“Global cooling” scam debunked yet again 17

You’ve probably heard the conservative argument that the globe is actually cooling, not warming. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard it 58 gazillion times. You may have even read it in the craptacular new book Superfreakonomics.

Associated Press’s Seth Borenstein decided to test it out, and he came up with a fairly ingenious way to do it: he gave the data to four statisticians, without telling them what it represented, and asked them to look for trends. The result? “The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”

Turns out the only way you can show any kind of downward trend is if you start your trend line in 1998, an unusually warm year thanks to El Nino. Any other year, including 1997 or 1999, and your “cooling” trend disappears.

And just to emphasize the point:

“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”

And again:

“To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it “a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policymakers” ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

So, now that the experts have debunked these transparently deceptive attempts to create confusion, the “cooling” myth will go away, right? Conservatives won’t repeat it any more, right?

Heh. Good one.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

Related Stories

Advertisement
Advertisement

  1. demoncleaner Posted 5:52 pm
    26 Oct 2009

    I have been posting recently on the CBC.ca boards under Environmental News stories. This comes argument comes up all the time. I started posting because I felt there was a dangerous amount of misinformation and just plain dangerous (think Glenn Beck) rhetoric being bandied about.
    As disheartening as it is, it has functioned somewhat like a Socratic method of teaching, wherein to refute ever changing claims I have had to solidify my own knowledge.
    There are some claims that have taken a while for me to begin to grasp. But as this case, a very common one, shows, they are easily refuted.

    Permalink

  2. EBJSCIENCE Posted 6:29 am
    27 Oct 2009

    I have a question, what did the analysis of the statisticians say. All you state is that it did not show global cooling, but did they say it showed a upward trend that would lead them to believe in global warming. It sounds like it looked flat. If it does not show a upward trend them maybe we need to rethink the assumption that there is global warming. Unless we are honest about the data, then we loose all credibility. Is there any way I can see the data that was presented. I am not a statistician, but I have a degree that had a lot of statistics in it. I would greatly be interested in looking at the data and how it was collected myself.

    Permalink

    1. dtrom4 Posted 7:47 am
      27 Oct 2009

      Well, if you go to the link you can see a graph of some of the data, as well as this line:

      "Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880."

      Also:

      "Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years."

      Permalink

    2. PurpleOzone Posted 3:11 pm
      27 Oct 2009

      "Free" thinker? You can't google to find the temperature data that shows global warming but you think better than other people?
      In case you are sincere, try to read Wikipedia's article on global warming. It's succinct and shows the data.

      Permalink

      1. EBJSCIENCE Posted 3:45 pm
        27 Oct 2009

        I don't appreciate your sarcasim and arogance and I don't trust anything on Wikipedia. I will take your advice and search for myself, so I don't have to deal with arogant individuals like yourself. Sorry to bother you.

        Permalink

    3. achase Posted 9:45 am
      30 Oct 2009

      In the spirit of this article, someone sent me this PDF recently, written by Richard Lindzen...is this of any merit?

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/cooler_heads_lindzen-talk-pdf.pdf

      Permalink

  3. EBJSCIENCE Posted 7:57 am
    27 Oct 2009

    What I see is that the statisticians that move it one year or the other are doing the same type of analysis that they say the global cooling scientist are doing. I am looking the the data for the past 100 years so I can look at it myself and not depend on one side or the other to cherry pick the data for me to make their point. I am a free thinker and want the true data because both sides have a agenda to push. Can you point me to a site that has the actual data of temperatures for the past 100 or so years?

    Permalink

    1. dtrom4 Posted 8:12 am
      27 Oct 2009

      That's not true. The statisticians were looking at the whole data set to draw conclusions. The comment was merely that cherry-picking the data by only looking at a 10 year trend starting at 1998 gave a different outcome than starting at 1997 or 1999. Which is why normal statisticians don't do that. They look at multi-year averages to smooth out year-by-year variation. There's a difference between comparing 10 year averages and only looking at a 10 year window to draw a conclusion.

      I understand you want an unbiased look at the data (unfortunately, I don't have the data either, but I'm sure Google can help), but you realize that this is what the story is about, right? They gave the raw data to professionals who didn't know what the data was for, so they would give truly unbiased analysis of the data.

      Permalink

    2. BrianS Posted 12:43 pm
      27 Oct 2009

      Here's some data:

      http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

      You can find lots more at the root URL.

