Calling NASA’s Ruedy On His BS

Reader daveandrews723 got this E-Mail from Reto Ruedy at GISS

It is true that our estimates for the global mean temperature anomalies occasionally change, since we base them on the best currently available data; those do change with time as records from more stations are digitized and made available, as corrections to earlier incorrect reports are obtained, as metadata are used to account for changes in reports that have nothing to do with climate change but were caused by changes in instrumentations, reporting procedure, location of the measuring instrument etc. Finally, those estimates may change slightly as the time series get longer, which allows us to assess better how to combine records from different stations and how to bridge spatial or temporal data gaps. Sometimes those changes result in increasing trends, sometimes trends are decreased. It seems that the sources you consulted cherry-picked the former instances.

A major change that decreased the trend happened when we included ocean temperatures in addition to land based sources only, and a slight decrease was caused when we adjusted the data for urban effects. All other changes had only minor effects on the global means.

Any major changes/adjustments have always been documented on the web and in the scientific literature by the people who made them (mostly NOAA/NCDC) and so did we whenever we adopted those changes, so none of the graphs you refer to is news to us.

Reto Ruedy”

Maybe he isn’t aware of what his team is doing to destroy the global temperature record, but his claims don’t hold up to any scrutiny. The animation below shows NASA changes to the global surface temperature record since 1981.

These are land-only temperatures – so the ocean excuse doesn’t work. The past is always getting colder, and the slope is always increasing. The trend from 1890 to 1978 has increased by 40% since Hansen 1981.

GISSGlobal1981-2001-2012-2014

2014 version : data.giss.nasa.gov…….graphs_v3/Fig.A.txt
2012 version : web.archive.org………/graphs_v3/Fig.A.txt
2001 version : wayback.archive.org………graphs/FigA.txt
1981 version : web.archive.org……..Challenge_chapter2.pdf

GISS also overwrites their data as they alter it, and they try to block web crawlers to make it difficult to document their tampering.

The next graph shows the total alterations to the NASA global surface temperature record since 1981.

ScreenHunter_2233 Aug. 23 09.14

Perhaps he isn’t aware of what his group at GISS is doing to destroy the integrity of the surface temperature record. His comments above would seem to indicate that.

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37 Responses to Calling NASA’s Ruedy On His BS

  1. Edmonton Al says:

    Goverment employees, bureaucrats, and politicos are never wrong.
    Anything that you bring to their attention they have a JERRE for it.
    They must have gotten 100% on every test they have ever written.
    They are never wrong.[just ask them].
    JERRE: J- Justification E- explanation R- Rationalization R- Reason E- Excuse

  2. daveandrews723 says:

    This is the rest of my communication with Mr. Reudy from GISS. As I indicate, I am no expert in this field, just a concerened citizen.

    Me: Thank you for your quick response and answering my question.
    I am not a scientist but I am very skeptical of the claims by high-level government officials, including the President and Secretary of State, that man-made global warming/climate change is “settled science.”
    I hope that people within the government-funded scientific community will always place the truth and facts as the most important standards.
    Cheers

    Reudy: “I understand and share your skepticism about statements by politicians whether they talk about science or anything else. Unfortunately, in this particular case the science is about as settled as it will ever be. Humans are adding greenhouse (heat absorbing) gases to the atmosphere which cause an energy imbalance that will eventually be resolved by a warming of the atmosphere. The enormous heat capacity of the ocean can only delay but not prevent that process. The most dangerous aspect is probably the resulting sea level rise caused by heat expansion and glacial melt.
    Thanks again for your interest,

    Reto Ruedy”

    Me: I don’t expect you to continue a discussion with me. I know you have more important things to do with your job.
    Let me just state a couple of things…
    40 years ago the prevailing scientific wisdom was that global cooling was upon us.
    Then, 30 years ago, a few people (many of the same scientists who were convinced of global cooling) came up with a hypothesis about the CO2 impact on temperatures… a hypothesis based on ice cores and tree rings.
    Then they produced models projecting a direct correlation between CO2 levels and rising temps.
    Those models have failed over the last 17 plus years. The hypothesis is not proof of anything. It is merely a prediction.
    I believe, as a layman, that science does not understand the fundamentals even though you say “the science is as settled as it willl ever be.”
    I don’t have any axe to grind in this debate. I do not represent the fossil fuel industry and I believe energy conservation, cost-effective alternative energy sources, and pollution control are important things that we should all be in favor of.
    What I see is a growing industry of scientists who have a vested interest in promoting “man-made global warming and climate change” despite a lack of evidence. That “industry” has done a great P R job in convincing the majority of people that they are right.
    But the “97% consensus” is false from all the opposition I have viewed. There are many respected and highly qualified scientists who disagree, but are marginalized by those attempting to protect their own self interests.
    I believe this will go down as a very dark period in the history of science.

    • Keitho says:

      Good response Dave. I think it is useful for those on the inside be made aware of our genuine and reasonable concerns.

