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Comments 51301 to 51350:

  1. It's El Niño
    Bob Tisdale: Why should anyone here feel obliged to respond to your nonsense? As far as I can see your questions are an attempt to side-step sea surface temperature trends as well as increasing ocean heat content. I mean, come on. Your graph of "Detrended Rest-of-World SST Data Disagrees with The Warming of SST Anomalies As Portrayed By AGW Proponents" [SST abbreviated by me]? Of course it disagrees - you detrended the SST data. As far as divergence between SST behaviour and ENSO goes, one would only expect complete agreement between SSTs and ENSO if ENSO were the sole driver of SSTs. But the fact that there is an upward trend in SSTs puts the boots to such a belief: other factors also drive SST behaviour. So, if anything, we would expect divergence from ENSO from time to time. Tom Curtis' post at #80, in the meantime, puts the boots to your claim that the East Pacific "hasn't warmed":
    It turns out that not only is the lack of warming in the East Pacific not statistically significant, its existence is an artifact of the choice of start and endpoints in the data. [Emphasis original.]
    So how is one to characterize your claim "no one here has replied to that question from comment 40" except as refusal, whether through inability or unwillingness, to read others' posts on this thread?
  2. Subcap Methane Feedbacks, Part 1: Fossil methane seepage in Alaska
    That Figure 1 by jg is very cool!
  3. It's El Niño
    To all who have commented in response to my appearance here at SkepticalScience: You’ve not answered my very basic questions. In my opening comment (40) here, I presented some graphs and asked questions of you. The first graph was for the East Pacific, which shows no warming over the past 30 years. http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-111.png I asked, Why hasn’t the East Pacific warmed? IanC has attempted to explain why it has not warmed using an abstract form of sea surface temperature. He’s making the effort. Bravo, for that. The third graph was the detrended sea surface temperature anomalies for the Atlantic, Indian, and West Pacific, which I referred to as the “Rest of the World.” http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-13.png It shows four periods when the Rest-of-the-World data diverges from the ENSO index (the scaled NINO3.4 sea surface temperatures [scaling factor 0.12 and lag 6 months). The two divergences in green are obviously the effects of El Chichon and Mount Pinatubo, but the divergences in brown are ENSO-related. The sea surface temperatures for the Rest of the World do not cool proportionally during the La Niña events of 1988/89 and 1998-2001. Everyone here has avoided the discussion of that graph. That’s the big ticket item, and it’s blatantly obvious why it’s important. Up through comment 67, I have replied to your questions and comments, yet no one here has replied to that question from comment 40. It’s time for you to catch up with me. You all are running way behind in the QnA. So I’ll ask the question again: Why does the detrended [Rest of the World] data diverge from the ENSO index during the 1988/89 and 1998/99/00/01 La Niñas? The ball is in YOUR court. Unless YOU can explain those divergences, there is no reason to continue this conversation. If and when you explain them, I’ll be happy to respond to all of the questions you’ve presented. I’ll check back every couple of days. Regards PS: skywatcher says: “You have to love Bob Tisdale complaining about the 'gatekeepers' of science…” I wasn’t complaining, skywatcher. I was being realistic. There is a difference.
  4. It's El Niño
    You have to love Bob Tisdale complaining about the 'gatekeepers' of science ... in response to an opening post that starts by discussing the failings of McLean et al who published in JGR!! Bob, are you saying that your science is not even up to the standard of McLean et al, a classic example of science being entirely open to the so-called skeptics? And for the umpteenth time, where is the heat coming from? And why do you persist in selecting favoured subsets of the data, rather than consider the full body of data? Your cherry-picks may be more elegant than the "it's not warmed since 1998" crowd, but they are still cherry-picks.
  5. It's El Niño
    Kayell, Your quote of William Briggs came from his post here, but I don't think he meant it the way you used it. Considering what he said in the rest of his post, I think his point is that if you are claiming that the trend is upwards, you don't have to use a linear model to make that claim. Whether the claim is a valid one is an entirely different matter. I don't fully agree with what he said, but the example he used is an excellent example as why one has to be very careful drawing patterns out of a noisy time series (BTW ENSO is noise when you are looking at multi-decadal trends). He artificially generated an artificial time series with zero trend with random noise: Yet if you fit a trend line it yields a statistically significant result. Now my question to you is, if you just eyeball the graph and claim that there is an increase till 2005 and then decrease from there, is it a valid claim? If you claim that there is a step, you at the bare minimum have to run some statistical testing as a sanity check. If your assertion passes a statistical test, we can then proceed with caution. If does not, there is no reason for it to be taken seriously. ############################ Now that I think about it a bit more, I think there is a much bigger problem. Your basis for shifting the global SSTA at those two points is based on your arguement that "extra heat piled up globally after an El Niño and during the transition to the first following La Niña", which you supported with the animation, that supposedly shows the "extra heat globally". The problem is this: since you are plotting a scaled global temperature anomalies and a regional temperature anomalies, you can't even interpret the difference between the two as a temperature difference because one of the quantities is scaled, let alone extra heat.
  6. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    Photon Wrangler @11 ...and even if the speedometer is correct, 3% of the other drivers riding in the bus think it's just a shallow descent on the other side of the ridge, which will be great for saving gas - only 97% think its a sharp, painful drop!
  7. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    vrooomie@5 Nice that you catch this piece of humour (sic - humor for you in US). Of course it was intentional: "affluent" implies "effluent" (i.e. discharging sewage) in this context.
