Excerpt from a story by statistician William M. Briggs
There are two stories floating around about the state of the earth’s atmosphere. Both are believed true by government-funded scientists and the environmentally minded. The situation is curious because the stories don’t mesh. Yet, as I said, both are believed. Worse, neither is true.
Story number one is that this year will be the hottest ever. And number two is that the reason it is not hot is because “natural variation” has masked or stalled man-caused global warming.
Which is it? Either it’s hotter than ever or it isn’t. If it is, then (it is implied) man-caused global warming has not “paused.” If it isn’t, if man-caused global warming has “paused,” then it is not growing hotter.
There are two things to keep straight: (1) why these divergent contentions are believed, and (2) why they are incompatible and individually false. The first point is easy. Climatology has become a branch of politics. And in politics, particularly in our rambunctious democracy, statements asserted in the name of some political goal are usually believed or at least supported by those who share the goal. It is necessary for global-warming-of-doom to be true in order to attain the government’s goal (of increasing in size and power), so any statement which supports global warming is likely to be touted by government supporters, even mutually incompatible statements.
Scientists — and some very big names indeed — who have made their living on government grants, and who provide arguments in line with the government’s desire that global-warming-of-doom be true, recently wrote a letter to the President and Attorney General asking these officials to criminally prosecute under the RICO Act scientists like myself and organizations that might fund me. Which scientists and organizations? Those, they say, who have “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”
In other words, arguments put forth by independent scientists and organizations that do not support the government’s line cannot be considered science, but should instead be classified as criminal acts. Incidentally, it has come out that the scientist leading the effort to prosecute the innocent has “paid himself & his wife $1.5 million from gov’t climate grants for part-time work.” Climatology is thus a branch of politics. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I’m no politician and can’t predict what will come of this. But I am a scientist and know good physics from bad. To understand why the claims about the atmosphere mentioned above are false, it is necessary to grasp, at least in broad outline, some rather complicated statistics and physics. Let’s try.
Read the rest of the story here:
https://stream.org/climate-change-spin-hot-hottest-year-ever-inside-global-warming-pause/
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The real problem is with the data itself. What they are in fact saying is that the average value of temperature changes in highly manipulated data sets is the highest it has ever been.
Does anybody actually believe that the actual ocean surface temperatures at the location of the ARGO buoys has actually risen. Or that the thermometers on the ARGO buoys are all badly calibrated so that the temperatures they read are all too low?
There is A real problem with the data itself: the data are inaccurate, as documented by the surface stations program and confirmed by the perceived need on the part of the climate science community to “adjust” the data. Also, once the data are “highly manipulated” they cannot constitute a “data set” because they are no longer data, but rather estimates of what the data might have been, had they been collected timely from properly selected, calibrated, sited, installed and maintained sensors; or, in the case of infilling, what the data might have been, had there actually been data.
There is also a real problem with the anomaly products, which can only be accurate if: there are no changes in the sensor calibration, the sensor enclosure or the surrounding conditions; or, if the adjustments made to the data in the production of the anomaly products are accurate.
There is arguably a real problem with the climate scientists or their procedures when both of their newest measuring systems – MMTS and ARGO – are ASSUMED to have a cooling bias in the field, even though they were presumably calibrated prior to field placement.
They claim that the temperatures in the Argo profiles are accurate to ± 0.002°C. That doesn’t leave much room for adjustments. If they now assume that ARGO measurements have a cooling bias, does that mean they adjust them beyond the stated margin of error? If so, that would present another contradiction for Mr. Briggs to write about.
Walt
The real problem here is that this is NOT data. It is time that we refer to these products coming out of NOAA and the other ‘value-adding’ groups by some other title, not ‘Surface Temperature Data”. In my lectures I now label all such plots “Reconstructed Surface Heating”. Even referring to them as “Adjusted Data” is inappropriate, as most students think that implies the data has only been instrument-calibrated. The onus with “Reconstructed Surface Heating” is then on the student (or reader) to assess whether they agree with the “Reconstruction” algorithm.
How about “homogenized data-like product”? Kinda like “cheese-like food product”.
I have never thought of AGW as politics before, political, yes, good science most definitely, not.Wishful thinking is the term I would use. These scientists are no different to other bigots, they would welcome the demise of the Earth due to climate change just to prove that they are right. They is nothing to choose between them and other religious fundamentalists and so should not be treated any differently.
Andrew, here is a definition of bigotry from Macaulay that fits these climatologists perfectly:
“The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me, for it is your duty to tolerate truth; but when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you, for it is my duty to persecute error.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1843)
Very much – many of these people have no religious background, so they are completely unaware that what they have created IS a religion. All the while, they are calling the religious “stupid” or “ignorant”, while partaking of the exact same emotional candy.
It’s called either Doublethink, or blackwhite, by Orwell, and it means holding two or more completely divergent and contradictory beliefs, truly believing both of them, if the Party needs and wants you to. Orwell was, sadly, a bloody optimist about human nature.
