And now, Douglas J. Keenan raises serious questions about the Chinese surface station data (PDF);

This report concerns two research papers co-authored by Wei-Chyung Wang, a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The two papers are as follows.

Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169–172.
Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377–2380.

Each paper compares temperature data from some meteorological stations in China, over the years 1954–1983. (The first paper also considers data from stations in the USSR and Australia; Wang was only involved in Chinese data, and so the other stations are irrelevant here.) The first paper is quite important: it is cited for resolving a major issue in the most recent assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC, 2007].
[,,,]
Regarding station movements over time, the papers of Jones et al. and Wang et al. make the following statements.

The stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times. [Jones et al.]
They were chosen based on station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times…. [Wang et al.]

Those statements are essential for the papers.
[…]
The essential point here is that the quoted statements from Jones et al. and Wang et al. cannot be true and could not be in error by accident. The statements are fabricated.

Keenan states that as a result of his report, Wang’s university is holding a misconduct investigation.*.
Via Anthony Watts (if you’re looking for the short form).
Related: “Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”.

From today’s “I Kid You Not” file…

The climatological station of record for Odessa, WA.

*.
SDA flashback: Goodbye Greenie Dirt Road

Good morning to our regular media hounds sniffing around for tips – have we got a doozy for you!
Roger Pielke Sr. ;

The hard work of of Steve McIntyre (Climate Audit) and Anthony Watts (www.surfacestations.org) has resulted in the identification of a significant error in the assessment of the rankings of what have been the warmest years in the United States as identified by GISS. The current warmest year is 1934.

Much more in the comments there – “As it stands, we are looking at a bladeless “Hockey Stick”, and for all intents and purposes at the falsification of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis for North America. Of particular note is that the Climate Audit piece indicates that GISS has erased the old [unadjusted] data, giving it the makings of an excercise in covering one’s tracks. The legality of this must be questionable given that we are dealing a federally funded agency. Astounding.”
(Climate Audit is currently down – I suspect in the same way SDA goes down when I post on Marc Emery’s cannibus cult…)
Update: My hunch was right. Climate Audit is under DOS attack.
Climate Audit:

Or as explained by commentor Chris Christner. “Congratulations Steve! On your own you’ve managed to reduce temperatures more than the Kyoto Protocol ever could!”
More here from Anthony Watts: “Here’s a story of scientific investigation and discovery I’m proud to have had a small part in.”
And here too.
Michelle Malkin has another roundup

Reader “Vitruvius” in the comments;

“The following is a media piece, not a learned essay; with that proviso I can now report that apparently there is some decent new evidence to the effect that – wait for it – stars produce organic molecules.

CS Monitor;

Every complex molecule absorbs and emits radio waves at unique frequencies. You can think of it as a molecule’s radio signature. Chemists can discover those “signatures” in the laboratory for any molecule they’re interested in. Then they can look for those signatures among the stars.
That’s how Dr. Ziurys and her colleagues in Tucson, Ariz., found something that should not be happening around the giant star VY Canis Majoris some 5,000 light years away. It’s one of the brightest celestial objects when viewed by infrared light. But observations with infrared or visible light have not revealed what radio tracking of molecules now shows. Two molecule-rich jets shoot out from the star. It’s the kind of chemistry expected around relatively nearby stars that are rich in carbon and poor in oxygen. VY Canis Majoris, however, has twice as much oxygen as carbon. As explained in the university’s announcement of this research last week, this discovery shows that there are far more sources of complex molecules to enrich the interstellar dust from which planets form than astronomers have suspected.
Half a century ago, astronomers thought complex molecules couldn’t exist in interstellar space because ultraviolet radiation should blast them apart. Observers have identified over 140 interstellar molecules since then. But doubts about negatively charged molecules have lingered. Such molecules would have extra electrons that UV radiation should easily knock off. Forget that. In less than a year, radio tracking of molecular “signatures” has found three such “impossible” molecules.

Another recommended link – beer in space!

Would you mind flipping the burgers while you’re out there?”
In apparent response to Anthony Watts’ project at surfacestations.org..

