Category Archives: Numbers are Tricky

The long[-]awaited surfacestations paper

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“The long awaited surfacestations paper“ (May 11, 2011). Hosannah! The great day has arrive-ened! Anthony Watts’ paper, Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, is in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. The global warming house of cards has fallen-ed!

Just look at some of these definitely-no-global-warming quotes in what Anthony has pasted in from co-author lead-author Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog (emphasis mine):

Q: So is the United States getting warmer?
A: Yes…

Q: Has the warming rate been overestimated?
A: The minimum temperature rise appears to have been overestimated, but the maximum temperature rise appears to have been underestimated.

Q: What about mean temperature trends?
A: In the United States the biases in maximum and minimum temperature trends are about the same size, so they cancel each other and the mean trends are not much different from siting class to siting class.

Yowza! Game over? Oops.

What a lame exercise in irrelevant nit-picking. After years of just you wait squawking, even Anthony and company’s best spin boils down to whining about bluntly negligible data quality issues. This isn’t even backyard fireworks level excitement. Shame on you, Anthony.

Still, you have to feel a bit sorry for him. He’s not lead author on ‘his’ paper because he doesn’t have the statistical chops for even this damp squib. Dr. Pielke tries to give him a libertarian head-pat though:

The Surface Stations project is truly an outstanding citizen scientist project under the leadership of Anthony Watts!  The project did not involve federal funding. Indeed, these citizen scientists paid for the page charges for our article.

Of course we have to remember what the big picture is here. After all this scientific-paper-of-the-century is just about US temperature data and global warming is, um, global. Dr. Pielke has to come clean (emphasis mine):

Does this uncertainty extend to the worldwide surface temperature record? In our paper… …we found that the global average surface temperature may be higher than what has been reported by NCDC and others as a result in the bias in the landscape area where the observing sites are situated. However, we were not able to look at the local siting issue that we have been able to study for the USA in our new paper.

Anthony seems quite pleased with himself, but frankly this own-goal would be embarrassing even as a high school science fair poster. Why Dr. Pielke’s name is attached to this says something about the power of conviction over that of intellect. Sad, because sometimes he has something relevant to offer.

I guess those page charges were just too juicy for the JGR to let slip away.

Update: Anthony’s wounded howls of mistreatment pepper the comment editing. Wait until the scientists respond!

The GISS divergence problem: Ocean Heat Content

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“The GISS divergence problem: Ocean Heat Content“. Butter wouldn’t melt in citizen-scientist Bob Tisdale’s mouth, would it? He’s back with new proof that there’s no global warming and that them gubmint scientists is stupid. Anthony Watts approvingly notes the alleged “[denialist] reality versus [Goddard Institute for Space Studies] projection disparity” and declares “a GISS miss by a country mile.” Game over, yuck, yuck, yuck!

Tisdale’s claim is that Ocean Heat Content (OHC) hasn’t risen as fast as an old GISS model projected (note that this was not a prediction). Why? Well, because he can slap a projected straight line (Bob still loves ’em) on a chart that rises faster than the observations. Therefore, warmists are liars and their computers are too. This handily side-steps the real issue: Ocean Heat Content is unquestionably rising. We call this global warming.

Except… Even Anthony has to give Bob a nudge in the comments for failing to admit that his citizen-science fair project is showing “anomalies” i.e. deviations from the trend and not the trend itself. Sure, the target man on the street won’t spot it, but it’s like plastering “kick me” all over your own back for the benefit of informed scientific observers like Tamino, to whom Bob’s posts are like candy to a baby. Tamino indulges his sweet tooth in Favorite Denier Tricks, or How to Hide the Incline.

So how does Tisdale think he’s proven that the alarmist GISS projection of increasing OHC doesn’t match the measured increase? By using the classic denialist trick of showing the projection over a very particularly chosen time period from on a very particularly chosen point. This allows him to imply that OHC is flat but the GISS projection is increasingly divergent from “reality”. Anthony is silent on the this half of Bob’s deception because in the denialist playbook cherry-picking is enthusiastically endorsed.

The following graphic collates Tamino’s deconstruction of Bob Tisdale’s game-playing. Perhaps Bob should submit his work to the National Science Fair’s Beeville branch?