Read the whole thing – good article and well written.
Briggs’ explanation of the statistical fallacies is particularly well done. Good post.
“In other words, arguments put forth by independent scientists and organizations that do not support the government’s line cannot be considered science, but should instead be classified as criminal acts.”
No…That is not at all what they said. They are talking about intentional deception. A good example is the tobacco companies (http://www.dwlr.com/blog/2011-05-12/rico-convictions-major-tobacco-companies-affirmed) where there is a paper trail showing that the tobacco knew they were lying and did so anyway.
If there is no evidence that you are knowingly lying about climate change (but are, say, merely mistaken) then you have nothing to worry about. I think there is a pretty strong hurdle in the RICO act to show that there was intentional deception.
“If there is no evidence that you are knowingly lying about climate change (but are, say, merely mistaken) then you have nothing to worry about. I think there is a pretty strong hurdle in the RICO act to show that there was intentional deception …”.
=================================
That’s just dissembling, the purpose of applying such a draconian measure is to silence all so-called sceptics for fear of prosecution.
The process would be the punishment, I think you know that.
Smoking tobacco will cause cancer.
Or
Smoking tabaco may cause cancer.
Which statement is true?
Or:
After how many cigarettes will a person have cancer?
Or:
True or false, if you smoke more than a pack of cigarettes every single day of your life from early teenager on, you will necessarily die young.
I have brothers and a sister who have done just this. I know a lot of people who have done just this.
No one I know personally has ever gotten cancer.
BTW, I do not smoke, never have, think it is sickening and stupid, and tell them they should quit every single time I see them light one.
But “causes” is not the right word.
Menicholas , “Causes” is the right word If you phrase it like this: Smoking could cause cancer (in people who are genetically more susceptible to a certain form of cancer).
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/01/02/study-concludes-that-many-cancers-caused-by-bad-luck-in-cell-division/
Adjusting earlier temperatures downward to create an artificial warming is “intentional deception”.
If this whole RICO thing comes about, the first people who should be jailed are Mann, Hanson, et. al….. and maybe some of their more rabid supporters who propagate the fiction. Like, say, habitual trollers or the wiki defacers.
Well said. Climate Science is very much like Tobacco Science — both have a foregone conclusion, both examine data which supports their conclusion. If the data doesn’t match their preconceived conclusion they ignore it or change the data.
No…Everyone who has seriously analyzed the data, ranging from NASA to HADCRUT to BEST has understood the necessity of making corrections for various issues that arise with the data and they all have arrived at almost exactly the same result.
And, sorry odcombe2007, but the analogy between climate science and tobacco science doesn’t work that way, especially since the people like Steven Milloy (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Steven_J._Milloy) and Fred Seitz (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Frederick_Seitz) who were involved with the shoddy tobacco science are also involved with the shoddy attacks on climate science.
Pfft – joel you just repeat the same garbage.
Everyone who was “seriously” analyzed the data realizes that your side is fudging the numbers. Apparently the definition of “seriously” depends on how much you want to believe it’s true.
Again, you spew the same lies about “tobacco science”… the same liars and data manipulators whose shoddy “science” caused them to scream about global cooling in the 70s turned on a dime and jumped onto the warming craze when it became politically expedient.
OF COURSE they all arrived at “exactly the same result”. They collaborated at manufacturing the result in the first place.
Apparently you are incapable of looking at anything objectively, which is typical for religious zealots.
Joeldshore
Completely right. There is a big difference between having an opinion that is off the mark and deliberately deceiving. Frankly I’d find the highest tree to hang anyone who deliberately set about deceiving the public so they could continue to peddle their wares and so endangering future generations. I mean, could you be more immoral?
Frankly I see nothing wrong with oil companies selling their goods as long as they don’t engage in misinformation. It has been reported lately that one company knew about the effect of CO2 on climate quite some time ago. The key question will be, did they then set about trying to influence/mislead public opinion so their profits were not affected? Big question. Big possibilities.
Simon,
Your penchant for lynch parties is not especially well received but duly noted. As is the extravagance of your expression and your avowed consternation as to the well-being of “future generations”.
I can agree with you and Joel on the distinction between intent to deceive and guileless credulity, but Joel’s reassurance that ” then you have nothing to worry about” is immediately belied by your own barely restrained baying for blood.
Your apocryphal account of a company knowing “about the effect of CO2 on climate quite some time ago.” sounds pretty funny in light of the fact that nobody knows what the effect of CO2 on climate is.
It’s always good for a sardonic chuckle when the self-righteous threaten their adversaries with dire retribution. It never occurs to them that the Fates might happily turn the tables on them.
mebbe,
Simon is out for blood, that’s for sure. Yesterday he compared me with mass murderers — for disagreeing with him. A typical climate alarmist, full of hate.
Now Simon has the gall to say to others who disagree with him:
“could you be more immoral?”
Simon doesn’t notice the beam in his own eye. But the planet is measurably greening due directly to more CO2 being added to the atmosphere. More food is being grown as a result, which holds down the cost of food, and in many cases makes it cheaper.
