Can you actually dispute the science in the Thompson paper?

Question

I have read it twice now, and am just not seeing anything that would make me suspicious of a massive conspiracy like Lindzen and others claim. Here's what they did:

--Using a temperature series that was filtered for internal variability, they examined all of the abrupt drops in temperature from 1880 to 2005, and find that:

“Most of the more prominent drops that are apparent in the [filtered surface temperature] coincide with large tropical volcanic eruptions. However, the most pronounced drop occurs in late 1945 and is not associated with any known climate phenomenon.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/fig_tab/nature06982_F2.html#figure-title

--They also note that this drop is ONLY noticed in the sea surface temperatures, not in the land based temperature record:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/fig_tab/nature06982_F3.html#figure-title

--They then point out that between 1942 and 1945, 80% of SST measurements were taken from US ships, with 5% from UK ships. Between 1945 and 1949, it dropped to only 30% of SST measurements being taken from US ships, and 50% from UK ships.

Since US ships primarily used engine intake readings--which are often biased warm due to heat from the engine--and UK ships primarily used measurements taken from buckets, which are often biased cool, the switch from US to UK could easily explain the abrupt drop in temperatures.

So based on the science of the paper alone, is this enough to conclude that Thompson is part of a massive conspiracy to ‘eliminate’ the mid 20th century cooling? If so, then at what specific point do you feel it loses credibility as a logical scientific argument?

Answer 1

The methods in Thompson's paper make sense. According to eric c, Lindzen's quote (no reference provided) is this:



"For many years, the global mean temperature record showed cooling from about 1940 until the early 70's...Improvements in our understanding of aerosols are increasingly making such arbitrary tuning somewhat embarrassing, and, no longer surprisingly, the data has been ‘corrected’ to get rid of the mid 20th century cooling (Thompson et al, 2008)."



I think it's pretty clear he's suggesting the purpose of Thompson's paper was to make the 1940-1970 cooling "go away". I find his use of the quotation marks around the word 'corrected' rather distasteful, as he's basically suggesting Thompson's purpose was to fudge the data. He sounds like a denier, not a scientist. If a scientist thought Thompson et al. were wrong, he would do his own study to prove it, not take pot shots in the denial blogosphere.



Eric's explanation of the discrepancy between Lindzen's comments and reality is that Lindzen didn't actually mean Thompson "got rid of" the cooling (even though that's what he specifically said), but rather made it less significant. However, if you actually look at the data in the paper, the cooling trend did not change much at all. It was a very small trend to begin with. Thompson considers 0.1°C a "substantial" change here. Which it is, but you're just changing the 'mid-century cooling' from maybe 0.1°C to zero, roughly.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7195/fig_tab/nature06982_ft.html



This isn't the first time deniers have tried to interpret a Lindzen lie to make it seem less dishonest. I brought up Lindzen's claim that we're 75% to a doubling of CO2 (in reality it's only half that, at 37%). Another denier claimed that Lindzen didn't mean a doubling of CO2 (even though I provided the quote which said exactly that), but rather a doubling of the CO2 forcing. In which case we're 46% of the way there.



His argument not only relies on a misinterpretation of Lindzen's quote, but the argument is that Lindzen wasn't lying by a factor of 2, but only by a factor of 1.63. Well, that's much less dishonest!

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20090811154032AAd6DuL



*edit 2* chuda - if you would actually calculate the trends and margins of error, you would indeed see that 2000 - late 2007 was a statistically significant trend while 2001 - end 2008 was not. Your problem is that you still don't know what the term "statistically significant" means. Maybe you should take a break from your hysterical laughter and look up the definition of the term. You can have an 8.5 year statistically significant trend. However, the one presented by deniers is not.



This is really not a difficult concept. There was a statistically significant warming trend 2000 - late 2007. Then 2008 was a relatively cool year (9th hottest on record). So the trend decreased, possibly even to negative values depending on where you cherrypick your starting point, and thus was no longer statistically significant.



I'll break it down so simply that even you can understand it. Say you've got 8 data points with a slope of 1 and a margin of error of 0.8. That's a statistically significant positive trend. Then you add another data point with a relatively low value. Now you pick 8 points with a much smaller slope, say -0.1, but your margin of error is still 0.8. That is a statistically insignificant negative trend. Get it?



While you're looking up what "statistically significant" means, look up the definitions of the terms "accurately" and "perfectly". You don't seem to know the difference. The fit was accurate, it was not perfect. It will never be perfect. This correction will make it more accurate. Is that concept really so difficult to comprehend?



