Global and Seasonal thread summary and continuation

From the update to the previous post: "there is also the possibility of Chris S coming back with his own analysis of Richard's data."

Those analyses will be coming. These things take time to do properly. Not sure if I'll have much before Christmas though.

Coby:

Richard, in his delusion of course, now regards it as a âvictoryâ that his obstinacy has repelled Mandas and the rest whoâve given up engagement with him out of disgust.

As you well know I am willing to watch someone like RW continue to exhibit his epic charlatanism and hector him for it indefinitely, although the point of diminishing returns was probably reached long ago. (Besides, I have a shit load of end-of-the-semester grading.) Thatâs something I suppose I should work on recognizing, but like Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) said in *Millerâs Crossing*, âI never let a man walk.â

So while I will keep an eye on RW as long as he posts, I would like to offer my version of a summary in the form very simple true-or-false questions to Richard:

Richard:

1.You have no formal training in climate scienceâor *any* science for that matterâtrue or false?

2.Your only peer reviewed publication was a refutation of a geologic claim made by a creationist that appeared in a low level geology journalâtrue or false?

3.The only alleged peer reviewed support (Zhang et al) of your claim of the flattening of summer Tmax and subsequent convergence of winter and summer temperatures in all of Canada only confirmed your finding for *southern* Canadaâtrue or false?

4.You have argued that the mere *claim* of dissentâeven by sources you admit to having not readâconstitutes a credible challenge to the idea of an AGW âconsensusââtrue or false?

5.You have claimed that âappeal to authorityâ is an invalid argument, yet have on multiple occasions linked us to material that you have not even readâtrue or false?

6.You have repeatedly used straw man argumentation, such as accusing your disputants of having âblind faith that ONLY CO2 changes the climateââtrue or false?

7.You have been caught brazenly demanding that we âget the data and check it outâ in regard to an analysis that you yourself could not even have accessed at the time you made the demandâtrue or false?

8.Even in cases where you have not specifically *admitted* to having not read a particular source you cite, on more than one occasion that particular source has been proven to contradict your own positionâtrue or false?

9.On more than one occasion you have cited sources that specifically contradict *each other*âtrue or false?

10.You have been caught citing as âproofâ of âhow irrational [the AGW] side has become, anti humanâ a source which admitted he *invented* his damning quotesâtrue or false?

11.You have never even *acknowledged* that AGW theory *predicts* winters cooling faster than summersâtrue or false?

12.You have repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, such as the ones enumerated aboveâtrue or false?

13.You will ignore this post and all of *the questions above*âtrue or false?

Anyone who knows Richard and the now archived thread knows that the honest and quite embarrassing answer to all of these questions is, of course

âtrueâ.

(Except for oneâI threw it in because I want to give Richard the chance to cherry pick a question and show his hypocrisy.)

And that is sad. For all we know Richard in his prime risked his life to save people from burning buildings, or at least rescued treed cats for crying little Canadian children. Iâm a tenured college professor but in my retirement I would be *way* prouder to be able to say I had been a fireman! He could be enjoying his retirement as a member of the intellectually honest, engaged, and scientifically literate community.

Instead heâs worked himself into this Ahabian frenzy, determined to vindicate the following self-perception:

Your side will just have the embarrassment of being taken down by a non-scientist. Yeah, I can see how that might hurt -- too bad. Not my fault the entire climate community failed to, or did not want to, see the detailed evidence . . . [it wonât be] the first time I've taken on someone with a degree who thought he was right. I had no formal training in geology, spent 2 years teaching myself first, then solved the enigma that no one else could. Richard, GASA #22.

In the end I regret that Richard chooses to waste his life this way, but that being said, if he keeps posting his ignorant horseshit Iâm not going to spare his feelings. As I told Richard before: my children have to inherit the world heâs helping to create.

For more insight into denialism of the Wakefield kind, you can have a look at his Youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/jrwakefield
and place a face to his user ID. He is only human.

This should help to keep a mental image of him when next you find yourself tempted to belittle his beliefs.

Coby, I gotta love your selective quoting from that wiki article. You failed to include this:

In the United States, definitions also vary by region; however, a heat wave is usually defined as a period of at least two or more days of excessively hot weather.[5] In the Northeast, a heat wave is typically defined as three consecutive days where the temperature reaches or exceeds 90 °F (32 °C)

My criteria for a heat wave day was any day over 29.9C. So my analysis fits that US criteria. My observations, from every station I have seen so far, from across the country, is those numbers are DROPPING. There are fewer days 30C and above today than in the early 1900's. By 1/3 fewer.

Second graph http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/03/specific-stations-4333-otta…

"Number of days 30C and above" here: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/station-2973-muenster-saska…

How do you explain this?

when Richard talks about falling summer temperatures he is actually just plotting a single point for each year.

Yes, the hottest day of the year, which AGW claims should be increasing, but it is not. How can the planet get warmer, with hotter summers if the hottest days of the year are dropping? How come the vast majority of record setting days are before 1950?

Aside from the irrelevance of some alledged "upper ceiling" (what is it and why? are we there already?),

Let me ask you this. Look at the first graph here: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/09/summer-of-2010-hottest-on-r…

That red line at the top is the highest daily temp reached for the period 1900-2009. Each point is one day on that line (so 365 points make up that red line) regardless of the year. It represents the hottest it has gotten for each day between 1900 and 2009. Notice the shape, and above all notice the peak. That's July. This is the question. If AGW is correct and summers must get hotter, that red line would have to slowly rise. But that's not happening. Do you see the posibility of the next years coming to go past that line and into 40C TMax temps? If so, how come the past 30 years has not already breached that line?

and the bottom graphs here: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/07/summer-record-temperatures…

Same thing. This is just July. Each black dot is a record breaking day of some year (doesn't matter which year). Notice the curve shape. Again, do you see subsequent year's breaching that line and going above 40C?

Look at the scatter graph with the dates on it above these three. The X axis are each July day. The Y axis is temperature. Each dot with a date is a record breaking day. Notice NOTHING after 1995, and it was a LOW TMax, with several years in the early 1900s well above that. The three highest years near 38C: 1913, 1921 and 1916.

Summers today are not even close to breaking those July records.

Apparently there is this mechanism that redistributes heat around the globe if and only if that heat is the result of solar forcing.

I never said that. I never said ONLY solar forcing. I said there is an upper limit to how much the planet heats up, as convection and winds redistrubute that heat to cooler regions. Or do you not think warm fronts and cold fronts do this?

Those analyses will be coming. These things take time to do properly. Not sure if I'll have much before Christmas though.

I can do this in a few mins Chris using SQL statements, what's the problem?

BTW, anyone following what's going on in Europe? Record cold and snow for this time of year. 48 people have froze to death so far. Global warming at work.

As I told Richard before: my children have to inherit the world heâs helping to create.

Yes, a world of cooler summers, more comfortable, warmer winters, lower heating bills, and a longer growing season to grow more of your own food.

Now, if you wish to accept solar scientists view of the future, they are predicting COLDER decades ahead.

Cold kills, warmer doesn't.

Oh, and Skip, you don't need a PhD in climatology to plot temperature data. It's so easy even you can do it. Though looks like not Ian, he screwed it up.

Oh Jesus Christ.

You are so right, Wag. I know I should be a better, more charitable man and not laugh, but I couldn't help it.

http://www.youtube.com/jrwakefield#p/u/11/muqesEDKRfs

The bird pacing back and forth, the belly hanging out . . . .

I have to admit, this much, Richard: You've got balls sack guys like me only bluster about over beer.

Cancun sun speeds decay of global warming charade

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/04/rex-murphy-cancun-sun-sp…

Wakefield, you are being very disingenious again. You claim that solar scientists are predicting colder decades ahead. Which solar scientists, Richard? Not all. In fact, not even most. You even have to look with a magnifying glass to find those solar scientists that predict colder decades ahead.

And yes, Richard, it's cold in parts of Europe. How does that contradict global warming again? Ah, that's right, it's the same jumping up and down as last year's cold snap, where most of Canada was anomalously warm, where MOST parts of the world were anomalously warm, but some people simply cannot see the difference between regional and global. Richard is apparently one of the latter. And if you think warmer does not kill, tell the people in Moscow that. The death rate doubled during the heat wave this year. In case you wondered, that's an excess 300 people dying...a day.

Heat waves across all Ontario are getting fewer. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

Go ahead, try and dismantle what I have done. Find the flaw in this analysis.

13. You will ignore this post and all of *the questions above*âtrue or false?

Shocker here . . .

And if you think warmer does not kill, tell the people in Moscow that. The death rate doubled during the heat wave this year. In case you wondered, that's an excess 300 people dying...a day.

Thank you for falling into the trap I set. I figured someone would.

You don't even see the hypocrisy of your own statement. I can't use this one example against AGW, but you can use one example to support it.

And the year is not out yet, so don't count on Canada being abnormally warmer. This was one of the coolest and wettest summers for the prairies in decades. I will be checking all across Canada come Jan.

Take note of my recent post on heat waves in Canada. They are dropping.

For all we know Richard in his prime risked his life to save people from burning buildings, or at least rescued treed cats for crying little Canadian children.

I rescued a dog from the basement of a burning house once, it was almost dead, but we revived it. The worst incident I had was a 2 year old run over by a neighbour's truck as he backed out of the drive. The entire family saw it. The child died. Arrived at one incident in time to see a birth, but I had already seen 4 of my own. Was at a murder once, woman cut up her cheating husband. When we arrived she was in the kitchen having tea with blood all over her and the knife on the table. He was in the bedroom, blood everywhere. She sure made a mess of him.

We wern't allowed to rescue cats in trees.

Q & A

1. no

2. true

3. false, all of Canada

4. true

5. false

6. false you do have blind faith that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature change.

7. no idea what you are refering to.

8. false

9. Show examples

10. false, eco-nutcases are anti-human. Go see Dieoff.org.

11. false, you do, some have claimed it. I have no idea if their models predict this accurately since models can't accurately predict anything.

12. true, not worthy of answering

13. false, obviously

"Those analyses will be coming. These things take time to do properly. Not sure if I'll have much before Christmas though."

