The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time — Part 28

What I refer to as the “Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” is the systematic alteration of historical world temperatures to make it appear, falsely, that the most recent months and years are the “warmest ever.”

The basic technique of the fraud is the artificial lowering of previously reported data as to world temperatures in earlier years, in order to erase earlier warmth and amplify the apparent warming trend.

This is the 28th post in this series. The previous post in the series appeared on October 5, 2020. To view all 27 prior posts, you can go to this composite link.

The deliverable products of the temperature fraudsters are purported charts of world temperatures derived from a thermometer-based surface record (called GHCN, or Global Historical Climate Network), generally going back to about 1880.

The charts are engineered to appear in an iconic “hockey stick” shape, with relatively flat earlier years followed by a sharply rising “blade” in the most recent years.

Every few years the government (this is a joint effort of NASA and NOAA) comes out with a new version of these data. The latest version is called GHCN version 4, which began in 2018.

Here is a chart from the Columbia University website (the NASA branch involved in this project, known as the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is located on the Columbia campus in uptown Manhattan) showing a side-by-side comparison of the version 3 and version 4 GHCN data.

Both show the famous hockey stick shape, although version 4 increases the recent uptick somewhat.

My October 5, 2020 post mainly summarized a piece by a guy named Tony Heller that had appeared on October 1 of that year.  Heller’s piece focused specifically on alterations to the temperature record of the U.S., as opposed to the entire world.

Heller provided links to earlier and later NASA/GISS data reports, clearly showing that temperatures originally reported for earlier years had subsequently been lowered to enhance the warming trend and to make the most recent years appear to be the “warmest” — in spite of the fact that if temperatures previously reported had been correct, then earlier years including 1953, 1934, and 1921 had actually been warmer than the most recent years.

Heller also noted, as I have many times, that NASA and NOAA make no secret of the fact that they are systematically altering and lowering earlier-year temperatures,

Reality is that the data alterations are no secret, and that NOAA and NASA acknowledge that they do it.

The problem is not that the alterations are a secret, but that they are opaque. You would think that it would be impossible for early-year temperatures to change at all, let alone that they would systematically change in a way that just happens to enhance the desired narrative of the promoters of the global warming scare.

The justifications for the alterations appear to be just so much bafflegab, completely lacking in specific rationales for each change that you would think would be required — particularly given that these temperature charts are being used as a basis for a multi-trillion dollar fundamental transformation of the world energy economy.

Anyway, into this mix now comes a young Japanese woman named Kirye, who has taken up the Heller tradition of compiling and publishing instances of government alteration of the data that underlie the NASA/NOAA temperature charts.

Kirye posts periodically on Heller’s website, known as RealClimateScience, and also at the NoTricksZone site.

A couple of days ago (August 24), Kirye had a post at NoTricksZone titled “Adjusting To Warm, NASA Data Alterations Change Cooling To Warming In Ireland, Greece.”

Adding to Heller’s work, this post goes outside the U.S. to look at two European countries that ought to have good and reliable temperature data.

The post specifically focuses on the period 1988 to present, which is the period of the supposed sharp uptick in temperatures represented by the “blade” of the hockey stick in the NASA/NOAA charts above.

What Kirye finds is that in both Ireland and Greece, NASA and NOAA have altered the data to turn a cooling trend into a warming trend for the 1988-2020 period.

Here is her comparison of the “unadjusted” data for Ireland compared to the “GHCN version 4” currently being reported:

Kirye gives a link for these graphs to the NASA/GISS website. That is where she got the information.

The NASA/GISS site has a map of the world with a little dot for each station, and if you click on any station you can get a plot courtesy of NASA that shows both the “unadjusted” and “version 4” temperature series for that station.

Kirye has taken both versions straight from NASA itself. It’s just that only when you combine and present the data the way Kirye does do you realize that the bureaucrats have systematically altered the temperature trend for an entire country from down to up.

Suddenly you clearly see that the entire, apparent upward trend consists of unspecified “adjustments.” The same applies to both Ireland and Greece.

Can they even attempt to justify what they have done? At the same, NASA/GISS page linked by Kirye, I find a further link saying “For details see FAQ.”

Maybe I can find the answer here? So I followed that link, and another, and come to the end of my road at this document titled “FAQs on the Update to Global Historical Climatology Network–Monthly Version 3.2.0.”

This document specifically relates to the version of GHCN just preceding version 4, but I have no reason to think that the basic methodology has changed. Here is an extremely revealing “FAQ” with the relevant part of its answer:

Why is the century‐scale global land surface trend higher in version 3.2.0?

The PHA software is used to detect and account for historical changes in station records that are caused by station moves, new observation technologies, and other changes in observation practice. These changes often cause a shift in temperature readings that do not reflect real climate changes. When a shift is detected, the PHA software adjusts temperatures in the historic record upwards or downwards to conform to newer measurement conditions.

In this way, the algorithm seeks to adjust all earlier measurement eras in a station’s history to conform to the latest location and instrumentation. The correction of the coding errors greatly improved the ability of the PHA to find these kinds of historic changes. As a result, approximately twice as many change points (inhomogeneities) were detected in v3.2.0 than in v3.1.0…

Study that a little bit and think about what they are saying. There can be “station moves” or “new observation technologies” that can cause a “shift in temperature readings.”

Fair enough. So has anybody contacted any of the Irish stations to find out if they have had a “station move” or “new observation technology” or anything like that since 1988? Absolutely not!

Instead, they have a computer algorithm detect these things — or maybe invent them. The algorithm supposedly looks for “shifts.” So suppose readings at a particular station have somehow shifted to lower temperatures.

Could it be that temperatures are reading lower because it got cooler? Obviously, that does not fit the narrative. Time to declare a “shift.”

Now, instead of reporting the cooling trend that is coming from the thermometers, you can adjust the earlier temperatures downward to reflect “new observation technology” or some such never-specified thing.

Note on Kirye’s dynamic graph that every single one of the stations in Ireland has had its trend adjusted from down to up by these computer algorithms. Did they all have station moves and/or “new observation technologies”? NASA doesn’t even pretend to have checked.

Take a look also at the “unadjusted” Irish plots on Kirye’s graph. Can you spot the supposed “shifts” that support having some computer come in and rewrite the earlier temperatures to make the overall trend change from down to up?

At the end of the linked NASA document is a further link where you can supposedly get the computer code used for making what they call the “homogeneity corrections.” However, when I try that I don’t get anything I can open.

Anyway, this is what passes for “science” in the field of climatology.

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