Apparently, one of the proudest achievements of the website SkepticalScience is their “Down the Up Escalator” gif animation. They prominently display it in their right sidebar. The intent of the animation is to show that global temperature anomalies can flatten or cool over decadal or shorter periods while warming over the long term.
The first version was created using the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) land surface air temperature dataset. That, of course, made SkepticalScience appear two-faced, because the papers associated with the BEST dataset had not yet appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific journals and SkepticalScience downplays any research efforts that haven’t been peer reviewed.
ONE OF THE TRENDS IN THE REVISED ESCALATOR IS MISREPRESENTED
Bogus Escalator
In an effort to distract from their duplicity, SkepticalScience revised and reissued the animation (modified screen cap above), using the average of the GISS LOTI, HADCRUT4, and NCDC land surface air plus sea surface temperature anomaly datasets. If you were to click on the mini “Escalator” animation along the right-hand side of their main page, you’re brought to the updated GISS-, UK Met Office- and NCDC-based Escalator. SkepticalScience describes “The Escalator” animation as (my boldface):
Average of GISS, NCDC, and HadCRUT4 monthly global surface temperature anomalies from January 1970 through August 2012 (green) with linear trends applied to the timeframes Jan ’70 – Oct ’77, May ’77 – Dec ’85, Jan ’86 – June ’94, Nov ’94 – Dec ’00, Jan ’01 – Aug ’12.
You’ll note that they’re now calling it “The Escalator”—no longer calling it the “Down the Up Escalator”. Yet each of the steps in their escalator clearly shows a short-term trend that’s flat or cools slightly.
SkepticalScience misrepresented the trend of the “fourth step”. The time period they selected is November 1994 to December 2000. As it turns out, the only dataset that shows a flat trend during that period is the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI). Both HADCRUT4 and NCDC have significant warming trends from November 1994 to December 2000 at about 0.08 to 0.09 deg C per decade. The average of the three datasets is approximately 0.06 deg C/decade, and that is a significant warming trend.
Actual Linear Trends During Fourth Step of Escalator
How significant is that 0.06 deg C per decade trend? It’s comparable to the trend in global surface temperatures since 1880.
GISS LOTI Global Surface Temperature Anomalies Since 1880
The following animation will give you an idea what “The Escalator” would look like if SkepticalScience had used the real linear trend for the fourth step. Depending on your browser, you may need to click on the following gif animation.
The Escalator With Actual Linear Trends
A COUPLE OF NOTES
As noted in my WUWT-TV presentation “The Natural Warming of the Global Oceans”, “The Escalator” is an exercise in cherry-picked start and end dates. Proponents of anthropogenic global warming will incorrectly cite “The Escalator” during my blog discussions of ENSO-related upward shifts in Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific (90S-90N, 80W-180) sea surface temperature anomalies. (In recent years, I typically present that dataset as the “Rest-of-the-World”, because I usually now start with the East Pacific data, which shows no warming over the entire 30-year term of the satellite era.) When the disciples of SkepticalScience link “The Escalator”, they are simply trying to distract from the process-caused shifts. Those natural processes were described in the WUWT-TV presentation and detailed with numerous datasets in my book Who Turned on the Heat?
Rest of the World Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies With Linear Trends
The above graph was presented in the post Does The Sea Surface Temperature Record Support The Hypothesis Of Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Proponents of anthropogenic global warming have another, related, inconsequential complaint about my research. They claim the decade-long time periods between the 1986/98/88, 1997/98 and 2009/10 El Niño events are too short for the trends to be significant. Curiously, when SkepticalScience is trying to make a point, they have no trouble presenting a series of decadal trends, and when SkepticalScience is trying to mislead their followers, they have no trouble misrepresenting the trend for a shorter 6-year period. Apparently, linear trends over periods as short as 6 years do have significance. Looks like another example of the double standards of the proponents of anthropogenic global warming.