"I can do this in a few mins Chris using SQL statements, what's the problem?"

As I said: These things take time to do properly. I think therein lies a problem for you perhaps? Dashing your graphs off in "a few minutes" without taking the time to actually analyse the data properly.

skip, lets forget the stuff about personal appearances, okay?

Richard, did you read the post? How have you determined there are fewer heat waves? A heat wave does not require a new TMax for the year, month or day.

[please note the above was asked before I saw Richard's lengthy unapproved comment #4. His criterion was a day above 29.9oC, based on a definition used in the NE US. I don't think it is justifiable to apply that to Canada, even S. Ontario]

If it were true that Southern Ontario were having fewer heat waves (at what statistical significance level?) what would this say about the globe?

Chris S said it takes time to analyse data properly. You analyze data very quickly with elementary SQL queries. Does it really need to be spelled out for you that explicitly? It just isn't as simple as you imagine it to be as evidenced by your choices of what to look at (a single TMax for each year) and your conclusions (winters are warming faster, and if that continues winters will be warmer than summers therefore CO2 is not a greenhouse gas).

So record* cold in Europe? And this contridicts AGW theories of global and seasonal average temperature rising but not your own theory of winters warming summers cooling in all locations...

Fascinating and hilarious.

* a record for the last several decades, not an all-time record shattering once in 1500 year event like Moscow's heat wave last summer.

All: A comment from Richard, now appearing above as #4, was stuck in moderation.

Richard: I will have to look at it later.

I added some more analysis to today's post. Very interesting looking at things this way, down at the bottom. So show me where AGW predicted this!

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

As I said: These things take time to do properly. I think therein lies a problem for you perhaps? Dashing your graphs off in "a few minutes" without taking the time to actually analyse the data properly.

You better be damn sure you can back up that alligation. Just look at the new post I did today. Couple hours at best to run and make sure it's right.

Don't tell me I'm not doing this properly when I have been doing this kind of analysis professionally for 25 years unless you can PROVE IT.

All the SQL for today is there.

Chris S said it takes time to analyse data properly.

BULLSHIT IT DOES!

Elementary, give me a break. Go through the SQL from today and tell me that is "elementary." This is pure bullshit. You obviously have no clue how to use SQL to analyze data. It's real easy to do with very large recordsets. You can do almost anything you want (In all my 25 years of doing this I have yet to not be able to query data the way I want. Sometimes with 20 or more joined tables, and three or four statements deep.)

This is it guys. There is nothing complex about this. There is nothing that needs more than a few minutes of work and knowledge of how to use SQL. So quit with the condescending attempts to belittle my work, AND PROVE ME WRONG!

Richard, you claimed colder kills, warmer does not, I showed you wrong. Instead of accepting you were wrong, you try to move the goalposts. Have you not yet learned we do not fall for such poor argumentation skills?

First off I acknowledge the chastisement from Coby regarding my comment about the protruding Youtube "belly" and apologize for drawing attention to this irrelevant detail, Richard.

That being said, lets do a tally of the quality of your answers:

Ok good 1 and 2 were softballs: You make no claim to formal expertise but you're not ashamed of this anyway.

Honest Answers 2
Possible Honest Incompetence 0
Full Blown Lies 0

3. The only alleged peer reviewed support (Zhang et al) of your claim of the flattening of summer Tmax and subsequent convergence of winter and summer temperatures in all of Canada only confirmed your finding for *southern* Canadaâtrue or false?

false, all of Canada

Possibly a lie. More likely the result of utter incompetence. You either never read Zhang et al, didn't understand it, or are simply indifferent to truth and reality.

Honest Answers 2
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 0

4. You have argued that the mere *claim* of dissentâeven by sources you admit to having not readâconstitutes a credible challenge to the idea of an AGW âconsensusââtrue or false?

true

An honest answer and an exemplary demonstration of your irrationality--but I appreciate the honesty.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 0

5. You have claimed that âappeal to authorityâ is an invalid argument, yet have on multiple occasions linked us to material that you have not even readâtrue or false?

false

A naked lie, and in contradiction to the admission in question 4. You have even *told* us you didn't in multiple cases; now you're changing your story. You're lying.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 1

6. You have repeatedly used straw man argumentation, such as accusing your disputants of having âblind faith that ONLY CO2 changes the climateââtrue or false?

false you do have blind faith that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature change.

A lie. You have been told on multiple occasions that none of us believes this.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 2

7. You have been caught brazenly demanding that we âget the data and check it outâ in regard to an analysis that you yourself could not even have accessed at the time you made the demandâtrue or false?

no idea what you are refering to.

A lie. You even tried to cover your tracks by posting Watts's explanation for the debacle without comment.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 3

8. Even in cases where you have not specifically *admitted* to having not read a particular source you cite, on more than one occasion that particular source has been proven to contradict your own positionâtrue or false?

false

Possibly not up the grade of full lie; you might have actually convinced yourself of this. But the evidence is clear with Ollier's cites, Laken, and Judith Curry.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 2
Full Blown Lies 2

9. On more than one occasion you have cited sources that specifically contradict *each other*âtrue or false?

See thread on your JC link.

10. You have been caught citing as âproofâ of âhow irrational [the AGW] side has become, anti humanâ a source which admitted he *invented* his damning quotesâtrue or false?

false

A lie. The record is clear: You cited Delingpole. He admitted the quotes were contrived.

Honest Answers 3
Possible Honest Incompetence 1
Full Blown Lies 4

11. You have never even *acknowledged* that AGW theory *predicts* winters cooling faster than summersâtrue or false?

[N/A this was suppose to be the trick question but Richard obviously didn't get it.]

12. You have repeatedly refused to answer direct questions, such as the ones enumerated aboveâtrue or false?

true, not worthy of answering

Honest, but pathetic. Any fool can make that claim.

with a bonus of 1 for 13 we have:

Honest Answers 5
Possible Honest Incompetence 2
Full Blown Lies 4
N/A 2

On balance more honesty than overt lies, but the problem is all the honest answers are miserable reflections on you, Richard: You have no scientific capacities other than the ones you claim to have personally acquired, no scientific vitae of note in an any subject--let alone climate, a conviction that intangible disagreement of unverified quality and origin can be regarded as disproof and that simply declaring an inquiry as "unworthy" constitutes a retort. Furthermore even in cases where your *intent* is defensible it only is so on the grounds of likely incompetence.

But thank you, Richard.

I just wanted all that on record.

Ah. I'm glad I caught this.

Richard's answer "false" was the lie, but his rephrasing of the position is a partial *truth*.

false you do have blind faith that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature change.

He switched the wording to "primary driver" from what he really said before (the straw man that AGW believers have âblind faith that ONLY CO2 changes the climate.")

This was slimy on Richard's part (he knows he made the strawman before so is pretending he said something else now), but I should have been more attentive in the first place.

Richard in #4,

coby said: "when Richard talks about falling summer temperatures he is actually just plotting a single point for each year."

Yes, the hottest day of the year, which AGW claims should be increasing, but it is not. How can the planet get warmer, with hotter summers if the hottest days of the year are dropping?

Can you please provide a citation for what you claim AGW predicts here?

AGW predicts that the globally and seasonally averaged temperature will rise. The maximum daily temperature is influenced by extremely large variabilities relative to the ~.15oC/decade observed rise (that is called weather). There is absolutely no justification for prefering to plot the single maximum daily temperature over a monthly average or an average for June-July-August (aka summer).

Why don't you try an experiment and calculate the trend in *average* summer temperatures and tell us why this is not a meaningful number.

Also, can you please explain to us how it is that heat waves can only occur in July? That is surely a novel bit of news to me!

Ya geçen hafta oyuncuların da bol olduÄu bir masada sohbet muhabbet derken, ciddi ciddi Ezelâin senaryosunun deÄiÅtirilip 8â²i yani Kıvanç TatlıtuÄâu yeniden diriltmeye çalıÅtıkları konuÅuluyordu.
-
Ben refleks olarak öyle bir âYok artık, çüÅ!â demiÅim ki, masadakiler irkildi. Evet evet vallahi yanlıŠduymadınız. Ezel âin reytingleri düÅtüÄü ve seyirci Kıvanç TatlıtuÄ, yani 8â²i dizide görmek istediÄi için senaristler de onu diriltmenin yollarını arıyormuÅ. Ah ah vallahi dönerse çok büyük kahkaha atacaÄım.

But thank you, Richard.

I just wanted all that on record.

You have quite the fixation on me don't you.

Can you please provide a citation for what you claim AGW predicts here?

Oh, I see, so all the chatter in the MSM and econutcases that there will be more extreme heat because of AGW is wrong?

AGW predicts that the globally and seasonally averaged temperature will rise. The maximum daily temperature is influenced by extremely large variabilities relative to the ~.15oC/decade observed rise (that is called weather). There is absolutely no justification for prefering to plot the single maximum daily temperature over a monthly average or an average for June-July-August (aka summer).

Nonsence. You are trying to deflect the facts because you cannot fathom that hotter days are getting fewer. In science you must look at ALL the facts, not just that which fits your theory. That includes looking at the length of the growing season, and the number of extreme high temp days.

The question has to be reversed, why ONLY the average temperature?

I really wish you people would look at my graphs and read my text before making such comments. It's all spelled out there.

Also, can you please explain to us how it is that heat waves can only occur in July? That is surely a novel bit of news to me!

REALLY!!! You've got to be kidding right? Are you serious, or are you just a baffon! Look at the graphs!!! How many times do I have to say that!

What is the highest temperature point of the year? Which month is that?

Somehow this got lost in the posting:

Why don't you try an experiment and calculate the trend in *average* summer temperatures and tell us why this is not a meaningful number.

I really wish you people would look at my graphs and read my text before making such comments. It's all spelled out there.

