German Springs Arriving Later As Wikipedia Caught Whitewashing, Disinforming!

Wikipedia and the Hamburg Forsythia Patch

by Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Josef Kowatsch
(Translated and rewritten by P Gosselin)

At the Hamburg Binnenalster near the Lombard Bridge, one finds a particular patch of forsythia, which blossoms every year when spring arrives at the north German port city. And just days ago on March 24, 2017, the famous patch blossomed again as it does every year.

So what’s the big deal about a spring flower patch blossoming in the spring?

It turns out that this particular patch is in fact one of great scientific interest as it has been scientifically observed since 1945. The dates at which the flowers blossom have been carefully recorded each year.

In the age of “rapid, unprecedented global warming”, you’d think that the blossoms would be appearing earlier and earlier as the global climate heats up like NASA insists it is. So it is all the more surprising that the data show that the opposite is in fact happening: the trend over the past 30 years is that this particular patch is blossoming later and later, indicating harsher and harsher winters.

Despite this year’s seemingly early spring in Europe, the most recent 2017 data point of the Hamburg Lombard Bridge forsythia blossoms in fact fits right with the overall 30 year trend.

Figure 1: The blossoming date of the Hamburg Lombard Bridge forsythia patch over the past 30 years with linear trend. The Y-axis is the number of days from the start of the year (January 1st). Spring at the site is arriving 3 weeks later!

The reason for the increasingly delayed spring blossoms likely has much to do with the trend of colder months of February over the past 30 years:

Figure 2: February mean temperatures in GERMANY over the past 30 years. Data from the German DWD National Weather Service. Chart by Josef Kowatsch.

Wikipedia censors, cherrypicks and disinforms

Lüning and Kowatsch add that because of the Lombard Bridge forsythia patch’s significance, it even has its own Wikipedia page.

The two authors at the Die kalte Sonne site note that Wikipedia makes no mention whatsoever of the later blossoms trend. In fact one skeptic who wishes to remain anonymous actually logged in the Wikipedia site and suggested the following important addition on the now famous Hamburg forsythia blossoms:

Over the past 50 years there’s been a detectable trend of earlier blossoming. However since 1988 the blossoming date of the Hamburg forsythia has been again coming later.[3]

This is a perfectly legitimate scientific statement that notes fairly both a trend of earlier blossoms on one hand, and on the other hand the current trend of the past 30 years, where the blossoms have been appearing later. The official long-term dataset since 1945 can be viewed at this DWD website (second chart, yellow curve).

So did the Wikipedia editors allow the added information? Lüning and Kowatsch write:

It did not even take a half hour, before the additional information was taken down. The reason according to page editor “DeWikiMan”: The trend of later blossoming over the past 30 years is not sufficiently statistically established.”

Lüning and Kowatch refer readers to Figure 1 above, and of course characterize DeWikiMan’s reasoning as somewhat absurd, before going on to show that the Wikipedia editor is in fact an activist and a “classic gatekeeper”: Wikipedia profile here. They depict DeWikiMan as a cherry-picker and purveyor of disinformation, and suggest that Wikipedia ought to take a much closer look at this editor.

Lüning and Kowatsch summarize:

It is a pity that the original excellent concept of a voluntarily written online encyclopedia has been hijacked by political activists and rendered useless in a number of sensitive subjects areas”

47 responses to “German Springs Arriving Later As Wikipedia Caught Whitewashing, Disinforming!”

  1. Patrick healy

    Is he by any chance of Irish stock who cannot spell the common Irish surname Connolly?

    1. Newminster

      Stoat lives!!

      1. AndyG55

        Responsible for making Wiki what it is today.

        Barely reliable even for a game of Trivial Pursuit.

        I hope the people who envisaged Wiki as being something worthwhile, are happy with this outcome.

        1. DirkH
    2. Edward

      Connolley, as he has it.

  2. sod

    The problem here is cherry picking. You choose the month, the state and the starting date and you can generate any trend you want.

    http://www.dwd.de/DE/leistungen/zeitreihenundtrends/zeitreihenundtrends.html?nn=495662

    1. AndyG55

      Interesting, look at sob’s graph.

      You can see that there was basically zero warming from 1900 to 1986, then a step change to 1988. Then cooling as shown above.

      Again we have this reliance on putting a linear trends over an obvious step change. the only think that supports a warming trend… except its NOT a trend.

      Whatever caused it, its NOT CO2, because CO2 should give a gradual warming.

      Any idea what caused that STEP change in Germany around 1987?

