Hey Datanauts - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online

Hey Datanauts - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online

Since a lot of the computer analysis code was leaked with the CRU files, I wonder if it would be possible to stuff pseudo-random data into the required data structures and reproduce AGW with their analysis routines? If an AGW signal is present in random soup or in data with a long-term artificially-enforced decline bias, then the whole AGW-thing really does collapse.

Jonah, pass Dr Bob the following URLS

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2086
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=800
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=63

the short answer is that he’s right; there have been many reconstructions of the Mann, Wahl and Ammann results using noise with various spectral characteristics. (If you’re not careful I’ll explain that.)

Regarding your post in The Corner about whether AGW may survive the crisis: I doubt it, as the temperature data themselves have been manipulated.

To see the McIntyre experiment alluded to by the reader, talk a look at this page from Climate Audit. The problems with the Mann data handling are pretty well summed up in the abstract to the M&M paper here.

For an accessible discussion of why modern temperature measurements are likely biased, see the Chiefio blog, here. Basically those who decree where temperatures should be measured have decided that high mountains are too expensive to measure and that all temperatures will be measured at the beach. In the US, and in South America. For Russia, they just copied September data 2009 data into October 2009 and called it warming.