…the National Climatic Data Center suddenly pulled the location addresses from publicly available resources. We are not amused! Mr. Watts took them to task, and now the locations are again publicly available . There are fewer than 1000 left to photograph, so enterprising shutterbugs, snap-to. [BTW, let me be the first, so far as I know, to predict that the alarmists will do what they’ve done with other legitimate enterprises debunking their hysteria, and submit phony photos to the effort in order to discredit the entirety].

www.surfacestations.org

“Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.”

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society’s continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say “how silly to judge climate change over such a short period”. Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Climate denier, Prof Bob Carter “is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research.”

On his presidential campaign trail late in 1999 and in serious need of at least some farm votes, Al Gore boasted to a Midwest audience that it was he who had cast a tie-breaking vote in 1994 against a proposal by New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bill Bradley which would have cut tax incentives for ethanol fuel. “It’s well known that I’ve always supported ethanol. And I have not ducked when votes for … agricultural interests were on the floor.”
[…]
Now, we discover that, thanks to increased ethanol production, something else is turning “Green” — the Gulf of Mexico. A huge 8,543-square-mile dead zone, roughly the size of New Jersey, is growing off the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. It is the result of a huge algae growth, fueled by nutrients flushed from the farmlands in the Midwest watershed.

“It is clear to me that those who espouse and promote acceptance of the “killer AGW” scenario are highly threatened by serious auditing of the surface record and the network used to obtain it. I have been in both academe and industry, with a career spanning 25 years. I am responsible for world wide efforts with budgets well into the millions. I can well recognize when someone is trying to hide poorly done, low quality science. In this case, I smell blood.“

USHCN Station, Tucson

It gets better! USHCN Wickenberg – “Remember, these are the few select stations being used to determine how much global warming the US is experiencing. “

This discussion (PDF)

“… reviews the analysis and conclusions of Lockwood and Fröhlich and then asks other notable scientists in the field of solar/terrestrial relations to comment on the findings. In doing so, it is found that the conclusions being forwarded by Lockwood and Fröhlich—that the sun has had no impact on the earth’s surface temperature history during the past several decades—is not consistent with the thinking of many other researchers, and instead, indicates more a personal dogma rather than scientific truth.”

Comments by Joseph D’Aleo (first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the cable TV Weather Channel), Richard C. Willson (Senior Research Scientist, Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research) and Nicola Scafetta, PhD (Dept. of Physics, Free Electron Laser Laboratory, Duke University).
More links here.

Models trump measurements (Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post);

We are doomed, say climate change scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that is organizing most of the climate change research occurring in the world today. Carbon dioxide from man-made sources rises to the atmosphere and then stays there for 50, 100, or even 200 years. This unprecedented buildup of CO2 then traps heat that would otherwise escape our atmosphere, threatening us all.
“This is nonsense,” says Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the same IPCC. He laments the paucity of geologic knowledge among IPCC scientists — a knowledge that is central to understanding climate change, in his view, since geologic processes ultimately determine the level of atmospheric CO2.
“The IPCC needs a lesson in geology to avoid making fundamental mistakes,” he says. “Most leading geologists, throughout the world, know that the IPCC’s view of Earth processes are implausible if not impossible.”
Catastrophic theories of climate change depend on carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere for long periods of time — otherwise, the CO2 enveloping the globe wouldn’t be dense enough to keep the heat in. Until recently, the world of science was near-unanimous that CO2 couldn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than about five to 10 years because of the oceans’ near-limitless ability to absorb CO2.
“This time period has been established by measurements based on natural carbon-14 and also from readings of carbon-14 from nuclear weapons testing, it has been established by radon-222 measurements, it has been established by measurements of the solubility of atmospheric gases in the oceans, it has been established by comparing the isotope mass balance, it has been established through other mechanisms, too, and over many decades, and by many scientists in many disciplines,” says Prof. Segalstad, whose work has often relied upon such measurements.
Then, with the advent of IPCC-influenced science, the length of time that carbon stays in the atmosphere became controversial. Climate change scientists began creating carbon cycle models to explain what they thought must be an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These computer models calculated a long life for carbon dioxide.
Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims.
Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous.

Continue reading →

Sasktel, call your premier.

The full contract is up at The Smoking Gun.
Via Drudge.
(Perhaps we’re being too hard on the Goracle. You think it’s easy these days to put Chilean sea bass on your childrens’ plates?)

Fort Morgan, Colorado’s USHCN climate station of record.

And a comparison of USHCN stations at Orland and Marysville, California.