That makes a huge difference to the one-third of humanity subsisting on $2 a day or less. Even a small rise in the cost of food would cause widespread malnutrition, possibly starvation.
Simon doesn’t care. He is projecting his own faults onto others. It is really Simon who is being immoral. If the policies he wants were put into effect, it would cause millions of deaths by starvation. That’s pretty damn immoral, but Simon doesn’t see it, or maybe he doesn’t care. He’s just a hater who wouldn’t mind if lots of those brown folks were gone. That would leave more for Simon.
DB and Mebbe
I think it is pretty well accepted that the possibility of Climate change being a problem in the future is real. Of course we can’t know for sure at the moment, because the future is ahead, but there would not be a thinking person alive who would not agree it’s a possibility. It’s also possible that we will slide on through this and in 20 or so years realise the concern was unfounded. This could potentially have cost us a lot of money, (believe it or not, I get that), preparing for an eventuality that did’t happen. With the above in mind, I would be more than happy to see companies or individuals on both sides of the argument held to account financially. There is far too much riding on this to allow deliberate misinformation or lying. Don’t you agree?
Those deserving of vigilante justice in your universe are those advocating measures to ameliorate supposed catastrophic, man-made climate change. They are the enemies of humanity who should be hanged while still alive, drawn, quartered and their parts stuck on pikes at the four corners of the realm to be eaten by crows.
” It has been reported lately that one company knew about the effect of CO2 on climate quite some time ago.”
What, they discovered a crystal ball and kept the future they foresaw to themselves?
Is this the report in which some guys “discovered” something during the 1970s that had been postulated by Svante Arrhenius back in the 19th century? BTW, Svante later admitted he was incorrect in this assertion.
Hey, back in 2005 it was discovered that a certain hurricane may hit land somewhere on the Gulf coast, and yet everyone was not evacuated immediately from all areas which might be hit.
This scandal has continued on to include every storm since then, in which action is only taken at the last minute when it is “known” where it will hit to a near certainty (although even then they sometimes miss).
Lets start locking people up over these forecasting scandals!
How could they know that? We do not know that to-day as any signal is buried in the noise. Or are you another one, who believes the science is settled?? GK
Simon:
“Frankly I’d find the highest tree to hang anyone who deliberately set about deceiving the public so they could continue to peddle their wares and so endangering future generations.”
How high are the trees in Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony, the home of VW?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34345210
DB and my other WUWT friends. Answer me this simple question. If Michael Mann was found to be deliberately fudging the data, for let’s say… to keep his career alive or to bolster his reputation…. would you want him to have to pay either financially or in some other way? If you answer yes then how is it any different expecting the same from people on the other side of the debate. What’s that about the goose and the gander?
Simon says:
I think it is pretty well accepted that the possibility of Climate change being a problem in the future is real.
The climate alarmists’ side of the debate has devolved to that kind of nonsense. That sentence means absolutely nothing. But it is the irrational basis for Simon’s “What if…” scenario.
Simon me boi, you cannot produce a single measurement of something that you insist must be real, and that you believe is likely to be dangerous. In other words, you have a religious faith that your belief must be true. Measurements are data, Simon. But your alarmist cult has no such data to support their CO2 alarmism.
Your data-free faith, combined with your bloodthirsty fantasies make you the perfect tool for the real motivation behind the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ hoax: big government’s push for a ‘carbon’ tax.
You don’t seem bright enough to understand it, but a carbon tax would certainly cause much grief, suffering and starvation for the world’s poor. It would also reduce the middle class standard of living by making almost all goods and services cost more, and it would greatly expand government bureaucracy. But the one thing a carbon tax would not do is change the planet’s temperature by even 0.000001ºC.
Finally, if a carbon tax were passed, it would follow the same trajectory as the income tax, which the government promised Americans would never exceed 1% of their income, and it would only apply to those making more than $4,000 a year — the top 3% of wage earners at the time. How did that work out?
No matter what they say, and no matter how many promises they make, a carbon tax would only go up in the years following its passage. <— And that is a prediction based on reality, on human nature, and on history, while your prediction is based only on your measurement-free faith.
DB
You didn’t answer my question. Do you think Mann should be held to account if it can be proved he has deliberately mislead? Simple question.
DB
And I never mentioned a carbon tax.
DB
Am I right in thinking this is perhaps an uncomfortable question for you to answer?
the only ones who have been seriously lying are those pushing the CAGW agenda. But it seems some of these are just idiots and zealots who have done immeasurable harm to civilization. what do you propose to do with them?
cba
Are you really serious? Do you genuinely think that only people on one side this debate embellish facts for profit or personal gain? I’m sorry but that is too much for me to accept.
The example you are looking for is this: Government constructs a social justice lie and schemes to hand over $159 billion to cronies sold as propaganda to “save the planet and reduce energy prices” with the intention of making donors, bundlers and sycophants rich without having to repay on money.
.