      Have fun.

      Permalink

  4. demoncleaner Posted 10:12 am
    27 Oct 2009

    Well out comes Pielke again. This will certainly make the rounds on denier sites.

    http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/comments-on-ap-story-statistics-experts-reject-global-cooling-claims/

    sigh

    Permalink

  5. manymany2 Posted 11:16 am
    27 Oct 2009

    My goodness. It must be fake. Otherwise we wouldn't see stuff like this.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehMs9MHo-W4

    Permalink

  6. EBJSCIENCE Posted 3:17 pm
    27 Oct 2009

    DTROM4, Thanks for the web site. I reviewed several of the articles and study and they state that their belief is that increasing levels of CO2 are causing some of the warming, but, I looked at a study on pollutants and it appears that black carbon particles from burning coal is a greater contributor to increasing temperatures than CO2. I think it is more important to use our energy & resources to reduce the use of coal than to try and pass a cap & trade tax on CO2 which I think will do more to make a certain few individuals wealthy than to reduce global warming. I don't know why the environmentalist refuse to look at nuclear plants to produce electricity, thereby perpetuating the use of coal to produce electricity. There are some risk to Nuclear power, but if global warming is so dangerous, then I think it is worth the risk. We have not had a nuclear plant failure in 30 years or so and the technology is getting better. Why is it we (Americans) are building nuclear plants in India and other foreign countries, yet we have not built one in America in a long time. If I remember right, we only produce 15% of our electricity with Nuclear power, yet France produces 90% of their electricity with Nuclear power. We are missing the boat and the rest of the world is passing us by due to our unjustified fear of Nuclear power.

    Permalink

    1. PurpleOzone Posted 9:55 am
      31 Oct 2009

      New nukes? Maybe they are too expensive:

      http://www.earth-stream.com/Earth/Pollution-and-Warming/Toshiba-tells-San-Antonio-its-new-twin-$13-billion-nukes-will-cost-$4-B-more-Time-for-clean-energy-_18_196__212682.html

      Permalink

  7. EBJSCIENCE Posted 3:32 pm
    27 Oct 2009

    MANYMANY2- That was too funny. But if you live in Canada, it might not be too bad a thing. I used to live in Minot, ND and that place could use some warming. I often tell stories to my kids how miserable the winter were and the summers were on tepid. I tell kids that it was 9 months of winter and 3 months of spring.

    Permalink

    1. demoncleaner Posted 3:35 pm
      27 Oct 2009

      As someone who grew up in Manitoba I would have to say "it was cold, but a dry cold"

      Permalink

  8. foodprovider's avatar

    foodprovider Posted 5:13 am
    28 Oct 2009

    Prominent Russian Scientist: 'We should fear a deep temperature drop -- not catastrophic global warming'
    'Warming had a natural origin...CO2 is 'not guilty'

    http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3515/Prominent-Russian-Scientist-We-should-fear-a-deep-temperature-drop--not-catastrophic-global-warming

    UN Fears (More) Global Cooling Commeth! IPCC Scientist Warns UN: We may be about to enter 'one or even 2 decades during which temps cool'

    http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2793/UN-Fears-More-Global-Cooling-Commeth-IPCC-Scientist-Warns-UN-We-may-be-about-to-enter-one-or-even-2-decades-during-which-temps-cool

    Permalink

    1. PurpleOzone Posted 9:36 am
      31 Oct 2009

      "May" cool -- how much? back to 1970?. There's nothing to fear in that, aside from the fact that it's unlikely to happen.
      There's much to fear in the current weather: historic episodes of severe or catastrophic flooding in Europe the American southest and northern NE, huge fires in Greece, California, Australia due to current droughts, rapid heating and melting of the Arctic, high winds increasing, the permafrost of Siberia melting. That's so far, and the increased CO2 that's up there already has NOT finished heating (come to thermal equilibrium).

      Put another way, when you turn up the thermostat, the house begins to warm but it takes a while to get up to your set temperature.

      Carbon dioxide (along with other greenhouse gasses) controls the earth's heat balance, its temperature. Adding carbon dioxide resets the heat balance up. Loosing ice reduces the sunlight reflected back into space, and allows more heating.

      Some people won't believe global warming until they see water in the streets of New York City. And then they'll agree to take what action?

      Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement