Data Comparisons

GISS Temp: Almost Flat Trend Since 2001

82 Comments

GISS Global Land-Ocean Temperature Anomaly Index for May: 0.36C; this is down from April’s temperature of 0.41C. Of course, I immediately plotted and fit a trend using ordinary least squares. Using OLS the measured trend is 0.007 C/century. The trend using Cochrane-Orcutt is -0.4C/Century.

Here’s the chart with May highlighted: GISS Temp

Now… I’ll go click and see if I beat Anthony Watts announcing this. I want to steal all his traffic! 🙂

Spreadsheet

This is the spreadsheet. It’s in progress as I update for each month. So, some ‘features’ may be incomplete. However, the regression for GISS and the figure are fine. (The figure is with the raw data, scroll down. Oh… there are macros.)
In progress: Graph For GISS

82 thoughts on “GISS Temp: Almost Flat Trend Since 2001”

  1. Lucia, Anthony has got nothing on you!. You do real good work. Even GISS is flat temp who woulda thought?

  2. Bob–
    Thanks!

    Technically, 7 * 10^-5 is positive. . . Heh! The GISS only dropped 0.05C, which is much less than the drops at the satellites. I’m waiting for NOAA and HadCrut now.

    FWIW, June is finally warming up!

  3. You do what you do, let Anthony do what Anthony does–keep a reason for me to continue reading both.

    (Trick is to get him and Reynolds to point to you!)

  4. Larry–
    I read Anthony’s blog. I read his “hockey stick- traffic stats post”. He deserves his good traffic, and gets more than other blogs because
    a) He post frequently.
    b) He is polite to his readers and commenters.
    c) He posts things people can understand.
    d) He answers questions people actually ask and
    e) His blog isn’t a “me too” blog.

    But, I did want to see if I could get a temperature stat up first. Anthony is amazingly prompt!

    Oddly enough, I can get more traffic if I post after he does. If I leave a track back, it brings visitors! 🙂

  5. dear ms.lucy:

    i know a woman, who is divorced, has a son an a daughter (15 an 18 years old) in highschool and the university, she works as a bank executive, does the household and she is in the last year in the university studying economics…
    she and you are my idols!!!! (Neither hillary nor tatcher)

  7. Gonna have to disagree with you on Anthony’s blog for reasons I’ve stated in the past. Spreading false the CO2 is coming from the ocean posts should be worthy of derision from skeptics. Should be were the skeptics bona fides in order.

  8. Boris– Why do you say

    Global warming stopped in 2007?

    The current flat OLS trend starts in 2001.

    My spread sheet normally read to 0.000. So, I have to admit I blinked when the trend was perfectly ‘0’! Usually, the last digit has a non-zero digit.

    As for derision: I know you are a fan of that, but I think it’s jejune. If you have a problem with a post, and want to world to understand why it’s wrong, it would be wiser to explain than do the sigh and eye-roll we often see from high school students.

  9. Gosh, Lucia, it takes an awful long time to point out all the errors on Watts’ blog. They’re fairly self evident anyway. Make a game of it. I’m surprised you and others are not more skeptical of what he posts.

  10. Boris–
    I didn’t say I agree with everything he posts. I’m skeptical of everything, everywhere. But Anthony’s blog has many good points. So a number of other climate blogs. The more interesting ones with original material tend to attract readers. If you have a problem with a post, and you want people to understand a counter argument, you would do well to write something up and post it yourself.

    Snark, eyerolling, mockery etc. are pointless because a) they never work and b) the reason they don’t work is that all third parties see is the eyeroll.

    It’s easy to do the web equivalent of eyerolls. It’s also lazy and third parties will tend to assume whatever argument you advance is the best one you could think of. Do you want third parties to think your best argument is “eyeroll”?

  11. Lucia
    is it possible for you to post the spreadsheet that you did the analysis in

  12. Lucia,
    Don’t get involved with Boris. Complete waste of time and energy. Based on his first post, sounds like he’s suffering from very high levels of nitrogen.

  13. We have something to look forward to now – Tamino’s spin on these results! The usual combination of bile and sleight of hand should reach classic proportions this time.

