Climate Change Statistical Cherry Picking

From The Guardian

Climate change is affecting the cultivation of Assam tea, with rising temperatures reducing yields and altering the distinctive flavour of India's most popular drink, researchers say.

The Tea Board of India said it had recorded a steady decline in tea production in recent years. In 2007, Assam produced 512,000 tonnes of tea. By 2008 this had declined to 487,000 tonnes, with estimated production in 2009 down again to 445,000. A further decrease is expected this year.

Thanks to a comment by AntonyIndia, and adding in the stats from the site, we can see the stats since 2001 (which I've helpfully charted for you good people):-

So, even if there's been a decline the past 2 years, it's still above what it was in 2002 and 2003 (which were below 2005-2008).

What Sort Of Scientists Are We Dealing With?

From the Horse's mouth:-

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

I'm sorry, but I don't think it goes too far than to describe this story as dynamite.

All these scientists who know better about climate change completely missed something in a report which had no scientific basis whatsoever? Every single one of them? Yet we're supposed to make a mulit-zillion dollar decision based on their judgement?

Settled Science Pt 235

Thaindian 9th January 2010

But, according to a report in New Scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC’s chairman, has hit back, denouncing the Indian government report as “voodoo science” lacking peer review.

He adds that “we have a very clear idea of what is happening” in the Himalayas.

Also, the lead author of the IPCC chapter, Indian glaciologist Murari Lal, told New Scientist that he “outright rejected” the notion that the IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers.

“The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them,” he said.

“We relied rather heavily on grey (not peer-reviewed) literature, including the WWF report,” Lal said. “The error, if any, lies with Dr Hasnain’s assertion and not with the IPCC authors,” he added.

The Guardian, 20th January 2010:-

The UN's climate science body has admitted that a claim made in its 2007 report - that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 - was unfounded.

So, the lead author of the IPCC report, one of these people we're just supposed to trust about AGW got it completely and utterly wrong and defended something for which there was no scientific evidence whatsoever. And we're supposed to make decisions running into billions of dollars based on the quality of what they're producing?

That Met Office Data In Full...

The Met Office has released some land surface climate station records.

The data subset consists of a network of individual land stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organization for use in climate monitoring. The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations.

But without the full list of stations, we can't verify if the station set is either correct or complete using their algorithm.

1. Are the data that you are providing the “value-added” or the “underlying” data?

The data that we are providing is the database used to produce the global temperature series. Some of these data are the original underlying observations and some are observations adjusted to account for non climatic influences, for example changes in observations methods.

 So, it's not the raw data. Which means we can't verify the adjustments being correctly made.

3. Why is there no comprehensive copy of the underlying data?

The data set of temperatures back to 1850 was largely compiled in the 1980s when it was technically difficult and expensive to keep multiple copies of the database.

The unzipped database is 33mb in size. You could comfortably fit that on a mag tape.

Let's be clear about this from a data processing perspective: You don't delete raw data. You keep it because you can always then reconstruct things. Mag tapes weren't so expensive that someone couldn't afford to keep all the data on one.

10. Does this subset constitute a new data set?

This is not a new data set. Data sets are only released when they have gone through the proper process of scientific review.

Can someone explain this? We've got altered temperatures, yet no original data and no program code for the alterations. How was this peer-reviewed then?

Climate Change: A Question of Trust

I've been thinking about the question of Gordon Brown describing people who are sceptical about climate change as "flat earthers" and a little lightbulb went off about the questions about climate change and trust.

Since Climategate kicked off, I've noticed something quite disturbing about the attitude of the scientists, their fans and the bodies that support them: none of them have tried to come up with a convincing argument to support the case of the scientists. They have attempted to reassure the population "there's nothing in these emails to disprove it" or to make accusations about the people who did it, or to call sceptics by names like "flat earthers".

What they don't seem to realise is that climate change has been, for most of the population, a matter of trust. It isn't like "flat earth". I, despite few scientific qualifications can prove the earth is round in about 4 different ways. I don't have to say "trust me, it is round".

Millions have been spent by the UK Government on climate change, and nothing in there has covered how the climate models worked, or why it is warming up, feedback and so forth. Go to a site like Act On CO2. The statement on there about climate change says "The scientific community agrees – climate change is happening and human activity is almost certainly the cause.". The current ad on TV talks about "scientists found that the warming was faster than they thought it was". There is nothing to try and educate people. It just tells them to trust the men in white coats because they know best.


The reason why suddenly Gordon Brown finds himself calling 48% of the population "flat earthers" is because having based the whole thing on trust in scientists, when some emails come out which might set a tone which is that they aren't trustworthy, then you're going to find the argument falling apart for many people.

More Global Warming...

From the NOAA:-

For the contiguous United States the average August temperature of 72.2°F was 0.6°F below the 20th century average and ranked as the 30th coolest August on record, based on preliminary data.

Of course, there might be a very good reason for this, and I welcome any climate scientists telling me where I can download the data and source code for their climate models to prove this.

More Flight Taxes

From The Times:-

Tens of billions of pounds will have to be raised through flight taxes to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment, according to the Government’s advisory body on climate change.

OK, I have no problem with the principle of "polluter pays". If I damage your environment, I should pay for that. How much? Well, that's subject to debate.

But if we're saying that we give these countries something for something, what the fuck are we getting for the billions that we throw at them? And what the fuck are they going to do with any money we throw at them? I don't see much evidence of all this aid leading to much improvement.

Change in Political View

I try not to write about things I don't understand, so I've avoided taking much of a position on global warming. Much like Sam Cooke, I don't know much about Geography or Biology.

And while I don't know much about the Science Book, I do understand some fundamental principles of science. One of which is that experiments should be reproducable.

The Climate Research Unit has not only refused to release data under the Freedom of Information Act (due to confidentiality with other countries, but they won't say which) but now say that they don't have the original 1980s data from weather stations, just "value-added" information.

So in other words, there's actually no way to verify any of their experiments, except to trust them, which frankly means that whatever they've produced as results belongs with perpetual motion machines and religion.

As this is all done with computers and models, it should be perfectly simple to provide the raw data that went into the model and the source code of the model to allow for full interrogation. When they do that, I'll start taking this seriously as science.