Scandanaviagate?

[johnholmes]

thanks for the links GW-I'll have a read of them

[osmposm]

Right. Well, it is a sort of Scandinaviagate - but the people left with egg on their face turn out not to be the IPCC at all...at least not on the evidence of the supposedly "Scandinavia-but-not-identified-as-such" IPCC 'NEU' temp graph, which as I suspected is not the Scandinavian temp record at all.

The original source for the hubbub is probably this piece of Nov 2009 by Willis Eschenbach on WattsUp: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/when-results-go-bad/. This perhaps makes a bit of a mountain out of a molehill re the confusing/incorrect email replies received by Professor Karlen from Phil Jones & Kevin Trenberth about the nature of the IPCC's graph(s); still, the matter of the included-or-not ocean temps certainly needs to be cleared up, and other points raised, especially the urban sites question, are interesting.

But with regard to the IPCC graph question, what Karlen does not seem to have realised - or perhaps he's been misrepresented or I have misunderstood - is that the designator 'NEU' is apparently in fact fully identified in Appendix 9.c of the IPCC report, as Eschenbach helpfully points out. It is "Europe, NEU, 10W to 40E, 48N to 75N, land". This is a vastly larger and different area to Scandinavia alone, stretching from Ireland in the west to beyond Moscow in the east, and Munich & Vienna in the south to Bear Island in the north. Whether or not it includes the ocean temps, I cannot see how anyone could attempt to draw conclusions from comparisons between it and the NORDKLIM (Scandi) temp record.

Despite WattsUp's clear revelation that 'NEU' is identified by the IPCC, and that Scandinavia is only a small part of it, Frank Lansner at HidetheDecline completely missed this, and wrote a piece on 13th Feb declaring an IPCC "Scandinavia-gate", based particularly on a comparison between two graphs that actually show quite different things: http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/scandinavian-temperatures-ipccacutes--scandinavia-gate--123.php?id=123 .

On 15th Feb John O'Sullivan at Climategate http://www.climategate.com/scandinavia-gate-climate-cooling-but-scientists-hide-the-decline then copied and truncated Lansner's piece without checking anything, declaring "It looks like we now have the evidence of a full-blown Scandinaviagate to further crush the credibility of the crooks that run the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)".

O'Sullivan - clearly a journalist, not a scientist - today rejected criticism of his article on the grounds that it was his editors who chose the graphs, and that there are plenty of other graphs and evidence to show that "alarmist climate scientists" cull inconvenient temp records, but that space constraints mean he can't show it.

Lansner initially defended his claims also, saying that Karlen had done "everything in his power to get information" (about what 'NEU' covered, for instance), but had been given "missing and misleading answers" (by Jones & Trenberth). When it was pointed out that the missing answer was in the IPCC report all along, he today had the honesty and good grace to admit "You might very well have a strong point. I will look into it and update the article - Thank you very much for digging this up!!"

Oh dear....rather a sad own-goal, it seems. Which is a pity, as I take no satisfaction in seeing the thoughtful 'sceptic' viewpoint brought into disprepute.

[Iceberg]

Thanks for doing the digging ossie, the problem is that it's so easy to attack/discredit the IPCC, I know I shouldn't but I do look at some names and just discount everything they say, after they have done this kind of thing a few times you generally lose respect for them.Karlsen amongst them....