All large data sets contain measurement or calculation errors. Unless there is some specific reason to believe the data is skewed due to an external trend (like UHI) people normally assume the errors are random and expect them to cancel out. Many fields of science and engineering depend on this principle, including nuclear weapons design.
For example, there is just as likely to be missing temperature data in January as July, so making up fake temperatures for missing dates serves no purpose and only corrupts the data.
When climate scientists start making adjustments, confirmation bias sets in. They look for problems which cause mismatches vs. their theory, and ignore problems which would work against their theory if corrected.
Suppose there are 20 things wrong with a data set, and scientists correct only the 10 problems which reduce warming. Even on the odd chance that the 10 corrections were done legitimately, they have completely corrupted the data set. And you end up with a mess like this.
If your data is sooooo bad that you must constantly readjust your adjustments, then your data is garbage, and it should not be seen by anyone other than your bird when surveys the bottom of his cage.
Hey Tony! Great post and a great point which needs to be constantly repeated.
Why is it so hard to get warmists to see that when data is arbitrarily changed, it becomes garbage? The crazy part is that there will almost certainly be some CAGW proponent who will comment to your post that “There is nothing wrong with adjusting data! Scientists adjust data all the time!” thereby proving that they are completely incapable of either reading for comprehension, understanding how science works, or even thinking logically.
I have over 100 monthly reports of the GISS GLOBAL Land-Ocean Temperature Index
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
from 06/2002 to 01/2016, and the first entry on each report for January 1880, which
was (1880 -20) in June of 2002 and is currently (1880 -29) for this past January’s report,
has been changed numerous times over the years (28 times by my count). I assume all
the other monthly entries since 1880 have also been changed in a similar fashion.
What it looks like is that on average monthly entries are changed 3 or 4 times a year.
I just want to know what the hell is going on.
Can I get copies of those? That’s some valuable data.
Yeah, it wold be interesting to look at changes. How many times does a ~150 year old reading need to be changed?
What is going on? They have to keep the $$$$$$$ flowing, and Obama is happy to do so, as long as they keep up the lie.
I work with large volumes of time series data that make up my research. We know there are minor measurement errors across many measurements by different instruments. We also know that there are TOB (Time of Observation) errors as samples are supposed to be taken at specific times by a human. They are usually a little off one way or the other. However, we don’t adjust the data because in a large dataset of independent samples, convergence of the mean to the normal distribution will occur because the random error cancels out per the Central Limit Theorem.
This “special” science called climate science is baffling to this mathematician. They claim they must adjust the data to compensate for TOB errors and instrument sample errors which are, by nature, random. By what’s the supportable justification? Why is the Central Limit Theorem accepted and works in my field of research but not in climate research? Are they on another planet that does not obey the same mathematical principles as on this planet?
If they did you have to do they would not get the answer they want. To adjust a measurement without understanding the reason for it other than what you expect in your and my world lunacy but in their world it is “science” the unfortunate part is too many LCD agree with them and that include the present occupant of the Oval office.
Because they do not give s**t about science or the truth.
It is a strictly a political agenda.
Years back, the AGWers chose CO2 as a pollutant and global warming agent, released by mankind from burning fossil fuels, as there scare tactic and the whole thing has backfired on them. The internet, social media, e-mails and blogs have exposed their lies.
Thanks to people like TONY, the global warming alarmists may lose the war.
That’s where you go astray, Hank. You can’t judge climate science as a mathematician.
I’ve been told that during the heaviest battles of the Great Patriotic War and under heavy fire by the Wehrmacht, the political commissars of Soviet artillery units discarded standard ballistics tables and ordered values of cosine spiking all the way to three.
https://coloradowellington.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/soviet-artillery-wwii.jpg
Such methods are unavoidable when you are engaged in a heroic survival fight against deniers and enemies of progress.
https://coloradowellington.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/heroic-soviet-fighter.jpg
I suspect transfer payments from producers to parasites may be a factor. The Kyoto Protocol, for example does not mention China but it is a beneficiary. Where trade and production are crimes competition is impossible so… the free must be bled to lessen the disadvantage?
Besides all the corrections that nearly always go one way, does anyone really believe they can measure sea level accurately in millimeters to three places from a satellite 250 miles away?
