Climate Deception: How The “Hottest” Temperature Game Is Played To Offset Prediction Failures
Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
Global temperature is not doing what the “official” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted. Proponents of the claim humans are the cause of warming and the cooperative media react by trying to deflect, divert and perpetuate fear. They exploit people’s lack of knowledge and understanding. A January 2013 ABC News headline said, “2012 Was 9th Warmest Year on Record, Says NASA” is a classic example of how the public are deliberately misled. It is deliberate because it distorts, is out of context, and exploits manipulation of statistics or as Disraeli summarized, “Lies, damn lies and statistics.”
The deception begins with the headline but is expanded in the article. The challenge is to know what is actually being said. Initially, you need a translator, but can develop sufficient propaganda detectors once the methods are identified. There are guidelines that work in most circumstances:
Don’t believe anything you read; Question everything; Be especially suspicious of numbers; Know the source and political bias; If you’re affected by the story get at least three other sources; Remember all government information and data is biased; Be especially wary of stories that cite authorities.
The opening paragraph to the ABC story says,
“The year 2012 was the ninth warmest globally since record keeping began in 1880, said climate scientists today from NASA. NOAA, crunching the numbers slightly differently, said 2012 was the tenth warmest year, and both agencies said a warming pattern has continued since the middle of the 20th century.”
The implied threat is the temperature continues its inexorable trend up. The record is 133 years long and with a general warming trend. When would you expect to find the warmest years? Figure 1 provides a hint.
Figure 1
Why are they drawing attention to this by focussing on the “ninth warmest”? Because for the last 15 years the trend has leveled and declined slightly in contradiction to their forecast. Figure 2 shows what is actually happening.
Figure 2
The IPCC claim with over 90 percent certainty that Figure 2 is not suppose to happen. Here is the actual data;
Figure 3
Notice how the shift caused a change in terminology to divert attention from the fact that CO2 was no longer causing increasing warming. CO2 levels continue to rise, but temperatures don’t follow. It completely contradicts their predictions, which is why they want to divert attention.
How meaningful is the temperature increase? What is the accuracy of the measure? IPCC says there was a “trend of 0.6 [0.4 to 0.8]°C (1901-2000)” , that is for most of the period in the news story. Notice the error range is ±0.2°C or ± 33%. It is a meaningless record.
The story cites NOAA and NASA in the standard appeal to authority. However, it’s offset by the observation that they are “crunching the numbers slightly differently” to explain why they disagree between 9th and 10th on the list. How can that be? Aren’t they using the same data? All agencies produce different average temperatures because they select different stations and “adjust” them differently. NASA GISS consistently produces the higher readings, and were most active politically when James Hansen was in charge. They both use the grossly inadequate surface station data.
Although the article limits its claim by acknowledging it is only the 9th warmest in the official record, most people believe it is the 9th warmest ever. It is a misconception deliberately created by political activists like Al Gore and not openly refuted by governments. It is like Gore’s claim that CO2 levels are the highest ever when they are actually the lowest in 300 million years.
So, how long and complete is the official record? A comprehensive study was produced by D’Aleo and Watts “Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?” detailing what was done. Two graphs from NASA GISS show the general pattern.
Figure 4 (Source NASA GISS)
There are fewer than 1000 stations with records of 100 years and most of them are severely compromised by growth of urban areas. Equally important, is the decline in the number of stations they consider suitable, especially after 1990. This pattern also partly explains why the current readings are high (Figure 5). Temperature increases as the number of stations used are reduced.
Figure 5
Number of stations plotted against temperature.
Although they condition the terminology “hottest” with “on record” most people assume it is “ever”. This implication was deliberate. The IPCC rewrote history by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) that was warmer than today. Weather agencies, increased the slope of temperature by lowering the old record – New Zealand is a good example (Figure 6).
Figure 6
Global temperatures are not following “official” predictions, so those who used global warming for a political agenda try to defend the indefensible. This proves it is political because scientific method requires you admit your science is wrong, determine why, and if possible make adjustments.
– See more at: http://drtimball.com/2013/climate-deception-how-the-hottest-temperature-game-is-played-to-offset-prediction-failures/#sthash.N7kgUFhU.dpuf
Maybe Bob Dylan wrote “Like A Rolling Stone” for the Climate Hystericals and Climate Scientificists.
Figure 5 is a classical example of how to lie with statistics. To see why, extend the Figure to well before 1950. Bad Bad Bad.
Oh, but Carbon Pollution!
Figure 2 gives the general idea. It may be noted, though, that RSS satellite temperature data finds the decline phase as having a greater relative slope (already!) than figure 2 alone would show.
Here is an analogy of figure 2 made more specific with exact data, in this case depicting the global warming scare period (after the global cooling scare period) through now:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1976/to:1998/plot/rss/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend
The 1997-1998 El Nino was the turning point, the last El Nino to be charged by relatively heavy warning before it. El Ninos (/ La Ninas) are largely how temperature change is expressed in the climate system. If CAGW movement claims had been true, the trend since the 1998 El Nino would have been warming instead of cooling, due to how more powerful El Ninos were supposed to occur after it:
“[BBC news article prediction] Friday, November 7, 1997 […]
El Nino events normally occur roughly every 5 years, and last for between 12 and 18 months. However […] “it appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino.” […]
“So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” he said.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/25433.stm
Of course, that didn’t actually happen; instead, there is the picture seen in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif
9th or 10th warmest on record.out of 133 years of records? Not much of a record. Sounds like temps are going down while CO2 is going up. Otherwise 2012 should have been the number 1 hottest. Watts up with that?
lsvalgaard says:
August 27, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Figure 5 is a classical example of how to lie with statistics.
===========
Fig 5 is a graph. It shows that when the USSR collapsed thousands of weather stations in Siberia closed and the earth’s average temperature went up rapidly. What a surprise. Remove cold stations from the records and the average goes up. Who’d have thunk.
ferd berple says:
August 27, 2013 at 11:06 pm
Fig 5 is a graph. It shows that when the USSR collapsed thousands of weather stations in Siberia closed and the earth’s average temperature went up rapidly.
It also would shows [if extended back in back] that as you go back in time from 1950 the number of stations declined and so did the temperature, hence in its present form is misleading and designed to be be so.
Never has so much data been manipulated by so few to deceive so many in order to provide those few with such comfortable lifestyles.
In July 1940, the last war was settled, it was settled again in December 1941.
Funny that, when someone tells you something controversial is settled, it rarely is.
Leif wrote: “Figure 5 is a classical example of how to lie with statistics. To see why, extend the Figure to well before 1950. Bad Bad Bad.”
However, extending the drawing to well before 1950 would give meaningless results. Well before 1950, the situation was completely different. Extend it to A.D. 1800 : number of observing stations, zero. But evidently the temperature was then not much different from the present one.
Jean Meeus says:
Beat me to it.
Here in Sydney, Australia, we’ve had the warmest winter in 150 years. I am sure the Observatory in the City is not where it was 150 years ago, and there certainly wasn’t an airport either.
Jean Meeus says:
Beat me to it, too!
So to cut short , Global Warming is the urban heat effect on night temperatures.
Leif, what figure 5 shows is an clear drop in the number of stations coincident with a jump in temperatures. What happened before 1950 is of no importance (he could haven chosen to cut off the plot at 1960 or 1970) What one has to establish whether the coincidence of the two events is coincidental or not. Statistics alone doesn’t provide a satisfactory answers to that question.
Here’s how the BBC use that data.
