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.
Douglas Hollis,
As Werner Brozek points out above, it is not necessary to use a 1998 start date to see global cooling. Here is a chart using a 2002 start date.
The question that is never answered by any member of the alarmist religion is this: how many years of global cooling will it take for you to admit you were wrong about AGW? We’re currently at about fifteen years of global cooling. So, care to answer that question? Take a stand. Give us a number, instead of pushing the goal posts into the next county.
It is past time to admit that even if AGW exists [which it may, or may not], it’s effect is too minuscule to even measure, and is swamped by natural effects. The planet itself is debunking your belief that AGW matters. If it exists it is too small to matter. The planet is saying so.
Any honest scientist would have admitted by now that there is something fundamentally wrong with the CO2=AGW conjecture — including the major problem that there is not a shred of empirical evidence supporting it. There are no verifiable, testable measurements showing a cause-and-effect relationship between human CO2 emissions and global warming. It is simply an evidence-free conjecture. And it is getting long in the tooth.
KR
So according to your new climate statistics, I guess you also consider the following as noise:
Day and night (it has been anecdotally observed by some that there is a nonrandom distribution of dark and light over 24 hour periods – but yes, I guess this could be noise)
Winter and summer
High and low tide
ENSO
Interglacials and ice ages
The heart beat
The radio signal from a Quasar
Breathing in and out
Wow – sure looks like you’ve found a new science of everything! Seeing a cycle in anything just means your not good enough at approved statistics.
izen says:
November 27, 2012 at 3:14 am
….. short-period manipulation of data that is rife among those motivated to reject the science.
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ROTFLMAO, Oh that is really really rich.
Words fail so I will link to Lucy’s OLD comment on CAGW from several years ago link
Anthony that has got to be the quote of the week.
Douglas Hollis says:
November 27, 2012 at 3:51 am
….The real graph (which ironically I haven’t seen anywhere on this page), shows a consistent warming trend…..
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No the real graph is very misleading since it is completely out of context.. link
Gail Combs says: “I am no ‘warmist.’ I think CAGW is a crock but I know enough to pick my fights. CO2 absorbing IR is a fact. IR is energy and energy can be turned into heat. The atom bomb proved that.”
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Atom bomb??? (shock)
OK, about CO2 absorbing IR again. For the second time, this misses the point. According to the IPCC, their alleged “greenhouse effect” should work through the CO2’s “back radiation”, not just through absorption. Quote from their 4th assessment report (FAQ): “Much of this thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean is absorbed by the atmosphere, including clouds, and reradiated back to Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect.” I hope you understand it now.
Douglas Hollis says:
November 27, 2012 at 3:51 am
I am still trying to understand the purpose of this article?….
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I really suggest you look at Bob Tissdale’s Utubes that I linked to above. Without them you do not have the background/context to understand what Bob is trying to say. And no they are not “denier” anti-science in anyway. They are about ENSO.
rd
Greg House says:
November 27, 2012 at 8:55 am
….Thank you, mod, and please note that I have never said “there is no back radiation”.
My point is that the alleged warming (or slowing cooling down) effect of “back radiation” has never been proven even by a single scientific physical experiment, hence it should be considered as a pure fiction and not as a scientific fact. Sounds logical to me: no proof = fiction…
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I am glad you finally stated that.
Also ‘never been proven’ does not necessarily mean ‘fiction’ It can just mean too small to measure with existing technology. This is a small but critical point.
Several chemical companies got badly stung on just that point when they did not fight the EPA on the “non detectable” rulings in the 1970’s. Back then you could detect PPM (Parts per million) at max (usually 3-10 ppm) now we detect PPB (billion) and products that were considered perfectly safe for years are now ‘Contaminated’
Let’s not commit the same mistake.
Douglas Hollis says:
November 27, 2012 at 10:41 am
Wait…let me get this straight. Is anyone on here seriously contending that there’s been no warming since 1998? First of all, I think it’s disingenuous to pick the 3rd hottest year on record for the starting point of such an argument. Also, both 2010 and 2005 were warmer than 1998, while the decade 2000-2009 was the single hottest decade on record! Have I missed something?…
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Too put it bluntly we do not know what the temperature is or if it has stayed the same or decreased. We only know it has not increased. Again this is due to the things going on in the background (context again)
This is a very very short list to give you a taste of the problem.
