Climate Depot Fail

[Gankfest]

Wanting to know what these graphs actually mean...

 

The article:

 

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/03/04/updated-global-temperature-no-global-warming-for-17-years-6-months-no-warming-for-210-months/

 

Here is the main graph from rmess.

 

http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html

 

So what's the deal? It's talking about temperature anomalies, but Idk what that really means in terms of global warming.

 

Thanx!

[swansont]

It means that if you take a small section from noisy data, and then look at a subset of that data, you can find sections that look flat (or even decrease) even though the longer trend is increasing.

 

It's cherry picking data, though it's done in a more subtle fashion than usual.

[Gankfest]

It means that if you take a small section from noisy data, and then look at a subset of that data, you can find sections that look flat (or even decrease) even though the longer trend is increasing.

 

It's cherry picking data, though it's done in a more subtle fashion than usual.

 

 

That's what I thought, and I found this info:

 

 

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/...

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...

http://www.remss.com/measureme...

 

Which I've been reading into the TLT(Upper Air Pressure) article, but it's a lot of reading.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Gankfest

[md65536]

So what's the deal? It's talking about temperature anomalies, but Idk what that really means in terms of global warming.

It looks like the anomaly is relative to the 36-year(???) average of the values in the second graph you linked. I think it means that since we don't have a "nominal" temperature that the Earth should be, we base the anomaly off of average. That way we can look at trends in the change in temperature, without needing to (or being able to) say whether the temperature is higher or lower than where it "should" be.

 

If I'm reading this right it shows how sloppy the self-proclaimed "Lord" Monckton is, because he left the anomaly based on the 36-year average instead of computing a new average. So in this cherry-picked data set, the temperature is still about .24 degrees above the average of the full data set, showing that even though Monckton picked a section where there is no upward trend, that data still shows an average excess warmth over the chosen period that is above the average of the full data set.

 

In short, I think anomaly is usually with respect to average across the period, and Monckton's anomaly is a revealing error.

Edited March 8, 2014 by md65536

[FX]

Wanting to know what these graphs actually mean...

 

 

So what's the deal? It's talking about temperature anomalies, but Idk what that really means in terms of global warming.

 

Thanx!

The RSS data means there has been no trend for 210 months

 

In other words, the average value of the global temperature mean for that period is unchanged, from the average mean temperature pf the satellite measuring period.

 

In short, there has been warming and cooling, but they even each other out, so that in general, the global temperature seems to be unchanged for that time period.

 

Which isn't the entire story.

[overtone]

Here is the main graph from rmess.

 

http://images.remss....ime_series.html

 

So what's the deal? It's talking about temperature anomalies,

If you go thirty years back, to 1983, and draw a line from the tip of the reading there to the point for 2013, you will have drawn a horizontal line more or less - no temperature change. If you go twenty years back, to 1993, to begin your line, you will draw a sharp upward slope. If you go fifteen years back (Monckton picked 17, carefully avoiding twenty with its unfortunate depiction of rapid warming, and fifteen with its depiction of a cooling trend that might startle his audience into doubt and questioning) you will get a sharp downward slope. That's not quite as subtle as the averaging Monckton is doing, but the principle is the same.

 

For background on Lord Monckton's technical handling of data sets, see this informative text: https://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics .

 

For background on his rhetorical style and allocation of verbiage (impressing his audience with the high class scientific type thermometers and software and such - platinum! calibrated at 2.73 degrees above absolute zero! ) see this or any similar work: http://books.google.com/books/about/Power_and_Influence.html?id=a3qLu4W5BEsC and observe the principles in action: http://www.luntzglobal.com/

Edited March 11, 2014 by overtone

[vampares]

The graphs are meaningless. The maps may be meaningless as well. It looks like mount everest is actually poking it head up out of the clouds.

 

North America got colder from January to February. I'm guessing the light reflected from snow affects some of the data. Snow is unpredictable. In 200 years this could mean something.

[Tim the plumber]

It means that if you take a small section from noisy data, and then look at a subset of that data, you can find sections that look flat (or even decrease) even though the longer trend is increasing.

