There has been much discussion recently about temperature adjustments made by GHCN in Iceland and Greenland, which have had the effect of reducing historic temperature levels, thereby creating an artificial warming trend. These can easily be checked at the GISS website, where both the old and new datasets can be viewed as graph and table data, here and here.


Enlarged

It has now been identified that similar adjustments have been made at nearly every station close to the Arctic Circle, between Greenland and, going East,via Norway to Siberia, i.e 56 Degrees West to 86 Degrees East, about 40% of the circumference.

So it is perhaps time to recap where we are now.

Background

The NCDC has produced the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), a dataset of monthly mean temperatures, since the 1990’s. Version 2 was introduced in 1997 and included “Methods for removing inhomogeneities from the data record associated with non-climatic influences such as changes in instrumentation, station environment, and observing practices that occur over time “. The GHCN datasets are used by both GISS and HADCRUT for calculation of global temperatures, as well as NCDC themselves.

In May 2011, NCDC brought out Version 3, which “enhanced the overall quality of the dataset”, but made little difference in overall terms. However, only two months later in July, a Google Summer Student, a graduate called Daniel Rothenberg, was brought in to convert some of the GHCN software and make modifications to “correct software coding errors”. The result was Version 3.1, which went live in November 2011.

It is this latest version that has thrown up the Arctic adjustments we are now seeing.

Until December, GISS used Version 2 unadjusted temperatures. Since then, they have changed to using Version 3.1 adjusted temperatures.

Basis of Homogeneity Adjustments

It is worth taking time to be clear why temperature adjustments are made (or should be). As far as GHCN are concerned, they explain their logic thus :-

Surface weather stations are frequently subject to minor relocations throughout their history of operation. Observing stations may also undergo changes in instrumentation as measurement technology evolves. Furthermore, observing practices may vary through time, and the land use/land cover in the vicinity of an observing site can be altered by either natural or man-made causes. Any such modifications to the circumstances behind temperature measurements have the potential to alter a thermometer’s microclimate exposure characteristics or otherwise change the bias of measurements relative to those taken under previous circumstances. The manifestation of such changes is often an abrupt shift in the mean level of temperature readings that is unrelated to true climate variations and trends. Ultimately, these artifacts (also known as inhomogeneities) confound attempts to quantify climate variability and change because the magnitude of the artifact can be as large as or larger than the true background climate signal. The process of removing the impact of non-climatic changes in climate series is called homogenization, an essential but sometimes overlooked component of climate analysis.

It is quite clear. Their algorithms should look for abrupt changes that are not reflected at nearby stations. It has nothing to do with “averaging out regional temperatures” as is sometimes claimed.

GISS also make homogeneity adjustments, but for totally different reasons. In their case, it is to make an allowance for the Urban Heat Island Effect (which is not spotted by GHCN because it is a slow change).

Effect of The Adjustments

Appendix A lists every current GHCN station with records back to 1940,that lie between Greenland, at a latitude of 56 W, around to a point about midway across Siberia at 86 E and which are situated close to the Arctic Circle.  The table shows the adjustment made by GHCN for 1940 data. Out of 26 stations, the adjustment has reduced actual temperatures in 23 cases, many substantially. In contrast, 2 remain unchanged and only one has a positive adjustment (and this is insignificant). As a crude average, the adjustment works out at a reduction of 0.70 C.

These adjustments typically extend back to the beginning of the station records (though Reykjavik is an exception) and most continue at the same level till about 1970. ( Some of the Russian stations last longer - e.g. Ostrov Dikson’s disappears in 2009).

By 2011, however, the adjustments disappear at ALL of these sites. In other words, an artificial warming trend has been manufactured.

It is worth spelling out two points :-

1) Within this arc of longitude, there are no other stations within the Arctic Circle.

2) With the exception of Lerwick and Vestmanneyja, I can find no stations, in the region, below a latitude of 64 North with similar adjustments. Why is 64 North significant? GISS produce zonal temperature data, and their “Arctic” zone goes from 64 North to the Pole. Coincidence?

Is there any justification for adjusting?

Trausti Jonsson, a senior climatologist at the Iceland Met Office, has already confirmed that he sees no reason for the adjustments in Iceland and that they themselves have already made any adjustments necessary due to station moves etc before sending the data onto GHCN.

Clearly the fact that nearly every station in the region has been adjusted disproves the idea that these sites are outliers, which give biased results not supported by nearby stations.

GHCN were asked in January to investigate this issue and so far have failed to come up with any explanation. Unless they can do this, the assumption must be that the adjustments have been created by faulty software.

Discussion

In global terms, these few stations make no tangible difference to overall temperatures. However, they do make a significant difference to temperatures in the Arctic, which are derived from a small number of stations such as these and then projected over hundreds of miles.

Across much of the Arctic, temperatures were as high in the years around 1940 as they are now. History should not be revised at the whims of an algorithm.

What should happen next? In my view, GHCN should immediately revert to Version 3.0 until the matter is properly investigated and any issues resolved. They maybe just need to put Version 3.1 down as a bad experience and start from scratch again. I believe they also need to seriously review their Quality Control procedures and question how these anomalies were allowed to arise without being flagged up.

It should not be up to independent observers to have to do this.

Enlarged

Footnote

I originally set this table up yesterday, 9th March. Today I noticed a few had changed slightly, presumably at the monthly update, so have amended them. It appears GHCN are still fiddling with their algorithms as the same thing occurred last month.

Washington, D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said today that despite their constant rhetoric that EPA needs to be reined in, Senate Democrats once again voted against an amendment that would save jobs.  This amendment, sponsored by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) would provide a legislative fix for the Obama Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) botched Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rule for industrial boilers (Boiler MACT).

“Despite their continued calls to rein in the Obama-EPA’s job-killing regulatory agenda, Senate Democrats again voted against a reasonable bipartisan amendment that would do just that,” Senator Inhofe said. “In fact, six out of the twelve Democrat cosponsors of the Collins amendment must have gotten a call from President Obama, as they voted against their own measure. This just goes to show that although Senate Democrats say over and over that EPA regulations are destroying thousands of jobs and increasing energy costs for their constituents, when the time comes, they side with President Obama and his radical environmental base.

“Boiler MACT is in dire need of a legislative fix as it is one of the most ruinous and expensive EPA regulations.  It will result in $1 Billion in lost GDP and put 800,000 good paying American jobs, as well as our manufacturing base, at risk. That is why a majority of the United State Senate voted to rein in the EPA. 

“The House has already approved legislation to fix EPA’s Boiler MACT rule with overwhelming bipartisan support - 41 Democrats voted in favor of the measure.  It’s time for Senate Democrats to stop pandering to President Obama and Majority Leader Reid and stand up for their constituents, who will suffer the most for the hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and skyrocketing energy costs that EPA’s current Boiler MACT rule will inflict.”

Background:

Today Senate Democrats did the same thing they did last April when the Senate voted on Senator Inhofe’s Energy Tax Prevention Act, which was offered as an amendment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.  This amendment prevented EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, while keeping all Clean Air Act provisions intact.  Although Senate Democrats continually said that EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations will be devastating to their constituents, they opted instead to take a cover vote and support alternative amendments: one was Senator Rockefeller’s amendment which only offered a two year delay of these regulations. 

The vote on these amendments was a moment of truth for Obama’s job-killing greenhouse gas regulations: 64 senators voted that day, in various ways, against EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda.  Each one chose whether to take the “cover vote” or actually to vote with their constituents for the only real solution to the problem: the Energy Tax Prevention Act. 

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Senate Democrats Reject Keystone Construction; Side with Obama Instead of Constituents

Washington, D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said today that Senate Democrats sided with President Obama instead of American families by voting against Senator John Hoeven’s (R-ND) amendment to the Boxer-Inhofe highway bill, which allows Congress to overturn President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline and approve the project immediately. 

