NOAA global temperature paper prompts a torrent of paranoid conspiracies at WUWT

If you ever want to get overloaded with conspiracy ideation, just go to a denier blog. It's almost unbelievable that there really are people whose first thought, when they think "climate science" is: it's a hoax; scientists are faking it. Some might argue that it's just that gullible people who are fed lies are being deceived. I don't see it as that. It's that people go to disinformation sites because it's only there that they will find what they want to believe. The visitors to conspiracy theory sites are by nature prone to conspiracy ideation.

This article won't interest everyone. It documents the conspiratorial and illogical reaction to climate science that you read every day on anti-science blogs. This article is a record of some of the reaction to the new NOAA paper on global surface temperature. You can read the main article about Karl15, if you want to know what caused such a knee-jerk response of conspiratorial thinking in the deniosphere.

Responses to NOAA paper from selected scientists

First, some responses from scientists to Karl15 (see the main HW article here). This first lot of responses are from the Australian Science Media Centre. See the list of links under the main article for some other responses. You might notice the slightly more equivocal (defensive?) responses come from scientists in the UK.

There’s nothing all that new in this paper and nothing that surprises me. The bottom line is that multiple data sets and multiple lines of evidence have shown that global warming hasn’t stalled at all. This is another paper adding to this evidence. - Professor Matthew England, Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at UNSW

...This suggests that the much-discussed recent slowdown in global temperatures is far less pronounced than previously thought. In addition, estimates of climate sensitivity constrained by past observations may need a slight upwards revision, increasing the risk of negative consequences from our warming climate in future. - Dr Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at NCAS, University of Reading

A whole cottage industry has been built by climate skeptics on the false premise that there is currently a hiatus in global warming. This is despite climate data showing continued warming of the Earth surface. Much of the media have latched on to this supposed slow-down as it continues the ‘for and against’ climate change debate. The weight of evidence for anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming and this new study shows that the global warming hiatus was just wishful thinking. - Prof Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at University College London

This reassessment of global temperatures, which gives that there has been no pause or slowdown in surface warming since 1998, is very important as it comes from an extremely well regarded group at a US Government laboratory. It has been known that the storage of the excess heat caused by increased greenhouse gases has continued, and it had been thought that the reduction in surface warming must be due to natural variation in the heat exchanged between the atmosphere and ocean. Now it appears that any such exchange of heat between the atmosphere and ocean has not been large enough to obscure the global warming trend, even in the relatively short period we have so far had in the 21st century. It also suggests that some of the lower estimates of warming that depend on the low trend in recent temperatures may no longer be credible. - Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, Chair of the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London

...Nevertheless, I would caution against dismissing the slowdown in surface warming on the basis of this study, nor to downplay the role of natural decadal variability for short-term trends in climate. There are other datasets that still support a slowdown over some recent period of time, and there are intriguing geographical patterns such as cooling in large parts of the Pacific Ocean that were used to support explanations for the warming slowdown. It will be interesting to see if these patterns are still present in the revised NOAA dataset (the new paper shows only the global average temperature). Furthermore, a key feature of the apparent slowdown in surface warming was that it left the observed warming close to the bottom of the range of climate model projections of warming during the last few years at least. The newly revised NOAA data can be used to update that comparison, though it’s not likely to resolve that issue. - Prof Tim Osborn, Professor of Climate Science at the University of East Anglia

...Overall this study demonstrates the importance of further work in narrowing down uncertainties in global temperature datasets and in better understanding climate variability. These are areas the Met Office has been working on for a number of years. The numbers in this study are within the uncertainty ranges calculated in our own global temperature dataset and we’re in the midst of a long-term project to further improve and narrow down our understanding of uncertainties. Understanding variability in the rate of global average surface warming is an ongoing and active research topic. - Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office Hadley Centre

The results and conclusions reached by Thomas Karl and others are certainly in accord with what we are seeing amongst the world’s glaciers, where melting – retreat or thinning – is taking place very widely. The results are also consistent with broader disruptions in the global climate system that the world’s people are feeling. The idea being pushed blindly by some with vested interests that somehow the planet is not responding to continued emissions of greenhouse gases doesn’t make sense from a simple physics viewpoint; but the climate-change denialism also doesn’t sit well with people who can read the newspaper and watch the TV news about climate change in action and who can recognize the effects in their own experiences. - Prof Jeffrey Kargel, Glaciologist at the University of Arizona

