Climategate: So Jones Lost the Data? It Was Worthless, Anyway
There are now admissions from Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, that his “data” may be lost.
But what did this “data” actually consist of, anyway?
The only temperature measurements made at weather stations — until recently when some became “automatic” — were taken only once a day. Usually all the stations measure are the maximum and the minimum temperatures.
But the time of day that this is done is not standardized. And the maximum usually refers to a different calendar day from the minimum.
These two figures are then averaged and called the “mean daily temperature.”
It is this quantity that gets subjected to further multiple averaging to arrive at monthly and annual figures. Eventually a “global” chart is produced, purporting to show temperature “trends.”
So all of this is built on a foundation of sand.
If you would like to measure the average height of a group of schoolchildren, it is not much use measuring only the tallest and the shortest. Quite obviously, you will not get a fair average from these two measurements.
Weather forecasters all know that the maximum/minimum average is inaccurate and they avoid using it, preferring to mention the separate figures. They also know that decimals of a degree are meaningless.
Yet we have been persuaded to change our lives, the entire developed world, because a system built on such a dubious foundation shows a “warming” estimated only in decimals of a degree over an entire century.
An amount you would never notice if such a change happened in one moment, nevermind one hundred years.
There is so much wrong, both conceptually and methodologically, with the representations of the global-warming advocates that the only thing of interest remaining to be discovered is why anyone ever allowed them any credibility at all. And that’s before we start with the jokes about laws against bad weather.
I love the guy that referred to the “Average Global Temperature” as being roughly akin scientifically to the “Average Global Telephone Number”.
Also there is the “tme at temperature” portion of establishing a true average, unlike school children the temperaturature changes at dramatically different rates under different conditions.
The only data that’s useful, is that which wasn’t “massaged”…but then, most of the basic data remaining has been rendered useless because the original data has been altered.
AlGore ate my homework. ROFLMAO
This article is very correct in declaring the data was worthless. Now we need to step back and evaluate the argument that it is even possible to “take “the earths temperature . It is a fraudulent assumption to begin with. The practical mechanics of doing this would be a project beyond the scale and scope of science.
What we get are a few select data sites that are representative of very small places . In fact all we get is sampling. That is all we have and it is very minuscule and contradictory. Add to that the problem of calculating and scale of measuring water vapor in the atmosphere and we get some idea of how ridiculous the notion of measuring change is . It is in fact absurd.
Challenge anyone who claims it can be done.It has never been demonstrated.
As a retired farmer, I have always thought that “heat units” were a more reliable guage. But then the manner that degree days are calculated is a nightmare too.
Especially in spring and fall, a maximum/minimum average is faulty. Long warm days and brief chilly nights, mean considering hourly readings.
If I recall, it was Canada’s Tim Ball who declared “there is no global temperature.” He also coined the average telephone number
quip.
RESIST THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Another thing that gets me is how they determine temperature by examining tree rings.
Now we need to step back and evaluate the argument that it is even possible to “take “the earths temperature . It is a fraudulent assumption to begin with. The practical mechanics of doing this would be a project beyond the scale and scope of science.
Right, because unless you can place a station at every single square mile of the globe you cannot calculate the “true” earth temperature (eg temperature changes a _lot_ between top of Mount Everest and ten miles away as a bird flies). But your critic isn’t valid: at times you aren’t interested as much in true value than in evolution. So you use a number of stations, calculate an average and see how it evolves. Now for this evolution being significant the selection of stations must be honest and you have to watch about changes in their environment. That does not preckude that IMHO AGW has ever been a scam.
“Yet we have been persuaded to change our lives, the entire developed world, because a system built on such a dubious foundation shows a ‘warming’ estimated only in decimals of a degree over an entire century.”
Exactly. Any modestly intelligent person, scientist or not, who bothered to look at the case for global warming could see all along that it was specious on its face. I’m not a scientist and when I decided to look into the issue a few years ago I expected it to be a complex issue that would require serious work to figure out the science. I was amazed how easy it was — since there was no “science” at all. A fraction of a degree! That’s it! How could random sources over a century long period, using uncontrolled measuring tools and practices, possibly have measured so precisely? Even accepting the implausible assumption that such precise measurement had occurred, how can a fraction of a degree be significant? Nonsense! I’m not a scientist but as a lawyer I know how to apply Daubert/Kumho to blatant junk science.