“Today Senate Democrats decided to stand with President Obama and his far left global warming allies by voting against the construction of the Keystone pipeline,” Senator Inhofe said. “I hope these Democrats feel good about saying ‘no’ to the tens of thousands of jobs, lower gas prices, and the energy security that the pipeline would bring.  For all his phony reelection rhetoric about an ‘all-of-the above’ approach, Politico reported today that President Obama has been pressuring Senate Democrats to withdraw their support.  Instead of putting American jobs and gas prices first, he’s clearly trying to avoid a PR disaster, as several members of his own party have come to understand the importance of the Keystone pipeline for our economy.

“Of course, Majority Leader Reid has got the President’s back.  Just as he did during the vote to stop EPA’s destructive greenhouse gas regulations, Senator Reid allowed an amendment that would give Democrats the chance to appear like they support the Keystone pipeline, while ensuring that the pipeline never gets built.  This ‘cover amendment’ sponsored by Senator Wyden, actually creates new barriers and further delays to the construction of the pipeline, and it keeps the decision in the hands of the President who has no intention of approving it.  It’s just unfortunate that so many Democrats caved to the pressure.  Even so, a majority in the United States Senate supported building the pipeline.

“Approving this project immediately is not just about creating tens of thousands of jobs.  With international tensions running high over Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a rejection of Keystone is reckless to the safety and security of the United States and sends the wrong signal to hostile countries - that America’s energy security needs can and will be held hostage by radical environmentalists.

“But the fact that President Obama had to go to such lengths to keep his party in line shows that there is still strong bipartisan support to overturn his rejection of this pipeline as well as his destructive war on affordable energy - and we will continue the fight to get the pipeline built.”

The government has finally seen through the wind-farm scam - but why did it take them so long?

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine - despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron’s government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. The biggest investors in offshore wind - Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens - are starting to worry that the government’s heart is not in wind energy any more. Vestas, which has plans for a factory in Kent, wants reassurance from the Prime Minister that there is the political will to put up turbines before it builds its factory.

This forces a decision from Cameron - will he reassure the turbine magnates that he plans to keep subsidising wind energy, or will he retreat? The political wind has certainly changed direction. George Osborne is dead set against wind farms, because it has become all too clear to him how much they cost. The Chancellor’s team quietly encouraged MPs to sign a letter to No. 10 a few weeks ago saying that ‘in these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines’.

Putting the things offshore may avoid objections from the neighbours, but (Chancellor, beware!) it makes even less sense, because it costs you and me - the taxpayers - double. I have it on good authority from a marine engineer that keeping wind turbines upright in the gravel, tides and storms of the North Sea for 25 years is a near hopeless quest, so the repair bill is going to be horrific and the output disappointing. Already the grouting in the foundations of hundreds of turbines off Kent, Denmark and the Dogger Bank has failed, necessitating costly repairs.

In Britain the percentage of total energy that comes from wind is only 0.6 per cent. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, ‘policies intended to meet the EU Renewables Directive in 2020 will impose extra consumer costs of approximately 15 billion pounds per annum’ or 670 per household. It is difficult to see what value will be got for this money. The total carbon emissions saved by the great wind rush is probably below 1 per cent, because of the need to keep fossil fuels burning as back-up when the wind does not blow. It may even be a negative number.

America is having far better luck. Carbon emissions in the United States fell by 7 per cent in 2009, according to a Harvard study. But the study concluded that this owes less to the recession that year than the falling price of natural gas - caused by the shale gas revolution. (Burning gas emits less than half as much carbon dioxide as coal for the same energy output.) The gas price has fallen even further since, making coal seem increasingly pricey by comparison. All over America, from Utah to West Virginia, coal mines are being closed and coal plants idled or cancelled. (The US Energy Information Administration calculates that every $4 spent on shale purchases the same energy as $25 spent on oil: at this rate, more and more vehicles will switch to gas.)

So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument - that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.

Though they may not admit it for a while, most ministers have realised that the sums for wind power just don’t add up and never will. The discovery of shale gas near Blackpool has profound implications for the future of British energy supply, which the government has seemed sheepishly reluctant to explore. It has a massive subsidy programme in place for wind farms, which now seem obsolete both as a means of energy production and decarbonisation. It is almost impossible to see what function they serve, other than making a fortune from those who profit from the subsidy scam.

