Category Archives: Numbers are Tricky

Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming

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“Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming“. Anthony Watts’ ferociously qualified associate A.J. Strata says:

“Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:”

and

“let me explain how I derived (by eye – ugh!) the two primary pieces of data I used”

Back-of-the-envelope tests? Eye-balling? Does anyone need to read any further? A.J., who seems more like a Tea-Bagger than a climate expert, is apparently working backwards from various printed graphs! This is classic denialist bunk, even down to accusations of “deception off on a global scale”. It’s kind of pitiable watching these obsessions play out in public.

So how did A.J. pull the Global Warming edifice down? He’s taken sets of what he claims are raw country temperature data (well actually pretty much of his own invention as he’s pulling the numbers from printed graphs) and slapped a line on them so he can declare that there is no Global Warming. I think I’ll wait for the cover story in Nature before I join the parade. Although he has been “working on [this] for about a week now”.

For a laugh, here's a cherry-picked sample of the printed temp charts A.J. Strata used to prove that there's been no Global Warming. These are from Mozambique and South Africa.

In the comments we get more examples of Anthony threatening critical commenters when he asks “Onion” about the weather in England. Anthony likes to use information from his website logs to reveal private details of his critics so he can make them feel exposed.

An over the top view of satellite sensor failure

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“An over the top view of satellite sensor failure“. You know someone’s gone “off the reservation” when even Anthony Watts can’t choke down a ‘warmist’ conspiracy theory about temperature records. Apparently his readers have clamored for him to spread the word.

Respected American physicist, Dr Charles R. Anderson has waded into the escalating Satellitegate controversy publishing a damning analysis on his blog. (from “co2 insanity”)

Dr. Anderson is an elderly materials scientist with a sudden interest in, and woefully limited understanding of, satellite temperature measurements. It’s not normal, expected and correctable instrument issues. No, it’s a deliberate conspiracy to falsify the readings! A classic of going emeritus.

I can’t help but admire in passing how Climate Change Dispatch describes Dr. Jones’ repeated exoneration by the many “Climategate” investigations: CRU’s Professor Phil Jones only escaped criminal prosecution by way of a technicality. Yeah, in that there wasn’t even a technicality that could be used against him.

Watts Up With Nuuk?

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“Watts Up With Nuuk?“ Ooohhhh, a weather station in Greenland has some weird values! You’re right Anthony Watts, this means we can’t trust any of them! Oh, wait it was just a charting error. The data is actually fine. But thanks for the 3400 word rant about CLIMAT, METAR, and the glory days of weather reporting by teletype. And all the photos from flickr.

Interesting note: Anthony’s post marks the subtle return from exile of Steven Goddard. Perhaps Anthony thinks we have short memories.

Proving, of course, that there is no Global Warming.

AMO+PDO= temperature variation – one graph says it all

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“AMO+PDO= temperature variation – one graph says it all“. If you’ve got a high-school science project, the “Science and Public Policy” Institute has a laser printer! Anthony Watts is eager to tell us about the latest final nail in the coffin of AGW from retired meteorologist Joe D’Aleo and geologist Don Easterbrook. Our hopeful contestants present Multidecadal Tendencies in ENSO and Global Temperatures Related to Multidecadal Oscillations. They’ve managed to force the US Mean Temperature to look like it’s a near-perfect match for ocean circulation patterns! Global Warming is dead! And it’s natural. Although they do admit that there is “some departure after around 2000.”

More wishful chart fiddling from denialists. After D’Aleo and Easterbrook.

How did they see what no-one else could? Well they chose their time period carefully so they could exclude the last ten years of warming that oppose the natural patterns. Then they smoothed the heck out of the data to artificially inflate the confidence of their results. Of course the AMO (detrended North Atlantic SST anomalies) and PDO (principal component analysis North Pacific SST anomalies, north of 20N) are incompatible values, so we have to wonder why they are combined. One graph does indeed say it all…

Of course, even if their claim withstood examination they still would have only found a correlation. Are the ocean circulation patterns driving air temperature, or vice versa, or is something else driving both? Joe and Don are silent on this interesting subject. Can you say anti-science?

Climatologists have no problem observing natural patterns in historical temperature data and proxies. They just also know that the recent global temperature increases do not follow any of these natural patterns.

Nicole lasts all of 6-hours as a named tropical storm

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“Nicole lasts all of 6-hours as a named tropical storm“. Tropical storm Nicole peters out after six hours, so Anthony Watts sniffs that the climate scientist conspiracy is giving names to smaller storms so they can inflate the numbers and trick the denialists into surrendering.

Of course since this tropical storm is the only evidence of AGW, at least for the purposes of this denialist talking point, it’s decline is the final nail in the coffin of global warming.

Pielke on ground water extraction causing sea level rise

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“Pielke on ground water extraction causing sea level rise“. Roger Pielke Dr. discovers a new excuse for why sea-level is rising – groundwater extraction! Yes, we’re sucking our way to oblivion. Groundwater extraction is causing sea-level rise! No need to turn off the power plants after-all.

A rising tide floats all boats? Source: Wikipedia.

