The December 2009 and year 2009 University of Alabama at Huntsville lower tropospheric MSU temperature data is available. Thanks to Phillip Gentry and John Christy for alerting us to these figures]. I have several comments following the figures.
This data shows why the focus needs to be on the regional scale and that a global average is not of much use in describing weather that all of us experience.
The news media seem to continue to avoid this perspective. For example, in the article Snow, ice and the bigger picture
excerpts read
“Rather than seeking vindication or catastrophe in this cold snap, now is a good time to remind ourselves that weather, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”
“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”
“If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”
“Handy as it is, the AO describes more than it explains. Forecasters still don’t know exactly what sends the AO into one mode or the other, just as the birth of an El Niño is easier to spot than to predict.”
See also the post at Dot Earth by Andy Revkin titled Cold Arctic Pressure Pattern Nearly Off Chart
The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.
The article concludes with the text
“If this winter tells us anything, it’s that we’ll have to remain on guard for familiar weather risks as well as the evolving ones brought by climate change.”
This admission implicitly recognizes the focus on the reduction of vulnerability that we wrote about in our paper
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
The media, policymakers and others should recognize this evidence of our incomplete understanding of the climate system. We will continue to have surprises such as we have seen this winter.
ryancmc if you are being taught that the Scientific Method is not the accepted method of separating scientific truth from false conjectures, then you are being cheated by your teachers and your school. You are being lied to.
Here is Richard Feynman, explaining the Scientific Method:
The Scientific Method requires full and open cooperation with other skeptical scientists, with everyone working to falsify the hypothesis. Only what has withstood all attempts at falsification is considered likely to be scientific truth.
That open cooperation, dedicated to finding the truth, has been perverted by government and university scientists seduced by fame and fortune. This process didn’t just start; it has been building up for decades, as President Eisenhower warned.
Now, with outside quangos and NGOs pouring $millions into the pockets of government and university climate scientists, the corruption of the relatively few gatekeepers has come to fruition. The process is complete: Mann, Pachauri, Jones and the others have been bought and paid for. They know that their CO2=CAGW hypothesis will be promptly falsified as soon as they provide all the raw and adjusted data and methods they used to construct it, just as Michael Mann’s hokey stick reconstruction was falsified. So they dig in their heels and stonewall information requests.
As Prof Feynman stated, the Scientific Method absolutely requires full cooperation. Try to credibly explain why the CRU scientists and Michael Mann have steadfastly refused to provide information supporting their hypothesis, even after more than forty legal Freedom of Information requests were filed requesting their climate data and methods. Explain the East Anglia emails, in which those same individuals strategize on ways to withhold information from other scientists. Explain why they admit to simply fabricating large swathes of climate temperature data in order to fit their conclusions. Explain why they are so full of hatred at those asking for their data that they state that they will destroy the data rather than share it.
Your claim that “nobody uses the Scientific Method” needs a citation. Who is teaching you this, ryancmc? Is it in a textbook? Cite the book. What science course teaches that? What is the name of the instructor?
Or, like the email admission in the Harry_read_me text, did you just make that up as you went along?
I don’t think it’s really necessary to get into too much detail about the scientific method used or not used at CRU. From what the world has learned from the emails and Fortran code, the “methods” used where horrible – as described by the programmer in the code comments. Speaking for myself, I don’t trust a single claim that comes from CRU or any of this current crop of like minded political activists. They have zero credibility with me and are highly suspect in their motives.
*shakes head*
Again I’m talking about the formal scientific method. The specific and formal 7 step process.
I’m very familiar with Feynman, and couldn’t agree more.
“Try to credibly explain why the CRU scientists and Michael Mann have steadfastly refused to provide information supporting their hypothesis,”
lol if it’s a hypothesis then it hasn’t been tested right? Following that ole scientific method then they aren’t required to share until step 7, right?
“even after more than forty legal Freedom of Information requests were filed requesting their climate data and methods. Explain the East Anglia emails, in which those same individuals strategize on ways to withhold information from other scientists. Explain why they are so full of hatred at those asking for their data that they state that they will destroy the data rather than share it.”