  8. Photon Wrangler at 07:59 AM on 28 November 2012
    Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    I like the above Judo-like use of analogies that play to conservatives heightened sense of threat-neutralization. I also like the image of a fast moving train being informed of a potential obstruction. Perhaps someone with artistic skills better than mine could render this scene: --- Passenger: "I can't help but notice that we're headed for a cliff at 60 mph." Driver: "Don't worry, the speedometer isn't entirely accurate. It's possible that we're only doing 50." ---
  9. It's El Niño
    Kayell @84, I apologize for inadvertently misrepresenting your technique; although it feels strange to apologize for assuming somebody has used a valid rather than an arbitrary rescaling. Having reread your post @35 (which I had previously only skimmed, I now see where you wrote:
    "When I 'detrended' the global SSTA curve in the graph above, I didn't use a statistical tool to remove a general upward trend. All I did was to pull it down at two (2) short sections: two datapoints in the last half of 1987 (July and November) and one datapoint in the beginning of 1999 (January)."
    Would you please inform me the magnitude of the downward ajustment for each of the three months?
  10. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    I would suggest an analogy with eating. Healthy food in the correct amount is good for you and necessary. Junk food may be better than no food but a full diet of it leads to obesity and ill health later. Fossil fuels are the junk food of our economy. Excess use will lead to severe planetary ill health eventually. Just like our bodies it will be too late to fix the problem after that first heart attack. We need to change our diet.
  11. New research from last week 47/2012
    Fixed, thanks. :)
  12. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    Forrest@7: Speaking of a conservative-oriented analogy for the proper role of uncertainty in determining action, there's the "Cheney Doctrine", better known as "The 1% Doctrine": "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response." We are far more than 1% certain that Business As Usual (BAU) burning of fossil fuels (i.e., no action, as Monckton advocates), will lead to greater (or much greater) than 2C of global warming. The modest warming of about 0.6C that has occurred so far has led to increased extreme weather events and associated multi-billion dollar losses, not to mention the demise of the Arctic sea ice and the additional warming and weather consequences it will cause. We are already committed to much worse consequences from 2C of warming, and we risk catastrophic consequences with 4-6C of warming under Monckton's BAU. The Cheney Doctrine demands that we take action to avert catastrophe. Even common business practices of prudent risk management demand that we act to avert the possibility of catastrophic consequences. Conservatives, what say you about this reasoning? [Oops...I see that Phila@8 gave this analogy while I was writing.]
  13. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    There is vastly more uncertainty about potential terrorist attacks than there is about global warming, yet with terrorism we feel it is our duty to take action despite the unknowns. During the Bush years, I often made an analogy to Dick Cheney's celebrated "One-Percent Doctrine": "If there's a 1-percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." It was especially effective with people who claimed to see a 50/50 chance (at best) that current climate predictions were accurate. Unfortunately, I don't think dredging up this ancient history would work nowadays. Most denialists I know would probably say "Dick who?" That said, ideologues who laugh off AGW often demand that we take immediate preventive action on far murkier problems, on the basis of much more questionable statistics. Like fighting same-sex marriage to protect Civilization Itself from...something or other. Or launching expensive, disruptive schemes to "prevent" the statistically irrelevant threat of in-person voter fraud. Meanwhile, a massive international conspiracy is the only coherent alternative explanation for the scientific consensus on AGW. There's no evidence that any such conspiracy does or could exist. And yet, this total lack of evidence -- let alone certainty -- doesn't seem to stop a lot of these folks from making very confident allegations about global scientific corruption. Funny how that works.
  14. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    I think an analogy should be something that the target audience can relate to. As most deniers are conservative, put it in military terms. It's like getting credible information about an impending terrorist attack, but taking no action because we're not sure what time the attack will be, or whether they really have as many bombs as they claim, or we're awaiting confirmation that the 20th terrorist has actually boarded a plane, or some similar detail. Obstructionists can always point to some piece of information that isn't yet complete, but there comes a point where we have to act before it's too late. There is vastly more uncertainty about potential terrorist attacks than there is about global warming, yet with terrorism we feel it is our duty to take action despite the unknowns.
  15. There is no consensus
    Here is a very interesting study recently carried out... http://scienceprogress.org/2012/11/27479/ According to this chap... "I searched the Web of Science, an online science publication tool, for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between January first 1991 and November 9th 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles.... By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17 percent or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming." So 99.83% of the peer-reviewed articles relating to climate change available on the Web of Science endorse the theory of AGW. I think that pretty much clears up the consensus debate.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed link.
  16. It's El Niño
    Kayell, You clearly fail to understand. Tom's graph is not based on either of our methods. It is properly detrended using a linear term. The justification for your two points is no better or worse than mine. It is arbitrary, unless you can submit an objective mathematical formula that was used to derive your points, as well as a valid physical justification (i.e. a mechanism whereby El Niño heats the atmosphere in step-changes in only those two instances) for doing so, both of which are lacking in your discussion. Tom's method, on the other hand, simply assumes a generally linear warming (not perfectly accurate, no, but it's the right way to do things when it is not entirely possible to separate the noise from the signal). Tom's method is the way it should be done, it makes no assumptions without physical cause, is entirely objective, and produces a result superior to yours/Tisdale's. So why, then, would we consider your/Tisdale's theory as anything more than playing games with graphs?
  17. We're heading into an ice age
    Michael, (-snip-).
    Moderator Response: [DB] Ignoring the proof citation challenges and the challenges of physical reality contravening your hypothesis put forth earlier by Michael Sweet and by Tom Curtis, it is not helpful to avoid dealing with those challenges and to blithely comment away. You must first deal with those before moving on. Soliloquy snipped.
