]

NIck - Do you mean groups like New Zealand Climate Coalition you referenced earlier? Their statement is bogus:
http://hot-topic.co.nz/nz-sceptics-lie-about-temp-records-try-to-smear-top-scientist/

ESR's blog contains many of the same errors that have been repeated here. He is a good programmer (he is not a statistician, btw) but has his own bias he is reading the excerpts through. For instance the code he is looking at graphed both the corrected and uncorrected data - hardly seems a way to hide anything if one was intending subterfuge. It is also important to understand that this data seems to be from tree data used as a proxy for recored temperature data. Was this even used in a paper or in some other way? How about we find out how this was (or was not) even used. That would be the pre-requisite before even getting into an argument about what the data means.

[Nick]

May all of you citizens of the Southwest
enjoy your moderate summer temperatures
when the warmers increase the cost thirty
to fifty percent to cool your homes!

Obama stated he will destroy Coal.
How much electricity for Arizona is generated with Coal?

Solar is not free.

Google
11,600,000 for climategate = I think the jig is up!
Real science from now on.

Keep the faith Todd.
Adios

[RonB]

Chuck and Todd: Sorry, but all your spin still doesn't cut it. Nick and Trent have done an excellent job pointing out the lies, I don't need to pile on. Even the stodgy Wall Street Journal can see through the bovine feces you and the rest of your lefties keep feeding us. Time to find a new gig.