I've been watching YouTube videos from Tony Heller for a while. He posts on temperature records and while I'm not sure he's always right I think he's much more accurate than, say Michael "Piltdown" Mann, of the Hockey Stick infame.

Heller uses library records to show how graphs have been changed, and also newspaper reports demonstrating cold and heat in earlier times. This morning's video is a particularly good example of what he does. https://youtu.be/mGe9JO58Uc8.

It's a bit perplexing for me. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and so should have an effect on the temperature. The satellite record, which is the most accurate and least adjusted, shows steady increase in the last 40 years, but we only have that record for the last 40 years.

But it does seem that this is a cyclical uptick and nothing major. Which could mean the sensitivity to CO2 is even lower than the estimates of people like Judith Curry and John Christy, because their figuring effectively excludes natural cycles and any contribution they might make.

Certainly thought provoking.

What would you expect something major to look like?

Graham Y, I could not access the link you gave on temperature, but I tried this link.
http://realclimatescience.com/2019/02/61-of-noaa-ushcn-adjusted-temperature-data-is-now-fake/

However I like Dan Britt on Climate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM&fbclid=IwAR3oANRPj161mGD-EYwM0tbh6sN1BM7THH-Z811HORvJAl2Wp5mMBWFizE8

One thing is for sure. All the elites are wishing that a couple of centuries ago someone had enough foresight to ban all newspapers, so the printed history could not keep coming back to bite them on the bum.

Temperature, rainfall, fires, droughts & floods, it's all there waiting for some enterprising journalist & paper editor to to do a 3 page spread, & shoot the whole scam out of the water.

Do you believe everything you read in the newspapers today? No? So why would you believe everything you read in past newspapers?

Temperature records in past newspapers are only as good as the thermometers, their position (under a tin roof?), the reliability of the people recording the temperature, the accuracy of the telegraphic transmission of the data, the accuracy of the type-setting and proof-reading of the newspaper, and so on. Using old newspaper records for anything requires forensic analysis to assess reliability. As a historian, I've been thinking of setting up a blog to provide some hilarious examples.

On the basic accuracy of the thermometers and recorders, see http://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742.

As for your questions on CO2, well, if you haven't already found the vast amount of information about the solid science supporting its role as a greenhouse gas, it would be futile (and exceed the word limit) to repeat it here. Why is there so much debate? Partly political of course, but understanding atmospheric physics, what happens today, what happened in the past and trying to estimate what might happen in the future, is probably the most complicated science humans have attempted. It's not rocket science - it's much, much harder. That's why it's so easy to challenge it by cherry-picking. Though the argument: "Look, historic newspapers have higher temperature records! Today's science must be faked!" is hardly credible even by cherry-pickers' standards.

It took me a while to access the Heller video (tip: use http// not https//), so I now realise that the newspaper articles referred to are mainly news reports through the 20th century of weather, ice melting etc and predictions of future global warming or cooling. I think this just reinforces my comment: newspapers report what people say or claim, whether it is specific temperature observations or predictions; that doesn't mean such reports or claims are accurate just because they are in a newspaper.

somehow I think journalist in the past had much more integrity than those today who have been sold a narrative (and usually a false one). Same probably goes for science, where once things needed to be tested and reproduced in order to be proved. Now many believe a sixteen year old girl can predict the future and is an expert on previous selfish generations. The education system has dumbed down the average human.

Ah, the integrity of the past!
Runner, you must be wearing rose-tinted glasses. Here are the first two usages of the term 'fake news' in Australian newspapers: 1855 and 1864.

Sydney Morning Herald 30 April 1855

Paris, Sunday, January 21st, 6 p.m.-

Count de Montmirail, an habitue of the Bourse, was sentenced yesterday by the Court of Correctional Police to six months’ imprisonment and 500 francs fine, for circulating fake news and calumnies against the Emperor.