  18. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    IMO contrarians/deniers/pseudoskeptics confuse or conflate uncertainties at the margins or fringes or cutting edges of the science with uncertainty at its root. They also confuse or conflate uncertainties regarding timing with existential uncertainty. What is uncertain is how soon the Arctic sea ice will be gone in summer time. What is certain is that it will happen if nothing is done to decarbonise (and given time lags and how quickly Arctic sea ice has melted, it may be that there is nothing that can be done to stop the ice from disappearing, only restore the conditions that allow it to form). What is uncertain is when the Greenland or Antarctic land ice sheets will collapse. What is certain is that, again, if nothing is done to decarbonise, the collapses will happen. And so on, and so forth...
  19. It's El Niño
    Tom Curtis @73 says: "As an aside, I was considering the first of your graphs reproduced by Kayell here, which I now realize is not lagged (final clause added in edit). Correctly lagged it looks like this: " Please don't misrepresent the graph you're showing as equal to mine, only lagged. Your global graph is not based on my global, adjusted down in 1987-88 and 1998-99 only. Your graph is based on Sphaerica's randomly adjusted one. This is quite easy to see. The justification for MY two points of adjustment is self-explanatory; just look at (compare) the original data. The justification for Sphaerica's adjustments is nonexistent.
  20. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    chriskoz@1: not sure it was intentional or not, but regardless, the term "effluent lifestyle" nearly made me gag with laughter...and its implicit veracity, vis-a-vis the lifestyle we Westerners so think is our birthright. To do nothing about that which we ourselves have perptrated upon our children, would be to do the *most* foolish thing humanity could conceive of. This is why I *rail* against the Moncktons of the world, for it is their path that is the truly foolish one.
  21. It's El Niño
    Albatross - Thank you, a very informative post. The timings, patterns, and energies observed (in all ocean basins) point to the theory of anthropogenic warming, and contradict the hypothesis of natural variations and cycles. If Bob Tisdale wishes to argue his hypothesis he's going to have to show that his hypothesis matches all of those observations, and in addition provide a supportable mechanism. In particular, he's going to have to address these existing works, demonstrate that they have errors, and how his hypothesis gives a better explanation for observations (not to mention showing why the expected GHG warming does not occur in his framework). You simply cannot put up a new hypothesis without demonstrating shortcomings in the existing theories - not if you want to be taken seriously. As with Albatross, I don't expect Tisdale to be swayed by the evidence either; he has a great deal invested in his hypothesis. But I'm willing to be surprised.
  22. President Obama's Statement on Climate Change
    No measures have any lasting effect without the cornerstone in the battle against climate change: a global carbon tax. This becomes clear from the evolution of CO2 emissions in the last 10 years: Global CO2 emissions are rising faster than according to even the worst scenarios predicted by the IPCC, despite all efforts. We urgently need to get rid of the theorem "Every little bit helps". Because it is incorrect. To give some examples: 1. The promotion of Compact Fluerescent Lamps (CFLs) leads to an increased energy consumption. This phenomenon is called ‘Jevon’s paradox’. To explain it in economical terms: it is a consequence of the law of supply and demand. If certain goods get cheaper (in this case: the cost of one ‘lamp hour’), consumption of these goods will go up. Total energy consumption increases as a result. 2. Promoting bio-fuels, meant as a measure to slow down climate change, leads to massive deforestation, which accelerates climate change. 3. After the oil crisis in the 1970s the American Congress approved a law stating that fuel efficiency had to double in 10 years time. The American car manufacturers succeeded in this task, but the consequence was that total fossil fuel consumption went up. Clinging on to the “Every little bit helps” delusion is both useless and dangerous. Once a global carbon tax has been imposed it does make sense to improve fuel efficiency, reduce the ecological footprint, build renewable energy plants etc. but mainly as tactics to create and maintain prosperity, within the border conditions of the carbon tax.
  23. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: The right response to the non-problem of global warming — first slide, please — is to have the courage to do nothing. I guess Viscount Monckton is braver than I am, or a fool. “If you fear nothing, then you are not brave. You are merely too foolish to be afraid.” Like the comments so far I use a travel analogy, in my case a train. Imagine a high speed train hears there is an obstruction further down the line. You have to apply the brakes now to avoid the obstruction, it takes along time to stop a train. Yet it could be a false alarm, the obstruction could be on the other track or cleared by the time you get there. Do you apply the brakes and play safe? Delaying your journey and later trains and losing money. Or do you gamble? By the time you know for certain you would not be able to avoid a crash if the warnings were true.
  24. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    Driving a car through a wall (or down a dark steep hill) as a shortcut because of missing certainty what shape the car (and driver and riders) will be in afterwards?
  25. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    It's more like not hitting the brakes on the freeway when you see a traffic jam ahead because you're not quite sure how good your brakes are, and you're not sure if the jam will clear or get worse by the time you plow into it. Normal people would consider either of those a good argument to hit the brakes early, but apparently deniers feel that you have to be 100% sure of the crash before doing anything.
  26. New research from last week 47/2012
    Just a slight error, Ari. The link to the "Classic of the Week" leads to a 2012 Cryosphere paper. Excellent post, as usual.
