FEAR of global warming is a preoccupation of western societies at the beginning of this 21st century. This fear is usually explained in terms of changes in the surface temperature of the earth as averaged from varying numbers of thermometers from around but the world. But given the many disputes concerning how this data is collected, compiled, adjusted and averaged (see notes and links below), it would perhaps be better if there was some agreement to focus on the temperature as measured from one or just a few sites.
Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming?
*******************
Notes and Links
Christopher Essex et al 2006 have argued the concept of an average global temperature is meaningless: http://www.climatepolice.com/GlobalTemp.pdf
But the earth does warm and cool, so the issue is perhaps how the change and magnitude of the change might be best measured.
Michael Hammer after studying the official data from the US official weather stations, and in particular how it is adjusted after it has been collected, has concluded that the temperature rise profile claimed by the US government is largely if not entirely an artifact of the adjustments applied after the raw data is collected from the weather stations.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/
Tom Quirk comments on how surprisingly similar the calculated mean temperature is:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/global-temperature-revisited/
Meteorologist, Anthony Watts, has documented evidence of official weather stations recording artificially high temperatures because of the changing environments in which they exist, for example, new asphalt, new building or new air conditioning outlets.
Ross McKitrick from Canada’s University of Guelph has argued that 50 percent of global warming measured by land-based thermometers in the US since 1980 is due to local influences of man-made structures, also known as The Urban Heat Island Effect.
Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, has suggested that because of the difficulty of assessing surface temperatures over ice surfaces it is more realistic to consider sea surface temperatures in places like the south pole and exclude areas of seasonal sea ice.
Roy Spencer and others use Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) on orbiting satellites to measure lower atmosphere temperatures.
EM Smith has suggested that the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) “signal” is an artifact of the arrival and departure of thermometers from the scribal record: the addition of more thermometers in the Southern Hemisphere followed by the loss of Siberian thermometers with the collapse of the Soviet Union. http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/agw-is-a-thermometer-count-artifact-a-note-from-e-m-smith/
Mauna Loa is one of the Earth’s most active volcanoes having erupted 33 times since 1843, I guess these eruptions will have some impact at times on local temperature.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming? ”
Jennifer as a PhD scientist, I would expect you to already know the answer to why Tim’s suggestion is just sheer ignorance. I don’t expect you to agree that AGW is valid science, but I would expect you to know why Tim is wrong when he uses that argument.
SJT,
Why is Tim wrong? Jennifer didn’t explain and I don’t have a PhD.
Also, Why do they mostly report on carbon dioxide for just the one site at Hawaii?
All good denialist sheer nonsense. Ho ho ho ho.
As the crock o’ the week video shows Wattsy’s obsession with UHI is misplaced – matters not. You get the same answer with what Watts reckons are OK stations.
All the various temperature data trend the same way.
Take the SST series if you don’t like the land.
And as that Nature paper showed 28,000 studies showing the same story. Look Mum – no hands – no thermometers.
But even more hilarious the biggest warmings is not where the urban areas are. HOW CAN THIS BE – SJT do you think they’re pulling our chain – choo choo – LMAO ?
Hey SJT – denialists are like zombies – they just keep recycling the same behaviour -even if shot up badly. Pitchfork through the eye socket – no problem – keep arguing same old. Remember SJT – the modus operandi is to deny everything and continuously. No matter how silly just keep churning the same old same old. Maybe they’re the ultimate recyclers.
But what really makes you mad are science slush puppies like Timmy the data diddler who we know from Deltoid dalliances likes to crop the issues. Why look at Mauna Loa 1000s of metres up some windswept lava rock mountain. Let’s look at all the reference stations in the global CO2 series. SJT don’t you find it noxious that the denialist scum love to cherrypick after having being smacked down so many times. But that’s what zombies do – keep coming up for more.
“Why do they mostly report on carbon dioxide for just the one site at Hawaii?” – hey SJT – cop this typical uninformed denialist drongo. OMIGAWD !
Luke,
You haven’t explained anything. Why exactly is what Jennifer wrote “denialist nonsense”?
Hi all… The commentaries by Larry Fields (http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/rainbow-lorikeets-and-temperature-gradients/?cp=1) and Chris Shoneveld (http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/rainbow-lorikeets-and-temperature-gradients/?cp=1) were published today in a local Newspaper:
http://www.biocab.org/Letter-Milenio.html
The letter is in Spanish, of course.
Jason:
I see that you are still in denial of the real causes of human induced climate changes or rather the apparent human induced changes in climate. If it were not for the Climate researchers that are claiming the sky is falling there would be no unnatural climate change and even with the attempts to adjust the temperatures to new exterminates the temperatures remain within natural bounds. Yes the use of temperature measurements at the locations where the CO2 is recorded would be better that what garbage they are currently using. You will notice I said multiple sites used to measure CO2 as there are 4 sites in the annual reports and not just one. Picking a site in the tropics which has a long history of rural existence without urban influence would be fine if one could be found otherwise we should ignore the surface station records and rely on the satellite records.
To see a denialist Jason needs to look in a mirror or read what he writes.
I agree with the idea that too much emphasis is being placed on the evolution of average temperatures. To begin with, the concept of an average temperature does not have a physical meaning. At most, it should be considered as a mere index. Probably the index is reasonable when used on the long term, like saying that it was hotter (or colder) 10 million years ago because the global average temperature was 5ºC higher (or lower) than that of today. But trying to determine the extent of an assumed “global climate change” in the last 10 or 25 years based on the evolution to four significant digits of a statistical index is simply wrong (I mean, it is stupid). The changes caused by the election of the methodology used to compute the average are bigger than the changes in the average temperature.
On the other hand, it seems obvious that replacing a global average with a single value at a single location is even worse, so that is clearly not the way to go.
In fact, the only way to effectively try to determine the influence of Man in the climate is to first understand the climate. We are still very far from it.
“Let’s Stop Averaging Global Temperatures”
Your hatred of science could not have been any clearer, even if you’d said “Let’s stop doing physics”.
Dennis Webb:
“Why is Tim wrong? Jennifer didn’t explain and I don’t have a PhD.”
You shouldn’t need one to see how risible the suggestion is. A vague acquaintance with the way the climate works should suffice. Here’s my exercise for you: look up CO2 data from all of the numerous stations at which it is measured. Determine the correlation between each data set and the global average. Thereby, assess how representative each individual station is of the whole. Now pick five random weather stations from around the world. Do the same. What do you find?
Also, Why do they mostly report on carbon dioxide for just the one site at Hawaii?
“They” don’t.
As Luke properly points out, AGW is such a scam, that data quality does not matter.
Siting, site degradation over time, equipment issues, creeping urbanization, site drop outs, none of this matters in AGW-land.
Heck, disclosure, actual peer review, and phony claims don’t matter.
All that matters with AGW is the faith in the apocalyptic clap trap that keeps the promoters feeling righteous.
Comment from: RW August 28th, 2009 at 1:41 am
“Let’s Stop Averaging Global Temperatures”
Your hatred of science could not have been any clearer, even if you’d said “Let’s stop doing physics”.
Oh really? So what EXACTLY does an average of 100 randomly selected thermometers MEAN?
If I add 10 to cold mountaintops, is that “OK”? If not, why not? How about one?
If I add 10 to hot tropical airports, is that “OK”? If not, why not? If so, why? If 10 are OK, how about 1000?
Now think about your answers to those questions long and hard. Then remember that the thermometer record on which you depend rises from ONE cold latitude thermometer to over 9000 then drops back to near 2000. Do you have any idea what that does to the “Global Average” baseline? The current “Global Average”? If so, what is it. Oh, and show your work. I do.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
You shouldn’t need one to see how risible the suggestion is.
Neatly avoiding answering the question with a “fling poo” remark. OK, I see your “style”.
A vague acquaintance with the way the climate works should suffice. Here’s my exercise for you: look up CO2 data from all of the numerous stations at which it is measured. Determine the correlation between each data set and the global average.
“Given these conclusions what assumptions can we draw”… Need I point out once again that “Correlation is not causality.”?
BTW, the “correlation” between airport growth and Global Warming is much stronger than that of CO2 and warming. The good news is that you can keep the same acronym. Yes, there *IS* AGW – it’s just AIRPORT Global Warming.
Now pick five random weather stations from around the world. Do the same. What do you find?
That will depend on exactly which weather stations records you pick. The short lived ones (largely added in the Tropics and at Airports) conform to the AGW thesis, while the older stable ones do not:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/gistemp-quartiles-of-age-bolus-of-heat/
So basically, the Airport Global Warming thesis is nicely supported by your example. CO2, not so much. (CO2 must ‘take summers off’ somehow and preferentially work on new thermometers only.)
But given the many disputes concerning how this data is collected, compiled, adjusted and averaged (see notes and links below), it would perhaps be better if there was some agreement to focus on the temperature as measured from one or just a few sites.
Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming?
this is a completely insane idea. there are so many things wrong about it, that it is hard to figure out where to start.
1. a thermometer at ONE PLACE can never give the GLOBAL te4mperature.
2. the theory of AGW does NOT expect temperature to rise at every point on earth (and certainly not at the same rate)
3. CO2 is showing a very similar value globally. temperature obviously does not. do you spot the obvious problem?
(and one more:
4. do you understand how the idea of relying on a single station is in direct contradiction to the “results” of the surface stations project?)
satellite data just recently showed a record global July temperature.
Let’s Stop Averaging Global Temperatures
yes, and let us stop the sun from rising in the morning. unless you have an instrument that measures global temp n one go, averaging will be the method to use.
Oh really? So what EXACTLY does an average of 100 randomly selected thermometers MEAN?
If I add 10 to cold mountaintops, is that “OK”? If not, why not? How about one?
If I add 10 to hot tropical airports, is that “OK”? If not, why not? If so, why? If 10 are OK, how about 1000?
please educate yourself a little.
AGW will effect the TREND of those thermometers. whether some of them are on mountain tops or not, wont matter a lot, as long as they are reasonably spread out.
that it is “cold” up there, wont have an effect on the ANOMALY (and change) of temperature, that we are interested in. (what will matter is, that “tops” in general are not very representative of their surrounding. can you name 10 stations used for global temperature that are positioned on mountain tops?)
neither will the fact that the tropics are “hot” have an effect on global temperature change. (you simply know absolutely nothing about the subject, do you?)
So basically, the Airport Global Warming thesis is nicely supported by your example. CO2, not so much. (CO2 must ‘take summers off’ somehow and preferentially work on new thermometers only.)
again: satellite data supports global warming. as does sea surface temperature of the oceans. and as has been pointed out before, the strongest warming is a places, that do NOT show a UHI effect.
please explain how your airports influence arctic temperature, the satellite data and the oceans. i am really curious!
All wasted dear Sod – as you can see no matter how many times you state the obvious, present alternative lines of data, studies of refutation or simple logic – activist shills like Hunter will just spew the same untruths over and over. Tight little white hands praying so hard in church that if you keep reciting the words that it will be true.
This thread’s very existence belies the fact that sceptics are reachable.
“the theory of AGW does NOT expect temperature to rise at every point on earth (and certainly not at the same rate)”
Sod, this is called making it up as you go along. and like all good warming hysterics, you do it so well..
Please reference where AR4 says THAT
so some will go down?
why would they go down?
not confusing weather with climate, are we?
If CO2 is a climate forcer and raises temperatures (especially nighttime ones), why would some temperatures go down? urban cooling effect perhaps?
sods loungeroom with the aircon on?
Luke and Sod, please present evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 increases average global temperatures.
Please tell me why, when atmospheric CO2 was 11 times the current level, in the Ordovician, there was an ice age.
Tell me why, when atmospheric CO2 is increasing, average global temperatures (however measured) are flatlining?
Tell me why the Antarctica refuses to warm?
From another field – an “average” property exists only in the mind of an “average” economist
Spencer: NOAA’s official sea surface temperature product ERSST has spurous warming error, July 2009 SST likely not a record after all.
WUWT
Luke and sod:
There are some here that are still waitimg for you to state anything but alarmist rhetoric. Where are your logical facts regarding globl warming that is not occurring. I have yet to see anything obvious from either of you besides an impression of chicken little. But please advise where the CO2 is measured besides Greenland, Hawaii, Antartica and one other location occasionally. The last site is mainly ignored due to excessive variation caused by biological processes that do not affect the cold dry regions. The equatorial location for global temperature measurement would be ideal due to the relative stable climate in the tropics over long periods of time while the polar regions are affected by natural weather variations of greater magnitude. The regions between polar and tropics are affected to a lesser degree so the tropics near the ocean would be ideal for long term data. With data from the tropics after 300 years we might be able to recognize the climate patterns.
Luke wrote:
That’s only true if you use “homogenised” data – that is, where every reading is “adjusted” to “correct” the trends by using its “neighbours” (which can be up to 1000km away). If you read Michaels and McKitrick, you will see a statistically sgnificant relationship between local GDP and temperature.
They do not.
Satelite or “bucket”? Bucket or engine coolant intake tempeature? There is a significant difference between the skin (top mm or so) temperature as read by satelite and just below it. There is also a difference between scooping some from the surface and getting it from an engine intake that sits 1m or so below the surface – enough that those who compile the record make an adjustment for it.
In any case, RC (in particular Gavin) have suggested that 60 “good” stations world-wide are more than enough to calculate a global average – of course, Gavin is not interested in such measurements, prefering to focus on his models. And, of course, we have Pielke’s latest work which suggests that using the 2m “surface” temperature as a proxy for atmospheric heat content is misleading due to boundary layer effects – which Gavin acknowledges, but then completely ignores.
But let’s ignore that for the moment as well. Tell me Luke, when there is evidence of cycles in climate at lengths of 30 years, 180 years, 1500 years and undoubtedly others as well, plus Milankovitch at 100k+ years or so, how long a record do we need to get a handle on exactly where we are and what we should expect? Don’t forget to Niquist, will you? Our pitifully short record of 150 years is barely sufficient to tell us much about even PDO/AMO cycles in the data (the 30 year one), let alone the rest! And you will note that the unvalidated models (still waiting for *anyone* to show a validation study of *any* climate model, BTW) do not produce such cycles as we know exist, and neither do they show ENSO events, PDO events, NAO events, AMO events, IOD events and so on, let alone predict them – you will note that the current “natural variability” which has been “masking” the warming for the last 10 years or so (UAH global average for June 2009 was near as makes no difference to 0) comes from these events, so they are most definately “significant” – currently *more* significant than the warming from CO2.
‘This thread’s very existence belies the fact that sceptics are reachable’. You have all the trappings of a Deltoid troll.
The IPCC recognised in their third report that climate is a non-linear chaotic system and climate predictions over the long term are practicably impossible.
“In any case, RC (in particular Gavin) have suggested that 60 “good” stations world-wide are more than enough to calculate a global average – of course, Gavin is not interested in such measurements, prefering to focus on his models.”
Pollsters are able to get a good indication of how people will vote with a very small sample size, too. How do you know Gavin is not interested in measurements? Did you ask him?
Yes you might as well try to deduce historical global temperatures and CO2 levels from an ice core sample at the South pole.
Yet they do.
Kindest Regards.
Luke is a little charmer! Would that he put as much effort into research as he does into labelling scientists who are quantum leaps ahead of him in up-to-date information refuting AGW.
Note the would-be ‘trendy’ style, the casual ‘Wattsy’ type references.. gosh, those guys must be in awe of this font of knowledge!
It reads as if he is trying to shout down his own doubts. And not very convincingly.
I recently read that 3,000 Argos bouys are measuring decreasing water temperatures.
Is this true, or have their temperature measurements been adjusted upwards to correct for some kind of calibration error?
‘I recently read that 3000 Argos buoys are measuring decreasing temperatures.’
You may be right, Jeff, but all I could find is that Argos buoys dive 3000 metres underwater.
Oh dear – poor little deniers
OK Oil Simple Shrill – the Ordovician – tell us Shrillsy – what solar output, what orbital parameters, continents in what configuration, and what vegetation land surface feedbacks. DO hurry back with the answers.
Global temperatures flatlining – as GCMs themselves and the recent record shows – internal variability/IPO – so?
Antarctica refuses to warm. Well the Western edge is. But in general given the circulation patterns why would you expect it most of it would be warming – YET !!
Mike Davis – err – what alarmist rhetoric was that? What alarmism? Don’t verbal me matey.
Neil Fisher – for heavens sake – why is the greatest warming is not over the UHI areas – take a grip !
Don’t like buckets – go NMAT
Look at woodfortrees the trends are the bloody same ! The slopes are slightly different due to what’s included.
Didn’t get the species did you? 28,000 studies. Biota don’t need thermometers.
Why would expect any model to validate the past perfectly Don’t be so intellectually dishonest. As you would know most of the quasi-periodic behaviour is under intense research and models do produce these phenomena.
But does it matter long term anyway unless the periodicity is affected?
Donald Duck – what are you – some sort of expert in backing quacks and scammers. Unconvincing comments by you too. We just spit on your denialist scum research. That is – if you can find it published – ho ho ho ho.
So Sod – as you can see – these guys just deny everything. Deny the Sun comes up each night.
SO after 2 SST data series, 4 land series, 28,000 species studies – we’re not sure about warming – pullease !! Or try some boreholes?
BUT BUT – in the same breath you’ll argue that Antarctica hasn’t warmed. Or temperatures have flatlined? You hypocrites – how do you know? You don’t believe the record(s) !!
” The ocean is warming about 50 per cent faster than reported two years ago, according to an update of the latest climate science. A report compiling research presented at a science congress in Copenhagen in March says recent observations are near the worst-case predictions of the 2007 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”
In July World Meterological Congress in London reported rising sea level temperatures.
“That’s only true if you use “homogenised” data –”
All data is adjusted, including the satellite data, it is not ‘pristine’, and the radiosondes, look up RAOBCORE.
Comment from: SJT August 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
““In any case, RC (in particular Gavin) have suggested that 60 “good” stations world-wide are more than enough to calculate a global average – of course, Gavin is not interested in such measurements, prefering to focus on his models.”
Pollsters are able to get a good indication of how people will vote with a very small sample size, too. […]”
Using Wiki’s figure 0f 510,072,000 sq. km, 1/60th of that area would be 8,501,200 sq. km. It doesn’t seem likely that anyone could reasonably select ~the one~ representative location for temperature for a grid of 8,501,200 sq. km.
Ah but, you say, just as the polls representative random sampling of a population is the key to the pollsters’ success, couldn’t we just randomly place 60 thermometers around the globe?
To that I’d reply, maybe so, but you’d need some honkin’ robust airtight triple-blind expert-statistician-reviewed statistics to convince me that 60 randomly placed thermometers on the earth are giving the average global temperature. I could be wrong. Convince me.
“Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, has suggested that because of the difficulty of assessing surface temperatures over ice surfaces it is more realistic to consider sea surface temperatures in places like the south pole and exclude areas of seasonal sea ice.”
Sea surface temperatures at the South Pole?
More seriously, I read somewhere that there is a a correlation of the order of 80% [allowing for volcanoes etc] between
the strength of sunspot cycles and planetary temperature.
Bearing in mind the extraordinary solar minimum now occurring, this bodes ill for the climate over the next decade.
Birdie quoted:
This oft quote alarmist factoid is an artifact of measurement techniques – if you use the same measurement methods, sea level rise has hardly changed, and has recently slowed – by all measures.
Oh dear, the replies from the chap called Luke are becoming more shrill – is he channelling The Little Red Book, or practising for the next World Youth Peace Forum in North Korea, he he?
“We spit on your denialist scum research..” – good heavens, and note the “we”, just in case one thought it was just Luke’s very own work..
Perhaps Luke can give no better example of his not keeping up with research than his reference to West Antarctica temperatures – I recall it was just 2 or 3 days later that this data was thrown out, and in the last week, attempts are being mooted to replace the (few) stations with accurate equipment.
Luke would like to imagine his dismissive references to “Wattsy” etc, somehow elevates him above such mere mortals, as he spits, scums, and donald ducks his way along – but the ducking is mostly to avoid contrary evidence.
Amusing, but less frothing please, Luke.
Jennifer should be credited with one inconvenient truth in her extraordinary attack on averages – “Mauna Loa is one of the Earth’s most active volcanoes having erupted 33 times since 1843, I guess these eruptions will have some impact at times on local temperature”.
Not to worry, there will only be missing data every 33 years on average – piece of cake for your average interpolator. Or maybe Part 2 will be about how to plug the gap. Or maybe she is running out of fresh lines of inquiry, is tied of recycling, or likes having a lend of her supporters just as they had begun to grasp the concept of averaging and were ready for the higher moments.
