Dr. David Whitehouse of the GWPF expounds on the “prime statistic of global warming” graph and its failure, as first reported here.
The Leaked AR5 Report And Global Temperature
Whatever one’s view about the leaking of the draft IPCC AR5 report it does make fascinating reading, and given the public scrutiny it is now receiving it will be interesting to see what parts of it are changed when the final report is released in a year or so.
One part of it that should be changed is the section on global surface temperature data and its interpretation.
The analysis of global combined land and ocean surface temperature in AR5 is inadequate for what it admits is seen as the prime statistic of global warming. It is highly selective in the references it quotes and in the use of time periods which obscures important, albeit inconvenient, aspects of the temperature data. It is poorly drafted often making a strong assertion, and then somewhat later qualifying if not contradicting it by admitting its statistical insignificance. This leaves the door open for selective and incomplete quoting.
In Chapter 2 the report says that the AR4 report in 2007 said that the rate of change global temperature in the most recent 50 years is double that of the past 100 years. This is not true and is an example of blatant cherry-picking. Why choose the past 100 and the past 50 years? If you go back to the start of the instrumental era of global temperature measurements, about 1880 (the accuracy of the data is not as good as later years but there is no reason to dismiss it as AR5 does) then of the 0.8 – 0.9 deg C warming seen since then 0.5 deg C of it, i.e. most, occurred prior to 1940 when anthropogenic effects were minimal (according to the IPCC AR4).
AR5 admits that of the warmest years on record the “top ten or so years are statistically indistinguishable from one another.” This is sloppy. The “or so” is significant and should be replaced with a more accurate statement. Despite the admitted statistical indistinguishability of the past ten years (at least) AR5 then goes on to say that 2005 and 2010 “effectively” tied for the warmest years! There is no mention of the contribution to global temperature made by the El Nino in those years!
It is in its treatment of the recent global temperature standstill that AR5 is at its most unevenhanded. It says that much attention has been focused on the “apparent flattening in Hadcrut3 trends,” and it says that “similar length phases of no warming exist in all observational records and in climate model simulations.”
No it hasn’t. The IPCC says that the time when anthropogenic influence dominated began between 1960-80. AR5 takes 1979 – 2011 as a period for analysis when temperatures started rising after a 40-year standstill. The fact that is obvious from the data is that the past 16 years of no global temperature increase is unusual and is not an “apparent flattening.” It is a total flattening for 16 years (as AR5 confusingly admits later on), just over half of the duration of the recent warming spell. Flat periods have existed before but they were in the era when mankind’s influence was not significant. The 16-year flatness since mankind has been the prime climatic influence has been the cause of much discussion in the peer-reviewed literature, something that this AR5 does not reflect.
AR5 goes on to say that with the introduction of Hadcrut4 (and its inclusion of high latitude northern hemisphere data) there is now a warming trend. No it isn’t. Look at the Hadcrut4 data and, as the GWPF has demonstrated, it is warmer than Hadcrut3, but it is also flatter for the past 15 years. AR5 also adds that “all products show a warming trend since 1998.” That this is not the case seems to be something that AR5 concedes a little later in the report when it that none of the warming trends they quote are statistically significant!
Referenced And Dismissed
Consider AR5’s summary: “It is virtually certain that global near surface temperatures have increased. Globally averaged near-surface combined land and ocean temperatures, according to several independent analyses, are consistent in exhibiting warming since 1901, much of which has occurred since 1979.”
Nobody doubts that the world has warmed since 1901. But why choose 1901, and what warming is natural and what is anthropogenic? As we have seen the last comment is wrong.
AR5 says: “Super-imposed upon the long-term changes are short-term climatic variations, so warming is not monotonic and trend estimates at decadal or shorter timescales tend to be dominated by short-term variations.”
So since 1979 we have has about 16 years of warming and 16 years of temperature standstill. Which is the short-term natural variation? The warming or the standstill?
AR5 says: “A rise in global average surface temperatures is the best-known indicator of climate change. Although each year and even decade is not always warmer than the last, global surface temperatures have warmed substantially since 1900.” Nobody, of whatever “skeptical” persuasion would disagree with that.
I can’t help but conclude that the pages of the GWPF contain a better analysis than is present in AR5, which is a mess written from a point of view that wants to reference the recent standstill in global temperatures but not impartially consider its implications.
The unacknowledged (in AR5) problem of the global temperature standstill of the past 16 years is well shown in its fig 1.4, which is seen at the head of this article. Click on the image to enlarge. It shows the actual global temperature vs projections made by previous IPCC reports. It is obvious that none of the IPCC projections were any good. The inclusion of the 2012 data, which I hope will be in the 2013 report, will make the comparison between real and predicted effects appear ever starker.
In summary, the global temperature of the past 16 years is a real effect that in any realistic and thorough analysis of the scientific literature is seen to be a significant problem for climate science, indeed it may currently be the biggest problem in climate science. To have it swept under the carpet with a selective use of data and reference material supported by cherry-picked data and timescales is not going to advance its understanding, and is also a disservice to science.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
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Tzo says:
December 18, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Side Note: Interesting how skepticalscience never censors those who use the word ‘warmist’ in the comments section, or censors links to valid scientific studies with the moderator’s reasoning of “That authors shenanigans are not welcome here”.
As a person who can’t log onto skeptical science because I have been banned for posting links to credible papers…..I can’t help but laugh at how naive you are.
I had hoped it was a site with valid discussion…….it is only propaganda and I was very sad to find that out.
That is why Skeptical Science Syndrome disorder has become synonymous with being near sighted. The only solution is to see an optometrist so that their view will be expanded to reality.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Tzo:
Since I am not “allowed” to post at Skeptical Science, would you be so kind as to post this link?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:14/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:13.885/detrend:-0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:-0.42/detrend:-0.23/offset:14/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:14.1/detrend:-0.23/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:17/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset:14/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:9
As to the statistics involved in your link to the escalator temp idea, I can only recommend that whoever took the time to do it, most certainly flunked every stat class that he/she attended. In all my years, I have seldom seen a butchering to match that one. But then off course, I recognize the source, do I need to really say more?
Tzo:
Oh yes, as an aside. Being a lot of folks here are not allowed to post at skeptical science, would you be so kind as to extend the posters there an invitation to post here so that we can help them with their near sighted issue?
We can prob recommend an optometrist , or if they don’t have enough cash we could turn on the lights, hold a magnifying glass for them and help them at least view reality for a few minutes. That should create a hunger for more don’t ya think?
rgb: “All anyone — warmist or denier alike (kidding, kidding:-) has to do is wait. Another few decades…”
I agree – I’d love to wait another 16 years, even more: If CO2 keeps rising, and temperatures keep doing their own thing, that will be the end of the CAGW hypothesis.
The problem is that in (Australia, at least) we are being carbon-taxed *right now*. Waiting another 16 years to repeal this tax is going to cost the country’s people a bundle.
What you all must understand is that there can be no CO2-AGW. Yes, zero, zilch.
This is because the lower atmosphere is a near black body emitter in the main GHG bands and the earth’s surface is near a black body. As any engineer or competent physicist will know, the two radiation fields cancel each other out at radiative equilibrium, so little if any UP CO2 band IR from the surface, no absorption.
The only reason the climate people claim there is CO2-AGW is by using the two-stream approximation which is physically wrong because only net radiative flux can do thermodynamic work. The result of this is they exaggerate IR absorbed [the 23 W/m^2 net IR is mainly water vapour side bands, not in self absorption] by 5.8 times at least, hence the imaginary positive feedback.
They justify this by mistakenly imagining pyrgeometers measure a net energy flow. This is balderdash: they measure temperature. If the other body is the same temperature, there is zero net flux in the direction of that body If the other body is at absolute zero, the temperature signal flux is the level.
Yet a pyrgeometer will measure the temperature field in both cases because the shield stops IR coming the other way – a pyrgeometer reading is always an artefact. They even work differently than claimed with much of the internal heat transfer by convection because the sensor plate can never equilibrate radiatively with a clear sky, because of the atmospheric window.
This has been the worst ever scientific project I have come across with 7 errors in the physics, a despeate story of scientific incompetence dressed up by the modelling as pretend valid. The IPCC claims are entirely baseless and the organisation needs closing down at once to be replaced by a science based body..
Never forget that the last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD was the coolest of the current benign Holocene epoch and that at ~12,000 years our happy Holocene, (responsible for the development of all human civilizations) is getting long in the tooth. Overall it has been cooler than the previous Eemian epoch and its end is now overdue when compared with earlier shorter more intense interglacials. See the Inconvenient Sceptic John Kehr figures 65 and 71.
So whether the current sunspot cycle and changing ocean circulation patterns lead to Little Ice Age conditions or perhaps to the impending real end of the Holocene during this millennium, the one thing that the world should not be concerned about is a little Global Warming, well within the level of natural variations that have been seen in the past 1000 / 3000 years.
A cooling, rather than a warming, world leads to both a reduction in agricultural productivity with huge deprivation for Mankind worldwide and probably to more extreme weather events, (possibly like hurricane Sandy). There is even good reason to expect worsening weather events in a cooling world because the temperature differential between the tropics and the poles will be enhanced.
But now the Western world is continually being pressured by propaganda and has widely enacted legislation about “Global Warming / Climate Change / Global Climate Disruption”. These definitions have meant that any adverse weather event can be ascribed to “Climate Change” and thus be blamed on the destructive actions of Mankind.
The Catastrophic Climate Change Alarmists back every horse whichever way it runs. Nonetheless all Alarmist policy recommendations are only intended to control excessive Global Overheating by the reduction of Man-made CO2 emissions.
It is not clear how reducing CO2 emissions would help save the world from a climate change towards a cooling world which now seems to be occurring nor how it could ameliorate severe weather events.
Never forget that the last millennium 1000 – 2000 AD was the coolest of the current benign Holocene epoch and that at ~12,000 years our happy Holocene, (responsible for the development of all human civilizations) is getting long in the tooth. Overall it has been cooler than the previous Eemian epoch and its end is now overdue when compared with earlier shorter more intense interglacials. See the Inconvenient Sceptic John Kehr figures 65 and 71.
So whether the current sunspot cycle and changing ocean circulation patterns lead to Little Ice Age conditions or perhaps to the impending real end of the Holocene during this millennium, the one thing that the world should not be concerned about is a little Global Warming, well within the level of natural variations that have been seen in the past 1000 / 3000 years.
A cooling, rather than a warming, world leads to both a reduction in agricultural productivity with huge deprivation for Mankind worldwide and probably to more extreme weather events, (possibly like hurricane Sandy). There is even good reason to expect worsening weather events in a cooling world because the temperature differential between the tropics and the poles will be enhanced.
But now the Western world is continually being pressured by propaganda and has widely enacted legislation about “Global Warming / Climate Change / Global Climate Disruption”. These definitions have meant that any adverse weather event can be ascribed to “Climate Change” and thus be blamed on the destructive actions of Mankind.
The Catastrophic Climate Change Alarmists back every horse whichever way it runs. Nonetheless all Alarmist policy recommendations are only intended to control excessive Global Overheating by the reduction of Man-made CO2 emissions.
It is not clear how reducing CO2 emissions would help save the world from a climate change towards a cooling world which now seems to be occurring nor how it could ameliorate severe weather events.
[Dupe ? Mod]
Tzo:
I write in a genuine attempt to help you.
Responses to your trolling have been ‘put downs’. This is understandable because your posts have been – shall we say – less than worthy. But I am now writing in hope of assisting you to evaluate your posts with a view to your providing worthy posts in future.
This thread is about the analysis by Whitehouse of statements in the leaked AR5 final draft. It would be appreciated if you were
(a) to present a statement of any error in his quotations of the draft
or
(b) to explain any fault in his analysis of those quotations.
But you have presented neither. Instead , you have made untrue assertions and linked to propaganda web sites.
For example, at December 18, 2012 at 2:56 pm you said
The NS propaganda site is NOT “facts and reality”: it is an alternative opinion from a biased and distorted source.
Indeed, at December 18, 2012 at 3:49 pm, manicbeancounter replied to your opinion by stating glaring flaws in the item which you linked.
Perhaps the item you linked does contain some information you think is pertinent to this thread. If so, then you should have stated that information preferably in your own words. And if you lack ability to formulate the criticism in your own words then you could you could have quoted from the link. In either case, you could have provided the link as the source.
But you did neither. You merely blew a metaphorical raspberry and linked to a propaganda source. So, any reasonable reader of your comment understands your comment to be a statement that you don’t like consideration of anything except the propaganda. In other words, your comment discredited itself. And you emphasised that discredit by adding
That addition says the reason your post contained no statement of value was because you had no such statement to make and, therefore, you resorted to unwarranted insult.
I could dissect all your posts on this thread in similar manner. And your reference to the risible SkS ‘escalator’ is an example of how badly you have defamed your own credibility. That graph was so discredited in a WUWT thread that SkS supporters resorted to pretending it had been produced as “a joke”.
In summation, you are failing to convince anybody with your self-defeating posts that consist solely of unfounded insults and links to propaganda sites.
If you want to be considered as other than a joke then you need to provide posts which state a clear argument supported by cogent evidence preferably backed-up with references.
Of course, your credibility is irrelevant to you if you are one of the trolls being paid to provide pro-AGW posts on the web from behind the shield of anonymity. In that case, brief and pointless posts of the kind you make are sufficient to obtain your income with minimum effort.
Richard
rgbatduke says this about the graph: “This figure puzzled, and continues to puzzle, me. I assume that the colored shaded areas are the two-sigma boundaries, although that is by no means clear — and how in the world would one compute sigma? ”
The AR% draft reports gives this as part of the annotation for the graph:
“Whiskers indicate the 90% uncertainty range of the Morice et al. (2012) dataset from measurement and sampling, bias and coverage (see Appendix for methods). The coloured shading shows the projected range of global annual mean near surface temperature change from 1990 to 2015 for models used in FAR (Scenario D and business-as-usual), SAR (IS92c/1.5 and IS92e/4.5), TAR (full range of TAR Figure 9.13(b) based on the GFDL_R15_a and DOE PCM parameter settings), and AR4 (A1B and A1T). ”
rgbatduke goes on to say “And then there is the grey shading. What the f*ck is up with that? It is unlabelled. ”
The annotation to the graph says “The 90% uncertainty estimate due to observational uncertainty and internal variability based on the HadCRUT4 temperature data for 1951-1980 is depicted by the grey shading. ”
Doesn’t look like a comprehensive analysis to me!!
Tzo says:
For anyone interested in the non-distorted graph, and non-cherry picked information:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/IPCC_FAR_Since_1880.png
Funny how that graph, starting in 1880, /begins/ with .25c of temperature change. If you deduct that from the end point you end up with .75 warming in 130 years, or .6 per century.
GCT:
Your post at December 19, 2012 at 4:18 am provides supporting evidence for the statements of rgbatduke which your post claims to be refuting. Your post says in total
The annotation to the graph says “The 90% uncertainty estimate due to observational uncertainty and internal variability based on the HadCRUT4 temperature data for 1951-1980 is depicted by the grey shading. ”
Doesn’t look like a comprehensive analysis to me!!
OK. So the coloured areas show the range of projections but
the the labeling of the measurement data says
1.
“Whiskers indicate the 90% uncertainty range of the Morice et al. (2012) dataset from measurement and sampling, bias and coverage (see Appendix for methods).”
and
2.
“The 90% uncertainty estimate due to observational uncertainty and internal variability based on the HadCRUT4 temperature data for 1951-1980 is depicted by the grey shading. ”
Which statement should be accepted as indicating the 90% uncertainty, (1) or (2)?
They cannot both be true but both could be wrong.
It seems to me that rgbatduke made a fair comment when he wrote, “What the f*ck is up with that?”
Richard
“The 90% uncertainty estimate due to observational uncertainty and internal variability based on the HadCRUT4 temperature data for 1951-1980 is depicted by the grey shading. ”
Translation:
“The grey shading covers the 90% uncertainty estimate that we have no idea what the hell is going on !”
“Which statement should be accepted as indicating the 90% uncertainty, (1) or (2)?
They cannot both be true but both could be wrong.”
They can both be true because there are two sets of uncertainties marked on the graph.
“It seems to me that rgbatduke made a fair comment when he wrote, “What the f*ck is up with that?”
He actually added that there were no labels, ant that was his problem.
The issue I raised was that rgbatduke made lengthy comments on the graph without having read the graph annotations, which explained what the graph showed.