  27. It's El Niño
    Just swooping down to clarify a few things for Mr. Tisdale. To be accurate one should refer to the theory of anthropogenic warming or theory of human-induced warming, it is not correct to speak of the "hypothesis of anthropogenic warming". To illustrate using an example: Mr. Tisdale has a hypothesis, just like the Slayers of the Skydragon have (had?) a hypothesis. Now until Mr. Tisdale succeeds in convincing the scientists who specialize in this area that his ideas have merit, his idea will forever be destined to obscurity and be nothing more than a hypothesis on a climate "skeptic" or climate denier blog. As for his disappointing excuse not to pursue publishing his ideas in a journal, there is always "Principe Scientfic Intl.". But doing so would not meet the criterion for publishing in a reputable scientific journal. I would dare Mr. Tisdale to publish in J. Climate or JGR-A or GRL or Nature or Science, but then I would be guilty of very likely wasting the valuable time of the editors and busy scientists with Mr. Tisdale's well-intentioned, but misguided ideas. Anyhow, it is telling that he is not up for the challenge, instead invoking conspiracy theories rather than actually submitting a manuscript for review by experts in the field. On the following, I do not necessarily wholly disagree with Mr. Tisdale, however, scientists have been researching this and publishing their findings in highly respected journals for some time now: "It’s best to divide the oceans into logical subsets, because coupled ocean-atmospherics processes impact ocean basins in significantly different ways. Realistically, that’s the only way anyone can attempt to perform an attribution study on the warming of ocean heat content data--or sea surface temperature data." Here is a review of some relevant papers through time on this subject. Note that they all find compelling evidence that the long-term warming of the planet's oceans is primarily externally driven (that is it is primarily the result of higher greenhouse gas levels from human activities). They have found this using sea-surface temperatures, ocean heat content and even salinity. Moreover, they have found the anthropogenic signal both globally and over individual basins. In short, the long-term warming of the planet's oceans is primarily in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, not El Nino or ENSO. To wit: Sedláček and Knutti (2012,GRL). Two of their key findings: "Ocean warming of the last century cannot be explained by natural variability The warming signal is visible throughout the whole ocean" Gleckler et al. (2012, Nature Climate Change), "Our detection and attribution analysis systematically examines the sensitivity of results to a variety of model and data-processing choices. When global mean changes are included, we consistently obtain a positive identification (at the 1% significance level) of an anthropogenic fingerprint in observed upper-ocean temperature changes, thereby substantially strengthening existing detection and attribution evidence." From Pierce et al. (2012), "We find that observed changes are inconsistent with the effects of natural climate variability, either internal to the climate system (such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) or external (solar fluctuations and volcanic eruptions). However, the observed changes are consistent with the changes expected due to human forcing of the climate system." From Santer et al. (2008, PNAS), "For the period 1906–2005, we find an 84% chance that external forcing explains at least 67% of observed SST increases in the two tropical cyclogenesis regions. " From Pierce et al. (2006, J. Climate), "The observed sampling of ocean temperature is highly variable in space and time, but sufficient to detect the anthropogenic warming signal in all basins, at least in the surface layers, by the 1980s." From Barnett (2005, Science) "A warming signal has penetrated into the world's oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences. " From Barnett et al. (2001, Science) "Further, the chances of either the anthropogenic or observed signals being produced by the PCM as a result of natural, internal forcing alone are less than 5%. This suggests that the observed ocean heat-content changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic forcing, which broadens the basis for claims that an anthropogenic signal has been detected in the global climate system." Then again, I do not expect Mr. Tisdale to be swayed by the overwhelming evidence against his idea. But maybe he will surprise us. Now the roaring forties beckon.
  28. It's El Niño
    Sure, KR & Phillipe, but I strongly suspect that that type of gatekeeping is not what Bob is imagining, although I can't think of any examples that would supply evidence for such a thing -- unless one chooses to defend various methodologies attempted by Soon & Baliunas, Spencer & Braswell, or Watts et (a diminishing) al.
  29. Climate of Doubt Strategy #2: Exaggerate Uncertainty
    The arguments for action delay by such people as Michaels & Monckton are not illogical when you consider their associations and possible motivations. it is in their interest to keep FF burning because they are associated with mining/energy industry. We can even "globalise" that point and find analogy at the national level: industrialised nations have no interest in cutting emissions because their economies cannot be easily switched to low energy/alternative energy and their citizens don't want to give up the effluent lifestyle. Of course we know the nonsense misleading talk of "getting 3 world countries out of poverty with cheep energy". Those countries actually don't need "cheap energy": their citizens are used to low energy lifestyle. And sometimes they are proud of it. Take for example Cuba, a county which is way ahead of any other nation in effluence to emissions ratio, I guess some 10 times better than US or GB or Australia (where most SkS commenters including myself, live). Cubans don't need AC, big cars, water bottles shipped from Fiji to comfortably sustain their culture. And I guess, in a warming world, when those "spoiling services" are about to collapse and their consumers doomed, cultures like Cuba have the best chance to adapt and survive. So, action to stop climate change should include not just stopping FF but changing the mindset. Without the appropriate mindset, nothing will happen. Obviously, the deniers like Michaels & Monckton are the lost case, and should be incarcerated for their crimes against the Earth (they confuse the mindsets of others).