Actually I’m pretty sure it was WAY more than 40 info requests. The hatred and disgust of these scientists comes from what they’re subjected to b/c of these conspiracy theory groups. Imagine trying to work when you’re complete inundated with these requests generated by every nut with a computer. Pretty much the exact same tactics Biologists deal with from the religious nuts, and that historians deal with from the Holocaust deniers. I’d be ticked off too.
“Explain why they admit to simply fabricating large swathes of climate temperature data in order to fit their conclusions.”
lol – I must have missed something big here.
ryancmc (18:33:05)
Despite your denials and attempts to hand-wave away your rejection of the Scientific Method by claiming to understand Feynman, when you obviously do not, you also conflate hypothesis with conjecture: “lol if it’s a hypothesis then it hasn’t been tested right?”
Wrong. Hypotheses are continually tested – as are conjectures, theories and laws. Newton’s Law of Gravity is being tested today, in the search for the Higgs boson.
At any point in the Scientific Method continuum, if a hypothesis or theory is falsfied, it is not scientific truth. Furthermore, there is no bright line dividing a conjecture from a hypothesis, or a hypothesis from a theory. They form an ascending verification of the starting conjecture, which is based on observation.
In fact, tesatability is a primary requirement of the Scientific Method:
As Mark Miller notes above: “What’s scary about this is you’re so matter of fact about it, which leads me to suspect you’re being taught this in school. Let me clue you in on something. If the scientific method is not being used, it’s not science.” You avoid corroborating your claim that, in your words, “nobody uses the scientific method,” by refusing to cite a textbook, a teacher, or a school that taught you that. Maybe you just made it up as you went along.
You also buy into the easily debunked excuse put out by the corrupt CRU scientists, claiming that they cannot accommodate all the requests for their data and methodologies because of all the time it would take. It is easy to show their mendacity:
They can very easily publicly archive all of their raw and adjusted data, methods, and code on a website with a few mouse clicks, and leave a link so anyone interested can click on it for the information. Instead, they tap-dance around, trying to explain to everyone how hard it would be. What they really mean is that they do not want to allow the taxpayers, who paid for their work product, to have access to it. Why not? Obviously, because their CO2=CAGW hypothesis would be promptly falsified, destroying what is left of their already tarnished reputations.
Recently, they have invented the excuse that they have agreements that forbid their sharing of information – even though they have already shared the same information with numerous friendly entities – and the journals they publish their studies in require that they provide their data and methods. [The same journals neglected to enforce their own ethics requirement in this regard. But then, as Prof Wegman pointed out in the Wegman Report to Congress, they’re all in the same clique].
The CRU crew refuse to disclose those putative “agreements”, as if they were protecting nuclear defense secrets, rather than weather records. Demands to see copies of any signed and dated agreements have been met with obfuscation and more stonewalling. If there are agreements, they should produce them. No doubt they are furiously attempting to fabricate and back-date such “agreements.” And why not? They have already admitted, in writing, to fabricating temperature data.
Your constant references to ‘conspiracy theory groups’ is a fine example of a red herring argument. Attempting to re-frame our questions to you in a way that hopefully lets you off the hook doesn’t work here. To the best of my knowledge, there are no ‘conspiracy theory groups.’ There are simply other scientists who wish to validate the claims. If you know of any conspiracy theory groups, please let us in on their identities.
Finally, you did miss something big, if you didn’t read the eastanglia emails and the Harry_read_me text. I suggest that you get up to speed by reading the highly incriminating files contained in the links here.
Gail Combs (05:00:56) : “COOKING THE BOOKS: Hansen’s changing temps:”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from/mean:6/to:2010/plot/gistemp/mean:6/offset:-0.25
Hansen cooked the books to show a warming, and managed to get it to line up with what the satellite record was going to show before they were launched about 1978. Neat trick! Very prescient!
“The homogenization of the temperature data”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
“One analysis was for the full USHCN version 2 data set. The other used only USHCN version 2 data from the 70 stations that surfacestations.org classified as good or best. We would expect some differences simply due to the different area covered: the 70 stations only covered 43% of the country with no stations in, for example, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee or North Carolina. Yet the two time series, shown below as both annual data and smooth data, are remarkably similar.”
