Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Belz...]

the "OMG! The world is going to burn up!" crowd

Could you name members of this crowd ?

 

[r-j]

The tool on the NCDC site doesn't calculate the statistical signficance, so it's impossible to tell whether the trends it shows are meaningful are not. Once again: read the quoted explanation from the SkS site.

I read it before you posted it. The reason I am asking you about what you will accept is actually based on what is said there. (this will become clear at the end of this post)

You said Illinois was having warmer winters based on a 30 year trend. I said you were wrong. You even explained how to use the software, thinking I was too dumb to do it right. Even DD chimed in about it.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
Funny thing
if I set the start year and end year and then the display base period and the trend period all to 1895 and 2013 and the time scale to one year, every month plotted for Illinois shows an increasing trend.

Nobody, including you, said that it was meaningless. I posted hundred year trends, showing cooling, and you said they were meaningless, or that you had to start in 1895 for it to be meaningful. Something. Then concerning quarky

And of course, of all things, both Divisions show winter is colder using a century of data. Kentucky Div 4 is -1.7 century trend. Tenn Div 1 is -1.4

And of course, of all things, both Divisions show winter is colder using a century of data. Kentucky Div 4 is -1.7 century trend. Tenn Div 1 is -1.4

Pure chance those two states would happen to show cooling winters, in the midst of the argument.

But, and this is why it's amusing in the extreme. The Sks you quoted?

Whenever we calculate a trend from a set of data, the value we obtain is an estimate. It is not a single value, but a range of possible values, some of which are more likely than others.

Your objection is based on "Whenever we calculate a trend from a set of data, the value we obtain is an estimate. It is not a single value, but a range of possible values".

Temperature data is an exact measurement of observable reality. The monthly data is not an estimate nor are the values we use to create it. Same for the yearly means, the seasonal means, all of the temperature data is the opposite of what you are saying.

"It is not a single value, but a range of possible value" applies to a vast global temperature estimate. But not to Illinois, much less Division 1 of the Tennessee data from the NCDC.

That's why there isn't an error range or the statistical data you claim must be shown to know if it's valid.

I can't believe have to explain this. It really seem nobody here knows the first thing about temperature data, or why it is not the same as the global average.

 

[lomiller]

For a regional dataset, is there anything you accept as valid in regards to determining if the average temperatures of a given time period, a year, season, month, is there anything you won't dismiss as meaningless?

For an individual event like a season, month, day, year what a statistical analysis will give you is how likely that event is to occur. For some events like the Russian heat wave a few years ago the likelihood is something like 5 sigma, or once in 1000 years. While you can’t really prove such an event is warming related at some point you have to consider that it’s so unlikely to occur without warming that it’s overwhelmingly likely to be a product of warming.


The type of regional cool events you are looking at are nowhere near 5 sigma, so are not comparable in any way. A more useful way you can look at this type of event is frequency. New record highs outnumber new record lows by something like 10:1. This distribution is completely implausible unless the world is warming.

 

[r-j]

The tool on the NCDC site doesn't calculate the statistical signficance, so it's impossible to tell whether the trends it shows are meaningful are not.

Let me make is simple for you. It's because a measurement of the daily temperature, the monthly average, none of that is estimated, none of it is uncertain. It's averages of real data, but it's all based on known values.

There is no uncertainty involved. (unless you are one of them people who doesn't trust the NCDC)

Could you name members of this crowd ?

Of course, but nobody cares.

 

[r-j]

For an individual event like a season, month, day, year what a statistical analysis will give you is how likely that event is to occur.

I am talking about what has happened. Not predicting the future.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

I dont really understand this graph:

The end of the blue line goes past the red line and ends on the gray line. Isnt it supposed to be on the red lines? Like this:

 

[Pixel42]

You said Illinois was having warmer winters based on a 30 year trend.

No I did not. I simply reported the figure the tool gave when I entered the appropriate parameters. Here's the entire post:

Illinois winter (Dec-Feb) trend over 30 years (1984-2013): warming of 0.6F per decade

You're the one that's been making assertions about seasons getting warmer/colder in particular states/areas based on these trend lines. I know better than to do so.

Let me make is simple for you. It's because a measurement of the daily temperature, the monthly average, none of that is estimated, none of it is uncertain. It's averages of real data, but it's all based on known values.

There is no uncertainty involved. (unless you are one of them people who doesn't trust the NCDC)

You are wrong. Read the quoted explanation again. Both tools use exactly the same kind of data. It's the trend that's estimated, with an uncertainty that needs to be calculated before its meaning can be assessed.

 

[aleCcowaN]

While r-j continue to abuse of cherry picking in a way that makes the boy who cried wolf look like an objective observer, I'd like to refer to the increased frequency of extreme events caused by global warming.

