Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In the US House of Representatives, there is something curiously yclept the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming” despite the lack of connection between the energy independence and warming. They have a very professionally done website, filled with some of the most outrageous misrepresentations imaginable. It is designed to promote the “Waxman-Markey” cap and trade carbon tax bill by means of the historically tried and tested “Big Lie” method, viz:
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
I’m going to take the website’s misrepresentations one at a time, as time permits. The first one is from a page entitled “Impact Zone – U.S. New England“, which contains this lovely photograph designed to tug at the heartstrings:
Figure 1. Photo of maple trees in New England, professionally chosen for maximum emotional impact.
The accompanying text says (emphasis mine):
Global Warming in New England: Slushier Slopes and Faded Foliage
Life and economic activity across New England is marked by the seasons – maple sugaring in the spring, trips to the beach in the summer, the riot of color of the fall foliage, and the swoosh of skis and skates in the winter. This familiar cycle is already changing in noticeable ways.
Changing seasons
Since the 1970’s average winter temperatures have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the Northeast region. If the current rate of heat-trapping emissions continues, by 2070 summers in Boston will feel like those of South Carolina today. By the end of the century, temperatures could rise up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit in the region. Cities across New England, which historically experience only one or two days per year above 100 degrees each summer, could average 20 such days per summer, while more southern cities such as Hartford could average nearly 30 days.
The character of the seasons will change significantly. Spring could arrive three weeks earlier, with summer lengthening by about three weeks, autumn becoming warmer and drier, and winter becoming shorter and milder.
So what’s wrong with that?
Well, once we note the conjectures (marked by the weasel words in bold), we see that most of it is nothing but unfounded, un-cited alarmist claims about imaginary future calamities. They have presented only one claim of fact – that winter temperatures in the Northeast Region have risen by more than 4°F.
Now, the USHCN has the data for all of the states, as well as by region. The Northeast Region is the data that starts with “101” in the first column. Figure 2 shows the temperature record for the four seasons, as well as the annual average temperature, for the Northeast Region:
Figure 2. Annual and seasonal temperatures, US Northeast Region. Photo shows winter surf in New England. PHOTO SOURCE.
As you can see, there has not been much of a change over the last 115 years in any of the seasons. The trend for all of the datasets is not significantly different from zero (winter p=0.06, spring p=0.15, summer p=0.34, fall p=0.68, annual p=0.06).
And more to the point, the winter trend over the last 40 years (1970-2009) is only 2.7°F, not the “more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit” claimed by their website. Such a swing is not surprising in a dataset such as the winter temperatures, which shows a 10 °F swing in one year, from 2001 to 2002.
But wait … there’s more. Because of the short length (40 years) and high variability of the 1970-2009 winter temperatures, the 1970-2009 trend is not significantly different from zero either (p = 0.12, a ways from significant).
SUMMARY: Their web page contains two misrepresentations of fact about US Northeast winters, two implied misrepresentations, and a big lie:
Misrepresentation of fact 1: the 1970-2009 winter temperatures have not “risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit”, they have risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no rise of more than 4 °F in the winter temperature record, no matter where you start.
Misrepresentation of fact 2: the 1970-2009 winter trend is not statistically significant, so we cannot reject the null hypothesis that there is no trend at all, much less a claimed 4 °F trend.
Implied misrepresentation 1: The US Northeast winters are not warming. Over the full period of record (1895-2009), there is no statistically significant trend in the winter record.
Implied misrepresentation 2: The seasonal temperatures in the US Northeast are not warming. Over the full period of record (1895-2009), there is no statistically significant trend in the overall record for any season.
THE BIG LIE: When you look at the full record for the US Northeast, there is no statistically significant trend anywhere. Neither spring, summer, winter, fall, nor the full annual average temperatures have any statistically significant trend for the period of the study, 1895-2009. And remember, this is measured by ground stations that contain spurious UHI warming, and there still is no warming trend.
The big lie is that the US Northeast is warming. The best records that we have say that it is not.
I will examine more of the malarkey from their web site as time permits, although the statements are so obviously untrue that it’s hardly sporting. It’s like shooting fish, not in a barrel, but in a bucket …
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Waxman-Markey: bigger than Bernie, and one Key Lay almost got away with. The damage from this one piece of legislation will put swan song on America’s epitaph. The perfect script for Civil War II.