 

It's cherry picking data, though it's done in a more subtle fashion than usual.

Or if you take the longer graph with the trend of +0.124K per decade you get the answer that the projected global warming by 2100 will be 1.2 degrees c. Maybe.

 

Or if you use some sort of several year average and work out the rate of change of change in temperature you can project a graph where this is a peak and the temperature line will drop in the next few years.

 

Or you could look at a significantly longer time period, I'd suggest several thousand years, and see that the current world climate temperature is within normal limits. 20% of the time since the last ice age it's been warmer than now.

 

Your choice.

[swansont]

 

Or you could look at a significantly longer time period, I'd suggest several thousand years, and see that the current world climate temperature is within normal limits. 20% of the time since the last ice age it's been warmer than now.

 

You haven't shown your claim is actually true http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev_png

 

The only way this could possibly matter is if the temperature had been higher and all other factors were the same, and the only differences were the anthropogenic contributions, such as CO2.

 

Can you show that to be the case? Hint: no. It was not warmer, globally, and at the very least solar and volcanic activity were not the same.

[Tim the plumber]

Other sizes: 100, 200, 300, 450, Full Size (600x405, 42KB)‎

 

This is from the link you posted. It shows us to be lower than the dotted line at the moment. I'm not sure what the line is. It does not apear to be an average.

 

Your link did not seem to say where they got this particular data from but I am assuming it's from the ice core samples using an isotope of oxygen as a proxy to get the temperature. That would be a world temperature.

 

The reason it matters is that we don't know that humans are the cause of the temperature rise 1970 to present. But that's not the biggest reason it matters.

 

The biggest reason is that it shows that the world has survived periods of higher temperatures than now. That the ice caps did not melt. That Polar bears did not die out.

 

If you need to know why it was warmer back then in order to live your life you are going to be troubled. I don't.

 

As I said;

 

Or you could look at a significantly longer time period, I'd suggest several thousand years, and see that the current world climate temperature is within normal limits. 20% of the time since the last ice age it's been warmer than now.

[md65536]

 

This is from the link you posted. It shows us to be lower than the dotted line at the moment. I'm not sure what the line is. It does not apear to be an average.

 

 

Maybe take another look at the graph. Look at the arrow marking 2004, above the dotted line. Look at the sharp rise in the "recent proxies" box.

 

The sharp rise in temperatures is so recent that it doesn't yet show up on a smoothed long-term chart. You spent a few minutes talking about what you don't see, and saved a few seconds by not even looking.

[swansont]

 

This is from the link you posted. It shows us to be lower than the dotted line at the moment. I'm not sure what the line is. It does not apear to be an average.

 

That's the baseline temperature, from which the anomalies are measured. The 2004 datum is quite clearly above this.

 

What the graph shows is that we were in a long-term (> 7K year) cooling trend that suddenly jumped up more than half a degree in the last tiny smidge on the graph. A behavior not duplicated at any other time on the graph.

[Tim the plumber]

 

http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf

 

Is that any better?

 

Or this;

http://mclean.ch/climate/Ice_cores.htm

Edited April 13, 2014 by Tim the plumber

[swansont]

Is that any better?

 

Or this;

http://mclean.ch/climate/Ice_cores.htm

Greenland is not a proxy for the world. So, no. It's cherry-picking. We already know some regions in the northern hemisphere got warmer about 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. That's not the same as a global increase of an equal or even similar amount.

[Tim the plumber]

If you exclude the last 100 years from the first graph it seems to match fairly well.

 

You have to exclude the last 150 years from any graph where the line is a floating 300 year avergae in any case. To do otherwise would be unscientific.

[jero25]

The graphs are meaningless. The maps may be meaningless as well.

[overtone]

 

 

Or you could look at a significantly longer time period, I'd suggest several thousand years, and see that the current world climate temperature is within normal limits. 20% of the time since the last ice age it's been warmer than now.

That is not true.

 

Rather than a whack of every denialist mole separately (only to find that by the time the last one comes around the first one's forgotten, and they're starting over), how about just a post of this link, and you guys can do your own repetitive revisiting: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy