By Steve Goddard
People see what they want or expect to see. A great example is in today’s NASA Earth Observatory image of the day article.
A heat wave scorched the eastern United States in early July 2010, straining power grids, slowing transit, forcing nursing homes to evacuate, and prompting East Coast residents to shelter in “cooling centers,” according to news reports. Temperatures topped 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) in Baltimore for two consecutive days. The heat wave was a global phenomenon. Beijing also experienced near-record heat, and temperatures soared to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in Kuwait. This global map shows temperature anomalies for July 4–11, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans, lakes, and areas with insufficient data (usually because of persistent clouds) appear in gray.
The author missed mentioning the fact that almost all of Mexico and Australia were far below normal. The author missed the fact that much of north and equatorial Africa was below normal, as was much of Asia and eastern Europe.
To quantify this, I did a pixel count on their high resolution image.
It turns out that 5% more pixels were below normal than were above normal. The animation below makes this easier to visualize. Red is above average temperatures, blue is below average temperatures, and white represents average temperatures.
Below are close up animations
This is not a perfect equal area projection – so the pixel count method is not 100% accurate. However, it is clear that NASA claims of a global heat wave are incorrect. Some places were hot, other places (like where I live) were cold.
The author noted that it is hot in Kuwait in July? What are the chances of that?
Spam says:
July 16, 2010 at 4:42 pm
“”A heat wave scorched the eastern United States in early July 2010, straining power grids”
You know, I do wonder how much of the “record summer highs” in cities in summer is due to air conditioning discharges.”
AHA!! The modelers should forget about GHGs. You have found the holy grail of climate science; the missing feedback mechanism!
Good ol’ summer temps
== turn on air
Temps go higher from AC exhaust
== turn up air
Temps go higher yet from more AC exhaust
== crank up the aire some more
etc.,
== etc.
Pretty soon you have runaway AGW.
Steve states: “The author missed mentioning the fact that almost all of Mexico and Australia were far below normal. The author missed the fact that much of north and equatorial Africa was below normal, as was much of Asia and eastern Europe.”
Yet the article clearly states: “…temperatures are below-normal for a large part of North America and parts of Eurasia.”
Steve said: “People see what they want or expect to see.”
Sure got that right.
Mann! it is absolute freezing here in South America LOL (so far -15C anomaly) BTW nothing out of the ordinary for “climate”
You may like it, Joe Bastardi may like it, but I really really hate La Nina because I have to live in the areas affected. Even Forrest Gump knows by now that La Nina correlates to much hotter temperatures on the east coast of the US. And yet, NOAA and NASA seem to have forgotten weather 101.
All of this reminds of me an episode of the Simpsons I saw today. The episode is Much Apu About Nothing. In the episode, 1 bear roams the neighborhood and an angry mob then demands a bear patrol, which they get even though this is the only bear ever seen in the neighborhood. Homer is then delighted the bear patrol is working. Here is the relevant part:
Homer thought correlation was causation. There were no tigers and there is a rock in the yard. Therefore, the rock keeps away tigers. But Lisa was right, that is spacious reasoning. The same with CO2 and that map. CO2 is higher and temperatures are higher. Therefore, more CO2 causes higher temperatures. That logic is just as asinine and spacious. And yet people want to buy the “rock” that NASA, NOAA, the UN, East Anglia, Michael Mann, James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, et al. is selling. How appropriate that the Simpsons parody the fallacy of such logic a long time ago. That episode was aired in 1996.
It is simply amazing that basic meteorology is thrown out the window for an agenda.
Jaymam: “NZ has the highest proportion of sceptics per population of any country”
Hmmm, I would be interested to see the source for that information. If it’s true, how did we get the most rigorous CO2 tax in the world? If it’s true, why did we only get 120 people to a recent march to parliament to protest against said CO2 tax?
