LATE yesterday Dennis Jensen, the Member for Tangney, spoke in the Australian Parliament about how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology plays "fast and loose" with critical temperature data.
At the end of this important speech, Dr Jensen calls for an audit of the Bureau and in particular the methodology it uses for compiling temperature data.
Dr Jensen emphasises the problem with the Bureau claiming unreliable temperature data for Australia prior to 1910, while supporting and contributing to a United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global temperature data base from 1850 including for Australia.
There is a more detailed justification for an audit of the Bureau detailed in a letter to Minister Greg Hunt…
Q4. Given potential and actual conflicts of interest, could the Australian Bureau of Statistics, (ABS) rather than the Bureau of Meteorology, be tasked with the job of leading the high quality and objective interpretation of the historical temperature record for Australia?
Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to treat data selectively and favor information that confirms their beliefs. Such bias can quickly spread through an organization unless there are procedures in place to guard against groupthink. Groupthink – Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascos (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1983) by Irving L Janis is the seminal text in the area and outlines how irrespective of the personality characteristics and other predispositions of the members of a policy-making group, the groupthink syndrome is likely to emerge given particular conditions; including that the decision-makers constitute a cohesive group, lack norms requiring methodical procedures and are under stress from external threats. This can lead to illusions of invulnerability and belief in the inherent morality of the group leading to self-censorship, illusions of unanimity and an incomplete consideration of alternative solutions to the issue at hand. All of these characteristics can be applied to the Bureau, which is particularly convinced of the inherent moral good in both its cause and approach to the issue of global warming.
The extent of the problem of groupthink within the Bureau, and the international climate science community more generally, became particularly evident in 2009 when the Climategate emails were released. These emails raised many disturbing questions about the way climate science is conducted; about researchers’ preparedness to block access to climate data and downplay flaws in their research; and about the siege mentality and scientific tribalism within the community. These emails show that managers at the Bureau including David Jones and Neil Plummer, rely on other climate scientists, particularly those at the heart of Climategate, for statistical advice and share the general contempt of the mainstream climate science community for rigorous scientific analysis.
For example, in an email dated 7th September 2007 Dr Jones wrote to Phil Jones from the Climate Research Unit that, “Truth be know,[sic] climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it.” In an email dated 5th January 2005, David Parker from the UK Met Office wrote to Mr Plummer resisting a suggestion that the period used to calculate temperature anomalies be corrected on the basis that “the impression of global warming will be muted.”
In 2006 Edward Wegman, professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association, was asked by the US House of Representatives to assess the statistical validity of the work of Michael Mann which contributed to many of the claims by the IPCC that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium. In his final report, Professor Wegman made damning assessments pertaining to the statistical competence of leading climate scientists.[4]
In particular, and drawing an analogy with pharmaceutical research, Professor Wegman recommended:
Recommendation 3. With clinical trials for drugs and devices to be approved for human use by the FDA, review and consultation with statisticians is expected. Indeed, it is standard practice to include statisticians in the application-for-approval process. We judge this to be a good policy when public health and also when substantial amounts of monies are involved, for example, when there are major policy decisions to be made based on statistical assessments. In such cases, evaluation by statisticians should be standard practice. This evaluation phase should be a mandatory part of all grant applications and funded accordingly.
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The full text of the letter can be read here… https://climatelab.com.au/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/
This five minute address to Parliament is indeed a good starting point, because members need firstly to have doubts cast on their minds about whether the data is valid and whether warming is still evident this century. But in the long run, the science itself has to be discussed and challenged, because it is in fact a whole new paradigm shift in thinking that is required in the climatology field. Planetary surface temperatures are determined by the gravito-thermal gradient that evolves in a planet’s troposphere, not by any imagined greenhouse radiative forcing.
In an adiabatic process in a sealed and perfectly insulated vertical cylinder of a solid, liquid or gas a thermal gradient evolves in accord with the process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
This fact may be used to deduce that such will also occur in calm conditions in a planet’s troposphere if no new energy were being absorbed, such as is close to the case in calm conditions in the early pre-dawn hours, when surface cooling and upward advection almost stops. In such a situation we can observe that there is indeed a thermal gradient, but there is no heat transfer from the lower warmer regions to the cooler regions above, for the simple reason that there is already a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.