  30. It's El Niño
    I think this is one of the most interesting graphs of Reynolds SST data for this discussion: It is simply the weekly SST anomaly for various regions of interest to this discussion. It is presented without rescaling, rebaselining, or lagging or any other device that might conceal the vast differences of variability between the two regions. So presented it is immediately apparent just how variable the Nino 3.4 region is compared to other regions. You might think that that is just because it is a small area, and the larger areas contain sub-regions with contrasting trends that reduce the mean variability. However, one of those regions, (Indian Ocean Tropical, in orange) is the region of the Indian Ocean from 50 to 100 degrees East, and from 5 degrees North to 5 degrees South. That is, it occupies the same area, and the same latitude as the Nino 3.4 region, yet it has only 32.3% of the variability of the Nino 3.4 region. Clearly the Nino 3.4 region (and presumably other directly ENSO effected regions) are exceptionally variable relative to other regions of the world's oceans. Another way of saying that is that the region has a very high noise to signal ratio when it comes to detecting medium term trends. The same is true of the East Pacific, which is dominated by ENSO variations. We all know that when it comes to detecting long term trends, we want to focus on the signal, not the noise. If you do not, you will find yourself "going down the up escalator, and all sorts of other improbable contortions. That is not reason to avoid studying the Eastern Pacific SST, but it is reason to take care that you are not fooling yourself with noise to avoid looking at the signal. You can take several steps to avoid fooling yourself in that regard. You can check out statistical significance: This is a bit crude, but as the table shows, the increase in regional temperatures plus two standard deviations for Nino3.4 (1.52 C)and the East Pacific (0.4 C) comfortably exceeds the increase in Global SST anomaly (0.26 C). A proper analysis of the error of trend calculations taking into account auto-correlation and multi-decadal influences such as the PDO is likely to find (I suspect) that they do not differ significantly from the model predictions for the East Pacific of 0.42 and 0.44 C (as quoted by Tisdale). Be that as it may, the important point here is that Tisdale's hypothesis does not even pass the most rudimentary test in showing that the limited warming in the East Pacific is unexpected given global warming. An even more rudimentary test is to check that your analysis is robust with regard to endpoints, and hence is not just a function of short term fluctuations. In this case, we that ENSO dominates the region and is the source of the large fluctuations in temperature. Looking at the ENSO 3.4 index, we see that Tisdale's start point just happens to precede the second strongest El Nino event since 1950, and precedes a period note worthy for its lack of La Ninas; but that the end of the period is noteworthy for weak El Ninos and several strong La Ninas: This pattern fully accounts for the negative trend in the Nino 3.4 anomaly, and hence the flat trend for the Eastern Pacific. Is it, however, a consequence of the start point of the data? As it turns out, yes it is. Just preceding the start point was another period of strong La Ninas. Including that period in the data results in a warming East Pacific: It turns out that not only is the lack of warming in the East Pacific not statistically significant, its existence is an artifact of the choice of start and endpoints in the data. I assume this is not the result of conscious cherry picking. Tisdale's chosen data set just happens to start in 1981. But he should have been aware of the possibility that what he thought he saw was just an artifact of incomplete data, and checked longer time periods using other data. He was negligent at least. This leaves him in an awkward position. Tisdale has provided no physical basis for his theory. He is, therefore, recommending it to us soley on the basis of the statistically unusual nature of the data. But it turns out that the data is not statistically unusual after all. That leaves his theory with nothing to recommend it until he can provide us with a physical mechanism behind his theory.
  31. It's El Niño
    As anyone who remembers the big hair and shoulder pads of the 80s knows, Gatekeepers are complemented by Key Masters. Bob Tisdale seems to be approaching science with a rusty nail rather than anything resembling a key. Why am I reminded of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?
  32. It's El Niño
    Bob Tisdale - ENSO cycles are (as shown in several posts above) a quite good match for detrended global SST's. Which indicates that that ENSO is not responsible for the trend itself.
  33. It's El Niño
    Philippe Chantreau - Agreed. Gatekeepers keep down such nonsense as an "iron core sun", odd planetary alignments driving Earth climate, little green men, and so on. Peer review checks for basic, credible evidence. I haven't seen any for the ENSO/global warming hypothesis, and I rather doubt such nonsense would make it into a peer-reviewed journal of any relevance or note.
  34. It's El Niño
    Sphaerica @74, the graph you have shown is the lagged global SST. A more direct comparison is without the lag: The differences between that graph and the first in your post are that I have used weekly rather than monthly data, and that I have rescaled by the ration of the Standard Deviations of the Data, ie, by multiplying the Nino 3.4 anomaly by 0.1224305012. Had I scaled the global SST to match Nino 3.4 as done in the first graph, the factor would have been 8.1678992563 rather than 10. In other words, that graph inflates the Global SST anomaly values by 22%. I also detrended the Nino 3.4 anomaly, and it is not clear that Tisdale has done so in the first graph. I hope that helps.
  35. Philippe Chantreau at 10:05 AM on 27 November 2012
    It's El Niño
    I really like the idea of gatekeepers for science, I don't think it's a bad thing. Without gatekeepers, soon you get fruicakes publishing stuff about how the Earth has been expanding over the past 5000 years and yet even more fruitcakes touting the piece around saying "see, it's published science." A gatekeeping process is necessary. Sorry for the OT, end of sopabox moment. I guess the conclusion is that Bob Tisdale's work has not even been proposed for publication? I'll interpret his response as such unless told otherwise.
  36. It's El Niño
    Kayell, So, here is your "detrending", based on presumed El Niños (although since such events last a year or more, it's still a little vague as to where Tisdale actually made his breaks, or why the breaks would be at specific points in time): Here is mine, pretty much randomly using spots in various La Niñas (no, there's no real, objective justification for my selection of points, any more than there is for yours): And here is the data detrended properly, over time, using a linear coefficient (courtesy of Tom Curtis): Personally, I think the proper statistical method gives the best fit, my tongue-in-cheek La Niña method the second best fit, and Tisdale's magical El Niño Gremlins method the worst fit. But, all in all, I think anyone would agree that there's not really any strong reason to argue that one is notably better than the other. So why wouldn't a simple, linear and correct detrending apply (Occam's Razor)? Why are we wasting any time at all on this discussion?