New cherry-picking and tunnel vision from Bob "Magoo" Tisdale. Deconstruction by Tamino.

Johns Hopkins succumbs to heat wave mania

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“Johns Hopkins succumbs to heat wave mania“. (May 3, 2011) “Climate Change Analysis Predicts Increased Fatalities from Heat Waves”, published in Environmental Health Perspectives on May 1st, 2011, is about heat-waves and the impact of global warming on morbidity. Anthony Watts stumbles across their press release and incorrectly decides they’re talking about record high temperatures. Nope.

Anthony, heat-wave morbidity is linked to multiple days of high nighttime temperatures, something that actually has an association with global warming, and humidity, not record highs. You’re not on the same page, buddy. (Are you ever?)

Anthony seems to think that denialist meteorologist Joe D’Aleo’s 2009 analysis, and the stagnant Hall of [false] Record blog (where the 2012 elections will aways be “getting closer”), have the definitive scientific answer. People only die from cold! Also, a weird blurred-together “statewide” record temperatures chart doesn’t seem to support global warming. Anthony loves mashed together out-of-context data if he can use it to advantage, but what dim-wit actually thinks that rising temperatures can’t happen without lock-step new daily temperature records? There’s something about straight lines that captivates denialists.

In the Joe D’Aleo links to we find the assertion that Anthony seems to like: “The claim that warming increases morbidity rates is also a myth.” Oops, Wikipedia says “in the United States, the loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events combined, including lightning, rain, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.”

Are Gulf Of Mexico Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Near To Record Levels?

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“Are Gulf Of Mexico Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Near To Record Levels?” As Anthony Watts foolishly suggests in his one sentence contribution to Bob Tisdale’s guest post, “the devil is in the details.” He is indeed…

Bob is trying to dispute the claim by meteorologist Jeff Masters that the recent Midwest deluge [was] enhanced by near-record Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures. Although Jeff is talking about weather, Bob Tisdale recognizes the threat. This might mean that global warming really is happening! Of course it’s not, so he accuses Jeff of  a “contrived” claim and counters that “…over the past 80 years, there is no global warming signal in the Gulf of Mexico SST data.”

My blue trend is just eyeballing but it's a lot less contrived than Bob Tisdale's flat red line in this example from his "analysis".

Unfortunately for Bob any open-eyed reader will see that every chart he tries to use as evidence reveals that he has deliberately picked dishonest comparison points that minimize the increase and he has ignored everything in-between. Details, details.

Statistics, Bob. Look into ’em. There’s a reason scientists use ’em.

Why windmills won’t wash

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“Why windmills won’t wash“. British motor-mouth buffoon Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (not a guest at William and Kate’s recent wedding) guest-posts a stream-of-consciousness conversation with himself on Anthony Watts’ blog. The apparent subject is a primary school wind turbine and its implications for mitigating global warming (which, of course, isn’t happening, but would be natural if it was happening). Apparently “the warming the Birmingham Bat-Batterer [one of Monckton’s varying pet names for his chosen scapegoat wind turbine] will forestall over the next 20 years will be rather less than 0.0000000000007 Celsius.”

If one backyard wind turbine won’t stop, say, at least half of the global warming why do anything? Seems sensible.

Also, since the lonely little 33-foot high Midlands primary school wind turbine only generated 209 kilowatt-hours of electricity in its first year, the Thanet Wind Farm, consisting of one hundred 3 MW wind turbines, will be useless too. All you need to do is take a hostile economic evaluation from a denialist buddy (in this case the Daily Telegraph’s reliable Christopher Booker) and give it an extra “twist”.

Monckton spews out great swaths of bogus economics gobbledygook in his arguments here and refers to “smidgens” and “tads” when trying to obscure his assumptions. He’s learning to avoid those concrete details that keep tripping him up and stick to the cocktail party clowning that he’s actually quite good at. The estimable Viscount finishes his ‘calculations’ thus:

So there you have it. After the biggest and most expensive propaganda campaign in human history, leading to the biggest tax increase in human history, trying to stop “global warming” that isn’t happening anyway and won’t happen at anything like the predicted rate is the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money in human history, bar none – and that’s saying something.