*edit 3* I provided a link to support my statistically significant trend claim, chuda. All you have to do is read it. I beleive it's January 2000 - August 2007. The Hadley trend in question is 0.018 +/- 0.016°C.



As for the "8.5 years does not a statistically significant trend make", yes, that is an imprecise statement. If you look at the whole context of what I was saying, I think it's clear that there is nothing specific about 8.5 years which makes the trend statistically insignificant. A more precise statement would have been "with this data, 8.5 years isn't going to give you a statistically significant trend".



As of late 2007 that wasn't true, because 2007 was a hot year. Then in 2008 temperatures dropped due to La Nina, and the short-term trend was no longer significant. This is why it's utterly stupid to look at such short-term trends, and why climate scientists look at trends over several decades. But the bottom line is that Lindzen's comment was nevertheless wrong, and that the trend since 1995 has been statistically significant even through the relatively cool 2008.



Chuda - you and your fellow deniers are the ones obsessed with short-term trends. The only reason I even look at them is to prove you're wrong about them. Which you are. You remind me of Sarah Palin. You say something stupid, like the health care plan is going to create death panels. Then we say 'no no, that's stupid, and even talking about death panels is stupid'. Then you say 'hah you're talking about death panels so you just called yourself stupid!'. It's like the little kid who grabs your arm and starts hitting you with it, yelling "why do you keep punching yourself?".

Answer 2

Voila! an staggering subject count wherein user-friendly floor between 2 very assorted issues must be got here across. whether you have faith in international Warming or no longer the certainty nonetheless remains temperatures are increasing and the polar ice caps are melting. you will ought to blind or stay decrease than a rock to no longer be conscious those issues. the main staggering reason i think of that a lot of human beings placed this off as fiction is as a results of the fact in the event that they agree and persist with technology this time it makes them seem undesirable for putting different issues off that technology has additionally shown certainty (evolution, massive bang concept, and so on.). they do no longer wanna element with it now to avert finding undesirable interior the long-term that's undeniable BS. that is wintry climate here in Florida and we are dealing with 80 degree climate! I propose it incredibly is often warm, no lie, yet wintry climate is frequently the time the place it drops to a minimum of 60. Why human beings can't placed their ideals aside to realize our planet is in intense difficulty is previous me. the two way Christianity has consistently completed the different of what that is supposedly meant to do....

Answer 3

You are totally misconstruing the point of my question. Nobody is talking about a conspiracy. To quote again Lindzen:



""For many years, the global mean temperature record showed cooling from about 1940 until the early 70's. This, in fact, led to the concern for global cooling during the 1970's. The IPCC regularly, through the 4th assessment, boasted of the ability of models to simulate this cooling (while failing to emphasize that each model required a different specification of completely undetermined aerosol cooling in order to achieve this simulation (Kiehl, 2007)). Improvements in our understanding of aerosols are increasingly making such arbitrary tuning somewhat embarrassing, and, no longer surprisingly, the data has been ‘corrected’ to get rid of the mid 20th century cooling (Thompson et al, 2008). This may, in fact, be a legitimate correction (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3114). The embarrassment may lie in the continuous claims of modelers to have simulated the allegedly incorrect data."



I will quote again to emphasis a specific part. "This may, in fact, be a legitimate correction (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3114)." ( Does that sound like a conspiracy? It is an admission that there is some legitimacy to this claim, and he references another well known skeptic McIntyre) "The embarrassment may lie in the continuous claims of modelers to have simulated the allegedly incorrect data." In other words, whenever the mid century cooling was mentioned proponents would point to aerosols as the cause, and that the models properly took them into account. The Thompson paper readjusted the the mid century cooling to make it less severe. But that also means that the forcing of aerosols as a cooling agent was overestimated, despite the reassurance of proponents and the IPCC that the forcing was accurate. So my point is, was this an honest mistake, or did they purposely enter data to give them the desired results to support the global warming theory? If the latter is true, what other data are they fudging to support the AGW theory?



