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.
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renewableguy says:
November 25, 2012 at 5:20 pm
“That is eactly the point of the escalator graph. The warming mainly driven by co2 is not a steady upward rise.”
============================================
Why not? What would prevent a well mixed gas that warms “in place” wherever it is from continuing to warm the atmosphere over the last decade and a half as human emissions accelerated? You might speculate that the oceans are absorbing more, but the data and ocean warming suggest that the oceans are absorbing less. You might speculate that photosynthesis is using more and it is, but it will continue to do so to about 2000 ppm with no apparent reason for stair steps. The THC cannot be cooling the atmosphere because if Levitus is correct the oceans are warming. Yet greenhouse gasses cannot warm the oceans.
Day By Day says: “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 presented a graph of global surface temperatures (GISS Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index ) from 1880 to 2012. It represents much more than the temperatures of the US.
renewableguy: Is this your first time here? Expect a not-too-warm reception.
Good luck.
KR,
You love statistics too much. They are merely tools for the blind. Sure, the steps are numerically insignificant, but would you have us pretend they aren’t there? They may turn out to BE significant in the real world regardless.
Bob Tisdale – I was referring to your illustration http://i48.tinypic.com/i42u6g.jpg, which contains segments less than four years.And those are just silly…
Even your 1987-1998 and 1998-2010 periods (your fourth figure) have uncertainties of something on the order of ±0.255 and ±0.201 °C/decade (GISTEMP uncertainties, which cover a larger area/more data), as I pointed out in my first message (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/25/skeptical-science-misrepresents-their-animation-the-escalator/#comment-1156940). You cannot, from that data and those time-frames, make any assertions of flat or “step” behavior. (Actually, you can, you do, but the data just doesn’t support it as real in any fashion…)
I’m still waiting for you to show the uncertainties of your various trends (of whatever length), relative to the noise in the data – some kind of demonstration that these are real trends, not cherry-picked short term noise (don’t forget auto-correlation). But I’ll not hold my breath.
Adieu
KR:
Here’s the real take-home message.
Please forget the fixation on trends.
What you are claiming is that the uncertainty in the mean temperature of the rest-of-the-world’s
oceans between 1989 and 1997 is so large that this mean temperature cannot be distinguished statistically from the mean temperature between 2000 and 2010.
Hence you are claiming that we are unable to tell whether the rest-of-the-world’s oceans were warmer between 2000 and 2010 than they were between 1989 and 1997.
Are you willing to stand by that claim?
Let me assume that you realize that you cannot support this assertion using statistics.
This leaves me believing that you are disputing Bob Tisdale’s choice of start and end
points over which he takes the mean.
I am assuming that you are saying that if you randomly chose end points for time intervals
that include a mixture of data segments that are comparable in length to those that Bob used,
Bob would only be correct if less than 1 in 20 time series (0;05 significance) showed the same
number of differences in the mean temperature as Bob’s choice of end points?
If so, I am sure that this simple test can be done to see if Bob is correct.
KR, the trend is still not outside the noise (something that AGW’rs nash their teeth about). Therefore the trend is not significant. I am into my next half century of life and trust me, the temperature trend is not outside the noise. I’ve seen decades much hotter, and much colder than the current one (think regional, not global average). Call me when the trend in Oregon rises above the short and long term natural noise (IE ENSO and volcano noise).
Maybe I am missing something, but even the lumpy escalator that Bob presents still shows some flat periods in a general rise.
Even if we acknowledge SS’s general shiftiness, doesn’t their point still stand?
good very good
From Wikipedia, with similar statements in popular and technical literature from 1817 on:
I am willing to be convinced, but I am not going to buy your book to discover if there is anything to your arguments. Can you provide a concise and understandable summery? What is your opinion on “winters” caused by meteorite impact, and large scale nuclear war, which are no more extreme than some known volcanic eruptions??
You can’t even feel temp differences by 0.2c. If they were honest enough to scale the chart in whole degrees, the entire thing would be a flat line.