I wonder how those poor little walruses managed to survive the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warm periods? Did they have to eat all the dead and dying polar bears?
I wonder how fast a 66% increase in summer sea ice retreats north?
Enquiring minds want to know…
Leif Svalgaard,
Do you disagree with the fact that elimination of the huge amount of Siberian weather stations coincided with the huge upswing in the registered average temperature? If so, on what grounds? Whatever happened before 1950 has nothing to do with this obvious fact.
Alexander, maybe Leif is forgetting that numbers don’t have memory; a lottery ticket has an equal chance of winning even if you chose 1,2,3,4,5.
I’d like to know more about that figure 5.
We expect the average of the entire Earth surface to be around 15 deg C.
If we have poorly distributed measurement stations (eg tending to be concentrated in mid latitudes like USA and Europe) their simple average would be a good deal lower than 15. Even if there are many thousand of stations.
If the number of stations is reduced, and most removals are in mid latitudes, we could have fewer stations, but a much better sampling distribution. The simple average would rise towards 15 as the stations were removed.
The issue would then be with the large number of stations with poor distribution, and not the number of stations. It would be appropriate to test the simple average of any measurement network to make sure it is not wildly different to 15. This could mean checking the sampling distribution and ignoring many station readings, where this helps to improve the distribution used to calculate the average.
The reduction in station numbers is not necessarily an issue. Given the rise in average temperature in figure 5 (towards 15) the lower number of stations appears to be doing a better job.
Is this what Figure 5 is showing?
I do detect a hint of disingenuity in the Tim Ball’s approach. For dramatic effect he chose a 15 month old plot from Climate4you which ends with the lowest T for many years. Climate4you updates its graphs every month.
It is sad when those who represent We The People are the problem of nearly every problem normal We The People face today.How many still trust their government ? But We The People don’t protest anymore because we fear our government.
Paul Craig Roberts – Humanity Is Drowning In Washington’s Criminality
http://youtu.be/iCn_IFS3OUo
If only ‘Climat Change’ would be the problem. We’ve become sheep but we can still choose the dog that bites us.
Is it not the Ocean heat content that regulates the climate ? So why are we measuring land surface temperatures.?
Chris Schoneveld says:
August 28, 2013 at 12:11 am
I do detect a hint of disingenuity in the Tim Ball’s approach. For dramatic effect he chose a 15 month old plot from Climate4you which ends with the lowest T for many years. Climate4you updates its graphs every month.
At sometime in the past, Dr. Ball took a climate4you chart and performed a few minutes of additional work on it, adding the colored line, thick black line, and so on.
He may have done that a few months ago, back when the chart was the current one, and just reused the same plot (already saved on his hard drive) when writing this article later.
The few months since mid 2012 haven’t been particularly warm, as seen in the current plot on climate4you.com : http://www.climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT4%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
That one superimposes HADCRUT4 as well, making it a bit harder to read HADCRUT3 individually. I’m not sure if climate4you.com still hosts now any chart showing HADCRUT3 alone by itself over the same timeframe of focus; I didn’t exhaustively look, but I didn’t find one at a quick glance.
(As illustrated in that link, HADCRUT4 has extra adjustments; in HADCRUT3, 2007 is seen to be cooler than 1998; in contrast, HADCRUT4 rewrites temperature history so 2007 gets depicted as warmer than 1998).
Utterly irrelevant, and since I doubt you are stupid enough to think it is pertinent, mendacious. Deliberately.
The relevant stepchange is the correspondence between elimination of data sources (predominantly in cold areas, including N. Canada and the Andes) and an apparent 1.5K jump in “average” temperature. Most of those weather sites continue to report, btw, they are just disregarded. Blatant distortion of the record. RU complicit?
Dr. Ball, very, very good articles on your site ( http://drtimball.com ), need it at the top of my links. You’ve got it right, especially about what the i.p.c.c. really is.
ferd berple
Alexander Feht
………….
Siberia’s size and temperatures uncertainty may have profound influence on the ‘global temperature’ trends, but far less real relevance.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/69-71.htm
Was divergence of the SST and the Land temperatures during short period of just two years real ?
I am inclined to think that was unlikely.
Yeah, if it gets colder they will just say, ‘the heat that should be making made it warmer is building up during the current cold to come back stronger…”, oh sorry..but they already say this….
Winston Churchill once said of delegates from the USSR, “these people just can’t face facts..” That’s what years of mindless propaganda does.
It’s all part of the Republicans “War against Icebergs”. They are racist who would rather see green leafy food cover the planet than glaciers, harsh winters, starvation, misery and death!
Patrick on August 27, 2013 at 11:43 pm said:
“Here in Sydney, Australia, we’ve had the warmest winter in 150 years. I am sure the Observatory in the City is not where it was 150 years ago, and there certainly wasn’t an airport either.”
Patrick, you may find the following WUWT link interesting. There was a lot of debate about the Sydney obsevatory last year. There were two WUWT articles on it. I’ve linked the second one because it contains the link to the first right at the beginning. I think the second is more interesting but the first is useful for context. My interest was in the thermometers used in 1790. I traced the make and type to a specimen in the National Maritime museum at Greenwich. Recalibrating that thermometer could answer the question. It’s in the comments of the second article.
Yes I have always thought like Henry Clark says that El Nino’s are an expression of high temperatures, do not know how though
I was also very interested in the sudden drop in stations used for collecting data in 1990. I saw that animation here many years ago, where the stations were plotted on a world map, year by year. the massive drop-off in 1990 was startling.
I, for one, want to know why this was, and how much of the ‘global warming’ of the 90’s was caused by this. If it is a lot, as I suspect, then we would have seen a rapid rise, then a plateau as the records become the ‘norm’ once more. That is exactly what we seem to have seen in the surface temp records, IMO.
It doesn’t matter much whether, in Fig. 5, the earlier lower measurements (averaged from many stations) or the later higher ones (averaged from much fewer stations) are a better representation of the actual temperature. Even if Jordan is correct in assuming that the “weeding out” of many reporting stations around 1990 actually improved the global distribution by removing an earlier over-representation of certain areas, the unpleasant fact remains that the step-change is still artificial, no matter if it was “really warmer” in earlier years, or “really cooler” in recent years. In both cases, the trend will be equally skewed. It should be possible, however, to recalculate 1970’s and 1980’s temps using only stations that are still used in the network. I wonder if doing so would remove, or at least reduce, the apparent step-change (which looks not only like a strange coincidence, but rather unphysical to me – and certainly not like anything you’d expect from AGW theory)?
It is truly appalling what these ‘climate science’ charlatans have been getting away with
.
They ought to be fired, and then put on trial for fraud and malfeasance in public office.
Let’s hope it isn’t much longer before a stop is put to this madness.
Leif,
Do you have a plot of this you can show or a link? SInce the 1920’s and 1930’s were warm, the graph might show the temp.’s going up as more thermometers dropped out although there may be a few years where it showed the opposite with earth cooling. I think the other caution is that correlation is not causality.
A friend of mine worked for a national weather station as a graphic artist and quit his job when he was being directed to make the weather maps of the US look different than what the raw data showed. He asked why he shouldn’t produce weather maps representing the real data and they said something like “because the map looks better that way”.
