The Raw Weather Data Was Discarded In The 80's

Is this a cruel hoax?  Back in the 80's, when electronic storage was not so cheap and ubiquitous, the major British center for climate research moved to a new building.  In a brilliant, forward-looking space saving move they discarded the raw weather data collected from stations all over the world, electing to preserve only the scientifically adjusted "value-added" data.

Of course, now the whole topic is hopelessly politicized and we don't trust them, so what next? 

From the UK Times On Line:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

...

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Unbelievable.

MORE:  Tigerhawk piles on.  And the Roger Pielke quote used by the Times appears at his website in a blog post from August 12 2009.

Comments

[BR]

I'd like to know what the total funding amounts were to CRU. They've produced no valuable, usable products in exchange for all that money; instead, only distorted climate graphs for the suppression of mankind.

They should be made to return all of those funds.

[BR]

Climategate: Copenhagen will be their Water-loo.

I can see it now: cool Euro bloggers converging
on the Copenhagen Climate Summit with toilet signs.

[daddy]

TM,

I am so glad you are still banging away at this. Thank you.

This mornings BBC posting by ">http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/"> their Climate Correspondant, Richard Black, is comedy of an exquisite degree.

Finally, after 10 days or so of nothing but obfuscation and writers block and denial etc, today Black gives us these 3 key lines:

1) "In the US itself, the "Climategate" issue - the batch of e-mails and documents apparently stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the UK's University of East Anglia - appears to be emerging as an issue of some significance..."

(No shit Sherlock---how did you guess?)

2) "Climategate - which, among mainstream media, we reported first here on the BBC News website..."

(This is like Jack The Ripper proclaiming he's reaping civic accolades by alerting Scotland Yard to the burial location of his latest corpse.)

3) "For the penultimate time, I type this phrase: if you think I've missed anything of significance that's happened over the last week, please post a comment."

(This sunuvabich has been comatose and incomunnicado for the last 10 days---I've had better conversations about AGW these last 10 days with our beloved P'UK than with with the BBC's Climate expert Richard Black.

When Mann and Jones and the rest of these dispicable weasels get booted out of Science and respectability, this character Black ought to be tarred and feathered right there alongside with the rest of them---and thankful they they aren't being hung from the neck until dead.

Simply gross, professional embarrassments---the bunch of them.

[sylvia]

Yes. It's all a cruel hoax. I see you are reading the London Times Tom now, like I do. I started reading it because my NYT site always froze up, but I continued to read it for it's ease and brevity.

What I would be interested in seeeing someday is some real information about what level of CO2 can we put out before we actually start effecting the climate. Since we haven't seen any signigicant changes on earth yet, I would guess it would be a multiple of what we are putting out now. Possibly in a 100 years or so, we might have to start getting worried. One day we might have the science down to figure that out.

[BR]

Do you think Phil Jones will dare show his face in Copenhagen?

[sylvia]

But by the way, GW is another great example of groupthink, a topic I am very interested in. Someone should analyze how it was all done.

[BR]

Do any JOMers have contacts in Denmark? Have they heard of Climategate there yet?

3/19/07 Danish Scientist Says Global Warming is a Myth:

"...University of Copenhagen Professor Bjarne Andresen, who working with Canadian scientific peers, concluded that the “global warming” urban legend is more a political issue than a scientific fact."

Let's find his email and alert him if he hasn't already heard of Climategate.

[BR]

I have to go to sleep now, but perhaps one of you could reach Professor Bjarne Andresen through this site:

http://www.nbi.ku.dk/.

[BR]

Okay, here it is: [email protected]
(This page at the University's site also has his phone number.)

Kim, Pagar, Charlie, Rick - who will email him? Is there a site one can link to which gives a quick overview of Climategate so far?

