Bishop Hill Hiding the pause
Aug 28, 2014 Climate: Models Climate: Parliament Climate: Surface Corrine le Quere of UEA is another of the scientists who were asked to address the All-party Climate Change Group about AR5, her topic being what is the evidence for that man is causing climate change. Audio is here, her slides can be seen here, an example of which is shown below:
;)
Anybody spot the pause in temperature rise there? No, you don't, because the data has been obfuscated by means of rolling them up into decadal averages. This is troubling, because I thought that everyone agreed that you should not smooth time series:
...you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses!
Looks like another statistics fail by a climatologist to me, and another set of policymakers misled.
But by accident, or design?
Reader Comments (118)
Not just smoothed, but adjusted and smoothed.
And this is what's called 'climate data'.
UEA
But by accident, or design? a question that needs no asking given it is UEA.
The better question is why their not being called out for such BS by others .
Still lets hope they enjoy their 'short ' career in climate sceince PR
Do you think she borrowed that graphic much - from the EPA of all places :-)
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fclimatechange%2Fimages%2Fscience%2Fmodels-observed-human-natural-large.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fclimatechange%2Fbasics%2Ffacts.html&h=433&w=600&tbnid=jsbm5w9VTvMohM%3A&zoom=1&docid=CMft0dAEf8FL0M&hl=en&ei=Gfz-U7CKJuqO7QaA1YHQBA&tbm=isch&ved=0CC4QMygNMA0&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=2061&page=1&start=0&ndsp=15
Oh, nonsense.
I think the advice would be better stated as "know what you are doing when smoothing time series". Briggs gives a nice rundown of ways that you can fool yourself when smoothing time series, but it isn't inherently evil. Just chuck "time series smoothing" into google, and see what comes up. e.g.
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/section4/pmc42.htm
Basically, you're applying a model to the data. All models are wrong, but some are useful.
Doug
From the Josef Goebbels School of Propaganda.
I have just listened to the audio of Prof le Quere. Deception by design.
@turnedoutnice
That was quick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Doug
Deception by design? Lying??
Does anyone else see the similarity between the blue line and; reality, observations, only natural forcing (all 10yr smoothed of course)?
@Doug McNeall: wem die Jacke passt
Apologies for my previous attempt - does this EPA graph look familiar?
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/science/models-observed-human-natural-large.jpg</I>
Many MP's considering their re-election prospects might be mentally relabelling the y axis to more pressing issues of public concern, like immigration etc
This is why scientists need a course on philosophy. In the best case, even if her slides are correct, the entire argument is a fallacy. It is argument from ignorance. She is simply saying "we don't know of a natural mechanism by which the warming could have occurred, therefore it is man-made".
That was a bad argument when it was first made. Now we know that the models are wrong by at least four independent lines of empirical evidence (surface temperatures, upper troposphere temperatures in the tropics, relationship between outgoing IR radiation and temperature and most recently the down welling IR, which appears to be reducing not increasing as CO2 increases) it is astonishing. It is a simply bizarre argument to make.
Doug said: "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
I agree.
This one is especially useful if the speakers intention is to hide the pause.
David - I don't know - maybe Prof le Quere is using the adjusted and smoothed data in good faith. But the graph is deceptive and to use it as the key 'evidence' of any anthropogenic warming in the 20th Century just shows how desperate they are getting.
We should just move on and find out if the AGW will stop the next Ice Age? If so, isn't that a good thing?
These models*, that can only reproduce the temperature rise when GHGs are included in the simulations, are the same ones that, with GHGs included, did not predict the halt, 17 years ago, in temperature rise?
S.L.B.T.M.
*programmed by people who believe only GHGs can explain rapid temperature rise.
Only two options left now
1. They're utterly incompetent and have no clue what they're talking about, so we shouldn't ever trust them.
2. They're competent and are lying, so we shouldn't ever trust them.
Doubting Rich
Not quite. She is saying "we don't know of a natural mechanism by which the warming could have occurred, so we asked our little greenie friends and they came up with one for us that suited their agenda. Good, isn't it?"Bishop,
According to Wikipedia, the US National Science Foundation defines scientific misconduct as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. How is producing "data" using a computer simulation not fabrication? It certainly cannot be a considered a scientific observation of any type. It should also be noted that the simulation using natural forcings only shows very little warming since the start point, which was a very cold period, possible the coldest period in the last 10,000 years. So the evidence presented is the difference between two fabrications. Not to mention that the "observations" are not true observations but adjustments to actual observations which fall into the definition of falsification.
Evidence in abundance:
//
In the last decade global near-surface average annual temperature was 0.75 - 0.81 °C warmer than the pre-industrial average. Other records have been broken in recent months – global average temperatures in May and June 2014 were the highest monthly averages ever recorded, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
These are a few of the many trends featured in 13 climate change indicators recently published by the European Environment Agency (EEA). Using graphs, maps and concise analysis, the indicators demonstrate some of the most important observations and projections of climate change and its impacts.
The update also improves projections of future climate change. Global sea-level rise projections have been revised upwards, based on new climate models that better represent the effects of melting ice sheets on sea level rise. This indicator now also includes regional sea-level rise projections for the European regional seas. In addition, several indicators now include projections of further snow and ice decline. For example, if greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at high levels, the Arctic Ocean is projected to be nearly ice-free every September before mid-century.
In many cases, the indicators feature information from the recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the physical science of climate change published in September 2013, although several indicators have been updated with even more recent information and adding trends and projections relevant for Europe.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/europe2019s-climate-continues-to-change
EEA Media Release 6 August 2104
//
I notice she claims:
Bit of the usual exaggeration there - but that's what "climate scientists" do.
Re: aTTP
You seem to be cherry picking your data. The set of data you are looking at consists solely of reports criticised by Andrew.