89% of all grants went to best friends. 100% of those grants, loans and funds had no contractual compliance to repay any money….the friends get the money first and then fold. They even keep the funds from sale of government purchased equipment.
.
That, Sir, is intentional deception. Do you wish to discuss the Co-Ops created under Obamacare by Best Friends who never worked in insurance and are now failing, demanding a bailout from taxpayers?
empiresentry
“The example you are looking for is this: Government constructs a social justice lie and schemes to hand over $159 billion…”
Um no I wasn’t, that is paranoia stuff. I was thinking more climate change.
Paranoid?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf
Simon
That $159+ billion turned over to cronies …. is actually “small change” compared to the billions being given away each and every year by government agencies …. to government agencies, colleges, universities and Grant recipients who are committed to proving that Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change is true and factual.
But we have abundant evidence that advocates of catastrophic man-made “climate change” have lied systematically.
IMO they should be hanged, drawn and quartered for the trillions they have cost the world and the millions they have killed in cold blood.
I count all the dead in the Arab Spring revolutions as Climate Casualties, including all those killed in the Syrian civil war, and by extension the current refugee crisis and all that will come of it.
Casualties of climate policy that is, not of anything to do with the climate itself.
These uprisings started out as food riots, brought on largely if not completely due to the decision to require that motor fuel sold in the US contain corn ethanol.
This caused a spike in food and especially grain prices and the price for futures contracts, even as crop yields were setting new records.
The ensuing shortages and record high prices led to these riots, which festered and grew into the uprisings.
Those who are calling for the RICO act to be used against any who are sceptical of the AGW hypothesis need to be very careful.
There are some very basic, glaringly obvious and easily proven fallacies with both the AWG and the GHE hypotheses. These fallacies are so fundamental and obvious that no ‘scientist’ could credibly plead ignorance of.
I’ll give just one example. Water vapour feedback, water vapour is provably, a negative feedback mechanism. The IPCC’s GHE hypothesis, on which their AGW hypothesis is built, states clearly that water vapour is a “strongly positive feedback mechanism”. This is not just wrong, it is a scientific fraud.
Wilful ignorance of facts in order to obtain money is the very definition of “racketeering”. Deliberate lies are quite something else.
A law that is discriminatory is no law at all.
Good shot. got the whole thing off topic.
Thanks W Briggs for a healthy does of sanity and logic!
Well worth reading the entire essay!
grrrr spelling!!
What else do you disagree with? Is that your only problem?
>>What else do you disagree with?
He means his own spelling…
R
@ralfellis –
Dose he?
Eye sink hee duz to.
Yese he prolly git he’s exukaition in spelang at the sam unavarsaty wear I git the seance thit sows Me thit the earth is a grapfrute compaired to a can’t elope Sun just teasing of course
Good article. The point that blaming El Nino for surprising the “experts” demonstrates that the “experts” didn’t know what they were doing in the first place – that’s very perceptive.
But taking pot shots at Lewandowsky and Oreskes is too easy.
Yes she does.
Yes, she’s nuts.
But most True Believers are not that far down the sanity scale.
By the way, if anyone has found this right wing conspiracy please put me in touch. I’m not right wing and I’m not paid. But I would love to take their money.
“Yes, she’s nuts.”
She but not only nuts, also bad at sciences. Really, really bad. Terrible. (I couldn’t believe it when I heard about that on doubter blogs, I had to go to Google Books to find out, it’s true. I think there is a re-edition where some glaring errors are corrected.)
She fails chemistry, she thinks neutral pH is 6 (but there might be a chemist conspiracy to fool people about the acidity of water laced with CO2), she also doesn’t know about or fail to read the Mendeleiev table (which might be Russian conspiracy to fool people into believing that no, beryllium isn’t a toxic heavy metal, just toxic), she obviously has never heard of reactive oxygen species and their role in cancer … and don’t get me started with the part where she describes radiation regulation (no, acceptable radiation levels aren’t based on levels believed to be safe, according to the official religion there is no safe level).
Even Greg Laden’s regulars think this sucks (I am not going to link to his “science” blog, you can easily find it.)
Maybe she just couldn’t care less about the scientific content of her book, and there is no pre-publication “peer review” on a printed book – not a website, not a personal blog, a published book. You don’t need world-class expert review, grad students would spot many mistakes.
Anyway, she seems to have a few simplistic basic mental associations like “cancer” “radiation” and “toxic metal” “heavy metal” that she got from media reporting of science or from enviro propaganda and the link go both ways: from heavy to toxic or toxic to heavy, from radiations to cancer or cancer to radiations (the part about the hypothetical link between smoking and radioactive oxygen – YOU can’t make this up, but SHE can).
Even a 8 years old child would spot the error on the radiation protection part (a level believed to be safe would be the same for adults working in the nuclear industry and some other adult – there is no “nuclear worker” human race with super radiation resistance). But then even a child can understand that a small increase of anything above natural level cannot be very dangerous, when natural levels vary between places).