    More seriously though, it can’t be right can it? It cannot be that CO2 is driving higher temps, when CO2 has been rising at a constant rate, and temps are flatlining like this? And if you factor in the weird adjustments made to the surface station record (see Goetz recent posts on CA) maybe they are in reality even falling, which makes the discrepancy even worse.

    The prerequisite of AGW theory is that there is warming to explain. If it stops warming, the whole thing is tanking before our eyes. Wonderfully interesting episode for historians of science. But in terms of public policy, the costs of this thing have already been enormous, and are still rising.

  14. Boris,

    apparently you are very knowledgeable. Could you please tell me when the first doubling of CO2 happened or will happen?? That is, what PPM amount is considered the FIRST doubling of CO2??

    Also, could you give me links to a paper(s) that delineate the sources of total CO2 each year??

    Thank you.

  15. Lucia: This comment is rather long, but if you’d like to change the Boris focus of this thread, maybe this will do it.

    I do realize GISS is being scrutinized by ClimateAudit and that the effects noted in the following have been discussed there and elsewhere. Some of your audience may never have before seen the influences of the GISS 1200km smoothing and the ever-changing number of weather stations they employ.

    Last month, the GISS elevated anomaly was aided by the Antarctic. Check the zonal means plots, especially the Antarctic using the two smoothing radii.
    April 2008 with 1200 km smoothing radius:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
    April 2008 with 250 km smoothing radius:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
    Look at the big red line across the bottom of the Mercator projection. But why is the Antarctic so warm? One station (or multiple stations?) at the South Pole was (were) “warm”. It stands out in the Polar Projection of April 2008 with 250 km smoothing radius:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=04&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=pol
    With the magic of 1200 km smoothing, an anomalous month at one or two stations can skew the entire global data set.

    Now take a good look at May 2008 with 1200 km smoothing radius:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=05&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
    The Antarctic anomaly is back in line with the rest of the world.
    But, did you notice the big differences in coverage between April and May? Forget about Africa and South America.
    Try May 2008 with 250 km smoothing radius:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=05&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
    The data from Northern Canada and from Southern and Western Greenland are gone in May. They were used in April. Where’d they go? And why?

    The last noteworthy items are the differences in global temperature anomaly noted in the upper right-hand corner of the maps, depending on smoothing radius. With the 250km radius smoothing, GISS and HADCRUT3GL are twins from January 1978 to March 2008.

    They’re getting deeper into the GISS code over at ClimateAudit. Some day we may know its inner workings…maybe. With the constant changes to code and data sets, it appears to be a moving target.

  16. Julian–I posted the spreadsheet. It’s not complete for May because NOAA and HadCrut haven’t reported. So, the stuff for “all” isn’t right. But GISS should be fine.

    Fred– The only “spin” is “it’s weather not climate”. Flat trends for this long can be consistent with warming. But, they aren’t consistent with the more alarming rapid rates of warming.

    Does anyone know where NOAA’s current anomaly maps are? (I know there is a page where we can see the current anomalies for surface temperature.)

  17. Kuhn,

    I’d start with the IPCC report.

    Don’t know what you mean by the “first doubling.” When CO2 concentrations are small the doubling breaks down anyway, so it’s not really relevant

    Lucia,

    When I see someone make lots of mistakes all in the same direction, I discount them as an unreliable source. That’s what happened with Anthony Watts. It’s exhausting to rebut bad post after bad post, and I actually have a life (I know, hard to believe, huh?). So I just point to the work Tamino has done:

    http://tamino.wordpress.com/?s=anthony+watts

  18. Since it’s fairly obvious that a la niña follows an el niño, it is also obvious that it’s unfair to include one and exclude the other. Tamino groans about anyone including the hot 1998 el niño in the trends, despite the cool 1999-2000 la niña balancing it out, then of course he merrily included the unbalanced 2007 el niño to calculate a trend with no qualms whatsoever…..and I’ll bet fair, sceptical Boris never pointed that one out either. Now we have the balanced data we can clearly see that Tamino’s calculation was complete dung. And yet when you point out such basic errors to him he gets all stroppy and says he is a professional who earns his living this way. Ho ho ho! Anyway what happens if you start at 1998 or even 1997?

