The climate science community will have to re-earn that trust, and this will take time and effort, which they have yet to begin.

m d mill: The reason your comment did not appear immediately is that you included two links, and any comment that includes more than one link must be moderated and approved by me manually. I have deleted your second attempt to post this. Please do not repost comments. Just be patient and give me some time. I’ll get to it.

The satellites give temp readings for the lower and upper troposphere. There is no need to know the ocean heats or other global data to simply determine if the model trend predictions for the lower atmosphere (and surface temperatures) are following the observed satellite readings.
The skepticism and vigilance advocated by RZ and others is laudable and necessary and a cornerstone of good scientific method, but let us not go down the path of “you can never know nothin bout nothin” and “its ALL a conspiracy”.

The good news…with the new temperature data gathered in the next 30 to 50 years (given increasing CO2 forcing) we (with the climate scientists, alarmists and skeptics) PROBABLY will be able to discern if the “alarmist” trends and models are reasonably vindicated or reasonably disproved.

RELATED…the new Netflix/PBS documentary on ultra-safe nuclear reactors (The Nuclear Option) is fascinating.

However, when the data do not fit the model, the satellite can be “recalibrated,” as m d mill noted, to make sure that the model is seen to be right.

The love of the theory (actually it is a hypothesis) seems to be driving a lot of confirmation bias in the climate science community. The data is modified to fit the hypothesis, so the loved hypothesis is promoted to a loved theory.

“The truth will out and within the foreseeable future, if we remain open minded.”

The truth is that temperatures stopped climbing for a couple of decades in the late 1990s. That was observation, as time passed. At first, this truth was met with excuses (e.g. the heat was hiding at the bottom of the oceans), then the temperature data were changed to show a continued climb rather than a period of level temperatures. If the data is fudged, how does the truth out? The truth has been hidden (probably at the bottom of the oceans), because the climate scientists were not open minded.

If the heat is hiding, such as in the oceans, it means that the models are incorrect, as they do not account for that factor, and perhaps other factors.

Meanwhile, as we wait for the truth to out, say in 50 years or more, the politicians are using the current fudged scientific data to tell us how to live our lives and to tax us into poverty lifestyles. All while those same politicians continue to spew CO2 as though they were trying to save us from the coming Ice Age.

The general public already does not take the climate alarmism seriously, because they continue to use powered transportation, to use power in their homes and workplaces, and to purchase products that were made and distributed using power — all of which contribute to the CO2, which supposedly is the reason for the Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change, expected ocean rise, and other announced catastrophes. Didn’t someone recently tell us that we only have 12 years left? How many times have we heard similar claims, yet those deadlines have already passed?
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/12-years-left-to-address-climate-catastrophe

Chris: All your questions fall under my oft-repeated phrase, the uncertainty of science. All are correct and must be considered.

What changed with satellites was that for the first time we were getting some data for the entire globe, a significant improvement over the past.

I ask this since even with this “new” global measurements I wonder if we have anything near a true complete data set? I think it will be some time until we can have this data to even start to get a single first data set.

Thoughts?

m d mill
January 28, 2019 at 7:42 pm

The good news in fact:
The nearly linear increase in CO2 since the 1960’s is in fact a global climate experiment in progress.
This increase will continue for the next 30 to 50 years at least…there is no reasonable expectation it will end soon (it would in fact be a grievous if it did).
But with the new temperature data gathered in the next 30 to 50 years we (with the climate scientists, alarmists and skeptics) will be able to discern if the “alarmist” trends and models are reasonably vindicated or reasonably disproved.

Doesn’t matter. We know the climate will change to some degree and no matter which way it goes, it will be framed to help the AGW alarmist’s political agenda.

Andi: My mistake. I was really referring to Nimbus 7, which most climate scientists consider the first to provide reliable global data. As I wrote in my Chronological Encyclopedia:

One of the most successful earth research satellite ever launched, Nimbus 7 was the last of the Nimbus experimental environmental/meteorological research satellites. ,,, The spacecraft operated for more than a decade, with several sensors functioning into the early 1990s. Nimbus 7’s instruments were the first to provide data on the earth’s climate on a global basis, using many carefully refined spectral bands.

All previous climate/weather satellites were experimental. Nimbus 7 established the baseline that all later climate satellites continued.

Moreover,
the nice thing is that UAH and RSS are respectfully skeptical of each other, and check each other…which is a situation rarely found in the field. That is why I think (hope) the temp data will no longer be fudged or misinterpreted SIGNIFICANTLY. UAH use observation based corrections and are skeptical of models ,RSS use more model based corrections and trust the models. [Incidentally, I doubt there was any confirmation bias in the original UAH findings, which were in error. A mistake was made in a string of VERY difficult corrections among many varied satellite types that no one had even attempted up to that point, and which took many years for anyone to find. There is no need to assume significant bias, and the error was corrected.]

Of course there is no absolute objectivity, but I feel very comfortable relying on the UAH, RSS temp data histories which are very similar (and tide gauge histories). Although, when Christy and Spencer leave the field then the situation could degrade. I hope they will have the power to see to their succession, so that this friendly competition may continue.

Further,
most Models are tested against diurnal and seasonal variations which have been averaged for many decades and are quite accurate. The models work amazingly well over this period for temperature, wind, humidity , etc variations (but are not as accurate for cloud and rainfall modeling, which may be critically important for long term predictions). So we cannot say these models are operating in a data vacuum…the modelers are generally doing there best,IMO, and have done remarkable work. But the variation of temperature over the oceans (and land) are greatly attenuated by the ocean mix layer thermal capacitance over these short time periods, so the feedback effects of ocean warming and evaporation are not easily verified observationally over multi-decadal periods.
As more time passes the experiment described above will probably answer this question observationally .

The first Nimbus satellite (successor to the TIROS series) was launched in the mid-1960s. My father was the Director of Meteorological Satellite Programs at NASA at that time, and I vividly remember the satellite details and launches. He took me to the launch of TIROS 1 – really thrilling for a kid.

Perhaps you meant to refer to the TIROS-N series, which I believe was launched beginning in the late 1970s?

Indeed, since the current models were based upon the pre-tampered data, the current models no longer conform to the changed “reality.” If they were not invalid before, they are invalid now. Tampering with the data, especially if it was done for legitimate and explainable reasons, has killed — not justified — the models that are currently used, because either they were created using faulty data or they failed to correctly predict current climate. If the former, then their predictions of current temperatures is coincidence, because the theories underlying their algorithms are based upon faulty information. If the latter, they were created using correct information, but the climate did not change as the models predicted.

Not only are the current models unusable, but future models cannot be created until we have enough reliable data (decades at the very least) to model the climate.

That the current climate scientists are willing to fudge data, it could be decades before we can trust the data enough to find a new start point for observation of nature’s processes in order to restart climate science. We have to wait until we are assured that new data (or current data) are legitimate and unfudged. Meanwhile, climate science is dead, except few people realize it yet.

Tampering with historical data has set back climate science by the century and a half over which we have temperature data — oops — had temperature data. The historic data cannot be used in order to test future proxies for compatibility or usefulness in order to deduce information about pre-thermometer temperature histories.

This is part of the problem with fudging data. It can set back the scientific field and invalidate other research. Everything that has depended upon temperature data sets has been compromised. If it was research performed in the past then the new data sets call it into question until those who tampered with the data explain themselves. If the tampering was necessary, then a century and a half of research is invalid. If the tampering is bogus, then all the recent research performed using the bogus temperature data sets is invalid.

And we will not know until the tampering is justified or refuted. Until then, we cannot be certain of anything done previously or anything being done now.

An absolute uncertainty of climate science.