Readers may recall earlier this week when I pointed out an inconvenient truth, the continental USA has no warming trend for the past decade, in fact it is cooling.
And, going back 15 years, the data is flat. Investors business Daily picked up the story in relation to the BEST controversy:
Don’t Stop Doubting
Posted 06:28 PM ET @ news.investors.com
Climate: Just a few weeks ago, a formerly skeptical scientist made news when he changed his mind about global warming. If he looked at the new data a meteorologist has pulled up, he’d change it back again.
Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, said that data from his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project convinced him that “global warming is real.” “We see no evidence,” he said Oct. 21, that global warming has “slowed down.”
The alarmists, of course, leveraged Muller’s statements to suit their agenda.
But Muller’s is not the “consensus” position of the team. Judith Curry, a Georgia Tech climate researcher with more than 30 years experience who was also part of the BEST project, has said “there is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped.” She looked at the same data Muller did and noted it shows global temperatures haven’t increased since the late 1990s.
Now comes meteorologist Anthony Watts armed with data showing the continental U.S. has not warmed in the last 10 years, and in fact has grown cooler in the summer and colder in the winter. The numbers aren’t a collection of weather forecasts from Watts, who runs the website “Watts Up With That,” but data from the National Climatic Data Center.
Granted, the Lower 48 aren’t the entire world, only a small slice of it. But it is a large portion of the developed world, a significant contributor of man-made carbon dioxide emissions and full of “heat islands” — big cities — that should be skewing temperature data upward.
Yet, that’s not what’s happening. The 2001-to-2011 trend shows a cooling of 0.87 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the 1911-2010 average. Backing up the starting date to 1996 doesn’t help the alarmists’ case, either. Temperatures are flat over that period.
Both the falling and flat temperature trends are coming at a time when man is putting out more emissions of carbon dioxide than ever. Given that, it seems to us that the U.S. should be warming.
Unlike Muller, we remain skeptics and would be even if he were right. Because rising temperatures are indicative of only one thing — rising temperatures — it’ll take more than an upward trend line to change our minds.
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> carbon monoxide than ever
Sigh.
typo in penultimate para
– dioxide or monoxide
Carbon dioxide…Carbon monoxide? Whatever.
carbon dioxide (slip) vs CO
How strange that the trend line and supposed average both lie below every single data point. Also remarkable that no indication of uncertainty on the estimated trend is given. Will you be rectifying this omission?
REPLY: Oh please. Don’t you ever do anything but whine and complain? Write to the National Climate Data center and ask them to fix it, since it is their output graph, not mine. Note the label on the lower right. You can duplicate it exactly here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
-Anthony
Error in next to last paragraph noted above
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs, mod.]
Good to see that your post has got some traction. As the article states, the US is a significant area of the developed Northern Hemisphere. Its trends need expanation, Indeed, it would be usedul to carry out a similar analysis of Russia and China (although their data may not be of the same standard).
IT was also good to see the comment “…rising temperatures are indicative of only one thing — rising temperatures…” Not enought people understand this simple but important point. Rising temperatures alone tell us nothing about the cause.
To Stevo: That’s because it’s the average of the last 100 years not for the last 10 years. Apparently the trend line was placed where it was for clarity. What counts with the trend is not the position but the slope.
No link back to here in the IBD article. That’s unfortunate.
There’s only one comment on it right now. I tried to register for the silly thing but it kept spitting out an error.
If someone can register like really soon now they can drop a link to Anthony’s article in the #2 comment. That’s not as good as in the OP but it’s better than nothing.
The average is for the period 1011 — 2011, which was cooler than the more recent decade. That’s why it’s below the current decade’s data. The trendline, I assume, is anchored to the horizontal average line to provide a way of visually estimating its slope.
Contact NOAA’s National Climate Data Center. The graphs they generate don’t provide this info.
stevo says:
November 11, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Be careful stevo – you might be turning into a sceptic. Best not let your friends know.
richard verney says:
November 11, 2011 at 7:58 pm
‘…although their data may not be of the same standard…’
From what Anthony has discovered about US temperature siting issues, which way are you suggesting the Russian and Chinese data standards might be – better or worse?
No matter what the data quality, it would still be massaged, corrected, adjusted, tweaked, screwed around with, homogenised, averaged, statistically manipulated and tortured until it revealed the ‘correct’ answer.
You can set the reference period on the NCDC menu. IIRC It defaults to 1901-2000. I think the trendline plots in the right place if you use a shorter, more recent reference period.
The US winter cooling trend actually started in ~1992. The trend is pervasive. Out of all of the US cities you can select, only a few exhibited winter warming trends over the last 20 years.
Roger Knights says: stevo says: “How strange that the trend line and supposed average both lie below every single data point.”
The average is for the period 1011 — 2011, which was cooler than the more recent decade. That’s why it’s below the current decade’s data.
I don’t think any of the USHCN surface stations have records back to 1011.
Some scientists have detected an accelerating ‘global warming’ trend since 1980 (near 1,5°C per century), while others have detected more recently a significant slowing, and even a reversal of this trend since 2001, to near -0.5°C (-0.9°F) per century. This is shown in the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre data (HADCRUT3).
See WoodForTrees.org: Plot of HADCRUT3 Unadjusted global monthly mean temperature anomalies from 1980 (°C) + linear trend from 2001.
If in Series 2 you change the From (time) Value to 1998 you will see how the trend has been flat from 1998 on (0.03°C per century).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend
More Carbon dioxide, More sugar, but solar cycles mean that little bees can not grow a mature hive, which I have personally witnessed, this year where if it wasn’t for colder times then the bee hive my father and nephew happened to step on while on a walk through a forest would have been fatal, there were very young bees/wasps brushed of there clothes that were too young to sting (they curled up and fell to the ground) there was over 80 bees counted and there was no swarm that followed them. after looking into this I can say that this could have been serious and they could have received hundreds of stings each and possibly causing death, if it had been just 10-5 years earlier there were more reports of higher activity of hives.
I have seen fue hives that are dangerous this past 5 years and less wasps/bees luckily for my own family only one major sting was counted.
One year a wasp nest took hold of my aunts garden shed and terrorized the whole neighborhood that was around 1999, it was much warmer, I stayed at her house one week end. One night I went into the kitchen for a class of water, when I switched the light on, the strangest sight I had ever seen, thousands of wasps had covered the ceilings and walls, stranger still, after I got a glass of water I left the kitchen and went to bed, the next morning I asked about the wasps and no one else had seen them. very weird!
Climate: Just a few weeks ago, a formerly skeptical scientist made news when he changed his mind about global warming. If he looked at the new data a meteorologist has pulled up, he’d change it back again.
Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, said that data from his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project convinced him that “global warming is real.” “We see no evidence,” he said Oct. 21, that global warming has “slowed down.”
Gawd, I’m so tired of hearing how Muller was a skeptic. As someone who owns his book “Physics for Future Presidents” I can assure you that Muller has never been skeptical of AGW. Anyone reading the chapter on global warming will come away with the impression that AGW is real and there will be catastrophic consequences even though the proof noted in the book is the same dismal crap we see everywhere else. The idea that Muller ever was a skeptic is laughable.
Oops–my finger hit the wrong key; I meant to type 1911.
That’s a quote you can take to the bank!
DaveE.
In what way is it “inconvenient” that a mere 2% of the planet is cooling over a time period that isn’t statistically significant?
stevo asks a good question: what is the uncertainty of the slope? It’s easy to calculate (as is the slope). Why wasn’t this done, as well as doing a test for statistical significance?
A statistic means nothing without an indication of its significance (both in the time and space domains).
Is this a statistically significant effect?
Anthony,
Your graph, from an objective scientific viewpoint shows two things:
1. the average annual temperatures of the last decade show a cooling trend over that 10 year period
2. the average annual temperatures of the last decade have all been higher than the 1901-2011 average.
Point No. 1 is of little scientific value because, as I’m sure you’re aware, anyone can pick and choose a 10 year period that suits them. Long term climate trends occur over longer periods than that.
Point No. 2. has more scientific value because it is more statistically significant: a 10-year period compared to a 110-year period, with the result that the continent has warmed.
You were kind enough to state that over a 15-year period the trend was flat. It’s a pity you didn’t state the 20-year or 30-year trends.
Now, place yourself back in 1996 and recalculate the previous decadal trends, i.e. from 1986-1996: a whopping -1 degF/decade decline.
Short decadal trends are useless in this debate, and you should know it Anthony.
Best regards.
Living in Florida I’m surprised at the Tallahassee, FL January 1895 – 2011 Trend = -0.30 degF / Decade on the NOAA site.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
Evidently you don’t understand the importance of the uncertainty on the trend. Hint: the uncertainty, when you calculate it, will show that your claims are specious.
stevo says:
November 12, 2011 at 4:29 am
Just as the claims by the CAGW crowd are specious. But more to the point, have they (the CAGW crowd) ever disproved the null hypothesis? Well, have they? The short answer: No (or they’d be shouting it from the housetops). All they can do is bumble around whining about the “importance of uncertainty”. They should really look to themselves when it comes to uncertainty (and null hypothesis failure).
Stevo:
When you look at the uncertainty, you have to examine both sides of the bars. The trend may be even steeper for cooling, or it may be slightly up for warming. This essentially tells us that the short term trend is flat with a cooling bias.
The correct conclusion is that there is not significant trend over the last 10 years. This is not surprising, since 10 years is generally too short to show a significant trend in climate data due to substantial year to year variability. Even without formal statistical testing, it’s clear to anyone who works with statistics that the results for this period do not show a significant trend. Talking about trends during this period only confuses people who lack familiarity with statistics.
…. So, Stevo. Now you admit climate uncertainty….. There’s hope for you yet. 😉
As the heat leaves the Pacific, I would expect a sudden tipping point to occur in North America. This would be due to the change in air pressure and jet stream as it crosses the Pacific. Look for the West Coast to suddenly have a sever cold spell and snow in unusual places in California. I would also expect Chicago to have one of the most sever snow storms on record.