I have definitely seen this here. You guys must have this flow chart on the wall above your computer:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/agw_def_flow.png

I hate to take this off topic, but it is related to my claim that there is a ceiling to how hot the planet can get:

http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/05/confidence-in-radiative-transfer-mode…

Whenever somebody claims to have performed detailed radiative transfer calculations on real atmosphere data, be VERY skeptical about the conclusions that may be drawn from such analyses. This is because it is beyond the capabilities of any measurement system to fully (and accurately) measure the entire atmospheric temperature profile, the entire water vapor profile â ground through stratosphere, the entire ozone profile, also the vertical distribution (and radiative properties) of aerosols and clouds. Also, the top-of-the-atmosphere ERBE OLR measurements are not really a measurement of outgoing LW flux (that is impossible to do). Instead, the SW and LW TOA âfluxesâ are inferred from theoretical and empirical âangleâ models based on inferred atmospheric cloud structure and the observed radiance measurements. Also note that the ERBE inferred fluxes are highly unlikely to coincide with any radiosonde or ground based measurements, and even if they did, they would have incompatible spatial resolution. This is why it is not possible to have a credible set of âclosureâ measurements to directly âvalidateâ climate GCM performance.

There is no recourse then but to rely on statistical analysis and correlations to extract meaningful information. However, any conclusions, particularly if they do not have a clear physical basis, will be subject to large uncertainties.

On the other hand, radiative analyses performed in the context of climate GCM modeling, have the capability of being self-consistent in that the entire atmospheric structure (temperature, water vapor, ozone, etc. distributions) is fully known and defined. Clearly, the GCM atmosphere is not an exact replica of the real world â consider it an âEarth-likeâ atmosphere.

This makes it possible to establish physical relationships within the climate system (such as the global warming caused by increasing CO2), rather than having to deduce them from a noisy climate system using incomplete and imperfect measurements that require considerable statistical analysis and modeling input to extract the relevant information.

You have quite the fixation on me don't you.

Believe that if you wish; in any event I need no longer be "fixated" because I've caught you lying on record, and more important, admitting to the most embarrassing of truths.

I hate to take this off topic, but it is related to my claim that there is a ceiling to how hot the planet can get:

http://judithcurry.com . . . .

Judith Curry. The same source which completely repudiates your position on CO2 and your earlier zombie-blogged source, Miskolczi.

Brilliant self-annihilation, Richard.

Skip, you definitely have that flowchart memorized. Instead of asking how this quote relates to my claim of there being a ceiling, you deflect the target. That's why you are fixated on me, because you are unwilling to look at the evidence. If you spent as much time looking at the data I provided for Chris to analyze than you do on your feable attempts to discredit me, you would have discovered by now that I'm right. Summers are cooling.

Why are you avoiding dealing with that? What evidence do you have that my analysis is wrong? Be specific, or admit you are not capable of understanding what I've done.

What evidence do you have that my analysis is wrong?

I have never claimed to have any--other than the testimony of the overwhelming number of climate specialists whose entire careers are devoted to studying an issue in which you admit--even boast that--you have absolutely no scientific training.

The point, Richard, is that any non-expert, as I freely admit myself to be, has to decide which alleged authorities to believe.

As I have a day job, I cannot independently verify the claim of every self-proclaimed consensus-shatterer with a knack for Excel, whether its on the issue of climate, evolution, 911, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landings, or any other field or topic in which a body of expertise has emerged that demonstrates overwhelming evidence in favor of one general interpretation of the truth.

What I *can* do is observe your capacities and inclinations on issues I *do* have the time and ability to test, such as:

(a) whether you can consistently recognize something as mundane as if a source actually supports or refutes your position (you can't).

(b) whether you cite sources and render arguments that are internally consistent (you don't).

(c) whether you actually *read* your sources in the first place (you often have *not*, by your own admission, despite later pleas to the contrary.)

(d) whether you can answer a simple question without overt avoidance or lame dismissal (you often don't).

(e) whether you can be relied on not to blatantly lie, when it suits your purposes (you can't.)

So no, Richard. I'm not going to download your your data and see if, on *that* particular point, you're both competent and honest; I have a dearth of time and a surfeit of proof that you are divested of one or both of those qualities regarding too many other issues.

overwhelming number of climate specialists whose entire careers are devoted to studying an issue in which you admit--even boast that--you have absolutely no scientific training.

Are you insinuating that only climate PhD's are allowed to analyze raw temperature data?

Not at all, Richard.

I'm glad you enjoy your hobby. I just can't put any stock in your data claims when I know you're an unreliable source in other regards.

I'm glad you enjoy your hobby. I just can't put any stock in your data claims when I know you're an unreliable source in other regards.

So there is no point in me saying anything because I always lie. Normal, I'm lying!

I suspect you often tell the truth.

It really boils down to the fact that you're demonstrably unreliable on *some* issues, and unable even to admit it except when you inadvertently fail to cover your tracks.

I don't know . . . wait to chat with Chris about your data. Maybe he'll confirm that you've discovered something no one else considered and the entire AGW paradigm will crumble into shambles, slain and humiliated at your feet (although I doubt it).

If that's the case, Chris will be the first to tell us all. I know this Richard, because Chris has *never* blithely referenced a source that contradicted him, *never* demanded deference to a source he had not even read himself, and has never, *ever* been caught in a lie.

This is how it works, brother. Credibility is built and granted, not seized by force of demand and passion.

This is how it works, brother. Credibility is built and granted, not seized by force of demand and passion.

Credibility only works if the other person is perceiving the replies correctly, you never asked why I answered the way I did on questions you assumed I'm lying about.

I guess we have to wait a month for Chris to do his magic (clean, homogenize, sanitize the data to hide the decline?) Not sure why his MetOffice super computers take a month to calculate what my desktop does in a few seconds.

you never asked why I answered the way I did on questions you assumed I'm lying about.

Well, the question would answer itself, Richard. You didn't want to say the truth.

hide the decline.

You have no idea what this means, but if you want to discuss it Coby has an appropriate thread.

Richard a quick note:
Your trap in #12 has no teeth. You made the simplistic claim that "Cold kills, warmer doesn't". Marco simply pointed out an example of a warmer than normal event caused many many deaths. He didn't claim that the Russian heat wave or Pakistani flooding, or any other individual event was the direct result of AGW. You made that leap all on your own.

He didn't claim that the Russian heat wave or Pakistani flooding, or any other individual event was the direct result of AGW. You made that leap all on your own.

Tell that to the MSM, and environmental NGO's that were all over those as prime examples of global warming. Did any of you refute that?

Skip, I used to think you were not a bad guy - deluded certainly, and a bit of an obsessive personality, but basically okay.

I now realise you are the most insufferably conceited twerp.

On what basis do you swagger about making your childish accusations (telling people they have no idea what hide the decline means). I am quite certain that Richard knows precisely what it means. It is not, after all, a particularly arcane concept. Yet somehow in your vanity you have persuaded yourself that you alone, with your mighty intellect, are capable of comprehending these matters.

Although I have refrained from commenting before, this is not the first time you have displayed this fault. Kindly correct it.

"I guess we have to wait a month for Chris to do his magic (clean, homogenize, sanitize the data to hide the decline?) Not sure why his MetOffice super computers take a month to calculate what my desktop does in a few seconds."

Two points here Richard.

1) You really should read with more understanding I said I was VISITING the Met Office, not working there & using their computers.

2) I take exception to your insinuations of data fraud here: "clean, homogenize, sanitize the data to hide the decline?" and expect a full retraction.

As a placeholder I've looked at the top 100 Tmax records at Meunster here: http://wakefieldiswrong.blogspot.com/2010/12/top-temps.html

Warmest Year On Record?

The Truth Is Global Warming Has Stopped

But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole. Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.âDavid Rose, Mail on Sunday, 5 December 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/What-happened-wa…

Looking more closely at the Met Office data reveals a different picture. 2010 will be remembered for just two warm months, attributable to the El Nino effect, with the rest of the year being nothing but average, or less than average temperature. There is no evidence whatsoever that the lack of warming seen in the global average annual temperatures seen in the last decade has changed. --David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 3 December 2010

http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1973-2010-an-unexceptional-el-nino-y…

2) I take exception to your insinuations of data fraud here: "clean, homogenize, sanitize the data to hide the decline?" and expect a full retraction.

Only after I see the results of your analysis amd you have done it right. You are all accusing me of fraud with mine arn't you. Once you are done and you see what I see, declining summer temps, I expect a full appology from you, and Coby. I don't expect to get one ever from skip or Ian.

I do have one question. What is it you plan to do "properly" with this data that you cannot do with your desktop? Be specific. I want to know what you plan to do with the data.

So, Chris, what does this mean to you in your graphs. Looks to me than the highest temp is DROPPING! If you didn't notice your graph is the same as mine here:

Highest of summer TMax:
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/station-2973-muenster-saska…

How much influence should the 41.1 degree C maximum temperature on the 19th July 1941 have on the interpretation of the 100+ year record?

Oh, I see, we should start to REMOVE data points because it doesn't make the trend the way YOU want it to be?! You are now starting to "clean" the records. How far do you take that? How many records do you remove? Should you not also remove the 1989 as it is anomalous too? Keep removing points until you get an increase in TMax? The lengths you people will go. If I did that you would be all over me!!

BTW, very nice the name of your blog, assume I'm wrong BEFORE you do the analysis. That shows your true motives right there.

Also, Chris, stop using scatter plots for this. It's impossible to see what is happening. The graphs I have for the same datapoints clearly shows what's happened.

TMax increased until the mid 1940's and has dropped since. You can even see the 1945-1975 decline in temps quite clearly in my graphs, but not yours.

Scatter plots which are supposed to be used to see correlation between two fields of records, is inappropriate for this application. Are you using scatter plots to deliberately hide detail?

"Only after I see the results of your analysis amd you have done it right. You are all accusing me of fraud with mine arn't you."

Show me where I've said anything of the sort.

"So, Chris, what does this mean to you in your graphs. Looks to me than the highest temp is DROPPING! If you didn't notice your graph is the same as mine here...Oh, I see, we should start to REMOVE data points because it doesn't make the trend the way YOU want it to be?!"

Richard, that last post is not an analysis, it is an example to show the dangers of naked-eye analysis. The removal of the datapoint is an illustration of how the eye misleads - by having that high value near the start the data looks like it's going down, remove it and it looks a lot flatter. It's also not the same as your graph - there are quite huge differences if you look. I do find it amusing though that the bar chart I posted actually supports your claim to some extent but you can't get past attack mode to see that.

"What is it you plan to do "properly" with this data that you cannot do with your desktop? Be specific. I want to know what you plan to do with the data."

I plan to do some real analysis of the data, mainly polynomial regression but other analysis if I feel the need - possibly some bootstrapping and/or jack-knifing, though it seems that if I try to normalise the data or otherwise manipulate it you will just cry foul so I will probably just work with raw data only. I will be finding the curve that gives the best statistical fit. I will look at the Highest Tmax that you have hung your hat on, but I will look at some other metrics too, I've already shown Tmax is going up. I plan to look at mean annual Tmax and possibly, if I can be bothered, mean summer Tmax and mean decadal Tmax. I may also look at Tmean & Tmin if I can maintain an interest.

"BTW, very nice the name of your blog, assume I'm wrong BEFORE you do the analysis."

Richard, my first post showed you were wrong, that regression was performed before I started the blog (In case you forgot your initial claim was Tmax was dropping at all sites. My first post showed Tmax increasing at Meunster, this was before you shifted to just looking at the extreme of highest annual Tmax of course). I also may use the blog to look at the MMR claims of Andrew Wakefield - and he is definitely wrong - is he any relation?

"Scatter plots which are supposed to be used to see correlation between two fields of records, is inappropriate for this application. Are you using scatter plots to deliberately hide detail?"

I'll call bullshit on this. Drawing a line between points fools the eye - as you have so consistently demonstrated. Scatter plots are the best way to avoid this.

"I plan to do some real analysis of the data, mainly polynomial regression"

Like this: http://wakefieldiswrong.blogspot.com/2010/12/highest-annual-tmax-at-meu…

Anagnostopoulos, G. G., Koutsoyiannis, D., Christofides, A., Efstratiadis, A. & Mamassis, N. (2010) A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(7), 1094-1110.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

It is claimed that GCMs provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. Examining the local performance of the models at 55 points, we found that local projections do not correlate well with observed measurements. Furthermore, we found that the correlation at a large spatial scale, i.e. the contiguous USA, is worse than at the local scale.

However, we think that the most important question is not whether GCMs can produce credible estimates of future climate, but whether climate is at all predictable in deterministic terms. Several publications, a typical example being Rial et al. (2004), point out the difficulties that the climate system complexity introduces when we attempt to make predictions. âComplexityâ in this context usually refers to the fact that there are many parts comprising the system and many interactions among these parts. This observation is correct, but we take it a step further. We think that it is not merely a matter of high dimensionality, and that it can be misleading to assume that the uncertainty can be reduced if we analyse its âsourcesâ as nonlinearities, feedbacks, thresholds, etc., and attempt to establish causality relationships. Koutsoyiannis (2010) created a toy model with simple, fully-known, deterministic dynamics, and with only two degrees of freedom (i.e. internal state variables or dimensions); but it exhibits extremely uncertain behaviour at all scales, including trends, fluctuations, and other features similar to those displayed by the climate. It does so with a constant external forcing, which means that there is no causality relationship between its state and the forcing. The fact that climate has many orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom certainly perplexes the situation further, but in the end it may be irrelevant; for, in the end, we do not have a predictable system hidden behind many layers of uncertainty which could be removed to some extent, but, rather, we have a system that is uncertain at its heart.

Richard,
This latest exchange with Chris S. has me wondering just what analysis you have done on the data beyond simply plotting them. Your graphs don't show SD or trend lines. What tests have you done?

This latest exchange with Chris S. has me wondering just what analysis you have done on the data beyond simply plotting them. Your graphs don't show SD or trend lines. What tests have you done?

Standard deviations are there on the graphs. They are the orange lines. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/station-2973-muenster-saska…

I do trends, 10 year moving averages and linear trends.

Plotting the highest TMax doesn't need SD.

What other tests do you have in mind?

Show me where I've said anything of the sort.

Your continued accusation that I havn't done this right. Your site name implies that! That only YOU can do a proper analysis on the data, not me. I must therefor be a fraud, as Ian claims I am.

I will be finding the curve that gives the best statistical fit.

Instead of removing data to make it fit, how about smoothing the data with a 10 year moving average, like I did. That's a curve fit too, and shows it is dropping.

mainly polynomial regression but other analysis if I feel the need - possibly some bootstrapping and/or jack-knifing, though it seems that if I try to normalise the data or otherwise manipulate it you will just cry foul so I will probably just work with raw data only.

That's funny, polynormal regression on 100 highly variable datapoints. Excel does that too with trends, it won't fit. That takes a fraction of a second to do in Excel.

And yes, don't even think about "normalizing" the data, that's just code to make it fit what you want.

Richard, my first post showed you were wrong,

BULLSHIT YOU HAVE! No you have NOT, you have shown me to be CORRECT. I posted that the AVERAGE of TMax is INCREASING across the year. So you have CONFIRMED what I've done.

No he is not any relation.

I'll call bullshit on this. Drawing a line between points fools the eye - as you have so consistently demonstrated. Scatter plots are the best way to avoid this.

Oh, I see so when stock prices are drawn on graphs like I did with temps they are wrong? Give me a break. Fool the eye, what crap. If anything your scatter plot is fooling the eye. Do a scatter plot with lines joining each point. It will look IDENTICAL to mine.

So, Chris, I guess this chart is drawn wrong according to you:

http://66.38.218.33/scripts/hist_charts/daily_graphs.cgi

It should be a scatter plot, eh? Better contact them and tell them they are wrong.

"I plan to do some real analysis of the data, mainly polynomial regression"

Like this: http://wakefieldiswrong.blogspot.com/2010/12/highest-annual-tmax-at-meu…

Very cute, choose a polynormal that makes the points APPEAR to be rising, nice trick Chris. Nice trick indeed to hide the decline.

"Very cute, choose a polynormal that makes the points APPEAR to be rising, nice trick Chris. Nice trick indeed to hide the decline."

Sorry for the sp, polynomial. How do you know that that polynomial is an accurate description of how the world actually works, and not just you trying desperately to find anything to make declining data appear to be increasing? You don't and you are verging on being fraudulent doing this.

Hey, Chris, I have a stats test for you to do. Take all the TMax temps for months 6, 7 and 8 for each year and do a correlation coefficent on the data. Should be 9342 points. Tell me what you get and then tell me you if can do ANY polynomial analysis on data with that CC.

Another set of links that masterfully demonstrates the gullibility and sloth of Richard Wakefield.

Stupid Argument Number 1: UK versus World Climate

From David Rose:

"A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction . . . 'Our experimental
decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.'"

Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap

I like the efficiency--save everyone time and get right to being stupid: "Britain is cold right now, therefore the world is not getting warmer."

Stupid Argument Number 2: No "significant" Warming.

Rose Continues:

But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown . . . for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.

Rose resumes this same line of argumentation later in the poorly organized rant, so skipping forward:

Even Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year's 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a littlenoticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995.

Technically true, but completely misleading. From Jones's interview with the BBC (your favorite source, Anthony Watts, was kind enough to have it cited as I was looking for the exact quote):

Q: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming.

A: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

The "no significance" argument over a 15 year period is another straw man, because climate scientists do not insist that trends over that short of a period are meaningful, anyway.

Continuing on . . .

Stupid Argument Number 3: Whats so special about 2010?

My guess is Rose . . .

The data from October to the end of the year suggests that when the final figure is computed, 2010 will not be the warmest year at all, but at most the third warmest, behind both 1998 and 2005.

. . . is regurgitating Whitehouse:

2010 will therefore be no higher than the third warmest year, possibly lower.

The 2010-is-not-the-warmest-year argument has become the new favorite denier straw man. When the forecasters say 2010 is projected to be the hottest year on record, they are simply looking at the data and making a best estimate, they are not claiming that AGW theory rests or stands on that empirical observation. And the idea that 2010 being "only" the third highest somehow "disproves" dangerous AGW is an argument so stupid, Richard, that I would have hesitated to think even *you* would believe it.

Stupid Argument Number 4: Whats so special about 2010?--revisited)

Furthermore, Whitehouse's comparison of 2010 month averages with other years was a breathtaking exercise in self-delusion. To prove that "The pattern is therefore of an unexceptional year [for 2010] except for a Spring/early summer El Nino that elevated temperatures," he compares--get this--2010 month averages against *only years from 1998 and later*. Its a superficially inane procedure, since of course many of those years will have individually hotter, say, Septembers, than 2010, because *those are also among the hottest years on record*. But the record of interest goes back *150 years*, as Whitehouse pointed out in his *own introduction*:

If the media headlines are to be believed 2010 is *heading to be either the warmest or in the top three warmest years since the instrumental global temperature records began 150 years ago* [my emphasis], and proof that the world is getting ever warmer. But looking more closely at the data . . .

(And bonus points for comical sophistry added to the stupidity.)

Blatant Lie Number 1: Mann on the MWP

But this was the best part from Rose:

Earlier this year, a paper by Michael Mann - for years a leading light in the IPCC, and the author of the infamous 'hockey stick graph' showing flat temperatures for 2,000 years until the recent dizzying increase - made an extraordinary admission: that, as his critics had always claimed, there had indeed been a ' medieval warm period' around 1000 AD, when the world may well have been hotter than it is now.

A lie. This is probably why they didn't cite the paper--to cover their tracks. But I found it.

What Mann and colleagues really said (in *Science*, 27 November 2009: Vol. 326 no. 5957 pp.

1256-1260):

Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval. The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade . . .

which is where everyone in denial simply stopped reading the abstract, but Mann continues on to say:

. . . *in some regions*, but *which falls well below recent levels globally*.

Rose lied, Richard. Rose lied and you believed him.

And on with the same tired bullshit . . . Trenberth's "travesty" (answered and explained ad nauseum) . . . . uncited research about water vapour . . . the same tired rants about unproven political motivations and dogma of the IPCC. But I won't score those against you, Richard. There is no more point.