  19. I put the data in Excel and, although I am certainly no expert, I found that it is only if you go right back to January 2001 that you get a slight positive slope, the line from every point from February 2001 onwards is slightly downwards.

    Again, I may be wrong, but according to my Excel chart if the June GISS anomaly is no more than 0.53 then the gradient for the whole of your chosen period will be just below zero. (I think that is because the average GISS anomaly for the period since Jan 2001 is 0.53, so any anomaly below that level makes the line drop – but that is just my guess).

  20. Patrick,
    It would not suprise me at all that if you start after Jan 2001, the slope goes negative. I picked Jan 2001 as my start point for analyses based on various publications dates of IPCC documents, overlaid with the “start at the beginning of the year.” (Otherwise, there is some ambiguity about “the best” time to start.)

    I try to stick with one start point! We’ll see what June temperature are like. It’s warmish in the Chicago area. So… maybe GISS will never trip negative. 🙂

  21. Lucia-

    One reason why you may have “beaten” Watts is that he announced last week (when he posted the UAH May data) that he won’t bother graphing the GISS data anymore…

    Thanks for plotting it for us!

    Jeff

  22. Boris,

    so you have no idea where we are in the logarithmic curve that describes the heat retention by co2 AND you have no idea what the human contribution to the amount of co2 is. Yet, you are willing to badmouth Anthony Watts, who at least TRIES to get it right, and corrects himself when shown to be wrong. Unlike GODS of the Real Climate!!!

    Do you know ANYTHING relevant to the Climate discussion??

    And you wonder why deniers tend to ignore statements by pipsqueaks like you??

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    Admin (Lucia): KuhnKat– no name calling. (I try to catch this when I see it. But, please don’t.)

  23. Bob Tisdale–

    Thanks for the graphics. The GISS data did stay ‘up’ compared with the temperatures reported by satellites. It will be interesting to see what HadCrut and NOAA say when they come in.

    The issue with the poles is that some think the pole procedure correct the problem of not measuring the poles. Others think it just adds noise. Presumably, in the long run, we’ll know.

    Given the uncertainty in the pole measurements, it might have been useful for the IPCC to provide estimates for warming excluding the polar regions, and a second estimate including the pole regions. That way, we could track both. But… they didn’t. I don’t really blame them. It’s a pain in the neck to make too many different projections/ comparisons etc. and explain them all. Still, it might have been interesting to see both predictions separately.

  24. lucia,

    FWIW, NASA has provided some basic analysis of the effect of including/excluding the Arctic region in their analysis:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ArcticEffect.pdf

    To me it seems like interpolating over the polar regions is the right thing to do. Why? Because excluding the polar regions has an effect on the GMST equivalent to assigning the global mean temperature over the polar regions. Simple interpolation may not be ideal but IMO is better than using the global mean temperature.

    What do you think?

  25. I’ve been trying to see what GISS uses to determine temperatures in Canada, both current and base period. What I seen is that they use a lot of partial records and very little recent. Just click anywhere in Canada here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ and chances are you will have one, maybe two station reporting “current” . However, the “current” records are often incomplete, having only a month or two of data per year.

  26. I have been trying to figure out how GISS gets their Canadian area data. Clicking anywhere in Canada in the map at the GISS station data site: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/ will show that there are a lot of partial records and very, very few complete current data. So they are extrapolation A LOT for Canadian areas. So if they’re doing that for the Canadian areas, Lord knows what they’re doing for the Arctic regions.

  27. Lucia: There’s a misconception about the use of polar temperatures in global temperature anomaly calculations by those other than GISS. Here’s an illustration of the HADCRUT3v temperature grid for March 2008, available from the Hadley Centre. I’ve crayoned in the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

    The Hadley Center does use polar temperatures. Do they have the same basic area coverage as GISS? I don’t know for sure and haven’t compared the two graphics side by side, but they’re close, South Pole station excluded. What we do know is that the Hadley Centre doesn’t force them with a 1200km radius smoothing calculation like GISS.

    I haven’t found an NCDC polar grid projection, so I can’t comment on them.

