Global warmed up: Study finds temperature data systematically fudged upward

[SBFORDTECH]

Your saying industry will choose the moral high ground? I don't think so.

You trust the government to choose the moral high ground?

[mschmoyer]

You trust the government to choose the moral high ground?

Not in all cases no. But I also don't believe the absurd conspiracy theories people come up with and think regulation in moderation is useful. With industry, we know where their compass is always pointing (profits). Look at the losses Elon Musk is taking to try to buck the trend...

[Forever_frost]

Not in all cases no. But I also don't believe the absurd conspiracy theories people come up with and think regulation in moderation is useful. With industry, we know where their compass is always pointing (profits). Look at the losses Elon Musk is taking to try to buck the trend...

You mean the losses Musk is dumping on the taxpayers through his grants from the federal government?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

[Gasser64]

Not in all cases no. But I also don't believe the absurd conspiracy theories people come up with and think regulation in moderation is useful.

Problem is, it exists in many areas where it has no business being. This is well known. There are areas, that don't see any type of benefit from regulation, but the retarded government felt the need to stick its nose where it didn't belong regardless. And in so doing, costs the taxpayer even more money. Every government undertaking is going to cost money, especially since they can't seem to go buy a pack of gum for less than $1200.

You've also got the that the unnecessary regulations' effects on the entities' ability to acquire profit, thus costing jobs and even more tax money that would have been paid as a result of those jobs. This is how government operates. Shooting themselves, and everyone else in the foot. When they come to help, expect things to get worse and a good deal more stupid.

[mschmoyer]

You mean the losses Musk is dumping on the taxpayers through his grants from the federal government?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...531-story.html

That's great. I'm happy to be investing in Tesla. I'd rather give him money money to lose than most other people.
That wasn't the point though, regardless of where the money is coming from, he's taking a HUGE risk right now to buck the trend and take on oil/gas and big car manufacturers. The Tesla 3 looks like a hit, Car&Driving calling it the next biggest thing since the iPhone, and other brands are rapidly looking into electric now. It may pay off for Tesla. Either way, there's not many example like this of someone forgoing easy profits to make a disruptive moral choice.

Problem is, it exists in many areas where it has no business being.
You've also got the that the unnecessary regulations' effects on the entities'...

Don't disagree we have some over-regulation. However, you simply say regulation is bad but offer no alternative. Industry only aligns with profits, not the good of mankind (or the US). We should use regulation sparingly, but not be afraid of the word IMO.
Also speaks to voting for more educated scientists/economists/etc that career politicians. They would tend to regulate more based on facts that to woo a political party. Vote for smart people.

[AnthonyS]

That's quite a stretch saying Tesla taking on big oil and gas.... you and everyone else in the world is free to not use any energy at all. You Tesla nuthuggers..... Go 100% green today! I dare you! You can start by smashing your computer which is largely powered by coal.

[Strychnine]

Why not put in writing what is already happening? Adds a little accountability if it suddenly turns un-profitable. Push industry to forge ahead just a little faster. Show that the country/gov't is committed to the idea.

So if a business is unprofitable, but you've legislated its operations into existence... who pays to keep it going when the market wants something else? Businesses have fixed costs - salaries, utilities, etc that must be paid to stay operational.


What would you do if your boss one day said, "mschmoyer, things have changed. I can only pay you $8/hr. I know you need $20/hr based on your number of kids, wife's work situation, mortgage, etc, but you are actually required by law to keep working here, sooooo... you're not allowed to do anything else. See you tomorrow!"
When you apply the logic to a single person it sounds a lot like socialism... or even slavery if you want to be really SJW about it. But if it's a corporation, without a single face attached to it, it seems that you're ok with it?
I mean, he's just pushing you to forge ahead, right? He just wants you to show that you're committed to what you were signed up to do! Back to work, comrade!


And what does "accountability" mean to you, anyway? Fines? How do you punish a business that's already operating in the red without putting it even further away from solvency?

[46Tbird]

That's great. I'm happy to be investing in Tesla. I'd rather give him money money to lose than most other people.

So, because you personally approve of Elon Musk's initiatives, you give him a blank check with my tax dollars?

Do you also approve of what Ener1, Solyndra, and Beacon did with taxpayer-guaranteed loans for clean-energy products?

If you approve of the federal government hand picking winners in what should be a competitive and open marketplace, then you can't really call yourself a capitalist.

[Gasser64]

Don't disagree we have some over-regulation. However, you simply say regulation is bad but offer no alternative. Industry only aligns with profits, not the good of mankind (or the US). We should use regulation sparingly, but not be afraid of the word IMO.

