Pielke Senior on NCDC's recent "state of the climate" rehash

I only read the AP when I want to know what the Democrats’ talking points are on an issue. That happens almost never these days.

What trend?
Looks to me like the LT- Lower Tropospheric Temperature Anomaly has jumped up 0.2-0.3 C and stayed there since 1998. Trends don’t make square-cornered turns or steps.
What steps us must step down…eventually.

the text does nothing but contradict the headline… i wonder if the reporter hurt himself doing that?

Hello,
Having direct links to the sources of your graphs would be most helpful. I have excluded the links for your last two graphs for your convenience. I could not find the source for the first graph.
http://www.ssmi.com/data/msu/graphics/TLT/plots/sc_Rss_compare_TS_channel_TLT_v03_3.png
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/may2011tlt_update_bar-2.png

“…Climate change study: More than 300 months since the planets temperature was below average…”
Which comes back to one of the original arguments – who determines the “average”?
Those that control the data make the charts.
Since day one, I’ve wondered why certain data sets use a 30-year old reference period. When the reference period is changed the zero changes. The average changes.
The rebuttal to this has always been the same – “Its the trend that’s important, not the zero”.
Well that may be true, but if the zero changes, so would the “300 month” figure.

Shouldn’t it read “More than 120,000 months since the planet’s temperature was below average” , rather than “300 months” ?

Grump. That’s “Biased Reporting”, pls. And to all unaware, “skeptic” is a noun, “skeptical” is the adjective.
/GrammarNasty

Man-made global warming/climate change is inconsistent with logic.

I still can’t get my head around an “average” global temperature – I really can’t. I see all the rubbish about how the earth would be “on average” minus 18 C without greenhouse gases then they play with the incoming solar radiation by reducing it to a quarter so they can justify their “back radiation” to explain the extra 33 C – ie “average” plus 15 C.
So the back radiation must be pretty fierce in Alice Springs when it hits plus 45 in summer – so the back radiation supplies 63 C ?? Do these people really believe this sort of nonsense ?
Of course the sun has nothing to do with temperature fluctuations.

rbateman says “Trends don’t make square-cornered turns or steps. What steps up must step down…eventually.”
There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of what a time series consisting of a steady upward trend, plus random, but autocorrelated noise, should look like. Steps up followed by flattish periods, are exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to see. I wonder whether Bob Tisdale has ever tried applying his “eyeballing” techniques to some control series consisting of a linear trend plus AR(1) noise?
Try it for yourself in Excel. In A1 enter 0. Then in A2 enter the formula “=A1+0.001”. Copy that formula down column A for 400 cells or so. This gives you a linear upward trend. In B1 enter 0.5. In B2 enter the formula “=0.9*B1+0.1*RAND()”. Copy that formula down column B. This gives you some autocorrelated AR(1) noise. Now add the two columns together in column C and chart the result as a line chart. Hit the F9 key to calculate different sets of random, autocorrelated noise.
That’s what noisy, autocorrelated time series, with an underlying upward trend (which is small compared with the noise) look like. Do you see some examples with square-cornered turns or steps? Do you see some where it looked like “something happened” at some point, to change the whole level of the series (even though we know it was just a random fluctuation)? Do you see some where the highest value was set way back before the end of the chart (even though we know that the underlying trend is still actually rising?) Do some of them look uncannily like historical temperature charts? You betcha!

Looking solely at the three graphs shown above, they all appear to show a warming trend over the entire width of the graphs.
How can I explain to a warmist that this is not the case?

Nigel Harris: wonderful example and point made! Thanks.

Interestingly, on Jeopardy tonight (June 29, 2011), one of the topics was called `Green` and one of the “what is“ questions had an answer of `Green House Gasses“, and during the question, a visual and commentary showed O3 and H2O, mentioned ozone and water vapour, with no mention at all of CO2. Goes to show that those Jeopardy question writers are very smart.

Keep up the good work. I live in Australia where millions of honest hard working people are just about to be made to pay an extra tax for no good reason by a minority government that did not take the policy to the poll. What is particularly annoying is that our government appears to be one of the very last to be still following the discredited catastrophic anthropogenic warming theory (emphasis on the word catastrophic). I’m quite upset. It’s money from my pocket that I might have put aside for my little childrens’ savings or some nice clothes that is now going into the pockets of what I consider to be the lowest form of public purse parasites that I have seen to date.

I question the 2.60 ppm increase in 2010. At the South Pole where three different organizations measure CO2, the yearly average changes were; 2007-2008 1.97 ppm, 2008-2009 1.70 ppm, and 2009-2010 1.56 ppm. Factoring out seasonal variations, these values probably have a standard error of about 0.4 ppm. These values indicate a significant decline in rate of increase.

