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.

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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.

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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.