Over at Anthony Watt’s excellent blog about climate and global warming – Watt’s Up With That? – we see Peter Sinclair get absolutely schooled for his dishonest and ignorant attempt to substantiate anthropogenic global warming. Who is Peter Sinclair? He’s a radical environut who puts out a (usually) weekly series of YouTube video documentaries entitled “ Climate Crock of the Week” in which he attempts to “debunk” the science that disproves global warming. Generally, while we can give Mr. Sinclair an “A” for effort, his “refutations” amount to little more than handwaving with a little ad hominem thrown in as filler. This should not surprise us, since Mr. Sinclair is not a scientist. In fact, he is an “independent film producer” whose only claim to anything even remotely resembling a relevant background in this field is that he apparently sat in on one of Al Gore’s Climate Project seminars. This didn’t stop him from trying to attack the temperature tracking station work done by Watt (an accredited meteorologist), making a thorough hash of the attempt while he was at it. Watt takes him apart,

….Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again, detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance, I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.

In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was as if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and a monotone voice-over track with ad hominems liberally sprinkled for seasoning. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of  radical burningman quality about it.

Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”

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….OK. But if Mr. Sinclair had contacted me (like a journalist would) before he made his video, instead of simply reading the NCDC Talking points memo (revised version seen here, PDF) he could have found out a few things, such as:

• NCDC used an old outdated version of my data set (April 2008) they found on my website and assumed it was “current”. Big mistake on their part. Big admission of not overly concerning himself with first-hand knowledge, or even substance, on his part.

• NCDC did not contact me about use of the data. The data, BTW is not yet public domain, though I plan to make it so after I’ve published my paper. So like Mr. Sinclair, technically they are also in violation of copyright. Surfacestations is a private project, I emphasize, what with the public-private concept being one of the major precipitors of the alarmosphere’s angst.

• That data NCDC found had not been quality controlled, many of the ratings changed after quality control was applied, thus changing the outcome.

• When notified of this, they did nothing to deal with the issue, such as notifying readers.

• NCDC published no methodology, data or formula used, or show work of any kind that would normally be required in a scientific paper.

• The author is missing from the document thus it was published anonymously. Apparently nobody at NCDC would put his or her name on it.

• When notified of the fact that the author’s name Thomas C. Peterson (of NCDC) was embedded in the properties of the PDF document (which happens on registration of the Adobe Acrobat program, causing insertion in all output), NCDC’s only response was to remove the author’s name from the document and place it back online. It is odd behavior for a scientist to publish work but not put your name on it.

• NCDC got the number of USHCN stations wrong in their original document document graph, citing 1228 when it is actually 1218 I notified them of this and they eventually fixed it.

• That NCDC original document did not even cite my published work,  or even use my name to credit me. I have the original which you can view here Note also the name in the document properties and the number of USHCN2 stations above the graph.

I’m regularly lambasted for publishing things here that are not “peer reviewed”. But, when NCDC does it, and does it unbelievably badly, not only is the “talking points memo” embraced by the alarmosphere as “truth” and “falsification”, but NOT ONE of those embracing it show the remotest interest in questioning why it fails to meet even the basic standards for a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.

Please read the whole thing, it’s long, but quite revealing about the standards and ethics of the environmental wacko side of the blogosphere and the outfits they rely upon to get their information – shoddy and dishonest use of data, copyright infringement, refusal to actually address pushback from the other side, the whole enchilada. What’s sad is that Peter Sinclair’s “Climate Crock” series has become something of a gold standard for the Church of Global Warming on the internet, if the number of blogs and other links to it from pro-global warming outfits is any indication. So, how seriously can we really take the pro-global warming bloggers and “journalists,” when they rely on such subpar material to support their mythology? I mean, seriously, meteorologist vs. “independent film producer.” For the logical and rational person, the choice isn’t hard.

Is it any wonder that real scientists are abandoning the AGW mythology in droves? Even though the Al Gore epic cycle makes for an entertaining story, it’s simply no substitute for reality.

