By Dr. David Whitehouse, the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Today’s Times says, “Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the skeptics.” However, a closer look at the information which the Times bases its headline on shows that a combination of selective memory and scientific spin play a large role in arriving at it.
The conclusion is based on a new paper written by James Hansen and submitted to Reviews of Geophysics. The paper released by Hansen has not been peer reviewed, and he admits that some of the newsworthy comments it contains may not make it past the referees.
Hansen claims that, according to his Gisstemp database, the year from April 2009 to April 2010 has a temperature anomaly of 0.65 deg C (based on a 1951 – 1980 average) making it the warmest year since modern records began. It is a fractionally warmer than 2005 he says, although an important point to be made is that statistically speaking, taking into account the error of measurement and the scatter of previous datapoints, it is not a significant increase.
The Nasa study said: “We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20 deg C per decade that began in the late 1970s.”
This is a selective use of a trend line that joins a datapoint in the late 1970’s with the most recent one ignoring the details in the data inbetween. The fact is that one could have taken a datapoint a decade ago and tied it to the same point in the late 1970’s and deduced an even greater rise in temperature per decade. So another way of describing the data is that the rate of increase has actually declined.
Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase.
In the Times article, the Met Office in the form of Vicky Pope, said that their data showed that the past year was “just below” the 12-month record achieved in 1998. Remember, 2009 annual temperature was, according to the Met Office, statistically indistinguishable from every year between 2001–2008.
Vicky Pope then says that Nasa might be right because the Met Office had underestimated the recent warming detected in the Arctic! There are few weather stations in the Arctic and the Met Office, unlike Nasa, does not extrapolate where there are no actual temperature readings. It is curious to hear this given the criticism that Met Office scientists have expressed in the past about the way the Gisstemp dataset is pieced together this way!
Vicky Pope does say however that, “the Met Office continues to predict that 2010 is more likely than not to be the warmest calendar year on record, beating the 1998 record.” This is also a curious statement since she adds that Met Office analysis showed that the four months to the end of April were probably the third warmest for that time of year.
In only the past few weeks however the Met Office has been saying something different.
In the Sunday Times of May 23rd Vicky Pope says that 2010 could be the hottest year on record due to the current El Nino. She also says that the 2010 January – April temperature was the seventh warmest on record meaning that out of the past ten years (allowing for the 1998 El Nino) most of them have been warmer during the January – April period, though not statistically so.
In the Sunday Times article Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, adds what is missing from the article mentioned earlier: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.”
In the Times article poor journalism is compounded with scientific spin from James Hansen’s article to give a misleading impression about the state of the science and what the data actually shows. It will be interesting to see if 2010 breaks any records in the Gisstemp or Met Office datasets. If it does the next question to ask would be, is it statistically significant as one would expect the occasional high point due to errors of measurements causing measured datapoints being scattered around a constant mean (the case post 2001). It would be highly misleading and scientifically fraudulent to look at one datapoint that is higher than the rest yet within the error bars of the previous years and say, “look, a record.” This will not undermine the skeptics but science itself.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
Well, well. At least as of May 28, we were still getting snow flurries here in Reno, NV.
A must see:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html
Also the GISS over +4C divergence against the Finnish Meteoroligal Institute for March 2010 was corrected, but IT HAS REINCARNATED! Check it out:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=4&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1971&base2=2000&radius=1200&pol=reg
FMI:
http://www.fmi.fi/uutiset/index.html?Id=1270030521.html
GISS = a fraudulent joke!
For some reason my comment didnt appear on the page so I post it again (Anthony, you can delete this if my previous message will appear).
GISS is a fraudulent JOKE:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html
They delete the non-warming SST data in order to use land-data instead with 1200km extrapolation.
Also, the GISS vs FMI March 2010 divergence for finnish anomalies (more than +4C) was first corrected but NOW it has reincarnated:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=4&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1971&base2=2000&radius=1200&pol=reg
http://www.fmi.fi/uutiset/index.html?Id=1270030521.html
Hansen should be prosecuted and locked up.
Well shoot, there’s your problem right there.
I recall from Dr. Keen’s historical North American record, the 30’s showed not only the greatest incidence of highs, but a very large incidence of lows. As tho a period of extremes preceded a change in direction. This principle is often cited as indication of a change in direction in Market chart analysis. Tho completely unrelated topics, I wonder if a statistical law is actually at work.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/TempExtremeDecadesm.jpg
Hottest year evah.
Of course that means 30 years of sat data.
Can someone point me to what the GISSTEMP anomoly for San Diego was for Jan – May 2010? I want to see that it reflects the coolest spring I have witnessed in my 20 years here. I know I could eventually find it, but I am assuming someone here will have the link and information handy.
Thanks
HadCrut has 2010 as #4 for Jan-Apr.
Hansen bumps his numbers up by extrapolating across large Arctic regions with no data.
CET 5-2010: 10.7°C. Rank: 236/352
Warmest May in this series was in 1833.
Average last 12 months: 9.57 °C.
May data from Central England ( and for thje year to date 2010), says dont worry !
Mr. global warming Hansen,
never trust a guy, who got arrested because of illegal anti coal demonstration.
He is a hardcore AGW activist and lost his scientific credability some decades ago…
Adding to my post above. I see that GISS does not have any current stations in San Diego area..
I predict that 2010 will break records for hyperbole from the warmistas.
@ Jon P
, maybe they use the temps from the Mojave and extrapolate your temp in San Diego. Kevin said this works pretty good and they do it up in Canada so it wouldn’t be unprecedented.
Jon P says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:24 am
“Can someone point me to what the GISSTEMP anomoly for San Diego was for Jan – May 2010? I want to see that it reflects the coolest spring I have witnessed in my 20 years here.”
Just click on the map and pick a station.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
I’m up in Seattle, we are running about as cold as it has been in 10 years.
Cold, wet, in NE Oregon. Bet May is not going to be in the top five. Besides, Nina’s
rearing her Hoary Head: http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
and it looks possible to say Nina by Nov? Have a nice Winter…..
Has anybody checked the GISS methodology by taking, say, the the US data for just a dozen or so stations and then using the GISS homogenising algorithm to generate the temperature at all the other stations. If that shows results very similar to the actual measurements then it is probably true that Eskimos are buying bikinis.
It’s curious how the Midwest has also set records for coldest July on record (2009) and snowiest February on record (2010) amidst all this unprecedented heating.
Jon P
here monthly GISS txt.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.425722900004.1.1/station.txt
If I may, I think I just found a gigantic hole in Hansen’s data. I was running trend lines from various scenarios back to 1880 using the GISS/TEMP data from the GISS map site. There’s a most interesting problem. When you run a trend from 1880 to 2009 there are 1,060 cells (of 16,200) which are used to calculate the trend, but which have no data to calculate against in 1880. Backing them out drops the trend to 2009 by 0.1 degrees over 100 years. Extrapolating from my graph, it would probably be 0.2 to 0.4 per century starting at 1980 because the magnitude of the bad cells increases as well as the frequency. Gotta run right now but I will do a more detailed analysis of 1970 to 2009 shortly to see how that looks in isolation. Details on my blog and anyone interested drop me a note, I can send you the spreadsheet (warning its over 100,000 cells by now, you will need lots of ram)
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-most-interesting-gisstemp-errors-can-this-be-an-accident/
It will be interesting to see how this may be used in the various civil suits that are out there over AGW. Also, Obama has been using the BP spill to push the green agenda for alternative fuels to get us off petroleum (refer to this item on CNET for an interesting analysis and comparison of energy technologies vs land use requirements – http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20006361-54.html ) . Both of which will also no doubt show up in green plaintiff’s claims against civilization, freedom, and the American way.
Am i mistaken or should a paper being made ready for publication not be under a press embargo until accepted?
Perhaps Hansen is expecting a rejection and wanted maximum publicity?
/Mango
@James
Yeah and these same people would only be talking about the Antartic if on the following map, the colors were swapped at the poles.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=4&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
David Whitehouse used to be the BBC science correspondent; and avery good one. Pity the beeb now only employs correspondents who follow the mantra.
Layne Blanchard says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:16 am
I recall from Dr. Keen’s historical North American record, the 30′s showed not only the greatest incidence of highs, but a very large incidence of lows. As tho a period of extremes preceded a change in direction. This principle is often cited as indication of a change in direction in Market chart analysis. Tho completely unrelated topics, I wonder if a statistical law is actually at work.
This is common behavior in many industrial processes, and also some natural processes. The Weibull Distribution ( Reliability/Life Cycle Analysis ) often pertains, and/or bifurcation points in systems (Chaos Theory).
Meanwhile, another global warming “fact”, the sinking of Pacific islands
due to rising sea levels, is now documented as an illusion based on
AGW speculative scenarios:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10222679.stm
The BBC posted this under “Asia – Pacific” news, not showing it
under the more logical “Science and Environment” heading.
Only records that have been broken in 2010 have been due to the cold.
Salt Lake City recorded its latest snowfall on record May 28 with .2 inches of snow at the airport. Location is everything, my house 40 miles south got 4 inches.
Jon P, June 3, 2010 at 9:24 am
Not the GISS temps you requested , but here is a site with pretty nice graphics on San Diego temperatures for Jan – May, 2010. From this, it appears that Jan and March were about average, with the other months cooler than average. Of course, these temps are from the airport (Linbergh Field) so they very likely have the usual Airport Heat Island effect.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/temp_graphs.php?stn=KSAN&wfo=sgx
Oops, make that May 24, the day of my father’s Funeral, for all the snow.
Midwest Mark, re recent cold events in the USA.
Yep, I’ve often wondered just why it is OK for AGWers to discount any and all cold events in the USA because “it is only 2 percent of the globe – and we deal with GLOBAL warming.”
Then they insist that Arctic temperatures are absolutely crucial, yet the surface area is roughly 3 or 4 percent of the globe. (Arctic Ocean roughly 14 million sq km, Earth’s surface roughly 510 million sq km).
I suppose that “some pigs are more equal than others.”
Well is Saskatchewan everything is behind so an extended growing season this year would be appreciated. For the sake of farmers here and those few who purchase foodstuffs making use of grain, grain oils and feed grain, I hope this global warming kicks in real soon.
Sweat or starve? Sweat please!
I would suggest at this point that the actual warming or lack of warming of the Earth will have nothing to do with what GISS reports for 2010.
This is worse than a ponzi scheme . In a ponzi scheme for society as a whole there is no damage , only an non-voluntarily transfer of wealth , mostly described as theft .
The facts are hidden behind a smoke-screen . Here when 2010 is only halfway and el nino is really fading and the northern plus the southern hemisphere is reporting below normal temperatures for the recent months , the prophets eating our taxpayers breads are trumpeting their agw-carbon dioxide-singsong around and nothing is absurd enough to support their beliefs . They are going a long way to falsify everything and anything within their reach , really trying to cripple our society and to kill poverty by killing the poor in order to create their false utopia and to enslave all of us . Look what the communists preached and actually did . They preached a utopia for all of us and they created a society that could not feed their working class . For what reason other than bread did the polish shipbuilders marched the streets ? From communism only the worst individuals of our society became rich ! From cap and trade a still worser type of manipulator will get even richer and the rest of our society may experience the new type of poverty and slavery which is now being precooked .
Ask the ex-wife of Al Gore how much real compassion she found in him .
Dropped by to say “Thank you!” to Anthony Watts et al for running this outstanding climate change blog.
I’ve been involved in a long [multi-year] debate on the topic at an eclectic board:
[http://spengler.atimes.net/viewtopic.php?t=14828]
[most recent of about 10 such threads]
and WUWT and it’s links have been an excellent resource.
Thanks again.
CS
Protestantti (9:10 a.m.) seems to assume that everyone here speaks Finnish.
However, he’s absolutely correct in saying that the recurring “GISS hot spot” in Finland does not tally with local experience.
The gist (no pun intended) of the article cited is that March was the fourth consecutive month of unusually cold temperatures in Finland.
Proof of “man made” warming in GISTEMP: 0.3 deg C/12 years
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998
GISTEMP diverges from HadCRUT, RSS and UAH as its mad creator repeatedly rewrites the history to prevent 1998 being the warmest year up to now.
There is a deep La Nina lurking in tropical pacific, much colder than 2007 event. 2010 has no chance beating 1998, since the first 4 months were colder than 1998 anyway.
We bitched about HadCRUT a lot, but it is still much better than NOAA/GISTEMP.
I thank all for the responses.
Roger,
Lindbergh Field varies in temperature a lot less than other areas of the county as it next to the bay.
Once again, look how GISTEMP runs warmer compare to all remaining datasets, including HadSST:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998
Maybe you’d like Lindburgh Field. You know, the airport?
“She also says that the 2010 January – April temperature was the seventh warmest on record meaning that out of the past ten years (allowing for the 1998 El Nino) most of them have been warmer during the January – April period, though not statistically so.”
Umm, is that correct? That seems significant to me of. . . something. May-Dec of calendar years have been having lesser anomalies than the Jan-April period on a fairly regular basis? Random walk, or potential for something else?
My experience is that in the past few years it has cooled on both sides of the Altantic (NE US and British isles). And that includes both summer and winter.
It’s almost as if Hansen and other warmists are creating Songlines – or Babblelines – across the planet, trying to bring Global Warming into existence by a collective act of will.
#
#
TFN Johnson says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:47 am
Has anybody checked the GISS methodology by taking, say, the the US data for just a dozen or so stations and then using the GISS homogenising algorithm to generate the temperature at all the other stations. If that shows results very similar to the actual measurements then it is probably true that Eskimos are buying bikinis.
__________________________________________________________________
There can be no doubt that Hansen belongs in jail for fraud.
Blink graph of Hansen’s 1999, 2001, and 2008 US temp: http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
US temp Raw vs adjusted: http://i26.tinypic.com/2bux35.jpg
There can be no doubt the guy belongs in jail for fraud.
Just heard on the radio yesterday for NW Oregon, if we hit June 10 without an 80 degree day we’ll be setting a new record. Typically we first hit 80 in May. The forecaster says we have 1 day between today and the 10th where we might hit 80 but he doesn’t give it much of a chance. This has been one cool spring so far, not sure how that will contrast with 2010 being the warmest year ever.
This is how the summer was before the first “interesting” winter, back in the Maunder Minimum times:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder
Jon P says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:40 am
Adding to my post above. I see that GISS does not have any current stations in San Diego area..
Joe, you could always use a 1200km (740 miles’ish) radius extrapolation to identify records which could be used according to GISS (I think 1200 km is theirs) methodology. This would give you the opportunity to select records from Vegas, Palm Springs, LA, San Fran, St. George, Death Valley or any other convenient hot spot which is just over a days drive away…
This makes no sense at all.
At the beginning of the year we had hot satellite troposphere temps. Dr Spencer told me when I asked, that this was due to the oceans dumping heat to the atmosphere (El Nino) sure enough a month later “The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C – largest since 1979″ And as Dr Spencer stated in a recent article Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures [are] Poised for a Plunge
So if the oceans are 70% of the earth’s surface and the Ocean Heat Content dropped by a whopping 1C from March to April and the SST is expected to continue dropping, how on earth can we have the “Warmest Temperatures Evah” in 2010 especially when most of us are freezing????
It looks like all the temperature indices (including satellite) are heading for a record. I usually look at Roy Spencer’s site. It’s user friendly and kept by a bona-fide skeptic.
So the last 10 years have been statistically indistinguishable! Something’s gotta give. either it starts going up again, or falls.
Hottest years ever and the ice caps thicken at the same time.
I think things need to be looked at on a much longer time frame. According to Hadcrut3vgl, the least square trend from 1850 to end of April 2010 or some 160 years is+ 0.00434 C /year. The trend since Jan 2000 to the end of April 2010 or the last 124 months or almost 10 years is + 0.00428C/year, identical to the long term or multi century trend. It is wrong to just look at short term peaks or valleys and raise false alarms or concerns. It is like looking at summer temperatures only to project the entire year and ignoring that there will be a fall and winter which cools things off. A cooling spell is coming that Hansen conveniently forgets.
Has there been significant warming from 1990 to the present?
Watch the attribution of the Pinatubo and consider there was an El Niño from 1991 to 1995.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air_thumb.png
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
Phil Jones: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
James Hansen: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1992/91GL02788.shtml
B.T.W. there has been a big El Niño in 1982/1983 of which the attribution was dimmed by El Chichon (and we get closer and closer to 1977: the climateshift)
geo says:
June 3, 2010 at 11:23 am
“Umm, is that correct? That seems significant to me of. . . something. May-Dec of calendar years have been having lesser anomalies than the Jan-April period on a fairly regular basis? Random walk, or potential for something else?”
Saturn and Jupiter align every 20 years 243 degrees from the point of origin. Hence the center of gravity of the solar system shifts into different earth ‘seasons’. If the cosmic rays/dust cloud relationship is true then the shifting center of gravity would cause changes in the cosmic dust and clouds.
One could have an identical annual cloud cover but the impact would be different if it were skewed to this or that season.
I keep hearing about the warmest 1st four month on record but here in the N.E. of England we had snow on at least some days each month for 6 months from Nov through April. Nobody, including some octogenarians can remember this happenning before!!
The currently developing La Nina will drop GISTemp down to about 0.400C by the end of the year.
(It will still probably be the highest GISS annual temperature record – close to 2005 – but then one should consider what stations and ocean indices are used and how those have been adjusted over time). GISTemp is adjusted every month and that includes temperature numbers from 1880.
Yep with the Central & Eastern Pacific Upper-Ocean (0-300 m) Weekly Heat Content Anomalies dropping past a negative 1 degree centigrade better grab some headlines while they are available.
Nobody believes anything the climate scientists say anymore, and nobody could care less if the atmospheric temperature is going up a fraction of a degree or going down a fraction of a degree. And nobody believes a word about any climate scientist’s predictions about climate change. To give you some idea about how little the public cares about this, the latest pronouncements from Hansen were not reported in the majority of pro-AGW press or on TV.