Hansen’s graphs link
New Zealand Law Suit over temperature adjustments. link
Parliamentary requests Australian National Audit Office to reassess the BOM records. In response, the BOM, clearly afraid of getting audited, and still not providing all the data, code and explanations that were needed, decided to toss out the old so called High Quality (HQ) record, and start again.
Even the Russians are pointing out ‘problems’ with the global temperature data set.
What the Russian papers say
…Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.
Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century….
Gail Combs says: “Also ‘never been proven’ does not necessarily mean ‘fiction’ It can just mean too small to measure with existing technology.”
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I see. This is getting a little bit funny, like this (a warmist’s voice): “We are sure the back radiation warming (“greenhouse effect”) is a fact and not a fiction, we can not prove that however, it is just too small to measure with existing technology.” Very convincing, I like it.
@ur momisugly Greg House,
I posted a possible experiment for you on the issue of back radiation. Did you see it? What do you think?
MattS, I think if it was possible, warmists would have proven it long ago. The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is 150 years old.
Douglas Hollis says: @ur momisugly November 27, 2012 at 10:41 am
Also, both 2010 and 2005 were warmer than 1998, while the decade 2000-2009 was the single hottest decade on record! Have I missed something?
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Werner Brozek says: @ur momisugly November 27, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Four data sets show that 1998 still has the record, however if you wish to use GISS and you want us to avoid 1998, no problem. There is one thing you are missing and I have to say that a large number of people are missing this point, namely that being hot is NOT the same as warming. For the GISS record, the last 11 years and 8 months have been hot, but warming has STOPPED as shown below.
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I tried to point that out here but used Ice volume instead of temp.
You are correct it is the change in the rate of change (first derivative) that is the critical point and 16 years is enough to indicate there has been a change. The EPA Sea Surface Temp. shows the lack of warming too without the 1998 spike. graph
What is interesting to look at is Solar Cycle 13 and Solar Cycle 14 and the dip ~ 1910 in SST. Solar Cycle 14 peaked at 64.2 in 1906. You can use Solar cycles 21-24 for comparison to modern day.
Cycle 25 is going to be really interesting but we are assured that even if the sun goes to sleep it will not effect the temperature or Global Warming. Of course by then the grandsons of the old Robber Barons will have shoved through the carbon taxes and the rest of the sustainability BS so it will not matter if the Climastrologists are wrong… except perhaps to the freezing and starving masses.
@Greg House,
Yes, but if my experiment was actually conducted and the result was what you expect that would put the GHG radiative forcing down once and for all.
MattS, I have an easier suggestion, you will not need vacuum. What about this: construct two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. Insert the bulb of a thermometer in each enclosure and pack the whole in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which should be exposed. Expose both of them to the sunlight, but let the sunlight first pass through an additional glass plate. The sunlight will warm both boxes and the temperature will increase, because the colder air from the outside can not penetrate them. From what is known about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55C or so, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely.
So, in the box with the glass lid the temperature must get much higher than the temperature in the other box thanks to the back radiation from the glass, if the “back radiation warming” hypothesis is correct.
How do you like this one?
MattS says:
November 27, 2012 at 3:15 pm
@ur momisugly Greg House,
I can think of an experiment to measure if back radiation can have any effect, though I don’t know if it has ever been attempted. Note: I don’t have the equipment to do this.
Heat a plate of metal to some temp x. Place it in a vacuum chamber and measure the rate at which it cools. In a vacuum chamber the only cooling can be from radiative heat loss.
Then take two metal plates, heat one to temp x and the other to temp x/2.
Place both plates into a vacuum chamber in close proximity but not touching. If the plate heated to temp x takes longer to cool than in the first test then the IR radiation from the second cooler plate is having an effect on the first plate.
It’s routine radiational heat transfer which engineers are using all the time.
