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Russian IEA Claims CRU (Thus NOAA/NASA) Probably Tampered With Their Data

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by amped, Dec 17, 2009.

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  1. amped

    amped Senior Member

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    Interesting new development in Climategate:

    "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."

    http://icecap.us/images/uploads/BOMBSHELL.pdf
     
  2. drees

    drees Senior Member

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    Hmm, you forgot to mention that the Moscow based IEA (aka Institute of Economic Analysis) is basically a privately funded think-tank. In other words, this is just another smear campaign.

    I suspect that they are more concerned with the economic effects of reducing fossil fuel consumption given that Russia's economy is in very bad shape and Russia has a LOT of fossil fuel reserves it would like to sell to the rest of the world but will not be able to if serious limits to CO2 emissions are enacted.

    Either way - I have no problem with the data being re-analyzed. Double checking results is a good thing, but in this case, I suspect it will be work wasted.
     
  3. amped

    amped Senior Member

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    Is all of the data still available, or was it "lost"?
     
  4. malorn

    malorn Senior Member

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    Now that the data, emails and such has been subpeoned, I am afraid we are going to see this with NOAA, and NASA also.
     
  5. icarus

    icarus Senior Member

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    Does anyone want living proof that the deniers deliberately mislead?

    Read the head line of this thread: Russian IEA Claims CRU (Thus NOAA/NASA)Probably tampered with their data.

    No where in the link is there even a suggestion that NOAA or NASA was involved in any data tampering! The denialists want to plant, fertilize and tend this seed of doubt about the validity of any climate science.
    If the deniests motives were as pure as they claim, they wouldn't have to resort to such antics.

    Shame!
     
  6. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    And they forgot that the Japanese do their own temperature timeseries, so it needs to be NASA, NOAA, Japan.

    And they forgot that all of the ground-based estimates correct for urban heat island effects.

    And they forgot that the warming is highest in high northern latitudes (where there ain't no cities, ergo no bias from urban heat island effects.)

    And forgot that temperature anomalies in Russia are in line with their latitude, so if there is an exaggeration, certainly is small.

    And forgot that the earth's surface is three-quarters water, so that 12% of the earth's land mass is ... 3% of the earth's surface. But that wouldn't have been nearly as impressive for propaganda purposes.

    A little back-of-the-envelope: If CRU had screwed up to the extent of overstating the trend in Russia by a full degree C (which, contrary to fact, would make Russia stand out ludicrously on a map of temperature anomalies), then the 1 degree C rise over the past century or so would have been biased all the way up to ... 1.03 degrees C. Which would be a big deal, scientifically, but would not materially change the overall picture of long-term temperature trends.

    It's junk, aimed at people who know nothing about this topic and who can't do arithmetic.

    Edit: Ironically, if anybody actually wanted to check the CRU work, instead of just making noise, here's the Russian data right here:

    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ndps/ndp040.html

    But hey, it's vastly more useful to speculate that there might be a problem that simply to check it, and to demand that all the numbers on global warming must be recalculated, than to do a simple sensitivity analysis (back-of-the-envelope) to see what the maximum plausible impact might be. No propaganda value there.

    EDIT2: Or, what the h***, if you were really interested in facts, instead of looking at some blather from some "think tank", you might take three minutes, as I just did, to track down the official Russian government estimates of temperature change. Not CRU/NASA/NOAA etc, but here's what the Russian meterological office says about the temperature trend in Russia:

    " ... warming in
    Russia as a whole is larger than global warming. According
    to observations provided by the meteorological
    network of Roshydromet, the warming in Russia was
    1.29°C for the last 100 years (1907–2006), whereas
    global warming for the same period was 0.74°C according
    to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report."

    That's page 7, from this report:
    http://wmc.meteoinfo.ru/media/climate/obzhee_rezume_eng.pdf


    From this website:
    http://wmc.meteoinfo.ru/climate

    That, by itself, doesn't settle the issue, but ... what you have here is the Russian government's own estimate of warming within Russia. Sorry, I didn't take the time to find CRU's estimate of warming within Russia. Maybe somebody else here would care to take a stab at finding that.

