Category Archives: Numbers are Tricky

A spot check on NOAA’s “hottest so far” presser

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“A spot check on NOAA’s “hottest so far” presser“. Anthony Watts tries to undercut NOAA’s 2010 temperature record analysis by pointing out Heartland Institute presenter and global warming dissembler Dr. Richard Keen’s observation that Coal Creek Canyon in Colorado, which lies outside the +4°F contour of the map below in spite of his claim otherwise, only has an anomaly of +1°F. Why that’s almost a decrease! Except it isn’t.

Ignore the Red States? Really Anthony!

That might work as an exercise in cherry-picking and arm-waving bluster over NOAA’s analysis, but it doesn’t work in support of the endlessly bellowed denialist claim that there is no Global Warming, does it?

At least Dr. Keen doesn’t repeat the idiotic claim that increased snowfall reflects lower temperatures.

Arctic Ocean ice retreating at 30-year record pace

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“Arctic Ocean ice retreating at 30-year record pace“. Steven Mosher is suddenly sniffing that short-term Arctic Sea Ice trends don’t mean anything. I guess short-term climate trends are only legitimate if they can be used to ‘prove’ that Global Warming is either non-existent or natural. They’re definitely not legitimate evidence that Global Warming is real or man-made. Ah, the hypocrisy.

His understandable indignation was triggered by an article about declining Arctic Sea Ice in The Montreal Gazette that was based on such wild sources as… the measurements of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the research of University of Manitoba polar scientist David Barber.

Actually, short-term trends aren’t very meaningful for climate prediction. But you can be sure the denialists will swing back to touting them as soon as they can find one that suits them.

What is PIPS?

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“What is PIPS?” Steven Goddard defends his continued use of the US Navy’s deprecated Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS) Arctic Sea Ice model. The US Navy uses it! Case closed. This is the same obstinate mindset that lies at the root of Anthony Watts’ obsession with surface weather station records. PIPS is not intended for climate usage. It is a repurposed navigational tool.

Steven likes PIPS because, as the Navy states, “PIPS 2.0 often over-predicts the amount of ice in the Barents Sea and therefore often places the ice edge too far south.” This is very useful for a desperate denialist.

Steven concludes by stating that any critics “ignore the facts, and post instead what suits their agenda.”  Unsurprisingly, this is actually Steven’s motivation for using PIPS. It’s the easiest to manipulate toward a desired conclusion. Just restrict your analysis to the areas where PIPS over-predicts ice and pass it off as impartial.

Concentration vs. Extent

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“Concentration vs. Extent“. Steven Goddard plays word games to try to slip out of his unsupported Arctic Sea Ice claims. He’s nothing if not intransigent!

Steven used to argue about ice extent (surface area) but the ice volume facts completely undercut his position. Now he’s talking about ice “concentration”. This is pretty much just a variation on volume, but it lets him slip away from his claims about extent.

To do this though Steven has to baldly claim that his chosen model, PIPS 2.0, is the proper one to use because it’s the only one that he can use to claim that “concentration” is not collapsing too. The better model is PIOMAS, but unfortunately it doesn’t support his claims.

Funny how quickly the outrage over using “models” disappears when denialists like Steven find one that they think they can exploit.

How ’bout the numbers? Arctic sea ice extent is currently about 270,000 km² lower than the “record low” of 2007. Arctic sea ice volume is also down since then, by about 300 km³.

2007 Sea Ice Post Mortem

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“2007 Sea Ice Post Mortem“. Lately it’s been embarrassing for denialists to talk about the 2010 Arctic Sea Ice Extent, so the indefatigable Steven Goddard tries to recast various denialist comments about the record low 2007 season and misrepresent the remarks of professional climatologists from the time.

First, he tries to pretend that ice volume was what really counted in 2007, not ice extent. Actually, they fought pretty hard against that metric back then. Too bad the ice volume has been steadily declining.

Next, he tries to tie the expert’s ice predictions to newspaper speculations. That’s just plain dishonest.

It seems that no progressive loss of Arctic sea ice will make Steven admit he’s spitting in the wind unless the Arctic Ocean is completely ice-free. Whenever his ‘nothing to worry about’ BS starts getting shaky, he simply moves the goalposts. The only thing thinner than the Arctic sea ice is Steven’s own skin.

