Climate Data Corruption
As the extreme predictions of the AGW alarmists continually fall by the wayside as blatantly false, and their model predictions deviate evermore from reality, rather than to question the validity of their beliefs and models, the AGW crowd turns to modification and corruption of the data in a desperate attempt to salvage their credibility. In this section, numerous, obvious examples of this corruption are shown. It is ironic, maybe to some, that government agencies, such as NASA and NOAA are so inextricably connected with this falsification effort, as frequent modifications to past history have been made to hide inconvenient data. Apparently, if the results aren’t what is desired, don’t change the models, “fix the data”.
A few years back, beginning in November, 2009, so-called Climategate made headlines. A whistle-blower exposed emails, and vast corruption with deliberate data manipulation by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the UK. The deceit also involved NASA and NOAA, as well as Dr. Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania. It is alarming that once an example of data manipulation had been exposed, subsequently, many graphs were pulled off of websites and are no longer available, either in original form or in “adjusted” form to avoid embarrassment. Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick is perhaps the most egregious example of data manipulation with his effort to erase the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age due to their devastating impact on the validity of CO2-Based Global Warming Theory.
Perhaps the most publicized example of data corruption involved a whistle-blower exposing the rampant, deliberate manipulation of climate data by Dr. Phil Jones at the East Anglia University in the UK, back in 2009. James Delingpole is credited with coining the term “Climategate”, which has stuck.
“Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, showed how all the data centers -- most notably NOAA and NASA -- conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than they actually did.” Article Link
From Wikipedia: “Several people considered climate change "skeptics" argued that the emails showed global warming was a scientific conspiracy, that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics. The CRU rejected this, saying the emails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas.“ Article Link
From the same source, and in the spirit of full disclosure, “Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.” However, if one looks at the committees, they are associated with government agencies both in the US and the UK (including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Commerce, and the National Science Foundation), and two from the University of Pennsylvania, home of Michael Mann (and clearly with a vested interest in the outcome), and the British International Science Assessment Panel. None of these could be considered unbiased. Of the latter committee, “The university solicited and paid for the new report, which climate skeptics assailed.“ “This is another example of the establishment circling the wagons and defending their position,” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and climate change policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington.”
One of the released emails was from Kevin Trenberth who said, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." Other comments from emails included "Mike's Nature trick" to “hide the decline". There was a lot of back peddling, and in spite of efforts to diffuse the obvious, the difficulty that other scientists have had trying to obtain original data and analyses to verify results belie credibility of Dr. Phil Jones and Dr. Michael Mann.
From the same Wikipedia source, “Patrick J. Michaels who was criticized in the emails and who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming, said "This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud". He said that some emails showed an effort to block the release of data for independent review, and that some messages discussed discrediting him by stating that he knew his research was wrong in his doctoral dissertation, "This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways."
Also, Judith Curry wrote that in her opinion "there are two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data, and 'tribalism' in some segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review and the assessment process."
Phil Jones was targeted in criminal investigation for destruction of evidence in connection with East Anglia University Climategate after his unequivocal admission of misconduct. He was relieved of his job, but later reinstated in a similar position but with a different title.
There was extensive deception in the peer review process for publication of papers critical of “global warming. For an extremely detailed discussion of this issue, see Article Link to American Thinker
The other dominant issue on data corruption involves Dr. Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania, and his deceptive Hockey Stick. This is such an overwhelming issue that a separate section has been devoted to it, elsewhere in this website.
Following are numerous other, but by no means exhaustive, examples of deliberate data manipulation, attempting to shift public opinion towards believing that humans are contributing to warming of the planet.
A significant part of the temperature record comes from thermometer measurements at a large number of sites within the US. There are significant problems with much of this data, as the site locations have been in environments that have changed over the years due to urban sprawl and increased amounts of cement and asphalt in close proximity.
Compounding this problem is that many sites, which seem to be preferentially in rural areas, much less likely to be susceptible to the Urban Heat Island effect, have been shut down, skewing remaining data towards warmer average temperature readings. In response to this criticism the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has actually fabricated data to “replace” that missing.