    Actually, there's no need, because somebody already did the comparison and posted it, here:

    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/russian_analysis_confirms_20th.php

    This guy took the plot from the Russian think-tank study and superimposed it on the CRU nothern latitudes temperature series. Not perfect, but ... a decent match. You should read what he writes before jumping to conclusions about the pre-1900 divergence between the lines. Thin grey line is CRU, blue line is the full dataset, red line is the subset.

    Sorry, but I'm just not seeing the need to throw out all existing temperature data because this think tank claims that the blue line is superior to the thin grey line on that graph.

    Interestingly enough, looking at that graph, and comparing to the above, the official Russian Gov't estimate of the temperature change from 1907 to 2006 is closer to what you get off the red line than off the blue line. So that think tank not only disagrees with CRU, they disagree with Russia's own meteorological office.

    Guess the conspiracy includes the Russian government as well.



    [​IMG]
     
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  7. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    I didn't realize NASA had been issued a subpeona.

    When I Google NASA subpeona, I come up with bupkis. The only reference is to a think-tank lawyer (Chris Horner, Competitive Enterprise Institute) who says he's *going to* *sue* NASA. That's future tense, and that's filing a lawsuit.

    Has the Congress issued a subpeona for materials at NASA? Has some US court done that? Could you provide a link to this subpeona so I can see what you're talking about?

    Or did you mean that the CRU had been issued a subpeona?. I Googled CRU subpeona and still came up with nothing. If you meant that CRU had been issued a subpeona, a link to that would help me understand what you're talking about.
     
  8. NevadaPrius

    NevadaPrius New Member

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    He probably meant this:

    [ame=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=DOE+CRU&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10]DOE CRU - Google Search[/ame]
     
  9. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    Thank you. I'm having trouble making head or tail out of that. That's not a subpoena. Neither NASA nor NOAA are in DOE. (NOAAs in Commerce, NASA is NASA). There's no explanation from DOE. Near as I can tell, the rumors say Senator Inhofe sent a letter to DOE and others, and that's what DOE's done in response. Not sure what to make of that. If it's just a response to Inhofe's letter, then it's nothing. Pretty much know where Inhofe is coming from. If somebody has actually sued DOE, then it might be more interesting.
     
  10. amped

    amped Senior Member

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    A few more items of interest:

    "From: Phil Jones <[email protected]>
    To: "Michael E. Mann" <[email protected]>
    Subject: Re: have you seen this?
    Date: Wed Mar 31 09:09:04 2004

    Mike,
    Yes, but not had a chance to read it yet. Too much else going on. Ed has a paper
    reworking Esper et al. as you'll know. If you're going to Tucson, I suggest you talk to
    Keith about it then - don't email him as he's too busy preparing to go and marking essays.
    Jan is in one of our EU projects. Seems that Keith thinks Jan is reinventing a lot of
    Keith's
    work, renamed the RCS method and much more. Jan doesn't always take in what is in
    the literature even though he purports to read it. He's now looking at homogenization
    techniques for temperature to check the Siberian temperature data. We keep telling him the
    decline is also in N. Europe, N. America (where we use all the recently homogenized
    Canadian data). The decline may be slightly larger in Siberia, but it is elsewhere as
    well.
    Also Siberia is one of the worst places to look at homogeneity, as the stations aren't
    that
    close together (as they are in Fennoscandia and most of Canada) and also the temperature
    varies an awful lot from year to year.

    Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it
    wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
    appears
    I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
    Cheers
    Phil"

    East Anglia Confirmed Emails from the Climate Research Unit - Searchable

    --

    "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."

    Russian IEA claims CRU tampered with climate data – cherrypicked warmest stations Watts Up With That?

    --

    "One the final page, there is a chart that shows that CRU’s selective use of 25% of the data created 0.64C more warming than simply using all of the raw data would have done. The complete set of data show 1.4C rise since 1860, the CRU set shows 2.06C rise over the same period."

    Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming – Telegraph Blogs

    --

    "They specifically state that lack of measurement is not the cause. 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."

