NASA’s global warming evidence page filled with lies, half truths and suspect data.

This is the problem when you have an administration that hires the most dedicated radicals and is willing to politicize most everything.

If you doubt just how politicized NASA has become:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden created a firestorm after telling Al Jazeera in June 2010 that President Obama told him before he took the job that he wanted him to do three things:

1 – inspire children to learn math and science
2 – expand international relationships and
3 – ‘perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.’

So much for NASA’s primary mission of space exploration says former NASA administrator Micheal Griffin who calls the change in priorities “deeply flawed“.

Let us begin with the image at the top of NASA’s AGW evidence web site:

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)

 

The ice core data never has shown CO2 levels above 284.7 over the last 70,000 years (see official Vostok Ice Core Data below) so where in the world did they get this graph and how was it generated?

First I started with the linked reference to NOAA, yes the same outfit that gets its recent data from James Hansen who stated that energy industry CEO’s should be put on trial for crimes against humanity, the same NOAA/NASA/ Goddard that has been caught manufacturing data and prefers data from ground station sensors that have been found on black top parking lots (don’t walk on it barefoot on a sunny day), next to building heat vents, at the beginning on runways so that jet engine jet wash hits them, placed on rocky like gravel, in refuge dumps, and all sorts of other places that serve to drive the measurements up.

So as I was saying, I examined the NOAA link and it brings you to this intimidating looking page filled with a long list of links to data sets. Seems pretty convincing right? Until I started examining the data on the page. The first thing I noticed is that no where on the page does it explain how these data sets were put together to generate this graph. So much for transparency. The second thing I noticed is that many of the links do not go to CO2 data sets at all many of them go to methane data sets like this one and ionized oxygen data sets like this one.

Again what is the claim made on NASA’s web site:

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution.

[Keep that reference to the industrial revolution in mind because soon we are going to come back to it – Editor]

The final “hockey stick” shaped part of this graph I have seen before, but to make sure I wasn’t missing something I started looking for this image on the web sites of “noted” proponents of global warming alarmism. So I started doing some Google image searching and I found it. I should not have been surprised when I discovered that famed global warming alarmism debunker Anthony Watts had already outed one of the chief suspects using this bogus graph.

This is the photo of Dr. Bradley right on  his University of Massachusetts  web page.  Dr. Raymond S. Bradley who is listed as:

University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Director of the Climate System Research Center (http://www.paleoclimate.org).

As Anthony Watts correctly reminds us, “Readers may also recognize Dr. Bradley from his co-authorship with Dr. Michael Mann in the famous MBH98 paper which produced the embattled ‘hockey stick’ graph.”

The hockey stick graph is a result of the now infamous computer model made by Dr. Michael Mann (of ClimateGate fame) and Dr. Bradley that generated this hockey stick no matter what numbers were entered into the model. The model could not generate known measurements when genuine data form the past was entered into it. Mann and Bradley tried to hide the raw data so that no one could verify their claims until they were forced to hand the data for the “hockey stick” over.

This video shows the story of how how the famed ‘hockey stick’, which was a key component of the IPCC and Al Gore’s movie, was destroyed by Professor Ross McKitrick and Professor of Applied Mathematics Christopher Essex:

Look at the circled parts of Dr. Bradley’s picture. He claims that this data is from the Vostok Ice Core Data with a number showing over 360. Anthony Watts examined every ice core data set to check for these numbers:

For readers not familiar with the CO2 data from the Vostok Ice Core, you can find the official data set here from NOAA’s FTP servers:

CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center)
ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/trends/co2/vostok.icecore.co2

NCDC (National Climatic Data Center)
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/co2nat.txt

NASA Goddard also offers access to the official Vostok data here:
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_CDIAC_CO2_VOSTOK_ICECORE.html

…and they offer this helpful graph, which is time reversed from Dr. Bradley’s graph, with the present day on the left:

The answer is seems, is that there is no new data from the Vostok Ice core. It ended, and the official repositories of that data have no new data. The last CO2 value for the Vostok Ice Core dataset is listed as being 284.7ppm.