When I mentioned this embarrassment in a question, people on this board attacked Lindzen and said that the Thompson paper made no adjustment to mid century cooling, when in fact it did. From the Thompson paper:



"The new adjustments are likely to have a SUBSTANTIAL (emphasis mine) impact on the historical record of global-mean surface temperatures through the middle part of the twentieth century."



https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20090810034258AA32iub



Edit: Dana. I guess you have to look at it in the context that it was written to make sense. Lindzen was giving examples of how every time the data did not fit the AGW theory, "corrections" were made. That is why he put it in quotations.



http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf

Answer 4

Once again, a chart of temperature change, not a chart on actual data. When will you AGW people realize that using heavily messaged data with no link to the original actual temperatures mean nothing. Also, I am still waiting for how we came up with the mythical Global average? I mean it doesn't take a climate scientist to know that if you exit a Global Minimum that the Average temperature from that time forward will increase from that minimum.

Answer 5

Sure you can dispute it. Write up a rebuttal and send it in to Thompson, or to any scientific journal you want. If it passes the peer review process they will print it.

Answer 6

When someone (Lindzen) starts hurling ad hominens at his colleagues, with absolutely no credible scientific basis for it, that individual loses credibility and appears childish.



I don't quite understand Lindzen's political motivation for throwing a tantrum over this correction. I haven't read the full paper so I'm not positive what the implications are, but my take was that it would simply smooth out the large drop around 1945 to the several years beyond that, which doesn't change the long-term trend or the slight mid-century cooling trend.



Lindzen recently claimed that most data corrections end up going in the direction of model expectations or theory. He described this as "implausible". It's only implausible if one assumes that the model expectations and theory are all wrong, as Lindzen does.



EDIT



I'm getting an idea why Lindzen and other deniers are (and might be going forward) throwing tantrums over this correction. Eric C quotes Lindzen as saying that scientists found their models agreed with previously bad data, which he claims is embarrassing. Actually, this is the opposite from reality. The period in question was one period that models had a hard time accounting for (more so than any other 20th century period), mainly with ocean temperatures.



http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-new-twist-on-mid-century-cooling.html



One possible result from this discontinuity:



"Forest predicts temperatures between 1942 to 1945 will shift downwards. This would make 1940's temperature data more consistent with climate models and remove the discontinuous cooling in 1945. "



Note also a sentence in the conclusion:



"compensation for a different potential source of bias in SST data in the past decade— the transition from ship- to buoy-derived SSTs—might increase the century-long trends by raising recent SSTs as much as 0.1 C, as buoy-derived SSTs are biased cool relative to ship measurements"



http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-new-twist-on-mid-century-cooling.html



Such a correction in recent SSTs would cause deniers to absolutely soil themselves a million times over.



RC doesn't quite go this far, but seems to have a somewhat different take on the expected correction.



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/of-buckets-and-blogs/



The Independent also had a rare good mainstream media article on this:



http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/case-against-climate-change-discredited-by-study-835856.html



This was more than a year ago. Anyone have an idea of where Hadley is at on a potential correction, or do more papers need to be submitted?



EDIT2



I found the following recent PP presentation by Phil Jones.



http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/symposium/061909presentations/Jones_Boulder_june2009.ppt



At around slide 20, he discusses the impact of this correction. It's mainly an upward adjustment to 1945-1955 but there's also a smaller upward adjustment in recent SSTs by a few hundredths.

Answer 7

"You are totally misconstruing the point of my question. Nobody is talking about a conspiracy."



Umm, hang on Eric, this is the same Lindzen who has suggested that scientists are being fired because they don't back AGW, that certainly sounds like a conspiracy theory to me and Lindzen is the one pushing it. This is despite the fact it quite easy to research the names he has provided,(which are not many) and show that in the case of several they simply retired (and were actually well past retirement age)

Answer 8

An answer from someone apparently completely unfamiliar with the way science is done says:



"As soon as you "filter" the data, you're operating with corrupt data. If the data is corrupt, then it's not much good."



Apparently he's unaware that ALL data in science is filtered one way or another. For starters, it's impossible to take measurements at every place and every time so it's already being filtered spatially and temporally. Data is also routinely filtered to remove obviously bad data points, or to limit to the frequency domain of interest, or by being sampled digitally when it's an analog signal, and on and on.



Deniers can't do that math, don't understand the science, but are more than willing to say that everyone who is trained in it and does it for a living is doing it wrong.



EDIT: Don't you love it how people that are constantly saying scientists are fools hate it when the criticism gets turned back on them? By the way, people that claim ad hominem attacks might want to be sure they understand the meaning of "ad hominem." Giving examples of how they don't understand the role of filtering in science is not an ad hominem attack--it directly skewers a fallacious argument.



Question for amancalledchuda: I'm very interested in this quote that you give:



“If they’re accurately re-creating the past,” we were told, “then their predictions of the future must be accurate too.”



