Remember White House science advisor John Holdren’s wackadoodle video about the Polar Vortex? The opening line of the video spoken by Dr. Holdren says
” If you’ve been hearing that extreme cold spells, like the one we’re having in the United States now disproves global warming…don’t believe it.”
He then goes on to present evidence, like this plot of mid-tropospheric temperature, which looks like it is from UAH/Dr. Roy Spencer, though no citation is given in the video.
The funny part? Watch these two guys blow the glossy WH take on this visual out of the water with just a ruler and some common sense.
For more information on the UAH temperature record, see our most recent update here: Global Temperature Report: January 2014 Upper Michigan was ‘coldest’ spot on the globe in January
Then there’s the other satellite record, from RSS: Satellites show no global warming for 17 years 5 months
For more on the polar vortex, see the new WUWT Polar Vortex Page.
“People wonder why the era of ’78-’79 is where this chart starts. The simple answer to that is that this is satellite data. Before then, there was no data. So, I have to give John Holdren a break on that point.”
It merely gives him cover. Had that start point been inconvenient, he’s amply shown that he’d have found a different year to begin with.
“Get a life NTAPM!”
If nothing else, he’s demonstrated how hard it is to defend the indefensible.
Last time around, we let people like Holdren off the hook for their belief in Ehrlich’s dismal predictions. Society has suffered greatly because of it. This time we need to make sure these people are run out of science on a rail, preferably covered in hot tar and feathers.
NotTheAussiePhilM says: “So your total criticism of the WH video is .. ..”
No, sorry that I didn’t make it obvious enough for you. My criticism was of you and your defense of that specific detail. (and I will not respond to anything further from you about it because others might accuse me of “feeding the troll”)
I hate to say it. But they are not going about it properly. You simply can’t run a linear trend with a ruler. They are overstating the case. And the case is fine when stated properly.
NTAPhilM-
Some facts.
1-That screen shot is directly from the Holdren video. Why was that chart purposefully chosen, with the data ending BEFORE 2009? If the temps are rising higher and higher, and you want to impress that point upon people, why not choose a chart that SHOWS ever increasing temps past 2009 right up to today?
FACT-Mid tropospheric temps are lower today than they were in 2009….so that wouldn’t have proven their point.
2-Stu (in the video) points out that the trend line starts in 1978, a point where a global cooling trend was just ending.
FACT-If the graphed line started in 1980 and went to 2013 (33 years) there would be pretty close to a zero trend.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Aqua-AMSU-60N-85N-ch-3-5-temps-30-dy-smooth.gif
Selective choice of beginning and ending points can make the trend anything you want it to be.
3- You said: “- as I said above, the human brain deals with perspective all day long, and is very good at processing what it means”
FACT- Any neuroscientist will tell you that the human brain is EASILY fooled by illusions, slight of hand, and angle placement. For example-Click on the “angles” studies at the link below.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/illusions/
The chart with trend line were placed out of the center of the video, behind the speaker, for 3 seconds (according to you).
A-They were not meant to be focused on and properly interpreted or they would have been front and center.
B-The Y axis covers a mere HALF a degree C above and below the 0 “average”. As such, the “trend” shown is less than 0.5 C+.
C-The bright red/hot color of the troposphere around the image of the globe is the same color as the 0C-0.5C+ end of the Y axis (upper half). The brain interprets the color red as hot. The bottom half of the Y axis is blue, which the brain associates with cold. (Ask any artist or paint department employee about “warm colors” vs “cool colors”)
C-the chart was tilted so the end trend line point was higher than the beginning point. The reason doesn’t matter. It’s a fact.
All of these things are common marketing tricks designed to “sell” an idea subliminally…here, the idea is that the globe is warming rapidly and dangerously. But if that was true, they wouldn’t need to use tricks at all.
Don’t know much about climate science, but if that were a chart showing the value of an investment, I’d be kicking myself for not having dumped it years ago.
Day By Day says:
February 7, 2014 at 11:43 am
Am I alone on what “Carbomontanus says: February 7, 2014 at 9:40 am @Anthony Watts & al”? I don’t think I understood one thing he wrote at us (us being the & al).
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(Inviting Carbomontanus to join in)
English isn’t his first language- By some of his sentence structures, etc., I think he is Germanic. He also tries to weave in Latin and odd references to obscurities and thus becomes difficult to understand, but such practice makes a tingle run up his leg.
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Obscurities is an understatement here. I tried to Google “PHAENOMENICALLY” for a definition and only got 4 hits (none of which included a definition).
It would be fun to see someone technically more competent than I superimpose a chart with a horizontal axis and the complete satellite era on top of the Holdren chart.
o_0 The dude with the ruler needs a lesson in statistics. You don’t choose a start date and end date and rule a line between them. Fail.
Techgm-
“The record” used by the chart is the satellite records, which does not go back to 1934.
Gail,
Beck has LONG been an Independent and in the past few years has grown ever more critical of the “Establishment” Republican/GOP side of things. He’s not at all wedded to a “party” anymore, and he’ll take down progressives whether they be Democrats or Republicans or anything else. In fact, he gave a speech last week at the GOP Texas’s Reagan Day Dinner and BLASTED the GOP all over the place. The audience loved it, the GOP leaders…not so much. (He warned them but they invited him anyway).
People will see what they want to see, be they right or left, extreme or moderate. There are those on the left that are just as “convinced” that their position is correct as there are on the right. The ONLY group that will see the truth, no matter where it is, no matter who speaks it, no matter what source it comes from, are those who SEEK THE TRUTH. For people like that, the truth is what matters, not where it came from or what “side” anyone/everyone is on. And for the most part, they aren’t fooled by the propaganda from either side.
Gail Combs says:
Aphan says:
February 7, 2014 at 10:20 am
Gail Combes-
“More reach”?
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Good, glad to hear it. I just hope he is also reaching the independents. (I have no radio or TV, haven’t for years. I hear Glen Beck occasionally on other people’s equipment.)
The problem, which I think Aphan and Phil are missing, is that nobody will listen who isn’t already inclined to do so. People willing to even HEAR a viewpoint different from their own are incredibly rare. I’ve convinced more than a few that I have better information and more knowledge about, for example, AGW, than they’re getting from their ‘trusted sources’, but they still won’t bother to look at any skeptical information source for themselves. Even when they concede those ‘trusted’ sources might be wrong.
Oops – forgot to check ‘notify’
Sean-the “dude with the ruler” didn’t draw the line there. No one does that to high end plasma screens. The people who created the video did that. Not his FAIL.
Just for the fun of it, I turned that image upside down, then turned the graph within its shear upside down as well. So now the zero line is pointing down instead of up while the graph is still upright. I think it didn’t change much on it, actually the angle between the two lines is now bigger. Human brains have great capability of removing perspective distortion.
http://i.imgur.com/4n2izEs.png
If WUWT tilted graphs *down*, graphically, in presentation videos, there would be all hell to pay and a raucous party of snide condemnations about rank dishonesty, yet nobody on the skeptic side would defend such a thing like NotTheAussiePhilM is very much doing. This undeniable double standard is the height of ridiculous hypocricy as we now hear that the human eye can resolve subliminally short suggestions. Then he suggests creating yet another echo chamber orbiter blog play on the WUWT name, already a genre of about a dozen existing blogs where counter arguments remain isolated from skeptical feedback, a very odd and cultish phenomenon that affords true believers daily defense mechanisms against cold hard facts.
TonyG-
I’m not missing that point. I’m trying to express it. And people like that might be rare, but if surveys indicate anything, it’s that people will admit “I don’t know” and that they can and do change their minds all the time.
The problem (in my opinion) is getting people to actually CARE enough about something to actually take the time, and do the work, to obtain an informed viewpoint about it in the first place. I’m resolved to the idea that most never will. 🙂
Aphan –
My mistake, then. Seems we may be more in agreement than I initially thought.
Sparks says:
February 7, 2014 at 9:27 am
The tilt would have been created by the graphics department during production rather than being a deliberate attempt at dishonesty by John Holdren, I personally wouldn’t make a serious point out of that issue (it is funny), the other good points raised are valid though!
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It’s a remarkable coincidence that they tilted it up when they could have just left it untitled or even titled it down. When is it common practice to tilt a 2-D graph? Sure you have to show a 3-D graph in perspective, but 2-D?
Thanks Glenn, for showing this. Thanks A, for pointing it out.
It is so sad to see the willful misleading coming from those who are in power.
This is what the image should be similar to without the tilting and the cherry picked end date
http://oi60.tinypic.com/jzitlg.jpg
Green = original position of their line
Red = actual start and end positions
evanmjones says: @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 2:04 pm
I hate to say it. But they are not going about it properly. You simply can’t run a linear trend with a ruler. They are overstating the case. And the case is fine when stated properly.
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They are dealing with people who can not multiply 7 times 9. (I kid you not)
@NotTheAussiePhilM-In your comment above you state that the data is “most likely” UAH or RSS data. I don’t think that’s the case, unless it has been mislabeled, by the White House. You can look at UAH’s data for the mid troposphere, I showed a plot of it above. It looks nothing like the data shown by the White House. And I stated where I think the data actually comes from: I believe it to be NOAA’s STAR dataset, which shows more warming than any other data for the global mid troposphere, and exhibits obvious problems (for example, note the ridiculous looking amount of seasonal noise).
attS says:
February 7, 2014 at 2:17 pm
I deduce that he meant phenomenologically: In terms of, or as regards, phenomena or phenomenology where phenomenology means: The science of phenomena as distinct from that of being (ontology).
Definitions from the OED. The German philosopher Husserl said that the pure and transcendental nature and meaning of phenomena, and hence their real and ultimate significance, can only be apprehended subjectively; the method of reduction, based by Husserl on Descartes’s method, whereby all factual knowledge and reasoned assumptions about the phenomenon as object and the experiencing ‘ego’ are set aside so that pure intuition of the essence of the phenomenon may be rigorously analysed and studied.
Hope that helps, though I suspect not 🙂
Aphan says: @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 2:44 pm
…The problem (in my opinion) is getting people to actually CARE enough about something to actually take the time, and do the work, to obtain an informed viewpoint about it in the first place….
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Truer words were never spoken.
If they are not interested in what you have to say you are labeled ‘eccentric’ at best or ‘kook’ or worse.
(P.S. I am glad Beck blasted the GOP they need it! – an interesting link just for you.)
@Gail Combs – KOOKS – Keepers Of Odd Knowledge Society. 😉
http://4cornishchoughs.livejournal.com/
Kashua-
“…So now the zero line is pointing down instead of up while the graph is still upright. I think it didn’t change much on it, actually the angle between the two lines is now bigger. Human brains have great capability of removing perspective distortion.”
In the image, the “zero line” is STRAIGHT on the graph itself, and if the graph “is still upright” (perfectly) is would not point up or down. It was only when the show projected that image onto multiple screens (as shown in the video) that they inadvertently realized that the the entire graph AND LINE had been skewed making the right side slightly higher than the left. Our human brains didn’t even SEE that perspective distortion, much less remove it from the initial image.
Your trick DID highlight how cleverly they blended the chart with the background behind it in it’s original form. When switched around, it is CLEAR that the chart does not match up with the bottom of the screen/image and is definitely skewed/warped rather than a straight on, lined up image.
You also CROPPED the image so that the top of the +0.5C (red) line and the blue WH.GOV box are both at the very top of your inset box. In the initial image, they are NOT at the same height.
Human brains are easily fooled with illusions.