In the next few days, I’ll present PBS’s sleight of hand about “The Escalator” when they presented it in their Frontline report Climate of Doubt. They were pretty blatant about it.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The SS animation appears to have been concocted as a way to diminish the perceived importance of the stagnation of temperatures over the last decade, trying to imply that the recent flat trend is just another illusion, an artifact of selection.
However, looking at the smoothed datasets one sees that the other ‘false trends’ do not appear, with the exception of a small dip around each of the El Chichon and Pinatubo eruptions of the early 80s and 90s respectively. In contrast, the ongoing slump in warming is quite clear, deeper and longer than those two, and unaccompanied by any major vulcanism.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201101-201112.png
Carbon Dioxide is Gaia Food.
Arno Arrak says:
November 25, 2012 at 12:33 pm
It may be a myth how much it reduce, but the early 1980’s had a strong El Nino. This would have shown a big peak in global temperatures without a large volcanic eruption. What prevented the rise if it wasn’t down to the volcano?
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5816/had3vsaotadj1979.png
Bob, it looks like you or the upload process didn’t drag along the .gif image for your “The Escalator With Actual Linear Trends” .gif. At least in the article, that quote isn’t near a URL for the image.
The real “trend” all this data is a complex set of cyclic functions. However people are constantly fitting short term and long term segments with lines. It’s as if they are approximating the area under the curve by using the trapezoidal rule, rather than integrating the actual function. Why do that not abandon the linear regression nonsense and start thinking about Fourier transforms?
KR says: “The complaint you present here can best be classified as ‘nit-picking’.”
Illustrating the misrepresentation of trends is not nit-picking.
KR says: “Calculate and show your ranges of uncertainties, and demonstrate that your trends are meaningful – until then I (for one) will not take your data seriously. Nor, I expect, will anyone else with knowledge of statistics. In the meantime, your _continued_ assertions based on 10-12 year periods demonstrate that you don’t get the point of that “Escalator” graphic.”
Feel free to replicate the post and add/calculate anything you’d like to add, KR. Also, I get the point of the Escalator graphic. The obvious point is to misrepresent the real trends for appearance sake. If SkepticalScience presented them properly, the steps look broken and the visual doesn’t work:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2gyd91g.jpg
Get it?
Personally, I do not care if you take my posts seriously, KR. If you, KR, don’t appreciate my presentations, then save yourself some time and don’t bother to read or comment on them.
Adios
Arno Arrak says: “Bob – give up that phony “Volcano-Adjusted” feature. Volcanic cooling of lower troposphere is a myth – it does not exist. Read my book pp. 17 – 21.”
Arno, there was no La Nina following the 1991/92 El Niño, so your assumptions don’t work. ENSO is not an oscillation and does not cycle between El Niños and La Niñas. El Niños and La Niñas can be independent events.
Ric Werme says: “Bob, it looks like you or the upload process didn’t drag along the .gif image for your ‘The Escalator With Actual Linear Trends’ .gif. At least in the article, that quote isn’t near a URL for the image.”
Sorry. My mistake. The animation is here:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/up-the-broken-escalator1.gif
Never forget that the last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD has been the coolest of the current happily benign holocene epoch where mankind has developed from hunter gathers to our current level of technology. The coming reversal to a real ice age is ever nearer. That will make concern for natural minor warming over the past 50 years totally irrelevant.
1. Dr Burns says on : Dr Burns says on November 25, 2012 at 11:12 am:
“Even though it may be a disaster, the next ice age ——-.”
=============
Toot toot, doc. We could already be some 6 – 7 thousand years along the downslope of the Holocene graph. –
Just like for the previous “Warm Periods” atmospheric CO2 is high – long after the warming has started its dive and I wish it was true that CO2 can act as a blanket (sweater even these days) around the globe. We could then, I am sure, produce some more of that gas – by burning a few forests etc.
But instead of CO2 impersonating a sweater, I think it works more like a “string west” would do if worn without a shirt on top.