Crap, now I understand why the three stage model rocket weren’t designed nor built by NASA. And why it took some high school students or what ever with a couple of hundred bucks to take actual new pictures of earth in a new way from space, almost anyway, like add at three stage non-nasa rocket to the whole weather balloon package and maybe a low orbit will be the next best thing before NASA gets all mental over peoples R/C satellite “Big Gun” battle. :p
Yuba Yollabolly says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:21 pm
“[…]
Yet the article clearly states: “…temperatures are below-normal for a large part of North America and parts of Eurasia.”
Steve said: “People see what they want or expect to see.”
Sure got that right.”
Good find. One sentence in the entire wall of text mentioning below normal temps, the rest talking about scorching heatwaves. Difficult to find, yet now NASA can say they’re objective. So we can say in the map there’s 55% below normal , in the text we have about 5% mentioning of below-normal temperatures. They know how to spin it.
S. Africa is shown as above normal, yet during the World Cup most of the world (outside of NASA) saw and heard how unseasonably cold it was. What’s Up With That?
WTG Steve!
“Global” temperature would include the 71% of the Earth surface covered by ocean. Nasa’s MODIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) operates on both the Terra and Aqua spacecraft. Since sea surface temperatures are available at the OCDPS, my guess is that we are only seeing part of the story (29%).
I’m concerned that you didn’t address the global water temperatures, especially the apparent significant increase in the Atlantic temps, which have the greatest reaching affect not only in area but in duration. Land temps come and go, but water temps linger on much longer…
“A heat wave scorched the eastern United States in early July 2010, straining power grids,”
I wonder how a grid using mostly wind power would have been strained.
They may lie all they want. Eventually all the warming doom they are predicting will not take place. Instead the world will wake up will nothing to eat since temperatures will drop. And as the Chinese have shown, these will be one of those triggers for a revolution. They want to impose a Global Government… they will get a Global Revolution.
Wade says:
Good post and Homer is hilarious, but the pedant in me cannot resist substituting specious for “spacious“.
Lisa: That’s spacious reasoning, Dad.
spe·cious
/ˈspiʃəs/ Show Spelled[spee-shuhs] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible: specious arguments.
2.
pleasing to the eye but deceptive.
this is such an excellent piece, perhaps it could do with a thread of its own:
17 July: Australian: Amos Aikman: Sorting Bangladeshi disasters from the fact or myth of climate change
Rising floodwaters and other evironmental problems cannot be simply blamed on the impact of man-made climate change
Already facing a surfeit of environmental crises, Bangladeshi policy makers have been quick to cry against global warming; environmental groups have sought to raise the spectre of climate migration. On the ground, however, the consequences of climate change are often similar to those of development, overpopulation and natural disasters, and it is hard to tell them apart. …
What’s more, many problems are complicated by developmental factors, such as embankment building that has produced apparent sea-level rise unrelated to climate change…
“The first culprit is the embankments, the second is the Farakka dam diversion, the third is climate change. Who contributes how much? That needs to be studied and looked into, it’s not a simple question,” Nishat says. However, even though Bangladeshi researchers are candid about such problems, environmental groups and Western media reports often ignore them…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/sorting-bangladeshi-disasters-from-the-fact-or-myth-of-climate-change/story-e6frg6z6-1225892653229
Guys: “ImageJ” from the NIH.
Google it, download it.
You can analyse pixels quite easily, and you can split RGB images into color components, and if they are of the right type, in terms of the color graph/numerical value, you can retranslate the images into “hard numbers” to be used in a spreadsheet, etc.
Take you about 10 minutes to download and set up.
Your tax dollars at work!
Max
The baseline is the 2000-2008 average. Thus, “cool” means cooler than the average for the warmest decade on record. And “hot” means very hot. “This global map shows temperature anomalies for July 4–11, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44664
People who do not read often end up confused.
So the reddish pixels have a value of +1 and the blueish pixels have a value of -1 instead of a scale of +12 to +1 and -1 to -12. By doing this you have removed all the weight represented in the original image. Yes, you have displayed the areas that were warm versus cool, but what is the significance of such a display when the weight of the pixels is discarded? I want to know how much hotter are cooler each area was. I can strip the weights myself by seeing all the blue or red pixels as two separate shades.