A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around

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“A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around“. Anthony Watts posts a retired physicist’s enthusiastic number crunching that proves… if there’s any global warming it’s not because of CO2. It’s the other way ’round!  However, Lon Hocker has to admit that “we offer no explanation for why global temperatures are changing“. It’s amazing what you can conclude when you remove the atmospheric CO2 trend before starting your number games.

Hocker tells us in the comments that “Excel isn’t all that hard to use, though I admit I had a bunch of learning to go though to write this. Remember I’m just using well accepted data, and high school math.” This is pretty much a confession that he’s a victim of Dunning–Kruger syndrome.

What Hocker has shown is that annual CO2 variations are, indeed, the result of seasonal temperature change and the resulting variation in vegetative CO2 production. In other breaking news, water is wet.

More on the Beeville, TX weather station

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“More on the Beeville, TX weather station“.  Anthony Watts’ friends continue to nitpick the Beeville temperature records and not talk about the false report of a Beeville grade school science project that “disproves global warming” being given a national award.

Apparently if you remove the temperature data corrections (i.e. re-introduce error) you can tell yourself that there’s been no global warming. Nice!

All this whining about “adjustments” (which a commenter goes to the unwelcome trivial effort of looking up and finds simple explanations for) suggests that Anthony wants to obscure difference between using temperature records for weather purposes vs climate purposes. When we’re interested in the weather, we want to know the actual temperature. When we’re interested in the climate, we want to remove local variability so we can use those records to see longer regional trends. Temperature records can’t be used for climate analysis without adjustments!

Minority report: 50 year warming due to natural causes

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“Minority report: 50 year warming due to natural causes“. Anthony Watts reposts a blog article by Dr. Roy Spencer. Roy has fiddled around (from his own comments: “this was the result of a couple of hours of work on the weekend, and I didn’t mean to start a whole new research effort”) and managed to amaze himself by extracting a correlation that he uses to claim an unspecified natural cause (“changes in cloud cover”?) for the last 50 years of warming.

How does he do this? Why by mashing together the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and only considering temperature change rate.

I've added the causation to Roy's correlation... After Roy Spencer, 2010/06/06.

Roy often shoots himself in the foot when he tries to use numbers and sure enough a disclaimer about a calculation error was posted within hours. Through the magic of denialist revision its gone now though. I should have grabbed the page for your entertainment.

Let’s say it together: “correlation is not causation.” Roy needs to present a clear mechanism for what he is describing. Turns out that what Roy has actually been plotting is temperature vs temperature, which obviously tracks itself very well…

Note that this computer model is getting a free pass from Anthony’s commenters as is the use of the “corrupt” CRUTem3 temperature data set from the vilified Dr. Phil Jones’ Climate Research Unit…

GISTEMP is High

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“GISTEMP is High“. Steven Goddard discovers that temperatures measured at ground-level are not the same as temperatures measured in the troposphere. Well, learning is a good thing I suppose.

He also discovers that different data-sets have a different geographic basis! The GISS data-set attempts to include high Arctic value, while the HadCRUT3 data-set (which Steven calls “Had-Crut”) excludes those values. Shocking.

The dastardly GISS data-set estimates 2010 to be the “warmest ever“, while HadCRUT3 expects 2010 to be the “fifth warmest ever“. It seems that Steven has been reduced to trying to cherry-pick the data-set that shows the least warming. Whatever happened to the claims of cooling? An inconvenient memory apparently.

WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #5

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“WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #5“. Steven Goddard tries to explain that “not much has changed during the last two weeks.” Well, other than the fact that Arctic Sea Ice Extent continues to track well below “normal”. But as we learned a few days ago, Steven has decided that the conventional climatologists were right and Sea Ice Extent doesn’t mean much. Mainly because the evidence isn’t proving useful to him. He’s also very quiet about Arctic Sea Ice Volume.

Still there’s always the Catlin Arctic Survey to mock. They’ve finally arrived at the North Pole, those wimps.

Steven tries to change the subject and talk about some cherry-picked trends from the first half of the 20th Century. Suddenly 1938 is the magical date. Good luck.