Since the La Nina is forming up [broad based down in temperature] strongly, this will be know as the year of the change.
I sure hope that CO2 warms the Earth as strong as they say; we are going to need it!
Well done, Anthony!
One courageous, intrepid person – can and does make a difference.
John Trigge says:
November 11, 2011 at 8:24 pm
richard verney says:
November 11, 2011 at 7:58 pm
‘…although their data may not be of the same standard…’
From what Anthony has discovered about US temperature siting issues, which way are you suggesting the Russian and Chinese data standards might be – better or worse?
No matter what the data quality, it would still be massaged, corrected, adjusted, tweaked, screwed around with, homogenised, averaged, statistically manipulated and tortured until it revealed the ‘correct’ answer.
______________________________
The Russians agree:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/julia-seymour/2009/12/18/climategate-fallout-russian-think-tank-says-temperature-data-was-cher
I can not find my link but China also called the data from her weather stations into question.
Wang Chinese station data Fiasco: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/01/climategate-intensifies-jones-and-wang-hid-chinese-station-data-issues/
Mike McMillan says:
November 11, 2011 at 8:38 pm
I don’t think any of the USHCN surface stations have records back to 1011.
Talk to the other Mike. He has records from tree rings back to 1011, calibrated to 1/1011 of a degree.
BillD says:
November 12, 2011 at 6:57 am
Talking about trends during this period only confuses people who lack familiarity with statistics.
People such as climate scientists.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1943/to:1976/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1976/to:2010/trend
@ Garrett
In the original post (link at the top of this post), Mr Watts did say:
“For the inevitable whining and claims of cherry picking that will come in comments, here’s the complete data set from NCDC plotted from 1895. I added the 1934 reference line in blue:”
The resultant graph showed 0.12deg F / Decade.
To explain the graph above, the IPCC tells us that warming from 1910-1945 was natural, but warming from 1975 onwards was due to CO2. They know this is true because the computer models can’t explain the warming any other way.
Most people that lack the training of climate scientists have to rely on common sense rather than computer models. They can understand what the IPCC cannot. Common sense tells us that both times the earth warmed, it was likely due to the same cause.
Computer models are not aware of this, because computer models have no common sense. None whatsoever. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Garrett says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:07 am
…….You were kind enough to state that over a 15-year period the trend was flat. It’s a pity you didn’t state the 20-year or 30-year trends.
Now, place yourself back in 1996 and recalculate the previous decadal trends, i.e. from 1986-1996: a whopping -1 degF/decade decline.
Short decadal trends are useless in this debate, and you should know it Anthony.
___________________________________
What is absolutely useless is the straight trend line of CAGW, when anyone with an ounce of sense knows that temperature is cyclical. There are the ~60 yr ocean cycles, the 88 year Geissenberg cycle, a 200 yr cycle, the ~ 400 yr cycle and the still larger scale cycles of 15,000 to 20,000.
Therefore a flat trend followed by a down trend could very well show a change to the cooling side of a cyclical trend especially when combined with other evidence like the change in Ocean cycles.
The LIE in the statistics is the adherence to a STRAIGHT LINE in the first place.
88yr and 200 yr: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
400yr: http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/~dettinge/PACLIM/Yu02.pdf
“When you look at the uncertainty, you have to examine both sides of the bars. The trend may be even steeper for cooling, or it may be slightly up for warming. This essentially tells us that the short term trend is flat with a cooling bias.”
That’s a woeful misunderstanding of what the uncertainty means. When Watts gets around to calculating the uncertainty on the trend he showed, I’ll explain why. I don’t expect that he will do that any time soon though…
REPLY: Sorry, as I said, it is NCDC’s graph and therefore their presentation issue, write a complaint to them and ask them to do it. 10 years was good enough for Hansen in 1988 BTW – Anthony
Garrett says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:07 am
thats a really funny post. I guess you are advocating the selection of specific time periods to demonstrate a specific point? – or in other words cherry picking! LOL
At the end of the day – the only real and genuine trend in the climate temp will be the one going in to – or coming out of an ice age, or mini-version thereof.
Since you seem to want to argue about time periods for analysis, why don’t you start with the big one – like from 12000 years ago? Then you can describe the uppy downy motion of the climate temps and deduce what exactly? Hmmmm, let me see, perhaps it will be a general upward trend in temperatures?
Now, you have done that, perhaps you can then manage to do what no-one else has satisfactorily and scientifically done yet – which is to show that ANY upward OR downward variation in climate temps upon that generic upward trend is DIRECTLY related to CO2!!
Good Luck – I suspect there’ll be grants to be had too – and if you’re really good and convince the masses to hand over lots of their hard earned cash to pay for energy at vastly inflated prices, with perhaps a couple of billion energy poor deaths around the planet at the same time – I’m sure there could be another worthless and false Nobel prize for you (a la Pachauri et al)!
@Fred Streeter
Thanks for pointing that out. But it does no favor for Mr. Watts. He anticipated the cherry picking “whiners” like me because he was, well, cherry-picking. The only thing that matters in long term climate change is, believe it or not, long term data. Decadal trends are sometimes informative, but are a long way from being useful for making conclusions. I do not deny that some on the AGW side also tend to exagerrate the importance of short trends to suit their agendas.
Gail Combs said
“What is absolutely useless is the straight trend line of CAGW, when anyone with an ounce of sense knows that temperature is cyclical.”
Yes, straight line trends need to be used sparingly – Nature doesn’t usually follow straight lines. Not just because of cycles but because of the chaotic, “noisy” nature of climate. The data that Mr. Watts uses is from a site that makes it easy for regular citizens to access temperature data. It’s called transparency. The graphs they produce are not meant to be used “as is” for pure scientific purposes. Shame on Mr. Watts for using screen captures of graphs from that site to make a scientific argument!
REPLY: So I shouldn’t use NCDC’s publicly accessible presentations to present something to the public here? LOL! . BTW 10 years was good enough for Dr. Hansen in 1988 – Anthony
Garrett says:
“The only thing that matters in long term climate change is, believe it or not, long term data.”
Observe, and learn: click
The planet is emerging – naturally – from the LIA. There has ben no accelerated warming, thus there is no basis for climate alarmism.
If Garrett spins any harder, we can use him for a renewable energy source. 😉
Why is the average temperature line way below the actual temperature lines?
Anthony wrote that “it is NCDC’s graph and therefore their presentation issue, write a complaint to them and ask them to do it.” But just because someone offers a plotting program doesn’t mean the user is absolved from interpreting the results, or its shortcomings. You might just as well plot yearly temperatures from 2008-2010 and say the trend is a startling 3.55 F per decade.
@Dp: See my reply and David Middleton’s reply to Stevo above.
Stevo:
The temperatures during the past 10 years are pretty recent. The actual error band should be quit small, say 5% LSD would be acceptable.
With that in mind, the trend is flat with a cooling bias. Yes, it may be up as well, but that would require one to be at the lower band of error at the beginning and the upper band of error at the end.
Now, I understand that there are some sites where they discount the error bar/band as a skeptic ploy. We all know that those types of sites are virtually worthless as far as scientific content because of the ignorance regarding certainty. (What happens within the error bands).
So, please kindly explain to us folks who are not rocket scientists, why, most of us are prob not even PHD climate scientists. But, with that in mind, a lot of us know how to use basic stats, and the significance of why, how and when error bars are to be implimented, understood, and the degree of certainty derived within that MEAN value.
Smokey says:
The planet is emerging – naturally – from the LIA.
How do you know? If that were true then natural factors would be able to account for the warming since the LIA. They can’t; in particular solar changes can’t. The Milankovitch cycle indicates another 4000 years of cooling. Decrease in volcanic activity compared to the LIA? Today’s temperatures seem to have overshot that. Then you need to consider that the LIA wasn’t global….
Not only have the US temperatures been flat for the last 10-15 years but a similar pattern is happening in Canada. Both the Canadian Annual and winter temperature departures from the 1961-1990 averages have been flat for 10 years when mesured on excel linear trend and based on Environment Canada’s own data. Regionally 7 of the 11 regions reported by Environment Canada showed declining tempertaure departures over the last 10 years . Only the the Atlantic Coast , Northeastern Forests and Arctic Tundra ,Mtns and Fiords showed rising temperature departures. But the North Atlantic Ocean heat content is dropping and so is the Arctic Ocean’s heat content . It will not be long before the Atlantic Coast and the Arctic regions will show similar cooling as the AMO goes cool or negative.
>> Ralph says:
November 12, 2011 at 4:07 am
Living in Florida I’m surprised at the Tallahassee, FL January 1895 – 2011 Trend = -0.30 degF / Decade on the NOAA site. <<
I'm not surprised. A map at Marjorie Kinnen Rawlings' house in Cross Creek, Florida describes the site of her orange grove in the early 20th cenbtury. Cross Creek is about 100 miles north of the current northern extent of orange groves in Florida.
>> Jeff Grantham says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:41 pm
In what way is it “inconvenient” that a mere 2% of the planet is cooling over a time period that isn’t statistically significant? <<
It isn't of course. In the context of Climate Science, nothing is inconvenient. Were the world suddenly plunged into an ice age it would simply be written off as 'consistent with AGW'.
But please, prove me wrong. Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
Jeff Grandtham:
1. The Little Ice Age was in fact global. This has been confirmed by precipitation alaysis of South America.
2. Rebound from the Little Ice Age. Yes, when the temp trend switched, according to proxy data, we have been on a slow rising slope ever since.
3. The rate of temp rise in the early 20th century is the same as the rate of temp rise in the late 20th century. There was a cold spell during the middle of the 20th century, with the initeria returning approx 1973.
4. Just as North America has not warmed statistically….well, GISS shows it has but then when looking in the time back machine it seems the temps of the 30’s and early 40’s have been ratcheted down a few degrees. But i regress.