If you can’t even get your own supporters to report what you’re saying, then you are finished.
Here in NW Calif, we are still getting our twice a week rain showers and more snow accululating in the high mountains.
One look at Unisys tells the story of a very cool North Pacific. We have not has a day here past 82 degrees, and it’s June already.
Most deciduous trees were past a month late, and some are just now budding out.
The President is more concerned with his Energy Tax Plan and taking over BP (after trying them) than he is about the plight of Gulf residents, which tells me that the story in the Times is a shamless plug for more tax & spend.
Here comes La Nina.
I really feel sorry for the poor folks having to live through the extreme heat necessary to offset the cooler-than-usual spring we seem to be having in my part of the globe. I keep picturing some poor polar bear or penguin dying from heat exposure while I enjoy the cool weather.
Another thought: Wasn’t it recently reported that the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most extensive snow cover in….many years? Again, where is this unprecedented heat?
Must be something wrong with my internal thermometer then because I shivered through most of April.
Measuring global mean temperature trends is futile endeavour in determining what’s happening to climate. We need to be able to measure Earth’s energy budget before we will know what’s happening at any moment in time.
There are lies, damn lies and GISS temp!
Since when were we using the financial year april-april as a criterion? And just how much good will it do the cause if they tell the public who lived through this last winter that it was record warm?
Oh, yeah, the temperature’s hot where the thermometers are not.
A lot of people carry around with them a bothering thought in the back of their minds. How can all other monitored solar bodies as the moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn’s moons warm over the last decades without the Earth to also warming in parallel.
If the Martian polar caps melted (or more properly decreased) as we here on Earth experienced the same polar ice decrease phenomena, won’t we not have to wait until the Martian polar caps regain their former ice area before we can say anything about Earth’s polar ice area?
Keep your eyes on Mars’s polar ice caps.
If they rebound, the moon and other monitored solar bodies cool, and Earth does not respond in parallel, then even I would have to admit that then we really have something to talk about in the tenths of a degree.
Also, thank you Ron for an very interesting post, it helps to keep one’s mind in motion!
Recent 2010 temepratures were on top of the weather phenomenon an El Nino contributing several tenths of a degree.
2005 was not.
There is no way to regard 2010 to be warmer than 2005 from a clomate science perspective..
Realclimate is very quick in adjusting temperatures upwards during La Ninas, but here they, Hansen and Pope are silent again.
This is further evidence, that the wrong people are employed at the top of climate science institutions.
I find it astounding that anyone can, with a straight face, announce that 2010 is shaping up to be the hottest ever. Hottest ever where? If this is hottest average they are talking about it must be incredibly hot somewhere, but nobody seems to know where.
I live in London and it’s been pretty cold most of this year so far. We had a severely cold January and February all over the UK and, apart from a few recent hot days, it has not been particularly warm. Spring was definitely late this year, which is not what you would expect for a ‘record hot year’. I have just returned from a holiday in California and everywhere I went – from San Francisco down to Los Angeles – people were apologising to me for the indifferent weather, ‘it’s usually much warmer at this time of year’ was what they all said.
So, I ask again how can anyone speak or write this complete rubbish about record high temperatures and expect to be believed? Or is it just that there is somewhere in the world where the mercury has been off the scale for the past 6 months?? I don’t think so.
Hansen needs this record how ever he gets it, for in his Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Annual Summation he predicted: “…barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.” This prediction was repeated in the last GISS Global Temperature Trends Annual Summation at the end of 2008. There was no summation at the end of 2009.
We are now into the 3rd year of this prediction and apparently coming out of an el nino peak. So how can we justify the April to April year? It is the UK financial year, which itself derives from the cult of Mary in the middle ages, when the Annunciation of the El Nino — his divine conception, not his birth — was considered the beginning. This matriarchal year allows the build up (the Advent) and the decline (to Good Friday) of an el nino event to be captured in a single year.
rw says:
“…trying to bring Global Warming into existence by a collective act of will.”
Yes, next we’ll have Sweat Lodge chanting and a pilgrimage to a Sedona vortex.
In case you want to help, here is a map.
http://www.lovesedona.com/images/vnetmap3.gif
With these GWRist posts what Anthony achieves is making our sensitive livers to produce big amounts of bile and keep the fun going. Need a lot of piridoxine (vit.B6) and dextrose now.
That heading it is just sadistic, it’s like echoing Jimmy “Trains” or Dr. Mannsimian. Wow!
When El Nino ends, it’s global warming. When El Nino begins, it’s global warming. When El Nino doesn’t exist, the long term trends prove global warming. When El Nino does exist, it proves global warming.
It’s like listening to a single tone frequency on a frequency generator and having someone keep telling you that every part of the sine wave indicates a devastating long term trend caused by a wasteful power supply.
If it’s been so warm so far this year, why are all the flowers in my garden a month or so later than usual? Silence from MSM gardeners: they have been fashionably pushing Mediterranean planting in recent years: prepare for hot and dry conditions! In England. I lost two shrubs to the cold this winter and others must have too.
Jon P,
re “Lindbergh Field varies in temperature a lot less than other areas of the county as it next to the bay.”
Yes, but then several coastal airports have the same issues, e.g. LAX, San Francisco, Seattle/Tacoma. The point is that it’s an airport, with miles (literally) of thick concrete pavement, much high-temperature jet exhaust, and more than likely it has grown substantially over the years. As Anthony has (correctly) pointed out, a worse place for long-term temperature measurement could hardly be found.
Remember: After they get their objective nobody will hear again about any “Warmest Season on record” anymore. Afterwards this blog will have to focus on the next issue: The Landscheidt Minimum and changing science paradigm to a brand new one.
After just going through the most severe Winter I can remember here in Devon(UK), in which most of my Hogs froze or became diseased, the last thing we need here is to follow with Hot records, as this only adds to the problems we have on our Hog Farm to raise the new Piglets we need to make a living on Bacon and Sausages.
We are still waiting for the government to pay out for the losses we just had, and being simple farming folk from devon, we don’t know alot about the exact science, but we are getting messages here for the last few years we are getting hotter and hotter. But the message is confusing for us basic farm folk who can’t comprehend it. Do we rear hardier Cold loving beasts in the future, or make ready for needing hardier species to raise for a Warming world. But the science we are told is not the reality, and it can be so confusing for us folk down in Devon who still live quite isolated from the modern world. We only recently got mobile internet (only works a few days a week) and we still use the cesspit here, even.
Mari Warcwm says:
June 3, 2010 at 2:01 pm
If it’s been so warm so far this year, why are all the flowers in my garden a month or so later than usual?
That is because your flowers are out of date: If they would be VIRTUAL (generated by models) they would flower all the time. Your MET office guys cultivate these in their computers and see them flower in their screens.
How can there be any credibility in any of the global temperature dialogue when there is such a wide spread in just the last ten years between the various temperature data sets .
Least square trend line slopes per Wood for Trees data
JAN 2000 to April 30/2010[124 months or about 10 years]
HADCRUT 3vgl 0.00428C/YEAR
RSS 0.00895C/YEAR
UAH 0.01289C/YEAR
GISS 0.01556C/YEAR
The difference is almost 3.6 times between low and high. The first thing the scientific community needs to do is to fix the data sets. A quote from the paper referenced below states the case well.
Hence perhaps the central policy implication of the
cross-examination conducted above is a very concrete and yet perhaps surprising one:
public funding for climate science should be concentrated on the development of better,
standardized observational datasets that achieve close to universal acceptance as valid
and reliable. We should not be using public money to pay for faster and faster computers
so that increasingly fine-grained climate models can be subjected to ever larger numbers
of simulations until we have got the data to test whether the predictions of existing
models are confirmed (or not disconfirmed) by the evidence.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1612851#
Hansen was never right, why does anybody list to him?
June 6, i was able to turn off the furnace for the 1st time since i turned it on last fall.
So, based upon the overwhelming consensus here (which is of course very important, just like the consensus of the overwhelming majority of climate “scientists”) the climate shows no sign of this warming, which means, either:
1. The temperature network (whether thermometer or satellite) is accurate but reading something entirely irrelevant, according to our perception of climate
2. The temperature network is reading the right stuff, but getting it wrong
3. Some lying barstewards are making it all up.
4. All of the above
What do you reckon?
UK Sceptic says:
June 3, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Must be something wrong with my internal thermometer then because I shivered through most of April.
__________________________________________________________________________
I am in North Carolina, where we usually do not see snow and we had a low of 35F or 1.6C in MAY!!! Not to mention FIVE snow storms this winter. We only had four days with highs of 91 (33C) for the entire month of May this year compared to 17 days over 90F (32C) in 2004 and two days with a high of 98F (36.6C). (the Wunderground data goes no further back)
Heck, I have not even bothered to turn on the A/C yet because it has been so cool the house has not really warmed up.
What warming? Our part of Vancouver Island still four degrees lower than seasonal average up to last night, and it’s been 2-4 degrees below the posted average for the area since before Christmas. We are promised that temperatures will be ‘average’ next week.
