Why do you think data and analysis corrections always seem to support anthropogenic global warming?

Question

A few years back, a couple of scientists at UAH claimed their satellite data showed that the troposphere was cooling. 'Skeptics' claimed this data disproved AGW. Some other scientists looked at the data and discovered that the UAH analysis was flawed. Now the satellite data shows the same warming as the surface data.

Still, the satellite and radiosonde data seemed to show that the tropical troposphere wasn't warming as fast as the AGW theory (or solar warming) predicted. Again, 'skeptics' claimed this disproved AGW, but corrections of errors in the radiosonde data revealed it was just an instrumentation problem.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/

Most recently, the data seemed to show the oceans weren't warming as much as AGW predicted. Again, the 'skeptics' claimed this disproved AGW, and again it turned out to be an instrumentation problem.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/ocean-heat-content-revisions/

Answer 1

"Leftists" like these?

"Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"

"National Review (the most prestigious conservative magazine) published a cover story calling on conservatives to shake off denial and get into the climate policy debate"

"Pat Robertson (very conservative Christian leader) 'It is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air.  We really need to do something on fossil fuels.”

"I believe there is now more than enough evidence of climate change to warrant an immediate and comprehensive - but considered - response. Anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial."

Ford Motor Company CEO William Clay Ford, Jr.

"The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."

James Rogers, CEO of Charlotte-based Duke Energy.

Answer 2

I thought that this article by Dr. Carter, an Aussie, was quite insightful and tends to answer your question.  Read it or don't.  

THE IPCC: ON THE RUN AT LAST

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change, climate alarmism

by

Dr. Robert Carter

SPPI Reprint Series

March 25, 2008

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images...

Answer 3

There have been studies done that showed that Hansen's temperature data is flawed.  

Ross McKitrick and Patrick Michaels published a paper in December 2007 that shows a strong correlation between urbanization indicators and the “urban adjusted”  temperatures, indicating that the adjustments are inadequate. The conclusion is: Fully correcting the surface temperature

data for “non-climatic effects reduce the estimated 1980-2002 global average temperature trend over land by about half.”

Dutch meteorologists, Jos de Laat and Ahilleas Maurellis, showed (2006) that climate models predict there should be no correlation between the spatial pattern of warming in climate data and the spatial pattern of industrial development. But they found this correlation exists, and is statistically significant. They also concluded it adds a large upward bias to the measured global warming trend

Satellite data is free of urbanization effects and provide truly global coverage continually. Previous problems with satellite drift affecting temperature calculations have been corrected.

Newer satellites have station keeping capability and do not drift. The satellite data is much superior to land measurement. The satellite global temperature trend from 2002 to May 2008 is a  decline of 0.25 Celsius per decade, significant global cooling for over 6 years.

Direct sensors of the oceans show that the warming trend of the oceans stopped a couple of years ago.

"Over the past 4-5 years, "there has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently told National Public Radio.

Willis monitors the data from a nifty new set of Argo ocean buoys. They not only record sea surface temperatures but periodically dive 3,000 feet under water and record sub-surface temperatures as they rise back up. These wonderful new Argo floats say the oceans have been cooling slightly for the past 4-5 years, instead of accentuating a continuing global warming trend.

Answer 4

Dana, you sure are a sh*t magnet with the answers you get on a regular basis from the same old same old.

The reason the corrections always support AGW is because no one really wants this situation to be happening, it's hard to admit that our economy and life styles have contributed all along. So the interpretation of the data is done with an attitude not of denial but regret. Conservative conclusions are drawn and mild predictions are made. As the data gets better and the results more definitive, the potential effects become more demonstrable.

There has been an all out effort by the fossil fuel industries to confuse people, create doubt and prevent any actions that would hurt their short and long term profits. They have intentionally conspired and collaborated to create our huge dependency on their products.