[Cecil Turner]

I read through all that stuff a few days ago trying to figure out if there was a smoking gun on data fudging. If there was, I couldn't see it. The closest thing was the stuff ChaCo highlighted in his fourth piece, which mostly involved crappy recordkeeping and trying to massage the stuff they had, apparently to match the old report (presumably done by the guy who put that nonsense together in the first place). The e-mail about deleting data was troubling, but there could be relatively innocuous explanations.

This story is much the same. Did they really lose the raw data 20 years ago and just admit it? If so, it's hard to take anything they say on the subject seriously. But the sentence about Pielke suggests this isn't that new, and I can't find the website statement, possibly because their main server is offline:

This website is currently being served from the CRU Emergency Webserver.
Some pages may be out of date.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Even this is inconclusive. Dunno if it's confirmation they've had a bazillion hits, or normal Sunday a.m. maintenance.

[MarkJ]

New Headline:

"CRU SHOCKER! PHIL JONES: 'MY DOG ATE THE RAW DATA!'"

;)

[Sue]

Has Kim surfaced?

[Porchlight]

Not that I know of, Sue.

[Otter]

'Has Gore surfaced?'

'We haven't seen sign of whale spout yet.'

[BobS]

It will takes decades to undo this goebels like scam. along with acid rain and ddt, these scientific frauds are in our kid's textbooks. we are going to have to realize that criminal behavior has taken place in this clear attempt to fraud. gore has certainly benefited and some reports have implied that carol browner benefits as well. anyone who still utters it's settled science can no longer be trusted - not only for there competence, but for their veracity as well. Browner is quoted this weekend as it still being 'settled'.

[Jack is Back!]

Christopher">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html'>Christopher Booker at the Telegraph has a damning column today and after reading it I wonder if someone is going to investigate the bank account and life style of one Professor Phil Jones who has committed as big a larceny as Madoff. Remember, we the American taxpayer, have been funding part of his research and data manipulation for over 10 years now and this is what we get. Isn't there a federal statute regarding false claims and fraud?

[PaulL]

Global warming: It's all about faith.

[jimmyk]

I suppose one could say that no one was really talking about GW in the 80s, so perhaps their "adjustments" were not agenda-driven, but that doesn't mean they were competent, or that there aren't other plausible methods for adjusting the data. In any case, discarding raw data like that is scientific malpractice of the highest order. It's like taking photographs of the Mona Lisa and throwing away the original.

[Jim Ryan]

It doesn't get any stupider than saying yeah but we should have a CO2 emissions tax anyway. Well, maybe saying Palin's fans are mostly men attracted to her sexually is stupider. He's one of the brainy conservatives, this Frum, unlike me and the other dimwitted Palin fans.

[DrJ]

BR,

They've produced no valuable, usable products in exchange for all that money

This probably does not matter. Likely they were funded by *grants*, and there is no product required or expected for such a funding vehicle. If instead they received *contracts* that would be different, but the overwhelming amount of government-funded science that is not funded by DOD is through grants.

The more reasonable approach would be to claim that some (many?) of their proposals were based on fraudulent information, but this probably is very hard to prove.

Grants are very hard to rescind, and are never paid back unless there was an obvious misappropriation of funds (like roofing the PIs house or buying a chalet in Scotland) or other illegality.

[cathyf]

Fricking amazing. I still have copies of futures options prices (for calculating implied volatilities) from the late 80's on magtape in my house. DrF has all of the data and calculations for his thesis on multiple magtapes in various spots, and even printed out on cards in a box in the attic.

[Strawman Cometh]

Acid rain is not a myth. It has been mitigated by the installation of sulfur scrubbers on the coal plants, but they are still spewing mercury, another reason to build nukes. As a child I and all the kids in the neighborhood would ride our bikes through the DDT plume as the fogger truck drove by, harmless to humans, but devastating to some predatory birds, notably eagles, falcons and brown pelicans. And then measurable amounts were found in human breast milk. More a testament to advances in quantitative analysis then an actual health concern, but many of us didn't want to run the experiment. But it should not have been banned.
These scientists, the IPCC, the media, the EPA and the 'ffing Supreme Court have all been complicit in the conflation of actual, legimate environmental concerns with the AGW hoax, but come on, goebels?

