NOTE: Mike alerted me in comments about this article he wrote along the lines of my story on Color and Temperature: Perception is everything. I thought this would be good to examine again. This article below is re-posted from John Daly’s website, and was originally published July 7th, 2002. – Anthony
By: Michael Ronayne
In a story titled “Coloring Climate Change” by Nick Schulz, Tech Central Station reported that key documents, in a US government report titled “The National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change“, were “doctored” to distort public perceptions of climate change. The report was published by the United States Global Change Research Program. According to their own web page, the USGCRP coordinates the research of ten Federal departments and agencies with active global change programs and provides liaison with the Executive Office of the President. The budget of the USGCRP in fiscal year 2002 was approximately $1.7 billion US dollars.
The National Assessment report has served as the basis for parts of the 2001 National Academy of Sciences’ report “Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions” prepared for President Bush on the state of climate science and, most recently, for the highly controversial “U.S. Climate Action Report – 2002“, covertly issued by climate alarmists within the Environmental Protection Agency, with the objective of embarrassing the Bush Presidency.
The TCS story displays two graphics, shown below. The graph on the left is the one which was circulated during the public comment period after the original draft was developed. It compares the Canadian Model with the Hadley Model for the lower 48 States for the summer months of June through August, over the next 100 years. The TCS story provides additional background on the two graphs and is highly commended to your attention. Then the disparity between the two models’ future forecasts, cast doubt on the predictive capacity of the Canadian and Hadley models, the USGCRP issued the final report on the right, with the color scale altered to obscure the differences between the two models.
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Unfortunately for the USGCRP, the two models show the areas of warming and cooling to be occurring in widely different sections of the United States. The USGCRP’s solution to this conundrum was to alter the temperature color scale by eliminating yellow and green, and extending the color orange into negative temperature ranges as low as -1.0°F, thereby implying warming, when in fact the models were showing no temperature change or cooling for some localities.
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Above: When the “Draft” and “Final” copies of the USGCRP graphs are animated, employing a technique used elsewhere on this web site, the amateurish nature of the deception becomes painfully obvious.
Not only was the distorted temperature color scale used to obscure the next 100 years of temperature models, it was also used to change the perception of the United State’s past climatic history. The page “Overview: Looking at America’s Climate” contains a graphic titled “Temperature Change” (shown below), which attempts to minimize the significant cooling which occurred in the Southeastern United States during the 20th Century. This is achieved by coloring even the zero or `no change’ temperatures in light orange, and blending colors in such a way as to make it almost impossible to differentiate anything between about 0° and 5°. Not even the IPCC has as yet stooped to this level of deception.
On the same web page, there is another graph titled “Summer Maximum and Winter Minimum Temperature Change” (shown below), which contains the USGCRP’s final version of the Canadian and Hadley 21st Century Summer and Winter Models, again with a choice of color scheme which blends everything from 0° to 5° into a deceptive spread of orange. Even areas which these models show will not change, are colored in orange. What other purpose can this peculiar coloring scheme serve but to suggest future warming in areas where none is actually predicted by the model?
“The National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change” report is comprised of three separate sections which represent themselves as addressing increasing levels of detail. The descriptions are those used by the USGCRP:
1. Overview Report: Concise, well illustrated summary.
2. Foundation Report: Volume, more detailed than the Overview Report.
3. Background Information: Learn more about the National Assessment.
The Overview Report is published in both HTML and PDF formats and contains all of the USGCRP graphs and most of the URLs, previously referenced. This report is clearly intended for the media and the general public. Its primary message is one of impending doom, associated with anthropogenic global warming.