      1. AndyG55

        typo… the only “thing” that supports …..

      2. sod

        “You can see that there was basically zero warming from 1900 to 1986, then a step change to 1988. Then cooling as shown above.”

        A STEP CHANGE has to pass a statistical test. you know absolute nothing and you understand absolutely nothing.

        basically you compare a step change curve (two constant functions, one at the level before and one after the step change) is better at explaining the outcome than one linear function (this is that “significance” stuff from statistics, that you also do not know anything about).

        But this would still only be curve fitting (give me a couple of constant or sinus functions and i will fit it to every sort of data!). So you also need a physical reason to explain the step change. On that front, you also have absolutely nothing.

        Real scientists do not mostly use linear trends to investigate things because they think that most things change in a linear way. Instead they do so, to avoid “curve fitting.

        1. AndyG55

          Poor sob.

          His eyes are blurred.. he cannot see what is in front of him. BLIND is he that will not see.

          Your pretence at knowledge is quite hilarious, sob.

          You have shown time and time again that the ONLY thing you know about statistics is WORDS you have picked up in a magazine.

          Stick to monkey-type linear trends across step changes. Its all you have left to support your stupefied AGW belief system, isn’t it, little-mind.

          “sinus functions” !!!

          roflmao.. really, comes from snorting whatever it is you are on.

          1. AndyG55

            PS.. you do know that a linear trend is a form of “curve fitting”, don’t you ????

            The most SIMPLISTIC… zero thinking involved…

            … and zero understanding of the system you are working with…

            … and therefore all you are capable of.

        2. AndyG55

          “Real scientists…. ”

          Sob.. you would not have the VAGUEST CLUE what real scientists do !!

        3. sod

          ““sinus functions” !!!

          roflmao.. really, comes from snorting whatever it is you are on.”

          “sine” is called “sinus”. I am glad that my translation error is allowing you to laugh your ass of. That is telling people a lot about your.

          The rest of your reply has actually zero substance. HINT: you have to (1) show us a statistical test that supports your step change claim AND (2) to give a physical reason for that step change in 1990.

          So far you have nothing but a sorry salf-made excuse to dismiss the evidence that contradicts your position.

          1. AndyG55

            Keep snorting the hallucinogenics, sob.

            Its obviously to late to stop you going blind.

          2. AndyG55
      3. SebastianH

        https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticFrame.jpg

        Yes … all those STEP changes … they really have nothing to do with trapped energy in Earth’s climate system 😉

        1. Sunsettommy

          Sebastian,

          here is a recently published paper showing that such steps are normal. It is another piece of evidence that CO2 doesn’t drive temperature changes.

          A ground-breaking new paper putting climate models to the test yields an unexpected result – steps and pauses in the climate signal

          “A ground-breaking new paper has recently been published in Earth System Dynamics that really turns the idea of direct linear warming of the atmosphere on it’s ear, suggesting a “store and release mechanism” by the oceans, which explains why there seemed to be a shift in global temperature during the 1997/98 super El Nino followed by a “pause” in global temperatures.

          Remember the “escalator” graph from wrongly named “Skeptcal Science” designed to shame climate skeptics? Looks like that may have been an accidentally prescient backfire on their part based on the findings of this new paper.”

          https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/31/a-ground-breaking-new-paper-putting-climate-models-to-the-test-yields-an-unexpected-result-steps-and-pauses-in-the-climate-signal/

          1. SebastianH

            It is another piece of evidence that CO2 doesn’t drive temperature changes.

            You know that the “shame” chart is not about changes not coming in steps? It’s about skeptics ignoring the step changes and claim that because trends are relatively flat in between, there is no CO2 effect … like you just did.

            And now you seem to think that this “store and release mechanism” is your way out or something, because in the skeptics mind only shortwave radiation warms the oceans. Right?

          2. Kenneth Richard

            “in the skeptics mind only shortwave radiation warms the oceans. Right?”

            Since IR cannot penetrate past the 0.1 to 1 mm “thick” skin layer, and the temperature gradient for the skin layer only reaches 0.002 K at most (according to an experiment using clouds explained over at RealClimate), and since sunlight penetrates to ocean depths of 200 meters and directly heats the first 2 meters of the ocean surface by 2 K during a typical day, what other mechanism do you believe is capable of not only competing with sunlight, but dominating over it such that that mechanism is the determinant of net ocean heat changes?

            Whatever mechanism you identify, please provide the physical measurements from a controlled scientific experiment that demonstrates that mechanism’s ocean-heating qualities. How much net change in ocean heat content can that mechanism actually produce?

