By Dr. David Whitehouse, the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Today’s Times says, “Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the skeptics.” However, a closer look at the information which the Times bases its headline on shows that a combination of selective memory and scientific spin play a large role in arriving at it.
The conclusion is based on a new paper written by James Hansen and submitted to Reviews of Geophysics. The paper released by Hansen has not been peer reviewed, and he admits that some of the newsworthy comments it contains may not make it past the referees.
Hansen claims that, according to his Gisstemp database, the year from April 2009 to April 2010 has a temperature anomaly of 0.65 deg C (based on a 1951 – 1980 average) making it the warmest year since modern records began. It is a fractionally warmer than 2005 he says, although an important point to be made is that statistically speaking, taking into account the error of measurement and the scatter of previous datapoints, it is not a significant increase.
The Nasa study said: “We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20 deg C per decade that began in the late 1970s.”
This is a selective use of a trend line that joins a datapoint in the late 1970’s with the most recent one ignoring the details in the data inbetween. The fact is that one could have taken a datapoint a decade ago and tied it to the same point in the late 1970’s and deduced an even greater rise in temperature per decade. So another way of describing the data is that the rate of increase has actually declined.
Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase.
In the Times article, the Met Office in the form of Vicky Pope, said that their data showed that the past year was “just below” the 12-month record achieved in 1998. Remember, 2009 annual temperature was, according to the Met Office, statistically indistinguishable from every year between 2001–2008.
Vicky Pope then says that Nasa might be right because the Met Office had underestimated the recent warming detected in the Arctic! There are few weather stations in the Arctic and the Met Office, unlike Nasa, does not extrapolate where there are no actual temperature readings. It is curious to hear this given the criticism that Met Office scientists have expressed in the past about the way the Gisstemp dataset is pieced together this way!
Vicky Pope does say however that, “the Met Office continues to predict that 2010 is more likely than not to be the warmest calendar year on record, beating the 1998 record.” This is also a curious statement since she adds that Met Office analysis showed that the four months to the end of April were probably the third warmest for that time of year.
In only the past few weeks however the Met Office has been saying something different.
In the Sunday Times of May 23rd Vicky Pope says that 2010 could be the hottest year on record due to the current El Nino. She also says that the 2010 January – April temperature was the seventh warmest on record meaning that out of the past ten years (allowing for the 1998 El Nino) most of them have been warmer during the January – April period, though not statistically so.
In the Sunday Times article Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, adds what is missing from the article mentioned earlier: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.”
In the Times article poor journalism is compounded with scientific spin from James Hansen’s article to give a misleading impression about the state of the science and what the data actually shows. It will be interesting to see if 2010 breaks any records in the Gisstemp or Met Office datasets. If it does the next question to ask would be, is it statistically significant as one would expect the occasional high point due to errors of measurements causing measured datapoints being scattered around a constant mean (the case post 2001). It would be highly misleading and scientifically fraudulent to look at one datapoint that is higher than the rest yet within the error bars of the previous years and say, “look, a record.” This will not undermine the skeptics but science itself.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
As I see it the planet is not at all threatened by the warming reported by GISS. In a world connected by the internet, GISS has had to move all the warming on their maps to places where there are few thermometers, few people and little wild life. Trying to report warming in places where individual citizens can check has caused problems such as the unfortunate Finland hotspot incident. GISS can continue their warming stories, but their claimed hotspots are going to have to continuously shrink and move further and further away from people, thermometers and the internet. Global averages are meaningless if real people are cold and crops are buried under snow. If the current trend in GISS temperature reporting continues, James Hanson will soon be telling us that the planet is warming due to a 100m diameter hotspot in the southern ocean that is hotter than the sun and highly agoraphobic.
davidmhoffer;
I ran 1970 to 2009 and plugged it into the same spread sheet. In that time period, there are 43 cells out of 12,721 that are in error. But there are 13,446 with data. What happened to them? Turns out the problem is in reverse. There are 768 cells with data at the beginning of the time period, but no corresponding data at the end of the time period. This is the case where the average fom the zone is supposed to be used in order to complete the caluculation, but loooks like it has not been done. So while the first problem was easy to back out of the numbers, this isn’t.>>
found it. nailed it. will take me a few hours in the AM to write it up and document it, but it even bigger than the first mistake I found.