[DrJ]

DrF has all of the data and calculations for his thesis on multiple magtapes in various spots, and even printed out on cards in a box in the attic.

Me too, though I dumped the cards some time back. I even read the tape back a few years ago so that I could have my thesis on my current computer -- I still get inquiries about it. It was read just fine.

[sylvia]

Since this is kind of a science thread, I am seeing a report on tv that cellphones may increase risk for brain cancer. And the doc is giving all kinds of tips to keep the phone away from your ear.

If that is true, doesn't just existing expose you to the waves? The waves are all over. What difference does it make whether you are on the phone or not? That might be the next shoe to drop.

[Jim Ryan]

That's different, Cathy. You two are scientists.

[ROA]

Has anyone closely examined the historical CO2 concentration data? Is it any better than the temperature data?

[DrJ]

Acid rain is not a myth.

That's right, but acid rain was implicated in the acidification of eastern lakes. That was disproven, but only after the expense of installing all those scrubbers.

It still might have been a good thing, but not for the reasons claimed.

[hit and run]

DrJ:
This probably does not matter. Likely they were funded by *grants*, and there is no product required or expected for such a funding vehicle.

Yup. $50 bills are always the wrong way to go.

Fund 'em with benjamins instead.

[Rick Ballard]

I have some doubts regarding the raw data being "lost forever". It would be unsurprising to find that the GHCN had most of it "on file". The GHCN 'product' is homogenized (the GIS product was probably also pasteurized by Hansen) but the raw data is still laying around somewhere at GHCN. The homogenization process is described here and one can find clear examples of unavoidable pasteurization that are inevitable over time (the outskirts move to the center, runways are paved, commerce drives building around airports etc). One might also reflect for a moment upon the fact that over 80% of the earth's surface is either covered with water or within the arctic or antarctic circles. The vast majority of the observational data come from the remaining 20%.

[hit and run]

Rick:
I have some doubts regarding the raw data being "lost forever". It would be unsurprising to find that the GHCN had most of it "on file".

Even more than being stupid, having "lost" the raw data would be ... conveeeenient at this point.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I still have copies of futures options prices (for calculating implied volatilities) from the late 80's on magtape in my house. DrF has all of the data and calculations for his thesis on multiple magtapes in various spots, and even printed out on cards in a box in the attic.

Cathy: After my Mother died, I was going through her things, including a footlocker and several metal boxes. Mostly the boxes were old receipts and things she thought she might need in case of a tax audit or they were legal papers of one kind or another, but in the footlocker there were four very large packets, each over a foot thick. It was all her raw data and draft copies of her Master's thesis for her degree in Economics from Berkeley, dated 1931. She must have looked at it at least once thru the years, because on the front of the last packet, she'd written, "How naive I was back then."

[BobS]

True, acid rain was not a myth, but it's presense was grossly exagerated. the phenomena can easily be reproduced by an 11 yo in a science fair project. it recieved more than a fair hearing, yet media hysteria advanced it and its regulatory regime beyond helpful.

[Strawman Cometh]

That's right, but acid rain was implicated in the acidification of eastern lakes. That was disproven, but only after the expense of installing all those scrubbers.

You have a source for that?
LUN shows the pH of some lakes has risen post scrubbers.

[Captain Hate]

Keeping sulfur out of the air is intuitively a good thing; although when a volcano lets loose it probably discharges more than man could do for decades.

[DrJ]

Straw, let me see if I can find one.

[MikeS]

I've always been suspicious because there aren't droves of 'believers' on the coasts, frantically building sea walls. Nor has there been a groundswell of support by these people to replace our coal burning electricity generating plants with nuclear plants. Not to mention the massive carbon footprints of the Pope of AGW and the rest of the warming Cassandras.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Without the raw data, how do we know that they have factored in major volcano eruptions that have more of an adverse action on the climate than man ever has.

