"TIME Magazine believes that Gore and “global warming” sermons are a great combination. That’s why their environmental doctrines are so very bizarre, I guess.
How bizarre? Try reading TIME Magazine’s “Global Warming Survival Guide” dated, April 9, 2007, and the “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference”.
Rule 26: “Plant a bamboo fence”, because it feels good?
Unprecedented levels of idiocy aside, there’s plenty to laugh about. Indeed, I was so moved by the weirdness of it all that I wrote to TIME:
Your comically unbalanced cover story on “global warming” reminded me of why, I, for one, am not a believer. “If droughts and wildfires, floods and crop failures … and the images of drowning polar bears didn’t quiet most of the remaining global-warming doubters,” claimed the hysterical Jeffrey Kluger, “the hurricane-drive destruction of New Orleans did”. Actually, it didn’t. Many scientists have said to blame Hurricane Katrina on global warming is absurd. In Australia’s case, we have had more devastating droughts before. As for “wildfires”, these have more to do with arson than global warming. Could TIME please consider the other side of the story?
My letter, to the editor’s credit, appeared in TIME’s Inbox section under the subheading “Global Hysterics?”
But what really made me laugh was the fact I had to remove my magazine from its plastic wrapper to read the damn thing. (States Rule 24: “Just say no to plastic bags”.)
Meanwhile even the politicised United Nations freely concedes crop harvests are booming. Just analyse the satellite images. TIME must employ lazy reporters.
Read the complete article here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5825
Arnost - is not Hansen modelling land temps not ocean temps? In any case the ocean temps need to adjusted upwards given the latest review a few weeks ago!!!
And TGGWS - a bit careless sheeesh - imagine TGGWS in the dock - sorry we were a bit careless and accidentally shot your client 4 times and stabbed him also by accident. We slipped. mmmmm
A cooler year this year matters naught - see how many times in last 30 years you would have said it was a cooling trend on the next number !
The 2005 vs 1998 argument is a bit of a pub debate. Which analysis etc. Does it matter that much? I'm happy to say they were "close".
I'm considering the splicing issue above and what was done.
Luke – I’d still like to have a beer with you one day – so let’s leave this one alone.
The trend is indeed your friend – but only if you are a technical trader / scalper. However in all cases, whether you are a fundamental or technical trader, the latest data is critical as it SETS the future trend. By the way, I also agree that TGGWS was a bit careless - but they could have done a far better job of highlighting (and if I now can use this word) the SHONKY state of climate science. We can take this up another time.
WRT to statistics, my problem is that the RC graph appears to have spliced ADJUSTED instrumental records on to the UNADJUSTED instrumental records in the original Hansen 1988 graph.
GISS now adjusts its temps as per the Hansen 1999 and 2001 papers (linked previously) (i.e. all the GISS post 2001/2 years are adjusted upwards - Tamino recently had an interesting debate on this as well as multiple on CA). The effect is clearly seen in comparing the GISS global land /sea graph below:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2_lrg.gif
with the equivalent HadCRU graph in below:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
The fact that GISS has 2005 whereas HadCRU (still) has 1998 as the warmest year ever is the telling point.
It is statistically invalid to do this – if the reason for the adjustment applied equally to the pre 1988 data (which according to the 1999 and 2001 papers it probably did), then to get a statistically meaningful result, the adjustment has to done to both, or to neither.
The fact is that without the latest datum plus the adjusted temps splice makes the RC graph ever so much more visually compelling and so is to a certain extent misleading. So my swindlesque comment stands.
As to future temps – this can not be proven one way or the other until you get to that future time. We’ll see how warm this year will be in 8 months time. Maybe I’ll eat my words then – will you?
By the way - the ocean temp lag is not relevant. If you use this argument then you must also accept that the Hansen 1988 model is flawed in that it did not take it into account.
cheers
Arnost
SJT, for your information many many economists routinely get their models dead right. The national budget is based on economic models and the numbers usually come in very close to estimates. And the good ones who are not employed by Treasury tend to work in Merchant Banks where the bonus' are not too good if the models are crap. I actually placed a few at Macquarie Bank where, judging by their recent profit reports, the modellers are doing exactly what they are getting paid to do, get it right.
Arnost has raised a very good point about missing current information that is less "convenient" for the climate cadres. I recently had to wade through 8 pages of google images to find a global temperature graph that had any data post 2001.
It seems the levelling off and slight decline in temperatures this century was not as sexy as the line reaching for the stratosphere prior to 2000.
And this puts Church's claims about Pinatubo causing a temperature and sea level decline in 1992 in a different light because the scale of the drop after 1998 is of similar scale, the duration is longer and the trend change is even more significant but we don't seem to have a volcano to attribute it to.
Arnost - as for the Ad Hom - I reviewed the said email found what you're complaining about at the very bottom as a set of letters (acronyms). Frankly I'm still not exactly sure what your quals mean. I have not intentionally used any personal information (which I had no memory of seeing anyway) - but if you feel personally sleighted in this matter then I apologise. As for Bird comparo - there are some differences - no string of obscenities nor multiple promises to come around and assault you. So frankly I'm most offended now by the comparison.