I’m also tired of hearing the term “extreme” everywhere. You can’t watch 5 minutes of the news, or read a news paper without being told that weather somewhere in the country is extreme. I’m sorry, but what’s going on today is generally no different than I remember going back to the 1960’s. It’s hot and dry in the summer, it’s cold and damp in the winter. Some years a little more, some a little less. 91F is not unheard of, it’s not extreme, even if it lasts for 3 days and becomes a dreaded heat wave. Years ago few people had air conditioners so it really felt hot to most. Now AC is ubiquitous. Who really feels the effects except for maybe 2 minutes when you’re outside checking the mail. So you have to be told it’s extreme outside. I just hope most people don’t believe this nonsense.
The IPCC and all the proponents and purveyors of the CAGW Lie like to refer to us as “climate deniers” for not obediently going along with the Lie. They should be referred to as “climate liars” henceforth.
Fig. 5 represents a meaningless claim. You would have to show that station location influences the average temperature calculation. Taking unreliable Russian stations (cold) out of the Russian total stations (also cold) should make no difference to the average global temperature (distributed by surface area and not station count). But if you take a group of cold stations out of the total record the “average” temperature based on the “number of stations” will go up. The latter means nothing to me.
lsvalgaard says:
August 27, 2013 at 11:19 pm
Whoa, we occasionally make a big deal here about similar graphs that start in 1950, most famously at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/why-ncars-meehl-paper-on-highlow-temperature-records-is-bunk/ with image http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/western_usa_all-time_temp_records.png?w=640 . That shows high and low records set by decade for “18 western states, provinces, and territories” and the 1930s have by far the most for both highs and lows. Other images show US summer highs and winter lows.
While the area covered is a small percentage of the planet, I’m not confident that “as you go back in time from 1950 the number of stations declined and so did the temperature.” It may be right, it may be the cold winters offset the hot summers, it may be that geographic and political influences rule. At any rate, I get suspicious of graphs that start around 1950.
I’d have to reread the original sources, it may be there was a geographic adjustment to account for the loss of the Siberian stations. I was amused at the suggestion back then that winter energy subsidies to Siberian towns were based on the local temperatures, thereby providing a strong incentive to report lower than actual averages.
There are so many caveats it’s hard to say anything that covers this large of a temperature span. I’m happy to point out that the recent record is consistent with a pause in warming or a plateau, and then point to suggestions we may be at the end of the plateau.
I think figure 3 says it all – the data changes, therefore, so does the name.
When you are statistically analyzing extreme values (hottest/coldest), you should start by assuming that the values have an extreme value distribution (not a normal distribution) and use extreme value statistical techniques. The tenth hottest in 150 years is more likely to be within a normal distribution range. What year in that 150 years was the tenth coldest?
An extended version of Figure 5 : http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/temperature/number-%20temperature-stations-ghcn-1701-2008.gif
From this page : http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/horrifying-examples-of-deliberate-tampering/
lsvalgaard is completely correct. Cutting off the graph at 1950 creates a false impression. The data directly before 1950 shows a rapid temperature rise occurring with a rapid increase in stations. In short, don’t do this.
One of my favorite quotes about this is (and I don’t know where I heard it)
You can see global warming happening. Every year 1901 gets colder.
Bill_W says:
August 28, 2013 at 4:30 am
Do you have a plot of this you can show or a link?
Figure 4 of the post shows what I’m talking about at least back to 1900.
Steele’s comment backs this up.
I think the other caution is that correlation is not causality.
There is that too.
lsvalgaard says:
August 27, 2013 at 11:19 pm
It also would shows [if extended back in back] that as you go back in time from 1950 the number of stations declined and so did the temperature, hence in its present form is misleading and designed to be be so.
=============
That is a mistake in logic. The number of stations are not physically “declining” prior to 1950 because time does not run backwards. The time axis only has physical meaning from left to right.
Prior to the 1950’s, the number of stations was increasing with time, but this would have been generally randomly distributed. After the collapse of the USSR the number of stations are declining rapidly, and these stations are generally from a colder place on earth than the average. This coincides with a rapid increase in the calculated global average temperatures, which suggests the increase may be a statistical artifact.
Steve from Rockwood says:
August 28, 2013 at 5:19 am
Taking unreliable Russian stations (cold) out of the Russian total stations (also cold) should make no difference to the average global temperature
============
There is no evidence these stations were any more unreliable than stations anywhere else. The USSR generally removed people from their jobs that were considered unreliable.
Given the large number of stations removed and the very large surface area of the earth it represents and the fact that these are almost exclusively from a colder part of the earth than average, it would be next to impossible to interpolate the missing data without creating a false statistical trend in the average. It would be more a matter of luck than skill.
Fig 5. provides evidence that the increase in temps around 1990 was due to an artifact of the statistics. It doesn’t prove this, but it most certainly is evidence. Given that scientists have said they are unable to explain the rise in temps in this time period except by a rise in CO2, Fig 5 is a smoking gun that there may well be other explanations.
Some temperature records go beyond 150 years. Here is the canary in a coalmine of global warming.
Here is another canary. Backqaaaaack.
It’s still the hottest evaaaaah. It’s worse than we thought.
vukcevic says:
August 28, 2013 at 1:00 am
Was divergence of the SST and the Land temperatures during short period of just two years real ? I am inclined to think that was unlikely.
===========
I agree. A divergence between the surface and satellite calculated average during the period of the USSR collapse would be further evidence that the loss of a large number of surface stations at that time changed the calculated global average surface temperature.
ferd berple says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:23 am
That is a mistake in logic. The number of stations are not physically “declining” prior to 1950 because time does not run backwards. The time axis only has physical meaning from left to right.
Irrelevant [and silly] nit picking. My meaning was perfectly clear. It could have been said differently: the number of stations increased form 1900 to 1950 and temperature did too. My point is that Figure 5 is misleading and that it is deliberately so.
Jimbo says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:40 am
“Retreating Alaskan Glacier Reveals Remains Of Medieval Forest”
August 26, 2013
“Retreating Glacier In Patagonia Uncovers 400 Year Old Forest”
August 27, 2013
========
1. Climate deniers in the pay of big oil placed those forests under those glaciers.
2. Any past warming in Alaska and Patagonia was regional, not global.
3. Because CO2 is well mixed, today’s warming is global. Everywhere is getting hotter.
4. Don’t try and confuse the issue with new facts. The science is settled.
lsvalgaard says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:49 am
the number of stations increased form 1900 to 1950 and temperature did too. My point is that Figure 5 is misleading and that it is deliberately so.
==============
The number of stations is declining, not increasing following the collapse of the USSR, so the two cases are different. One is increasing, the other decreasing, so you cannot simply assume one is the mathematical inverse of the other. The mechanism would need to be the same, but in this case the mechanism is different. Thus the error is not with Fig 5.
“….Don’t believe anything you read; Question everything; Be especially suspicious of numbers; Know the source and political bias; If you’re affected by the story get at least three other sources; Remember all government information and data is biased; Be especially wary of stories that cite authorities…..”
If there is any truth left, it is found in this statement. Whether it is about global warming or some other issue, you simply can no longer trust our government to report the truth. I can’t believe it has come to this.
Leif, the statistical analysis was done in gret detail some years ago, and the station decline/temp increase link is undeniable. See: Chiefio analysis – Here are some links, but it’s best to review all. GISS output is meaningless
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/ghcn-the-global-analysis/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/ushcn-vs-ushcn-version-2-more-induced-warmth/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/agw-and-gistemp-issues/agw-gistemp-specific/ GISTEMP problems, read the whole archive
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/dtdt/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/ghcn-version-one-vs-two-prepping-for-three/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/gistemp-sneak-peek-benchmarks-step1/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/pacific-basin-the-australian-hockey-league/ the Chiefio does a whole lot of raw temperature analysis vs instrument change.
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/derivative-of-integral-chaos-is-agw/
• http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/comparison-temperatures/
Perhaps a statistically minded reader could run an analysis to see what percentage of the time the statement “the last decade was the warmest in ______ years” has been true. One would expect, in a rising temperature regime, it would be true more often than not.
Steve from Rockwood says:August 28, 2013 at 5:19 am
Fig. 5 represents a meaningless claim. You would have to show that station location influences the average temperature calculation. Taking unreliable Russian stations (cold) out of the Russian total stations (also cold) should make no difference to the average global temperature (distributed by surface area and not station count). But if you take a group of cold stations out of the total record the “average” temperature based on the “number of stations” will go up. The latter means nothing to me.
Steve, I think this graph showing the physical location decimation came out at the same time as the graph you refer to,and gives an idea of location and density change as well as actual vs. estimated temperatures.
http://i44.tinypic.com/23vjjug.jpg
Also check out E M Smiths site: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/gistemp-start_here/
he covers the station migration in detail
lsvalgaard says:
“My point is that Figure 5 is misleading and that it is deliberately so.”
This is something you have absolutely no way of knowing. Deliberate is a state of mind and your comment assigns your opinion as to another person’s motives. Very unscientific. Where is you “data” to back up your assumption?
133 years of global temperature data, according to ABC news. What’s the margin of error for the global temperature estimate for 1880? The data is junk. GIGO.
Where is Man Made Global Warming coming from ?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2014/scale:1/trend
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/new-data-falsifies-basis-of-man-made.html
“So, how long and complete is the official record? A comprehensive study was produced by D’Aleo and Watts “Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?” detailing what was done. Two graphs from NASA GISS show the general pattern.
Figure 4 (Source NASA GISS)
There are fewer than 1000 stations with records of 100 years and most of them are severely compromised by growth of urban areas. Equally important, is the decline in the number of stations they consider suitable, especially after 1990. This pattern also partly explains why the current readings are high (Figure 5). Temperature increases as the number of stations used are reduced.”
Wrong.
This pattern does not explain what temperature increases.
This has been shown many times in many ways. Let me detail the ways it has been
Shown.
1. Adding back IN the stations that were dropped post 1990. The answer is the same
2. Restricting the entire data to only long records. the answer is the same.
3. Computing the answer with all available data, 40000 stations, the answer is the same
4. Using only rural stations. the answer is the same
5. using random samples of all 40000 stations. the answer is the same.
6. Computing the answer from unadjusted daily data using methods endorsed by skeptics. the answer is the same.
The great thermometer drop out “bias” is a myth. There are other issues that deserve attention, investigation, and skepticism. They are: microsite bias and [estimates of] UHI bias more accurately. But the thermometer drop out is not a valid concern. For people interested in doing science rather than spreading confusion, I’ll suggest that they focus on Anthony’s work.
The media focus on records drives me crazy. One need only glance at the Volstok ice core data to see that the earth undergoes cyclical swings in temperature, that we are at present near the peak of one of these perfectly natural cycles and so of course one would expect to break non-proxied records that only go back 150 years. Breaking records says nothing about the trend nor about attribution.
@Steele 6:03 am
In short, don’t do this. Don’t do what? Don’t cut off data? That applies to the Y-axis, too.
Re: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/temperature/number-%20temperature-stations-ghcn-1701-2008.gif
Let’s look at the date range from 1701 to 1840. There are very few changes in the number of thermometers, but relatively large growth rates in the number of thermometers. What is going on at 1740? Did we go from 1 thermometer to 3? Let’s not hide important changes in the number of thermometers when the numbers are small.
I submit, going from 10 to 20 thermometers is just as significant as going from 100 to 200 and 600 to 6000. The number of thermometers needs to be a log scale. What will be come clear is that changes in the mean temperature will correlate with changes in the number of thermometers. That is certainly one form of man-made temperature change, but not what is being peddled.
That Mean Temperature Graph, with Log scale Thermometer count is only good for saying that WHERE we measure the temperature changes Mean. Without doing much research, I will make the hypothesis that the temperature rise of 19th century has more to do with the rise of the British Empire and European colonization of Africa than any rise in world climate.
I confess a befuddlement in the lack of risk of the number of thermometers from 1940 to 1945. Consider the rise in the number of airplanes and airfields during that period. But then somehow there is a rise of 1500 thermometers between 1948 and 1951, where and why?
Thanks, Dr. Ball. Your clear words are welcome!
@Steven Mosher 7:58 am
<i.1. …The answer is the same
2. … the answer is the same.
3. … the answer is the same
4. … the answer is the same
5. … the answer is the same.
6. … the answer is the same.
Why do you write nonsense like this? Maybe someone can reach similar conclusions, but what ever the “answers” are from these different datasets, they are most certainly NOT “the same.”
Emotion is talking. Bluster is not science.
Links and numbers, please.
Measurement artifact is a common source of data compromise and should be suspected each and every time data is collected. Leif, you have spent many years on this very issue. That’s why calibration of methods and instruments is important. That’s why maintaining the integrity of the subject pool is important. That’s why maintaining the integrity of the control pool is important. Measurement artifact should ALWAYS be the first thing one examines, tests, and discusses, at considerable length, before drawing any other conclusions.
Any stream of weather sensor data before or after 1950 should first and foremost be considered compromised by measurement artifact. Why? See the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sentence in the first of my paragraphs here. All three hallmarks of data compromise are present thus we can reasonably suspect the data we have. Measurement artifact is highly suspected.
lsvalgaard says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:49 am
the number of stations increased form 1900 to 1950 and temperature did too. My point is that Figure 5 is misleading and that it is deliberately so.
==============
What is striking about figure 5 is not the trend but the step change that is coincident with the step change in the number of stations. I don’t think anyone is claiming that no trend exists, only that the effect is exaggerated by the loss of cold stations in the 90’s.
Steven, you have not done a complete review of station parameters that could account for a false positive rise (or decrease) in temperature. The data collected from your spread and decline of stations could have been affected by infusing the data with regional bias as well as by changes in latitude, longitude, and altitude of your subject pool. Agriculture research knows this well and they guard against it.
Steven Mosher: I was waiting for your comment, thanks!
Anyone know the source of Figure 6?
Steven: Example of regional bias: La Nina dominant years results in regional precipitation and temperature patterns to change in one part of the country and El Nino dominat years results in regional precipitation and temperature patterns to change in another part of the country. Changes also occur with altitude. As station increase and drop out occurs, you will introduce a bias that is an artifact of the measurement protocol. The country, the world for that matter, is not a flat piece of ground with stations evenly spread across it. Your data pool was not maintained. That you no longer suspect compromise in your data is a testament to your bias, not the thoroughness of your investigation into that matter. So no, I am not buying your assurances that the data is unaffected by the increase or the drop out of stations.
If agriculture products companies developed seed varieties with the same blind eye towards the lack of maintenance of seed plots that from the beginning were unevenly spread across the country, they would have gone bankrupt.
Fred: I hope I’m not being too simple here, but in order to test what effect the loss of Siberian stations had, then surely one could run the entire analysis minus the stations in contention?
Excellent artice.
Since we always are concerned with accuracy at Wattsupwiththat, there is no written evidence that Disraeli ever said that phrase or anything close to it. While Mark Twain in 1906 popularized the phrase and its exact wording, attributing it to Disraeli, others before him have used some variations of the sequence of lies or fibs, but not the exact quote.
