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... which would support my argument that the article misses the point. If the ratio of carbon isotopes is the damning evidence, then perhaps the article could h

... which would support my argument that the article misses the point. If the ratio of carbon isotopes is the damning evidence, then perhaps the article could have graphed it or at least mentioned it.

pcrh 11y ago
You're correct that the article failed to point out that the increase in CO2 was unambiguously man made. Now, is the temperature increase caused by the increase in CO2 - likely so since the correlation is so close. Have they exhaustively excluded other possible causes -- maybe, maybe not...?
- merpnderp 11y ago
  Why does everyone ignore the UAH and RSS troposphere data? It's the best data (by far the most accurate) we have on atmospheric temperature, and it shows no warming since 1996. http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html I have a simple R script to find the trend if you want to see it yourself.
  - pcrh 11y ago
    Climate science is not my area, so I wouldn't want to comment on details... The wiki article suggests that earlier discrepancies between tropospheric and ground measurements have been resolved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_data...
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      That article doesn't offer much information about how the discrepancy was resolved. I do know it is wrong in saying that the RSS troposphere shows more warming than UAH since 1998, because RSS shows zero warming since 1998. Don't trust me, please look at the data yourself. But the land temperature stations have a miasma of questionable adjustments hanging around them. The stations themselves are not often well situated for clean readings, and then when the data is adjusted for heat island effects, rural stations will be adjusted upwards far more than urban areas will be adjusted downwards. I can't imagine why rural stations would ever be adjusted upwards, except on a case by case basis. But either way, the confidence intervals become mere guesses. It's unconscionable to mix that data with the more scientifically rigorous satellite data. There's no getting around that the UAH and RSS sets show little to no warming for nearly 2 decades (RSS is 19 years and 6 months, and UAH 6.0 [most references to UAH will be 5.6 which is outdated] lines up nearly perfectly with RSS). [Edited for mobile grammar mistakes]
  - phaemon 11y ago
    Can I ask you two questions? What does your R script attempt to show? What is your null hypothesis? Thanks!
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      My R script merely finds the first time the temperature trend turns positive since last data point. My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm just wanting to make clear I'm not making any grand claims, except that the most rigorous data, with the tightest confidence intervals (measured in fractions of K instead of multiple K's), says that nearly every model previous of the IPCC's 5th assessment was wrong. None of the models predicted a 2 decade lapse in warming. We don't know as much as we thought we knew. [EDIT] I don't mean that the models were completely wrong, merely that they were missing some key variable to explain 19 years and 6 months of flat global temperature trends.
      - phaemon 11y ago
        > My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass I'm sure you're not, and certainly you seem to be making a good faith effort to analyse the data, but I'm afraid you're just doing it wrong. You can't just keep testing up to x data points till you hit a significance level and then say "this proves x-1 doesn't show the trend". Imagine you were measuring the height of waves on a beach as the tide comes in. After 20 measurements, you can see a significant height difference, showing the tide is indeed rising. Now imagine if your stated conclusion was, "the tide hasn't been coming in for the last 19 waves". It would be ridiculous, right? That's pretty much what you're doing here. If adding more data makes your conclusion worse, you're doing it wrong. The correct way to test this is to say, "30 years of data shows a rising trend. Is the past 19 years significantly different to this?". Then your null hypothesis is that the trend remains the same and when you add more data your conclusion (either way) becomes stronger. Since you've shown enough interest to create an R script to test this data, I sincerely hope you'll have enough interest now to test it properly and share what you find. Good luck!
  - bcheung 11y ago
    No warming of the air. But the oceans have been absorbing and storing heat. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-hid-the-heat-and-slowed-pace-of-global-warming/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-hid-the-hea...

pcrh 11y ago

You're correct that the article failed to point out that the increase in CO2 was unambiguously man made. Now, is the temperature increase caused by the increase in CO2 - likely so since the correlation is so close. Have they exhaustively excluded other possible causes -- maybe, maybe not...?

merpnderp 11y ago
Why does everyone ignore the UAH and RSS troposphere data? It's the best data (by far the most accurate) we have on atmospheric temperature, and it shows no warming since 1996. http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html I have a simple R script to find the trend if you want to see it yourself.
- pcrh 11y ago
  Climate science is not my area, so I wouldn't want to comment on details... The wiki article suggests that earlier discrepancies between tropospheric and ground measurements have been resolved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_data...
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    That article doesn't offer much information about how the discrepancy was resolved. I do know it is wrong in saying that the RSS troposphere shows more warming than UAH since 1998, because RSS shows zero warming since 1998. Don't trust me, please look at the data yourself. But the land temperature stations have a miasma of questionable adjustments hanging around them. The stations themselves are not often well situated for clean readings, and then when the data is adjusted for heat island effects, rural stations will be adjusted upwards far more than urban areas will be adjusted downwards. I can't imagine why rural stations would ever be adjusted upwards, except on a case by case basis. But either way, the confidence intervals become mere guesses. It's unconscionable to mix that data with the more scientifically rigorous satellite data. There's no getting around that the UAH and RSS sets show little to no warming for nearly 2 decades (RSS is 19 years and 6 months, and UAH 6.0 [most references to UAH will be 5.6 which is outdated] lines up nearly perfectly with RSS). [Edited for mobile grammar mistakes]
- phaemon 11y ago
  Can I ask you two questions? What does your R script attempt to show? What is your null hypothesis? Thanks!
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    My R script merely finds the first time the temperature trend turns positive since last data point. My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm just wanting to make clear I'm not making any grand claims, except that the most rigorous data, with the tightest confidence intervals (measured in fractions of K instead of multiple K's), says that nearly every model previous of the IPCC's 5th assessment was wrong. None of the models predicted a 2 decade lapse in warming. We don't know as much as we thought we knew. [EDIT] I don't mean that the models were completely wrong, merely that they were missing some key variable to explain 19 years and 6 months of flat global temperature trends.
    - phaemon 11y ago
      > My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass I'm sure you're not, and certainly you seem to be making a good faith effort to analyse the data, but I'm afraid you're just doing it wrong. You can't just keep testing up to x data points till you hit a significance level and then say "this proves x-1 doesn't show the trend". Imagine you were measuring the height of waves on a beach as the tide comes in. After 20 measurements, you can see a significant height difference, showing the tide is indeed rising. Now imagine if your stated conclusion was, "the tide hasn't been coming in for the last 19 waves". It would be ridiculous, right? That's pretty much what you're doing here. If adding more data makes your conclusion worse, you're doing it wrong. The correct way to test this is to say, "30 years of data shows a rising trend. Is the past 19 years significantly different to this?". Then your null hypothesis is that the trend remains the same and when you add more data your conclusion (either way) becomes stronger. Since you've shown enough interest to create an R script to test this data, I sincerely hope you'll have enough interest now to test it properly and share what you find. Good luck!
- bcheung 11y ago
  No warming of the air. But the oceans have been absorbing and storing heat. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-hid-the-heat-and-slowed-pace-of-global-warming/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceans-hid-the-hea...