“The ocean is warming about 50 per cent faster than reported two years ago, according to an update of the latest climate science”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/27/spencer-noaa’s-official-sea-surface-temperature-product-ersst-has-spurous-warming/#more-10343
“Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming? ”
I have a high temperature due to a viral infection, and measure it using an IR thermometer in my ear. Why don’t I just focus on my ear when getting the infection treated?
“So what EXACTLY does an average of 100 randomly selected thermometers MEAN?”
What does the average of anything mean?
Comment from: sod August 28th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Oh really? So what EXACTLY does an average of 100 randomly selected thermometers MEAN?
If I add 10 to cold mountaintops, is that “OK”? If not, why not? How about one?
If I add 10 to hot tropical airports, is that “OK”? If not, why not? If so, why? If 10 are OK, how about 1000?
please educate yourself a little.
Neatly dodging any thinking or an actual answer with an insult. Nice try. Try again.
WHAT does that “Global Average Temerature” we’re always told to worry about mean?
May I, or MAY I NOT add the specified thermometers to the record?
And, since you may not know me, just let me point out that I do have a fairly decent education, including teaching credentials at the Community College level. No, not a Ph.D (though I can call myself “Doctor” due to another bit of paper… but I don’t.) Also, I’ve got a library of several feet in length of AGW related publications (and that’s just the stuff on “dead trees”…). Finally, I’ve ported GIStemp and made it run (as near as I can tell, the only one to do that without translating it to another language) and have spent a few hundreds (maybe up to thousands) of hours in it. I think I already know a fair amount about it.
AGW will effect the TREND of those thermometers. whether some of them are on mountain tops or not, wont matter a lot, as long as they are reasonably spread out.
Great! SO: You admit that there is no reason what so ever to keep the Mauna Loa Observatory readings out of the record.
BTW, your assertion amounts to a claim that the final STEP of GIStemp land (STEP3) can undo everything that GHCN and GIStemp STEP0, STEP1, and STEP2 have done to the data. It can’t. Analysis of the GHCN data “as provided” shows a very strong “warming signal” in the data from the movement of the thermometers to the south. THAT is amplified through STEP0, STEP1, and STEP2 (the first of the zonal steps) of GIStemp. (To the tune of about 1/2 C). So you are a “true believer” in the perfection of a filter, and are certain that STEP3 will “fix it all up real nice!”. One Small Problem: NO filter is perfect. Second Small Problem: The anomaly step and grid / boxing only “correct” a record out to 1000 km max (and many are limited to 500 km if enough “reference stations” are found) while the box steps only act out to 1500km. See the program PApars.f for details. I have.
What this means is that The March Of The Thermometers to the south can NOT be fixed by STEP3. (STEP4 just does an update of the SBBX.HadR2 file and is optional. STEP5 does the blending of SBBX.HadR2 into GIStemp land data, it does not “fix” the land data.
See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/thermometer-years-by-latitude-warm-globe/
And speaking of “reasonably spread out”: Look at the “Southern Cold” band in that link. Notice we have exactly 20 thermometers for that 1/9th of the globe. And they are NOT reasonably spread out. GIStemp can not properly represent that 1/9th of the globe.
that it is “cold” up there, wont have an effect on the ANOMALY (and change) of temperature, that we are interested in. (what will matter is, that “tops” in general are not very representative of their surrounding. can you name 10 stations used for global temperature that are positioned on mountain tops?)
I can name EVERY station used in GHCN. It is in the v2.inv file. Feel free to match the LAT and LON to geographies. The idea that the anomaly, oh, pardon, ANOMALY, will “fix it up real nice” is seriously broken. Not only due to using hot airports as rural “reference stations” but due to the fact that for much of the globe the baseline is sparse (see the above link) and both the reference stations and the baseline and the “corrected” stations are polluted by the addition of ever more records in hot places biasing the “anomaly”. The code is not adequate to fix this overload.
But: Since you have asserted that not being ‘representative of their surrounding’ is sufficient for deletion from the record: Thank you for agreeing that Death Valley can be removed from the record. It is, after all, way below the surroundings (heck, it’s even below sea level) and the dramatic drive down in from Nevada, followed by the Radiator Killer Climb out into California makes that very clear. (I’ve driven it a few times…). I have a long list of other hot stations that are not ‘representative of their surrounding’ that can also be removed from the record, since you say it will have no effect…
neither will the fact that the tropics are “hot” have an effect on global temperature change.
So, adding 6,000 or so thermometers to the Tropics did nothing to change the temperature record? Wow, what power… You do you also know that a large percentage of thermometers in the latitude band of Siberia “moved” to the Latitude band of Italy… AND that GIStemp does NOT differentiate those two latitudes…
You see, GIStemp will not FIX that “surprise” warming in the N. Hemisphere because it doesn’t even recognize it in the zones. They are left lumped together by too few zones. What, you think GIStemp is perfect?
(you simply know absolutely nothing about the subject, do you?)
Another “fling poo” behaviour. Well, I guess we know what you are good at.
What I know is that GIStemp is a filter that tries to remove the impact of the GHCN thermometer changes AND the amplification that it induces in all of the “temperature” steps in the final box/grid/anomaly step, AND FAILS. I have the code, the benchmarks, and the analysis. You have an opinion…
QUOTE FROM EMS: So basically, the Airport Global Warming thesis is nicely supported by your example. CO2, not so much. (CO2 must ‘take summers off’ somehow and preferentially work on new thermometers only.)
again: satellite data supports global warming. as does sea surface temperature of the oceans. and as has been pointed out before, the strongest warming is a places, that do NOT show a UHI effect.
Another dodge.
You have no answer to the fact that the August temperature data show no warming. It’s 20C or so. Doesn’t change. The January data show a dramatic warming. This, too, is hidden in the GIStemp granularity. It doesn’t do monthly… So you ignore that “CO2 takes summers off”. How does it do that, eh? And you ignore that the 10% of best thermometer records (and the top quartile for that matter) show no warming. How is it that the oldest and longest lived records do not warm? Does CO2 not like them? Is Global perhaps not so global? BTW, the last decade plus shows no warming. The satellite record is a bit short still to be much help to the AGW thesis when about 1/3 of it is “cooling”… and the early parts are cross calibrated.
But you choose to hide behind a dodge of massively processed and homogenized fictions. One Small Problem: The Data.
When 4000 stations Do Not Warm. It isn’t global. I don’t care how you turn it into processed data food product.
When the entire data series AND sub sets of it DO NOT WARM IN SUMMER, it isn’t CO2 and runaway feedback does not exist.
You may commence ducking, dodging, and flinging poo now.
GIStemp changes the past of the temperature records and neatly chooses (yes, it’s a programmers choice) not to change the present data. It neatly does this right at the time the satellite record begins. Now, there are two problems with the satellite data sets (at a minimum). First off, they had to be calibrated against…. Oh Yeah, the same ground data sets that ‘have issues’… Second, they begin right at the time we have a PDO flip to a “hot” trend (which has now reversed, which is why we’ve had such a pot load of snow and cold in the last year or two all over the planet). So splice two data sets together, calibrated against each other, and then be surprised that they agree? Right at the time that the thermometer migration reaches an end? Right…
Oh, and you DO know that the thermometers in, for example, Alaska are largely at AHI “AIRPORT heat island” locations. They are neatly measuring the arrival of the Jet Age and growth of U.S. Military operations.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
There can be no significant human induced GHG signal prior to WWII.
http://photos.mongabay.com/09/0323co2emissions_global.jpg
There was temperature stasis from 1940-1979, so-called ‘global dimming’ notwithstanding.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:2010/normalise/plot/gistemp/from:1940/to:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001/to:2010/trend
The AGW hypothesis rests solely on the temperature rise 1980-2000.
For the purpose of testing the AGW hypothesis, the UAH LT or RSS LT data is far more comprehensive and relatively incorruptible.
The surface temperature data is irrelevant and can be ignored.
I’ve been watching and this reply has not shown up. I presume it was caught by the despam filter due to too many links, so I’ll break it up and repost it.
Comment from: Luke August 27th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
All the various temperature data trend the same way.
Um, no, they do not. For example, the top Quartile of GHCN temperature records in terms of longevity have almost no warming signal in them at all. And the Top Ten Percent are absolutely stable.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/gistemp-quartiles-of-age-bolus-of-heat/#TopTen
The “warming” is all brought to be party by the very short lived temperature records from “new” thermometer records:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/well-theres-your-global-warming-problem/
Those get “refined” into “Quartiles” in the prior link.
Further, the “warming” only happens in winter. Clever stuff, this CO2. Take a vacation in summer:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/co2-takes-summers-off/
Part Two:
But even more hilarious the biggest warmings is not where the urban areas are. HOW CAN THIS BE –
It can easily “be” if you are moving the average thermometer from Siberia to Rome or from London to Brazilia and putting your new thermometers preferentially in the AHI (Airport Heat Island) of Tropical Tarmac:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/thermometer-years-by-latitude-warm-globe/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
Why look at Mauna Loa 1000s of metres up some windswept lava rock mountain.
For the same reason we look at Death Valley, below Sea Level, in a very “atypical” desert environment. (Take the drive in from the Nevada size elevated plateau then climb out the other side into the California mountains / Central Valley. It is a very “atypical” location by any standard… so once you start to cherry pick and remove “Atypical elevations”, make sure this one is on the list along with Mauna Loa Observatory… I can “tat” as long as you “tit”…)
Let’s look at all the reference stations in the global CO2 series.
Yes, and while you are at it, look at how GIStemp adjust for UHI using pristine “rural” stations like the large U.S. Marine Corp Air Station at Quantico (yes, that Quantico) called the “Crossroads of the Marine Corp” and THE main airport at Lihue Kauai, Hawaii with 100,000+ flights per year…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/gistemp-fixes-uhi-using-airports-as-rural/
Oh, and I’ve posted the source code for most of this (the rest is available upon demand and will be posted in about a week as time permits) so you can “do this at home”. It has nothing to do with me, nor with my beliefs. It is simply the result of looking at the data and asking them what they have to say. It is all there in the data.
But I don’t expect that will stop you from “flinging poo” and having more “LMAO” sessions. Though frankly, with the number of times you say you “LMAO” you must sit rather uncomfortably now… having so little left upon which to rest.
Comment from: sod August 28th, 2009 at 4:34 am
Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming?
this is a completely insane idea. there are so many things wrong about it, that it is hard to figure out where to start.
You seem to have a lot of difficulty figuring out where to start. I’ll help. Start with a very long temperature series taken at a place that had changed very little and by the same staff that record the CO2. That is it up on a mountain ought not to matter at all (you said so earlier – it ought to just have an anomaly like all the others…). It is a site located thousands of miles from most major land sources of temperature influence, so there is plenty of time for the air to stabilize before it gets to the mountain, and the same effect that makes the CO2 desirable to measure (well mixed air away from people) ought to make the temperature more representative of an untainted record too.
1. a thermometer at ONE PLACE can never give the GLOBAL te4mperature.
Nor can 1000 thermometers in 1000 places…. “Global temperature” is about as meaningful as “Global telephone number” or “global food flavor”. An intensive variable can not be averaged. (A counter example would the average velocity of money. It doesn’t matter what any one dollar rate of movement is, it matters how many change hands in a year and how that relates to the total quantity of goods changing hands. The velocity of the money SUPPLY is not an intensive quantity of any given dollar.)
2. the theory of AGW does NOT expect temperature to rise at every point on earth (and certainly not at the same rate)
But it does expect that there will be an aggregate increase in temperatures broadly. And that aggregate increase MUST show up as a general rise in the temperature records. Further, it expects a thermal runaway, a gain with heating. That implies that summers will warm faster than winters (due to that positive feedback). NEITHER of these effects are in the data. The 27% of the thermometer records that are most long lived show no such increase in readings. Further, NONE of the tranches of temperature records, neither by quartile of duration nor by 20 degree latitude bands, shows warming in the N.H. summer months. This directly says that the CO2 thesis is false.
3. CO2 is showing a very similar value globally. temperature obviously does not. do you spot the obvious problem?
Yes. The obvious problem is that CO2 is unrelated to the temperature.
Let’s Stop Averaging Global Temperatures
yes, and let us stop the sun from rising in the morning. unless you have an instrument that measures global temp n one go, averaging will be the method to use.
No problem. I averaged them, several different ways. No warming. The only group that shows warming is the group of relatively short lived stations, largely added to the Equator and points south, and they were very largely added to airports. To the tune of rising from 15% to 70%+ at tropical airports…
While the average of an intensive variable lacks meaning, it can be used as a benchmark (since all you care about is how the code changes the numbers, not what they mean) and that kind of average can be used to detect the presence of a signal (break out your code breaking and signals intelligence texts… I have a couple I’m especially fond of…). What we find in the data is a very clear warming signal. But only in the N. Hemisphere winter months (yes, you need to look at it by month, GIStemp does not) and we find it in the Tropical movement of the thermometers (but not in a stable group of 10% – about 1300, or even in 3000, nor even in the top Quartile of stability representing fully 27% off all the land temperature data in GHCN).
So if the best thermometers do not warm, and the thermometers with stable locations do not warm and more than 1/4 of the planet does not warm, and the summers do not warm, well, it isn’t very “Global” and it isn’t really “Warming”; and it can’t be CO2 so it isn’t very “A” either, unless you let the “A” mean Airport.
Oh, and “anomaly maps” can’t save you from this. If the data are not warming, any creation of an anomaly that rises is a fabrication. You can not take a bunch of stuff not going up and get the anomaly to go up. Math doesn’t work that way…
But you can take a bunch of data added to the data set in warm places, especially those with warm N.H. summers and new airports, and smear that data around and average over the whole year and make it look like the anomaly is going up. Just make your time granularity a year (as GIStemp does) and your zonal granularity way too course (6 zones, 2 of them the poles, so only 4 for the “interesting bits” where we have a decent number of thermometers) and then don’t look too closely at what you use to “correct” for UHI. And that is exactly what GIStemp does. I know, I’m looking at the code that does it right now.
Comment from: Neil Fisher August 28th, 2009 at 8:38 am
That’s only true if you use “homogenised” data – that is, where every reading is “adjusted” to “correct” the trends by using its “neighbours” (which can be up to 1000km away). If you read Michaels and McKitrick, you will see a statistically sgnificant relationship between local GDP and temperature.
I’m working up a posting on this very subject, but got sucked into this thread so it won’t go “up” tonight… but… I’m going to put some of the early data here. Yes, Jennifer will get “my stuff” before I do!
This is the correction log for Pisa Italy. I won’t go into what the PApars.f and related bits of code do (a bit deep for this comment), but I will describe what this log says. The first record says that the URBAN station is “161580004” and that is Pisa. It uses a comparison radius of 500 km, so it is one of the better behaved ones (you get either 1000 km or half that if there are lots of reference stations). I’ve added the names for the reference stations, along with their country codes. You can see the years of that station and the overlap. Now, one Really Interesting Thing. See that overlap of 129 years for Hohenpeissenb and 126 years for SAENTIS? How do you get 126 years of “overlap” from a Pisa record that starts in 1949? Yes, this matters to how the code chooses to apply stations for “corrections”. Notice also that stations in Switzerland AND Algeria are used to “correct” Pisa. Gotta think there is a bit of weather variation between those places… like 160400000 101 CAP CARBON (Algeria) (where 160400000 is the station ID, 101 is the country code. I added an A to the country code for sites that are airports. Supposedly pristine rural locations…)
For comparison, you can look at the more or less “raw” Pisa GHCN graph here:
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/623/16158.html
and compare the before and after adjustment (and much closer scale) here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/paolo-figure14.png
Notice that the start of the graph gets about 1.75C nocked out of it… And this is the stuff the warmers want to trust to fix everything perfectly…
*** urb stnID: 161580004 # rur: 31 ranges: 1949 2008 Radius: 500.
LONGEST rur range: 1880-2008 129 109620002 617 HOHENPEISSENB
add stn 2 range: 1883-2008 126 066800003 646 SAENTIS
data added: 126 overlap: 126 years
add stn 3 range: 1880-1985 106 067190010 646 ST. BERNARD SWITZERLA
data added: 106 overlap: 106 years
add stn 4 range: 1887-2008 102 111460002 603 SONNBLICK
data added: 102 overlap: 102 years
add stn 5 range: 1880-1960 81 067530010 603 ST. GOTTHARD SWITZERLA
data added: 81 overlap: 81 years
add stn 6 range: 1880-1980 69 144470000 609 HVAR
data added: 69 overlap: 69 years
add stn 7 range: 1880-1943 64 112340010 603 OBIR AUSTRIA
data added: 64 overlap: 64 years
add stn 8 range: 1951-2008 58 109610003 617 ZUGSPITZE
data added: 58 overlap: 58 years
add stn 9 range: 1933-1985 53 067300000 646 JUNGFRAUJOCH
data added: 53 overlap: 53 years
add stn 10 range: 1951-2007 32 162800000 623A PONZA
data added: 32 overlap: 32 years
add stn 11 range: 1951-1981 31 160660000 623A MILANO/MALPEN
data added: 31 overlap: 31 years
add stn 12 range: 1951-1980 30 161460000 623 PUNTA MARINA
data added: 30 overlap: 30 years
add stn 13 range: 1951-1980 30 160400000 101 CAP CARBON (Algeria)
data added: 30 overlap: 30 years
add stn 14 range: 1951-1980 29 165060000 623 GUARDIAVECCHI
data added: 29 overlap: 29 years
add stn 15 range: 1954-2007 29 161790000 623 FRONTONE
data added: 29 overlap: 29 years
add stn 16 range: 1951-1980 29 161420010 623 RIFREDO MUGELLO
data added: 29 overlap: 29 years
add stn 17 range: 1951-1979 29 161290000 623 ISOLA DI PALM
data added: 29 overlap: 29 years
add stn 18 range: 1951-1979 29 161190010 623 PASSO DEI GIOVI
data added: 29 overlap: 29 years
add stn 19 range: 1955-2007 28 162240000 623 VIGNA DI VALL
data added: 28 overlap: 28 years
add stn 20 range: 1951-1978 27 161970020 623 ISOLA DI PIANOSA
data added: 27 overlap: 27 years
add stn 21 range: 1953-1980 27 161160010 623 GOVONE
data added: 27 overlap: 27 years
add stn 22 range: 1952-1977 24 165380010 625 MACOMER
data added: 24 overlap: 24 years
add stn 23 range: 1951-1974 24 165200020 623 ISOLA ASINARA
data added: 24 overlap: 24 years
add stn 24 range: 1954-1977 24 162800010 623A TORRE OLEVOLA AERO
data added: 24 overlap: 24 years
add stn 25 range: 1954-1976 23 162940010 623 CAPRI
data added: 23 overlap: 23 years
add stn 26 range: 1960-2007 23 162450000 623A PRATICA DI MA
data added: 23 overlap: 23 years
add stn 27 range: 1951-1975 23 161490010 623 SASSO FELTRIO
data added: 23 overlap: 23 years
add stn 28 range: 1951-1973 23 160360010 623A AVIANO
data added: 23 overlap: 23 years
add stn 29 range: 1951-1974 21 161970010 623 ISOLA GORGONA
data added: 21 overlap: 21 years
add stn 30 range: 1961-1980 20 162340000 623 GUIDONIA
data added: 20 overlap: 20 years
add stn 31 range: 1949-1968 20 075860010 615 MONT VENTOUX FRANCE
data added: 20 overlap: 20 years
Comment from: Luke August 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
So Sod – as you can see – these guys just deny everything. Deny the Sun comes up each night.
OK, I deny that the sun comes up each NIGHT. I claim the planet rotates and that it is always “up” somewhere, but appears to come “up” in the local morning. 😎
Comment from: SJT August 28th, 2009 at 10:58 am
“That’s only true if you use “homogenised” data –”
All data is adjusted, including the satellite data, it is not ‘pristine’
Well, there is adjusted, and then there is what GIStemp does. I won’t go into it all here, it would take several pages, but by the time the “temperature data” reach the anomaly step it has little to do with what first entered. Missing data are just “made up” via a look aside to a “reference station” up to 1000 km (or 1200 km in one step) away. This is done repeatedly and there is not reason to think that this technique is valid done recursively. (The published lit only covers “once”). So you might have missing data filled in for 1000km in one step then used to fill in some other bit 1200 km away in the next step, then used to adjust a “zone” 1500 km away in the next then used to adjust a Box 10 degrees away in the last bits.
Hardly what folks think of when they say data are adjusted or calibrated. Whole sale creation of data where none exist.
Then these fabricated data are averaged in with other data (in the step who’s log file is reproduced above for Pisa) to adjust the anomaly for a site. and further “homogenized” in another step. Oh, and in the case where multiple modification histories exist for a station, the behaviours can be really fun… Oh, and I forgot to mention that in STEP0, the USHCN and GHCN data are both mixed together, sometimes keeping one, sometimes the other, and sometimes making an “offset” and using the ofsetterized data. Truly bizzare:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/gistemp-step0-the-process/
Has observations like:
We then compile and run cmb2.ushcn.v2.f (producing the logfile ushch.log) and v2.meanz as the output file. What does it do? The input files are v2.meany, USHCN.v2.mean_noFIL and ushcn-ghcn_offset_noFIL This guy copies all the non-425 (non-us) stations directly to the output (maintaining the sort order). It also copies to the output any USHCN stations that do not have a corresponding GHCN record for that year. The magic sauce is what happens to the records with both a USHCN and a GHCN entry.
In that case, skipping ‘the early years’ (those being any not in the USHCN record), the USHCN record is used, but it is decremented by the DIFFERENCE value found in the last step (that GHCN/USHCN difference or “offset” map we just computed: DIFF(eachmonth) above). It does not matter how far back in time that record came from, the ‘difference’ by month calculated based on at most 10 years (from at oldest 1980) to present is subtracted from that record.
I can see little rational for this. Why is the USHCN record “better” than the GHCN sometimes? Why is subtracting a delta value more ‘correct’ than just using one record or the other? The stated rational is to un-adjust the replacement record, yet the other GHCN records are left as is. This is just mixing two different kinds of records willy nilly with a smoothing step so the disconnect doesn’t show up; as near as I can tell.
So I think it’s very much incorrect to paint this process as the typical polishing that a data series gets to remove clear errors.
E.M. Smith
Your point re intensive variables is spot on but the AGW types, and most scientists I discover, don’t really understand it. It took me a very long time to convince a UK scientist of the problems associated with intensive variables. That individual finally realised “aha”.
doing statistics on intensive variables might be numerically interesting, but physically its meaningless. This is why computing the metal content of a mineral deposit the intensive variable Metal % is applied to a discrete volume of mineralised rock (together with another intensive variable, density) to produce a countable quantity.
You could do stats on the the individual numbers, ie mean of metal%, density etc to yield 3 numbers which when multiplied together will result in some amount of metal, but from the mining of an ore body using that method, you soon discover that this method of computation produces the wrong results.
But I doubt you will make any more headway in this issue than I – there is only so much one can do before having to give up because of the apparent intellectual impenetrability of our AGW folk.
But full marks for raising the issue of intensive variables – a doubt a certain Dr. Jones posting elsewhere would “get it”.
While I agree with Jennifer’s point that mathematically estimating a global temperature is problematical, so too the allied idea that the Earth as a specific climate state that could be summarised by a statistic.
There is only one Earth and it has no average anything in a statistical sense. It has one temperature and the estimate of that temperature by the means used at present is pure numerology and physically nonsensical.
And no Luke, SJT et al, I shall not be putting a paper up for peer review, for this would be little different to me submitting another paper disproving the existence of God to a peer reveiw committee comprising the Pope and the heads of the various religious orders. You expect them to approve of my paper for publication?
The elephant in the room is the massive fraud perpetrated by scientific prostitutes in the multi-billion-dollar Climate Alarmist biz. They ‘correct’ the ground temperature data, without telling the Great Unwashed (that’s us) how data from an *individual* temperature station are corrected, and without giving us the *raw* data for a given temperature station in the first place. The same scientific prostitutes conveniently lose entire collections of data when climate blogger extraordinaire Steve McIntyre gets too close for comfort. And then there’s the outright fabrication of data. (Example: the originally reported GISS ‘data’ from October 2008 for a very large land area that included most of Russia.) This is not the way that *real* scientists conduct themselves. From my non-specialists perspective, *all* of the ground-based temperature data appear to be tainted.
I’m not sure where Tim Curtin is coming from. Yes, honest measurements from a single well-sited temperature station are better than averages of cooked ‘measurements’ from thousands. But a part of me wonders: Is Curtin serious, or is his ‘modest proposal’ intended to be in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift?
“Nor can 1000 thermometers in 1000 places…. “Global temperature” is about as meaningful as “Global telephone number” or “global food flavor”. An intensive variable can not be averaged. (A counter example would the average velocity of money. It doesn’t matter what any one dollar rate of movement is, it matters how many change hands in a year and how that relates to the total quantity of goods changing hands. The velocity of the money SUPPLY is not an intensive quantity of any given dollar.)”
If the sun was to double in it’s radiation output, would you expect the average temperature, as it is defined by the climate scientists, to show a rise that reflects that increase in radiation arriving at the earth? If the sun was to halve it’s output radiation, would you expect the average temperature to show a reduction?
“The elephant in the room is the massive fraud perpetrated by scientific prostitutes in the multi-billion-dollar Climate Alarmist biz.”
Bullshit.
And, since you may not know me, just let me point out that I do have a fairly decent education, including teaching credentials at the Community College level. No, not a Ph.D (though I can call myself “Doctor” due to another bit of paper… but I don’t.) Also, I’ve got a library of several feet in length of AGW related publications (and that’s just the stuff on “dead trees”…). Finally, I’ve ported GIStemp and made it run (as near as I can tell, the only one to do that without translating it to another language) and have spent a few hundreds (maybe up to thousands) of hours in it. I think I already know a fair amount about it.
it is even more strange, that a person who did some reading on the subject could support the idea to focus on the temperature measured at one station, when talking about global temperature changes.
WHAT does that “Global Average Temerature” we’re always told to worry about mean?
it is a necessary tool to measure changes in the global climate.
May I, or MAY I NOT add the specified thermometers to the record?
your idea, that including “cold” mountain tops into the temperature record would make it colder is simply false.
SJT:
“If the sun was to double in it’s radiation output, would you expect the average temperature, as it is defined by the climate scientists, to show a rise that reflects that increase in radiation arriving at the earth? If the sun was to halve it’s output radiation, would you expect the average temperature to show a reduction?”
So the Earth’s surface temperature has nothing to do with Solar Radiation?
SJT wrote:
I’m aware of it, thanks all the same. There is a significant difference between making TOBs and UHI adjustments, which can at least be justified, quantified and backed out if required to get the original data, and homogenisation which “blends” data from multiple sites to “correct” the trends in the measurements using data from as far away as 1000km, based on outdated and unreliable meta-data. In the case where we are comparing subsets of the data, making such a comparison after avergaing (sorry, homogenising) it and then suggesting that the deleted subsets “don’t matter” is an abject example of torturing the data to make it say what you want it to say – the data no longer contains the differences that you are searching for, because it’s been “spread around”! Of course you can no longer see the differences – you’ve already removed them with the homogenisation process! If you examine the differences from removing the stations before doing the homogenisation vs. after doing it, you will see that the difference becomes significant (in the statistical sense). Gee, come on! – this is basic, obvious stuff that anyone who knows even the most basic stats should be aware of.
here is your reply to one of ym questions:
3. CO2 is showing a very similar value globally. temperature obviously does not. do you spot the obvious problem?
Yes. The obvious problem is that CO2 is unrelated to the temperature.
i will apply your logic to a big piece of meat in the oven. obviously the air temperature in the oven is showing a similar value everywhere. but the temperature in the middle of the meat is different. your conclusion: the temperature of the meat is unrelated to the temperature in the oven. bizarre!
Oh, and “anomaly maps” can’t save you from this. If the data are not warming, any creation of an anomaly that rises is a fabrication. You can not take a bunch of stuff not going up and get the anomaly to go up. Math doesn’t work that way…
another attempt of backward logic. so because your approach to the data doesn t show warming, a better approach can t show warming either? great!
Sod says “i will apply your logic to a big piece of meat in the oven. obviously the air temperature in the oven is showing a similar value everywhere”
Needs more lessons in cookery – unlike Luke (aka the cook)
My, my give them some facts and they come up with half baked roast!
“3. CO2 is showing a very similar value globally. temperature obviously does not. do you spot the obvious problem?
Yes. The obvious problem is that CO2 is unrelated to the temperature.”
As deniers continually remind us, the climate is complex. The response to the CO2 forcing will not be the same over the globe. The models predicted that.
SJT have you thought about getting plastic surgery for your pimple problem? I hear that a lot more can be done for even severe cases like yours these days. Think of it SJT, no need to hide in your bedroom all day pretending to yourself that you are famous. You might even get out and meet people, you know, catch the bus, go shopping, even meet a bloke your own age.
What an amazing amount of sceptic shit and drongoism.
(1) http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.146/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.238/mean:12 shows that the 2 land series data sets and satellite series have the same basic trends. How can this possibly be – you have 2 analyses of a continuous spatial coverage from satellites giving the same trend and overall pattern as the land series
(2) Parker, D., C. Folland, A. Scaife, J. Knight, A. Colman, P. Baines, and B. Dong (2007), Decadal to multidecadal variability and the climate change background, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D18115, doi:10.1029/2007JD008411. analyse two SST data sets back to the 1800s – what is apparent is an almost global centennial signal of warming as EOF1. Decadal bumps appear as EOF2 and EOF3. This is about the simplest, longest and most compelling analysis of contemporary global temperature one can do. And oh so boring gives the same answer overall as the other data sets. No UHIs here !!
(3) Warming climate is changing life on global scale, says new study in Nature
Wide-scale analysis combines decades of data from all continents
A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans’ plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities. The study appears in the May 15 issue of the leading scientific journal Nature.
“Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale,” said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research. Both are affiliates of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Rosenzweig and researchers from 10 other institutions across the world analyzed data from published papers on 829 physical systems and some 28,800 plant and animal systems, stretching back to 1970. Their analysis of revealed a picture of changes on continental scales; previous studies had looked mainly at single phenomena, or smaller areas. In physical systems, 95% of observed changes are consistent with warming trends. These include wastage of glaciers on all continents; melting permafrost; earlier spring river runoff; and warming of water bodies. Among living creatures inhabiting such systems, 90% of changes are consistent with warming. The researchers say it is unlikely that any force but human-influenced climate change could be driving all this; factors like deforestation or natural climate variations could not explain it. Their work builds upon the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which in 2007 declared manmade climate warming “likely” to have discernible effects on biological and physical systems.
Nature 453, 353-357 (15 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06937; Received 28 January 2008; Accepted 19 March 2008
Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change
Cynthia Rosenzweig1, David Karoly2, Marta Vicarelli1, Peter Neofotis1, Qigang Wu3, Gino Casassa4, Annette Menzel5, Terry L. Root6, Nicole Estrella5, Bernard Seguin7, Piotr Tryjanowski8, Chunzhen Liu9, Samuel Rawlins10 & Anton Imeson11
NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research, 2800 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, USA
School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd Street, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA
Centro de Estudios Científicos, Avenida Arturo Prat 514, Casilla 1469, Valdivia, Chile
Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, 85 354 Freising, Germany
Stanford University, Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford, California 94305, USA
INRA Unité Agroclim, Site Agroparc, domaine Saint-Paul, F-84914 Avignon Cedex 9, France
Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 89, PL-61–614 Poznan, Poland
China Water Information Center, Lane 2 Baiguang Road, Beijing 100761, China
Caribbean Epidemiology Center, 16–18 Jamaica Boulevard, Federation ParkPO Box 164, Port of Spain, Trinadad and Tobago
3D-Environmental Change, Curtiuslaan 14, 1851 AM, Heiloo, Netherlands
Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.
And yet our denialist drongos are sure the world is not warming – and the climate record is irreparably flawed – oh except on the days when they want to use the same record too prove cooling. Nothing like some massive hypocrisy. You denialist scumbo crooks !
What utter tripe luke;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1828;
and still with the wft’s graph and all the indices have the same trends; too bad about the differentials. And look at the conclusion from your last reference:
“there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica”
Have you told Steig and Mann?
What utter tripe luke;
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
has your wife finally explained to you, how to do a chow test?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1828;
the Mc Lean de Freitas paper has been completely discredited. it is rubbish.
“there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica”
Have you told Steig and Mann?
do you know what the difference between “warming” and “signficant warming” is?
So you are a “true believer” in the perfection of a filter, and are certain that STEP3 will “fix it all up real nice!”. One Small Problem: NO filter is perfect. Second Small Problem: The anomaly step and grid / boxing only “correct” a record out to 1000 km max (and many are limited to 500 km if enough “reference stations” are found) while the box steps only act out to 1500km. See the program PApars.f for details. I have.
What this means is that The March Of The Thermometers to the south can NOT be fixed by STEP3.
i think you are wrong about this. Hansen explains the process very well:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990042165_1999050125.pdf
the data after step 3 is datapoints in a grid of 2×2 degrees. moving a station from one sector of that grid to another one, will have nearly no effect on the global temperature. (unleess either one of those sectors doesn t have any data before or after the change)
So, adding 6,000 or so thermometers to the Tropics did nothing to change the temperature record? Wow, what power… You do you also know that a large percentage of thermometers in the latitude band of Siberia “moved” to the Latitude band of Italy… AND that GIStemp does NOT differentiate those two latitudes…
if you move half the siberian thermometers to italy, you will have basically no effect. those temperatures will just be in addition to the original italian ones. they will refine the data in that grid cell. the remaining stations in siberia will give a similar result for the siberian cells.
the global temperature from those cells will be calculated from the grid, and the movement of stations will not have any effect, especially not an obvious “warming” one.
Comment from: sod August 28th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
3. CO2 is showing a very similar value globally. temperature obviously does not. do you spot the obvious problem?
Yes. The obvious problem is that CO2 is unrelated to the temperature.
i will apply your logic to a big piece of meat in the oven.
God only knows why… Is there CO2 in the oven? Will it cause a tipping point to the roast?… Can I get Chianti with that? 😉
obviously the air temperature in the oven is showing a similar value everywhere.
Obviously you have never instrumented an oven nor baked much. (Yes, I have. Grew up in a “restaurant family” and I’ve been cooking since I was about 5. I say about, because it’s one of my earliest memories from before paying much attention to age. It could be 4…)
A “typical” oven will have up to 50 F of stratification of temperature in it. It has a very large heat source at either the top, the bottom, or both, and the radiative energy transfer can be dramatic separate from the air temperature (see “broiling” in ‘The Joy of Cooking’). Oh, and in addition to the stratification, it can have a cycling temperature range of ANOTHER 50F (for poor ovens).
but the temperature in the middle of the meat is different.
Yes, it is. But slowly changing in a very complex way only part of which is related to the oven. Meat shape, pan shape, size AND color, water content of the pan: all these must be considered to get a decent result.
your conclusion:
Um, no. Not my conclusion. I never tried to turn climate science into a pot roast class. That’s your gig. And your opinion.
the temperature of the meat is unrelated to the temperature in the oven. bizarre!
Yes, very bizarre. Why you want to “reason by analogy”, and a broken one at that, when all you need to do is to stop torturing the climate data and ask it what it has to say is, truly, bizarre. I do hope that your climate skills are better than your cooking skills and that your understanding of climate is better than your understanding of ovens…
Oh, and “anomaly maps” can’t save you from this. If the data are not warming, any creation of an anomaly that rises is a fabrication. You can not take a bunch of stuff not going up and get the anomaly to go up. Math doesn’t work that way…
another attempt of backward logic. so because your approach to the data doesn t show warming, a better approach can t show warming either? great!
Try again. What you assert and what I said are two, quite different, things.
I am simply saying that if, on average, the globe is getting warmer, then the data must show some warming. The claim is simply that if a bunch of the world is getting warmer, then a bunch of the world thermometer records ought to also get warmer. Is that so hard to grasp? For an average of a bunch of things to go up, the things must, on average, go up. Basic definitional math. And there is nothing in the anomaly step that can “fix” this. It isn’t a “better approach” or “worse approach”, it is a fundamental property of data. The anomaly map step can pin it to sectors of the globe, and it can maybe dampen the trend some (i.e. 4 thermometers in a box become one box average) and it can normalize it against a baseline; but if the thermometers in the box do not warm, and the box does, you did it wrong. For the anomaly box to show warming, the records in it must show warming. (To a different degree, certainly, but the signal must be there or one is fabricating an anomaly without foundation).
So as long as the data for a huge chunk of the planet, and for the most stable thermometer records, show no warming; you must look elsewhere for the cause of your anomaly map changing, because it isn’t CO2. As long as the winters warm, but the summers do not, it isn’t CO2. The spacial domain shows a disjoint signal. The time domain shows a disjoint signal. There is no escaping that via referencing to a baseline (it stays the same) nor via averaging inside boxes (it can dampen, but not eliminate, these aspects of the signal). Read The Code. I have.
Comment from: sod August 29th, 2009 at 1:46 am
What this means is that The March Of The Thermometers to the south can NOT be fixed by STEP3.
i think you are wrong about this. Hansen explains the process very well:
I don’t care what Hansen says, I care what the code does. His explanations of his expectations are nice, like theatre is nice, but it is the code that does things to the data.
the data after step 3 is datapoints in a grid of 2×2 degrees. moving a station from one sector of that grid to another one, will have nearly no effect on the global temperature.
Unfortunately, the ZONES of STEP2 are only 6 for the whole globe (2 at the poles) and we’ve already “fixed up” the temperature series via the Reference Station Method at least twice by that point. So by the time STEP3 turns the zonal data into grid boxes, it is already too late. The damage has been done. That is the whole point. The GHCN data have no warming signal suitable for making a claim of global warming; only after all the chopping, forming, blending, homogenizing, interpolating, and flat out data fabrication is there a “warming signal” in the anomaly boxes. And that MUST come from things like the “correction” of UHI by using Large Military Air Bases (like QUANTICO) and the “correction” of Pisa by using Algeria and Switzerland. So once you’ve buggered the data, it’s too late for 2×2 grids to unbugger it.
(unleess either one of those sectors doesn t have any data before or after the change)
A large number of them will have no data. Especially in the Tropical band and southern hemisphere. It is The March of the Thermometers that adds the “heat” in those areas that previously had none that causes the problem. So you’ve put your finger on one of the smaller problems. That’s a start.
Since you seem to be unable to click a link and look at what the data tell you, I’ll reproduce part of one chart here. This is the change of thermometer count, by decade, by latitude band (note that I use a slightly finger grained 9 bands):
SP SC ST SW EQ NW NT NC NP
DecadeLat: 1869 0 0 15 0 3 7 173 103 1
DecadeLat: 1879 0 0 27 2 15 20 336 110 2
DecadeLat: 1889 0 0 44 10 18 48 624 184 3
DecadeLat: 1899 0 2 57 26 31 87 1175 309 3
DecadeLat: 1909 0 9 111 61 44 133 1510 382 5
DecadeLat: 1919 0 11 174 124 57 160 1789 479 8
DecadeLat: 1929 0 11 187 145 66 212 1961 545 16
DecadeLat: 1939 0 13 220 180 91 304 2156 713 26
DecadeLat: 1949 0 20 261 259 116 407 2412 887 37
DecadeLat: 1959 9 43 347 453 421 1010 3417 1249 80
DecadeLat: 1969 32 68 466 650 729 1310 4121 1511 105
DecadeLat: 1979 34 85 580 747 661 1269 4204 1511 103
DecadeLat: 1989 25 68 495 605 452 916 3805 1307 82
DecadeLat: 1999 9 32 212 250 224 429 2128 314 27
DecadeLat: 2009 7 20 102 132 159 316 1339 241 17
The move from Northern Cold to Northern Temperate will not be caught by GIStemp (they are in the same “band” for GIStemp). Notice also the very sparse thermometer records in the S.H. There will be LOTS of grid boxes with nothing, that will have data fabricated from “nearby” thermometers 1000 to 1500 km away, or will have a sudden step change as a thermometer enters that grid cell. THAT is the problem.
So, adding 6,000 or so thermometers to the Tropics did nothing to change the temperature record? Wow, what power… You do you also know that a large percentage of thermometers in the latitude band of Siberia “moved” to the Latitude band of Italy… AND that GIStemp does NOT differentiate those two latitudes…
if you move half the siberian thermometers to italy, you will have basically no effect. those temperatures will just be in addition to the original italian ones. they will refine the data in that grid cell. the remaining stations in siberia will give a similar result for the siberian cells.
Only in your fantasy world of perfection. In the code, those Siberan thermometers would already have been used twice to adjust “nearby” stations. One at a radius of 1000 km, and one at 1200 km (if I’m remembering that particular parameter / program exactly right). Total potential range: 2200 km. No, there is no flag set to say that data created by ONE fabrication in ONE step ought not be used AGAIN in the next step, so the potential ranges are ADDITIVE. Oh, and there is one more 1500 km homogenization yet to go at that point, so it’s 3700 km after that step… AND adding those thermometers to Italy would similarly let them warm up areas in their ZONE for a considerable distance as well. THEN, and only then, would this result go off to Grid Land, but by then, the anomaly grids can not undo the damage. That “Siberian” temperature is no longer seen as from Siberia, it is seen as from the station that was modified.
Just as the Pisa record says “I am from Pisa”, when in fact part of it is from Algeria… (See the log file posted above. This is not a matter of opinion. It is directly from the log files produced from running GIStemp. It is what the code actually does.)
the global temperature from those cells will be calculated from the grid, and the movement of stations will not have any effect, especially not an obvious “warming” one.
Those grid cells will be based on temperatures from thermometers thousands of kilometers away, unfiltered for net change of latitude. Only AFTER that process is the grid cell value calculated. And that is the point behind saying that anomaly grids can not save you from this effect. Add more thermometers to Italy, and they warm the records of thermometers in Poland and Germany. Take thermometers away from Moscow, and you warm Rostov and Sevastopol. Only AFTER that process, is the grid cell calculated. That is the problem.
There’s one small fly in the ointment regarding Curtin’s idea. It would probably understate the magnitude of global climate changes. Here in Northern California, I haven’t noticed much change since the latest round of global warming, which had its grand finale in 1998. The effects of global climate change are more pronounced in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
For example, an online friend in the Southern part of Sweden had mentioned warmer-than-average temperatures, higher-than-average rainfall, and lower-than-average snowfall during the Winter months. This was compared with the more ‘normal’ seasons during the early 80s. And the disruption of the familiar pattern was unsettling to him.
From Vincent Gray’s August 18th newsletter. Interview with NASA’s James Hansen.
Q. What exactly do you mean by SAT (Surface Air Temperature)?
A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10ft or 50ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest) the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50ft of air either above ground or on top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been adopted. I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.
Q. What do we mean by daily SAT?
A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every two hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.
Q. What SAT do the local media report?
A. The media report the reading of one particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT we would have to use many 50ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
[Vincent Gray writes:] Having stated that there is no agreed way to measure the surface air temperature, he talks about the “true” value which nobody agrees to; Essex et al (2007) argue that “there is no physically meaningful global temperature”. There are theoretical reasons why the average temperature of the earth’s surface cannot be measured. Because of the fact that the sun does not shine for half the time, its variability is non linear. It is impossible to simulate it with any of the mathematical functions used by statisticians and even if this were possible there is a variety of possible averages, such as the arithmetic mean, geometric mean, or the harmonic mean.
“Unfortunately, the ZONES of STEP2 are only 6 for the whole globe (2 at the poles) and we’ve already “fixed up” the temperature series via the Reference Station Method at least twice by that point. So by the time STEP3 turns the zonal data into grid boxes, it is already too late. The damage has been done. That is the whole point. The GHCN data have no warming signal suitable for making a claim of global warming; only after all the chopping, forming, blending, homogenizing, interpolating, and flat out data fabrication is there a “warming signal” in the anomaly boxes. And that MUST come from things like the “correction” of UHI by using Large Military Air Bases (like QUANTICO) and the “correction” of Pisa by using Algeria and Switzerland. So once you’ve buggered the data, it’s too late for 2×2 grids to unbugger it.”
I’ll ask again.
If the sun were to drop it’s output, would the average show a drop, if the sun were to raise it’s output, would the average rise?
SJT: Since you never indicate to whom you address your pithy posts here, I suppose it might be addressed to me though from your quote that isn’t the case.
If the Sun’s output rises, the average global temperature of the Earth will rise, and if the Sun’s output drops, it will cause a drop, as is currently being observed. (Pun intended).
Louis,
A quick test for whether an average of a quantity has a physical meaning is to consider whether the sum of the quantities that go into the average has a meaning. I don’t think the sum of individual temperatures means anything.
Unpublished swill Coho – try to get your “opinions” published somewhere seriously instead of playing behind the bike shed. Just typical sceptic stuff hiding from a decent review I’m afraid and given that the decadal forcing could easily have moved the GHG warming impact (Meehl) – I’m afraid just childish empirical drivel. Surely you’re not going to trust some statistician to do your climate for you?.
Steig & Mann – the usual sceptic sideline diversionary nonsense.
E.M. Smith chunders on ignoring other lines of evidence. Classic.
silly sod and his UHI; as if an acre of cement will be colder than an acre of grass; UHI is not limited to the night in cities and while a wind effect will transfer heat from the canyons of CBDs in cities that heat will persist in the flatter surrounding suburbs.
Tim’s observations about the regional contradictions of particular site readings is entirely germane and confirms the Essex et al paper on the fallacy of average temperature or GMST; in this Essex et al must be regarded as definitive. Essex is supported by the operation of Stefan-Boltzman’s law which has been described by Pielke et al;
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
Pielke note that temperature variation in colder climates with less SB effect have less radiative consequences than temperature movements in the warmer regions; Lubos explains how this works;
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/05/average-temperature-vs-average.html
The complaint of a lack of commutivity against this sort of analysis has been made; it is wrong as Lucia explains;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/spatial-variations-in-gmst-eli-rabbett-vs-dr-pielke-sr/
Average temperature or GMST, the basis of AGW, is simply a dud concept.
And incidentally, the Pielke thesis negates Arthur Smith’s rebuttal of G&T
davidc,
You are quite right – an average global temperature is physically meaningless – actually it’s a ludicrous concept to start with to come to think about it, since there is but one Earth and it can’t have an average anything. What climate science has done is estimated the mean temperature of the thermometers as physical objects and assumed that this metric represented an estimate of the Earth temperature. And the crass errors made in aggregating these numbers is another issue making the whole global temperature metric quite laughable if it were not for the impending economic catastrophe in store for us if the Cap-and-Trade or ETS legislation ever gets passed in either the US or Australia.
I should have stated that a rise in solar output will increase the Earth’s temperature, rather than stating it in SJT’s terminology.
And the game is not climate mitigation but gulling us into accepting a totally regulated system based on energy use using climate mitigation as the smokescreen, and it seems to be working. The problem with having the socialists in charge is that they never understood the fact that economic calculation isn’t possible in their political system.
“Average temperature or GMST, the basis of AGW, is simply a dud concept.” – what frigging denialist goonery – it’s not the basis for AGW at all – it’s “an” index. It’s not the way calculations are made by the models – if you think this you’re an outright dickhead.
Let’s do a simple thought experiment – let’s put the current global temperature monitoring sites – roughly at the same grid positions on Mars. So we’ll get the answers back and lo and behold Earth will be shitloads warmer.
But the denialists with their “knowledge” of science will say “not it’s not”. You can’t tell. – you can’t average any temperatures.
Nobel Prize winning stuff lads…. keep diverting your minds. If the TCS are supporting this sort of dogshit – well I that leaves it a clear choice.
“A quick test for whether an average of a quantity has a physical meaning is to consider whether the sum of the quantities that go into the average has a meaning. I don’t think the sum of individual temperatures means anything.”
Of course it does. If the earth was to go into an ice age, the average would go down.
“And incidentally, the Pielke thesis negates Arthur Smith’s rebuttal of G&T”
You aren’t really going to say you think G&T are right?
Luke says……”Of course it does. If the earth was to go into an ice age, the average would go down.”
—————————————————————————————————————–
Bingo. Luke agrees that this averaging bunk is bunk……..
Because if the Earth was entering an Ice age, just a few temperature data stations would be needed to measure it…
If there was supposed to be a correlation between dropping temps and the world wide concentration of mango juice in the ocean….. one could easily measure and discern the correlation of dropping temps and increasing mango juice concentrations at EVERY place they measured.
It would not be necessary to do a “Global Average”…. Instead just determine if there is a trend at EACH place…. NOT THE AVERAGE OF ALL THE PLACES.
Capice?
….. Then of course one would have to explain the mechanism of mango juice’s effects on global temps….. That could be a bit sticky;-)
Unfortunately, the ZONES of STEP2 are only 6 for the whole globe (2 at the poles) and we’ve already “fixed up” the temperature series via the Reference Station Method at least twice by that point. So by the time STEP3 turns the zonal data into grid boxes, it is already too late. The damage has been done. That is the whole point. The GHCN data have no warming signal suitable for making a claim of global warming; only after all the chopping, forming, blending, homogenizing, interpolating, and flat out data fabrication is there a “warming signal” in the anomaly boxes
ouch, i see. so you don t have a point actually. you just assume that the process of filling up missing data (or compensating for UHI) with a weighted avearge of nearby stations is causing an effect.
all your talk about cold mountain tops and thermometers moved to the south were without any meaning?!? absurd.
Because if the Earth was entering an Ice age, just a few temperature data stations would be needed to measure it…
If there was supposed to be a correlation between dropping temps and the world wide concentration of mango juice in the ocean….. one could easily measure and discern the correlation of dropping temps and increasing mango juice concentrations at EVERY place they measured.
It would not be necessary to do a “Global Average”…. Instead just determine if there is a trend at EACH place…. NOT THE AVERAGE OF ALL THE PLACES.
Capice?
you were one of those people who aren t worse a discussion with whom Luke described above.
no, if earth was entering an ice age, a few thermometers wouldn t be enough. unless you are talking about taking a reading every couple of hundred years only…
Luke says……… “Let’s do a simple thought experiment…………”
Er, Let’s not.
Let’s use observations and the principles of the Scientific Method….. Enough with the thought experiments and their computerized justifications.
…. Let’s do real science instead.
sorry. while “worse” was obviously a term on my mind, while reading your post, the term in my reply was supposed to be “worth”. sorry.
Comment from: sod August 29th, 2009 at 1:00 pm:
“…..no, if earth was entering an ice age, a few thermometers wouldn t be enough. unless you are talking about taking a reading every couple of hundred years only…”
——————————————————————————————————————-
I glad you agree with the basis of my point that an average world temp is bunk, though you seem to couch it in terms rather obscure…. and then there is this strangeness.
You seem to think that the less thermometers there are, the less you would need to read them?………. Why would you think that?
Why would you think that if you had ten thermometers measuring a trend on one theoretical world and ten thousand thermometers on another theoretical world…. why would you only read the world with ten, every one hundred years…… but read the ten thousand on the other world, every day?
I’m just wondering at the logic of your suggestion….??? You woz th’ one that suggested it. I’m only questioning it, via an analogous device… It doesn’t make sense to me, what you have said.
Luke’s ice age was probably a similar device, which I expounded on the pointlessness of measuring global temp averages. It probably wasn’t meant in either instance to be a real ice age probability…. Luke probably just picked an extreme example to highlight a point.
(but on that point, I think you will find that Ice ages onset quite rapidly, which is recorded in the geological record.)
” Let’s use observations and the principles of the Scientific Method….. Enough with the thought experiments and their computerized justifications.
…. Let’s do real science instead.”
It was the thought experiment that Einstein used to start off his Theory of Relativity. He came up with some brilliant ones.
SJT:
Einstein’s thoughtless ideas have some empirical problems http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/guest.htm. So does thoughtless AGW theory, come to think of it.
Now Hansford – you can’t have it both ways. Even you come up with 1000 thermometers scattered randomly around the world that when averaged said the mean temperature was -10 – you wouldn’t have a clue we were in an Ice Age. In fact it would a warm sunny day with birds singing and grass growing in most places.
Hey SJT – did you know the temperature in the the Sahara is 600C – I’m a sceptic and a few thermometers can’t prove me wrong. And I also believe the Antarctic is close to absolute zero – can’t prove me wrong either. Even if you had a thermometer every square metre.
How could we have missed what they’re saying. They might win the Nobel with this insight. It’s outstanding . hahahahahahahahahah
SJT says………. “It was the thought experiment that Einstein used to start off his Theory of Relativity. He came up with some brilliant ones.”
——————————————————————————————————————–
He was explaining the concept of a principle… a fundamental law…. It is simplistic because of that.
The climate is not simplistic nor is it one thing or property. It is a huge complex interaction of many things.
The only thought experiment here is the first basic premise…. Anthropogenic CO2 has a measurable effect on GLOBAL climate. It is a interesting thought experiment…….
But observation doesn’t bare it out…. The AGW Hypothesis is flawed.
So the “thought experiment” has now progressed to a computerized virtual experiment that uses mismanaged data to continue the “thought experiment” further.
It’s time to use scientific method to observe the real world….. and the real climate.
Luke says……… “Now Hansford – you can’t have it both ways. Even you come up with 1000 thermometers scattered randomly around the world that when averaged said the mean temperature was -10 – you wouldn’t have a clue we were in an Ice Age. In fact it would a warm sunny day with birds singing and grass growing in most places.”
———————————————————————————————————————
Dude!!!…. You need to read what I wrote again… No wonder yer science is shot.
But the point you have missed is … WHY AVERAGE…… are you not simply looking for (in the case of our Ice age analogy) a falling temp trend and it’s relationship to a perceived cause, (oceanic mango juice concentration analogy)…. Why would you need to average all the temps across the globe? What would be the point?
All is needed is the trend, not an average. the actual temp is unnecessary?
So why do we need an Average. Explain the reason for that.
“All is needed is the trend, not an average. the actual temp is unnecessary?”
Why do you think they are using anomolies, not the temperature reading? If they do it for the planet, they get an idea of how the different parts of the climate are responding to the forcing.
““Average temperature or GMST, the basis of AGW, is simply a dud concept.” – what frigging denialist goonery – it’s not the basis for AGW at all – it’s “an” index.”
Lawdy, Lawdy, it’s an index [pointer or indicator] is it?
When can an ever-changing, “adjusted” data base be anything but a vague indicator?
There are a few richard craniums in the woodpile around here and it ain’t the sceptics.
Comment from: SJT August 29th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
………..Anomalies of what though?
What?… That the Temp data has been adjusted to show a warming bias? or not show it, for that matter.
So there is another question….. Why adjust temperature data.
The reason being of course is because of localized effects that are not the result of the theorized effects of anthropogenic CO2….. and it is a downhill slide into bad science right there…. after awhile the temp data is so corrupted with noise, so as to be meaningless.
The more I read about the surface temperature thermometer measurements, the more I realize that they are entirely unsuitable for attempting to quantify the warming that Anthropogenic CO2 is theorized to do.
They are simply too compromised by error to be meaningful and of too low a resolution to be effective…. they were never meant to determine hundredths of a degree Celsius.
Thanks Spanglers – inciteful but dopey. If you thought it was “the entire basis” for AGW that’s your problemo.
J Hansford – spatial anomaly maps which give you regional trends are indeed produced.
Then we could for every 100 kms or so produce a time series graph to look at the pattern of cooling/warming over years.
Then someone will quip – “ah that’s too much information – can’t we just do an average”.
SJT: “If they do it for the planet, they get an idea of how the different parts of the climate are responding to the forcing.” which is based on the unproven ” Anthropogenic CO2 has a measurable effect on GLOBAL climate. It is a interesting thought experiment…….
But observation doesn’t bare it out…. The AGW Hypothesis is flawed.” and according to the scientific method, that should be the end of it.
But it isn’t, is it SJT because that’s not the game in play – it’s all about creating a new funding scheme for the Commonwealth Government and nothing to do with mitigating climate.
Luke,
It’s worth noting that you cannot be considered a Fabian – Fabians have impeccable manners.
Comment from: Luke August 29th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“J Hansford – spatial anomaly maps which give you regional trends are indeed produced.”
——————————————————————————————————————
Spatial anomaly……? Of what data though Luke….? What is the spatial anomaly mapping. An error, a fabrication, a misconception, a true representation of CO2’s effect, a spurious effect of bad science…… What?
That is the sixty four thousand dollar question ‘eh?
SJT and other Believers have stated that the CO2 level at the measuring stations is consistent. Why is this?? Maybe it is because the sites were selected to get a “BACKGROUND” level. That is, the sites for measuring OFFICIAL CO2 levels are selected to have minimal, if any, direct Anthropogenic effects. They are also selected to try and minimise NATURAL CO2 fluxes from Vegetation, land and sea, and Volcanoes.
Volcanoes??? Then why is the primary site of worship on the side of an active volcanoe which is also close to a second volcanoe and on active volcanic islands????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh yeah, they have operating instructions which tells them to discard readings that are a certain amount outside of their EXPECTED range!!!!
The last embarrasment of posting bad data was due to their tossing readings from 20 days of a month and posting the monthly average based on 10 days of information. NOW they MAKE UP DATA BASED ON AVERAGES OF PREVIOUS READINGS TO REPLACE THOSE DISCARDED!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Nothing like CONFIRMATION BIAS creating your CO2 records!!!!
Just for yucks, y’all BELIEVERS might want to research the CO2 level readings for any modern city. You will see readings regularly exceeding 500ppm. How does 380ppm in Antarctica have any meaning here????
For that matter, how does measuring CO2 on Mauna Loa, at an altitude of 3400m have any relationship with CO2 measurements at sea level or the interior of Antarctica????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh yeah, they ADJUST and HOMOGENISE the data!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
“But it isn’t, is it SJT because that’s not the game in play – it’s all about creating a new funding scheme for the Commonwealth Government and nothing to do with mitigating climate.”
Velikovsky
” So there is another question….. Why adjust temperature data.
The reason being of course is because of localized effects that are not the result of the theorized effects of anthropogenic CO2….. and it is a downhill slide into bad science right there…. after awhile the temp data is so corrupted with noise, so as to be meaningless.
The more I read about the surface temperature thermometer measurements, the more I realize that they are entirely unsuitable for attempting to quantify the warming that Anthropogenic CO2 is theorized to do.”
Go to wood for trees, and see how all the sources there track each other in terms of anomolies. They all match remarkably well, include the surface temps to the satellites. And don’t think the satellite data doesn’t get adjusted.
Do you think they can fake this.
It’s still winter.
This is the time of year when people burn off. If it’s dry and becomes windy the risk of a wildfire is always present. Nothing unusual in that. But as usual the AGW bleeders would know the exact cause.
I’d hate to hear you blokes if your arse was on fire.
SJT says ….. [there are fires but ,] “It’s still winter.”
———————————————————————————————–
It isn’t just the heat SJT, it is the wind velocity that is the danger with fires…. That and the build up of fuel…..
Due to enviro fascist policies involving land clearing, it is little wonder that during times of low temperatures (25c is not high) that High winds are still the biggest fire propagator.
It’s not temperature that is important, but the strength of winds…
SJT: “The reason being of course is because of localized effects that are not the result of the theorized effects of anthropogenic CO2….. and it is a downhill slide into bad science right there…. after awhile the temp data is so corrupted with noise, so as to be meaningless.”
I tell you what meaningless, and thats any comment made by SJT. SJT wouldn’t know what bad science was even if he took a training course in the subject. Unless of course it was run by the IPCC, his revered collection of self-sanitised climate saints singing the good news gospel of AGW on their latest DVD.
SJT: ““But it isn’t, is it SJT because that’s not the game in play – it’s all about creating a new funding scheme for the Commonwealth Government and nothing to do with mitigating climate.”
Velikovsky”
I think your computer dvd player is skipping or is locked into repeat mode.
If not your reply is accepted as an abject admission of defeat – especially when you no longer consider the surface temperature record as suitable for showing the hypothesized global warming from human emission of CO2, or is it due to an increase in atmospheric CO2 that causes the warming, and human emission nothing to do with it?
Not to worry – rejecting the temperature record means you can’t tell whether its warming or cooling – so that only leaves you with authority as your proof that the AGW hypothesis is correct. And that is called “religion”.
I really don’t care about anything you say Louis. Your admission of defeat is your belief in the sheer lunacy of Velikovsky.
Gee Kockhead Kat – did you really write that last little piece on CO2 measurement – seek medication quickly. All those non-urban CO2 sampling sites- an entire network behaving consistently. Fair dink mate.
Well J Hansford – don’t do spatial anomaly mapping if you want to be tedious – try little dots red or blue – with bigger or smaller size depending on the trend. That’s been done too. Jeez you’re tedious matey. The answer’s the same and the whole question is totally stupid.
SJT
Actually I don’t say anything here, I write and then post it.
My belief in the lunacy of Velikovsky? I think I’ll side with the late Harry Hess on that one.
Luke says………. “The answer’s the same and the whole question is totally stupid.”
