Nothing to See Here

Especially not a pause. Ahem. Move along, deniers.


Image source.

Understanding Steven Goddard (Spoiler Alert: Fool's Errand)

A while back, I blogged about an apparent concentrated effort, campaign, or maybe even a veritable crusade on the part of Steven Goddard to devolve into a completely incoherent and irrational disaster before the very eyes of the world. Well, I must admit I drastically underestimated his desire and determination that we all find him utterly incomprehensible.

Today, we had this odd, indecipherable blurb from him:

Understanding The Hiatus

"The global warming hiatus is easy to understand.

It is much harder for NOAA to tamper with post 1979 global data, because we now have satellite data – which restricts the amount of cheating which they can do."

In point of fact, the hiatus is easy to understand...it's the hiatus that wasn't and ain't.

But, wait, Goddard is claiming proof of the "pause" is more dependent on satellite data than surface station data? Huh? Let's look at the data sources behind the so-called "pause," shall we?



NOAA/NCDC: surface stations.

NASA/GISS: surface stations.

CRU/HADCRU: surface stations.

ERAI: surface stations.

Even if it's the case that "pausers" are having a steamier love affair with, say, UAH or RSS satellite data, or numbers drawn from some other NASA satellites or temperature data derivation technique, uh, how exactly is it that these alleged impervious sources have allowed GISS to continue its devious US surface temperature manipulation as Goddard claims is the case? How did those supposed data-shifting shenanigans slip through the hiatus-guaranteeing, tamper-resistant, satellite gauntlet again exactly, hmmmmmmm?

Can anyone figure this Goddard nutjob out? With whom is this cretinous idiot even arguing anymore? Himself?! Has his science denial become so virulent that he even denies his own pseudoscientific conspiracy theories? Anything remotely scientific-sounding (which gives him and his bubbling blog bilge more credit than they deserve) is a target? Or is it just that he has been so roundly and soundly thrashed and humiliated before that he is too afraid to go after anything but his own unscientific garbage now?

What.

The.

Fuck?!

Are You Sitting Down?

You're never gonna believe this, people, but just like Steven Goddard, Anthony Watts goes in for this "NASA-GISS is doing something spooky and secret to the data" crap, too. Back in 2012, Watts felt the need to uncritically mirror-blog an article by Randall Hoven, where he reveals himself to be an impatient, impetuous fool:

I thought I’d update that analysis to include July’s and August’s temperatures. To my surprise, NASA’s entire temperature record, going back to January 1880, changed between NASA’s June update and its August update. I could not just add two more numbers to my spreadsheet. The entire spreadsheet needed to be updated.

NASA does summarize its "updates to analysis," but the last update it describes was in February. The data I looked at changed sometime after early July.

In short, the data that NASA makes available to the public, temperatures over the last 130 years, can change at any time, without warning and without explanation. Yes, the global temperature of January 1880 changed some time between July and September 2012.

Well, no Obama mind control accusations this time, unlike with Goddard, which is a relief, but we still seem to be stuck with the now predictable denier wet diaper bellyaching about NASA changing things "without warning and without explanation," so let's investigate, shall we?

Looking at the GISS update announcement page that Hoven links to, and that I've linked to numerous times now myself while addressing Goddard's extreme paranoia, we do see an update in February, 2012, and then nothing until September, 2012.

February 17, 2012: The analysis was redone on Feb 17 after learning from NOAA/NCDC that the operational version of GHCN v3 was only made available that afternoon.

September 26, 2012: NOAA/NCDC replaced GHCN v3.1 by GHCN v3.2. Hence the GISS analysis is based on that product starting 9/14/2012. Version v3.2 differs from v3.1 by minor changes in the homogenization of the unadjusted data. A description of the modifications in the adjustment scheme and their effects are available here.

Well, gosh, Hoven is moaning and groaning about changes that happened from June to August, 2012, and that September GISS bullet says the analysis began using the GHCN v3.2 on Sept. 14th, 2012. That means he's onto something, right? Let's see where that "description of the modifications" link takes us...

The software used to perform operational updates and reprocessing of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to correct coding errors and to improve its run-time efficiency. In particular, coding errors were corrected in the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) that had been identified during the course of a project led by Mr. Daniel Rothenberg in July 2011...These software changes were combined with other minor changes to improve debugging and processing efficiency. A total of eight software modifications were made...With v3.1.0, the adjusted annual global land surface air temperature trend for 1901‐2011 was 0.94°C/Century. Using data from version 3.2.0 this trend is 1.07°C/Century.

OK, no timing indicators per se, though the error corrections apparently started in 2011 well before the public release date in September, 2012, but there is a "Where can I obtain additional information about the changes that were made and their impacts on global temperature trends?" section which takes us to a NOAA/NCDC technical report dated August 1, 2012, which again mentions software bug fixes for the September release of v3.2.0. Another dead end? Well, no, not really, because interestingly enough, with a little online digging, you can learn here that on the same day, August 1, 2012, NOAA released another technical report regarding fixes made and implemented in GHCN-M v3.1.0...

The software used to perform operational updates of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to improve its run-time efficiency...The impact on annual means resulted in a change in century-scale global and US trends of less than 0.002°C/Decade. The software modifications are incorporated into a new release of GHCN-M, version 3.1.0.

There ya have it. Nothing mysterious and secret taking place anywhere. There were ongoing code corrections since July 2011, some of which were applied to calculations in v3.1.0 before September, 2012, and some to v3.2.0 during and after September, 2012.

Hoven couldn't be bothered to research GHCN-M v3.1.0 technical reports, or wait ONE DAY for the helpful v3.2.0 mention to appear on the GISS update page (his article is dated 9/25/2012, and the v.3.2.0 explanation was posted on 9/26/2012), and, plain and simply, Watts and Goddard are nothing more than two paranoid peas in a pod.

