Did Media Or NASA Withhold Climate History Data Changes From The Public?

Newsbusters ^ | 8/9/2007 | Noel Sheppard

[Neville72]

A change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.

For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.

McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.

As McIntyre wrote Wednesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer dscott):

There has been some turmoil yesterday on the leaderboard of the U.S. (Temperature) Open and there is a new leader.

[...]

Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.

Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.

As global warming is such a key issue being debated all around this country and on Capitol Hill, wouldn't such a change by the agency responsible for calculating such things be important to disseminate? When this correction was made by Hansen's team at the GISS, shouldn't it have been reported?

In fact, it is quite disgraceful that it wasn't, as it suggests that a government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation.

Think this will be Newsweek's next cover-story?

No, I don't either.

Post facto thought: If Hansen's team had made changes to the data which showed that ten of the ten warmest years in American history occurred since 1995, do you think that would have been reported?

Yeah, I do, too.

*****Update: This appears to be necessary given some very silly e-mail messages that I've received. Gore's claim concerning warmest years in history pertains to data for the entire planet. The changes at GISS are only for American data.

However, as e-mail messages from various scientists around the world have pointed out, American climate data collection is the finest on the planet. It is expected that when these changes are made to numbers across the globe, the worldwide rankings might see some changes as well.

Yet, still more to the point is the fact that American data were changed without any announcement.

—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

[lepton]

Did somebody alter historical records, or did climate trends suddenly deviate from historical trends?

GISS was notified of an error in the program that assembles their temperature records for the U.S. and GISS went back and undid that particular mistake, resulting in different records for annual temperature averages.

As a side-answer, GISS modifies the historical records by some unknown process. This process is overseen by Hansen.

[Fred Nerks]

I am also interested in the development and application of global numerical models for the purpose of understanding current climate trends and projecting humans' potential impacts on climate. The scientific excitement in comparing theory with data, and developing some understanding of global changes that are occurring, is what makes all the other stuff worth it.

nasty humans!

(As for all that other stuff I have no idea what he means.)

[Robert A Cook PE]

Interestingly my latest Discover Magazine had an article that actually showed the other side of the global warming issue.

Well, yes, but the writer (and editor!) of the jellyfish story fell all over themselves trying to link the rise in jellyfish to global warming .....

[Carry_Okie]

From a discussion in my book about the underlying assumptions of government environmental management:

If the Preservation Hypothesis does not exist, if the guiding assumptions are flawed, if there cannot be a goal, if there is no technical method, if there are no output variables by which to judge the results, how can it work? If the motives of those employed by the decision-making system are toward acquiring power through environmental failure, then the results are likely to be destructive. If the sponsors of an illogical and destructive system seek control of all factors of production, then their motives must be founded upon either faith or greed.

Consider faith. Deep Ecologists deny that their body of practices and beliefs constitutes a religion, although they publicly engage in animist and shamanist rituals and speak reverently of Gaia (the “Earth Mother Goddess”) as the source of true scientific knowledge:

“Gaian perception connects us with the seamless nature of existence, and opens up a new approach to scientific research based on scientific institutions arising from scientists’ personal, deeply subjective ecological experience. When the young scientist in training has sat on a mountain top, and has completed her first major assignment to ‘think like a mountain’, that is, to dwell and deeply identify with a mountain, mechanistic thinking will never take root in her mind. When she eventually goes out to practise her science in the world, she will be fully aware that every interconnected aspect of it has its own intrinsic value, irrespective of its usefulness to the economic activities of human beings.”
– STEPHAN HARDING

Gaia was supposedly a Minoan earth goddess, adopted by a clearly wealthy, and reputedly earth-worshipping and pacifist civilization on Crete. Unfortunately, the popular beliefs about Minoan civilization largely represent the neurotic whimsy of Sir Arthur Evans, the first major excavator at Knossos. Evans was obsessed with proving that Minoan civilization had Aryan origins, and demonstrated a propensity to contort his observations in order to project upon them Druidic beliefs. Current evidence suggests that constantly warring Minoan city-states were overrun by Mycenean Greeks, perhaps after a nearby volcanic eruption. Maybe they had been weakened and their numbers were reduced. They did sometimes eat their children. One thing that we do know: They are no longer with us.