See for yourself:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2016_rel1/sl_ns_global.txt
It boggles the mind.
Steve, science keeps progressing and many historical corrections only go one way. Here is the adjustment of a bothersome 1930s blip:
https://coloradowellington.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/stalin-yezhov-1930s-blip-adjustment.gif
You men kinda like the GIA corrected note?
Now you see it:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2015_rel4/sl_ns_global.png
And now you don’t:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2016_rel1/sl_ns_global.png
Neat rick huh?
“If you add decimal places, the answer assumes more credibility” – Globull Warming Gestapo “scientists”
Indeed.
My favourite is ocean heat capacity, whereby a few thousandths of a degree K is converted to some extremely scary units called zettajoules.
In fact, they missed a trick, if they’d used ergs they could have increased the alarmism coefficient by another seven orders of magnitude.
+1
Correcting Ocean Cooling
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/
Great article in Breitbart, on deniers and Loretta Lynch
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/11/attorney-general-loretta-lynch-wants-to-prosecute-deniers-heres-why-shell-fail/
OT but I thought I would mention that Dr. Spencer has suspended comments on his blog due to an A-hole named Doug Cotton.
He’s well known.
Yea and great guy IMO. I will miss the comments because I learned things there and could ask questions.
BTW CW I’m running hard right now. Last two weeks have not had my regular 48 hours off and won’t get it this weekend either since I go out at 21:00 Saturday night.
Won’t get into the specific runs but will mention the adaptation of technology for trucking that I started using the last couple weeks.
There are times truck drivers need to get documents back to their company quicker than drop box service one sees at truck stops can possibly do it.
Two examples of those times;
Dealing with Lumper fees. We deal with Lumpers most of the time at food warehouses. They unload the truck and then break the shipment down for shipment to the individual grocery stores. The vender ultimately pays for that service but the trucking company or trucker pays the lumpers initially then his company transmits those charges to the vender. In my case I get authorization for a comcheck from my company. A comcheck is simply a financial instrument much like a regular check which only can be activated with a activation number. So I call my company and give the amount and they give me the activation number and I write the check and when I give it to the lumpers who then call or use a computer to call and confirm the check is good by getting an authorization number.
Since the trucker or company has money out front they want to transmit the lumper receipt along with the signed bills of lading to the vendor ASAP in order to get paid.
Before we had to go to one of the truck stops that offer a service called Transflow and scan our documents and send them in from there. Now Transflow has an ap. I just take a picture of each document for a transaction with my Gallaxy S6 smart phone, crop each image, and it coverts it to a scanned image. and send it. Simple and quick.
We can now also do the same thing for sending our bills and manifests back to our company import department or to a border broker so they can start working on getting the load cleared for passing the border.
Very cool and this makes life easier for us drivers.
If the original temperature data is unmolested, the Trump administration can easily throw out the garbage created by Schmidt and other criminals, and create new accurate averages and trends.
To the best of my knowledge an original unadjusted dataset doesn’t exist. It seems that preferential bias and poor data handling practices have all but lost the original unadjusted datasets. NASA comments that if you want unadjusted temperature datasets, they recommend that you obtain them from each monitoring site and do the work yourself – not practical for anyone not government funded. Anyway, if there is an original unadjusted dataset, I would love to get my hands on it. 😀
That’s disgusting
https://tools.ceit.uq.edu.au/temperature/index.html
Allows a look at a lot of the data
Thank you, SFX2020!
False pride and blinding arrogance have forced world leaders and puppet scientist to make a difficult choice:
1. Start prosecuting AGW doubters as federal criminals, or
2. Find a way to erase the record – in precise rest masses of 3,000 types of atoms that compromise all matter – of the force that actually made and sustains every atom, life and planet in the solar system, or
3. Admit that the foundations of nuclear and solar physics were falsified after WWII to hide from the public the source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the same source of energy that powers the Sun and heats planet Earth.
Only the most unpalatable choice (#3) will return integrity to government science and constitutional limits to governments as they existed before being united on 24 Oct 1945,
. . . just a few months before George Orwell moved from London to the Sottish Isle of Jura to start writing “Nineteen Eighty-Four.
When people with a strong vested interest in the outcome start making repeated “adjustments” to fit their agenda, the fix is definitely in. That should be painfully obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ.