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.
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Gail, thanks.
The question you have to ask yourself is “Why would/should I care what someone THAT (insert) stubborn, narrow minded, stupid, uneducated, idiotic, agenda driven-thinks of me in the first place?” I give a person’s opinions the exact same weight I give to that persons importance in my life. If it’s someone I respect, admire, trust, and believe in-then I give their opinion greater weight and consideration..but I still don’t accept it blindly. If it’s a stranger or someone who has not earned my respect, admiration, trust or belief, then I examine whatever it is they have said for any reason or logic that might be present in it and toss everything else.
They can, and WILL, label me whatever they choose to. I can’t do a thing about that, so I don’t waste a whole lot of time trying to get them to pick one that’s flattering. 🙂
Read the link Gail. And yes, division is coming. I welcome it.
I worry about America too. When the government literally has to tilt the evidence in its favour to make a nonexistent point.
NTAPM
First you say,
“If you plot the trend to 2008 & 2009, it doesn’t make much different.”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/trend/plot/uah/to:2008/trend/plot/uah/to:2009/trend
So you admit there is a difference. If both the trend lines in your chart started at the same point on the left side or beginning of the trend line, the difference would look even greater.
“So your total criticism of the WH video is that the graph presented for 3 seconds has a couple of degrees of perspective added, and your brain can’t cope with it?”
And if you rotate it “a couple of degrees”, you’d be adding twice the difference you already acknowledge. The difference in your WfT link is about 1 degree. The trend decreases when it is extended using that data.
I agree with Gail.
“Because the flat no trend for 17 plus years would stick out like a sore thumb when you only have 36 years worth of data and ~50% of it is flat.”
I see that Tamino has tried to do his usual slant on this post.
Don’t bother going there but the link is here.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/q-how-do-you-outdo-anthony-watts/
And typical of Tamino, he uses misdirection showing the 500 mb level of temps from HadAT2 which goes back to 1958.
But he should have used the Channel2 equivalent temperatures here (which is the correct comparison to the chart in question – using radiosondes with data back to 1958). Channel 2 here, which clearly shows a 1977? low point and not much change overall since 1958 – 0.3C? over 55 years or 0.055C per decade versus the climate models which have this level increasing at about 0.25C per decade over this timeframe.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/msu_timeseries.png
Thanks Bill,
Tamino aka Grant Foster, has never understood humor, probably because he lives a humorless life holed up in an apartment in Maine with his cat XKCD style. He’s incapable of laughing at things that are funny, and gets way too serious with his chest beating.
Clearly he doesn’t understand tilting either.
RaiderDingo says:
February 7, 2014 at 3:03 pm
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
_________________________
Thanks!
[Now working. Mod]
They are dealing with people who can not multiply 7 times 9. (I kid you not)
I’ve taught in NYC public schools. I know it.
But we need to win the debate with the ones who actually do know the times table. The rest will follow.
Raider, what would happen if you used available latest data to 2014 rather than 2009?
Pompous Git, Carbowhatthehell is “Latinizing” a number of words in his post in order to make
himself seem smarter than the average bear! I caught this when I read his lengthy screed.
The one thing that was missing in his post was any kind of coherent point.
We know he has a Thesaurus and a penchant for “Latinizing” words, but seems not to
possess a spelling checker, as a number of common words were misspelled.
My Mother instilled in me a passion for reading. In my early teens, I was reading Steinbeck,
the classics, and contemporary works like Catch 22, MASH and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s
Nest. I grew tired of being disappointed at watching a movie after I read the book. My Mom
told me that any time spent reading is never a waste of time. For the first time in my life,
I have come to the realization that my Mother was wrong!
evanmjones says: @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 4:40 pm
…I’ve taught in NYC public schools…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are a better man than I. I quit the teaching program (and just got a BS in chemistry) when they shot at a friend who was a student teacher in one of the Chicago schools. All I needed was the student teaching I was supposed to take the next semester.
Leonard, your mother wasn’t wrong. Now you know what “crazy” reads like…and that can be a valuable lesson too. 🙂
Hoping this isn’t too late since this was a morning (here in Chicagoland) post: One other thing I couldn’t help noticing is that the line we were supposed to look at that showed the warming tendency started in winter, when you get the coldest temps of the year, and ended in summer when you get warmer temperatures. Around my neck of the woods, June is always warmer than December. Even if you stretch the line over several decades this will hold true. So, if I put up a chart and have a line that stretches from a cold point in December to a warm point in June a couple of decades later, what would you normally expect to see?
That chart needs some work, I’m thinking. If I had turned that in to my science teacher when I went to high school (the early 1970s just so you know) I would have expected that effort to get a failing grade– maybe with some notes added for extra interest.
I wish to address the issue of the baseline tilt. As I see it, There are only a few possibilities;
Any finished graphic image (JPG, BMP, etc,) would be devoid of layering.
Layering could only exist with Photoshop or other graphic development programs in their
proprietary file format. I am not a graphic arts guy, but there are only a few ways to tilt
the graphics in an otherwise plumb and level screen;
1 Select a layer (Say the baseline,) and rotate it.
2. Or, with a finished file select everything and rotate a few degrees.
In either case, it took a conscious effort to make these changes even if was only to “Add
a 3-D effect.” Nothing can alter the fact that the graph was altered. And it was altered in
a way so as to bolster AGW theory.
Anthony Watts said @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 4:13 pm
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” ― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Leonard Jones said @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 4:52 pm
Likely the dictionary his spellchecker uses is German, so not much use when typing English.
I rather thought Miloš Forman did an excellent job on Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s impossible to distill much from a book into a movie; there’s far too much information. Forman virtually wrote a new story from a different character’s POV. My favourite Forman film though is The Fireman’s Ball. It was banned for all time in Czechoslovakia, Forman’s home country.
The Pompous Git says:
February 7, 2014 at 3:21 pm
attS says:
February 7, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Obscurities is an understatement here. I tried to Google “PHAENOMENICALLY” for a definition and only got 4 hits (none of which included a definition).
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).
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two of the four references I found appeared to be articles from linguistics journals, so I assume that “PHAENOMENICALLY” is in fact a real word. However, without knowing what it means, judging if he really meant phenomenologically is difficult.
Gail Combs says:
February 7, 2014 at 9:05 am
……..So yes I wish a more ‘neutral’ person had debunked that graph because it would reach a wider audience.
——————————-
It actually reached a very good audience. These are conservatives and we need them to hold the line against the loons. If Beck’s audience gives in to CO2 is pollution all is lost.
cn
MattS said @ur momisugly February 7, 2014 at 6:26 pm
Phaenomenically may “in fact be a real word” though I’m unsure what that means. It is not in the Oxford English Dictionary, but might one supposes be found in some dictionary somewhere. It’s not in my Chambers or Websters either. The nearest word in the OED is phænocarpous: “Bearing a fruit which has no adhesion with surrounding parts” (Treas. Bot. 1866).
Pompous Git-
I’m just going to start ending all of my emails with:
“Allways keep that in mind and use the sponge..”
🙂
By now, I had hoped that I would be attacked for my tilted baseline post. But there are far too
many issues with the graph;
1. Selective start point. It is significant that the graph starts in 1978. A major national
magazine asked the question “Are we entering a new ice age?” based on the fact that
temperatures were in decline for the 10 years prior to 1980. If the graph had an earlier
start point, the trend line would have (As I said in an earlier post,) been as flat as a female
gymnasts chest.
2. The trend line was manipulated. It went from the bottom of a cooling trend to the
highest point near the end of the sampled data, instead of the end point.
3. Selective end point. All of this adds up to an attempt to manipulate the data to the
extent that what should be a decline in temperature is represented as a rise. If tilting
the 0 point (baseline) a few degrees, were the only issue with this graph, I could dismiss
the other 3 flaws.
This is evidence of a systematic manipulation of data. There may even be other problems
with the graph that I have not even caught!
David L says:
February 7, 2014 at 2:47 pm
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!
——————-
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?
The video is actually in good humor. Elaborating on the original graph, it’s a 2-D graph shown in a 3 dimensional environment for effect, I’m actually astounded more you don’t find it funny that it was pointed out.
H/T Friday funny.
@ur momisugly Mike M. re being worried that you wouldbe feeding a troll ( NTAPM ), don’t worry he feeds himself rather well. and if he reads this when will you get through your head that it was the WHITE HOUSE that published the graph in the first place??
The tilt was a conscious effort, as were the three other major flaws. This was not a simple mistake. On the contrary, I am amused that such an obvious fraud could be dis-proven by a guy with a straight edge, just as I am amused that Michael Mann (The Jerry Sandusky of climate science) can claim that average global temperatures represented a horizontal
line at the bottom of a graph for thousands of years could form a “Hockey Stick” in the last 30 years.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..:
The problem with my representation is that the upper dot on the right side would be touching the lower dot. Hockey stick my hairy arse! You cannot represent average global temps. over so long a period that would represent even a blip when the rise over 30 years is just under 1degree C.
Leonard- according to the chart trend, the rise in that 30 year period is 0.5 C or less. The line starts at roughly -0.25C and rises to less than +0.25 C. Even less of a blip.
Ahpan says:
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.
_______________________________________
I did not remove a single pixel out of that image. I only made a preview how the graph would look if the image was organized in vertically reversed manner. The WH box is irrelevant, I just did not care enough to cut it out and place it in bottom right corner so it got processed as if it was part of the graph. The zero line in my version is pointing down at the same angle it is pointing up in the original image. Of course to understand what I did, you would first need to understand how the original image was made.
Another way of looking at the graph is just to look at the overall picture – i.e. inspect it, something also taught at school which seems to been forgotten in the rush for trend lines. Presumably the data points are all anomalies from the 1951 -1980 period.
So what is there to see? Over thirty years, the anomalies have been oscillating at a mere +/- 0.6 degreesC, mostly +/- 0.4C. We’re looking at fractions of a degree either way.
Let’s not overlook the possibility that this graph indicates that nothing odd at all is happening, and that the earth is regulating its temperature perfectly well.
As I asked in an earlier post, where exactly is danger evident in this series of plots?
Sorry Im in a Stats area and create graphs all the time and you know when an axis is tilted. And you would only do that if you were trying to manipulate / exaggerate the data such as in advertising. Which is the problem. Starting with Gore Greenpeace etc they have deliberately used hyperbole for effect. To wake up the masses. The trouble is ultimately they have over-reached and it has proved counter productive. The people have switched off.