Government Data Show U.S. in Decade-Long Cooling

[Paul98]

What contrary scientific data are you talking about which refutes the fact that we've been in a prolonged temperature increase lull the past 17 years?

post 35

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

It's already been mentioned in this thread!

Please provide the specific Post number where my question to you was fully addressed.
Edit - Thanks Paul.

 

[Babbles]

I have also found this to be incredibly strange. People with zero scientific training would never pick up one of your analytical chemistry projects and declare that you're an idiot/lying/that they know better than you. For some unfathomable reason people seem perfectly content to do just that with climate science.

To me it seems that it has become a culture war/political constraint issue. Elites and ideology tell people that climate science is a lie and if you fall on their end of the spectrum you are powerfully incentivized to believe them.

For a good example, this study on the vaccine-autism link found a similar thing:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...in-believing-things-that-just-arent-true.html Not only did science not convince those who believed differently, in some cases making people aware of the science made them believe wrong things even more strongly.

Humans are strange creatures.

I've done a lot of projects in environmental chemistry and quite often I find people on the internet that do claim to 'know better' when it comes to the environment or EPA. I've also spent time doing what's called 'bioanalytical' work for preclinical and clinical FDA studies, and of course people have tons of opinions on FDA, pharma, animal research, and so forth. Currently investigated a wide range of various contaminants in food products, and it makes me roll my eyes when people want to talk about 'organic food' or 'natural' or 'chemical free.' Words mean things and standards of identification do not exists for such words.

My guess is - and the New Yorker article touched on it - is once something becomes politicized, then no amount of objective data can change their opinion, which is rooted in politics, not knowledge. It boggles my mind that otherwise intelligent people would say, "I don't care what the data demonstrates, I choose to believe otherwise!"

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

post 35

Did you read the article I posted in #28? There are several theories regarding the current temperature increase lull and the fact of the matter is that we don't know why it's occurring. To state as "fact" that the lull is due to ocean heat retention is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty imo. While it's a plausible theory for some of the temperature lull...the fact of the matter is that WE DON'T KNOW!

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

It's already been mentioned in this thread!

No...my question was not addressed by Post #35.

Please provide contrary scientific data which refutes the fact that we've been in a prolonged temperature increase lull the past 17 years. Most experts in this field are acknowledging this lull as fact and they're currently trying to figure out why this is happening.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/warming-lull-haunts-authors-key-climate-report

 

[fskimospy]

My guess is - and the New Yorker article touched on it - is once something becomes politicized, then no amount of objective data can change their opinion, which is rooted in politics, not knowledge. It boggles my mind that otherwise intelligent people would say, "I don't care what the data demonstrates, I choose to believe otherwise!"

Yes, I imagine this is the root of it. This other paper was linked in the article, specifically dealing with political beliefs: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2441895

What's distressing about this is that climate change affects everyone. If facts don't work on people who are currently denying it what do you do? It's sad that the answer was basically "nobody's found a way to fix that".

 

[fskimospy]

No...my question was not addressed by Post #35.

Please provide contrary scientific data which refutes the fact that we've been in a prolonged temperature increase lull the past 17 years. Most experts in this field are acknowledging this lull as fact and they're currently trying to figure out why this is happening.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/warming-lull-haunts-authors-key-climate-report

Yes it was. In addition, your own link addresses it. So again I'm going to have to ask you why you appear to be advocating for ignoring such massive scientific evidence to the contrary?

I would suggest you read the New Yorker article and think how it might apply to this debate.

 

[xBiffx]

From Doc's linked article:

Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10 to 15 years was misleading in the context of climate change, which is measured over decades and centuries.

The U.S. also urged the authors to include the "leading hypothesis" that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. That year was exceptionally warm, so any graph showing global temperatures starting with 1998 looks flat. Using 1999 or 2000 as a starting year would yield a more upward-pointing curve. In fact, every year after 2000 has been warmer than the year 2000.

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for skeptics.

Aside from the US reaction. Does anyone else see a problem with what the other countries are asking for?

Also, this part caught my eye:

The heating of Earth's surface appears to have slowed in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.

For years, skeptics have touted what looks like a slowdown in surface warming since 1998 to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are cooking the planet by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Doesn't this just reinforce what we already know about water vapor being the biggest contributor to warming as a greenhouse gas? Seems the authors just glanced over that fact.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Yes it was. In addition, your own link addresses it. So again I'm going to have to ask you why you appear to be advocating for ignoring such massive scientific evidence to the contrary?

I would suggest you read the New Yorker article and think how it might apply to this debate.

Both of the articles I linked freely acknowledge the temperature increase lull....where is your scientific evidence that there has been no lull in observed global temperatures during the past 17 years?

 

[fskimospy]

Both of the articles I linked freely acknowledge the temperature increase lull....where is your scientific evidence that there has been no lull in observed global temperatures during the past 17 years?