South Australian Weekly Chronicle 27 August 1864

After all the rumors, contradictions, and counteraffirmations on the subject of the alleged discovery of Leichhardt's remains, the whole story proves to be a discreditable hoax. In Paris such audacious trifling with the public would be punished with fine and imprisonment, and although we have no desire to see French press law introduced here, we think it right that some expression of public indignation should follow such an unprincipled piece of trickery. Not only has the public mind been unwarrantably excited upon a subject of world-wide interest, but the name of a respectable colonist (Mr. Hack) has been calumniated and abused by the perpetrator of this very discreditable hoax. We hope some one will give us his name for publication. It appears that Mr. J. B. Hack, annoyed at the supposed misconduct of his son, went personally to Gawler to look after him, and there found that it was not Mr. Charles Hack at all, but some one who had personated him, and palmed off the story in his name ! Mr. Charles Hack has not left Lake Hope. More we need not say, except to repeat the expression of our hope that as the laws of this country do not provide any direct punishment for the propagation of 'fake news,' public displeasure may be brought home effectually to the mind of the offender.

An introduction to the history of fake news and yellow journalism.

http://www.1843magazine.com/technology/rewind/the-true-history-of-fake-news

http://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yellow-journalism-the-fake-news-of-the-19th-century.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535

Apart from regularly using historic newspapers in my work, I have a particular interest in historic examples of fake news because I have a family connection to Thomas Bulling, one of the London journalists who probably faked the Jack the Ripper letters in 1888.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/were-ripper-letters-fabricated-journalists-180968004/

Finally, "Now many believe a sixteen year old girl ...."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc.

Dear GrahamY,

Sorry mate but this bloke is terrible. He makes simple mistake after simple mistake.

Take this spot in the video;

http://youtu.be/mGe9JO58Uc8?t=550

“1939 the glaciers of Greenland and Norway faced the possibility of catastrophic collapse yet the government graph show in 1939 has been very cold, also in 1939 the Arctic regions around Spitsbergen were warming up at a rate of approximately one degree every two years, winter temperatures had warmed nearly 16 degrees, yet the government graphs show 1939 cooler than the late 1870s.”

This really misrepresents what the graph shows. The single high annual global temperature of 1878 wasn’t matched using the HadCRUT data until 1944. But the average annual global temps of the decade leading up to 1939 were over 0.15 degrees C higher than 1878. In other words it was very much an outlier.

Here is an explanation of why the post-war adjustments occurred.

“The big difference is the near-elimination of the temperature drop after the second world war, as a result of the corrections introduced in HadSST3. The recent changes are rather smaller, but there is a noticeable increase in temperatures since the late 90's.

Where do the differences come from? This question can be answered by separating out the contribution of the changes to CRUTEM and HadSST. Since Hadley and CRU distribute gridded datasets for the land and ocean data, they can be combined in any combination using a land mask to select between land and ocean series, or to perform a weighted average in the case of coastal cells - this is the method employed in constructing the HadCRUT4 combined maps (HadCRUT3 used a slightly different approach for coastal cells). Combining CRUTEM3 and HadSST2 give a very close approximation to HadCRUT3, and CRUTEM4 and HadSST3 give an almost exact reproduction of HadCRUT4. (This also reveals that additional corrections incorporated into HadCRUT4 have minimal impact).”

http://skepticalscience.com/hadcrut4_a_detailed_look.html

Seems straightforward to me.

The newspaper doesn't lie! That's a lie!, Back in 2019 an article from a prominent newspaper said it was difficult to buy drugs( from weed, to coke, lsd ecstasy, pills etc) online. But that was not the case. It's so easy. All you have to do was text the user with the name Lordkush46 on the wickr or kik app and place an order and it comes in your mail easy. It isn't that hard!! thousand on people in different states NSW, Victoria, Queensland, W and S Australia and Tasmania, depend on lordkush for prescription drugs, bud and coke. And he is reliable and never misses a dateline. so the Newspapers lied. Its easy to buy drugs online.

