Hacked E-mails from Climate Scientists released

[D.Turtle]

Instead of using your bullshit graphs (which compares a linear trend with a highly nonlinear one), use a proper graph:

UAH is slightly lower than all the others (including RSS which is also based on satellite measurements).

Even using their data, the globe is warming at an alarming rate.

[KrauserKrauser]

Since when has the Earth's temperature followed a strictly linear trend that you keep trying to indicate.

[[R_H]]

Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.

The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.

Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.

The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.

The development will add to fears that influential sceptics in other countries, including the US and Australia, are using the controversy to put pressure on leaders to resist making ambitious deals for cutting CO2.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.

[Formless]

Since when has the Earth's temperature followed a strictly linear trend that you keep trying to indicate.

He's not, its called a trend line, dumbass. Its a basic statistical tool that's used all the time to show the average rate of change. This is statistics 101.

[KrauserKrauser]

I know what a fucking trend line is, shit for brains, I was simply implying that the temperature of the earth has never followed a single order straight line in temperature change, the sinusoidal graph of the satellite temperatures makes a lot more sense in that it more accurately represents the temperature changes, not some line heading off towards infinity.

Also, each graph that has been posted has been of only the last 20 years of data. Is this the only accurate data set that we have? I know the further back we go the more inaccurate the data, but have the trends been taken any farther back? It just seems like such a small data set to justify the drastic changes, especially with something that is usually measured in geologic timescales.

[Formless]

I know what a fucking trend line is, shit for brains, I was simply implying that the temperature of the earth has never followed a single order straight line in temperature change, the sinusoidal graph of the satellite temperatures makes a lot more sense in that it more accurately represents the temperature changes, not some line heading off towards infinity.

And you are either a dumbfuck, illiterate, or mathematically illiterate with regards to graphs and statistics for thinking anyone in this thread ever stated or implied otherwise. Which is it? I'm not a mind reader, you know.

[D.Turtle]

Also, each graph that has been posted has been of only the last 20 years of data. Is this the only accurate data set that we have? I know the further back we go the more inaccurate the data, but have the trends been taken any farther back? It just seems like such a small data set to justify the drastic changes, especially with something that is usually measured in geologic timescales.

Thats because Gilthan for some reason thinks that satellite data is more accurate than data taken over a longer time frame by simple methods aka thermometers, despite satellite measurements not directly measuring temperatures but requiring complex models in order to arrive at a temperature. This obviously is not because the UAH data is lower than all other data sets (including several satellite-based temperature measurements), but because UAH is obviously correct and all others are wrong, despite the UAH data needing major revision in 2005.....

Here you have the various different data sets (including linear trends for the time shown):

The graph is taken using the offsets from this comparison, except that I show the whole HadCRUT3 and GISTEMP range, instead of only the common timeframe they have with the satellite data. The trends are for the whole time scale shown of each data set.

As for why it is important to distinguish between various smoothing/regression methods, I'll just show a small comparison of a dataset (Central England Temperature), using different two regression methods), from here:


Again, both images show the same dataset, only using different regression methods (2nd degree polynomial and 3rd degree polynomial). I could overlay them to make the difference even more obvious,but I'm tired and drunk, and I think its obvious enough as is. If you only compare the two regression lines, you could get the impression that they show vastly different trends/data sets, while in fact the y show the exact same data set.

That is why it is important to use the same methods when comparing several data sets.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I know what a fucking trend line is, shit for brains, I was simply implying that the temperature of the earth has never followed a single order straight line in temperature change, the sinusoidal graph of the satellite temperatures makes a lot more sense in that it more accurately represents the temperature changes, not some line heading off towards infinity.

A sinusoidal curve is not appropriate for attempting to find an overall trend in a data set. Linear models are better for that, and the data does fit a linear regression model (it just has homoscedastic scatter)

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If we are going to be awefully pedantic about graph interpretation, what we are seeing here is the average mean is increasing and all that is random walk fluctuations.

However, it will be nice to see just how big the error bars are, because otherwise, the graph is tad meaningless in the scientific sense, and generally inadmissable for publication.

