Tom Karl’s Trends Are Wrong – At Least in Slide 21
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
A number of bloggers on the WattsUpWithThat thread “Tom Karl’s Senate Dog & Pony Show – it’s worse than we thought, again” noted the curious errors in the trend lines in Tom Karl’s presentation to Senate. The one that stood out for me was slide 21, presented here as Figure 1. It showed the global land surface temperature anomalies and linear trends for the new (Version 3) versus existing (Version 2) Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset.
http://i48.tinypic.com/4j4c60.png
Figure 1
First Observation: The slide title states the data is monthly, but the data illustrated are annual averages. Figure 2 is a graph of monthly Global Land Surface Temperature anomalies presented by the NCDC from January 1900 to April 2010. Monthly global land surface temperature anomaly data should look like that, with lots of month-to-month variation.
http://i45.tinypic.com/5k3xjp.png
Figure 2
Second, there are two linear trends listed on the Karl slide. Version 2 is noted to have a linear trend of 0.83 deg C/Century, while Version 3 is claimed to have a linear trend of 0.91 deg C/Century. But the trend lines are nearly identical and they present linear trends of approximately 0.75 deg C/Century, Figure 3. The trend lines are erroneous or the values listed for the trends are wrong.
http://i49.tinypic.com/28iyyhk.png
Figure 3
Trend lines of 0.83 and 0.91 deg C/Century should be noticeably different, as shown in Figure 4.
http://i48.tinypic.com/346at1d.png
Figure 4
And for reference, the NCDC’s Monthly Global Land Surface Temperature anomaly data, Figure 5, has a linear trend of 0.78 deg C/Century.
http://i47.tinypic.com/142a1b4.png
Figure 5
And the the NCDC’s Annual Global Land Surface Temperature anomaly data, Figure 6, has a linear trend of 0.77 deg C/Century.
http://i45.tinypic.com/v4qvxl.png
Figure 6
Makes one wonder. If a simple comparison graph with linear trends is so error filled…
SOURCES
Tom Karl’s Powerpoint Presentation is available here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/download/Global%20Warming%20is%20Unequivocal%20TKarl%20May%206.ppt
A full-sized copy of Slide 21 is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/karl_senate_2010_pg21.png
The NCDC Land surface temperature anomaly data is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. If they can’t make a valid presentation slide to the Senate, what trust should we place in the data? If they eyeballed the slide creation rather than plotting it, then we can’t really say they were truthfully representing the data.- Anthony
Does not matter. If he had declared that the moon is made of robust green cheese the damage is done and they will never retract it. Glaring errors will be fixed under cover of darkness and for what the public hears they were that way all along. This is a staged event.
Again, speed or amplitude of warming (if there is one) is beside the point. What of that (alleged) warming is caused by human emissions of CO2? Where is evidence for that?
Andrew.
Will someone be able to pose the error to the Senate?
Mike,
Please explain the cooling between 1940 and 1980. Thank you very much.
I have a problem with Figure 4. Linear trends go through the point of means. So they should intersect in the middle, not at the beginning as shown. The basic point — that the slopes should be more visibly different — is a valid one. But the attempted illustration is not. Pick the midpoint of the time period, and then draw the lines through that point with slopes of .83 and .91, to illustrate the difference.
Faux Dr. Karl ought to start that trend from Roman warming period..
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.
——————
And how pray tell do you think they produced the slide. Do you think they did it free hand?
O’course….they might have. I do not think that it makes them look better if they did though.
Dang, not robust x2, not robustness x3, but now, because they got caught fibbing to the Senate(nothing will happen to them)….we’ll have to have the robustest x4.
All the slides show some warming. The world is warmer than when 1900 1700 1200? Who picks the starting point? The world has been warmer and cooler but purpose of this presentation was not that the world is warmer but man is the cause. Not that the earth has been warmer and cooler without mans inputs. Sounds arrogant to me.
