

Raw climate data in New Zealand tells a different story than “official” one. - cwan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/

======
davidppp
I'm a New Zealander.

The source of the "facts" in this blog post is none other than Ian Wishart,
who is regarded by many in New Zealand as a crackpot. He is anti-gay, anti-
science, anti-evolution, and very right wing. If you cross Murray from "Flight
of the Chonchords" with Glenn Beck, you'll have a pretty good idea of who the
guy is. Here's a review of one of his more recent books:

[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/books/news/article.cfm?c_id=134...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/books/news/article.cfm?c_id=134&objectid=10437680&pnum=1)

Ian Wishart will not be very well known outside New Zealand, so I just wanted
to point out that he has a massive agenda, as well as a reputation for
relentlessly cherry-picking facts to support his points of view. Very few in
NZ take him seriously. I strongly encourage all of you to treat his writings
(which were mostly just reprinted in the link posted by cwan) with an extreme
level of skepticism.

Finally, the New Zealand scientist mentioned in the post, Jim Salinger, does
have an excellent reputation in New Zealand and around the world. He was part
of the IPCC group, for example. It is a real shame, but I have a feeling his
name is about to be dragged through the mud by these crackpots. I was very,
very surprised to see his name associated with science as bad as that
mentioned in the original blog post, until I saw that Ian Wishart was the
source of the information.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
What if I started my reply off with:

"I'm a HN'er. The source of the parent comment is davidppp, who is a notorious
crackpot and illiterate fool..."

I just was curious if you understood an ad hominem attack when it was directed
at you, because you obviously aren't noticing it when you use it against
others.

Let's repeat yet again: unintelligent, mean, illiterate, crackpots with
horrible political views can get science right. And wonderfully credentialed,
polite, intelligent, well-renown scientists can screw up science horribly.
Science is not a popularity test or a beauty contest. We're on an equal
playing ground where data and reproducible experimentation is all that
matters.

~~~
ewjordan
_Let's repeat yet again: unintelligent, mean, illiterate, crackpots with
horrible political views can get science right. And wonderfully credentialed,
polite, intelligent, well-renown scientists can screw up science horribly.
Science is not a popularity test or a beauty contest. We're on an equal
playing ground where data and reproducible experimentation is all that
matters._

Sure, it's always possible.

But the prior probability that the crackpot got it right and the thousands of
mainstream scientists all got it wrong (or worse, actually committed perhaps
the furthest reaching fraud in the history of science by falsifying dozens and
dozens of data sets, which is what is being alleged here) is properly very
low, and we'd have to be fools to pretend otherwise.

That doesn't mean that we should ignore the questions altogether, but it's all
the more reason to be skeptical. The behavior of some of these clowns when
talking about evolution indicates that they haven't a care in the world for
truth or science, and while that may be an ad hominem indictment and not a
proof that they are wrong, it is more than enough to tell us to treat anything
they say about science with some suspicion.

------
ewjordan
There's more on this at
[http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_...](http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf)
[PDF], including some more detailed graphs at the end.

Full disclosure: I'm coming at this from the initial point of view that the
global warming folks are probably right, primarily because all of my
experience with scientists in other fields (mostly physics and biology) has
taught me that the scientific "establishment" is generally far more interested
in seeking the actual truth than pandering to convenient politics.

However, without explanation for why the slopes of the graphs were shifted
during the adjustments, I'd say there's some definite cause for concern here.
At the very least, these adjustments should be explained in detail so the
rationale can be examined.

Back on the other hand, I'm very suspicious of a blanket statement that
there's no reason to apply any adjustments here, especially coming from
someone that opportunistically publishes this right on the heels of a very
negative PR blitz against AGW. So I think we should reserve judgment until the
people that made these adjustments explain in detail how they calculated them;
it's very possible that they had excellent reasons to adjust things the way
they did, but they really ought to provide the supplemental data sets that are
required to compute these adjustments if they want to save face here.

And I absolutely agree that the fact that this information is missing in the
first place is unacceptable in a scientific field; future AGW researchers need
to learn a lesson from all of this, that even if they are right, they need to
tread carefully because of the intense scrutiny they are under. And by "tread
carefully" I mean treat your data as rigorously and make it available as
easily as if this was any other scientific pursuit. Evolutionary biologists
are under a lot of fire, too, from a lot of the same asshats that are funding
anti-AGW work, but you don't see them witholding data or stonewalling people
asking questions, at least until they become obnoxious or take the argument
past science.

You only get to shout people down once they already have access to all the
data they need in order to see (if only they weren't so dense) that you are
right!

Edit: it's worth noting that the only references I've seen on any of this come
straight from the blog post, not from NIWA itself. So I don't know if we can
trust those pictures at all, or if perhaps the alterations _are_ , in fact,
explained somewhere.

------
lucumo
Okay, here's the thing. If you're publishing scientific stuff on a blog or in
a newspaper, instead of in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, then you're
playing politics, not science.

This topic has been politicised enough. Stop doing that. If you're critical of
some peer-reviewed paper, publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. Those dudes
know if what you're saying is truthful and valuable, the general public
(including me) does not.

