Category Archives: Numbers are Tricky

Warmest year ever? – 2010: An Unexceptional El Nino Year

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“Warmest year ever? – 2010: An Unexceptional El Nino Year“. Anthony Watts kindly re-posts ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation’ lobbyist David Whitehouse’s comical cherry-picking of evidence that 2010 wasn’t so warm after-all. Surprisingly, The Daily Mail is naturally taking our pet right-wing lobbyist at face value.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the lack of warming seen in the global average annual temperatures seen in the last decade has changed.

Hmmm. If you play the usual bogus denialist statistical mis-representation and ignore all the natural contributions that have been tending towards cooling. And then add in a comparison of individual months to cherry-picked years. This is eye-rollingly stupid/dishonest.

“No, no” say the commenters, “we’re on the cusp of an ice-age!” They also declare, standing with a dripping brush in their hand, that them durn climatologisters have painted themselves into a corner. Somehow.

New peer reviewed paper shows just how bad the climate models really are

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“New peer reviewed paper shows just how bad the climate models really are“. Ah yes, when I look for compelling climate science, I always turn to the civil engineers at Hydrological Sciences Journal. Just like Anthony Watts. Hey, it’s peer-reviewed! The author’s conclusion? Computer models suck.

So is anyone claiming that global climate models are perfect? Is anyone claiming that they are useful on a local or regional scale? Nope and nope.

Were the models really never compared against the past record? Of course they were! It’s how they were frickin’ developed.

So, what’s better? Still waiting for a credible devastating analysis of “the consensus”.

P.S. I’m just eyeballing things here, but don’t the paper’s temperature charts show an upward trend?

Various temperature time series spatially integrated over the USA. Figure 12 from Anagnostopoulos et. al., 2010.

Sea Ice News #31

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“Sea Ice News #31“. Anthony Watts discusses Joe Bastardi’s idiotic half-cocked accusation of fraud in the NSIDC’s Sea Ice data. You know your ‘team-mates’ are becoming a liability when even Anthony has to walk back their claims and even try to minimize the damage by admitting things like: “eyeballing can be an error prone activity, and a risky bet.”

Anthony has the gall to lay the final blame on the NSIDC for not publishing their daily data. Why, because they release data on a weekly basis, an over-eager denialist might jump to a rash conclusion!

Eyeballing is the only tactic Anthony’s can use to pretend he has a factual point in the Global Warming discussion, isn’t it? Oh, there’s cherry-picking too.

Nov. 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.38 deg. C

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“Nov. 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.38 deg. C“. Anthony Watts lets the denialist’s favorite scientist, Dr. Roy W. Spencer Ph. D., break the news that “2010 is now in a dead heat with 1998 for warmest year.”

There’s hope though for cherry-pickers (italics mine):

The tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly for November continued its cooling trend, finally falling below the 1979-1998 average… but the global anomaly is still falling slowly: +0.38 deg. C for October, 2010.

Anthony’s readers twist and squirm in the comments.

Testing … testing … is this model powered up?

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“Testing … testing … is this model powered up?” Willis Eschenbach guest posts on Anthony Watts’ website and mentions about Judith Curry’s “excellent blog”, where she has apparently been talking in her usual vague way about a subject that she seems to have only a superficial understanding of. In this case about “verifying and validating” climate models.

After drowning us in a deluge of Excel charts derived from a variety of old (6+ years) climate models and using a conveniently short 20-year span, Willis tells us that generalized climate models don’t mirror the specific fluctuations of real temperature trends well enough. This, somehow, is a surprise to Willis. Apparently all the climate models must be discarded now.

Newsflash: “general” is not “specific”. The impact of one-time events will never be predicted. Regardless, I guess we can’t trust any of them sneaky climate computer models, can we Anthony?

Skeptic paper on Antarctica accepted – rebuts Steig et al

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“Skeptic paper on Antarctica accepted – rebuts Steig et al“. “Hah!” says Anthony Watts. A skeptic has a paper into a real journal! Of course there were many review comments that were “difficult”, but they overcame the alleged resistance of the nasty “Team”!

So what new knowledge have these intrepid skeptics uncovered? Well, nothing. They’re just trying to critique a paper in Nature that showed that Antarctica has warmed (Steig et al, Nature, 2009). They report that yeah Antarctica has warmed, but it’s not quite as uniform as Steig determined. With Steven McIntyre as a co-author, as well as fellow ‘citizen-scientist’ Jeff Condon, I suspect that this will prove another exercise in sour-minded nit-picking resulting in a conclusion that ‘they could have used a slightly better statistical method’.

