Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry responds to warmist attacks on ‘pause’ whistleblower report

In this post, I go through the critiques of Rose/Bates made by NOAA scientists and other scientists working with surface temperature data. They are basically arguing that the NOAA surface temperature data sets are ‘close enough’ to other (sort of) independent analyses of surface temperatures. Well, this is sort of beside the main point that is being made by Bates and Rose, but lets look at these defenses anyways. I focus here more on critiques of what John Bates has to say, rather than the verbiage used by David Rose or the context that he provided.

The Data: Zeke Hausfather and Victor Venema

You may recall a recent CE post where I discussed a recent paper by Zeke Hausfather Uncertainties in sea surface temperature. Zeke’s paper states that it has independently verified the Huang/Karl sea surface temperatures.

Zeke has written a Factcheck on David Rose’s article. His arguments are that:

  1. NOAA’s sea surface temperatures have been independently verified (by his paper)
  2. NOAA’s land surface temperatures are similar to other data sets
  3. NOAA did make the data available at the time of publication of K15

With regards to #1: In a tweet on Sunday, Zeke states

Zeke Hausfather ‏‪@hausfath   ‪@KK_Nidhogg@ClimateWeave @curryja and v5 is ~10% lower than v4. Both are way above v3, which is rather the point.

What Zeke is referring to is a new paper by Huang et al. that was submitted to J. Climate last November, describing ERSSTv5. That is, a new version that fixes a lot of the problems in ERSSTv4, including using ships to adjusting the buoys. I managed to download a copy of the new paper before it was taken off the internet. Zeke states that v4 trend is ~10% lower than v5 for the period 2000-2015. The exact number from information in the paper is 12.7% lower. The bottom line is that sea surface temperature data sets are a moving target. Yes, it is good to see the data sets being improved with time. The key issue that I have is reflected in this important paper A call for new approaches to quantifying biases in observations of sea surface temperature, which was discussed in this previous CE post.…

Whistleblower: ‘Global Warming’ Data Manipulated Before Paris Conference

A high-level whistleblower at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has revealed that the organization published manipulated data in a major 2015 report on climate change in order to maximize impact on world leaders at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

According to a report in The Mail on Sunday, NOAA scientist Dr. John Bates has produced “irrefutable evidence” that the NOAA study denying the “pause” in global warming in the period since 1998 was based on false and misleading data.

The NOAA study was published in June 2015 by the journal Science under the title “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus.”

Dr. Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, of “insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation.” Bates says that Karl did so “in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

Update: NOAA To ‘Review’ Allegations That Scientists Manipulated ‘Global Warming’ Research

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it will “review” allegations by a former scientist that researchers rushed a study claiming the world was warming faster than previously thought to influence policymakers.

Dr. John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., blew the whistle on NOAA scientists behind a landmark 2015 taxpayer-funded study claiming there was no 15-year “pause” in global warming.

“NOAA takes seriously any allegation that its internal processes have not been followed and will review the matter appropriately,” a NOAA spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation in response to Bates’ accusations.

The NOAA spokesman gave no further details on what actions the agency could take.…

Fed Whistleblower: NOAA Scientists Manipulated Temperature Data To Hype ‘Global Warming’

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=1c2cf9b0f9&e=f4e33fdd1e

NOAA Scientists Manipulated Temperature Data To Make Global Warming Seem Worse

World Leaders Duped Over Manipulated Global Warming Data

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015. –David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 5 February 2017.

The scandal has disturbing echoes of the ‘Climategate’ affair which broke shortly before the UN climate summit in 2009, when the leak of thousands of emails between climate scientists suggested they had manipulated and hidden data. Some were British experts at the influential Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia…Dr Bates retired from NOAA at the end of last year after a 40-year career in meteorology and climate science. As recently as 2014, the Obama administration awarded him a special gold medal for his work in setting new, supposedly binding standards ‘to produce and preserve climate data records’. Yet when it came to the paper timed to influence the Paris conference, Dr Bates said, these standards were flagrantly ignored…In the weeks after the Pausebuster paper was published, Dr Bates conducted a one-man investigation into this. His findings were extraordinary. Not only had Mr Karl and his colleagues failed to follow any of the formal procedures required to approve and archive their data, they had used a ‘highly experimental early run’ of a programme that tried to combine two previously separate sets of records…Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: ‘I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.’ The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.

1) World Leaders Duped Over Manipulated Global Warming Data
Mail on Sunday, 5 February 2017

2) John Bates: Climate Scientists Versus Climate Data
Climate Etc. 5 February 2017

3) Matt Ridley: Politics And Science Are A Toxic Combination
The Times, 6 February 2017 Excerpts: Whistleblower

Warmists Lament: ‘Kids’ TV Is Ignoring Climate Change’ – Angry kids not being indoctrinated enough!

nature cat.
Kids can learn a lot about science by watching shows like Nature Cat—with one glaring exception.

PBS Kids

Acheetah can run 70 miles per hour. Venus and Earth are about the same size. Blobfish don’t have any bones.

These are facts I’ve learned from my 5-year-old in the past several weeks courtesy of the science- and nature-themed television shows he loves: Wild Kratts, Nature Cat, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Octonauts. He is an erupting volcano of scientific trivia right now, so I was surprised the other day when I mentioned climate change and he said: “What’s that?”

After a few more questions, I discovered that he’s never heard any of his favorite science shows mention climate change or global warming. Which is strange, because according to overwhelming scientific consensus, climate change is one of the most important environmental issues of our time. It affects wildlife, natural resources, weather, and human health, all of which are regularly discussed on kids’ shows. My son can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about red pandas, except for the fact that their very existence is being threatened by the changing climate.

I know better than to trust a 5-year-old’s memory, of course, so I reached out to PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, and Disney Junior to see if there was any truth to his claim. I was told that with the exception of an episode of Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins called “The Big Storm”—in which stuffed owl Professor Hootsburg says that “as the Earth gets warmer and warmer, big storms get bigger and bigger”—none of the three networks’ shows has ever discussed the causes, mechanisms, or impacts of climate change on our planet. (Kids’ movies don’t seem to fare much better. There is only one climate change–focused movie among Common Sense Media’s list of 47 “Movies That Inspire Kids to Change the World,” but alas, it’s rated PG-13.)