She seems confused and in need of science education about many issues, even the way history research works (hint: when you have zero idea what a person meant, don’t try to make up an uninformed interpretation, ask the person if you can, or his colleagues, or domain experts – even if you dislike this person).
Because she is the team of the Good, approximately zero journalists are going to ask questions about the serious errors in her book.
In France, the famous book of geoscientist (and former education and research minister) Claude Allègre L’imposture climatique ou la fausse écologie about the contradictions of the AGW theory has been VERY harshly criticized, sometimes even for minor stuff like an error in the name of a scientist or an incorrect reference. (Admittedly his book also contains more serious errors. I am not defending his book here.)
The difference of treatment between the treatment of “L’imposture climatique ou la fausse écologie” where journalists published a long list of errors (sometimes small errors) and “Merchants” where journalists (especially specialized science journalists) described the book as some kind of revelation… it’s beyond words.
And what is Oreskes even doing in a university? Jean Jouzel is annoying and not very honest and unlikable, but at least he really is a scientist, has recognised, verifiable qualification, has done real research (just not about atmospheric science), doesn’t get neutral pH wrong…
Good rant, S-T, and you’re exactly right about the dishonest and disparate treatment of AGW-belief texts versus critical texts.
Steve McIntyre has noted that anyone critical of AGW must be microscopically correct. He’s dead-on right. Critical statements are trolled for errors with a fine-tooth comb. Any small error found is blown up, and used to discredit an entire argument, to the general applause and relief of journalists in the AGW peanut gallery.
Meanwhile, grotesque falsehoods of the climate cognoscenti are overlooked and/or explained away with strained analogy. The excuses appended to “Mike’s Nature-trick” are a fine example. Willful lies swallowed whole and disseminated as gospel by a consciously partisan press.
Between this, nutritional, and medical “science” I would hate to be a scientist. It’s all bought and paid for. The ones doing it right are considered nuts. At least I took it upon myself to figure out that saturated fat and cholesterol is good, medicating yourself is not, and I cannot change the weather.
Let least nutritional “science” is using the term “Emerging Science” a lot, the term actually means “We conducted a cohort examination of data intended for other purposes and are probably wrong or at least not correct”; unlike climatology.
Of course, they do not propose prosecuting those who knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to exaggerate America’s response to climate change.
Original version:
“knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”
Fixed version:
“…climatologists who knowingly deceived the American people by exaggerating the risks of climate change, as a means to force America’s irrational response to climate change.”
With those words they painted targets on their own backs. When the winds of politics change, as they inevitably do, they are giving ideas to their opponents as to how to deal with dissent. Very dangerous ideas indeed.
Exactly!
I’ve thought for a long time that entities like Michael Mann, Penn State, James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt and GISS need to have a RICO suit filed against them. We could easily prove they have knowingly published intentionally misleading data, obfuscated attempts to verify the data, and in the case of Mann in particular , the evidence is fairly overwhelming. Don’t think RICO jurisdiction extends as far as UEA but if it does, they should be a party too, among others.
msbehavin’ – RICO doesn’t extend to UEA but another acronym does, CIA. They could be renditioned to Gitmo and tried there.
good post pointing out that fallacy of composition is one of the central issues in environmentalist argument is very useful.
Climate industry is so large, it’s no surprise that there are divergent views. There will be the true believers who assume warming is going on as per the “models”. I mean, we all knew that this was going to be the warmest year ever long before it began, because every year for (how long now?) has been the warmest ever. Media headlines prove it. Quite recently I read a headline “74°C in Iran”. they printed it with what I assume was a straight face (sorry, I can’t find the reference now, but it was either in the Toronto Globe & Mail or on the CBC website some time in August).
There are some of the hand-wringing foot-warmers who still try to practice a bit of science now and then, and maybe actually look at some data, and they can’t be unaware of the “pause”, and we have seen several (not very convincing) explanations of why the “pause” is consistent with continued warming.
There is another faction who (perhaps seeing the writing on the wall) boldly assert that global warming is going to cause cooling, and we’ll all freeze. Of course, that’s still consistent with the models.
Schisms in religious movements are only to be expected, and are probably overdue in the church of warming.
BTW I spent a few minutes trying to follow the 74°C story to its source, and it looked like (a) it wasn’t an actual temperature, but a newly invented “heat factor” like the wind-chill factor those of us who live in cold countries know so well (b) it was converted to fahrenheit for the American public and (c) was converted back to celsius for the Canadian reader but they forgot to subtract 32 first. Such is the wisdom of the press. Story trumps facts every time.
Actually it was 74C which would be 165F.
165F which would be 31F higher than the highest ever recorded temperature in history, set in the very cold year of 1913. Interesting how this temp has not been beat in over 100 years when 6 of the last 10 years have been the hottest year ever. You would, think the record would be broken at least once, by now, in the 21st century.