Hey, was that a derisive snort just then or me sneezing? Must be the weather, not the climate. /sarc
First week of June, and the lake/pond outside my office window is nicely fringed with daffodils. This is the first warm spell of the year. Globally its only going to go downhill for the rest of the year. Hansen’s peculiar choice of April-April means he maybe senses that fact – this time-frame centers around the (now faded) el Nino, and thus the hasty publication before the cooling sets in. Perhaps in his mind he cant separate climate and taxes, thus his choice of the financial year for climate.
Peter Hearnden says:
June 3, 2010 at 2:08 pm
….But the message is confusing for us basic farm folk who can’t comprehend it. Do we rear hardier Cold loving beasts in the future, or make ready for needing hardier species to raise for a Warming world. But the science we are told is not the reality, and it can be so confusing for us folk down in Devon who still live quite isolated from the modern world…..
____________________________________________________________________________
So Peter, it must be you folks that the USDA was referring to in their manual when they tell Staff to address Farmers at *Sixth Grade Level*
It’s really due to gravity. It pulls the mercury lower in the thermometers than it should be, so the ‘experts’ have to make adjustments to correct it. In Colorado, when we are 10-15 degrees below average, it’s just weather, but 5 deg above and CAGW is proven! (of course, ‘average’ hereabouts is meaningless. That’s what it won’t be.)
All this “Warmest Year ever” crap, is based despetately in manipulated data from the GISS, the ONLY thing to turn to nowadays for record Heat.
Must we Forget The MOST SNOWPACK in the US in Like, 50 years.
The Only reliable resources to look at are the satellites put up in the 70’s for the fear of global cooling. Year 1979….. The years when the PDO and AMO turned warm, has created this temperature rise. This is the LAST year that “record” warmth will be discussed, we’re about to turn a huge corner. I’d hope we don’t get colder globally than the 70’s, but it looks like it will end up that way.
Whats going on here is the oscillations of the PDA and AMO> First the PDO Goes Cold, and temps level off and slowly Fall, then, he AMO goes cold, and we’re back to the 70’s, and we still have no idea what the sun has to do with it, or, at least we’ll find out. CO2, a 2% fraction of the atmosphere….. You noticed, back in the 90’s we were talking about the ozone layer thinning, then it slowly died off? The Global Warming idea, while it will slowly fade, the money, the “green”, the Texes, Big Government, and NOAA, will find a way to keep something going, whether it be the Next Ice age, Global Drought…. somway, they’ll find a way.
Its about the MONEY, Not the Sceince. If it were about thye science, and if it were settled, then we skeptics WOULDN’T be winning the debate, as we are.
This AGW Myth is hore sh*t, I’m out
Peter,
I’m headed for your neck of the outback this weekend – a break from a research trip. I’ve been having trouble with my internet connections at a B&B in Southampton, and hope things aren’t as bad as you paint them in Devon. Hope the government comes through for your pigs and hogs.
Totally off topic – the last time I went on a research trip (the archival kind) Climategate broke. I suppose it’s too much to hope for something similar to happen again? I won’t hold my breath, and at least the memory is a grand one.
Thanks for your analysis, Dr. Whitehouse. I’m glad people like you are keeping a weather eye on alarmist lies and exaggerations, and deconstructing the message for us.
Juraj V. says:
June 3, 2010 at 11:05 am
Once again, look how GISTEMP runs warmer compare to all remaining datasets, including HadSST:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998
=====
You forgot the offsets to put the four on a comparable base( – 0.24 for gisstemp and – 0.15 for hadcrut). Do that and the differences shrink.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/offset:%20-.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998
#
Chris says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:52 am
Jon P
here monthly GISS txt.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.425722900004.1.1/station.txt
#
davidmhoffer says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:58 am
If I may, I think I just found a gigantic hole in Hansen’s data. I was running trend lines from various scenarios back to 1880 using the GISS/TEMP data from the GISS map site. There’s a most interesting problem. When you run a trend from 1880 to 2009 there are 1,060 cells (of 16,200) which are used to calculate the trend, but which have no data to calculate against in 1880.
—…—…
1) Has Hansen released the raw US temperature data from 1880?
Or are we allowed to look at only his corrupted (er, corrected) and adjusted (upwards) temperature data?
2) I understand (from an old WUWT thread in 2008) that some of his program code has been released. Apparently he “re-analyzes” and then “re-calculates average temperatures” for EVERY temperature record ever received each month. Rather than, say for example) actually leaving the historical record intact and unedited, and comparing only the “new” data to the 1970-based 0.0 reference point? A reference very conveniently located right at the valley between 1940’s warm years and 2000 – 2010 warm years.
3) Further, I understand that he adjusts upward all data from remote sites within 1200 km (max, if 600 km data is not available while correcting for UHI hot spots) but refuses to release the actual “remote sites” he uses for this purpose.
4) I understand that “new” remote site temperature records are used every month for each GISS run based on NASA’s light index. How often is this index updated?
5) What is the effect of this update (new light index patterns1) have on previous calculated “remote site” corrections? That is, if every month a new light index is used, what happens to old record corrections that are now being compared against different remote sites? Also, if every month a different remote site could be “found” by the calculator, then wouldn’t Boston’s Logan Airport be “corrected by Ontario’s temperature one month, some parking lot in rural south PA the next, Appalachian VW the next, and North Carolina the next month?
6) Hansen’s GISS “remote site correction selector” sub-routine appears to accept and reject remote sites based on longevity (years of comparable records available at that given month) and “circular radius” only. If one or more months, a previously valid remote site drops out, he is now (automatically and without checking!) using an entirely different baseline temperature to “correct” his temperature history for how many sites?
7) Hansen’s “circular radius” selection criteria accepts all “remote site” records: regardless of latitude changes (Washington DC to southern Canada are acceptable “remote sites” to adjust all east coast cities.) Is this valid? Who (and when – other than Hansen himself in his 1987 papers) decide this is acceptable?
Not at all sure why we pay attention to this [snip] (stuff). Assuming things cool off, (from the last few months) will Hansen be pointing to the Dec(09) / Dec(10) slope as proof of dangerous cooling?
Just how many wrong guesses does Jim get before Politicians and the Public wake up?
Perhaps all that missing “hidden heat” is now to be found on the far side of the Moon eh Jim …
Well, you have to hand it to Hansen for consistency. Consistently shovelling sh*t, that is.
Hansen’s rubbish has also hit the headlines of the smh:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-warmest-year-yet-says-nasa-20100603-x7f5.html
… funny how the expanding Pacific Islands don’t rate a mention.
El Nino is over and the 2010 El Nino didn’t surpass the 1998 El Nino. If La Nina starts (and there are indications it could be in effect soon) then temperatures will begin to drop quickly.
Joe Bastardi thinks temperatures will begin to drop quickly by September and could be in negative anomaly for a time in 2011.
3:33 video at link:
http://www.accuweather.com/video/89141767001/major-drop-in-global-temps-is-around-the-corner.asp?channel=vblog_bastardi
p.s., moderators, could you suggest to Anthony that a guest post from Joe Bastardi would be uber cool?
davidmhoffer says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:58 am
If I may, I think I just found a gigantic hole in Hansen’s data. I was running trend lines from various scenarios back to 1880 using the GISS/TEMP data from the GISS map site. There’s a most interesting problem. When you run a trend from 1880 to 2009 there are 1,060 cells (of 16,200) which are used to calculate the trend, but which have no data to calculate against in 1880.
1) Has Hansen released the raw US temperature data from 1880?
I thought that he had, but when I pick the “unadjusted” from the web site it just gives me an error. The unadjusted data says it is available up to 1999. Doesn’t seem to be there.
My first crack at it (see post above) was astounding. To have over 1000 data points in the calculation that are in error is astounding. That they appear to have been hand crafted is astounding. That they are slid in here and there in place where they would be hard to spot is astounding. They are on average about double the actual anomalies for nearby data, more astounding still. See for yourself if you don’t believe me.
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-most-interesting-gisstemp-errors-can-this-be-an-accident/
Was going to re-examine the data for the same date span as in his article above, but it is turning out to be a bit of a challenge. Showing that there was bogus data from 1880 to 2009 had an increasing effect on the temperature trend was a challenge, but not unsumountable and all the evidence is on my blog. Trying to do the same for just the last part of the data is another thing.
I ran 1970 to 2009 and plugged it into the same spread sheet. In that time period, there are 43 cells out of 12,721 that are in error. But there are 13,446 with data. What happened to them? Turns out the problem is in reverse. There are 768 cells with data at the beginning of the time period, but no corresponding data at the end of the time period. This is the case where the average fom the zone is supposed to be used in order to complete the caluculation, but loooks like it has not been done. So while the first problem was easy to back out of the numbers, this isn’t. Since I can’t guestimate the amount of the missing numbers, then I would have to figure out how the other numbers are or are not in the calculation in order to back them out or put them to adjust. I’m not certain the info is there to do that, but I am looking at it.