Could you please give the source of that quote? It doesn't sound like anything a climate scientist would say.



AMANCALLEDCHUDA: Still waiting on your source for that quote. I'm starting to think either you said yourself or another denier. If you're going to question other people's credibility you should back up what you claim.



Another EDIT: Thank you amancalledchuda, for admitting that that was a made-up quote. I didn't think that was a real quote, because certainly no climate scientist would have said that. However, a reasonable person (climate scientist or not) would say "If a model cannot accurately predict the past, why would we expect it to accurate predict the future." That is why hindcasts are important, but are no proof that a model will forecast correctly.



Also, you should not think of $30 billion (or whatever) as being given to global warming science. I have no idea where that figure comes from, but if it's accurate I'm sure the money is being given to climate, meteorological and oceanic research, and the results are just confirming global warming. Look, the previous US administration would have been tickled pink if climate scientists could have come up with evidence AGAINST global warming, but it just hasn't worked out that way.

Answer 9

As soon as you "filter" the data, you're operating with corrupt data. If the data is corrupt, then it's not much good.



Fudging the results of buckets vs intakes and then assuming accuracy of less than one degree is incredibly stupid.



You don't need to believe in a massive conspiracy to believe there's a massive error.



Edit.



...and if the data is "filtered" outside of the analysis being done, fraud can be committed as the "analysis" is filled with bad data.



Honest science wouldn't even be done with "intake" temperatures because the individual intakes would always represent different surroundings... and thermometers that are acceptable for running machinery are in no way accurate enough to claim we know the temperature of the ocean to less than a degree. It's utterly stupid to pretend anything else.



This is no different than polling the readership of the New York Times and pretending you have a handle on the opinion of all of the American people.



And I suppose if I'm going to reply like a scientific mind like yours, Pegminer, I should include some kind of baseless ad-hominem attack to support my case, but I don't do that, neither do real scientists.

Answer 10

Here's a flash: each winter we have cooling and each summer we have warming..the rest of the argument fictional.

Answer 11

If your obsessed with SST's, then it's find and dandy. Most people or scientist wouldn't have that limitation though.

Answer 12

I must say, I’m with Lindzen and Eric c on this.



Let’s get this straight...



1) For years we have been lead to believe that we are heading for a catastrophe due to Global Warming.



2) The only evidence ever provided for these claims of future catastrophe is in the form of the output of Global Climate Models (GCMs).



3) When the accuracy of these GCMs was questioned, we were assured that they were accurate and should be trusted, based on their ability to accurately re-create the temperature fluctuations of the 20th century. “If they’re accurately re-creating the past,” we were told, “then their predictions of the future must be accurate too.”



4) However, the changes proposed by Thompson mean that the GCMs did *not* accurately re-create the temperature fluctuations of the 20th century.



5) Therefore, the GCMs cannot be trusted.



I notice with much amusement that Dana has immediately foreseen this line of reasoning and has stated: “...this adjustment will make the data fit what the models expect even more accurately.” Well, hang on a minute. Isn’t that an admission that, in fact, the GCMs never did actually re-create the 20th century temperature fluctuations accurately? So, it’s also an admission that we’ve been lied to for years!



Oh, and I nearly gave myself a heart-attack from laughing so hard when I read this bit from Dana’s answer: “...the trend since 1995 most certainly is statistically significant. It was even statistically significant from 2000-2008, let alone from 1995.” Um? Hang on a minute. Dana and I have recently been discussing the relevance of the current 8.5 year cooling trend. Dana has made comments such as “8.5 years does not a statistically significant trend make.” (See: https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20090717132734AAuoqQv&show=7#profile-info-TI06IsACaa )



Now, let me get this straight. 2001-2009 cooling is *not* “statistically significant” and makes me deserving of being accused of having “sh*t coming out of [my] mouth”, but suddenly the warming from 2000-2008 *is* “statistically significant”.



Can I assume that all you Global Warming Liars think that this is perfectly acceptable behaviour?



Come on! Show an ounce of credibility and condemn him – I dare you! LOL



As ever with Global Warming - Don't believe the hype.









::EDIT::



In response to Dana...



OK, I’ll bite. Perhaps I’m missing something here – I’d be the first to admit that I’m no expert...



First let’s talk about the data in question; I’m using the HADCRUT3 Variance adjusted global mean (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt )



First let’s determine the trends:



Your 2000-2008 period has a least squares trend line slope of 0.010383⁰C per year.