Stupid argument Number Five: Undetermined Climate Models

From the abstract of your article by Anagnostopoulos et al:

However, we think that the most important question is not whether GCMs can produce credible estimates of future climate, but whether climate is at all predictable in deterministic terms.

No one claims climate is "predictable in deterministic terms".

This is the whole straw man argument that the models are "wrong" if they don't predict temperatures exactly.

Its another stupid argument that you found persuasive, Richard. You believe stupid things because you have no capacity for and/or interest in recognizing them.

Total number of stupid arguments uncritically swallowed by Richard: 5

Total number of lies uncritically accepted: 1 (and possibly more, but after a few preliminary investigations I saw no more point in critiquing these links.)

I will give you this much credit, Richard. You cited sources that actually agreed with you this time. But then again you've shown yourself to be capable of prolific incompetence and dishonesty; why shouldn't your sources as well?

Chris, what does a second order polynomial show? I can see why you chose a third order over a second order. The second order didn't fit what you wanted did it.

Skip give it up, I don't even read your posts any more. Do something meaningful and analyze the data.

Skip give it up, I don't even read your posts any more.

Of course not!

Often you don't even read your own, Richard. That's the point.

You believe stupid things written by incompetents and liars.

Why should I trust the data analysis of someone so gullible?

Skip, you should desist with these thousand-word rants. You are starting to sound a bit unhinged.

Assume I am, Snowman.

How would you know its a "rant"; of course you didn't read it. Its the simple documentation of reality.

Richard, like you, accepts with the faith of a fundamentalist arguments made by children. His posts prove it.

I'm just the messenger, Snowman.

Since neither of you will dare read it, I'm done for the nonce.

Hi Richard,
So your Tmax analysis is simply to plot it? No regression or anything?
I honestly don't know what the appropriate analysis is. Looking at annual Tmax seems like it would skew the distribution.
Certainly just throwing annual Tmax onto a chart with other variables and eyeballing the result won't tell you much.

Richard, a quadratic shows a less good fit than a cubic, hence I didn't use it. Sheesh

Whether or not your documentation - as you rather grandly call it - reflects reality is neither here nor there, Skip. No rational person writes these interminable diatribes.

Tell me, did you actually think that anyone would wade through all that guff with those sub-headings and different type faces? You seem to think you are making devastatingly clever arguments. What you are actually doing is making us all think you are a bit deranged.

Statements such as this show your abject ignorance and blindness, how silly your world view, how childish your epistemology, how delusional your faith in the quality of your position.

It took me about 90 minutes to research and compose that post; it would take you about 3-6 minutes to read it.

If you understood anything--anything at all--about how scholarship and academia work, you would laugh at your own words.

We routinely peer review articles 35-40 pages long, making comments several fold the size of my post. It takes *weeks* to compose an article for peer review, often months more to get it revised and completed for publication.

You're just naive; there is nothing more to it, and Richard shares your naivete. He thinks he is going to topple a worldwide consensus established by culmination of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles in which scholars who dwarf his intellect spent lifetimes refining a scientific theory, but he can't be bothered to read 4 pages of critique of two silly editorials whose sophomoric arguments bested him like a child fooled by a stupid card trick.

What would he say to the peer reviewers when they come back with 3--or 4--or 5 separate 3-6 page comments, explaining why his spreadsheet analysis is rejected from a journal?

I think we've seen it:

give it up, I don't even read you more. Do something meaningful and analyze the data . . .

And then he will claim he was a victim of the breakdown of the peer review process and be a hero for Lord Monckton.

No, Snowman. It is you are "deranged". You are so ignorant of what scholarship, research, science, and intellectual investigation is that if you had even a remote idea how silly your statements appear you would change your post name in shame.

But Skip, we aren't talking about your wretched peer reviewed articles (although I can guess at their pomposity and leaden prose). We are talking about your astounding prolixity. For some unfathomable reason, you actually seem to have convinced yourself that we should care about your tedious deconstruction of an article in a British newspaper.

Oh, and kindly remember that you are not lecturing to your halfwitted students here. Do give us a break with the 'epistemology'. Nobody's impressed.

you actually seem to have convinced yourself that we should care about your tedious deconstruction of an article in a British newspaper.

Why did you not chastise Richard by asking him why we should *care about the articles in the first place* when he posted them?

Oh my God . . . you didn't know, did you? Ha ha! Now I get it. You thought I just critiqued them out of the blue! Oh my god what a clown you are.

Keep posting, Snowman. Ha ha!

Oh, and kindly remember that you are not lecturing to your halfwitted students here.

I can never forget. You make me miss them.

Do give us a break with the 'epistemology'.

Your insecurities are showing Snowman. And perhaps they should. I really don't care either way; that probably reflects poorly on me. I'd rather not hurt your (or Richard's) feelings all things being equal, but if you are going to post stupidity I am *more* than willing to expose it as Climate Denial Dimwittedness Exhibit 1.

Of course I knew Richard had posted it. How can I get it through your head, Skip, that it is your verbosity I am trying to correct?

Here is a word of advice to guide your future attempts at writing: do try to remember that less is often more.

I know we have to make allowances. You are, after all, an 'academic', a legendarily verbose tribe with the ability to say nothing at extraordinary length.

Just try to bear it in mind, nevertheless. No need to thank me.

Of course I knew Richard had posted it.

Then why this silly comment?

you actually seem to have convinced yourself that we should care about your tedious deconstruction of an article in a British newspaper.

Step 1. Richard links articles.
Step 2. Skip reads said articles.
Step 3. Skip recognizes superficial absurdity in much of said articles; slightly deeper investigation reveals even more absurdity and at least one outright lie.
Step 4. Skip posts *documented* critique of said articles for specific purpose of enlightening all current and prospective readers of the exact quality of argument that Richard finds convincing.

Step 4 takes *time*, Snow. There is no other way to do it. Thats why its called *investigation*, *inquiry*, and *research*.

This is the fundamental difference between an academic mindset and a populist one, and why the correlation between the factors (populism and global warming denial) is so high.

Simple answers convince you, Snow. I am *not* saying this because I think you're dumb, let me hasten to add. Its not because you're dumb; its because those simple answers are *attractive*. Combined with your inexperience with genuine scholarly investigation, it makes you vulnerable to the silliest of AGW denier talking points.

The same is true of Richard; hence he cites Rose and Whitehouse, and exposes himself as a complete amateur in the process.

Skip, as your latest post seems to be conciliatory, let me reply in the same spirit. I generally find that almost everything I write is improved by being shorter. So I bash something out fairly quickly then see how I can compress it. I do a precis, in other words. Of course the result shouldn't be stilted or inelegant. But to use more words than necessary is to intrude upon the patience of your readers - or so it seems to me.

Commentators on this side of the Atlantic sometimes point out that while the US Declaration of Independence contains - what is it? - fourteen hundred words or so, the European Union rules on the importation of root vegetables seem to run to as many volumes.

In this context, Skip, I often think about the magnificent prose of the founders of your nation: 'We hold these truths to be self evident..' and on the Statue of Liberty 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...' Ideas that stir men's souls are seldom lengthy. And they always employ straightforward language. Don't you agree?

Anyway, talk about getting off topic. Coby will shortly be reprimanding me, and rightly so.

So your Tmax analysis is simply to plot it? No regression or anything?
I honestly don't know what the appropriate analysis is. Looking at annual Tmax seems like it would skew the distribution.
Certainly just throwing annual Tmax onto a chart with other variables and eyeballing the result won't tell you much.

Read all the posts on my site with all the text in them. It is all laid out for you to see and read. Trends, moving averages highest, lowest, averages, standard deviations. Just TMax, full year temp ranges, TMin. I cover it all. I pick certain temperature ranges depending on the context I'm using it for.

What you should be asking is why the AGW graphs of just the average of the yearly mean anomalies don't have their full range of data. Why do they leave out the standard deviations?

I can tell you why they do, ask.

Richard, a quadratic shows a less good fit than a cubic, hence I didn't use it. Sheesh

LOL ROTFL!!! Right!! Because you EYE BALLED IT IT DOES!! This is your "proper" analysis? Sheesh!

Richard,
You should know by now that I don't find your explanations or labeling clear.

So when you analyze annual Tmax, what test are you applying that allows you to say that it is clearly dropping?

Richard, I don't have the values with me at the moment but the p and Adjusted Rsquared values were worse. No eyeballs involved. Get a clue please.

Meanwhile, Hussey has fallen, just a matter of time...

Richard, I don't have the values at the moment but the p and Adjusted Rsquared were both worse for the quadratic. No eyeballs involved. Get a clue please & stop grasping at straws.

Chris, I just noticed something with your graphs as I was drafting a reply for my blog. You don't have any points below 34C. Yet when I do a plot of the highest TMax for each year I get values as low as 27.8.

Why did you leave the lower points out?

I will hold off publishing my reply until you clearify why those points are missing from your graph.

So when you analyze annual Tmax, what test are you applying that allows you to say that it is clearly dropping?

The ten year moving average, which smooths the swings of the early data. You can clearly see we are not as hot today as we were in the mid 1940's.

Richard, I don't have the values with me at the moment but the p and Adjusted Rsquared values were worse. No eyeballs involved. Get a clue please.

So in your mind a 13% R Squared is a good fit? Please... That's pathetic, and shows NO correlation to your curve. Try a forth or a fifth order and see what it does. They are meaningless, so is your curve. Your own R Squared proves it.

Did you bother to do a projection of say 50 years from now based on your curve? 50C by 2050, right. Your curve is a great depiction of reality -- NOT!

I see what you have done, you have screwed up. You took the top 100 records when there are 104 years in the dataset. Those dates are 1905 at 28.9C, 1907 at 9.4C which is likely due to missing data, 1913 at 27.8C and 1916 at 28.9C. For the sake of 4 records why would you exclude them?

But even still there is something seriously wrong with your dataset. You have nothing below 34C. Yet when I get all the years highest TMax I get 66 records below 34C. Your polynomial graph has the correct dataset, but not your first post. What gives? What did you do to the data?

This is your example of "proper" analysis?

This dataset is a progressive time series, choosing just the top 100 records loses years. This is why scatter plots are inappropriate for this analysis. You should be including ALL years.