Without knowing a priori which stations Watts & his buddies would select as “good”, Hansen managed to ‘homogenize’ the data so that all stations and the good stations show nearly identical trends and variation. Another neat trick!, The man’s a mindreading genius!
“I think the most honest “opinion” is the noise is greater than the signal and we need to do a lot more research.”
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/cet_vs_co2-Tfyq5.jpg Do you just see noise, or can you see a signal? If you have the raw data, readily available on the net without an FOIA request, you can plug it into Excel and get your very own confirmation of the correlation coefficient. If you need help understanding the math (like I do – I’m a college dropout because my math skills suck), try http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/. It would be good to know whether the temperature rise with 2X CO2 is 2 or 4.5 degrees, and a lot more research IS being done.
mandolinjon (13:30:28) :”…raw temperature data appear to be contaminated and or lost by the researchers at CRU. ”
A few links to just some of the allegedly “hidden”, “lost”, “contaminated” but freely downloadable data and code can be found at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ – all they have is the following:
Climate data (raw)
* GHCN v.2 (Global Historical Climate Network: weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation)
* USHCN US. Historical Climate Network (v.1 and v.2)
* World Monthly Surface Station Climatology UCAR
* Antarctic weather stations
* European weather stations (ECA)
* Italian Meterological Society IMS
* Satellite feeds (AMSU, SORCE (Solar irradiance), NASA A-train)
* Tide Gauges (Proudman Oceanographic Lab)
* World Glacier Monitoring Service
* Argo float data
* International Comprehensive Ocean/Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Oceanic in situ observations)
* AERONET Aerosol information
Climate data (processed)
* Surface temperature anomalies (GISTEMP (see also Clear Climate Code), HadCRU (alternate site), NOAA NCDC, JMA)
* Satellite temperatures (MSU) (UAH, RSS)
* Sea surface temperatures (Reynolds et al, OI)
* Stratospheric temperature
* Sea ice (Cryosphere Today, NSIDC, JAXA, Bremen, Arctic-Roos, DMI)
* Radiosondes (RAOBCORE, HadAT, U. Wyoming, RATPAC, IUK, Sterin (CDIAC), Angell (CDIAC) )
* Cloud and radiation products (ISCCP, CERES-ERBE)
* Sea level (U. Colorado)
* Aerosols (AEROCOM, GACP)
* Greenhouse Gases (AGGI at NOAA, CO2 Mauna Loa, World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases, AIRS CO2 data (2003+))
* AHVRR data as used in Steig et al (2009)
* Snow Cover (Rutgers)
* GLIMS glacier database
* Ocean Heat Content (NODC)
* GCOS Essential Climate Variables Index
Paleo-data
* NOAA Paleoclimate
* Pangaea
* GRIP/NGRIP Ice cores (Denmark)
* GISP2 (note that the age model has been updated)
* National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC)
Paleo Reconstructions (including code)
* Reconstructions index and data (NOAA)
* Mann et al (2008) (also here, Mann et al (2009))
* Kaufmann et al (2009)
* Wahl and Ammann (2006)
* Mann et al (1998/1999)
Large-scale model (Reanalysis) output
These are weather models which have the real world observations assimilated into the solution to provide a ‘best guess’ of the evolution of weather over time (although pre-satellite era estimates (before 1979) are less accurate).
* ERA40 (1957-2001, from ECMWF)
* ERA-Interim (1989 – present, ECMWF’s latest project)
* NCEP (1948-present, NOAA), NCEP-2
* MERRA NASA GSFC
* JRA-25 (1979-2004, Japanese Met. Agency)
* North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR)
Large-scale model (GCM) output
These is output from the large scale global models used to assess climate change in the past, and make projections for the future. Some of this output is also available via the Data Visualisation tools linked below.
* CMIP3 output (~20 models, as used by IPCC AR4) at PCMDI
* GISS ModelE output (includes AR4 output as well as more specific experiments)
* GFDL Model output
Model codes (GCMs)
Downloadable codes for some of the GCMs.
* GISS ModelE (AR4 version, current snapshot)
* NCAR CCSM(Version 3.0, CCM3 (older vintage))
* EdGCM Windows based version of an older GISS model.