  37. It's El Niño
    Bob Tisdale @67, thankyou for answering my question. I am unsure why you draw attention to the fact that you used East Pacific vs the rest of the world in your figure. There is even less correlation between the East Pacific and the rest of the world than there is between Nino 3.4 and the globe, or Nino 3.4 and the rest of the world (ie, gobal minus East Pacific). Indeed, Nino 3.4 vs the rest of the world even gives the best correlation with much greater lag than does any other comparison I have made, with a correlation of 0.076 at thirty one weeks lag. All other comparisons other than Nino 3.4 vs Global show the highest correlation with zero lag, and as previously indicated Nino 3.4 vs Global shows its best correlation (0.382) at nine weeks lag. Here is the data: "Indian Ocean" refers to a band between 5 degrees North and 5 degrees South in the Indian Ocean having the same area as Nino 3.4, and as you can see correlates better both with the globe minus the East Pacific, and the globe than does Nino 3.4 Given this data, your response that you lagged the rest of the world vs East Pacific data is an evasion rather than an answer. Doing so provides less justification for the lag you have chosen, not more. This leaves you in the position where your only justification of the lag that you have chosen is that it helps you make your point. That is, you have a rhetorical, not a scientific justification for your chosen manipulation of the data. As an aside, I was considering the first of your graphs reproduced by Kayell here, which I now realize is not lagged (final clause added in edit). Correctly lagged it looks like this: (Both detrended) What also becomes clear using the proper lag is that the way in which global temperatures track ENSO events is noisy. Focusing on just one or two such events will simply focus on noise in the system. It is, in other words, simply cherry picking. (Edited to delete faulty analysis, TC)
  38. It's El Niño
    Bob Tisdale. Further to Doug Bostrom's latest asking of the matter concerning from where the internal heat comes to persistently warm the planet over decades, I'm also curious about where you think the heat being trapped by the anthropogenic component of atmospheric CO2 is ending up, and why it isn't warming the planet. Numbers and references are welcome.
  39. 2012 SkS Bi-Weekly News Roundup #4
    Oh boy has the start of COP18 ever set the deniers into a frenzie in Canada. On every news site I've looked at today which allows commenting, the majority of comments are rants related to how the UN is just stealing our money, the globe has been warming for 12,000 years, its a natural cycle, ect ect. The brass jokes of the woefully ill-informed have taken over today, leaving the rest of us shaking our heads (and overwhelmingly downvoted)
  40. It's El Niño
    Bob, I'm still working through your analysis, but I have to say: the 'gatekeepers of the science' claim is pretty pathetic. Surely you don't buy into that garbage. If someone held your hand to the fire and forced you to attempt publication, what would your hypothesis or (better yet) research question be? That's something I'm still not clear on. I'm also not clear on the physical mechanism you're proposing (if indeed you are). How does a step change fit into Walker circulation dynamics, what is the trigger mechanism, etc.? And does the results of Tokinaga et al. (2012) change the way you look at the trends and relations? Kayell, data, in this case, are the result of a set of dynamically integrated physical processes. Untangling those physical processes is the only way to understand the data in a meaningful way. See David Rose, for example, who makes a colossally dumb statement to the public at large based on a simplistic reading of a data set that itself is limited in a variety of ways in terms of representation. I can buy a step change if I see a physical mechanism. If it's there, it's there. What I fear, though, is that you're trying to argue for a step change not in order to advance the science but in order to present a specific message to the public at large, a message that may or may not be supported by investigations into the physical processes at work.
  41. It's El Niño
    Sorry Bob, but I've got a hanging question open here that you've not answered and which needs to be addressed if your hypothesis is to have any relevance to global warming. It is after all global warming that is the topic of this site; forgetting the rest of the globe and focusing on the E. Pacific is only a variation of the infamous "escalator." So I'm not really interested in the wee specifics of the E. Pacific, I'm more interested in the relevance of your hypothesis to the topic of this web site, global warming. It's a fairly simple question. Where is the energy required to produce net warming of the entire global ocean along with the atmosphere coming from? Put another way, are you claiming that the energy required to produce net warming of the global ocean and atmosphere is coming from the global ocean itself? Please don't answer by reference to the E. Pacific; the E. Pacific is after all a relatively small part of the global ocean and thus contains only a relatively small component of the net ocean heat content.
  42. It's El Niño
    Bob, I explained very carefully in my previous post how one should relate the PD) index to SST anomalies (relative to global temperature, or residuals if you prefer) (1) Do you agree that one cannot interpret the PDO index in terms of SST anomaly without the corresponding EOF? (2) Do you agree with my example, that -0.2 degrees C per standard deviation is a reasonable average for the EOF over N Pacific (NP)? (3) Do you agree that with (2), it explains why your observation that (a) PDO varies inversely with NP SSTA and (b) the PDO index "exaggerates" the fluctuation in NP SSTA? Regarding Zhang et al 1997: Here's their figure 3 HP: the EOF and PC shows that this is the usual ENSO mode. You can check the PC and it follows ENSO indices quite well. The spatial EOF also shows good agreement with ENSO: the hot spot on the east corresponds to 0.7 degrees per SD, the response in NW pacific is much weaker: -0.2 degrees per SD. LP: This is the PDO mode:comparing the PC (bottom) to the PDO index(top): You can see they agree reasonably well. Looking at the EOF, you can see that the response in the NW pacific (-0.3 degrees per SD) is comparable to the responds in the eastern pacific (0.4 degrees per SD). Your comment " Additionally, you’d need to analyze the dataset being discussed, which is the East Pacific, not the North Pacific or the Pacific as a whole." is puzzling. One of the central question here is whether PDO is a basin wide phenomena, and thus can account for the lack of warming on the eastern pacific. Can you elaborate on why using data from the entire pacific to determine the existence of a basin wide mode is inappropriate. ########################################## You said " Why not simply compare the East Pacific to a scaled ENSO index and say that the East Pacific has mimicked the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years? It’s much easier for people reading this thread to understand" What that will accomplish exactly? NINO3.4 is part of the east Pacific so the fact that they vary similarly should not come to a surprise. How does that say anything about the long term decadal trend of the east pacific? ############################################# In your original post, the following quote appeared: “According to numerous peer-reviewed papers, surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events, but it’s obvious they do not.” The last sentence is largely irrelevant because it is clear that you are disputing something. The question is what are you disputing? My point is from what you've written you are disputing conclusions of papers (which is surprising so I asked for references), whereas in reality you are disputing the assumptions.
