When you don’t like the bottom line…
Shortly after NASA published their source code on Sept 7, we started noticing puzzling discrepancies in the new data set. On Sep 12, 2007, I inquired about the changes to Hansen and Ruedy, observing that there was no notice of the apparent changes at their website…
… change the accounting method;
Hansen said that the difference between 1998 and 1934 was “statistically insignificant”. But business accountants are familiar with situations where a lot of attention is paid to numbers that may be “statistically insignificant”. I’ll give you an example. For a large corporation, the difference between a small profit and a small loss can be “statistically insignificant”, but there is a big difference in how they are perceived by the public. In some cases, unscrupulous corporations (and you can think of a few, including the most famous recent U.S. bankruptcy) will do whatever they can in terms of deferring expenses or recognizing revenue to change a reported loss into a reported profit. Accounting changes are a red flag to analysts for brokerage companies; there may be “good” reasons but the analyst needs to be right on top of the situation and they will be VERY unimpressed if a company tries to slip a change in without reporting it.
So while the difference between 1934 and 1998 may have been “statistically insignificant”. Hansen was obviously quite annoyed by the attention paid to 1934 being called the “warmest year” even in the U.S. and the change in rankings must have stuck in his craw. Was that motivation in the change from SHAP to FILNET accounting? I certainly hope not. Perhaps long before the Y2K error re-arranged things, NASA had already made long-standing plan to shift from SHAP accounting to FILNET accounting. But if this was not the case, then the timing of the change, especially with the all too “convenient” restoration of 1998 to the top of the leaderboard is certainly unfortunate.
It’s a long and detailed post and difficult to extract from, so read the whole saga.
More from Anthony Watts;
An odd twist has developed in the past week regarding some data sets that surfacestations.org volunteers have been using to look at individual stations. The data has changed on NASA’s GISS website with no notice whatsoever.
My first indication that something changed came from surfacestations.org volunteer Chris Dunn who wrote to me complaining that one of the sites he’d recently surveyed, Walhalla, SC had been greatly adjusted at GISS for no good reason that he could ascertain, since the site is pristine by climate monitoring standards, and has not gone through any significant changes in the past, and has been operated at the same location (by the same family) since 1916. He wondered why NASA would have to adjust the data for a “good” station. The way I view it, shouldn’t good data stand on it’s own? That was September 7th. He was using data from NASA GISS published on 8/28.
So he continued to look at the data, and the site. The on Sept 11th he noticed a change when he downloaded the data again. Something had changed, the data was different. Not only the adjusted data but the “raw” data too.
[…]
I don’t know what to make of this, by I think perhaps this could be a breach of the Data Quality Act. At the least, it flies in the face of accepted scientific courtesy, where if you publish data sets being used by researchers worldwide, scientific courtesy would dictate that you at least place notice of such a change, otherwise there can be a domino effect for hundreds of research projects that use the data. Which would cause researchers to wonder why things don’t look the same anymore and begin searching for answers. Well that is exactly what happened here. We had a citizen trying to figure out why a climate site with good data was “adjusted”, and then the data changed right in the middle of him looking at it.
Alby has been taking the Kellogg’s short course on bilingualism and multi/culti. Now with extra fibre.
Fraises. That’s classic. A real fox pas.
Posted by: Yukon Gold at September 18, 2007 5:22 PM
Oops, I goofed, I am only human after all, “phrase”. Is that better, I guess one really should proof read a bit closer?
Now if all of you who picked that up would remember to ensure that all of your, your/you’re” and there/theirs, among your many, many other errors I read here are in order, I won’t bother to pick them up every time I see them. I notice there’s considerable numbers of grammatical errors and typos on this sight.
Wallen
Won’t you please come to my Emotional Rescue? I like parties. Are you having any I could attend? You’ll have to give me your address.
Thanks
fraises – phrase ,geez , more than a typo. indicative of an education by “hooked on phonics” or as alby would call it ” hokt on fonix”
Even funnier, Cal2, is the following sentence “…there’s considerable numbers of grammatical errors and typos on this sight”.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt though, and assume that the grammatical error and typo in his sentence about grammatical errors and typos was just in jest.
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definitions/fraise
fraise
n
1 a neck ruff worn during the 16th century
2 a sloping or horizontal rampart of pointed stakes
3
a a tool for enlarging a drill hole
b a tool for cutting teeth on watch wheels
Which definition of fraise were you referring to, alby?
Alby, we only point it out because you were making fun of the collective intelligence around here. More often than not, we’ll slam your skewed viewpoints and leave the grammar to the Eats Shoots and Leaves-type bloggers.
This one, however, was delicious. Pun intended.