PS. Good article Bob
Put a sine curve on it. Of course the very diverse SkS people can’t do sine fits as they are linear thinkers over there. One track minds. They also have this amazing luck to always start their trending right at the bottom of the cycle. What a stupendously amazingly amazing coincidence!
Sorry about the “doubling up” of Dr. Burns says.
I’m not too sure why anyone is responding to this strawman.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that the temperature went down between 1970 and 1999. The ‘escalator’ is pretending that sceptics claim something that they do not. I think it is important that this technique is exposed for what it is – not that individual minor errors inside it are discussed…
Apparently, linear trends over periods as short as 6 years do have significance…..REALLY but 15 years of no warming does’nt????? someone better go tell Phil Jones.
the Atlantic Warm Period was warmer than the Minoan Warm Period which was warmer than the Roman Warm Period which was warmer than the Medieval Warm Period, which was warmer than the Present Warm Period
Now, who is going up on down escalators?
I’m just applying the “escalator” method to the period from1880 Wow! It works!
There is a flat period between 1880 and 1920 and another flat period from 1940 to 1980
With rises in between This “escalator” goes right back to 1880 But doesn’t that make this pattern pre – CO2 warming?
Anyone who stops their analysis at 1970 without offering an explanation of what happens before is just being disingenuous.
I don’t understand the GISS graph for 1880 to 2012–If I have been following the real science correctly, 1930s-40s were as warm as it is today and 1934 was the warmest year int he US–How could the graph look like that? I know the climatologists adjusted temps down for the past and adjusted current temps up to creat the hockey stick–but surely we are not using those adjusted tempreatures to make a point here? Are we, Mr. Tisdale? –it gets so confusing. I wonder if we could just get a page with unadjusted and historical data and use that for comparisons? It’s too hard to know who has adjusted what, when we keep using “their” adjusted graphs, how can we make a point?
I would say “just whining” but I really want to know. It’s very possible I missed something important–like the point….. the various graphs are driving me nuts.
Out of the noise the climate does show a trend of warming. It isn’t just the escalator alone.
2011 to 2012
Trend: 4.15 ±52.21 °C/century (2σ)
2010 to 2012
Trend: -11.42 ±22.32 °C/century (2σ)
2009 to 2012
Trend: -2.57 ±12.59 °C/century (2σ)
2008 to 2012
Trend: 3.08 ±9.84 °C/century (2σ)
2007 to 2012
Trend: 0.44 ±7.24 °C/century (2σ)
2006 to 2012
Trend: 0.23 ±5.29 °C/century (2σ)
2005 to 2012
Trend: -0.59 ±4.03 °C/century (2σ)
2004 to 2012
Trend: 0.19 ±3.44 °C/century (2σ)
2003 to 2012
Trend: 0.10 ±2.80 °C/century (2σ)
2002 to 2012
Trend: -0.03 ±2.41 °C/century (2σ)
2001 to 2012
Trend: 0.31 ±2.05 °C/century (2σ)
2000 to 2012
Trend: 0.97 ±1.92 °C/century (2σ)
1999 to 2012
Trend: 1.42 ±1.73 °C/century (2σ)
1998 to 2012
Trend: 0.95 ±1.61 °C/century (2σ)
1997 to 2012
Trend: 1.05 ±1.44 °C/century (2σ)
1996 to 2012
Trend: 1.34 ±1.32 °C/century (2σ)
1995 to 2012
Trend: 1.33 ±1.21 °C/century (2σ)
1994 to 2012
Trend: 1.58 ±1.13 °C/century (2σ)
1993 to 2012
Trend: 1.88 ±1.07 °C/century (2σ)
1992 to 2012
Trend: 2.08 ±1.03 °C/century (2σ)
1991 to 2012
Trend: 1.92 ±0.96 °C/century (2σ)
1990 to 2012
Trend: 1.76 ±0.90 °C/century (2σ)
1989 to 2012
Trend: 1.79 ±0.83 °C/century (2σ)
1988 to 2012
Trend: 1.66 ±0.79 °C/century (2σ)
1987 to 2012
Trend: 1.61 ±0.74 °C/century (2σ)
1986 to 2012
Trend: 1.67 ±0.69 °C/century (2σ)
1985 to 2012
Trend: 1.77 ±0.65 °C/century (2σ)
1984 to 2012
Trend: 1.81 ±0.62 °C/century (2σ)
1983 to 2012
Trend: 1.71 ±0.59 °C/century (2σ)
1982 to 2012
Trend: 1.75 ±0.56 °C/century (2σ)
Doesn’t anyone appreciate Bob Tisdale’s seminal assertion that the SST of the central east Pacific Ocean has not warmed over the last 30 years. This extremely important result lead you to two possible conclusions:
a) The cooling effects upon the surface of this vast area of ocean must perfectly balance the energy inputs from the universal warming of the atmosphere and oceans by increasing levels of CO2.