Today we would be locally "celebrating" the first anniversary of a record wind storm which included a train of tornadoes with estimated winds from 170 to 240 km/h (record gusts ever) which tore down 79,000 trees, severely damaged 12,000 buildings and killed 26 (5 in Buenos Aires City -that is, like saying Manhattan, D.C. or la Ville de Paris-, and 19 in the suburbs, 2 in other cities). In some districts public services were 100% restored only 3 weeks later. By the way, we have to add some 500,000 trees to the list of victims as people, looking at the damages and taking advance of the disorder, tore them down to avoid the risk of their home to be damaged during the next episode. This last act is proof enough of the unprecedented character of the event.

But, as we prepared to "celebrate", the party was drown by a record rain today: from 12 to 2 a.m. 110 mm felt in the Central Observatory -155 mm (more than 6 inches) by 7 a.m., both a record for their spans- while northern suburbs suffered the worst of it, with 175 mm (7 inches) from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m, and who knows how much more in the following hours. The result is 6 killed only in Buenos Aires city -the figure in growing by the hour-, mostly old people drowned in the streets, and parts of the city are still a chaos.

Here some images and videos, mostly hours after the storm (Note: the city is absolutely flat, so there were floods everywhere; these are not selected low spots):

But, are these just a couple of isolated events made into trend because of the date? Well, in the middle I was commenting here the rainstorm on October 29th and a surge caused by winds a few days later. It was the 4th record surge (according to some here, I didn't know what a surge was and I was mixing up the waves with the surge ). You can follow what I said in page 170, in this thread, and here. There was another heavy nearly-record rainstorm with dead toll during the year, but I didn't comment here, and it could have been a record 40 years ago, but now it's just one of many events.

So, locally, besides the new taxes of some 140 usd a year I have to pay exclusively to finance new works to enhance the capacity of the city's draining system to cope with floods, what in the end will cost tens of milliards (giga usd) during the next decades, we are experiencing what is common worldwide:

- Increasingly common extreme events
- High energy - high enthalpy records broken once and again
- Extreme - low enthalpy records broken, but with at a lesser rate, about a fourth.

Among the few "cold" records, we had the snow storm during July 9th 2007, the only snow storm downtown Buenos Aires experienced during my lifetime. That was a record indeed, but I like always to remember that 62 days later, on September 9th 2007, it was 3 a.m. and I was typing angrily on a forum that the temperature was 23°C and mosquitoes had awaken me in what was and unprecedented warm record for a day in the last part of Winter.

Reason for all this? My apartment contains 5 buckets of CO2 in excess on what it contained in 1940, the year it was built. Of those buckets, one and a half was generated in the USA. If it was just my apartment! but it is all the wide world, from pole to pole and from the surface of the Dead See to the high troposphere.

 

[lomiller]

You said Illinois was having warmer winters based on a 30 year trend. I said you were wrong. You even explained how to use the software, thinking I was too dumb to do it right. Even DD chimed in about it.



Nobody, including you, said that it was meaningless. I posted hundred year trends, showing cooling, and you said they were meaningless, or that you had to start in 1895 for it to be meaningful. Something. Then concerning quarky

A linear fit is only an approximation. It is not only possible but likely that the 100 year trend is different and much lower than the 30 year trend even when both are statistically significant. In such a case the 30 year trend is going to be a better indication of current trend than the 100 year.

Pure chance those two states would happen to show cooling winters,

Trends in geographically close locations are going to be heavily correlated, so it's not only reasonable but highly likely you will see similar patterns in Kentucky and Tennessee

 

[jimbob]

Illinois winter (Dec-Feb) trend over 30 years (1984-2013): warming of 0.6F per decade

You're the one that's been making assertions about seasons getting warmer/colder in particular states/areas based on these trend lines. I know better than to do so.

Has the claim moved on from "colder winters in general" "to colder winters in specific areas"?

 

[lomiller]

I am talking about what has happened. Not predicting the future.

Can you clarify what you are trying to say? My post discusses probability of an event occurring which isn’t “predicting the future”. I t can be applied to events that have actually happened or it can be applied to scenarios to calculate risk. Neither is prediction.

 

[lomiller]

Has the claim moved on from "colder winters in general" "to colder winters in specific areas"?

From the beginning he’s tried to use regional and/or short term data to make a generalized claim. This error has been pointed out from the start and he has yet to acknowledge that you can’t make general conclusions from the data he is offering.

 

[CapelDodger]

"In a statement, the deputy information commissioner Graham Smith said emails between scientists at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that were hacked and placed on the internet in November revealed that FOI requests were 'not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation'. Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests. Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act."

