Tag Archives: Numbers are Tricky

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.

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 -vs- HadCRUT

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“GISTEMP -vs- HadCRUT“. Steven Goddard continues his voyage of discovery. Gosh, the GISTEMP data-set uses a somewhat different Arctic data than HadCRUT3 and has a different interpolation process! Gosh, the GISTEMP trend is rising faster than the HadCRUT3 trend! Gosh, GISTEMP is a lying trick!

Gosh, maybe there has been an amplified response to Global Warming in the Arctic? More nit-picking idiocy from Steven, who can barely recognize his own hand in front of his face.

Sea Ice Graphs Have Limited Predictive Value

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“Sea Ice Graphs Have Limited Predictive Value“. Steven Goddard decides that since the sea ice charts aren’t illustrating his desired climate trend he’d better start deprecating them. Funny, for a few weeks there he thought they were definitive! Now, they don’t tell you anything until August. Now he admits that:

The fact that April, 2010 had the highest extent in the DMI record tells us little or nothing about the summer minimum.

As a backup, he posts a photo of Barrow, Alaska with dirty-looking snow. Therefore all increased Arctic snow or ice melt is due to dirt, not Global Warming. Got it.

Spencer on Earth’s missing energy

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“Spencer on Earth’s missing energy“. Dr. Roy Spencer draws a horizontal line through three years of satellite radiation observations and comes to the scientific conclusion that the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation means that the Earth is cooling. Take that Global Warming, you’ve been defeated by charts!

Well if you know what you want to find its easy to find it…

Spencer: strong negative feedback found in radiation budget

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“Spencer: strong negative feedback found in radiation budget“. Sometimes denialists proclaim that there is NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT, sometimes they admit that it is REAL BUT SMALL. Dr. Roy Spencer takes the latter approach here. He’s been “slicing and dicing the [Earth’s radiation budget data] different ways” trying to find a value of CO2 sensitivity that lets him claim the climate impact is small. Guess what? He found one.

Dr. Spencer's usual blob of data without chronological context.

Spencer does it “without going into the detailed justification” by:

  • Ignoring data from polar areas, where most of the climate change has occurred.
  • Comparing global radiation data to ocean temperatures.
  • Pretending that 7 years of satellite data is a sufficient time span for climate analysis (try 30 years).
  • Restricting his plot to just month-to-month variation.
  • Using only monthly temperature changes that were greater than 0.03°C.
  • Ignoring decades of independent empirical studies that conclude that climate sensitivity must be somewhere between 2.3 to 4.1°C.
  • Sweeping away the 0.6°C warming over last 100 years as natural (therefore a similar estimated rise for this century must also be natural).
  • Ignoring the reality check that ice ages are impossible if CO2 sensitivity is as low as he declares.

What does Dr. Spencer end up with? I mean besides the WUWT comments declaring him a shoo-in for a Nobel Prize. He ends up with an artificial statistical correlation with no physical explanation to support it.

UAH global temperature anomaly, a bit cooler in April

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“UAH global temperature anomaly, a bit cooler in April“. Dr. Roy Spencer tells us that the global temperature anomaly has dropped a bit, according to the UAH satellite data. So Global Warming is over! Because every month must be warmer than the previous one if Global Warming is true, right?

April's down a bit, so Global Warming's over!

Well, statistically the global temperature anomaly is still rising, but whatever…

March Modeling Madness

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“March Modeling Madness“. Steven Goddard cherry-picks his way around Climate Central’s new interactive depiction of average US March temperatures.

He does this by picking a location that is not predicted to rise above freezing and then claiming that charts confirming this are proof that the models are wrong. He also picks a juicy starting point and uses a scale that obscures any trends that aren’t blindingly large to assist denialists in looking past them.

Next, Steven will prove that water is wet.

Tropical England

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“Tropical England“. Steven Goddard returns with some insight into an information campaign by the UK’s National Trust. They warn that predicted temperature rises due to AGW will lead to dramatic changes in England’s vegetation and crops. Think Portugal; drier and without pastureland. Steven says they’ll love it! This is the “what if climate change is good?” approach.

An English Garden in 2080 with a 4°C rise? © Rob Collins.

After an obligatory round of weather forecast bashing, he waves away England’s 0.5°C of warming as “likely due to UHI effects” but neglects to offer any statistical basis for his unsubstantiated claim.

So there hasn’t been any warming, but if there is warming it’s going to be nice. Have I got that right Steven?