How NASA doctor surface temperature readings

How NASA doctor surface temperature readings

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Comment by 'Pete Statistician'

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So let me understand. I do a bit of statistics, so here goes. NASA takes a 100 year period of data, but the first bunch of years has a lot of "less factual" data in it, because there were not enough reliable collectors at various points around the world. But it is necessary for NASA to have a 100 year period, because a 30 year period is just not statistically significant for doing an extrapolation, yes? So NASA takes a calculation of the first 70 years, then performs "adjustments" on the data, which just happen to be uniformly downwards, and then puts these adjusted data points in its very convincing graph. So some non-statisticians (ie 99% of the people looking at the graph) can stare at the graph, see the hockey stick with the up on the right end, and draw non-statistically based conclusions? Well, just 2 points: 1) extrapolations are extremely risky - especially if you have not controlled for outside lurking variables, or other factors 2) a really short hockey stick (only 30 years) would not look that convincing, would it - it would also allow reasonable people to dispute the extrapolation by pointing to the flatter shape of the past 3) oh gee, let's add ethos by taking into account the first 70 years, but applying a meaningful "downward adjustment" to many of the data points, which just happens to help support the conclusion we want So, if you use the unadjusted data, you get much less of the slowly climbing result NASA wanted, and your alpha is a heck of a lot higher - ie, there is no meaningful relationship between year and temperature. Oh well, I guess when your funding depends on Obama the other rocket scientists, you do what you gotta do. I mean, we all have to survive, yes?

Political climate science

By this, I mean a tendency on the left to create a cause to unify around. To save humanity. For the left: it is hardly ever about just saving something specific like the USA. That would just be selfish. The left need causes to be steeped in moral goodness. The more global the mission, the more abstractly altruistic, the greater their sense of moral superiority over everyone else, the stronger the sense of mission. It is a collective cognitive delusion. The subject first deludes himself that planetary catastrophe is just around the corner. Then proceeds to enlist everyone else to the mission. The left in politics are particularly prone to this. We also see extreme politics from the right: The US War of Drugs was mostly a conservative thing as far as upping the ante went. The reaction following 9/11, especially the senseless invasion of Iraq which gave us 13+ years of Middle East chaos. Yet the right are mostly saving USA, not the world. Only the left give themselves world-saving missions such as the Climate New Testament. Naturally anyone who disagrees with them is a denier / shill / selfish / fascist. This kind of bullying seems essential to cohere their group identity as holier-than-thou. It is the essence of political correctness. PC is never about doing good for an oppressed person. It is always about labelling evil. Pointing the finger at the MCP, fascist, shill and denier. Asserting one's own moral goodness against the evil of another.

Upon getting this far, the left are unable to criticise their own propaganda. That would be betrayal. In an environment where self-criticism is impossible, reckless people are able to make even more reckless statements on climate with no fear of comeuppance (from their own side). Because criticism of one's own side is tantamount to treachery. At this point lies are common in politics. The means became the end. Lies begin with exaggeration and putting one's case strongly. The more exaggerated an argument, the more it's promoted, because the more convincing it seems to its believers. Such believers think that Jill Public has not joined their side because the case was not been put forcefully enough. Jill Public has yet to hear the truth! In all its gory details, such as 20 feet of sea level rise very soon. So they embellish their case by putting their case strongly, and simply. A simple case must be one dimensional with all uncertainty and ambiguity ironed out. From time to time lies obviously follow. The originator of a lie probably just sees it as better propaganda. Much like cops framing a gangster for a murder because they could not get the evidence for the actual crime done. That's how I see the state of a climate fanatics mind.

Those are the sort of effects we get in politics. In climate science the majority are bullied to stay in line, and never criticise alarmists. That allowed alarmists to present themselves as mainstream, with modeling as science. This is not dishonest deception. It's honest, yet wrong. Alarmists really believe they are saving the planet. Consider refs: disputing CO2 climate sensitivity, which alarmists say they refute. They routinely describe as denier literature anything disagreeing with alarmism. Yet the vast majority of alarmists never read, nor understand what they say they disagree with. Alarmists think they don't need to understand critics because they really do think the critics are denier / shill / selfish / fascist just as their propaganda tells them. One could see this as the whole point of climate extremism: to polarize the debate so much that one has an army of supporters, who don't understand your argument, but who fanatically support it! Supporters who will shout down their critics and deny them a platform. These tactics have been current at Western Universities now for a long time. Social science graduates are skilled at this.