5. One would expect the temps to rise when one is in a Grand Solar Maximum. There is a lot more to the effects on climate than TSI. I know you have to know that as that is common knowledge anymore.
6. The inertia of the rise seems to have peaked in the 1997-1999 period. World wide temp metrics since that time have stablized. Once again, the outlier is GISSTEMP, but the methodology of extracting and the weighing of Arctic Temps has/is in question. Statiscally, it doesn’t work at all unless you are blind. Then you can feel that heat……but wait…..North America is affected by the Arctic more than any other continent. And North America has been flat with a cooling bias….mmmm……gosh…..mmmm….oh yea……the Arctic is hot….hot I tell ya.
7. Sea surface temperatures confirm the cooling trend. OHC confirms the cooling trend. Only the likes of Prof where is the heat Trenbeth think it has gotten past the top 700 meters, that secret pathway…(Must be realllly secret as even Dr. Hansen can’t find it)….I regress…..
8. Oh ya…the strat is cooling…….but wait…..it is warming. Oh yes, more ozone, but it hasn’t been measured yet…..but it has to be there. Why….if it hits the levels it was suppose to be at in 1940..(When it was not measured but it sure is modeled)…it might even warm a few more Kelvins. (But it can’t do that..the models tell us that is impossible)………ahhhhhh yep…..keep drinking the whatever it is you are drinking and let the rest of us in on that secret reciepe please?
The question is…how many holes in a sail does it take before the sail can’t drive the boat forward? Looks to me like the AGW sail is riddled with holes, and the cotton is getting reallllllly rotten.
Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.
stevo says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:18 am
………That’s a woeful misunderstanding of what the uncertainty means. When Watts gets around to calculating the uncertainty on the trend he showed, I’ll explain why. I don’t expect that he will do that any time soon though…
______________________________
If you want to look at “Uncertainty” A J Strata has a very good article on the “uncertainty” in the temperature data. http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
Kev-in-Uk says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:36 am
Garrett says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:07 am
…..Since you seem to want to argue about time periods for analysis, why don’t you start with the big one – like from 12000 years ago? Then you can describe the uppy downy motion of the climate temps and deduce what exactly? Hmmmm, let me see, perhaps it will be a general upward trend in temperatures?…..
______________________
Actually the Holocene started off warms and has an over all slight downward trend in temperature. That is what would make the whole CAGW posturing so very very funny, if it weren’t such a nasty political tool.
12,000 years VostoK Antarctica Ice Core: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/vostok-last-12000-years-web.gif
10,000 years Greenland GISP2 Ice Core: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/easterbrook_fig5.jpg
15,000 years – Ice cores Greenland: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a719dbb4970b-pi
2000 yrs of non tree ring proxies: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a64c8c9b970b-pi
Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
_______________________
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.
_______________________
You have just shown that you have absolutely no idea of how the Scientific Method works.
Jeff Grantham:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer? (Is this a result of mankinds increased lifespan? When the molecular structure breaks down over a longer time period)
Interesting idea. Will wonders never cease? It seems that GAWG can cause most any malady now a days. Bet my grandpa wishes this new fangled idea was around during his lifetime.
Proof?
Noteing that Jeff now has introduced medical breakthroughs to GAGW. Wasn’t the topic how the USA has cooled for over a decade? Actually, North America as a whole has cooled.
(Note to self. Monday morning put an order in to buy GAGW stock. With the medical news this stock can only go up…….UP……)
Done, but it required a p/w reset, etc., so the best I could do was #7.
Gail Combs says:
November 12, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I thought it was pretty obvious I was meaning the actual rise in temperature from the lowest temps of the last Ice age. Given that the Holocene starts around 10000 years ago, your point is perfectly valid and correct, although I mentioned 12000 yrs as the approximate time at the end of the pleistocene period, when, IIRC, the last ice age ended proper. The Holocene does, as you observe, show a slight downward trend from palaeoclimate proxies (ice cores etc) and also, as you note , this is oft ignored by the team! (in a similar vein, compare to the intense voracity with which the MWP is ignored by the team!)
My beef, and the point I was (badly) making – is the whole timescale selection metric for any climate analysis is baloney – it simply cannot be stressed enough that 10/20/30/100/1000 years is really not appropriate to use as an indicator of what is ‘normal’ and ergo, what is abnormal (i.e anthropogenic climate change)! Moreover, when you add the lack of actual real measurements, and the uncertainties in those measurements, it just makes the whole thing a mockery.
(It would be nice if the sooperdooper MetOffice computer could predict my lottery numbers though – and I think they have more real chance of that than modeling the climate!)
I find the whole global temps issue very disconcerting, as it is the hub of the warmist argument but can never be validated. To me, it’s like tossing a coin a 1000 times and then pointing to a group of say 4 heads in a row and saying that they were ‘abnormal’ and influenced by anthropogenic CO2 ! – even though everyone and his dog knows that that is just a chance/probablity issue!
May the Nobel Award go to Anthony for courage on par with quasi crystals and other similar cases of perseverance against corrupt science fronts. Of course that will be the first Nobel award in the post-bias era of realism. Bravo Anthony! Unlike quasi crystals and the like, this false front of science is a multi-trillion dollar scam capping off an era of unsustainable spending by a generation of kick the can leaders.
Jeff Grantham says:
Smokey says:
The planet is emerging – naturally – from the LIA.
“How do you know? If that were true then natural factors would be able to account for the warming since the LIA. They can’t; in particular solar changes can’t. The Milankovitch cycle indicates another 4000 years of cooling. Decrease in volcanic activity compared to the LIA? Today’s temperatures seem to have overshot that. Then you need to consider that the LIA wasn’t global….”
I know because I provided a graph showing you. Here’s another one.
I agree with Gail Combs, Grantham has no understanding of the scientific method. The conjecture that Gramtham believes in is that a rise in CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming [it is a conjecture and not a hypothesis, because it is not testable; CO2 may cause slightly warmer temperatures, but there is no direct, testable evidence that it does].
Since the CO2=CAGW conjecture is put forth by the alarmist clique, they have the onus of showing it is valid through testable measurements. But as usual the alarmist crowd tries to put the onus on scientific skeptics to prove a negative, as Grantham does in his comment. His response amounts to the usual argumentum ad ignorantium: ‘Since I can’t think of a cause of the global warming since the LIA, then it must be due to human-emitted CO2.’ Unfortunately for the alarmist crowd, the planet isn’t listening.
And anyone who believes the LIA was just a local event needs to run along back to Skeptical Pseudo-Science, where unsupportable beliefs like that can be comfortably discussed, with all credible opposing comments pre-deleted by the moderators.
Smokey:
Naw…..not only predeleted by the poster will be banned if he doesn’t conform to their beliefs. I always get a kick out of their OHC graph, based on one paper that is based on models that are not verified. And somehow all that deep heat got through the top 700 meters.
Oh well, that doesn’t change the fact that presently there has been a definite trend change in global temperatures as confirmed by the majority of the temperature metrics. The most important metric is Sea Surface Temps. They have been flat.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/to:2012/trend:1
There are no UHI, elevation issues etc involved with SST.
>> Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
OK, but first … <<
Clearly you can't. Why not ask your AGW church elders.
Camburn says:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer?
Of course not. We’re discussing how we come to know things.
Smokey says:
I know because I provided a graph showing you. Here’s another one.
This graphs proves nothing, except that two parameters are approximately in phase with one another for a certain time period. That’s hardly sufficient to show one causes the other.
Jeff Grantham:
Smokey’s graph is just as robust as saying co2 causes warming of 0.xC degrees per unit of doubling. In fact, Smokey’s graph may be more robust because the time frame is longer.
As far as how we come to know things. Do you dispute this concerning the stratosphere:?
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tres/2009/00000030/F0020015/art00002
Jeff Grantham says:
“This graphs proves nothing…”
Grantham is afflicted with incurable cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t matter how many graphs, peer reviewed papers, charts, data, or anything else that is provided for his edification. He still believes that his flying saucer will come and rescue his repeatedly falsified CAGW conjecture.
Smokey says:
November 12, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Jeff Grantham says:
“This graphs proves nothing…”
Grantham is afflicted with incurable cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t matter how many graphs, peer reviewed papers, charts, data, or anything else that is provided for his edification
It is sad that there are those who refuse to accept the papers, such as the one I presented above, that shows the models are not working.
And then they try to tell the rest of us that we don’t get it?
Ok……we can read, observe etc.
The long term trend is up since the LIA ended. The short term trend is down….and accelerateing. NOT good for the USA, nor the world.
At 9:56 PM on 11 November, ,Bob Johnston had commented:
Are there any online sources of statements uttered by Muller which can be cited as demonstrating his previous allegiance to the AGW bogosity?
That might be truly useful in online comments about BEST.
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Camburn says:
What does cancer have to do with GAWG? Are you saying that GAWG now causes an increase in cancer?
Of course not. We’re discussing how we come to know things.
You Carbon Cultists just love to try to use the bogus analogy of climate science to medical science; specifically that showing the link between smoking and lung cancer. It is both a diversionary tactic as well as an implied ad hominem and a poisoning of the well, which shows your actual trollist motives here.
If you would only bother to dig a little deeper, you’d see that what you think you “know” about climate science is based on nothing but assumptions, half-truths, and cherry-picked and distorted data. All you really have is a much- cherished Belief system.
Jeff Grantham says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
“Tom_R says:
Describe some test or measurement That Climate Science has claimed would refute AGW.
OK, but first describe some test or measurement on a particular human being that would refute the hypothesis that smoking can cause lung cancer.”
Oh My! Jeff, please tell me that this is not your best argument. Is this really all you’ve got? You just showed the depth of your intellect to the whole world. A truly embarrassing moment…… I feel for you.
Best,
J.
To determine whether or not either the Earth or the U.S. has stopped warming, one would have to invoke an idea that does not appear in the IBD’s article. This idea is the observed independent statistical event (OSE).