  43. It's El Niño
    IanC @57, I'm sorry, but it appears we're not looking at the same dataset here. Please examine one more time the second and third figure in my Part 1 post and then the animation at the end. Then read once more what I point to. What exactly are we looking for? "[...] places where the global curve diverge permanently from the NINO curve. There are only (and by that I mean ONLY) two cases between 1981 and 2012 where the extra heat piled up globally after an El Niño and during the transition to the first following La Niña is never fully made up for before the ENSO pendulum turns and the heat comes in again, both in the NINO3.4 region and globally." If you observe the second figure (Level 1), how can you miss these two instances? Only in 1987-88 and in 1998-99 does the global curve lift its mean SSTA level up from the NINO3.4 curve and stay there. Nothing of consequence happens at any other time between the two curves. You must not forget that in this exercise we're always relating the global curve to the NINO3.4. In Part 2 I also show you WHERE the two specific upward shifts originate - check out the second figure in my Part 2 post. You say it's a noisy dataset. I've shown you just how 'un-noisy' it really is. If one simply cares to take a closer look at the data. The global curve pretty much consists of two component signals: 1) the regular large-scale NINO ups and downs and 2) the two sudden and significant hikes in mean temperature level as compared to the NINO3.4 after the El Niños of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 respectively. Sphaerica is only obfuscating and confusing the matter. He/she isn't reading what I'm writing. He/she isn't looking at my plots. Let's have a look at his/her graph. (Compare with my second figure in Part 1.) The first chosen La Niña is an extended, yet fairly weak event, fluctuating in and out of La Niña territory. There is absolutely no 'extra' global heat accumulating here. No need whatsoever for a downward adjustment. Then he/she skips the next La Niña (88/89) altogether, which as it happens was the deepest ENSO event since the 70s. Peculiar, don't you think? Here you DO clearly see the extra global heat accumulating, inducing an upward shift in mean SSTA level globally relative to NINO3.4. Sphaerica's next blue line is not a La Niña at all. It's Pinatubo. Then he/she places the next line right smack in the middle of the La Niña 98/99/00/01, but of course by doing so again misses the actual instance of global accumulation of heat, which quite evidently occured during the first La Niña-year after the 1997/98 El Niño (98/99). Sphaerica's last La Niña adjustment is again performed at a place along the curve where absolutely no downward adjustment is called for. He/she's completely missed what we're actually looking for. I'm telling you again (and I thought this was already made very clear in my two posts, I feel a bit silly having to repeat it), there is no extra global trend, no increasing divergence between NINO3.4 and global SSTA levels anywhere outside the two obvious upward shifts. (Referring once more to the second and third figure in my Part 1 and the animation towards the end.) You see, this isn't about playing around with statistical trickery. About who can produce the 'best' fit. It's about what the actual data at hand is showing us, telling us. What's in the data? That's all I've done so far. Explored the data. It's all right there. Right there in front of you. In the data. Something out of the ordinary is very clearly happening globally (outside the East Pacific) during the transition from specific, solitary and powerful El Niños to the deep La Niñas directly on their heels. This is all about natural processes. Readily observed to unfold. They happen. I still haven't gotten to those, though. That's for Part 3. The satellite-based Reynolds OI.v2 is a benchmark dataset for SSTs since 1981/82, globally comprehensive, a tried-and-true source of high-resolution data. It agrees well with surface-based datasets like the HadSST, HadISST and ERSST. To quote William M. Briggs: "We do not have to model what we can see. No statistical test is needed to say whether the data has changed. We can just look." Why not let the data speak for itself?
  44. It's El Niño
    Philippe Chantreau says “Tom Curtis also asked an interesting question @45, to which I have not yet seen an answer.” Sorry I missed his question. Tom Curtis asked, “Thankyou. I notice that the strongest correlation between Nino 3.4 and global SST is when global SST lag Nino 3.4 by nine weeks. In your comparison, you say you used a 6 month (equivalent to a 26 week) lag. Why did you use a lag 17 weeks longer than that indicated by the data?” Please advise where you’re noting that the strongest correlation between NINO3.4 and global SST is when global SST lag NINO3.4 by 9 weeks. Also, in my comparison, assumedly this one… http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-13.png …it’s not a global dataset. It excludes the East Pacific Ocean where the direct effects of ENSO would be felt. Also note how well the scaled NINO3.4 data and the Rest of the World data align during the evolution of the 1997/98 El Niño. The 6-month lag works quite well.
  45. It's El Niño
    Philippe Chantreau says; “I read Albatross' post and at no point had I the impression that BT was asked to stake his reputation on the DK paper. I don't see how it could even be construed this way, especially by one who claim to be so brilliant that his ideas escaped all of the SkS contributors.” Here’s what Albatross wrote, Phillipe: “Additinally, would Mr. Tisdale stake his ‘reputation’ (in the 'skeptic' blogosphere) and his hypothesis on the aforementioned paper? He can respond to the last statement and question onthe relevant DK thread.” He quite clearly stated in his question, “would Mr. Tisdale stake his ‘reputation’ (in the 'skeptic' blogosphere) and his hypothesis on the aforementioned paper?”