Bob Tisdale,
What’s the error bounds (when accounting for autocorrelation) on the trendlines you presented above. Technically they are correct if the trends are not statistically significant. Are they? Can you demonstrate that the trendline for any portion is statistically different from zero?
Don’t even worry about their little, very short term step trick.
No need to play their game at all …. just show the chart back to 1880, or further if they wish, then ask them to explain the CAGW story again…
@renewableguy:
There was an August thread here in response to Hansen’s claim about greater extreme temperatures:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/06/nasas-james-hansens-big-cherry-pick/
I do think the extremes are increasing, just not as much as his analysis suggests. I believe the cause is the increasing loopiness of the jet streams. But that is something that has happened before.
There’s an “extreme weather topic” in the “category” drop-down list in the sidebar that links to more threads on the topic. Here’s the link to it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/category/extreme-weather-2/
KR says: “Bob Tisdale – I was referring to your illustration http://i48.tinypic.com/i42u6g.jpg, which contains segments less than four years.And those are just silly…”
As I noted earlier, they are not required for the presentation, since I’m presenting the effects of processes. The processes are what cause the divergences between the detrended Rest of the World data and the ENSO index, and the existence of those divergences contradicts the assumptions made in numerous papers, like Foster and Rahmstorf, that assume the effects of El Nino and La Nina events on global temperatures are proportional.
KR says: “I’m still waiting for you to show the uncertainties of your various trends (of whatever length), relative to the noise in the data – some kind of demonstration that these are real trends, not cherry-picked short term noise (don’t forget auto-correlation). But I’ll not hold my breath.”
I seem to recall noting in my earlier reply that the trends aren’t required for my presentation, yet you’re fixated on trends. Additionally, the start and end dates for the time periods are based on the “official” El Nino months (based on NOAA ONI index) associated with the 1982/83, 1986/87/88, 1997/98 and 2009/10 El Nino events with a six-month lag, so they’re not cherry-picked.
R, here’s the same reply to basically the same question you left at my blog:
The discussion is not if the trends are statistically significant; it’s about the misrepresentation of actual trend lines in their animation. If they had used the actual trend lines, the escalator would appear to have a broken step and the visual doesn’t work:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2gyd91g.jpg
RoHa:
At November 25, 2012 at 10:36 pm you ask the very reasonable – and fundamental – question:
An answer to your question depends on what is “their point”. In his above article, Bob Tisdale correctly states that “point” to be
So, the simple answer to your question is, ‘Yes’.
However, like all simple answers, that ‘yes’ requires some expansion.
It ignores
(a) The cause(s) of the overall warming trend.
(b) The cause(s) of the periods when the trend ‘flattens’.
And
(c) The dissimilarity of the periods of ‘flattening’.
Importantly, SkS presents the ‘escalator’ as being a demonstration that the present period of ‘flattening’ is not an indication that the overall warming trend is mostly or entirely induced by natural climate variation. But their demonstration is false. I explain this as follows.
SkS (and e.g. renewableguy in this thread) assume the overall warming trend is mostly or entirely induced by increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. And that assumption is improbable for several reasons.
The overall warming trend is most likely a recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA), and there is no reason to suppose the LIA was caused by change to atmospheric CO2 concentration. Simply, the LIA is an observed natural variation of unknown cause but the cause was not observed variation to atmospheric CO2 concentration. The Null Hypothesis and paucity suggest that whatever caused the LIA is the probable cause of recovery from the LIA (e.g. the LIA was coincident with the Maunder Minimum in solar activity: if it is assumed that the start of the Maunder Minimum induced the LIA then recovery from the LIA is a result of the end of the Maunder Minimum).
Importantly, it has been claimed that the overall warming trend is too large for it to have been caused by natural variation other than variation caused by increased atmospheric CO2 concentration (this claim is not true, but an explanation of why the claim is false is not relevant here).
