Doctor, Doctor, What's wrong with the (doctored) figures?

Everyday we get bombarded with facts and statistics. It can be very confusing to the average layman. 


Since the middle of 2010 we were told 2010 was or was going to be the hottest year on record.

2010: Warmest year on record – Science Fair  17/5/2010  (Great “science,” Science Fair.)

2010 is warmest year ever  Deccan Herald 18/5/2010  (Amazing statement made after only 5 months)

First Half of 2010 Warmest on record – msnbc 15/7/2010

2010 0n track to be hottest year – aljazeera  17/7/2010

Probably a reaction to the statements in May saying that after less than half a year they claimed that 2010 was the Warmest Year EVER, by July they had tempered their statements. Meanwhile, In July, Ken Stewart on Joanne Nova’s site reported that Australian Temperatures had been adjusted. …What he found was that the raw records showed only a 0.4 degree rise, less than the rural records which went from a raw 0.6 to an adjusted 0.85 (a rise of 40%). What shocked him about the urban records were the adjustments… making the trend a full 70% warmer. The largest adjustments to the raw records are cooling ones in the middle of last century. So 50 years after the measurements were recorded, officials realized they were artificially too high?

Also in May. we learned that the official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) had managed to doctor the figures. 

Crisis in New Zealand climatology by Barry Brill

“The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible. 

IPCC expert  reviewer, Vincent Gray has reached the same conclusion in his NZ CLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 260 issued today: “One can only conclude that average temperatures in New Zealand cities have not changed significantly since records began.”

In September, Paul Macrae on False Alarm wrote, discussing NASA-GISS massaged figures: “….the temperature estimates from the other three major climate monitoring agencies—the Hadley Meteorological Centre (HadCrut), University of Huntsville at Alabama (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)—all show temperatures for the last decade considerably lower than the GISS estimate. In fact, they even show some cooling. The latter two agencies, UAH and RSS, rely on satellite data, which many regard as more reliable than ground temperature estimates.”

So, where does that leave us? As A. A. Milne (Via Winnie the Pooh) said: “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” It doesn’t matter how many others are looking at it. There’s an old saying – You can look but you’d better not touch.

The latest Satellite-Based Global Temperatures from Dr Roy Spencer of UAH.

As I said at the start, the different figures can be very confusing to the layman. I do know that the UAH figures are not massaged, not doctored. Although satellite records only started back in 1979, you can see basically a level trend line from `79-97 and a level trend line from `2001-2010 with a step up. (See Professor Bob Carter’s falsification of the AGW hypothesis.)

Today, Mr Des Moore, Founding Director of the Institute of Private Enterprise, has contributed an article to Quadrant-on-Line:

Climate inquiry needed

by Des Moore

January 9, 2011

Interpreting the 0.7C fall in 2010 temperatures

Those familiar with the climate debate will naturally be aware that the rise in average official temperatures of 0.74C over the 20^th  century was an inherent component of IPCC’s conclusion of a future of dangerously high temperatures unless governments acted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

But how to interpret the fall of 0.7C in the average Australian temperature for 2010? Clearly one year’s temperature doth not in itself maketh a new trend and believers in the IPCC’s conclusion are tending to portray it as either a one-off or even an unusual form of continued warming. But it is pertinent to give the development a perspective that differs from that conveyed by the believers. 

Des examines statements made by AGW “scientists” and sponsors and concludes:

“This latest display of highly questionable opinions and supposedly factual statements by “experts” strengthens the case for a proper independent inquiry.” 

 “The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”  A. A. Milne quote