What is amazing is how many intelligent people simply accepted such flimsy evidence from such biased sources, while at the same time writing off all reasoned dissenters as obviously oil-industry shills. Why are smart people so easily duped?
Well, there is an equation for Average Global Temperatures, but it’s not even utilized in Meteorology, it’s from Planetary Science, and really doesn’t relate to the same term in the article.
All weekend the talking heads were saying that the blizzards in Washington DC prove nothing about AGW because weather is not climate.
OTOH, if you take a long string of average temperatures that is asserted to be climate.
So a single day, week, month, season, or, even, year is not climate.
At some point however the average of a bunch of days is climate, because it is the only data that so called climate scientists use.
What is that point? and Why? Is is it climate when it proves what they want it to?
I certainly hope that all these people who are excitedly stating that this has been a crock of a theory and any one who believed in it were very gullible have in fact been stating for the record for the last 25 years that is junk science. The skeptics of us have been looking for backup for a long time, and now it seems the fair weather friends have arrived.
I love “the average telephone number”. Wonder who has that, and will that number be added to re-calculate “the average telephone number”…?
We want the “Pudge”! Come out a defend yourself Mr. Gore.
Making the ‘averages’ data even more irrelevant, is that we are told the scientists are using data from 1,500 temperature stations. Years ago, there were over 6,000 temperature stations. What happened to the other 4,500 stations?
In Russia, they are complaining the IPCC folks or the CRU folks in Great Britain, failed to include temperature readings from… Siberia! One of the largest & coldest regions on the planet. Why?
Seems to me, if you omit the coldest, you skew the data upward or warmer. If your data is skewed just because you failed to take into account data from a very cold region that happens to encompass a massive area of the entire planet!?! Later reports tell us the scientists averaged temperatures so they could come up w/ predictable averages for those regions. “Predictable averages! Hmmmm. Now what exactly can one do w/ predictable averages. They can GUESS!!!!
It is amazing how this entire scam is finally unfolding & I hereby nominate Lord Monckton for the Nobel Prize in Environment, Literature, Peace, and the newest proposed prize, TRUTH!!!!!!!
Climatology is not a science; it is merely a statistical discipline. Science proposes falsifiable hypotheses and then tests their predictive accuracy by comparing their conclusions to experimental results. But the physical world is a complex, dynamic system of chaotic, cosmic forces that can only be described, not predicted, and certainly not controlled. We cannot experiment on climate. When any cause can be proposed, and any result can be predicted without reference to a hypothesis testable against reality, we are talking voodoo. No experiment, no science: mere words, childish speculation.
Climatologists – the honest ones – are simply trained record keepers seeking to measure and spot valid statistical trends in natural events, and to the extent that their sources are not comprehensive, or that their analytical techniques are flawed, their conclusions lack merit. This has been obvious for years. I do not understand how any normally intelligent adult could believe that humans can affect Earth’s climate even if we wanted to, except by exercising forces comparable to nature’s, such as nuclear blasts. Pollution we can and have been fixing. Climate, no.
The AGW frauds who have conspired for so long to wreak our economies, steal our livelihoods, and subvert our freedom are criminals. Justice demands that they pay a penalty that ruins their lives, as they have worked so hard for so long to ruin ours.
No one associated with Global Warming’s absurd pack of lies has any business in a position of authority, beginning with Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Banki-moon, the EPA, the universities who allowed it, the sickening UN IPCC, and the malfeasant Nobel Committee. We must root their self-serving, totalitarian propaganda out of our schools, professional institutions,and public policy debates, finally and completely. Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore has redefined “contemptible.” He discredits and pollutes everything he touches. Gore has done far more damage than Bernie Madoff. Big Al should be the first one of these gangsters led away to jail in handcuffs.