An OSE has an outcome, a starting time and a stopping time. If and only if the temperature has not risen in the period between the starting time and the stopping time of a specified OSE can one justifiably state that the temperature has not risen. In climatology, the canonical period of an OSE is 30 years. With temperature-time data extending over 15 years, it would be logically impossible for one to determine that the temperature has not risen.
“Sorry, as I said, it is NCDC’s graph and therefore their presentation issue”
You’re the one who doesn’t understand the importance of the uncertainty, not them. You’re the one promoting this as if it supports your agenda when it doesn’t. You’re the one consistently spreading misinformation.
“The temperatures during the past 10 years are pretty recent. The actual error band should be quit small, say 5% LSD would be acceptable. With that in mind, the trend is flat with a cooling bias.”
Nope, that’s just completely incorrect. Even if the measurement error was zero, the uncertainty on the trend due to inherent noise (ie weather) is much too large to draw the conclusions that you wish to draw from it. “flat with a cooling bias” is a meaningless statement with no foundation in statistics.
REPLY:Oh, please. Steve waded into this but keeps sidestepping this issue: explain why it was OK for Hansen to go on record with 10 years of warming in 1988, but 10 years of cooling, presented using the public tools of NCDC is “misinformation”. – Anthony
stevo, satellite temperatures show what is happening. What’s your excuse now? That global warming causes global cooling?
Stevo:
1. Weather does not last 10 years, it is a year to year flucuation. And even within that year to year there are climatic influences to the weather…..agree?
2. The inherent noise is present in ALL data, whether it is 1 year, 10 years, 100 years.
3. Since 1998, the trend is flat to down. Give it another few years and we wil hit 17 years. That seems to be the golden metric of AGW now a days, altho I am confident that before 17 years hits there will be another metric.
4. You are assuming that the long term trend is going to over ride the short term trend. That is one heck of an assumption based on models and not observation.
5. The statement is not meaningless. Whether you like it or not, the trend is now down. All indicators are that the short term trend will turn into a longer term trend. Which, would follow the long term cooling trend of the Holocene ever since the end of the climate optimum period. On a spatial scale, the recent warming is not even visible yet as the warming has not been long enough.
Jose Suro says:
Oh My! Jeff, please tell me that this is not your best argument.
No, it’s not my best argument — I was trying to lead up to a point. But apparently people here don’t get that.
And by the way, no one has yet told me how you would prove that an individual smoker acquired lung cancer from smoking.
Anthony wrote:
explain why it was OK for Hansen to go on record with 10 years of warming in 1988, but 10 years of cooling, presented using the public tools of NCDC is “misinformation”.
NCDC merely provides data and a plotting tool — interpreting the results is up to the user. As I showed, NCDC’s same presentation also says we have US warming at a rate of 3.55 F/decade since 2008. Is that a statistically valid result?
You still haven’t calculated the uncertainty of the slope for the the 2001-2010 trend. It’s straightforward to do it. When I do this for 2001-2010 I get a slope of -.0919 F per year with an uncertainty of -.0652. That’s a pretty big error.
So if the slope is -.0919 F per year and the uncertainty is -.0652 and assuming the errors are normal and applying the 68-95-99.7 rule there is a 9% chance the true trend is actually positive. That’s pretty big and so the trend isnt what any statitiscian would call significant, especially for a small piece of a global phenomenon. and didn’t someone point out that similar 10 year trends have happened before, then warming resumed.
Just a word of caution on junk data. I downloaded the full complement of the GISS anomalies in 2008, 2009 and 2010, from a reputable web site, and lined them up in columns and found they did not match. Basically the 1800s’ had become cooler and the later years had become warmer making the + trend line steeper. The only explanation I can think of is that the GISS baseline is continually fiddled with.
Ho ho! I’m sidestepping? You’re the one who won’t even attempt to calculate the uncertainty on a supposed “trend” that you’re hyping.
“explain why it was OK for Hansen to go on record with 10 years of warming in 1988, but 10 years of cooling, presented using the public tools of NCDC is “misinformation””
There is no reasonable grounds to describe the graph you show as “10 years of cooling”. Your apparently complete ignorance of statistics is a problem here. You cannot determine whether the trend is significantly different from zero, from this data.
As for Hansen, if you were at all familiar with the history of climate science, you’d know that his 1988 claims were very controversial, and at the time most climate scientists remained sceptical. He did not claim a significant trend based on 10 years of data. He’s quite a bit more intelligent than that. Instead he claimed that the then-recent spate of very warm years had only a 1 per cent probability of happening by chance, and that this could be attributed to the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Like I say, most people reserved judgement, and they were certainly not being unduly sceptical by doing so. But Hansen was proven right. 17 of the 22 years since 1988 have been warmer than 1988, formerly the warmest year in the instrumental record.
So now, when are you going to stop sidestepping and work out the uncertainty on that trend you’re hyping?
Now then, Camburn:
1. Weather does not last 10 years, it is a year to year flucuation. And even within that year to year there are climatic influences to the weather…..agree?
Yep.
2. The inherent noise is present in ALL data, whether it is 1 year, 10 years, 100 years.
Correct.
3. Since 1998, the trend is flat to down. Give it another few years and we wil hit 17 years. That seems to be the golden metric of AGW now a days, altho I am confident that before 17 years hits there will be another metric.
Wrong. It’s no longer clear whether you’re talking about the US or the whole world, apart from anything else. 17 years is a completely irrelevant time span.
4. You are assuming that the long term trend is going to over ride the short term trend. That is one heck of an assumption based on models and not observation.
I’m not assuming any such thing. The “short term trend” being claimed is not statistically significant. You are assuming that it is. And that is based on neither models nor observations but on ignorance and prejudice.
5. The statement is not meaningless. Whether you like it or not, the trend is now down. All indicators are that the short term trend will turn into a longer term trend. Which, would follow the long term cooling trend of the Holocene ever since the end of the climate optimum period. On a spatial scale, the recent warming is not even visible yet as the warming has not been long enough.
Wrong again, in so many ways. The trend for the continental US over the last ten years is not statistically different from zero. And, as Jeff Grantham points out, temperatures have been going sharply up since 2008. Again, not statistically significant – your choice of start date only shows that you are a most egregious cherry picker.
The long term cooling over the Holocene would indeed be expected to continue, if it weren’t for rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. Not even visible? I’d get your eyes tested if I were you. If I look at the graph here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
I can clearly see that the temperature in 2004 was higher than any part of the thick black line that represents the average of the various temperature measurements being displayed.
“”””” Jeff Grantham says:
November 11, 2011 at 11:41 pm
In what way is it “inconvenient” that a mere 2% of the planet is cooling over a time period that isn’t statistically significant? “””””
Well given that the time period (ten years) is half of the period between the two appearances of climate catastrophe guru, James Hansen before the US Senate for which he predicted a significant increase, then it is reasonable to call it “statistically significant”
Given the CO2 rise during thast period, the Temperature should be rising, and not falling.
Given the abyssmally inadequate spatial and temporal sampling of global Temperatures; who is to say that the results for the USA are not typical of the whole. That’s as good a possibility as any other one might make, from other global regions that are even less adequately sampled.
George E. Smith; says:
Given the CO2 rise during thast period, the Temperature should be rising, and not falling.
No, you have misunderstood the greenhouse effect, which says: given the CO2 rise during that period, there should be a net increase of heat in the atmosphere-ocean system. This then gets added to the heat changes from other natural and manmade forcings. And if there is a net increase after all that, a higher global average surface temperature is only one way that increase can manifest itself.
Given the abyssmally inadequate spatial and temporal sampling of global Temperatures; who is to say that the results for the USA are not typical of the whole.
That’s very poor logic. The effect of the temporal and spatial sampling resolution is a question of statistics — more won’t necessarily change the conclusion. (I honestly don’t know the status of the thinking on this, but would be very surprised if no one has ever considered it.) And who is to say there is a net cooling trend, if the US data is so bad?
BEST showed that station quality doesn’t affect the trend results (and insofar as Anthony doubts that, his own forthcoming analysis will be a welcomed addition to the question), and satellites corroborate that for 1979 onward.
You’ve said this multiple times. Wasn’t Hansen’s 1988 commentary/report based on data collected starting from 1958???! ==> http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
This is a remarkable new idea but sadly it’s completely ridiculous. Appearances of scientists before the US Senate do not determine what is statistically significant and what is not. Mathematics does.
The excellent agreement between satellite and ground-based temperature records tells us that the spatial and temporal sampling of global temperatures is good enough.
stevo says:
November 13, 2011 at 5:29 pm
The excellent agreement between satellite and ground-based temperature records tells us that the spatial and temporal sampling of global temperatures is good enough.
======
Is good enough, for wot.
stevo says:
“The excellent agreement between satellite and ground-based temperature records tells us that the spatial and temporal sampling of global temperatures is good enough.”
It’s good enough to show that CO2 has little if any effect.
Smokey says:
It’s good enough to show that CO2 has little if any effect.
You, too, seriously misunderstand what the science actually says. See my 3:54 pm reply to George E. Smith.
Smokey doesn’t realise it’s 2011 already. If he’s going to post yet another picture of a cherry-pick, he could at least try to post one that’s not two years out of date.
Stevo:
Remember I mentioned spatial coverage? Want to understand that temp plot that you so nicely shared with us?
“, it should also be noted that the 2004 measurement is from a single year (actually the fourth highest on record, see Image:Short Instrumental Temperature Record.png for comparison). It is impossible to know whether similarly large short-term temperature fluctuations may have occurred at other times, but are unresolved by the available resolution. The next 150 years will determine whether the long-term average centered on the present appears anomalous with respect to this plot”
Again, the short period of warmth in contrast to the temps of the Holocene is not distingquisheable.
As far as cherry picking. 1998 is the warmest year in the past 20 years. The temperature has not surpassed that year on any metric except GISS, which is understandable as GISS uses a 1200km radius in the Arctic which has been shown to be very questionable. The error bars of GISS also indicate that what some call warm in 2008 could be cool.
