In a new article just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, Pat Michaels and I have concluded that the manipulations for the steep post-1980 period are inadequate, and the global temperature graph showing warming is an exaggeration, at least in the past few decades. Along the way I have also found that the UN agency promoting the global temperature graph has made false claims about the quality of their data. The graph comes from data collected in weather stations around the world. Other graphs come from weather satellites and from networks of weather balloons that monitor layers of the atmosphere. These other graphs didn’t show as much warming as the weather station data, even though they measure at heights where there is supposed to be even more greenhouse gas-induced warming than at the surface. The discrepancy is especially clear in the tropics.
The surface-measured data has many well-known problems. Over the post-war era, equipment has changed, station sites have been moved, and the time of day at which the data are collected has changed. Many long-term weather records come from in or near cities, which have gotten warmer as they grow. Many poor countries have sparse weather station records, and few resources to ensure data quality. Fewer than one-third of the weather stations operating in the 1970s remain in operation. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, more than half the world’s weather stations were closed in a four year span, which means that we can’t really compare today’s average to that from the 1980s. Read a background summary here and a technical paper published in the JGR December 2007 here.
The Abstract states:
Local land surface modification and variations in data quality affect temperature trends in
surface-measured data. Such effects are considered extraneous for the purpose of
measuring climate change, and providers of climate data must develop adjustments to
filter them out. If done correctly, temperature trends in climate data should be
uncorrelated with socioeconomic variables that determine these extraneous factors. This
hypothesis can be tested, which is the main aim of this paper. Using a new data base for
all available land-based grid cells around the world we test the null hypothesis that the
spatial pattern of temperature trends in a widely-used gridded climate data set is
independent of socioeconomic determinants of surface processes and data
inhomogeneities. The hypothesis is strongly rejected (P= 14 7.1 10− × ), indicating that
extraneous (nonclimatic) signals contaminate gridded climate data. The patterns of
contamination are detectable in both rich and poor countries, and are relatively stronger in
countries where real income is growing. We apply a battery of model specification tests to
rule out spurious correlations and endogeneity bias. We conclude that the data
contamination likely leads to an overstatement of actual trends over land. Using the
regression model to filter the extraneous, nonclimatic effects reduces the estimated 1980-
2002 global average temperature trend over land by about half.
necessarily scattered through all the different corners of the a great empire, the freedmn of the inland trade appears, both
As a layperson who has attempted to learn a bit about the scientific and political basis of AGW and climate change, I have considered the same arguments put forth by 1observer. However, I can't find any broad based proof of ideological zeal or political bias behind AGW science. I do find those who wish to color it thus, perhaps due to their own political biases.
The simplest argument against the "politicization of science" proponents, is that I very much doubt that most climate scientists predicated their work and it's outcome on a quest for political power. The protractor and slide rule set I've encountered are mostly dispassionate viewers of politics. They are primarily immersed in the intricacies of their area of study.
As a political person, and a social liberal, I find it extremely unlikely that a world conspiracy has arisen, riding the "horse" of AGW and climate change to greater political power and control. In fact, I wish the skeptic/denialists were correct and that AGW weren't occurring. For world resources would be much better utilized absent such a future.
Authoritarian governments don't emerge through world scientific consensus. They typically emerge through violence, famine, disease, wars, economic crisis, and conflicts. All the things that are likely to occur if AGW isn't addressed. To address AGW (as determined by unbiased science) is to work to reduce the likelihood of future repressive governments. Fighting climate change does not create conditions for authoritarianism to rise. Addressing AGW prevents the failure of democracy and the emergence of authoritarianism.
Thank you, Major Mike. You said it well. The frivolity of the "scientific" debate on this blog and on so many others ignores the broad existential facts you highlight. Individuals too often self-promote their narrow expertise and desperately extend it to a grand theory of everything, rather than accepting their unique but nevertheless subordinate fit within a greater body of knowledge and probable causality.
Here is another facet, and I submit it cautiously for comment: Frequently you hear the AGW accusation that there are contrarians who deliberately bend science to fit an industry-manipulated agenda. I accept their logic, for it is no stunning concession that corruption exists. But I assert more profoundly that there are those who deliberately bend science to fit a socio-political agenda, too. AGW proponents need consider the implications of this point.
There is an inherent and existential difference between these two varieties of corruption. While the industry-funded manipulators once unmasked typically concede their power and influence to regulation by civil and free market mechanisms, the socio-political manipulators instead seek to confound the civil and free market mechanisms themselves, striving to cement their power into something that can only be termed a centrally planned autocracy of their own liking. To wit, there certainly is small-time corruption, but then there is a big-time variety, too.
Neither camp of suspect agendas views the scientific debate as particularly relevant, nor views the scientists themselves as more than synchophants pawns. Their core value is that they generate quotable hyperbole. Because of a general level of public respect for scientists (and an inability to distinguish the ordinary from the exceptional), the scientists' publicized passions effectively help create a malleable public policy-herding environment.
Consider: The AGW policy environment is one of urgency and emergency. Rather than elaborate the point I'll cut to the chase: Who benefits from a declaration of global emergency? I submit that it is those who aspire to exert control over people and nations, not those who just want to make money.