A writer who uses “yclept” wins my complete confidence. I will now believe anything you say.
timetochooseagain says:
June 29, 2010 at 3:36 pm
[–snip for brevity–]The US Office of Strategic Services had this as part of Hitler’s psychological profile:
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
Huh! How about that?!
It begins to sound an awful lot like just about every politician in office in the U.S.
Certainly it does for BOTH my U.S. Senators!
Then there’s both the past and present mayors of Seattle …
And the Governor …
There’s a term here which bothers me: Sociopath.
See: http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
There ya go!
It looks to me, that they clearly have shown on that website evidence for Weather of Mass Disruption. Evidence which is fit for a demonstration at the UN Security Council, I may add.
Izzat raw or adjusted data?
“We don’t need merely to win the scientific debate. That appears done. This is a battle between servitude and freedom. We need national leaders who recognize this as a dangerous cult that is already bleeding our country dry. (And somehow, strangely embraces communist ideology) ”
Follow the dollars. That’s all Waxman/Markey are interested in, raising money, and transferring “wealth”. They need to fund their programs, period, and the budget is long since busted. They need new revenue, and CapandTrade is the means to that end…most likely the ONLY means.
JimB
TTCA
“I can’t believe you think that a rise that is not distinguishable from white noise is somehow important.”
Of course it is important. Every statistically significant result is the combination of results which are not, by themselves, significant.
The criterion of significance (95%) is the convention for making inference from that particular result alone. But that’s not what we have here. Temperatures rose not only in New England, but in many other places. It’s very likely that if you combined the rise in NE with a few neighboring regions, the result would be highly significant.
In any case, the rises from 1976, 1977 and 1978 were, for NE alone, statistically significant, according to this model.
Ed Darrell says:
June 29, 2010 at 4:35 pm:
One way to tell Eschenbach is practicing the Big Lie: He accuses others.
You just did it, too, and now so have I.
Well maybe it’s not true, but if it helps get the Wacky-Marxist Bill passed then it’s all in a good cause and therefore better than true in the minds of the deranged. [PS Ed Darrell – do you have any evidence refuting the post?]
You know Obama has been granted the power to shut down the internet for a period of four months?
Nick Stokes-“Temperatures rose not only in New England, but in many other places.” So what you are assuming, is that this cannot be a coincidence? Just asking. I am willing to believe that the fact that one location warms a non statistically significant amount, is independent from Global Warming, just as is the fact that the Southeast US cooled over the last century.
“In any case, the rises from 1976, 1977 and 1978 were, for NE alone, statistically significant, according to this model.”
Key words: “according to this model” As I said above, independent and normal distributed residuals, is a model which rejects the null of no trend pretty easily. Using a tougher test, those trends might not be significant. Indeed, I seriously doubt that the climate system, much less small portions of it, is best thought of as behaving as white noise by chance.
George E. Smith says:
June 29, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Please don’t lump New Hampshire with the People’s Republic just south of us. A statistical study several years ago found that NH had the highest per capita use of cigarettes and alcohol among the NE states – they neglected to look at our tax structure that encourages people to come and spend money. Cheap cigarettes (well, whenever MA raises cigarette taxes, NH does the same, but we stay cheaper). Cheap booze (due in large part to the state putting big stores in border communities and paying subpar rent in other places). High room and meal tax (about the only tax higher than MA’s), but visitors tend not to look at that when they make hotel reservations.
No sales tax on other stuff, no income tax (sorta – there’s a payroll tax and some much hated LLC taxes, need to work on that). We pay our state reps and senators $100/year (whether they deserve it or not) and give them free highway tolls and travel expenses – grudgingly. There are 424 of them, so a dollar each would be good deal.
We were picked over places like Montana to be the target state for the Free State Project, http://freestateproject.org/ and while the deal when a goal 20,000 pledges were reached before people moving here, several “early adopters” have arrived and are doing good things, both politically and economically.
While the state is far removed from the days when something like a third of state funding came through horse racing, we still have the lowest tax burden in the region, and get less than our “fair” share from Washington. Our unemployment rate is a bit high at 6.4% (North Dakota is 3.6%) (Vermont is 6.2%) so we’re only #5 out of 51 (includes DC).