An example is a thermocouple in a hot flame which is surrounded by a wall near room temperature, it will register a temperature about 100 K or so below the adiabatic flame Temp, place a quartz radiation shield in the flame around the ThC and the temperature measured goes up close to the adiabatic T. Experiments showing this and quantifying the corrections necessary for unshielded ThCs were published by NASA (back when it was NACA!) The back radiation from the cooler radiation shield was the cause of the increase in Tmeas.
An illustration of this can be found here:
http://eyrie.shef.ac.uk/eee/cpe630/comfun2.html
Phil. says: “…The back radiation from the cooler radiation shield was the cause of the increase in Tmeas. … An illustration of this can be found here…”
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Phil., your illustration is not an illustration of an experiment. You said something about experiments, but presented no valid link or clear reference. This looks very much like an act of obfuscation to me.
I remember you applying the same method on some previous threads: “Science held hostage in climate debate”, “Some thoughts on radiative transfer and GHG’s” and “Important paper strongly suggests man-made CO2 is not the driver of global warming”. The culmination was your suggestion I should look for evidences proving your point myself.
Let us be serious about this debate.
Greg House says:
November 27, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Atom bomb??? (shock) [So I am showing my age]
OK, about CO2 absorbing IR again. For the second time, this misses the point….
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Greg, think about this.
This is the actual energy comparison of incoming energy from the sun and outgoing IR from the earth. graph The out going radiation is very very low in energy at any one wavelength compared to a wavelength of solar energy when you use the same scale. (Note the two lines showing the visible spectrum) Now look at this chart showing spectral lines for some gases absorbing in the visible spectrum chart now mentally take a couple of those lines and slap them onto the first graph. Take half of that and that is the amount of energy we are talking about for CO2 back radiation. It is equivalent to a fart in a stiff wind. The energy is just not there. That is why this chart is nothing but a misleading piece of propaganda. That is why you had Judithgate ( another very interesting comment on Judith Lean link ) and despite that Judith is back for the next round link and was the First Speaker
This is why we are continually lead to believe the sun’s TSI is constant and does not vary.
More importantly why was Dr. Richard .C. Willson, Principle Investigator for the ACRIM satellites not invited? Perhaps because he wrote this to Dr Nicola Scafetta who presented it to the EPA “Fröhlich made unauthorised and incorrect adjustments… He did it without any detailed knowledge of the ACRIM1 instrument or on-orbit performance…The only obvious purpose was to devise a TSI composite, that agreed with the predictions of Lean’s TSI proxy model.”
Why wasn’t Dr. Douglas Hoyt invited? He was in charge of the Nimbus 7 satellite. Perhaps because he wrote to Scafetta “2)…The Nimbus 7 radiometer was calibrated electronically every 12 days… There was no internal evidence in Nimbus 7 records to warrant the correction… 3) Thus Frohlich’s PMOD TSI composite is not consistent with the internal data or the physics of the Nimbus 7 cavity radiometer… There is no justification for Frohlich’s adjustments in my opinion”
This is found on klimaskeptik.cz who continues
You want a nice juice bone to chase that is the real bone. Think about what that TSI increase means. A change of ~ 0.1% to 0.3% from the 1985 min. to the 2003 max in TSI as measured which is ~ 1366Wm^2 and not the 340.25Wm^2 that is always waved under our noses. About 2 Wm^2 with short peaks of 4 Wm^2 . Since most of that variation in energy is in the vis-ultraviolet range according to the data from EVE, that means it went straight into the oceans possibly adding fuel Bob’s El Nino ‘elevator’ and what did not make it to the ocean ended up in the atmosphere. (Lean claims 30% is reflected)
Lean also claims the Anthopogenic influence is 1Wm^2 and is four times the influence of the sun. I guess she never saw those skinny spectral lines in the IR coming from the earth. IR that is so low you have to use a log scale to compare it to the energy from the sun.
Darn it this sentence should be:
That is why this chart is nothing but a misleading piece of propaganda.
Henry@Greg/Matt
The idea that there are “closed” box experiments that exist that would prove that the net effect of more CO2 in the air is that of warming is false. CO2 has absorptions in the sun’s spectrum 0-5 and in the earth’s spectrum 5-20 um. Most recently they even discovered that CO2 also has some absorption in the UV. I explain the problem of re-radiation / back radiation in some detail here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
Henry@Greg
A GH effect from clouds and cloudiness (weather systems, depressions) can be picked in the weather records from CET.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/#comment-198
@- Gail Combs
You object to my suggestion that those motivated to reject science manipulate short-period data saying –
“ROTFLMAO, Oh that is really really rich.”
Even more ironic, just one post before there is this –
“D Böehm says:
As Werner Brozek points out above, it is not necessary to use a 1998 start date to see global cooling. Here is a chart using a 2002 start date.”
[snip]
izen:
At November 28, 2012 at 1:43 am you write
I was sufficiently foolish as to try it, and I found it to be as “rational” as your usual posts; i.e. complete nonsense.
For a “rational view” of the recent cessation of global warming which addresses the same issues as your link, please read my post above at November 26, 2012 at 2:46 am.
Richard
izen says
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/10/carbon-dioxide-and-temperature/
henry says
izen, what you seem to forget is the following reaction
(more) heat + HCO3- => CO2 + OH-
that this relationship does exist is easy to demonstrate.
Note that it is summer here, and my pool is getting warmer. I find that to keep my alkalinity HCO3- right I have to add some soda (sodium carbonate) every now and then. I don’t have to do that in winter.
So, the warming from 1950 to 2000:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
was pushing up CO2. Unfortunately we also do not have good reliable records of CO2 from before 1950.
Smoking causes cancer, but cancer does not cause smoking. Cause and effect, get it?
If you say that more CO2 in the atmosphere also causes more warming you first have to prove to us whether or not a net increase in CO2 in the atmosphere actually does cause warming.
In this respect, you have to come up with a balance sheet showing us exactly how much radiative warming and cooling is caused by the increase in CO2 + how much cooling is caused by the CO2 due to the increase in vegetation noted over the past 5 decades (remember: did you ever see a tree grow where it is very cold?).
You must do that in the right dimensions (e.g. time, concentration CO2, W/m2/ m3 etc.) and you must show us the actual measured results.
You cannot “calculate” that which has never been measured:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
ps to my previous post
there are giga tons and giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans
izen says:
November 28, 2012 at 1:43 am
@- Gail Combs
You object to my suggestion that those motivated to reject science manipulate short-period data saying –
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This discussion thread was about the recent lack of warming so what else did you expect a commenter to talk about?
Many scientists who reject CAGW are geologists or are scientists like me who took geology courses in college for “the fun of it” The thought that CO2 can cause “Run away CAGW” is counter to all we learned such as the high levels (7000 ppm) CO2 in the past. (Cambrian) The thought that puny little man CONTROLS the weather after studying the forces of nature is even more laughable. The climate changes and it can change dramatically thanks to earth cycles but the Holocene has had a very very stable climate compared to other interglacials.
When it was pointed out that it was warmer during the Medieval Warm period. The ‘Team” went to work and ‘disappeared’ the Medieval, Roman and other warm periods using a hockey stick. Even with evidence from all over the world it is still called a ‘local” phenomenon.
You want LONG RECORDS? HERE The temperature changes. we have been warm before and not very long ago either. Listed Here are a set of historical temperature graphs from a large selection of mostly non-urban weather stations in both hemispheres. Large cities have been excluded because of Urban Heat Island Effect distortions to long-term data.
To counter this the ‘team’ went to work again and disappeared the rural stations by statistical hocus pocus and ADD in adjustments to low rural stations by comparing them to hotter airport and city stations which are ALSO ADJUSTED UP. My nearest station is rural and I watch it closely. Each day 2F to 4F is ADDED to the high of the day when it is reported the next day.
Team members in Australia and New Zealand have been called on it and just like Phil Jones, the answer is The Goat Ate My Homework
When ‘The Team’ was asked what was a significant time for no warming we were told 12 years then 15 years then 17 years. QUIT MOVING THE GOAL POSTS!
And if you will not show your work IT AIN’T SCIENCE!