1980 - Mt. St. Helens
1982 - El Chicon
1984 - Krafla
1985 - Ruiz
1989 - Redoubt
1991 - Unzen
1991 - Pinatubo
1991 - Hudson
1992 - Spurr
1993 - Galeras
1993 - Guagua Pichincha
1995 - Soufrière Hills
1995 - Fogo
1996 - Manam
2000-2001 - Etna

[clarice]

Very good, daddy.

I think it was Doug Ross who cleverly established that the only accurate hockey stick was the CRU's grant record from 1990 to the present.

[Strawman Cometh]

CH,
No doubt, but if your property or fishing hole is downwind from the coal plant you'd want the scrubbers. It's unsafe to eat the bass in local reservoirs due to upwind coal burners emitting mercury. Money currently spent on climate modeling and CO2 sequestering would be better spent on mercury scrubbing, or better, building nuclear power plants.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Climate Change: Greatest Scientific Scandal of a Generation

Headline in the Telegraph UK.

[clarice]

strawman, After watching what the govt expenditures have done re environmental health and energy supplies, I'd like to see a long term moratorium on the govt funding anything in either of those two area.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Seems I remember talk of acid rain when I was in high school in the '60s. Of course, I grew up in coal country and air quality was on the agenda of most people many years before that.

[DrJ]

Straw, I saw it here. I'm also reading a Science article from the era, but a quick glean attributes it to both natural and man-made sources without giving a breakdown.

[clarice]

Meanwhile--Per the Telegraph the loony left is still at it:
:GPs 'should offer climate change advice to patients'
Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed.

Nick Britten
Published: 11:53AM GMT 29 Nov 2009

The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.

Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.

The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.

*********

And Big Govt has an article by Chris Horner in which it's revealed that ReaClimate is a Fenton operation:LUN

http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/28/climategate-what-are-the-alarmists-so-afraid-of/

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Do you think Phil Jones will dare show his face in Copenhagen?

Show his face? Hell, he'll probably be awarded next year's Nobel Peace Prize during the proceedings.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

The women here who have ever suffered morning sickness will remember that overwhelming nausea that hits with the smell of certain foods. That is how my body reacts any time I get a whiff of brewing coffee. I know, I know, coffee drinkers think it crazy, but brewing coffee makes me violently sick to my stomach. So, I'm thinking I should apply for one of those nifty grants to study the adverse effects on health of coffee vapors and call for the ban of brewed coffee in all public places. Then like smoking bans, I could insist that apartments and businesses also ban coffee brewing.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

But by the way, GW is another great example of groupthink, a topic I am very interested in.

Sylvia, get hold of Gary Taubs Good Calories, Bad Calories, where he documents a very similar process from the 50's and 60's.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Kim, Pagar, Charlie, Rick - who will email him? Is there a site one can link to which gives a quick overview of Climategate so far?

Thanks, BR — I did better than that; we've got a PJM correspondent going to C'hagen, I just set him onto the tip.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Sylvia: I saw that report this morning on cell phones. Not really new info, but the doc had me moving my cellphone from the table right next to where I'm sitting to a table a couple feet away. By tomorrow, I'll probably be sick of the inconvenience and move it back. :)

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I suppose one could say that no one was really talking about GW in the 80s, so perhaps their "adjustments" were not agenda-driven, ...

One could, Jimmy, but one would be wrong. By the 80's, Hansen and Schmidt were releasing predictions that by the 2000's Manhattan would be awash. Hansen and Schmidt's offices are at 125th and B'way....

[Charlie (Colorado)]

It doesn't get any stupider than saying yeah but we should have a CO2 emissions tax anyway.

Pretty well tells us what the real driver is, doesn't it?

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Iran announces plan to build 10 new nuclear enrichment plants within months. (FNC)

[pagar]

"LUN shows the pH of some lakes has risen post scrubbers."

