These are annual average temperature (top) and precipitation (bottom) in the United States from 1895 through 2007.
The magnitude of change in the trend lines, +1 degree in temperature, +2 inches annual rainfall, is interesting but not nearly as interesting as the slopes being almost identical and straight as an arrow. That’s an amazing correlation for there to be no direct causal factor in common. Warmer, wetter, and more CO2 are good things for agriculture. God help us all if those trend lines go towards colder and drier. If it does we’ll be inventing ways to make global warming happen.
This supports climatologist Roy Spencer’s thesis of “Nature’s Thermostat” – that there are negative feedback phenomena that help stabilize climate. i.e., NOT positive feedback that increases the global warming from CO2.
Global Temperature Report 1988-2003.
and as an interesting subpoint…..this april was the coolest april in over 100 years:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/cl.....g3/na.html
Dave:
FYI. From The Skeptic, Vol. 14 No. 1
Featured Article: A Climate of Belief, by Patrick Frank.
“The following is Patrick Frank’s controversial article challenging data and climate models on global warming. Patrick Frank is a Ph.D. chemist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. He has previously published in Skeptic on the noble savage myth, as well as in Theology and Science on the designer universe myth and in Free Inquiry, with Thomas H. Ray, on the science is philosophy myth.”
http://www.skeptic.com/the_mag.....elief.html
This article is pretty devastating. The maths supporting Frank’s calculations can be found at http://www.skeptic.com/the_mag.....g_info.pdf
The author’s conclusion:
“General Circulation Models are so terribly unreliable that there is no objectively falsifiable reason to suppose any of the current warming trend is due to human-produced CO2, or that this CO2 will detectably warm the climate at all. Therefore, even if extreme events do develop because of a warming climate, there is no scientifically valid reason to attribute the cause to human-produced CO2. In the chaos of Earth’s climate, there may be no discernible cause for warming. Many excellent scientists have explained all this in powerful works written to defuse the CO2 panic, but the choir sings seductively and few righteous believers seem willing to entertain disproofs.”
perhaps i should have said that was the 29th coolest in 114 years, but it WAS 1 degree farenheit below the 100 year average.
Well, they would be “straight as an arrow” – they’re tend lines, so by definition they are straight. A cubic curve actually fits the temperature data much better.
It’s difficult to see what you mean by the slopes being the same: the slopes on the plots are in part artifacts of the plotting: there is a lot more white (errm, grey) space around the temperature plot. If you plot them so that the data takes up the same proportion of the vertical scale, the temperature slope looks bigger. In fact, when we scale the data to the same variance, the slope for the temperature effect is about 1.7 times larger.
The correlation in the data is actually slightly negative (-0.06).
Bob
I realize the slopes will change with plot scales. I didn’t pick the scales that were used. As well, if you change the period of time (for instance use 1895 to 1962) you’ll find the temp trend slope to be about the same but the precip slope is flat.
Conceded the straight line is an artifact of a simple linear regression across the entire time series. That has rather limited use in data presentation. A trend line in that can be extremely misleading. A single high/low reading at either end of the data series would plot a trend line that would appear as a gradual slope across the entire series when in fact there was no trend at all. I guess I was expecting the trend line to be a rolling average based on the length of time specified in the base period. Mibad.
I’d like to take this time to again point out that the same crowd that insist “the world is burning to the ground” wants to rip down hydro-electric dams and prohibit nuclear energy all the while having personal carbon footprints much bigger than average.
To me, that is slam-dunk evidence that they are lying through their teeth about there being a crisis.
tribune7
It is worth raising scientific criticism.
However lay off the ad hominem accusation of moral perversity unless you have clear evidence to the contrary. cf your statement “To me, that is slam-dunk evidence that they are lying through their teeth about there being a crisis.”
They may be deluded and morally unaware of what they are doing.
Interesting trends.
Next would be to show a plot of temperature vs precipitation and to do an autocorrelation to check the correlation.
Major issues:
Is the temperature trend biased by
1) the “heat island effect”?
e.g., Parker and Fresno Airport
and How not to measure temperature, part 10
Note particularly the “careful” location of the temperature sensor near concrete and an air conditioner exhaust!
2) systematic bias in temperature adjustment.
e.g. see:
Petaluma CA
There are better analyses around, but these are a flavor to exemplify the issues.
I did. There’s no pattern, as I pointed out above, the correlation is effectively zero.
An interesting article addressing the issue is:
Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler? A tale of two thermometers
Are the “adjustments” by NASA’s Hansen to “correct” for errors, or are they the bias that is creating “global warming”?
They may be deluded and morally unaware of what they are doing.
DLH,
What evidence would you accept that they (OK, some) are lying through their teeth– i.e. knowingly and with premeditation disseminating information that they know to be false, and –and to add to my cynicism– for the pursuit of personal money and power?
Frankly, I can’t see any other word for it.
Now, I grant that “they” is a rather broad term, and certainly there are those who are sincerely and passionately concerned about global warming. You can usually tell who they are because they are outspoken advocates of nuclear power.
And of course there are others who are not lying but merely stupid and followers of fashion.
But follow the money. To ignore that lying — in the ugliest definition of the word– is not being used by some in the pursuit of power and money, is naive.
lol
tribune7
I would rather not use “lying” unless there is clear evidence to support it.
See the numerous accusations as in the following Google search:
Panda’s thumb lying
Lets set the example in origin’s discourse and oppose such frivilous rhetorical use of “lying”.
I find this video brings a smile to my face. (Thanks to Minnesotans for global warming.)
DLH,
I respect your opinion and will try to refrain from using that word but please don’t discount the possibility it may be happening.
When someone uses Hollywood disaster footage without comment in a documentary to illustrate a crisis one is obliged to go hmmmmm.
And when the same political alliance describes a crisis then advocates actions that would actually worsen it as per their claimed cause of it (new turnpike tollbooths, removing hydro-electric dams), I can’t help but go mega-hmmmmm.