How about the "Truth" chain of newspapers. 'Sydney Truth' 1890 and others published in capital cities after 1900. Newspapers packed with lying scandal.

Today we have the Murdoch gutter press, to tell you everything you need to know.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Mark Twain
Certainly applied to newspapers of the past, and many of today.

Cossomby,

Let's stipulate that its really very easy to find newspaper articles from the past that are either obviously in error even at the time or found to be so later.
But to leap from that unassailable fact to then declare that you'll ignore all newspaper data that you find distasteful based on these other errors is the opposite of truth seeking.

I can easily find any number of scientific, peer-reviewed papers, even (or especially) in the field of climate science that were obviously in error even at the time or found to be so later. But that hardly gives licence to declare that one can ignore all papers that one finds to be not to your liking.

All data needs to be evaluated on its own merits. To do otherwise isn't truth seeking but justifying rejecting unwanted data.

________________________________________________________

That there's been inappropriate adjustments to the global raw data is hardly disputable these days. The graphs in the video showing how raw data changed to make the early 20th century colder and later data warmer really ought to set of alarms in any field of science that valued truth over propaganda.

Essentially what these adjustments are saying is that the people from the past where morons who couldn't read a thermometer correctly. That errors were made in the past (as they are now) is undoubtedly true but the assumption is that the error was always one way.
(Equally these same assumptions are made about our descendants who they assume will be morons who won't be able to adjust to climate changes.( "OMG when my grandfather stood in this spot he was dry but now the water is lapping my ankles!! Whatever will I do?")

Out of all the data shown in the video, the most telling is the segment about the made-up central African heat-wave. This again is available in myriad sites but has never been adequately explained by those who create these data records. There was NO data but their algorithms filled in the gaps with heat-wave data. It never seems to fill it with below average data.

/cont

The best maintained and most complete data record of the past century or so is the so-called CONUS record from the US. It shows no statistically significant warming over the period. We only get a global rising temperatures after the authorities fill-the-gaps for everywhere else.

Lest it be thought that I'm alleging a conspiracy to create a manipulated record, I'm not.

I feel sure these changes are done honestly and sincerely.

Let's say you are tasked with filling the gaps over central Africa when there is no data. You run various algorithms and get a data record that shows no warming. But you spent your entire career believing that warming is real and pervasive so you just assume that the results you've found are wrong. They aren't what you know in our heart they should be. Your maths has to be wrong. So you start making changes to the formulae and re-running them until you finally get the results you expect - significant warming. Since these new algorithms are giving the 'correct' results they must be correct. So when you next need to fill-the-gaps you use these new correct algorithms and, behold, they again produce a warming, which is, obviously, correct. And the whole thing permeates through the system.

No one decided to fudge the data and therefore they take offence at the accusation. But fudged it is.

There was a case in NZ where the adjusted data was examined for accuracy. It turned out that they were using formulae and models that hadn't been changed for a decade or more and which no one even understood any longer. But the adjustments gave the expected results, and so were assumed to be correct.

In the end the warming that has the whole (western) world fretting is minor even if you buy the adjusted data set. We remain in a situation where temperatures over the past 12 millennia exceed the current temperatures 25% of the time. These temperatures are neither unusual nor dangerous. But we, who live in the most secure period in human history, need something the fret about.

Good comments Mark, but some people have fiddled the data. We currently have Michael "Piltdown" Mann on sabbatical in Australia. He stuck thermometer temperatures onto proxy temperatures when the proxies didn't follow what was happening in the real world.

That they didn't model the real world should have led to him jettisoning them as suitable for modelling temperature pre-thermometers.

This is fraud, as he never told anyone that there was a problem with the proxies and was referred to in the Climate Gate emails as "Mike's Nature trick".

Heller may have got some things wrong, and I invite Steele to write to him, but most of the points he makes are correct. So many of these climate "scientists" make so many mistakes and false statements I'm less caring that their opponents sometimes do the same thing, as long as I don't.