Also speaks to voting for more educated scientists/economists/etc that career politicians. They would tend to regulate more based on facts that to woo a political party. Vote for smart people.

We have a LOT of over regulation, and its very detrimental to what you'd like to see happen. But I do offer an alternative, and its doing away with retardery in government. Here's what it all boils down to, if you really want to get your way: End campaign contributions. You kill all the straight up bribery that these scumbags are taking/giving, and you'll see whatever the people actually want always at the forefront. Is that too big of a task? Is that too much to ask? Well then give up now, cause its the only thing at the root that will fix it all. The rest will forever just be more retardery. Round and round in circles.

As for Tesla, I like almost everything he's doing. Any of his detractors are doing nothing but spewing hot air, until we know how things are finally going to go down. Until he either wins or loses, which hasn't happened yet. While the electric motor is way better than the 1800's technology internal combustion engine, I'd question where its going to get its power. Granted due to the efficiency its going to need a lot less power than IC engines.

[mschmoyer]

We have a LOT of over regulation, and its very detrimental to what you'd like to see happen. But I do offer an alternative, and its doing away with retardery in government. Here's what it all boils down to, if you really want to get your way: End campaign contributions. You kill all the straight up bribery that these scumbags are taking/giving, and you'll see whatever the people actually want always at the forefront. Is that too big of a task? Is that too much to ask? Well then give up now, cause its the only thing at the root that will fix it all. The rest will forever just be more retardery. Round and round in circles.

As for Tesla, I like almost everything he's doing. Any of his detractors are doing nothing but spewing hot air, until we know how things are finally going to go down. Until he either wins or loses, which hasn't happened yet. While the electric motor is way better than the 1800's technology internal combustion engine, I'd question where its going to get its power. Granted due to the efficiency its going to need a lot less power than IC engines.

I like your alternative and 100% agree on the contributions. Huge waste of money. I also like term limits on congress and bumping presidential term to 6-7 years and reducing limit to 1 to further reduce money/focus spent on elections.

However, I don't think this solves anything on the resource waste front, it just moves dollars from lobbyists back to corporations. Sure, more jobs, more economy is good, but it doesn't help with Americans being so damn wasteful.

[Strychnine]

I like your alternative and 100% agree on the contributions. Huge waste of money. I also like term limits on congress and bumping presidential term to 6-7 years and reducing limit to 1 to further reduce money/focus spent on elections.

However, I don't think this solves anything on the resource waste front, it just moves dollars from lobbyists back to corporations. Sure, more jobs, more economy is good, but it doesn't help with Americans being so damn wasteful.

You'll comment on the merits of things that will likely never happen, but skate right past posts that ask real questions about how economics of these pie-in-the-sky plans would actually play out?




Also, it happened again...

Australia Weather Bureau Tampered With Climate Numbers

ByJohn Nolte
August 1, 2017


The Daily Caller reports that for the second time in a just a few years the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) in Australia has been caught red-handed tampering with climate temperatures as a means to make a "slight cooling trend to one of 'dramatic warming' over the past century."

Back in August of 2014 the Australian BOM claimed that there was no bad faith behind the decision to "modify the physical temperature records that had been recorded at weather stations across the country.” Nevertheless, the effect, according to Dr. Jennifer Marohasy, who holds a PhD in biology, was a “dramatic change in temperature trend towards warming after homogenisation.”

"Homogenization" is the process that allows climate scientists to correct for anomalies in raw temperature data. How there can be anomalies in raw data is beyond me.

This latest scandal is even more serious, one in which the BOM has been forced to admit that incorrect temperatures were logged. Naturally, the agency is blaming faulty equipment but Marhosasy is pushing back. According to the Daily Caller she told reporters that the BOM's claims of faulty equipment "are nearly impossible to believe given that there are screen shots that show the very low temperatures before being 'quality assured' out."

One meteorologist reported watching the BOM data change in real time. Colder temperatures, or temperatures inconvenient to the theory that our planet is warming, either disappeared entirely or were "homogenized" into a warmer temperature.

Apparently "faulty equipment" turned a temperature recorded elsewhere at 5.54 degrees into 13 degrees.

The subtitle of that article was a very valid question. Maybe you can answer it, maybe you'll just wait another week for someone to steer the discussion elsewhere so you can move on...

Wouldn't "honest mistakes" result in an equal number of false warming and cooling readings? And yet, these "honest mistakes" always seem to show the planet is warming. Odd that.

The Bureau of Meteorology Budget was 365.3 million in 2015-16. The Australian climate is a national crisis, but the Bureau won’t publish it’s methods in full, aren’t doing basic quality control checks, and can’t employ even one person to answer questions about its secret methods?