Some Deep Ecologists think that a consequence such as befell the Minoans might not be so bad. Such are adherents to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHMT, pronounced “vehement”) or the Church of Euthanasia (whose central tenets are: Abortion, Sodomy, Cannibalism, and Suicide).

If a belief system has a flawed foundation in logic, a codified structure of beliefs, a hierarchy, icons, a personified supernatural deity, and spiritual rites, then it is equivalent to a religion whether it has a 501(c3) or not. If a religious body of belief starts to direct policy, it is equivalent to an establishment of religion capable of confounding all civic deliberation. Perhaps the only thing that keeps deep ecologists from being sued successfully is that they don’t have an office or a bank account.

These folks are on the power curve. Consider greed.

Together, environmental activists and agencies of the United States government have advocated a plan of human withdrawal and ecological inaction over 50% of the continental United States: The Wildlands Project. The plan is to set aside enormous “core reserves” with “connecting corridors” surrounded by “buffer zones.” The plan is being enacted over the objections of both landowners and many scientists. The published goal is to institute the plan, as soon as possible, nationwide, based upon the mere assumption that to withdraw human action constitutes preservation of natural resources. There has been no fractional experiment with published expectations, established methods, or means of measuring relative success. There certainly has not been an experimental trial. The first indications are by no means promising and, because of the preconditions listed above, are subject to interpretation. The real goal is resource land acquisition.

In order to get the land it sometimes has to be acquired over the pesky objections of its owners, with the temerity to indicate that the preservationists have no idea what they are doing. The key point of leverage is control of the water in the connecting corridors. Given the democratic claim on the use of water as a commons, the key to a public taking becomes the management and interpretation of specific provisions under either the Clean Water Act, or uses of water pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Determining the outcome nearly always involves a court of law, where the assumptions of a judge and the infinite legal resources of government render the decision nearly a fait accompli or a coup de grâce (depending upon your perspective). The agencies and activist organizations are armed with experienced lawyers and “experts.” The landowner and their legal representatives are usually unschooled in the conduct of dispute or technical argument and are very unlikely to have either deep pockets or sufficient data from expert witnesses.

The experts are, of course, scientists. Technical testimony in environmental cases is often composed of value judgements of the degree of threat to or criticality of an ecological resource. These experts are representing themselves to the courts as objective witnesses of activist organizations, universities, and government resource agencies. If, however, these same scientists have been trained to subject their observations and data to what is, at least functionally a religious belief system, then they make their testimonies before courts of law on the bases of such subjective science.

Under a biocentric ethic, our Gaian scientist believes that everything is ecologically critical and all economic value to the property owner is to be disregarded. Such a “scientist” is fully capable of the delusion that subjective interpretation is equivalent to objective data or that dishonesty ‘in the defense of nature’ might not be a moral failing.

A judge is no judge of technical integrity and has no experience upon which to evaluate testimony other than by considering university credentials and the quality of the legal presentation. Consider the above quote in that regard as applies to the expert testimony of such a scientist.

The courts are predisposed to make judgements on the behalf of government agencies under the erroneous assumptions that the testimony is objective and that employees of the U.S. Government are representing policies according to laws passed by Congress. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, most Federal resource agencies are members of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are likely to take positions in the legal conflict, contrary to the agencies’ constitutional and organizational mandates. These private NGOs require agencies of the United States Government to adhere to multilateral treaties as a prerequisite to membership, WHETHER RATIFIED OR NOT. Some such treaties have been specifically rejected. The texts of these treaties grant virtually unlimited power governing land use within the United States to those agencies.

These treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, were designed and drafted by activist NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Congress never allotted payment of Federal Agency membership dues to these international organizations. Both these organizations were started with grants from private, tax-exempt, “non-profit” foundations of the major stockholders in oil companies. These treaties, originating at these NGOs, were blessed by United Nations Environ¬mental Programme (UNEP) and routed for “approval” to the respective member governments of the UN.