Thanks for all you do at WUWT
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. If they can’t make a valid presentation slide to the Senate, what trust should we place in the data?
You’re using “the data” to critique the slide, aren’t you?
REPLY: No, the slide itself is erroneously self explanatory. -A
I think Mike is right. If you start at 1900, and end at 2010, you get a bigger number for the warming-per-century trend.
If the data are correct (big IF), then something on the order of 1°C of warming has occurred. But even if warming has occurred, that tells us nothing about what caused it, or whether or not it will continue, or whether that weather will be mostly good or mostly bad, or whether replacing carbon fuels with hyper-expensive alternative fuels will help or hurt … etc.
We probably ought to apply the precautionary principle, and be nearly certain of answers to those question, before we make any big changes. We do know with great certainty that the 1°C of warming so far didn’t hurt us at all, in fact the human race flourished as never before during that warming. So we can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that, even if we caused the warming, we still have something like another century to figure things out.
One century ago children died at alarming rates, mostly from biologically polluted water, famine was common place, and virtually no one had electric lights, air conditioners, automobiles, jet planes, computers, telephones, cell phones, microwave ovens, washers and dryers, flush toilets, sewage treatment plants, water purification plants, etc., etc.
We should be concentrating on improving the lot of those of us who still go to bed hungry, and who don’t have all the wonderful things we take for granted. In fact, shame on AGW advocates for taking attention away from that effort. We should be building power plants and infrastructure in the developing world, not trying to figure out how to make our power plants more expensive.
This GW debate rages in the absence of any real knowledge on the subject. If we had the answers to the important questions, there would be far less mind-numbing discussion.
Thomas
Tom Karl have something to do with the two sources on this?
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/2010-is-warmest-year-on-record/1
Shearer says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:09 pm
‘Faux Dr. Karl ought to start that trend from Roman warming period..’
And we have been treading down hill since then. I feel a big chill coming.
Oh dear, that’s distressing. I would never have imagined that CLIMATE SCIENTISTS did such sloppy work.
Mike said: ” …. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.”
But, do notice that all “corrections” also go up. The upgoing temps and CO2 do not correlate.
The new version 3 will have whatever trend Karl and Peterson want it to have.
If they want it to be 0.91C per century, it will be.
To meet the 3.25C by 2100 projection, the warming rate has to more than double to 2.4C per century in the remaining 90 years so they have to start making those “adjustments” now. [Including oceans it will have to be even higher].
The final Version 43 adjustments to be made in 2094 will get them up to the trend unless someone stops these two starting now.
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
At the rate of 1.0 C per century? So what.
Sea level data for 2010 now available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php.
Talked with one of the guys there a couple of weeks ago asking when 2010 would be included in charts and data. He said it was on its way.
He was right.
Nice guy.
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.
Please at least be a little scientific when here if you are capable. Linear regressions describe what data has done, or are you an insistent extrapolator. The proper way to term it is: the world has warmed during the last century, not the world is warming.
Now would be a good time to link to the various blink comparisons showing the first half of the 20th century before they removed its inconvenient warmth, for Mike’s benefit. Evidently, Karl, Hansen, and others think the greatest generation was too stupid to read a thermometer. Of course, Hansen’s generation never figured it out either as evidenced by the periodic adjustments upward of post-1980 temperatures.
Larry Huldén says:
May 19, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Mike said: ” …. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.”
But, do notice that all “corrections” also go up. The upgoing temps and CO2 do not correlate.
Not true. All the corrections for the first half of the 20th century were down.
It’s the Karl Urban heat island effect:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/
I noted the oddness of two virtually identical plots giving different slopes, but figured, what the hell, that’s close enough for climatology. It’s a good day for them if they manage to get the decimal in the right place.
It they will lie about something so easily refuted what else would they lie about? Certainly not about lost, manipulated temperature data.
