UPDATE: 8/20/12 3:50 PM PDT The Governor’s office changes the page – see below.
I’ve been sitting on this one quietly for almost a week now, and nobody seems to have caught this glaring error in California Governor Jerry Brown’s new climate “denier slamming page” put together by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.
Like some government work I’ve seen, they didn’t seem to worry about quality control. My impetus for deciding to share the error today comes from Michael Tobis, of Planet 3.0, a warming advocate who I thought sure would have caught it. He writes:
Somebody working for Governor Jerry Brown (of whom, let me be quick to say, I am a fervent long-time admirer) has slapped together a page about climate denialism as part of an official State of California website about climate.
I would like to say that I think it gets the whole situation wrong and may do more harm than good by being polarizing and superficial.
Good for him. “Slapped together” and “wrong” pretty well sums up the governor’s effort. If I made a dumb mistake like this one below in a time series, Tamino and his Lord of the Flies followers would be all over me, pointing and jeering stoopid! Have a look:
Source: http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_scientificconsensus.php
Note the trend is 1.9°F/century ( 1.055°C/century) in the graph shown on Brown’s “consensus page”. That’s waaay too high. More on that in a bit.
The graph they show for the USA is for only one third of the US climate data, from January to April. WUWT?
It seems that if you follow the footnote on the graph that says: “Source: NOAA.”
…you discover that whoever put the web page together wasn’t smart enough to choose the entire year for the NCDC plotting page, or maybe they chose January-April for effect:
When you choose January and the Year to Date Average, you get the whole 12 months worth of data, as it should be presented in the context of global “consensus”:
Note the trend of 1.25°F/century or 0.694°C/century. While it is a US value only, it is fairly close to the generally agreed upon ~ 0.7°C/century trend for the globe as cited by the IPCC.
If the reverse had happened, such as some “denier” plotting just a few months of the surface record from 1895-2012 without a caveat as to why it was presented, perhaps showing a cooling, the alarmosphere would have a collective “denier” cow.
Laughably, nobody seemed to have noticed it when Moonbeam did it.
Further, since this was put together by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, you’d think they could have researched this given the IPCC references on that page. Clearly, they were using the IPCC as the authority for their argument.
For example:
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
Direct Observations of Recent Climate Change
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-direct-observations.html
Eleven of the last twelve years (1995–2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature[9] (since 1850). The updated 100-year linear trend (1906 to 2005) of 0.74°C [0.56°C to 0.92°C] is therefore larger than the corresponding trend for 1901 to 2000 given in the TAR of 0.6°C [0.4°C to 0.8°C]. The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13°C [0.10°C to 0.16°C] per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.
But what the hell do I know? By pointing out such things, I’m just a “denier” according to Governor Brown.
I wonder how long it will take for them to fix that page, and if they dare give me credit for pointing it out? A better choice would have been a global graph, perhaps one from the IPCC, since they reference that so much. For example, here’s figure 2-3A from the IPCC Third Assessment Synthesis Report:
Or if they were trying to stick to the USA, since California is part of it (at least as of this writing) with a little research, they could have used this resource from NCDC:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Or if they wanted to focus on California, since that’s the state of Moonbeam’s influence, they could have shown this NCDC plot output:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/ca.html
Annual Temperature
California
Nah, not alarming enough, especially with 2011 being at the normal temperature line.
But, any of those alternate graphs I’ve shown, using the whole year, not just 4 months of data, would have been acceptable for Governor Brown’s “denier slamming page”.
I find it to be exquisite irony that a “denier” (by his definition) has to point this out.
Even though he didn’t spot the wonky graph, I’ll give Michael Tobis credit though. With incomplete misleading graphs like the one they used it sure does look “slapped together”.
UPDATE: Tamino agrees:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/climate-fail-california-governors-office/
UPDATE2: I have a response from the director of Governor’s office of Planning and research:
From: Ken Alex
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 9:08 AM
To: ‘Anthony Watts – TV Weather’
Subject: RE: Your page on climate has a glaring error
Thanks for the comment. We will check it out.