  28. JohnV
    That graph isn’t what I meant. What I meant was it would be nice if the IPCC projections made one projection for GMST excluding the poles and one including the poles. I know the measured trend differs depending on what you include. But, we can’t, strictly speaking, include the poles because they aren’t measured.

    GISS tries to estimate this. That’s fine that they do.

    However, I’m not sure whether I’d call what they do an interpolation or extrapolation. To interpolate, you need data on “either side”, in a relevant way. From the point of view of changes in average temperature, the North Pole is an extrem. It’s not in between two points on the arctic circle even if it looks that way on a map. The reason is, both points on the arctic circle get more sun than the actual north pole.

    Extrapolation is a bit dangerous in general. That’s why everyone argues about this procedure– it may introduce as much error as if fixes. Or, it might be splendid. I have no idea.

  29. lucia,

    I realize the GISTEMP graph was not exactly what you meant. It does give an idea of the magnitude of the polar effect though.

    I understand your point about interpolation vs extrapolation. My point is that the temperature anomaly over the North/South pole is probably closer to the anomaly at the North/South polar circle than it is to the average anomaly over the entire globe.

  30. JohnV–
    Sure, the anomaly over the pole is probably closer to the nearby anomalies. But that doesn’t quite answer the question of whether the GISS method ends up getting a more accurate measurement or whether they don’t. They have a theory for extrapolating over the poles. It’s published, others know it. The method has not been universally adopted.

    So, in the meantime, I use the measurement in my average on an equal basis to the other five. It may turn out the GISS one is more correct, or it may turn out otherwise. I have no idea.

  31. lucia,
    I’m not trying to convince you to change anything. I’m just looking for a little non-confrontational conversation about the merits of including/excluding the poles. Do you have a reference for the GISS method of extrapolating over the poles? I should read about it from the source.

  32. The poles are only a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface (less than 1% is beyond 82 degrees N and S), so whether or not they are included can make scant difference to the global mean temperature.

    What is much more significant in the difference between HadCRU and GISS can be seen by looking at the amount of extrapolation and intrapolation that goes on in GISS calculations in Africa, South America, Russia, Canada and many other areas. If you look at the GISS temperature map site, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ and select 250km as the smoothing radius you can see just how much of the planet does not report its temperature. HadCRU only claims to cover 80% of the earth’s surface: whereas using exactly the same information GISS calculates a reading for all the areas where there are no thermometers, as long as they are no more than 1,200 km from the nearest station.

  33. The poles cover only a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface (less than 1% is beyond 82 N and S), so whether or not they are included can make scant difference to the global mean temperature.

    However if you look at the GISS map page http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ and select the 250km smoothing, you see just how large are the areas where there are no reporting weather stations. GISS performs the smoothing that you can see by selecting the 1200km option, and therefore reports the temperature anomaly for vast areas of the planet which HadCRU does not – it only claims to cover 80% of the planet.

  34. JohnV–
    I didn’t think you were being confrontational. I was just answering your question. I don’t know which method is better. I haven’t looked into it enough. It’s just that as far as I can see, “interpolation”, isn’t quite possible. So, things must e some sort of extrapolation.

    I don’t know exactly how they do it and don’t have any prejudice for or against GISS. I think they post a reference at the GISS Temp page. (Unfortunately, many are behind money walls, but you can get them through a library.)

  35. The poles cover only a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface (less than 1% is beyond 82 N or S), so it makes scant difference whether or not they are included.

    However a visit to the GISS maps page http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ varying the smoothing radius from 250km to 1200km shows just how much extrapolation and intrapolation goes on all over the world. HadCRU do far less of this and only produce an average based on 5 degree square grids with reliable data, at present this is just 80% of the planet.

  36. so you have no idea where we are in the logarithmic curve that describes the heat retention by co2 AND you have no idea what the human contribution to the amount of co2 is

    I don’t see how my response led you to this conclusion. I don’t know what you mean by “Where we are in the logarithmic curve.” Yes, we know how much CO2 is from human sources–about 30%.

    tetris,

    Sorry I missed your insult the first time. Take care.