————————————————————————————————-
No question is stupid Luke….. There are only stupid answers.
I just find that with such a contentious surface thermometer temperature record data base that defining anything meaningful from it is fraught.
I think you could concede that with out too much pain.
As for being tedious….. That is the nature of exactitude.
When you first learn to type…. It is tedious. When you understand the process and become proficient, it becomes interesting.
J.Hansford
Typing – be very careful when moving from the PC to Mac environment. Apple has a really neat wireless keyboard (bluetooth) that the WINTEL mob has not copied, but apples do one thing, and Wintels other things, so proficiency has its apples and pears 🙂
What sucker would want to move from PC to Mac? Only the self-flagellent in search of a deeper meaning to the pain of their existence. Stick to something that works and is reliable.
dribble,
I’ve used computers since 1973 for work, and Wintel caused grief with Vista – I have an expensive HP Mobile workstation 8701w in limbo land while a reliable OS is released. I do use Microsoft at work but as the Apple OS is based on Unix, which I am familiar with, I tend to prefer it.
Since I can now run Windows apps on Apple computers, the issue has disappeared.
Except for keyboard shortcuts 🙂
Louis – fancy selling out to leftist Californian technology – I am shocked. I would have thought a hard guy like you would be using vi.
Jennifer, Thanks for the GlobalTemp.pdf link. It was very helpful.
I have been wondering about a better parameter for a while because the current “global temperature” makes no sense. I cannot get five thermometers in the same beaker of water to agree within 0.3°C.
The problem with coming up with anything new is that we are stuck with the data we have (assuming Hadley Center quits shredding it.) I would try to look at trends from each station first and identify the period of time for which the station is KNOWN to have been unchanged. Averaging trends would seem to be more logical than averaging temperatures and then computing a trend if we are interested in the trend.
Also it would be a good idea to stop trying to average everything. The worlds climate is divided in to the north and south Hadley, mid-latitude, and polar cells. The trends for each should be considered separately. If we were to concentrate on one trend the north hemisphere mid latitudinal cell is the most economically important. The northern hemisphere has more land area and the trends of snow and ice in the mid latitudes the most important factor of all.
“Jennifer, Thanks for the GlobalTemp.pdf link. It was very helpful.
I have been wondering about a better parameter for a while because the current “global temperature” makes no sense. I cannot get five thermometers in the same beaker of water to agree within 0.3°C.”
You have just demonstrated that you have no understanding of the precision used in the average.
SJT: “You have just demonstrated that you have no understanding of the precision used in the average.”
There you go again SJT, pretending to be important as usual. Don’t you know that its just not enough to be important to yourself, you need to be important to others to make a difference.
““Global temperature” is about as meaningful as “Global telephone number” or “global food flavor”. An intensive variable can not be averaged.”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear E.M. Smith. You really fell for that one? Hook, line and sinker? How tragic. And what a very idiotic analogy you drew there. “Telephone number” and “food flavour” are not physical quantities, are they? Do you think that you can’t define things like density, velocity, pressure and concentration can’t be averaged? Looks like your physics education was very deficient.
“As long as the winters warm, but the summers do not, it isn’t CO2”
In fact, greater winter warming that summer warning is exactly what one expects when greenhouse gas concentrations increase. You seem to have been led astray by someone again.
Many thanks Jen for mentioning me – and well done for spotting the importance of my discovery that temperatures at Mauna Loa have not risen at all despite the continuous increases in atmospheric CO2 measured there. Here follows a draft of an article I have just written. Helpful and critical comments will be most welcome.
Horse before Cart: Energy not Carbon creates Heat
The leading article “Cart before Horse: solving climate change is about engineering, not maths” (FT, 28 August) exemplifies the opposite of the truth, which is that it is the energy horse which creates heat (ever sat on or behind one?) and not the carbon cart. The article ends by claiming “what it [Copenhagen] must provide is a carbon reduction target. Then the market engineers can get to work” – to decarbonise our energy.
Regrettably both the premises and the conclusions of the leading article are false – and exemplify a reprehensible lack of due diligence. The first is the complete failure of all climate scientists – and their cheerleaders in the media – to investigate the relationship between the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa (the mountain in Hawaii which is the official source of the IPCC’s data on atmospheric CO2) and temperatures at Mauna Loa.
The exceptionally inconvenient truth is that there is no correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperatures when both are measured at Mauna Loa. It only requires ability to use Google to verify my assertion. Neither James Hansen of NASA-GISS and NOAA nor Phil Jones of HadleyCRUT at Exeter and Norwich chooses to log temperature at Mauna Loa itself. Instead they prefer to represent Hawaii’s temperatures by those at Honolulu Airport, where the arrival of Boeing 707s in 1960 and 747s by 1970 had a very direct impact on temperatures there. But of temperatures at Mauna Loa, selected by the late and estimable Charles Keeling for its pristine lack of purely local influences, there is no mention by the aforesaid Hansen and Jones.
Perhaps there are unknown unknowns that explain why temperatures at Mauna Loa stubbornly fail to respond to the acknowledged and indubitable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide there (by about 24 per cent since 1958)? If so, these unknowns are also needed to explain why there is a similar lack of response of temperatures in situ to atmospheric carbon dioxide at all other measuring stations, like those at Barrow in Alaska, and Cape Grim, in Australia’s Tasmania. Both Barrow and Cape Grim show strong correlations between their measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and those at Mauna Loa, and also a nearly identical lack of response by their respective temperatures. Again my source is Google – try Cape Grim + temperature. NOAA and GISS in the USA and Britain’s HadleyCRUT provide no data on temperatures at any of these locations.
Yet, despite being censored by the panoply of the IPCC, there is a known that explains why there is discernible warming in many locations around the globe, and that is the First Law of Thermal Dynamics. This Law infers that Energy is needed to effect Work, and that Work creates Heat, as Michael Flanders and Donald Swan opined at the Haymarket Theatre in London where I heard them in 1963.
The evidence for the relationship between energy use and heat is overwhelming. All the world’s cities are now hotter than they have ever been, and even areas with modern farming, with its intensive cultivation, higher yielding crop varieties, enormous tractors, silos, and other industrial installations, are demonstrably warmer than they used to be. But not Mauna Loa, Barrow, or Cape Grim, innocent as they are of any modern economic activity based on energy usage.
Given the incontrovertible evidence for warming (aka heat) being associated with energy use, the most profound inconvenient truth for all governments – too busy setting targets for renewable energy to replace energy derived from fossil fuels – is that energy derived from windmills and solar panels has the identical warming effect as energy derived from fossil fuels. For it is the use of energy that creates heat, and not carbon dioxide, as is manifest at Mauna Loa, Barrow, and Cape Grim. Even if all coal mines were closed tomorrow, as James Hansen has demanded of President Obama, and replaced as sources of energy by windmills and solar panels, the impact on global warming would be nil, unless indeed the increases in costs to users of such “renewable” energy led to an overall reduction in use of energy, with all that would entail in terms of less economic growth and human welfare. Is that what the Financial Times wants?
“Also it would be a good idea to stop trying to average everything. The worlds climate is divided in to the north and south Hadley, mid-latitude, and polar cells. The trends for each should be considered separately. If we were to concentrate on one trend the north hemisphere mid latitudinal cell is the most economically important. The northern hemisphere has more land area and the trends of snow and ice in the mid latitudes the most important factor of all.”
The global average is just a simple overview of what is happening. The models work on much finer grid sizes, although they are still quite large. New generation computer hardware will allow for even smaller grid sizes again. They also produce maps of the temperature that is divided into smaller grid sizes.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/a/aa/Annual_Average_Temperature_Map.jpg
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/Images/global_temperature_anomaly.gif
“The global average is just a simple overview of what is happening.”
Exactly!
A simple and dubious indicator with which to arm GCMs in any subjective manner a programmer desires.
Plus, of course, those known and unknown unknowns?
SJT, you and Luke need to relax a little and exercise the more sceptic regions of the brain.
Luke,
You are shocked? And me using vi? I did when I studied some image science at Curtin some years back but I use use Ultraedit on the Wintel platform actually, so even in your guessing what I use you are way off target.
Tim Curtin,
Well spotted – and I wonder how the AGW mob are going to explain this inconvenient fact away, as they will. My guess is Pious Silence hoping it will go away.
Tim Curtin,
Your observation is correct – the temperatures have not been increasing in line with the hypothesis. I’ve plotted the January and July temperatures – and it’s clear the AGW hypothesis has been falsified.
Well done!
Louis – I’m pulling your chain. The Mac is a fine machine albeit at a premium. Are you racing out to get Snow Leopard?
Anyway back to sledging and eye gouging …
Listen Timmy – you can piddle around with your piddly little examples or do a proper global analysis minus the heat island utter nonsense – and lo and behold it has been done – http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008411.shtml
Three prominent quasi-global patterns of variability and change are observed using the Met Office’s sea surface temperature (SST) analysis and almost independent night marine air temperature analysis. The first is a global warming signal that is very highly correlated with global mean SST. The second is a decadal to multidecadal fluctuation with some geographical similarity to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). It is associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and its Pacific-wide manifestation has been termed the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). We present model investigations of the relationship between the IPO and ENSO. The third mode is an interhemispheric variation on multidecadal timescales which, in view of climate model experiments, is likely to be at least partly due to natural variations in the thermohaline circulation
For drongos like Louis – 2 sea data sets (look Mum no hands and no UHI) give same PC analysis – and the big signal is the centennial climate change signal.
So that is it morons – the definitive experiment.
So pack up – stop worrying about silly shit and do something useful.
(Oh and yes – mirrors the land story anyway – how sad – how tedious)
SJT wrote:
And yet, there is still no validation study that would tell us the minimum grid size required to ensure that the discrete solutions converge with the continuous solutions – Ye et al found no such convergence at any scale they considered in the only published paper on 3D N-S equations, solutions and/or parameterisations of which are relied on by all GCM’s. Therefore, there is no evidence that these modelling exercises are producing anything other than numerical noise. Since you and Josh Halpern (aka Eli Rabett) have still not produced any references to refute this claim, it’s quite obvious that you can’t do so although if you find such I would be very interested in seeing the reference.
Luke wrote:
Gee, what a surprise – the surface temperature of 70% of the planet (ocean) is highly correlated with GMST, which relies on… SST data! Who woulda thought that could happen?
Luke,
You only get into PC analysis when the conclusion is not blindingly obvious. Since that analysis is at the level of minute differences in a variable close to the detection level, it’s all spurious.
But I suppose you lot have to justify your computer budgets somehow, don’t you. In the real world we get sacked for this crap which cannot happen in yours, since it AGW science is vibrant and has the attention now of the bankers in terms of raking in the rent money.
“In fact, greater winter warming that summer warning is exactly what one expects when greenhouse gas concentrations increase. You seem to have been led astray by someone again.”
As is often the case here, it’s usually their own ignorance. You cannot debate the issue properly if you do not first understand the case for AGW.
Not so fast. You accept that the scientists work with much more detail than just the global average?
“Louis – fancy selling out to leftist Californian technology – I am shocked. I would have thought a hard guy like you would be using vi.”
I’m shocked as well Louis. Don’t you realize that the Apple/Windows dichotomy is a symbolic allegory for AGW/normality dualism. The elite group of science frauds in their taxpayer funded ivory towers all use Apple computers, the green technology ho ho. Via the process of group think and mutual self-adulation they convince themselves that it is superior to Windows, the coal-fired technology of the masses. In reality of course Apple is just the same old crap as everything else but with superior advertising. Are you sure you want to do this Louis?
Dribble,
I have a colleague who uses a Mac and I asked him why? Easy – it can talk to the mainframe at Los Alamos Labs. But the macs are over priced for what they are, indeed.
Fear not, I am firmly in the Wintel camp – too much GIS and mining software investments to do anything else. And I actually use Windows on the Mac platform as well, so 🙂
What really impresses me is the neat way Apple has it’s Cinema Screen/macbook setup done – one AC lead to the screen and the macbook gets its power from the screen via some magnetic connector. My present Wintel mess involves power boards, UPS, night mare of wires.
Now if HP made something in that fashion, I would have it now.
“A simple and dubious indicator with which to arm GCMs in any subjective manner a programmer desires.”
You have no idea, have you?
“You cannot debate the issue properly if you do not first understand the case for AGW.”
The case is that by burning oil and gas and coal we will increase the Earth’s atmosphere with respect to CO2 thus rising it’s temperature.
This case has been falsified by observation and measurement.
SJT wrote:
They must do, otherwise how do they get a global average?
And it’s not fast at all – I’ve been asking people for these proofs for years and not one of your alarmist friends have been able to supply them. Can you show me where there is such a validation study? Of any of the CGM’s used by IPCC? No, you cannot because they do not exist! If you think they do exist, find one and give me a reference!
Unvalidated models are an exercise in faith and nothing more. Even following the predictions of a validated but unverfied model is risky – so risky that any engineer who did such a thing would lose accreditation even if no-one was harmed, and even if later studies showed there was and remains no danger. This is the level of professionalism and accountability that we apply to situations where the amount of damage is on the order of a million times less than what we are proposing to spend globally on AGW mitigation. Just stop and think about that for a moment – we are demanding less evidence and have less accountability for a situation where we are spending a million times more money and affecting a million times more people. It simply beggars belief that this situation has been allowed to develop – it’s totally unacceptable.
“You have no idea, have you?”
I certainly don’t know how to program a GCM. Maybe you can tell me.
I don’t have to, to know they don’t either.
But I do know they can’t even get TODAY’S weather right.
Today’s forecast: strong wind warning SEQ coast. Observed: calm.
SJT,
Can you tell me with your hand on your heart that what goes into GCMs is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
And that would be only a small part of what is required.
““You have no idea, have you?”
I certainly don’t know how to program a GCM. Maybe you can tell me.
I don’t have to, to know they don’t either.
But I do know they can’t even get TODAY’S weather right.
Today’s forecast: strong wind warning SEQ coast. Observed: calm.”
So you don’t know how GCMs work. So stop making fairy tales about them. The forecasting of weather has made huge advances over the years. It will never be perfect, but the reliability is amazing.
“SJT,
Can you tell me with your hand on your heart that what goes into GCMs is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
And that would be only a small part of what is required.”
What are you going on about? What goes into the GCMS is the best knowledge they have of the physics of climate, within the physical limitations of the hardware, to the best of their ability.
“They must do, otherwise how do they get a global average?
And it’s not fast at all – I’ve been asking people for these proofs for years and not one of your alarmist friends have been able to supply them. Can you show me where there is such a validation study? Of any of the CGM’s used by IPCC? No, you cannot because they do not exist! If you think they do exist, find one and give me a reference!”
I thought I was saying that the scientists
Tim, you may be interested in this paper;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JA013753.shtml
Nickolaenko suggests that the work done by civilisation can through the energy used and the heat produced create a temperature increase of 1C per century. The paper assumes a thermal balance with solar irradiance, that is no AGW. In some ways N’s conclusions about anthropogenic heating are worse than AGW because it doesn’t matter what is the source of energy, fossil fuels or doopty doo windmills and solar farms because there is an equivalence of work being done and therefore and equivalence of anthropogenic work created heat. The only solution is to drop living standards by using less energy. It is of course bunkum as Lindzen’s and Douglass’s recent work to do with the expansion of TOA OLR show extra heating in the atmosphere produces extra radiative dissipation of the heat. MEP and maximum greenhouse save us again.
“What are you going on about? What goes into the GCMS is the best knowledge they have of the physics of climate, within the physical limitations of the hardware, to the best of their ability.”
Don’t go all superior when your ignorance is peeking through.
If you think that this is all they need to get accuracy in predictions then I rest my case.
1/ They need complete knowledge and understanding of weather circulation [that’s the known as well as the unknown, unknowns]. {D’you think they are at 50% yet?} and
2/ They need to fully understand the unpredictable chaos involved. {Not Possible}
3/ After that the software and hardware are only a side issue.
So I’m prepared to archive along with Motty’s statements that weather and climate will never be predictable.
To think it is anywhere near it at present is laughable.
“The forecasting of weather has made huge advances over the years. It will never be perfect, but the reliability is amazing.”
Boy! you’re easily amazed. Do you ever go outside or even look out the window? Have you checked today’s weather and compared it to your horroscope?
You’ll find it reads somewhat similarly. Tres generique.
Spangles
Good point – it’s much like an Alien watching a Cambrian Earth and trying to predict from an observation of tribolites the likelihood of the appearance of dinosaurs or mammals, or humans from a tribolite by evolution. It’s not possible. And I wonder how many of our AGW folk read their star signs every day?
And it’s no different to econometrics – that area of modeling can’t get it right either yet they try and try, to the best of their ability, to predict the economic future.
You have to be amused with the statement “the reliability of weather is amazing” – I suppose that means it’s amazing that it’s reliability is so wrong all the time. Very reliable.
Spangles,
cursors – I got my reliabilities confused – weather forecasting is reliably so wrong all the time…….Ahem,,,,
Louis,
When you’re in the position where “you get all the news you need on the weather report” as the S & G song goes, which I’m sure you are which means that you need accurate forecasting, well you suddenly realise how “accurate” weather reports are.
Spangles,
spinning a bottle seems more scientific 🙂
SJT, now I remember your name. It stands for Sad Johnny Trout, the believer who so loved the climate he turned himself into a fish.
Jennifer,
your introductory remarks to Essex are problematical – if we know the earth has cooled and warmed, then what would that be based on, a temperature metric? But you question that metric, so how could you know the Earth cooled or warmed?
Tim Curtin, you are a liar.
“Both Barrow and Cape Grim show strong correlations between their measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and those at Mauna Loa, and also a nearly identical lack of response by their respective temperatures”
Let’s look at the data. Barrow has warmed significantly over the last 30 years.
“Again my source is Google – try Cape Grim + temperature. NOAA and GISS in the USA and Britain’s HadleyCRUT provide no data on temperatures at any of these locations.”
Let’s look at where that last link of mine takes you. Gosh, it’s GISS!
One should of course presume stupidity before malice, but it would be just too stupid for words to say “GISS don’t use that data” when plainly they do. Therefore, you’re a liar. Who do you think you are fooling?
Utter garbage RW; the GISS record [and god knows what it has been through] for Barrow shows a classic PDO pattern with no warming since 1998. Here is a good example of GISS fiddling;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/08/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-79-would-you-could-you-with-a-boat/#more-4455
Utter garbage RW; the GISS record [and god knows what it has been through] for Barrow shows a classic PDO pattern with no warming since 1998.
cohenite, as always, you are wrong.
at the bottom of the GISS page linked by RW, you can download the data in a txt format.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425700260000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
if you import that data into excel and use the annual data from the last row since 1998 to do a scatter plot and then add a trend line (perhaps your wife can assist you with this), you will find that the trend is UP!
so Curtin was wrong and even your cherry pick is wrong!
—————————-
BREAKING NEWS: using the new “curtin standard” to calculate global temp0erature by one reference station on Hawaii has lead to a dramtaic doubling of global temperature since the new standard was adopted. (15°C –> 30°C)
http://www.hawaiiweathertoday.com/?page_id=20
but global temperature is expected to drop by 10°C again, when night falls on Hawaii. those who think they are scientists expect dramatic new insight from the new method of measuring global temps. stay tuned!
“BREAKING NEWS: using the new “curtin standard” to calculate global temp0erature by one reference station on Hawaii has lead to a dramtaic doubling of global temperature since the new standard was adopted. (15°C –> 30°C)
http://www.hawaiiweathertoday.com/?page_id=20
but global temperature is expected to drop by 10°C again, when night falls on Hawaii. those who think they are scientists expect dramatic new insight from the new method of measuring global temps. stay tuned!”
LOL.
SJT wrote:
Seems you left a bit off there or it got cut off. Want to try again?
“Mauna Loa is one of the Earth’s most active volcanoes having erupted 33 times since 1843, I guess these eruptions will have some impact at times on local temperature.”
First principles ought to preclude us from having a measuring site above a volcano. It doesn’t matter that Mauno Loa figures are confirmed by Cape Grim. You don’t do stupid things like this just for starters. You don’t put a measuring site under a place where air traffic between the islands has been picking up. This is another major embarrassment that we ought to not put up with. There seems to have been a propaganda campaign against chemical testing of CO2. And the reasons for this ought to be obvious. It means that people can gain a monopoly on information. Has anyone audited these sites to make sure they aren’t smoothing out the data? Has this data been confirmed by chemical testing. Here I assume the Mauna Loa technology is probably more accurate then the chemical tests but thats not the point. Now that we see the ludicrous attempt to undermine the validity of past testing we ought to suspect these people and our own people at Cape Grim. They have their yearly wiggles. But I would suspect them for smoothing out matters over a few years. No reaction from Mount Pinatubo eruptions????