(I’ve assumed that we’re talking Jan 2000 – Jan 2008, since if you take Jan 2000 – Dec 2008 you get a trend of only 0.00185493⁰C per year – which is so small as to be irrelevant.)



My 2001 – present has a least squares trend line slope of -0.0101491⁰C per year.



The magnitude of your slope is greater by only 2%, so I think we can agree that the slopes are, for the purposes of this discussion, the same.



Length of sample:



Your 2000 – 2008 = 96 data points.



My 2001 – present = 102 data points.



So my sample is longer by 6%.



Both samples are taken from the same dataset, so the margin of error is the same for both.



Now, I look at all that and conclude that they are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same. One cannot be considered “statistically significant” without the other also being so.



Where am I going wrong?







::EDIT 2::



I’ve had another think about this, and had another read through those quotes of yours, Dana. I’m sorry, you don’t get away with this that easily.



You first quote was: “8.5 years does not a statistically significant trend make.” – Clearly, you are saying that it is the time period that is the problem. It’s the “8.5 years” that means the trend is not statistically significant. Not one of your initial comments made any mention of the slope of the trend.



You were clearly talking about the length of the sample being too short.



You’re now simply trying to save face, by pretending that you said something that you didn’t.



The simple truth is that you ridiculed me, in an absolutely appalling way, on the strength that 8.5 years does not make a statistically significant trend, and then suddenly completely contradicted yourself in this question by saying that an 8 year trend is statistically significant.



Now you’re trying to cover your own embarrassment by completely changing the basis of your argument.



*This* is why I’m a Global Warming sceptic. This is *not* how science is done. You don’t ridicule someone for making a mistake and then do exactly the same thing yourself when it suits your argument.



It’s called being corrupt. Look that one up, Dana.







:::EDIT 3:::



Dana. So, now that you’ve just said: “This is why it's utterly stupid to look at such short-term trends”, is that you accepting that you were utterly stupid to have done so?



OK, I apologise for not reading the link. Having now done so and looked at his graphs, it would appear that it’s actually quoting Jan 2000 – Jun 2007, which does indeed give a slope of 0.018 on the HADCRUT3 (Unadjusted) dataset. So again, were back to “Is that more statistically significant than my -0.01 cooling trend. Clearly, it’s an 80% greater slope, but your sample is only 90 data points long. Just for fun I checked what you get if you reduce my sample to only 90 data points and (would you believe it?) you get a slope of -0.018! Don’t you just love it when things happen like that?



Anyway, since you’ve admitted to having been “utterly stupid”, we’ll leave it there, shall we?







:::EDIT 4:::



In response to pegminer...



Yes, sorry, I have to hold my hands up to this one; there should never have been quotation marks around those comments.



What I was trying to say was that that was what we were *generally* getting told, as in...



Sceptics: how can you be so sure that these model predictions of yours will be anything like accurate?



Alarmists: Because, Look! They can hind-cast *so* accurately!



Apparently not, it would seem.



I have little doubt that some may respond saying: “No actual climate scientist ever said that” and that may well be true, but they didn’t exactly climb to the rooftops and scream the truth to the world, when the alarmists were lying about it, did they.



And who can blame them? They have a vested interest in ensuring that the public remains alarmed by the idea of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. After all, the US Government has paid $30 billion into Global Warming science over the last twenty years, and the moment the scientists confirm, conclusively that, actually, Global Warming isn’t something we need to worry about after all, then they are all out of a job.



I pride myself on being an honest man, but even I’d admit that I’d be tempted to be slightly reticent in my duty to correct the lies that some people are spouting. “I’ll mention it tomorrow, maybe, if I have time.” I imagine myself saying. Who would be honest enough to speak loud and clear in a manner that risks putting themselves out of work?



If we paid $30 billion to a group of scientists and told them: “Prove that it’s the Sun.” (or whatever possible alternative theory you like) But then added that: “A) You’re out of a job the moment you came back and say it’s not the Sun. B) You can do as much correcting of data to support your case as you like, and censoring anyone who speak against you is perfectly acceptable, and C) You’re not required to actually provide any conclusive, empirical evidence.” Do you think that, perhaps these scientists might suddenly find compelling reasons why continued study of the Sun would be essential?



If we were paying $30 billion to the sceptics, do you think the debate would be as one-sided as it is?

Answer 13

Read your Bible so you may learn the truth.