Molecules move in random directions after each collision, and the direction is not significantly dependent upon the kinetic energy in the molecule. So the calculation of the thermal gradient has nothing to do with pressure or density or rising packets of air. There is no such thing as a moving packet of air in adiabatic conditions anyway, because the probability of trillions of molecules all moving in the same direction is absolutely infinitesimal in the absence of wind or forced advection caused by an external energy source like a fan.
Temperature is the independent variable and only changes if mean molecular kinetic energy changes. Gravity sets up non-zero gradients in density and temperature. Pressure is merely the end result because pressure is proportional to the product of density and temperature.
To have this issue aired in the Australian parliament is very commendable and encouraging. To have the data put in the care of a statistician may not be the most satisfactory solution. These comments apply mainly to Australia data, but could apply elsewhere.
To determine temperature trends, a long continuity of as many sites (i.e. town, etc.,) as possible is needed, to know of any changes in location at these sites, and any changes in the surroundings and possible Heat Island Effects. All original data should be available, max., min., average, and missing data noted.
Pre-1910 data should be included. Most sites which had been measuring rainfall and then started collecting temperature in the late 19th century did so when Stevenson screens were installed, so the data collected in the colonial period was done so as diligently and often by the same personnel as later under the BoM. There is no real justification for not using the early data, certainly not from 1880. One could think the BoM wants to hide the heatwaves of the 1890s, well documented in newspapers and elsewhere.
Of recent decades the meteorological community have been trying to derive data representative of a given region or area of the earth's surface. By doing so, town or city data has been modified to reflect a selected region of a country and so build up a figure representing a 'global' temperature. This is a commendable concept which would be more realistic than just averaging all the collected world data for a given year or month. This adjusted data must be kept quite separate from the site records as above, as well as being accompanied by a record of how this is achieved.
A detailed and strict assessment of the differences or similarities of averaging maxima and minima compared to time averaged data - hourly or less should be carried out.
The use of automatic temperature data devices instead of Stevenson Screens introduce another variable into picture, especially when located near airfields instead of within the towns, perhaps many kilometres away from the original site.
Another unknown in assessing "global" temperatures, is as to how high mountainous regions are treated having few measuring sites. Have satellite measurements filled in the gaps?
The BoM reports just appear to treat the readers of their reports as ignorant peasants!
Matt Ridley confirms that the IPCC WG 2 report will show that the Stern report concerns about the cost of AGW were ridiculous. Even at that time the BBC had doubts about Stern's numbers and Lomborg's team and Richard Tol also pulled it apart.
They were correct and Stern was wrong. Big surprise NOT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/28/matt-ridleys-new-article-in-the-wsj-a-dose-of-pragmatism-about-revelations-from-the-new-ipcc-report/#more-106539
Just How Angry Was Our Summer?
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/03/just-angry-summer/
So the cliamte obsessed still want to pretend that there are no problems worth checking out in the AGW consensus machine.
And extra points for trying to claim (falsely) that Wegman's alleged problems are relevant to the substance of his work, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the layers and layers of substantive issues in so many aspects of the AGW consensus.
Like button , me too!
🙂 🙂 🙂
ROFL!
Good one Jen.
I need the like button.
Bazza, I'm not trying to establish some credibility amongst mainstream climate scientists, I'm trying to bring some credibility to mainstream climate science. 😉
Bob FJ, after this last lot they are gonna be near 100%
http://www.seqwater.com.au/water-supply/dam-levels
How desperate is bazza.
Never cut and pasted anything in your life without full citation and attribution, hey baz?
When you are reduced to that sort of argument in the teeth of all the Hockey Team, Climategate, Gleick and Gore skulduggery, not to mention Lew and Turney and the rest of your heroes and choose to ignore the message it puts you on rather shaky ground.
Mashey spuds for tea, baz?