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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 59001 to 59050:

  1. Dikran Marsupial at 05:00 AM on 15 May 2012
    IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    The reservation I have about the IPCC graph is that a linear model is obviously not appropriate for timespans greater than 30 years or so, because of changes in forcings means that the residuals have structure, and so violate the modelling assumption. Not that big a deal as the fact is clearly evident in the plot and nobody is drawing any firm statistical conclusions from it. However the diagram is in a FAQ and is not intended to be part of the IPCC's scientific explanation or evidence of anything. It is obviously intended as an illustration designed to convey a basic point, which is that the rate of warming has been accellerating. There is a difference between the FAQs and the body of the report and Monckton surely knows that.
  2. Dikran Marsupial at 04:51 AM on 15 May 2012
    IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena, Just a thought, but trends ending at the current time tell you about the change in gradient (i.e. curvature) around the current time. Trends starting at (say) 1860 give you an indication of the change in gradient (i.e. curvature) around 1860, not the present date (note that the two differet sets of trends have a different common point, one is "today", the other is 1860). Hence it is no big surprise that the analysis gives a different result.
  3. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    My last message here : you know my stand, it's useless to discuss it further, and (-snip-) Skywatcher : "Progressively increasing or decreasing gradients of the lines prove concavity of the curve" Gradients prove concavity yes, but 4 trends calculated on different time scales no. That's my whole point. Muon : I agreed to those three points (he yes/no questions) with .... you ! Not the IPCC ! There is no yes/no question in the legend of the IPCC graph, right ? You cannot start from saying it's an accelerated warming, then plot the 4 trends and say "well, the 4 trends increase, that surely indicates accelerated warming", that would be circular reasoning. What you must do is start with 4 increasing trends, not knowing anything else. What can you conclude from that ? My stand is : not much. KR: "As multiple posters have noted, a linear trend increasing over time is a clear indicator of acceleration " First, please note that Tom Curtis said : "Therefore this test [linear trend increasing over time] does not detect accelerating curves per se, but acceleration within a curve" You got 4 linear trends calculated. Can you really conclude or infer that the underlying curve depicts an accelerated warming ? SRJ : I support your method and i think your comment should replace or be added to the article on this website. It's sad the IPCC didn't use it and instead used one that can be rightfully criticized...
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] "It's sad the IPCC didn't use it and instead used one that can be rightfully criticized..."

    As many have already pointed out, you have not "rightfully" proved this assertion.

    Tone-trolling snipped.

  4. 101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
    Carbon500: What I get from "Whilst the global trend is one of warming, significant decadal variations have been observed in the global time series, and there are large regions where the oceans are cooling." is the oceans are warming The extra nuance in the more fleshed-out description does not alter the accuracy of the simpler one. Finally, I find your accusation of misleading terminology in the DCCEE response to Plimer is without merit. Any decrease in pH is necessarily an "increase in acidity" (which is why the change in ocean pH is "ocean acidification"), without regard to the final state of the system or entity in which the decrease has occured.
  5. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    I also do not like that figure from IPCC. I think it is comparing apples to oranges when trend lines over 150 years are compared with 25 year trend lines. Skywatchers graphs do the same, i.e. comparing trends over longer times with trends over shorter times. Consider replacing the trend with the mean. Would it make sense to compare the mean of the temperature over the last 150 years to the mean over the temperature over the last 25 years? What I would do is to calculate ALL 25 years trend over the entire lenght of the series, then plot these vs. end year. In that way, trends of equal lenght are compared I had already the code ready for this, using annual data for HadCru I get this plot, click to enlarge: The 25 year trends are increasing up to 2005 (marked by a vertical line), from there on they are decreasing. However, the trends after 2005 are still positive and significant, so warming is indeed continuing. Error bars shown are not corrected for autocorrelation. In general, I do not like the concept of calculating trends on more or less arbitrary subsets of the data. Another approach using all the data to fit a generalized additive model is outlined by Gavin Simpson in a blog post here. Using the code provided I have updated his graph, and it shows a significant warming until 2003, and continued but not significant warming from 2003 to 2011:
  6. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    Nope, not intimidated. Pete
  7. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    Issue of the Week: I think the authors and the people that comment here are great examples of civility and are excellent teachers. One just has to look at the succinct clarity in the 170 or so articles covering climate science myths to see what a great teaching service is provided. Some might feel intimidated if they see comments from someone that has no interest in learning about the peer review literature, but that isn't Skep Sci's fault. I have seen many examples of Skep Sci trying to put the science in understandable terms when posed a question from a non-expert. As an engineer, I have learned quite a bit, though I only pop in once in a great while to post my thoughts..