          3. AndyG55

            ““only shortwave radiation warms the oceans. Right?””

            WOW.. Seb gets something correct.

            a 1 in a million chance.!!

            A provable piece of science, as well.

            LW causes evaporation of the top fraction of a mm, and the latent heat dragged into that evaporation causes a layer about 1mm thick which is about 0.3C COOLER than below.

            This has been known for ages !

          4. AndyG55

            “It’s about skeptics ignoring the step changes”

            Now that is a DOWNRIGHT LIE.

            Its just that the step changes ARE NOT and NEVER CAN BE caused by CO2.

            Because, as you have amply proven……

            … CO2 DOES NOT and CAN NOT warm the oceans.

            Anyone that thinks these step changes, such as the 1998 El Nino step of about 0.3C has anything to do with human or any other sort of CO2 , really does need to stop drinking so much klimate-kool-aid, and overcome the stupefying addiction.

          5. SebastianH

            Kenneth, the sun is the source of energy, but it’s not the only thing that defines the surface temperature.

            One more time. Do you agree that the warming that is caused by the sun increases the heat content of the ocean? Do you agree that in order for the heat content to stay at some level that energy must leave the ocean in some way? Do you agree that this happens through evaporation, contact and radiation? Do you agree that the surface temperature can be determined by measuring this radiation? Do you agree that net radiation is the difference between the emitted and received radiation? Do you agree that in order for the heat content to stay the same the net radiation must reach a certain level? Do you agree that the amount of the emitted radiation must be higher when the received radiation is higher (so net radiation stays the same)? Do you agree that this equals a surface temperature change?

        2. AndyG55
    2. Edward

      you’ve got to laugh, “cherry picking” coming from an alarmunist, what a joker!

    3. Kim D.

      What does this have to do with the blossoms coming later and later? That is empirical, who knows about the data for the temperature charts?

  3. DirkH

    Wait, let me try:

    BREAKING: SCIENTISTS BAFFLED, CONFUSED AS GLOBAL WARMING LEADS TO LATE FORSYTHIA BLOSSOMING IN HAMBURG, GERMANY

    In a surprising development, Global Warming has manifested one of its newest horrors in the picturesque town of Hamburg Germany. A patch of Forsythia has been observed to blossom LATER instead of EARLIER each year as Global Warming progresses at an unprecedented speed. Researcher Wilhelm Schnacklgruber of the Potsdam Institute For The Global Warming Apocalypse had this to say:

    “We call this the HAMBURG FORSYTHIA PARADOX”.

    Back to you, Shyleen from Hamburg.

    1. SebastianH

      http://www.dwd.de/DE/klimaumwelt/klimaueberwachung/phaenologie/produkte/langereihen/forsythie_2006.jpg?__blob=poster&v=7

      That Kowatsch guy has a history of searching for low points to start his graphs. After several years finally the 30 year timeframe begins exactly at such a low (forsythia blossom) / high (temperature) point.

      BTW: March 2017 was the warmest March since the beginning of temperature records in Germany.

      1. SebastianH

        This comment got edited by the moderator/admin … just saying.

      2. DirkH

        ??? DWD is a warmunist adjustment agency, we know that.

        Well, we’re all lost anyway, Sebastian. Climate expert Michael Moore has clearly stated that President Trump has wiped out the human race by eliminating warmunist terror. So it must be true, given the total veracity of everything the land whale utters.

        So. It’s over, Sebastian. Go behave irresponsibly, have fun! END TIMES!

      3. sod

        “BTW: March 2017 was the warmest March since the beginning of temperature records in Germany.”

        the facts are hurting again. that graph clearly shows that this was a terrible sort of cherrypick. Why can we not simply agree that the original article was wrong?

        why has nobody tested the claim ogf the wikipedia author, showing that the recent trend is not significant? No “scpetic” here who can do it?

  4. CO2isLife

    There was a lot of whitewashing in the recent Congressional Hearings about climate change

    Michael Mann Just Jumped the Climate Change Shark
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/michael-mann-just-jumped-the-climate-change-shark/

  5. mothcatcher

    Hi, Pierre
    ?Any reason you disappeared my comment from earlier this morning/

  6. Henning Nielsen

    Ah, those flowers, that’s just weather. And anyway, the plants have no doubt been bribed by the Koch brothers -with a big dose of co2- to blossom later.

  7. R2Dtoo

    Naw – Putin hacked the bushes.

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