Has anyone tried to audit any of these people and been knocked back in any way shape or form? One knockback ought to inspire an audit and a full change of staff. If not closing it down. And the measurements ought to be checked against other methods of testing conducted elsewhere.
SJT wrote:
Best estimate of simplifications of the basic physics – they do not resolve the known physics at all scales. Neither do they resolve all the physics known to affect weather/climate.
With no validation study to show that the limitations of the hardware are sufficient to ensure that the output is meaningful.
Undoubtedly. Pity that they don’t have an error propogation study to mathematically show the likely error ranges over the lifetime of each model run.
“your idea, that including “cold” mountain tops into the temperature record would make it colder is simply false.”
Your stupidity is never going to bottom out is it sod?
I think this is poor form to let anonymous alarmists comment here. They could be anyone. They could be from anywhere serving any sort of malign purpose. They just keep coming back constantly saying stupid stuff. Why give them an audience if they are anonymous Jennifer? Its like giving a platform to people working on behalf of some international pedophile ring if you don’t know who they are. Their agenda could be simply to ruin your career. To bring on the new millenium. Anything. Personally I think sod is a pedophile who sees his hopeful future in a country that has been brought to its knees economically.
It is these sorts of people who have already affected your employment. You ought not co-operate with them out of a some sort of naieve libertarianism.
““your idea, that including “cold” mountain tops into the temperature record would make it colder is simply false.”
Your stupidity is never going to bottom out is it sod?”
You don’t get it. The warming is determined by changes in temperature, not the absolute temperature.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The puzzle with this data for me is that it looks far too regular. If this represents a global CO2 level, rather that just SH and it’s human induced, why does it peak each year in May? Given the higher NH population it looks like something is increasing in the Northern spring, then switches off by midsummer. So, unlikely to be human energy use. I have seen mention of it being due to variation in plant growth but (assuming plant growth greater in NH due to larger land area) it seems to go in the opposite direction than expected.
Or is it that there is a lag of of several months in Mauna Lao measuring changes in CO2 produced in NH, so the May figure is actually driven by mid-winter events? In that case, shouldn’t cold or warm winters be evident in the data?
It seems to me that the measure of “global warming” should be a change in global heat content. In principle, local temperatures could be useful here. The change in heat content at location i would be given by delH(i) = m(i)Cp(i)delT(i) where m(i) is the “mass” of location i, Cp(i) its “heat capacity” and delT(i) the “temperature change”. Adding up the contributions of each location gives delH, change in heat content for the globe. If we define a global average temperature change delT such that delH=m.Cpg.delT, where m is the mass of the globe and Cp an average heat capacity, we get delT = sum over i{m(i)Cp(i)delT(i)}/mCp. Further, if we define Cp such that it is the weighted average of the Cp(i) we have
delT = sum over i{m(i)Cp(i)delT(i)}/sum over i{m(i)Cp(i)}
So delT is a weighted mean of the individual delT(i) measurements, but with weighting factors quite different from those used in the NASA calculation.
In practice, it would be extremely difficult to apply this approach, because none of the term m(i), Cp(i) and delT(i) are known. To know m(i) you would need the depth below the surface to include in the calculation (clearly just a thin surface layer is relevant but how thin?). Locations don’t actually have a heat capacity but this could be roughly interpreted by considering the actual materials within the boundary of the location (and the depth decided for estimating m(i)). Heat capacity for common materials (water, rocks etc) vary over a range of about 8, so errors in composition could lead to very large errors in the apparent Cp(i). One of the components of a “location” is the atmosphere, but the heat capacity of air is so low that it’s the one thing we could be confident that we could leave out. But the delT(i) measurements we have for land areas are surface air temperatures so we have a further problem of estimating the delT(i) we need from the surface air temperature. The one delT(i) we probably do have a reasonable idea about is the Argo buoy SST data, with the added advantage of being over a region with about the same Cp. So if we take just the ocean as being “the globe” in terms of heat content, with M(i) and Cp(i) the same for all i, we get delT=sum over i{delT(i)}/N where N is the number of buoys. Now, delT still has no physical meaning (and offers no advantage over delH) but looks harmless enough. But leaving out the land area (30% of the globe) is a potential serious source of error, especially when the final delT result that is being talked about is 10ths of a degree.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
The puzzle with this data for me is that it looks far too regular. If this represents a global CO2 level, rather that just SH and it’s human induced, why does it peak each year in May? Given the higher NH population it looks like something is increasing in the Northern spring, then switches off by midsummer. So, unlikely to be human energy use. I have seen mention of it being due to variation in plant growth but (assuming plant growth greater in NH due to larger land area) it seems to go in the opposite direction than expected.
Or is it that there is a lag of of several months in Mauna Lao measuring changes in CO2 produced in NH, so the May figure is actually driven by mid-winter events? In that case, shouldn’t cold or warm winters be evident in the data?
no (important) lag, and the change is in the right direction. in late spring in the northern hemisphere, plant growth starts taking up CO2 and there is a peak in global CO2 (the rise of CO2 stops and it starts dropping)
a 10 seconds search on the web would have been all that is needed to understand this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth%27s_atmosphere
Concentrations peak in May as the Northern Hemisphere spring greenup begins and reach a minimum in October when the quantity of biomass undergoing photosynthesis is greatest.[3]
Comment from: sod August 29th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
EMS: Unfortunately, the ZONES of STEP2 are only 6 for the whole globe (2 at the poles) and we’ve already “fixed up” the temperature series via the Reference Station Method at least twice by that point. So by the time STEP3 turns the zonal data into grid boxes, it is already too late. The damage has been done. That is the whole point. The GHCN data have no warming signal suitable for making a claim of global warming; only after all the chopping, forming, blending, homogenizing, interpolating, and flat out data fabrication is there a “warming signal” in the anomaly boxes :end EMS quote.
You seem to have trouble figuring out what words to selectively read, so I’ve bolded a couple of particular importance. I’ll explain it a bit further down.
ouch,
Glad to oblige.
i see. so you don t have a point actually.
I see you managed to completely miss the half dozen or so clearly articulated ones, including specific links to specific topics. Maybe it’s more than just “selective” reading issues…
you just assume
Nope. I don’t ASSUME anything. I take the data, and the code, and I test and measure what they do. If they supported the CO2 thesis, that is what I would report. They don’t, so that is what I report. It’s called honest science. You ought to try it some time. Just to make sure it is completely clear to you: I RUN GIStemp. I put in GHCN Data. I MEASURE what it does. I report those results. I make the CODE and DATA AVAILABLE to anyone to run and test and confirm for themselves. It isn’t about ME at all. It is all about the data and the code.
that the process of filling up missing data (or compensating for UHI) with a weighted avearge of nearby stations is causing an effect.
I report that it is because it is measurable in the data. Through STEP0 and STEP1 it measures at about 1/2C. (The actual result is by decade and is published in one of the links I put here, that you clearly have not bothered to read, and the source code is available). In STEP2, for example, the slope of the Pisa, Italy temperature data become more “tilted” after passing through GIStemp. The 1949-early50s data drop by about 1.75C putting in a “warming” of about 2 C / century that are not in the data. This is mostly done in the PApars.f program. The exact details of “which reference station” changes what part of the record is my project for this week. For now, I’ve just identified all the pertinent bits in the aggregate.
Here is the before and after chart of the data for you to look at:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/paolo-figure14.png
and a listing of the GIStemp log file that shows which stations were used to change PISA along with a link to the source code.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/gistemp-a-slice-of-pisa/
You are free to “play along at home” and if your results don’t match mine, present your work for inspection too. (I post mine.)
all your talk about cold mountain tops and thermometers moved to the south were without any meaning?!?
No, not at all. Take a look at the bold bits up above. I know, it was at least 2 minutes ago and that’s a long time to pay attention to something, but try real hard. No? Ok, I’ll repeat it for you here: “suitable for making a claim of global warming”. See, the GHCN data DO have a strong warming signal in them. But it isn’t in summer. AND it isn’t in the longest lived stations. It is in the very short lived stations that are strongly in the new thermometer growth in the tropics. And it is only in the N. Hemisphere winter. The top quartile of long lived thermometers do not show a warming signal.
This is NOT consistent with CO2 and it is NOT consistent with the “claim of global warming”. It is very consistent with the “GIStemp reports of warming” being the result of a poor program doing a lousy job of smoothing the data into boxes and grids, a worse job of handling thermometer change over time and latitude, and it is VERY consistent with GIStemp buggering the data in exactly the ways it is seen to do in the code. By doing little things, like using Aviano Military Air Base as a “rural reference station” for UHI adjusting PISA and by using a station on a giant rock in North Africa to UHI adjust Pisa… No, not my opinion, it is from the GIStemp PApars.f log file from running the code.
absurd.
Yes, most of the stuff the trolls here post is quite so. I try to ignore most of it (trolls not being very interesting) but some things just must be corrected. Like asserting that I said one thing when I said the exact opposite. Or claiming things are my opinion, when they are verifiable statements of fact. So folks who want me to answer questions that are patently a waste of time, or absurd, just get bypassed (since they are not worth the time). I look mostly for the interesting bits. Like that gem posted by Alan Siddons showing that Hansen knows full well that his “Surface Temperature” metric is bogus. Gotta Love it!
Oh, and I’m only an “occasional visitor” here. Don’t have the time for more. So repeated bleats that I’m not responding to some particular troll piece are mostly hitting dead air. I get to read blogs about 1 hour for every 4 to 8 in the code. It’s a discipline thing. You ought to try it some time…
BTW, my complaints about the bad code quality in GIStemp are not all opinion either (some part is). I’ve recently measured 1/3 “dead code” in the invnt.f program. That is unpardonable.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/gistemp-invnt-f-a-sympathy-plea/
It is in the “Anomaly” part of GIStemp. You know, that part of the code that you are SURE must make it all better… I’m sure glad my view of the world does not hinge on that code being “well made”…
Comment from: SJT August 28th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
“So what EXACTLY does an average of 100 randomly selected thermometers MEAN?”
What does the average of anything mean?
Take two pots of water. Measure their temperatures. Now average them. The result tells you nothing. It is an intensive property
Pour one pot into the other. What is the temperature of the resultant mix? You don’t know.
Now take those two pots temperatures x mass of water in pot x specific heat of water and you have an extensive property.
Average those two extensive values and you KNOW what the thermal energy content of the mix will be and you KNOW what the final temperature will be.
The average of two intensive properties means nothing.
The average or two extensive properties means everything.
If you don not understand this, research intensive vs extensive properties. I don’t have the time to ‘splain it.
Or to put it another way the lack of scientific vigour of sod’s comments is an intensive property of his comments. BTW sod, I did do a trend analysis of Pt Barrow and you’re right the trend is UP! The trend is 0.02C per decade. You are a twit.
Comment from: Louis Hissink August 29th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I do use Microsoft at work but as the Apple OS is based on Unix, which I am familiar with, I tend to prefer it.
Since I can now run Windows apps on Apple computers, the issue has disappeared.
Comment from: Luke August 29th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Louis – fancy selling out to leftist Californian technology – I am shocked. I would have thought a hard guy like you would be using vi.
Hmmm… Fascinating. I have an old Sun Sparc box in the garage, I’ve got two Linux boxes (one running GIStemp) and I’m typing this on my Mac laptop (that I prefer due to the stellar stability and excellent design). The PC laptop sits depowered on the desk and the HP Vectra PC had it’s memory loaned to my mechanic as a repair to his PC (that is choking under M.S. last release of bloat).
I think I’m seeing a pattern here… Hard core techies who “do Unix” and like quality do not buy the AGW thesis. PC guys, who typically value video games most, like it, being computer models and all…
Oh, and I DO do vi. For a few hours a day most days…
Comment from: SJT August 30th, 2009 at 1:04 am
You have just demonstrated that you have no understanding of the precision used in the average.
It’s not the precision used in the average that’s the problem, it’s the precision that ought not be used in the average that’s the problem… AGW is largely just an exercise in playing in the error bands of False Precision.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/mr-mcguire-would-not-approve/
Comment from: sod August 30th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
so Curtin was wrong and even your cherry pick is wrong!
Well, this chart looks pretty flat to me:
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/425/70026.html
Then again, it’s the GHCN data prior to GIStemp modification…
E.M.Smith, the majority ofg what you wrote above is either false or misleading. but i have noticed that you abuse my detailed replies to obfuscate the subject and to odge important points and questions.
so here is just the most important one:
how will “movement” of stations from (cold) Siberia to (warm) Italy (actually it is closing stations in Siberia and adding new ones in Italy) lead to a warming bias in the global temperature trend?
how will adding 10 stations on (cold) mountain tops lead to a cooling bias in the global temperature trend?
i am seriously interested in your answer to this question.
and just for my own reference:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/gistemp.html
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990042165_1999050125.pdf
BTW sod, I did do a trend analysis of Pt Barrow and you’re right the trend is UP! The trend is 0.02C per decade. You are a twit.
your point was clear.
RW said:
Let’s look at the data. Barrow has warmed significantly over the last 30 years.
then you cherry picked 1998 as starting point and claimed:
Utter garbage RW; the GISS record [and god knows what it has been through] for Barrow shows a classic PDO pattern with no warming since 1998.
the data shows warming. you were wrong.
(i don t have access to excel or calc on this computer, but i hope you did not transfer a f(x)=0.02x-11 trendline into a 0.02°C per decade increase? the internet calculator i used (and i don t really trust) gives me such an increase per year…. )
“I think I’m seeing a pattern here… Hard core techies who “do Unix” and like quality do not buy the AGW thesis. PC guys, who typically value video games most, like it, being computer models and all…”
Barf !
No so – being an ageing cold-war warrior – you have it totally arse about. Lefties smart techies do Unix, as well as invent Macintosh elegance, while right wing arseholes (and the rest of us in complete ignorance to the existence of anything else) do PCs.
Anyway Smithy – Throw out that old crap and save yourself some electricity bills. Stop using Vi and quadruple your productivity. Not even Louis uses vi ! And for the record – “back in the day” and “the times” sucked.
“The average of two intensive properties means nothing.
The average or two extensive properties means everything.”
If I have many pots of water, scattered around the globe, that sit out in the open. I measure their temperatures every day for years. If the temperatures of all those pots are rising over time, their is a good chance that the temperature of around the at the surface globe is rising. If they all fall, their is a good chance the temperature around the globe is falling. If the sun was to double it’s energy radiation, there is a good chance the temperatures of those pots will rise, if it was to fall, there is a good chance the temperatures of those pots will fall.
“You don’t get it. The warming is determined by changes in temperature, not the absolute temperature.”
WRONG-YOU-ARE. I left that rope-a-dope in place with malice-afforethought. Since as a practical matter the high stuff was being added on over time even as the Siberian stuff was about to disappear.
You can include them. But if you do you must do an almighty culling back in time so you have an entirely attenuated database that is consistent all the way through. There is another way around this but it is a lot of work.
I must say that this presumed MEDICINE MAN Mr E M Smith is adding a lot of rigour to things. I like it. Like a fellow coming into the subject anew determined to give it all a good conceptual audit. Its his very unfamiliarity which makes his conceptual audit so useful.
One hopes that Mr E M Smith will “hang out” as the kids say.
SJT wrote: You don’t get it. The warming is determined by changes in temperature, not the absolute temperature.
Oops! stuffed up the quoting. Sure you can figure it out…
little will says “If the temperatures of all those pots are rising over time,”; well that is the point, not all those pots are rising; in fact, in Australia, very few of the pots are rising;
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml
So, if the individual or regional pots are not rising how can the aggregate temperature be rising?
“So what does this mean in terms of GMST? Plenty. For example, if a species range is limited by minimum temperature during winter (let’s say they can’t survive if the temperature ever drops below 0C), then what does a change in GMST mean for this species? We don’t know unless we know what caused the change in mean! If GMST increased by 1C, this may have no effect on that particular species if the change is the result of increased maximum temperatures, or if the temperature of the tropics changed but not the temperate or cold regions (that is, the GMST change may have no effect on the positioning of the 0C minimum topography). So looking at why and how the GMST changed is important – arguably more important than the actual change itself. So when EMS tells you that upon examining the data, it seems that the change in GMST is the result of mildly warmer winters in the NH, you should be concerned that people are telling you that Australian snowfields are at risk from changes in GMST – after all, if there’s negligable change in temperatures, we would hardly expect temperature changes to have a significant effect, right?”
Read the IPCC report “Understanding and attributing climate change”.
SJT wrote:
Which bit and why?
“little will says “If the temperatures of all those pots are rising over time,”; well that is the point, not all those pots are rising; in fact, in Australia, very few of the pots are rising;
Moving the goal posts again. You accept we can have a figure with some meaning if we have a record of the surface temperature across the globe? Thank you.
To E.M.Smith, I would like to express deep appreciation on behalf of myself and other ingrates on this blog for your efforts in deconstructing the GISS-myth. It is staggering and beyond belief that this ‘climate science’ product needs to be reviewed by an individual outsider instead of proper and correct peer review by paid professionals. But that is the sad and corrupt state of ‘climate science’ today. Please pay no attention to the infantile posturings of believer trolls on this site. They are the worthless products of not only their own degenerate DNA but also the degenerate modern educational system. None of them would have a clue as to what it takes to question the simplistic assumptions behind their various propaganda-inspired beliefs. Keep up the good work. You will need your helmet ready when the crap hits the fan and Big Science, ie Big Shonk, starts to worry about the PR implications of your conclusions.
“Which bit and why?
The whole chapter is worth reading. Rather than having people continually debating what they think the case for AGW is, read what it is first. The science is far more complex than just GMST. By reducing the debate to GMST, the comprehensive approach taken by the IPCC, to ensure that they don’t just take one piece of evidence and rely on it, is often missed.
Hey SJT – cop this turd “correct peer review by paid professionals” – what ? to get the answer that this guy paid for. Far out !
Then remember Louis going on about Eugenics – check out – “worthless products of not only their own degenerate DNA ” – of course written by someone called “giggle….. – dribble”.
Anyway we’ll leave dribble to wedging his tongue right down the back of Smithy’s trousers.
Leaves you in the regrettable Mottsian philosophical position doesn’t it – just drop the pricks. Discuss science later.
I was of course referring to ‘proper and correct peer review by paid professionals’ in the idealistic sense, the way it is supposed to happen but clearly does not. The irony of this statement did not escape me. If the GISS-myth product was in fact peer reviewed by paid climate scientist shonks, we can be certain that it would have been blessed with the gold elephant stamp of IPCC approval and ‘greenhouse gas certified’.
We should therefore be thankful that the GISS-myth product is being dissected by an outsider with no climate science agenda to procreate apart from his own. E.M. Smith’s product, being the result of genuine effort, enthusiasm and skill, will make for more interesting reading and have more real-world scientific effect than any of the endless silly rants produced by the peer-reviewed Luke trolls.
(BTW, thanks for the gravatar info)
SJT wrote:
This is a problem that I’ve alluded to before – and it’s not specifically a go at you SJT, although you do tend to do it too. It seems that every objection to AGW theory can be shown not to matter because of the “body of evidence”, and yet every “denialist” arguement can be shot down one at a time. I find myself more than a little frustrated by this hypocracy and by the failure of the “warmanista” to see that the “denial-o-sphere” also has a “big picture”. For instance, in this case, you are saying it’s not all about GMST – there’s also sea level rise, ice, phrenology and so on, so that any one particular piece of evidence might be “wrong”, but it doesn’t mater because of all the supporting evidence, right?
Except that:
* GMST has many problems as shown by many people – Michaels & McKitrick showed correlation of local temperature to local GDP; Pielke Snr shows that LULC makes a significant contribution that is all but ignored by IPCC, and he also shows that GMST probably doesn’t represent atmospheric heat content; EM Smith shows that the warming seems to be seasonal and regional rather than global etc etc. IOW, it’s quite equivicable that the rise we have measured, while certainly anthropogenic, is quite what it seems to be.
* Sea level rise has issues too – the recent so-called increase in sea level rate of rise is due to changing measurement from tide gauge to satellite, so that if you check tide gauge data the rate of increase hasn’t changed and has even slowed (although within normal variation)
* Ice amounts are also problematic – the warmanista insist that arctic sea ice at low levels is evidence of AGW, yet record high levels in the antarctic are ignored or labelled “regional”, and global level, which has hardly changed, is ignored.