      As an aside I note that the volcano in Iceland has begun to erupt.

    • gregole says:

      “But the “97% consensus” is false from all the opposition I have viewed. There are many respected and highly qualified scientists who disagree, but are marginalized by those attempting to protect their own self interests. I believe this will go down as a very dark period in the history of science.”

      We are witnessing the complete destruction of a valuable branch of science, described quite well by someone far above my pay-grade, Dr Judith Curry:

      …we’ve lost a generation of climate dynamicists, who have been focused on climate models rather than on climate dynamics and theory that is needed to understand the effects of the sun on climate, the network of natural internal variability on multiple time scales, the mathematics of extreme events, and predictability of a complex system characterized by spatio-temporal chaos.”

      http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/28/ipcc-diagnosis-permanent-paradigm-paralysis/

      Further:

      “With the failure of climate models to simulate the pause and regional climate variability, we have arguably reached the point of diminishing returns from this particular path of climate modeling – not just for decision support but also for scientific understanding of the climate system.”

      Ruedy:
      …in this particular case the science is about as settled as it will ever be. Humans are adding greenhouse (heat absorbing) gases to the atmosphere which cause an energy imbalance that will eventually be resolved by a warming of the atmosphere.

      May I ask just exactly when the so-called energy imbalance will actually have a noticeable effect? Two simple questions: When will Miami, Florida be uninhabitable from sea-level rise, and when will Phoenix, Arizona be uninhabitable due to it’s status as our least sustainable city?

      http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/27/world/climate-rising-seas.html?_r=0
      http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-least-sustainable-city-phoenix-as-a-harbinger-for-our-hot-future/

      I can’t speak about Miami, because I don’t live there, but here is Phoenix, Arizona we have just had a spectacularly beautiful August – relatively wet and cool. The coolest August I can remember. It is now 2014, CO2 is choking the atmosphere at over 400 parts per million…where’s the heat in Phoenix – a typically hot, desert climate?

      This is what the death of a science looks like. Heating from greenhouse gasses? No; an apparent heating in the present by cooling past records, but no heating as predicted by their so-called settled science which in this case is based entirely on computer models – computer models that have failed miserably to predict anything close to reality. Our government bureaucracies have settled on warming – no matter it is just a convenient fiction affording them infinite powers of regulation, taxation, and power to award their allies enormous resources – that is just a side benefit of settled science.

      • James Strom says:

        gregole,

        “May I ask just exactly when the so-called energy imbalance will actually have a noticeable effect?”

        Good question. Even if the warmist account is right, we are talking about tenths or hundredths of a degree changes in the deep ocean, so does this have any effect in the few hundreds of years left before we start running out of fossil fuels? And if the ocean starts releasing this heat, will the rate of release be enough to have any impact?

        There is one possibility of larger temperature increase in the warmist theory. That is that the oceans may begin to reject additional heat in the atmosphere. But when climate scientists talk about this they say something like, “Sooner or later the oceans will no longer absorb the excess heat”. (That is not verbatim, but I’ve encountered this approximate line a few times.) It seems as though there is not a carefully vetted theory about how this change would take place.

        • Acres of Statuary says:

          “if the ocean starts releasing this heat…”

          See the second law of thermodynamics: “The entropy of any isolated system never decreases. Such systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium — the state of maximum entropy of the system.”

          Low entropy in this case means concentrated heat and cold. The second law says that the heat and cold will tend to average out according to the heat capacity of the storage medium. This means that even if you accept the absurd claim that heat is being stored in the deep ocean most of it will go toward warming up the ocean by a tiny temperature increment and only a tiny amount that is carried by subsurface currents with minimal mixing with very cold benthic waters will cause less cooling than it otherwise would when the current surfaces, such as the El Nino current offshore of Peru.

        • nielszoo says:

          Ummmm the average temp at 2,000m is ~4°C. If we use the agreed upon laws of thermodynamics and the warmist’s claim that all this sneaky heat that’s hiding in the ocean will come out and get us… it will begin that transfer as soon as the surface air temp drops below 4°C… along with the rest of the water column above. Either that or I missed a thermodynamic law or two in school somewhere. I’m also a little hazy as to how the salt leaves that “warm” water at 2,000m so that it can get lighter and rise back up to the surface.

    • Edmonton Al says:

      daveandrews723
      Please ask Reudy this: How can he believe the GHG Theory when there is no proof?
      Arrhenius, who proposed the GHG Theory, believed in aether.
      Here is the wiki explanation of aether:
      According to ancient and medieval science, aether (Greek ????? aith?r[1]), also spelled æther or ether, also called quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere. The concept of aether was used in several theories to explain several natural phenomena, such as the traveling of light and gravity. In the late 19th century, physicists postulated that aether permeated all throughout space, providing a medium through which light could travel in a vacuum, but evidence for the presence of such a medium was not found in the Michelson-Morley experiment.[2]

      Arrhenius’s theory was based on the presence of Aether.
      The Aether was the equivalent of the glass in a real greenhouse.
      It [the aether] would trap heat and cause global warming.
      The aether medium was debunked [Michelson-Morley experiment].
      Therefore: The GHG Theory and the GreenHouse Effect is invalid.