Not as scholarly as the above submissions but I have commented on the SOD Fig 1.4 and joined up the data points so that the their bands have less visual significance. Also I have added a 3 term exponential moving average of the given data.
http://revfelicity.org/2012/12/17/global-cooling-from-un/
http://revfelicity.org/2012/12/17/global-cooling-from-un/how-trustworthy-ar5-draft/
I have commented on this Fig 1.4 at :
http://revfelicity.org/2012/12/17/global-cooling-from-un/
and modified the figure thus:
http://revfelicity.org/2012/12/17/global-cooling-from-un/how-trustworthy-ar5-draft/
The modded chart shows the data points which helps in removing the visual confusion of their attached bands.
A 3 term exponential moving average of the data is also shown imbedded on the chart and you can see it struggling to maintain a level trend.
GCT:
At December 19, 2012 at 10:03 am you say
Would you care to expand on that, please?
It seems to be what climastrologists call science.
Richard
Tamino has an interesting analysis of Whithouse’s key points. The key point being that the temperature anomaly of the most recent 16 years or so are above the linear trend of the previous era. Check this out to get an objective nonbiased statistical analysis.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/fake-skeptic-draws-fake-picture-of-global-temperature/#more-6082
REPLY: I love it when somebody with a fake name “Tamino” calls other people and their conclusions “fake”. Heh. Next Tamino will call Nature itself fake for not cooperating at the correct pace. – Anthony
Here’s one of the graphs from Tamino’s analysis. If the warming actually declined in recent years, you would expect the recent data to be below the trend line. What do you see–above or below trend temperatures?
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/giss79.jpg
BillD
Indeed.
David Whitehouse claims that “the past 16 years of no global temperature increase is unusual”.
Let’s examine that claim using the WoodforTrees temperature index (an average of two surface HADCRUT3, GISTEMP, and two satellite lower troposphere temperature series, UAH, RSS, starting in 1979):
The claim of “no/little warming for the last 16 years” boils down to this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1980.67/plot/wti/from:1980.67/trend/plot/wti/last:192/trend
Firstly, let us note that Whitehouse is wrong to claim that the last 16 years has been a time of no global temperature increase. The trend for the last 16 years is less than the trend since 1979, but it is positive.
But, Whitehouse also claims that the trend for the last 16 years is “unusual”, so let’s compare the trend for the last 16 years with the 16 years before that. This what you get:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1979/plot/wti/from:1979/trend/plot/wti/from:1996.67/to:2012.67/trend/plot/wti/from:1980.67/to:1996.87/trend
So, the trend of the 16 years previous to the last 16 years was ALSO less than the trend since 1979.
Do you still think the last 16 year has been unusual, Mr Whitehouse?
Slioch says:
December 20, 2012 at 7:25 am
The trend for the last 16 years is less than the trend since 1979, but it is positive.
It depends on your data set.
When rounded to the nearest year, the following data sets have a slope of 0 for 16 years:
1. HadCrut3: since April 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to October)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to October)
3. RSS: since January 1997 or 15 years, 11 months (goes to November)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/plot/rss/from:1997.0/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1
However in view of the significance of the 16 years lately, I would like to elaborate on RSS. The slope for 15 years and 11 months from January 1997 on RSS is -4.1 x 10^-4. But the slope for 16 years and 0 months from December 1996 is +1.3 x 10^-4. So since the magnitude of the negative slope since January 1997 is 3 times than the magnitude of the positive slope since December 1996, I believe I can say that since a quarter of the way through December 1996, in other words from December 8, 1996 to December 7, 2012, the slope is 0. This is 16 years. Therefore RSS is 192/204 or 94% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
BillD
You should know that Tamino is one of the more discredited AGW types. It will do you no good to link his products from here, that is, if you wish to convince. Now, I grew 3 feet between the ages of 18 and 36. I have a graph that proves this. Tamino made it for me. What do you think?
“BillD
You should know that Tamino is one of the more discredited AGW types. It will do you no good to link his products from here, that is, if you wish to convince. ”
In other words, “He’s BAD, therefore I don’t have to address his arguments.”
That, my friend, is a textbook example of the “argumentum ad hominem.”
BillD & Slioch:
I’m sorry, but the almost painfully obsessive way in which Tamino “dissects” his data in order to make some handwaving points (in the post that you link) reminds me of quants trying to fit trendlines to share prices.
Just not as convincing.
The gray areas have been added to visually give the impression that the IPCC range includes what is within the gray. Without the gray, the disconnect between scenarios and observation are more obvious, as the observations are in the white and have no connection to the ARs/
The gray band is not design. It’s a trick to hide the disconnect.