Even in a boom, wind farms would have been unaffordable - with their economic and ecological rationale blown away. In an era of austerity, the policy is doomed, though so many contracts have been signed that the expansion of wind farms may continue, for a while. But the scam has ended. And as we survey the economic and environmental damage, the obvious question is how the delusion was maintained for so long. There has been no mystery about wind’s futility as a source of affordable and abundant electricity - so how did the wind-farm scam fool so many policymakers?

One answer is money. There were too many people with snouts in the trough. Not just the manufacturers, operators and landlords of the wind farms, but financiers: wind-farm venture capital trusts were all the rage a few years ago - guaranteed income streams are what capitalists like best; they even get paid to switch the monsters off on very windy days so as not to overload the grid. Even the military took the money. Wind companies are paying for a new 20 million pound military radar at Brizlee Wood in Northumberland so as to enable the Ministry of Defence to lift its objection to the 48-turbine Fallago Rig wind farm in Berwickshire.

The big conservation organisations have been disgracefully silent on the subject, like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which until last year took generous contributions from the wind industry through a venture called RSPB Energy. Even journalists: at a time when advertising is in short supply, British newspapers have been crammed full of specious but lucrative ‘debates’ and supplements on renewable energy sponsored by advertising from a cohort of interest groups.

And just as the scam dies, I find I am now part of it. A family trust has signed a deal to receive 8,500 a year from a wind company, which is building a turbine on land that once belonged to my grandfather. He was canny enough not to sell the mineral rights, and the foundations of the turbine disturbs those mineral rights, so the trustees are owed compensation. I will not get the money, because I am not a beneficiary of the trust. Nonetheless, the idea of any part of my family receiving ‘wind-gelt’ is so abhorrent that I have decided to act. The real enemy is not wind farms per se, but groupthink and hysteria which allowed such a flawed idea to progress - with a minimum of intellectual opposition. So I shall be writing a cheque for 8,500, which The Spectator will give as a prize to the best article devoted to rational, fact-based environmental journalism.

It will be called the Matt Ridley prize for environmental heresy. Barring bankruptcy, I shall donate the money as long as the wind-gelt flows - so the quicker Dave cancels the subsidy altogether, the sooner he will have me and the prizewinners off his back.

Entrants are invited forthwith, and a panel of judges will reward the most brilliant and rational argument - that uses reason and evidence - to gore a sacred cow of the environmental movement. There are many to choose from: the idea that wind power is good for the climate, or that biofuels are good for the rain forest, or that organic farming is good for the planet, or that climate change is a bigger extinction threat than invasive species, or that the most sustainable thing we can do is de-industrialise.

My donation, though significant for me, is a drop in the ocean compared with the money that pours into the green movement every hour. Jeremy Grantham, a hedge-fund plutocrat, wrote a cheque for 12 million to the London School of Economics to found an institute named after him, which has since become notorious for its aggressive stance and extreme green statements. Between them, Greenpeace and Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) spend nearly a billion a year. WWF spends $68 million a year on ‘public education’ alone. All of this is judged uncontroversial: a matter of education, not propaganda.

By contrast, a storm of protest broke recently over the news that one small conservative think-tank called Heartland was proposing to spend just $200,000 in a year on influencing education against climate alarmism. A day later, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with assets of $7.2 billion, gave a grant of $100 million to something called the ClimateWorks Foundation, a pro-wind power organisation, on top of $481 million it gave to the same recipient in 2008. The deep green Sierra Club recently admitted that it took $26 million from the gas industry to lobby against coal. But money is not the only reason that the entire political establishment came to believe in wind fairies. Psychologists have a term for the wishful thinking by which we accept any means if the end seems virtuous: ‘noble-cause corruption’. The phrase was first used by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir John Woodcock in 1992 to explain miscarriages of justice. ‘It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned,’ said the late Lord Denning, referring to the Birmingham Six.

Politicians are especially susceptible to this condition. In a wish to be seen as modern, they will embrace all manner of fashionable causes. When this sets in - groupthink grips political parties, and the media therefore decide there is no debate — the gravest of errors can take root. The subsidising of useless wind turbines was born of a deep intellectual error, one incubated by failure to challenge conventional wisdom.

