Physicist Luboš Motl of The Reference Frame demonstrates how easy it is to show that there is: No statistically significant warming since 1995
First, since it wasn’t in his original post, here is the UAH data plotted:
By: Luboš Motl
Because there has been some confusion – and maybe deliberate confusion – among some (alarmist) commenters about the non-existence of a statistically significant warming trend since 1995, i.e. in the last fifteen years, let me dedicate a full article to this issue.
I will use the UAH temperatures whose final 2009 figures are de facto known by now (with a sufficient accuracy) because UAH publishes the daily temperatures, too:
Mathematica can calculate the confidence intervals for the slope (warming trend) by concise commands. But I will calculate the standard error of the slope manually.
x = Table[i, {i, 1995, 2009}]
y = {0.11, 0.02, 0.05, 0.51, 0.04, 0.04, 0.2, 0.31, 0.28, 0.19, 0.34, 0.26, 0.28, 0.05, 0.26};
data = Transpose[{x, y}]
(* *)
n = 15
xAV = Total[x]/n
yAV = Total[y]/n
xmav = x - xAV;
ymav = y - yAV;
lmf = LinearModelFit[data, xvar, xvar];
Normal[lmf]
(* *)
(* http://stattrek.com/AP-Statistics-4/Estimate-Slope.aspx?Tutorial=AP *)
;slopeError = Sqrt[Total[ymav^2]/(n - 2)]/Sqrt[Total[xmav^2]]
The UAH 1995-2009 slope was calculated to be 0.95 °C per century. And the standard deviation of this figure, calculated via the standard formula on this page, is 0.88 °C/century. So this suggests that the positivity of the slope is just a 1-sigma result – a noise. Can we be more rigorous about it? You bet.
Mathematica actually has compact functions that can tell you the confidence intervals for the slope:
lmf = LinearModelFit[data, xvar, xvar, ConfidenceLevel -> .95]; lmf["ParameterConfidenceIntervals"]
The 99% confidence interval is (-1.59, +3.49) in °C/century. Similarly, the 95% confidence interval for the slope is (-0.87, 2.8) in °C/century. On the other hand, the 90% confidence interval is (-0.54, 2.44) in °C/century. All these intervals contain both negative and positive numbers. No conclusion about the slope can be made on either 99%, 95%, and not even 90% confidence level.
Only the 72% confidence interval for the slope touches zero. It means that the probability that the underlying slope is negative equals 1/2 of the rest, i.e. a substantial 14%.
We can only say that it is “somewhat more likely than not” that the underlying trend in 1995-2009 was a warming trend rather than a cooling trend. Saying that the warming since 1995 was “very likely” is already way too ambitious a goal that the data don’t support.
kdkd:
“Personally I trust the IPCC’s work as it’s based on a wide ranging process of consensus that receives scientific then political review – it’s only flaws as far as I can see are that it tends to being more conservative than might be prudent because of the need for scientific and political consensus. I certainly don’t buy the conspiracy theories popular in these pages.”
—…—
No.
You are dead wrong.
The IPCC is based on self-serving politicians from dictator-ruled second and third-world countries who are working (successfully) to take money from the US and Western Europe to spend it on their countries “projects”.
The “science review” has proved to be dead wrong. the “science”has never been shown “right”, and all parts of it have been individually proved to be (if not corrupt or dead wrong) to be exaggerated or controversial, or legitimately disputed. There is no single piece of the supposed AGW theory can stand -collectively or in total – against debate. None. No part of it can be defended absolutely as “true data.”
And now we find the AGW “scientific community” cannot even provide the raw data they claim they are using. Their computer programs have no inspection or quality controls. Their data storage has been proved to be paper (thrown away), tapes, PC printouts – with the source code destroyed, backup never made on obsolete systems and backups themselves destroyed. The source code for basic programs is laughable – if not a sad reflection of the amateurish methods and sloppy programming in obsolete languages for programs that are not commented or even verifiable.
The “political review” has been shown to be done by one person re-writing the “summary for Politicians” to DELIBERATELY create the current programs of economic destruction and taxation wanted by the UN’s politicians.
To do this, they are spending 79 billion of US taxpayer money to fund those “52 scientists” who re-wrote (deliberately ignoring and abusing those 33,000 other scientists and climate specialis who disagree with their UN-funded and US-funded theories. As the leaked programs prove, 26 of these 52 “scientists” conspired (despite your denial!) to actually corrupt their data and pollute the UN’s process – all for the POWER, MONEY, and INFLUENCE they can get by supporting their AGW propaganda.
“Conservative” predictions? Even Hansen’s ten year predictions are dead wrong! What’s “conservative” about re-writing political papers in isolation to exaggerate effects 400 years in the future? What’s conservative about not getting even ONE prediction correct within a factor of 2 of the real world?
What? Do you think Al Gore and the UN actually “earned’ their Nobel Peace Prize for their roles in studying the supposed “science” behind AGW theories?
Follow the political power that comes from controlling AGW policies.
Follow the economic power that comes from controlling AGW policies
Follow the power that comes from influencing the world’s energy supplies.
Follow the money that funds corruption:
If you claim that “Big Oil” is behind any skeptic’s position, or you claim that “Big Oil” has corrupted the science of global warming, then you are only are proving that money HAS corrupted the lairs and propagandists who are promoting AGW for their own political and economic benefit.
I am abusing your grade-school inspired “trust” in the UN.
But a UN commission that spend 2 years spending money on a multi-billion dollar international conference in Copenhagen for 45,000 accredited delegates, but only reserved room for 15,000 to get inside is too stupid to plan their way out of a snowdrift when a shovel is handed them.
The UN is corrupt, stupid, and is run to benefit dictators and governments who take their country’s money and spend it on their own mansions and their bank accounts. (Which, by the way, is what Gore and the UN-appointed head of the IPCC does too.)
kdkd: “Here’s your classic skeptic technique of avoiding the stuff you don’t like, and making disproportionate claims about the stuff that you do like.”
[Textbook Projection, folks].
Are you, kdkd, not describing your OWN religion with this statement??
And I’ll take the term “skeptic” as a compliment…even if you don’t mean it as one.
Why??? Because it lays out the basic BASIC skeptical mode of science….
….as opposed to the dogma of the AGW faith.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
kdkd: “Personally I trust the IPCC’s work as it’s based on a wide ranging process of consensus that receives scientific then political review.”
You *TRUST* the IPCC’s work?
Sounds a bit more like faith.
And then….”scientific then POLITICAL review.”?
You cannot be serious here?
“Trust”…..”political” review???
On which planet do you live??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
kdkd:
“Here’s your classic skeptic technique of avoiding the stuff you don’t like, and making disproportionate claims about the stuff that you do like.”
—…—
Back up your claim: What part of the “stuff that I don’t like” am I avoiding?
Be specific. I want to know what I am avoiding (in your eyes) so I can address it.
[Since I know I have deliberately NOT avoided “anything”, you must know something I don’t know I don’t know I am avoiding.]
kdkd:
The IPCC will not “show its work” when requested. That alone puts it out of court.
The one most important thing we can take away from climategate is that all methods and data must be provided on request. What is shocking is that this lesson should have been necessary in the first place.
RACookPE1978 (20:07:29) writing to kdkd: “Back up your claim: What part of the “stuff that I don’t like” am I avoiding?
Be specific. I want to know what I am avoiding (in your eyes) so I can address it.”
[Chuckle] That is what happens when you take on an exacting engineer, kdkd.
I could have warned you….but you would have never listened anyway.
Slice slice slice.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
RACookPE1978:
Well we’re at a fundamental ideological impasse. The IPCC are a diverse international group, and there are multiple lines of evidence from various sources that show the overwhelming likeliest source of the post-industrial global warming is greenhouse gas emissions. The only skeptic arguments I’ve seen fiddle around the edges, and ignore a variety of well understood scientific theory to provide a rather incoherent argument often backed by rather strange conspiracy theories.
The fundamental problem with your argument is that you’re overstating the importance of clouds, and making unjustified long term extrapolations, while conveniently discounting the soot feedback, and ignoring the decrease of the arctic albedo which is a clear long term positive feedback.
As far as the models are concerned they have predicted arctic amplification of warming, as long as 30 years ago. This is not predicted by models where greenhouse gasses are not the forcing drivers.
Anyway, I’m gone now. My last comment is that the title of this post is incorrect. This is not a mathematical proof, its an incomplete argument derived from statistical reasoning. If the statistial argument was completed, it would not reach the same conclusion. Like I said, I find the sceptics interesting from the point of view of the group psychology of denial, but little else.
kdkd: “The IPCC are a diverse international group, and there are multiple lines of evidence from various sources that show the overwhelming likeliest source of the post-industrial global warming is greenhouse gas emissions.”
Show forth the “multiple lines of evidence.”
Where are they? Show some direct observations that aren’t simply climate model extrapolations.
You won’t because you CAN’T.
And that is the reason you are fleeing this argument….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“As far as the models are concerned they have predicted arctic amplification of warming, as long as 30 years ago. This is not predicted by models where greenhouse gasses are not the forcing drivers.”
HUH?? What code language are you speaking here? Speak clearly, please.
“Anyway, I’m gone now.”
If you can’t stand the heat…..
Like I said, I find the sceptics interesting from the point of view of the group psychology of denial, but little else.
And we find you less than interesting, but from the point of view of the group psychology of GROUPTHINK and cognitive dissonance, but less than little else.
You are fleeing because you afraid of what you might have to recant if you learned the truth….
Cognitive dissonance at its best. The question is….will you ever man up and recognize your error.
The truth hurts.
But it also sets you free…
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks:
The climate models have shown for a long time that early greenhouse gas forced global warming will result in amplified warming in the arctic. It’s very powerful evidence that we have a serious problem, and the repeated challenges by sceptics have been unable to undermine this evidence.
Anyway, I’m out of here because I’m off on holiday and don’t have further time to waste on this. An impartial view of the data, and the challenges to the science show the skeptic position severely wanting. But there’s quite a lot of this, and it’s not trivial to explain. Sitting in the sceptic echo chamber is an amusing brief diversion, but the scientific credibility of the arguments in this thread are generally pretty poor, with the most common three points being strange conspiracy theory, overstatement of weak conclusions to try to magnify the sceptic case in a way the evidence doesn’t warrant, and finally irellevant or scientifically wrong statements that have no basis in fact.
kdkd:
“Anyway, I’m out of here because I’m off on holiday and don’t have further time to waste on this. An impartial view of the data, and the challenges to the science show the skeptic position severely wanting. But there’s quite a lot of this, and it’s not trivial to explain. Sitting in the sceptic echo chamber is an amusing brief diversion, but the scientific credibility of the arguments in this thread are generally pretty poor, with the most common three points being strange conspiracy theory, overstatement of weak conclusions to try to magnify the sceptic case in a way the evidence doesn’t warrant, and finally irellevant or scientifically wrong statements that have no basis in fact.”
—…—
A “waste” of time?
When your AGW propaganda is going to destroy the world’s economy for ….. nothing? When tens of millions have already been killed by false enviro theories, you consider energy and food and power and transporation for the world’s deperate poor a “waste of time” ??? I pity your lack of morals.
Again: Give me specific proof of any of your generic (general) statements. I’m working 80+ hour weeks trying to improve real power plant efficiencies to deliver real power to realpeople so real people don’t freeze in the dark and starve. I’ve been receiving environmental and efficiency and scientific awards awards since 1972.
There is no part of the physics, chemistry, chemical bonding, gas theories, heat exchange theory, nuclear and chemical bonding, cosmic and cloud interactions (yes, I’ve seen clouds produced by nuclear radiation – measured it too), radiative and conductive heat transfer, finite element analysis, computer programming, computer simulations, winds, steam, political, economic or statistical analysis I have not formally studied and applied and used. Don’t use your deliberately vague words – I know you are throwing press release propaganda because your basic words you repeating are false.
They are lies, in other words. If you believe them based on your faith in the UN and the world’s greedy socialist/liberals/environmental theists, and you repeat them, then you are a dupe.
If you are a scientist, then you can’t believe you own words and you are a simple propagandist.
I really don’t care about your holiday – only about your biased “faith” in a fruitless exaggeration of extrapolations from politicians and “scientists” who have produced no evidence in the past – nor can they produce any evidence now – that supports any of your conclusions.
EVERY statement you have made is no more true than a generic press release. NONE can be traced back to facts.
kdkd: “The climate models have shown for a long time that early greenhouse gas forced global warming will result in amplified warming in the arctic.”
Ahhh…the climate models.
Show the actual evidence, not the models, kdkd. Can you?
Cite it please, before you “flee” on your holiday.
“An impartial view of the data, and the challenges to the science show the skeptic position severely wanting.”
What impartial view?? Yours??? Hardly impartial, bro.
“Sitting in the sceptic echo chamber is an amusing brief diversion, but the scientific credibility of the arguments in this thread are generally pretty poor, with the most common three points being strange conspiracy theory, overstatement of weak conclusions to try to magnify the sceptic case in a way the evidence doesn’t warrant, and finally irellevant or scientifically wrong statements that have no basis in fact.”
Uh huh….THIS folks….is sophistry at its best. Attempting to weave a clever argument….devoid of substance. A true smokescreen.
What is your agenda, kdkd???
Is AGW your personal religion, and is that why you feel you need to defend it?
Anyways….the burden of proof is on YOU. You espouse a fantastic theory, then you have to prove it.
Thanks for the entertainment…..
Enjoy your holiday.
[Or I thought you were GONE….a couple of posts ago because it was a waste of your time….]
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
kdkd:
savethesharks:
“The climate models have shown for a long time that early greenhouse gas forced global warming will result in amplified warming in the arctic. It’s very powerful evidence that we have a serious problem, and the repeated challenges by sceptics have been unable to undermine this evidence.”
no. Again, no.
The only reason the arctic is expected to show AGW theories is because it is so cold (on average) that the water vapor is very low (low relative humidity, in other words.
With low water vapor, the CO2 concentration is higher, and thus the theoretical effect of 0.003 some-odd percent of CO2 in the air is expected to be higher than in the mid-latitudes, where water vapor is even higher a percent of total greenhouse gases.
but the ONLY parts of the Arctic that indicate rising temperatures are those parts of the former USSR which we now find (through the Soviet Union’s formal complaints to the IPCC and GISS and Hadcrut offices, were made by selectively eliminating MOST of the USSR’s weather stations to deliberately create hot spots in the Arctic. By the way, it was your “trusted” AGW experts and scientists who were corrupting the data from Russia.
If you claim melted ice across the Arctic is a “positive feedback” for AGW, then I challenge you to show me why your vaunted (theoretical hand-waving about ice melting by politicians who failed divinity school) yielded HIGHER ice regions in 2008 and 2009 than 2007. If low ice is to create a positive feedback, somebody forgot to tell nature. Because the ice coverage in April and May 2009 set all-time highs for coverage. (When using the same instruments form the same platform – do you want me to go into how previous ice calculations weren’t based on same data elements?
The problem with measuring sea level is that many land masses are subsiding and many are uplifting. There is also sedimentation and erosion. None of this is sea level “rise” or “fall”, per se.
This makes things very hard to judge. Esp, when we are talking in terms of a couple of mm per year! (I wouldn’t be surprised if the margin of error alone were a lot larger than that.)
RACookPE1978 (22:07:27)
WELL said, mate. Way to sock it to ’em as I completely agree with your assessment.
And thanks for those 80 plus hours per week. Much appreciated.
Where….just WHERE would we be without our engineers??
In the f****** stone age, that’s where.
Cheers.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
No point engaging with kdkd… as proudly linked from his “site”:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/04/08/climate-change-cage-match-a-fight-to-the-death/
Preferred combat appears to be referring to oppposing views as delusional and psychotic. Of course, at a site like Crikey this is acceptable discourse. Don´t feed the troll.
