Oh, Blow It, Rick » « Green on Green 


Eschew Needless Obfuscation?
December 5th 2008 Junk Science

Climate scientists say 2008 will be coolest year of the decade | Environment | guardian.co.uk

2008 will be coolest year of the decade
Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists

Should I wonder why this graph measures “Temperature relative to the 1961-1990 average?”

Submit to Stumbled Upon!
-Bill Quick







Comments on this post:

  • Robohobo
    December 5th, 2008 | #1

    Should I wonder why this graph measures “Temperature relative to the 1961-1990 average?”

    No. Nothing to see here. Move along. Now.

  • Robb Allen
    December 5th, 2008 | #2

    You’re trying to make something out of the date range that it’s not, Bill.

    The Messiah was born in 61. It’s critical to understand that anything that happened before that is irrelevant. He shall cool the world with a smile (and a metric buttload of new taxes, but don’t worry about that).

  • martinra
    December 5th, 2008 | #3

    It would be nice if they’d show error bars, or where the transitions from proxy data to real temperature measurements occurs, or the urban heat island effect, or the density of measuring stations in developed nations, or anything at all that would represent scientific honesty.

    Nope, let’s have a big scary right-hand red graph instead.

  • Toren
    December 5th, 2008 | #4

    They also don’t tell you almost all the Russian arctic weather stations went off-line during the little problems they had when the CCCP broke up. Which happened, hmm, around 1990.
    This is just the usual graph-warping these folks love: cherry picking starting and ending dates (gosh, it starts right at the Little Ice Age! What luck!), leaving out error bars, using bizarre baselines, etc, but a delightfully blatant example, to be sure.

  • martinra
    December 5th, 2008 | #5

    Toren, from the comment thread in your link:

    If you are really interested in global temperatures, do read:
    Jones, Wigley & Wright, “Global temperature variations between 1861 and 1984″, Nature 322, 31st July 1986, p.430ff.

    Since 1986 the temperature data, which are published and used, are “corrected” data, where about 960,000 sets of data from the period 1861-1945 have been removed because “this difference is also **likely** to reflect a non-climatic inhomogenity in either the MAT data or the land data, **probably** the former.”

    The article contains lots of “considered”, “thought to have”, “suggesting”, “generally assumed”, “likely”, etc.

    The temperatures have been reduced by - (two examples from the list: 1861-73: -0,4 C; 1942-45: -0,54C).

    The actually measured temperatures were published in Oort et. al.: “Historical trends in the surface temperature over the oceans based on the COADS”, Climate Dynamics 2, pp. 29-38, 1987

    Gotta love it. These data sets are a mess, and it’s just coincidence that “adjustments” on pre-1945 global temperatures are always downwards, and on post-1980 temperatures are always upward.

    If you believe anything coming out of these fraud factories, I’ve got some Al Franken for Senate absentee ballots to sell you.

  • Toren
    December 5th, 2008 | #6

    If you like that, you’ll love this:
    Adjusting Pristine Data

    The only reason anyone is still taking AGW seriously is because of the money and power involved.

  • Bill Quick
    December 5th, 2008 | #7

    If you like that, you’ll love this:

    …

    Sigh.

  • kimdutoit
    December 6th, 2008 | #8

    Remember the credo of the fraudulent: if the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be altered or disposed of.

    I saw this a lot when I worked in the Stat Research Dept of the Great Big Research Company. We were under constant pressure to “adjust” the data to make it fit with the (paying) clients’ expectations. At one such meeting, I sourly suggested that we apply a K-factor to all data — “K” being the multiple by which the data can be made to come out in such a way as to please the client.

    One salesman actually took me seriously. I think he probably works in the climate industry now.

comment on this article

Note: Daily Pundit uses the Akismet spam filter, which has been known, on occasion, to start flagging regular commenters' submissions as spam for a while until we can smack it around enough to change its mind. If you're having problems like this, you can bypass Akismet by registering. Your comments are still very welcome whether you register or not. The only drawback of not registering is, if Akismet flags your comment as spam, it may take us a while before we see it and fix it.

Quicktags:

Tags allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <img src="" alt="" /> <li> <ol> <s> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <ul>
Comment Preview (updated when idle):

 


return to main page (at this post)