Reading the LUN, it appears a lot of people would lose the reason for their funding/jobs if they cannot keep proving that all kinds of drastic action is required to solve what ever it is they are researching. This appears to be a common factor in the whole AGW fraud field. As soon as someone says there is no problem-their funding drys up. Keep identifying and researching a problem and every government agency throws taxpayer money at the researcher. IM0.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

If that is true, doesn't just existing expose you to the waves? The waves are all over. What difference does it make whether you are on the phone or not? That might be the next shoe to drop.

Sylvia, the thing is that the wave energy obeys what's called an inverse-square law. So if the energy is x one inch from your ear, is 1/4th x two inches from your ear, 1/9th, 3inches, and so on. So if you hold the phone 24 inches from your ear, the energy is just a touch less that 1/2000 as much.

[Strawman Cometh]

DrJ,
Your link let me to the LUN, which is very convincing that acid rain does not cause acid lakes.
Clarice,
It's always safe to agree with you. Yes, the govt doesn't have to fund nuclear power, just get out of the way through a straitforward cleaner regulatory process. But if they are determined to spend money stimulating something, spend it on nukes.

[clarice]

Since that will never happen and the feds will piss away more money on caterpiller spit or somesuch--just get them out of the way.
Interestingly, people are starting to catch on. Yesterday I saw one of the big city newspapers (forget which) just noticed that the "environmental" groups that blocked conventional energy sources in favor of alternatives are now using teh San Francisco federal courts to block all those alternatives, too.They remind me of the lunatic medieval cults which desired death over life.

[Rick Ballard]

Willis Eschenbach Continues Digging

The exchange between Trenbeth and Karlen reduces to Trenbeth going the "me or your lying eyes" route. It's mostly arm waving and appeal to "authority". Note the precision with which Trenbeth identifies his data sources and the fog in Trenbeth's "rebuttal".

[MayBee]

They covered the emails on ABC this morning. Paul Krugman of course said people just weren't used to academic emails. Otherwise, there was a pretty fair discussion.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Beat me to it, Rick. Note at the end he basically is calling Karlen a denier:

You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong.

That's Trenberth (here in Boulder) speaking to Karlen. If you read the whole exchange, this is the only mention of CO2 "not being a greenhouse gas" after many exchanges about how Karlen can't make the data do what T. says it does.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Liz Trotter was on Fox talking about the media coverage of Climategate. Her assessment was that the WSJ is leading, the NYT is burying their articles inside when it should be on the frontpage, the Economist is in total denial and still pushing the "good" science. She thinks that the media will no longer be able to stick their heads in the sand when the sh!t hits the fan in Copenhagen. She said it a little more politely, but the meaning was the same.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Paul Krugman of course said people just weren't used to academic emails.

For once, I actually agree with him. The tone of the emails seems perfectly normal. The prevarication is not.

[clarice]

If all the academic emails are like these, MayBee, either tuitions will soar even higher or departments will be shut down. No one in his right mind would contribute to the alumni fund to keep this asinine . juvenile farce going.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Yikes! Breaking news. Multiple police officers have been shot in Parkland, Washington.

[matt]

why is it that we get this and it seems the entirety of global officialdom is sweeping it under the rug?

anyone who has ever been involved in research knows how important the raw data is. To proceed any further until the mess is sorted out is criminally malfeasant.

"The dog ate my homework" doesn't quite work.

LUN

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Here are more details on the Iranian plans:

Iran Plans 10 More Uranium Plants

[MayBee]

For once, I actually agree with him. The tone of the emails seems perfectly normal. The prevarication is not.
=========

He didn't seem to separate the two, Charlie.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Follow up: 4 police officers dead after ambush outside McCord Air Force Base in Parkland, WA.

[Rick Ballard]

MayBee,

Prevarication is inseparable within any communication generated by Krugman. It may be difficult at times to determine with precision the subject of prevarication but it's there - that's what "normal" means to him.