This is a careful and persuasive analysis, and I think shows clearly that the so-called ‘hiatus’ does not exist and that global warming has continued over the past few years at the same rate as in earlier years. - Prof Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge

And from realclimate.org:

This kind of update happens all the time as datasets expand through data-recovery efforts and increasing digitization, and as biases in the raw measurements are better understood. However, this update is going to be bigger news than normal because of the claim that the ‘hiatus’ is no more. To understand why this is perhaps less dramatic than it might seem, it’s worth stepping back to see a little context...The harrumphing from the usual quarters has already started. The Cato Institute sent out a pre-rebuttal even before the paper was published, replete with a litany of poorly argued points and illogical non-sequiturs. From the more excitable elements, one can expect a chorus of claims that raw data is being inappropriately manipulated. The fact that the corrections for non-climatic effects reduce the trend will not be mentioned. Nor will there be any actual alternative analysis demonstrating that alternative methods to dealing with known and accepted biases give a substantially different answer (because they don’t). - Dr Gavin Schmidt of GISS NASA

Reaction from WUWT deniers and disinformers

In stark contrast to the above are WUWT comments demonstrating the conspiratorial and illogical thinking in response to Karl15. These are from the WUWT "thoughts" written under the most calm response to Karl15 at WUWT, an article by Ross McKitrick (archived here). Notice the conspiratorial comments from Pat Michaels who is employed by the denier lobby group, the CATO Institute. I've highlighted some of the key conspiratorial phrases in bold italics.


Conspiracy theory: scientists will do anything for money

Ted G  June 4, 2015 at 12:26 pmRoss

The hiatus in global warming is provable, a fact but that is not enough for the doom and gloom crowd. After all if it is this is the case, they will have to get real jobs and no more exotic travel junkets!

Conspiracy theory: scientists will do anything for fame

Mike Smith  June 4, 2015 at 2:03 pm

Karl et al wanted their 15 minutes of fame. And they got it.
The end.

Conspiracy theory: Scientists will fake results for political masters or political agenda

pat michaels  June 4, 2015 at 3:23 pm (excerpt)

It is useful because Karl’s boss needed the result. They are obviously getting hurt by the pause. He doesn’t care that the fact that he raised all the buoy data by .12degC, coupled to the fact that the number of buoy datapoints is increasing compared to the intake data, MUST induce a warming trend....The truth does not matter to Obama Administration scientists.

kim  June 4, 2015 at 5:38 pm

This is monstrously perverse inquiry. What, in Gaia’s name, made them think this was scientific rather than politically useful information? I shudder to think they ignored that calculus in their deliberations. How much madness and evil can this discipline, and the policy it has misbegotten, stand?

Salvatore Del Prete  June 4, 2015 at 4:36 pm

The only data that matters is data that is not agenda driven which is satellite data. End of story. 

joelobryan  June 4, 2015 at 6:13 pm (excerpt)

That AAAS and Science Mag would publish such an arguably piece of garbage, confirmation-biased result of K15 speaks volumes to the levels of political corruption that has invaded the AAAS. 

mem  June 4, 2015 at 6:35 pm (excerpt)

Propaganda in Action?
Should anyone wonder how the mainstream media will respond to this new paper they needn’t go any further than the AustralianScienceMediaCentre. This site coordinates pre-prepared responses from a range of selected scientists. Remarkably these all give credibility to the warmist cause. (Goebbels would be proud of what amounts to a scientific propaganda filtering for journalists.) This organisation has been duplicated in other countries so performs a global propaganda purpose which appears to be strongly influenced by the UN and left. I recommend anyone who cares about freedom of scientific thought and the media goes to this site now and see for themselves how this operates. 

joelobryan  June 4, 2015 at 8:32 pm

The behavior of a politicized executive branch agency under the Obama Administration is by now to be expected. The Obama Admin mantra is firmly in the “If you aren’t lying, you aren’t rying” realm.
No, the real takeaway for me is that credibility of the AAAS is on hiatus, and possibly may fall fatally off the cliff in a few years when the fraud of this pseudoscience is exposed. 