I am not sure why the USGCRP expended the effort to create the Foundation Report. It has so many technical flaws, in terms of electronic publishing techniques, that anyone who attempted to read it, would be quickly discouraged from delving into its contents. The report is only published in two PDF formats. Each subsection of the report is comprised of two PDF files, one which is black and white, with extremely low resolution gray scale graphics. The second PDF file contains the color figures and graphs but only the text associated with each figure. As the figures associated with the text report are all but useless, because of the poor quality, the serious reader must have two PDF files open and switch between both files to comprehend the report. What is interesting is that the PDF file titled “Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change“, which contained color figures, shows in Figure 13, the US temperatures using the altered color temperature scale, but in Figure 20, the Global temperatures are displayed using the original color temperature scale found in the draft report. The only function of the altered color temperature scale is to obscure the differences between the Canadian and Hadley models for the 21st Century United States. By contrast, the 21st Century Global graphs were not altered in this way.
In the Background Information section, things become interesting. On a deeply buried page at “VEMAP Trend Maps” the original high resolution images, on which the draft graphics were based, can still be found. The individual graphs are: “CGCM1 Maximum Temperature Trend (JJA)” and “HadCM2 Maximum Temperature Trend (JJA)“.
One could engage in endless speculation as to why the USGCRP went to the trouble of altering the first two sections yet failing to alter the third, which contained the most incriminating information. The two most likely explanations are: (1) the Background Information section was overlooked and (2) the USGCRP did not expect anyone to find the original graphs from the Canadian and Hadley Models. Also, on the “VEMAP Trend Maps” page the Canadian and Hadley Models are not compared side-by-side, so the inconsistencies between the models are not as obvious.
Of course, the USGCRP may not even care if the real results from the Canadian and Hadley Models are found. As long as the media continues to endlessly report only the results from the first two sections, the voices of a few skeptics can be safely ignored.
Last year in another story, a question was asked for which no reply has been forthcoming: If the evidence for global warming is that compelling, why is it necessary for those who believe in global warming, to misrepresent data in this manner to support their cause?
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I think the natural disasters we’ve experienced in our short lifetimes shows there is no concerned creator. Yellowstone might well destroy civilization, but not humankind.
We’re certainly doomed if we’re relying on imaginary beings to protect us. IMHO, our civilization has no meaning in the greater scheme of things.
I’m using IE7
There’s your problem.
Just a quick aside from a fascinated lurker to Jeff Alberts with apologies for the OT. Pope Benedict has put a very interesting argument up in the Regensberg Address that religious faith and scientific endeavour are actually two sides of the one coin and mutually reinforcing. Regensberg Uni is of course, a place where science degrees and theological degrees are taught side by side.
MarkL
Canberra
I think the natural disasters we’ve experienced in our short lifetimes shows there is no concerned creator.
That would assume that God is necessarily concerned with earthly wellbeing.
What if, as is commonly believed, life on earth is a mere, brief testing ground for a soul’s destiny in eternity? Then goodness or badness, justice, injustice, and early, arbitrary death are irrelevant in the long run. It would all be wrapped up in what one does with what time one has.
Or to put it another way, your teacher would care a lot whether you score well on the SAT but would not be overly concerned if the AC wasn’t working during the test. He’d care about how well you did, not how comfortable you were during the three hours of the test.
I am a nonbeliever, but seemingly arbitrary death and disaster is perfectly well accounted for by every major religion.
A disingenuous response would be, what’s the fuss about, they are only colors.
The psychological effect of color is well recognized and used in advertising and marketing.
http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html
I must agree with DAV here. The drafts are far more psychologically misleading than the final versions. The (projected) information being conveyed shows a lot of heating in almost all regions and almost no cooling. Green and blue imply cooling.
The draft makes sense from the point of view of conveying the greatest dynamic range of information with colors, but the consequence is that unless someone carefully reads and uses the key, they will think the model conveys a mix of warming and cooling, and the information being represented is almost entirely warming, or at best neutral throughout the region.
There’s definitely some gaming in the final version, as zero, or a small negative is still shown orange rather than green or blue, but if honest authors and editors believed the information they were trying to represent was a prediction of almost universal warming, they would have considered the draft to be the misleading color scheme, and rightfully so.