You should be using this SQL to get all the records:

SELECT [Station Data].Year, Max([Station Data].[Max Temp]) AS [MaxOfMax Temp]
FROM [Station Data]
GROUP BY [Station Data].Year
ORDER BY [Station Data].Year;

I missed two, there's 6 missing years. 1926 at 28.9C and 1960 at 25C. What the hell does "actually the top 107 taking into account equal placings" mean exactly?

There's 106 records.

Say what you want about my "loquacity", Snowman.

Notice how Richard has stopped posting zombie links?

To quote the post you're now complaining about: "So, as a bit of fun I've plotted the top 100 temperatures against the year recorded at Meunster (actually the top 107 taking into account equal placings)."

Evidently this is not clear enough - I plotted the top 100 Tmax records for the complete dataset. As the 100th record was tied with the next seven (33.5 degC) I plotted the top 107 records. I thought that the fact that I showed there were 20+ records in the 30s, 40s & 80s and specifically stated 8 of the records were from 1961 this would be understood - I obviously overestimated you.

This was a bit of fun as part of my exploration of the data - not a proper analysis. My next post (Highest annual Tmax at Meunster) did plot the highest temperature for each year.

Richard I'm using your own chosen metric here, I don't see any reason why single-point highest temperature should tell you anything. You complain that Tmean is meaningless, but in my view highest Tmax is even more so. I tried to illustrate that with the Top Temps post, your argument effectively rests on the fact that 1941 was hot and (for Meunster) the 19th July was the warmest day on record. This is just another version of the "warming stopped in 1998" argument ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm ). Now, can you justify the use of highest Tmax in your 'analysis'* rather than, say, mean Tmax?

*It seems that for Richard analysis = joining dots on a graph.

"can you justify the use of highest Tmax"

Looking at this paper ( https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1477/1/Stephenson.pdf ) may show the reason:

"Table 1 also shows that these changes are field significant for all the temperature indices except annual maximum daily maximum temperature (TXx) ... The coldest minimum temperature (TNn), the warmest minimum temperature (TNx), the coldest maximum temperature (TXn) and the hottest maximum temperature (TXx) have also increased
in the latter half of the 20th century but the difference between the 1951â1978 and 1979â2003 time periods is less obvious ... Of the indices that can be defined seasonally, maximum daily minimum temperature (TNx), maximum daily maximum temperature (TXx) and diurnal temperature range (DTR) are the least spatially coherent."

You may want to read that paper Richard, they've already done all the analysis you are doing and much much more. Their findings?

"Results showed widespread significant changes in temperature extremes associated with warming, especially for those indices derived from daily minimum temperature. Over 70% of the global land area sampled showed a significant decrease in the annual occurrence of cold nights and a significant increase in the annual occurrence of warm nights. Some regions experienced a more than doubling of these indices. This implies a positive shift in the distribution of daily minimum temperature throughout the globe. Daily maximum temperature indices showed similar changes but with smaller magnitudes." (h/t to mandas)

'Nuff said I think, I'm off to find some Aussies to talk about cricket.

Skip, Richard strikes me as a pretty independent character who makes up his own mind about what to post. I wouldn't be so quick to take credit for changes.

But leave that aside. What upset me, Skip, and what led to my rather immoderate comments last night, was your attitude to Richard. By all means attack his methods and his conclusions if you think they are nonsense. But I have to say your remarks were ungracious.

Here is a guy who, by his own admission, is entirely self-taught and has no formal training. Yet he succeeded in having an article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal. Rather than acknowledging his achievement you choose to belittle it, and him. To paraphrase Jane Austen: 'It was badly done indeed, Skip.'

Skip, Richard strikes me as a pretty independent character who makes up his own mind about what to post.

But he doesn't. He trolls the web looking for "proofs", zombie-blogging the likes of Anthony Watts.

By all means attack his methods and his conclusions if you think they are nonsense.

I never said his "methods" were nonsense (although I have grave doubts that more informed voices have better articulated; see below). I simply said there is no point in verifying the radical claims he bases off them since he cannot even be trusted to understand/read his own sources or maintain a coherent position.

But I have to say your remarks were ungracious.

And they will continue to be. What grace is owed to someone who:

(1) changes his claims when they are demonstrated to be false (see his subtle switch from "all stations in Canada" to "every station I looked at" and his exchange with Ian regarding the starting points of Sachs Harbour temperature trends), and

(2) zombie-cites a link which doesn't even function at the very moment he demands any challengers to debunk it (proving that he himself did not even verify it; see his link to Watts on temperature trends and my response), and

(3) cites sources that make vacuous and absurd arguments (see his links to Rose, Whitehouse and my response), or which even themselves ignorantly cite material that directly refutes him (see his link to Ollier and my response), and

(4) cites sources that directly contradict his other links/sources (see his post on Judith Curry and my response for one example and Mandas's summary post for a greater exposition), and

(5) cites sources which specifically *refute* his position (see his zombie link of Laken from Watts and my response), and

(6) makes a hypocritical demand that all 50 pages of his website's "research articles" be scoured in detail when he cannot even be troubled to respond to a 4-page post, and

(7) simply ignores any direct question whose honest answer would expose to himself and his audience that all the above assertions are true, and/or

(8) is willing to blatantly lie in the same program of evasion.

Now, I have and can again document *all* of these assertions, but then you will just say its a "rant", because documenting it takes time and space.

Add to all this the simple point that Coby and others have pointed out (which I always thought made at least intuitive sense to me but is of course that is all I can claim because I am not an expert) that Richard uses a bizarre metric for measuring "summer heating"--the maximum maximum daily temperature per year: Because this doesn't rise (or is falling, depending on which version of his argument Richard employs at the moment) in two stations in Canada, this (somehow) proves that CO2 is not a heat forcing agent.

There is no way to be both honest and "gracious" with someone like this, despite your desire to believe that he's a new anti-AGW hero:

Hi Richard. Snowman here. I just wanted to say how much I admire your courageous and spirited defiance of the climate gang . . . I particularly liked Skip's foaming indignation. How dare this upstart not acknowledge my superior intellect and answer my questions, he rages. #Snowman, old GAS thread #373

This is just the latest in your history of backing losers, Snowman, and its telling that you would encourage his evasions as if that were a triumph. Next time, evaluate the quality of someone's arguments, not their conclusions, before throwing in your huzzahs.

From that paper:

"rather than viewing the world as getting hotter it might be more accurate to view it as getting less cold."

Gee isn't that what you all laughed at me about!!!

Chris, you complain to me asking if the extreme of TMax is appropriate. That average is better. Then you better tell these guys that!

What do I get from this paper? That I have done the analysis CORRECTLY. For Canada at least, TMax is DROPPING!

Thank you Chris for confirming I'm right. Now I expect the apologies to start to flow in. I expect for you all to admit I have been right from the beginning, and you have been wrong.

So now people, how can global warming from our CO2 make the world "less cold" and if not lower TMax, at least keep it flat? Guess there is a ceiling after all.

Now, with your claim you were just playing around. You did not answer the question.

Why do none of your point go below 34C?

If this first post of yours is incorrect, which it sure looks to be, either fix it or drop it.

Re: Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation

Notice that one of the authors, Zhang, is the same guy from Toronto that did the 2000 paper I posted.

Now you AGW faithful have another major problem on your hands. This in the conclusion:

"the evidence suggests complex changes in precipitation
extremes but which supports a generally wetter world."

So what do we have from this paper.

1) winters are getting less cold WORLD WIDE

2) summers are flat or dropping in extreme TMax, so FEWER heat waves WORLD WIDE

3) Thus because of 1 and 2, the growing season is increasing WORLD WIDE

4) WORLD WIDE the general trend is more precipitation, so LESS DROUGHTS, the exact opposite of the claims of the Faithful of AGW. (also good for crops)

5) Because of all of the above, what we have is a fture of BETTER climate WORLD WIDE.

Seems to me AGW has serious flaws.

Not that any of this will impact any of you. That's what dogma is all about, right Coby?

You missed the start of the quote Richard - "As the decreases in extreme minimum temperatures are greater than the increases in extreme maximum temperature..."

Yes Richard, they used Highest Tmax - just like you.

They also used highest Tmin, Lowest Tmax & Tmin, Cold Nights, Cold Days, Warm Nights and Days, Diurnal Temperature Range, Frost Days, Summer Days, Ice Days, Tropical Nights, Growing Season Length, Warm spell Duration, Cold Spell Duration, Maximum 1 & 5 day Precipitation, Simple Daily Intensity, Heavy and Very Heavy Precipitation Days, Consecutive Wet & Dry Days, Annual Total Precipitation and Very Wet & Extremely wet days - just like you, oh no wait hang on...

"What do I get from this paper? That I have done the analysis CORRECTLY. For Canada at least, TMax is DROPPING!"

1) Good to see you're now restricting your claims to Canada.
2) How do you get that from a paper which says "hottest maximum temperature (TXx) have also increased in the latter half of the 20th century"
3) Dropping, except at Meunster? except at the site Ian looked at?

"Why do none of your point go below 34C?"

Do I really have to spell this out? The top 107 Tmax records across the timespan were all 33.5 degrees C or above.

(Note that Richard in #91 has managed to turn a rise (albeit small) into flat or dropping in point 2. What was that about dogma?)

Snowman, Skip is a prime example of a True Believer in the AGW faith. The entire global warming scam is collapsing around him (ie Cancun) yet, years from now, while freezing, skip will still keep the "world is warming, be afraid, be very afraid" faith. Of all his dribblings, he has said nothing of any evidence to support his faith.

Notice that one of the authors, Zhang, is the same guy from Toronto that did the 2000 paper I posted.

Which did indeed affirm his claim for southern Canada--and nothing else. He didn't read it, Snowman.

Observe the cherry-picked response to Chris, and Chris's riposte.

And observe how Richard makes no attempt to address any of the points I made, except to say,

Of all [Skip's] dribblings, he has said nothing of any evidence to support his faith.

Because what I have done--and this is the real reason Richard selectively ignores me--is show there is no basis to have any faith in *Richard*. And as for my own "evidence" to support my *belief*, I never claimed to provide it any of these exchanges. That's for a different set of threads (e.g., there is no consensus, etc.)