  8. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    skywatcher - Those are very informative graphs; well worth including in the main post on this thread. As multiple posters have noted, a linear trend increasing over time is a clear indicator of acceleration (with, albeit, increasing variations for shorter time periods, as seen in skywatchers graphs). Helena's objections are mathematically unsupportable, and the constant repetition is simply (IMO) trolling. And, returning to the original subject, Monckton's objections to the IPCC graph are in one sense incorrect (acceleration is definitely shown), and in another a strawman argument (the IPCC did not base the conclusion of anthropogenic influence on this graph).
  9. Bob Lacatena at 23:37 PM on 14 May 2012
    IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena's pretentious "I'll teach you guys what I mean by my genius" attitude, combined with a very thorough lack of clarity and an unwillingness to reason -- only to lecture and malign -- suggests a trollish behavior that does not warrant feeding. You be the judge whether or not you think this is an accurate portrayal, but to me pursuing this conversation simply lets the troll grow larger and larger, until it breaks the very bridge it lives beneath.
  10. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena#78: "where did we say that we were considering increasing functions ?" Here, where you agreed the curve under discussion is concave up. Here, where you agreed with 'increasing and accelerating', which I re-stated here. And here. This is now straightforward: a. If the temperature function over the period in question was increasing and linear, there would be no change in slope regardless of the interval used. b. If the temperature function was increasing and accelerating (which you agree means concave up), slopes starting in later periods would be greater (more positive) than slopes from periods starting earlier. Here is an illustration of this from first-year calculus: The slope of the line crossing the curve at x=1 is the smallest. Subsequent lines have increasing slope. Subsequent lines cross the curve at x>1. The slope of the last line shown (purple) is calculated from a very small interval around x=2 and is the largest. Work it backwards: the pattern of lines is sufficient to infer the shape of the curve. To insist otherwise at this point suggests you have an interest in prolonging this agonizing (and frankly uninteresting) back-and-forth.
  11. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    "Helena" sounds like Girma Orssengo.
  12. Chookmustard at 22:49 PM on 14 May 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    Hi guys, love the site, long time reader first time poster! I don't have enough confidence to ask a question as I feel my knowledge level is not high. Is there a 101 section? Keep up the good work!
    Moderator Response: Welcome! At the top of the Home page, click the big button "Newcomers Start Here." After you've read that page, click the big button "The Big Picture." Comments must be on the appropriate thread, but if you are uncertain which thread that is, you can either pick the most apparently relevant one from the Arguments list (click the "Arguments" link at the left end of the blue horizontal bar across the top of the page), or use the Search function that is just under that link.
  13. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    About the issue of the week: No, no fear of getting lectured. Mostly I just feel I have nothing to add. Bert from Eltham at 13:47 PM on 14 May, 2012 wuwt has many of those. And they all nod along as long as it sounds vaguely anti-Hansen, anti-Gore, anti-Michael Mann...
  14. 101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
    Although I haven’t as yet obtained a copy of Plimer's publication, as judged by the Australian government’s response on your website his questions raise interesting points. It’s essential that children learn to think, question, compare and contrast sources, and form opinions of their own in science. The governmental response lacks detail and references - for example, in the answer to question 8, it states ‘the oceans are warming’. Yet on page 48 of the IPCC’s Climate Change 2007 is the statement ‘ Whilst the global trend is one of warming, significant decadal variations have been observed in the global time series, and there are large regions where the oceans are cooling.’ A rather more complicated picture than the government presents, isn’t it? Then there’s the matter of oceanic pH. The government answer to question 95 states that ‘the pH of seawater has historically remained at about 8.2 ’ This is followed by the claim that human activities have ‘caused the pH of ocean surface waters to drop by 0.11 pH units.’ There’s no reference for this, but on page 405 of Climate Change 2007 the IPCC state ‘The mean pH of surface waters ranges between 7.9 and 8.3 in the open ocean, so the ocean remains alkaline (pH>7) even after these decreases.’ The government’s use of the words ‘equivalent to 30 percent increase in acidity’ is misleading. So how has this increase of surface ocean waters been measured? Climate Change 2007 states on p48 that ‘the overall pH change is computed from estimates of anthropogenic carbon uptake and simple ocean models.’ Computations from estimates! Mercifully, they follow this with ‘Direct observations of pH at available stations for the last 20 years also show trends of decreasing pH, at a rate of 0.02 units per decade.’ Empirical data, thank goodness. The answer to question 68 paints a rosy picture of computer modelling, yet on p21 Climate Change 2007 gives a more realistic ‘there is still an incomplete understanding of many components of the climate system and their role in climate change. Key uncertainties include aspects of the roles played by clouds, the cryosphere, the oceans, land use and couplings between climate and biogeochemical cycles.’ I’ll be interested to see Ian Plimers’s answers to his own questions. I hope that the science teachers in Australia do their homework well!
  15. Analysis of Speed of Greenland Glaciers Gives New Insight for Rising Sea Level
    Moon et al (2012) further the examination of flow velocities of Greenland glaciers. The results in terms of flow speed changes fit previous observations. Zebras in Greenland examined the reasons why the glaciers behave differently. The sea level change noted by Moon et al (2012) is for dynamic changes only not for increased basal or surface melting. Epiq Sermia is one of the glaciers that has not accelerated dramatically but has still thinned and retreated. Upernavik Glacier did accelerate quite a bit and has lost even more area
  16. Analysis of Speed of Greenland Glaciers Gives New Insight for Rising Sea Level
    Agnostic, in Hansen and Sato's discussion their scenario is very explicit: "If either ice sheet [[Greenland and Antarctica]] were to lose mass at a rate with doubling time of 10 years or less, multi-meter sea level rise would occur this century." Hansen and Sato's prognosis explicitly depends on continued acceleration and the new work of Howat et.al. seems to put upper limits on this acceleration. Let's hope they are correct. Both studies however seem to agree on eventual (on centuries timescales) multi-meter sealevel rise. So the discussion here is the rate of change, not the scale of the change.
  17. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena, you're really not making much sense. Progressively increasing or decreasing gradients of the lines prove concavity of the curve, as opposed to it being flat or curved the other way. The same applies for 'decelerating' curves, whether you like it or not. They don't say anything about the specific function that best fits the curve - there may be a single breakpoint where the temperature accelerated, or it may smoothly 'accelerate', but it demonstrates that the rate of temperature increase is faster now than it was earlier in the last century. Noise may temporarily disrupt the pattern, but as you'll see from my graphs above, the pattern for HadCRUT3 is one of progressive acceleration. It says nothing about the future evolution of the temperature profile either - that depends on the balance of forcings of course. But the IPCC was quite justified in using this example, and you have provided no coherent reason why it is an illusion, rather than a simple illustration of the obvious.
  18. Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
    Riccardo, I have to agree - when I look at the derivation of Betz, it is odd. It assumes total downstream KE is derived from the axial flow component, which ignores swirl. But the flow exerts a torque on the turbine; the turbine must exert a torque on the air. I guess that's one more layer of mystery. Anyway, I'm convinced by SM's second argument about the smallness of temperature change.
  19. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    "Therefore this test does not detect accelerating curves per se, but acceleration within a curve." Ahah, we're getting there.
  20. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Tom : Moreover, the example you give of decreasing accelerated curve is a very specific one, part of the "punctual counterexemples" i said would exist because you take it all smooth with no noise or bumps. However, the larger subset of all decreasing decelerated curves contains much more curves that *do* have increasing trends with shorter time periods. Any noise, any bump (i.e. anything but the ideal case you present) will tend to ensure that what i say is correct. Do you agree with that ?
  21. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Erratum : "IPCC does neither constraint the slope of the trends (they just have to be increasing) nor the form of the underlying function (as it is what they want to infer)." Please read : "IPCC does neither constraint the slope of the trends (they just have to be *greater than the longer one*) nor the form of the underlying function (as it is what they want to infer)." They do not have to be increasing, just greater than the previous one.