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Thanks to Wren for the giss and hadley offsets. As you can see: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1985/offset:%20-.24/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1985/offset:-.15/plot/rss/from:1985/plot/uah/from:1985
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal. What’s all the fuss about?
==========================
I dunno. You tell me.
Looking at that graph…agreement or not…there is absolutely NO cause for alarm whatsoever.
So yeah…what is all the fuss about?
I guess the “chicken-little-alarm side of the debate”…is so accustomed and acclimated to fuss, fret, and hand-wringing…that it can easily spot it as well. 😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Owen
So you are saying that James Hansen has done a good job in handling data? Does he do a better job of it than laymen like Steve McIntyre? And he does as good a job of it as Roy Spencer
Are you also saying that James Hansen is not an environmental activist?
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal.
phenomenal—LOL—-you are funny
nice how your graph blends all the lines together so you can’t see the details. The devil is in the details, and that’s where you’ll find James Hansen’s handywork!
Owen
Did you know about these in James Hansen’s history:
1998—1934? And September/October 2008—you know, the hottest October on record?
Thanks
stevengoddard says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:28 am
“HadCrut has 2010 as #4 for Jan-Apr.
Hansen bumps his numbers up by extrapolating across large Arctic regions with no data.”
Perhaps they have installed anal thermometers in some polar bears to fill in this data gap.
This is why I think there’s a chance that 2010 will fall just short of setting a record. I’m hoping (and betting) that it won’t–the odds are roughly 75% / 25% at the moment on https://www.intrade.com — so if I’m right my short-side bets will pay off handsomely.
Incidentally, on a thread about Arctic ice yesterday, “The Undeath Spiral,” someone asked for the exact wording of Intrade’s bet on that matter, and was happy when I posted it. So here’s the wording of Intrade’s conditions on this bet, which you get to by clicking on the purple name of the bet and then on “Contract Specific Rules”:
Each contract is worth $10. If someone is “asking” 75 for a contract, it means 75%, so it costs $7.50 to “buy it (or $2.50 to “sell” it), and ten such contracts cost ten times as much. (If one “sells” the contract above one is in effect betting that 2010 is NOT the warmest year on the GISS record.)
Enneagram says:
June 3, 2010 at 11:51 am
“This is how the summer was before the first “interesting” winter, back in the Maunder Minimum times:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32396573/Witch-Hunting-Maunder ”
Thanks! That is extremely interesting historical perpspective. Extremely.
Roger Knights says:
June 3, 2010 at 10:07 pm
the odds are roughly 75% / 25%
I don’t think odds in gambling are based on what they think is really going to happen but on what will attract the most money to the oddsmakers benefit.
Al Gored says:
June 3, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Thanks
stevengoddard says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:28 am
No, no, no, Owen just said GISTemp is phenomenally comparable to all other data sets. 😉
Climate is said not to be the extreme one year or even many, but the long term change. So I have noted the last five years when the ice on the Lakes breakes close to my home in Sweden. I have also noted the dates when our appletres blossom. So far this year is three weeks behind all other years BOTH by the ice breaking dates AND the applestrees. Actually my trees are now in full flower, wich is last year was on the 12th of May. The year before was 6th of May and 2008 was also first week in May. 2007 though was early, in end of April ! When it comes to the ice breaking, all the way back in the 1960ies, the ice break almost always 16-19 of March, this year it was on the 12th of April ! I know this is NOT climate change, but we have had absolutely no warming that is for sure, we had some nice springs like back in 1991 when I went sailing on May 1th, was at sea for 6 week in the southern Sweden region, had about 25-30 degrees all the time. That has not happened since. This year for example we have now June 3rd, have had 2 days, (yesterday and today), with 20-25 Celsius. Global warming, I guess not here ….. We are all looking for it, wanting it, begging for it, but seems to vanish, hopefully with the taxation ….
