3.5. How Reliable are the Data Used? Models can't be better than the data they are based on. It is of the utmost importance to collect reliable data and to document the more accurately as possible the way they were gathered and not to adjust the data. Making data available to other scientists and letting them reproduce the computations and check the models is and has always been the very basis of science. Tycho Brahe 300 is remembered by Burtt (1924) as “the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts” and remains known to each scientist for having been the one who collected the observations that enabled Kepler to formulate his three laws, a decisive step forward in mankind's understanding of the universe. In fact, Tycho had urged Kepler in a letter "to lay a solid foundation for his view by actual observation, and then by ascending from these to strive to reach the cause of things".301 Without the fastidious and precise observations and further data compiled by Tycho Brahe, Kepler would have been unable to make his heliocentric formulation and as reminded by Burtt (1924) “It was very fortunate for Kepler that he was just plunging into such profound labours at the time when Tycho Brahe, the greatest giant of observational astronomy since Hipparchus, was completing his life-work of compiling a vastly more extensive and incomparably more precise set of data than had been in the possession of any of his predecessors”. Things should normally not have changed since Tycho Brahe and these ancient times should serve as a guidance, both with respect to scientific rigor but also in terms of moral, honesty, and integrity. In that respect Wunsch et al. (2013) remind us that “Predicting climate change is a high priority for society, but such forecasts are notoriously uncertain. Why? Even should climate prove theoretically predictable—by no means certain— the near-absence of adequate observations will preclude its understanding, and hence even the hope of useful predictions As in most scientific problems, no substitute exists for adequate observations. Without sufficient observations, useful prediction will likely never be possible”. Therefore the feckless data obstruction and tampering that we have seen and summarized by "Mike's trick to hide the decline" 302 is not only scientifically mistaken or stupid (McIntyre, 2010), (Muller, 2011) and will in the long term ruin more than the legacy of those who have indulged themselves in that sort of obnoxious practice but will be remembered as futile attempts to deliberately delude people, as the truth always prevails, whatever the time it might take. Because, either these authors did honest science and in the end temperature curves will display a hockey stick print and I will have been dead wrong all along (I would in that case even apologize posthumously), or they would have deliberately forged the data for reasons that epistemiologists will have to clarify (though the conflict of interest is so obvious that there is no need to dwell on it) and I would not rather be in their shoes as to what history will remember of them. In the meantime, one can only worry and wonder of the recurrent need to adapt ever more the data so that they would better fit the climate affabulators' agenda, demonstrate the next to come catastrophic global warming. Christy (2016) came back in his testimony before the U.S. Senate on the huge discrepancies visible on Figure 100, between observations representing the bulk atmospheric temperature of the layer from the surface to 50,000ft and compiled thanks to the average of 3 satellite datasets (green - UAH, RSS, NOAA) and 4 balloon datasets (blue, NOAA, UKMet, RICH, RAOBCORE) and values estimated or projected by models and software simulators. Christy (2016) adds “The layer shown is known as the mid-troposphere or MT and is used because it overlaps with the region of the tropical atmosphere that has the largest anticipated signature of the greenhouse response by bulk mass – between 20,000 and 50,000 feet”. Christy (2016) continues “That two very independent types of measuring systems (balloons and satellites) constructed by a variety of institutions (government, university, private) all showing the much slower rate of warming gives high confidence in its result. Thus, the evidence here strongly suggests the theory, as embodied in models, goes much too far in forcing the atmosphere to retain heat when in reality the atmosphere has a means to relinquish that heat and thus warms at a much slower rate”. The reasons why it is so were explained in the discussion accompanying the set of Figures 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and one of the major reasons has to do with the fact that contrary to what was asserted by IPCC the measurements from weather balloons and satellites show declining water vapor in the upper atmosphere (at the TOA level) and the departure between models and reality is even worse for the tropical MidTropospheric temperatures as depicted in Figure 105. 300https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe 301Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, Vol. II, p. 401. 302https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/ and awkward defense by Gavin A. Schmidt's RealClimate blog (Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
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