From: Anthony Watts – TV Weather
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 8:45 AM
To: Ken Alex
Cc: Web Master
Subject: Your page on climate has a glaring error
Dear Mr. Alex,
I want to bring this failure to properly research this page:
To your attention:
The graph only uses 1/3 of the yearly data, and exaggerates the trend. I’ve offered alternatives for you. Perhaps less focus on “denial” and more on the actual science would suit you better. The Orange County Register seems to think so.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Anthony Watts
============================================================
UPDATE3:
Dear Mr. Watts
Thanks again for reviewing our “Climate Change: Just the Facts” website. We followed up on the issue that you raised and discovered that, as you pointed out, one of the charts on our website shows only one scenario, while the tool we link to can provide a range of scenarios for data from 1885-2012. Rather than show one data set, we have instead decided to remove this chart and link directly to the resource. We hope people viewing our website will explore this resource to see wealth of climatic data that has been collected.
Thanks,
Ken
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You get what you deserve with Gov. Moonbeam. Suckers.
Wrong? Doesn’t matter. It repeats and advances the lie. The only way to fight this stuff is to keep a lst of the lies and every time a new one comes out republicize the full list.
Beautifully analyzed! As is often the case, this simply follows the sort of pseudo-science I’ve been attacking for years in the smoking area: I’m sure you’ve heard about the tobacco companies increasing amounts of nicotine “to addict the children”? They basically took the figures from 1998 to 2006 for Marlboro and showed something like a 3% increase. Of course they had the figures for 1997 and 2007 available, but they didn’t include them. Why? Because including them would have shown ZERO increase… *not* the desired answer for the campaign!
There’s another example out there even closer to your January/April thing (can’t find it at the moment) where they took economic figures for a ten month period and pretended it was the same as taking them for the full year. Since hospitality $/employment is highly seasonal the lopping off of those two months allowed them to come to a conclusion wildly at variance with reality.
Unfortunately, just as with climate propaganda, the original stories by “reputable” authorities are all that 95% of the population ever sees.
– MJM
The problem with this advocacy is that sheeple are likely to read the Governor’s web page but not the WUWT rebuttal so they are likely to propagate the incorrect info, believing it to be correct.
One might think they were intentionally trying to mislead the public.
I wish there was a way to persuade both the Gaians and the skeptics that an arithmetic mean of a very large spatial system is simply invalid. You can’t improve it . You shouldn’t do it in the first place. A mean can be valid when the values are KNOWN to be tightly coupled. The mean salary of the employees of Joe’s Market is valid, because those salaries are all decided by Joe.
But in a huge sprawling geography like America, we KNOW that each climate district is moving in its own ways. I’ve tried to show this with animations
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2012/08/hottest-ever-in-48-oops-in-one-state.html
and
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2011/12/century-temperature-animated.html
but there isn’t a “closed-form” way to show that the mean is wrong. It’s a matter of basic judgment and understanding.
When you choose to take a spatial mean of America, you’re ASSUMING that the system is tightly coupled; ASSUMING that every district is being affected by one single Joe. Trouble is, that is exactly the question we’re supposedly ASKING. We’re debating whether every place is affected by one single driver. When you ASSUME what you’re ASKING, the whole process is circular.
You have to laugh at the climate mitigation section (or cry, depending on your California taxation situation).
I think we should have a rolling update (like the number of meals served by McDonald’s billboards) on number of parts per million of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, and another one showing the cumulative cost, all in real time. Would the sheeple be able to comprehend it ?? Naaaaah, or is that baaaaah.
It’s really not that bad for government work, they spelled ‘meteorological’ right. For tax-payer funded political propaganda it falls squarely in the middle of the bell curve. Good job Moonbeam!
Bob Tisdale says:
August 19, 2012 at 4:41 pm
One might think they were intentionally trying to mislead the public.
———-
You’re right Bobby, one might think that.
cn
Doesn’t matter. We’re looking at California as a corpse. It’s financial state is in shambles as budget after budget over estimates the actual revenues due the state. In desperation California even bet that Facebook will generate huge revenues for the starving coffers and bet the house by including it in it’s budget. Bernie Madoff would have loved taking California’s money.
I penned a letter to the Gov about his reliance on a 20 year old talking point about skeptic scientists being in a parallel situation to the ‘big tobacco expert shills’, though.