So sorry, the temp trend since 1998 is down. AS you indicated, the odds of it being positive are approx 9%, so for all intents and purposes it is down.
As far as anyone questioning why the end of the 20th century was warm? Ever heard of a Grand Solar Maximum? It ended with SC23, we are now in SC 24 which is getting back towards a more “normal” sun condition.
I am talking about the whole world using SST temps, HadCrut land based temp data, it all shows the same trend of cooling. When you combine the trend since 2003 of the ARGO data, it confirms the cooling trend. I will give you that the ARGO data is a very short time frame and can only be used for an indication that the other temp metrics are correct. At this time it does confirm.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The change/forcing in temps is dependant on the sensativity to that gas as well as other GHG. The wide range that is presented in WG1 AR4 indicates that sensativity could be from approx 1.0C to 6.0C. Contrasting the rise in co2 verses the short temp record indicates that the sensativity is closer to 1.0C.
Grantham, George E. Smith has forgotten way more than you will ever learn about the subject. And why do you constantly evade the question: are you related to Jeremy Grantham?
And stevo labels every chart and graph that debunks his falsified belief system as “cherry picked.” That chart is not “two years out of date”, stevo me boi, it is a chart covering 2010 and 2011. You just don’t like what it’s telling you.
No doubt the clueless stevo will label this chart as being “cherry picked”. The biosphere is literally starved of harmless, beneficial CO2. More is better.
Smokey says:
The biosphere is literally starved of harmless, beneficial CO2.
This is absurd. The biosphere is what it is. In what way was it deficient when CO2 was 270 ppm before the Industrial Revolution.?
And it is far from clear that plants will thrive in a higher CO2 world:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11655-climate-myths-higher-co2-levels-will-boost-plant-growth-and-food-production.html
Or that their tissues will have the same nutritional properties:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108
Camburn wrote:
So sorry, the temp trend since 1998 is down.
So sorry. For 1999 to present Roy Spencer and John Christy’s data gives a slope of .0140 per year, which is positive, and an uncertainty of .0036. you also get a positive number for the start of 1998 to today, though it isn’t statistically significant, but the slope’s not negative.
“Camburn says:
November 12, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Sea Surface Temps. They have been flat.”
You can even get a very slightly negative slope by moving the 1998 back to 1997.17. Then we will only have to wait 4 months to get 15 years of flat sea surface temperatures assuming no major changes.
Smokey says:
That chart is not “two years out of date”, stevo me boi, it is a chart covering 2010 and 2011.
No it does not. The chart ends 3/4ths of the way through 2008.
(http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-10-years.gif)
“Werner Brozek says:
November 13, 2011 at 9:24 pm
“Camburn says:
November 12, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Sea Surface Temps. They have been flat.”
You can even get a very slightly negative slope by moving the 1998 back to 1997.17. Then we will only have to wait 4 months to get 15 years of flat sea surface temperatures assuming no major changes.”
Gee guys… that will make the sea surface temperatures rise for sure!
Don’t you know the power of words when it comes to climate “science” yet?
Psst…quiet please!
wayne says:
You can even get a very slightly negative slope by moving the 1998 back to 1997.17.
That’s not what I find when I use Spencer + Christy’s SSTs. The trend of that data is positive except if you start at any date between Dec-00 and Dec-02. Any starting month before Dec-00 gives a positive trend.
But you people are now engaging in numerology, not science. If you do actual science and calculate something that’s relevant to climate, the 30 year sst trend is .16 Celsius per decade.
Camburn, you are confusing spatial with temporal. The Holocene is a time, not a place. The modern warming shows up.
“As far as cherry picking. 1998 is the warmest year in the past 20 years. The temperature has not surpassed that year on any metric except GISS, which is understandable as GISS uses a 1200km radius in the Arctic which has been shown to be very questionable. The error bars of GISS also indicate that what some call warm in 2008 could be cool.”
Pure fantasy.
“So sorry, the temp trend since 1998 is down. AS you indicated, the odds of it being positive are approx 9%, so for all intents and purposes it is down.”
No it isn’t, and I indicated no such thing.
“As far as anyone questioning why the end of the 20th century was warm? Ever heard of a Grand Solar Maximum? It ended with SC23, we are now in SC 24 which is getting back towards a more “normal” sun condition.”
Ever heard of the numerous studies which show that the Sun cannot have been responsible for more than a minority of the observed warming? You think no-one thought of this before you did?
“I am talking about the whole world using SST temps, HadCrut land based temp data, it all shows the same trend of cooling.”
Hm, well I’m getting the sense that you are not one to trouble yourself with actual facts so let’s see what the truth is. HADSST2 data since your beloved 1998:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/trend
HadCrut:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend
So-called “sceptics” favourite, UAH:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/trend
GISTEMP:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend
BEST:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1998/trend
All these upward lines don’t look much like a downward trend to me. If you’re going to pick cherries, you should try to pick ones that look tasty. OK, well, let’s try the one record we haven’t looked at so far, RSS:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1998/trend
OK! We’ve got one that’s going down! So IF you ignore all the datasets except one, and IF you ignore most of the data in that one dataset, and IF you ignore the concept of statistics, you can convince yourself that global temperatures are dropping. Now, why would you do any of those things?
Stevo:
What did you post of significance?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2012/trend:1
I was wondering what UAH (land only) was doing relative to U.S. GISS (pre1999), and came up with this:
http://i41.tinypic.com/ehn5l0.jpg Modest warming, nothing to get excited about.
Just out of curiosity, I put the same UAH data onto a GISS global 2007 graph:
http://i40.tinypic.com/t642rl.jpg While the slope of the modern warming appears similar, there is about a +.5-.7°C offset to the GISS plot. The min and max points of the UAH plot are scaled to the correct values of the GISS plot.
Wood for Trees shows the same anomaly:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:2007/mean:60/plot/uah-land/from:1979/to:2011
Stevo:
I can see that the blinders are on. Interesting.
What is the probability that the trend since 1998 is down? What is the probability that the trend since 1998 is up?
You agree that there is noise, you agree that there is weather. Now, will you agree that the trend since 1998 is not statistically up?
“stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:39 am
HadCrut:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend”
I agree that is up, but change 1998 to 1997.42 and the slope is down. Mind you, the slope is extremely small, but still down.
I am confident I could play around with some others and get a down slope. But the bottom line is that since 1998, very little has been changing with respect to temperature.
UAH (baseline 1981-2010) and GISS (baseline 1951-1980) use different reference baselines. To do a direct comparison you need to convert to a common baseline. BTW, they match quite well.
stevo says:
“Smokey doesn’t realise it’s 2011 already. If he’s going to post yet another picture of a cherry-pick, he could at least try to post one that’s not two years out of date.”
Jeff Grantham agrees with stevo, and says:
“The chart ends 3/4ths of the way through 2008.”
You boys are both wrong. I was clearly referring to this chart when I commented on the last two years. I even gave you a hint with ‘sattelite temperatures’ highlighted as the hotlink to the chart. But I’m not surprised you couldn’t figure it out.
And JG, George E. Smith has forgotten more than you’ve ever learned about the subject. I’m repeating myself here, I know. But your reading comprehension is as weak as stevo’s.
“I agree that is up, but change 1998 to 1997.42 and the slope is down. Mind you, the slope is extremely small, but still down.”
Right! So, if you cherry pick your start date very carefully, you can torture a line that goes down out of the data. Um, well done. Now, just how much meaning do you think there is in 1997.42?
“I am confident I could play around with some others and get a down slope. But the bottom line is that since 1998, very little has been changing with respect to temperature.”
I’m sure you could. The bottom line, though, is not what you think it is. The bottom line is that cherry picking gives meaningless results. The very, very simple concept of statistical significance, [SNIP: Stevo, gratuitous insult will be snipped. Additional gratuitous insult will result in the whole post being discarded. Your choice. -REP] allows us to tell when we have meaningful results and when we have meaningless ones.
“[SNIP: Stevo – you’re pushing it. Last warning. -REP]
Stevo:
The statistical significance is derived by the period in question.
The 30 years thing is something derived by IPCC. It has no merit at all in reality, and when looking at the length of the data of the Holocene, 30 years won’t even show up on the chart.
Can we agree on that?
What you are missing is what is commonly referred to as a leading indicator. People who sell grains etc use this all the time. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are correct. When looking at a commodity chart, you look for that leading indicator of a trend change.
For application in the real world, I can only suggest that you go to this site and play around a bit:
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/menu.html
You can use intraday, daily, weekly, monthly and historical to gain perspective on charts and how to use/read them.
When you are establishing a trend on anything, you set an end point and a beginning point. IF time frame is irrelevant, namely trying to tell us that 30 years out of 12,000 is relevant, you have to be consistent.
Either the set points of the chart that are used will establish a trend or they won’t.
I don’t care if it 12 months, 12 years, 120 years. Within those data points there will be a trend.
The warmists get excited when one shows a down trend saying it is too short. There is an aweful lot of semantics used to try and prove a point that is false. The trend is the trend.
Want to talk about climate? 30 years on a statiscal scale out of 12,000 won’t cut it. We are either in the Holocene or we aren’t. We are either within the climate norms of the Holocene or we aren’t. So far, we are well within those norms.
A thread posted earlier today shows that the IPCC has finally fessed up to what anyone who reads the literature has known for 30 years. WE are not in extreme climatic conditions, we are well within the norm.
Thanks for reading this and learning.
Stevo:
Even the Mann version of a hockey stick might finally be corrected:
http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=websterb&date=111114
“stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Now, just how much meaning do you think there is in 1997.42?”
None at this time. However I had an interchange with a warmist almost two years ago about Phil Jones’ comments about what he said regarding the last 8 and the last 15 years. He told me that what happens over 8 years is basically meaningless, but what happens over 15 years should be taken somewhat seriously. He was however very upset with the headlines that came out that said: “No warming for 15 years” since that was only true at the time since the significance level was just under 95%, even though the warming according to HADCRUT3 was at +0.12/decade. But if the present warming of essentially 0 continues until May of next year, it will be 15 years at that time with no warming. So when the last 15 years are “cherry picked”, that is nothing to sneeze at.