Terrys,
Fair point. I guess it's possible that Andrew doesn't discuss all the times that climate scientists don't make mistakes and don't mislead their audiences. Even so, that would still suggest that there is a chance (maybe a good one) that anyone perusing this blog would get a rather one-sided view of the situation and might think that climate scientists typically make lots of mistakes and typically mislead their audience.
aTTP:
//
"I guess it's possible that Andrew doesn't discuss all the times that climate scientists don't make mistakes and don't mislead their audiences."
//
Ten of your favourite, verifiable references to "all the(se) times" please?
Re: aTTP
Neither does he discuss all the times that climate scientists do make mistakes and do mislead their audiences.
Douglas Carswell defecting to UKIP seems a O/T item worth interrupting this thread for.
Hiding the Pause
What if the pause is never there in the first place ?
Doubting Rich said:
Sherlock Holmes said:
Assuming that Corrine le Quere thinks that the models are correctly modelling all natural mechanisms, then she would be correct in assuming that whatever remains, i.e. non-natural mechanisms, must be the truth.
Her error would appear to be in her faith in the models. The logic however appears correct.
aTTP - oh look, over there, a unicorn
They also neglected to label when the models were created which, were it not for this smoothing "trick", would show the immediate divergence between the models and climate.
Can we now assume that Richard Betts is no longer bemused over why people think that GCMs are central to climate policy?
Doug McNeall
In an subject area infested by eco fascism, I think Godwin's Law deserves a hiatus. Don't you ?
Most climate scientists are now effectively arguing that those assumed natural forcings must be wrong because they have counteracted the anthropogenic forcings for the last 17 years. So her argument is just stale disinformation and she must know that. Or are these characters really so dim-witted? Also she provides the ncounter to Richard Betts special pleadings that models have no bearing on the argument for manmade climate change: In fact, these model outputs were the only 'evidence' and were based on purely circular reasoning, now disproven.
Can there really be any doubt that this was by design?
The graph shows 'models using both natural and anthropogenic forcing'
What would a model show if if it used anthropogenic forcing only?
The black line is observations and the graph is derived from the IPCC AR4.
The black line is not bent slightly the way it is in her graph. I am looking at Tol's book which carries the original. It has been bent to blunt the 1910-'40 temperature rise and increase the rate of rise for 1970-1998.
It's hard to tell because of the unusual scale on the x-axis, but it looks like the data only runs up to around 2005, so obviously missees out most of the pause.
Saying that the data is a decadal average is no justification for this - the graph could just have easily used the most recent ten years.
"What would a model show if if it used anthropogenic forcing only?"
A gravy train lying on its back drawing its last breath.
Shub,
Let's see if we can actually achieve something here.
If you're referring to the figure in the post, then it appears to be the Global average of the land and ocean surface temperatures from Figure 6 in the IPCC AR5 SPM. This is from the Approved draft dated 27 September 2013, so I don't know if it changed after that (I don't think so). I can't - by eye - see any difference between the graph in this post and the figure in the IPCC AR5 SPM document, so I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting with regards to it being bent to blunt things.
Can I suggest that someone who knows R Betts now contacts him and asks him to contact C Le Quere and advise her that she should not be using model outputs to advise on policy.
What a tangled web we weave..........
Yes but they are only saying they don't know of a natural mechanism because they choose not to see the
elephant in the room.
Global cloud anomaly (%), 1983-2012)
http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/01/ipcc-finds-the-important-natural-climate-driver-solar-surface-radiation-intensity-but-then-ignores-and-buries-it/
AndPhysics, we are both right, in a way. The trickery is the IPCC's.
The AR5 version is the same as her graph - and - slightly bent. The AR4 version of the same graph is not bent. See here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/figure-spm-4.html
You can look at global surface temperatures from any source (for eg Realclimate here, reproducing the AR5 WG1 Figure 10 graph: http://www.realclimate.org/images//WGI_AR5_Fig10-1.jpg) - the 1910 - 1940 trend is uniform, uninterrupted and continuous.
The IPCC uses a different baseline to calculate anomalies between the AR5 and the AR4. Which is perhaps why the 1940 does not stick out like a sore thumb in the AR5 as it does in the AR4. Very clever.
I was wrong to assume she had taken the graph from AR4.
Why is it that they cannot think of any other reason for the warming, but they can pull 39 reasons for cooling out the hat without breaking a sweat
ATTP, as someone who studied engineering over 50 years ago, I guess that I am not alone in finding your tone incredibly patronising - "Let's see if we can actually achieve something here."
Kind regards
MP
Following up Richard Drake's heads-up:
http://www.talkcarswell.com/home/i-was-wrong-about-the-climate-change-act/2607
The graph is from the IPCC AR5 SPM, fig 6. As Shub says there was a very similar fig in AR4.
Corinne Le Quéré was one of the authors of the AR5 SPM.
The IPCC are masters of pause-hiding - see WG1 chair Stocker here .
The graph is from AR5 WG1, Figure SPM.6 (equally TS.12). The comment at Figure TS.12 is "This figure is based on Figure 10.21 except presented as decadal averages rather than yearly averages."
Figure 10.21 shows annual averages, and yes, the pause is visible there.
[Edit: Not as fast as aTTP or Paul Matthews, I see. But the first reference to Figure 10.21, at least.]
Mike,
You include "as someone who has studied engineering over 50 years ago" and you call me patronising? My comment was based on many attempts to achieve something - and failing to do so - in discussions with Shub, In this case, it appears that we did. So, kudos.
Additionally, note the dashed portion of the black line, indicating <50% spatial coverage. It extends all the way up to ~1935 or so in AR5 whereas it goes only to about 1920 in the AR4.