“Open letter to California Gov Jerry Brown: Prove Your Accusation Against Skeptic Climate Scientists” http://www.redstate.com/russellc/2012/08/14/open-letter-to-california-gov-jerry-brown-prove-your-accusation-against-skeptic-climate-scientists/
Ah the perfect “Brown out”, likely from the green energy agenda!!
What’s with these graphs that use only four months of data out of each year, and then plot it out for over a hundred years? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. That would be like a plot of my income on the 7th of each month for the last 25 years – a straight line at ZERO (I have always gotten paid on the first working day on or after the first/15th of each month). They could just as easily select every other month, or the first day of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. I could even run a computer program and select days ( all the same day of the month) and make a graph that went drastically down or up or whatever you wanted. What purpose is this information?
What’s the problem? The graph is clearly labelled, head and foot. So, what’s the state of contiguous US temps since 1895, Jan to April? On the rise, it seems. And the state of the same, annually since 1895? On the rise. California? Lower trend because of maritime influence, but on the rise.
The graph is not “wonky.” It would be, if it was mislabelled.
Michael Tobis is probably one of the few that bothered to look at Gov. Moonbeam’s cretinous site. Of course, now all your nice charts will appear there, without thanks.
Bob Tisdale says:
“One might think they were intentionally trying to mislead the public.”
Bob, how could you even think such a thing !!!
No warmist politician would EVER do that !!
Anthony I agree with your conclusion but I have an issue with your use of the nickname “moonbeam”. It’s ugly and reminds me of grade school. After all, he is the governor. Just as I detest the use of “deniers” I also detest the use of intentionally mean nicknames here.
REPLY: “In 1979, an out-of-state columnist, Mike Royko, at the Chicago Sun-Times, picked up on the nickname from Brown’s girlfriend at the time, Linda Ronstadt, who was quoted in a 1978 Rolling Stone magazine interview humorously calling him “Moonbeam”.”
From Wikipedia. This isn’t anything new. – Anthony
Rather than suspected that they were trying to intentionally mislead the public, I assume that it is more like yet another example of confirmation bias.
The numbers are scary, then they must be right and don’t get looked at a second time. OTOH, a low or negative trend sets off alarm bells and further checking. There is a long history of scientist doing step by step refinement of experiments and calculations to remove “errors” — where “error” in this case is defined as “other than expected results”.
Egg-on-face Tamino et al for not catching this?
(… and having the nerve to claim proficiency in said climate statistics!)
.
An old saying around the South of the US, in Southern slang–figgers don’t lie, but liars do figger.
Why is NOAA fabricating ‘climate data’?
Why would a government agency fabricate data?
Why is a President and Governor misrepresenting data?
Why does NOAA adjust the raw temperature data from the old temperature network and ignore the existence of the new temperature network?
Why does Dr. Mr. James Hansen GISS despise and hate the United States of America an all of its peoples, Iowa and his parents?
8D ! 🙂
I long ago stopped expecting climate dilettantes to care anything about facts.
Governor Moonbeam? More like Governor Moonbat, if you ask me.
“…California Governor Jerry Brown’s new climate “denier slamming page” put together by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.”
—————–
If I thought anyone read it, it would piss-me-off.
In Illinois the Governors go to jail, for a rest from pocketing the taxpayers money.
Most of them don’t even bother to insult the intelligence of half the populace.
A major trick of the AGW camp is to smooth out the oscillation in global mean temperature and the corresponding forcing before the 1970s and to claim the cyclic warming since 1970s is man made.
The cooling from the 1880s to 1910s are smoothed out. The warming from 1910s to 1940s are smoothed out. The slight cooling from 1940s to 1970s are smoothed out. What is not touched is the warming starting from the 1970s. This gave an exaggerated climate sensitivity of 3 deg C for doubling of CO2, when the more likely value is only about 1 deg C.
CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing EVERY YEAR for the last 14 years, but it has refused to add any temperature above the maximum value recorded 14 years ago. To overlook this pause, they have stopped to talk about trends (climate) and have started talking about the weather with their “nth warmest in the record”.
To account for the lack of warming, they now want to increase the effect of aerosols or increase the defused heat to the deep ocean in the climate models.
Here are the evidences for the above statements:
Smoothed GMST before 1970s => http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
Actual observation that show the oscillation before 1970s => http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd