UPDATE: The StataSphere server can’t handle the load of interest, I’ve take the images offline from this article, and disabled the link to it. Once he gets the server up and running again I’ll put them back – Anthony
Readers may recall this quote from Dr. Phil Jones of CRU, by the BBC:
Q: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
A: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
A.J. Strata has done some significance tests:
CRU Raw Temp Data Shows No Significant Warming Over Most Of The World
Published by AJStrata at StrataSphere
Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:
- 75% of the globe has not seen significant peak warming or cooling changes between the period prior to 1960 and the 2000′s which rise above a 0.5°C threshold, which is well within the CRU’s own stated measurement uncertainties o +/- 1°C or worse.
- Assuming a peak to peak change (pre 1960 vs 2000′s) should represent a change greater than 20% of the measured temperature range (i.e., if the measured temp range is 10° then a peak-to-peak change of greater than 2° would be considered ‘significant’) 87% the Earth has not experienced significant temperature changes between pre 1960 period and the 2000′s.
So how did I come to this conclusion? If you have the time you can find out by reading below the fold.
I have been working on this post for about a week now, testing a hypothesis I have regarding the raw temp data vs the overly processed CRU, GISS, NCDC, IPCC results (the processed data shows dramatic global warming in the last century). I have been of the opinion the raw temp data tells a different, cooler story than the processed data. My theory is alarmists’ results do not track well with the raw data, and require the merging of unproven and extremely inaccurate proxy data to open the error bars and move the trend lines to produce the desired result. We have a clear isolated example from New Zealand where cherry picked data and time windows have resulted in a ridiculous ‘data merging’ that completely obliterates the raw data.
To pull this deception off on a global scale, as I have mentioned before, requires the alarmists to deal with two inconvenient truths:
- The warm periods in the 1930′s and 1940′s which were about the same as today
- The current decline in temperature, just when the alarmists require a dramatic increase to match the rising CO2 levels.
What is needed out the back end of this alarmist process is a graph like we have from NCDC, where the 1930′s-1940′s warm periods are pushed colder and the current temps are pushed higher.
[image offline]
People have found actual CRU code that does this, and it does it by smearing good temp data with inaccurate proxy data (in this case the tree rings) or hard coded adjustments. The second method used by alarmists is to just drop those inconvenient current temps showing global cooling, which has also been clearly discovered in the CRU data dump.
I have been attempting to compensate for the lack of raw temperature data by using the country-by-country graphs dumped with data from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU). The file is named idl_cruts3_2005_vs_2008b.pdf, which tells me this is the latest version of the CRU raw temp data run in prep for a new release of the latest data (the PDF file was created in July 2009).
I am very confident this data is prior to the heavy handed corrections employed by CRU and its cohorts. The fact is you can see a lot of interesting and telling detail in the graphs. Much of the Pacific Ocean data has been flipped since 2005 trying to correct prior errors and you can see the 2008 data trend way downward in most of the graphs. In addition, the 1930′s-1940′s warm periods have not been squelched yet. The alarmists have not had a chance to ‘clean up’ this data for the general public (which is one reason I think it was in the dump).
Before we get to actual examples and my detailed (and way too lengthy) analysis, I need to explain the graphs and how I used them (click to enlarge).
[image offline]
In this graph we see the primary data we have available from CRU. This is a comparison of the 2005 runs in black and 2008 runs in light purple/red. At CRU all the data is blocked into quarters. This graph is MAM, which stand for March-April-May, for Argentina.
The love of trend lines and averaging by CRU and other alarmists is quite telling here. The ‘raw’ quarterly data is noted with the blue arrows, It is the highly variable lines from which the (much less accurate) trend lines are generated. I point this out to note that fact that to create a quarterly value for a country for a given year means the raw daily temp data has disappeared under a mountain of averaging already. Day/Night temps must be combined into quarterly temps by location and then combined into a country wide figure. Even with all this inaccuracy added in the ‘raw’ data is quite dynamic, which makes me wonder how dynamic the true sensor data is. CRU and others believe the trend lines mean something significant – but really all the do is mask the true dynamics of nature.
Anyway, now let me explain how I derived (by eye – ugh!) the two primary pieces of data I used to test my hypothesis that the 2000′s are not significantly warmer or cooler than the pre 1960 period (when CO2 levels were drastically lower). Here is how I measured the Peak-to-Peak change in each of the graphs (click to enlarge):
![[image offline]](http://strata-sphere.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/P2P_Calculation.gif){kind=link}
I simply find the highest pre 1960′s peak and the highest point in the 2000′s and subtract. I know this is subjective and error prone, but it is good enough for a ‘reasonableness test’. I would have preferred to use actual data and define min/max points for each time period and compare. But this is what happens when you don’t share the raw data, as true science demands.
Note I am using the 2005 trend line. I have noticed many graphs where the 2008 would given my hypothesis more strength, and maybe some day I will compute that version. I also know there were higher peaks prior to 2000 (especially around 1998). In fact I found myself averaging the slide from 1998 into the 2000′ many times. I tried to err on the alarmists’ side (my hypothesis to prove after all). Also please note that the ‘raw’ yearly data bounces around well beyond all trend line peaks – so I am not too concerned with fact some peaks are skipped. The next calculation will better explain why.
The P2P data is captured in my results file [offline] as shown (click to enlarge):
![[image offline]](http://strata-sphere.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/P2P_Dataset.gif){kind=link}
Note: I am trying to find a way to get a clean spreadsheet up so folks can copy out the data.
Anyway, what I did was compute the P2P value for each quarter for each country, and then averaged those over the full ‘year’. Then I applied three significance tests to see if the P2P value is (1) less than -0.5°C, (2) within the +/- range of 0.5°C or (3) greater than +0.5°C.
I decided used this significance test because of another file dumped with the CRU data which clearly showed where CRU stated its measurement accuracy was typically 1°C or greater. Here is the CRU report from 2005 containing their accuracy claims, along with their own global graph of temperature accuracy:
In my original post on these files I went into great detail on the aspect of measurement accuracy (or error bars) regarding alarmists claims. I will not repeat that information here, but I feel I am being generous giving the data a +/- 0.5°C margin of error on a trend line (which contains multiple layers of averaging error incorporated in it). Most of the CRU uncertainty data, as mapped on the globe, is above the 1°C uncertainty level.
What that really means is detecting a global warming increment of 0.8°C is not statistically possible. If I had used their numbers none of the raw temps would have been significant, which is why people do these back-of-the-envelope tests to determine if we have sufficiently accurate data to test our conclusions or hypothesis.
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Read the conclusion here: CRU Raw Temp Data Shows No Significant Warming Over Most Of The World
h/t to Joe D’Aleo
Anthony – “This a ridiculous conspiracy theory”
Maybe not. Do you think that former PM and AGW advocate Gordon Brown knew of any likely collusion between his Met office and the GISS office before the Met Office was exposed in 2008?
Billions of government revenue dollars and millions of newly created government jobs all based on GISS “anomalies”.
Please keep up the good work
Jeff Alberts says:
November 27, 2010 at 12:13 pm
“How many is “every few years”? How would it compare to regular maintenance on IC engines? As the technology becomes more robust, the costs would come down, as they always do.”
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Comparison_with_internal_combustion_engine_vehicles
How long depends in large part on battery technology, driving habits, and tolerance for lower and lower number of miles before needing a recharge. Each recharge reduces the capacity of the battery. Generally speaking lead acid batteries will wear out under moderate use in three years. Lithium Ion is said to last 7 years but I never had a L-ion notebook battery last more than half that long before it held so little charge as to be virtually useless.
A Tesla Roadster, according the manufacturer (so it’s probably optimistic), driven 40 miles per day will need its L-ion batteries replaced in seven years. Estimated battery replacement cost works out to 12 cents per mile. A gasoline engine costs about 10 cents per mile for fuel. Electricity for the Tesla isn’t free and if you live where Anthony lives it isn’t less expensive than gasoline but for me it’s about 3 cents per mile. Maintenance and repair of internal combustion engines is hard to put a number on but I’ve owned several Hondas and Toyotas that happily went over 200,000 miles with less than $1000 maintenance/repair cost for the motor which works out to a half penny per mile.
And don’t forget to add-on the huge purchase price premium of an electric car vs. a similar size gasoline vehicle. Government rebates don’t count as someone (read you and I the taxpayers) end up footing the bill for those rebates.
So anyone thinking that owning an electric vehicle is going to save money is in for a big surprise. And they aren’t even all that “green” either as they require a lot of toxic materials in the batteries, rare earth (non-renewable) elements for the electric drive motors (niobium), and copper (non-renewable) also for the drive motors. And because weight is so important to reduce in the electric vehicle they also use more energy-intensive to produce body materials like aluminum and FRP instead of steel.