And we have some really cool weather, though I like to comment that the few perfect days we get in the autumn make up for the rest of the year.
BTW, I think the text at http://globalwarming.house.gov/impactzones/newengland is a few years old. After a couple really snowy winters with great skiing, I don’t think I heard anyone mutter about last winter’s late warmth as due to global warming. The snow wasn’t very good either, but a lot of what we missed hit DC, so we’re not complaining. In fact, it was great snow.
That photo isn’t very impressive. Too early, too many pine trees, the Sun should be more from behind and lower to reduce the shadows. The patch of good foliage in the center is likely a bog or swamp. That’s fine, but it would be better if it were twice the size. The sky is nice, but a wide expanse like that makes some of the distant trees too small and indistinct.
Willis, many thanks for your thoughts on the Big Lie as used in propaganda.
In case anyone is curious about the source of the quoted text in the introduction of your comment, it is from “James Murphy’s translation of the unexpurgated edition of [Hitler’s] ‘MEIN KAMPF’ [which] was first published on March 21st, 1939 by HURST AND BLACKETT LTD.”
See: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt [You can find the quote in CHAPTER X, WHY THE SECOND REICH COLLAPSED]
Have a look at the details of propaganda strategies described in CHAPTER VI, WAR PROPAGANDA
Anyone who reads that can probably not help but think that many who — all scientific truth to the contrary — persist in spreading their propaganda must without a doubt have taken more than one page out of ‘Mein Kampf’ to heart.
Airplanes.
The USA surface temp is held down by them.
Contrails = Clouds = Cooler.
Golly: the Global change since 1974 has been 0.39 C. Not too much to offset.
Less than 1 degree F. — and 60% of that is the Pacific Oscillation/Sun. I think. Dr. Roy Spencer says 85%.
Alas, the Arctic Warming is 4 times the Global Average, courtesy of:
Cap & Trade (Diesel soot is “forgiven” but = black dots make Ice absorb more SUN)
Cap & Trade (Coal soot is “forgiven” if from China & not tainted by Evil Western Culture)
Cap & Trade (Sulfur, the “Great Global Cooler”)
– – – why didn’t we forgive sulfur ?
PS – – Planes are what we can use FAST, against the Arctic Melt-off. Over the Polynnyas = Open Water.
I have a friend who is a native New Englander and, until recently, totally bought into the whole “rising temps”, “rising oceans”, “the world is dying” crud being liberally broadcast by the AGW crowd and their groupies in the MSM. After listening to his “it is so much warmer now than when I was a kid” malarky, I got into the weather station project, located the nearest station, requested the raw data, and then dumped it into Excel and plotted the trend line.
No warming.
There is now one less parishener for the AGW church after seeing the “unadjusted” data. I regularly send him links to posts on the outrageous station locations and he is now a true skeptic.
A rise of the size p=0.06 will occur purely by change roughly one time out of every seventeen observations. The crucial question in assessing whether it is statistically significant is what size sample was examined to find this rise? Omitting this step is one of the most common ways that arguments about statistical significance are commonly abused.
So lets see now – there are four seasons and what – four/five regions? That is 16/20 different temperature records in our pool. It is highly unsurprising to find a p>0.06 rise occurring in one region in one season purely by chance in a pool this size. Indeed it is likely that there is also a p>0.06 FALL in temperature in some other region in some other season amongst this set of records as well.
What’s the Fuss?? Here is the NorthEast US Winter Temp Trend, from 1930-2010.
.1F/decade, basically flat.
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5vbWLK5dTl2ZGU0MjhjMWEtM2UxNi00ZDdhLWI0Y2QtYzI1MTQwNGZiYTAy&hl=en&authkey=CI7Gi8kH
from here
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/regional.html
Not only has any temperature rise been exaggerated; but so have the colors in the “Photo of maple trees in New England, professionally chosen for maximum emotional impact..” I’ve taken quite a few New England Fall color pictures; they don’t look like that unless you really punch them up in a photo editing program. So like most of AWG agitprop; its a fake.
“The big lie is that the US Northeast is warming. The best records that we have say that it is not.”
Sure, sure. But it could warm if we do not obey. Have you no respect for the Precautionary Principle? Don’t you care about the children?
