The climate scam fudge factor, with a bonus of arguing with idiots
Another example of why you need to read the Climategate material, as opposed to reading what left wingers want you to believe about it.
If you had not heard about it, back in 2009 there was a leak of thousands of emails and other files from the “CRU” at the University of East Anglia in the UK. That release has been referred to as “Climategate” ever since, of course using the well known reference to the Watergate scandal. “Mike’s Nature Trick” was one of the key items revealed in the leaked material:
The people included in the leak comprised the majority of the most prominent global warming scammers back in 2009 and in the years prior, if not almost all of them. A certain group of them is (or at least was for some time) “affectionately” known as “The Hockey Team” (referring to the faked “Hockey Stick” temperature graph made most famous by Al Gore) by skeptics and others who deny the scam of global warming. One of the team members is a guy named Keith Briffa, and you can look him up if you like.
Briffa’s files provide another key item known as the “fudge factor”. For one because the words “fudge factor” are literally in the computer code as a comment, and for two because that’s exactly what it is. If the words “fudge factor” are not enough, the code comments in that section include a sentence that removes all doubt:
If you’ve never done any coding before and you’ve never seen code, the words in green are comments only and intended for the programmer. The computer does not use them in any way. The semicolon indicates that a comment follows such that the computer will ignore it, and as you can see the comments are in green.
So when you see “Apply a VERY ARTIFICIAL correction for the decline!!”, what does that tell you?? Whoever wrote that code, whether Keith Briffa or someone working with him, literally stresses in at least three different ways that it’s faked. He uses the word VERY, he has VERY ARTIFICIAL in all caps, and he finishes the sentence with two exclamation points. Throw in the namesake words of “fudge factor” down below and you’ve got four different indications that the output of the program is going to be fake. When the output of that program and others like it is going to be used to dictate government policy, it rises to the level of FRAUD.
Looking at the parts that are actually code gives you a clue as to what’s going on. You see the “yrloc” and the more obvious “yearlyadj”. If you think that “yearlyadj” means an adjustment based on the year, you would be right. If you’re thinking it’s temperature that’s being artificially adjusted, you’re right again. This code is part of a program that generates a handy “hockey stick” temperature graph to claim that the global temperature was flat for centuries and then suddenly spiked up in the latter part of the 20th century due to man made CO2 emissions.
There is a more thorough/detailed explanation at Watts Up With That, although both the author of the article and Anthony Watts (the site’s creator) actually downplay the significance somewhat. The author does use the word farce, and perhaps more importantly he links to this off the charts excellent piece that comes right out and calls it fraud and there is no downplaying. It actually covers much more context on the code above and on other computer code found in the Climategate files:
Plotting programs such as data4alps.pro print this reminder to the user prior to rendering the chart:
IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this "decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.
Others, such as mxdgrid2ascii.pro, issue this warning:
NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures then (sic) they should be which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skillful than it actually is. See Osborn et al. (2004).
That last bit spells things out even further. The term “tree-ring density” refers to “maximum latewood density”, which was often abbreviated “MXD”. MXD was used as a temperature proxy for years in the past, or in other words they used “treemometers” instead of thermometers because of course going back centuries there was little or no thermometer data to use.
So my big picture point is that if Mike’s Nature Trick wasn’t enough, how about this fudge factor? What does the sentence “Apply a VERY ARTIFICIAL correction for the decline!!” tell you? Can that be explained away by the many left wing deflections? How about the last few words of that last warning above “which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skillful than it actually is”. Remember this is one of the warmists writing this too, as is true of the rest. It’s not some right wing “climate denier” using this wording.
Does it sound like fraud to you? Considering that the outputs of “scientists” like this are being used to control your life in a multitude of ways? Costing you thousands extra per year, or even tens of thousands extra, and preventing you from doing many things you otherwise could have without the global warming fraud?
Heard the talk about the fascists in power all over considering declaring a “climate emergency”? Thanks to pathetic useful idiot left wingers and horribly corrupt governments, they managed to get away with it for the scamdemic/plandemic, so now they are emboldened to continue the “emergency” ruse in other areas, to further increase and extend their power. Change my mind in the comments below.
What about the arguing with idiots part, you ask? That comes courtesy of a couple of twits on Twitter. This is purely bonus material mostly for your amusement. While it is educational to see how liberals “think”, and the stuff does include more content that helps to shred the global warming scam, don’t consider it required if you have limited reading time and you’ve already seen enough.