  22. Analysis of Speed of Greenland Glaciers Gives New Insight for Rising Sea Level
    While the changes in the Arctic are indisputably very dramatic, I am hesitant to draw too simplistic an extrapolation of what is going on. I presume the long term impact of this work, if correct, would be that the current quadratic trend in the GRACE Greenland ice loss will at some point hit a maximum rate and then stop accelerating. That doesn't seem fundamentally implausible to me. When it comes to experts, while I go to Hansen first on climate modelling, when it comes to glaciology I'll certainly pay careful attention to what the specialists in that field have to say. Having said that, all new results are provisional, and many turn out to be wrong.
  23. Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
    As Scott Mandia said -- Moving money from one bank account to another won't make you richer, so windmills just move air around, they don't make it warmer. Blogged here... http://thisnessofathat.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/windmills-move-air-like-banks-move.html
  24. Bert from Eltham at 13:47 PM on 14 May 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    I have been intimidated by the knowledge shown on this site. It was then I realised that I just did not know. On looking at wuwt I found this gem. Heat from the sun cannot get into the ocean due to surface tension! You blokes are doing it all wrong as you should let the scientific illiterati just say nonsense. That way they are all happy calling all outsiders nasty names from an enclave of idiocy! Bert
  25. DaneelOlivaw at 12:21 PM on 14 May 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
    "Are you reluctant to ask a "dumb question" on a comment thread for fear of being lectured to by one or more of members of the SkS author team?" No, but sometimes I don't post on a comment thread when there are too many comments and there's already a conversation going.
  26. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    I expect this to be my last post on this issue. That is because Helena's misrepresentation of what I said, and her refusal to acknowledge that misrepresentation makes conversation with her, IMO, pointless. At best, she is simply not open to new ideas that do not suite her preconceived opinions. Reviewing Helena's claims, we find that first she claimed that Monckton was correct, even though she has argued her case on entirely different grounds to that used be Monckton. That means that even if she could establish her case, she would not establish that Monckton was "right", and her claim that he was remains false. Second, Helena argued that the claim in the original post that "(2) ... the pace of warming over the last 25 years is greater than that in preceding years on the record". When challenged, however, it was found that in all her supposed counter-examples, the trend in the 25 years to 2005 was in fact greater than that in her supposed counter-examples. Therefore her claim was false, and based simply on inadequate inspection of the data. The more significant claim that the data does not support the categorical assertion of (2), but only the very qualified assertion that "on balance of probabilities" or, in the IPCC's jargon, "it is more likely than not" that the 25 year trend to 2005 is larger than any prior 25 year trend in the instrumental record. Of more concern to me is that it is not even clear that the IPCC ever asserted (2). The closest I can find to their asserting that is the assertion that,
    "An increasing rate of warming has taken place over the last 25 years, and 11 of the 12 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 12 years."
    (IPCC FAR, WG1, FAQ 3.1, My emphasis, note the tense.) This, however, is an assertion of increasing warming, not of a greater rate of warming than any comparable period. In other words, it merely reasserts the claim of accelerating warming in different words. I would be interested to see if anyone can find an actual assertion of (2) by the IPCC. Failing that, the OP should be updated to correct this potential error. I recall (vaguely) having some input into this post, and therefore bear some responsibility for this error, if error it is. For that I apologize. Finally, Helena continues to insist that a pattern of increasing trends with decreasing trend length can never be evidence of an accelerating trend. Her claim is, frankly, is nonsense. To see this, consider a smooth, and accelerating curve, ie, a curve whose slope is steeper at later times than it is at any earlier time. We can express this mathematically by saying the curve satisfies the condition that slope(t) < slope(t+x) for all x greater than 0. The second curve in the figure below gives an example of such a curve. A decelerating curve shows the opposite pattern, ie, the slope at any time t is greater than the slope at time t + x where x is greater than 0, bearing in mind that large negative numbers (and hence negative slopes) are smaller than small negative numbers and positive numbers. (Common language and intuitions are sometimes confused on this point.) The first curve in the figure below is an example of a decelerating curve. However, as the reasoning is parallel in both cases, I will not discuss it further. A linear trend is a type of average of the slopes of a curve. It is not the same as the mean of the slopes of a curve, or the mode, but it is an average