Would the UN be representing an interest in acquiring global control of all resources? Under the current plan for reorganization, the UN plans a congress of NGOs that subsists entirely off grant money as supposedly representing civil society: The People’s Assembly.

What kind of government gets to decide who represents “the people?” One that is sponsored by greed and controls “the people” by fealty to faith.

In addition to the philosophical bias on the part of testifying NGO grantees and agency professionals, are also direct career interests. Agency executives often circulate through a revolving door, at either environmental NGOs or private foundations. There is obvious reason for these political appointees to exert pressures upon technical civil servants with few other career options. The inherent conflict of interests in technical testimony thus deepen, to say nothing of the ethical considerations regarding ecosystem health. Though the human propensity to cower in compliance in return for personal security can be understood, it cannot be morally condoned.

The members of any group, with deeply held beliefs in a cause, will suffer frustration if they don’t get what they want. It is natural for them to elevate the consequences of failure to heed their claims. Upon attributing the point of contention to an issue of collective survival, it isn’t hard to justify internally any means to achieve their ends. It is predictable then, that they rely upon the courts, executive fiat, or the irreversible slide down the road to serfdom. Once they get their paycheck in service to that cause, it makes the case more personal. Desperate activists will accept support from any source, even if that source was the historic cause of the very problems they seek to solve! They do it to get their way, through legal coercion at the pleasure of its direct beneficiaries: a moneyed elite interested in manipulating the global commodity value of resources or their substitutes (as we shall see in Part V). To socialize a commons is to control the factors of production. It is a way to power. A financial elite can dominate the political appointees in charge of administrative bureaucracy. That elite will always subordinate ecology to the acquisition and maintenance of power. It is an ultimately corrupting process destructive to its purpose.

Social “scientists,” subsisting off of the ill-gotten cash from the scions of the industrial robber barony, are gleefully destroying the very foundations of individual freedom that have the best hope of fulfilling their dreams. They are selling scientific subjectivity and a biocentric ethic to dedicated human beings, confused into believing they are engaged in unselfish acts. They are mucking with the scientific method. They are destroying the technical integrity of young people, who commit their lives to save the environment.

The antithesis of this book is designed to connect the results with the perpetrators, the philosophy with the policy, the motive with the means, and the local with the global. Each of us will see our own piece of this terrible conflict. The message to many environmentalists, here, is this:

You are being used. It doesn’t work the way you think it does.

To render observation subjective is to engage in self-deception. A scientist, engaged in such art, is trafficking in opinionated guesswork for the mere benefits of self-aggrandizement and a subsistence paycheck. Without technical integrity, deep ecologists may do irreparable damage to everything they say they love, to their great personal sorrow.

It was published in late August 2001 (which is one reason why few people noticed) See tag line.

[WOSG]

“Interestingly my latest Discover Magazine had an article that actually showed the other side of the global warming issue. I was stunned.”

I had to cancel Scientific American because it had become too biased. They have gone after Lomborg viciously (in between their relentless hyping of stem cells, bashing of creationists, and occasional flaking out, like when they did a puff piece on Rep Waxman).

Now, I’ve noticed that National Geographic is mired in bias as well, with a recent propaganda piece about greenland ice melting that was so hyperbolic I had to explain to the kids how that wan’t really scientifically accurate fear. Some time ago they did one on running out of oil (no we’re not, but fearmongering sells).

If Discover avoids the bias that the other mags have, they are the one to buy.

[brytlea]

Yeah, I did notice that. But hey, the photos were really spectacular!
Discover editors are clearly in the “global warming is caused by humans and humans are bad” camp. It’s too bad because I like the magazine alot.
susie

[brytlea]

They still have a bias, I like Science News better, nice short articles too. I remember we got NG for years and years (even as a kid and then when I grew up I got it) until I realized they had such a liberal slant, that I just stopped. It’s a shame because all of those mags have some good stuff in them too.
Now...why doesn’t National Review do a science magazine??
susie

[Fred Nerks]

If a belief system has a flawed foundation in logic, a codified structure of beliefs, a hierarchy, icons, a personified supernatural deity, and spiritual rites, then it is equivalent to a religion whether it has a 501(c3) or not. If a religious body of belief starts to direct policy, it is equivalent to an establishment of religion capable of confounding all civic deliberation. Perhaps the only thing that keeps deep ecologists from being sued successfully is that they don’t have an office or a bank account.