  37. Well If you want to extrapolate or interpolate over the poles, then you need to TEST that method.

    Test the method. show the test. here is how we do it. here is how we tested it. here is how we verified it.

    standard stuff. why is this even a matter? there are no verifications of GISS extrapolations
    that show there model of estimating the polar data actually MATCHES the polar data. cause there is no polar data, thats the problem.

    I think GSMT should be an OBSERVATIONAL RECORD. a record of ACTUAL observations.

    which is why I prefer hadcrut. except for the annoying fact that jones wont release his source data.

    ARRGGG.

  38. steven–
    I also prefer observations to really, honestly be observations.

    Part of the reason I can’t answer yes or no to JohnV is that there is no final verification of the GISS method. The interpolation/extrapolation is likely plausible. But many ideas are plausible. So, in the end, unless you can compare to data at the poles, how can you really know?

    But, on the other hand, leaving out the poles is also a problem if we are comparing to predictions of GMST which do include the poles. I just end up using GISS on the same basis as the other data. Then, as far as testing other theoretical predictions: Let the chips fall where they may.

  40. A comparative graph of the 250km and 1200km smoothing radii for GISSTemp from January 78 to April 08:

    The same data smoothed with a 7-month running average filter:

    And the difference between the two (1200km data minus 250km data):

    The poly trend line could be misleading. It gives the impression that the difference between the two data sets began to climb around 1990. I can also look at the raw data and visualize a relatively flat trend until the 97/98 El Nino and after that, the 1200km smoothing data rises drastically.

    Lucia: It appears Patrick Hadley had the same problem I encountered yesterday, hence his duplicated comments. Your filter page wasn’t showing the code required to post.

  41. JohnV if you are looking for the paper it’s one of the hansen Giss papers ( maybe 1999?) and in it they discuss the difference between hadcru and giss and attribute it to the polar differences.

    There is a footnote as I recall that does some hand waving about rossby waves and GCMs .

    A thread somewhere on CA has the quotes.

    My point would be that an instrument record should be an instrument record. plain and simple.

    beyond that, of course one makes adjustments and modifications.

    1. here is the raw data and what it says.
    2. here are our adjustments and what they do.
    3. here our “modelled” additions to the data and what they do.

    I dont want to bring up the engineer scientist debate, but I think its instructive to note
    that engineers are REQUIRED to make Reports like this, but scientists are required to do orginal work
    and frankly documenting all this stuff in tedious detail is not excatly orginal work. so
    This is what you what see in climate wars. you see engineers who are required to do tedious documentation reading scientists who “SOMETIMES” dont always leave a good paper trail. cultural conflict

  42. Lucia is the most fair, considerate and reasonable warmer I’ve ever met! 🙂 (Figurativly speaking)

    On one side, the North pole is ocean with ice surrounded by land and on the other side, the South Pole, a landmass covered with ice surrounded by water. Should have interesting effects upon the weather.

    Ha, at Open Mind, somebody’s posting as “Gavin’s Pussycat” lol.

  43. 2. here are our adjustments and what they do.

    Here is the USHCN version. It seems reasonable. In fact, a lot of the data adjusting is done before climate scientists get to it.

  44. Pingback: Niche Modeling » Global Warming

  45. GISS simply extrapolates temp data from the northern most land stations up to 1200km. If you look at a map of the Artic Ocean, the 1200km extrapolation is sufficient to cover the entire ocean/ice cap.

  46. Back in January I complained on the AGU thread on DotEarth that the GISS code was mysterious, and a Boris told the world that the algorithm was publicly downloadable. So I asked him if he could run it. Silence ensued.

    Well?
    ===

  51. Bob and others:

    Just eliminate the “here” before the http and it works fine.

  52. I suspect that because GISS use data that is unadjusted for Nino/Nina, they get a predominance of hinge points at incorrect places, and that incorrectly influences the subsequent adjustments for UHI.

  53. So global warming isn’t happening because Boris hasn’t tried to run GISS code? That’s pretty desperate, kim.

  54. Erhmm… Boris,

    Come on! That’s not what kim said. She was addressing your counter argument to her claim “GISS code is mysterious.”

    The code may or may not be mysterious. But, your counter argument to her assertion seems a bit incongruous.

    We know you believe in AGW and kim doesn’t. And we also know that the ‘mysteriousness’ (or not) of GISS code neither proves (nor disproves) global warming. But if you ever want to convince kim (or she you) counter arguing things she never said isn’t going to do it!

  55. Boris I think we should be able to agree on this. The globe’s temperature should be public knowledge.
    It’s our planet. The data collected to determine that temperature should be public knowledge.
    The methods to calculate that temperature should be public knowledge. The methods of calculating GSMT, according to gavin, can be done in two pages of matlab. so why is Gisstemp 10K lines of impenetrable fortran with some python thrown in? and why does hadcrut not release their data or code. same for Noaa.

    They need to sack up, rewrite the code, make it available so anyone can check it, check it just as we check references to papers, and PUT THIS MATTER TO REST. put it to rest, by doing a proper engineering of the job. The science is fine. I buy the science. the engineering is horrific. You go slog through gisstemp.
    I did. It’s a giant pile of, well, I dont use those words here.

  57. Heh. It’s not ‘a Boris’, it’s ‘the Boris’. Well? Take a look at your argument on the AGU thread.
    ===========================

  58. You know, I’ve said it in a number of forums. I am not a sophisticated scientist, and frequently cannot follow the technical details of the arguments. What I can do is evaluate the quality of the rhetoric, and this has been a wonderful example. Thanks, Boris, for playing.
    =============================================

  59. Lucia,

    I apologise. I will not repeat this.

    Boris, I also apologise to you. The hostess does not want this on her blog and I should not have called you a name.

  60. Lucia,

    I apologise. I will not repeat this.

    Boris, I also apologise to you. The hostess does not want this on her blog and I should not have called you a name.

  61. Lucia,

    I am well acquainted with kim’s arguments, which include many conspiracies, so my comment may seem extreme without the context.

  62. Sorry, Boris, my opinion is that the phony carbon paradigm is a folies a beaucoup, not a conspiracy. Your insinuations about conspiracies is more sophistry.
    ===========================================================

  63. Your violation of the rule of holes is going to provoke a cave-in unless you shore up your argument with something more substantial than that irrelevancy.
    ==============================================

  64. Boris mentioned above that human contribution of global CO2 was 30%.

    It’s about 3% of the total.

    There seems to be also some intersting behaviour in the posting area – I did not put my website on, and nothing appeared, So I did and now there are two posts.

  65. Lucia, it looks like now the recent cold months are making UAH flat 10yrs way back to 1998:

  66. BobB–
    Yep. UAH is looking flat. But, do bear in mind, if we average all five data sets, the trend is positive from 1998. (They aren’t up much, but the trend is positive.)

  68. Bob B June 15th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    Lucia, why praytell would you bother to include the GISS temp when it is missing Africa and Canada surface stations?

    Actually, the real question is why would ANYONE believe the GISS anomalies becase of what you brought forward (lack of coverage, Arctic extrapolation, changes in histories, outdated code, use of the oldest reference period, etc).

    Most of the reason for the code is to create the charts, and the charts are used to show the “extreme” temp rise, and without the “extreme” temp rise, people won’t pay attention.

    People do believe that temps are rising, but there is no credible measurement to prove that man is responsible for the entire rise.

  69. It’s probably been said before, but it rarely hurts to hear more praise – many thanks for releasing your spreadsheet – may the power of many eyes and minds guide you!

  70. Your insinuations about conspiracies is more sophistry.

    Really, kim? Perhaps I should do what denialists never do–check a primary source:

    Such a claim, underlying a lot of the hysteria of the AGW hoax, is highly controversial.

    Nice try, Boris. I strongly suspect that a small coterie of the warmers have figured out that much of the AGW hype is fraudulent. The rest of you are just being taken for a ride.

    Especially if the AGW from CO2 is the fraud it is becoming to appear to be.

    The tipping point on this fraud is fast approaching.

    [Hansen] is a fraud, and has conspired with some to perpetuate this epic error.

    What do you warmers hope to accomplish by perpetuating this fraud? There will be an accounting, and the longer it takes, the worse for the public’s opinion of science. This is already an amazing disaster of science.