* Phrenology (early spring etc) is produced when it supports the AGW arguement as more evidence, but is quietly ignored when it swings the other way.
* “Highest ever” temperatures are consistent with AGW, yet despite 100-150 years of anthropgenic CO2 emissions and associated “warming”, we recently saw record cold in China, snow in Buenes Ares (sp? sorry!) for the first time in 89 years and so on. Yet these are plastered over as “weather not climate”, or “regional effects”.
* Cherry picking – when done by denialists, this is the absolute worst thing they can do and “shows their true colours”, yet the warmanista do it all the time – “lowest arctic ice on record” (but the “record” is since satellite data started in the late 1970’s – coming off a known cold period, or from the 1950’s submarine data right in the middle of that cold period) “highest temperature ever recorded” (but the record starts in the late 1800’s, coming off the LIA) and so on.
* IPCC goes against the direct advice of a hurricane expert that they appointed to an IPCC position at the very press conference where they announced his appointment and despite direct warnings from him at the time that the science did NOT support their position.
* data and methods are not fully open in direct contravention of journal policies, and when, in some cases after years of stonewalling, it does finally appear, it shows a litany of questionable statistics, unjustified assumptions and unreported adverse verification stats, yet the paper is still cited as definative and not withdrawn.
So you see, I have this “big picture” too – and just like yours, it aint pretty. I’m happy to admit that I might be wrong and you right, but I will require some proper scientific data and analysis (fully open and auditable) before you can convince me that’s the case – something sadly lacking to date.
Well said Neil.
Sigh – is it worth even bothering. Flips coin- of bugga – 10 minutes stolen.
** GMST has many problems as shown by many people – Michaels & McKitrick showed correlation of local temperature to local GDP;
Yes – so pick ocean SSTs, 28,000 studies of wildlife patterns/phenology, match the maligned surface record with the satelllite – IT”S ALL THE SAME STORY !
** Pielke Snr shows that LULC makes a significant contribution that is all but ignored by IPCC,
Utter utter rot. Land surface schema issues have been around for yonks and a major modeller pre-occupation.
** and he also shows that GMST probably doesn’t represent atmospheric heat content; EM Smith shows that the warming seems to be seasonal and regional rather than global etc etc. IOW, it’s quite equivicable that the rise we have measured, while certainly anthropogenic, is quite what it seems to be.
Sigh – simpy uniformatarian denialist nonsense – effects should be regional and variable as a tilted planet, with uneven land surface, distribution of oceans moves heat around !! OMIGAWD !!
* Sea level rise has issues too – the recent so-called increase in sea level rate of rise is due to changing measurement from tide gauge to satellite, so that if you check tide gauge data the rate of increase hasn’t changed and has even slowed (although within normal variation)
Sigh – sea level rise has always had it’s ups and downs – however the long term and ongoing rate of rise is surely indisputable.
* Ice amounts are also problematic – the warmanista insist that arctic sea ice at low levels is evidence of AGW, yet record high levels in the antarctic are ignored or labelled “regional”, and global level, which has hardly changed, is ignored.
Not really – there are very good meteorological reasons why and modelled that way a priori.
* Phrenology (early spring etc) is produced when it supports the AGW arguement as more evidence, but is quietly ignored when it swings the other way.
Yep fair cop – that’s why you needs collections of numbers and trends.
* “Highest ever” temperatures are consistent with AGW, yet despite 100-150 years of anthropgenic CO2 emissions and associated “warming”, we recently saw record cold in China, snow in Buenes Ares (sp? sorry!) for the first time in 89 years and so on. Yet these are plastered over as “weather not climate”, or “regional effects”.
Yep and even modelled and my old rave on this blog on records and CAO – http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/12/is-global-warming-cool-a-note-from-luke/
* Cherry picking – when done by denialists, this is the absolute worst thing they can do and “shows their true colours”, yet the warmanista do it all the time – “lowest arctic ice on record” (but the “record” is since satellite data started in the late 1970’s – coming off a known cold period, or from the 1950’s submarine data right in the middle of that cold period) “highest temperature ever recorded” (but the record starts in the late 1800’s, coming off the LIA) and so on.
The Arctic record is what it is. Should not expect each year to be a record. But melting is exceeding expectations.
* IPCC goes against the direct advice of a hurricane expert that they appointed to an IPCC position at the very press conference where they announced his appointment and despite direct warnings from him at the time that the science did NOT support their position.
Yea so – he ain’t the only one – Kerry Emmanuel’s work on peak storm index change is still there.
* data and methods are not fully open in direct contravention of journal policies, and when, in some cases after years of stonewalling, it does finally appear, it shows a litany of questionable statistics, unjustified assumptions and unreported adverse verification stats, yet the paper is still cited as definative and not withdrawn.
Oh diddums – this has NEVER happened in any other discipline ever. And big business would NEVER do this – yea sure !!
But fair cop. If it’s wrong – it’s wrong.
Another wasted 7.5 mins.
Toby – try to be the slightest bit critical ! sigh ….
BTW frankly I’d be bloody disturbed what the sub-tropical ridge is doing and the apparent widening of the tropics. And what happens to the sub-tropics – drying. See the MWP as a “dry run” – get it !
http://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/researchletters/CAWCR_Research_Letters2.pdf
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n1/full/ngeo.2007.38.html
Luke wrote:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/the-paper-heat-balance-in-the-nocturnal-boundary-layer-during-cases-99-by-sun-et-al-2003/
would seem to disagree with that – for example, it says in part
Luke:
Yes – short!
Akasofu seems to disagree, as shown here: http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/news/news_shorts/akasofu_4_26_06/written_testimony.php
There’s a difference between being wrong and being misleading, as Chris Landsea says here: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
You’re joking, right? People of all stripes “try it on” – finance people, mining people, science people. The difference seems to be that if I talked people into investing in my stock and didn’t disclose all the relevent risks and caveats (ie. I “oversold” it), I’d be in very deep trouble indeed, especially if the amount of money involved was billions – let alone trillions! – of dollars, as the recent Ponzi scheme collapse in the USA shows quite well.
Something we can agree on, anyway!
Lukie: “* data and methods are not fully open in direct contravention of journal policies, and when, in some cases after years of stonewalling, it does finally appear, it shows a litany of questionable statistics, unjustified assumptions and unreported adverse verification stats, yet the paper is still cited as definative and not withdrawn.
Oh diddums – this has NEVER happened in any other discipline ever. And big business would NEVER do this – yea sure !!”
What you appear to be suggesting , in fact what you are exactly suggesting, is that it is okay for climate scientists to hide data and methods and to lie and commit fraud. Your excuse is apparently, that Big Business does it, so its OK.
So when Big Tobacco produces bogus science its really bad, but when Big Climate produces bogus science its not really an important issue, lets just sweep it under the carpet, the Big Picture is more important.
Personally I find it outrageous that climate scientists are not required to completely disclose full data and methods before papers are allowed to be published. It is issues like these that create skepticism in the first place. If someone is hiding his data and methods, the first instinct is to be suspicious. And for good reason, because usually it means that some sort of shonk is going on. I do not really care about what excuses scientists may prefer to use for this practice, any excuse is completely irrelevant.
Why do you think the medieval Church did not translate the Latin bible into vernacular languages? Because it knew that if the rabble of unschooled believers could actually read it, they would quickly figure out that the Church’s claim to global uniqueness was not supported by the actual text. Sure enough, come the Protestant Reformation, exactly this happened.
In post-Enlightenment Western society, the role of the Church in providing sure knowledge of ‘reality’ to the rabble has been taken over by Big Science. If data and methods hiding is widely condoned by the scientific establishment, which it is, then the rabble are entitled to believe that Big Science is corrupt on a basic level.
Dribble – I’m simply saying you’re droning on. It’s not OK to undertake poor science.
But here argument is something like – a person of a certain race did a bad thing – therefore all people of that race are “bad”.
So there are some climate science issues that may have been handled better / were wrong / occurred. Yes expect a lot more – it’s called human frailty and/or bad luck. Is climate science any worse than other fields – you’ll say yes as you’ve stroked yourself into a blog lather.
Situation is probably the same for butterfly taxonomy but you wouldn’t care.
But there is a really big difference if you call it fraud. Being purposefully and knowingly deceptive for personal gain. The comparison with tobacco is nonsense – apply that to the sceptic scumistas who will sell their grannies to spin a line – all day – every day. And the denialists never pull them up – anything to hang one on eh?
Anyway no shortage of sceptic comment on the wire. If you don’t like it publish an alternative analysis and an alternative paper.
i.e but you’re having a real big wank. Better let you get back to it.
Neil – yep – always an alternative point of view. The problem with the sceptic movement is that they’ve had to come up with so many. And ongoing – what’s the odds of all those ducks lining up in a row? Personal risk decision !
Luke wrote:
Yes indeed – it’s funny how people see things sometimes, init? I mean, you are suggesting it’s the sceptics that have had to “come up” with so many alternate viewpoints, but the way I see it, they’ve had to do so because the alarmists keep changing their “evidence”! Every time a sceptic demolishes an alarmist point, the alarmists claim that “it doesn’t matter” and “move on” to the next line of “evidence”, hiding their data and methods from those who want to replicate and examine the new “evidence”, while at the same time having a press release where the authors completely distort the significance of the results. Now all this would be a fine show and is somewhat expected in the push and shove contest of ideas that is science, and it’s likely no-one would care if, like butterfly taxonomy, it had negligable impact on society at large. But in the case of climate science, there is a huge impact – we are, it seems, about to embark on a plan costings trillions of dollars worldwide to completely remake the worlds energy supply – don’t you think that requires a little more due dilligence? Should we not examine each and every piece of evidence, push at it and pull at it, examine it under the microscope for the tiniest flaws so we know exactly how sure we are about what’s going on and what the error margins are before we commit to such a path? Isn’t that the way public policy is supposed to work – fully informed decisions in the best interests of wider society? Isn’t that the basis (although rarely the reality, I admit) of decisions we make with a large impact on society like health, transport, taxation and so on? Isn’t it the case that as a general rule, the greater the impact, the greater the due dilligence? Care to give me an example of something else with a greater impact on society that involved less due dilligence and less transparency? Preferably one that didn’t result in a lynch mob going after the perpetrators once their scam had been exposed.
IM(NS)HO, climate science is doing itself and science in general a great disservice by tying their colours to the political mast before they are very certain of themselves. If you think the politicians would hesitate to pass the blame onto these people if, as and when it all falls apart, you are surely kidding yourself. If you think that such an act would not impact on science in general, then you are a fool, sir!
Well Neil – I’m sorry if the evidence keeps piling up. 🙂
It doesn’t change to suit – there’s just more of it.
As for “demolish” – well you mean mostly whiney little attempts that appeal to the gullible.
“Scam” is a very harsh term. Do you think a vast body of contemporary climate scientists are all scamming?
God isn’t going to give you a complex issue like this on a platter. It’s a question of risk management.
Every time a sceptic demolishes an alarmist point, the alarmists claim that “it doesn’t matter” and “move on” to the next line of “evidence”, hiding their data and methods from those who want to replicate and examine the new “evidence”,
It’s actually a case of the IPCC having come up with so much evidence, (all referred to in the report), that if a denialist won’t accept one, there is plenty more available.
Lukey: “But there is a really big difference if you call it fraud. Being purposefully and knowingly deceptive for personal gain. The comparison with tobacco is nonsense – apply that to the sceptic scumistas who will sell their grannies to spin a line – all day – every day. And the denialists never pull them up – anything to hang one on eh?”
Fraud is any form of deception committed by anybody, including fraud committed by climate scientists, of which many examples exist. I could list their known frauds to date for you but I don’t have enough hours to spare in the day. Pious fraud is a form of unconscious self-deception and is undoubtedly extremely common as well, probably more common in climate science than most other subjects. This is where believers unconsciously or semi-consciously adjust data to suit their own purposes, relieving themselves of guilt by telling themselves that its okay since the glorious end justifies the shonky means. If you are self-deludedly enmeshed in personal fantasies about saving the world from the CO2 disaster, just about anything goes. Any fraud is okay if it saves the world. Well hello IPCC! You’ll find all the world-saver fantasists right there gathered in the one spot shitting together in the same toilets.
The IPCC documents are classic examples of fraudulent bureaucratic crapola. Their purpose is not to explain or enlighten, but rather to obfuscate and cover up the inadequacies of AGW science. It’s all too obvious Lukey, you’ve been sold a punnet of strawberries with a wink and a nod and silly dumb old you thinks it’s a box of gold. You’re too easily fooled.
“Anyway no shortage of sceptic comment on the wire. If you don’t like it publish an alternative analysis and an alternative paper.”
Another boring invitation to publish a paper. No thanks, I’ve got other things to do. If you don’t like skeptical comment, don’t read it. Save yourself the blood pressure. I don’t read the believer blog crap for the same reason.
Well said Dribble! Luke cannot get his head round absurdity of IPCC AR4 attributing warming solely to CO2 when of course wherever measured it is wholly due to energy used for Work which creates far more Heat than CO2 has ever managed. Lukey, just check IEA numbers for Energy and Heat production and compare with atmos. CO2. If IPCC were right our solar panels would work at night!
Neil: ” IM(NS)HO, climate science is doing itself and science in general a great disservice by tying their colours to the political mast before they are very certain of themselves. ”
I agree completely. The issues are too vast, the cost too huge and the difficulties in obtaining reliable alternative energy supplies is too great for anything less than total certainty.
The IPCC approach is “We must save the world, we don’t actually have any proof, but if we bullshit you enough we can push you into doing something” may appeal to green moralisers, but, being based on a fraud, is inevitably self-defeating. Its like the old socialist line: “the workers paradise will come in the end, but first we need to kill, enslave and brainwash you in order to prepare you for the goodies to come.”
In reality, the IPCC is a carpetbagger telling you “Dont worry about the quality, the threadbare bits and the holes in middle, just check out the width madam! We’ve got lots of lines of evidence for you to consider. All of them are shit, but if you add them all together you’ve got a good idea of what we are trying to sell you”
The sad irony for the green believers is that in about 10 years the politicians in the industrialized world will wake up, shake off the green natural power fantasy and start installing nukes in a big way. Thats right, instead of an Arcadian paradise of windmills, all that the CO2 hysteria is going to get the green believers is a world full nukes. Thats what you get for pushing a fraud instead of looking for the truth. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHA
Lukey: “Scam” is a very harsh term. Do you think a vast body of contemporary climate scientists are all scamming?”
Yep. They prove it every time they open their mouths. Shrinking sheep? Its global warming. Shrinking fish? Its global warming. And don’t forget the hidden subliminal message, all global warming is due to CO2.
Well dribble if you really believe that – you’re a halfwit. What a whole lot of rhetorical waffle.
What a little ranter you are “kill, enslave and brainwash you”. Jeez Dribble ! Take a walk.
You really do need a massive kick right up your denialist arse. What a presupposing little turd you are – indeed the interest with new nuclear is high. And you can count me in. So don’t bother verballing matey.
As for Timmy the Data diddler – no thanks Timmy – you’ve now proven yourself to be the ultimate time waster. Get back over to Deltoid and resume being beaten up. ” If IPCC were right our solar panels would work at night!” – Tim get medical help and quickly.
Luke wrote:
Well how about showing some them Luke? I don’t want to see stuff that is “consistent with” the AGW hypothesis, I want to see stuff that demonstrates it! Stuff that is replicable, with open access to data and full disclosure of methods – the “smoking gun”.
Mann’s “hockey stick”, Stieg’s “Antarctic warming” – these are two classic examples of a single paper that was trumpeted as a “smoking gun” that AGW is “real and happening now”. Problem with both of these is that they go against all previous published papers on the matters they investigate, the data and methods were hidden until well after they’d “sold the message” to the media, in both cases a “new statistical technique” was used on new data without investigating how the technique worked on data sets with known properties first, the “trends” they produced went against what the raw data said, and in both cases the data was tortured until it confessed the “right” answer. In both cases, they have been vigorously defended by the alarmists by the use of denigration and slurs against those who dare to question the answer they give, even though one would expect such suspision given that they go against the “conventional wisdom”. In both cases, when the evidence that they were dodgy became so obvious that even RealClimate could no longer defend them, there was a loud thud as they were dropped as “doesn’t matter, we’ve moved on”. Both were “demolished” after a ridiculously difficult time in discovering just exactly how they were produced by statisticians who were motivated by the desire to understand the “new statistical methods” and did it on their own time with no funding! And finally, in both cases, neither was withdrawn and are still being cited.
Of course not. A small number of politically active and very loud “leaders” have abused their positions to create a clique that rejects from peer review any paper that goes against their pet theory, while allowing through some extremely bad papers “on the nod”. Wegman showed with this quite clearly in his social network analysis. Happens all the time in science, although it usually doesn’t involve the sort of social and financial consequences that this one does. Remember these?
* “It doesn’t matter if the science is wrong, there are other reasons to make these changes”
* “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”
* “We have to offer up scary scenarios to make people pay attention”
* “We have to decide on the balance between being honest and being effective”
* “Why should I give you my data, when all you want to do is find mistakes?”
While I haven’t gone to sources and so these quotes may not be exact, these are the thoughts of various AGW alarmists. Doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, does it? Doesn’t inspire confidence that these people are telling us the full extent of the uncertainties, does it? As I said, if this sort of thing was happening in the world of finance, some of these people would be in gaol for what they’ve done, and we’d have no hesitation in calling the whole thing a scam. Understand that I don’t object to anyone proposing any theory they like in science – that’s the way science progresses – but when such ideas move from the world of academia into the real world, and when such ideas affect every person on the planet in a very real and personal way (such as the raising of a new tax, or restrictions on personal freedoms) then I demand a much higher level of due dilligence, transparency and accountability and so do many others – and rightly so, too.
SJT wrote:
“* “It doesn’t matter if the science is wrong, there are other reasons to make these changes”
* “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”
* “We have to offer up scary scenarios to make people pay attention”
* “We have to decide on the balance between being honest and being effective”
* “Why should I give you my data, when all you want to do is find mistakes?””
ooooo – what a stupid little rant – how devastating – a small collection of blog factoids out of context – yet another recycling denialist scumista.
“Show me the “smoking gun” – show me the one line of physical evidence that anthropgenic CO2 is driving climate.” – don’t be such a dishonest turd. You know there is nothing that would suit you you is there? Nothing except 200 years – and 60 replicate Earths in 60 replicate solar systems – half of which we’ll jack up the CO2.
Then you’ll weasel out on some point of trivia.
Why don’t you stop being totally disingenuous and draw up a for and against table.
I had to laugh my guts out on this “evidence that natural variability is being overwhelmed by the CO2 driven changes” – hahahahahaha – crap … “overwhelmed!!”.
Open your eyes mate !
Luke wrote:
Are these not the statements of your alarmist buddies? They are all well documented, and the most damning one from Phil Jones (the “Why should I…” one) has even been confirmed by him personally as something he did, in fact, say!
So you have not got such a line of evidence? Thought so, but thought I’d ask anyway. No, not the 60 earths – just some physical evidence; stuff that any reputable scientist would be more than happy to provide when it’s in his area of research. Unless she’s one of the gatekeepers of AGW orthodoxy that is; in which case, “we don’t have to give it to you, it’s available elsewhere; and anyway, we can’t give it to you without breaking a confidentiality agreement even though we’ve already given it to one of our mates. Besides, we don’t have it any more anyway” would be a likely response if HADCRU responses to FOI requests are any guide. Probably easier if they just said “My dog ate my homework”!
Firstly, as I said, if you want me to change my “evil ways”, then show me they are indeed evil – should be a piece of piss if things are as you say.
Here’s what your buddies at RC have to say on climate variability:
right here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
So think about that: natural variability, we are told, has put the warming “on hold”. That is, it is at least as powerful as the (cuurent) effect supposed for CO2. So if it’s that strong, and that unpredictable that none of the warminsta saw it coming, then how can we say that the warming itself isn’t the result of the same process of natural variability, but the “flip side” – warming instead of cooling? We can’t – well, at least, I’ve never seen a coherent explaination of why not.
In all, I think it is you, sir, who need to open your eyes!
If you look at the last 150 years of temperature rise, the upward trend has stalled and dipped a number of times.
Individual GCM runs do not show continuous monotonic warming.
Current generation GCMs are are only starting to model PDO/IPO impacts. This solar cycle has become “exceptional” in in quietness.
“effect supposed for CO2. So if it’s that strong” – more verballing – no it’s as strong as it in combination with other factors. You don’t to “feel” how it should be.
