Re: [Phys-L] climate change continues apace

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 01/11/2016 03:12 PM, Bernard Cleyet referred us to:

"Climatologist Judith Curry calls attention to a new kind of attack on climate denial"
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.8158

Wow, that seems like the poster child for what *not* to do.
There is an accumulation of evidence that such an attack is 
likely to backfire, producing negative progress ... not to 
mention all the collateral damage to basic civil and scientific
institutions.

Most evidence suggests that the best approach is to first
establish trust.  This takes time.  Typically it starts
with discussing something else, something non-controversial
and non-confrontational.

This is why I suggest starting with tack-tossing and similar
simple data-driven exercises.  This gives people a chance 
to become proficient at looking at noisy data.  Among other 
things, they learn that it pays to look at the data in many
different ways.  They can bring their creativity to bear.

Here's an example of data that has more to do with weather
than climate, and is (as far as I know) non-controversial.
Take a look at figure 5 here:
  http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/elmonout.html#fig5

It took me a while to understand what is being shown there.
It is not your usual map.  It is more like a spacetime diagram,
only upside down, with time running vertically downwards.  Just
west of 120°E there are some structures that pop up, sit there
for a while, and then disappear.  They appear as vertical streaks
on the diagram.  Meanwhile, in the eastern half of the ocean 
there are structures that pop up, move eastward, and then
disappear.  They appear as streaks running in the \ direction.

There is nothing uniquely wonderful about this representation.
The real point here is that the Japan Meteorological Agency guys
have tons of data ... and many, many ways of looking at it.  If
you look at the data in only one way -- or worse, if you let some
corrupt politician pick one drop out of the ocean and show it 
to you -- then you might get fooled.  OTOH if you look at all 
of the data, and look at it lots of different ways, it becomes
much harder to get fooled.

Back on 06/08/2015 10:01 PM, I wrote:

> > the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 
> > years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half  
> > of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of 
> > a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.

And that was based on data collected long before the current
El Niño set in. 

Memo from the unsurprising news department:  Last month was 
the warmest December on record, by huge margin.

To say the same thing another way:  December 2014 was roughly
tied for the warmest-ever at the time, within the margin
of error ... but December 2015 was very much warmer than
that.  Take a look at figure 2 here:
  http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/highlights/mhcs201512.pdf

I don't think that is what a "slowdown" is supposed to look like.

Also November 2015 was the warmest November on record.
Ditto October.
Ditto September.

Every year for the past 18 years, the professional liars have
been comparing non-El-Niño years to an El-Niño year.  Now
that we have a chance to compare apples to apples, El-Niño
to El-Niño, they cry boo-hoo that's not fair, it must be
just a fluctuation.  Well, OK, we can compare oranges to
oranges if you'd prefer.  Let's discount this El Niño *and*
the 1997-98 El Niño.  We get the same long-term warming
trend from any fair comparison ... which is what I've been
saying for years and years:  the data is noisy, but the
trend is clear, and has been clear for a long, long time.

These are the same liars who say we can't make any policy
decisions because there isn't enough data ... then they
cherry-pick one drop out of the whole ocean of data, then
twist it until it /superficially appears/ to support their
agenda, and then ask us to make important decisions on that
basis.  As Trevor Noah put it (Daily Show, 14-Dec-2015) we
don't normally measure time in 18-year intervals ... unless
you are calculating child support.

Noisy data is a lot more useful than no data.

GPS signals are /at least/ 26 dB below the noise ... i.e. the
signal is many hundreds of times weaker than the noise ...
yet the receiver is able to pull it out.  The climate data is
not nearly that noisy.  It takes "some" skill to figure out
who's lying and who isn't ... some, but not very much.