DAVID ROSE: How can we trust global warming scientists if they keep twisting the truth
By Paul Homewood
David Rose follows up his story from last week:
They were duped – and so were we. That was the conclusion of last week’s damning revelation that world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on climate change under the sway of unverified and questionable data.
A landmark scientific paper –the one that caused a sensation by claiming there has been NO slowdown in global warming since 2000 – was critically flawed. And thanks to the bravery of a whistleblower, we now know that for a fact.
The response has been extraordinary, with The Mail on Sunday’s disclosures reverberating around the world. There have been nearly 150,000 Facebook ‘shares’ since last Sunday, an astonishing number for a technically detailed piece, and extensive coverage in media at home and abroad.
It has even triggered an inquiry by Congress. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House of Representatives’ science committee, is renewing demands for documents about the controversial paper, which was produced by America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world’s leading source of climate data.
In his view, the whistleblower had shown that ‘NOAA cheated and got caught’. No wonder Smith and many others are concerned: the revelations go to the very heart of the climate change industry and the scientific claims we are told we can trust.
Remember, the 2015 Paris Agreement imposes gigantic burdens and its effects are felt on every household in the country. Emissions pledges made by David Cameron will cost British consumers a staggering £319 billion by 2030 – almost three times the annual budget for the NHS in England.
That is not the end of it. Taxpayers also face an additional hefty contribution to an annual £80 billion in ‘climate aid’ from advanced countries to the developing world. That is on top of our already gargantuan aid budget. Green levies and taxes already cost the average household more than £150 a year.
The contentious paper at the heart of this furore – with the less than accessible title of Possible Artifacts Of Data Biases In The Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus – was published just six months before the Paris conference by the influential journal Science.
It made a sensational claim: that contrary to what scientists have been saying for years, there was no ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the early 21st Century.
Indeed, this ‘Pausebuster’ paper as it has become known, claimed the rate of warming was even higher than before, making ‘urgent action’ imperative.
An official report from the European Science Advisory Council stated that the paper had ‘refined the corrections in temperature records’ and shown the warming rate after 2000 was higher than for 1950-99
There can be no doubting the impact of this document. It sat prominently in the scientific briefings handed out to international negotiators, including EU and UK diplomats.
An official report from the European Science Advisory Council stated that the paper had ‘refined the corrections in temperature records’ and shown the warming rate after 2000 was higher than for 1950-99.
So, flawed as it was, the Pausebuster paper unquestionably helped persuade world leaders to sign an agreement that imposes massive emissions cuts on developed countries.
No wonder, then, that our revelations were met with fury by green propagandists. Some claimed the MoS had published ‘fake news’. One scientist accused me of becoming the ‘David Irving of climate change denial’ – a reference to the infamous Holocaust denier.
Yet perhaps more damaging is the claim from some in the green lobby that our disclosures are small beer. In fact, their importance cannot be overstated. They strike at the heart of climate science because they question the integrity of the global climate datasets on which pretty much everything else depends.
The whistleblower is a man called Dr John Bates, who until last year was one of two NOAA ‘principal scientists’ working on climate issues. And as he explained to the MoS, one key concern is the reliability of new data on sea temperatures issued in 2015 at the same time as the Pausebuster paper.
It turns out that when NOAA compiled what is known as the ‘version 4’ dataset, it took reliable readings from buoys but then ‘adjusted’ them upwards – using readings from seawater intakes on ships that act as weather stations.
They did this even though readings from the ships have long been known to be too hot.
No one, to be clear, has ‘tampered’ with the figures. But according to Bates, the way those figures were chosen exaggerated global warming.
And without this new dataset there would have been no Pausebuster paper. If, as previous sea water evidence has shown, there really has been a pause in global warming, then it calls into question the received wisdom about its true scale.
Then there is the matter of timing. Documents obtained by this newspaper show that NOAA, ignoring protests by Dr Bates, held back publication of the version 4 sea dataset several months after it was ready – to intensify the impact of the Pausebuster paper. It also meant more sceptical voices had no chance to examine the figures.
Our revelations showed there was another problem with the Pausebuster paper – it used an untested experimental version of the dataset recording temperatures on land, which had not been properly archived and made accessible to other scientists.
We cannot allow such a vital issue for our future to be mired in half truths and deceptions.
This was a fundamental breach of mandatory rules under NOAA’s Climate Data Records programme, which Bates had devised. Is it sharp practice? Certainly it carries the stench of ‘Climategate’ in 2009, when leaked emails showed scientists colluding to hide data and weaknesses in their arguments.
It is important to acknowledge the MoS did make one error: the caption on a graph, showing the difference between NOAA’s sea data records and the UK Met Office’s, did not make clear that they used different baselines. We corrected this immediately on our website.
The only ‘fake news’ in our revelations is the claim that they don’t matter.
In truth, they are hugely damaging, for they suggest an agreement made by figures such as Barack Obama and David Cameron rested in part on research that had not been published with integrity.