From your own article:

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. That year was exceptionally warm, so any graph showing global temperatures starting with 1998 looks flat. Using 1999 or 2000 as a starting year would yield a more upward-pointing curve. In fact, every year after 2000 has been warmer than the year 2000.

Using an extreme outlier year as the start for a series is bad science.

Many researchers say the slowdown in warming is related to the natural ocean warming and cooling cycles known as El Nino and La Nina. Also, a 2013 study by Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research found dramatic recent warming in the deeper oceans, between 2,300 and 6,500 feet.

The planet as a whole is still warming. Lull not found.

Again, I strongly suggest you read the New Yorker article.

 

[fskimospy]

From Doc's linked article:

Aside from the US reaction. Does anyone else see a problem with what the other countries are asking for?

Actually, what Belgium is asking for makes perfect sense. Choosing to pick an outlier as your starting point would be pretty poor science if you're attempting to accurately depict the data.

 

[Cozarkian]

I have also found this to be incredibly strange. People with zero scientific training would never pick up one of your analytical chemistry projects and declare that you're an idiot/lying/that they know better than you. For some unfathomable reason people seem perfectly content to do just that with climate science.

Don't tobacco-users and marijuana users do that all the time?

 

[xBiffx]

Actually, what Belgium is asking for makes perfect sense. Choosing to pick an outlier as your starting point would be pretty poor science if you're attempting to accurately depict the data.

Maybe it makes perfect sense to you. I'm not surprised by your take on it. However, if you are going to show the last 15 years, you really can't show 14 and claim 15. Perhaps they should show the last 20 or 10 years I guess.

I don't think its technically an outlier either. It's within confidence intervals and also standard deviations. We've also seen other year to year changes of the same magnitude. Outliers are defined as greatly different from the data point before or after. Or they are distant from the rest of the data. Neither definition applies in the case of 1998.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

From your own article:

Using an extreme outlier year as the start for a series is bad science.

The planet as a whole is still warming. Lull not found.

Again, I strongly suggest you read the New Yorker article.

Then it appears that you think Nature doesn't have a clue as to what they're talking about when they refer to the ‘global-warming hiatus’. Apparently, you believe that a New Yorker blog on human psychology is a much more credible source regarding the global temperature record and the current state of climate science. Got it.

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525

Climate change: The case of the missing heat

Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are piecing together an explanation.

<snip>

 

[fskimospy]

Then it appears that you think Nature doesn't have a clue as to what they're talking about when they refer to the ‘global-warming hiatus’. Apparently, you believe that a New Yorker blog on human psychology is a much more credible source regarding the global temperature record and the current state of climate science. Got it.

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525

Nope, I'm merely offering an explanation as to why you and so many other people are ignoring scientific evidence that contradicts your position.

In addition, this would be yet another article you are linking to that is discussing the same problems I mentioned earlier.

 

[fskimospy]

Maybe it makes perfect sense to you. I'm not surprised by your take on it. However, if you are going to show the last 15 years, you really can't show 14 and claim 15. Perhaps they should show the last 20 or 10 years I guess.

I don't think its technically an outlier either. It's within confidence intervals and also standard deviations. We've also seen other year to year changes of the same magnitude. Outliers are defined as greatly different from the data point before or after. Or they are distant from the rest of the data. Neither definition applies in the case of 1998.

I think that 1998 was distinctly different. More importantly though, the real criticism was that climate change is a process what occurs over decades and centuries. Picking a single year as a starting point is again, poor science. This is why it was suggested to look at decade on decade changes, to smooth out the irregularities.

 

[Paul98]

Both of the articles I linked freely acknowledge the temperature increase lull....where is your scientific evidence that there has been no lull in observed global temperatures during the past 17 years?

The lull is in the atmosphere, and sea surface temperatures and no one disputes that.

The question then becomes why did the temperature increase drop so much after 1997? I gave you the main reason, if you want to learn more look up the PDO, AMO, trade winds, and the ocean cycles. These changes happened in the past and are having a similar effect now as they should. Also look at sea level rise, and why. Along with other potential factors to see what impact they may be having.

Yes I did read your article, I actually had read that before when looking for information.

 

[xBiffx]

I think that 1998 was distinctly different.

The data doesn't back up your subjective opinion.

More importantly though, the real criticism was that climate change is a process what occurs over decades and centuries. Picking a single year as a starting point is again, poor science.

You have to start somewhere. And data is data. You can represent it either way as long as you qualify it. One way it might show one thing, the other way it shows another, that's statistics for you. But to want to completely disregard or omit the data being displayed and qualified in certain way just because its against your position/hypothesis is nonsense.

Even if we smooth out the irregularities, there are still questions that arise from looking at the data.

 

[Paul98]

If temperatures start to climb quickly again and the current cycle doesn't change or the cycle changes and the temperatures don't rise quickly I will be proven wrong. Then will have to look at what did change and see what the cause was.

 

[fskimospy]

The data doesn't back up your subjective opinion.

Disagree!