In response to an Elon Musk tweet about Twitter’s new rules for questioning science, Katharine Hayhoe (a prominent warmist) replies to Musk with something ridiculous, and then I reply to her with Mike’s Nature Trick with my standard bet that she doesn’t know what the trick is. My first reply was quick so I didn’t even pay attention to her name. Within a few seconds after my reply I did pay attention and recognize her as one the big time scammers. Skim her glowing Wikipedia content and ask yourself how she would be making a living in the absence of the hundreds of millions if not billions in research money tied to the global warming scare.
After recognizing her I challenged her to a Twitter “Spaces” discussion, and sometime shortly after that she blocked me. Prior to blocking me she replied to me a couple times, and she also liked another twit’s comment about how the 1970s global cooling scare was just a couple magazine articles and was not scientists giving warnings. So I offered this very handy link that shreds the “couple of magazines” claim, and I highlighted this bit:
If you don’t recognize Holdren and Ehrlich, please look them up. There are a multitude of other “scientists” quoted in the long list of items at that link above, so of course any claim that the 1970s cooling scare was just a Newsweek article and a few other wild news stories back then is a complete lie.
So Hayhoe blocks me but then in come the left wing twits. An hour after I make clear I recognized Hayhoe, one of the twits states I don’t know who she is:
So I mention the fudge factor and include the same picture of the code that I used above in this post. The same babyface twit immediately comes back with a tweet saying “unsourced”, implying I made it up.
He (Yes I’m assuming gender here.) apparently thought he had the authority to compel me to show him a source. Of course it’s not my job to find him a source, and he does his own search and finds the WUWT article I linked above, which I had read many years ago along with multiple other commentaries on the CG material. The twit focuses in on Anthony Watts’ tepid note after the story:
Just to cover all the idiocy shown in this one tweet requires a list.
He had no prior knowledge of the fudge factor, at all.
He thinks my not replying within a couple minutes shows I “couldn’t bring a source”.
He spouts item 2 even though I provided the fudge factor in the first place and he knew nothing about it and he knows nothing about me.
The link he finds confirms that the fudge factor is real, but he still calls it “nonsense”.
The link shows exactly what I provided to him originally, but somehow this means I don’t know what I’m talking about.
He’s so ignorant about the global warming scam and the evidence that destroys it that he does not realize the source he found is on one of the most prominent skeptic websites in the world, if not the most prominent.
I found all that amusing so I replied:
But again the severe reading comprehension issue comes in, along with a repeated claim that he has the authority to assign people to find sources for him:
I downloaded it years ago, I’m the one who mentioned it, but he “has to find my citation (sic) for me”. He’s unaware of the advice “when in a hole, stop digging”. He even comes in later with his childish question, and again assumes he can compel answers.
I didn’t play along, and I did try to make him realize how stupid he looked:
Of course he didn’t realize his own stupidity, so here was his next comment:
So we’re on Twitter, with a 280 characters per comment limit, I’ve made only 10 comments or so even including the ones to Hayhoe, but the fudge factor is my only argument??? Of course he forgot about Mike’s Nature trick earlier, but the “sloppy coding” bit is even worse. This is where you ask yourself is this massive stupidity, or is he lying? It’s got to be a combination of both.
There’s nothing “sloppy” about the code or the description of what the code is doing, so even with his very limited mental skills saying “sloppy coding” is a lie. Saying to anyone that a brief Twitter thread on one limited topic is their “only argument” on a very broad topic is incredibly stupid. In the end Mr. Babyface actually congratulated himself for winning the argument. Too bad there are no laughing emojis in the Substack editor.
The 2nd twit mostly followed along liking babyface’s tweets. Here’s his Twitter profile headline stuff:
So he’s an associate professor in Florida, and he’s an ESG guy. ESG is a topic for another post, but I do have to wonder how Josh can stand to remain in Florida with Ron DeSantis as governor. If DeSantis has his way, the ESG BS will be thrown into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
But that’s not my point. My point is that apparently Josh is another one of those left wingers that needs to be told what to think and told what to do. He can’t think for himself or learn anything. He can’t look up side effects of medicines because he’s not a doctor. He can’t do his taxes because he’s not an accountant. He can’t work on his car or even have any idea what could be wrong with it because he’s not a mechanic. And he almost certainly has no idea what a woman is because he’s not a biologist.
And Josh certainly can’t know what “Apply a VERY ARTIFICIAL correction for the decline!!” means because he’s not a “climate scientist”.
FFS. Thanks for the material, twits.