      Glass is a solid; A greenhouse is a closed system.
      CO2 is a gas [expand and rises when heated]. The atmosphere is a open system.

  3. copernicus34 says:

    They are very aware of what they are doing.

  4. Robertv says:

    Remember the past was much colder.

    http://youtu.be/AYBFWE1UKWo

    Much to cold for bikini.

  5. Ben Vorlich says:

    GISS also overwrites their data as they alter it

    That’s criminal, I hope there is a copy of the source data somewhere because without there’s no going back.

  6. Shazaam says:

    GISS also overwrites their data as they alter it, and they try to block web crawlers to make it difficult to document their tampering.

    Taxpayer funded data should never be blocked from archival or download. Period.

  7. Latitude says:

    GISS also overwrites their data as they alter it, and they try to block web crawlers to make it difficult to document their tampering.
    =====
    There’s no sane reason to do that……the only reason someone would go to that much trouble is to deliberately hide it

  8. Latitude says:

    The enormous heat capacity of the ocean…
    yes, and it’s a constant……the oceans didn’t suddenly decide to hide the heat

  9. Owen says:

    The raw data doesn’t show any global warming but after it gets doctored it appears Earth is burning up. GISS is doing fraudulent science. If Obama changed his mind and told them another ice age was coming , it’s a guarantee, the next day the data would ‘prove’ the planet is getting colder.

  10. Justa Joe says:

    Humans are adding greenhouse (heat absorbing) gases to the atmosphere which cause an energy imbalance that will eventually be resolved by a warming of the atmosphere. The enormous heat capacity of the ocean can only delay but not prevent that process. The most dangerous aspect is probably the resulting sea level rise caused by heat expansion and glacial melt.

    -RR

    The idea of something being a gross over simplification is lost on the warmists. For example, internal combustion engines make power by burning fuel and O2. More powerful engines burn more fuel and O2. The “science is settled” on that. If I take RR’s Honda Civic or whatever and slap on a big throttle body and big injectors thereby permitting more fuel and O2 to enter its engine it won’t make anymore power and it probably won’t even run.

  11. geran says:

    “Unfortunately, in this particular case the science is about as settled as it will ever be.”

    Translation: “I have no clue what “real science” is all about. I just want to keep my job and maybe get a promotion or two.”

    • geran says:

      BTW, thanks to daveandrews723 for this special effort. And, also thanks to our host for the extra attention to this effort.

      • daveandrews723 says:

        The absolute confidence the warmists have in their hypothesis and their total rejection of any skepticism or challenging views have fascinated me for several years.
        As a layperson with no real background in science, it has always seemed so dogmatic and unscientific to me for someone to have that attitude. I always thought science should welcome debate and different viewpoints to reach the best conclusions.
        I ran across a professor on the Internet who calls himself a “climate change ecologist.” It made me wonder why he wouldn’t just call himself an ecologist. I also wondered if he used to call himself a “global warming ecologist” until the warmists stopped using that term. I think there is a huge self-promotional aspect in academia that plays a big part in all of this “science.”

        • omanuel says:

          You are right again, daveandrews 723.

          The rewards are great in universities and research agencies for promoting government propaganda: Research Grants, Promotions, Salary Increases, Positive Peer Reviews and Citations by Fellow Travelers, Special Membership Status for Leadership in Professional Organizations like ACS, AGU and APS, even Nobel and/or Crafoord Prizes from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for talented propaganda artists, etc.

        • Justa Joe says:

          These guys would be toiling in obscurity w/o the AGW hustle.

  12. nutso fasst says:

    For a few years now I’ve been working with Coop station data that was supposedly raw data (daily listings). Recently, in the course of the NCDC’s combining of data from multiple stations that comprise a continuous or nearly-continuous record, the Coop data was made available through two new websites. Much to my surprise, the new data does not match the old.

    I made a table of recent incongruous temperature listings from a nearby station and checked them against the written records at the station. I found that in some cases the new data matched and in others the old data matched, i.e., both sets of “raw” data have been modified in different ways.

    Hard to figure a logical reason for this as it doesn’t seem to change trends much at this station, but it’s certainly unequivocal evidence that historical data is being altered.

  13. Justa Joe says:

    I noticed RR conveniently omitted all of the Rube Goldberg “positive feedbacks” that are required to get the multi-degree warming that the IPCC is claiming.

  14. omanuel says:

    Daveandrews723:

    When the curtain is finally pulled on the modern-day Wizard of Oz, we will all agree that the sixty-nine year period from August 1945 until today was a very dark period in the history of science.

  15. kirkmyers says:

    As 20th century muckraker Upton Sinclair once wrote:

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

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