It is precisely this consensus-worshipping, heretic-hunting environment where the greatest errors can be made. There are some 3,500 wind turbines in Britain, with hundreds more under construction. It would be a shame for them all to be dismantled. The biggest one should remain, like a crane on an abandoned quay, for future generations to marvel at. They will never be an efficient way to generate power. But there can be no better monument to the folly of mankind.

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Wind Turbine Syndrome affects more people than previously thought
Posted on March 6, 2012 by Anthony Watts

by Mark Duchamp

A survey was conducted on wind farm noise as part of a Master’s dissertation by Zhenhua Wang, a graduate student in Geography, Environment and Population at the University of Adelaide, Australia. The results show that 70% of respondents living up to 5km away report being negatively affected by wind turbine noise, with more than 50% of them “very or moderately negatively affected”. This is considerably higher than what was found in previous studies conducted in Europe.

The survey was made in the vicinity of the Waterloo wind farm, South Australia, which is composed of 37 Vestas V90 3 MW turbines stretching over 18 km. These mega turbines are reported to be emitting more low frequency noise (LFN) than smaller models, and this causes more people to be affected, and over greater distances, by the usual symptoms of the Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS): insomnia, headaches, nausea, stress, poor ability to concentrate, irritability, etc, leading to poorer health and a reduced immunity to illness.

The Danish government recognised recently that LFN is an aggravating component in the noise that affects wind farm neighbours. This prompted their issuing regulations that limit low-frequency noise levels inside homes to 20 dB(A). Unfortunately, as denounced by Professor Henrik Moller, they manipulated the calculation parameters so as to allow LFN inside homes to actually reach 30 dB(A) in 30% of cases. “Hardly anyone would accept 30 dB(A) in their homes at night”, wrote the Professor last month.

A summary of the Australian survey has been published (3), but the full Masters dissertation has not been made available to the public. In the interest of public health, the European Platform against Windfarms (EPAW) and the North-American Platform against Windpower (NA-PAW), have asked the University of Adelaide to release this important document.

A neighbour of the Waterloo wind farm, Mr Andreas Marciniak, wrote to a local newspaper last week: “Do you think it’s funny that at my age I had to move to Adelaide into my Mother’s shed and my brother had to move to Hamilton into a caravan with no water or electricity?” (4) Both Mr Marciniak and his brother have been advised by their treating doctors, including a cardiologist, to leave their homes and not return when the wind turbines are turning.

How many people will be forced to abandon their homes before governments pay attention, wonder the thousands of windfarm victims represented by EPAW and NAPAW. “It’ll take time to gather enough money for a big lawsuit”, says Sherri Lange, of NAPAW, “but time is on our side: victim numbers are increasing steadily.”

Contacts:

Mark Duchamp +34 693 643 736 (Spain) Skype: mark.duchamp
Executive Director, EPAW
www.epaw.org
save.the.eagles@gmail.com

Your BEST chance to stop expensive, subsidized, land-intensive, bird-killing, scenery-wrecking, health-impairing wind energy projects in the United States is to make three quick phone calls - today - one each to: 

Senator Mark Warner 202-224-2023
Senator Jim Webb 202-224-4024

(or your own two senators, if you don’t live in Virginia, through the Senate switchboard: 202-224-3121)

And one to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 202-224-2541

Urge them to oppose Senator Maria Cantwell’s Amendment to the Transportation Bill (and ANY other extension of the wind energy PTC).

Lobbyists for greed energy are still trying to extract more of our tax dollars through the Transportation bill. Industrial wind projects should not get one more dollar of tax subsidies. After decades of subsidies, they need to operate on a level playing field, without us and our children and grandchildren subsidizing them any longer with borrowed billions.

Thanks to YOUR earlier calls, the Senate has already defeated Senator Mike Bennett’s (D-CO) proposed “non-germane” amendment #1709 to the Transportation Bill, to extend the wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC).