[Jim Miller]

I'm not sure whether Tom was being sarcastic or not, but "electronic data storage" was cheap and ubiquitous in the early 1980s. It just wasn't fast, since we mostly used 9-track tapes.

You could easily store more than a gigabyte on ten such tapes, which would be more than enough to hold their raw data. As I noted in the post, ten such tapes would take up less than a foot of a single drawer of an ordinary file cabinet. (Though you wouldn't want to store them that way, long term.)

And one minor correction: The raw data is probably not irretrievably lost; in principle someone can go back to the original sources and recompile it.

[Gmax]

Jim:

That having to hunt through a lot of trees until you find the ones with just the right spacing to make your point. So much easier to just hide the data and tell people its "settled science".

Tar and feathers.

[DrJ]

Let me expand Charlie's quote above, to include Karlen's statement:

[Karlen] So, I find it necessary to object to the talk about a scaring temperature increase because of increased human release of CO2. In fact, the warming seems to be limited to densely populated areas. The often mentioned correlation between temperature and CO2 is not convincing. If there is a factor explaining a major part of changes in the temperature, it is solar irradiation. There are numerous studies demonstrating this correlation but papers are not accepted by IPCC. Most likely, any reduction of CO2 release will have no effect whatsoever on the temperature (independent of how expensive).

[Trenberth] You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.

[Me] Charlie's observation is right: Karlen was very specific about his questions, and at no point did he claim that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Only that its role in the measured temperature readings does not explain the observed behavior as well as other things that were not considered by the IPCC.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Climategate denial foundering on army of Davids
By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds (aka Insty)

[Charlie (Colorado)]

And one minor correction: The raw data is probably not irretrievably lost; in principle someone can go back to the original sources and recompile it.

I think that's correct.

The thing I find so intriguing about this is that Phil Jones explicitly said in an email that he'd delete the data rather than release it to McInture.

I'd like to have an external auditor look into when the data was actually destroyed.

[Gmax]

Does anyone know the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? I believe it to be approximately .04 % or 4 out of every 10,000 molecules of the atmosphere. Pretty damn small.

What about the lie about the floating arctic ice cap melting and raising ( not lowering ) the oceans levels.

Some of this stuff boggles the mind that trained scientists can believe such difficult to believe stuff.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

DrJ, have a look at Roger Pielke Sr's blog, as he's got a good bit on this today. He, like Karlen, is one of the people who have been slimed and censored for daring to question whether CO2 was the dominant forcing.

Okay, I'm now going to write my "guide for the perplexed" to lay out the basic scientific questions. Anyone want to volunteer to review it before I send it to PJM?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Gmax, you have to be a little careful with some of this stuff — remember that a lot of what you read about global warming and its effects has been filtered by a bunch of "journalists" who know what the right view is, but whose last science class was "intro to science for humanities majors" and they almost didn't pass that.

I don't think I've ever seen an actual scientist actually say that the melting North POLAR ice cap would cause higher sea levels; I have seen them mention Greenland, but that actually would make sense.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Oh, and Gmax, here's a table. You've got the figure right to one digit: 387 ppm by volume.

[Gmax]

Yes Greenland is ice not in the water table already and would raise the water level somewhat. Without a calculation of the amount of ice mass on land and floating, I am going to continue to call Bullshit on this until I see something that resembles credibility. Greenland as a % of the total area of the world including the oceans rounds to near zero I think. Not enough ice to make a difference.

[Boatbuilder]

They disposed of the raw data? C'mon. This is climate science---the raw data is the basic material for study--not just in the 80's and 90's but into the indefinite future. I am not a scientist, but I know that. As new information comes to light, as scientific knowledge evolves, the importance of good raw temperature data for all periods is obvious--and would have been obvious to anyone engaged in serious scientific study. There was at that time(as always) intense debate about the reliability of temperature records for earlier periods, and the difficulties inherent in deriving temperature histories from proxies such as ice cores and tree rings. And now we are to believe that they just threw it away?
It is as if archeolgists, having examined ancient ruins and drawn some conclusions, simply said--"OK, we don't need it any more, go ahead with the bulldozers"--except that in this instance there was no significant competing interest.