This is what you regard as "misbehaviour" revealed in the hacked CRU emails? That's it? A suggestion, made in a moment of anger and exasperation, that emails should be deleted - a suggestion which was never acted on? UEA's unpreparedness for a flood of vexatious FoI requests?

Universities are now prepared for such floods if and when they get in the crosshairs of scumbags such as McIntyre. FoI requests have become part of the standard toolkit of science-deniers even for data which is publicly available because the very existence of the request is presented as proof that the data wasn't avaialble and that something is being concealed for nefarious purposes.

not that it matters, but years ago I also brought up the cold and snowy winters, as well as why it was of interest, in regards to global warming. Dismissing science, facts, data and the like, because you think it it is some kind of threat, that isn't science. Nor is the response "we dealt with that already".

You say this, and yet nobody is dismissing science. By doing so you try leave the impression that somebody must be, but it's a lie.
Nobody said "we dealt with that already" - we've been to the trouble of dealing with it again - but it has been pointed out that your self-aggrandising fantasy about being the first to bring it up is at best a fantasy.

Edited by jhunter1163: 

Edited for Rule 12.

I doubt you will ever explain, in clear terms, what you consider evidence.

Edited by jhunter1163: 

Edited for Rule 12.

If you do, then you have to look at all of it, and can't simply pick that which supports your belief.

In your peculiar vocabulary "all of the data" means "data for parts of Kentucky". If you want to communicate effectively you need to speak in the language of the majority, not your own version of English.

Right from the very beginning of the AGW debate decades ago those of us with a grasp of the subject have been pointing out that even with global warming some places will get colder while other places get warmer. Some places will get drier while other places get wetter. Every time it gets cold somewhere up pop the tiny minds to question the existence of global warming and we patiently explain (to no obvious effect) the facts. This incident is no exception.

Edited by jhunter1163: 

Edited for Rule 12.

 

[jimbob]

Lolmiller,

Dragging the conversation back a couple of pages,

IIRC you work in the nuclear industry?

Do you have any opinion on my post quoted below?

And on the prospects for nuclear fusion - the IET (former IEE) magazine had an article on this recently

The thrust of the article is that achieving break-even is the easy part - once that happens, the real engineering challenges will have to be solved...

It's somewhat outside my field of specialism...

 

[Lennart Hyland]

I dont really understand this graph:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1038&pictureid=7593[/qimg]

The end of the blue line goes past the red line and ends on the gray line. Isnt it supposed to be on the red lines? Like this:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1044&pictureid=7625[/qimg]

Ok I finally understand the graph, please ignore this

 

[r-j]

Trends in geographically close locations are going to be heavily correlated, so it's not only reasonable but highly likely you will see similar patterns in Kentucky and Tennessee

The chance was quarky mentioning climate change in his area. Once I checked the data, it showed a trend towards colder winters, warmer spring and summer.

That some states and regions show colder winters, and others show warmer trends, is an expected result of AWG

What wasn't predicted, and there is the rub, is the extreme record cold and record snow, as well as it effecting regions known for warm winters already.

Canada is showing (for most of it) warmer winters, and I found a way to show this. Maybe. Unlike the US Canada doesn't have a cool program to look at data.

 

[CapelDodger]

From the beginning he’s tried to use regional and/or short term data to make a generalized claim. This error has been pointed out from the start and he has yet to acknowledge that you can’t make general conclusions from the data he is offering.

If he's even said what he thinks the implications are it's been lost in his fumbling presentation and incessant whining. I sincerely hope that anyone following this can draw the right conclusions; if not, that has to be our failure. Zeph, for one, gets it.

 

[r-j]

Once again opinion, is mistaken for scientific discussion.

Denial, it's not just river in Egypt.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I dont really understand this graph:

It's very simple. The trend line is linear regression showing that winter temperatures in Kentucky went down slightly between 1913 and 2013 - therefore Global Warming is a hoax.

Curiously however, if you move the start and endpoints by a few years, the trend line may go flat or even slope upwards! This proves that Global Warming is not caused by man.

The end of the blue line goes past the red line and ends on the gray line. Isnt it supposed to be on the red lines? Like this:

No, that's a different kind of trend line. But more importantly it shows a temperature increase. That's the real reason why it must be wrong. Any trend line which shows an increase is simply a localized anomaly.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

It's very simple. The trend line is linear regression showing that winter temperatures in Kentucky went down slightly between 1913 and 2013 - therefore Global Warming is a hoax.

Curiously however, if you move the start and endpoints by a few years, the trend line may go flat or even slope upwards! This proves that Global Warming is not caused by man.

No, that's a different kind of trend line. But more importantly it shows a temperature increase. That's the real reason why it must be wrong. Any trend line which shows an increase is simply a localized anomaly.

Thank you Roger for explaining that too me