This is what it boils down to, Snowman. You can latch on to Richard as the latest anti-AGW Messiah, or you can honestly and rationally examine the quality of his character and his other arguments to have the next-best-thing to refuting his claims without actually disentangling the data yourself (as no one has time to do except pros like Chris).

"Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to Journal xxx. I have now received referees' reports and an assessment from the Associate Editor who handled the review process. All are positive about the study but express doubts about the presentation here. I have re-read the paper and agree with their assessment.

Since a new manuscript addressing these concerns would be much altered, it would probably need to be re-reviewed. In these circumstances, it is Journal policy to reject the current manuscript but to invite resubmission once the problems have been resolved. This carries no commitment to eventual publication but provides an opportunity for re-evaluation by this Journal.

I am sorry not to be more positive at this stage but please let me know if you wish us to consider a new version. Any resubmission should be submitted to the website within four months of this message. Should you decide to take this option, you should address the referees' comments in full in the new version of your manuscript. At resubmission, you should upload a file explaining how you have responded to the various criticisms and including a point-by-point description of how you have addressed the various comments."

Looks like I'll have less spare time than anticipated in the next few months so won't be doing anything else on the data for a while.

At least you didn't get this one:

Date: *******

From the Editor of the Journal of ********

To: ********

Dear ******

Thank you very much for your submission to the Journal of **************. Unfortunately, after serious consideration, the external reviewers have concluded that the piece is not appropriate for the journal. While we have provided the reviewersâ comments (where availableâsee below) in their entirety, a few in particular stand out that help summarize their overall estimation of the paper. For example, Reviewer 1 asked, âWhy was this abomination even submitted to a journal, let alone sent out for peer review? I believe the time I wasted reviewing this intellectual atrocity would have been better spent counting the crane flies in my front lawn.â Reviewer 2 said that the process of examining the manuscript was âa psychic assault akin to being rent on the rack of charlatanism before being burnt at the stake of abysmal scholarship,â and later that, âThe authors should not be allowed to breed.â Reviewer 3 simply returned the review package without comment after having apparently urinated on the manuscript. We interpreted this as a rejection.

We greatly appreciate your interest in the Journal of ************** and wish you the greatest success in your future scholarly endeavors.

Sincerely,

**********, Editor
Journal of **********

(And no, it was not sent to me, personally!)

I think you misunderstand me, Skip. I offer no opinion on the validity or otherwise of Richard's work, because I am not qualified to judge it. However, I do know mean-spirited behaviour when I see it. You will know what I am referring to, of course.

Do I really have to spell this out? The top 107 Tmax records across the timespan were all 33.5 degrees C or above.

So you didn't do a time series. Your plot is not a progression of each year because you will have SEVERAL points for the same year on that graph. Hence your plot is NOT the highest TMax for each year. You blew the analysis big time. Nice going Chris. So much for your superior abilities.

Looks like I'll have less spare time than anticipated in the next few months so won't be doing anything else on the data for a while.

Not surpising that reply seeing how you screwed up simple data analysis on temperature data. Nice going Chris, bailing out when it gets too hot for you, eh?

I demand you remove your stupid blog posts, or I will rip you to shreds on mine. That's how pissed off you have got me.

Richard, I have no specialist knowledge of these statistical arguments. However, I absolutely love the way you are not taking any crap from these guys. Normally, they form a mutual admiration society and spend their time telling each other how clever they are. When somebody comes along with a mind of his own they start to shriek and foam at the mouth.

Naturally, they assumed that you were a patsy who would grovel and beg to be forgiven once they ganged up on you. But slowly, the terrible truth is dawning on them: they have got into the ring with Mike Tyson, and you can smell their fear.

Nice going Chris, bailing out when it gets too hot for you, eh?

Unlike yourself, Richard, Chris is constrained by the process of legitimate science, intellectual honesty, and the rigors of peer review.

they have got into the ring with Mike Tyson, and you can smell their fear.

I thought you said,

I offer no opinion on the validity or otherwise of Richard's work, because I am not qualified to judge it. -- Snowman

This just shows again, Snowman, that for you its nothing more than a battle of polemical assertions.

Re: 98 "Hence your plot is NOT the highest TMax for each year."

Please tell me where I claimed it was.

Please tell me why I would point out there were eight records for 1961 if I was trying to claim it was.

I've told you at least three times it wasn't a time series I can't believe it took that long to sink in. Mike Tyson? A punch drunk Audley Harrison perhaps.

Skip, I'm glad I've never got anything as bad as your #96. My favourite rejection from a reviewer was because the paper was too good for the journal I submitted to! I had to disagree.

Ha ha.

Uh, no. I've never gotten that one. In fact I've had to sneak a few past "top" (for my field) journals' reviewers a couple of times in what some might regard as a Soon-and-Baliunas kind of manner.

Guys like me would rather be lucky than good any day.

Chris, as promised:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/agw-faithful-take-on-cdnsur…

Please tell me where I claimed it was.

Yeah, I incorrectly assumed you would be doing as you claimed you would be, doing a "proper" analysis. Read my blog post.

BTW, anyone following what's going on in Europe? Record cold and snow for this time of year. 48 people have froze to death so far. Global warming at work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTR-xzA8xLk

Really? Really?

"An increase in global temperatures will lead to an intensification of the hydrological cycle. This is because an increase in surface air temperature causes an increase in evaporation and generally higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. In addition, a warmer atmosphere is capable of holding more water vapor. The excess water vapor will in turn lead to more frequent heavy precipitation when atmospheric instability is sufficient to trigger precipitation events.

"The largest changes in precipitation are expected at mid- to- high latitudes (Kattenberg et al., 1996). Climate models predict an increase in average precipitation in winter at high latitudes due to poleward transport of evaporated moisture from lower latitudes. There is also an increase in the expected frequency and areal extent of intense precipitation over the continents."

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/early-…

This explains why record snowfall in the northern hemisphere at this time of the year is consistent with global warming models.

Is the plotting of annual Tmax (and annual Tmin), as RW has done it, a statistically relevant methodology that holds water within climate science?
If no, then letâs move on from this thread.
But if yes, then it appears to me, that in the case of Meunster, RW seems to be generally correct (I say that on the basis of what I can discern from his website) that Tmax data for Meunster shows a flat-ish trend over recent years and Tmin shows a generally increasing trend.

However, to RW:
* How is this generally inconsistent with the overall premise of AGW?
* Why do you believe the Meunster trend would even hold regionally, let alone globally, when other posters here have linked to published articles that show otherwise?

I think it is unfortunate that another poster here has applied very amateurish data analysis to try and refute RWâs Meunster trend, thereby only emboldening RW further in his postulate that such a trend is global and that the greater increase in minimum temps compared to maximum temps invalidates the entire AGW theory.

RW:
I would be happy to concede credit to you on elements of your data trending, should that methodology be shown to have relevance within climate science. But I do not appreciate your political posturing on AGW, and linking to the likes of the Daily Mail and James Delingpole does nothing for your credibility. Skip has taken great time and care to call you out on a number of matters. If you want anyone with an open mind to pass any heed on your data analysis, you will have to take a more considered approach to your interactions.

* How is this generally inconsistent with the overall premise of AGW?

The prediction over the years is AGW should lead to more heat waves, ie higher temperatures in the summer. At the last US congressional hearing on the subject, one of the AGW scientists claimed that the number of heat temperature records in the future would be 20:1 to cold temp records. She stated outright that summer temps would rise because of AGW.

My analysis shows that to not be true. Plus the analysis of that paper Chris linked to shows that not to be true. Which also shows this is world wide.

Why do you believe the Meunster trend would even hold regionally, let alone globally, when other posters here have linked to published articles that show otherwise?

I have shown this is a Canada wide phenomenon, and at least in Ireland where TMax is dropping too. Chris' link shows the same, less cold is more correct, not more hot.

Problem is, you cannot claim that this is EXCLUSIVELY from AGW just because it predicts it (or now claiming to predict it, we have seen the moving goal posts in AGW before).

AGW would need discriminatory evidence to bolster the theory, less cold winters is not discriminatory. Normal cyclic variation also predicts that. I can go into the reasons why, and have done in the other thread. Basically it involves what is considered "normal" in the climate. If the normal state of the climate is tropical, then what is happening now is moving towards that normal state. Very cold winters being abnormal. A 500 year or so pendulum is swinging back to the normal, less cold, state.

If you want anyone with an open mind to pass any heed on your data analysis, you will have to take a more considered approach to your interactions.

I was fine doing just that until the tone here fell into throwing insults at me, Re Ian and skip. That happened within the first few days. So don't blame me, take it out on them.

I was fine doing just that until the tone here fell into throwing insults at me, Re Ian and skip. That happened within the first few days. So don't blame me, take it out on them.

Add this to the list of lies.

He dodges me because he knows he embarrassed himself. To answer my questions (and those of many others; I don't want to overstate my performance in this) forces him to either (a) lie again or (b) face an awful truth he cannot process.

The difference between us, Skip, is that while it is patently obvious you have no understanding of the technicalities lying behind this debate, you pretend otherwise. You keep nagging Richard with your silly little questions that interest nobody but you. Why don't you dig into his argument and demonstrate why he is wrong? I think we all know why you don't.

Finally! I found it:

http://www.funnycorner.net/funny-pictures/4905/funny-demotivational-pic…

I've been looking for this link for weeks. It proves beyond all doubt, Richard, that you are

(a) totally wrong about your temperature analysis, and
(b) that I am correct about everything in our dispute

Glad that is finally settled.

If you have any problem with this source, take it up with the author, not me.

Furthermore, I'm not going to respond to any of your "refutations" of the viability of my source and what it allegedly proves, because you've insulted me. Again, if you have a problem, take it up with them; its out of my hands now.

If you cannot see how this proves you wrong, it simply shows that you are devoted to your anti-AGW religion as a mindless believer; you are unable or unwilling to brook any challenge to your dogma.

I think we all know why you don't.

I know; I told you. No one has the time to conduct their own independent credibility check of any fool with a spreadsheet and an agenda.