Evan,
Not bad for a heathen 🙂
I would just add that the God I believe in is concerned even with suffering in this life but that there are higher priorities. I won’t argue the point though.
Jeff,
My belief extols work as well as faith so I will work in confidence.
All the believers think he/she/it is.
What if, it’s not. Really, Evan, this is just philosophizing. No one knows or can know one way or the other, which is the whole problem. You know that religion is a means of controlling the populace, nothing more.
Sorry, but how does this equate to an all-powerful, all-knowing being who seems concerned enough about the “sweet savour” of roasted, unblemished male rams we all must sacrifice, but no one does? Concerned enough that we shouldn’t eat pork, must stone rape victims to death because they just shouldn’t have been out in the city, concerned enough to torture an old man into killing his son only to call “psych” just before the deed? Come on, Evan, you know it’s all a bunch of crap.
Of course it is. They’d have been out of business long ago if they couldn’t answer why bad things happen to good people. And the answers are bogus.
MarkL, I’ve already posted more on this than I should have, so won’t go on. You all get the last word. Let’s just say the Pope can say anything he wants, that doesn’t make it true. And Theology is the study of religion, not faith.
I agree that neither version is reasonable.
The second one overplays warming and shows that there is a lot occurring, and the first underplays it, masking the warming. However, of the two, I believe the first one was innocent, done to maximize contrast, and the second one was deliberately done to emphasize warming. Why? Because there is a full spectrum of colors that is expected on weather maps, ranging from purple in the extreme cold to red in extreme heat. Eliminating any color on the rainbow causes confusion, especially eliminating the neutral green and warm yellow colors, skiping straight to the orange.
A better scale would be
< -3 degrees = Blue – Cooling
+/- 3 degrees = Green – Really no change
< 6 degrees = Yellow
9 degrees = Red
I suggest that the criticism of the map coloring reflects an unfamiliarity with some of the principles that drive the use of color in graphical representations. It appears to me that the left side graphics (which include the green color) were created with the goal of maximizing differentiation by using the broadest color range over the existing range of delta-Ts. This is the starting point for most graphics that use color.
However, I can also see somebody point out that cool colors imply cooling and that therefore the color range should be adjusted so as to have warm colors indicating warming and cool colors indicating cooling. This is exactly what the right-side graphics appear to do, although they do suffer from a problem with the transition from warm colors to cool colors: first, they jump directly from orange to blue, and second, the transition occurs at -1 degree Fahrenheit rather than 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unless I am greatly misunderstanding the claims made in this article, I think the criticism offered is unjustified.
REPLY: Yes you’ve completely misunderstood it.
Well then, let me show you the statement in your article that was the basis for my observation:
The USGCRP’s solution to this conundrum was to alter the temperature color scale by eliminating yellow and green, and extending the color orange into negative temperature ranges as low as -1.0°F, thereby implying warming, when in fact the models were showing no temperature change or cooling for some localities.
The problem with this sentence is that the two clauses constitute a non sequitur. The first clause talks about the color scale, while the second clause asserts that the applied colors did not match the underlying temperatures. There’s no logical relationship between the two clauses. Moreover, you seem to have three actual complaints:
a. the colors yellow and green were eliminated. Is this an aesthetic criticism? Do you have some special attachment to yellow and green?
b. the color orange has been extended below 0 degrees Fahrenheit to -1 degree Fahrenheit. This criticism is justified — but hardly serious given the displayed range of some 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
c. You imply that there exist points on the map whose temperature differentials are not correctly represented by the applied colors. Is this in fact your claim?
REPLY: Nope, still missed it
An excellent example of a NASA map, carefully colored to create alarm.
They used yellow to represent areas where sea level is falling.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18075
Your cryptic replies suggest evasiveness rather than openness. If you don’t care to discuss the matter, perhaps it would be better to simply say so.