Now that’s what I call climate science! Like most denialists for Monckton, after all the verbal dancing, it boils down to taxes.

It’s probably nothing*

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“It’s probably nothing*“. Anthony Watts tries to slide another stupid “Snow! Somewhere!” post by as just a little “humor“. Apparently busy denialist copy-and-paster Tom Nelson noted that there was lots (41 inches) of ice in Nenana, Alaska (which is in the Arctic you know) on April 21st this year. But the ice was all gone by that date in 1940! Therefore global cooling.

Nenana has held an annual draw to guess the date of spring breakup on the Tanana River for a century now, and this is Anthony’s new gold standard for global climate data.

Like most northern rivers, the Tanana’s spring ice breakup is almost entirely dependent on flow volume during the spring run-off. The ice broke up, at a thickness of 39″, just four days after this astonishing climate evidence was presented. Also at 64°N Nenana is below the Arctic Circle.

Willis Eschenbach accidentally undermines Anthony's "humor".

Anthony’s teammate Willis Eschenbach creates the real punchline by inserting a chart (above) that shows that ice break up on the Tanana River is clearly trending to earlier dates. Or maybe he just can’t understand his own work.

I guess Anthony’s readers aren’t subtle enough to follow Anthony’s attempt at humor; they’re reacting with stolid earnestness.

Not Whether, but How to Do The Math

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“Not Whether, but How to Do The Math“. A Willis Eschenbach “citizen-scientist” post on Anthony Watts’ blog is always entertaining.In this one he’s taking on the denialist’s former BFF, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Apparently any kind of quality control or “homogenization” is bad science, but since BEST may still swing back into the denialist camp Willis couches his attack as constructive advice.

Willis invokes the “Zipf Distribution” as the best test for outliers but, predictably, he may be the only person who has ever suggested using an empirical linguistics law for temperature data. Cutting-edge thinking from the make-the-data-look-as-bad-as-possible school of thought.

Willis’ preferred approach is plotting the raw data and let the public figure it out themselves. Let a thousand uninformed opinions bloom!

If only BEST, and those other secretive climate scientists would stop hiding their raw temperature data we might be able to believe them. Oh that’s right, it’s been publicly available for years. Funny how you don’t hear that much in the denialist blogosphere.

Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?

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“Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?” Indur M. Goklany returns to Anthony Watts’ blog to tell us about his paper in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? reveals how “global warming policies may be helping kill more people than it saves.” OMG, stop everything! We’re killing poor people!

I always think it’s a bit dodgy when a scientific paper title is in the form of a question. Maybe because the author is ever so slightly overreaching? “Could” is about as close as Indur gets to any kind of supporting evidence. He calls his research an “exploratory analysis”. With, apparently, exploratory conclusions.

Who reviewed and published it? Oops, The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a “politically conservative non-profit organization“. They are anti-vaccination, anti-universal healthcare, pro-gun, don’t think HIV causes AIDS, try to link abortion to breast cancer and claim that illegal immigrants are bringing leprosy to America. Nice.

But is Indur Goklany right? Are biofuel production consequences the result of AGW policies? As I recall American ethanol production began as a response to the “energy crisis” in the Seventies. Nothing whatsoever to do with climate. Some current forms of biofuel production can reduce global food availability and increase global food prices. This says more about the enthusiasm of agribusiness for government subsidies than it does about attempts to reverse AGW. Biofuels are primarily an economic issue.

Indur Goklany illustrates a linear process as a circle, but leaves something out.

This is just another one of Indur’s right-wing think-tank revisionist efforts. Based on a fast-and-loose numbers, with an exaggerated connection to climate policy and used to infer imaginary negative future consequences. This time, instead of understating the consequences of AGW we get an overstatement of AGW’s alleged political power.

Rising From My Long Winter’s Nap

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Yawn… Hey, the sun came back! It warm again! (Note to self: the junk calories at Watts Up With That are no foundation whatsoever for a proper hibernation; Anthony gamed that stupid internet popularity poll! He is not the handsomest man in school.)