    [​IMG]

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/...ata-cherrypicked-warmest-stations/#more-14241
     
  11. icarus

    icarus Senior Member

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    And NASA and NOAA is mentioned where in all this BlaBlaBla?
     
  12. amped

    amped Senior Member

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    I agree, the author should've omitted them from the title, but I took it to mean they all used the same sets of corrupted data to form specious conclusions.
     
  13. icarus

    icarus Senior Member

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    Thank you for recognizing the manipulative nature of the headline. It is way too easy to manipulate language. I contend once again, that the is, and has been a widely organized, well funded misinformation campaign whose intended purpose is plant a seed of doubt amongst non scientist laypeople where virtually none exists in the climate science community.

    If you don't believe it, just consider the lobbying/PR power of large corporate/industry money. I cited yesterday, that a newly formed PR/lobbying arm funded by the natural gas industry, spend ~ $80,000,000 (thats Eighty Million) in just the last year. And they are a new organization! Their efforts were substantially smaller than that of the coal lobby, but the coal folks have been at it longer. Add to that, Big oil/Big utility/ Big Chemical and their collective PR lobbying ability dwarfing that of any and all environmental groups.

    I have always contended that if you follow the money, you will have a pretty good idea of who stands to win and who stands to loose. If these folks have literally $100's of millions to spend on PR and lobbying to protect $100's of billions in potential profits, I don't think it is unreasonable to think that the incentive to cloud the truth is pretty strong.

    Deniers like to claim in light of the "hacked E-mails" that it is the "alarmists" that cloud the truth. I ask again, one honestly think that the entire climate science community (assuming you think there is such a thing) has been "making it up" for 20+ years? I think not.
     
  14. NevadaPrius

    NevadaPrius New Member

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    Many, many studies all use the same data. For instance, many (most?) studies are based on Mann's and his friends tree ring proxy data. And now after ClimateGate we unfortunately see that he was a big liar. And with ClimateGate we see Mann cherrypicking the datasets that minimize the MWP and LIA, and ones that "present a pretty picture of global warming" (in their own words.)

    You're right. We are all guilty of sometimes misusing words. Is it misinformation as in saying that AGW is based on "repeatable experiments which lead to conclusive results" or whatever your quote was? We need the misinformation to stop on both sides of the debate.
     
  15. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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  16. NevadaPrius

    NevadaPrius New Member

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    Since 1900 is not the critical time period for AGW. In fact, since 1850 we see three distinct warming trends separated by periods of cooling/no warming. AGW claims that anthropogenic causes outpaced solar causes since 1975-1980.
     
  17. TimBikes

    TimBikes New Member

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    Yes - is how they correct for urban heat island effects - by adding to it?

    [​IMG]
     
  18. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    Let's take it from the top.

    Some no-name group claims that there is a divergence between their estimate of Russian warming and CRU's estimate, and that their estimate is better. And the denialists blog it up.

    Ask a few simple questions. First, who are these people, and why do I think they'd know more about this than CRU/NASA/NOAA/etc.

    Was this report issued by climatologists? Well, by scientists of some sort? Well, is the institution at least some type of scientific institute?

    No, no, and no. The report was issued by a right-wing economic think-tank with no scientific credentials in this area.


    "A prominent Russian climate sceptic and free-market economist says that the British HadCRUT global temperature database - much of which has now been released to the public following the "climategate" email scandal - has been manipulated to show greater warming in Russia than is actually the case. Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to then-Russian President Putin, is head of his own thinktank in Moscow, the Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA). He is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian American thinktank. He has always been a climate sceptic, having vigorously opposed Russia's signing up to the Kyoto protocols."

    If you google either Illarionov (the head of that institution) or the lead author of the study, do you find any prior scholarly work in the area of climate? No.

    But, hey, guess who lists Illarionov? Exxonsecrets. I'm shocked, shocked to see that.

    ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Andrei Illarionov

    So let's recast this a bit. A senior fellow at the Cato institute, and head of a conservative economic policy "think tank" in Russia, who also happens to be a long-time climate skeptic with a history of funding from Exxon, issues a report whose lead author apparently has never previously published anything in the area of climate, that says that CRU overstated the warming trend in Russia. But, in fact, the warming trend shown in this report is less than the warming estimated by Russia's own meterological office. And somehow, the temperature "bias" mysteriously disappears in the 20th century.