This is like having a limit of 8 people on the elevator. It is important whether the 8 people are elementary school students or 8 men from a Largest Men in the World meeting. That’s why the capacity on elevators is written as weight. Who is being weighed makes all the difference.
Though NASA map shows 5% more cold anomalies than hot ones, I wouldn’t believe their data.
As LightRain correctly mentioned above, everyone knows that South African weather was colder than usual in June, but NASA map shows it was warmer than usual.
Even when these Big-Brother-Tit-Milkers are forced to tell some of the truth, they lie.
A comment should be made on the one week they are grabbing out of the basket.
What about the week before, or the week after? My comment comes because it shows in red south of France where my son is, and I know that a bit before they were complaining of having 19C temperatures in the middle of the summer!
Glad to see they got Greece right.
Mike says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:18 pm
The baseline is the 2000-2008 average. Thus, “cool” means cooler than the average for the warmest decade on record. And “hot” means very hot.
—…—…—
Propaganda = The “hottest decade ever recorded” is at the top of a whopping 4/10 of ONE degree increase over a record low point in the 20th century between the highs of the 1940 and the 60 year later 2000 high. Gee. Less than 1/2 of one degree.
The ENTIRE global hype ( Obama’s 1.3 trillion dollar tax) is based on hype about a spotty 1/2 of one degree temp rise. And that rise doesn’t correspond to CO2 increases either.
hint: We are rising up from a low temperature of about -1.0 between 1600 and 1850. We are coming back up towards a high about 1/3 of a degree higher. Temp’s were warmer in the year 100-200 AD and in the years between 1000-1100.
Jason Miller says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:21 pm
The point of SG’s post is that NASA only focused their article on the heated bits of the Earth using hyperbole in order to make it all seem quite extreme. The question you should ask is why didn’t NASA at least balance the article by using the same hyperbole to describe the colder bits of the Earth. Is this a perfect example of an agenda at work here – do you think?
The data for South America is false. In Argentina we are having record cold temperatures. This July is a repetition of the 2007 July when it snowed in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918. It snowed again yesterday. It even snowed in the province of Santiago del Estero where it has never snowed!
Today was the coldest day in 10 years in the entire country, in all places. It keeps snowing in Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy, northern provinces close to the boder with Bolivia, north of the Tropic of Capricorn. And not only in the mountains but at low altitudes (300-500 m asl).
A temperature graph for my nearest city Alta Gracia updated to July 15th:
AltaGracia-15-JUL-2010
Any newspaper in Argentina is speaking about this unusual cold weather and the terrible energy crisis it has imposed on the country.
What I always wanted to know what is the point in reaching a “baseline” in temperatures.. And who cares how one week compares to said baseline. One week is weather according to our pals at real climate, and yet this is a press release about global cooking?
Just to be clear, I think the entire baseline is bogus. Baselines need much more data to even come close to approximate a baseline for temperature data. When climate moves at millenium scales and we have a baseline of 30 years….and we even discuss this?
I also tend to think, whats the point of having the most biased scientists in the world in charge of NASA temperature charts? Whether intentionally or inadvertantly through observer bias, those temperatures are at best “good enough for Government work” and at worthless.
Shrug, just things like the NASA press release make me want to rant.
What also is interesting about this article is the last paragraph. Note the first sentence:
“Heat waves often spark discussions of global warming, but it’s important not to consider a single heat wave evidence of long-term climate change; heat waves can and do occur in any kind of climate. However, climate warming is expected to increase the likelihood of heat waves. Unusually warm temperatures in May and June 2010 continued a long-term trend of warming, especially pronounced in the Arctic.”
Anyone who was using the east coast heat wave to continue spouting global warming (Michael Mann, Joe Romm, et. al. ) needs to read it.
But of course, the last two sentences have to give its ‘dig’ to a warming environment. Sure, in a warmer environment, one would expect more ‘heat waves’, as compared to cooler environments ( . . so what, nothing other than the obvious there . . .) .
Yet although unspoken, one can assume what they believe is causing the warmer environment . . . (oh, and though I haven’t gone back to look at any data, was the arctic really that much warmer in May/June?)