Dr A Burns:
June 3, 2010 at 5:27 pm
If the temperature anomaly stays the way it was in Jan–Apr throughout the rest of the year then 2010 will be the hottest on record. But James Hansen knows full well, I’m sure, that the high temperature anomaly in the first 1/4 of this year was caused by the El Nino. And I am sure he also knows El Nino ended quickly at the beginning of May. The anomaly will not continue high like it was. But most of us here know there are odd things going on with James Hansen’s data set, GISTemp. If these odd things continue from this point on throughout the year then it is possible that his data set for 2010 will be the highest ever on record. But that record will only be a fact of life in James Hansen’s pretend world.
If La Nina sets in and temps cool but NASA says it’s a record hot year then the average person will know something is up at NASA GISTemp. And I will enjoy that.
David Oppenhaimer says:
June 3, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Hansen was never right, why does anybody list to him?
the four letters N-A-S-A attached to his name is the reason
If the words ‘environmental activist’, which is what he really is, were attached to his name then most everyone would be like you and say ‘why would I listen to him?’
As Wren points out the temperature data have offsets as much as 0.24 degrees in this temperature region. The satellite data from UAH and RSS should serve as a standard to which all the others ought to be compared. And if you really want to get information out of such curves do not average but use a magic marker instead. I have long known that these offsets are devices to show that warming exists when there actually is no warming. Let’s look at Hanssen’s approach using satellite data as a guide.. First thing to take note of is the fact that in 1988 when he testified to Congress that warming had started there was no warming. Global temperatures just oscillated, up and down by half a degree for twenty years, and real warming did not start until 1998. That is ten years after he claimed that warming was here. The oscillations I spoke of were not noise but real and were caused by the alternation of warm El Nino and cool La Nina phases of the ENSO system in the Pacific. ENSO has existed since the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea and is guaranteed to exist for the foreseeable future. But this period in the eighties and nineties shows up in NASA, NOAA, or Met Office curves as a warming period. And comparing their data to satellites we see that this is achieved simply by raising up low La Nina temperatures between El Nino peaks and this way creating a rising temperature curve from an originally horizontal curve. Clearly this system was already in place when Hansen testified. Even so, this only got them 0.1` degree rise per decade, not 0.15 or 0.2 degrees for that temperature segment. The larger numbers come mostly from luck: the super El Nino of 1998 which was not a product of the greenhouse effect helped them hugely, and so did its aftermath, the twenty-first century high. But even so this did not satisfy them and the highest offsets are found in that last warm plateau. This plateau included six warm years where the temperature stayed near El Nino maximum. It ended with the La Nina cooling of 2008. And this was in turn followed by the present El Nino which has just peaked. I expect that the oscillating climate we had in the eighties and nineties is back and should deliver us another La Nina this year. To show the correct average temperature for the last thirty years you should start with a horizontal straight line that ends at the beginning of the super El Nino of 1998. Another horizontal straight line from 2002 to the present belongs to the twenty-first century high that followed it.. They are disconnected and must not be statistically combined.. The temperature difference between these two horizontal lines is 0.3 degrees. The transition that includes the super El Nino and the climb up to the twenty-first century high should not be averaged. The super El Nino itself was produced by a storm surge that dumped warm water at the start of the equatorial countercurrent near New Guinea. The countercurrent carried it to South America where it ran ashore, spread out, and produced the warm spike in our records. The most important conclusion from all these temperature curves is this: anthropogenic global warming has never been observed because Hansen’s warming is imaginary and real warming was not carboniferous.
Mango says:
June 3, 2010 at 10:03 am
Am i mistaken or should a paper being made ready for publication not be under a press embargo until accepted?
It is a time-honored practice to send out ‘preprints’ to friends and colleagues when the paper is submitted. A general press release at that point would be frowned upon.
2010 may not end up being the warmest year on record, or it may. While you all complain about GISS, your own Dr. Roy Spencer’s analyses show the same very warm first five months of the year – in complete agreement with GISS and NOAA. In fact, Spencer’s data shows that 2010 so far matches the highest daily temps in the past 20 years.
While you all threaten Hansen with arrest, the modelers at the Blackboard can’t understand why the GISS temperatures run so much lower than theirs from the same data set: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-great-gistemp-mystery/
Manfred says:
June 3, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Recent 2010 temepratures were on top of the weather phenomenon an El Nino contributing several tenths of a degree.
2005 was not.
There is no way to regard 2010 to be warmer than 2005 from a clomate science perspective..
Realclimate is very quick in adjusting temperatures upwards during La Ninas, but here they, Hansen and Pope are silent again.
This is further evidence, that the wrong people are employed at the top of climate science institutions.
========== ===========================
NOAA claimed “Conditions are favorable for a transition to La Niña conditions during June – August 2010.”
So it is official now.
Thanks to Wren for the giss and hadley offsets. As you can see: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1985/offset:%20-.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1985/offset:-.15/plot/rss/from:1985/plot/uah/from:1985
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal. What’s all the fuss about?
Quoted from the post by Arno Arrak :
June 3, 2010 at 6:24 pm
“As Wren points out the temperature data have offsets as much as 0.24 degrees in this temperature region. The satellite data from UAH and RSS should serve as a standard to which all the others ought to be compared. And if you really want to get information out of such curves do not average but use a magic marker instead. I have long known that these offsets are devices to show that warming exists when there actually is no warming …………”
==============
Perhaps I’m missing your point, but I don’t see how offsets could “show that warming exists when there is no warming.”
Offsets are simply adjustments that are necessary if we are comparing the four temperature anomalies, since they use three different baseline periods. UAH and RSS both use Jan 1979 – Dec 1998 as a baseline period, while HADCRUT uses Jan 1961 – Dec 1990, and GISTEMP uses Jan 1951 – Dec 1980.
The offset adjustments (- 0.15 for HADCRUT , and – 0.24 for GISTEMP) put these two series on a common baseline period with UAH and RSS. You can find out more about this, and see the effects of the adjustments at
http://www.woodfortrees.org
Quoted from a post by matt v. says:
June 3, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“How can there be any credibility in any of the global temperature dialogue when there is such a wide spread in just the last ten years between the various temperature data sets .
Least square trend line slopes per Wood for Trees data
JAN 2000 to April 30/2010[124 months or about 10 years]
HADCRUT 3vgl 0.00428C/YEAR
RSS 0.00895C/YEAR
UAH 0.01289C/YEAR
GISS 0.01556C/YEAR
The difference is almost 3.6 times between low and high. The first thing the scientific community needs to do is to fix the data sets…….”
=====
After I put the four temperature anomaly series on a common baseline over at woodforytrees.org, the trends from 2000 look pretty similar to me.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2000/offset:%20-.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/plot/rss/from:2000/plot/uah/from:2000
I wouldn’t expect the temperature changes shown by the different series to be exactly the same, since they aren’t measuring exactly the same thing. However, their long-term trends are about the same.
As I see it the planet is not at all threatened by the warming reported by GISS. In a world connected by the internet, GISS has had to move all the warming on their maps to places where there are few thermometers, few people and little wild life. Trying to report warming in places where individual citizens can check has caused problems such as the unfortunate Finland hotspot incident. GISS can continue their warming stories, but their claimed hotspots are going to have to continuously shrink and move further and further away from people, thermometers and the internet. Global averages are meaningless if real people are cold and crops are buried under snow. If the current trend in GISS temperature reporting continues, James Hanson will soon be telling us that the planet is warming due to a 100m diameter hotspot in the southern ocean that is hotter than the sun and highly agoraphobic.
davidmhoffer;
I ran 1970 to 2009 and plugged it into the same spread sheet. In that time period, there are 43 cells out of 12,721 that are in error. But there are 13,446 with data. What happened to them? Turns out the problem is in reverse. There are 768 cells with data at the beginning of the time period, but no corresponding data at the end of the time period. This is the case where the average fom the zone is supposed to be used in order to complete the caluculation, but loooks like it has not been done. So while the first problem was easy to back out of the numbers, this isn’t.>>
found it. nailed it. will take me a few hours in the AM to write it up and document it, but it even bigger than the first mistake I found.
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Thanks to Wren for the giss and hadley offsets. As you can see: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1985/offset:%20-.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1985/offset:-.15/plot/rss/from:1985/plot/uah/from:1985
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal. What’s all the fuss about?
==========================
I dunno. You tell me.
Looking at that graph…agreement or not…there is absolutely NO cause for alarm whatsoever.
So yeah…what is all the fuss about?
I guess the “chicken-little-alarm side of the debate”…is so accustomed and acclimated to fuss, fret, and hand-wringing…that it can easily spot it as well. 😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Owen
So you are saying that James Hansen has done a good job in handling data? Does he do a better job of it than laymen like Steve McIntyre? And he does as good a job of it as Roy Spencer
Are you also saying that James Hansen is not an environmental activist?
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal.
phenomenal—LOL—-you are funny
nice how your graph blends all the lines together so you can’t see the details. The devil is in the details, and that’s where you’ll find James Hansen’s handywork!