While the dupes and white collar criminals point their plastic fingers at others and claim no responsibility, the Planet is reacting to correct the situation. To some of us it is obvious without the science... for too many others they either don't care, are obligated to the fossil fuel industries or support some who is, or have no capacity to want to understand what is happening.

Your stamina to keep reaching out and make a difference is impressive.

Especially against the huge right wing multi-national industrial complex conspirators and criminals you speak truth to every day.

When we prosecute the CEOs, I hope we get some of these jerks that have aided and abetted and given shelter to the perpitrators of the worst crimes against humanity and the planet ever committed!

Fight on!

Answer 5

If you believe in NOAA, the government agency responsible for monitoring climate, and not a blog, you will see that the mid troposphere data warmed at a slower rate than the surface. For both RSS and UAH.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

If you believe in the ridiculous corrections applied to both UAH and RSS by U. Washington you still do not have enough warming ratio to support the AGW theory.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

The Radiosonde data is insufficiently sampled in the southern hemisphere to be a classified a global metric for evaluating temperature.

Answer 6

because when you come up with a conclusion before you have any real information you can skew data to look as you want it to

Answer 7

They DON"T!!........................

"The Sun Also Sets

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance."

Answer 8

Please state the relationship between CO2 and global mean temperature.

Answer 9

Ah yes, we are moving along the continuum...

there is no global warming...global warming is not caused by man...there will be no negative effects / the negative effects of climate change are overblown...

the leftists are the ones who caused this by not raising a loud enough alarm while simultaneously funding a hidden conspiracy to feed the right wing propaganda machine to delay action so that when time came the people would be so helpless they had to accept whatever societal steps were necessary for mitigation (I mean one world domination).

Diabolical indeed!

Oh, and to answer your question, I'm sorry to say I'm just a fuzzy empiricist.  I only needed to see the Mauna Loa graph to realize we have a problem.  

These types of corrections don't suprise me at all.  What would be really suprising would be to see one of the far out ideas like cosmic rays or solar magetic flux gaining merit.

Hey, it looks like cosmic rays trigger lightning, anything is possible.  Just not very likely.

Not likely as in a magic theory will be found that absolves mankind of responsibility for global warming while simultaneously proving that hydrocarbons come from the mantle and are limitless.

Oh, that must be the dream they dream before they go to bed at night.

Answer 10

On 'The Daily Show', there was a clip of 'Dubya' saying 'we' would all reach an agreement about Global Warming before he left office. Hee-hee. He can be such a funny man sometimes ;-)

Answer 11

Welcome to the world of experimental science.  I have fallen into the trap of reporting results to peers too early and then having to give corrections as more results come in.  It is generally prudent to wait a year or two after publication to see if the results will stick before reading too much into them.  The peer review process catches a lot, but unfortunately not all of the possible errors.  When experimental results have been reviewed and possibly corrected by a large number of scientists, and further studies yield the same results, the results provide a proper test for a theory.  The fact that well-tested results support the AGW theory means that the AGW theory is essentially correct.  That being said, more fine tuning of the AGW theory is certainly possible.

Answer 12

When you have an extremely complex system that has numerous assumptions and data gaps, you can make with what you want.  No matter what it says, it doesn't say that any warming potentially caused by humans is necessarily significant or harmful.  For those conclusions, you have to dig into your gut feelings and that is how AGW movement was born and why it is so dominantly leftist driven.

Answer 13

Bob--those people you listed just prove what a scam this really is!  Thanks!

Answer 14

It is because it is far easier to code a model to include most of the essential physics than it is to take good high-quality data over many decades over the entire globe.  This is especially true for first-order things like ocean heat content, which has to be increasing due to the increase in radiative forcing from greenhouse gases.  If OHC is not increasing, something is dramatically wrong with the physics, and there isn't anything wrong with the physics.  

Anyone who has ever been out on a research vessel understands the difficulty of working at sea, even under the best of conditions.  Modeling is far easier.  Nobody ever two-blocked a Sun workstation at 50 S, 140 W and was prevented from running more simulations midway through a 6-week cruise.