That letter signed by 16 scientists saying there’s “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” to the Wall Street Journal has caused a great disturbance in the farce. At last count there were no less than 19 blog rebuttals plus one new WSJ op ed piece trying to convince the alliance that all is well. It didn’t work.
But, they know the AGW Alliance Death Star has been compromised before its mission can be completed, the Rebellion has seen the plans and the Alliance knows it is only a matter of time before “the consensus” blows apart. Reports are that “Michael Mann has been tweeting furiously“, but the reinforcements he’s bringing in may not be able to stop the Rebellion as its ranks swell with ordinary people.
Here at WUWT, we had our best day ever on January 31st with 229,000 views from ordinary people, exceeding the heady days just after Climategate 1 and Copenhagen. People are coming in out of the cold to embrace the warmth and declare it good, while laughing at the folly of the alliance.
Meanwhile, the Bad Astronomer (Phil Plait er, not Jim Hansen) has been spinning in low orbit trying tell alliance forces that the past 10-15 years of stalled temperature rise are just a statistical illusion.
William Briggs, Statistician to the Stars, schools Plait on what statistics really is and writes:
Remember when I said how you shouldn’t draw straight lines in time series and then speak of the line as if the line was the data itself? About how the starting point made a big difference in the slope of the line, and how not accounting for uncertainty in the starting date translates into over-certainty in the results?
If you can’t recall, refresh your memory: How To Cheat, Or Fool Yourself, With Time Series: Climate Example.
Well, not everybody read those warnings. As an example of somebody who didn’t do his homework, I give you Phil Plait, a fellow who prides himself on exposing bad astronomy and blogs at Discover magazine. Well, Phil, old boy, I am the Statistician to the Stars—get it? get it?1—and I’m here to set you right.
The Wall Street Journal on 27 January 2012 published a letter from sixteen scientists entitled, No Need to Panic About Global Warming, the punchline of which was:
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Plait in response to these seemingly ho-hum words took the approach apoplectic, and fretted that “denialists” were reaching lower. Reaching where he never said. He never did say what a “denialist” was, either; but we can guess it is defined as “Whoever disagrees with Phil Plait.”
The WSJ‘s crew said, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.” This allowed Plait to break out the italics and respond, “What the what?” I would’ve guessed that the scientists’ statement was fairly clear and even true. But Plait said, “That statement, to put it bluntly, is dead wrong.” Was it?
Plait then slipped in a picture, one which he thought was a devastating touché. He was so exercised by his effort that he broke out into triumphal clichés like “crushed to dust” and “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” You know what they say about astronomers. Anyway, here’s the picture:
See that red line? It’s drawn on a time series—wait! No it isn’t. Those dots are not what Plait thinks they are. They are not—they most certainly are not—global temperatures.
Read the whole rebuttal here, well worth your time.
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Just so I can get on the same page, can anybody cite the definitive peer-reviewed study that incontrovertibly ties man to current climate warming ?
(Al Gore’s books and movies don’t qualify, neither do IPCC reports which are mostly put together by politicians.)
Has there been statistically significant cooling since August. You betcha. So?
Joel Shore wrote:
“It seems to me that there is a double-standard applied by AGW skeptics whereby data that doesn’t support their preferred conclusions is not trustworthy but if there is a piece of data that does support their preferred conclusions then, no matter how what is known concerning problems with that data, it nevertheless must be believed and shows that all the models are wrong and anybody who says otherwise believes in untested models over real world empirical data!”
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Joel your position is a perfectly reasonable one. The way I interpret your argument is that the data could be too noisy to say anything about recent trends (with recent trends meaning anything in the last 30 years or less). This could be due to errors relating to what is being measured, which is small, superimposed over the background of natural variability.
However, it is not hypocritical for skeptics to use the same tools and methods of the warmists to reach an opposing conclusion. In fact, it is necessary for skeptics to do this. If their criticisms turn out to be indefensible, then that is good outcome for the warmists.
Just a repost of what I put up for Briggs. I notice WUWT has copied his bit of plagiarism.