Conspiracy theory: Climate science is a scam, a hoax (general)

pat michaels  June 4, 2015 at 7:14 pm

Ross is amazingly polite, both in print and in person. I do not know how he does it, given the magnitude of the bull$hit he is documenting.

Stephen Richards  June 4, 2015 at 1:11 pm

You see how the FIFA scam is unravelling. They are all turning on each other to save their themselves from prison. Well that’s how the AGW scam will end, I HOPE. These scam all end eventually and very often in super quick time. Like a cascade.

Brian R  June 4, 2015 at 1:48 pm (excerpt)

...Or, they could just be working for The Team in trying to remove or reduce the impact that “The Pause” has had on the psyche of the believers and non-believers alike.

carbon-based life form  June 4, 2015 at 1:57 pm

Of course the record reflects continued warming, just add fudge.

Bill Illis  June 4, 2015 at 2:08 pm (excerpt)

We all know this simply a continuation of the process to adjust the temperature trend higher and higher to postpone the day of reckoning and having to face self-introspection.

Neo  June 4, 2015 at 2:15 pm

The Tobacco Institute would be proud of this work product.
The data was tortured until they got the answer they wanted. Proof that torture doesn’t work.

Thomas  June 4, 2015 at 8:36 pm

“skeptics have placed an awful lot of faith in the argument no warming for 18 years.” Because the satellite temperature records show just that. They can fiddle with super uncertain ground based measurements but they can’t fiddle the satellite data. We don’t “place an awful to of faith.” We just read the numbers and calculate the trends. NOAA and NASA ignore the most precise state-of-the-art data set. That is very odd … Okay, maybe not. Witch doctors and faith healers have no faith in modern medical imaging technology.

steve in seattle  June 4, 2015 at 2:57 pm

All the more reason to look at RSS and UAH ONLY, all the rest is manipulation, adjusting and homogenizing so as to keep the faith in their ” religion “. Counter their fraud in the MSM to the extent you / we can ! 

franktoo  June 4, 2015 at 3:12 pm (excerpt)

Their conclusions are settled and the data says whatever they want it to say. 

pochas  June 4, 2015 at 4:07 pm

Data fiddling is never justified. Too much potential for bias confirmation. If the data is not suited for purpose, get new data. We have plenty of time. 

Chuck Wiese  June 4, 2015 at 4:14 pm

...Another cheap and dishonest attempt to change and fake the history of the climate so as to save these shameless scientists from the throttling they deserve in helping the government steal from the public and enrich themselves in the continued taking.
Chuck Wiese
Meteorologist

hunter  June 4, 2015 at 4:39 pm

Twisting the knobs and torturing the data until they get the pre-selected answer. 

M Seward  June 4, 2015 at 4:46

Is this as big a fiddle as the Hockeyschtik? Basically the same device, data manipulation, to achieve the same end, get rid of an inconvenient historical record.
The best explanation is that pre ARGO the SST data was not fit to yield a global aggregate figure other than to say 0.5 or 1.0˚C say. Using it for identifying the sorts of variations and trends being sought is fundamentally flawed and so obviously so that in all honesty it should not have been attempted let alone relied on in any way. Using as a basis for policy is therefore utterly lunatic and you might be better off reading sheep’s entrails. 

Salvatore Del Prete  June 4, 2015 at 4:49 pm 

This is so agenda driven and does not deserve discussion. Their adjustments of the data are a fabrication of the truth and as far as I am concern are a non issue. Many reliable sources from Weatherbell Inc., to satellite data, to radiosonde data paint an entirely different correct truthful picture in contrast to the BS of the AGW agenda supporters.

Andres Valencia  June 4, 2015 at 6:28 pm 

Thanks, Dr. McKitrick. Good explanation.
Karl et al. is trying to rewrite the climate records to revive a dead parrot, so to speak. 

durango12  June 4, 2015 at 7:59 pm 

It is of course unabashed data buggering. The only question is whether these people believe their own manipulations or are they out and out liars. 

