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.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast
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.