http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_bush_global_warming


Proof the Bush Administration ignored global warming reports from the EPA.

More will be coming out, no doubt. There's been a steady stream of it for a while now. Naomi Oreskes talked about this in one of her presentations (forget which one now). Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science documented Bush admin censorship, and the book Censoring Science by Mark Bowen deals specifically with how people in the Bush admin (or loyal to the admin) altered the reports of scientists, and looks at the political attack on lead scientist Jim Hansen. He kept his job, btw. Neither his bosses or the Senators could get rid of him although it was close for a bit.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperatures for September 2009 ranked as the second warmest September on record since records began in 1880. See this graphic.

It's global warming! See! You were all told that!!

Ok, so a warm month doesn't mean much by itself, but if deniers can run around screaming "It's cold out...there is no global warming!" every time the temperature dips below normal, why don't they then run around screaming "It's hot out...there is global warming!" every time the temperature bobs above normal? I'll take INCONSISTENCY for a thousand, Alex.

Global warming?

On a more serious note it is now less than 6 weeks to the big climate summit in Copenhagen where an agreement to reduce CO2 emission should be made.

Even though the global average temperature has not increased the last decade, it is a fact that the temperature in the arctic has increased significantly and that the ice on Greenland is melting with an still increasing rate. Recent measurements on Greenland shows that the land is rising because the weight of the ice cap has decreased significantly.

This is part of a very persistent myth. E.g. global warming stopped in 1998, or that it is cooling. It has been debunked so many times, the latest was just this past week when the data was given to four independent statisticians. They weren't told what these numbers represented but were asked to look for trends.

Bit of math required. Also here. And here. What is especially annoying about this claim is that it is so easily demonstrated to be wrong. You can plot the numbers for the last 10-years yourself into excel, then have excel run a trendline through it. The trend line will point up (see pics below of 8 and 15 year trend lines) not down like deniers say it does. Keep in mind though that since weather (year to year) is chaotic most of the 7, 8 and 15 year trend lines aren't statistically significant anyway, even if they do point up.

See Mind the Gap written by climatologists. The graphs below are taken from links found within the Gap article. Seven year trend lines.


Eight year trend lines

Fifteen year trend lines. What deniers like to do is take that high peak at 1998 and draw a line from that to the lowest record around 2007/8. As I mentioned back in September even my first year biology students know enough NOT to draw a trendline this way.


Like I said, this is one of the easier myths to debunk because anyone can plot these numers for themselves and use any graphing program that projects trendlines. It is high school math and the fact that some people keep promoting this myth demonstrates that they are either 1. extremely ignorant of even basic graphing, or 2. are deliberatly lying.

Here's the data from the official GISStemp set.
year temp
1998 0.56
1999 0.32
2000 0.33
2001 0.47
2002 0.55
2003 0.54
2004 0.48
2005 0.62
2006 0.53
2007 0.56
2008 0.44
2009 0.54

Using 2009 my equation is y = 0.0102x + .4286, R2=0.1584 and the trend line goes up. Not statistically significant though. Remove the 2009 data and the R2 drops to 0.14 or thereabouts but the trend line keeps going up. To say it has stayed the same or even cooled just flies in the face of all evidence.

Re: the arctic. Did you know that a recent denialist article tried to claim the Arctic wasn't warming? Again, they used very bad math, cherry-picked the data, left some data out, altered the axis of the graphs. It was a startling display of dishonesty. Here's a pretty pic of just August. I'm due in class in 10 minutes and don't have time to search for the video link that shows global temps from the 1980s to present day. It is sobering watching the reds spread across the globe in fluctuating waves and concentrating in the arctic regions. I'll see if I can find it later.
Big pic here. Too big to fit into this message box.

Ken, you're an absolute legend with your facts and your graphs and everything. I've got nothing to add, really, but just wanted to thank you for putting in the time to show us the temperature data (and the earthquake data in the World Religions thread).

Ken has pointed out several times that the "warming stopped" claim is associated with a careful selection of starting points. Looking at the graph we can see that 1998 was a bit of an outlier. If you start with 1998 you greatly diminish and in several cases reverse the appearance of a warming trend.

If you start in 1999 or 1996 you will slightly inflate the trend.

Using just the years Ken posted, if we discard 1998 the warming trend gets huge: y= -33.215 + .017x with an R2 of .348 (more than double the R2 with 1998 included)

Use only 1999 to 2007 and we are all going to die very soon: R2=.632, slope = .03.

Edit time has expired...sigh!

this is why it is so important to take all of the data into account and beware of those who cherry pick their data. (Note: went off to read something Ken linked and one of the folks suggested 30 years of data for minimally decent trend analysis of climate data. Given the noise relative to the size of the effect this seems like a reasonable lower bound.)

Like this: Using 1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008 I managed to get global cooling! slope = -.008, R2 .338 (Now watch some wack job reference this abuse of data as proof of climate change. Sigh.)

Figures may not lie, but liars sure will figure.

No worries about a wack job using your data, Spock. I'm sure they're way ahead of you and have already figured that out themselves.

I heard Senator James Inhofe is heading to Copenhagen to shadow Obama. He's the one, who without benefit of anything approaching a knowledge of science in general, says all the climate scientists are lying and global warming is a big hoax. Now he (and two others apparently) are going to stand before real scientists and tell them they're all wrong (and/or lying).

I thought someone might tell him off, but instead it appears they'll just ignore him as I'm seeing references to The Three Stooges Visit Copenhagen. It seems he and company are just regarded as a joke. I'll have to tune in to international news to find out what is happening.