Marque – I suspect it is because it is “Less cold” rather than hotter – and that makes the average temperature appear higher, but not so much higher temperatures as less cold temperatures. I know – redundancies abound.
http://www.thejournal.ie/heatwave-iran-iraq-heat-index-74-degrees-165-2247958-Jul2015/
‘There’s a slow train coming round the bend’ as the old Gospel song goes.
There is a growing disconnect between what the IPCC says and climate reality.
And the public are gradually waking up to the fraud (that’s not too strong a word)
Those ‘scientists’ who tailored data to get a bigger faculty grant or follow a political agenda are a disgrace to science.
Thanks for posting this, Anthony. Briggs is always wonderful to read.
Yes, read the whole article at https://stream.org/climate-change-spin-hot-hottest-year-ever-inside-global-warming-pause/
This is a very good article. Thanks, Dr. Briggs.
When the climate STOPS changing , THEN I’ll start worrying !!!
http://i58.tinypic.com/257oh9v.png
Start worrrying !!!
(You knew it had to happen)
Ummm…that’s temperature, NOT climate !!!
TonyL September 23, 2015 at 9:29 am shows satellite data he calls UAH Pause. There are actually two pauses or hiatuses here, not one. The right side is drawn correctly and shows the current hiatus. The left side is wrong and shows a curved red line. There should be no curved line but a straight horizontal line designating a hiatus in the eighties and nineties. It starts in 979 and ends in 1997. The two do not meet because between them there was a step warming in 1999 that raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius in only three years and then stopped. The two hiatuses now jointly prevent any greenhouse warming from happening since 1979 and render the satellite era that begins with that year entirely greenhouse-free
Please do tell us why that will worry you?
You say this all the time, with no explanation.
I thought you were just bring funny the first few times, but no one tells the same joke to the same people everyday…do they?
Oh…wait…CAGW.
Bahahahahaha!
@ur momisugly annoarrak
I agree, the step-change hypothesis is most interesting. I plotted this up to take a look at the differences between satellite and ground based data sets. (Channeling my inner Bob Tisdale) Bob shows plots post-Nino event with his Monthly Update posts, but he does not show the pre-Nino portions. So I thought I would plot it up, just to see what it looks like. As you can see, it is not really very flat at all. In fact, it tracks the ground data fairly well, which I did not expect.
http://i62.tinypic.com/2yjq3pf.png
(click to embiggen)
The first portion is Dec. ’78 through dec. ’97. The second portion is Jan. ’98 through Aug. ’15 (includes the Pause-Busters adjustment). The legends show the slopes as Deg. C/decade.
I prefer to think of it as fuschia
A Lovely Fuschia.
As always, a pleasure to read Briggs’ actual article and an even greater pleasure to follow his links as he takes on the impossibly narrow error estimates in BEST (would that he would extend this to e.g. HadCRUT4 etc as well, as their error estimates don’t even scale reasonably from the present to the remote past of the thermometric record), as he presents Bastardi’s CO2 vs temperature graph over the Phanerozoic (I built much the same graph for myself just to try to understand the geological evidence for CO2 being the primary driver for global temperature), as he links to the Goddard/Heller site with the comment that
Finally, I enjoyed reading “The Cult of the Parameter” as it illustrates one of several serious problems with error estimation not just in BEST, not just in discussions of the hottest year versus the pause versus warming continuing — but hidden — during the pause, but everywhere in the general field of modeling in climate science. Error in model parameters cannot be simply translated into error estimates for the results produced by the models — at best they are a strictly lower bound but the actual associated (contribution to the) error is (probably) many times larger. A brutally honest Bayesian computation (or a Monte Carlo simulation) can sometimes correct for this, but rarely is used to do so.
One thing that I think would be a lovely exercise for Briggs’ students — since he apparently uses their homework as a fertile ground for establishing practical bounds on things like error for computable problems — to assess one of the central assumptions of the GCMs: That the mean and variance of N non-independent, parametric models simulating a highly nonlinear and formally chaotic process are in any useful or predictable sense statistically meaningful estimators for an actual nonlinear/chaotic process that is different. In particular, if one generates a numerical solution to a computational fluid dynamics problem at resolution X (sufficiently fine grained that the resulting model, started from some small spread in initial conditions and underlying parameters, exhibits the usual extreme and divergent variability over time characteristic of turbulent chaos at the resolution chosen, and forms the mean and variance of the trajectories in model phase space, how predictive are they of the same general model computed at resolution Y much less than X?
This is a serious problem for non-chaotic dynamics. If you solve the coupled ODEs for a simple 2D classical orbit with some given stepsize, you can easily observe solutions that a) violate the known conservation laws for that orbit over time; b) have substantially different behavior from solutions solved with the same ODE solver but at a much smaller stepsize. GCMs solve a CFD problem on a grid that is order of 100’s of km square (or often larger) while we know that length scales down as low as millimeters (the Kolmogorov scale) are likely to be relevant to the accurate solution of the dynamics. What statistical theorem exists — what statistical hypothesis exists, backed by at least some simulations of comparatively simple problems to test the hypothesis — to support this practice? What is the relationship between the envelope of the averages of many perturbed parameter ensemble trajectories from many non-independent models evaluated at a range of spatiotemporal resolutions and the actual trajectory of the actual climate? What is the relationship of the superaveraged mean of these already-averaged per-model trajectories and the actual trajectory? It certainly isn’t going to be a statistically normal one, in the sense that if we only wrote another 1000 or so non-independent models and ran them lots of times and superaveraged their averages the multimodel mean would somehow converge to the actual climate, or that the standard deviation of the per-model PPE mean trajectories is a meaningful estimator of error.