On a slightly diffent note this graph from the Vostok Ice Core is interesting https://binged.it/2u96F3O. It shows a regular large oscillation in temperature, over much smaller fluctuations, and suggests that earth's temperature was about to turn down, but for the dramatic increase in CO2, which on one interpretation could be said to have maintained temperature at a time of impending ice age. The scientists of the 70s were onto something, and perhaps we should be thankful that we've geo-engineered a warmer earth.

Dear GrahamY,

Just to be clear, I’m asserting a little more than just mistakes, this bloke is being outright deceiving, so if you are using him to make the case that the data is fiddled then you are going to struggle.

Look at his run through of a series of graphs attempting to make the point that there was no data to support them. This was the dialogue from the clip;

“This is a typical map which shows NOAA releases every month to show that the world is burning up. In September 2016 they showed record heat in Central Africa but if we look at their underlying data they didn’t actually have any readings from Central Africa. It says please note grey areas represent missing data. There’s no data there. How did they determine it was record hot?”

Here is the problem, it isn’t apples for apples. The first graph was “Land & Ocean Temperature Percentiles Sep 2016” with 7 ranks going from Record Coldest to Record Warmest. The second graph was “Land-Only Temperature Departure from Average Sep 2016 (with respect to a 1981-2010 base period)”. The ranking was not percentages but rather actual temperatures with a defined base period.

It is obvious the second graph required a more fulsome temperature record than the first and therefore will not as extensive. Why is this so hard?

I had resisted looking at the author’s background until now because I have been accused of going after the source before giving the assertions a chance. But as this video was pretty duplicitous suspicions were raised and confirmed. It turns out he is the man behind the Steve Goddard alias. You know you are dealing with a dodgy character when he tries to keep his identity hidden.
http://www.desmogblog.com/steven-goddard

No climate qualifications and a history of having to retract bogus climate claims. Would not ever be my go to source at all.

Cont..

Cont..

Finally you say “The scientists of the 70s were onto something, and perhaps we should be thankful that we've geo-engineered a warmer earth.” I have repeatedly said over all the time we have debated this issue that if we were headed into an ice age I would be right there shoveling coal with the rest of them and if someone tried to stop me I would give them a clip with said shovel. In fact there is a pretty strong case for leaving a lot more of it in the ground to cope with such an eventuality. Instead we are pushing the planet out of the ‘Eden period’ which allowed our civilisations to flourish and it is idiocy at its finest.

Steele, you're a laugh a minute. So because he once used an alias he's not to be believed? So on your own assessment you are not to be believed. All we have for you is an alias. We don't know your real name even, although we do know his. So in "Steele world" he has to be more credible than you. I, however, am not using an alias, so in Steele world have a heap more credibility than either of you.

Of course in logic world, it doesn't matter whether you use an alias or not. What matters is whether you are right.

And are you seriously asserting that they actually have reliable temperature measurements in the interior of Africa? They don't. Same thing happens in Antarctica. They only have three recording stations from memory there, and they just infer the rest of continental temperature from that.

You can't make a bad argument good, by making a good reputation bad. All you do is ruin whatever crediblility you still retain.

re the great Central Africa debate. One graph showed that they had no data for the grid area in question. The second graph showed that, despite having no data they nonetheless determined that the region had record warm temperatures.

How can that happen?

When these agencies don't have data for a particular location for a particular period they have two main ways to fill the gaps:

1) they use other data from the location. So let's say they have no data for September but data for August. They'll look at other years where they have data for both, determine the average difference between each and apply that difference to the missing month. Clearly each year that average will change and so the data in the missing month will change.
2) they compare the data from adjacent locations which do have data for the missing month. So as in our example above, they'll find near-by location(s) and using the ratios between the two, determine the missing data.

Generally they use both methods and give a weighting to each to average the calculated data.

But giving a weighting means that the data is open to inadvertent or deliberate fudging. If the weighting results in a cooling, then it is assumed to be wrong and the weighting changed.