Neo June 4, 2015 at 8:21 pm 

The real takeaway from this paper isn’t whether or not the hiatus is real or not.
The real takeaway is that the folks at NOAA et al can use and abuse statistics to make the numbers say virtually anything. The could even tweet the numbers to make AGE go away.

joelobryan  June 4, 2015 at 8:32 pm 

The behavior of a politicized executive branch agency under the Obama Administration is by now to be expected. The Obama Admin mantra is firmly in the “If you aren’t lying, you aren’t rying” realm.
No, the real takeaway for me is that credibility of the AAAS is on hiatus, and possibly may fall fatally off the cliff in a few years when the fraud of this pseudoscience is exposed. 

Logical fallacy: only one part of the system can heat up with greenhouse warming

Aphan  June 4, 2015 at 2:30 pm 

So, I’m confused. If this paper is correct, doesn’t this mean that Trenberth and Co. were flat wrong about the heat being “missing” at all, and thus wrong about deep ocean warming? Wouldn’t it make a laughing stock of the entire climate science A Team because it was laying on the surface of the ocean all along and they’ve bent themselves into pretzels trying to explain something that never existed? Doesn’t it mean skeptics are free to apply random adjustments that cool the trend if they see fit? How on Earth does NASA think this makes them look like anything except idiots?

Logical fallacy: the strawman - scientists do not say "all the science is settled", plus the observations are in situ - from data collectors on ships and buoys on the sea surface.

franktoo  June 4, 2015 at 3:12 pm (excerpts)

Ross: Given satellite coverage, don’t we have one homogeneous source of SST data for since 1980 that doesn’t require adjustment. Doesn’t it show slower warming since 1998 than before?
...Then they have the audacity to say climate science is “settled”. Their conclusions are settled and the data says whatever they want it to say. If the hiatus can disappear by tweaking some adjustments, the main conclusion should have been that climate science has placed too much confidence in all of their results!
A real SCIENTIST who wanted to improve the SST temperature record would get his a$$ out from behind his computer and into the laboratory – by sailing around the world for a year or more measuring SST and MAT with a variety of current and historic methods. Then maybe we would have a scientific basis for combining a variety of incompatible records and calculating the uncertainty inherent in that process.

Selective belief: selecting information that supports a belief and rejecting everything else

steve in seattle  June 4, 2015 at 2:57 pm 

All the more reason to look at RSS and UAH ONLY, all the rest is manipulation, adjusting and homogenizing so as to keep the faith in their ” religion “. Counter their fraud in the MSM to the extent you / we can !

Logical fallacy: based on ignorance - tide gauge records are adjusted for pressure and land movement, among other things

Steve Case  June 4, 2015 at 3:14 pm 

You know what’s interesting? There seems to be no limit to the amount of temperature adjusting to various sources of manual temperature recording shipboard or land based. But as near as I can tell, manual records of sea level from tide gauges hasn’t been touched. I wonder if there is any sort of an assault on those records by people who wish they said something other than what they do. I know that the sea level data from satellites is regularly adjusted.

References and further reading

Thomas R. Karl, Anthony Arguez, Boyin Huang, Jay H. Lawrimore, James R. McMahon, Matthew J. Menne, Thomas C. Peterson, Russell S. Vose, Huai-Min Zhang. "Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus." http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/recent 4 June 2015. doi:10.1126/science.aaa5632 (subs req'd)

Other references and links relating to the above paper

A First Look at Ross McKitrick's "A First Look" by Alexander Coulter at Michigan Secular Student Alliance

Related from HotWhopper

• NOAA: No pause in the global surface temperature - main article describing the NOAA paper (Karl15) published in Science
• The perversity of deniers - and the "pause" that never was with Tom Peterson - Anthony Watts' email with the full response from Tom Peterson
• More perversity from Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat - about a very odd Twitter protest from Anthony Watts
• Pausing for a dozen protests at WUWT - summary of a dozen WUWT protests
• No pause in the frenzy of denial: at WUWT
• No pause in the frenzy of denial: S. Fred Singer
• Anthony Watts alleges fraud by the NOAA - Anthony's pre-embargo announcement "preparing the ground" and his first allegation of fraud