[D.Turtle]

Well, Chapter 10.5 of Working Group 1 of the IPCC is about the uncertainties. Here is one figure from that section (and it's caption):
VERY Large Image

Figure 10.26. Fossil CO2, CH4 and SO2 emissions for six illustrative SRES non-mitigation emission scenarios, their corresponding CO2, CH4 and N2O concentrations, radiative forcing and global mean temperature projections based on an SCM tuned to 19 AOGCMs. The dark shaded areas in the bottom temperature panel represent the mean ±1 standard deviation for the 19 model tunings. The lighter shaded areas depict the change in this uncertainty range, if carbon cycle feedbacks are assumed to be lower or higher than in the medium setting. Mean projections for mid-range carbon cycle assumptions for the six illustrative SRES scenarios are shown as thick coloured lines. Historical emissions (black lines) are shown for fossil and industrial CO2 (Marland et al., 2005), for SO2 (van Aardenne et al., 2001) and for CH4 (van Aardenne et al., 2001, adjusted to Olivier and Berdowski, 2001). Observed CO2, CH4 and N2O concentrations (black lines) are as presented in Chapter 6. Global mean temperature results from the SCM for anthropogenic and natural forcing compare favourably with 20th-century observations (black line) as shown in the lower left panel (Folland et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2001; Jones and Moberg, 2003).

What makes projections difficult is not only uncertainties in climate sensitivity, but also uncertainties in CO2 and other GHG emissions. Currently, we are tracking the worst-case scenarios in CO2 Emissions. Also note that these are long-term projections. They can (and are) obscured by short-term variability (Solar cycle, El Niño/La Niña, etc), as described, for example, in the Copenhagen Diagnosis:

Has global warming recently slowed down or paused?
No. There is no indication in the data of a slowdown or pause in the human-caused climatic warming trend. The observed global temperature changes are entirely consistent with the climatic warming trend of ~0.2 °C per decade predicted by IPCC, plus superimposed short-term variability (see Figure 4). The latter has always been – and will always be – present in the climate system. Most of these short-term variations are due to internal oscillations like El Niño – Southern Oscillation,
solar variability (predominantly the 11-year Schwabe cycle) and volcanic eruptions (which, like Pinatubo in 1991, can cause a cooling lasting a few years).

If one looks at periods of ten years or shorter, such short-term variations can more than outweigh the anthropogenic global warming trend. For example, El Niño events typically come with global-mean temperature changes of up to 0.2 °C over a few years, and the solar cycle with warming or cooling of 0.1 °C over five years (Lean and Rind 2008). However, neither El Niño, nor solar activity or volcanic eruptions make a significant contribution to longer-term climate trends. For good reason the
IPCC has chosen 25 years as the shortest trend line they show in the global temperature records, and over this time period the observed trend agrees very well with the expected anthropogenic warming.

[Fake Edit]Umm, I just realized that you might mean the uncertainty in the temperature measurements. GISTEMP say this:

The two-standard-deviation (95% confidence) uncertainty in comparing recent years is estimated as 0.05°C [ref. 2]

For HadCRUT3 (Google cache version of their page, as the current one is down):

Annual values are approximately accurate to +/- 0.05°C (two standard errors) for the period since 1951.

I couldn't find anything about the uncertainties in the UAH and RSS measurements - which doesn't mean they don't exist. I would guess they are higher, as Satellites do not directly measure temperatures, but need to extrapolate the temperature from other measurements using relatively complex models and calculations. Errors in those models and calculations can lead to large changes in the "measured" temperature - as happened with the UAH data in 2005.

I did find this large image from chapter 3 of the report from Working Group 1 of the IPCC which includes the error bars. Here is the caption:

FAQ 3.1, Figure 1. (Top) Annual global mean observed temperatures1 (black dots) along with simple fits to the data. The left hand axis shows anomalies relative to the 1961 to 1990 average and the right hand axis shows the estimated actual temperature (°C). Linear trend fits to the last 25 (yellow), 50 (orange), 100 (purple) and 150 years (red) are shown, and correspond to 1981 to 2005, 1956 to 2005, 1906 to 2005, and 1856 to 2005, respectively. Note that for shorter recent periods, the slope is greater, indicating accelerated warming. The blue curve is a smoothed depiction to capture the decadal variations. To give an idea of whether the fluctuations are meaningful, decadal 5% to 95% (light grey) error ranges about that line are given (accordingly, annual values do exceed those limits). Results from climate models driven by estimated radiative forcings for the 20th century (Chapter 9) suggest that there was little change prior to about 1915, and that a substantial fraction of the early 20th-century change was contributed by naturally occurring influences including solar radiation changes, volcanism and natural variability. From about 1940 to 1970 the increasing industrialisation following World War II increased pollution in the Northern Hemisphere, contributing to cooling, and increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases dominate the observed warming after the mid-1970s. (Bottom) Patterns of linear global temperature trends from 1979 to 2005 estimated at the surface (left), and for the troposphere (right) from the surface to about 10 km altitude, from satellite records. Grey areas indicate incomplete data. Note the more spatially uniform warming in the satellite tropospheric record while the surface temperature changes more clearly relate to land and ocean.