never-the-less, and consequently has some of the properties of averages. One of those properties is that if you include more low value terms, ie, if the curve has more low slopes, the linear trend will be lower. In contrast, if you include more high value slopes, the linear trend will be higher. If you have an accelerating curve, with no noise, and take trends of successive periods, each being a whole number multiple of some value (say, 25 years), and each terminating at the same point, an interesting thing occurs. Whatever the value of the first trend you take, the second trend will include all the data points of the first, plus some some additional points. Because the trend is accelerating, these additional points will have a lower value than the original points (by definition of accelerated). Therefore the calculated trend of the larger interval will be lower than than the calculated trend of the smaller interval. This point follows by logical necessity. It is true of any accelerating curve segments with no noise. Therefore for any such curve segments, finding this pattern is sufficient proof that the segment is accelerating. Please note that Helena has repeatedly contradicted the bolded claim above. She has done so with no supporting argument, and he contradiction of that claim represents the bedrock of her case. It also logically indistinguishable from a simple assumption that no curve is accelerating. Of course, the temperature curve is not a curve with no noise. When you introduce noise, an interesting thing happens. Suppose the noise in the signal is so small relative the signal that it cannot be distinguished from the arc of the curve as drawn on a graph. Then clearly the reasoning above will still apply. In contrast, if the noise is very large relative to the curve segment, the reasoning will not apply. That is because most of the data in each successive period will be noise rather than the underlying curve. Therefore this method of detecting acceleration will only work when the signal to noise ration is large, or stated alternatively, when the difference in the trends of successive intervals is a sizable fraction of the 2 sigma confidence interval (and ideally, larger than it). There are a couple of important nuances to this argument. The first is that if your "curve" consists of two straight line segments meeting at a particular point, and if your successive trends all overlap that point, this method will still show the curve as accelerating. This is not a flaw. The "curve" has in fact accelerated. It has just done so at a precise point rather than continuously and smoothly. Therefore this test does not detect accelerating curves per se, but acceleration within a curve. Second, like all statistical tests, this test does not test for what the data will do outside the segment tested. A curve may repeatedly, and at regular intervals, accelerate than decelerate as with a sine curve. If you test the appropriate segment, you will find the acceleration that is actually occurring by this test, but it will not tell you whether the acceleration will continue, stop, or reverse. Of course, the IPCC does not claim, based on this test, that the acceleration will continue. The claim that it does is a key misrepresentation by Monckton, discussed in the OP.
  27. Analysis of Speed of Greenland Glaciers Gives New Insight for Rising Sea Level
    These findings, that loss of ice from the GIS are likely to contribute no more than 4 inches to sea level by 2100 stand in stark contrast to the Hansen and Sato (2011) prognosis that total ice sheet loss can be expected to double per decade resulting in SLR of 5 metres by 2100. Given the speed with which atmospheric and sea temperature is rising in the Arctic, on-going loss of albedo, and the rate of loss of land-based ice over the period 2000-2009, the conclusions reached in this article should, perhaps, be regarded with …. skepticism.
  28. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Lest there be any great confusion about the selection of start and end years, as Helena implies, here's a couple of simple graphs that demonstrate the fallacy of her claims: The first image shows the gradient of all trends longer than 25 years that have an end date in 2005. Years the IPCC used for their example are marked with a red star. The pattern of generally increasing trend rate is obvious, and the red stars are obviously not cherry picks. The second image shows a similar thing, but for >25 year trends beginning in 1850, with the 25, 50, 100 and 150 year trends marked with an asterisk. First data point is 1850-1874 trend, last data point is 1850-2005 trend. This is what Helena suggested would be awkward. Y-axes are to the same scale. What is interesting here, is that the trends are once again generally increasing from about 1918 onwards. There are large variations in the 19th Century when coverage was poorer and there was no clear trend in global temperatures. Once you reach the 20th Century, when the rising trend in the actual data kicks in (and the data coverage is more-or-less global), you get the same pattern of increasing warming rate, thus accelerating actual warming. It is only a less pronounced increase because the time periods are longer in this 'wrong-way-round' graph.
  29. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Further to this supposed counter example: We were discussing increasing functions with increasing slope. Your cosine does not apply.