I don’t think anybody knows the answers to these questions. Anybody anywhere. The IPCC more or less acknowledges this in their earlier reports. I suspect that the unwritten assumptions are in any event false — that there is no defensible reason to presume that the various model ensembles produce any results that are even likely to be predictive at the resolutions we can afford to compute and with the parametric and model errors that no doubt abound in the models themselves.
rgb
It has been my understanding that GCM runs that yield “nonphysical” results are discarded. I wonder if there is agreement on the threshold of a “nonphysical” result.
If the model is capable of producing “nonphysical” results, that should be pretty good flag that there are problems with the model.
I think a name change is in order for the Berkeley team.
Perhaps The Berkeley With Out Regard to Science Team?
Hey, they asked for it by choosing their acronym, then not living up to it.
RGB, I would be interested in your comments about the bind the IPCC is in in trying to explain a warming surface and flat or cooling troposphere with CAGW theory. In short, even if one accepts the mal-adjusted surface record, CO2 cannot be the cause of the warming.
“to assess one of the central assumptions of the GCMs: That the mean and variance of N non-independent, parametric models simulating a highly nonlinear and formally chaotic process are in any useful or predictable sense statistically meaningful estimators for an actual nonlinear/chaotic process that is different”
If this is true, doesn’t mean that phrenology is actually viable after all? LOL
“It is well past the time to move on from EFCOD global warming and return to doing real science.”
Surely you jest Mr Briggs!
Credo quia absurdum
Man made Global Warming is REAL. Created in the fevered brains of Fellow Travelers of this funding scam to acquire wealth and Fame.
We don’t need them!…pg
“From the Triassic to the Quaternary, a time spanning more than 200 million years, the earth was hotter than it is now, and not just a little hotter, but downright steamy at times, with temperatures 10 or more degrees Celsius higher. ”
And CO2 had nothing to do with it. Virtually no CAGW advocate/”Climate Scientists” ever allow this fact to creep into their grant applications…
This works! It explains the on-going change of average global temperature (R^2>0.97 since before 1900). It shows that CO2 has no effect on climate. http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Is this a dare for Madison Avenue?
Sorry guys, the article is gibberish. There is no contradiction between ‘hottest year ever’ and ‘pause’. Anyone using ‘Hottest Year Ever’ to deny (can I still say that?) the ‘Pause’ is deeply arithmetically challenged. Anyone who thinks the ‘Pause’ falsifies the contention that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is equally so. Anyone who says they know how much ‘Natural Cycles’ have influenced the pause has a surfeit of confidence.
Seriously, there must be better things to talk about.
And yet you didn’t.
RERT,
The ‘pause’ by itself doesn’t falsify the AGW conjecture (I assume you meant AGW).
But it sure weakens the argument.
What weakens it even more is that ever since Arrhenius, scientists have been searching for the ‘fingerprint of man-made global warming’. By that I mean they’ve been searching for measurements quantifying AGW.
But despite hundreds of billions of dollars ‘studying climate change’ and launching satellites and thousands of radiosonde balloons, no one has ever found a single verifiable, empirical, replicable measurement of man-made global warming.
So, the usual question: at what point would you be willing to admit that either AGW doesn’t exist, or that it is just too small to matter?
Or can nothing ever convince you that ‘dangerous AGW’ is gonna getcha?
Did you read the article?
It does not say CO2 is is not a GHG, it says CO2 is obviously not driving climate because if it were there would not be a pause. Alarmists (can I still say that?) claim that CO2 warming is occurring but hidden by other natural climate events. If other natural events are overwhelming CO2 warming then it is reasonable to conclude that CO2 is not the principal climate trigger.
Anyone who will look at the geological record of temperature and CO2 over the last 400 million years can figure that out.
There are people who claim that here in Rochester, we have a strong seasonal cycle whereby the seasonal change in solar insolation is a principle driver of our climate. However, the seasonal cycle theory predicts that it should be getting colder as we head toward winter. Nonetheless, last week was warmer than the previous week.
By your logic, if the seasonal variation in insolation was important, last week should not have been warmer than the week before and we should thus conclude that this seasonal variation in solar insolation is not important in our climate.
Do you actually believe that to be the case? Perhaps thinking about this more closely will help you to understand the errors in your logic.
“If other natural events are overwhelming CO2 warming then it is reasonable to conclude that CO2 is not the principal climate trigger …”.
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That looks to me like a perfectly logical inference to make.