* Uni. Hamburg (SAM, PUMA and PLASIM)
* NEMO Ocean Model
* GFDL Models
* MIT GCM
Model codes (other)
This category include links to analysis tools, simpler models or models focussed on more specific issues.
* Rahmstorf (2007) Sea Level Rise Code
* ModTran (atmospheric radiation calculations and visualisations)
* Various climate-related online models (David Archer)
* Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) (FUND, FAIR, DICE, RICE)
* CliMT a Python-based software component toolkit
* Pyclimate Python tools for climate analysis
* CDAT Tools for analysing climate data in netcdf format (PCMDI)
* RegEM (Tapio Schneider)
* Time series analysis (MTM-SVD, SSA-MTM toolkit, Mann and Lees (1996))
Data Visualisation and Analysis
These sites include some of the above data (as well as other sources) in an easier to handle form.
* ClimateExplorer (KNMI)
* Dapper (PMEL, NOAA)
* Ingrid (IRI/LDEO Climate data library)
* Giovanni (GSFC)
* Wood for Trees: Interactive graphics (temperatures)
* IPCC Data Visualisations
* Regional IPCC model output
* Climate Wizard
Master Repositories of Climate Data
Much bigger indexes of data sources:
* Global Change Master Directory (GSFC)
* PAGES data portal
* NCDC (National Climate Data Center)
* IPCC Data
* Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Lab: Atmospheric trace gas concentrations, historical carbon emissions, and more
* CRU Data holdings
* Hadley Centre Observational holdings
If you asked someone who can use google and distinguish propaganda from facts, there’s lots more actual data, software, and real science out there to be found. They’ll probably be more helpful if you don’t start out with accusations of fraud, wrongdoing, scientific misconduct or motivations of greed.
Doug S (18:20:37) : “Speaking for myself, I don’t trust a single claim that comes from CRU or any of this current crop of like minded political activists. They have zero credibility with me and are highly suspect in their motives.” Do you know how many of the 928 papers that Oreskes analyzed came solely from CRU scientists? Do you really think that every scientist since Arrhenius who studied climate and concluded more CO2 would cause global warming has ZERO credibility or suspect motives?
A book in agreement with that perspective is Henry Bauer’s Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, available here: http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Literacy-Myth-Method/dp/0252064364/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263190613&sr=1-4
Brian Dodge (22:18:47) :
Brian, how can one possibly have any confidence in the team of people that have cooked the books and sold the entire world on false, catastrophic predictions? I’m sure there’s good science commingled with the manufactured results but how in the world can the public know what is good and what is fiction? These “scientists” have thrown away their credibility and their careers IMO. Really sad, actually.
Brian Dodge (22:18:47)
“Do you really think that every scientist since Arrhenius who studied climate and concluded more CO2 would cause global warming has ZERO credibility or suspect motives?”
Not necessarily – the general consensus here is that they are just wrong.
The vitriolic character of much of the skeptical criticism of AGW is an understandable reaction to the arrogant and bombastic nature of the claims of certainty concerning global warming, combined with the incontrovertible political chicanery that has openly set out to suppress scientific development and communication of skeptical viewpoints and hypotheses. Among the many scientist posters on this site are some whose funding has been cut for not singing the praises of AGW whole-heartedly enough. (Analagous to the fate of Roman courtiers failing to praise Nero’s musical recitations with enough enthusiasm.) The existence of this web site points to the impossibility of such suppression.
Smokey (20:20:22) : “To the best of my knowledge, there are no ‘conspiracy theory groups.’”
Perhaps it would be enlightening for you to see a financial network analysis by the good Prof Wegman on the ties between Exxon, Lindzen, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Baliunas, the Friends of Science, Balling, the Cato institute, Singer, the American Petroleum Institute, Monckton, and the rest of their cronies[what you might call a “clique”]. Of course, there are plenty of deluded denialists willing to do their dirty work for free.
Doug S (22:59:59) :
According to http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html the people listed below are the top 50 most cited scientists who have written on climate change. They have published thousands of papers and been cited tens of thousands of times. Not one of them is skeptical of global warming. Almost half have signed an “activist” statement.