So I believe the exact wording of this popular quote was Twain’s.
Pseudepigraphy, the false use of more famous historical names to make your point or writings more significant, was not uncommon before modern times and the Internet. As, Winston Churchill told me when I had a chance to meet him as a youngster in England: “Gary, never, never give in to the urge, to promote your ideas through other famous men. And you may quote me on that!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
vukcevic says:
August 28, 2013 at 1:00 am
ferd berple
Alexander Feht
………….
Siberia’s size and temperatures uncertainty may have profound influence on the ‘global temperature’ trends, but far less real relevance.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/69-71.htm
Was divergence of the SST and the Land temperatures during short period of just two years real ?
I am inclined to think that was unlikely.
=======================
Thank you for the link to your graph. Quite interesting as to the temperature divergence in such a short period of time.
In addition to all the Chiefio pages, the full report of “Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?” by D’Aleo and Watts (and thanks to Chiefio) is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/26/new-paper-on-surface-temperature-records/ That is 209 pages long and covers many things.
Figure 5 is in D’Aleo & Watts and comes from Ross McKitrick’s http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html and that refers to Joe D’Aleo who got the data from the NCDC.
My son bought a book for me at a used book shop. It is called Climate and Man, published by the US government (agriculture dept) in 1943. There are temperature tables for all states. It listed the average and extremes for frost dates in the fall and spring.
In northern Illinois where I live, 60 years later I still cannot plant tomatoes and peppers before Memorial day. Not much change here, no matter what “they” say, no warming to note.
@ Gary Fox (re: 10:01 am)
LOL, loved your little admonition to us all. Your caution is a valid one, though I disagree to some extent, for, used judiciously, accurate quotes to make a point are a good thing; they aid in promoting truth by persuasion. Overall, NICELY and WITTILY PUT!
My favorite part: “…through other famous men… .”
*********************************************
GREAT DISCUSSION, above, you wonderful WUWT scholars and scientists. This site is SO COOL! (and, in the Northern hemisphere, cooler every month now, heh, heh)
Nifty book find, Jay (10:55am). Now, of course (well, you set this up!) it is: “Climate of Mann.”
Can you still plant your peas on George Washington’s birthday as my great-grandfather did (in NW Washington State, USA) until he died in the 1950’s?
No, Gary Fox. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I had never heard of you before this morning.
#(:))
Man is an expert liar. Man is also an expert at deception, that is, phrasing a fact so that it supports your opinion.
We need scientist to be honest enough to look at a fact and admit his opinion (hypothesis) was wrong. Most times and in most fields (I hope!) that’s not an issue. A scientist is out find out what is really going on.
Add politics (search for power) and greed (search for grants) and corruption enters in. (I suppose pride and search for fame is also involved.)
Robertv says: @ August 28, 2013 at 12:28 am
… But We The People don’t protest anymore because we fear our government….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We don’t protest any more because it could mean a ten year jail sentence as a Felony. With a felony conviction you may lose your right to vote permanently if you reside in certain states like Alabama, Florida, Delaware, Virginia and eight other states. In all but two state you lose the right to vote while in prison and sometimes during Parole and Probation.
Washington Times:
From Huffington Post:
Voting rights of a felon in the USA:
If you thought the USA was a free country that respected it’s Constitution… Well I guess you were wrong.
Jer0me says: @ August 28, 2013 at 4:01 am
I was also very interested in the sudden drop in stations used for collecting data in 1990. I saw that animation here many years ago, where the stations were plotted on a world map, year by year. the massive drop-off in 1990 was startling.
I, for one, want to know why this was, and how much of the ‘global warming’ of the 90′s was caused by this…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
May I suggest you look at the articles by Verity @ digging in the clay on and around this link. She did a lot of research and several articles as did E. M. Smith See AGW is a Thermometer Count Artifact and also see his Thermometer Zombie Walk
“Pseudepigraphy, the false use of more famous historical names to make your point or writings more significant, was not uncommon before modern times and the Internet.” ~J Gary Fox
There is the anecdote of the historian who commissioned one of his researchers to determine whether the authors referring to past works had accurately represented what the original source had said. They found that in most cases, the citations were not really accurate characterizations of previous works, and in some cases were complete fabrications. And it is worse with the internet, because others very easily repeat the mischaracterized reference.
“Pseudepigrapha (also Anglicized as “pseudepigraph” or “pseudepigraphs”) are
falsely attributed works,
texts whose claimed authorship is represented by a separate author; or
a work, “whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.” ~wik
Jordan says:
August 28, 2013 at 12:05 am
I’d like to know more about that figure 5.
We expect the average of the entire Earth surface to be around 15 deg C.
If we have poorly distributed measurement stations (eg tending to be concentrated in mid latitudes like USA and Europe) their simple average would be a good deal lower than 15. Even if there are many thousand of stations.
* * *
Is this what Figure 5 is showing?
PLUS… Thorsten: (August 28, 2013 at 4:02 am)
PLUS… Steve from Rockwood (August 28, 2013 at 5:19 am) AND others…
First, Fred Berple says: There is no evidence these stations were any more unreliable than stations anywhere else. That may be correct, but is the converse true? Is there any evidence that these stations were more reliable than stations anywhere else? We’ve heard for years that the U.S. network was “among the best” in the world, yet we have seen evidence presented by Mr Watts (among others) that many U.S. stations are, and continue to be, very poorly sited, and influenced by the UHI, which NOAA implies they can address my corrections.
A bigger issue here is HOW the global mean temp is calculated using the base data from fluctuating numbers of stations. I have been told it is a mathematical construct based on grids. The grids range in shape from roughly rectangular (in a flat projection) near the Equator to triangular at the poles. A mean temp is created — mathematically — for each grid from those met stations that are deemed acceptable to the powers that be. From those mean grid temps, which represent huge geographic areas (especially nearer the Equator), a global mean is created. Two immediate problems:
1. Is that model in and of itself fully appropriate? Are there other procedures that are more robust statistically? I’m guessing here, but I’ll bet it was designed more for computing ease than anything else. We’ll disregard, for the moment, what relevance to reality is actually associated with a calculated “global mean temp.”
2. If there are no met stations inside the grid, temperature values are created — “transported” in by some mathematical construct — from neighboring grids, even if those grids have no reliable met stations within them. In the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as over great expanses of oceans there are no existing, permanent met stations with any real history much less those with >100 years. As a result, interpolation and extrapolation must necessarily be used to “fill the gaps.” As must extrapolation and interpolation based on other extrapolated/interpolated values if the neighboring cells also lack quality met stations.
Of course, there’s always the issue of the missing original met records, those once claimed to have been lost due to limited disc drive space (while the “value-added” dataset was retained), and the myriad adjustments over time, those same adjustments we now know (h/t whomever is behind Climategate 1.0) were not documented by the researchers as to what was done and on what basis.
The IPCC is persistently guilty of a kind of deceptive argument that is not the one the one described by Dr. Ball. In fact, in his current article, Ball makes an argument of this kind. I’m sure this error is inadvertent.
The kind of deceptive argument that I have in mind is an equivocation. I prove the existence of it and of the equivocation fallacy that results from it in the peer-reviewed article at http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7923 .
An equivocation is an argument in which one or more terms change meaning in the midst of the argument. By logical rule, a proper conclusion may not be drawn from an equivocation. To draw an improper conclusion is the equivocation fallacy.
A term that is capable of changing meanings is said to be “polysemic.” In the language of climatology, the word-pair predict/project is polysemic in the frequently observed circumstance that the two words in the word pair are treated as synonyms. As I show in the above referenced article, “predict” has a meaning and “project” has a meaning and the two meanings differ. When the difference between the two meanings is observed, it is found that none of the climate models referenced by AR4 predict. All of them project. A model that projects is incapable of conveying information to a policy maker about the outcomes from his or her policy decisions. Thus, this type of model is useless for the purpose of guiding policy decisions on CO2 emissions. When well meaning people such as Dr. Ball use “project” and “predict” as synonyms this has the effect of covering up the failure of global warming research to provide a basis for making policy.
I erred. In my recent post please strike the second instance of “the one” in the first paragraph.
Monday, February 18, 2013Its the Sun stupid – The minor significance of CO2
1 The IPCC’s Core Problem
The IPCC – Al Gore based Anthropogenic Global Warming scare has driven global Governments’ Climate and Energy Policies since the turn of the century. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on uneconomic renewable energy and CO2 emission control schemes based on the notions that it is both necessary and possible to control global temperatures by reducing CO2 emissions. All this vast investment is based on the simple idea that as stated in the IPCC AR4 report
“we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is very likely larger than 1.5°C.”
These values can only be reached by adopting two completely unfounded and indeed illogical assumptions and procedures
1. CO2 is simply assumed to be the main climate forcing .This is clearly illogical because at all time scales CO2 changes follow temperature changes.
2. Positive feedback from the other GHGs – notably water vapour and methane is then added on to the effects of CO2 and attributed to it. Obviously, in nature, the increase in CO2 and Humidity are both caused by rising temperatures. It is also impossible to have a net positive feedback because systems with total positive feed back are not stable and simply run away to disaster. We woudn’t be here to tell the tale if it were true.
From its inception the IPCCs remit was to measure Anthropogenic Climate Change and indeed Climate Change was defined as Anthropogenic until the 2011 SREX report when the definition was changed.The climate science community simply designed their models to satisfy the political requirements of their funding agencies. – Publications ,acadmic positions,peer approval , institutional advancement and grants were unlikely to be forthcoming unless appropriate forecasts of catastrophic warming were dutifully produced. The climate models have egregious structural errors and ,what is worse, in their estimates of uncertainty the IPCC reports for Policymakers simply ignored this structural uncertainty and gave policy makers and the general public a totally false impression of the likely accuracy of their temperature forecasts.It is this aspect of the AGW meme which is especially unconsionable.
The inadequacy, not to say inanity, of the climate models can be seen by simple inspection of the following Figure 2-20 from the AR4 WG1 report.
Fig1
The only natural forcing is TSI and everything else is anthropogenic. For example under natural should come such things as eg Milankovitch Orbital Cycles,Lunar related tidal effects on ocean currents,Earths geomagnetic field strength and all the Solar Activity data time series – eg Solar Magnetic Sield strength, TSI ,SSNs ,GCRs ,( effect on aerosols,clouds and albedo) CHs, MCEs, EUV variations, and associated ozone variations and Forbush events. Unless the range and causes of natural variation are known within reasonably narrow limits it is simply not possible to calculate the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on climate.
The results of this gross error of scientific judgement is seen in the growing discrepancy between global temperature trends and the model projections. The NOAA SSTs show that with CO2 up 8% there has been no net warming since 1997, that ,the warming trend peaked in 2003 and that there has been a cooling trend since that time.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
The gap between projections and observations is seen below
Fig 2 ( From Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim (Oslo) )
2, The Real Climate Drivers.
Earths climate is the result of resonances between various quasicyclic processes of varying wavelengths. The long wave Milankovich eccentricity,obliquity and precessional cycles are modulated by solar “activity” cycles with millenial centennial and decadal time scales .These in turn interact with lunar cycles and endogenous earth changes in Geomagnetic Field strength ,volcanic activity and at really long time scales plate tectonic movements of the land masses.The combination of all these drivers is mediated through the great oceanic current and atmospheric pressure systems to produce the earths climate and weather.
To help forecast decadal and annual changes we can look at eg the ENSO PDO, AMO NAO indices and based on past patterns make reasonable forecasts for varying future periods. Currently the PDO suggests we may expect 20 – 30 years of cooling in the immediate future.Similarly for multidecadal,centenial and millennial predictions we need to know where we are relative to the appropriate solar cycles.The best proxies for solar “activity”are currently ,the Ap index, and the GCR produced neutron count .The solar indices are particularly important for their past history these can be retrieved from the 10 Be data,
In a previous post on htpp://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com on 1/22/13 – Global Cooling – Timing and Amount(NH) I have made suggestions of possible future cooling based on a repetion of the solar millenial cycle. Here I point out for the modellers the value of using the Ap index as a proxy measure of solar activity. Compare the Northern Hemisphere HADSST3 Temperature anomaly since 1910 with the AP index since 1900 . Because of the thermal inertia and slow change in the enthalpy of the oceans there is a 10 – 12 year delay between the driver proxy and the temperature.
Fig 3 – From Hadley Center
Fig 4 From http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png
There are some good correlations .The 1900 and 1965 Ap lows correspond to the NH temperature minima at 1910 and 1975 respectively . The 1992 Ap peak ( Solar Cycle 22) corresponds to the 2003 temperature high and trend roll over- and as shown in the previous post referred to above might well represent the roll over of the millenial solar cycle which brought the Medieval and Roman warming peaks. The NH is used because it is more sensitive to forcing changes and its greater variability makes correlation more obvious.
As a simple conceptual model the Ap index can be thought of as simple proxy for hours of sunshine especially when mentally integrated over a 10 -12 year period. See Wang et al
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/9581/2012/acp-12-9581-2012.pdf
As far as the future is concerned the Solar Cycle 23/24 Ap minimum in end 2009 is as low as the 1900 minimum and would suggest both a secular change in solar activity in about 2006 and a coming temperature minimum at about 2019/20. This change is also documented for TSI by Adbussamatov 2012 http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/14754
Fig 5.
As a final example for this post the following figure from Steinhilber et al http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/30/1118965109.full.pdf
shows the close correlation of successive Little Ice Age Minima with cosmic Ray intensity.
Fig 6
CONCLUSION : IT IS NOW CLEAR THAT THE Ap/GCR/10BE DATA ARE THE BEST PROXY MEASURES OF
THE EARTHS TEMPERATURE DRIVER OVER MILLENIAL CENTENNIAL AND DECADAL TIME SCALES.
THE BEST WAY OF FORECASTING THE FUTURE IS TO PREDICT FUTURE SOLAR CYCLES AT THESE WAVELENGTHS KEEPING IN MIND THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD
The above is courtesy of Dr. Norman Page.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Past history shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sun is the driver of the earth climatic system, and this time is going to be no different.
If one goes back in past history it will show prolonged active solar periods have been associated with a rise in temperatures while prolonged solar minimum periods have been associated with a drop in temperature.
However neutral solar activity or solar activity that has been established over a long period of time remaining more or less the same will show very weak or no correlations to the climate at all ,or even run counter to the climate and that is where so many of you are getting tripped up.
So many are so short sided, and so many of you fail to grasp the secondary effects that come when the sun changes from a prolonged active state to a prolonged minimum state.
So many of you have no concept of climatic thresholds, so many of you don’t understand the beginning state of the climate has much to do on how the climate will wind up even if the same forcings are applied.
So many of you don’t understand that the climate is non linear, and cycles only work when the climate is in the same climatic regime and even then they are a guide at best.
They say bond events occur in a cycle every 1470 years, that is a qusi cycle at best with a plus or minus 500 year difference from the mean which in effect does not make it very cyclic.
So many of you ignore completly the real issue of why the climate has changed abruptly from time to time in a period of a few decades. Cycles do not explain and cannot to be made to fit in with past abrupt climate changes that have taken place on earth .
My conclusion is that present day mainstream climatolgist are an embarrassment to this very interesting field ,and have set it back by decades, while their AGW theory will meet it’s end before this decade ends.
The temperature trend is going to be down once the maximum of solar cycle 24 passes by which is not very far off. I have mentioned the solar parameters needed to set all of this in motion many times in the past.
1.solar flux sub 90 sustained
2. ap index sub 5.0 or less sustained
3. solar wind 350 km/sec or lower sustained
4. UV light off upwards of 50% extrme uv light wavelengths sustainded.
5. solar irradiance off upwards of.015% sustained
The above, following several years of sub solar activity in general which we have had post year 2005, in contrast to very active solar conditions previously.
Clueless fools.
Once last note with the sun versus the climate is as follows: The CATCH is the degree of magnitude change of solar activity and duration of time of solar activity has to reach a certain critical level in order to overcome random earthly climatic changes and or influence these random earthly climatic items(such as enso,volcanic actiivty ,cosmic rays/clouds,to name a few) which will allow them to phase in line with the solar activity rather then show no corrrelation at all when solar activity is neutral or not changing over the course of many decades.
In addition I maintain the GHG effect is a result of the climate ,not the cause of the climate. It comes as a result of the amounts of co2 /water vapor that are in the atmosphere which are tied to oceanic temperatures which is tied to the total energy in the earth climatic system to begin with.
NOTE: a weakening geomagnectic field wil serve to amplify any solar effects.
Solar changes from states of prolonged active to prolonged inactive conditions are the best explanation to explain all of the many eratic jigsaw climatic changes over the earth throughout the ages.
I’d still like to understand more about that Figure 5. Does anybody know where it comes from and how it was calculated.
Look at the scale on the LHS – it ranges from 9.0 to 12.5. The legend says this is “Average-T”, so we can suppose it is an average temperature in degC. If it if an illustration of global mean temperature, we should expect a value of around 15degC, +/- a few tenths (call this the “expected value”).
Regardless of how the average is being calculated in Figure 5, the method and/or data is clearly a very poor estimator of global average T: the error is systematically low by several degC. Eugene discusses gridding (say, averaging by grid and then combining into a global average), but surely this would be a method which aims to adjust for poor distribution, and we would get something much closer to the expected value from gridding (if there is enough data in each grid to address sampling error in the gridded data).
That’s why I suggested it could be a simple average over all data. It appears to be an estimate of average T, and not anomalies. If so, it would provide a very useful indicator of a sampling issue with the “instrumental record”.
Anomalies, and differences are frequently argued to produce a useful measure of TREND (emphasis) in Average T, and it is suggested that this can be precise, without needing to measure average T itself. There is a problem with this claim (possibly shown in the above graph): if the instrumental record is so poorly distributed that it produces a huge error in Average T, it takes quite a leap to argue that the network can produce an acceptable assessment of the trend in Average T. I certainly don’t find this convincing.
Perhaps I can finish by repeating a comment I made above: a small number of stations (with good spatial distribution) might do a much better job of estimating average T compared to a large number of stations with a biased distribution. If there is enough data available in the “instrumental record”, I think it would be better to extract the data from a subset than to try to use all of the data.
The subset would be a network of stations with good distribution which can actually get close to the expected value with an unbiased error distribution.
Stephen Wilde, you are exactly correct about the data changing due to a difference in the number of reporting stations.
As I have said AGW theory is already proven wrong(in the eyes of many) and will be obsolete before this decade is out.
It is the most asinine climate theory I have ever come across.
Figure 5 explains the problem quite well.
SATELLITE DATA should help to alleviate this problem as move further into the future.
Terry Oldberg:
At August 28, 2013 at 12:29 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-hottest-temperature-game/#comment-1402076
you are being egregious when you accuse Tim Ball of making an equivocation error in his article but you do not state what it is.
The accusation is especially offensive because your post demonstrates you do not understand what you have written.
You say
No.
I list some of the misunderstandings concerning equivocation and of IPCC predictions stated in your words I have quoted here.
1.
You are incorrect when you say
That is not true. The truth is
An equivocation is an argument in which one or more terms change meaning in the midst of the argument. By logical rule, a proper conclusion may not be drawn from an equivocation THAT AFFECTS THE CONCLUSION.
2.
You mislead when you claim
In its definitions the IPCC says
So, the IPCC defines a prediction is the projection with highest confidence.
The definition does NOT provide an equivocation because the definition makes a clear distinction between
a prediction (i.e. the forecast with highest confidence)
and
a projection (i.e. a forecast with less confidence than another forecast).
Furthermore, a projection can be converted to become a prediction if it gains confidence, and this does not create an equivocation.
It is important to note that a projection can become a prediction without there being an equivocation. And whether or not your paper has been peer–reviewed has no relevance to this.
3.
You are plain wrong when you say
The IPCC defines that a model’s projection with highest confidence is a prediction.
When the IPCC provides a forecast that the IPCC says is a prediction then the IPCC has made a prediction.
How and why the IPCC made that prediction does not – and cannot – prevent that prediction from being a prediction.
4.
You make a logical error when you refuse to accept a forecast as being a prediction when the forecaster states the forecast is a prediction.
The forecaster alone knows the intention of the forecast. And it is not possible for anyone else to know the intention of the forecaster is other than the forecaster says.
Therefore, when the forecaster says the forecast is a prediction then there is no possibility of anyone disproving it is a prediction: the most anybody can do is to show the prediction is improbable.
In light of the above, I am willing to accept that your unsubstantiated affront to Tim Ball derives from you not knowing what you are talking about. But, whatever your reason for that affront, you need to withdraw your assertion or substantiate it.
Richard
ferd berple says:
August 28, 2013 at 6:38 am
——————————————-
I am not convinced. Fig.5 shows a step change which should show up in the temperature record which would increase in 1990 and then remain constant. But what we see is a gradual increase in global temperature to 1998 and then a levelling off for almost 16 years. There is no correlation between Fig. 5 and global temperatures.
Steve Keohane says:
August 28, 2013 at 7:29 am
——————————————-
Thanks Steve for the links. I reiterate that the trend in global temperatures does not correlate with Fig. 5 so I conclude the removal of Russian stations does not explain the warming. Otherwise we would see a step change in 1990 and we do not.
jbird says:
“If there is any truth left, it is found in this statement. Whether it is about global warming or some other issue, you simply can no longer trust our government to report the truth. I can’t believe it has come to this.”
It’s time to dust off those old government jokes that the then USSR populace used to tell, and make them applicable to the USA government.
Salvatore, you depend wholly on wriggle matching. And you don’t even do that right. Your premise is not any kind of scientifically valid form of scientific discourse regarding determining climate drivers. In fact, your comments about the Solar/Earth climate connection are becoming more bizarre thus more easily attributed to someone who wriggle matches without any kind of understanding about the two systems he so willingly wants to connect.
I have been wanting to see this graph for a while, so I finaly ploted it on Wood for Trees.