By the way, the warmest January to December period in HADCRUT3 is of course 1998. But the warmest 12 month period is actually September 1, 1997 to August 31, 1998. That is why going back a few months from January 1, 1998 gives a more negative slope as there are more high numbers at the start of the period.
Camburn, commodities prices do not behave like global temperatures. The laws of physics and the laws of human behaviour do not have much in common and if you try to apply one to the domain of the other, you tend to go extremely wrong.
“I don’t care if it 12 months, 12 years, 120 years. Within those data points there will be a trend.”
Wrong. This is what statistical significance is all about
“The warmists get excited when one shows a down trend saying it is too short. There is an aweful lot of semantics used to try and prove a point that is false. The trend is the trend.”
Wrong again. This is what statistical significance is all about. A trend is only a trend if it is statistically significant. If you refuse to understand statistics, you give yourself very little chance of coming to the correct conclusions.
You are galloping about all over the place with your timescales. One moment 13 years is the most important time frame, next it’s 12,000 years. The “norms” of the Holocene tell us nothing about the causes of climate change right now, and nor do the statistically meaningless “trends” from either the US or the world over the last 10-13 years.
Werner Brozek, did you not know that at current rates of warming, there will never be a time when you can’t play the game of “NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT WARMING FOR THE LAST x YEARS!!!”? 1998 is still the cherry-pick year of choice for some; others have moved on to 2001, 2005 or even 2008. Note that it used to be “cooling since 1998”, now it’s “flat since 1998”.
The game is a foolish game that fools play on other fools. Sensible people look at all the data, and sensible people know about the implications of statistics. There is a choice to make between being a fool or being sensible. You can choose not to be foolish if you want.
Stevo:
Will you agree that the current rate of warming is approx the same as the warming in the early 20th century?
Will you also agree that the current warm period is essentially not yet visible on a climatic time scale? As in the Holocene?
Will you also agree that there have been periods of warming and cooling within the Holocene?
Can you tell us what distinguishes the current rate of warming verses the early 20th century warming? I will give you a hint, there are numerous peer reviewed papers that come to different conclusions as to the cause of the early 20th century warming. The idea that it was solar does not match the current papers on solar by the way.
When you are talking stats, the length of time is the length of time. You make the mistake of extending the set points of the trend expressed within the stated set points. Extend the set points and the trend established by the shorter or longer time span will probably not apply.. Once again, a trend within two established set points is a trend.
The case can easily be made that we are still cooling as the resolution/spatial temp sets of the Holocene are still trending down. Within shorter set points, the trend is up and within even shorter set points the trend is down.. Do you consider that cherry picking? Using 30 years verses 12,000 years? Or 10 years, or 100 years?
The planet may well be cooling. It also might be warming. Time will tell. But one thing must be kept in mind: there is no evidence that human CO2 emissions are the cause of any warming. That is simply a conjecture. On all time scales, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature. Effect cannot precede cause, no matter what they teach you in Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science.
And more CO2 is, on balance, completely beneficial. More is better. The burning of fossil fuels benefits the biosphere. That is the truth, and all the wild-eyed hand waving in the world won’t change that fact.
You know, Smokey, all of your fellow skeptics cringe every time you repeat this. What you describe is the feedback phase in response to warming. I’m unaware of a single member within the climate science community, skeptic or not, who disputes the CO2 feedback process. None. What you chose to ignore each time is that never before during “all time scales” has mankind unearthed and combusted millions of years worth of sequestered carbon deposit into Earth’s atmosphere thereby creating a CO2 forcing component. Again, this is not controversial. It’s among the most elementary and non-contested climate concepts understood by virtually everyone. My question to you, as a long time and frequent poster on WUWT, is: What do you think you’re achieving by acknowledging only half of the cycle?
Jack Greer,
Show me the forcing: click
List one serious skeptical climate scientist who believes CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas and dispels it’s heat trapping characteristic, i.e. it’s forcing nature to be considered amongst the array of other forcing/feedback components. You’ve personally acknowledge in the past that the current abnormal marginal increase in atmospheric CO2 was caused by man’s burning of carbon deposits – that seems to contradict your claim, above.
Smokey says:
The planet may well be cooling. It also might be warming.
The planet is warming. All studies show that, and now so does BEST. There is absolutely no doubt that the planet is warming. Measurements show it, and melting shows it. Time has already told.
But one thing must be kept in mind: there is no evidence that human CO2 emissions are the cause of any warming. That is simply a conjecture.
Absolutely, completely false. Even laughably false. Are you even amenable to evidence, or do you just make things up?
On all time scales, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature.
Untrue. It didn’t happen during the PETM, when a massive injection of carbon into the system caused large warming, and it’s not true today, when humans are artificially injecting carbon into the atmosphere. In effect, it’s like a carbon-rich comet is now in a slow-motion impact with Earth, bring new carbon into the system.
And more CO2 is, on balance, completely beneficial. More is better. The burning of fossil fuels benefits the biosphere. That is the truth, and all the wild-eyed hand waving in the world won’t change that fact.
Bull. A rapidly changing climate is a threat to the biosphere as it now exists, and it is especially a threat to human societies. You think that if you repeat platitudes enough times it somehow makes them true. It does not.
May I once again easily deconstruct Jeff Grantham? Thank you:
Jeffy says: “There is absolutely no doubt that the planet is warming. Measurements show it…”
…Wrong. By not indicating a time period, deconstruction is easy.
Next, Jeffy shows the world he doesn’t understand the difference between a scientific conjecture and a hypothesis. CAGW is a conjecture. Grantham is confused over the meaning of words in science. The proof is in his erroneous comment.
And to repeat: Rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. Grantham is reduced to impotently arguing with analogies, rather than with verifiable evidence. Why? Because there is no verifiable, testable evidence that human emitted CO2 causes warming. It may cause some small amount of warming, but there is no evidence; there are only computer models.
Finally, in an emotional, fact-free response to my testable hypothesis that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, Grantham responds: “Bull.”
Grantham cannot identify any global harm directly attributable to CO2 [therefore CO2 is harmless], so he falls back on his comfortable anti-science belief system: “A rapidly changing climate is a threat to the biosphere as it now exists, and it is especially a threat to human societies. You think that if you repeat platitudes enough times it somehow makes them true.”
More psychological projection; platitudes are Grantham’s forte. I have proposed a testable hypothesis, and JG responded with a series of baseless “what ifs”. My hypothesis remains unfalsified. And my question is still unanswered: is Grantham related to Jeremy Grantham?☺
Jack Greer,
Not quite right. I’ve stated that I think the sensitivity to 2xCO2 is ≈1°C, ±0.5°C. I have not stated that human emissions are responsible for a doubling of CO2. Part of it, maybe. But even the hyperbolic IPCC admits it’s minuscule. When you quote me, please cut and paste my words. Thanks.
Okay.
Jack said: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/03/has-the-bbc-has-broken-faith-with-the-general-public/#comment-590922
Smokey said: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/03/has-the-bbc-has-broken-faith-with-the-general-public/#comment-590928
“”””” Jack Greer says:
November 15, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Smokey says:
November 15, 2011 at 9:01 am
…. On all time scales, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature. Effect cannot precede cause, no matter what they teach you in Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science.
You know, Smokey, all of your fellow skeptics cringe every time you repeat this. What you describe is the feedback phase in response to warming. I’m unaware of a single member within the climate science community, skeptic or not, who disputes the CO2 feedback process. None. “””””
Well say hello to one who does. No I am NOT a skeptic; I’m quite convinced that they have it all wrong.
Well I agree with some of it.
Sun FORCES a global surface Temperature. Global surface emits a LWIR radiation spectrum appropriate to that surface Temperature. CO2 absorbs some of that LWIR spectrum, maybe 3 microns bandwidth approximately out of about 75 microns spectrum width (98% of emissions).
More CO2 absorbs a little more of that narrow bandwidth. More CO2 also absorbs more of the incoming solar spectrum FORCING (in the 2-4 micron range. Ergo; less solar spectrum FORCING energy reaches the global surface. Global surface with less solar energy cools down.
Ah yes, the CO2 interception of a small portion of the outgoing LWIR surface emissions, does lower the surface cooling rate; but then the lower input solar FORCING, isn’t going to heat the surface as much anyway.
Oh for an encore; just replace CO2 in the above with H2O, and it will look like some 4th of July fireworks compared to the CO2 fizzer.
Howcome those other “climate scientists” NEVER connect their CO2 FEEDBACK to the actual FORCING input; namely the SUN ?? Instead they connect it to the ocean surface to generate more evaporation (and of that nasty H2O stuff that causes all the problem)
IT’S THE WATER !!
Jack Greer,
Thank you for posting my exact words. If you read the following commentary in those posts you will see that I’ve been consistent… as George Smith points out. [Thanks, George.]
Human CO2 emissions may cause a small rise in temperature. But it is beneficial. All the frantic arm-waving is nothing but fake alarmism.
@george E. Smith; says:
November 15, 2011 at 8:54 pm
…Well say hello to one who does. …
________________________________
It appears to me you generally agree with the thinking of most climate scientists but have assigned your own magnitudes to the various “bits”. All components, including CO2 feedback, modulate against the background of the primary forcing, solar. Not sure why you claim scientists don’t make that connection.
Camburn. A phrase like “not yet visible on a climatic time scale” is meaningless. Sure, if you plot the whole history of the planet, all 4.5 billion years, then the last 30 years will look very, very small unless you make your graph very, very large. And if you think that the simple fact that 30 years is very small compared to your much longer period of choice tells us something about the climate change going on in the 30 years and its potential impact on humans living in those 30 years, then frankly that’s just so bizarre that I don’t think I can begin to explain how wrong you are.
“Can you tell us what distinguishes the current rate of warming verses the early 20th century warming?”
The causes. Solar was going up, CO2 was going up, there was a period of a few decades without a major volcanic eruption. Now, CO2 is going up much much faster, solar activity is going down, volcanic forcing is higher. What do you think the difference is?
“Once again, a trend within two established set points is a trend.”
Nope, a trend is not a trend unless it is statistically significant. Your refusal to accept basic statistics is leading you to some absurd conclusions.
“Within shorter set points, the trend is up and within even shorter set points the trend is down.. Do you consider that cherry picking? Using 30 years verses 12,000 years? Or 10 years, or 100 years?”
Like I say, there is a well established branch of mathematics that tells us what period of data is valid when looking for a trend. If you don’t understand or don’t believe in that branch of mathematics, you will come to erroneous conclusions.
Smokey: “Because there is no verifiable, testable evidence that human emitted CO2 causes warming”
You say a lot of crazy things but this is particularly impressive. It’s a weird tactic I sometimes see from pretend “sceptics” – don’t just dispute the evidence, don’t question it or suggest that it’s not reliable or doesn’t support the conclusions, no, that’s not pushing your head far enough into the sand! Deny that the evidence even exists!
CO2 causes warming. That is a fact, known since Victorian times. Unless you only read scientific articles from before 1860 you should know this. There is not just evidence but incontrovertible evidence that CO2 causes warming.
Jack Greer said “I’m unaware of a single member within the climate science community, skeptic or not, who disputes the CO2 feedback process. None.” To which George E. Smith responded “Well say hello to one who does.”
George E. Smith – in what sense do you consider yourself a member of the climate science community? Do you hold an academic position? Do you have a record of publications?
stevo says:
“CO2 causes warming.”
Where do you get your misinformation? From Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science?
CO2 does not “cause” warming, junior. CO2 delays IR emissions. It acts as a [mild] insulator. Your understanding is well below an 8th grade level. I recommend that you read the WUWT archives, and attempt to get up to speed on the subject. In your case it will be a hard slog, but I suppose anything is possible. You can start your education here.
Smokey,
Little OT but thought you might like this bit of info.
Seems according to NCDC the OK 115 year trend finally made it back to, yep, ZERO.
Here’s the report today:
OKLAHOMA
Climate Summary
October 2011
The average temperature in October 2011 was 61.5 F. This was -0.1 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 55th coolest October in 117 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.0 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
Good reason to stay firmly skeptical. Well, physics says energy does not chose favorites, it always shares itself. So where the hell is Oklahoma’s piece? Huh? I’m cold.
No serious that is the one aspect that makes all of this a mirage. You can’t have South America with negative trends, mid-America with no trend and large cities with +4C trends over long periods of time, not in a real world. It’s got to be the cities and stations (a.k.a. UHI) and all of the major temperature databases have it imprinted. Probably from the splicing adjustments at apparent discontinuities guessing those were errors when what they were splicing out WAS the UHI signature. That’s seems the only possible answer to the spectrum of secondary questions it causes.
Smokey, might explain that last sentence. Long ago they put a station in a tiny town. Over 10-20 years the tiny town is now in the center of a large town. Station in the way and really should be sited better and showing an upward trend (UHI). Move it 6 miles out of town to a farm. Temp takes sizable drop. Town grows to small city and station moved further out to keep record ‘good’ but has trended further up (UHI). Move it 15 miles from downtown. Another immediate drop. Grows to large city more trending.
Here comes NCDC to purify the temperature records. There are apparent errors, look at these one day drops when the station was moved. Must be a calibration error. Splice the drop out. Same on the next one. Splice it out and correct the error.
But those drops were NOT calibration errors. They WERE the UHI and now you have a hefty continuous upward trend and it is not real.
Any way that could have actually happened in the databases? I don’t know enough to answer that.
One more Smokey:
In fact, I have already downloaded the some 600 megs of BEST’s raw data and it’s readable now. I haven’t looked whether they have released the adjusted data yet but this might be as simple as creating a database of the adjustments (hopefully after any weighting) and seeing if there are more downward pieces spliced out than upward corrections spliced out. That would assume all splices are equally weighted at the end or a weighting adjust to these spliced out records would have to occur. Someone needs to do exactly that.
If all corrections are equal and both flavors symmetrical then that would imply no UHI signiture was spliced out. My guess is you would find more downward discontinuities spliced that upward spliced out if that scenario above is actually happening in the data purification process.
Does that make sense?
Makes sense to me, Wayne.
“stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Sensible people look at all the data, and sensible people know about the implications of statistics.”
I assume we agree that not much has been happening temperature wise since 1998, correct? Now that is a reasonable length of time, but not 30 years. However see the 60 year cycles at the following from 1880:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-amo-killed-cagw-cult.html
What is interesting is that the flatness since 1998 is totally consistent with this 60 year cycle that has been going on for the last 130 years. Note the very slight rise of about 0.8 C over since 1880. So if that should continue at the same rate, it will be another 150 years before we reach the 2 C that is presumably so bad for us. I disagree with that, but that is another topic.
Jack Greer says:
November 15, 2011 at 8:48 pm: [ … ]
Jack, neither of the links you posted say what you seem to think. I have never claimed that human CO2 emissions are non-existent. What I have said consistently is that the rise in CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere.
I read not only the comment you linked, but that whole long thread. I answered your comments. But when I asked you a question… well, toward the end of the thread roger says it better than I could:
roger says:
February 4, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Smokey says:
February 3, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Jack Greer,
I’ve read the UN/IPCC report. Answer my question.
“But answer came there none………………………..”
Smokey says:
…Wrong. By not indicating a time period, deconstruction is easy.
Your prove my point by having to focus on such a tiny time interval and a tiny subset of the planet (the surface). This seems like all people like you have left anymore.
Because there is no verifiable, testable evidence that human emitted CO2 causes warming. It may cause some small amount of warming, but there is no evidence; there are only computer models.
Wrong. There is paleoclimate data, and there are direct measurements showing decreases in outgoing radiation at CO2 absorption frequencies (Harries et al, Nature, 2001).
Werner Brozek says:
But if the present warming of essentially 0 continues until May of next year, it will be 15 years at that time with no warming. So when the last 15 years are “cherry picked”, that is nothing to sneeze at.
werner, this is incorrect. the linear trend of the uah data for the last 15 years is .0764 (.0327) C per decade.
and here’s what phil jones told the bbc this june:
“The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn’t significant at the standard 95% level that people use,” Professor Jones told BBC News.
“Basically what’s changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years – and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.
“It just shows the difficulty of achieving significance with a short time series, and that’s why longer series – 20 or 30 years – would be a much better way of estimating trends and getting significance on a consistent basis.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
Camburn says:
Will you also agree that the current warm period is essentially not yet visible on a climatic time scale? As in the Holocene?
the globally averaged change from the bottom of an ice age to the top is about 7 C. we’ve had 1 C since 1950. that 1 C is easily visible on on a ‘climatic time scale’.
Smokey, Above, you were prattling-on about how CO2 had always lagged warming (Snowball Earth not withstanding) and couldn’t be a significant forcing component contributing to GW. I simply made the point that you had previously acknowledged that the marginal abnormal increase in atmospheric CO2 we see now was man-made. By extension I was pointing out the CO2 isn’t “lagging” and that you simply choose to blow-off its GHG impact on current/future climate. When you quibbled about my claim of your acknowledgment, I showed you where you had done so. My links say exactly what I had intended.
Re: your off-topic question in the “Has the BBC broken faith with the General Public?” thread: Having read through that thread, I’m sure you saw my comment about wanting to stay on topic and not flit-off on a tangent, as you frequently do. Steven Mosher also commented, in that thread, as to why people are reluctant to engage you in extended discussion, on topic or not. Hint: it’s not because your questions are well formed, or that your response expectations are reasonable, or that your arguments are particularly relevant or persuasive, or that people expect their counter points to be thoughtfully considered. … and then there are the inevitable unearned self-congratulatory “victory” proclamations … case-in-point ==> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/11/ibd-picks-up-my-article-on-the-us-cooling-trend/#comment-798163
Seriously, who in their right mind would wish to participate in that kind of discussion?
…. Anyway.
You must be getting sick of posting that fabulously powerful Bastardi image. Let me help you out.
Here’s some other conclusive “The earth is cooling” images you might use.
CO2: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/to:1972
Temp: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1958/to:1972/plot/gistemp/from:1958/to:1972/trend
Pay no attention to these, especially their logarithmic character ….
CO2: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/to:2011
Temp: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1958/to:2011/plot/gistemp/from:1958/to:2011/trend
Smokey says:
Show me the forcing: click
you repeatedly pick out little plots of short time periods of one slice of the climate system and use it to try and make large-scale conclusions.
where did you ever learn this is how science is done?
George E. Smith says:
More CO2 absorbs a little more of that narrow bandwidth. More CO2 also absorbs more of the incoming solar spectrum FORCING (in the 2-4 micron range. Ergo; less solar spectrum FORCING energy reaches the global surface. Global surface with less solar energy cools down.
nice theory. where’s the math to back it up, using the laws of radiation and the known solar spectrum?
do you really think no one ever though of this before?
“CO2 does not “cause” warming, junior. CO2 delays IR emissions. It acts as a [mild] insulator. Your understanding is well below an 8th grade level. I recommend that you read the WUWT archives, and attempt to get up to speed on the subject. In your case it will be a hard slog, but I suppose anything is possible. You can start your education here.”
Yeah, right – learn from the archives here? You seem pretty whacked out generally but that’s just over the top.
CO2 absorbs IR photons and re-emits them. The ones that reach the ground warm it. If the CO2 wasn’t there, the ground would be colder. Ergo, CO2 causes warming.
You dispute that, and then you have the gall to suggest that a plot of temperatures covering only 2002.0 to 2009.5 could possibly demonstrate your claims?