    If you don’t want people knowing you think AGW is a fraud and a conspiracy, I suggest not typing your musings at the New York Times.

  71. Henri–
    I think the IPCC’s position is most of the rise is due to humans. I don’t think they say all. That said, I’m not sure they exclude that possibility.

    Clearly, everyone everywhere things there is some natural variability due to (“weather!”). The larger “weather noise” is, the less confident we can be that any rise is due to humans. But by the same token, large weather noise permits weather to mask an underlying climate trend too.

  73. Bob B– Thanks for the link. I’m aware of the various controversies about the temperature records, but I’m still going to proceed with the available ones.

    Obviously, to the extent that some don’t believe GISS, HadCrut, UAH, RSS or NOAA, they won’t believe calculations involving those measurements. But, I still think it’s best to use the average for the main test, and then also show the individual trends.

  74. You will not post this, but honestly, the claim of no warming is a real stretch. You would have to use a magnifying glass to find the “flat” spots in the graph below. You could say the same about some stocks that have tripled in value. It is possible to find a short stretch where they flattened out in value. In the case of weather, you need to read about La Nina and ENSO.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

  75. Dan–
    Of course I let your comment show. I moderate lightly.

    I haven’t claimed “no warming”, only that the GISS ordinary least squares trend since 2001 happens to be amazingly close to zero this month– which, at 7 * 10^-5 C/year is about as close to zero as we’ll ever get. The “flat” bit is the dashed line, which is probably visible to most who look at the graph.

    Rest assured, I know about ENSO. As you know La Nina is one of the phases of ENSO.

  76. Heh, Boris, thanks for the research. My opinion remains that AGW is largely an inadvertent fraud. The degree of conspiracy among the principal players is yet to be determined. I suggest you take a look at Steve’s Fortress posts for some evidence of guilty consciences. I repeat, the main fraudulence in the hysteria around the CO2 paradigm is an example of the ‘madness of crowds’, not active conspiracy, but we shall see.

    If there has been conspiracy, I’m prepared to believe that it all started out quite innocently, the motivation was to save the earth from a climate catatastrophe. Somewhere along the line, that motivation, a laudable one, has been used to justify some questionable science, in order to further the policy goals of those trying to save the earth. It isn’t difficult to think that there were more than one with this perverted motivation. Whether there was active conspiracy, or passive ‘breathing together’ is yet to be determined.

    Your excerpts from my DotEarth writings bear out that these have been my views.

    It is important to remember, that though the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so is the Road to Paradise. I believe James Hansen started with good intentions on the Road to Paradise. I think he hasn’t paid enough attention to the signs along the way, and his present destination looks more like the Hell he imagined for all of us, than the reality of the world around us.
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  77. Oh, and by the way, my views as to the illicit co-operation of the principal players is still irrelevant to the mess that is the GISS code. Remember how you so proudly countered my claim that the code was inaccessible with your crowing about it being publicly downloadable? You were trying to counter my point, and to the uninformed, it seemed like a telling point. As it turns out, it was sophistry, and it seems that logical fallacies are your trump cards. Well, maybe not trumps, maybe you just got a distribution hand.
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  78. One last thing, Boris, about your contention that ‘denialists’ never check primary sources. Surely in your peregrinations through the files of DotEarth you have noticed that my main theme over there is to plead with the readers to check primary sources, the UAH and RSS satellite tropospheric thermometers, the Argos oceanic bouy thermometers, the Jason sea level readings and the polar ice anomalies. How much more primary can you get?

    Sophist. ::spits;;
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    Admin note: No spitting!

  79. Heh, it is all pretty childish, isn’t it. Well, it looks like John Goetz and Steve McIntyre, and others, are about to break the code. Finally this mass of paid for by taxes information is going to be accessible to the public.
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  80. Kim, you mention some interesting stuff. You should link to some of it to make it easier to find.
    Lucia, you have a great Blog—keep it up!

  81. Whatever, kim. Your words are clear to everyone but yourself.

    I love your “inadvertent fraud.” Do you even know what “fraud” means?

    So it was an accidental hoax and Hansen unknowingly conspired? 🙂

  82. Pingback: Time to Ditch “Climate Change”!? | Joe Taylor's Blog

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