  30. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena while you keep ignoring the meaning of your original claim you also ignoreed my full answer, despite I underlined the relevant part. Somehow I expected your selective reading. Quite telling.
  31. Daniel Bailey at 05:52 AM on 14 May 2012
    IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Henri has led us on a merry chase, no?
  32. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena#67: "i don't see how you can infer a deceleration." That's just silly. I live in a world where 3/4"/hour is a higher rainfall rate than 1/4" per hour. A world where calculus works and thus I can infer deceleration when the trend is decreasing. #69: "Examples: x^2, x^3, etc (for x>0)." Wrong " Show how x^2 does not have increasing slopes over progressively shorter intervals (as used here) when x>0. #70: "imagine a temperature graph that looks like a cos function with a 25year period. The secular trend is almsot flat." Your 'counter-example' requires at least one full cycle to have a flat secular trend. Do any of the graphs of real-world temperature variation shown here, especially fig 1, look anything vaguely like a full cycle cosine function with a 25 year period? Let's say the secular trend is the one established over the longest time interval (150 years) in Figure 1. Do you agree that the most recent 25 year period in Figure 1 shows a trend (0.18) that is greater than this secular trend (.05)? What do you propose this change in trend signifies?
  33. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    67 : it was sunny for 2 hours and a half and not 1hour and a half (so it adds up to 4hours).
  34. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Ricardo / Munoucounter, here is a simple example : Let's imagine a temperature graph that looks like a cos function with a 25year period. The secular trend is almsot flat. The short term trend (50 and 25) get higher and higher. You would have accelerating trends, you would infer accelerated warming, and you would be wrong because there would be no warming or cooling trend.
  35. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Muoncounter "Functions that produce statistically meaningful trends that increase over time are far more likely to be increasing and concave up (which we agree is one form of 'accelerating'). Examples: x^2, x^3, etc (for x>0)." Wrong
  36. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    (The first part is for Ricardo)
  37. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    "It's not a proof of your original claim. " It proves that, chosen at random (i.e no cherry picking), it is more likely that the slope of long trends will be smaller that the slope of short trends. Do you agree with that ? "The asnwer is yes" Wrong. You cannot infer accelerated warming from greater slopes for shorter recent periods Muoncounter 66 : Your example for rain is not exactly correct. First, I don't understand how those two sentences "It rained really hard the other night, 2" an hour for a bit. Then the rainfall rate decreased. " fit with the rest. The exercise is correct if you "only know" the various trends, and nothing else. So let me start here : I do not know if it rains after or not. I do not know if it was raining before or not. Here is how i write your exercise "Over the course of 4 hours, there is 3" of rain. The rate over the entire period is thus 3/4" per hour. The rate in the last half hour is 1/4" per hour." You take these changing trends as an indicator that the rainfall rate is decreasing. I'm sorry but i don't see how you can infer a deceleration. Maybe you do that because you already assume that it stopped raining after that, or that it must rain at a constant rate, or because you've lived it, but here you're adding crucial extra information that are not contained in the trend itself ! What if i tell you that it rained (3-1/8)" during the first hour, then it was sunny during 1h and half and then it rained again 1/8 (rate of 1/4" for half an hour). Maybe it's a new cloud coming and it's gonna rain for the next 5 hours. Who knows ? You've been adding the information that it's zero after that, but when you do that you do more than comparing the trends to infer the deceleration.
  38. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena#53: "we are on planet SKEPTSCIENCE. ... an indicator that we have an accelerated warming on this planet?" I prefer to work on this planet (for the time being). It rained really hard the other night, 2" an hour for a bit. Then the rainfall rate decreased. Over the course of 4 hours, there was 3" of rain. The rate over the entire period was thus 3/4" per hour. The rate in the last half hour was 1/4" per hour. I took these changing trends as an indicator that the rainfall rate was decreasing. In your hypothetical, I assume you refer to trends calculated from time intervals starting progressively closer to the present, as illustrated in the OP's figure 1 and in DB's response here. Let's also stipulate that each of these calculated trends is statistically significant - neither an artifact of any carefully selected time periods nor some artfully constructed noise. Functions that produce statistically meaningful trends that increase over time are far more likely to be increasing and concave up (which we agree is one form of 'accelerating'). Examples: x^2, x^3, etc (for x>0). On the other hand, functions that are increasing and concave down (decelerating) show the opposite behavior: 'older' trends are greater than more recent trends. Examples can be found among trig functions (5-5 Cos[x]), x between 0 and Pi. Add random noise if you like. Let's not devolve this discussion into wrangling over what the word 'indicate' means.