On July 5th I asked many questions, and now nearly a month later, we still have no answers:

… this opens a whole can of worms in so many ways — what are these “limits”, do they apply equally to the high side records, who set them, how long has this being going on, and where are they published? Are the limits on the high temperatures set this close to previously recorded temperatures? How many times have raw records been automatically truncated?

Jennifer Marohasy points out that these stations are used to homogenize other stations which are supposed the best stations used in the ACORN dataset. So when the BOM protest that they are not manipulating the data, it’s obvious that they are.

Graham Lloyd, The Australian

The Bureau of Meteorology has ordered a full review of temperature recording equipment and procedures after the peak weather agency was caught tampering with cold winter temperature logs in at least two locations.

Bush meteorologist Lance Pidgeon blew the whistle on the missing data after watching the minus 10.4C Goulburn recording from July 2 disappear from the bureau’s website. “The temperature dropped to minus 10.4, stayed there for some time and then it changed to minus 10 and then it disappeared,” Mr Pidgeon said. He relayed his concerns to scientist Jennifer Marohasy, who has queried the bureau’s treatment of historical temperature data. After questions were asked, the bureau restored the original recording of minus 10.4C to its website. A bureau spokeswoman said the low recording had been checked for “quality assurance” before being posted.

The bureau said limits were set on how low temperatures could go at some stations before a manual check was needed to confirm them. “The bureau’s quality *control system, designed to filter out spurious low or high values was set at minus 10 minimum for Goulburn which is why the record automatically adjusted,” a bureau spokeswoman said.

A similar failure had deleted a reading of minus 10.4 at Thredbo Top on July 16 even though temperatures at that station had been recorded as low as minus 14.7 in the past. That temperature was still blank on the bureau’s website yesterday. The bureau did not respond to questions about how widely the quality control system had been applied and at what upper temperature the cut-off had been set.

Dr Marohasy has evidence of the initial minus 10.4C recording at Thredbo before it was deleted for quality assurance. “This either reflects an extraordinary incompetence, or a determination to prevent evidence of low temperatures,” Dr Marohasy said

The Australian has an editorial position on this also: Bureau clouds weather debate

That adjustment process, known as homogenisation, has got the bureau in trouble in the past. Again, the issue has been one of transparency. The bureau has made a series of changes to historical records across the country. It says it does so to adjust for the movement of a weather station site, changes to surrounding vegetation or results that look wrong when compared with nearby sites. Such homogenisation is not unique to Australia but the bureau sometimes fails to convince when asked to explain the specific local adjustments it has made, especially if these bolster a warming trend. The same goes for any practices that discount cold temperatures.

The official record must be accurate and trusted. Otherwise, claims of historic extremes — the hottest winter day! — only mislead and public policy gets corrupted. Even if the bureau does have all the answers, it needs to do a better job of taking the public — sceptics included — into its confidence.

[bubbaearl]

i know corporation . he's an old fat bald white dude who rolls around naked in his money . i'm so tired of this leftist greenie shit about corporations and big business. every one of them who bitch have a 401 that is heavy with corporate stock . just like that fool al gore and his energy sucking mansions .
hell at least gw has his ranch house pretty much green .

[Gasser64]

I like your alternative and 100% agree on the contributions. Huge waste of money.

I'd say its more than a huge waste of money. As far as I'm concerned its an evil act committed by evil people. A direct subversion of the will of the people. Bribery. I want all campaign contributions of any kind banned, with painful, unnecessarily harsh penalties for breaking the rule and taking (or attempting to give) any form or fashion of a contribution. Something that will make it not at all worth it to risk taking a bribe. If this were accomplished, they'd be beholden only to the people, and the people are going to then have all the power to keep unruly corporations in check. Which in my estimation will work out great, because you don't want to harm the corporation because that's where you work. But you also want them to behave themselves.

However, I don't think this solves anything on the resource waste front, it just moves dollars from lobbyists back to corporations. Sure, more jobs, more economy is good, but it doesn't help with Americans being so damn wasteful.

I'm of the mind that will be solved with technology. The better it gets, the less wasteful we are. We'll hit a certain point, where very little ever gets wasted. The electric cars are a prime example. 86% efficiency vs 25% energy efficiency is a big step in the right direction, and will have a big effect on that waste you're talking about. A lot less energy wasted there. And that's just one area of improvement. Almost all areas are improving, and there will come a day where no more improvements in terms of waste, are needed.

With the cars they've just got to keep a close eye on the battery disposal and recycling process. So they don't kill their own efforts at trying to dial way back on pollution.