So what exactly are you doing Mr Briggs? You take an ANIMATED GIF that is meant highlight how climate skeptics tend cherry pick short periods vs climate realists preferring to look at the big picture then try to make some point about the statistics of an illustrative diagram! You even went to the trouble converting the GIF file into a JPG, just to make sure no-one would be able to see the real image. Then remove the caption at the top to change what it appears to be so you can misrepresent it to people.
There are names for that sort of behaviour and most of them have legal conotations.
For those who are interested in the real graph try this
Or if embedding it didn’t work, go here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif
A further update. I posted the same at Bishop Hill and it has already been moderated off.
Well William; Statisticator Extraordinaire, I’m here to tell you, that I can bloody well do statistics on any set of numbers I want to. I mean the mathematical rules for statistics are pretty straight forward; any government agency can even do it.
So if I want to do a global statistical analysis of the number of animals per acre/hectare/m^2/whatever, I can do that; animal being anything as big as an ant(or bigger).
So I can count termites, rabbits, gnus, grasshoppers, whatever, and it is all good statistics. Now the problem comes if I try to tell you, or WUWT, WSJ, US Senate, UN, whatever; that my results actually mean something.
Take GISStemp for example. Hansen et al keep updating it regularly; specially the old ancient reported data, which still changes routinely, just like the weather changes.
BUT even so GISStemp is probably a very good representation of; well GISStemp, is what it represents; so if Hansen wants to change what GISStemp is, why should YOU care.
So long as he doesn’t call it the Global Mean Temperature or something totally outlandish like that, I don’t mind what he does.
I do object to him spending MY tax dollars revising old GISStemp data, every now and then.
And if you start off your daily routine scanning the latest value of GISStemp before getting on with your life, then you need to get a hobby. I suggest something other than statistics.
Glenn,
What is the trend if you chose 1958 as the start rather than 1973. As long as we are taking endpoints, we could just as easily choose any point, though maybe about 60 years ago is the right point (if one accepts a 60 year cycle as dominant one should trend from like points on the cycle). Then there is the question of: are you using the data as it existed then or are we confirmation bias adjusting it colder to make now look like we want (for probable propaganda purposes.)?
I don’t know the answers to the above questions because I haven’t looked at it. I suspect the slope would be much flatter than the one starting in a trough.
Just my two cents.
Owen
Glenn Tamblyn says:
Or if embedding it didn’t work, go here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif
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The ‘real’ graph is rather silly, don’t you think? Towards the end, as it becomes increasingly impossible to show any periods of cooling, the constructor of this gif had to start using overlapping trend lines. It would also have been less questionable to use land and ocean (global) and not just land here. Anyway, this misses the point of contention, which is that there has been no global warming trend for 10 years or so. It seems to me it’s ok to argue, “Yes there has been no warming trend for a decade but this is not significant because…” and then offer one’s best explanations… Rather than obfuscate and argue the claim is untrue. Besides being an impossible to accomplish task, such tactics make the general public suspicious.
“”””” Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says:
February 1, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Joel – where were you when Skeptical Science wrote about a “dampening” and “pause” of global warming? “””””
”
I suggest that “dampening” is only loosely connected with global warming. “Dampening” tends to be a local weather phenomenon, generally associated with rainfall, or maybe spray from waterfalls.
On the other hand, when you have some erratic cycling phenomenon, like Temperatures going up and down, one could talk about some possible “damping” of those events, which really isn’t related to rain or mist at all.
George – I understand the joke but “to dampen” can actually mean To depress; to check; to make dull; to lessen.
So for once, SkS correctly used a verb. A day for the history books!
Actually Will Nitschke, the graph is quite serious in highlighting the absurd arguments used by skeptics along the ‘It hasn’t warmed for the last … years’ of which kindly offered an example. The point when looking at data is to know what time scale one should be looking at for the conclusion one wishes to draw. For Climate the timescale is 25-30 years. The graph is highlighting how skeptics cherrypick data either by convenient selection of startpoint or length.