Which of these scientists will you go on record accusing that they have cooked the books, made false statements, and/or thrown away their credibility and their careers?
Please cite specific instances – e.g.”G. Gerlich and R. D. Tscheuschner in “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within The Frame Of Physics”, International Journal of Modern Physics B Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275-364 made the false claim that radiation from cooler layers of the atmosphere to the warmer ground is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.”
Sir Robert M May
Sir John Sulston
David Tilman
F Stewart Chapin
Jean Jouzel
Stuart Pimm
Sir John T Houghton
Robert Costanza
Kevin E Trenberth
William H Schlesinger
Sir Nicholas J Shackleton
David S Jenkinson
Gerard Bond
Paul Falkowski
Chris Field
Robert W Howarth
Minze Stuiver
Peter H Raven
J Michael Wallace
Joseph A Berry
James E Hansen
James W Hurrell
Jane Lubchenco
Dennis V Kent
William J Parton
Jonathan M Gregory
Charles David Keeling
Philip D Jones
Gerald A Meeh
David Schimel
John FB Mitchell
Peter Liss
Kelly Chance
Stephen Pacala
Michael Hulme
Peter J Webster
Sydney Levitus
Richard W Reynolds
Georges Bonani
Steven C Wofsy
Tom ML Wigley
David Rind
John F Nye
Gene E Likens
Wally S Broecker
Tomomi Yamada
Brent Holben
David W Schindler
Inez Fung
William D Nordhaus
Peter B Reich
Brian Dodge (01:09:20) :
“According to http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html the people listed below are the top 50 most cited scientists who have written on climate change.”
So Brian by your own admission there are only a handful of scientists producing most of the support for the already falsified hypothesis of man-made global warming. It is also proved that this hypothesis has no predictive power.
Many of the names on your list are part of the CRU/Hadley/GISS/IPCC cabal, and as the Climategate papers show, their methods and practice behind their work can no longer be trusted. They colluded to try hide the raw individual thermometer & other proxy data, they tried to avoid FOI requests, they tried to subvert the peer review process and colluded with the MSM to promote their failed hypothesis.
There is no evidence for CAGW, the scientists behind the scam have been discredited, so I’m puzzled why you and the rest of the CAGW brigade still cling to your false belief?
Tom P
I plotted and lined up the HadCRUT data (only first 11 months for 2009) over top of the IPCC’s AR4 TS-26 graph.
http://users.vianet.ca/paulak2r/AGW/ipcc_ar4_ts-26.JPG
Assuming the IPCC did the original graph correctly, this graph is correct as well without the spaghetti of several lines from woodfortrees.
The last 6 years are all below the scenario lines. This ‘lack of warming’ for such a long period is what worries the IPCC. Six years is too long for all of the forcings that the IPCC included without a significant volcanic eruption. Even four years is too long.
John M Reynolds
Tenuc (02:58:30) :
Good question. I think Brian Dodge is deliberately disregarding the very incriminating evidence contained in the leaked emails. He’s another believer in conspiracy groups out to get him, when it’s simply a matter of right and wrong.
Brian Dodge actually seems to believe that those people, who were caught strategizing on how to control and subvert the peer review process, who worked behind the scenes keep skeptical viewpoints out of journals, and who ran other scientists off of editorial boards simply because they expressed skepticism, were just honest scientists trying to warn the populace of climate armageddon. He can’t believe they could have been crying “Wolf!!” for fame and fortune. Sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
And it’s interesting that Brian is given the opportunity to post here, and link to his echo chamber over at realclimate – which would promptly censor his comments if they were skeptical of CAGW. People routinely comment here that their views are censored at RC, which is run on taxpayer-paid time by the same taxpayer-paid censors who were caught up in the East Anglia email net. How does that doublethink compute with Brian? Here’s how:
Down is Up, War is Peace, Black is White, Freedom is Slavery, Evil is Good, Ignorance is Strength…
Cognitive dissonance. The hallmark of the true believer.
Brian Dodge (01:09:20) :
Thanks for the list. It may prove useful.
jmrSudbury (03:56:57) :
“I plotted and lined up the HadCRUT data (only first 11 months for 2009) over top of the IPCC’s AR4 TS-26 graph.”