~~~
hop
_Those dudes know if what you're saying is truthful and valuable, the general
public (including me) does not._

Not necessarily. They are incentivized by fame and grant money to produce
studies with a wow factor. Climatologists skeptical of global warming are
outcasts among their peers - the leaked CRU emails illustrate this, as well
as, intimidation to scholarly journals that publish skeptical papers.

I am not a climatologist, but I've done some complicated math simulations in
college and there is no way you can future predictions look like these -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions.png)
\- how the fuck do you have squiggly lines, not a range, after 20 years from
now - fails the common sense test.

Plus, can any non PhD even get access to a scientific journal? Can you or me
even access most of them without a paid subscription?

~~~
lucumo
_> They are incentivized by fame and grant money to produce studies with a wow
factor._

That's why I said "peer reviewed".

Sceptics have the same incentives as climatologists and when they just publish
in newspapers and blogs, they don't have the peer review stage. There is
absolutely NO guarantee of correctness or even scientific soundness. Whatever
you may think of the peer review process, it's a good deal better than
nothing.

------
JCThoughtscream
I can think of a half-dozen reasons off the top of my head as to why the
records might have had to been adjusted, starting with "equipment calibration"
and moving widely on from there. I think the media's been a little too eager
to jump on the climate change denial bandwagon...

~~~
pyre
Let's just face the fact that 'climate change' has become a political topic
more than it's a rational and/or scientific one.

"Climate change denial" has become secret code for, "I'm a neo-conservative
and I really want it stick it to Those Damn Liberals(tm) because not _only_ do
they want to take away my Hummer and my hamburgers, they want to take away my
_guns_ too!"

There are plenty of journalists and talk-show pundits on the conservative side
of the spectrum that see this as some sort of vindication that they were,
"right all along," or just as a chance to get all sorts of
coverage/attention/viewership/advertising money.

~~~
anamax
Similarly, AGW has become secret code for, well, you can fill in the blanks.

However, there are some differences. For example, the skeptics haven't been
suggesting that their opponents be thrown into jail for their beliefs. And,
they aren't proposing restrictions or taxes.

~~~
JCThoughtscream
No, we simply have "skeptics" that've decried climatologists as anti-
industrial communists that ought to be tarred and feathered if not outright
lynched for their views.

Comparing crazies doesn't make for great discourse.

------
mmphosis
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2008/ann/globa...](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2008/ann/global-
jan-dec-error-bar-pg.gif)

------
spoondan
The unadjusted data these people present do not account for the relocation of
measurement sites. If a measurement site for an area were to be moved higher
above sea level, we would expect its readings to be consistently lower than
those recorded prior to its move. Since New Zealand's measurement sites have
moved over the last 150 years, the use of these unadjusted data are a
_complete distortion_ of reality.

This is an inexcusable mistake. Not only do these people not know the first
thing about the data they attempt to analyze, they have evidently never
attempted to learn anything at all about the data.

It's also rather implausible that the NIWA is part of a global conspiracy to
cook numbers but still provides free, open access to the raw data that reveal
the whole nefarious plot to any fool who can plot a chart.

------
rudin
Have a look at this. They "shift" the data so it is all on the same scale and
create one graph. This is horrible science. They should be treating each
temperature probe as a separate entity.

I am also dubious about the use of airports for temperature readings (Note
this is a recent development). Airports can introduce a mini-UHI effect
producing an artificially higher temperature.

[http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/niwa-
co...](http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/niwa-confirms-
temperature-rise/combining-temperature-data-from-multiple-sites-in-wellington)

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's not horrible science. It's very simple analysis and maths.

Graphs are used to answer a question: "what is the relationship between these
objects" or "how are these things changing" or "what is the trend in their
rates of change".

In this case, we're less concerned with the actual temperatures at the
individual stations than we are with _how they're changing over time_. So,
there's nothing wrong with adjusting and merging them together like that.

Think of it this way: what if we were to remove the temperatures from the left
side of the graph, and instead plot the temperatures as a series of
differences? i.e., temperature station 1 has +5 at one point, -1 at another
point, and so on.

You could plot the _changes_ in temperature for a number of stations that way,
all on the same graph, and it would make perfect sense.

That's really all they're doing.

As for measuring temperature at airports: if there is such an effect, then it
will produce _uniformly higher temperatures_ , but it will _not affect the
rate of temperature changes_ \-- so, again, as long as the question is, "how
is the temperature changing", taking measurements at airports is acceptable.

~~~
rudin
My point is they are shifting the data arbitrarily. The Thordon data points
are lower than both the Kelburn and Airport data points for the following
reason: "Thorndon (closed 31 Dec 1927) has no overlap with Kelburn (opened 1
Jan 1928). For the purpose of illustration, we have applied the same offset to
Thorndon as was calculated for the Airport." - i.e. they shifted it down as
much as the Airport even though the Airport has a higher average temperature

~~~
thaumaturgy
The data isn't being "shifted", and it's not arbitrary. Again, the graphs are
being used to illustrate _changes_ in temperature, not _actual temperatures_.
And, again, this is a very simple analytical tactic.

This is not unlike a non-programmer being skeptical of Quicksort because it's
"arbitrarily dividing data".

------
radu_floricica
For those who mentioned there are many good reasons for the data to be
adjusted:

\- the fact that data is adjusted predominantly toward a worming trend and the
fact that we do not have an official reason for this is suspicious

\- we need "the other guy's version" to make an informed opinion

\- you cannot talk about good science without some degree of openness. No
matter what the data shows you need all of it to be verifiable and
reproducible, otherwise something is very wrong.

~~~
Tichy
It doesn't seem possible to get an informed opinion on this subject anymore.
Reading "another guy's version" does not really make for better information.
Note that publishing a plethora of contradictory information is tried and
proven political strategy (FUD).

~~~
radu_floricica
We as laymen can't really trust a source, any source. But we can still
reasonably trust a process. If we hear that a part is not "showing the math",
the process is flawed.

Why do we trust physicians or mathematicians? Why don't psychologists or
historians have the same disputes? It's not the difficulty or fuzziness of the
subject that's the difference, it's the process: openness and reproducibility.

~~~
Tichy
I think it is also that not a lot of people get worked up about mathematics.
With the climate thing, a lot of money and lifestyle issues are at stake.

I don't even trust complaints about "not showing the maths". With creationists
it is the same, they always claim that the science of evolution is shoddy, but
it isn't true. They pick some obscure details nobody cares about, but if you
don't know much about evolution theory, you might be fooled. With the climate
debate likewise I might not be able to tell which calculations are relevant
and which aren't.

------
Tichy
The next iPhone should come with a thermometer. Let's create the worlds
greatest grid of temperature sensors, all open.

~~~
mukyu
I don't think recording the temperature of the insides of people's pockets
inside of air conditioned buildings would be a good measure of climate. Also,
iPhone and open do not go together.

~~~
Tichy
True - somehow I picture iPhone people always holding their phones in front of
them, looking at some location based service (and no, the iPhone isn't the
best phone for LBS either, but still).

------
sleepingbot
This is getting nastier as we are getting close to COP15, which USA and China
will attend, as they officially announced.

An advice: be aware of what's being told, take a look at different sources,
consume different media and keep your eyes open. There's a big interest in
blocking any climate negotiation.