harrywr2 @ur momisugly 9:46 am
I went to the link for gistemp you provided and then to the state of Washington. The initial sort of stations has (first) Wenatchee/Pangborn Field and (second) Wenatchee, both with population of 22,000. This is strange. Wenatchee is on the west edge of the Columbia River and East Wenatchee is on the east side of the Columbia River. They are different cities in different counties. Neither has (nor recently had a population of 22,000.
http://washington.hometownlocator.com/census/estimates/cities.cfm
East Wenatchee (2000 census: 5,757; 2008 estimate: 12,286)
Wenatchee (2000 census: 27,856; 2008 estimate: 29898)
The gistemp population in the table seems to be a 1990 Census number rounded-up from 21,756.
Use theses coordinates [47.398958, -120.208193 ] to locate Pangborn Field. It is on an elevated river terrace east of the urban area in a quite rural environment – except for being an airport!
It makes no sense to provide information when it doesn’t relate to the place indicated as done for the 22,000 population of East Wenatchee. Then, too they ought to update these numbers after each Census. 1990 is so last century!
Here’s something I posted about a week ago that gives more detail on the mechanics of betting there: The odds at Intrade aren’t set by the organization itself, which is a mere marketplace where individual bettors posts bids and offers (sell-short bids, in effect) on certain propositions, similar to bids and offers placed on the stock market. (I.e., the bettor specifies the price level and quantity of his bid/ask.) If a bid or ask is tempting enough to another bettor, he “covers” it, and the price at which he does so establishes the latest odds.
For instance, on the Greater Arctic Ice This Sept.? proposition, I currently have [no longer] a bid at 40% for five $10 “contracts.” (All contracts are for $10.) I had to post a margin of $20 (40% * 5 * $10 = 20). If someone wants to take my bet at those odds, he posts a “sell” order at 40 for 5 and posts margin of $30 (60% * 5 * $10 = 30). In October Intrade settles the bet one way or the other and places $50 in the winner’s account. That’s one nice thing about the site — the feeling that I’m punishing the other side (not a bookie).
Another nice thing is that if you change your mind on a bet you can sell it (or try to) at a partial loss before it goes totally bad. For instance, I could place a sell offer on my position at 30 and lose only a quarter ($5) of my bet ($20). You don’t have to put up extra cash to hedge yourself by buying a bet on the other side, the way you have to with a bookie. (Of course, Intrade charges commissions, but they aren’t onerous.)
Since April 2009 people around southeastern Pennsylvania have typically been complaining how cool or cold it’s been. Only within the past week or two has the “summer weather” shown up. But i doubt the average person could detect a 0.2 degree difference from a decade ago.
@Everybody
Amino Acids in Meteorites links:
major drop in global temps is around the corner, Bastardi.
Hansen knew that. That’s why he hastened to lobby at “The Times” without peer review. He links his (s)crap paper on his gisstemp site before his retirement. That paper mentioned his use of the OI v2 (Optimal Interpolation) for SST, even if partly covered with Sea ice (Reynolds et al, 2003, 2007). HadCRUT3 uses it for major parts of the Arctic Sea. And what does Hanson do? He deletes it and smears over it with “hot” land temperatures, as people like Bob Tisdale repetedly pointed out here and there.
Looks like the Arctic Sea is boiling with red magma according to Hansen’s: gisstemp map April 2010 vs. 1971-2000. Now look at the OIv2 temperatures of NOAA using the same baseline.
Everybody see the scam?
If you assume that year 1998 was hotter than 1997 (as most global graphs show) then subtracting 1997 temps from 1998 temps, month by month, should show when the heat started. Here are some UAH figures for lower troposphere over LAND :
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahland-1.jpg
The same treatment for lower troposphere over OCEANS:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahocean.jpg
Clearly, the troposphere above the oceans showed more increase than that over land. Mechanism? Unknown.
If I was comparing year 2010 to the “hot” year 1998, I’d like to be able to work out where the heat started and where it travelled to. I can’t.
