Friday 27 November 2009

"Hide the Decline": Deleted Data Revealed

Steve McIntyre, the climate scientist behind climateaudit.org has pieced together the code that reveals the data deleted by the CRU to "hide the decline" (as Prof Phil Jones now famously said in a leaked email) in post-1960 global temperatures. It provides further damning evidence of a cover-up the likes and scale of which the scientific world really has never seen before. It is devastating.

For the very first time, the Climategate Letters “archived” the deleted portion of the Briffa MXD reconstruction of “Hide the Decline” fame – see here. Gavin Schmidt claimed that the decline had been “hidden in plain sight” (see here. ). This isn’t true.

The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)

A retrieval script follows.

For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red.
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions. The relevant IPCC 2001 graph, shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.

Contrary to Gavin Schmidt’s claim that the decline is “hidden in plain sight”, the inconvenient data has simply been deleted.

The reason, as explained on Sep 22, 1999 by Michael Mann to coauthors in 938018124.txt, was to avoid giving “fodder to the skeptics”. Reasonable people might well disagree with Gavin Schmidt as to whether this is a “a good way to deal with a problem” or simply a trick.

Meanwhile, as the UK MSM and government go on pretending that nothing has happened, merrily misinterpreting a Chinese promise notionally to cut pollution and confusing bad weather in Cumbria (in late November, no less) with "climate change," the rest of the world is beginning to wake up to the implications of this scandal. Australia's main opposition Liberal party, for instance, has gone bananas with five of its front bench members resigning over their leader's plans to support a carbon cap. Climategate really could be starting to make a difference, but not, sadly, in the UK where journalists and comedians continue to deny the scandal is anything more than a diversion.

But Barack Obama is going to Copenhagen, so that's alright then. I wonder if he's seen Steve McIntyre's report. I wonder if he cares.

==Update==
The Wrinkled Weasel has a bit of a blogscoop (for me, at least - I didn't see the Mail article that carried the story) that gives you some idea about just why the UK is not yet experiencing much fallout from climategate. The BBC knew about the emails over a month ago and even had a copy of the file. But, predictably, it spiked the story. Impartiality? Not on your life. But don't worry, you and I just pay for it all: CRU, BBC, government AGW propaganda - the lot. Tidy.

6 comments:

  1. It seems, D, that "Climategate" is to be investigated in the US Congress! The whole house of cards is starting to fall apart. There are also some great articles on You Tube on the "Russia Today" news channel.

    http://www.youtube.com/profile?gl=US&user=RussiaToday

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  2. Hallelujah, Spidey. I'm fair dinkum at the end of my stormy weather with the UK (leftwing) media - including and especially the BBC - and their endless support of bankrupt tax-scamming, hot air theories and a bankrupt, tax-scamming, hot air government.

    I might as well just emigrate. Australians sound like they're beginning to relocate some common bloody sense and proportion, while the UK just crumbles.

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  3. The Aussies never did take kindly to bullshit! Cameron's weekly email is just spouting the same old Copenhagen crap as the rest of them so who could blame anyone for emigrating and getting out of this Labour-created dystopian shithole!

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  4. Yeah, saw that Cameroon claptrap. It's almost enough to make you vote Libertarian!

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  5. Why not read the paper in question? No substitute for going direct to the source.

    You will observe if you actually read it that they explain why they did not use the post-1960 data, citing the 1998 paper (see end of p 2932, the 4th page in the PDF).

    This divergence between the temperature record and tree ring data since the 1960s is well known and is all over the academic literature. This stuff has been out there in plain view for more than 10 years. Why does it suddenly become a big deal now? That the denial camp could not find this point in the science to attack without stealing emails suggests to me that they don't have very competent scientists working for them. But if you are attacking the science politically, you don't need top-drawer scientists.

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  6. Nonsense. If that were the case, explain why there would be a need to "hide the decline". Also, this graph is based on real data recovered from their own server, that they had omitted from the model in an act of deliberate deception. So what, precisely, are you trying to say, that they were right to omit it - ie: that it's right to 'hide the decline'?

    Are you running through the blogs dumping the same comment? Or are you just gullible?

    Your use of the usual blurring tactics - like claiming that any 'dissent' is politically motivated, or the vicious ad hominem, dismissive use of the term 'denial' (with all its evil, filthy, intended Holocaust connotations), or that people are 'stupid' if they do not believe your favoured 'competent' scientists (who have made a farce out of the peer review process by peer reviewing each other for twenty years, which is what, partly, climategate is all about) - all that suggests to me that you are yet another bandwagon AGW type, probably with a vested interest, probably with a mainly political agenda of your own.

    That manipulated paper to which you refer is one of the very pieces of junk science that's been blown out of the water by the emails. But then again, your mind is already made up, regardless of the new evidence. It's always the way with zealots.

    Don't come back.

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Any thoughts?