One popular claim about USHCN adjustments is that they are “peer-reviewed” and thus sound.
This is complete nonsense. What is peer-reviewed are a couple of papers outlining potential issues impacting temperature readings and proposed remedies. It is like saying that a piece of production software has been validated, because a few people within the company agreed to a general high level specification.
I am a commercial software developer. The process of developing production software involves an seemingly endless series of reviews from specification to delivery, by a wide range of people from many different disciplines and from both within and outside of the organization. Any product which doesn’t go through this process is likely to fail.
I’ve done comparisons between the TOBS (Time of Observation Bias) spec, and the actual implementation of TOBS – and it isn’t even close to what is written in the spec – for several different reasons.
A Closer Look At USHCN TOBS Adjustments | Real Science
The total adjustments are much larger than the specification implies. As far as I can tell, the actual adjustment software has a grossly deficient quality control process.
Furthermore, once you start adjusting temperatures, you have opened the door to confirmation bias. The UHI adjustment is much too small, and the other adjustments are much too large. These temperature records form the basis of climate science, and they are generated by work which is the quality of a freshman programming project.
They have turned a cooling trend into a warming trend, and don’t even put a disclaimer on the graphs. This isn’t even good enough for government work. I see no reason to believe that NCDC/USHCN/NASA US temperature trends have any validity.
Keep up the clarion call. Some are starting to notice. Eventually the sham will crumble because the adjustments are becoming too extreme.
In another thread a jhmclane questions Steven’s work, and says: The adjustment methodology… is based on peer-reviewed work. My comment:
Jhmclane, you add: “In science, this is exactly how legitimacy is demonstrated, by giving others the tools to replicate or invalidate the results.” It is kind of a bit of gall to think that we are so stupid as to need to be lectured about what peer review is supposed to achieve. But we know, because of Climategate, frankly, that in the particular case of climate science peer review has been *fully* compromised. You know the story.
So you can expect the small politically motivated circle in the Hockey Stick Team to work to achieve a “peer reviewed” methodology for making temperatures adjustments… that helps their “cause.” It doesn’t take an Einstein to see this. Indeed, the fact that these guys are apparently
collaboratingcolluding in developing the temperature adjustment methodologies makes the whole enterprise completelysuspectcriminal.“The adjustment methodology… is based on peer-reviewed work.”
Alarmists often say this as if it reads: “so it must be valid”. That’s argumentum vericundum.
Better for someone to attempt to show where Steve is wrong; so far, they’re failing dismally.
“I am a commercial software developer.”
Same here. Sadly, some government organisations here think their work is “good enough”. I’m surprised my head hasn’t fallen off from all the shaking it has done over what they’ve produced.
More media outlets picking up on Steve’s lead:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/06/23/Global-warming-Fabricated-by-NASA-and-NOAA
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/06/data_fudging_the_great_global_warming_scandal.html
(referring to this post and the other posts on this discussion):
So if the annual and 5-year mean surface temperature charts are such that they are relative to 1951-80 (as stated in all the original papers and sources that are linked in this blog), couldn’t some other, relative time-interval (not to mention TOBS adjustment, as you point out) be chosen instead of 1951-80, and then the data is shifted? Are these charts arbitrary in the first place? I’m also curious about the 5-year mean curve and the smoothness of it. I’d expect a larger mean interval to have a smoother curve. I wonder what the mean curve would look like when plotted for longer and/or shorter time intervals..?
kudos.
One of many links (note the “v3” at the end of the url):
(http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/)
As the old saying goes: “You get what you pay for.”
And the dictator-wannabes are the ones using our money to pay for what they want— a fraudulent warming trend.
Better hope nobody’s computer crashes and destroys the one hard drive in the entire organisation which contains all of the adjustment algorithms. Then we’ll never get to the bottom of all this.
Jennifer Morahasy has found the Australian BOM has done exactly the same. Cool the past. They were once a proud organisation that is now whipped by political apparatchiks.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/dont-miss-jennifer-marohasy-speaking-in-sydney-wednesday/
On a technical discussion blog when Bill Illis pointed out massive alterations to the trend of an Antarctic station – a themometer that should be “pristine” – Zeke’s response was that this was a “bug” caused by the extreme nature of the temperatures in that area.
How did Zeke instantly know this? A competent software engineer would not explain the reason for a bug in a methodology until the problem had been carefully studied. That suggested to me that either Zeke made that up, or knew about the “bug” already. Either way, I was not impressed.
In physics or mathematics, or even in philosophy (!), you only need to demonstrate a single fatal flaw to reject a methodology. Climatology is a strange field, because no matter how many times you point to individual errors, all of them turn out to be “special exceptions” – and the belief is maintained that the overall integrity of the methodology is OK.
Acolytes in the Religion of Climate Change, who know nothing about how the scientific method or data analysis work and blindly believe and parrot the unscientific garbage fed them by their spiritual leaders, have no clue how important this point is.
As Gail and I have discussed before: do this in an analytical lab where drug products are manufactured, and you’ll find yourself in prison. But do it under the guise of Climate Change proselytism, and the government will give you unlimited grant money.
Has anyone noted that the Antarctic Sea Ice anomaly is the second highest ever, out of 12,000+ daily observations? 1.79mm km^2. Highest ever is 1.84 km^2 in 2007.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.south.anom.1979-2008
Everyone in this discussion is making the mistake that the warmers believe what they are saying, This is not the case. They are in the mode of harvesting a cash crop. They do not know how long they will be able to do it, but it is good money while it lasts. Once this crop is dead they will move onto a new crop to harvest.
That is why they need to end up in jail or better yet tarred and feathered. (Tar and feathering is a sure thing while criminal charges can be made to disappear.)