Paul Georgia reporting on Professor Scott Armstrong’s Capitol Hill Briefing

On September 13, Professor Scott Armstrong presented his research on climate forecasting on Capitol Hill. His power point slides and video are now available for viewing.

Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, has initiated a backlash as scientists, heretofore absent from the global warming debate, have begun to criticize Mr. Gore, and by extension, much of the underpinnings of the global warming hypothesis. One such critic is Professor Scott Armstrong, a leading expert on forecasting at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Armstrong hasn’t just criticized Mr. Gore; he has put his money where his mouth is by challenging the former VP to a $10,000 bet, based on climate predictions.

Professor Armstrong, along with his colleague Professor Kesten Green with Monash University’s Business and Economic Forecasting Unit in New Zealand, conducted an audit of Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s Working Groups I report, The Physical Science Basis. They found no evidence that the IPCC authors were aware of the primary sources of information on forecasting. They also found that there was only enough information within the IPCC report to make a judgment on 89 of the total 140 forecasting principles as described in Professor Armstrong’s book, Principles of Forecasting. Of these 89 principles, the IPCC violated 72.

They conclude that, “We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming.” They also concluded, “Prior research on forecasting suggests that in such situations a naïve (no change) forecast would be superior to current predictions.”

By Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters

Since NASA’s James Hansen finally released computer codes related to how climate data are collected and adjusted, anthropogenic global warming skeptics around the world have been waiting to see what a scientific examination of this information would produce. On Monday, Canada’s Steve McIntyre, who himself debunked Michael Mann’s ridiculous “Hockey Stick” theory as well as identified Hansen’s Y2K bug, released information identifying that Hansen recently made additional changes to climate data akin to how companies like Enron used creative accounting to exaggerate earnings and defraud investors.

As published at Climate Audit, shortly after, NASA published their source code on Sept 7, we started noticing puzzling discrepancies in the new data set. On Sept 15, Jerry Brennan observed that the NASA U.S. temperature history had changed and that 1998 was now co-leader atop the U.S. leaderboard. By this time, we’d figured out exactly what Hansen had done: they’d switched from using the SHAP version - which had been what they’d used for the past decade or so - to the FILNET version. The impact at Detroit Lakes was relatively large - which was why we’d noticed it, but in the network as a whole the impact of the change was to increase the trend slightly - enough obviously to make a difference between 1934 and 1998 - even though this supposedly was of no interest to anyone.

In very simplistic terms, SHAP and FILNET are computer programs used by climatologists to assist in the collation and interpretation of climate data. Each program does so differently, and, therefore, yields different final results. As such, by suddenly switching from SHAP - which NASA had been using for decades - to FILNET, NASA was able to once again claim that 1998 and 1934 are now tied for the warmest years on record in the U.S. This despite Hansen’s claim in August that climate record changes precipitated by McIntyre’s Y2K bug find were irrelevant.

As McIntyre pointed out, what’s now happening at NASA is akin to companies changing from Generally Accepting Accounting Principles (GAAP) to what produced a lot of faulty earnings in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA).

While you ponder, Surface Stations’ Anthony Watts accurately depicted the gravity of this issue that somehow will elude press outlets coast to coast. “My first indication that something changed came from surfacestations.org volunteer Chris Dunn who wrote to me complaining that one of the sites he’d recently surveyed, Walhalla, SC had been greatly adjusted at GISS for no good reason that he could ascertain, since the site is pristine by climate monitoring standards, and has not gone through any significant changes in the past, and has been operated at the same location (by the same family) since 1916. He wondered why NASA would have to adjust the data for a “good” station. The way I view it, shouldn’t good data stand on it’s own? That was September 7th. He was using data from NASA GISS published on 8/28. So he continued to look at the data, and the site. The [sic] on Sept 11th he noticed a change when he downloaded the data again. Something had changed, the data was different. Not only the adjusted data but the “raw” data too.”
Read more here.

By John Marchese, Philadelphia Magazine

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack is a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania. Just so you know, the professor said he mostly votes Democratic, and he voted for Al Gore.

Giegengack rejected fears of a catastrophic 20 foot sea level rise. “Sea level is rising,” Giegengack said, but it’s been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago, he explained according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. But the Earth’s global ocean level is only going up 1.8 millimeters per year—less than the thickness of one nickel, Giegengack further explained. “At the present rate of sea-level rise it’s going to take 3,500 years to get up there (to a rise of 20 feet) So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn’t know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming,” he said. 

Giegengack also noted that the history the last one billion years on the planet reveals “only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice.” See more here and here