“The hockey stick of adjustments since 1970 is due almost entirely to NOAA fabricating missing station data. In 2016, more than 42% of their monthly station data was missing, so they simply made it up. This is easy to identify because they mark fabricated temperatures with an “E” in their database.” Article Link on Tampering
The following graph shows the percentage of fabricated data vs. years to make up for the increasing number of missing sites.
Another very telling graph shows “adjusted” temperature values with the obvious intent to exaggerate a “warming trend” over the last century.
The “adjusted” temperature values are a total of 1.5oF, almost the total “warming” for the past century.
A different view of the “adjustments” is very disconcerting as shown in the graph below, plotting the “adjustments” vs. the amount of Atmospheric CO2. The graph is nearly a straight line, very suspiciously looking like they were calculated to conform to CO2-Based Theory, with an unbelievably high correlation coefficient, R2 of 0.98! Astounding!
Another graph of obvious manipulation of temperature data by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) of NASA shows modifications to the average temperatures for January, 1910, and for January, 2000, the “adjustments” being made from May, 2008 to August, 2017. Again, the intent is obvious and doesn’t need to be explained:
A very serious problem that has been an embarrassment for the AGW alarmists is the warm period during the 1930’ and 1940’s for which temperatures exceed current ones, and that preceded significant emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, a tempting target for data “adjustment’.
In a NASA Press Release in 1999, James Hansen said: “The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.”
But in 2001, Hansen said: “The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the GISS analysis (Plate 6)… the difference between 1934 and 1998 mean temperatures is a few hundredths of a degree.”
Sometime after 2001, 1998 creeps into the lead!!!
Another example of temperature data “adjustments” from 1880 to 2007, this time by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of NOAA/NASA. Temperature modifications, shown below, were made over the time period from May 2008 to September, 2017, as a further effort to hide the natural warming that was occurring since the Little Ice Age, to reduce the warm period of the 1930’3 and 1940’s, and to exaggerate warming since 1975:
Temperature data manipulation has not been confined to only the US. In 2010 the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition successfully requested its High Court to require National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to rescind their “national temperature record” modified to show 1oC warming and to restore the original record that showed no warming.
From the Daily Caller, Article Link:
Weather agencies in Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland may be manipulating temperature data to create a sharper warming trend than is present in the raw data — a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent months.
Most recently, Dr. H. Sterling Burnett with the Heartland Institute detailed how the Swiss Meteorological Service adjusted its climate data “to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments.”
In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made.
But even with the data tampering, Sterling noted that “there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperature.”
Very recently there have been articles about Dr. John Bates, blowing the whistle on NOAA/NASA, for shoddy climate science National Review NOAA Article Link
“Dr. John Bates, led NOAA’s climate-data records program for ten years and reveals stunning allegations in a lengthy Daily Mail exposé posted February 4. His main charge is that the federal government’s top agency in charge of climate science published a flawed but widely accepted study that was meant to disprove the hiatus in global warming.”
In addition to manipulation of temperature data, sea level data has also been modified to show more extreme rising. In the graph below, sea level, as measured by satellites, lower line, has been flat, troubling for the AGW alarmists. There was a desperate need to show a more alarming rise, and that has been generated by adding an isostatic adjustment, which, in reality, is a number plucked from thin air.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/03/closely-coupled-solar-activity-and-sea-level/
Below is another sea level graph, for comparison purposes, that is not at all alarming.
The evidence of data manipulation is overwhelming, so much so that if someone says they are a climate scientist, anything they say should be immediately suspect, and one should be very skeptical. Scientists who are not in climate science are more likely to have credibility, and would also be very likely to have the skills to understand and to accurately assess climate issues in an objective, honest manner. Those in the climate field should police their own ranks, demanding integrity, openness in providing their data and programs for all to review and discuss, shutting down name-calling, and insuring a common standard for the peer review process regardless of position on climate issues. Anything less would relegate climate scientists more to the field of politics rather than to genuine science.
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