More bad news

[guardian]

for the doomer cult. Some more of their doomer acolytes have been caught cooking the data again. Gee I hope this won't hurt Michael Mann's grant money pipeline or book sales.


http://en.rian.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html

The Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA), in Moscow, issued a report Tuesday alleging that the Hadley Centre, when compiling its contribution to the Hadley-CRU Temperature (HadCRUT) surveys, used data from a select 25% of Russian weather stations. The problem: the remaining stations, covering 40% of Russian territory, have shown NO SUBSTANTIAL WARMING IN RECENT DECADES. Furthermore, the stations selected mostly include those with incomplete datasets.

IEA also specifically alleged that the stations selected by the Hadley Centre were in large population centers and thus subject to urban heat island (UHI) effects.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass.

[kristopher]

1. The Russian based "Institute of Economic Analysis "

Who are they?

Are you aware of russia's stance on policies that affect oil money - their only viable economic export?

Think about this for a minute; you unquestioningly glom onto this unsubstantiated claim that emerges during intense negotiations on fossil fuels and is produced by an unknown entity located in an place that depends on oil for its economic lifeblood.

Yet you reject the work of thousands of scientists around the world claiming they are all biased because they are looking for grant money.

Do you see a bit of a problem with your perspective?

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Climategate: Why those Russian 'experts' might not have our best interests at heart

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100020210/climategate-why-the-russians-experts-might-not-have-our-best-interests-at-heart/

Climategate: Why those Russian 'experts' might not have our best interests at heart

…

1. Who are these Russian ‘experts’?

Will Stewart didn’t properly answer this question in his Daily Express story, but just read what his Daily Mail version of the article says. The headline is slightly different, for a start: “Met Office ‘manipulated climate change figures’ says Russian think tank linked to President Putin.”

So, it’s a think tank rather than a reputable body of Russian scientists. http://www.gdnet.org/cms.php?id=organization_details&organization_id=890">The Global Development Network informs us that it’s an “independent, non-governmental, non-political and non-commercial organisation” founded in 1994. And it was founded, Stewart reports, by “a former adviser to Vladimir Putin”, a man called Andrey Illarionov.

Let’s hear a bit more about Andrey Illarionov, shall we? Well, according to his Wikipedia entry he’s a Russian libertarian economist and a former economic policy advisor to Putin. But he’s also one of Russia’s leading climate change sceptics: he was a highly critical of the Kyoto Protocol and even submitted a paper to the 2003 World Climate Change Conference entitled “http://www.sysecol.ethz.ch/Articles_Reports/Illarionov_QandA_WCCC_2003.pdf">Anthropogenic Factors in Global Warming: Some Questions” (all ten questions were answered by climatologists). In a http://archive.corporateeurope.org/awardingdeception.html">BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman in 2004, he said: “No link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change”.

It’s overwhelmingly clear, then: the Russian “experts” are no such thing. They represent a think tank founded by a former adviser to Putin who is a libertarian and a well known manmade global warming sceptic. All of this is fine, of course, unless you’re trying to present his views as particularly ground-breaking (Climategate “goes SERIAL”, “just got much, much bigger” etc etc).

…

[NickB79]

3. Yet NASA's independent climate surveys back up what HadCRUT found

So either HadCRUT AND NASA are in on this vast global conspiracy, or the Russian economists are lying.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Well, of course they’re involved!

Otherwise it wouldn’t be a “vast global conspiracy” (now would it?)

[Viking12]

5. Doh, a denier lying about climate change?

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/russian_analysis_confirms_20th.php#more

No doubt the OP will demand the data & code that was used to prepare this report.

[TxRider]

6. The person in question is of very dubious nature

[arachadillo]

7. Russian Temperature Measurements

The Russians continue to improve their data collection methods for both air temperatures and land temperatures.

The first presentation for this video
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/video/NICOP/plenary_june_30.php
shows the medium term changes in permafrost throughout the entire Russian land mass. Overall increase in permafrost warming, with some places showing more changes than others.

Better data collection can only help the Russians understand how best to adapt to the changes they now see, and those changes they might see in the future.