On the other hand joeldshore’s analogy is weak because it contains a disproportional scale comparison in time and magnitude.
Pressed to a logical conclusion that analogy could be reduced to absurdity.
No…It is not a perfectly logical inference to make and my analogy is about as perfect as any analogy can be. In both cases, we have a slow but steady longer-term trend with relatively large short-term fluctuations.
That means that the fluctuations dominate on short enough time scales but eventually slow long-term trend dominates. For the seasonal case, that means that behavior over the course of a week…or even a few weeks…will be dominated by the weather fluctuations but behavior over a few months will be dominated by the seasonal cycle. For the AGW case, that means that behavior over the course of a decade…or even a couple decades (especially if you cherrypick the starting point) will tend to be dominated by the climate fluctuations (ENSO and what-have you) but behavior over several decades to a few centuries will be dominated by AGW.
joeldshore says:
…my analogy is about as perfect as any analogy can be.
Got an even better one:
Joel Shore’s belief in ‘dangerous AGW’ is as strong as a Jehovah’s Witness’s belief in his religion. ☺
“Large short-term fluctuations” are caused by “what-have-you” — very good that should be added to the list with ‘the oceans swallowed our global warming’.
If the seasonal variation stopped, if the mean maximum monthly temperature in Rochester remained flat, say 5C, from February to August in one particular year that would raise questions about the seasonal cycle — which of course is absurd.
But that is where the analogy takes you if pursued to its logical conclusion and exposes the inherent circularity or question-begging it contains, that CO2 forcing is an underlying dominating forcing factor analogous to the seasonal insolation fluctuations is the very point in contention.
OK. Let’s instead talk about how the GCM results seem to be diverging from reality. Do you think in ten years the agreement will be better? Do you thing the measurements are so poor that the globe is really hotter than we see it today? Do you think that, if we can prove that 99.999% of the peer reviewed literature that takes a stand on global warming supports the CAGW hypothesis, the naysayers will remarkably grow silent and the people of the world will give up their cars and air-conditioning in time to save the world?
where did you read here or in the article that someone thinks that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? This sounds like a red herring.
Most reasonable people acknowledge that it likely is. However, currently it is a relative bit player in the “greenhouse gas” and naturally choreographed feedback system, and it cannot possibly be *the* climate driver to any great extent-and certainly not to the extent that has been claimed..
“Anyone who says they know how much ‘Natural Cycles’ have influenced the pause has a surfeit of confidence.”
Ah… exactly. And that’s what the AGW camp is saying, and also that “Natural Cycles” had NOTHING to do with the temperature run-up over the last 50 years. So they knew everything about natural cycles up till The Pause, were in denial that it was happening, but now they are 100% knowledgeable again… CO2 is definitely warming but those natural cycles are only now kicking in and hiding the rise.
Actually, it doesn’t. It is spot on the money. The climate is not a stationary process. Even if nobody touched CO2, it would be warming up and/or cooling down and/or remaining the same, pretty much unpredictably. We have almost no data worthy of the name of the timescales of most of this variability, and we don’t know if it is true “noise” (some underlying random process) or a manifestation of chaotic dynamics. That’s why Indian Summer isn’t surprising. Nor is it surprising when this year is warmer than, or cooler than, last year. A glance at any of the temperature records (take your pick!) shows that it goes up, and down, and up, and down. Staying the same as long as it has recently is the exception, not the rule!
The point is not that CO2 warming is being masked by natural shifts — or not. The point is that it is impossible to conclude that just because we haven’t warmed (much) over the last 20 or so years, that is some sort of proof that CO2 has no warming effect on climate. It isn’t, because the timescales involved are far too short to draw any such conclusion, just as is the case for 70 degree weather in January (which happens, sometimes, in NC, but is not the rule).
“The point is that it is impossible to conclude that just because we haven’t warmed (much) over the last 20 or so years, that is some sort of proof that CO2 has no warming effect on climate …”.
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For what it’s worth with respect that is not my point; simply that on the strength of the temperature hiatuses ~1945 — 1975 and ~ 1998 — ? CO2 must be in completion with other factors which at times augment and at other times nullify it as opposed to the analogy of the ever-present dominating influence of seasonal insolation fluctuations overwhelming short-term day-to-day conditions.
But there are much smarter people than me who have reservations about the supposed overwhelmingly dominant role of CO2 in the evolution of the post ww2 climate as per the IPCC conjecture and model projections-predictions.
The – CO2 forcing is to the climate evolution – as – seasonal insolation fluctuation is to day-to-day weather change – analogy also implies an unfounded inevitability to the future temperature trend à la the IPCC models.
As to the likelihood of any success with RICO to suppress dissent have a read through the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254. It is quite comforting. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/376/254/
The “pause” doesn’t mean or imply that the climate has stopped changing.
Therefore, since the climate changes, each year will probably be either cooler or warmer than the previous year and probably be either cooler or warmer than the following year,… ad (probably) infinitum or until the planetary atmosphere ceases to exist, whichever comes first. /grin