Kate…why don’t you start a side blog with “troll of the month” and /or “stupidest fraise” award? Should be quite a number to pick from.
Bernie Ebbers went to prison for less than what Hansen has apparently done with the global temperature data. And while Worldcom cost investors a lot of money, the amount of money that is being swindled right under our noses by the AGW crowd dwarfs the money lost in Worldcom by several orders of magnitude.
“hanging by their tail throwing feces”
An insulting image, I suppose, but it takes a certain amount of skill; better to throw it, rather than constantly hang around to catch it in the face. Or does this satisfy some dark, twisted need?
“hanging by their tail throwing feces”
An insulting image, I suppose, but it takes a certain amount of skill; better to throw it, rather than constantly hang around to catch it in the face. Or does this satisfy some dark, twisted need?”
Well, you could be polite, I suppose, like the Liberals new mascot (the bird, not the eunuched leader) and hide it instead, only to be found when one wonders what that latest stink is…
Hansen calls the changes to make 1934 insignificant; that the cooling in South America and Africa are insignificant. Just how “global” is this warming? I would have thought it would have, like, you know, been all over the globe.
Over at climateaudit, some wag asked:
I still haven’t had explained to me how the seasonal variations in CO2 concentration create the seasons.
And received this reply:
Well, first of all you have to forget all that stuff about the spinning Earth being tilted at an angle of twenty-something degrees to the ecliptic, and cooling during its Northern winters, warming during its summers. Forget about the Sun. Or better still, think of the Earth as being flat.
Think instead about CO2 in the atmosphere. During summer, when plant photosynthesis is maximum, plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and reduce its levels, and thus reduce global warming, resulting in a subsequent cold winter. During winter, when plant photosynthesis is at a minimum, CO2 levels tend to rise, resulting in global warming – and the subsequent warm summer.
See. Quite easy to explain.
You’ll probably want to know about anthropogenic seasonal variation too. That is, how humans manage to create the seasons. And this happens because, during winter, humans tend to light fires to keep warm, and these fires generate CO2, which causes global warming, and results in warm summers. During these warm summers, humans stop burning fires, and the excess CO2 is absorbed by plants, reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and bringing global cooling, and the subsequent winter.
The result, as I’m sure you’ll see, is that the seasonal cycle of spring-summer-autumn-winter is entirely created by human activity, and if humans would simply stop burning fires in winter, this seasonal variation would vanish, and terrestrial surface temperatures would remain more or less constant.
Convinced? I’m sure you are. If you want to save the world from the endless cycle of the destruction of the creation, all you have to do is to not turn on your heating system when temperatures fall 10 or 20 degrees C below zero. It would also help if you stayed outside, and didn’t wear any clothes, or ate anything. You know by now that it makes no sense to do stupid things like that, right?
It always seemed to me that the AGW folks had a pretty good case for 0.2 to 0.3C increase, but the evidence for much beyond that seemed shakey at best. And I haven’t seen anything that rings true for how a colder south pole can be forcast in all of their musings.
They would help their case tremendously by publishing their ACTUAL code and methods and keep the “father knows best” talks to themselves.
The Global Warming Meltdown is just about as far along right now as the gun control meltdown was when Michael Bellesiles published his book “Arming America”. Shortly after he was exposed as a fraud, and by extension the whole liberal gun control lobby with him.
I look forward to heads rolling at NASA over this. Pretty soon the whole affair will be history, just like Sarah Brady.
God speed the day.
Incidentally, and entirely off topic, Wallen and Alby are doody heads.
jt, Real scientists are reulactant to speak out ebcause they risk teh modern equivelant of the Spanish Inquisition, let alone reduced or cancelled government research grants.
If a nutritionist, for example, wants the money for a study, it must be on “the effect of global warming on ice-cream induced obesity” not the more honestly titled “Do fat kids eat more ice cream?”
And the albatross enters the fray with a paragraph long slur ranting about name-calling. HA!
Liberal fools don’t have anywhere to go; the right sites are where all the action is 🙂
Wallen and alby…I hope you read wimpy canadian’s post @ 8:48 pm. It should explain a lot. But Wimpy…what about the influence of Bullwinkle and Bossie??
Cal2, “fraises” is pronounced FREZZ.
But maybe not if you a a Dion speech-writer 🙂
Wimpy: Real scientists are reulactant to speak out ebcause they risk teh modern equivelant of the Spanish Inquisition,
So why do Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Singer, McKitrick, McIntyer, and others get published? The simple fact is that ideas that deserve to be put before the scientific community are – no matter what point of view they represent.