    Let me spell it out:

    • Issued by a right-wing economist.

    • With a history of funding by Exxon.

    • Lead author has no apparent experience in this area.

    • Disagrees with Russian government's own estimates of warming.

    • "Bias" is not constant by somehow disappears in the 20th century.

    • Does not materially affect estimated global temperature change.
    You've got to be kidding me. As a piece of propaganda, brilliant. It's exotic enough that few readers will actually realize what the issuing organization is. Timing was spot on, for maximum impact. But as a piece of science? I think I'll continue to trust the CRU/NASA/NOAA analysis of the temperatures. Barring that, I'll trust the Russian government's own analysis of its temperatures.
     
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  19. chogan2

    chogan2 Senior Member

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    Oh, yeah, man. That proves it. Whatever the heck that is. No need to read an actual, intelligent discussion of urban heat island effects, or even a summary of the published scholarly literature in this area, as given here:

    RealClimate: The Surface Temperature Record and the Urban Heat Island

    Nah. Much better to ignore the scholarly literature, pretend that NASA's scientists are too stupid to understand the issue (and, by inference, since the GISS data seem to match the other series pretty well, that all of climatology is too stupid to deal with this issue correctly), pretend that there haven't been numerous scholarly studies of the issue, and plop a graph down on the page, as if that tells the real story. Because the real story is that the urban heat island effect is too small to materially affect the warming.

    Even if I couldn't be bothered to look up the actual analysis of the issue (or, as likely, if the serious analysis of the issue didn't make the point I wanted to make), I'd at least remember that worldwide ocean temperatures hit an all-time high this summer (all-time for the period of intrumental measurement).

    NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA: Warmest Global Ocean Surface Temperatures on Record for July


    No cities in the ocean. So that warming, at least, sure ain't driven by the urban heat island effect.

    So, what, I'm supposed to be believe that the land temperatures are seriously biased by urban heat island effects, but the fact that land/ocean temps are consistent with one another is ... a fluke?

    Fact is, this issue has been studied a lot, and it just doesn't matter.

    EDIT: And, you know, at some point, this graph is a classic example of the quality of your postings. I went to NOAA and found the graph. Here's the page at NOAA where they spell out their adjustments:

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html

    With regard to the adjustment for urbanization, here's what NOAA says:

    "Adjustments to account for warming due to the effects of urbanization (purple line) cooled the time series an average of 0.1F throughout the period of record."

    So, just to keep the false impressions out of the record, let's be completely clear:

    In the context of the urban heat island adjustment, you posted a graph showing a 0.6 degree increase in temperature trend.

    In fact, NOAA's urban heat island adjustment reduces the temperature trend by 0.1 degrees.

    And, near as I can tell, you got your graph from the page where NOAA spelled that all out. So, you had NOAA's own estimate of their heat island correction factor, but that didn't tell the story you wanted, so you posted something else instead. Classic. Real helpful for understanding the facts. Here's the full graph, though you have to look at the NOAA page to understand it. The downward-sloping purple line is the heat island adjustment:

    [​IMG]



    If anybody wants to see what the other adjustments are, and why NOAA did them, they can go to the page I cited.

    Use a little sense, folks. On maps of temperature anomalies, do you see red squares in areas of high urbanization and blue elsewhere? Nope. Guess why not? Because NOAA and others know what they're doing, and any residual urban heat island effect remaining in the data is minimal.
     
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  20. NevadaPrius

    NevadaPrius New Member

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    Chogan, I was merely correcting you on the time frames for global warming.

    About urban heat islands, like you did above, we have to consider the source :) I would never get my facts from RealClimate. I'd rather someone go to the store and get me a big box of strawberry prostate cancer than trust them. Just look at their "Contributors" section - it's a who's who of ClimateGate. Just look at their most recent article "show us the code!" Yes, CRU, show us the code! What a bunch of hypocrites!

    Ugh! I believe that humans are contributing somewhat to climate change, and reading that site sends shivers down my spine. Ewwww!
     
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