Dave N says:
May 19, 2010 at 9:43 pm
It’s the Karl Urban heat island effect:
Dave logic dictates that:
1. Karl Urban is a Kiwi (New Zealander).
2. New Zealands NIWA says their surface temps are all going up. (Ever since Lord of the Rings. WETA WORKSHOP -> Volcano -> HELLO!)
3. Therefore Karl Urban is increasing the worlds surface temps.
Easy fix. Put Karl in the ISS in orbit, let them cope with 1 degree per century,….thats AGW logic for you…
Its Incontraverta-Robusta-Equivocal-able.
Looks to be done in haste, cobbled together at the last moment.
But the real problem is long before the graph stage, and that would be the hand-picked stations.
.6C / Century is more like it, and the NCDC does not show the accepted lack of warming the past 10 years. Up to 15 years, according to Phil Jones (and his raw data sets agree), as UHI is not universal to all cities.
UHI may have an upper limit. Has anyone digging into the raw data sets come across this?
I think Im about sick of looking at this highly dubious graph. I feel physically ill each time I see it.
Can some one just cut to the chase and plot me out the graph since 1998 and then tell me what the slope of the temperature increase actually is at the moment, so I know just what Im supposed to be in a panic about. To add a some bells and whistles, how about superimposing the rise in CO2 on the same graph so we can get a handle on what we are actually talking about.
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
It may be, or at least it was. Like I mentioned before, note the graph has 2 warm PDO phases and one cool, so it certainly should be going up. I’m fond of Akasofu’s hypothesis that the curve is from a periodic signal like the PDO and a straight line recovery from the Little Ice Age, so overall, things should be getting warmer.
Is is not evidence of anthropogenic warming. Are you concerned about AGW, non-AGW, or any warming at all? For that matter, are you concerned about cooling? I read today that an adult female gorilla and 3 or 4 baby gorillas have died in a cold weather outbreak in Rwanda. Over here, some 125 manatees died in Florida due to cold stress.
This analysis of temperatures is entirely wrong. He does not understand that during the century different temperature regimes have existed that cannot be thrown into the same pot and forced to become a single linear trend. Right off the bat, the recovery from the Little Ice Age took about a century and came to an end with World War Two. At that point there was a break in the curve and an almost horizontal, slight cooling trend set in. If you look at NOAA’s temperature curve that is in his slide show you will see it too. But NOAA shows also a warming trend that follows this horizontal segment, starting about 1977. This is Hansen’s warming but it does not exist because satellites see nothing but temperature oscillations during this period, up and down by half a degree, but no rise until 1998. These oscillations are quite real and are synchronized to the ENSO phases in the Pacific. Their mean lines up nicely with the horizontal temperature segment that started with World War II. This period ends with a discontinuous rise when the super El Nino of 1998 shows up. After it has come and gone a new El Nino warming begins to form. But this one rises 0.2 degrees above all the previous El Nino peaks and what is more, it refuses to come down when it is time for a La Nina to appear. As a result, we get a run of six warm years where temperature stays near what is usually an El Nino maximum. It ends with a La Nina cooling in 2008. I call it the twenty-first century high. None of this has anything to do with carbon dioxide greenhouse effect. The cause of the super El Nino was a storm surge that brought warm water to the head of the equatorial countercurrent near New Guinea. The countercurrent then carried it to South America where it ran ashore, spread out, and caused the symptoms of the super El Nino we observed. The twenty-first century high that followed was caused by warm water left over from the super El Nino. Presence of this warm water can be verified by SST records from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. While the temperature during these six years was 0.3 degrees higher than the mean of the nineties the curve itself is flat and must be fitted to its own horizontal temperature segment. The appearance of the 2008 La Nina signifies that the oscillating temperatures of the eighties and nineties have returned. I expect the current El Nino to be followed by another La Nina that should start sometime later this year, to be followed by another El Nino and so on. They are part of the ENSO oscillation in the Pacific that has existed since the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea. The upshot of all this is that since there was no warming in the eighties and nineties when Hansen said there was and since subsequent warming had nothing to do with CO2 we can say that anthropogenic global warming has never been observed.
AC of Adelaide says on May 19, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Since when have people in Adelaide become such pansies that they feel physically sick when they see a graph? I guess it’s good that I left in 2002.
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.
Oh yes, the data.
What is the probability of error in each measurement? That is crucial to know if you are going to start using statistics to pull the data apart. I can say blah blah blah about such and such, but what is the probability the data is right? Well, turns out you can just multiply the measurement’s probability of being incorrect together and come up with it.
If, and I am being generous, each measurement has ‘the standard’ LOS of alpha=.05, and the surface stations alone represent 1200 measurements, you have an incredible chance of being wrong. The proper way to determine your level of significance, or sigma as it it was once called by Lubos Motl, is to divide your desired level of significance by your number of replications. 2 measurements a day for 365 days a year times the number of places taking measurements would be your replications. So please, come back when you have data that has error margins that properly represents the .05 claimed by IPCC. As in .05/365*2*bs where bs=number of active climate stations. Then you have proved it to a 95% confidence level…
Oh puhleeze, as Anthony would say! Anyone who draws a straight line through these charts is deliberately, selectively blind. Try up, down, up instead. Response to more CO2 should be almost immediate as the atmosphere has little thermal inertia (unlike the ocean). These charts do NOT show what you would expect from more CO2. If you think that the warming is hiding in the oceans the heat flow can only to be from a warmer atmosphere into the oceans so the air temperatures has to show warming first. If the charts show anything, it’s that the slope is not due to CO2. Third rate ‘science’ from third rate ‘scientists’.
It’s either deliberate deception or a complete lack of quality control. Take your choice.
AlanG says:
May 19, 2010 at 10:49 pm
> Oh puhleeze, as Anthony would say! Anyone who draws a straight line through these charts is deliberately, selectively blind. Try up, down, up instead.
Umm, keep in mind the target audience were congresscritters. They can’t handle up, down, up.
rbateman says:
May 19, 2010 at 10:08 pm
UHI may have an upper limit. Has anyone digging into the raw data sets come across this?
Well, paritally and loosely. You have to go back to Dr. Spencer’s analysis on UHI and some ten thousand stations, the temperature vs. population density a few months ago. I believe it was his last chart of that series of articles which showed the logrithmic curve which implies that UHI will only continue to rise as a log of the population density. So if not viewed as a logrithmic chart it does appear to have an approaching upper limit.
That was a very good series on UHI by Roy. If you take the time to take his four data poins which represent a large number of station pairs and plot them in a logrithmic chart you will see something amazing. It’s a straigt line crossing the y axis between 0.2°C/cy & 0.3C/cy at zero population density. That’s impressive. Impressive in that it so closely parallels the sea temperature rise.
Richard Sharpe says: ……
May 19, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Guess I must be a pansy. And I soil my pants every time I see a “hockey stick” Guess when it comes to graphs I expect a bit of quality control. I’d leave here too if I could only find a place where they only print credible graphs.
Fitzy you are a kiwi too nice to meetcha
Thomas well said
1 degree warming per century since the LIA why are the Team getting their tits in such a tangle over this. Yes yes I know continued Government funding. Making their mark. Opportunity to publish papers in readily accetable journals blah blah. Thing that hits me is that nobody I talk to actually cares beyond their lifestyle and mortgages. Not withstanding this I commend WUWT and really appreciate Anthony and his millions of intelligent supporters that blog here and question the team. That includes you Mike who questions the questions.
I thought it used to be 0.6K per century in the IPCC report. How does it get to 0.9K per century when the anomalies have been static for over a decade? Is this the same bunch that calculate the unemployment statistics?
Gentleman,
For me, at least, this image (Figure 4) did not appear: even after several refreshes:
http://i48.tinypic.com/346at1d.png
[It came right up on my screen: “Confirms that global warming is robust.” ~dbs]
0.75 instead of 0.83!
Off with his head!
And we were lucky to have Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
We could have been 1.5 degrees warmer now than in 1900.
On the other hand you could say there hasn’t been no warming from 1990 to 2009.
I could also say there hasn’t been warming from 1900 – 1990.
And I could go on and on….
Explain the forcings that caused this temperature walk: http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/global.png
“snip” the “trendlines”.
Phillip Bratby says:
May 19, 2010 at 10:51 pm
“It’s either deliberate deception or a complete lack of quality control. Take your choice.”
Its both.
Next they will have a presentation on the economy and show the Dow Jones from 2002 to 2007. Then we can all rest assured that everything is AOK.
Basil says: “I have a problem with Figure 4. Linear trends go through the point of means.”
Figure 4 was presented as an example to show that the differenes between the trends of 0.83 and 0.91 deg C/century would be visible.
Mike says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide. But do notice all the slopes are up. The world is warming.
Oh? Go to the Number Watch website & look up Chartmanship. It’s all about start points, end points, vertical & horizontal scaling, suppressing the zero, etc. It’s all good fun this statistics game, is it not? Puter says yeah!
Mike G wrote: “Not true. All the corrections for the first half of the 20th century were down.”
And when the corrections cause lower temperatures in the first part of the graph, the trend increases.
Ric Werme: You wrote, “Like I mentioned before, note the graph has 2 warm PDO phases and one cool, so it certainly should be going up.”
Ric, through what process would the PDO warm and cool global temperatures? Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/misunderstandings-about-pdo-revised.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/revisiting-misunderstandings-about-pdo.html
Is there similar data/graphs for any other planets?
At the start of the Graph the year 1990 was it -0.4c below a.v.g then and if so how do they come up with that Temp?.
With regards to UHI, it would be interesting to analyse an urban area’s total energy usage in terms of watts/sq.m. Electrity, gas, oil (even wood), petrol and diesel – all usage immediately or ultimately heats the air. Could be a conclusive way of countering the argument that UHI contributes little to urban temperature measurements.
Mark.R says:
May 20, 2010 at 2:35 am
At the start of the Graph the year 1990 was it -0.4c below a.v.g then and if so how do they come up with that Temp?.
SHOULD SAY 1900.
AGW is real – its official – and so is anthropogenic sea level rise. Robust proof of this is easy: tape together two yard (meter) sticks and go to your nearest surfing beach. Wade out to waist depth, and measure the depth during the trough between two waves. Then as the crest of a wave moves over you, meaure the depth again, taking care to remain vertical.
The difference in height will prove sea level rise beyond reasonable skepticism. Better clean the sand off those yardsticks and hurry up with my ark building – its worse than I thought!
Locally cached on your PC maybe? I even saved the png image to HD and re-loaded the image by itself using IE6/Win98SE.
Maybe it is this PC (YABC – yet another backup computer) – will try a Win2000 platform w/Opera.
.
.
Addenda; it’s loading on this platform now (IE6/Win98SE) …
Mark.R asked: “At the start of the Graph the year 1990 was it -0.4c below a.v.g then and if so how do they come up with that Temp?”
They present the temperatures of what little data they have on record. For example, here’s a map showing the locations of the land surface temperature station readings for the year 1900 that were used by the Hadley Centre in their CRUTEM product:
http://i46.tinypic.com/315oas7.png
I cant understand why anyone is obsessing over quality of the regression and hence the slope of the graph when it is obvious that the whole slope is determined by the temperatures in the 1900 to 1940s period, before anthropogenic CO2 was an issue, and hence the whole slope of this graph is irrelevant to the AGW story. If this graph is supposed to show a link between CO2 and warming, it shows exactly the opposite. It clearly shows the warming trend was established in the late 1900s. I would have thought to see a CO2 trend you have to take that slope off and look at the residual.
Alvin says:
May 19, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Will someone be able to pose the error to the Senate?
Not in your lifetime.
All this demonstrates to me the futility of using straight lines of any sort when considering graphical representations of climate variations. Over the short term (years, decades) they are meaningless because of the ability to select start and end points to suit an argument, and are even worse as predictors of future variations, and worse still at recognising any simple or complex cyclic variation.
They do however have impact as marketing tools, especially when aimed at the lay public, and I suggest this is why they are so popular with the global warming industry.
Mike: You wrote, “Linear regressions are done on the data, not by putting a ruler on a crude graph from a power point slide.”
Apparently the obvious eludes you. If, when the linear trend line crosses the x-axis at the year 1900, the temperature anomaly on the y-axis is “x” degrees C, and if it crosses the hash mark at the year 2000 (one century later) with the temperature anomaly of “x” plus 0.75 degrees C, what is the linear trend per century?
Alvin: You asked, “Will someone be able to pose the error to the Senate?”
As of 9:00am eastern, I’ve only had three visitors from the Washington D.C. area open this post on my website. But my website gets a bajillion fewer hits per day that WUWT. If I get a hit from the Senate Office Buidling today, I’ll let you know.
Seems to me that we’ve recently been educated that applying a linear trend to a data series with a unit root is completely meaningless. Not only that, but if one starts the trend at 1880 instead of 1900 the warming will be the same and the meaningless trend will be lowered.
Someone who would present this kind of bogus analysis to Congress is essentially lying. Will Karl be prosecuted?
Mike G says:May 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Now would be a good time to link to the various blink comparisons showing the first half of the 20th century before they removed its inconvenient warmth, for Mike’s benefit.
Here you go: http://i42.tinypic.com/vpx303.jpg
Notice the past is not only reduced, post 1960’s goes up. Pinning the graph at the mid 60’s and rotating 6° CCW makes the new representation. This was revealed by someone here at WUWT recently.
Bob Tisdale says:
May 20, 2010 at 1:05 am
Basil says: “I have a problem with Figure 4. Linear trends go through the point of means.”
Figure 4 was presented as an example to show that the differenes between the trends of 0.83 and 0.91 deg C/century would be visible.
But it is still wrong, and presents a misleading result. If you have the lines intersect in the middle, as they should, then at the end of the period covered by the graph, the difference will not be as great, or as visible, as you’ve shown. Roughly (because the two trends are so close together), the difference be about one half what you’ve shown.
If we are going to criticize erroneous or gee whiz graphs with the warmistas use them, we need to hold ourselves accountable to such criticism as well.
I understand your main point, and agree. The original chart hardly seems to support the claim attributed to it. To those who criticized your method of calculating a .75 slope — “by putting a ruler to the paper” — I would defend your method. You didn’t create the trend line. You just measured what it shows, and with a defensible approach.
Responding to:
AC of Adelaide says:
May 20, 2010 at 4:30 am
I cant understand why anyone is obsessing over quality of the regression and hence the slope of the graph when it is obvious that the whole slope is determined by the temperatures in the 1900 to 1940s period, before anthropogenic CO2 was an issue, and hence the whole slope of this graph is irrelevant to the AGW story. If this graph is supposed to show a link between CO2 and warming, it shows exactly the opposite. It clearly shows the warming trend was established in the late 1900s. I would have thought to see a CO2 trend you have to take that slope off and look at the residual.
It is not obvious that the slope is determined by 1900 through the 1940’s. Linear regressions are heavily weighted toward the end points of the data. In this case, I’d say that the slope is very much influenced by the much higher trend from 1960 to 2010. If the slope of those years had been the same as the slope of the years from 1900 to 1940, the trend would basically have been flat. It is as positive as it is because of the more rapid growth in the second half of the 20th century. Now, that more rapid growth is partly bogus, in that it starts measuring during a cool period, i.e. 1940-1960.
I agree with the point that warming that began before the middle of the 20th century tends to undercut the AGW hypothesis. But if I were a proponent of AGW looking at that graph, I’d see — since human nature is to see what we want to see — that the trend from 1960 to 2010 was about twice what it was from 1900 to 1940. And then I’d say, okay, the earlier warming was natural, and the doubling of the rate in the second half of the 20 century is evidence of AGW. Which is pretty much the exact claim that was made in AR4. So it behooves anyone challenging AGW to answer that claim. Part of the answer is that the higher growth of the second half of the 20th century is inflated by measuring growth from the low point of a cold phase of a PDO to the high point of a warm phase. But I’m not sure that is the whole story. This last warm phase of the PDO (i.e. the period since “The Great Climate Shift of 1976” seems to have been unusually warm. I don’t think CO2 can explain it. But I don’t think it can be denied, either. Science still has a lot to learn about the forces that control and govern natural climate variation. One thing we all ought to know, thanks in the main to Roy Spencer and w., is that the proper null hypothesis of natural climate change has yet to be rejected.
P.S.
Some of the “inflation” of the growth rate in the latter half of the 20th century is probably do to data quality control issues. I’m not denying that. But I do think the last warm phase of the PDO was unusually “robust,” based on the frequency and strength of the El Nino’s of that period.
Thomas says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:31 pm
“….One century ago children died at alarming rates, mostly from biologically polluted water, famine was common place, and virtually no one had electric lights, air conditioners, automobiles, jet planes, computers, telephones, cell phones, microwave ovens, washers and dryers, flush toilets, sewage treatment plants, water purification plants, etc., etc.
We should be concentrating on improving the lot of those of us who still go to bed hungry, and who don’t have all the wonderful things we take for granted. In fact, shame on AGW advocates for taking attention away from that effort. We should be building power plants and infrastructure in the developing world, not trying to figure out how to make our power plants more expensive….”
_____________________________________________________________________
Thomas, you missed the whole point. AGW advocates want to turn back the clock to a time when serfs died like flies and the aristocracy had absolute control. It is all about greed and power.
“Here, in his own words, is what Strong wants for the middle class: “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary towards lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.” (1992 Rio Earth Summit 11).”
http://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/maurice-strong-and-george-soros-world-wizard-and-financier-personified/
“…It would have been impossible for us to develop OUR PLAN for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a World Government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual ELITE and World Bankers is surely preferable to the national auto – determination practiced in past centuries.” – David Rockefeller – June 1991
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Here you go: http://i42.tinypic.com/vpx303.jpg
There is no source for this data on the graph.
What temperature series were used to produce this excellent blink chart?
Mike G says:
May 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Now would be a good time to link to the various blink comparisons showing the first half of the 20th century before they removed its inconvenient warmth, for Mike’s benefit.
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Mike you mean these:
Hansen changes the data: blink graphs
US temp raw vs adjusted
Lucy’s super blink graphs
In this article: Lamb’s temperature graph presented in first IPCC report in 1990
The measurement error is so big that if you put in the error bars they would swamp any trends:
A J Strata’s look at Cru e-mails on temp data error
Mr. Karl just needs to go back and robustify his data.
How does all them mega temperature of point six, or .8, or point seven, or .nine, or what, go from kelvin to fahrenheit to celsius with a 1:1 conversion?
Or does it just exist so many different temperatures and time series starting at different times these days that they just get confused? Maybe they just pick one from the heap, adding the scale and time that’s hyped for the day?
Jay Cech says: May 20, 2010 at 8:22 am
There is no source for this data on the graph.
What temperature series were used to produce this excellent blink chart?
It is GISS.
Basil says:
May 20, 2010 at 7:40 am “It is not obvious that the slope is determined by 1900 through the 1940′s. …….”
Dont agree. the rising trend 1902 to 1940 is actually steeper than the whole trend line and establishes the whole basis for the future trend
On the other hand I agree up to a point about your second observation. But not 1960. If you seriously want to identify a CO2 component you really need to analyse the graph in two sections – one pre 1944 (before CO2 kicks in) and one post 1944. I believe 1944 is taken as the magic date. I dont know how they use this graph but its crap.
In any case since the “Show this to Jim then hide it” disgrace I have no confidence in any graph that is constructed from “raw” data. I prefer to look at the early IPCC graphs before the usual suspect got their hands on the data.
Thanks Gail Combs and others. I always have trouble finding those things when I want to show them to somebody. Now, I’ve bookmarked them (again).
That other Mike. I doubt they would help him.
Basil: In reply to your May 20, 2010 at 7:40 am comment, a correction has been made at the version of the post at my website and you have been thanked.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/tom-karls-trends-are-wrong-at-least-in.html
Well it seems this place is crawling with Kiwi posters; if Fitzy and James Allison are also from that crusty side of the Pizza. I see that my latest issue of “Ingenio” says that one Mark Sagar was responsible for that blue faced idiocy that passed for Aliens on that highly political Avatar rubbish. I can abide Lord of the Rings seeing as someone wrote a book; but NZ should dis-associate itself from the silly Avatar like message; before people think, we are all kooks.
Am I to understand that NIWA actually determines the Temperature of NZ from 7; or is it 8 owl box stations. Why so many; why not just put one owl box at the top of Rangitoto, and take its reading as a good average for the whole country. I would almost bet that such a reading would be equally as valid (or invalid) as a sampling of 7 or 8 stations would be. Don’t they teach the Nyquist Sampling Theorem down there anymore ?
And I wouldn’t worry about any runaway climate problems down there; why the hell do they call the place Aotearoa ? No chance you chaps are ever going to fry like Venusians; maybe the Aussies will; but then they deserve it. I mean anyone who speaks English even lazier than the Kiwi do; deserves to fry. Well all but my sister; who still has an NZ accent, and not onoe of those “wash your fice in a bison.” twangs.
If the whole idea of linear trends is to plot a straight line on a graph of data, that clearly is NOT astraight line function; then why not put a straight line thorugh the past and present Temps, starting at the pre-Cambrian 600 million years ago; then you will see what the true trend really is.
I like Bobs black graph in fig 5. I can believe that that is more like reality; I see absolutely NO point to the red line though it is apaprent even to a fifth grader; that the red line is not a good replacement for the black graph. Why are we paying so many climatologers to come up with measured observational data like Bob’s fig 5, and then we throw it all away by drawing a line with a straight edge. That is the ultimate in fudging data.
But then it seems like the GCMs are even incapable of reconstructing that straight red line from basic Physics; let alone recover the black real data that Gaia uses to figure out where to go next.
George E. Smith says: ” …NZ should dis-associate itself from the silly Avatar like message; before people think, we are all kooks.”
You’re right, but NZ is in the grip of Europe-like political correctness.
>Am I to understand that NIWA actually determines the Temperature of NZ
>from 7; or is it 8 owl box stations.
What NIWA did, was this: They took the 11 most-warming stations, and made it their control set. These are mostly obscure stations. They then took the 7 most prominent stations, located in the main population centres, and adjusted their temperatures (which showed no warming) to conform to the 11 control stations. They then parade the warming as hailing from the 7 prominent stations. Then, as justification for their adjustments, they trot out the 11-station control set and say “See? They’re the same!”. ROTFL
Where can I find GHCN-v3? I must admit, I am a little baffled by what I am seeing in the spatial distribution of adjustments in GHCN-v2: http://blog.qtau.com/2010/05/would-you-like-yours-well-adjusted.html
Pure speculation: Could the craziness on the map (post 1990) be due to the fact that they stopped updating GHCN-v2 adjustments in anticipation of v3? Or, am I doing something wrong?
REPLY: GHCN3 has not been released yet, in fact it has been delayed. Karl’s mention of it in his PPT is the first notice we’ve had of it’s results – Anthony
Thank you, Anthony. I have been trying very hard to figure out what’s going on with those adjustments and I thought I would check. I was afraid that everything I did with GHCN-v2 was useless because the NCDC had “moved on”.