I personally prefer the pine-needle/leaf ratio as a key climate indicator. You merely take the average number of pine needles (fallen and attached) for a given hectare of land and then calculate the ratio of that number to the number of leaves in that same hectare. The data value may change significantly during the course of the year (spring, summer, autumn or winter) but the resultant ratio, much like the Mary Mapes Bush memos, might be fake but indicative of the supposed seriousness of the allegation, and that is what is really important.
Then, if you can link these calculations up with the number of Koi Carp bred in Japan between the years 1162AD and 1547AD you can come up with some startling insights.
Simply plug these numbers into your FORTRAN simulations and turn the proverbial crank and there you have it. I am so glad that we have the top “climate scientists” on this because the rest of us morons were brought up during the age where the quality of the data mattered. Silly us!
Big_Al, there’s a flaw in your methodology: you forgot to take the secant of the mantissa, then normalize the result. Other than that…..it’s an elegant solution.
I think it was Dr. Lindzen who said that if “scientists” hadn’t told everyone the planet had warmed, no one would ever have noticed it. I experience this every evening while I’m at my computer in my home office. I’ll notice I suddenly feel chilled and look at the thermometer and notice the temp dropped 5 or 6 degrees since the last time I checked. You don’t even notice a 1-2 degree change.
I’ve lived at my present address for 15 years. We’ve had hot, dry summers, cool, wet summers, cold, dry winters, cold, snowy winters, cold springs, hot springs, dry, sunny autumns, cold, wet autumns, etc. If you average it all out nothing seems out of the ordinary.
The data is so bad, for dozens of reasons, you wouldn’t make a $20 football wager on it. Any layman can figure that out simply by thinking about the methodology and the extensive problems with gathering, collecting, and interpreting information over 150 years with constantly changing technology and environments.
Yet they act as if they are willing to bet the future of humanity on it.
But of course they know the data is useless for anything other than broad generalizations. If we know it, they know for sure what trash their numbers are.
Which proves the scam isn’t really about climate at all.
I hope this will teach us to demand publicly funded raw data and independently verify it; if that data is not immediately forthcoming then we should take legal action to obtain it or cut off and reclaim funding. There are plenty of well-informed and well-behaved people who have devoted significant time and resources to exposing the truth. Thank you; you have done us a great service.
Most people who know about statistics will say that the average, also known as the mean, is MEANINGLESS. A better measure is median or even mode. A millionaire is worth millions. A bum on the street has nothing. But on average, they have half the millionaire’s fortune between them… Well, only if Obama gets his way and redistributes the millionaire’s wealth! LOL!
I would expand your point about generating an average height of school children:
You can drive around town and record the dimensions of every window you see (much less a crappy sample of inconsistent and dubious methodology) and calculate a mathematically correct ‘average’ (mean).
The result is virtually meaningless beyond the trivial statement that it is the arithmetically correct result of performing the calculation for mean.
How so? Because that single number tells us nothing useful about the windows themselves, illuminating nothing about their actual nature, much less having any predictive value.
Similarly, a single ‘global temperature’ number is very suspect.
Vincent Gray needs to go back to school. The extremes are in fact the MOST significant attributes of a timeseries. In stocks people remember the top and bottom values. Who cares about points between? Nature imbues man with this quality because extremes are more in important in systems far from equilibrium, which includes biology and weather.
Obviously Mr. Gray doesn’t know what comprises a trend. One must subtract the mean to DETREND the data, in order to see casual patterns of change. One does not look at the TREND of data itself in timeseries, which could be wholly system related.
Massive analytic FAIL
Any scientist who doesn’t keep their raw data isn’t even a real scientist in the first place.
Follow the money.
Al Gore has scammed the Hollywood community, the Nobel committee, the international educational establishment, the scientific community and has amassed a fortune.
Al Gore is worth a half billion based on being a global con man.
Compared to Al Gore, Bernie Madoff is a piker.
But like Bernie Madoff and all other con men, Al Gore should be in prison.
This messy professor defense reminds me of Sandy Berger stuffing archive records down his pants and walking out….Bill Clinton chuckles…”Oh,Sandy is so messy and forgetful.”hahaha….how do we let these people near responsible positions????