Actually, Groundwater extraction is a well-known contributor to local subsidence. Happens over oil fields. Happens in areas of intensive irrigation by groundwater. Happens naturally in river deltas as the weight of new sediments squeezes water out of underlying sediment. Happens over underground mining operations sometimes. Is it really the cause of sea-level rise, or just a contributing factor?

I wonder what the article Pielke Sr. briefly notes and that Anthony Watts wants us to believe is YAFNCSLR (Yet Another Final Nail in the Coffin of Sea-Level Rise) really says?

“Although the role of groundwater depletion in rising sea levels had already been acknowledged, it was not addressed in the most recent IPCC report due to a lack of reliable data to illustrate the severity of the situation. Our study confirms that groundwater depletion is, in fact, a significant factor.” (italics mine)

Hmm… They suggest that about a quarter of the sea-level rise can be attributed to groundwater extraction, which of course means that Pielke and Watts are conveniently forgetting the other three-quarters. Still, that’s 7.62928887 × 1013 gallons of groundwater drawn out every year! An interesting topic, but for Pielke and Watts it’s just a useful factoid that has served the purpose of distracting their readers.

It’s tiresome to repeat these criticisms, but why does Pielke Sr. have to keep making false representations about AGW?

“This is yet another paper that shows the interconnection among the components of the climate system. The attribution of a climate effect (in this case sea level rise) to just one cause (e.g. ocean warming and glacial melt due to positive radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is too narrow of a perspective.”

Show me a scientific paper that claims that modern sea-level rise is entirely due to AGW! He’s dismissing an argument that was never made. (That’s called a straw-man.)

Loehle: Vindication

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“Loehle: Vindication“. Craig Loehle uses Anthony Watts’ blog to declare “victory!” over criticisms of his 2008 temperature reconstruction, which claimed to overthrow Mann’s “hockey-stick” reconstruction, in the discredited journal Energy & Environment (A 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Data).

At the same time, I have been repeatedly insulted about it on the web. It is claimed that it has been debunked, is junk, that E&E is not a “real” journal, that I’m a hack, that I “only” used 18 series (though 2 were composites covering China & North America), etc. In the ClimateGate emails, Mann called it “awful” (which I’ll take as a compliment!). Lot’s of fun. In this post I demonstrate perhaps a little vindication.

Feel good to get that off your chest Craig?

Craig Loehle's misleading comparison of his discredited temperature reconstruction to a new one by Ljungqvist.

So was this victory achieved? Apparently through a new paper by Fredrik Ljungqvist called “A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millenia“, in Geografiska Annaler. And all Loehle has to do is cheat the charts a bit! Don’t align over the calibration period, center “on their respective long-term mean values”, ‘warm’ the new reconstruction a bit to get it closer to yours, use non-comparable baselines, and… victory!

An honest comparison of Loehle's proxy reconstruction. Loehle's is the red high one, Ljungqvist's is the green one in middle with the rest. By Zeke Hausfather

Funny that the Ljungqvist abstract ends with this, uh, inconvenient quote (underline mine):

Our temperature reconstruction agrees well with the reconstructions by Moberg et al. (2005) and Mann et al. (2008) with regard to the amplitude of the variability as well as the timing of warm and cold periods, except for the period c. ad 300–800, despite significant differences in both data coverage and methodology.

I guess Loehle and Anthony were too lazy to read the whole thing, even though they pasted it into their article. Is this what passes for “vindication” in denialist circles these days?

Examining Trenberth’s: ‘The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later’ statement

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“Examining Trenberth’s: ‘The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later’ statement“. Anthony Watts tries to take another kick at the subject of “Trenberth’s missing heat”. It’s all human error apparently, and there’s nothing to worry about!

Here’s what Kevin Trenberth was really concerned about: “It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.” Doesn’t seem so controversial.

Because the ARGO float measurements suit Anthony’s purpose he doesn’t question them at all, but I wonder why he also swallows a chart that seems to include outrageous changes in solar irradiance.

Trenberth's Missing Heat is all down to massive changes in solar irradiance?

Sea Ice News #24

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“Sea Ice News #24“. I miss Steven Goddard’s agitated ramblings. Anthony Watts tells us that “sea ice has turned the corner, for real this time.” Whew. Best year ever, right?

Sept 26, 2010 Arctic Sea Ice

Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)

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“Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)“. Anthony pats himself on the back for letting someone with a “narrative contrary to the blog owner(s) view” post on his website. Of course although retired engineer Ferdinand Engelbeen happens to accept the scientific principles and evidence for increasing CO2 levels, he has similar ideas about how this has nothing to do with Global Warming. Which of course isn’t happening.

Regardless if that is man made or not, I think we agree that the influence of the increase itself on temperature/climate is limited, if observable at all.

Poor Ferdinand Engelbeen thinks that patiently explaining, in this post, how useful “background” CO2 levels are actually derived, how sampling locations and techniques dramatically diminish the value of many historical records, and how the ratio of stomata openings to the total number of cells on leaves are a poor proxy for CO2 levels, will stem the flow of ignorant commentary.

Good luck Ferdinand! And good luck with the nothing’s happening theory.

Hint to Anthony Watts: the d13C ratios show that the added CO2 has come from fossil fuel sources. Engelbeen explained it to you a week ago. End of story.