[Strychnine]

Anyone still think that Trump pulling our wallet our of the Paris Accord is the worst thing in the world?

'Dodgy' greenhouse gas data threatens Paris accord

Matt McGrath - Environment correspondent
8 August 2017


Potent, climate-warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the UN records just a tiny amount of the substance being emitted.

Levels of some emissions from India and China are so uncertain that experts say their records are plus or minus 100%.

These flaws posed a bigger threat to the Paris climate agreement than US President Donald Trump's intention to withdraw, researchers told BBC Radio 4's Counting Carbon programme.


Bottom-up records
Among the key provisions of the Paris climate deal, signed by 195 countries in December 2015, is the requirement that every country, rich or poor, has to submit an inventory of its greenhouse-gas emissions every two years. Under UN rules, most countries produce "bottom-up" records, based on how many car journeys are made or how much energy is used for heating homes and offices. But air-sampling programmes that record actual levels of gases, such as those run by the UK and Switzerland, sometimes reveal errors and omissions.

In 2011, Swiss scientists first published their data on levels of a gas called HFC-23 coming from a location in northern Italy.

Between 2008 and 2010, they had recorded samples of the chemical, produced in the refrigeration and air conditioning industries, which is 14,800 times more warming to the atmosphere than CO2. Now the scientists, at the Jungfraujoch Swiss air monitoring station, have told the BBC the gas is still going into the atmosphere. "Our estimate for this location in Italy is about 60-80 tonnes of this substance being emitted every year. Then we can compare this with the Italian emission inventory, and that is quite interesting because the official inventory says below 10 tonnes or in the region of two to three tonnes," said Dr Stefan Reimann, from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. "They actually say it is happening, but they don't think it is happening as much as we see.

"Just to put it into perspective, this greenhouse gas is thousands [14,800] of times stronger than CO2. But Dr Reimann told Counting Carbon: "We still see 10,000-20,000 tonnes coming out of China every year." "That is something that shouldn't be there." "There is actually no Chinese inventory for these gases, as they are banned and industry shouldn't be releasing them anymore." China's approach to reporting its overall output of warming gases to the UN is also subject to constant and significant revisions. Its last submission ran to about 30 pages - the UK's, by contrast, runs to several hundred.

Back in 2007, China simply refused to accept, in official documents, that it had become the largest emitter of CO2. "I was working in China in 2007," said Dr Angel Hsu, from Yale University. "I would include a citation and statistics that made this claim of China's position as the number one emitter - these were just stricken out, and I was told the Chinese government doesn't yet recognise this particular statistic so we are not going to include it." A report in 2015 suggested one error in China's statistics amounted to 10% of global emissions in 2013.

The BBC investigation also discovered vast uncertainties in carbon emissions inventories, particularly in developing countries. Methane, the second most abundant greenhouse gas after CO2, is produced by microbe activity in marshlands, in rice cultivation, from landfill, from agriculture and in the production of fossil fuels. Global levels have been rising in recent years, and scientists are unsure why. For a country such as India, home to 15% of the world's livestock, methane is a very important gas in their inventory - but the amount produced is subject to a high degree of uncertainty "What they note is that methane emissions are about 50% uncertain for categories like ruminants, so what this means is that the emissions they submit could be plus or minus 50% of what's been submitted," said Dr Anita Ganesan, from the University of Bristol, who has overseen air monitoring research in the country. "For nitrous oxide, that's 100%."

There are similar uncertainties with methane emissions in Russia, of between 30-40%, according to scientists who work there. "What we're worried about is what the planet experiences, never mind what the statistics are," said Prof Euan Nisbet, from Royal Holloway, University of London. "In the air, we see methane going up. The warming impact from that methane is enough to derail Paris."

The rules covering how countries report their emissions are currently being negotiated. But Prof Glen Peters, from the Centre for International Climate Research, in Oslo, said: "The core part of Paris [is] the global stock-takes which are going to happen every five years, and after the stock-takes countries are meant to raise their ambition, but if you can't track progress sufficiently, which is the whole point of these stock-takes, you basically can't do anything.

"So, without good data as a basis, Paris essentially collapses. It just becomes a talkfest without much progress."

"So, that would be like an Italian town of 80,000 inhabitants not emitting any CO2." The Italian environment agency told the BBC its inventory was correct and complied with UN regulations and it did not accept the Swiss figures. Another rare warming gas, carbon tetrachloride, once popular as a refrigerant and a solvent but very damaging to the ozone layer, has been banned in Europe since 2002.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40669449

[Mysticcobrakilla]

Oh shit, we have red text again!