Join the project at Surfacestations.org.

Common sense interrupts the climate change debate;

Few people in Africa got to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff two weekends ago, because most have neither television nor electricity. That’s just as well, because they would have been aghast at Live Earth’s bizarre message.
In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa.
[…]
Please, Europe and America, spare us! You can cut your own emissions if you want, but don’t tell us what to do. We really have much more serious and urgent threats to deal with. Unfortunately, our beggarly governments are very susceptible to diktats from on high, especially when they are offered aid (which they use to line the coffers of their bank accounts): don’t encourage them!
Humanity has proven itself hugely adaptable. We survived an Ice Age and a period probably much hotter than today (around 8,000 years ago). The Dutch salvaged land from the sea and built on it. In Saudi Arabia, they drink desalinated sea water. The Tuaregs adapted to the blazing heat of the Sahara and the Eskimos adapted to the freezing cold of the Arctic.

Indeed. It’s an observation that eludes the “1 degree rise in temperature will destroy life on earth as we know it” CBC fruit-fly cult and their megaphones in media.
Just as things look even more grim for the future of that dysfunctional continent, a glimmer of hope appears on an unexpected front;

Rising prices for food have led the United Nations programme fighting famine in Africa and other regions to warn that it can no longer afford to feed the 90m people it has helped for each of the past five years on its budget.
The World Food Programme feeds people in countries including Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia, but reaches a fraction of the 850m people it estimates suffers from hunger. It spent about $600m buying food in 2006. So far, the WFP has not cut its reach because of high commodities prices, but now says it could be forced to do so unless donor countries provide extra funds.
[…]
She said policymakers were becoming more concerned about the impact of biofuel demand on food prices and how the world would continue to feed its expanding population.

If an inflationary food-into-fuel market has the net result of forcing the UN to cut back on its dictatorship funding programs, Africans may finally have a chance to turn their backs on dependency and get legitimate economies off the ground.
Won’t happen though. There are too many hungry bureaucrats at the UN working hard to ensure things stay exactly as they’ve always been.

Can the ice caps melt fast enough save Canada’s sea ports?

Chart Datum varies from country to country, but always follows some low water definition. In Canadian coastal waters, our present target threshold is Lower Low Water Large Tide (LLWLT). LLWLT is the lowest predictable tide *averaged* over an 18.6 year tidal epoch. […]
STATION 00065 – SAINT JOHN
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
4.43
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
4.47
-4CM
[…]
STATION 07735 – Vancouver, BC
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
3.07
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
3.08
-1 CM
[…]
STATION 05010 – Churchill
LAST DECADE AVERAGE
2.57
AVERAGE FOR ALL YEARS
2.58
-1 CM

Apparently not.

Marlo – You are so full of crap. You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on. Mike Michael T. Eckhart President American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

H/T reader “Ross” who explains;

Marlo Lewis is a lawyer who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. He published a well-reasoned article critiquing a cap-and-trade proposal before Congress, based on recent testimony he gave before a Senate committee.

One clear cut forest at a time;

Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday criticized the Kyoto Protocol on climate change for failing to allow countries like his nation with pristine unharvested forests to earn carbon credits.
“The Kyoto Protocol is limited in that sense, and it’s short-sighted in that it encourages bad behaviour basically among countries; if you cut down trees and you plant them back you get money, if you preserve them, you don’t get anything,” Jagdeo told a forum on agro-energy.

But that’s about to change…

He said Guyana has decided to get into the production of bio-fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.

Goodbye, rain forest – hello, palm oil plantations!
I love it when a plan falls apart.

““There seems to be a discontinuity in the temp curve just before 1980. Is this when the site was moved here, or when the a/c was upgraded?”

An astonishing backdrop containing more than 9 million LEDs has been created for the Genesis “Turn It On Again” world tour.

XL Video UK has supplied 15,089 Barco O-Lite LED panels with 270 control boxes, plus 102 Mitsubishi 16:8 high-resolution LED panels.
The O-lite panels make up a spectacular back wall measuring 13 metre high and 55 metre wide. This is surrounded and topped by 7 lighting towers (“ribs”) reaching heights of up to 28 metres, with the entire structure resembling a giant conch shell. This was designed by Mark Fisher/Stufish.

Related.
h/t