Atmospheric CO2 concentration has been increasing exponentially. If it is assumed that the CO2 increase causes the overall warming trend then the periods of ‘flattening’ demonstrate that natural variations can overwhelm the warming effect of the CO2. This is a conclusive demonstration that natural variation has at least as great an effect on global warming/cooling as atmospheric CO2 concentration.
So,
the recent overall warming trend could be entirely a result of recovery from the LIA
but
the unknown cause of the LIA was not altered atmospheric CO2 concentration
and
the recovery from the LIA is most likely a cessation of whatever induced the LIA
while
the natural variability is observed to be sufficient to overwhelm the warming effect of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Which brings us to the periods of ‘flattening’ in the warming trend.
Firstly, these periods may be apparent and not real. The measurement data are sparse so the global temperature derivations have little confidence. Hence, values of trends in global temperature over short periods could be ‘noise’ provided by the uncertainty in the data and, therefore, these trends may indicate nothing about reality. Importantly, prior to the now present period of ‘flattening’, SkS and others were claiming such short-period-trends are ‘noise’. Indeed, they needed to claim that because – if they are real – the periods of ‘flattening’ demonstrate that natural variability can overwhelm the warming effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration.
However, the present period of ‘flattening’ now exceeds 15 years and the claimed certainty of the data does not allow the trend of such a long period to be ‘noise’; i.e. the present ‘flattening’ is real and not ‘noise’.
The ‘escalator’ attempts to show the present ‘flattening’ is similar to the previous ‘flattenings’. Either it is or it is not. But, whichever of these possibilities is true then it does not support the SkS assertions of the overall warming trend being a result of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration.
1.
If the periods of ‘flattening’ are real then they indicate the overall warming trend can be overwhelmed by natural climate variation.
2.
If the previous periods of ‘flattening’ are ‘noise’ then the present period of statistically significant ‘flattening’ indicates the overall warming trend is being overwhelmed by natural climate variation.
In either case, such large effect of natural climate variation provides the probability that the overall warming trend is mostly or entirely natural recovery from the LIA.
Add to that the fact – as Bob Tisdale’s article points out – that the trends in the SkS ‘escalator’ are false and one can only conclude that the SkS escalator is deliberately misleading propaganda.
And all of the above assumes that linear trends indicate anything about the global temperature time series. In reality the time series indicate several overlaid cycles which need to be understood and modelled for any true trends to be discerned, and those true trends would not be linear.
Richard
According to Bob Tisdale +0.06 deg C/decade is a “significant warming trend”. The trend in the HadCRUT4 data since 2007 is currently +0.05 deg C/decade: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/trend.
Was there not some clamour a few weeks ago about how the HadCRUT4 trend has been “flat” since 2007?
If +0.06 deg C/decade represents “significant warming”, then how can +0.05 deg C/decade be called “flat”? Is the difference between ‘flat’ and ‘significant warming’ +0.01 deg C/decade? I wouldn’t have thought so.
Greg House says:
November 25, 2012 at 7:13 pm
I am sorry, but who exactly and how experimentally proved that CO2 causes warming on the surface by sending back to the surface some IR it gets from the surface? Because IR from colder bodies does not necessarily cause warming of warmer bodies, it needs to be proven first….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is this From Dr. Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/
About CO2 measurement at Mauna Loa: http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles/carbon-dioxide-growth-rate-at-mauna-loa/
From satellite data, graph 1
The graph is from SORCE:
There is this: graph 2 As a chemist who used UV Spectrophotometers professionally since 1972, I do not question these results as IR absorption spectra are well known and used by chemists in industry every day.
There is this from WUWT:
New paper: researcher in Germany has carried out a spectroscopic analysis of the impact of CO2 and other greenhouse gases’ contribution to warming.
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.: Comments On The Andy Lacis Post On CO2 As A Climate Thermostat where Pleione @ur momisugly November 11, 2010 at 11:35 pm mentions
Unfortunately he gives no references.
Articles by physicist Tom Vonk
CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view Read all the way to the end please.
Does CO₂ heat the troposphere ?