If this is to be believed then why isn’t this amazing result achieved in the rest of the world’s oceans.
OR
b) CO2 induced warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans is not the result of AGW.
I would favor the latter explanation.
Sorry,
The last few lines of my previous post should read:
OR
b) the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans is not the result of AGW.
I would favor the latter explanation.
At least we can all agree the world has been warming.
Matt G says:
November 25, 2012 at 11:47 am
The biggest issue with this step SkepticalScience graph are periods shorter than they told us are not long enough periods to judge. Yet they have cherry picked themselves and chosen shorter periods all less than a decade except the latter. Which can easily be extended back to at least 1998 and still show a flat trend. Hypocrites is the word I am looking for here….
____________________________________
It is fun to compare their graph to the global Sea Surface Temperature graph from the EPA it shows the present lack of warming starting in 1998 or their abouts. It also shows a large drop in ~ 1910 and a smaller drop in 1945. It also does not show any major plateaus except the one ~1960 – 1970 (aka Global Cooling hysteria time)
Guest Post by Bob Tisdale: “[…] It’s comparable to the trend in global surface temperatures since 1880. […]In the next few days, I’ll present PBS’s sleight of hand about “The Escalator” when they presented it in their Frontline report Climate of Doubt. They were pretty blatant about it.”
==============================================================
Bob, this is very interesting about “The Escalator” and the “PBS’s sleight of hand”, thank you. But what about the use of therm “global surface temperatures“? Isn’t this “global” just another sleight of hand and a more important one?
What is the scientific reason to consider the thermometer network to be representative of the whole world or of the whole surface? Is there any scientific proof that they are? Because if they are not, we can not say that the calculated trends are global. No “global warming” then.
Or even a simpler question. So, we have a thermometer placed outside. How large is the area this thermometer can be scientifically considered to be representative of? Who proved it and how? I mean, the air is moving naturally in different directions, cold wind, warm wind etc.
Maybe you can clarify that.
David L says:
November 25, 2012 at 1:53 pm
The real “trend” all this data is a complex set of cyclic functions. However people are constantly fitting short term and long term segments with lines. It’s as if they are approximating the area under the curve by using the trapezoidal rule, rather than integrating the actual function. Why do that not abandon the linear regression nonsense and start thinking about Fourier transforms?
________________________________
Easy answer.
If you do not use a straight line you do not get CATASTROPHIC global warming. Without a crisis Climate Science becomes a big yawn. The politicians can’t use Climate Scares to beat more tax dollars out of a frightened electorate. The grant dollars evaporate. CAGW is good for politicians, climate scientists, universities, the MSM and large corporations positioned to take advantage of government ‘Green Project’ money. The only loser is the tax payer.
So why would anyone on the gravy train want to consider the cyclical nature of the climate? There is no money in it.
bee bop says:
November 25, 2012 at 4:35 pm
At least we can all agree the world has been warming.
_________________________
Depends on your starting point. graph