The very nits you are picking are the exact point the graph is making. It is highlighting the faulty reasoning shown by many skeptics. So thanks for providing an illustration in support.
Glenn Tamblyn,
It has already been directly pointed out to you on William Briggs’s site that it was Phil Plait who, in your words, “plagiari[zed]”, “cherry pick[ed]”, and “misrepresent[ed]” the graph in question. Briggs’s post was in direct response to Plait’s use of the graph.
You might want to reconsider the wisdom of copying and pasting your comment to multiple public websites, especially after you’ve been made aware that the claims you are making are both false and malicious.
There are names for your sort of behaviour and most of them have legal connotations.
When the leader of the US party of central government changes the subject to CO2 is “dirty,” you’ve definitely lost momentum with an audience that would love to use you.
Tweeting furiously may look like you’ve been found cheating while confirming one’s longing for the good old days of Lysenko. And – at long last – your appearance would resemble the truth.
Regardless of what the dots are, the red line is also a strawman in terms of temperatures stalling for the last 10-15 years.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
February 1, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Actually Will Nitschke, the graph is quite serious in highlighting the absurd arguments used by skeptics along the ‘It hasn’t warmed for the last … years’ of which kindly offered an example. The point when looking at data is to know what time scale one should be looking at for the conclusion one wishes to draw. For Climate the timescale is 25-30 years. The graph is highlighting how skeptics cherrypick data either by convenient selection of startpoint or length.
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Glenn, first of all, it was Plait who copied the graph. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/01/30/while-temperatures-rise-denialists-reach-lower/
Briggs was illustrating what Plait was babbling about. What would you have preferred him do? Describe it? I believe you owe Briggs an apology.
Secondly, 25-30 years? LMAO…. ok, we accept that CO2 has been exponentially increasing for the last 150 years or so, correct? And lately we’ve been hearing that it takes longer than 10-15 years to falsify the hypothesis that CO2 significantly effects our global temps. Consider it falsified. On 36, 50, and 70 year time scales. Using various starting periods. And I could include many more if you wish. Why is it so hard for you people to accept that the data says the Malthusian misanthropists parading as scientists lied to you?
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/30-years-is-needed-to-confirm-the-null-hypothesis/
Sigh, I’ve got a comment in the spam bucket….. thanks.
In fact pretty much the whole US except California and Alaska appears quite warm, and in some places extraordinarily warm, today.And from the Department “The Sun Rises In The East” this message in many parts of EU it’s currently extraordinarily cold…yawn…
@Will Nitschke at 2:19
Brilliant! I caught the twinkle of a Richard Feynman-like good humor and reasonableness in your point, and ever the quest for the good outcome…where truth leads. Bravo, and carry on, even in the face of the Darth Vader clones who have abandoned freedom and cannot see.
Did’t Phil get the memo from Trenberth about consultations with dentists about coronary problems? Either he didn’t get it or he’s ignoring it or he considers astronomy part of climate science.
Is it just me? I look at the far left side of that graph, around 1973 and I see an anomaly of 0.51 or so. Jump to the far right and it’s sitting at about 0.58. Disregarding all of the jumping about in the 39 years between, the actual difference right now is 0.07 — probably well within the error bars, which means that statistically it’s as warm now as it was back then?
We’re supposed to get excited about this?
You can forget all the temperature (or temperature anomaly) graphs.
The only thing that matter is that the models predict a linear relationship between CO2 concentration and global temperature.
That is not happening.
So I wonder, are there no actual skeptics here? Anyone curious enough to look up the original source and caption of the graphic Briggs copied? People who have worked with numbers enough to recognize that the data points he is calling model or predictions are basically just averages of temperatures? That were published by BEST on their website, along with uncertainties and a description of their methods? Anyone who would check for themselves how those uncertainties affect the trend, or whether 1973 really is cool for its period as he claims? Or who recalls that similar trends occur in other data including the satellite records?
