The folly of blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming

Looking back at this thread, I ran across Smokey’s latest post, and I really have to say I’m impressed. I haven’t seen such deliberate distortion of graphical data in quite some time!
Here’s Smokey’s last graph. He says that this demonstrates “The longest temperature record in the world confirms the same trend in other cities, showing that the long term rising trend is within past parameters. If CO2 caused measurable global warming, it would show up in the trend. But it doesn’t. Thus, the CO2=CAGW conjecture is falsified by real world observations.”
Sit down, class, and learn how to distort data.
First and foremost, notice how compressed the Y-axis is. Looking at the data graphed, there are plots scaled by 0.00001 (essentially straight lines) and then offset high and low to compress the data. This is deceptive – those lines are unneeded, and minimize our ability to discern changes in the real data. This is particularly true since at this point in the discussion most people who are talking about climate have seen other graphs without this compression, and will interpret the compressed graph compared to the uncompressed ones.
Here’s the graph without those extraneous scalars or re-centering offsets. That certainly makes things a bit clearer. The next item to note is that this graph has much of the data detrended! Amazing – the graph is intended to show something about the trends, but those trends have been artificially decreased. Here is that same data without the detrending.
Next, the graph shows GISTEMP and HadCRUT3. HadCRUT3 is obsolete, the current data is HadCRUT4, which has notably more stations included. Here’s the graph with HadCRUT4 added.
Finally, the assertion that “the long term rising trend is within past parameters”: Here is HadCRUT3 (the most sympathetic case here) with long term, 30, 60, and 90 year trends. You will note that for each shorter time period (30 years being long enough to establish a linear trend versus noise at more than 4-sigma confidence) the trend is higher – warming is accelerating.
Conclusion? Smokey’s statements are incorrect.
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Summary: If you see a graph with unneeded compression or expansion, and in particular if you see one where (as in the case of trends here) the important data has been altered to change values, you can conclude one thing with certainty. The presenter of that graph is attempting to mislead. Shame on you, Smokey.

diogenesnj – With respect to temperature records, or in fact any record of a varying parameter over time, it is completely expected that the number of record extreme events will decrease over time – you’ve simply seen more of the system behavior. Early in observations, every new data point might be a record – after you’ve been observing for a while, you will see fewer extremes.
The telling number is the ratio of record highs to record lows. Changes in that ratio reflect changes in the base statistics, changes to the average temperature. In the 1960’s that ratio in the continental US was about 0.78:1 highs to lows (slightly more lows than highs). But in the 2000’s, the ratio in that region was 2:04:1, twice as many highs as lows. And that reflects the increasing average temperature.

Robbie says:
July 7, 2012 at 10:59 am
Shall we wait and see what the UAH Global Temperature Update will do for July?
Regardless what happens in July with UAH, a new record for 2012 is totally out of reach and at the end of this year, 1998 will still be the warmest on UAH (as well as RSS and Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2). Here is the analysis for UAH.
With the UAH anomaly for June at 0.369, the average for the first six months of the year is (-0.089 -0.111 + 0.111 + 0.299 + 0.289 + 0.369)/6 = 0.145. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 10th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.153 to rank it 9th for that year. On the other hand, if the rest of the year averaged at least the June value, which is more likely if the El Nino gets stronger, then 2012 would come in at 0.257 and it would rank 3rd. (1998 was the warmest at 0.428. The highest ever monthly anomalies were in February and April of 1998 when it reached 0.66.) In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 6 months of the year would need to be 0.71. Since this is above the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record or to even come in second.

Paul K2 says: July 7, 2012 at 12:47 pm
John F. Hultquist: Most homes in Pennsylvania didn’t have AC thirty years ago. None of my family had AC in their homes. We really didn’t need it much. That is likely why you had trouble sleeping. Now, most of my extended family there has AC.
45 years ago, when my parents built their house in N Central Tx, the central AC they got was a less than normal thing at the time. Most people in TEXAS didn’t have it at that time. Now, show me a house built in the last 20 years, in Texas that *doesn’t* have central AC. Furthermore, most POOR people in the US have AC. We’re a more affluent society (at least according to our debt levels, at both the gov’t level and individual level, but that’s another blog), so we get conveniences that we didn’t in the past. Almost every new car has not only AC, but power windows, automatic transmission, nice stereo, etc. What does that development tell you about AGW? Nothing? Exactamundo.

Paul K2 says:
July 7, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“Its peculiar that so many readers here seem to deny that much of the middle part of the US mainland has had some extremely hot weather recently”
I am a relative newcomer to this site, but have seen it explained many times over that most skeptics do not deny that the climate changes and that it has been warming for a few hundred years. They don’t even deny that CO2 has an effect. The only real argument seems to be over the significance of the anthropogenic CO2 contribution. The alarmists claim, that we will suffer a catastrophe if don’t stop burning fossil fuel, is not supported by any scientific arguments I have seen anywhere, including my copy of the 4th IPCC report. There are always, valid scientific arguments that counter the IPCC claims. For example, I have never seen an explanation of the ice core data from approximately 120,000 years ago showing the temperature dropping from a high point to nearly ice age conditions before the CO2 even began to drop.
Rather than address many of these counter claims, alarmists instead attack, the skeptics credentials or simply make stuff up about them. Paul, where exactly did anyone deny on today’s postings that we are currently having some unusually hot weather. I just drove around in the Virginia suburbs of the Washington D.C. area keeping my eye on my car’s outside air temperature display which indicated from 96 to 103 deg F., depending mainly on whether I was in a wooded area or a treeless area. This car is ten years old and during that time I have seen temperatures of 103 on at least 3 other occasions so to me the temperature is much higher than a normal summertime high but not all that unusual for a extreme summer heat wave.
Just because most skeptics are not climate scientists is not a valid reason to ignore the science behind their claims. The laws of physics are the same no matter where you learn them and it is physics that control weather and climate. The problem to overcome is, all the laws of physics are in effect all the time, not just those that are chosen to be used in weather and climate models. It is obvious that present models are severely lacking something. But then, in fairness, it may be the most complex thing that has ever been attempted to model and many factors must simply be guessed at.
I do appreciate your posting of Jennifer Francis’s interesting dissertation on a possible cause of hot weather in the area. But that is weather change not climate change, unless, of course, the arctic sea ice never returns in the next few hundred years. The joke about weather here in the Washington DC area, which is difficult to forecast, has always been – if you don’t like the weather now, just wait a day or two. I always used to enjoy Joe Bastardi’s morning forecasts on WMAL. I miss the humor Joe.

After the awful floods in Queensland last year there were claims that they were caused by global warming/climate change. These were made by the head of the IPCC no less. Prior to the floods Prof T Flannery was on record as saying Queensland may never have drought breaking rains again. They were both wrong.
The Queensland weather bureau put the event down to the PDO and La ninja the head of IPCC later retracted his statment. The release of water from the Wivenhoe dam also contributed.
It seems any event now is being attributed to Global Warming, too hot, too cold, too dry too wet So any event you get in the US, drought, fire, floods severe winter will all be caused by Global Warming to the exclusion of anything else. Prof Christy called it the “ultimate non falisifiable hypothesis” which he further stated is not science.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Christy.Testimony.pdf

Regarding my last post, I must apologize – I didn’t catch that Smokey had plotted HadCRUT3 linear trends twice, and hadn’t plotted GISTEMP linear trends at all. But that’s easy to change in the dropdowns for data selection at WoodForTrees.org – I would encourage folks to explore the data themselves.
For comparison to the obsolete HadCRUT3, here is HadCRUT4 with full length, 30, 60, and 90 year trends, and here is GISTEMP with full length, 30, 60, and 90 year trends. Note the steepening trends, note the clear acceleration in warming.
And again, if you see a distorted or overly compressed graph, such as temperature change in zero-based degrees Kelvin, you know that someone is trying to deceive you.

Lester Via says:
July 7, 2012 at 3:53 pm
I am a relative newcomer to this site, but have seen it explained many times over that most skeptics do not deny that the climate changes and that it has been warming for a few hundred years. They don’t even deny that CO2 has an effect.
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Yeah, that is what some warmists do: creating an impression that nobody challenge their warmism. The reality is quite different, however, but many are probably unwilling to speak up. I allow me to refer to a comment of mine on the issue of consensus: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/consensus-argument-proves-climate-science-is-political/#comment-972119 .

To “Paul K2” I have one question for you: If the science behind global warming is sound, then why do the scientists who promote it, such as Michael Mann and James Hansen, repeatedly violate the scientific method and federal law by doing everything in their power to avoid showing the raw data and methodology of their studies? Please tell me how something can be considered scientific if it brazenly violates the scientific method of transparency, openness, and willingness to admit the study may be wrong.

I recall seeing 44 Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) In the shade growing up (way too hot for ball hockey)
Indeed heat waves and media hype are always a good bet.
Humidity is a big factor, though, and ours was %25 at the time.

Lacking a better place to put this … We don’t even know why Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Wikipedia on Mpembe effect (possible) causes.

Paul K2 says: July 7, 2012 at 1:56 pm
What you are really seeing is a combination of NATURAL factors that are the result of things like a weak solar cycle, multidecadal oscillations shifting from one phase to another, etc. The only man-made effects that can be found in any of the observations are the UHI effects on the overall temperature record (coupled with removing rural sensors) and the results of tinkering with the data by those who are supposed to be maintaining the integrity of said data. Instead of learning what has happened and what is happening, these supposed scientists have buried their collective head in the sand and will not consider anything other than a CO2 driven catastrophy that just will not cooperate with their predictions. There is SO much we could have learned over the past 30 years or so with the amount of money spent trying to prove the phantom menace really exists and labelling every extreme weather event (droughts, floods, excessive heat, monster snowstorms) as proof.
These types of WEATHER and natural WEATHER pattern shifts are known and are very well documented throughout history in various parts of the world. It’s not climate change. That IS climate. That’s what happens when the various oscillations fluctuate between positive and negative phases. They don’t all happen at the same time, so each one may only change an aspect or two of a particular regions overall weather patterns. Get enough of them to shift at the same time and it can really wreak havoc on WEATHER patterns, but they do not necessarily cause climate change. Again, a climate can be and almost always covers a wide range of weather and persistent weather patterns. That’s the way it has been since we came out of the last glacial period (except the Younger Dryas event) and will be for at least for the remainder of this current interglacial. There is no place on earth where the climate is supposed to be identical every year. That’s the biggest mistake of many who believe in AGW and why so many seemingly intelligent people get suckered in.
Are humans making an impact on the earth? Yes. We always have and always will – some good some bad. Is pollution a bad thing? Yes, emphatically! Is the world gaining heat at unprecedented levels that can only be attributed to CO2 emmissions? No! Are there natural events that seem to correlate much better with the current state of weather and climate? Without a doubt, yes.
Do yourself a favor, take a look at the temperature reconstructions of the last million years and see where we are today compared to where we have been. Now, where were all those SUVs and coal fired electric plants 100s of thousands of years ago??? Oh…
But then again, I’m just an amateur with a love for actual science, so what do I know…