On 1/27/13 7:22 PM, Marvin the Martian wrote:
> And NO ONE can answer your questions. They are unapologetic about using
> bad data.
There you go again, Marvin, claiming conclusion are based on bad data.
> What the science says...
>
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CRU-tampered-temperature-data.htm
> The Independent Climate Change Email Review went back to primary data
> sources and were able to replicate CRU's results. This means not only
> was CRU not hiding anything, but it had nothing to hide. Though CRU
> neglected to provide an exact list of temperature stations, it could
> not have hid or tampered with data.
> Exhibit No. 1 of the climate conspiracy theory is a collection of
> emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University
> of East Anglia (UEA), which appeared on the internet in November
> 2009. Though some of these "Climategate" emails can sound damning
> when quoted out of context, several inquiries have cleared the
> scientists. The most comprehensive inquiry, the Independent Climate
> Change Email Review, did something the media completely failed to do:
> it put the emails into context by investigating the main allegations.
> Its general findings (summarised here) were that the scientists'
> rigour and honesty are not in doubt, and their behaviour did not
> prejudice the advice given to policymakers, though they did fail to
> display the proper degree of openness.
>
> One set of allegations against CRU concern its main area of research,
> the instrumental temperature record CRUTEM. The CRUTEM analysis is
> very similar to those produced by independent groups such as NASA’s
> Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and NOAA’s National
> Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Nevertheless, the contrarians allege
> that CRU manipulated data to fabricate a global warming trend; that
> CRU prevented critics from accessing the raw data and other
> information required to check its conclusions; and that CRU director
> Phil Jones failed to admit having cited fraudulent data twenty years
> ago. Thus they claim CRUTEM cannot be trusted.
>
> To create the CRUTEM surface temperature analysis, CRU scientists
> take temperature data from 4,138 stations, and for each station they
> calculate the mean temperature for 1961-1990 and temperature
> anomalies relative to that period. They then arrange all this data
> into a 5x5 degree grid. This process requires that adjustments be
> made to account for sources of error such as changing station
> locations or urban heat island effect.
>
> Following Climategate, several amateur climate bloggers have
> attempted their own analyses of global temperature trends, and
> arrived at very similar results to CRU, GISS, and NCDC. The Review
> took a similar approach, going back to primary sources and obtaining
> raw station data to see if it was possible for critics to replicate
> CRU’s results. They were able to acquire as much data as necessary
> from both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and the
> National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). They proceeded to
> write the computer code needed to analyse the data in the space of
> two days, without requiring any information from CRU.
>
> Thus the Review demonstrated that CRU was not hiding anything:
> sufficient data was available to replicate CRU’s results, and any
> competent researcher would be able to analyse it. Furthermore, they
> had nothing to hide: both adjusted and unadjusted data yielded very
> similar results to CRUTEM, and CRU’s homogenisation adjustments make
> no significant difference to the global average. Although the Review
> stopped short of drawing scientific conclusions, it appears that
> CRU’s conclusions are robust.
>
> Based on this, the Review concluded (its emphasis):
>
> CRU was not in a position to withhold access to [temperature] data or
> tamper with it. We demonstrated that any independent researcher can
> download station data directly from primary sources and undertake
> their own temperature trend analysis.
>
> On the allegation of biased station selection and analysis, we find
> no evidence of bias. Our work indicates that analysis of global land
> temperature trends is robust to a range of station selections and to
> the use of adjusted or unadjusted data. The level of agreement
> between independent analyses is such that it is highly unlikely that
> CRU could have acted improperly to reach a predetermined outcome.
> [1.3.1]
>
> This is stated more explicitly in Chapter 6:
>
> It is impossible for a third party to tamper improperly with the data
> unless they have also been able to corrupt the GHCN and NCAR sources.
> We do not consider this to be a credible possibility, and in any case
> this would be easily detectable by comparison to the original NMO
> records [6.4]
>
> The Review also considered the availability of metadata; that is,
> whether there was enough information available to identically
> replicate CRUTEM. As noted above, the computer code was no problem.
> Getting an exact list of temperature stations included in CRUTEM was
> more of an issue. Such a list was provided with the first version of
> CRUTEM in 1986, but CRU neglected to update it in the latest version,
> CRUTEM3, published in 2006.
> An up-to-date list was not released until October 2007, in response
> to an FoI request. Even then, the Review Team found it was not
> straightforward to identify all the stations, due to a lack of
> standardisation. However, 90% could be matched with stations in the
> GHCN database, and CRU informed them that the remaining 10% could be
> obtained from other sources such as the relevant National
> Meteorological Office. As a “test case”, the Review did obtain data
> directly from the Japanese NMO.
>
> The Review makes the following criticism of CRU:
>
> CRU should have made available an unambiguous list of the stations
> used in each of the versions of [CRUTEM] at the time of publication.
> We find that CRU’s responses to reasonable requests for information
> were unhelpful and defensive. [1.3.1]
>
> The inquiry also briefly dealt with the allegation “that Jones was
> complicit in malpractice in failing to respond appropriately to
> allegations of fraud made against […] Professor Wei-Chyung Wang”,
> whose data Jones cited in a 1990 paper on the urban heat island
> effect. The allegedly “fabricated” claim was that few if any of a
> certain selection of Chinese weather stations had moved over time.
> Wang’s university investigated and rejected the accusation of fraud.
> Meanwhile, Jones responded within one year with a peer-reviewed
> analysis confirming the original conclusions. In any case, this was
> only one paper and does not change anything we know about the urban
> heat island effect.
>
> The overall implication of the allegations was to cast doubt on the
> extent to which CRU’s work in this area could be trusted and should
> be relied upon and we find no evidence to support that implication.
> [1.3.1]
>
> Despite being heralded as “the final nail in the coffin of
> anthropogenic global warming”, Climategate has not even invalidated
> CRU's results, let alone the conclusions of the climate science
> community. In any case, the entire work of CRU comprises only a small
> part of the large body of evidence for anthropogenic global warming.
> That mountain of evidence cannot be explained away by the behaviour
> of a few individuals.