So how does Dr. Bradley get ~360ppm? Easy, I think he uses the same technique he and his co-authors learned when writing the famous MBH98 paper that made the hockey stick -splice the instrumental record onto the paleo record:

[IUSB Vision Editor’s Note – Notice how this graph eliminates the “Medieval Warming Period” from the proxy hockey stick method used to generate the pre-1850 temperature record? See why this manipulation was important to them HERE and HERE;  as they show how the proxy data averages can be manipulated and how the proxy data methods when used passed 1850 show gaps where it does not match the temperature record. It was because of this variation in the proxy method of measuring temperature post 1850, which shows global temps falling, that the ClimateGate scientists had to “hide the decline”. As has been argued and demonstrated by many data sets that skeptics have pointed out there is evidence that pre-1850 temp measurements have been steered down and more recent instrument data , such as the NOAA ground station data and the filling in the gaps data mentioned above have been used to steer modern measurements up.  There are indeed several data sets that show that global temps have been flat-lining within the margin of error and/or show a slight cooling trend as you will see below, but global warming alarmists do not wish to discuss those… and they accuse us of cherry picking data. Pot meet kettle!]

Dr. Bradley’s 1999 article in Nature that shows (PDF) to the first Vostok Ice Core Data to have a CO2 PPM count of just over 280 and yet his photo shows it at over 360. The latest data sets linked above from the Vostok Ice Core is from 2003 which gives us the 284.7. So where does this 360+ number come from? [Keep these bold text years (1999 & 2003) in mind as that becomes crucial in a moment – Editor]

Aside from the bogus  aforementioned ‘hockey stick’ method of graphing, there is only one raw data set that shows numbers that appear in the NASA graph and the Bradley picture. That dataset is from the weather station atop Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii.  data is controversial because it always shows the very highest amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of any data set. Why? First,  it sits atop an active volcano that constantly spews CO2. Second, Hawaii is a small land mass that sits in a very hot part of the world which is surrounded by the ocean. The warmer it gets the more the ocean releases its CO2 (think of the ocean like a giant CO2 sponge.) Not exactly the most objective choice to measure “global” CO2 to be sure.

So lets look at that Mauna Loa dataset. And at what year is the measurement just over 360 as in the Bradley picture and is today 380 just as it appears in the NASA graph  – ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt :

The 1999 values are (hey look its Dr. Bradley’s numbers from the picture) –

1999   3    1999.208      369.46      369.46      367.90     26
1999   4    1999.292      370.77      370.77      368.19     30
1999   5    1999.375      370.66      370.66      367.84     29
1999   6    1999.458      370.10      370.10      367.87     30
1999   7    1999.542      369.10      369.10      368.42     30
1999   8    1999.625      366.70      366.70      368.21     30
1999   9    1999.708      364.61      364.61      367.95     29
1999  10    1999.792      365.17      365.17      368.41     31
1999  11    1999.875      366.51      366.51      368.58     29
1999  12    1999.958      367.85      367.85      368.58     29

And the 2009 numbers are (Hey look its the numbers from the NASA graph)

2009   3    2009.208      388.77      388.77      387.18     30
2009   4    2009.292      389.46      389.46      386.66     28
2009   5    2009.375      390.18      390.18      386.98     31
2009   6    2009.458      389.43      389.43      387.10     29
2009   7    2009.542      387.74      387.74      387.27     31
2009   8    2009.625      385.91      385.91      387.65     30
2009   9    2009.708      384.77      384.77      388.05     27
2009  10    2009.792      384.38      384.38      387.77     31
2009  11    2009.875      385.99      385.99      388.14     30
2009  12    2009.958      387.27      387.27      388.15     21

Well well well, we have found our dataset and it is NOT from Vostok Ice Cores or any other ice core; nor is it just a direct CO2 reading from Vostok. Dr. Bradley, obviously using the same academic integrity he displayed in his “hockey stick’ sham, pasted the Mauna Loa data onto the Vostok Ice Core data to make one impressive looking graph. He of course just didn’t believe it was necessary to reveal that little detail. I examined the properties of Dr. Bradley’s photo and it was last modified on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:51:19 PM also known as Barack Obama’s inauguration day. Was someone trying to get attention for a grant or a job?

This data is also certainly not “a comparison of more direct measurements” as the NASA graph states or an average of the data given as the NOAA source link. It is the pasting of the raw numbers from the most elevated dataset they could find onto the Vostok Ice Core dataset, and presented as if it was some kind of “average”.

Anthony Watts states it this way:

Now here’s the problem. If you took surface temperature data [or CO2 data for that matter] from Antarctica, and spliced it with surface temperature data from Hawaii, and then presented it as the entire historical record from Antarctica, our friends would have a veritable “cow”.

Or, if you took stock performance data from poorly performing Company “A” and spliced on better performing stock data from Company “B”, and then made a new graph and used that graph to sell investors on Company “A”, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would have a veritable “cow” when they found out, wouldn’t they? People go to jail for such things.

But hey, this is Climate Science.

Remember how we told you to keep in mind the comment from the NASA graph about the Industrial Revolution? Keep in mind that CO2 is but one of the smallest players in global temps and global temps do not always follow CO2 levels. The sun has a much larger impact than man made CO2 and global temps often, but do not always follow solar output cycles. This shows that there are many factors that affect global temperatures.

Examine the graph [above] carefully. It shows that most of the warming that has happened in the last 200 years occurred before 1940; well before most industrialization and before most people had used cars. It shows that global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1975, which is the time of the post war economic boom, the highest period of global industrialization in world history. According to the theory of man made global warming the temperatures should not have gone up much before 1940 and should have went up quickly after 1940. Exactly the opposite is what took place.

Says Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the director of the International Arctic Research Center, “[man-made] CO2 began to increase exponentially in about 1940 but the temperature actually began to decrease and continued ‘til [sic] 1975. We cannot say that CO2 and temperature go together.” Dr. Nir Shaviv of the Institute of Physics, University of Jerusalem states that “there were periods in Earth history when we had three times as much CO2 as we have today or ten times as much CO2 as we have today and if CO2 has a large effect on climate we would see it in the temperature reconstruction.”

Dr. Piers Corbyn, lead climate forecaster for Weather Action (England) said, “None of the major climate changes in the last 1000 years can be explained by CO2.” Dr. Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia and IPCC author states that “Anyone who goes around and says that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming of the 20th century hasn’t looked at the basic numbers.”

Dr. Ian Clark a leading paleo-climatologist from the University of Ottawa says, “If we look at climate in the geological time frame we would never suspect CO2 as a major climate driver. You can’t say that CO2 will drive climate. It certainly never did in the past.”

What about the rest of what is on that NASA page? While I do not have the data to refute all of the points listed, I do have the data to refute, or at least very credibly challenge,  several data points they have listed.To see a long list of IPCC retractions go HERE, HERE, and HERE.

 

 

NASA Gives a Dire Warning About Global Sea Levels

Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.

This is a typical example of relatively accurate information delivered with an “attitude” to imply a coming catastrophe. Look at the temperature chart above. The global temps did indeed rise several tenths of a degree before 1940 which shows why measurement over a century would show a sea level rise. Then for 35 years the Globe cooled during the massive CO2 output of the post war industrial boom. Then global temps rose quickly from 1976 to 1998 which would result in a rapid warming and expansion of the ocean just NASA says which makes sense given the date of their data set,  but since most of this happened before the post war industrial boom how is this mans fault?

IPCC is already retracting doom and gloom claims of massive sea level rises.

UK Guardian 21 Feb 2010:

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown.

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study “strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results“. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

UK Guardian 20 Jan 2010:

IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers

Senior members of the UN’s climate science body admit a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded.

The UN’s climate science body has admitted that a claim made in its 2007 report – that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 – was unfounded.

The admission today followed a New Scientist article last week that revealed the source of the claim made in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not peer-reviewed scientific literature – but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. Several senior scientists have now said the claim was unrealistic and that the large Himalayan glaciers could not melt in a few decades.

In a statement (pdf), the IPCC said the paragraph “refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.”

 

 

 

NASA Says Global Temperatures Rising

All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. 5 Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. 6 Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase. 7

They are correct that the Earth warmed much since 1880 before the post war industrial boom. But they left out the cooling form 1940 to 1975 as shown in the chart above. The claim that most of the warming happened after 1970 is disputed to the point where I feel safe saying that the claim is demonstrably false. The claim that the surface temps continue to rise from 2007 to 2009 is from those NASA/NOAA/Goddard ground stations we told you about above. The other source for this is the discredited CRU which was the epicenter of the ClimateGate data manipulation and destruction of raw data. There are satellite datasets that dispute the 2007-2009 claim.

Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia (CRU) climate scientist at the centre of the Climategate scandal, concedes to the BBC we’ve had warming bursts just like the last one that the IPCC claims was probably man-made. Jones also admitted there has been no statistical significant warming since 1995. Herald Sun of Australia 15 Feb 2010 (another link HERE).

[Editor’s Note  – So I get a tweet from one of the pro-AGW alarmist telling me that “Phil Jones was misquoted”. So I go to the LINK he sends and right there on the page it says:

Phil Jones is saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. [Hello isn’t that what we just said – Editor] He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period. To demonstrate this, look at the HadCRUT temperature record from 1995 to 2009. The linear trend is that of warming. However, the temperature record is very noisy with lots of short term variability. The noisy signal means that over a short period, the uncertainty of the warming trend is almost as large as the actual trend.

This makes my point exactly, when the “noise” and the “trend” are within the margin of error and amount to tiny variations (CRU of ClimateGate fame has already shown that they are desperate to steer temperature data upwards anyways) there is a term for this, its called flat-lining. There is noise and variation within the margin of error that is not statistically significant. Maybe one day that will change, but is this the data that we want to completely reform our economy on and turn it over to far left central planners in the government?  This is from the same guys that tried to make the entire world believe was catastrophic by manipulating the data and the peer review process to scare the hell out of people.

This dataset shows a flatline, other datasets show a slight cooling trend, some say we are going into a mini ice age, other alarmist scientists insisted that 2010 would be the warmest year on record which just hasn’t shown to be the case. Now they point to Pakistan that did have a hot year:

Socialist Worker blames global warming and capitalism for floods

UN Links Pakistan Floods to Climate Change

But hey guys that’s weather not climate. I can do the same thing so why not link the following to the type of  global cooling the IPCC author predicts in the video below?. England had the coldest year since 1996, Norway just had the coldest November in living memory, Europe is snow covered and cold (2) and the British Meteorological Office data shows that global temps have flat-lined for 15 years.]

The UK Hadley Center which (is global warming alarmist) published a dataset with the University of Alabama showing global cooling since 2002 HERE.

 

 

 

 

Roger Helmer from the European Parliament comments:

This graph shows average global temperature records for the last five [to 6.5 years] years from two of the world’s most respected meteorological institutes, the UK’s Hadley Centre, and the University of Alabama in the US. Both show a clear downward trend, and the graph contrasts that trend explicitly with the rising trend of atmospheric CO2.

This dataset form the National Climactic Data Center (a part of NOAA/NASA) shows the same cooling trend:

NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.

There was so much cooling that the UK Telegraph published a column declaring 2008 to be the year that mane made global warming was disproved complete with a load of good links.

An IPCC lead author Mojib Latif  tells us to expect 30 years of cooling –

So much for the old “All scientists agree” and “total scientific consensus”.