Such rebuttals are usually in the original journal for reasons of clarity, but this particular attack will be in the Journal of Climate.

Statistical fiddling changes... what? After O'Donnell, 2010

What do we see in the abstract? Admissions that Steig 2009 “has merit”. Allusions to “suboptimal determination”. Reluctant references to “negligible differences”.

Oh here’s Anthony’s killer rebuttal of Steig! “I would hope that our paper is not seen as a repudiation of Steig’s results, but rather as an improvement.”

That’s the problem with peer-review. Your accusations have to stand up to scrutiny before they are published. Or get restated honestly. Unlike denialist websites like Anthony Watts’.

Sea Level Rise and Solar Activity

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“Sea Level Rise and Solar Activity“. Anthony Watts posts Australian denialist David Archibald’s latest insights about how it’s all due to the Sun. Thanks?

See where the Sun affects seal-level rise? Which is flat by the way. Original by David Archibald, 2010.

Let’s file this one away for a laugh:

Our prediction of a 2° C decline in temperature for the mid-latitudes over Solar Cycles 24 and 25 suggests that sea level will stop rising, and should start falling at some point prior to 2032.

Nothing like giving yourself twenty years of wriggle room!

New book: Slaying the Sky Dragon

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“New book: Slaying the Sky Dragon“. You know a climate denial book is on shaky ground when even Anthony Watts has trouble with the list of authors! Yes, “Iron Sun” kook Oliver K. Manuel is among this confederacy of dunces.

Windmills on the Moon and dragon-riding astronauts!

Still, Anthony’s happy to report that Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, available as an e-book only, has debunked the greenhouse gas theory. Funny how these devastating “refutations” of accepted science never seem to find their way into an actual scientific journal. Damn those cliquish scientists and their social networks!

Read the author’s modest description of their own work. Bemused emphasis mine.

Even before publication, Slaying the Sky Dragon was destined to be the benchmark for future generations of climate researchers. This is the world’s first and only full volume refutation of the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming.

Nine leading international experts methodically expose how willful fakery and outright incompetence were hidden within the politicized realm of government climatology. Applying a thoughtful and sympathetic writing style, the authors help even the untrained mind to navigate the maze of atmospheric thermodynamics. Step-by-step the reader is shown why the so-called greenhouse effect cannot possibly exist in nature.

By deft statistical analysis the cornerstones of climate equations – incorrectly calculated by an incredible factor of three – are exposed then shattered.

This volume is a scientific tour de force and the game-changer for international environmental policymakers as well as being a joy to read for hard-pressed taxpayers everywhere.

Journeyman denialist and former professor of geography Tim Ball seems the only author with even faintly relevant scientific credentials…

Overshoot and Undershoot

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“Overshoot and Undershoot“. Willis Eschenbach guest posts on Anthony Watts’ blog, saying: when a scientist starts talking about “consistency” between observations and model results, I check my wallet. Now that’s an impartial mind at work.

His theory seems to be that the Earth’s temperature “overshoots” in response to volcanic inputs, but the contemptible climate models don’t. Which means that any undesirable temperature increases, which aren’t happening, will magically reverse themselves. Somehow. Of course like any good denialist he has an Excel spreadsheet to prove it.

Willis’ “observation” is that the Pinatubo eruption caused a dip in global temperatures for about two years, but when temperatures recovered they “overshot” the pre-eruption temperature for a similar period of time.

So Willis;

  • Exactly how does temperature rise higher than the initial state without more energy? Shall we whisper “global warming?”
  • Were there really no other climate influences other than Pinatubo over the time period in question?
  • How do you honestly show a cyclic pattern from half of an imagined cycle?
  • Does the fact that cars can have cruise control really mean that the Earth must have one too?

Enjoy the praise of the ignorant, Willis.

Does Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature Data (HADSST2) Underestimate Recent Warming?

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“Does Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature Data (HADSST2) Underestimate Recent Warming?“. Anthony Watts knows that the politicians meeting in Cancun next week to discuss climate issues need the best scientific advice, so he’s gonna make sure its available to them, protected by a mountain of bullshit.

Here’s a chart from Bob Tisdale that Anthony wants you to look at and see a villainous adjustment in 1998 to make temperatures look hotter. But its a difference plot between two temperature sets, and all it shows is that when the newer sea surface temperature measurement methods replaced the older ones they slightly underestimated sea surface temperature correction.

Bob Tisdale's plot of the difference between the HADSST2 sea surface temperature measurements and the HADISST satellite measurements. The step "up" represents an overcorrection and hence an underestimate of true SST.