Owen
Did you know about these in James Hansen’s history:
1998—1934? And September/October 2008—you know, the hottest October on record?
Thanks
stevengoddard says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:28 am
“HadCrut has 2010 as #4 for Jan-Apr.
Hansen bumps his numbers up by extrapolating across large Arctic regions with no data.”
Perhaps they have installed anal thermometers in some polar bears to fill in this data gap.
This is why I think there’s a chance that 2010 will fall just short of setting a record. I’m hoping (and betting) that it won’t–the odds are roughly 75% / 25% at the moment on https://www.intrade.com — so if I’m right my short-side bets will pay off handsomely.
Incidentally, on a thread about Arctic ice yesterday, “The Undeath Spiral,” someone asked for the exact wording of Intrade’s bet on that matter, and was happy when I posted it. So here’s the wording of Intrade’s conditions on this bet, which you get to by clicking on the purple name of the bet and then on “Contract Specific Rules”:
Each contract is worth $10. If someone is “asking” 75 for a contract, it means 75%, so it costs $7.50 to “buy it (or $2.50 to “sell” it), and ten such contracts cost ten times as much. (If one “sells” the contract above one is in effect betting that 2010 is NOT the warmest year on the GISS record.)
Enneagram says:
June 3, 2010 at 11:51 am
“This is how the summer was before the first “interesting” winter, back in the Maunder Minimum times:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder ”
Thanks! That is extremely interesting historical perpspective. Extremely.
Roger Knights says:
June 3, 2010 at 10:07 pm
the odds are roughly 75% / 25%
I don’t think odds in gambling are based on what they think is really going to happen but on what will attract the most money to the oddsmakers benefit.
Al Gored says:
June 3, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Thanks
stevengoddard says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:28 am
No, no, no, Owen just said GISTemp is phenomenally comparable to all other data sets. 😉
Climate is said not to be the extreme one year or even many, but the long term change. So I have noted the last five years when the ice on the Lakes breakes close to my home in Sweden. I have also noted the dates when our appletres blossom. So far this year is three weeks behind all other years BOTH by the ice breaking dates AND the applestrees. Actually my trees are now in full flower, wich is last year was on the 12th of May. The year before was 6th of May and 2008 was also first week in May. 2007 though was early, in end of April ! When it comes to the ice breaking, all the way back in the 1960ies, the ice break almost always 16-19 of March, this year it was on the 12th of April ! I know this is NOT climate change, but we have had absolutely no warming that is for sure, we had some nice springs like back in 1991 when I went sailing on May 1th, was at sea for 6 week in the southern Sweden region, had about 25-30 degrees all the time. That has not happened since. This year for example we have now June 3rd, have had 2 days, (yesterday and today), with 20-25 Celsius. Global warming, I guess not here ….. We are all looking for it, wanting it, begging for it, but seems to vanish, hopefully with the taxation ….
harrywr2 @ 9:46 am
I went to the link for gistemp you provided and then to the state of Washington. The initial sort of stations has (first) Wenatchee/Pangborn Field and (second) Wenatchee, both with population of 22,000. This is strange. Wenatchee is on the west edge of the Columbia River and East Wenatchee is on the east side of the Columbia River. They are different cities in different counties. Neither has (nor recently had a population of 22,000.
http://washington.hometownlocator.com/census/estimates/cities.cfm
East Wenatchee (2000 census: 5,757; 2008 estimate: 12,286)
Wenatchee (2000 census: 27,856; 2008 estimate: 29898)
The gistemp population in the table seems to be a 1990 Census number rounded-up from 21,756.
Use theses coordinates [47.398958, -120.208193 ] to locate Pangborn Field. It is on an elevated river terrace east of the urban area in a quite rural environment – except for being an airport!
It makes no sense to provide information when it doesn’t relate to the place indicated as done for the 22,000 population of East Wenatchee. Then, too they ought to update these numbers after each Census. 1990 is so last century!
Here’s something I posted about a week ago that gives more detail on the mechanics of betting there: The odds at Intrade aren’t set by the organization itself, which is a mere marketplace where individual bettors posts bids and offers (sell-short bids, in effect) on certain propositions, similar to bids and offers placed on the stock market. (I.e., the bettor specifies the price level and quantity of his bid/ask.) If a bid or ask is tempting enough to another bettor, he “covers” it, and the price at which he does so establishes the latest odds.
For instance, on the Greater Arctic Ice This Sept.? proposition, I currently have [no longer] a bid at 40% for five $10 “contracts.” (All contracts are for $10.) I had to post a margin of $20 (40% * 5 * $10 = 20). If someone wants to take my bet at those odds, he posts a “sell” order at 40 for 5 and posts margin of $30 (60% * 5 * $10 = 30). In October Intrade settles the bet one way or the other and places $50 in the winner’s account. That’s one nice thing about the site — the feeling that I’m punishing the other side (not a bookie).
Another nice thing is that if you change your mind on a bet you can sell it (or try to) at a partial loss before it goes totally bad. For instance, I could place a sell offer on my position at 30 and lose only a quarter ($5) of my bet ($20). You don’t have to put up extra cash to hedge yourself by buying a bet on the other side, the way you have to with a bookie. (Of course, Intrade charges commissions, but they aren’t onerous.)
Since April 2009 people around southeastern Pennsylvania have typically been complaining how cool or cold it’s been. Only within the past week or two has the “summer weather” shown up. But i doubt the average person could detect a 0.2 degree difference from a decade ago.
@Everybody
Amino Acids in Meteorites links:
major drop in global temps is around the corner, Bastardi.
Hansen knew that. That’s why he hastened to lobby at “The Times” without peer review. He links his (s)crap paper on his gisstemp site before his retirement. That paper mentioned his use of the OI v2 (Optimal Interpolation) for SST, even if partly covered with Sea ice (Reynolds et al, 2003, 2007). HadCRUT3 uses it for major parts of the Arctic Sea. And what does Hanson do? He deletes it and smears over it with “hot” land temperatures, as people like Bob Tisdale repetedly pointed out here and there.
Looks like the Arctic Sea is boiling with red magma according to Hansen’s: gisstemp map April 2010 vs. 1971-2000. Now look at the OIv2 temperatures of NOAA using the same baseline.
Everybody see the scam?
If you assume that year 1998 was hotter than 1997 (as most global graphs show) then subtracting 1997 temps from 1998 temps, month by month, should show when the heat started. Here are some UAH figures for lower troposphere over LAND :
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahland-1.jpg
The same treatment for lower troposphere over OCEANS:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahocean.jpg
Clearly, the troposphere above the oceans showed more increase than that over land. Mechanism? Unknown.
If I was comparing year 2010 to the “hot” year 1998, I’d like to be able to work out where the heat started and where it travelled to. I can’t.
Therefore, I would not even start to compare incomplete 2010 to the geographic spaghetti of 1998. Upstairs is for thinking.
Personally, I suspect that very big relative errors and false anomalies arise from lack of coverage of polar areas, by satellites as well as ground based instruments. In any case, the “correct” signal is often buried in the noise.
All temperatures are local. (Want to stop AGW? Vote!)
It could be for Tampa, Florida. I got curious about the ASOS at the Tampa International Airport and so I looked it up on Google Earth.
The first link below is to the GE image from 2007. The instrument placement is circled in light orange (lower right). As far as I can tell, in the same position since the 1990’s. Notice the aircraft making their turns onto the active runway, that becomes important for the the 2010 GE image.
Google Earth 2007:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/889495425_gfJYw/Original
And now in the 2010 image:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/889495457_tnKJv/Original
I bet on warmer!
Jose
@rw says: June 3, 2010 at 11:26 am
[ ]
“It’s almost as if Hansen and other warmists are creating Songlines – or Babblelines – across the planet, trying to bring Global Warming into existence by a collective act of will.”
You may be on to something there, rw.
On Wednesday I chanced to hear one of our favourite lunatic attention seekers Lewis Gordon Pugh (aka The Human Polar Bear) on Radio 4 together with Tony Benn and other luminaries. Listen to it on:- (don’t have a mouth full of tea at the time)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjmz2
Pugh (remember his fine achievement in kayaking to the North Pole [not] in 2008) now has a new stunt. He goes swimming in extremely cold water. So far he’s notched up a dip in a lake near Mount Everest and a swim actually at the North Pole. Thereby drawing attention to Global Warming. (Don’t ask how that works.)
The interesting bit is that, when asked by the wonderfully named Libby Purves how he prepares for this, he said he concentrates very hard on a time when he was very frightened and this raises his body core temperature by 2 degrees. [No! I’m not making this up! Listen for yourself!]
So if all the ecotards, fraudulent Climate “Scientwits”, dodgy carbon traders, scientifically illiterate politicians – not forgetting our own very lovely BuffHuhne – all concentrate very very hard on something REALLY scary (like a Royal Tribunal of Inquiry into the whole AGW scam) then they should be able to pump up the temperature of the planet and ensure 2010 is a record!
