By: RBT
Friends of Mark Fuhrman
From a fellow blogger re the latest on climategate.
CRU Raw Temp Data Shows No Significant Warming Over Most Of The World
Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:
- 75% of the globe has not seen significant peak warming or cooling changes between the period prior to 1960 and the 2000’s which rise above a 0.5°C threshold, which is well within the CRU’s own stated measurement uncertainties o +/- 1°C or worse.
- Assuming a peak to peak change (pre 1960 vs 2000’s) should represent a change greater than 20% of the measured temperature range (i.e., if the measured temp range is 10° then a peak-to-peak change of greater than 2° would be considered ’significant’) 87% the Earth has not seen experienced significant temperature changes between pre 1960 period and the 2000’s.
So how did I come to this conclusion? If you have the time you can find out by reading below the fold.
I have been working on this post for about a week now, testing a hypothesis I have regarding the raw temp data vs the overly processed CRU, GISS, NCDC, IPCC results (the processed data shows dramatic global warming in the last century). I have been of the opinion the raw temp data tells a different, cooler story than the processed data. My theory is alarmists’ results do not track well with the raw data, and require the merging of unproven and extremely inaccurate proxy data to open the error bars and move the trend lines to produce the desired result. We have a clear isolated example from New Zealand where cherry picked data and time windows have resulted in a ridiculous ‘data merging’ that completely obliterates the raw data…
UPDATE I:
I posted this comment to another commenter in an open thread at the S-R’s “A Matter of Opinion” blog:
Jeffrey,
I haven’t really delved into the inner workings of the climate debate. I’m not advocating one position or another. I’m just watching how the new/alternative/social media has facilitated an open debate on this topic that was not possible in the past. The MSM has not facilitated this debate and largely has concluded this is a settled debate e.g., our resident blogmeister Gary Crooks. Many people can now communicate inexpensively and instantaneously with many other people and share their views/opinions in a free and open debate. These debates can easily go viral if they strike a social chord. This is what happened and eventually broke the Catholic Church’s longstanding secrecy of sexual abuse by priests in Boston in 2002. See Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody-the power of organizing without organizations.”
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/20…
Experts in their own fields of research and expertise and not entrenched in the climate debate are now seeing the underlying climate data and the CRU’s source code used to smooth the data and are scratching their heads in disbelief. Read the article at the AT re the mathematics of global warming I linked to above. Our current computer processing ability may not yet have the ability to crunch the vast data in a reliable manner based using current climate models to predict much of anything.
Today’s WSJ OP/ED has an excellent piece on what happens when there is a lack of transparency in these scientific debates when critics are marginalized and shut out of the review process. As I said above, “Garbage in – garbage out. Bad science doesn’t do anyone any good.”
This is a serious flaw in our critical thinking skills at a time when are policy makers are on the verge of making huge changes in the world’s economic system. There is great danger in making these policy shifts when they are based on suspect/flawed information.
Today’s WSJ OP/ED:
The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths
The world cannot trust scientists who abuse their power.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001…For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data. . .
This unseemly business reveals another flaw. Why are scholars who review papers allowed to remain anonymous? Reforming scientists and lawmakers might put the question more concretely: How many of the anonymous reviewers who spiked skeptical scientific papers over the years are the people who wrote these emails detailing how they abused peer review to block contrary evidence?
Science was one of the first disciplines to insist on transparency in order to foster competition in data and ideas. In the case of global warming, transparency is better late than never, as policy makers now have the chance to review the facts. Facing up to high-profile flaws is hard for any profession, but honest scientists will cheer how in our digital era eventually the truth will out, and will accept that no scientific hypothesis can be viewed as sacred or can be proved in secret.
The S-R censored my additional comment [see below]. OK my analogy with climategate/RPS et al as being a failure of critical thinking skills has been pulled from the S-R Blog. So much for transparency and faciltating an open/free debate. Yes, this was a little off topic but I believe the analogy was valid. Why was my comment killed? I will let you form your own opinion if it was relevant or not and whether it violated normal blog etiquette.
