[ale] Disappointed in the recent climate research hack

[Jim Kinney]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>wrote:

> > Anyway, it seems clear that global average temperatures are increasing,
> > and that there are likely to be serious consequences from this:
> >
> >   http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
> >
>
> It is the derivation of the equivalent charts at the Climate Research
> Unit that is at the heart of Climate Gate.
>
> So I would say a few (possibly many) respected scientists do not agree
> that those charts are accurate.
>
> Specifically some of the leaked emails are from climate researchers on
> the IPCC review team that question the accuracy of those charts.
> Those emails argue that the raw temperature record shows that the
> 1930's and current temps are at roughly the same temperature with a
> valley between them.  ie. The raw data apparently shows temps climbed
> from 1850 to 1930 or so globally, then cooled for a couple decades,
> then climbed back to the 1930's temps today.
>

I haven't been digging into the emails as I consider it a bit rankling that
they were effectively stolen. However if the emails were prior to
publication, that is not a problem if there is often back and forth
discussing the anomaly with the reviewers. If it's after the publication and
there's back and forth discussing the discrepancy, that is also ok as
sometimes the wrong data set or wrong graphs get published by mistake. It is
also entirely possible that there was a legitimate error that was not caught
until after publication (that is a frequent thing in all science fields) and
that will spur much paper writing as scientists argue for or against the
idea in error and/or propose solutions or alternate hypotheses. The
publishing scientist gets a virtual bloody nose and a bunch of peers get
another citation credit.

Science is not for the weak. :-)

The NASA graphs don't show that valley in temp between 1850 and 1930. It
doesn't show anywhere on the plots they provided. Of course the NASA plots
are dealing with a detail of the overall temperatures - the temperature
change over a time frame. The also have the data the plots were made from.
Nor was the England research group who was a victim of computer theft
referenced for data in the listing of the one paper I glanced at.

Please provide a link to the published paper from the England group where
they present the graph that doesn't match the data.

Also, if one digs into the NASA link through the author name/pub date link,
there is the abstract and the full PDF paper to read. For the 2006 paper
there is also a link to a supplementary section that is excellent reading
about methodology and processes.

If you really want to see if there is a problem with the data or the
analysis, it will take about 1-3 months for the papers to start coming in
from the people in the field who know enough about the science and
methodologies to provide proper analysis of the England group's data and
conclusions. I very strongly doubt there is anyone on the ALE list who has
the background to read a few emails and understand essentially the life work
of a few dozen people. I could be wrong, but....

>
> That is also in agreement with the tree ring analysis per the emails.
>

I am of the understanding that the tree ring data is often considered a weak
data set. I'm unclear on all the details but it has something to do with
rings being affected by both temperature and water and many ring sets don't
have a correlating  water data set to establish a definable relationship
between rings, water and temperature. Again, I've only looked at a few
abstracts dealing with ring data and the general tone I saw was ring data is
the last choice to fill a gap and it'll take some hard extrapolations to use
it. If the theft victim group is trying to use ring data, the emails could
very well be about how to do the data extrapolation.

>
> But the "adjusted" charts as shown on the above link show a strong
> temp increase in the last 50 years.  Thus the desire by many to
> understand the adjustment process.  And it is the adjustment process
> that is still shrouded in mystery.  I for one hope the senate hearings
> into all this result in the nasa temperature chart creation process be
> opened to all.
>
> Now it may be that that the adjustments are all fine and can each
> individually be justified.  That does not change the fact that the
> whole process should be opened up instead of forcing all but a
> privileged few to guess at the specifics of the adjustments.
>
> Greg
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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