RACookPE1978
No. In the absence of water vapour we’d expect less warming as it’s a powerful (equilibrium) greenhouse gas. And the satellite observations also confirm the arctic amplification as well. You’re too swayed by the conspiracy theories.
Bulldust: No surprise, I don’t respect the sceptic argument. If the current post is a good example of overextended conclusions, and poor use of scientific and statistical techniques. I understand here that if I lose patience, I get deleted. Over there there’s more vigorous (and entertaining) conversation.
Now really gone.
[Reply: kdkd has never had a post deleted from WUWT. ~dbs, mod.]
We can only say that it is “somewhat more likely than not” that the underlying trend in 1995-2009 was a warming trend rather than a cooling trend.
Unfortunately, the AGW’ers also know this to be true, but that hasn’t stopped them has it?
Bulldust (22:35:56) :
Right. Agreed.
kdkd: “Now really gone.”
Good.
Ironically, you walked out in a huffyhuff about three posts ago saying you would not be coming back….yet you keep coming back.
Thanks for finally vocalizing your lack of respect for the “skeptics argument”.
Because of that lack of respect, you have really disqualified yourself in the ability to debate man to man here.
Go back “over there” (I am assuming you mean the Peoples Republic of RC) where you probably will feel more at home.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I tried having civilised discourse at Crikey´s Pure Poison site when they discussed the “obvious” warming trend in the above graph a few weeks ago. Needless to say all my rational arguments were gunned down by people with a similar slant and approach to dkdk. I gave up trying to have any meaningful debate there. Every now and then I toss a good story their way when it is obvious that AGW has completely missed the mark.
Interestingly I was making the same gut-feel arguments based upon my statistics background over there as here. It is pretty obvious from the more recent temperature data that neither a positive not negative trend is significant for the last 10 years or so. The Air Vent anaylsis linked above vindicates that gut-feel perfectly.
But people see what they want to see…
I almost feel I should apologise to kdkd now… it appears that when he assesses people as being delusional or psychotic, based upon their blog postings, that he is qualified to make such statements by virtue of his background:
http://www.uow.edu.au/~kd21/
He was a research neuropsychologist ya know.
Ric and others,
I’ve been meaning to add confidence intervals to WFT for a while, but it’s rather tricky to do this in bare-metal code – for one, IIRC it seems I need to calculate an inverse t-function. I have the mathematical description of the process, but anyone who can point me at any code (in any low-level language) for doing this simply given a basic time-series array, I’d be most grateful…
At least adding the SD of the data and R^2 of the trend to the textual data output should be fairly easy – I’m aiming to do an update over the holiday, so watch this space…
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Paul
If Pinatubo is reduced from UAH with correction values +0.5, +0.4, +0.3, +0.2, +0.1 beginnig from year 1992, the trend 1990-2009 is +0.04.
So there actually is no warming during past 20 years, which is expected according to existed solar activity.
Currently NH land areas are cooling remarkably fast: If the trend of past 4 years still continues about 8 years, NH land is back to 70’s temperatures. It is the oceans which are still keeping global temperatures at relatively high level, but after few years it is expected that also oceans begin to cool faster.
Make that nine years and you’ll deprive the warmists of the comeback that you’ve included a low year (2000) that lowers your average level. Looking at the bar chart (the 2nd one), it’s obvious that temperatures have plateuaed for the past nine years. That may not yet be statistically significant, but it’s surely not what the warmists would have predicted or bet on nine years ago. That should lower our confidence in their current predictions.
This modest claim (instead of saying “it’s cooling”) stands up better in the long run, and thus makes more of an impression on bystanders.
=========
How can he tell what this place is like from a visit to one thread? I’ve noticed several other drive-by warmists make similar sweeping and condescending dismissals after only a brief (single-thread) apparent acquaintance with the site. Further, their judgments that our side is , etc. appears to be based on seeing claims made here that contradict what they’ve read elsewhere, or that they believe have been refuted elsewhere — without trying to get deeper into the guts of the matter., or being self-critical oftheir own baggage.
Oops — insert “with the exception of the down-year in 2008” after “it’s obvious that temperatures have plateuaed for the past nine years.”