Political fact: the great majority of climate believers do not understand much at all about climate science. This is a very agreeable state for affairs for climate alarmists. Because the more one understands of climatology and science, the less one believes in climate alarmism and modeling. When we look at the arguments they present in the media to support their science, they are shot full of holes. They routinely build entire theories on fragmentary, partial, provisional evidence. Mann's tree ring data comes to mind. This fragmentary, partial, provisional evidence is used to discount more solid evidence of the cannon. The new breed who entered 'climate science' since it became political after 1988, often have little background in climatology. They don't understand its background, basic tenants and its literature. To climate invaders: climate was mostly about the models, and getting funded by blaming all global warming on man.

Striking how few alarmists studied climatology

Andrew Stock	Chemical engineering degree
Bill Nye	engineer
Dana Nuccitelli	Environmental Scientist
David Archer	computational ocean chemist
David Suzuki	biologist
Dr. Andrew J. Weaver	mathematician
Eric Steig	isotope geochemist
Gavin Schmidt	mathematician
Guy McPherson	ecologist
James Hansen	astronomer and physicist by training.
Jason Box	Glaciologist
John Cook	Physics, solar physics
David Karoly	Meteorologist & mathematician
Ken Caldeira	Physicist/Environmental Scientist
Lesley Hughes	ecologist
Michael Mann	Maths, physics, geology & geophysics
Richard A. Muller	physicist, no climate training
Neil deGrasse Tyson	Astrophysics
Pachauri	railway engineer
Paul Beckwith	Geologist
Phil Jones	hydrologist
Rasmus E. Benestad	physicist
Raymond T. Pierre humbert	A.B. degree in Physics from Harvard
Stefan Rahmstorf	oceanographer
Stephan Lewandowsky	Psychology
Stephen Henry Schneider	Mechanical Engineer
Steven Mosher	English major
Tim Flannery	mammalogist, palaeontologist
Kevin E. Trenberth	meteorologist
Veerabhadran Ramanathan	Engineer
Will Steffen	Chemical Engineer

How is it possible for me to say this without having been engaged much in climate discussions and not at all in climate science? Because this is exactly the kind of behaviour I experienced from the left over discussions on energy policy. Their near religious belief in renewable energy without bothering to understand the issues around its science, engineering and economics. It's the same pattern of behaviour.

Scary, scary methane. More fake / pseudo-science on climate.

Consider this science news report: Data show no sign of methane boost from thawing permafrost

"Over a 100-year period, a ton of methane will cause about 25 times as much warming as a ton of CO₂." ... The CO₂ rise “is still bad, it’s just not as bad” as a rise in methane

At first glance it looks like this story is rebutting claims there'll be catastrophic warming due to melting tundras releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere, so causing runaway global warming. You've, no doubt, read that story at a climate porn site like The Guardian. Yet the threat still remains in our subconscious to bully us because the article assumes this could happen. They legitimise speculation, dressed up in sciency clothes, scaring us into panic measures such as building more expensive electricity systems. It is in fact lies. They dont' tell you the scare story is nothing but speculation. They don't tell you they have no solid science upon which to base their methane scare stories.

1. The greenhouse gas, GHG, effect of methane tails off logarithmically, just like other GHG. E.g. With CO₂, the first 20 ppm of CO₂ in the atmosphere is responsible for over 50% its GHG effect. At small concentrations the logarithmic tail off is most pronounced!
2. Methane absorption bands also overlap with water bands. Not surprising: both molecules have sigma bonds to hydrogen. Nearly all the warming that could be done by methane is already done by far more concentrated water vapour already there. Earth's atmosphere has more water in it than CO₂. The water is not well-mixed so it's hard to say exactly how much more warming happens with more water (or more methane acting almost like water).
   

3. The statements made by scientists here are based on crude, bad climate models. I believe no one ever experimented to discover the effect of water / methane mixtures on atmospheric radiative forcing. It looks like they spent their research billions on modeling. Shame they could not spare a few millions for basic science to back up their models. Where are the experiments simulating actual water/methane mixtures?
4. Nor does methane stay around in the atmosphere very long. Methane is reducing (it's actually used as a hydrogen source in industrial chemistry, in ammonia manufacture). Oxygen (present at 21%) is highly oxidising. UV sunlight is a catalyst. You guessed: methane is rather quickly oxidised away. The lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is 10 years at most. So talk about what a ton of methane does over a 100-year period is senseless.

Scaring people to death with methane is junk science. Shame on them.

Notes:

• sciency: A disparaging term for representations in mass media which use scientific sounding stories to sell an idea, or befuddle us. It is not the same as pseudoscience because sciency tries to make no actual false claims, whereas pseudoscience is wrong more than right.
• Wuebbles, Donald J.; Hayhoe, Katharine (May 2002), "Atmospheric methane and global change", Earth Science Reviews, 57 (3): 177−210, doi:10.1016/S0012-8252(01)00062-9.

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