Therefore, I would not even start to compare incomplete 2010 to the geographic spaghetti of 1998. Upstairs is for thinking.
Personally, I suspect that very big relative errors and false anomalies arise from lack of coverage of polar areas, by satellites as well as ground based instruments. In any case, the “correct” signal is often buried in the noise.
All temperatures are local. (Want to stop AGW? Vote!)
It could be for Tampa, Florida. I got curious about the ASOS at the Tampa International Airport and so I looked it up on Google Earth.
The first link below is to the GE image from 2007. The instrument placement is circled in light orange (lower right). As far as I can tell, in the same position since the 1990’s. Notice the aircraft making their turns onto the active runway, that becomes important for the the 2010 GE image.
Google Earth 2007:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/889495425_gfJYw/Original
And now in the 2010 image:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/889495457_tnKJv/Original
I bet on warmer!
Jose
@rw says: June 3, 2010 at 11:26 am
[ ]
“It’s almost as if Hansen and other warmists are creating Songlines – or Babblelines – across the planet, trying to bring Global Warming into existence by a collective act of will.”
You may be on to something there, rw.
On Wednesday I chanced to hear one of our favourite lunatic attention seekers Lewis Gordon Pugh (aka The Human Polar Bear) on Radio 4 together with Tony Benn and other luminaries. Listen to it on:- (don’t have a mouth full of tea at the time)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjmz2
Pugh (remember his fine achievement in kayaking to the North Pole [not] in 2008) now has a new stunt. He goes swimming in extremely cold water. So far he’s notched up a dip in a lake near Mount Everest and a swim actually at the North Pole. Thereby drawing attention to Global Warming. (Don’t ask how that works.)
The interesting bit is that, when asked by the wonderfully named Libby Purves how he prepares for this, he said he concentrates very hard on a time when he was very frightened and this raises his body core temperature by 2 degrees. [No! I’m not making this up! Listen for yourself!]
So if all the ecotards, fraudulent Climate “Scientwits”, dodgy carbon traders, scientifically illiterate politicians – not forgetting our own very lovely BuffHuhne – all concentrate very very hard on something REALLY scary (like a Royal Tribunal of Inquiry into the whole AGW scam) then they should be able to pump up the temperature of the planet and ensure 2010 is a record!
Sorry Roger Knights! I think you’ll loose your bet on this one!
ban coal, gas, oil, ng and all others forms of CO2 energy! sod houses and horses for all.
Hum, I wonder if Al Gore’s new house on the beach is safe from flooding, does anyone know? Maybe Tipper bought that one.
climatepatrol
June 4, 2010 at 2:30 am
I didn’t know he was retiring. So he’s getting out because he sees the handwriting on the wall that the earth is cooling and no matter what he does to manipulate the data he can’t compensate for it? Or what is his reason given?
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Owen says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
the GISS, HADCRUT, RSS, and UAH methods produce essentially the same temperature record – the agreement in nothing short of phenomenal.
phenomenal—LOL—-you are funny
nice how your graph blends all the lines together so you can’t see the details. The devil is in the details, and that’s where you’ll find James Hansen’s handywork!
=========
It’s easier to see the details in a graph of 2 temperature series than in a graph of 4. Notice in the linked graph how close GISTEMP and UAH are over the 1980-2010 period.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1985/offset:%20-.24/plot/uah/from:1985
wren
You said “After I put the four temperature anomaly series on a common baseline over at woodforytrees.org, the trends from 2000 look pretty similar to me. ”
The devil is in the detail. My post was about LEAST SQUARE TREND LINE SLOPE not visual appearance. The trend of the temperatures is different for the last 10 years for the four data sets
The basic difference can be illustrated thus . If hadcrut3vgl is driving at 30mph, rss is at 60 mph, uah is at 90 mph, giss is at 108 mph You can project this 100 years ahead and the global warming picture will be quite different. This is the basic problem .
CORRECTION
The graph for my previous post starts with 1985 instead of 1980. A graph starting with 1980 can be found at
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/offset:%20-.24/plot/uah/from:1980