And by Jeff ID (An engineer?)
A reply to Vonk: Radiative Physics Simplified II
Note: If you look at what Tom Vonk says at the end of each article his articles do not contradict Jeff. Speciffically:
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of CO2′ will have ‘little impact’ on temps” by Dr Duffy
The money quote from this article is:
Again this agrees with what Tom Vonk says.
Now on to actual proof of the dampener effect of the greenhouse gas H2O.
Sleepalot @ur momisugly July 21, 2012 at 4:21 am comments:
(I could not get the graph to load this morning and it is not on the wayback machine. The 2008 eclipse data is also among the missing – http://www.shadowchaser.demon.co.uk/eclipse/2008/index.html)
In this comment Sleepalot Compares the Brazilian rainforest and the N. African Desert.
I took it a step further
comment 1
comment 2
So yes CO2 and H2O slow the flow of energy from the surface to space and on a molecular level can emit IR back towards the earth but the macro net flow is going to be from the earth to space unless the sun is shining. When the sun is shining in the presence of high humidity the flow of energy is again dampened.
Note that CO2 has a much much smaller effect that H2O does as humidity. All you have to do is look at the IR graph and the amount of H2O in the atmosphere.
One only has to look at the moon to see what the result is for no atmosphere. The day temperature is 107°C: Mean surface temperature at night is-153°C and the Maximum surface temperature is 123°C. (Note radiative transfer is only a one of the reasons for the difference)
RoHa says:
November 25, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Maybe I am missing something, but even the lumpy escalator that Bob presents still shows some flat periods in a general rise.
Even if we acknowledge SS’s general shiftiness, doesn’t their point still stand?
________________________________
That is the real I gottcha.
Bob’s data suggests the flat periods are the periods between El Niño’s where the El Niños are the mechanism that raises the surface water temperature and thereby the land temperature. In the period he has looked at the La Niñas have not cooled the oceans. It is going to be very interesting to see if the sleepy sun causes a change in the dynamics and there is a switch to more frequent and stronger La Niñas with the La Niñas ratcheting the temperature DOWN.
Notice there is no CO2 in sight in this explanation.
renewableguy
If increasing CO2 levels, as the models seem to indicate, lead to catastrophic warming, how is it that with 20x the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth had an ice age?
This is geologically well documented, I would like an intelligible response based on known science, as opposed to handwaving.
wsbriggs says:
November 26, 2012 at 6:11 am
renewableguy
If increasing CO2 levels, as the models seem to indicate, lead to catastrophic warming, how is it that with 20x the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth had an ice age?
This is geologically well documented, I would like an intelligible response based on known science, as opposed to handwaving.
########################
I assume you are talking about hundreds of million years ago. CO2 is not the only driver of climate but is necessary to explain what is happening.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
It appears that from this graph one is saying that the ocean isn’t being heated directly by sunlight. I find that true in that sunlight can only penetrate so deep into the ocean. And yet I would imagine it would be easy for heat to travel from molecular bumping, from ocean currents and different forms of mixing.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/levitus-2012-global-warming-heating-oceans.html
The takeaway I get from the graph is that a continuous increase in CO2 concentration since 1970 causes (1) long periods of constant temperature change of random length, followed by (2) brief bursts of warming of random size.
What’s the mechanism in AGW theory that explains these 2 features of the data, given that the effects of nina’s/nino’s are assumed away as noise?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/11/27720/
“ there is a clear demonstration that without the radiative forcing provided by the non-condensing GHGs, the terrestrial greenhouse effect collapses because there is no structural temperature support to restrain the current climate water vapor from condensing and precipitating.”
######################
The relationship between H2O and co2 is the main driver of our climate. That is what drives our climate. From the ice cores, the absolute humidity levels are driven by the climate drivers such as co2 and orbital variation. In our recent ascent in temperature orbital variation is too slow to of effected our climate.Those listed below are not contributing to warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change
There are also natural mechanisms for variation including climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and volcanic activity.