I know, giant URL, but it is worth the look. It is the rolling decadal linear trend. It is interesting to see both the amplitude change and the slope change over the decades. I guess the level is the sum of the slopes preceding it.
I only ploted every second year to save time. Interesting to see that the only significant warming was for 3 of the decades (1989-1999, 1991-2001, and 1993 – 2003). What I would really like to see know is a plot of the slopes of the decadal linear trend.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1983/to:2013/plot/rss/from:1983/to:1993/trend/plot/rss/from:1985/to:1995/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1989/to:1999/trend/plot/rss-land/from:1991/to:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:1993/to:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2007/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2009/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2011/trend/plot/rss/from:2003/to:2013/trend
I know, giant URL, but it is worth the look. It is the decadal linear trend. It is interesting to see both the amplitude change and the slope change over the decades.
Steve Keohane says: 7:29 am
Steve, I think this graph showing the physical location decimation came out at the same time as the graph you refer to,and gives an idea of location and density change as well as actual vs. estimated temperatures.
http://i44.tinypic.com/23vjjug.jpg
Wow! Thanks for that JPG. The differences between 1965, 1985 and 2005 are just stunning, if not incriminating.
I gotta ask… Are they right? Where are the original images and the source data?
The originals seem to be from John Goetz, Feb. 10, 2008,
published by Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit: “Historical Station Distribution”
1965 map
1985 map
2005 map
It is one thing to estimate grid cells where there are no thermometers. It is quite another thing to estimate grid cells when you discard real thermometers located in the cells.
See also WUWT Oct. 15, 2012:GHCN’s Dodgy Adjustments In Iceland, or what I call The Smoking Shotgun in Iceland. Iceland is the test case that exposes the shenanigans going on is adjustment of temperatures records.
@ Jeff in Calgary
Thanks for the graph. Bookmarked it. I’m so weary of being told the ‘last decade’ was the hottest on record which is true but irrelevant. It looks as though the 1997-2007 line is key here because 2007-17 is likely to be cooler and then they’ll have to shut [self-snip] up. But they won’t of course because they’ll say “we meant the last full decade and this one hasn’t finished yet”. You could bookmark this comment in return. That way you could present it with your graph, date and all, to the first alarmist who trots out the above predicted quote on January 1st 2018.
Would not the “ninth warmest year” be necessarily COOLER than eight previous years?
(Re: Glynn Mhor (I don’t spell my last name right, do I, heh) at 5:36pm). LOL, no. It is that 2012 year is the ninth time we’ve had a warmest year in a century*. From the Cult of Climatology bible: “‘You can have 12 warmest years in a century*,’ thus saith the High Prophet of Climatology.” Statisticus 1:21.
*”Century: any 100-year period starting after 1979.” (C.C. Book of Important Words, 2010 ed.)
Very childish stuff from lsvalgaard.
1900 to 1950 we have a gradual build up of monitoring sites to the point where we have pretty broad coverage of the globe.
Then in the 1960s we see a gradual decline in number of stations leading to a sudden drop in 1990.
The earlier history implies a natural growth in parallel with development, with probably no aim to produce a global figure.
The latter part can only imply some degree of cherry picking has occurred.
Methinks Leif doth protest too much. Maybe, that’s because 1990 on Figure 5 is the most damning figure for the AGW movement that I’ve ever come across.
Jeff in Calgary says:
August 28, 2013 at 3:49 pm
—————————————–
Those intervals don’t really mean anything. We know that, right?
Stephen Rasey says: @ August 28, 2013 at 4:10 pm
WOW those graphs are something else. Notice how many stations are in the USA throughout the decades and then consider this: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif
Here are a some of WoodForTrees plots comparing RSS to CO2 in 20 year bands.
In all three plots, the RSS is plotted with 20 year linear trends.
The ESRL CO2 curve is offset -350 (so that 350 equates to a 0 anomaly) and scaled to 0.01 (for simplicity, but that would also plot as a CO2 Climate sensitivity of 3.5 deg per double.)
This chart is 1980 to 2000 and the Linear Trend is bang on the 3.5C sensitivity. IPCC is on a roll! Its near the upper range of what we feared.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1980/to:2000/offset:-350/scale:0.01/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2000/scale:1/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2000
Then there is 1990 to 2010.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1990/to:2010/offset:-350/scale:0.01/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2010/scale:1/trend/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2010
(Ahem!) Ok, so it isn’t as fast, but sensitivity must still be higher that 2.0…..
Then this chart 1995 to 2015
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1995/to:2015/offset:-350/scale:0.01/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015/scale:1/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015
(Doh!! Don’t show that!!!)
Now the CO2 is steadily increasing and RSS and the Linear trend blissfully unaware of the CO2 rise.
this chart has overlapping 20 year linear trends starting at 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995.
It is not as clear as the individual charts, but has all the trends on one chart.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1980/to:2015/offset:-350/scale:0.01/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2000/scale:1/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1985/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015/trend
Back to those maps of thermometer locations from 1965, 1985, 2005 created by John Goetz in 2008. and refered to by Steve Keohane says: 7:29 am
See Stephen Rasey 4:10 pm
Given the stakes involved in whether there is real danger of CAGW that justifies billions spent on IPCC studies, how can so many thermometers be removed from such large areas of the earth — by scientists who honestly and objectively want to investigate potential warming of the planet? Who would ignore data that was available?
The reduction in available temperature data in remote locations is so counter intuitive, so surprising, so puzzeling, I can see these maps as part of a general public presentation by GWPF, Monckton, Watts, or anyone skeptical of GISS processed ground-based temperature histories.
Slide m1:
Show the 2005 picture on the upper left with “Year ?”
Show the 1965 picture on the Lower left with “Year ?”
Text on right “Thermometer locations used to measure the world temperature and temperature trends”
Slide m2: same as m1
Picture on right of James Hansen at 1988 hearing extoling the dangers of global warming and the need for study and action.
Slide m3: same as m2 with
Dissolve Appear: “This is the guy who turned off the Air Conditioning during his July 1988 testimony on Global warming — to make the listeners hotter, scared, and uncomfortable.”
Dissolve Appear: … He is the same at GISS manager who turned off the thermometers around the world.
Appear: “Year 2005” on upper left
Appaer: “Year 1965” on lower left.
Slide m4:
“Let’s see that again”
Dissolve Appear: 1965 map (full screen)
Slowly Dissolve Appear: 2005 map (same size, superimposed)
Fade to light grey
Place on top 1965 minus 2005
“The blue points are the thermometers GISS (James Hansen) removed from the database. Look at them. Canada!, Russia, Africa, South America, Australia. More that half the world lost most of its thermometers.
“Why would any climate scientist off so many thermometers over such a broad area of the earth if you wanted to do good science on potential Global Warming?
Slide m5.
Smaller version of the 1965 minus 2005 map
Picture/cartoon of room thermostat, set to Off position
Picture of Hansen 1988 Congressional Testimony.
“Was it to make public scared and uncomfortable? “
Bruce Cobb says:
August 28, 2013 at 4:38 am
The IPCC and all the proponents and purveyors of the CAGW Lie like to refer to us as “climate deniers” for not obediently going along with the Lie. They should be referred to as “climate liars” henceforth.
Indeed they should, Bruce, and I for one will make it a rule to do so from now on.
Pamela Grey, that is exactly the kind of commentary I would expect from you and your obsession with your wrong conclusions.
The blind leading the blind.