The all-electric vehicle is a huge boondoggle. Hybrids make a little more sense because they have far smaller battery packs and internal combustion motors can be very very efficient when designed to run at constant RPM. But the engine that has my eye is the TDI diesel which are almost as efficient as constant RPM motors and they’ll run on anything from diesel to peanut oil and everything in between. Couple those TDI engines with bio-engineered saltwater algae that efficiently produce vegetable oil and ya gots a real 21st century solution for the transportation fleet more economical than anything preceding it. Saltwater algae don’t even require arable land to grow them and what’s left after squeezing the oil out of them has a decent protein content suitable for livestock feed (or human consumption too if push comes to shove – it can’t taste worse than tofu).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
P.Skilz says: November 27, 2010 at 3:43 am
“Anthony Watts, might very well own an electric car, etc. but he is probably wasting a lot of time with all this conspiracy theory and his notions of debunking. What’s it all for?
Global warming might or might not be real. But you need only to look at the benefit to Los Angeles residents of the Clean Air Act, or similar in London decades earlier.
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I think you might find it was the introduction of smokeless fuel that solved the smog problem in the uk, nothing to do with CO2 which is not a pollutant.
P.Skilz says:
I’m not much into labels, because I think that diminishes the value of what people are saying, but if I were to label those that oppose global warming theory I’d call them, including Mr Watts, ‘the hedonists’.
Exactly, an unproven theory, similar to the banning of DDT which has since killed over 40 million people in the third world, mainly children.
E.M. Smith says:
November 27, 2010 at 2:12 am
Ian W says:
Surely all this misses the point – temperature especially ‘average temperature’ is the wrong metric.
The entire AGW hypothesis is based on trapping HEAT. Heat does not equal temperature
Even worse than that, temperature is an intensive variable, so can not be averaged at all, yet it is. There really is, practically and theoretically, no such thing as a ‘global average temperature’. It is a fiction, and not even a polite one.
The average cost of a house in the UK supposedly went up last year by 9.2% which would indicate a booming housing market which it is not, the reason the average went up was because there were fewer sales and those few sales were mainly expensive houses in the south of the country. Is this not similar to removing temp stations from cooler areas leaving less stations in warmer areas.
@Roy says:
November 26, 2010 at 4:32 pm
“However, if 2010 really is, in global terms, one of the hottest years on record then there must be a lot of places where this year really has been a scorcher. Where are these places?”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/temperature/global_temp_accum.shtml
Darn! Being from Dakota Territory, I was hoping for some global warming, though I would not object to Mother Narure shoving this down the throat of the hyteric warmist crowd.
Mention was made about heavy handed adjustments. It’s good to remember that 1934 was the warmest year on record [by a half degree] until, after adjusting it down and 1998 up, we got a new queen [by fifteen thousandths of a degree].
http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2010/783_NASA_docs-2.pdf
However this all turns out, warming trend…cooling trend…no trend, it is good to remind other folks of the key points: 1)We are only talking about an anomaly of about 0.7 C, all within the range of natural variability [or did they want us to stay stuck in the last little ice age?]
2) CO2 is not a problem; it is not a pollutant; it is plant food.
3) Government cannot even fix things they do have control over, like the budget, and they want to ‘fix’ the climate???
Thank you for the comments Jeff Alberts and Dave Springer.
Dave, you may well be right about nuclear fusion. I guess time will tell in the end. And maybe some of the other things you mentioned will work better than wind or solar. I am not in a position to do a huge analysis of using fusion to get a steady flow of electricity. This may never work. However could it be conceivable to get a burst of energy for a few seconds from a fusion reaction to split huge amounts of water into hydrogen and oxygen and then using the hydrogen as a fuel for cars?
Werner Brozek;
I am not in a position to do a huge analysis of using fusion to get a steady flow of electricity. This may never work. >>
The progress of technology is not hostage to a single solution. Saying fusion reactors will be possible in x years and that will solve the problem is foolish. Saying that we’re doing research on fusion, thorium, tidal, orbital, efficiency, etc etc etc and that one of these will solve the problem is also foolish. What one CAN say is that there is a lot of research going on and the inevitable result is that we will get more from less as time goes on. Will it be incremental or a giant leap? Dunno. Will it be one thing or a combination of many things? Dunno. Will it be something that no one has even started researching yet? Dunno. But we’ll be getting more from less, that I am confident of.
Well, even without the graphs, I will believe everything you say. Because it is exactly what I was sure was happening, and I don’t believe in warming.
feet2thefire says:
November 26, 2010 at 8:55 pm
‘Where did they go wrong’
Good question.