This is an age where many have come to question the role of experts. Restoring trust demands transparency.
In climate science, this means being open about the fact there are still critical uncertainties: not about the basic proposition that the world is warming, thanks in part to humans, but about the speed at which this is happening; and when it is likely, left unchecked, to become truly dangerous.
Al Gore famously said: ‘The science is settled.’ It is not.
We cannot allow such a vital issue for our future to be mired in half truths and deceptions.
Just to clarify what David Rose says about the comparison with HADCRUT, his original graph was perfectly correct, but did not make it clear that different baselines had been used for HADCRUT and GISS.
There has been a lot of misdirection from some quarters to the effect that HADCRUT and GISS tally with each other.
This is in fact a lie. As the Woodfortrees graph below shows, the warming trend on GISS is about a third higher then HADCRUT.
After allowing for the different baselines by offsetting to January 1998, GISS temperatures are now 0.174C higher than HADCRUT.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“The climate change industry”.
Says all you need to know.
A “manufactured” scam.
Rose hits the nail on the head.
Matt Ridley expended on this issue in The Times on Feb 6 – a splendid article that also catalogued the major quasi-criminal activities of the warmist/alarmists since climategate. I do hope people like the Astronomer Royal are beginning to realise where they have been wrong for so long before their reputations are destroyed.
Correct: Martin Rees last year warned the Royal Society that it must maintain an open mind. The simple fact is GISS climate alchemy is based on the assumption that Planck, Bose and Einstein’s radiant theory is correct. However, that is only true for a vacuum.
The resultant bidirectional photon transport model, stored energy because photons travel at the speed of light, implies 40% more radiant energy than reality in an atmosphere. In 1964, Manabe offset this by ‘negative convection’, which cannot exist.
In 1976 Cess claimed the ratio of OLR (-18 deg C) to mean surface exitance (+15 deg C) is Earth’s emissivity. This was a scientific howler because you MUST use identical temperatures and geometry. GISS (1976) justified this with Manabe’s 1-D model.
24 years latter, Hanse admitted ‘negative convection’ was ‘a fudge’ but the (UKMO) 3-D use of a Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation approach was fine. However, that model by the late husband of the recently retired Chief Scientist of the MO depends on the 1960s’ incorrect aerosol optical physics of Hansen, Sagan and Pollack.
Our atmosphere is not a vacuum. Earth’s surface is in contact with it so there is no stored radiant energy. Taking for example CO2, the 10 micron emission to Space from Earth’s surface occurs at 20 km**. As [CO2] varies, the water cycle adapts to ensure there is near zero surface temperature variation.
That eminent scientists like Martin did not pick this up is to their shame. They are desperately wriggling. The MO is dumping CO2 warming without publicising it so he Pubic doesn’t realise it has been conned.
**You prove this from B-E statistics and Maxwell’s Equations..
“They are desperately wriggling.”
The few who have an ounce of common sense. The rest are going “la-la-la” with their fingers in their ears.
Perhaps some people in positions of power do not realise that this strikes at the very heart of all science, not just agw.
Big money always attracts big scams and science is no different.
“……the basic proposition that the world is warming, thanks in part to humans,”
Judith Curry said something similar recently. What I’m curious to learn is precisely what part they ascribe to humans. Are they simply talking about local effects, such as heat islands from cities, deforestation etc.? If so, how on earth do they separate and distinguish the percentage of human factors in the equation?
Paul, we come at this from differing emphasis and I admire greatly your effort to cold, sober analysis and always backed up with evidence – though imho why any of us bother with that – facts and observed analysis………….to me becomes more unnecessary as time goes on.
i used to delve into GHCN stuff and discovered that you cannot believe a single stat, number, figure they tout.
The global warming myth always was, and is; a political vehicle to drive Agenda 21 there never was any science to it, the fact that CO₂ is a factor of not a cause of warming and any input mankind emits is therefore immaterial, even uncorporeal…………….. in the great scheme of things.
CO₂ is a life force not a pollutant, the political illiberal claque have led the world a merry dance and India and China have exploited the west’s green nervous breakdown to the fullest possible extent instinctively president Donald. J. Trump feels this even if, he don’t know it.
They lied, they still lie and if the green mongs are up in arms over David Rose’s exposition it’s only because these W – anchors have never worn any clothes.
NOAA you need closing down, you are a bunch of desperate alarmist alchemists and charlatans playing at science.- you fully merit all the opprobrium coming in your direction, that’s what happens to scumbags and lying scumbags at that – are you listening Moonbat and your batshit mates up in the Graun? And those two
cnutsillusionists RealClimate divs; Joe and Gavin……………….Romm and Schmidt btw…….. did those two fekkers have a fall out – shame, you are a stain on the face of the earth.Wot you sed, Athelstan!
I claim no particular scientific knowledge other than what I gleaned from trying to understand global warming. What I do claim is 20 years reporting on local government affairs wherein I took the view from Day One that Agenda 21 was a crock, mainly from the boundless enthusiasm with which my dont-count-the-votes-weigh-them local Labour council adopted it.
