Amusement in the NewsFollow

But only for a couple years. That's the point. The actual data collected over the next 7 years did *not* match the projections. Get it?

Sigh.

just one of many articles about temperatures in the last decade


I could probably find 50 more. You're pulling out selected data points, but not using them consistently. You can't compare one set of data to another that was collected using different methods. When you plot broad global temperature trendlines, they show a plateau effect over the last decade.


I've already pointed out how this calls into question global warming theory, and at the very least the need to spend massive amounts of money reducing CO2 emissions. Something *else* stopped the temperature increase that occurred during the previous 30ish years. CO2 emissions didn't change. Ergo, something else is having a larger effect on temperature than CO2 emissions. Something that the global warming models do not predict or account for.


That's why it's reasonable to question those models. They haven't accurately predicted temperature effects since they were adopted. It's easy to make a model fit historical data. But the proof is when they predict future data points. And so far, they haven't.

Yes, but peer-reviewed ones.

Yours sre subjective mantrae

I rarely bother replying to your posts because you're such an annoying, bigotted, self-blinded, verbally-laxated dolt, but I'm in a good mood.

What's sad is that you are pretty much accurate. It's an evil plot for mean old Marxists to seize control of those innocent oil companies who just want to HELP PEOPLE.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree, Anna. Me being right is never sad.

I could probably find 50 more.

Fuck, I could find 50 paid for by Exxon/Mobil alone.

What's your point? That there are people who will say or write things you agree with? Ok! Good to know. The overwhelming consensus among even marginally serious people who've spent time learning and doing actual science is the opposite of what you'd like (although who the fuck knows why, right, sucker?). I'd like the DMV to provide blowjobs while I wait in line to register my car. Yet, oddly, no matter how many people I pay to agree with me, it just doesn't happen.

That's just ridicule, ace, it's not a real metaphor.

Ok... one more time, with hand puppets.

Here is a graph showing the models, created on/before 2001, and what they thought would happen over the next century. I have marked off the portion projecting 2000-2007 using the magic of math and a graphics program that tells me which pixel number I'm on. I also marked off 0.1 degree intervals:



Here is a graph, created after 2001 which shows the actual global temperatures between 1840 and 2007. The part we really care about is the 2000-2007 part since we're seeing how sharp those projections above were. I drew a baseline at the 2000 temperature. Note that "Zero" isn't the same on the two graphs since each measures "anomaly" from a different point but, for the temperature points themselves, we can see if the temperature went up or down using the same 0.1 degree interval lines for reference and using the same baseline at 2000.



Here are the two portions from 2000-2007 blown up. Unfortunately, the projection chart blows up to something of a mess even after you sharpen it a dozen times. Still, it gives an idea of what the projected temperature range was between 2000-2007 which we can compare to the actual range. Note also that the actual temperature chart starts from the 2000 baseline but it's more like a half interval to the first line:



The projections, if anything, undercut the first year or two a little and then are pretty much accurate for the next five years. Of course, this is speaking within a range since we're looking at eight different projections drawn on top of one another. Still, you'd have to be blind to deny that the projections accurately suggested a mild increase in global temperatures from 2000-2007.

Free bonus: If you take the actual temperature data line and stretch it to make it (roughly) match the dimensions of the projection graph, you get this:

Admit it, these are catsup stains.

I'm not sure how blowing the graph up does anything other than show in large dots how you're wrong.

Do any of the data points after the trendline equal or exceed the .1 line? No.

Out of the 6 points, how many come close? 1

Of the remaining 5, how many are near the halfway point? 2, 3 if you count that one that's kinda around the quarter mark.

Of the remaining 3, how many are down near the bottom? 2


Bonus question: Those two near the bottom. Are they the earlier points, or the later points? later points.


Do you see how this doesn't bode well? Plot a trendline through those following the same rules as the trendline on that graph up to that point, and you get a nearly flat line (a plateau if you will).

Tell you what. Go find me a graph generated that uses the same methodology, with new data for the years from 2002 through 2008 so we can stop guessing. For more bonus points explain why it is so hard to find such things on this wonderful thing called the internet.


And for the kicker:



Wait. How does a choice between temperatures going down or leveling off equate to a "warming trend"? Not for the last decade, it doesn't. Trends change over time Joph. That's the point here.


There is no explanation in global warming theory for the temperature plateau we've seen in the last decade. None at all. That doesn't mean it's absolute garbage, but it should make one a little bit cautious about taking every prediction generated by those models at face value, let alone spending billions of dollars as a result.


It's not a zero cost argument here. It's not like if we do something and it turns out to be unnecessary that we've lost nothing in the process. If that was the case, I'd have no problem with global warming, and neither would anyone outside of academic circles. But there's an enormous cost involved in "fighting" global warming. Silly me. I want to have a bit more reason than "it might be bad" to go on here...


Heck. No one can promise me that even if the most dire predictions are true that *any* of the massive proposed costs will help at all. If the oceans are going to raise by 2 feet in the next century, and spending billions of dollars fighting CO2 emissions only reduces that by a half inch, well... I suspect we might have been better using that money doing something else. Like building boats maybe...

I linked you one from NASA.

Guess what?

It lines up with the predictions. Astonishing, no?

Alt text: Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

You have to post that with xkcd comics, young padawan. Much to learn, you have.

There is an xkcd for every occasion. I have to restrain myself fom posting links to them soemtimes. Of course, about a third of new xkcds suck because Randall is being slowly corrupted by the internet, so it's generally the older ones.

No, you don't. The projections show as you stated, about a .1 degree temperature change over that decade.

The problem isn't with that part though. The problem is with your 2000 "baseline" in the chart right underneath it. The one you then go on to blow up massively to try to make a point.

You placed the 2000 baseline on a very low outlier data point, while ignoring the 5 year average trendline. If you place it *on* the trendline, and then look at where the trendline continues from there (so we're ignoring outliers, like 1998, which had a very high temperature, and 2000, which had a very low one), we find that the net temperature increase over the next few years is microscopic. It's a very very clear slope change from the preceding couple decades.


That's what you seem to be ignoring. The projections of gloom and doom are based on assumptions/predictions that global temperatures will continue to rise at the same or higher rate that it's risen for the last 2-3 decades. If you look at the projections, the lowest of them continue on a more or less straight slopped line, while many of them show an increased slope over the next century (90 years now).

The relevance of the plateau in temperatures is that the predictions of gloom and doom are based on the higher predictions, not the lower ones. Pointing at a couple projections which don't show much increase in the first decade of the century and saying "See! That's what they predicted" isn't that relevant.



Only if you kinda squint hard and see only what you want to see. The predictions are color coded, but by prediction source/methodology. While all of them show dips and ridges, they *all* show the trend going upwards, even when we just look at the first decade.

Look at the blue trendline Joph. That's the 5 year average. That's the line I'm talking about. And that number has absolutely gone up at a pretty steep slope for about 30 years prior to 2000, and then shallowed significantly in the next 8 years. That's the plateau everyone is talking about. It is *not* predicted by global warming theory. The entire argument for spending billions of dollars reducing CO2 emissions rests on the assumption that a plateau would not happen and that temperatures would continue to rise as they had in the previous decades. You can play games with this set of projections, or that set of measurements, but the policies we're talking about don't make sense given the data we're now seeing.




Because what's relevant is which predictions are used to justify that political actions global warming activists want us to take, and the fact that those predictions do not appear to match the data. Everything else is static. It doesn't matter.