Sorry Roger Knights! I think you’ll loose your bet on this one!
ban coal, gas, oil, ng and all others forms of CO2 energy! sod houses and horses for all.
Hum, I wonder if Al Gore’s new house on the beach is safe from flooding, does anyone know? Maybe Tipper bought that one.
climatepatrol
June 4, 2010 at 2:30 am
I didn’t know he was retiring. So he’s getting out because he sees the handwriting on the wall that the earth is cooling and no matter what he does to manipulate the data he can’t compensate for it? Or what is his reason given?
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal.
phenomenal—LOL—-you are funny
nice how your graph blends all the lines together so you can’t see the details. The devil is in the details, and that’s where you’ll find James Hansen’s handywork!
=========
It’s easier to see the details in a graph of 2 temperature series than in a graph of 4. Notice in the linked graph how close GISTEMP and UAH are over the 1980-2010 period.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1985/offset:%20-.24/plot/uah/from:1985
wren
You said “After I put the four temperature anomaly series on a common baseline over at woodforytrees.org, the trends from 2000 look pretty similar to me. ”
The devil is in the detail. My post was about LEAST SQUARE TREND LINE SLOPE not visual appearance. The trend of the temperatures is different for the last 10 years for the four data sets
The basic difference can be illustrated thus . If hadcrut3vgl is driving at 30mph, rss is at 60 mph, uah is at 90 mph, giss is at 108 mph You can project this 100 years ahead and the global warming picture will be quite different. This is the basic problem .
CORRECTION
The graph for my previous post starts with 1985 instead of 1980. A graph starting with 1980 can be found at
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/plot/uah/from:1980
The attached graph illustrates my previous post.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/trend
Is 2010 heading for a record? Absolutely!
Will it be record warmth? Absolutely NOT!
Will it be a record of hyperbole and spin? Definitely!
Will my eyes continue to hurt from rolling? Positively!
I was driving home tonight and this story made the 6 pm National news broadcast on the radio. They mentioned NASA but did not reference Hansen in any way. While the people who visit this blog can quite rightly scoff and laugh at such questionable science, main street media audiences are lapping this alarmism up! The general population are buying it because no other opinions are getting through.
Anthony- you can’t get to ‘down under’ quick enough as far as I’m concerned.
BYO sick bag! PS. Have you tried to get an interview on ABC Melbourne Radio while you’re here? KJ
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 4, 2010 at 7:14 am
climatepatrol
June 4, 2010 at 2:30 am
I didn’t know he was retiring. So he’s getting out because he sees the handwriting on the wall that the earth is cooling and no matter what he does to manipulate the data he can’t compensate for it? Or what is his reason given?
He’ll be 70 next year, seems a reasonable age to retire, I expect I’ll retire by then.
Matt V., you picked a relatively short time range, and noise has a bigger effect over a short range. Take a look at a 30 year range (about as far back as I can go to still get satellite data): http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:2011/trend/offset:-.15/plot/uah/from:1980/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2011/trend/offset:-.24/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2011/trend
The agreement for RSS, GISS, and HADCRUT is remarkable. Only UAH is a somewhat off from the others. The big picture says that Hansen’s work is well done, and he does not deserve the excoriation he receives from followers of this blog.
matt v. says:
June 4, 2010 at 7:43 am
The attached graph illustrates my previous post.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/trend
——————–
Again your comparisons are invalid because you have plotted the four temperature anomaly series without adjusting them to a common baseline period. Read ” Comparing temperature anomalies – getting the baselines right” in the Notes section at http://www.woodfortrees.org
Below is a link to a chart showing 1980-2010 trends for the four series on a common baseline period:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend
Wren says: June 4, 2010 at 10:44
Again your comparisons are invalid because you have plotted the four temperature anomaly series without adjusting them to a common baseline period.
Below is a link to a chart showing 1980-2010 trends for the four series on a common baseline period:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend
Wren, can you post anything without fudging the data? Why the GISSTEMP offset?
Owen says:
June 4, 2010 at 10:13 am
Matt V., you picked a relatively short time range, and noise has a bigger effect over a short range. Take a look at a 30 year range (about as far back as I can go to still get satellite data): http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:2011/trend/offset:-.15/plot/uah/from:1980/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2011/trend/offset:-.24/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2011/trend
The agreement for RSS, GISS, and HADCRUT is remarkable. Only UAH is a somewhat off from the others. The big picture says that Hansen’s work is well done, and he does not deserve the excoriation he receives from followers of this blog.
You two guy’s must think you’re fooling someone. But that’s the alarmists’ gameplan, isn’t it. Delete the offset.
And don’t tell me to “show trends”. It was done to reduce the temperature discrepancy between satellite and surface.
Owen says:
June 4, 2010 at 10:13 am
The agreement for RSS, GISS, and HADCRUT is remarkable. Only UAH is a somewhat off from the others. The big picture says that Hansen’s work is well done, and he does not deserve the excoriation he receives from followers of this blog.
_________________________________________________________________________
This graph says Hansen does deserve the excoriation he receives: http://i31.tinypic.com/2149sg0.gif
Wren
There is nothing wrong in showing the four different temperature dataset’s spread for the last 10 years . The 10 years was picked because NASA was similarly arguing that the last decade was the warmest decade. They did nat say that there was a lot of static in their 10 year data.I was merely showing that there is spread in the latest data sets for a similar 10 year period . You picking the last 30 years , that is a different time frame and the spread is different again.Perhaps what applied the last 30 years , no longer applies the last 10 years . Your argument that data sets are similar for both periods is not valid. They two sets of analysis for two totally different timeframes. I am not saying your time frame is wrong , just that it does not invalidate mine either.
Tim Clark says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:09 am
Wren says: June 4, 2010 at 10:44
Again your comparisons are invalid because you have plotted the four temperature anomaly series without adjusting them to a common baseline period.
Below is a link to a chart showing 1980-2010 trends for the four series on a common baseline period:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend
Wren, can you post anything without fudging the data? Why the GISSTEMP offset?
======
Because if you want to compare anomalies that have different baseline periods, you need offsets to put them on a common base. Without a common base, the comparisons will be wrong.
The baseline periods for the four temperature anomaly series are:
UAH and RSS — Jan 1979 – Dec 1998
HADCRUT — Jan 1961 – Dec 1990
GISTEMP — Jan 1951 – Dec 1980
The offset adjustments (- 0.15 for HADCRUT , and – 0.24 for GISTEMP) put these two series on a common baseline period with UAH and RSS. For more on the subject, see “Notes” at http://www.woodfortrees.org
Now I see what was bothering me. You forgot to offset Hadcrud.
matt v. says:
June 4, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Wren
There is nothing wrong in showing the four different temperature dataset’s spread for the last 10 years . The 10 years was picked because NASA was similarly arguing that the last decade was the warmest decade. They did nat say that there was a lot of static in their 10 year data.I was merely showing that there is spread in the latest data sets for a similar 10 year period . You picking the last 30 years , that is a different time frame and the spread is different again.Perhaps what applied the last 30 years , no longer applies the last 10 years . Your argument that data sets are similar for both periods is not valid. They two sets of analysis for two totally different timeframes. I am not saying your time frame is wrong , just that it does not invalidate mine either.
====
The main issue is you are comparing different anomalies without putting them on a common baseline period. By not doing so, the differences you see are largely a result of difference in the bases rather than real differences.
Offsets adjustments for putting the four anomalies on a common baseline are explained at http://www.woodfortrees.org
From the linked graph with trend lines for the different anomalies already on a common baseline, you can insert any starting year you like. If you start with the year 2000 and compare that graph with your previous results, you will see a very different picture.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend
Tim Clark says:
June 4, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Now I see what was bothering me. You forgot to offset Hadcrud.
—————–
Tim, you are right. I forgot to offset hadcrut. The link to the corrected chart is
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/offset:%20-.15/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/trend
wren
I get the same spread with your offsets. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2000/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/offset:%20-.15/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/trend
matt v. says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:53 pm
wren
I get the same spread with your offsets. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2000/offset:%20-.24/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/offset:%20-.15/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/trend
=====
No, the magnitude is different. In the graph with the offsets, the spread starts at about 0.07 in 2000 and ends at about 0.09 in 2010, a difference of 0.o2. In your graph without offsets from your earlier post(see below), the spread starts at about 0.27 in 2000 and ends at about 0.35, a difference of 0.08.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2011/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2011/trend
The notion of offsets is as basic as it gets. I’m surprised that so many here have difficulty understanding what offsets are and why they are necessary for comparisons.
The big picture remains: 4 different calculation methods of an average global temperature from two very different types of data (direct on-site thermometer readings and microwave radiances) are all in substantial agreement. The temperature record is solid, and it is best interpreted over the long term.
WREN
I can see where the diffrence has risen in our posts . I started my original article comparing “the least square trend line slopes” which later seemed to have morphed to “spreads ” of the four different data sets. The least square trend line slopes of the four different data sets remain as per my original article for the 10 years in question and they are different.