At best the effect is stasis not cooling, and perhaps depending on statistical opinion still slightly warming.
You would not expect current generation GCMs to model it well. Nor long term does it really matter.
The melting of the Arctic consistent. So is a slow to melt Antarctic.
Importantly the widening of tropics and movement of the sub-tropics is consistent.
Phiipona at al well show how the radiation budget change is consistent with a greenhouse impact.
The PETM shows us what a sudden injection of CO2 does to global temperature.
Nothing explains the 1980s and 1990s rise in temperature other than greenhouse forcing. Nothing else adds up.
Is the story perfect – nope. Can you pick holes – yep.
But all in all it’s a 60-75% case for. That’s enough to be “concerned”.
An active sun and another PDO flip could just as well see a remarkable amplification of warming.
Lukey: “But all in all it’s a 60-75% case for. That’s enough to be “concerned”.”
Okay, we’ve now got the ‘unofficial but more correct than official IPCC’ stats from Lukey. AGW is 60-75% case for. Not 60-75% proven, mind you, just ‘case for’. And we should remind ourselves that of this official 60-75% from Lukey, probably that’s about 100% overstated. So we are left with about 35% case for what, ‘concern’. Yes, I’m slightly concerned, Lukey, you pathetic wanker, but then again I’m more interested in the practical solution to the theoretical problem. If it means a world full of nukes, which is what is going to happen when the green delusions are finally brushed aside as transparently worthless, I’d like to be sure that it was really, really necessary in the first place. So stick your toyworld precautionary principle up your arse, Lukey, prove it is necessary before you fuck everything up, you drippy little shit.
Rubbish! Show me the “smoking gun” – show me the one line of physical evidence that anthropgenic CO2 is driving climate. Not interested in what’s “consistent with” it – that could be anything.
There is a physical basis for the claim, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we are on our way to doubling it’s concentration in the atmosphere. There is the ‘enhanced greenhouse’ effect.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/ (in two parts).
The ‘consistent with’ is just standard science speak for supporting evidence for the predictions made on the physical basis. Sorry if it doesn’t sound too alarmist.
Also of significance is the paper by Santer, which refers to evidence that the observed warming is due to AGW, and not other sources of warming.
Lukey: “But all in all it’s a 60-75% case for. That’s enough to be “concerned”.”
Haw haw, I suspect one of the Lukeys has let the cat out of the bag and inadvertently revealed the real going rate for AGW believability in the Pubic Circus science group-think cartel. Looks like this particular Lukey is going to get taken off Luke Patrol and is not going to get his promotion after all. All that hard work and palm greasing selling AGW to the masses Lukey, but one of you has blown it.
Well for someone suffering from an advanced STD I guess “dribble” would know lots about greased palms.
And only now that one realises that it must be so advanced to explain the sheer lunacy of his position.
Just think matey there’s only a 75% chance of a madman attacking you in your sleep. Bugger the precautionary principle – leave the front door unlocked.
And like CO2 in the atmosphere – gee maybe it’ll be Father Xmas instead so let’s worry about getting them out of the house once they’re in. She’ll be right.
And you won’t be getting 3 x CO2 outside of the atmosphere either.
SJT wrote:
You have shown that CO2 is a greenhouse gas – but that’s not what I asked for. I left your quote of my post in – try reading it again and answer the question!
Furthermore, do you have any idea how much fossil fuel we’d need to burn to double CO2 in the atmosphere – I presume you are talking about going from 280ppm to 560ppm? It works out to more than we currently know about!
So? Spencer refers to evidence that cloud feedbacks are incorrectly diagnosed as positive when they should be negative; Pielke refers to evidence that the 2m surface temp will be biased upwards in ways that climate models do not, and currently cannot, resolve; and so on. The point is that these proposals are in competition to explain what we observe, and AGW is no different to Svenmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis in terms of evidence – there’s not currently enough to settle the matter, yet you insist that just one of these is right, and the others are wrong, based solely on the opinions of the “side” you trust. That’s currently the dominant view, but that doesn’t mean it always will be, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s the correct explaination.
Lukey: “Just think matey there’s only a 75% chance of a madman attacking you in your sleep. Bugger the precautionary principle – leave the front door unlocked”
Yes its the old teenage “is the pie poisoned or not” rhetorical trick. When you grow up you may figure out there is a vast difference between shutting a wooden door and spending 50-100 trillion on the brave new world of wall-to-wall nuclear power. Why should I or anybody else jump because you and the rest of the climate shonks have a personal attack of the hysterics?
But don’t worry yourself about my opinion, silly billy, the fix is already in. The puerile hysterics have done their job, the venal pollies and their henchmen smelling votes have moved in and taken over the shop. The only reason I can fathom for you to keep hanging around here humiliating yourself is that you too are world-saving fantasist with an self-appointed evangelical mission to fulfil.
Or do you do it for the money? Are you one of those Gavin the Midget types who get a PR allowance for flogging AGW propaganda on the internet? Or do they just offer you the smell of a promotion if you a do good job as an AGW blog troll? Of course, I am obviously dealing with more than one Lukey, this one is clearly different from the day job one, so perhaps both motives apply.
Rubbish! Show me the “smoking gun” – show me the one line of physical evidence that anthropgenic CO2 is driving climate. Not interested in what’s “consistent with” it – that could be anything.
You want one, simple piece of evidence for AGW? Do you want a pony for xmas too?
Yes mate I get paid heaps to argue with turds like you? I love it. Funny I thought you were a denialist paid troll – fairly typical blow-in we get around here – oblivious to past to discussions wanting to rehash it all again. We just head butt denialist turds like you now. Easy than arguing.
Why should you jump – am I saying you should jump. Do turds jump? I’m simply telling you there’s a more than fair case for AGW affecting the climate system. It most likely already is.
And if you live in southern Australia the outlook ain’t pretty.
And given the trillions to fix the problem – well it’s a bit of a pickle isn’t it. You see logically just because you’d rather not spend the money is clouding your fair and balanced analysis of the science, But you give every indication of having a low IQ so it’s probably fruitless. Indeed, I don’t think you read the science at all – you’re just another two bob ranter.
“AGW is no different to Svenmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis in terms of evidence” hahahahahahahaha !!! OMIGAWD.
SJT wrote:
Once again SJT creates a straw man and sets it on fire. Do you ever answer the questions you are asked, or do you only answer the the question you’d like it to be?
Not a piece of evidence, you bloody pelican – a line of evidence!
Luke wrote:
When you recover from your laughing, you might like to point out to me how these two theories differ in terms of evidence – both have a plausable physical basis, both have lines of evidence that “support” them, neither has definitive evidence for or against, and both are easily “proved” or “disproved” by people who selectivey choose evidence which seems, on the surface, to do as they say, but careful examination reveals there is still “wiggle room”. So, yeah – CO2 / AGW and Svenmark’s theory are not “dead” in my view, but it’s a long way from a done deal which one is “right” (hell, maybe they both play a role!)
Oh yeah – I’m still waiting for Luke, SJT or Josh Halpern (aka Eli Rabett) to find a validation study of any climate model relied on by IPCC. Well, at least SJT and Luke have the balls to hang around and debate the matter, unlike Josh who runs and hides whenever faced with a forum that isn’t controlled by him or his alarmist buddies. Any luck yet, guys? No? I you won’t be relying on those models as “evidence”, right?
And here we have the dishonest moving goal post “never satisfied” view. What’s your specification before we waste more of our time?
Once again SJT creates a straw man and sets it on fire. Do you ever answer the questions you are asked, or do you only answer the the question you’d like it to be?
Not a piece of evidence, you bloody pelican – a line of evidence!
I have already referred you to the IPCC report. That is too complex for you, apparently.
SJT wrote:
I asked for evidence and you give me a political document. Be that as it may, which IPCC report should I accept as truth – the one that shows the MWP and LIA exist, or the one that says they don’t?
Luke wrote:
Specification of what Luke? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
I asked for evidence and you give me a political document. Be that as it may, which IPCC report should I accept as truth – the one that shows the MWP and LIA exist, or the one that says they don’t?
The report has political interference to make it sound less alarming, that is correct, but the science is sound and contains references to the research to back it up.
SJT wrote:
What a funny fellow you are – the political interference didn’t make it less alarming at all, it made it more alarming by virtue of the fact that several references to uncertainty were removed, and the scientific report was changed by politicians after the scientists had agreed and “signed off” on it. That’s a well documented fact – in fact, the summary for policy makers was written before the scientific report was completed, the summary was then published, and the scientific report changed to conform with the summary. Yep – we changed the science to conform with a summary of the science, such summary written before the science was “in” – if that ai’t a purely political process, I don’t know what is!
What a funny fellow you are – the political interference didn’t make it less alarming at all, it made it more alarming by virtue of the fact that several references to uncertainty were removed, and the scientific report was changed by politicians after the scientists had agreed and “signed off” on it. That’s a well documented fact – in fact, the summary for policy makers was written before the scientific report was completed, the summary was then published, and the scientific report changed to conform with the summary. Yep – we changed the science to conform with a summary of the science, such summary written before the science was “in” – if that ai’t a purely political process, I don’t know what is!
Carful with that phrasing. They were writing all the sections at once, you mean. Your implication is just a baseless conspiracy theory.
From Realclimate
The process of finalising the SPM (which is well described here and here) is something that can seem a little odd. Government representatives from all participating nations take the draft summary (as written by the lead authors of the individual chapters) and discuss whether the text truly reflects the underlying science in the main report. The key here is to note that what the lead authors originally came up with is not necessarily the clearest or least ambiguous language, and so the governments (for whom the report is being written) are perfectly entitled to insist that the language be modified so that the conclusions are correctly understood by them and the scientists. It is also key to note that the scientists have to be happy that the final language that is agreed conforms with the underlying science in the technical chapters. The advantage of this process is that everyone involved is absolutely clear what is meant by each sentence. Recall after the National Academies report on surface temperature reconstructions there was much discussion about the definition of ‘plausible’. That kind of thing shouldn’t happen with AR4.
The SPM process also serves a very useful political purpose. Specifically, it allows the governments involved to feel as though they ‘own’ part of the report. This makes it very difficult to later turn around and dismiss it on the basis that it was all written by someone else. This gives the governments a vested interest in making this report as good as it can be (given the uncertainties). There are in fact plenty of safeguards (not least the scientists present) to ensure that the report is not slanted in any one preferred direction. However, the downside is that it can mistakenly appear as if the whole summary is simply up for negotiation. That would be a false conclusion – the negotiations, such as they are, are in fact heavily constrained by the underlying science.
Finally, a few people have asked why the SPM is being released now while the main report is not due to be published for a couple of months. There are a number of reasons – firstly, the Paris meeting has been such a public affair that holding back the SPM until the main report is ready is probably pointless. For the main report itself, it had not yet been proof-read, and there has not yet been enough time to include observational data up until the end of 2006. One final point is that improvements in the clarity of the language from the SPM should be propagated back to the individual chapters in order to remove any superficial ambiguity. The science content will not change.
The Governments have their say over the contents of the SPM.
SJT wrote:
Indeed they do. Despite it’s clear AGW bias, here is what wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Debate
Note that Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer both felt that the process was just plain wrong.
And here is what IPCC procedure say:
So clearly the change the science document to conform with the summary – just imagine if a publicly listed company changed it financial statements to align with what the CEO had said publicly.
So clearly the change the science document to conform with the summary – just imagine if a publicly listed company changed it financial statements to align with what the CEO had said publicly.
They don’t do that. The scientific papers that the reports are based on, is all in and closed off well before the reports are released. They are the ‘financial statements’ of the report. What is being finalised are the conclusions to be drawn from the ‘financial statements’, as well as late observations to the end of the year, but these too are closed off. Is it good news, or bad? For every scientist who thinks there conclusions that are over stated, there are more scientists who think the conclusions are under stated. It’s all explained in the quote I referred to. They are not preparing a financial statement of a publicly listed company, and even then, as the recent financial crises has demonstrated, a lot of those financial statements were not worth the paper they were printed on.
Comment from: SJT August 31st, 2009 at 10:55 am
““your idea, that including “cold” mountain tops into the temperature record would make it colder is simply false.”
Your stupidity is never going to bottom out is it sod?”
You don’t get it. The warming is determined by changes in temperature, not the absolute temperature.
Well, take a look at the PApars.f code. THAT is the part which”does” the process you believe will be so perfect. Now the interesting bit was suspected by me, but actually demonstrated by a reader who is also running GIStemp. He was able to do a run leaving out the “above 900M mountains” from the “adjustment” of Pisa, Italy. The result? The bogus “cooling” of the past of Pisa (which had been -1.4C – GISS never quite managed to explain what a UHI urban “correction” would make the past cooler and INCREASE the slope of ‘warming trend’) was reduced to -1.0C. So here we have an explicit example FROM GISTEMP ITSELF of “add the mountains change the temperature to be colder”.
So you can huff, puff, posture and claim anything you want. GIStemp WHEN RUN WITH ADDED MOUNTAINS makes Pisa colder.
You are, quite simply, wrong. Demonstrably so. (Any one who wants to repeat this test can, the code is available and the method is described in the link).
That is the reality of the code, no matter what fantasies you hold about it and what it THEORETICALLY ought to do in “your mind”.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/gistemp-a-slice-of-pisa/#comment-841
Comment from: sod September 1st, 2009 at 5:59 am
E.M.Smith, the majority ofg what you wrote above is either false or misleading. but i have noticed that you abuse my detailed replies to obfuscate the subject and to odge important points and questions.
So, you lead with more “fling poo”. Going with your strengths again, I see…
So I state demonstrable facts, measurable things, post my work, show links to definitions of things like “intensive” and that is “obfuscation”… What a rich, and misdirected imagination you have…
how will “movement” of stations from (cold) Siberia to (warm) Italy (actually it is closing stations in Siberia and adding new ones in Italy) lead to a warming bias in the global temperature trend?
Well, very simply. In the zonal code, the ‘too few’ zones of 6 will let the new lower latitude stations stand in for the missing further north stations via the “reference station method”. The distance parameter is set to 1000km for radius of influence. As seen in the PApars link above, the effect does happen (take out the cold mountain tops, Pisa gets warmer. Similarly, take out cold Siberian reference stations and add more warmer southern stations, the target station will also warm. It is all the code can do.) Further, as you go through the code, the added stations in the lower latitudes outside the same zone are used to guess (oh, pardon, interpolate) the temperatures where there are none. Take, for example, in the LAST LAND STEP of GIStemp, STEP3 (you know, after the zonal step, after the first anomaly step, during the final Grid and Box step) GIStemp uses those new stations in lower latitudes to ‘fill in’ empty boxes of ocean. Where does it get those temperatures? From hot tarmac covered airports on tropical islands.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/gistemp-islands-in-the-sun/
You will see in the log file specific blocks of ocean that have their temperature invented by looking at the temperature at specific airports on specific islands. It is all in the data and the code. (Please note, again, this is not about me, I am just the messenger. This is from the GIStemp code and GIStemp Log Files. ) This is what the code does.
how will adding 10 stations on (cold) mountain tops lead to a cooling bias in the global temperature trend?
First, in STEP2, the PApars.f code will use anomalies computed from reference stations to “UHI Adjust” the “urban” stations. This process is not perfect. Add more cold stations, you get more cold “correction” applied. In the link, I document exactly where in the code I think there is a bug, but it has not yet been proven to be a bug. For full details, see the link. The short form is that the “bias” is supposedly removed from stations applied as ‘correction’ by normalizing them to have no change on the mean of all the stations applied “so far” – in this way their slope will have impact, but not the absolute value. Sounds good… but 2 problems:
1) The very first record is used “as is” with no “bias correction”. If all the other stations need bias correction, why not this one?
Well, it looks to me like the first station just sets the bias that the other stations must conform with. In STEP3, very similar code is used, but the first station is handled differently. I suspect it is an improvement that was never retrofitted into STEP2, that continues to have station bias.
2) It is all well and good to normalize the mean, but stations with higher variation can still bias the data. If an ocean moderated site like Pisa has a lower “beta” (to use a stock trading term – that is, a lower slope of sensitivity to the aggregate change), and you normalize then add in a high “beta” location (like mountains or deserts or strongly inland locations they have higher range to their temperatures) you can easily be changing the temperatures of the low beta site to ranges they never did really attain.
3) What is worse, the records are not continuous. So you can easily be applying “offsets” from times that were anomalous and not know it. Basically, you are doing a LOT of splicing together disjoint data sets, except that many of them are entirely fictional and created by the program from other discontinuous data sets. The opportunities for “screwing up” are very large.
4) And a test run on the data show that the program does, in fact, have exactly that kind of behaviour with exactly those kinds of results. Take out the over 900M stations from the available cohort for STEP2 to use in “correcting” Pisa, and Pisa gets warmer. By extension, put them in to the set and Pisa gets colder. (There is also the fact that this happens more in the past than the present, but that is for another discussion about the growth of airports over time. Suffice it to say that PApars.f leads off with Hohenpiessenberg as the first record, not Milan Airport, so the early corrections have more mountains and less airports, the later dates have more airports, so are ‘warmer’).
Please note: At NO TIME to I want or expect you to believe me. Run the code. Look at the data. Measure the results. Everything you need is publicly available to you.
i am seriously interested in your answer to this question.
There you have it.
and just for my own reference:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/gistemp.html
That is where I got the source code. I document what to do to get it to run on my site. I have deliberately made minimal changes so that anything done with the code I’m running is GIStemp, and not my “port”. (Almost all of the changes are of the form of taking variable declarations that “initialize in place” and doing the initialization in a DATA statement instead, per the standards; and a minor change to the scripts to pull the compile-run-delete out and put the sources in a source directory with a make file. Things that will have no impact at all on the results.)
Oh, and what any one SAYS their program does is not nearly so important as what it actually does. GIStemp, too, has a disconnect between theory and practice in that regard. So read any docs you want, but it is the CODE that runs and only what the programs actually do that matters. For example, in STEP0 there is one line of one program that warms 1/100 th of the records by 1/10 C due to a programmer “style choice” that was, er, “unwise”. You will not find that in the docs…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/gistemp-f-to-c-convert-issues/
So don’t bother waving the GISS goals around, they are not very useful once the code is running…
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990042165_1999050125.pdf
Comment from: SJT September 1st, 2009 at 8:16 am
“The average of two intensive properties means nothing.
The average or two extensive properties means everything.”
If I have many pots of water, scattered around the globe, that sit out in the open. I measure their temperatures every day for years. If the temperatures of all those pots are rising over time, their is a good chance that the temperature of around the at the surface globe is rising.
An amusing, if pointless, example of a simplistic view of reality. Unfortunately, not all the worlds “pots” of thermometers are showing warming, so your simple view of things is broken from the very first assumption you make.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/gistemp-quartiles-of-age-bolus-of-heat/
The best longest lived thermometers show no warming. The shortest lived temperature records contribute the warming. Those records are predominantly in the mid-latitudes and tropics. We have a March of the Thermometers south over time, and as they arrive in new hotter places they show added warmth. What a surprise…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/thermometer-years-by-latitude-warm-globe/
And when you dig into the code and the data, you find the number of airports rising significantly over time (and those airports grow in size and tarmac over time). You also find that GIStemp uses these Airport Heat Islands as pristine “rural” stations in the UHI adjustment and that will certainly cause a warming bias.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/agw-gistemp-measure-jet-age-airport-growth/
To make your “thought experiment” represent what really happened to the thermometers, you would need to start with a few hundred pots, add 8000 over time, most of them sitting on the tarmac at airports in the tropics, and have the older pots of water show no temperature change. Then you need to start removing the pots of water that did not show warming from the set of pots (thermometer count drops to a couple of thousand). Oh, and many of the pots randomly enter and leave the record and some of them get water dumped into pots 1000km away from time to time… (The GIStemp Reference Station Method…)
SJT wrote:
which part of this:
do you have a problem with? It’s pretty clear, IMO. You are distorting the question in any case – I did not say that the published papers were changed, I said the technical report, which is supposed to be a summary of the published science, was changed after it was “signed off” on – that’s a documented fact.
While I have no idea exactly what was changed and when, the very idea that we change the detail to match the summary is completely backwards to what most people would expect and believe to be the “honest” approach. Even if this guideline was completely ignored and things are as you say (and they are not, as has been documented in US Senate testamony) this is an extremely bad and badly thought out guideline that needs to be modified – the potential for abuse and/or misuse (regardless of motive) of this guideline is huge. If you care about “getting it right”, then you should object to this guideline regardless of what you might think the science indicates.