[REPLY: So many questions, no links. -REP]
I left a couple comments at Phil’s blog this afternoon, and they’re still flagged as awaiting moderation. I see them as 182 and 184. Nothing earthshaking, and 184 is basically the UEA data I posted on the Rutan thread here. It is the only thing I see there that has actual data besides the graph of land temperature anomalies.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
February 1, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Actually Will Nitschke, the graph is quite serious in highlighting the absurd arguments used by skeptics along the ‘It hasn’t warmed for the last … years’ of which kindly offered an example. The point when looking at data is to know what time scale one should be looking at for the conclusion one wishes to draw. For Climate the timescale is 25-30 years. The graph is highlighting how skeptics cherrypick data either by convenient selection of startpoint or length.
The very nits you are picking are the exact point the graph is making. It is highlighting the faulty reasoning shown by many skeptics. So thanks for providing an illustration in support.
===================
Glenn I don’t think this graph shows what you think it shows. The various negative trends towards the end of the series can be shown to be negative because they *are* negative.
The earlier negative trends from circa 1988 to 1995 which you can produce using, say, GISS, is only possible because of the Mt Pintatubo volcanic eruption that depressed global temperatures for many years. You can even milk a negative trend for the earlier period because of the El Chichón eruption in 1982. Prior to that the trends *were* negative for several decades, so no surprises there.
There have been no volcanic eruptions of similar magnitude since that time. This does require explanation. Of course, all of this does miss the point somewhat. Trends can shift positive or negative easily enough when the trend itself is tiny. This is the real ‘problem’. Fundamentally, the real issue is the lack of a stronger positive trend. The lower troposphere global trend for 30 years citing RSS is only 1.39C per century. That’s a trend that’s nearly 3 times less than what the IPCC has predicted. So we need to start seeing some accelerating warming trends soon for such a forecast to be plausible. If we’re still playing the warm/cool game with shorter trend lines in 10 years from now because the trend is so flat — well, there will be no way to continue to obfuscate on this issue by that stage.
The graph is tagged by Plait as “skepticalscience_globalwarming”. The title of the image frozen by Plait was assigned by SkS as “How Realists View Global Warming”. It seems we have more than enough evidence to claim that according to Plait, the frozen image is evidence of global warming.
The fact that the original was the “escalator” dynamic picture has nothing to do with Plait’s use of the frozen bit of it.
Gneiss says:
February 1, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Asked and answered. Read up.
You need to read his posts referenced in the post we’re discussing. Gneiss, is this your first time here? They most certainly are not simply averages of temp readings. Homogenization, adjustments, corrections, and applications of algorithms distort them beyond recognition.
BEST is a land only study and isn’t representative of global temps. Nor is it complete. Nor is the data up to date. It is laughable that any alarmist would reference BEST. I would imagine BEST put enough egg on their face.
You mean like this? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1937/to:1973/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1937/to:1973/trend Oh, snap! That’s another 36 year period of time in which temps dropped and CO2 exponentially increased! Please note, I could have started the graph in at a warmer point and ended at a cooler point…… well ok, talked me into it. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1937/to:1977/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1977/trend I dunno, does 57-63 look like a warmer period to you?
Yes, I’ve seen similar trends. For just over 1/2 of the satellite record. Oddly, the last 1/2 seems to be arcing in a different direction. So, tell me, do you ascribe to the thought that 30 years of temps not responding to increases in atmospheric CO2 is enough to confirm the null hypothesis? That atmospheric CO2 does not significantly effect our global temps?
I’m wondering…… would you know an actual skeptic if he slapped some skeptical data right in front of you? And would you know what to do with it?
I hope the mods can forgive me here, but I must say:
I would like to thank Mr Tamblyn for demonstrating either his ridiculous logic or gross ineptitude by joining in the conversation here. After all that is what science is about to him and his idiotic friends at skeptical junk science- demonstrating to skeptics how smart they are.
Thanks for demonstrating to us how smart you are.
I hope Mr. Rutan is here collecting more data for his social experiment with the CAGW chicken littles.
This is good stuff.