And whta's the relevance - pretty simple - doesn't look like you know much about statistics in an analysis here. Leaving off a data point in an ever evolving time series is always an issue with these sort rolling problems. i.e. time goes on. Data series may not always have the latest year. Anyway the point would be well within the series - not off the chart. Comparing to swindlesque is farcical - those skanky dudes left off decade(s). So pathetic Arnost - you would have no changed outcome on a statistical interpretation. One swallow doesn't make a summer. The trend is your friend !
My 2007 warming comment was about the record temperatures in North America and elsewhere. So if you want to play that game of latest data then we can bend it up.
As for La Nina and PDO (PDO we have no forecast of the PDO - it's simply tracked) - let's wait and see. And El Nino and La Nina events are all different - could be a whopper or a fizzer in respect of rainfall and temperatures. Near zero PDO = little reinforcement of La Nina effect anyway.
So you now want to count data points we don't even have. And you distrust climate models but you're happy to take a forecast La Nina model projection here when it suits - not impressed Arnost.
I should have said you were an economist - someone who counts wool unshorn from lambs unborn. (Gee - please tell me that you're not an economist too 🙂 Have I offended New Zealanders and Tasmanians yet ?? So many groups such little time).
"Hansen is going to choke on his prediction" from a single datum - ROTFL Arnost?! - bolsh
Oceans - simply the temperature trend will lag as RC discusses. We've been here before too in semi-related issues - the southern hemisphere having much more ocean area.
As for splicing data sets I can't see anything in what you're on about. They've used a reecnt data set and I can't see any reason to doubt their analysis unless you want to show us some "graph fiddling". Happy to consider if you explain some more.
Luke
As usual, you are obfuscating an inconvenient fact and trying to divert to an unrelated issue.
But, as usual I’ll bite, and politely address each of your points in turn.
2006 – Whilst I agree that one datum does not make trend – the fact remains that Gavin could have very easily included this year. After all, this datum has been available for 4 months. The fact that it wasn’t is therefore very “swindle-esque” (NB: I used this neologism first!) in order to achieve a more visually compelling outcome.
For those that are interested, open this page and have a look at the downtick at the very end
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
and then imagine it in this graph
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen06_fig2.jpg
my guess that the dark black line would reach halfway between the values for 2004 & 2005.
2007 – Whilst we may have had a very warm May here in Australia, it is cooling elsewhere – especially the Pacific sub-SSTs. The La Nina progs are getting stronger each week.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml
Further, the PDO index has been either negative or only slightly positive since the middle of last year.
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
And if (as is likely) the El Nino does eventuate and the PDO remains where it is (or trends more into the negative) - I think that Hansen is going to choke on his prediction.
El Nino spikes - First, as I said the blog ate my more detailed post of 5.00pm. This may have led to a bit of confusion – I did not say anything about 1998 El Nino. What I said was that it appears that the most recent instrumental record appears to have been spliced on to the Hansen 1988 temps in the RC graph, and that this means that the upward adjustments to the GISS global temperatures as per Hansen et al 1999 and Hansen et al 2001 (my bad when I said 1998) were not accounted for.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf
Accounting for these should either lower the instrumental temp record post 1988, or increase the starting point temp of the projections. Doing either would result in the instrumental record being even lower than it is in the RC representation (i.e. more BELOW the "low estimate" Scenario C).
The Ad Hom - Can I politely ask what’s with this and what is the relevance? Out of courtesy I privately emailed you some of my quals some time ago when I offered you a beer and a chat, and now you are trashing me in public (so - hint - check out what the Masters Degree is in). Looks like you learnt a lot from Bird.
As to the land/sea thing – educate me then. And by the way as you do this, can you please address the question of why is it that the model is so spot on if the instrumental record is BELOW the "low estimate" scenario which assumes a linear increase and “then close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards”. I presume that we agree that “constant” means NO increase in CO2 etc and makes all the previous re exponential/linear discussion irrelevant?
SJT,
I doubt it. In this case the economist would have said something tantamount to "that it realistically can not be below this range" - and it was. Lots of egg on face, trillions of dollars lost - IgNobel Prize candidate.
cheers
Arnost
For gods sake arnost, if an economist managed a prediction as good as that over 20 years, he'd have been awarded a Nobel Prize.
Toby - depends what humanity does or does not do about CO2 - have a look at the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios - many different paths to the future.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/005.htm
But as Arnost link shows the current business as usual emission rate has jumped from 1% in the 1990s to 2.5% of late.
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1127-co2.html
I apologise for my doubting the 'exponential' nature of recent c02 growth, it is a reasonable way to describe it. I was thinking in 'lay terms' and a move from 280 to 380 in 100 years does not 'seem' exponential, but its rate of increase has not been linear so i retract my statement. Is it projected/expected to grow exponentially into the future?
A single 2006 point invalidates the model does it - are you nuts ? You could have said that a many downturns. And we could put in warm starts to 2007 and bend it up again too!? Loopy thinking to the max.
On 1998 - the model doesn't factor in El Nino spikes. Come on !!
Have you ever modelled natural phenomena in your life our are you an accountant? or even worse an engineer.
And of course the land+ocean is below the line - you can work out why as an exercise. Ain't hard !
Toby if you're not satisfied with model performance like that you're kidding yourself. Any better and the results would be fudged ! Hansen's stuff says the broad principle of greenhouse forcing seems to be right on the money thus far.