Tag Archives: Hockey Stick Graph

Did Man-Bear-Pig eat the Climate Research Unit’s raw data?

Is this the reason that CRU's data has been "lost"?
Is this the reason that CRU's data has been "lost"?

The UK Times reports.

Excerpt:

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 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.

[…] Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

The Washington Times reports on some of the hacked e-mails that talked about data “loss”.

Professor Phil Jones, head of the CRU and contributing author to the United Nation’s IPCC report chapter titled “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes,” says he “accidentally” deleted some raw temperature data used to construct the aggregate temperature data CRU distributed. If you believe that, you’re probably watching too many Al Gore videos.

Mr. Jones is the same professor who warned that global-warming skeptics “have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”

The worst part of this mess is that taxpayers footed the bill for all of this “research”. In effect, the government was distributing taxpayer money to “scientific” lobbyists.  These “scientists” then put out suspect data in order to trick the public into voting for increased government power over individuals and businesses – all to “solve” a completely made-up crisis. It’s depressing. The only thing to do to solve this is for the public to vote for smaller government and lower taxes. Everything needs to be privatized.

What happens to the hockey stick graph if you don’t hide the decline?

Here’s the story from Steve McIntyre. (H/T Story from Watts Up With That via ECM)

Excerpt:

“Hide the decline” refers to the decline in the Briffa MXD temperature reconstruction in the last half of the 20th century, a decline that called into question the validity of the tree ring reconstructions. (I’m going to analyze the letters on another occasion.) In the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, IPCC “hid the decline” by simply deleting the post-1960 values of the troublesome Briffa reconstruction – an artifice that Gavin Schmidt characterizes as an “a good way to deal with a problem” and tells us that there is “nothing problematic” about such an artifice (see here.

Not only were the post-1960 values of the Briffa reconstruction not shown in the IPCC 2001 report – an artifice that Gavin describes as being “hidden in plain sight”, they were deleted from the archived version of the reconstruction at NOAA here (note: the earlier Briffa 2000 data here does contain a related series through to 1994.)

Here’s the graph, with the decline added back in.

Hide The Decline
Hide The Decline

Wow, look at that decline that somehow wasn’t included in the graphs made the global warming alarmists. Did they use a trick to hide the decline?

Hide the decline

And here’s a catchy video to help you remember all of this. (H/T Lex Communis)

The scary part is that two of my leftist friends still kept their faith in global warming after this scandal broke. It’s a religion, but one that is diconfirmed by the evidence.

Related posts

Leaked CRU e-mails reveal pattern of deception and suppression of criticism

Here on Watts Up With That.

Here are a few of my favorites, with links to the original e-mails.

  • Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
  • Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
  • Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
  • Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI (Freedom of Information) request.(1212063122)
  • Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
  • Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)
  • Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.(1106338806)
  • Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers – Saiers was subsequently ousted]
  • Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)

It goes on and on. There are FORTY-SEVEN of these.

Is this science?

Comments in CRU source code

Check out these comments in the source code of a CRU program that explains why CRU uses some data, but not other data.

From documents\harris-tree\recon_esper.pro:

; Computes regressions on full, high and low pass Esper et al. (2002) series,
; anomalies against full NH temperatures and other series.
; CALIBRATES IT AGAINST THE LAND-ONLY TEMPERATURES NORTH OF 20 N
;
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline
;

Is this science?

Note: a search engine for the leaked e-mails is now online.