The other interesting aspect to this is that newly calculated data for location A which is based on location B data can then be used to find missing data for location C. And so we have a series of estimated data rather than actual readings. Even worse, you can end up with location D having actual data but having it changed because it doesn't agree with A, B or C.

Its this type of data manipulation which has caused things like the absurdity over 1934. Once 1998 and 1934 had the same temperature. But today, 1934 is determined to be over half a degree cooler than 1998. And each year the difference between the two changes as new data causes old data to be recalculated.

And this is called science!

GrahamY,
Seriously? You think antarctic temperatures are extrapolated from just three weather stations?
That may have ben the case fifty years ago when we didn't understand the significance of antarctic weather. But those days are long gone.
To discover the current situation, see http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/aws/index.html

Similarly Africa isn't as backward as you think. They do have a related problem though: red tape sometimes makes the data difficult to access.

It is worrying that you're so ignorant of the science that you base your opinions on the assumption that it's not even being done!

Aidan,

There's a world of difference between having a weather station and having a site that is acceptable to the GHCN. There are a range of criteria that must be met before, for example, GISTEMP will accept that station as having good enough data to be used. Issues such as siting, maintenance etc make many stations unacceptable.

The last time I looked at this there were 11 antarctic stations that were considered of high-quality and were used by GHCN. Of those 7 were in the west antarctic and so close together that they were in the same grid and therefore treated, essentially, as one site.

The vast majority of the antarctic is not covered by the GHCN and therefore is inferred from related sites.

As to Africa, the graph shown in the video originally referenced, showed vast areas of Africa with no data. Why? Well there are myriad reasons for a site to be rejected in any particular month. You only need to make an error in or miss one day, to have the site marked as no data.

There is this assumption that the global temperature-station data network is pristine, closely monitored and professional maintained. The truth is very different. That's why I prefer the satellite data.

I don't know why mhaze, recent checking of the BOMs stations has shown that more than 50% of don't comply to their own published standard.

Unsurprisingly, they are happy to use all these non complying stations in all their official records & record braking reports.

Dear GrahamY,

You asked; “So because he once used an alias he's not to be believed?”

Nope. It is just combined with no “climate qualifications and a history of having to retract bogus climate claims” he would “not ever be my go to source”.

And to be clear I went and deconstructed two sections of his video which showed instances of him being less than honest before raising the issue of credibility.

Here is the time stamped link to the part of the video where he plays silly buggers with the graphs.

http://youtu.be/mGe9JO58Uc8?t=167

So to your baseless claim that “And are you seriously asserting that they actually have reliable temperature measurements in the interior of Africa? They don't.”

Here is a link to the Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly (GHCN-M) Mean Temperature (Version 4) documentation. In it you will find a map on page 8 titled “Figure 1: Location of the ~26,000 stations in the GHCNm v4 inventory.”
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v4/documentation/CDRP-ATBD-0859%20Rev%201%20GHCN-M%20Mean%20Temperature-v4.pdf

You will see from the map that there most certainly are stations in countries like Chad which are in the area you and your mate are referring to.

Further you will see they are colour coded as to the length of years of available data. Those within the area we are discussing are within the last 50 years and while obviously not able to give a robust enough data set to give a “Temperature Departure from Average Sep 2016 (with respect to a 1981-2010 base period)” they most certainly would allow a determination of “Temperature Percentiles”.

This is all stuff someone who was even half way serious about getting to the bottom of an issue could have easily found. Tony Heller aka Steve Goddard either didn't bother or didn't want it to spoil a good story.

In my opinion he is a lightweight with an agenda and there are far more honest, more respected, and better qualified contrarians you could be putting up.

The Goddard video wasn't saying there is never any data in these locations. Just that on that particular month in that particular year there was no (or more likely inadequate) data yet they were able to declare that region as having a record high in that particular month in that particular year ie they fudged the data.

If they have no, or incomplete, data they really aren't in a position to make assertions about the region. Well you can, but only if you're trying to create propaganda rather than science.