Of course its a Big Lie. And a massive coordinated propaganda campaign. And it was working and for some it still is.
The subliminal effects are illustrated by this comment from
BJ says:
June 29, 2010 at 7:29 pm
“I have a friend… After listening to his “it is so much warmer now than when I was a kid” malarky”
I too have met lots of people like that. The power of suggestion combined with selective memory is a marvellous thing.
I’m certain that the snow was a lot deeper when I was four years old and three feet tall.
R. de Haan says:
June 29, 2010 at 6:38 pm
You know Obama has been granted the power to shut down the internet for a period of four months?
Well, you know? It’s not like he ‘needed’ said permission, what with all the other powers the idiots in that place have absconded with lately.
Hell, all they have to do anymore is write an EO and give themselves free gratis powers for whatever reason or cause célèbre happens to fit their game plan of the moment.
Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me at all that he’s already given himself the power to annihilate half the US to please his masters in the EU, and then blame it on Mexico.
Now, just so you know: Shutting down the net won’t help at all, inasmuch as personal computers can —and do— act as routers in the entirely local sense. So any such act by his wholly reluctant GOD-KING won’t amount to much, as THE WORD =WILL= get through.
It might take a day or two, but THE WORD =WILL= make it though.
here is a piece of NE global warming propaganda for you.
http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/oceansamp/pdf/samp/samp_300_climatechange_6.22.10.pdf
This a Chapter from a document the Ocean SAMP that will be a model for zoning offshore waters for designated uses.
This Chapter was recently approved with out much fuss and is based on the hockey stick, the IPCC, and temp stations that moved from the coast to the airport.
Check out the video of a public workshop here http://www.christocrats.net/?p=857 before the document was approved.
David M. Brooks says:
June 29, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Good to see you here! Here’s a photo, I’m pretty sure it’s digital, apparently from 2001, and that means my first junky digital camera, so you could blame the electronics for some of the color. OTOH, the spruce (left) lilacs, and grass look quite reasonable.
http://wermenh.com/images/autumn_tree.jpg
I don’t know if I have the original handy any longer. I’m sure I did no tweaking on this, but did look at some low level data. A lot of the brighter reds are saturated, something I’ve seen on Kodachromes of some flowers on Block Is off the coast of Rhode Island. The darker areas are not saturated. Gotta learn to take some under exposed photos of foliage and flowers.
The view is to the northeast, the sun is at my back, and pretty low. Both bring fewer shadows. Instead of a muddied sea of forest, contrast comes from individual leaves. I think the camera had no zoom and was fairly wide angle, hence there’s a lot of sky for the clouds to fill in. I much prefer cirrus for photos, but this cumulus did pretty well.
One annoying thing – the tree has never been this red again, it hasn’t even been very orange. Foliage biochemistry is so weird. Also, it’s been affected by that leaf spotting mold for the last few years.
BTW, the sun-at-your-back technique is one reason I think Vermont foliage is better than NH foliage. The Vermont mountains are lower and “softer” so a lot of roads go along the sides of the hills. In NH a lot of roads go through valleys, so you’re looking up. Also, the bigger mountains mean peak foliage is in a band that moves up slope during the season up to the spruce line.
That can be worked – one of the best NH photos I’ve seen is of Mt Washington from a bog in September. Bog plants in the foreground, trees around the base of the mountain, then spruce, then rocks, all topped with snow. And of course, a decorative sky.
The first unqualified statement that caught my attention was the segue from temperature rise to “heat-trapping emissions” viz:
“Since the 1970′s average winter temperatures have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the Northeast region. If the current rate of heat-trapping emissions continues,”
HaroldW says:
June 29, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Well, thirty years before 2009 gives us 1980. The rise since 1980 is 1.8 °F.
If we (carefully) cherry pick, the rise from 1976 to 2009 is 3.87 °F, still not 4.4 °F, and still not significant (p = 0.6).
Nick Stokes says:
June 29, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Not according to the USHCN dataset. In that dataset, the highest rise in the winter dataset is 3.89 °F.
You, on the other hand, are fond of putting words in my mouth. This is why I say that if you disagree with me, QUOTE WHAT I SAID. I don’t find anywhere that I have said that if a rise is not statistically significant then it is not a rise.