#23
“Most people who know about statistics will say that the average, also known as the mean, is MEANINGLESS. A better measure is median or even mode.”
I’m not a statistics person, but I think I can demonstrate how that is not necessarly true. The Canadian govt says the median wait time to get referred for treatment is 4.1 weeks, with the poll saying, if I recall, roughly 40% 1 month or less, 45% 1-3 months and 15% > 3 months.
Median=1/2 at or below the number, half above it. Other surveys done put the averages much higher. Below is how you could arrive at that difference-the proportions of 1 mnth, 1-3 etc are close enough to the ones above.
AVG MED
3.5 3.5
3.6 3.6
3.7 3.7
3.8 3.8
4 4
4.1 4.1
12.5 12.5
12.6 12.6
12.7 12.7
13 13
25 25
30 30
8.95 4.10
So just over half the sample is at or near the median, the rest well above it. In a random selection, you have roughly the same odds of getting a number very close to the median as you do one 3 or more times it. So it seems to me it depends on the nature of the sample.
I woudn’t be suprised if numbers like these explain why the median wait times in the Canadian govt #’s are much lower than the averages from other surveys. The half at or below are right near it, the half above are well over it, so it seems that the median in cases like this are misleading.
Not to bring health care into it, but I was looking at this subject the other day so had it in memory.
Whoops, minor error! This would be the set of numbers. At least I check it, unlike the AGW people.
AVG MED
3.5 3.5
3.6 3.6
3.7 3.7
3.8 3.8
4 4
4.1 4.1
12.5 12.5
12.6 12.6
12.7 12.7
13 13
25 25
8.95 4.10
“unlike school children the temperaturature changes at dramatically different rates under different conditions.” I take it that you have never dealt with a large group of schoolchildren, my friend. Turn around and the 3′ tall 4th grader will be trying out for the NBA. Their growth rates are extremely variable, and aside from the kids only growing in one direction, the comparison is apt.
As for all of the data analysis mentioned above: Alone, the mean, median, and mode are almost completely useless, and range and standard deviation are only slightly less so. You need all five to make sense of a statistic. However, for proper understanding of the data, you need a histogram. Single values are worse than useless.
29@Landru
Climate data is nonstationary. The standard deviation grows to infinity with sample size, and the average is worthless except to be subtracted for detrending. I’m not saying that manmade CO2 is the main factor in global warming. Only that there are spurts of global warming and Vincent Gray is out of his depth on this specific set of measures.
Trans-national taxation appeared imminent with Copenhagen, and that’s a scary precedent for a one-world government run by the Bank of England mobsters.
May I be Permitted a question? Who is behind this massive conspiracy to destroy America by fudging climate data? (you are required to name actual people). What is your evidence for this assertion? And finally why would any one devote their scientific career to falsifying evidence? In other words where is the motive?
An additional question. Do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 23 1963?
Basic math failures frustrate me.
I am a Civil Engineer and I do lots of drainage calculations. To do this I have to first delineate a drainage basin. I may be up to 5% off on this. Then I have to look at aerial photography, which may or may not be current, to determine the land use. Based on the land use, I then pick a Curve Number from a table which is tied to soil types. So I have to find out the prevailing soil type. Then I have to estimate the time of concentration using various methods.
Finally, I toss all these estimated factors into the appropriate formulas and determine that the 100-year flow at the road culvert is some number….
Given the amount of assumptions upon assumptions, I usually round my flow numbers to the nearest 10. So, if I found that the culvert had 46 cfs going to it, I would use 50 cfs in my report.
The thing that kills me is when I see junior engineers report a flow as 46.654 cfs…..really? three decimal places? REALLY?
A thermometer only measures the temperature of itself, not the air even an inch away, let alone a whole town. Unless we all live inside a thermometer bulb the instrument is just an interesting toy. Plus, glass is a viscous liquid that gradually shrinks with time, which means old thermometers continually read higher and higher values. A thermometer does not even measure cold, except as heat absence. But you can’t describe people at the party by who wasn’t there. And yet cold happens first – gravity causes colder air to descend. Unless colder air descends warmer air cannot be displaced and rise. Also, earth has spent 80% of its geological history in ice age. Geology is the closest science we have to examining ‘cold’ and therefore geologists come closest to describing climate.