  39. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena you consistently avoid to address the weaknesses other commenters and I point out. In your last reply to me you end with the trivial fact that long term trends are more constrained than shorter ones. I agree, but it does not mean that they are larger (or smaller for that matter) in any way. It's not a proof of your original claim. On the other hand you still do not see the difference between starting at an old date and going forward from strating today and going backward. I don't want to pile up with other commenters and anyway untill you properly address this point, which is the source of disagreement with us all, the discussion can not move forward. P.S. Let me answer to your question to Tom: can one infer accelerated warming from greater slopes for shorter recent periods (150-10-50-25yr periods like in the IPCC)? The asnwer is yes, the trend has lately accelerated with respect to the secular trend. This is what that graph tells us. Now a hint, applying the same logic to your analysis, what does it tell us?
  40. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Well then let's have Tom answer on the important question (for the n'th time) : can one infer accelerated warming from greater slopes for shorter recent periods (150-10-50-25yr periods like in the IPCC). Tom, yes or no ?
  41. Bob Lacatena at 04:15 AM on 14 May 2012
    IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    62, Helena, Yes, you did. I don't see how it can be read any other way.
  42. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Tom61, i don't misrepresent any of your claim, but i guess it's easy on a forum to make people think that. Anyway, can you tell me what you think of KR claim that "If those trend changes are statistically significant, and increasing (and they are both), you can infer acceleration." Thanks (that is the same as my yes/no question #53
  43. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena @57 misrepresents my claim, and I believe deliberately so. My stating what her argument is is not the same as my agreeing with her argument, and no reasonable person could expect it to be so.
  44. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    KR : "If those trend changes are statistically significant, and increasing (and they are both), you can infer acceleration." Sorry but this is wrong.
  45. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena - "...one cannot infer accelerated warming from greater slopes for shorter recent periods." As I stated earlier, "Shorter terms will certainly have higher variances, but absent an underlying change in rate, randomly selected time periods and lengths would statistically average out to the same trend." If those trend changes are statistically significant, and increasing (and they are both), you can infer acceleration. That's the entire point of looking at statistical significance, to judge whether or not apparent indicators are indeed evidence.
  46. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    ... from greater slopes for shorter recent periods
  47. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Tom56, i've already agreed on the 25yr trend quite some time ago and i had noted that ironically it would be wrong if stated in AR5 as 1987-2011 is quite smaller. "Your argument against the inference that the warming is accelerating is a claim that the inference is not justified statistically. " Great to see that, based on common sense statistics, you agree that point 1 is incorrect i.e. the word "indicate" is wrong as one cannot infer accelerated warming.
  48. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Helena @51, if you want to claim that claim (2) from the OP is false, you need to show a 25 year trend earlier than the record that has a statistically significant greater trend. As it happens, you cannot even find one with a greater trend, let alone a statistically significant trend. If instead you want to simply claim that it was unjustified, ie, if you change your claim, then statistical significance becomes important. As it stands, given the available data the IPCC is justified in asserting that "it is more likely than not" that the 25 year trend terminating in 2005 was larger than any other 25 year trend on the instrumental record, both because. They are justified in doing so because the measured trend is in fact larger than any prior trend in the HadCRUT3v data, and because on the GISTEMP and NCDC data, which are more extensive, it is also larger than any prior 25 year trend, and by a larger margin. Your argument against the inference that the warming is accelerating is a claim that the inference is not justified statistically. Therefore you cannot ignore statistical significance. The problem here is not that I am asserting a double standard, but that you will not accept any standard which falsifies your claims, however, well justified those standards are.
  49. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    "my linear trends and the IPCC linear trends" = "my evolution of linear trends and the IPCC evolution linear trends"
  50. IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
    Tom52 : Qualitatively, my linear trends and the IPCC linear trends contain the same qualitative information about the underlying temperature function : NONE. That's the only point i'm making. You can answer my yes/no question on message 53 if you wish.

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