Oh come on, tAV has been far to boring lately. Today I was fortunate enough to receive an email which pointed out an interesting, yet short article from Paul Krugman, who writes at the ever shrinking New York Times Pay-Blog.
Paul Krugman – New York Times Blog
May 16, 2010, 6:12 pm
How Will They Spin This?
So, via Joe Romm, the NASA-GISS data show that the past 12 months were the hottest 12-month period on record. Here’s my plot of the temperature anomaly — the difference, in hundredths of a degree centigrade, from the average over 1951-80:
The 12 hottest months? — really? From Joe Romm!, you know it’s propaganda before you read another word.
Well this is a denialist blog, at least to the point that I deny the ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ solutions. It’s not like many of us deny the radiative effects of CO2, it’s the result we worry about. I flatly would not be surprised to see warming from human effects -or nature, but some seem to throw down the gauntlet every few minutes to us evil “solution” denialists.
SteveH provided the compiled graphs, but come on, how fun is this.
They could argue that temperatures fluctuate, that one shouldn’t make too much of a particular peak — which is actually true. But that would get them in trouble, since the whole global cooling thing has been about taking the 1998 peak — visible in the chart — plus a bit of bad data to claim, literally, that up is down. Any statistical fix, like looking at multi-year averages, would just confirm that the temperature trend is up.
Yes guys the trend has been up, until a little more than a decade ago but we all know the short term trend is nearly useless.
Now, I’m sure that the climate deniers will find a way to ignore the latest facts. But I’m not sure what that way will be.
Well, he’s shown his “PROOF”, the last 12 months were the warmest in recorded history– or ever!!! Certainly not many of us are surprised to see some warming but let’s see if the ‘warmest ever’ claim holds up to ‘mild’ scrutiny.
Well, it looks like our good pseudo-scientist reporter Krugman, has apparently missed the fact that he’s accidentally lumped Phil Climategate Jones into our ‘tribe’ (terminology courtesy TCO). Cru3 in green shows hat this is nowhere near the warmest year and Phil was willing to ‘hide the decline’ for the IPCC – a decidedly crooked move. What has happened to crutem and NCDC or better yet, why did Krugman choose the single highest metric??. Well, from climategate et al., we already know.
So, you can call it spin, my opinion is that none of these curves contradict or prove global warming, but they do contradict the fact that Krugman is an honest source has a clue.
I’ve just changed the title for the third time. Thanks to the New York Times, Joe Romm and Michael Mann, for providing the continuous stream of entertainment at zero cost.
BTW: This is the second time in the last hundred years that we’ve had unprecedented warming.
Thanks to SteveH for the plots.
the Air Vent 
Ok, maybe the video is a bit over the top, but what is blogging with out a bit of humor..
Good idea to look at more than just GISS. Pointing to it’s perennial record breaking is kinda a red herring, considering that two other prominent surface data sets. But let’s look at the “bad data”:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.3
I “spin” this as I have always stated: The surface data are likely erroneous.
Hm… I guess I can’t embed images. Okay:
CRU has 2010 5th warmest so far. Check out the “trick” at GISS. After their computer program gave a lowering anomaly for 2005, they redid the program to produce the 2005 is the warmest ever result. You could look it up.
Hits control T, plays video.
Flips back a tab and continues reading.
Works for me.
If the last 12 months were the warmest on record it certainly didnt feel like it!
Plus the largest snow extent for the northern hemisphere and the rapid growth of the artic ice, which are normally used as metrics by the AGW crowd for warming, seem to counter the fact is was so incredibly warm!
Where was all this extra heat exactly???? Oh yeah, it was all in the bit GISS guess over the poles! No wonder we didnt notice, its because its man made warming created in a program. But that doesnt help my Tomatoes grow 😦 Enjoy the “heat” Romm et al.
Where are the heat waves over europe that followed the 1998 El Nino? I think Europe would be glad for their summer to start!
Krugman – “the difference, in hundredths of a degree centigrade…”
The centigrade scale was abandoned 50 years ago. But then again scientific accuracy never seems to be very important in these matters.
This can’t be right. The graph puts warming over the last century at about 0.6 C(entigrade).
But last week I learned that high temps were killing lizards. Those biologists measured local temps several degrees warmer than normal.
So, most important question of the day: do lizards make good thermometers? (and do the report in centigrade).
Dead lizards make excellent thermometers. Live ones not so much.
Jeff ID, this thread should be related back to the El Nino preceding one – it can explain the recent warmer temperatures (for the globe and not regionally).
Krugman is to economics what Mann is to climate science. They have so thoroughly mixed advocacy with their fields that one can no longer separate their intentions. Krugman seldom gets his facts wrong, although he did on the recent Freddie problems, but being what he is in his NYT column, i.e. a partisan political hack, you will only see one side of an issue and with much spinning by Krugman.
Maybe Joe Romm’s arctic thermometer is located in Iceland. Yeah, with a name like Iceland, it would have to stay cool. Nothing there would ever warm up. What, you say there are volcanoes in Iceland? Can’t be, they would have named the place Fire-land, not Ice land if there were volcanoes there. /sarcasm
Ok, now at least you have ventured into my expertise – economics. A field of study that I can speak with authority on. And I can tell you the only thing Krugman and Economics have in common is Krugman can spell the word. He is a complete and utter fool that has no conception of anything he pontificates on.
In other words, have fun. But really, is it fun to kick an idiot for being an idiot?
Usually when I hear the words “warmest ever” I think of maximum temperatures. In the USA, 25 of the 50 max temperature records were set in the 1930’s and a couple in the 20’s. I would argue the hottest ( as in max ) decade was the 1930’s.
It may be the average temperature is up, but that would fit in with UHI where winters are slightly less cold and nights are slightly less cold because of all the heat radiating from the concrete and brick. Plus all the thermometers are now at airports.
Why are there so few ( 5 ) max records set in the 1990’s and none in the 2000’s if it is hotter?
# 6 you are too late. Sea ice was only a good story for skeptics for the month of April. It is now just barely above the 2007 minimum (but the rate of change is much, much higher now than 2007).
Here it is on Cryosphere
Could it be that all those Marxist, model loving, statistics hating warmers got it right?
3 things:
First, all I can say is that there must not be much of interest in the climate world, if the discussion involves that clueless political hack Krugman.
I wasn’t aware that Joe Romm was now a spokesman for NASA-GISS.
Temperatures to .01 degree? This from stations, many of which aren’t accurate to within a degree? Give me a break.
It’s no wonder the NYT is in trouble.
#15 “Could it be that all those Marxist, model loving, statistics hating warmers got it right?”
Only if you think the arctic weather was unchanging before 1979. 31 years of data is not 100 years of data and is not 1000 years of data. Considering how cold the late 1970’s was compared to the 1930’s alone.
Its been warmer. A lot warmer. In the 1930’s, in MWP, in the Roman Optimum. And probably a lot more 30 year periods.
Of course, I understand there is 1 or 2 treemometers that disagree with me.
Warmest “ever”….
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1974
After looking at what Krugmans graph is…. it is 12 month series and it currently works out for spin… on his part. Such is life.
If I chart (Yr.17 to Yr.8)/ 12 using hadcrut3 data it comes out like this…
However, if I chart (Yr.67 to Yr.58)/ 12 using hadcrut3 this is the result….
So, how do you read a dead lizard. Cut off it’s tail and count rings.
Perhaps Bob Tisdale could write Krugman a little not showing him his SST data and even introduce Paul to the concept of break points in time series. Even though Krugman is in the rarified company of Nobel winners, knowing how humble he is, he may even give Tisdale some space in his column. Is not that way it works at the NYT?
Today the ice extent, which was reported in late March at tAV to be completely recovered, compared to the 30 year average, intersected the 2007 (lowest recorded year) line.
And it intersected it at a steep slope. Compared to 2007, the extent limited the whole time and followed the curve pattern of the 30 year average. This year, the decline is much steeper than the 30 year curve.
How shall we hide THIS decline?
(usual caveats about weather is not climate apply, and of course I am just eye-balling the chart graph.
#17 – here is a graph that incorporates data back to 1900.
I love how they just graph the 1979-2010 bit of HadCRUT3 and ignore the inconvenient parts of the series.
Adding a sine fit is so uninteresting:
As Jeff says the 1912-1945 bit looks to be the same rise rate as 1972-2005, no coincidence. And guess when the first satellite went up.
Whole original post here: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/deconstructing-the-hadcrut-data/
#23 Thoughtful, fascinating graph of ice extent from 1900-2007. How were those estimates made before satellite coverage? Remarkably boring before about 1952. Is this a very short hockey stick?
#23 Never mind, I think I found the answer to my question at #25, here:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/arctic.historical.seaice.doc.txt
“Please note that much of the pre-1953 data is either climatology or
interpolated data and the user is cautioned to use this data with care.”
In other words, it’s made up.
Thoughtful Tom said
May 18, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Tom,
Can you explain why nsidc differs so widely from arctic-roos graph of the exact same data?
This seems to show ’07 having been about 12m k^2, while Boulder’s got it at 13m. There’s definitely a data set discrepancy somewhere.
#27,
I do not have a complete answer to your question. This seemed helpful:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/comparison-of-algorithms
Both sites are showing a precipitous drop in ice extent this year, which is what was predicted by climate models (that the thin ice creating the “fully recovered” ice extent would melt faster than multi-year ice). It happened in about 45 days.
I am sure there are complications to ice as there are with thermometers, but at some point you look at the preponderance of evidence and it gets very, very hard to side with the skeptics, that this is all some conspiracy for one world government, or whatever the popular way of saying HOAX is today.