By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow

Note that our press release and research papers hit a raw nerve with alarmists who did not really meaningfully argue the data or science but challenged the claim it was ‘peer reviewed’ (in the sense they have defined and controlled the peer review process through what have become advocacy journals).

The traditional peer review often can be compared to the TSA boarding card approval process. If you are not on any no fly list, after a review of a photo ID and/or passport, you get a stamp and move on. With journal submissions, if you have the politically correct credentials, you get the stamp and are published. The journal ‘no-fly’ list it appears includes those deemed to be skeptics. For the review, there is often at least one reviewer ‘gatekeeper’ responsible for ensuring you don’t board the plane or in this case get your paper in the journal no matter how impressive your CV and content-rich your paper.

Our research reports are not traditional journal articles. The reports follow the approach used frequently in industry often for their own internal use. They were prepared by highly qualified authors using the best available data and understanding of the scientific factors, analyzed properly by the very best statisticians/econometricians. The reviewers who endorsed them are chosen to be highly qualified to evaluate the work. The individuals quoted in fact checker reviews like on Snopes are simply enforcers of orthodoxy, unable or unwilling to understand the processes applied and the science.

You must know that the traditional journal peer review process is broken. It is failing in a lack of robustness in the statistical analysis and widespread inability to replicate results. This is true in both the Medical and Scientific areas.  See examples here and here.

This story in Forbes by Henry Miller says “A number of empirical studies show that 80-90% of the claims coming from supposedly scientific studies in major journals fail to replicate”.

Another recent paper in Nature showed 70% of the papers in medical journals had studies that could not be replicated, many not even by the original authors. See an example of one such falsified report that the author worries is a part of an epidemic of agenda-driven science by press release and falsification that has reached crisis proportions here.

Other reports show an alarming number of papers having to be retracted. For example here Springer is retracting 107 papers from one journal after discovering they had been accepted with fake peer reviews.

Result-oriented corruption of peer review in climate science was proven by the Climategate emails.

In the journals, there are a small set of gatekeepers that block anything that goes against the editorial biases of the journals. Conversely, these journals and their reviewers do not provide a thorough due diligence review of those that they tend to agree with ideologically.  They are engaged in orthodoxy enforcement.

Indeed, Henry Miller wrote: “Another worrisome trend is the increasing publication of the results of flawed ‘advocacy research’ that is actually designed to give a false result that provides propaganda value for activists and can be cited long after the findings have been discredited.” A prime example of this is the hideously flawed but endlessly repeated “97% of climate scientists” paper by Cook and Lewandowski. EPA’s own Inspector General found that EPA’s Endangerment Finding was never properly reviewed, yet it is the basis of all EPA GHG regulations that imposed hundreds of billions in costs on the U.S. economy.

The scientific method requires the data used be made available and the work must be capable of being replicated. This should be required of all journals (in virtually all cases, as shown above, it is not).  Peer review has become pal review with gatekeepers that prevent alternate unbiased data analyses and presentation but rush new papers that support their ideology or view on the science.

In our research reports, we identify the reviewers, who have lent their names to the conclusion, and provide full access to the data for others to work with and either refute replicate, with and instructions on the analytical methods used.

Our team chose to apply the same research report procedures used in industry, which is to assemble the most qualified authors with the skills required to compile the data and rigorously perform the correct analysis. They draft a report and share the draft with a team of experts chosen for their expertise in this field to provide feedback. Almost no journals require that and their failure and rejection numbers speak for themselves.

Wegman et. al suggested one of the common failures in climate papers is the lack of necessary statistical expertise. For our research reports we assembled the highest qualified data experts, econometricians/statisticians and meteorologists/climatologists to draft the research project, do the rigorous statistical/econometric analyses, and then submitted their work to the best qualified scientists/econometricians for review. Attempts to discredit this report are now of course being made because it raises critically important questions about the quality and trustworthiness of the global surface temperature data sets.

The facts and statistical reasoning of this paper cannot be refuted merely by carping peer review. Instead, demonstration of a factual or logical error is required.

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Original Post:

This release and research study was covered by Michael Bastasch in the Daily Caller and picked up by Drudge.

Stated simply, our new research findings building on the previous work, totally debunks EPA’s claim that CO2 is a pollutant that must therefore be regulated. It does so by very clearly demonstrating the “Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) “ data, quoted all the time as setting new surface temperature records, have been purposefully adjusted in a manner such that they are now basically meaningless numbers. Continued reliance on this manipulated GAST data is supporting CO2 regulatory actions that very negatively impact the poor not only in the U.S., but worldwide. There is no scientific basis for this widespread regulation.

PRESS RELEASE

On the Validity of NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU Global Average Surface Temperature Data & The Validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding Abridged Research Report June 2017

New Research Report

Just released: A peer reviewed Climate Science Research Report has proven that it is all but certain that EPA’s basic claim that CO2 is a pollutant is totally false. All research was done pro bono.

The objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data are sufficiently credible estimates of global average temperatures such that they can be relied upon for climate modeling and policy analysis purposes. The relevance of this research is that the validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding requires GAST data to be a valid representation of reality.

In this research report past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by each entity systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.

As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. The conclusive findings were that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments which removed their cyclical temperature patterns are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S.and other temperature data.

Thus, despite current claims of record setting warming, it is impossible to conclude from the NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever.

Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings. This means that EPA’s 2009 claim that CO2 is a pollutant has been decisively invalidated by this research.

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The press release and research report was covered in the Daily Caller today here.  In the story Michael Bastasch writes:

Sam Kazman, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said the study added an “important new piece of evidence to this debate” over whether to reopen the endangerment finding. CEI petitioned EPA to reopen the endangerment finding in February.

“I think this adds a very strong new element to it,” Kazman told TheDCNF. “It’s enough reason to open things formally and open public comment on the charges we make.”

Since President Donald Trump ordered EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to review the Clean Power Plan, there’s been speculation the administration would reopen the endangerment finding to new scrutiny.

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Icecap Note: One of the reasons the temperature measures are flawed in the great uncertainties involved. See details here. See more detail here and an earlier very detailed working document here.

NCDC Climate Director Tom Karl whose paper in 1988 defined the UHI adjustment for the first version of USHCN wrote with Kukla and Gavin in a 1986 paper on Urban Warming:
“… the urban growth inhomogeneity is serious and must be taken into account when assessing the reliability of temperature records.” Inexplicably, the UHI adjustment Karl argued for was removed in USHCNv2. Many of us believe the global warming depicted is largely urban warming as urban heat is blended into the more representative rural station data through “homogenization”. 

Recall this was the third Research Report in the Series - the first two research efforts (see link here) set out to test for the Existence of a “Tropical Hot Spot” and the Validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding. Both dealt carefully and properly with econometric simultaneous equation parameter estimation issues in the two separate structural analyses that were carried out. And, both efforts involved the same three authors. Each analyzed the same Tropical, Contiguous U.S. and Global Temperature data sets.

“The objective of this research was to determine whether or not a straightforward application of the “proper mathematical methods” would support EPA’s basic claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Stated simply, their claim is that GAST is primarily a function of four explanatory variables: Atmospheric CO2 Levels (CO2), Solar Activity (SA), Volcanic Activity (VA), and a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO.)” This research failed to find that the steadily rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 14 temperature data sets that were analyzed. The tropospheric and surface temperature data measurements that were analyzed were taken by many different entities using balloons, satellites, buoys and various land based techniques. Needless to say, if regardless of data source, the analysis results are the same, the analysis findings should be considered highly credible.

The bottom line is the failure of the real world data to support the EPA’s 3 lines of evidence in the Endangerment Finding invalidates it and all regulations which are imposed based on it.

‘http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/05/exclusive-study-finds-temperature-adjustments-account-for-nearly-all-of-the-warming-in-climate-data/

Here is the actual global data that gets incorporated into the models that are run 4 times daily. There are no adjustments. The data is based on 6 hourly forecasts adjusted for new observations. We are coming off the El Nino warm period.

Enlarged

See how since 2005, warm spikes have occurred with El Nions and dips with La Ninas.

Enlarged

See video post from WeatherBELL this Sunday showing summer heat has been declining for decades!!

See this post that shows how GISS has been manipulated.