Ken Ring
When computing averages, WEIGHTING is everything. How you select and emphasize or de-emphasize different measurements must be clear and transparent, and rational. The CRU and other numbers are none of the above.
In addition, you must/can NEVER claim results more accurate than the least accurate component of your measurements. The number of significant digits is controlled by the least precise of your factors and components, whether you are doing additive or multiplacative manipulation. I.e., you can’t “average” your way to accuracy that doesn’t reside in your raw data.
theother;
Start with Maurice Strong, and then add in every senior UN official and every grant-seeking scientist in every “related” university faculty in the world. The discovery that the money taps could be opened wide by pushing the agenda which says human energy production must be controlled world-wide is more than enough “motivation”. It gives the pols an open-ended mandate.
Climatology as a “discipline” didn’t even exist until this program was put in place.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I have been trying to get anyone – anyone at all – to actually look at this data for years.
Jones’ data is THE ONLY SOURCE of the first NINETY(90) YEARS of the alleged 150-year “Global Temperature” Record.
It doesn’t matter much now, since Jones “lost” his original data; but there are many more statistical problems with the HADCRUt3 dataset than you mention.
For instance, the first year in the series (1860) derives a “Global” and “Average” temperature from measurements covering less than 16% of the Earth’s surface. This is the equivalent of looking at the thermometer outside your kitchen window and saying to yourself, “Wow! The ENTIRE EARTH is awfully warm/cold today!”
Again, there are still more problems with the data. Not the least of which is the use of statistical “Bootstrapping” to “fill-in” missing temperatures. The way this worked was that if you had no temperature measurements from, for example, Central Angola until 1940 — what you would do is “back-fill” the MISSING data from 1860-1940 based on how the temperature had varied from 1860-1940 in, say, London, England.
Further, the temperatures were compiled in 5-degree by 5-degree (Lat. x Long.) grid. So, if there were only one temperature measurement within a given grid-square, Jones (et al) would presume that THAT temperature was the “average” temperature for the entire 5×5 grid-square. This is the equivalent of measuring the temperature in Philadelphia and assuming that every square inch between Philadelphia and Portland, Maine was at THAT temperature.
There’s more, and there’s more. Unfortunately, nobody with a PhD in Statistics (which is what is really needed here) has EVER so much as looked at Jones’ data and methods since it was published OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO.
Over the past decade, I’ve contacted several Statistics professors to ask them if they would analyze Jones’ data; I’ve tried writing newspapers, trie contacting radio hosts, sent umpteen-zillion e-mails to anyone I thought might be interested, and I’ve posted comments on every website I could think of to get someone — ANYONE — to even LOOK at this data. NO reply at all except from Dr. Roger Pielke (who confirms what I’m saying here). After 10 years of telling everyone I could what I’ve just posted here, to finally have someone — ANYONE — raise the obvious and blatant statistical flaws in Jones’ data is a Godsend.
So, again: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
kochevnik:
“Climate data is nonstationary. The standard deviation grows to infinity with sample size, and the average is worthless except to be subtracted for detrending. I’m not saying that manmade CO2 is the main factor in global warming. Only that there are spurts of global warming and Vincent Gray is out of his depth on this specific set of measures.”
What, exactly, is your “depth” on this specific set of measures?
I’m actually amazed that anyone who has actually looked at this data would suggest that there are no flaws in it. Even Jones, IPCC, NOAA, NASA, Hansen, Mann, etc., etc., admit to a rather wide variety of uncertainties in the data. If you feel that there are no problems with the HADCRUt3 dataset, I can post an e-mail addy here where you can contact me directly so that we can discuss this set.
BTW, saying that there are spurts of global warming doesn’t require any measurement or statistics to assert. Mere consciousness and having lived on the planet will suffice.