You have to start somewhere. And data is data. You can represent it either way as long as you qualify it. One way it might show one thing, the other way it shows another, that's statistics for you. But to want to completely disregard or omit the data being displayed and qualified in certain way just because its against your position/hypothesis is nonsense.

Even if we smooth out the irregularities, there are still questions that arise from looking at the data.

It is true that you can represent it any way so long as you qualify it, but if you decided to start from a single year and then extrapolate a "pause" your qualifier should be "in no way can you extrapolate a pause from this". I guess how useful you think that is is up to you.

Advocating for looking at averages over longer periods in an inherently noisy data set is just common sense and basic research design. So yet again, picking a single year and going from there is bad science. Nonsense even.

 

[Babbles]

I think perhaps the best quote in the AP article was this:

But "anybody who tries to use the past 10 years to argue about the reality of global warming — which is based upon century-scale data — is just being distracting."

Again, this is where people need to understand some basic mathematics. Or perhaps not basic math, but at least basic statistics.

First, frequency of data points - the scale - is absolutely essential. Even the stuff I do in the laboratory with chromatography, if I 'zoom in' enough, everything is flat. Again I am not a climatologist, but I guess 10 years is a pretty small datapoint when looking at global changes. Sometimes the data can even look 'spiky' because the peak/valley height between two points can look significant, but when you 'zoom out' that height is much smaller than the error bars.

Secondly, not everything is going to be a nice linear increase that fits a y=mx+b model with a slope of 1. Things can be quadratic or otherwise have 'flat parts' of a curve.

Finally, the types of data are not always the same. Obviously there isn't a magical temperature that reflects global temperature. How, when, and where you take the temperature complicates making a curve. Reconciling a datapoint from a 100 years ago in NYC versus one yesterday in Alaska takes work. And, I imagine that is the 'easy' part in building the models.

 

[dphantom]

I think perhaps the best quote in the AP article was this:


Again, this is where people need to understand some basic mathematics. Or perhaps not basic math, but at least basic statistics.

First, frequency of data points - the scale - is absolutely essential. Even the stuff I do in the laboratory with chromatography, if I 'zoom in' enough, everything is flat. Again I am not a climatologist, but I guess 10 years is a pretty small datapoint when looking at global changes. Sometimes the data can even look 'spiky' because the peak/valley height between two points can look significant, but when you 'zoom out' that height is much smaller than the error bars.

Secondly, not everything is going to be a nice linear increase that fits a y=mx+b model with a slope of 1. Things can be quadratic or otherwise have 'flat parts' of a curve.

Finally, the types of data are not always the same. Obviously there isn't a magical temperature that reflects global temperature. How, when, and where you take the temperature complicates making a curve. Reconciling a datapoint from a 100 years ago in NYC versus one yesterday in Alaska takes work. And, I imagine that is the 'easy' part in building the models.

Couldn't agree more. That is why I found intriguing the roughly 10 year dataset from these new weather stations. Obviously drawing conclusions long term from such a short data set is going to be highly prone to error. We should know more in another 10 years and much more in 100 from these weather stations.

I would like to see the same done elsewhere. Placing new weather stations in areas unaffected by artificial constructions would give us much better data for modeling. I can only imagine how difficult it has to be to try to normalize data from existing weather stations that might at one time been in an open area but are now surrounded by buildings and asphalt.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

The lull is in the atmosphere, and sea surface temperatures and no one disputes that.

eskimospy disputes this...he actually thinks that "deniers" are cherrypicking data points and apparently believes that Nature etal are actually buying into their "lie".

The question then becomes why did the temperature increase drop so much after 1997? I gave you the main reason, if you want to learn more look up the PDO, AMO, trade winds, and the ocean cycles. These changes happened in the past and are having a similar effect now as they should. Also look at sea level rise, and why. Along with other potential factors to see what impact they may be having.

I think that the best explanation for the temperature lull was the El Nina event of 1997/98 along with some ocean heat sequestration. However, to present this as fact is wrong...and this is what differentiates "believers" from those who actually respect science. You should read eskimospy's New Yorker blog if you want to learn more about why people do these things.

 

[fskimospy]

eskimospy disputes this...he actually thinks that "deniers" are cherrypicking data points and apparently believes that Nature etal are actually buying into their "lie".

I think that the best explanation for the temperature lull was the El Nina event of 1997/98 along with some ocean heat sequestration. However, to present this as fact is wrong...and this is what differentiates "believers" from those who actually respect science. You should read eskimospy's New Yorker blog if you want to learn more about why people do these things.

Sigh.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Nope, I'm merely offering an explanation as to why you and so many other people are ignoring scientific evidence that contradicts your position.

In addition, this would be yet another article you are linking to that is discussing the same problems I mentioned earlier.

What scientific evidence am I ignoring that contradicts my position. I've asked for this several times yet you keep pointing to a blog on human pyschology. Please be specific or don't bother responding....I'm tiring of this game.