As I dozed off in January the global (i.e. my neighbourhood) temperature trends (for a few weeks at least) indicated the clear return of a new ice age. How I wept bitter tears as I shuffled into the den I share with Al Gore, knowing I had been fooled by those climate scientists and their greedy self-interest!

Yet I was already too sleepy to beseech forgiveness from the noble citizen-scientists who had so bravely rejected the alleged evidence and the so-called physical science. The warming had stopped, just like Henrik Svensmark had said it would. Snow was falling (somewhere), just as Anthony Watts was always pointing out. The Arctic sea ice was piling up anew just a Steve Goddard had promised. CO2 was plant food! I knew I was in for more than the usual number of hibernation dreams in which I found myself in public without my fur on.

…

So what’s happened during my nap? Let’s gather a list of Anthony’s winter whoppers in the comments. I hear that Anthony has been encouraging his readers to drown out scientist’s voices. And did Watts really try to wriggle into the spotlight and falsely pre-announce the results of Dr. Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project’s “skeptic” dream-team reexamination of global temperature trends, only to misrepresent their initial findings and declare that they were dead to him because it, err, matched the published scientific consensus?

Here are some entertaining (or infuriating if you are Anthony Watts) quotes from Dr. Muller’s 2011-03-31 Testimony to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who was brought in by the controlling tea-party Republicans as a dependable tame scientist:

“Many US stations have low quality rankings according to a study led by Anthony Watts. However, we find that the warming seen in the “poor” stations is virtually indistinguishable from that seen in the “good” stations.” and later, “Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.”

“In our preliminary analysis of these stations, we found a warming trend that is shown in the figure. It is very similar to that reported by the prior groups: a rise of about 0.7 degrees C since 1957.”

“The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us” [Must suck when your boasts of transparency prevent you from jigging things to match your personal biases, eh Dr. Muller? Don’t worry, your Republican pals will legislate the Earth’s temperature, along with the value of pi and that annoying evolution thing.]

Which brings us to this website… As much as I try to have fun with Anthony Watts’ malicious website, I can’t keep this up by myself. Getting inside Anthony’s head is not only time-consuming but corrosive and claustrophobic, and my Significant Other is much more fun to interact with. In the Fall I had some research help from a few readers, which I greatly appreciated. I need to find a way to facilitate this more directly and where appropriate recognize contributions. Put your thinking caps on and look for a post here discussing some options.

In the meantime, I’ve finally got e-mail working here and you can contact me privately at ben@wottsupwiththat.com.

Union of Concerned Scientists – Unwarranted Concern about the Northeast US

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“Union of Concerned Scientists – Unwarranted Concern about the Northeast US“. A guest post by Alan Cheetham of Appinsys (an unskeptical version of Skeptical Science, with an interest in portraits of Mohammed). Did you know that the Union of Concerned Scientists, who are just washed-out librul anti-nuke gravy-train types, has been exaggerating climate change in the Northeastern USA? (Nothing to say about the rest of the world?)

[Across the globe, and] “here in the Northeast, the climate is changing. Records show that spring is arriving earlier, summers are growing hotter, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy. These changes are consistent with global warming, an urgent phenomenon driven by heat-trapping emissions from human activities.” – 2006, from climatechoices.org

“In fact”, there has been no trend in temperature change there in a hundred years, and sometimes the “record” was, like, years ago!

Cheat-sheet:

  • When denialists like Anthony Watts and Alan Cheetham want to present the illusion of a recent cooling period, they will reduce the number of years of temperature data until they can.
  • When denialists like Anthony and Alan want to hide recent (post 1975) AGW warming, they increase the number of years they present.
  • Denialists like Anthony and Alan will always cherry-pick a convenient location and claim that it disproves a global trend.
  • Denialists like Anthony and Alan will always fixate on an outlier if it suits their argument, the wilder the better.

Unfortunately for Anthony, in this case the “trick” is in plain sight. In all “flat” temperature graphs the trend from 1975 onwards is a rising one. Here’s an example, the “summer” temperature trend:

Alan Cheetham's "flat" temperature trend — of just the northeast USA because nothing else exists — with post-1975 trend indicated.

I guess we should listen to the Union of Unconcerned Scientists.