I also looked at your Redux 1970 blog, thank you
‘The question then is, of course, counter to whose intuition? ‘ (p8 of Rand article link below)
Wendy Allen, Rand Corporation (1975) critiques Forrester and Meadow’s assumptions underlying a computer based model of the global ecology (World Model). This World Model was worked up prior to the book release ‘World Dynamics’ (1971) and later with a global publicity campaign ‘The Limits to Growth’ (1972) was released, financed by Club of Rome (12 million copies). LtoGrowth predicted an energy- commodity: pollution-population crisis (ref Gollub, Townsend 1977 Malthus, Multinationals and The Club of Rome).
Allen states ‘as for modeling the future under conditions imposed by this test, all that can be verified is the accuracy of the data on which one’s projections are based.’ p13 http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5540.pdf
Will follow up the Club of Rome and ‘Moral Force of Unified Science’ with Willis E blog on People in Glass Planets, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/27/people-living-in-glass-planets/
as he has provided a link to Judith Curry requesting ‘Engaging the Public on the Climate Change Issue’ and ‘Raising the Level of the Game’ – the social feedback loop discussed by Allen in 1975!
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P.Skilz says:
November 27, 2010 at 3:43 am
How will we survive for another 50,000-80,000 years? (as tribal societies have done)
Comments by others noted
I would be interested if you (Skilz) would explain exactly what survived in these 50-80,000 years? Likely that natural disasters and disease caused much human loss, as did warfare, but I think you are stating that tribal societies have a world view to offer.
Perhaps you are with the anti-DDT brigade, maintaining starvation and death in the hunter or agrarian tribal societies? No risk there of ‘them’ having freedom, education, individual choice. Almost like a twisted causal argument – maintain tribalism = your agrarianism; rather than human dignity. The same variables you list were listed by Forrester (see Allen p1) 39 years ago.
1. Demographic trends: limiting population growth- particularly in the urban areas or resettlement from rural areas;
2. Food production – by not increasing land productivity or providing technological advancement (or rural resettlement);
3. Industrialisation – Pollution is your preferred language and mind-set
4. Maintain diversity (but not of girls or children), but forests and plains which are resources to preserve
5. Finite resources to your mind – however you genuflect to cultural practices by referring to tribal societies [not the tyrannical practices by collective individuals] which are designed to instil fear and pain
Your post has remarkable similarities to Gaia theory and eugenics.
Eulogising tribals as comparison to those developed or trying to develop democratic societies and nations is a poorly devised case control study on humans. Using tribal society as a proxy for naturale environment – two independent variables rolled into one, you erroneously dismiss and condemn the hope and goals of thousands, if not millions.
This video may serve to educate further to the ‘tribalism’ of men and women in these ‘societies’: their local governance and that of their lack of rule of law. Perhaps you like rule of the jungle? Or see that the UN commentators, another centralised global governing agency, work towards education of individuals and OF the nation state in seeking human dignity and just law? http://www.france24.com/en/20101125-2010-uganda-female-circumcision-cut-clitoris-genital-mutilation-law-fight-enforce-customs-ritual-elgon-sabiny-tribe
From Scandinavia we can add the mean temperatures in the whole of Scandinavia .(59 stations,raw data)
The result from 25-year mean values is:1900-1924 1925-1949 1950-1974 1975-1999
temp deg C 3,988 4,554 4,263 4,392
The result from first half and second half differs only by 0,06 C.So there has been no measurable
temperature increase during the 20 th century here in Scandinavia. OLd
Please use only my signature OLd.
N 69 Lat
arctic weather station
Nicholson Peninsula (Canada)
is now recording the warmest temps in
all of Canada.
http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynres?ind=71956&ano=2010&mes=11&day=28&hora=18&min=0&ndays=30
REPLY: And your point is?
Anthony, Thank you for reviving the important and fundamental subject of the world temperature data series.
Although it is right that the authorities should be pursed relentlessly to explain why and how they have adjusted the raw data, because that has to be the ongoing scientific challenge in the face of official obfuscation, it remains nevertheless true that the official temperature data even as it stands is distinctly un-alarming.
My own analysis of the HadCRUT3 official world temperature data (see temperature chart and commentary at http://www.thetruthaboutclimatechange.org) is that there is absolutely no sign of any variation that cannot be explained by natural climate processes.
I think Steven Mosher gets it just about right (26 Nov 2010 at 10.55am) when he says “For myself I did the following: using the raw data source from GHCN…I get the same answer as CRU. Further, you might want to head over to the cosmic ray thread and explain to them that there is no warming for the rays to explain.”
As Steven pithily implies, there really is, in effect, no case to answer.
Can you explain why out of the 620 graphs in http://strata-sphere.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/idl_cruts3_2005_vs_2008b.pdf only a handful are used for the analysis? Could it be that the remaining 98% don’t give the result expected?