In one more desperate attempt to slip this in unnoticed amid the general wrangling over this bill, Senator Cantwell (D-WA) introduced another slightly differently worded amendment to extend the PTC. It was just submitted today and is so new even they didn’t have a number for it.

Negotiations are on-going to determine which amendments will be included with this bill, and this will likely be decided this week between Senators Reid and McConnell.

Remember: without the PTC, the US wind energy business will likely collapse. That would be a good thing, because wind turbines generate too much ultra-expensive electricity when it is not needed, and too little when it is most needed. They kill eagles, hawks, falcons, migratory birds, and bats. They are not clean, green, cheap (much less free), sustainable or environment-friendly.

PLEASE CALL TODAY.

The telephone number may be busy, and you might have to try again or wait a bit. But that’s because your friends are also calling ... and we are making a difference. YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT, SO PLEASE BE PATIENT.

Hopefully will be the last bill this year (with bipartisan support) that the lobbyists have any hope of slipping this PTC provision in. Your calls may make that happen, too. If there is another attempt, we will let you know.

Please pass this information on to friends and colleagues on your email lists!

Errors in the new 7SS

The shocking breakthrough in our audit is that NIWA didn’t use the adjustment method they said they would use. Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition, released an overview entitled New Zealand Unaffected by Global Warming (pdf, 1.3 MB). The discovery that the country hasn’t experienced global warming is another startling finding. In Chapter 8, on page 24, he identifies nine criticisms of NIWA’s newest 7SS. These multiple defects destroy the credibility of the 7SS as a source of the NZTR.

Enlarged.

1.It contradicts every other record of NZ temperatures.

2.Its warming trend comes almost entirely from the Auckland and Wellington stations, which are contaminated with false warming from UHI. The 7SS makes no adjustments for UHI.

3.It uses adjustments derived from comparisons between “isolated stations” in direct defiance of the scientific authorities.

4.It finds warming only by disregarding the statistical techniques it said it would use - Rhoades & Salinger. The reality is that New Zealand has had no strong warming for a hundred years.

5.It gives no margins of error for its adjustments and always applies changes, even when the method says they are unjustified.

6.The strong warming is created by implausible accumulating adjustments, which are not random, as we would expect, but slanted in the direction of warming.

7.To verify the 7SS, NIWA wheeled in the 11SS, which they themselves invented, has data missing everywhere and is laughably unscientific.

8.The refusal to release the BoM review documents under the Official Information Act (by both NIWA and the BoM) raises the question of what they’re hiding.

9.Most of the warming in the 7SS occurs during the first half of the century, which contradicts NIWA’s official advice that our warming was driven by global CO2 emissions - which are concentrated in the last 40 years.

NIWA shows 168% more warming than Rhoades & Salinger -the method NIWA claimed to use but did not. The blue dashed line shows the warming trend when the method is used correctly. The red line reveals NIWA’s outrageous fraud - it’s much stronger warming, but it’s empty of truth.

1. It contradicts every other record of NZ temperatures.

The temperature readings themselves, both ancient and modern, provide clear evidence that there’s been little warming. Modern temperatures in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are about 0.5C below the 1860s, and the New Zealand mean now is 0.2C below the 1860s mean, so there’s been no warming. NIWA’s story of strong warming is believable only if they fault the accuracy of the old readings. But they don’t.

If they did, and they “adjusted” the oldest temperatures downward, their already strong warming would give off the distinct smell of fish.

2. Its warming trend comes almost entirely from the Auckland and Wellington stations, which are contaminated with false warming from UHI.

The peer-­reviewed literature says clearly that records from these two cities are contaminated with an urban heat island (UHI) effect and show false warming. If you don’t correct for UHI, the series you finish up with is skewed in favour of warming. Why haven’t NIWA’s team made some correction for UHI? UHI also affects the other four urban stations, but no corrections were made there either.

3. It uses adjustments derived from comparisons between “isolated stations” in direct defiance of the scientific authorities.

Here’s what our audit says:

The technique NIWA has used for all their adjustments (excepting overlaps) is the “neighbouring stations” method. It is important to note that in reality NIWA seldom uses truly neighbouring stations. In most cases the stations chosen are from some distance away, especially for the earlier records. For example, Dunedin is compared against Albert Park in Auckland. For the purposes of this document, we shall however refer to all station comparisons as “neighbouring”, even though many are not.

So NIWA have used the “Clayton’s” neighbouring stations method - the neighbouring stations method you use when you’re not using a neighbouring stations method. If the methodology requires the use of neighbouring stations for comparisons, why have NIWA disregarded that requirement?

This is a nonsense. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money. It’s a caricature of the scientific method. And it will become the laughing stock of the climate world.

4. It disregards the statistical techniques it said it would follow - Rhoades & Salinger.

After we published Are we feeling warmer yet? (AWFWY) we asked NIWA what adjustments they had made to the temperature record. Their constant theme was that they had followed the scientific literature and we ought to know what it said.

For the methodology, they referred us to Salinger’s thesis (which proved useless) and R&S (which didn’t). Later, when they announced their reconstruction of the 7SS, they said they would use R&S for the adjustments.

But they didn’t use R&S. Why didn’t they keep their word?

5. It gives no margins of error for its adjustments and always applies changes, even when the method says they are unjustified.

6. The strong warming is created by implausible accumulating adjustments, which are not random, as we would expect, but slanted in the direction of warming.

The chances of replicating the first series without knowing the original method used are astronomical. In fact, it’s incredible that it happened. The further chance that all the adjustments should almost universally conspire to alter the trend to warming is too incredible and probably constitutes evidence of intent.

7. To verify the 7SS, NIWA wheeled in the 11SS, which they themselves invented within a few days of our AWFWY paper, has data missing everywhere and is laughably unscientific.

Only about a week after we published AWFWY, NIWA put out a media release saying:

Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1C from 1931 to 2008.

And with that, cherry-picking data to prove a scientific case became an officially-sanctioned strategy. Comment on that, you bright boys at Hot Topic!

8. The refusal to release the BoM review documents under the Official Information Act (by both NIWA and the BoM) raises the question of what they’re hiding.

We still await a response from the Ombudsman from our request made in May last year, although it follows our complaint about NIWA’s original refusal in 2010. Their tardiness in this case is outrageous. It constitutes a severe condemnation of the conduct of that formerly useful office. If a small number of those new functionaries in the Ministry for the Environment calculating carbon footprints and assembling long inventories of obscure greenhouse gases being emitted by innocent New Zealand manufacturers might be diverted to the Ombudsman’s office, we might see some useful work accomplished.

9. Most of the warming in the 7SS occurs during the first half of the century, which contradicts NIWA’s official advice that our warming was driven by global CO2 emissions - which are concentrated in the last 40 years.

These contradictions and mysteries mark NIWA’s latest attempt to hoodwink the public over the national temperature record.

It seems incredible that this agency has a monopoly on government advice on climate science.

THE SUN BACK IN A FUNK

Enlarged

One sole spot of significance to end February.

Enlarged

The February sunspot number came in at an amazing 33.1 three years and 3 months into the new cycle. Often cycles are peaking at this point. This cycle has been declining in recent months.

The magnetic field as indicated by the Ap Index remains very low as it has been since 2006.

Enlarged

Many of the solar parameters peaked in November and have declined.

Enlarged

Normally a solar max occurs when the magnetic fields flip sign in the two solar hemispheres. the northern flipped briefly but returned but is close, the southern hemisphere has not yet changed. the sign of the southern hemisphere in red reversed on this Wilcox Solar Observatory plot so we can see the two together. Every time they convincingly cross the 0 line, the cycle peaks. You can see we are getting close.

Enlarged

Here is how the SSN compares month by month cycles 23 and 24.

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Since our ability to see spots today is greater than it was a century ago, a group has develop a Layman’s Count that only counts spots large enough to have been seen before. This is a little like hurricane and tornado counts which are higher today because we have better technology to see them (note February not yet included). The Layman’s Count has this cycle looking like cycle 5 in the early 1800s. Interestingly that cycle had an early spike like this one and then relaxed into a long, low plateau max and then long minimum.

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