[Gmax]

Charlie I am pretty sure that Phil Jones in his rejoinder to all the criticism of the e-mail contents, claimed that there was a preponderence of evidence such as rising sea levels that AGW was in fact occuring. Am I wrong on this. Maybe Phil is not an actual scientist, since he actions dont seem to resemble one but that is what I got out of his defense of the indefensible.

[clarice]

In fact, it appears the polar ice capo was a lot smaller than we thought--settlements up there that are 11k y.o. have just been found:LUN

[clarice]

Cap (not capo)..

[matt]

and not a word from anyone in officialdom. Isn't that odd?

suspicious e mails, disappearing data....no, nothing to see here...move along.....

[Jim Miller]

I probably should have shown my work in my post, but I think most of you can do the calculations in your head. As I understand it, what the CRU scientists were storing was temperatures from weather stations around the world. Typically, these are reported twice a day, with minima and maxima. So, for each weather station, we would have two values per day.

Ignoring leap years, then for 100 years of a single station, we would have 2x365x100 data values to store, or 73,000 values. If they have 500 such stations, then they would have a total of about 37 million values to store.

How many bytes for each value? Given the imprecision of older thermometers, two would probably be enough, but you might want to make it four to allow for improvements in the later readings. That much data would still fit on a single 9-track tape, if you used large blocks, even allowing for headers, or two such tapes, if you didn't use large blocks.

[boris]

"Anyone want to volunteer to review it before I send it to PJM?"

Well you claimed I was "too hard" on the AGW scamartists scientists a few days ago. But I do know what Beer-Lambert is and wrote a quant package for a lab data analysis machine couple of decades ago.

[MayBee]

Ha.
Treacher gets the email argument Krugman is trying to make down cold here:

Treacher: I can read. "Hide the decline" and "Quick, delete these files before somebody catches on" and "HOLY CRAP WHY CAN'T I GET THIS DATA TO SAY WHAT WE NEED IT TO SAY IN ORDER TO KEEP OUR JOBS" aren't exactly complex scientific concepts.

The AGW advocate in Treacher's head: That just shows what a simpleton you are. You put scientists on a pedestal, so when you see them behaving like regular human beings, you think they've done something wrong.

[Rick Ballard]

Jim M.,

From the GCHN site:

There are 4.7 million station months of temperature data in GHCN, starting in 1701 and continuing to the present. Derived from 300 million individual readings of thermometers, GHCN embodies the systematic observations of our environment by tens of thousands of individuals over centuries of human history.

As I noted earlier, it's unlikely that much data was "lost". CRU may have provided only homogenized (and pasteurized, after 1970) data but it is more likely to have been "raw". The enHansenment done for GIS is slightly different than CRU. I believe that Hansens pasteurizaation process involves using higher temperatures to "purify" the predetermined required signal.

[Ignatz]

--Greenland as a % of the total area of the world including the oceans rounds to near zero I think. Not enough ice to make a difference.--

Well the argument is that temperatures high enough to melt the Greenland icecap would also make a large dent in the Antarctic one. At the moment Greenland seems to be only slightly melting or perhaps even adding ice, depending on whom you listen to, while Antarctica seems by most measures to be adding ice overall.

As far as CO2 being only 387 PPM, that doesn't really answer the physics of the energy balance of the earth. Less than 387 PPM of certain substances can kill you so it's the effect not the amount.
That AGW exists is probable IMO. That it is anything to worry about is almost certainly false. I suspect on balance it is not only not bad but a positive.

[Gmax]

Does not the pasteur process involve heat? As in cooking? As in cooked books?