Consider, too, that when you read the AGW literature and blogs, they exude religio-political zeal - not dispassionate science. The ICPP report itself is vulnerable to this accusation. You don't have to scratch too deep before you find anti-capitalist sentiment. Curious about this phenomena, I scratched further and encountered those who advocate "temporary global dictatorship" to impose the changes "demanded" by the global emergency.
Is there a massive conspiracy? I don't even have to assert that there is for the question to rise on its own. It is certainly likely that various miscreants sense opportunity. On my own I have encountered only amateurs but for this fact: The one, globally recognized individual at the lead of the AGW juggernaut is himself a documented aspirant for powerful political office. In fact, for THE most powerful political office on the planet, that of US President.
How much more enticing might it be to progress beyond nation state aspirations to a vision for a new, meta-national office? What better platform for creating that non-existent office than by bestirring a global environmental emergency, one that transcends national boundaries and begs for a prize-winning savior? Such a one doesn't have to submit again to a messy democratic process of debate, election, and possible embarrassing rejection.
I'm not given to conspiracy theory, but the circumstantial elements are intriguing.
All these comments are reminiscent of the “Six Wise Men of Hindustan” who went to see the elephant though all of them were blind. Their analyses of the elephant, and their arguments in support of their positions, were irrelevant because they didn’t comprehend the essence of the beast.
The subject at hand, Earth, has had constantly changing climate. It has been warmer, it has been colder. Atmospheric CO2 at times has been multiples above present levels. This current warming trend began a century before significant increases in CO2. So did current glacier shortening and sea level rise.
It was warmer during the Holocene Optimum of only 5,000 years ago, and warmer during the Medieval Warm Period of less than 1,000 years ago. Sea levels have risen over 400 feet in less than 20,000 years (since the Ice Age), an average of over two feet a century. Civilization made great progress during these previous warm periods, and regressed during cold periods such as the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age. These cold periods were characterized by influenza, bubonic plague, and cholera pandemics. Storms were more violent and numerous. Crop yields fell and famine spread, while human bodies shrank and their skeletons showed malnutrition and disease.
In contrast, warmer periods exhibited population growth, progress in arts, science and civil development, and humans living longer, healthier lives.
In the face of all this, voluminous and detailed arguments about the correction of readings from weather stations and satellites covering a period of less than three decades seems futile and frivolous. What will it all mean when the Earth completes its passage through this current natural interglacial period, and enters the next glacial one?
Less than 20,000 years ago, an ice sheet a mile thick covered Chicago. No actions of man caused it.
10,000 years ago that ice sheet was gone and sea levels had risen about 300 feet. No actions of man caused it.
Many now are like the wise who debated the elephant, saying it is like a tree, a spear, a wall, a rope, a snake, a fan. When tired of that debate, they argued about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, when those who knew angels know they would rather watch football than dance.
In the anthropogenic global warming debate I detect the use of outstanding methods to achieve mediocre results. If the warming is not caused by man, it can’t be stopped. If it is caused by man, it is still unstoppable even if mankind assents to reentering the eighteenth century.
Given these inevitabilities, the best we can do is adapt to the changes, whatever they may be, making the best use of our limited resources, rather than squandering them in vain efforts to turn back the tide. Then once we get adjusted to doing what mankind does best – adapting to change – we can start planning to adjust to the real climate change challenge, when we enter the inevitable next glacial phase.
Adjusting to warm is nothing compared to adjusting to cold.
I am not a scientist and I do not understand many of your comments. I am, however, a trial lawyer (retired). When confronted with scientific "experts" as witnesses in the courtroom, experienced trial lawyers can sense when an opinion doesn't sound right. With preparation the lawyer will cross-examine the expert probing the underlying bases for the opinion. I established in cross-examination that several scientific "experts" had made erroneous assumptions, extrapolated conclusions from incomplete data, and even fudged facts to fit an pre-determined conclusion. And yes, some scientists are deeply invested in protecting their erroneous conclusions, to save their reputations as well as their careers built on their incorrect findings.
When I first heard about man-caused global warming, the argument just didn't make sense. How could humans generate so much co2 to cause the entire globe to so heat up into a catastrophe, causing oceans to flood major coastal cities, islands to disappear, and the Arctic sea ice to melt away forever. In my amateur's mind I knew that ice ages had occurred, melted away, and then reappeared. This activity happened long before the appearance of man. Why wasn't the current global warming caused by similar natural phenomena?
Then I read that all scientists, except for cranks and kooks, accepted man-caused global warming as predicted by computer models. Putting "all scientists" together with "computer models" sounded the alarm for me that these claims needed rigorous, independent examination.
It is a probably a fantasy, but it would be informative and revealing if global-warming "experts" could be submitted to cross-examination where they would be sworn to tell the truth (under fear of perjury) and would be compelled to answer questions directly and completely.
Suppose the NASA GISS data is inaccurate. Maybe it hasn't been played around with enough like the BoM data. Hasn't been 'modelled' enough.