Nigel Harris says:
June 30, 2011 at 1:41 am
Try it for yourself in Excel. In A1 enter 0. Then in A2 enter the formula “=A1+0.001″. Copy that formula down column A for 400 cells or so. This gives you a linear upward trend. In B1 enter 0.5. In B2 enter the formula “=0.9*B1+0.1*RAND()”. Copy that formula down column B. This gives you some autocorrelated AR(1) noise. Now add the two columns together in column C and chart the result as a line chart. Hit the F9 key to calculate different sets of random, autocorrelated noise.
Just tried that and am ROFLMAO! If I only knew how easy this was, I would have made a fortune in Global climate research. Too bad I’m a tad too honest and want to like myself when I shave. Maybe I could this technique to genertate some landscapes for my POVRay renderings. Just think I could display global temperture rise in a 3D model…WHERE’S MY FUNDING?

Torgeir Hansson says: June 29, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Besides, it is the job of all honest people to de-politicize the issue. As such, dialogue continues to top the agenda.
****************************************************
Torgeir, I appreciate your good will as in “Can’t we all just get along”.
Unfortunately, to have an honest discourse, both parties must be talking from the same foundation. You believe that we are all talking about the science.
This controversy, i.e. AGW, is ALL POLITICAL. It is a struggle for money and power and has been from the beginning. The so called “science” is only a tool in a political struggle.
It has never been about the science.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Which just goes to show that if you repeat an unsubstantiated opinion often enough in the MSM, it eventually becomes fact.

For me the issue with all of these Global Warming Alarmists is that the premise of the whole thing is that the temperature is directly tied to the CO2 levels, and that the effect of any change in CO2 is multiplied by (some positive factor) because of the “forcing effects) of other greenhouse gasses like water vapor and methane. Since they are claiming that the increase in CO2 levels in the last few years are greater than anything ever recorded, wouldn’t the increase in temperature have to be greater than ever recorded?
In the temperature record that they published in 2007, 1998 was the hottest year EVER. By this year, they changed the hottest year ever to 2005. Why the didn’t realize that 2005 was hotter than 1998 in the year 2007 I can’t quite figure out. I mean, one would think that two years would be sufficient to calculate the temperatures and see the averages, but apparently they needed 6 years to add the temperatures up and decide that they were wrong in 2007.
Now, apparently, they know that 2010 was equal to 2005 as the hottest year EVER, with 1998 coming in at a very close 3rd place, followed by 1934 in a fairly close forth place. Now, if the temperature is closely related to CO2, and CO2 is growing much faster now than in 1998, and much, much faster than 1934, why isn’t the temperature climbing much, much faster now than it did from 1910 to 1945? Also, why is the temperature anywhere close to what it was in 1998?
According to the projections (because the IPCC does not make scientific predictions) with the amount of CO2 we’ve added we should be well above 1.2 degrees above normal my now. How is this not the message? We are NOT adding temperature at even near the rate that we’re adding CO2, so that means that the feedbacks are not anywhere near as positive as they are claiming, right?

I actually did a graph recently of the UAH and RSS data and the GISS and HADCRU indexes for since the start of the satellite records. What is interesting is that the HADCRU records are only 0.01 per decade higher and the GISS is only 0.02 per decade higher than the RSS results.
http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2011/06/comparing-giss-hadcru-rss-and-uah.html
click on the graph to see the details.
It looks like strong warming only occurs in computer models and isn’t in the actual data.

We should all be allowed to use average in our daily lives. I’d never get any speeding tickets again. My taxes would be so, so much lower. Temperatures here in northern Alberta on average are NEVER freezing ever again – see, I could live with that. Ride my Harley year round on average. No guy would ever be smarter or more handsome or richer than me. On average I’d then get a shot at every lady I ever laid my eyes on – yep, I’m really beginning to have myself a real love affair with average. What’s not to like?

jaymam says:
June 30, 2011 at 2:20 am
“Looking solely at the three graphs shown above, they all appear to show a warming trend over the entire width of the graphs.
How can I explain to a warmist that this is not the case?”
Dunno, I’m still trying to comprehend the outgoing longwave radiation. Does it include the reflected solar radiation or just that that is released by the Earth?
Month to Month values (and a few trend lines). The orbital influence can be seen here.
http://i54.tinypic.com/95q8g7.png
And a full plot, latitude vs date. Seasonal variation can be seen here.
http://i51.tinypic.com/287zqdt.png
Again… dunno much about it, but it plots nicely.