  46. It's El Niño
    doug_bostrom says: “Thereby conveniently avoiding the problem of explaining how net ocean heat content is increasing, along with atmospheric temperature.” Not sure how you could conclude that from what I had written, doug. I wrote and you quoted part of, “I typically don’t bother investigating global data. Why? Looking at global data can be misleading. It’s best to divide the oceans into logical subsets, because coupled ocean-atmospherics processes impact ocean basins in significantly different ways.” doug_bostrom says: “By ignoring ocean heat content?” Where in the sentence that you quoted (Realistically, that’s the only way anyone can attempt to perform an attribution study on the warming of ocean heat content data--or sea surface temperature data.) does it say that I ignore ocean heat content, doug? An example for you, doug, of how I address data in logical subsets: Here’s an annotated graph of the Ocean Heat Content of the North Pacific north of 20N (the same area that’s used for the PDO). http://i48.tinypic.com/2l9gqxf.jpg Now it’s time for me to ask you questions, doug. How does the AGW hypothesis explain the cooling of the North Pacific (north of 20N) from 1955 to the late 1980s? And how does it explain the sharp rise over a two year period? And how does it explain that the North Pacific north of 20N would have cooled over the entire term of the data if it wasn’t for that 2-year rise?
  47. It's El Niño
    @Bob Tisdale #63: Actaully, I know very little about you and your analyses. The fact that you have not published anything in a mansitream peer-reviewed journal explains why. Either you are confident about the validity of your work, or you are not.
  48. It's El Niño
    John Hartz: “In your response to Albatross, you conveniently ignore the first question hea had posed, i.e…” John, I’m not sure why you’re belaboring the point. You and Albatross know quite well that they have not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. All I do is present data, and it contradicts the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming. Now it's my turn to ask you and Albatross a question: how would my findings make it past the gatekeepers of AGW peer review?
  49. It's El Niño
    IanC says: “ENSO is most prominent in the tropics, while for PDO the responses in N. Pacific and Tropics are similar in amplitdue.” They are? I believe you’re wrong, IanC. The PDO is standardized. NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies typically are not. The first PC of detrended North Pacific residuals (North Pacific minus global sea surface temperature anomalies) has a standard deviation of approximately 0.18 deg C. In other words, standardization exaggerates the value of the PDO by a factor of 5.5, giving people the impression that it’s similar in magnitude to NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies. IanC says: “Zhang et al. 1997, did an EOF with SSTA of the entire basin . For the low-pass filtered (c.f. fig 3) computation, the dominant mode has a similar spatial structure as the one depicted on the JISAO website. Furthermore, the principal component varies similar to the PDO index.” All of the analyzed subsets have major variations in response to ENSO giving them similar appearances, but there are subtle differences, so please confirm your last claim with data. Additionally, you’d need to analyze the dataset being discussed, which is the East Pacific, not the North Pacific or the Pacific as a whole. When you examine the data, you’ll discover the East Pacific responds differently than the other portions of the Pacific you’re attempting to compare with it. IanC says: “You are technically correct in saying that "PDI index is not SSTA", but you are completely missing the point: the PDI index, in conjunction with the EOF, does in fact describe SST variations.” You missed my earlier comment, where I noted that the PDO was inversely related to the North Pacific residuals (North Pacific minus global sea surface temperature anomalies): http://i52.tinypic.com/15oz3eo.jpg Same thing holds true for the variations in the monthly data: http://i52.tinypic.com/1zo8686.jpg With respect to Zhang et al 1997 and to Shakun and Shaman 2009, both papers concluded ENSO leads the ENSO-like patterns. In fact the title of Shakun and Shaman is “Tropical origins of North and South Pacific decadal variability.” So why deal in abstract forms of sea surface temperature data like the PDO, IanC? Why not simply compare the East Pacific to a scaled ENSO index and say that the East Pacific has mimicked the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years? It’s much easier for people reading this thread to understand: http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-111.png IanC says: “In your original post, you said ‘According to numerous peer-reviewed papers, surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events'. I think the reasonable interpretation, based on your wording, is that numerous papers concluded that surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events; this is very different from papers assuming the same.” In your quote, you forgot the ellipse, IanC, to indicate my sentence continued. In other words, you’ve taken what I wrote out of context. That sentence read in full: “According to numerous peer-reviewed papers, surface temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña events, but it’s obvious they do not.” When the entire sentence and the graph linked in that original paragraph… http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-13.png …are included as I has intended, then your interpretation of what I had written doesn’t ring true. Those papers didn’t conclude global temperatures respond proportionally to El Niño and La Niña; they assumed it. In fact, of those papers that I linked for you in my earlier reply, only one acknowledges ENSO residuals. It was Trenberth (2002). In their concluding remarks, they wrote, as I quoted earlier: “Although it is possible to use regression to eliminate the linear portion of the global mean temperature signal associated with ENSO, the processes that contribute regionally to the global mean differ considerably, and the linear approach likely leaves an ENSO residual.” And as I noted earlier, the divergences in brown… http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-13.png …are those ENSO residuals, which are not accounted for in any of the studies I linked for you. Regards
  50. Philippe Chantreau at 02:43 AM on 27 November 2012
    It's El Niño
    I'm not sure who is using "curious tactics" here. Albatross's question was straight and simply formulated. In what article has Bob Tisdale subjected his ideas to scientific peer-review? I read Albatross' post and at no point had I the impression that BT was asked to stake his reputation on the DK paper. I don't see how it could even be construed this way, especially by one who claim to be so brilliant that his ideas escaped all of the SkS contributors. At any rate, it was a perfectly legitimate question, is there an answer? Tom Curtis also asked an interesting question @45, to which I have not yet seen an answer. IanC raises some interesting points above too. I hope that, for the sake of clarity, all these will be addressed before the conversation drifts to other things.

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