[Porchlight]

I believe that Hansens pasteurizaation process involves using higher temperatures to "purify" the predetermined required signal.

Sheesh, it's like homeopathy or something. Actually more like alchemy.

In a just world these people would all be in prison, along with the people in charge of distributing and tracking the stimulus money.

[PaulL]

Probably only in China would these "scientists" be in prison or, even, executed.

[anduril]

I wasn't exactly a science ace in HS, but I do recall being told to preserve data. That may be the only thing I recall from those classes.

[Rob Crawford]

Charlie's observation is right: Karlen was very specific about his questions, and at no point did he claim that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Only that its role in the measured temperature readings does not explain the observed behavior as well as other things that were not considered by the IPCC.

I've noticed this to be the general response to questions, once you push the AGW advocate far enough: CO2 is increasing, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, therefore CO2 is to blame AND if we do not limit CO2 warming will increase without limit!

There are so many unstated assumptions in there: the primary driver of climate is CO2; CO2's GHG effect has no limit; man-made CO2 is comparable in scale to natural sources... Then there's the "correlation is not causation" issue, which seems to be swept under the carpet ESPECIALLY when you point to the ice cores showing CO2 lagging, not leading, warmer temperatures.

[DrJ]

Chaco, you ought the read the paper Pielke linked in your citation above if you have not done so yet. The whole modeling effort to date seems very crude, and yes, not understood.

[Gregory Koster]

Sara, thanks for the Parkland link. I've drvien past that coffee shop many times en route to work. Parkland is notoriously a high crime area. Also, the coffee shop is on the border of Pacific Lutheran University. Don't know if there's any connection.

Chaco, keep pushing. As I've said, I hadn't paid much attention to AGW, beyond looking at those yelling doom and figuring such frauds had to be lying. You've done us all a great service.

[Jim Miller]

Rick - Thanks. I'll check that and use it to update my post. Assuming the numbers are right, you would need about ten 9-track tapes to store the raw data, if you did it efficiently.

(It may be a while before I get to it. Right now, I am trying to follow the story of the four local policemen who were assassinated early this morning.)

[Boatbuilder]

Anduril--Me neither. I do seem to recall being told that we weren't allowed to change the data if it didn't support what we wanted. Something about "The Scientific Method," I believe. People seemed to think it was important.
Apparently the ethics studies I received in law school were more rigorous than those undertaken by the AGW "scientists."
It's not like they didn't have the budgetary resources available to preserve the data.

[Rick Ballard]

"As in cooked books?"

A bridge too far, perhaps. The data are homogenized and during homogenization some pasteurization (after 1970) is employed to purify the results. Alternatively, some data collected prior to 1940 are chilled slightly to improve the overall presentation of the "dish" to be served to John G. Public.

If the ingredients are manipulated slightly, are the "books" considered to be cooked? That depends upon whether it's cruel, evil Enron or those wonderful, thoughtful, caring folkss involved in creating the IPCC fantasy.

We must learn to judge only by the purported declared intent. We'll all be much happier for having done so. Ask any Eloi.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Gmax, Greenland alone has 2.85 million km³ of ice according to Wikipedia, enough to raise sea level by 7+ meters alone.

Of course, the likelihood of a 0.6°C global temp increase doing that seems pretty damn slim.

Charlie I am pretty sure that Phil Jones in his rejoinder to all the criticism of the e-mail contents, claimed that there was a preponderence of evidence such as rising sea levels that AGW was in fact occuring. Am I wrong on this.

From the way you're saying this, I'm guessing you mean this to be a sequitur. I don't think you're wrong in this, but remember there's lots more ice in the world than the ARCTIC ice caps.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Well you claimed I was "too hard" on the AGW scamartists scientists a few days ago.

Boris, find what I actually said, would you? I'm willing to bet I was either being sarcastic, or said something much more limited than that.

In any case, get me an email address and I'll be happy to have you review it.