Are you still denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
Jack Greer,
Sorry those charts that clearly show that CO2 isn’t having the predicted effect on temperature bother you so much. Since you like using WFT, you can see here that the planet has been naturally warming since the LIA, with no acceleration of warming despite a ≈40% increase in [harmless, beneficial] CO2. In fact, as the green line shows the long term trend is declining. Reasonable folks will look at those facts and conclude that the red faced, spittle-flecked, wild-eyed arm waving over “carbon” is just overhyped nonsense. [Note that I said “reasonable folks”.]
Finally, stevo and Grantham aren’t reasonable folks because they reject out of hand every chart I post. So if any of you boys want to specify a time frame, I’m sure one of my thousands of saved charts will fit the bill, and show everyone that your wild-eyed CAGW claims are nonsense. Just ask, and I’ll post it.☺
@Smokey says:
November 16, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Nice graph. You’re a comedian, right Smokey?
==> http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1890/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1930/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend
==>http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:2010/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1850/to:1890/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1890/to:1930/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1930/to:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2010/trend
You’ll be rejected out-of-hand each time you try to support your position with irrelevant graphs or ones of insufficient time scale to show significance … not to mention the ridiculously doctored graph you just presented to me.
“Jeff Grantham says:
November 16, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Werner Brozek says:
But if the present warming of essentially 0 continues until May of next year, it will be 15 years at that time with no warming. So when the last 15 years are “cherry picked”, that is nothing to sneeze at.
werner, this is incorrect. the linear trend of the uah data for the last 15 years is .0764 (.0327) C per decade.”
With regards to this, see my comment at
“Werner Brozek says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:56 am
“stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:39 am
HadCrut:”
It seems clear to me that I was referring back to the HadCrut and NOT uah.
“The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn’t significant at the standard 95% level that people use,” Professor Jones told BBC News.
“Basically what’s changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years – and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.”
Professor Jones should never have said this because almost as soon as he said it, it was already irrelevant. The anomaly for 2009 was 0.443. The anomaly for 2010 was 0.477. However the anomaly for the first 9 months of 2011 so far is only 0.358. So it is simple to do the math for the average for the last 21 months, namely 12(0.477) + 9(0.358) all divided by 21 gives 0.426. This is LESS than the 2009 value of 0.443. So in other words, the warming for the last 16 years and 9 months is NOT significant at the 95% level. And when the figures are in for all of 2011, we will have 17 years of warming that is NOT significant at the 95% level. If you do not believe me, see the graphics at:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Focus on the top 95% error bar for 1995 and note that it is way above the bottom error bar for the presently green 2011 line. It is so much higher that the green line cannot catch up any more for the remainder of the year.
“I assume we agree that not much has been happening temperature wise since 1998, correct?”
If by this you mean that nothing at all changed in 1998, and that the behaviour of global temperatures from 1998 to now is exactly in line with the behaviour of global temperatures from 1975-1998, then yes, we agree. Is that what you mean?
“stevo says:
November 17, 2011 at 1:07 am
Is that what you mean?”
Not really. 1975 to 1998 was way different from 1998 to the present. For specifics:
The HadCrut3 slope for 1975 to 1997.5 is + 0.0144312 so it is quite positive.
However the slope from 1997.5 to date is -0.000146044, or essentially 0 for all practical purposes. Both of these slopes are consistent with the 60 year sine curve in temperatures for the last 130 years as can be seen by the second graph down at:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-amo-killed-cagw-cult.html
This is the graph that shows the IPCC Prediction and where we are actually at now.
Why have you chosen 1997.5? And why haven’t you quoted the uncertainty on those trends? And why haven’t you compared the 1975-cherry picked year trend with the 1975-present trend?
“stevo says:
November 17, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Why have you chosen 1997.5? And why haven’t you quoted the uncertainty on those trends? And why haven’t you compared the 1975-cherry picked year trend with the 1975-present trend?”
As for 1997.5, this was pretty close to the time when the El Nino effects became noticeable on the global temperatures. As for the uncertainty in the trends, we can say that the chances are only about 50% that either warming or cooling happened since that time so saying the temperatures are flat since 1997.5 or 1998 would be fairly accurate. I agree that 1975 to 1998 is about the same slope as 1975 to 2012. That just happens due to the way the numbers turn out. But let me ask you a question. Suppose a child is born in 1975 and grows until the age of 23 when the year is 1998. Then growth stops. Now you can plot the height from 1975 to 2011 and get an upward slope and thereby conclude that the person is still growing in 2011. Just because you can get an upward slope according to the graphing program does not been height has increased past 1998. So my question to you is this: At what point do you decide the person has stopped growing in 1998 based on the graphs?
Your attempt to quantify the uncertainty is well wide of the mark. Application of well-defined mathematical principles to well defined actual numbers tells us that there is no significance to 1998. Your efforts to give it some importance are pure cherry picking.
If the height of a person from year to year, sometimes going up and sometimes going down, in a way that was random but autocorrelated, then indeed, how would you decide whether there was an underlying trend, and how big that trend was?
Jack Greer,
As I’ve mentioned before, you can show just about anything with WFT. I showed that the planet has been in a warming trend since the LIA, and you showed that at times the warming has reversed. But there is a problem with your graphs that I have pointed out several times in other threads. It is this:
Whenever either a zero base line, or an arbitrary temperature baseline is used, the normal warming trend from the LIA is made to look artificially scary; a false hockey stick shape is created. That’s why flat baseline charts are always used by GISS and the rest. But when a trend line chart is used, it is clear that there has been no accelerated warming – which is the central [and failed] prediction of the alarmist crowd.
The trend from the LIA is intact, as can be seen here. Nothing unusual is occurring. AGW is just a giant head fake; sound and fury signifying nothing. CO2 may add a tiny bit of beneficial warmth, but that’s about it.
To stevo, everything is cherry picking. It’s the best argument he can comee up with. But I note that he hasn’t taken up my challenge to name a time frame that he prefers. I have charts for every time frame, from months to billions of years.
#
#
Tucci78 says:
November 12, 2011 at 10:41 pm
At 9:56 PM on 11 November, ,Bob Johnston had commented:
Gawd, I’m so tired of hearing how Muller was a skeptic. As someone who owns his book “Physics for Future Presidents” I can assure you that Muller has never been skeptical of AGW….
____________
Are there any online sources of statements uttered by Muller which can be cited as demonstrating his previous allegiance to the AGW bogosity?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes very definitely. He owns Muller & Assoc. see my comment : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/30/the-best-whopper-ever/#comment-783396
stevo says:
November 16, 2011 at 4:22 am
Jack Greer said “I’m unaware of a single member within the climate science community, skeptic or not, who disputes the CO2 feedback process. None.” To which George E. Smith responded “Well say hello to one who does.”
George E. Smith – in what sense do you consider yourself a member of the climate science community? Do you hold an academic position? Do you have a record of publications?
___________________________
ROTFLMAO.
Do a search on him before you insult the man again. Smokey gave you a broad hint when he told you that George and forgotten more than you will ever know.
Gail Combs – insult? I asked him in what sense he considers himself a member of the climate science community. He can answer that, if he wants to, and I’m sure he doesn’t need you to appoint yourself his spokesperson.
“stevo says:
November 17, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Application of well-defined mathematical principles to well defined actual numbers tells us that there is no significance to 1998. Your efforts to give it some importance are pure cherry picking.”
I was initially responding to your initial post at:
“stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:39 am
All these upward lines don’t look much like a downward trend to me.”
Here, you plotted HadCrut3 with a upward line of about 45 degrees. It looked huge due to the y-axis numbers. Your plot was from 1998. The actual value on your graph was 0.00039/year. This is as insignificant as my extremely small negative value by changing the starting date a few months further back. So it appears as if we both did some cherry picking! As a matter of fact, the slope changes from positive to negative merely by going back from November 1997 to October 1997.
“So it appears as if we both did some cherry picking!”
No. I was showing that someone had picked the wrong cherry, claiming that there were downwards trends since 1998 – they were lying.
“As a matter of fact, the slope changes from positive to negative merely by going back from November 1997 to October 1997.”
The conclusion is absurdly obvious. If including one extra data point changes the trend so much, then you haven’t got enough data. But if you refuse to understand basic statistics, then you will keep on failing to grasp simple conclusions like this.
Doing a little checking of our database, it turns out that “stevo” is just the repackaged “RW” of the City College of London, who has been previously banned from WUWT.
He’s violated site rules (again) by changing his screen name and email to get around that.
So, Roger, let me make this really clear, really simple. Next time you do this it will be full disclosure.
You have been banned from WUWT previously, that means get out, stay out. You aren’t welcome here and I don’t have to put up with your shape shifting shenanigans, kid.
– Anthony Watts
“stevo says:
November 18, 2011 at 6:19 pm
No. I was showing that someone had picked the wrong cherry, claiming that there were downwards trends since 1998 – they were lying.”
Look at the exact words of whoever you were quoting.
As you noted at stevo says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:39 am:
RSS does give a negative slope from 1998 with a value of -0.0032.
I went back to your post and it says “As far as cherry picking. 1998 is the warmest year in the past 20 years. The temperature has not surpassed that year on any metric except GISS, which is understandable as GISS uses a 1200km radius in the Arctic which has been shown to be very questionable. The error bars of GISS also indicate that what some call warm in 2008 could be cool.”
To put it in different words, whoever wrote the above claimed, in effect, that according to HadCrut3 and uah, 1998 was the warmest year. That is true. Unless I am not reading something right, you are then accusing that person of lying because the trend is positive for HadCrut3 and uah since 1998. This is NOT what the person claimed. It is quite possible and in fact it DID happen that 1998 is BOTH the warmest year on at least these two data sets and yet the slope from 1998 is positive on both of these data sets.
“If including one extra data point changes the trend so much, then you haven’t got enough data.”
WHOA! I never said anything about “so much”. The difference is totally negligible. For one month, it is +2.226 x 10^-6 and for the other, -0.0001778. I do not know where the cut off is between what is significant or not, but for several months around 1998, according to HadCrut3, the trend is almost flat. Do you not agree with that?