An absolutely damning exposé about the way money and political expediency drives the sham “research” that underlies arguments for anthropogenic global warming, from somebody who knows a whole lot more about science than Charles Johnson does –  Climate Money: Monopoly Science

(Hat Tip: Escovado)

Despite the billions of dollars in funding, outrageous mistakes have been made. One howler in particular, rewrote history and then persisted for years before one dedicated fact checker, working for free, exposed the fraud about the Hockey Stick Graph. Meanwhile agencies like the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, can’t afford to install temperature sensors to meet its own guidelines, because the workers are poorly trained and equipped to dig trenches only with garden trowels and shovels. NOAA “adjust” the data after the fact—apparently to compensate for sensors which are too close to air conditioners or car parks, yet it begs the question: If the climate is the biggest problem we face; if billions of dollars are needed, why can’t we install thermometers properly?

How serious are they about getting the data right? Or are they only serious about getting the “right” data?

The real total of vested interests in climate-change science is far larger than just scientists doing pure research. The $30 billion in funding to the CCSP (graphed above) does not include work on green technologies like improving solar cells, or storing a harmless gas underground. Funding for climate technologies literally doubles the amount of money involved, and provides a much larger pool of respectable-looking people with impressive scientific cachet to issue more press releases—most of which have little to do with basic atmospheric physics, but almost all of which repeat the assumption that the climate will warm due to human emissions. In other words: a 30-billion-dollar cheer squad….

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Normally this might not be such a problem, because the lure of fame and fortune by categorically “busting” a well-accepted idea would attract some people. In most scientific fields, if someone debunks a big Nature or Science paper, they are suddenly cited more often; are the next in line for a promotion and find it easier to get grants. They attract better PhD students to help, are invited to speak at more conferences, and placed higher in the program. Instead in climate science, the reward is the notoriety of a personal attack page on Desmog¹, ExxonSecrets² or Sourcewatch³, dedicated to listing every mistake on any topic you may have made, any connection you may have had with the fossil fuel industry, no matter how long ago or how tenuous. The attack-dog sites will also attack your religious beliefs if you have any. Roy Spencer, for example, has been repeatedly attacked for being Christian (though no one has yet come up with any reason why that could affect his satellite data).

Ironically, the “activist” websites use paid bloggers. DeSmog is a funded wing of a professional PR group Hoggan⁴ and Associates (who are paid to promote clients⁵ like David Suzuki Foundation, ethical funds, and companies that sell alternative energy sources like hydro power, hydrogen and fuel cells.) ExxonSecrets is funded by Greenpeace⁶ (who live off donations to “save” the planet, and presumably do better when the planet appears to need saving).

Most scientific fields are looking for answers, not looking to prove only one side of a hypothesis. There are a few researchers who are paid to disprove the hypothesis of Global Warming, and most of them are investigated and pilloried as if they were a politician running for office. This is not how science works, by ad hominem attack. The intimidation, disrespect and ostracism leveled at people who ask awkward questions acts like a form of censorship. Not many fields of science have dedicated smear sites for scientists. Money talks.

Money definitely talks.  It’s no secret that a large driving force behind Al Gore’s push on this issue is the fact that he hopes to cash in on selling “carbon credits” to companies being forced to either scale back production or else look  for ways to shift their costs around to maintain present levels. 

Let’s face it – the science underlying anthropogenic global warming is shoddy.  The Hockey Stick has been thoroughly debunked (yet I’ve still had scientifically-illiterate types try to use it when arguing with me).  It’s well-known that the earth has actually been cooling for over a decade.  We know that the ground-level temperature data used to generate the “warming trends” that the ecos harp about was taken using temperature sensors placed in extremely unrepresentative and inappropriate places (such as near exhaust ports for heat exchangers and the like).  We know that just as much glaciation has been taking place as de-glaciation.  We know that the polar bears aren’t going to go extinct because they can’t find ice floes from which to hunt for seals.  Anybody who can simply read data knows this. 

Yet, supposedly smart people literally spend their lives trying to scare us into running around like chickens with our heads cut off worrying about AGW.  Why?

As JoNova shows us, follow the money, baby, follow the money.