Ross says:
June 30, 2011 at 12:40 am
I see all the rubbish about how the earth would be “on average” minus 18 C without greenhouse gases then they play with the incoming solar radiation by reducing it to a quarter so they can justify their “back radiation” to explain the extra 33 C – ie “average” plus 15C.
They exclude downwelling thermal infrared – the actual heat we feel from the Sun… Instead they say only the shortwave visible/uv/near infrared heat the Earth’s land and oceans, these are not thermal wavelengths, they can’t physically do this.
So the back radiation must be pretty fierce in Alice Springs when it hits plus 45 in summer – so the back radiation supplies 63C?? Do these people really believe this sort of nonsense?
🙂 Not only believe it, but argue til they’re blue in the face that Light heats organic matter to produce all this infrared upwelling and bouncing back to toast Alice Springs.
But shrug, I haven’t seen any of the ‘major skeptics’ deal with this either.

wsbriggs says:
June 30, 2011 at 8:53 am
“Thanks Anthony for offering the World this island of calm. Like the coral in the sea, I have no doubt that this island too, will remain above the water level of the sea of nonsense that surrounds it. Keep up the great work!”
One of the keys to Anthony’s genius. Another is that the site offers the charm found in good Natural History. Another is that posters and commenters engage in criticism that would have made David Hume proud. There are many more, as you know.

Nigel Harris says:
June 30, 2011 at 1:41 am
“There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of what a time series consisting of a steady upward trend, plus random, but autocorrelated noise, should look like. Steps up followed by flattish periods, are exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to see. I wonder whether Bob Tisdale has ever tried applying his “eyeballing” techniques to some control series consisting of a linear trend plus AR(1) noise?
Try it for yourself in Excel. In A1 enter 0. Then in A2 enter the formula “=A1+0.001″. Copy that formula down column A for 400 cells or so. This gives you a linear upward trend. In B1 enter 0.5. In B2 enter the formula “=0.9*B1+0.1*RAND()”. Copy that formula down column B. This gives you some autocorrelated AR(1) noise. Now add the two columns together in column C and chart the result as a line chart. Hit the F9 key to calculate different sets of random, autocorrelated noise.”
The random noise component of an AR(1) process is typically nomally distributed, not uniformly distributed as in your Excel formula. Change “0.1*RAND()” to “0.1*NORMSINV(RAND())”, copy and paste and see what you get. Note that the trend is nowhere near as obvious. You should also see what happens with a negative or no trend, and also what happens as the degree of autocorrelation is changed (ie the 0.1 term). While you’re at it you could also plot out a complete random walk, ie in cell D1 enter 0. In D2 enter “=D1 + NORMSINV(RAND())” then copy and paste it down. Note that your random walk will often end up a long from 0 and there will often be a strong apparent trend. Of course the apparent trend is highly unstable and varies greatly for different data sets, but in real life we only get to observe 1 data set.

Nigel Harris says:
June 30, 2011 at 1:41 am
This is the first graph I plotted. A very good hockey stick.
http://i52.tinypic.com/2ymt3s5.jpg
I hit F9 lots of times but the first graph was the best.
Is that cherrypicking? Is that wrong?

Larry;
Yep; to update the primitive cosmology, “Trash, all the way down.”

jon shively:
This paper reports that Greenland lost an average of 195km\3 annually from 2003-2008, mostly from fjords etc. That’s .0068% / annum of the 2,850,000km\3 area. It also reports this “potentially” translates into a global sea level increase of 0.0005 m/annum. It will also suggest additional sites for data.
Run for the hills.
/off sarc
Wouters., B.D. Chambers etc
Grace observes small-scale mass loss in Greenland
Geophy Res Letters Oct 2008

Nigel Harris says:
June 30, 2011 at 1:41 am
well – I played a bit more & put in a sine curve as well as the other suggestion – 4 columns
for rows 0 and 1 :
0 0 = 0.05*(RAND() + NORMSINV(RAND())) =A1+B1+C1
=A1+$G$29 =SIN(A2*$G$30)/$G$31 = 0.05*(RAND() + NORMSINV(RAND())) =A2+B2+C2
where the three $g$n cells are
$g$29 linear const 0.001
$g$30 sin_freq 100
$g$31 sin_amplitude 50
now I can add in a sine curve to see something cyclic on top of the linear trend – – and I let the graph show all 4 columns. And I can vary the input parameters.
One observation – before adding in the sine curve; was that if I made the start -0.200 the resulting summed curve looked remarkably like some of the before & after adjustment curves so frequently stared on WUWT
thanks

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