Regards,
John
Lulu, but are they hanging around by their tail, throwing shit…or are they around by here, throwing shit with their tail?
Rather like:
“I saw the girl in the park with the telescope.”
Where is the girl, where am I and where is the telescope? Difficult to say. This is why computer translation will never get beyond shopping lists and Dijon speeches. It gets even harder when the ambiguity is deliberately developed to convey meaning.
Re-posting from http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/006895.html#c190312 on 25 August – see below in quotes.
Re, change to GISS dataset.
“I plotted the referenced data. My curves effectively look the same, but are not identical. The major difference is that I have about one more year worth of data, and that his last year’s data (mid-2005 to mid-2006) appears 0.15 to 0.2 Celcius (sic) degrees cooler than the current data set. Cursory inspection reveals no difference at earlier years.
The present dataset yields average mean warming sover (sic) the last 5 years of 0.175 C (SH), 0.373 (NH), and 0.274 (Global).
I really want see if there has been any change to the referenced dataset.
I really want to see raw data, and a full explanation of how all adjustments are made.”
The effect was significant, even at that date. For the benefit of wallen and alby, the analysis and interpretation of data from complex systems is my field. I am a practicing engineer and scientist. I publish and hold research grants. The acquisition and treatment of data by NASA in this regard is not open and transparent and does not conform to established standards of scientific rigor.
John Cross, your exceptions prove the rule. These people have had to suffer immense obloquy from government funded bureaucrats, NGOs and, even I’m ashamed to say, scientists, for their opposition to the hysterical melodrama of billions of government funding each year for “global warming”.
I will note that John V’s work over at ClimateAudit is very interesting on a number of levels. A good overview of it can be found here .
If you look at the record from class 5 sites you can see that it follows the Class 1&2 quote well. If you recall, class 5’s are sites that have errors that may be more than 5C. As this graph shows, the actual errors are much less.
While the analysis is preliminary, it is looking like all the identified problems don’t really amount to much.
John.
Wimpy: I don’t know about immense obloquy, but it has not hurt their funding.
Tenebris: The changes that you linked to are from the MSU dataset, not the GISS. However I am not convinced that the methodologies are that secret. First, there are no greater skeptics than Spencer and Christy. Second, there is enough back and forth in the scientific literature to convince me that the methods are well known. After all there was enough information for the RSS team to identify a very specific flaw in the S&C methodology.
Regards,
John
Why did I wake him ?? They fumbled the lateral and he revovered out of bounds.
John – I sit corrected.
John, I suppose you are following climateaudit.org as I do.
A number of things, of which you are probably aware and have just overlooked.
1. There is a difference between East and West mainland USA in the averages.
1a. And it depends upon which data set you use.
1b. And Hansen has just switched data sets.
2.These numbers do not show cataclysmic warming – in fact, they have cooled since 1998 (or 1934, your choice).
3. The “global warming” is not very global.
4. The main source of the “global” warming appear to be in places less likely to have a reliable record than the USA.
To me, it is clear that, apart from a few very long term records, with station histories, or well understood near-term proxies, such as sediment cores, the only reliable way to measure the “planet’s temperature” is via satellite. This should focus on lower atmosphere (troposphere) and sea temperatures.
Regarding John V.’s work,
“After a closer look at JohnV’s data it seems that the unadjusted USHCN data and GISS adjusted data is what is matching. That means that GISS did not adjust out any of the errors caused by UHI, Microsite effects, station moves, changes in equipment and so on.” -Kristen Byrnes
Pole vs. Pole:
http://www.am770chqr.com/station/blog_the_world_tonight.cfm?bid=16713&m=9&y=2007
Wallen “worked for” a publisher (past tense)
is into entrapeneurship (vague)
and is going to have a blog (just haven’t got around to doing it, eh….cuz you know, actually opening a blogger page takes soooooo much time)
Translation:
Wallen’s unemployed, and he probably likes it that way.
Just as I thought.
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=279
Hey alby – It’s hard to practise two religions at once.
NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting “court jesters,” appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years.
“U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,” blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world “could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070919/NATION02/109190067/1008
…quiet day at SDA Kate?
😉
mojo at September 19, 2007 5:15 PM
“The scientist was S.I. Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansen’s”
He was a colleague, there is no mention of Hansen whatsoever found in the Science article that the Washington Post was referring to. If you read the journal article from start to finish you will see the that we will never know if Rasool was correct in his claims or not.
Remember Marvin Gaye………Mercy Mercy Me the Ecology. That was almost 40 years ago. No one listened then and finally someone is listening now.
We need more singers Like Marvin Gaye. And he was a black american. He was smart and true. Imagine that all of you right wing WASP’s out there.