These folks are on the power curve...

And FEAR is their instrument! Thanks for the link to your book.

[fella]

The only thing worse than normal junk science is demoKKKrat science.

Don't you know that it's politically incorrect to mention the founding of the KKK by the RATS nor to allude to the relationship between the RAT party and leadership of the KKK. It's all so much ancient history, why, just ask Senator Byrd.

[lonestar]

How much hotter can it get in deserts?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!!!

[WOSG]

“Now...why doesn’t National Review do a science magazine??”

---

fascinating idea. I know who the editor could be - Michael Fumento.

[WOSG]

Here is a recounting of how it happened ... a kind AGW “rathergate” at work here, where officialdom is upended by truth-found-by-diligent-investigators + internet-speed-activity:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/08/giss-has-reranked-us-temperature-anomalies/#comments

The whole issue came up because of some photos Anthony Watts volunteers took of the Detroit Lakes, MN USHCN site in July.

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=3891

Climate Audit first commented on the Detroit Lakes site on July 26th.

http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?paged=3

The debate/discussion continued with a post at
http://rabett.blogspot.com/ on August 1st.

With a further look at the data, Steve McIntyre discovered the Y2K error and announced it on August 3rd.

http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?paged=2

And NASA corrected it’s GISTEMP data on August 7th. I believe.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

All happened very fast.

Possibly Steve McIntyre could comment on whether or when he thinks the Y2K error would have been discovered if these photos had not been taken.

And while it appears Anthony Watts intentions were only to document this site, its unintended consequences have resulted in a significant correction to NASA’s GISTEMP records for all of the US. (And within 20 days of the photos being taken!)

Very interesting (and valuable) work.

[SunkenCiv]

good time for a reprise:

[pp 208-216] "On June 23, 1988, climatologist James Hansen testified before a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a day when the temperature in Washington D.C. reached a sweltering 38C... Hansen had impressive data from 2,000 weather stations... which documented not only a century-long warming trend but a sharp resumption of warming after the early 1970s... Hansen flatly proclaimed that the earth was warming on a permanent basis because of humanity's promiscuous use of fossil fuels [sic]... Recently, James Hansen and a group of his colleagues have argued that the rapid warming of recent decades has in fact been driven by non-CO2 gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. Fossil fuel [sic] burning CO2 and aerosols have both positive and negative climatic forcing effects, which tend to cancel each other out. Hansen and his team point out that the growth rate of non-CO2 gases has declined over the past decade and could be reduced even further. This, combined with a slowing of black carbon and CO2 emissions, could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming. Much more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis."

In other words, in 1988 Hansen warned Congress that CO2 would raise world temperatures. About ten years went by, after which Hansen claimed that CO2 doesn't have any net impact at all. So much for his data. Mind you, this came from the book shown below, which is egregiously in advocacy of the notion of "global warming".

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian M. Fagan Paperback

[Fred Nerks]

Hansen flatly proclaimed that the earth was warming on a permanent basis because of humanity's promiscuous use of fossil fuels [sic]...

ah yes, I remember him well...pro·mis·cu·ous adj. Having casual sexual relations frequently with different partners; indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners.

I'd like to see him do that with a bag of coal, LOL!

[Fred Nerks]

I got it! Hanky-panky in an SUV!

[GopherIt]

I am curious: is there a weather station data point at Ozette, Olympic NP, WA? I was hiking there yesterday and observed that the unit was about 30 ft. N of a techy latrine, two holer, M/F, with exhaust pipes. Traffic I would guess is 100/day in summer. Just idle observations, for your use. Thanks for this thread.

[GopherIt]

Meant to cc you my #77
Gopherit

[philman_36]

>snickering< What dolts environmentalists are to believe the bilge that's been pumped their way. Nonetheless they lapped it up.
And now they'll be too humiliated to admit they were fooled!

[brytlea]

Capital idea!
susie