 

 

 

 

NASA Warns of Warming Oceans

The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.

But IPCC lead author Mojib Latif just told us in the video above that changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation and studies in changes of ocean temps would result in 30 years of cooling or a mini ice age [perhaps like Europe had a few hundred years ago].

 

 

 

 

NASA Warns of Shrinking Ice Sheets

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.

Sounds ominous, luckily we have the University of British Columbia to make us all feel better as they went and ruined the alarmists day by publishing a study in Nature telling us about that Greenland ice sheet melt: “it’s weather, not climate”.

While there are some data sets that say Antarctic sea ice is shrinking, other data sets say quite the opposite. The CATO Institute quotes the IPCC which states that they expect Antarctic ice to grow in the 21st century and they also quote Nature in 2003 showing cooling and January 2008  Geophysical Research Letters expressing doubts.

 

 

 

 

NASA Warns of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades. (And they show a picture of the ice at its minimum – scarey!)

Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying Oct. 15, 2008:

10/14/2008 7,064,219 square kilometers

10/14/2007 5,487,656 square kilometers

A difference of: 1,576,563 square kilometers, now in fairness, 2008 was a leap year, so to avoid that criticism, the value of 6,857,188 square kilometers can be used which is the 10/13/08 value, for a difference of 1,369,532 sq km. Still not too shabby at 24.9 %. The one day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also quite impressive.

You can download the source data in an Excel file at the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent:

Watch the red line as it progresses. So far we are back to above 2005 levels, and 28.7% (or 24.9% depending on how you want to look at it) ahead of last year at this time. That’s quite a jump, basically a 3x gain, since the minimum of 9% over 2007 set on September 16th. Read about that here.

Go nature!

There is no mention of this on the National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage, which has been trumpeting every loss and low for the past two years…not a peep. You’d think this would be big news. Perhaps the embarrassment of not having an ice free north pole in 2008, which was sparked by press comments made by Dr. Mark Serreze there and speculation on their own website, has made them unresponsive in this case.

What I like about the IARC-JAXA website is that they simply report the data, they don’t try to interpret it, editorialize it, or make press releases on it. They just present the data.

November 22, 2010 AccuWeather Sea Ice Report – Northern Sea Ice still coming back – Southern Sea Ice on long increasing trend.

http://www.accuweather.com/video/683773758001/monday-morning-sea-ice-and-glo.asp

All of the charts are posted on the Sea Ice Page for all to see. Northern Sea Ice went on the downward curve on its cycle with the bottom coming in 2007. Now the ice trend is curving back up just as cycles do.

 

 

Related:

Polar Bears in decline or is Michael Mann of ClimateGate fame propagandizing? AccuWeather responds – http://www.accuweather.com/video/666221245001/hunting-not-global-warming-m.asp

Global Warming Policy Foundation: A Year After Climategate, The Corruption Of Science Persists

EPA Tried to Supress Global Warming Report Admitting Skeptics Correct

The Roundup.

New peer reviewed paper shows just how bad the climate models really are – LINK

How Global Warming Propaganda Works

IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT: Most global warming models are exaggerated, many scientists in it for the grant money or treat it like a religion

More ClimateGate One Year Later

Top Scientist Resigns from American Physical Society: says global warming is a scam – scientists corrupted by big money

Professor to Students: ‘Blood Will be on Your Hands’ if You Don’t Fight Global Warming

More Hadley Center Global Warming Horror Claims Debunked by Real Science

Bjorn Lomborg: Government Plans to Stop Global Warming Won’t Work

National Association of Scholars on the “ClimateGate” Scandal

UN IPCC Co-chair: climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth

IPCC Author Dr. John Christy Lecture on Climate Change

NOAA Claim: Warmest June Ever – But They Made Up Much of the Data!

Climate Scientist Idiotic Quote of the Day: Only 10% of Population Will Survive Global Warming