[Zac Naloen]

This story just got a bit weirder : -


Russian Secret Service Hacked the CNU?

FSB accused of paying hackers to discredit scientists after stolen correspondence traced to server in Siberia

By Shaun Walker

The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.


The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them "an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect". The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.

"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services," Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. "It's a carefully made selection of emails and documents that's not random. This is 13 years of data, and it's not a job of amateurs."

The leaked emails, Professor van Ypersele said, will fuel scepticism about climate change and may make agreement harder at Copenhagen. So the mutterings have prompted the question: why would Russia have an interest in scuppering the Copenhagen talks?

This time, if it was indeed the FSB behind the leak, it could be part of a ploy to delay negotiations or win further concessions for Moscow. Russia, along with the United States, was accused of delaying Kyoto, and the signals coming from Moscow recently have continued to dismay environmental activists.

When Ed Miliband, the Secreatary of State for Climate Change, visited Moscow this year, he had meetings with high-level Russian officials and pronounced them constructive. But others doubt that Russia has much desire to go green.

Up in the far northern reaches of Russia, there are stretches of hundreds of miles of boggy tundra; human settlements are few and far between. Often, the only inhabitants are indigenous reindeer herders, who in recent years have reported that their cyclical lifestyle is being affected by the climate: they have to wait until later in the year to migrate to winter camps, because the rivers do not freeze as early as they used to. In spring, the snow melts quickly and it becomes harder for reindeer to pull sleds.

Much of Russia's vast oil and gas reserves lie in difficult-to-access areas of the far North. One school of thought is that Russia, unlike most countries, would have little to fear from global warming, because these deposits would suddenly become much easier and cheaper to access.

It is this, goes the theory, that underlies the Kremlin's ambivalent attitudes towards global warming; they remain lukewarm on the science underpinning climate change, knowing full well that if global warming does change the world's climate, billions of dollars of natural resources will become accessible. Another motivating factor could be that Russia simply does not want to spend the vast sums of money that would be required to modernise and "greenify" Russia's ageing factories.

But global warming also brings with it a terrifying threat for Russia, the melting of permafrost, which covers so much of the country's territory. Cities in the Siberian north such as Yakutsk are built entirely on permafrost, and if this melts, are in danger of collapsing, along with railways and all other infrastructure.

But many in Russia's scientific community are deeply sceptical of the threat from global warming. And only 40 per cent of Russians believe climate change is a serious threat, a survey shows

Russia's commitments ahead of Copenhagen have been modest. In June, the President, Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia would reduce emission levels by 10 to 15 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. But what this actually means is a whopping 30 per cent rise from the present levels. Using the 1990 figures as a benchmark is a way to gain extra leeway, because emissions in Russia have tumbled since the Soviet Union collapsed and much of its polluting industrial complex went down with it.

Of course, Russia is not alone in falling short on climate commitments. But nor does it have a track record for openness for dismissal of the claims against the FSB to be straightforward. The Tomsk hackers in the message along with their leak, wrote of their hopes that the release would "give some insight into the science and the people behind it". Similar insights into the hackers themselves look extremely unlikely.

[CaptainChewbacca]

So... Russia has hacked the CRU emails and spread them around to undermine anti-global-warming science and legislation in an effort to spur global warming on further to warm the northern half of their country?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Granted, not many of them are as likely to listen if the consensus shifts dramatically (against the prevailing theory about climate change) but science which doesn't give a central government more excuses to increase their staff and enlarge their area of responsibility is less convenient than that which does.

Yeah, polar bears and climate scientists donate as much to your campaign and think tanks as electrical utilities and oil companies. I forgot, clearly leftist professors are the dominant political-economic-social institution in Western society.

[Liberty]

Granted, not many of them are as likely to listen if the consensus shifts dramatically (against the prevailing theory about climate change) but science which doesn't give a central government more excuses to increase their staff and enlarge their area of responsibility is less convenient than that which does.

Yeah, polar bears and climate scientists donate as much to your campaign and think tanks as electrical utilities and oil companies. I forgot, clearly leftist professors are the dominant political-economic-social institution in Western society.

Science is at its core neutral, and it shouldn't be in anyone's pocket. I think that's the concern over these letters; if science is in someone's pocket, and is thus working toward a specific conclusion regardless of the evidence, there is clearly great reason for alarm. But is it? I think not. Granted, I am in the social sciences, but history too can be biased or paid off, and I have to say that what I have seen at the public university where I am completing graduate work is nothing but the most professional, unbiased work. Professors in my department work hard to follow the evidence and data and come up with good, unbiased theories. My understanding is that the vast majority of intellectuals in the social and hard sciences behave in this way, and those who do not usually get outed and discredited.

Consider this: a scientist has to protect his name and reputation. If it is tainted, he risks losing his livelihood.

[KrauserKrauser]

That is true but the drive for recognition, money and fame has driven many a professor to publish or go forward without sufficient foundation for their claims.

It is especially damning in this case as multiple times the source code for the models have been requested from this organization and each time refused. Obviouslly for good reason as it appears to be constructed of the coding equivalent of swiss cheese.

If the source code and emails are taken at face value, this is simply another one of those times. It in no way completely invalidates the MMGW movement, but it doesn't do it any favors by any means.

Listening to my family go on about how this means that global warming is a hoax because these emails prove it, well, it's a bit disheartening. There are revelations that can be gleaned from this information, but they are getting the wrong take-aways.

[Liberty]

That is true but the drive for recognition, money and fame has driven many a professor to publish or go forward without sufficient foundation for their claims.

It is especially damning in this case as multiple times the source code for the models have been requested from this organization and each time refused. Obviouslly for good reason as it appears to be constructed of the coding equivalent of swiss cheese.

If the source code and emails are taken at face value, this is simply another one of those times. It in no way completely invalidates the MMGW movement, but it doesn't do it any favors by any means.

Listening to my family go on about how this means that global warming is a hoax because these emails prove it, well, it's a bit disheartening. There are revelations that can be gleaned from this information, but they are getting the wrong take-aways.

Ah, so your family is like mine. Of course, my family never believed in global warming in the first place, so this is just adding fuel to the fire. I'm still trying to figure out why they shipped me off to a public university when I turned eighteen...

[Duckie]

Edit- Wait, I just suck at reading. Ignore.

[bobalot]

This video points out how blatantly out of context of these quotes were. It won't stop the jackasses though.

[Gilthan]

Breaking news, a recent update:

http://en.rian.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world's land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

Regarding the above graph in that context:

If they claim the full set of Russian data does NOT support global warming, imagine how different the bright red dot over Russia would look. Again the accusation is completely believable, yet is completely unverifiable because CRU has refused to release the data. This data and code release is the subject of illegal blocking of FOIA’s is one of the keys in the Climategate emials. We need to know the list of stations used and we must have copies of the raw data.

This is a very powerful accusation, which if true could change much about the climate science debate. Many papers are based on this dataset which has the highest trend of the major ground datasets.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/16/r ... -stations/

[bobalot]

What is it with this asshole and shitty sources?

Institute of Economic Analysis is NOT a scientific agency. They are a right wing think tank along the lines of the Cato Institute whose focus is economics. The founder of the "institute" is Andrei Illarionov, who actually works for Cato. What fucking expertise do these assholes have?

[D.Turtle]

Here we go into conspiracy theories again, as other independent sources show the same warming in Russia...

[Darth Wong]

What is it with this asshole and shitty sources?

You could replace "this asshole" with "all right-wingers" and it would be pretty much accurate. It's part and parcel of the entire right-wing movement to create their own ideologically pure references, often with horrendously misleading names, like "Friends of Science", or "<something> Research Group", which are basically just glorified essayists pretending to be scientific researchers by using journalist methods (ie- the only methods they know) to analyze scientific issues.

[Surlethe]

I guess this is not an ad hominem circumstantial because there's no reason to believe the IEA is not making up numbers as to how the Hadley Center did its work. Even if they were correct, there could certainly be technical reasons that are not evident to the layperson as to why the climate scientists did not use three quarters of the data - criticism would have to be in the realm of experts, not laymen.

[Darth Wong]

I guess this is not an ad hominem circumstantial because there's no reason to believe the IEA is not making up numbers as to how the Hadley Center did its work. Even if they were correct, there could certainly be technical reasons that are not evident to the layperson as to why the climate scientists did not use three quarters of the data - criticism would have to be in the realm of experts, not laymen.

It's an ad-hominem fallacy to attack an argument based on the source, but it's not an ad-hominem fallacy to attack a source reference based on the source. Indeed, it's quite absurd to say that you can't attack a source reference based on the source; the whole reason people use source references is because they're hoping to use the credibility of the source in order to bolster their argument.