Steven Goddard Continues to Prove He's an Idiotic Troll

NASA's lying to us, folks, according to Goddard.

I apologize for forcing NASA to do this 15 years ago, via my evil retroactive witchcraft.

Updating data with a over a decade of findings is something caused by or equivalent to "evil retroactive witchcraft." And it just can't be a case of Goddard botching the numbers/sources/graphs, if he made this animated gif image, because he never screws up or anything, ya know?

I suppose, in Goddard's warped opinion, there must also be UFOs on the Moon that NASA doesn't want you to know about. I mean, if you think NASA is cooking the temperature books rather than correcting them, why would you not believe the agency lies about other things?

There's an informative (and humorous) parody of Goddard's trash site called Really Sciency that's well worth a look. And I showed what a paranoid wingnut he is in a previous post.

But, really, all you need to do is apply a dash of common sense here. Doesn't even take much. After all, do you really believe NASA is manipulating the data in a willfully-deceptive manner? Or, instead, this one, strange, Internet troll needs to remove the giant tin foil hat he's been wearing, and leave his dark and scary conspiracy cave more often?

Tough choice, I know.

Steven Goddard is a Conspiracy Theorist Nutcase

Steven Goddard, or whatever his real name is, is the author of a wordpress blog called Real Science.

I'll pause a moment here to allow that blog title to sink in. Its rich irony, if not already evident, will become clear shortly.

As the DeSmogBlog link above points out, Goddard has initially tried to deny and then ultimately succumbed to reality before:

"Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC has convinced me this week that their ice extent numbers are solid... It is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year – just as NSIDC had stated."

You would figure Goddard learned his lesson, but he didn't. He just changed targets. Now, rather than accusing the NSIDC of cooking the books, he's trying the same awful horseshit with NASA and NOAA:

"Over the past 15 years, NASA and NOAA have turned a long term US cooling trend into a warming trend. But it is even worse than that, because almost every year they make the past cooler and the present warmer."

Yup, you got it, folks. If at first you don't succeed, deny, deny again. With other agencies, of course, so you can pretend your previous face-palming failures didn't happen.

"Real science" to Goddard is apparently some strange process that would not allow over a decade worth of findings to update the data. In his mind, helpful, well-intended, scientific self-correction like that must be due to – drumroll, please – some conspiracy, maybe like the one above that didn't exist at the NSIDC:

"These alterations are being made by government employees with a strong vested interest in global warming, who should recuse themselves because of their overt conflict of interest. Their boss, the President of the United States, has made it clear that he will not accept any data which does not promote global warming theory. That is pretty strong motivation to generate warming data."

For people like Goddard, tin foil alone doesn't offer enough protection.



He presents no proof of this conspiracy other than the numbers have changed, so therefore there must be something pernicious at work behind the alteration, and he dismisses the reasonable explanation out of hand, because it doesn't fit with his Looney Tunes narrative:

"NOAA does have discussions on obscure web pages describing their thought process behind the alterations, but few people know about this. The alterations are highly subjective, and could just as easily go the other way – making the present cooler due to urban heat island effects."

Updating data and alerting the public you have done so is an "obscure" and "subjective" trick. Oh, brother. In reality, NOAA and NASA are careful to rather explicitly and clearly annotate public release of data sets with update/alteration reminders like the following:

Because these data are primarily intended for the study of climate variability and change, observations have been adjusted to account for the artificial effects introduced into the climate record by factors such as instrument changes, station relocation, observer practice changes and urbanization. Some of the more current data provided by the Climate at a Glance system are preliminary and may be modified after appropriate quality control has been performed. As a result, some values available on this site differ from the official observations.

In fact, the notifications are damn well near bloody fucking exhaustive. You'd just have to be a paranoid dipshit of epic proportions to miss and/or dismiss such obvious and honest attempts at full disclosure.

Maybe tin foil hats, or whatever Goddard wears, trap false-positive conspiracy theory frequencies. Dunno, just trying to think of reasons why he'd be so confused. Just trying to help, ya know?

And it's Goddard's opinion that the obligatory denier "urban heat island effect" canard just just hasn't had its lifeless corpse dragged around enough yet, I guess.

This is the abysmal lack of logic and evidence that all screwball conspiracy theorists offer. The "government" (NASA and NOAA receive daily propaganda and marching instructions from the Obama administration, which is a de facto den of liars, didn't you know?) is hiding things, because, well, because Goddard says so, that's why.

Oh, and this infantile "reasoning" as well:

Progressives say there are no government conspiracies, which explains why Edward Snowden rocked the world with his disclosures.

We're dealing with someone who has the intellectual capacity of your average 7 year-old. And my apologies to 7 year-olds who, unlike Goddard, understand why this batshit insane comment is UTTER BULLSHIT. According to Goddard, because federal agencies like the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the White House, etc., which all have obvious and stated obligations to secrecy for the sake of national security (whether or not you agree with those imperatives), can and will lie to us from time to time, this means that research and exploration divisions of the government, like NASA, NOAA, GISS, etc., which have little or no strangling commitments to our nation's defense and security, and quite the opposite have policies of public outreach and disclosure (when budgets allow, of course), will also purposefully seek to deceive us as well. Guilt by lack of significant association, or something

It follows that NASA must be lying to us about the UFOs, too, I suppose.

Steven Goddard is a vile and ridiculous troll, who wouldn't recognize real science if it drove up on a Mars rover, slapped him across the ignorant face with a stack of updated sea and surface temp print-outs, and knocked the wind out of him by jamming a copy of The Feynman Lectures on Physics into his gut.