Regardless, GISS fills in Gaps with the positive anomaly, in addition, I agree with JB that
“They have adjusted down non-satellite-era temperatures (1951-1980) and are now comparing them to current satellite-era temps AND THEN CLAIMING IT’S THE WARMEST EVER.”.
Also, GISS deleted (or at least I heard) the arctic temp anomalies. What would be their motive behind that? Sounds Like they’re covering up the evidence. After all, we all know AGW is all about the money……right……?
matt v. says:
June 4, 2010 at 4:50 pm
WREN
I can see where the diffrence has risen in our posts . I started my original article comparing “the least square trend line slopes” which later seemed to have morphed to “spreads ” of the four different data sets. The least square trend line slopes of the four different data sets remain as per my original article for the 10 years in question and they are different.
====
The slopes before the offset adjustment are different than the slopes after the offset adjustment. Note that the RSS trend line moves from below the HADCRUT trend line to above it after the adjustment. Perhaps if you can print the two graphs, the differences would be easier to see.
The four anomalies have less similar temperature changes in the short-run than in the long-run, as we have seen by comparing the offset-adjusted trends for 2000 – 2010 and 1980-2010, and as can be seen by comparing the trends for either period to the changes in the last 12 months.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.15/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12
keep working Wren, keep working, maybe you’ll eventually convince at least yourself
matt v. says:
June 4, 2010 at 4:50 pm
WREN
I can see where the diffrence has risen in our posts . I started my original article comparing “the least square trend line slopes” which later seemed to have morphed to “spreads ” of the four different data sets. The least square trend line slopes of the four different data sets remain as per my original article for the 10 years in question and they are different.
That’s why you shouldn’t look at climate trends over short periods (e.g. <15 years). Each dataset can be influenced slightly differently by different events. For example, satellite measurements respond strongly to ENSO events. If you choose a short time period which starts with La Nina and ends with El Nino (or vice versa) you can get a misleading impression of the underlying trend. GISS extrapolates over the arctic which means that during an arctic warming period, the GISS trend will be be higher than Hadcrut, say. Of course, this should all even itself out because as most posters on here are fully aware the sun is about to enter a grand minimum which will presumably result in the sort of arctic cooling which occurred between 1940 and 1970 (See GISS record).
In any case, as has been shown by a number of posters, these short term discrepancies between the datasets have very little influence on the longer term trends. The trends for all 4 main datasets are remarkably similar and consistent.
Just a quick word on 'offsets'. GISS calculate monthly anomalies which are relative to the 1951-1980 base period (Hadcrut uses th 1961-1990 period). UAH and RSS use the 1979-1998 period. Because 1951-1980 was a colder period than 1979-1998 then, quite naturally, GISS anomalies will be larger than satellite (UAH & RSS) anomalies. If we want to compare GISS (and Hadley) with the satellite readings then we need to use a common base period (i.e. 1979-1998). GISS temperatures for the 1979-1998 period were, on average, ~0.24 deg warmer than for the 1951-1980 period (Hadley was ~0.15 deg warmer than the 1961-1990 period). Note there are slight monthly variations but this gives a mean annual difference. Therefore if we want to compare GISS with UAH we need to knock 0.24 deg off the actual GISS anomaly (and knock 0.15 deg off for Hadcrut).
To see how it works let's look at the April 2010 anomalies, i.e. GISS +0.73; UAH +0.50. Now subtract 0.24 from the GISS anomaly to find the anomaly relative to 1979-98 and we get +0.49 (0.73-0.24), so UAH has an April anomaly which is 0.50 deg above the 1979-98 April mean while GISS has an April anomaly which is roughly 0.49 deg above the 1979-98 April mean. I say "roughly" because the 0.24 deg offset is an annual figure and it's possible that the April offset is slightly different. However GISS provides tools which allow us to check this. The following is an anomaly map for April 2010 relative to the 1979-98 period.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=4&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1979&base2=1998&radius=1200&pol=reg
The anomaly is in the top RH corner. It tells us the April was actually +0.51 deg warmer than the 1979-98 April mean. GISS is clearly up to no good here.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:40 pm
keep working Wren, keep working, maybe you’ll eventually convince at least yourself
======
I’m not alone in being convinced GISSTEMP and HADCRUT are on different baseline periods than UAH and RSS, and that offset adjustments are necessary if these series are to be compared. I think many others here are convinced, including Anthony Watts, and regular contributors Willis Eschenbach and Steve Goddard.
I’m also am not alone in believing comparisons of these four temperature series over short periods can be misleading. John Finn’s post does a good job of explains why such comparisons can be misleading.
Seeking a reply to TFN Johnson (June 3, 2010 at 9:47 am) I’ve been pointed to a global analysis using just 60 stations here: http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2010/05/just-60-stations.html
(ht — J at Open Mind — http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/open-thread-19/#comment-42206)
Thoughts?
Wren
Thanks for pointing out my wrong reading of the plots. I looked at the Raw Data print out[ by clicking RAW DATA] for the Wood for Trees plots and thought that the least square trend line slope for the offset case were the revised slope numbers , but they only give the slope numbers for the non-offset case again . [ they do not give the actual slope figures or numbers for the offset case.] I missed that .
I appreciate the problem of using decadal figures only but I was responding to the warmest decade claim and trying to point out that the data sets can give different answers in the short term
matt v. says:
June 5, 2010 at 11:57 am
Wren
Thanks for pointing out my wrong reading of the plots. I looked at the Raw Data print out[ by clicking RAW DATA] for the Wood for Trees plots and thought that the least square trend line slope for the offset case were the revised slope numbers , but they only give the slope numbers for the non-offset case again . [ they do not give the actual slope figures or numbers for the offset case.] I missed that .
I appreciate the problem of using decadal figures only but I was responding to the warmest decade claim and trying to point out that the data sets can give different answers in the short term
————-
matt, thank you.
A basic point that never seems to be brought up is the reality that we have only been an “industrial” planet for less than 150 years and until the last 50 years only a few nations really had any industry to speak of. You have to be living with blinders on to believe that doubling the population and creating economies based on oil (for energy, for plastics, for pharmaceuticals, for the carpet in your house) would not have some effect on our planet. Whether or not that effect is a positive one or a negative one is the next issue. Just look around. Do you really think that burning millions of gallons of oil and dumping even more oil based trash into land fills is a good thing? Maybe the poles will melt and maybe they won’t but I have a very difficult time believing that the societies that we have built on Earth have no effect on the land, the water, and the air…
The accusation of “cherry picking,” as I understand it, often refers to the choice of an extreme year as starting point, and a shortened time series, to support claims that run contrary to the longer-term trend. Examples mentioned here recently include “global cooling” based on UAH temperatures for 1998-2008, or “Arctic recovery” based on NSIDC ice extent for 2007-2009. It is suggested that peer reviewers for science journals would object to such claims, and ask to see more complete time series and tests of statistical significance.
What are the best (worst) examples going the other way? That is, choice of extreme starting points and shortened time series to support claims of recent warming (based on nonsignificant “trends”), that nevertheless got past peer review and into science journals? I am looking for simple, obvious examples in both directions that could be used for teaching.
fred says:
June 6, 2010 at 12:56 am
The accusation of “cherry picking,” as I understand it, often refers to the choice of an extreme year as starting point, and a shortened time series, to support claims that run contrary to the longer-term trend. Examples mentioned here recently include “global cooling” based on UAH temperatures for 1998-2008, or “Arctic recovery” based on NSIDC ice extent for 2007-2009. It is suggested that peer reviewers for science journals would object to such claims, and ask to see more complete time series and tests of statistical significance.
What are the best (worst) examples going the other way? That is, choice of extreme starting points and shortened time series to support claims of recent warming (based on nonsignificant “trends”), that nevertheless got past peer review and into science journals? I am looking for simple, obvious examples in both directions that could be used for teaching.
——————————————————-
Fred, this isn’t an answer to your request for “real life” examples of cherry-picked temperature trends, but you and your students may be interested in
experimenting by doing your own cherry-picking, which is easy to do thanks to woodfortrees.org. I recommend “Temperature trends – pick a time scale, any time scale! ” in the linked page, which shows what you can graph, and the page on “Examples,” which explains how.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/notes
Okay, enough of you people saying it was cold here or there in the United States. If your argument is that it was cold here so it couldn’t be warm globally then the AGW people will eat you alive. Take for instance Quebec and Labrador. 10+ degrees warmer than usual. Labrador has broken record after record. Ottawa was 28 degrees on April 2nd beating the previous high for that day by 12 degrees. Anyone can pick local regions and find cold or warm trends… don’t open yourselves up for such easy criticisms…
Planetary Ordered Solar Theory, shows that 2010 to 2013 will have strong warming episodes, and global temperatures will climb strongly later this year. 2010 and 2013 will stand out as a very hot years.
http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/2008/06/03/the-sunspot-cycle-and-c24/
Assuming there’s been a generally upward trend for 150 years or so, wouldn’t “record high” temps be routine and expected?
Just quickly, this blog is superb. So much weather and climate information on here, it has been a great read so far and very educational. I have bookmarked this blog for future reference and have emailed my weather friends the link, keep up the good work!