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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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.