There’s no temperature data after 2005 in the plot you link to, though I’m sure the IPCC figure is correct.
“The last 6 years are all below the scenario lines. This ‘lack of warming’ for such a long period is what worries the IPCC.”
Really?
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/811/ipccprojections.png
Tom P
What are you talking about? There are temperature data after 2005 because I put them on.
Here is that graph link again in case you clicked on the wrong link:
http://users.vianet.ca/paulak2r/AGW/ipcc_ar4_ts-26.JPG
Since you are only fisking, let me know when you check the above link.
John M Reynolds
Brian Dodge (01:09:20) :
Brian, I do appreciate your responses. I don’t want to fall into the trap of having a closed mind on any of these very complex issues. Still, for me the underlying issue is credibility of the people out on the tip of the AGW spear making claims in public “the science is settled”. The science is settled?! From the little I have been able to glean from this and other excellent blogs and the very knowledgeable people, perhaps some of those you referenced, the science seems to be far from settled. The climate and weather appear to be a very, very complex systems with many of the individual components fairly well understood but the interaction between these components are largely unknown. Fool me once shame on them, fool me twice shame on me.
>> Brian Dodge (23:34:17) :
Perhaps it would be enlightening for you to see a financial network analysis by the good Prof Wegman on the ties between Exxon, Lindzen, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Baliunas, the Friends of Science, Balling, the Cato institute, Singer, the American Petroleum Institute, Monckton, and the rest of their cronies[what you might call a “clique”].<<
If you are going to delve into the realm of ad hominem attacks, which seems to be the fall-back position of the CO2-hater crowd when their scientific arguments fail, you might note that Big Government spends a thousand times more every year than Big Oil has spent total. Could you please give a subset of the 50 names you listed who have received less money from Big Government than the amount (say) Lindzen received from Big Oil?
jmrSudbury (05:56:43) :
OK – I see – it’s the little grey balls. A key might have helped…
All you’ve done is to replot a figure linked to in a comment several days ago: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
But that figure gives some important additional information that is not included in your overlay. From the 95% confidence limits of the grey envelope you can see both HadCRUT and GISTEMP are currently well within one standard deviation of the mean IPCC AR4 projection. Why on earth do you think this “worries the IPCC”?
>> Tom P (10:01:47) :
You are mistaken. As it quite clearly states in the Pielke reference these are the “IPCC global average temperature predictions from 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007.” <<
I see four straight lines drawn through the data existing at the time the lines were drawn. Did the IPCC really just predict straight lines?
In any case, my point stands; the predictions appear better than they really are because much of the plot shows them matched against the backfitted measurements. Just view the predictions against the measurements taken AFTER each line is drawn. 1995 looks pretty good, but is also the lowest of the predictions; if it's right we have an insignificant 1.8 degrees warming by 2100.
Brian Dodge (20:41:06) Thank you for your helpful response to my query. I am guilty of reacting to the many comments made on this blog and others concerning the relaibility of raw temperature data. Perhaps only Mann and the CRU are guilty of using data for which the equipment was not calibrated or for which the site was subject to errors. I greatly appreciate the time you took to provide the list in your response to me. It should be a great help to many other bloggers.
Tom_R (08:37:12) :
“Did the IPCC really just predict straight lines?”
For shorter periods of a decade or two the IPCC projections are very close to linear. Over several decades the projections rise faster.
“1995 looks pretty good, but is also the lowest of the predictions; if it’s right we have an insignificant 1.8 degrees warming by 2100.”
With the warming of the previous century, that makes about 2.5 C in all. That’s a third of the warming associated with the temperature cycles of the ice ages, so hardly insignificant. Of course this assumes no acceleration in the warming rate.
Tom P
I don’t know what you are talking about. I made that graph this morning. Like I said, I took the IPCC AR4 TS 26 figure linked below.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-ts-26.html
That graph already has black observed temperature dots on it. They are the HadCRUT yearly average temperatures. I overlayed the same points as well as the years beyond 2005.
Are we on the same page so far?
John M Reynolds