Reply to: Earth Hour

[pjclarke]

I can't recall exactly but they've been monitoring those CO2 levels closely, and at historically high levels that must have a warming effect.

Uh-Huh...

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for February 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.1°C (53.9°F). This is the sixth warmest such value on record.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for December 2009 - February 2010 was the fifth warmest on record for the season, 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 12.1°C (53.8°F).

The worldwide ocean surface temperature for February 2010 was the second warmest on record for February, 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.6°F).

The seasonal (December 2009 - February 2010) worldwide ocean surface temperature was also the second warmest on record, 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.5°F).

In the Southern Hemisphere, both the February 2010 average temperature for land areas and the Hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean surface combined), represented the warmest February on record

No evidence of Global Warming here, no sir, none whatsoever, uh-uh.

[BlasterBates]

They predicted a dry summer, which is a heap of garbage if you rely on the forecast.

[pjclarke]

If you look behind the media soundbites, you discover the forecast was actually just a 65% chance of above average temperatures and a similar probability of below-average precipitation. Which some PR idiot spun into 'barbecue summer'.

They were wrong about the rain, but correct about the temperatures, which were actually above average and warmer than 2007 and 2008.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...r20090907.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...r20090731.html

[shaunbhoy]

Now what did the Met office say?

Something about a Bar-B-Q summer last year.

[BlasterBates]

This is what Joe Bastardi said in July 2009

“In years past, cooler summers have been followed by harsh winters. Temperatures in New York City did not top 85 degrees in June this year. There have only been three other times in recorded history when New York City failed to reach 85 in June. In each of those instances, snowy winters followed.”

He went on to forecast a very harsh winter:

Now what did the Met office say? I can't recall exactly but they've been monitoring those CO2 levels closely, and at historically high levels that must have a warming effect.

[Churchill]

yeah, thx for the tip, normally I rely on the Met office.

They base their predictions on computer models developed by the CRU in East-Anglia.

Is this thing giving any meaningful results?

[BlasterBates]

yeah, thx for the tip, normally I rely on the Met office.

They base their predictions on computer models developed by the CRU in East-Anglia.

[pjclarke]

Accuweather’s “expert long-range forecaster” Joe Bastardi has now firmly established himself as the least informed, most anti-scientific meteorologist in the world - click

What is so incredible about this blog is that it resides on one long page, so you’d think Bastardi might occasionally go back and look and see if what he just wrote doesn’t contradict something he wrote a little earlier - click

[BlasterBates]

http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bast...urope-blog.asp

[pjclarke]

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/...c/CRUphiljones

[BlasterBates]

so like Phil Jones and co. an advocacy group who've lost touch with reality

Is Phil Jones running the CRU at the moment?

[pjclarke]

You don't give a reference, but I guess you have in mind the Press Release by the Stockholm Institute, as faithfully reproduced by Watts etc.

Turns out the 'Stockholm Institute' is an advocacy group with some non-reality-based ideas. Their PR was riddled with factual errors, see here.

http://maxandersson.blogspot.com/201...bout-phil.html

[BlasterBates]

Phil jones said they couldn't release the data because the Swedish authorities, wouldn't allow him. The truth was he'd manipulated the data, so the Swedish authorities didn't want it published as their data (a bit like libel, the whole dataset being a lie).

But the point is McKintyre just wanted to check Phil Jones calcs.

Well how can he when it is deliberately withheld, and blatant lies are given as an answer.

.

[ratewhore]

overpopulation

[pjclarke]

Looks to me like there is too much hiding behind the Data Protection Act going on. If they have all the irrefutable facts in the raw data then why not release it publicly for scrutiny and verification if it is so solid?

Erm, I think you mean Freedom of Information rather than DPA. If you are referring to the CRU at UEA, remember that they do not produce or own the data; it is supplied by weather stations and National Met Services (NMS) around the world. CRU work this up into a gridded global temperature index, which is the product they do release. The vast majority of the stations are part of the Global Historical Cimate Network - GHCN - and you can download freely all that data. However a small percentage of non-GHCN data is subject to nondisclosure agreements from National Weather Services. What non of the sceptics, even those with some statistical expertise ever do, is take the simple step of calculating the index using only the open source data and compare it with the index using all the data. Because if you do that it looks like this The black line is the publically released index, the red is using the subset for which data can be downloaded from the Met OFfice. Also, the CRU index is just one of several measures of global temperature used by the IPCC. Another is the GISTEMP index from NASA, this uses 100% freely available data and the source code for the analysis is also open source. Here is a plot of the open source NASA GISTEMP vs the 'suspicious' UEA CRU data... They clearly have something to hide. Not.

I fail to see what parts of this data can possibly be "classified".

Its implausiable that a poster here is unaware of the concept of commercial confidentiality. Some of the data providers also sell the raw data as a commercial product and so supply it only on the specific basis that it is NOT redistributed other than for academic research purposes. Don't take my word for it, here is Halldór Björnsson of the Icelandic Met Office

The reasons for restricting access is often commercial, NMSs are often required by law to have substantial income from commercial sources, in other cases it can be for national security reasons, but in many cases (in my experience) the reasons simply seem to be “because we can”.

What has this got to do with CRU? The data that CRU needs for their data base comes from entities that restrict access to much of their data. And even better, since the UK has submitted an exception for additional data, some nations that otherwise would provide data without question will not provide data to the UK. I know this from experience, since my nation (Iceland) did send in such conditions and for years I had problem getting certain data from the US.

The ideal, that all data should be free and open is unfortunately not adhered to by a large portion of the meteorological community. Probably only a small portion of the CRU data is “locked” but the end effect is that all their data becomes closed. It is not their fault, and I am sure that they dislike them as much as any other researcher who has tried to get access to all data from stations in region X in country Y.

These restrictions end up by wasting resources and hurting everyone. The research community (CRU included) and the public are the victims. If you don’t like it, write to you NMSs and urge them to open all their data.