REPLY: No I’m just waiting for the light bulb to come on for you. Personally I think you are overanalysing it. I figure that if you don’t see it by now, you probably won’t.
Steven Goddard suggests that the NASA sea level map was “carefully colored to create alarm”. I examined the map and see nothing alarming in it. They used the most common approach of fitting the color scale to the range of possible values, and in this case used yellow as the null value. I examined the actual RGB values at the extremes and the middle, and it’s difficult to assign a numeric algorithm to their scale. In any case, I see no basis for the claim that there’s something deliberately deceptive in the color scheme. Could you expand on your statement?
No I’m just waiting for the light bulb to come on for you. Personally I think you are overanalysing it. I figure that if you don’t see it by now, you probably won’t.
When a communication fails, the reader asks for clarification, and the writer refuses, do this prove that the reader is stupid or that the author is evasive?
[…] Far from continuing to rise in sync with CO2 levels, as the theory says they should, temperatures have not only been dropping but are now lower than when Hansen and Gore set the scare in train in 1988. (For latest graph see the Watts Up With That website.) […]
It was revealing to see the posts by statepoet. I suppose he’s typical?
REPLY: I wouldn’t know, are unclear comments typical for you?
The Earth’s climate, whether warming or cooling, is not the simple thing that we seek.
The Earth’s climate, she’s as fickle as they come, perched on a hair trigger.
Doesn’t seem to take a whole lot to run it hot or cold, whether it’s sunspot activity, volacanoes cooking off, massive dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere, etc.
The whole geologic record going back 4 billion years seems to imply that while at any given point in time you can have large climate swings, on the whole it has been cooling since the Earth formed. There was even an ice age some 3.x billion years ago. So the Earth’s climate, she’s fickle and easily moved about and it’s probably been that way from the beginning.
What might this mean? If we knew what we were doing, global climate moderating is possible.
But make a change in the midst of a misread trend and you might get an Ice Age or a PETM.
The Lag time of Co2 rising after warming in light of the climate cooling 30 yrs after the onset of Maunder Minimum seems to say that there is great momentum in play in the climate engine, but it does reverse directions in a few decades.
The Sun also may have the same general tendency of many decades.
Who is to say that the Sun’s magnetic hiccups of many maxima followed by inconsistent minima is not due to the Sun’s travelling through galactic lines of force? Might be something to look at. Or it could be that the Sun has it’s own massive inertia to overcome long after the forces that drove the stop are spent.
But every time I see these plotted graphs I have to think that they are really showing us symptoms instead of telling us what is causing the change.
I’m grasping at the straws here, because there really isn’t much else to reach for.
One thing is for sure: This sunspot delay/crash has just wiped out all our theories. We have precious little idea of what comes next.
[…] Coloring the Models: Climate Change through Color Change NOTE: Mike alerted me in comments about this article he wrote along the lines of my story on Color and Temperature: Perception is everything. So I thought this would be good to examine again. This article below is re-posted from John … […]
Ah, El Reg’s Mr. Goddard! Who is he, one may ask, as a “Steven Goddard” doesn’t even exist on the interweb before April 2008.
Yet the Register chose to continously enlighten us with his views on climate change without criticism, Is he perhaps having some connection to IT professional John Atkinson, who was allowed to post a similarly incoherent article on the Register? Is it just a coincidence that someone using the moniker “John A.” pops up regularly on the blog of Stephen McIntyre, who works in IT as well and is known for making powerful oil interests heard?
WHO IS “Hellhound?”
Is he the Greenpeace mascot? Or perhaps it’s the bow ornament of one of their scows after which this poster chooses to name himself? Is it just a coincidence that when anyone tries to tell the truth, he pops up and throws his quano in their general direction? And why is he so eager for puny anti-civilization interests to be heard? Is it because misery love company? I have a feeling that if this mystery were to be solved, we would be no more the wiser for our wasted efforts than that pathetic drone “Hellhound” ever is.