Ably and equally enthusiastically supported by assorted local Swampies, Fiends of the Earth supporters and other varied “let us unpick the industrial revolution” activists all of whom were so hypocritical that I reckon Christ would have called them “whiter than whited sepulchres”. If that offends I’ll confess my sin later.
As anyone who has followed my ramblings over the years will know I have persistently maintained that no-one at all ever has yet produced a single shred of believable empirical evidence to support any of the assorted hypotheses on the basis of which the western world is being required to impoverish itself, allegedly to benefit the planet which is in itself an extremely illogical stance since, whether you believe in a Supreme Being or not, without us the planet serves no useful purpose as far as we are concerned so what precisely is the point of our doing anything that will “save” it at the expense of saving us?!
So there!
“so what precisely is the point of our doing anything that will “save” it at the expense of saving us?!”
That’s a darned good way of putting it Mike.
Besides which, who’d believe it now and in all honestly ANYTHING they utter? Those self appointed ‘saviours’…………… any type of Marxist political gimp/ Socialist attempting to guilt trip people into doing green…….. people whose often times occasion a carbon footprint nigh as big as their mouths/ egos?
I grow weary of these latter day religious zealots who practice in the church of green, indeed I deem that the country has had their fill of the sanctimony and cant of the green demigoddesses. It’s time to cast them all down.
Nemesis be thy name Donald! I think POTUS is eventually going to train his sights on the UN and defund the fekkers and if he pulled the public money hose out tomorrow, for yours truly, it wouldn’t be soon enough.
Climategate, deleted, lost and altered data, historical geological contradictions, sham peer reviews, political posturing, career threats, absurdly complex theories to prop up the theory, zero acknowledgement of even one sceptical line of question never mind the multiple points that smash AGW theory to bits, multiple direct quotes admitting this has nothing to do with science and everything to do with abolishing capitalism and oh, the bloody pause as well. All that and more besides. Really, how can the AGW fraud continue? It’s so obviously a racket it’s just embarrassing. If it needs president Trump to ruffle feathers and tell some home truths then so be it, because the UK doesn’t have politicians with the courage to face down the green blob.
The folks in Paris were also duped into believing that by capturing and storing (hiding somewhere) 50 ppm of CO2 already in the atmosphere that this would bring us back to a “safe” 350 ppm. They were duped into accepting this “small amount” as possible in a reasonable human generational time frame. BUT…50 ppm of CO2 is 100 billion metric tons of oxidized carbon. Even one ppm is two gigatons. As NASA’s Gavin said… we won’t ever see CO2 below 400 ppm again. And Dr. Hansen called it “wishful thinking”. They were not duped?… but never spoke up?
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News.
David Rose should hit-back hard at his critics by using his clout to expose Climategate to a wider audience.
See
Sharp practice…
https://climateaudit.org/tag/muir-russell/
‘using readings from seawater intakes on ships that act as weather stations’ – which were never calibrated to modern standards. They would not have been considered under any normal circumstances.
Don’t forget the whole point of the Argo buoys was to record bang up to date sea temp’ data. So what does Karl do? – why, chuck out the modern Argo buoy data and return to the ship-intake system it was supposed to replace. As you do, like. Amazingly not only was the ships data ‘hotter’ but by just enough to ramp up ‘ocean heat content’ and end the pause. Amazing!! Incredible that politico’s didn’t just have Karl arrested and be done with it….except, oh yeah, they’re in on the lie as well. Money talks, eh? A scam all day long and no mistake.
As long as climate “psientists” jobs depend on AGW alarmism, they will continue to cheat, exaggerate, fiddle and torture data until it gives the “right” answer.
Meanwhile, SOME may ask what is happening to “psientist” Pachauri, the ex-head-honcho of the IPCC and of TERI accused in a lengthy charge-sheet of sundry anti-feminist offenses.
He is still skipping around the world and being lionized so I guess the answer is “Nothing.”
He will be allowed, by the powers that be, to die rather than face justice.
To no great surprise, warmist attack dog Bob Ward had a letter published in yesterday’s Mail On Sunday denying any fiddling. There was another letter from the home of warmist fiddling, CRU UEA.
So the implied question is “Since they have corrected all the data that was previously used for all the climate science are their previous findings all in question?”
We now “know” there was no dip in global temperature after 1940 but all the work that relied on the GISS record done before Karl thought there was. To quote Rose: “How can we trust that science?” Don’t all the papers that relied on the “wrong” data have to be revisited or at least questioned? It isn’t just that their shenanigans make us question the veracity of this paper, if it is correct the base for much previous work is destroyed.
David Whitehouse at GWPF discusses the next version of ERSST which is said to somewhat more favourable to the pause than the Karlised version. 🙂 Also outlines the Carbon Brief attempts to deflect.
http://www.thegwpf.com/data-deflection-and-the-pause/