You'd be quite a boxing judge, Snow. You regard an opponent with broken nose, missing teeth, and swollen eyes who never punches back as "Mike Tyson".

The goal of boxing is to swing *back*, Snowman. You cheer Richard for his obstinate refusal to respond to questions that embarrass him. He's not Mike Tyson. He's a punching bag with one operational organ: a mouth.

Skip, despite your huffing and puffing, you suffer from a rather serious drawback: you haven't a clue about the statistical complexities. How funny to hear you splutter that you haven't refuted Richard's argument because you don't have the time.

Richard, you have picked your opponents off one by one and left them senseless on the canvas. Will Skip lurch back to his feet, or will he be counted out?

I see Richard has been destroyed by my link!

Behold the fop's silence!

And you, Snowman, cringe from the distance, crying as your false hope and fake champion drowns in his own tears of defeat and pain!

Ha ha! I have struck another blow for the AGW Truth! See my foes scatter . . . behold my fury . . . my wrath . . . my . . . !

You see, Snowman. Any dipshit can argue the way you do. Only people of reason and honesty can do it the way I do. This is the difference between us. You're not honest, least of all with yourself.

you have picked your opponents off one by one and left them senseless on the canvas.

Thanks Snowman, but I really can't take credit. If you recall the original reason for these threads, it was my claim, and that of a good many others, on Curry's site that the True Believers of AGW are quite dogmatic in their support for the faith. I challenged Coby to not be dogmatic in his beliefs and look at my analysis. Hence his invitation for me to come here and defend my analysis. I fully knew what was going to happen, nothing from their side surprised me here, simply confirming their dogmatism.

I didn't defeat these people, they defeated themselves. From Ian's ranting that I do nothing but lie, to skip's fixation on me and any faults he could conjure up, to Chris' amateurish attempts to discredit my analysis.

It is very clear indeed from all those here who have attempted to discredit my work that the dogma is a live and well entrenched in these people.

The AGW ship is sinking, both from the empirical side and the public relations side. Not even the AGW faithful can deny that, well, some of them anyway. Cancun may indeed be their last attempt as country after country call their bluff and pull out of any binding agreements. Agreements that anyone with a clear head knew were death sentences to western culture.

But those here will still be standing screaming "the sky is falling!" long after the rest of the public gets over being had, and the planet carries on as it always has, not following their alarmist predictions.

The monetary damage these people have done in the name of "saving the planet" is huge. One can only hope not irreversible.

If I can play a small part in turning the numbers away from AGW, then I'm satisfied with that accomplishment.

Richard,

Chris destroyed you in your interpretation of the Alexander et al, article.

And I noticed you've quickly left the topic of Zhang et al.

Snowman, who does not even understand the simplest mathematics of a trend line (I have proof), is not the kind of admirer you want to accumulate.

All you have left is bluster and fraud, Richard, and its sadly appropriate that you've found a soul mate in our resident Snowman, who admires evasion as much as incompetence. Although we are disputants for the nonce I would ask you as a fellow human being to consider if you really want to spend the rest of your days this way.

Good will aside, just to expose you again on one example: What does it say about you that you cited Laken after you skimmed Watts's blog--only to have me track down both the source and the man himself, and find that he utterly repudiates your position?

Your imminent craven silence on this matter will tell more truths than 100 peer reviewed articles, and I'm going to enjoy watching it.

Richard, all of us who value independent thought admire your achievements. How ironic to see Skip decrying you at every opportunity, when his idea of intellectual rigour is to parrot what others have said.

It is really rather ironic that when someone who has carried out original work appears on this blog the abuse of the true believers knows no limits. It is simply remarkable that, challenged to show why you are wrong, Skip bleats that he hasn't the time. Somehow he has convinced himself that this is victory.

Oh, and Skip, kindly stop saying 'for the nonce'. The phrase you want is 'for now', or, if you must, 'for the time being'.

Richard,
I wouldnât be too quick to claim âvictoryâ if I were you. You have failed to answer a large number of reasonable questions posed to you by Skip and others. I donât necessarily blame you for not being able to answer all queries â I wouldnât be able to either, because none of us on this forum are climate scientists. In my opinion, you would be better off saying something like, âGuys, I feel pretty confident in my ability to collate and present data and I *think* I may have found something interesting here â can you guys help me see if thereâs anything to this that I can explore further?â
Starting from your own dogmatic position that AGW is a fraud isnât a great way to frame a debate.
I accept, on the basis that your methodology can be shown to have relevance within climate science, you are generally correct in your interpretation of the Meunster trends. But you have a *long* way to go to extend such conclusions even regionally. Zhang et al is just one of likely very many published studies that have been carried out that will not support your conclusions that *everywhere* shows flat max summer temps and rising min winter temps. You need to be a bit more critical of your own analysis before taking issue with others about their interpretations. And you shouldnât be surprised if people are deeply skeptical that an Excel analysis of extremes of summer and winter temperatures at a few sites in Canada is going to âtake downâ the entire body of work of thousands of climate scientists all around the world. Again, maybe show some humility for your own limitations in approach and analysis.
It seems like this thread is mostly left to you and Skip now. Unless it very quickly reverts to an adult, scientific discussion, where enquiring minds seek to explore an issue in an unbiased and ego-free way, then I wonât be lurking on this thread any further.
So since it is mostly you and Skip, I offer both of you a way forward: On the specifics of Richardâs analysis, Skip ask one question and one only, and Richard respond ONLY to this query. And stick with the question until a fair answer is given. Note: a fair answer can be âI donât know, but Iâm willing to have someone help me find outâ.

ironic to see Skip decrying you at every opportunity, when his idea of intellectual rigour is to parrot what others have said.

Um, Snowman. Richard is the one who zombie-blogged Watts . . . .and Ollier . . . and Delingpole . . .and Rose . . . and Whitehouse--not to mention a few which specifically refuted him, such as Laken . . . and Curry . . . and Zhang et al. And all you do is cheer *him*.

"Och! Polly says global warming is a sham! Och!"

It is simply remarkable that, challenged to show why you are wrong, Skip bleats that he hasn't the time.

In Richard's own words:

First that my analysis of all stations in Canada with long enough data shows the same trend, everywhere, every station. Summers are cooling. Richad GAS thread #3

Download the data a check it yourself. It's simple to do. Write a program to hit the EC database, for each month, for each year for each station and drop the data into text files (takes about 3 months to run it all). Richard GAS thread #38

No, Snowman. No one has three months on his hands except an . . . eccentric (a good compromise word) like Richard. What I *do* have time to do is verify his various claims of vindication of his analysis (Zhang et al., Alexander et al.) that specifically refute his finding. And I have.

But you live in a Deniallusion, Snowman, where Richard alternating between self-refutation and utter nonsense is "rigor". Its to be expected.

GG: Sorry that the thread devolved to this disappointing point for you. If you were to look at my earliest posts to Richard, you would have seen a very different tone. But he obstinately disengages whenever the discussion takes a threatening turn, and now that he has Snowman to cheer him, I suspect this will continue indefinitely.

The value in refuting in Richard is almost certainly not for his benefit. Its for people of reason to see his example and say, "Wow. I don't want to be like that guy."

So no Snowman, I don't have three months to independently verify the claims of a man who cannot even recognize friend from foe in debating an issue.

Richard has the 2 minutes required to explain himself regarding Laken. But watch: he won't.

âGuys, I feel pretty confident in my ability to collate and present data and I *think* I may have found something interesting here â can you guys help me see if thereâs anything to this that I can explore further?â
Starting from your own dogmatic position that AGW is a fraud isnât a great way to frame a debate.

How about from their side to look at the evidence objectively and not a priori dismiss it out of hand? I see no criticism from you about that.

But you have a *long* way to go to extend such conclusions even regionally.

Then you have not seen the rest of my posts on my site. Please, read them. This is ALL ACROSS CANADA. Example: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

and

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/04/canadian-summer-trends.html

And you shouldnât be surprised if people are deeply skeptical that an Excel analysis of extremes of summer and winter temperatures at a few sites in Canada is going to âtake downâ the entire body of work of thousands of climate scientists all around the world.

All it takes in science is one bit of evidence to bring down an entire theory. And it's not just me that is exposing serious flaws in AGW, as you are well aware I'm sure.

Assuming this increase in temps is because of AGW (which can ONLY be in the last 40 years) then you have to ask yourself:

1) is this bad? Milder winters, cooler summers, longer growing season seems quite nice to me.

2) what other weather related effects have changed in the last 40 years? Answer: None. There is no change in any weather related events that is beyond normal variation. Not one.

3) are future AGW predictions going to be accurate? Not a chance.

Do you agree with these 3 points? And yes, let's stick to the science. That's all I've wanted to do.

BTW, my "bias" that AGW is a faith based theory is nothing more than a counter to their dogmatic belief that EVERYTHING happening in the climate today is because of our emissions of CO2. That's a worse bias than me calling AGW a faith.

But just for you I willing suspend that if you are willing to stick to the science.

Richard,
Iâm sorry, I canât answer your questions, because I simply donât know the answers. And it would take me such a long time to research the literature to find out, and even then I would be giving a non-expertâs interpretation of an expert field. I can only hope to follow the arguments of those much more knowledgeable in the subject. Thatâs not a cop-out to avoid your questions, itâs just the truth.
Let me be clear â none of your detractors have done an adequate job of either proving or disproving your data analyses, but be fair; to do so would take quite an amount of time, probably too much than is available to guys who are simply tuning into a blog to harmlessly pass away an hour or so in the evening. I think some fairness could have been applied in comments concerning your data analysis, but in this regard you did yourself no favours, coming across as very strident from the outset. The original thread degenerated into farce very quickly. It is a shame, because I personally would like to know whether your analysis really holds any water.
To that end, Iâll give you the chance to give an answer to a genuine enquiry: what research have you done, and what can you present, to show that your methodology of choosing annual Tmax and Tmin is appropriate and relevant to the examination of long-term temperature trends in the worldâs climate?
[Please note again that I am not knowledgeable in the finer points of climate science. Neither am I in any way a prolific poster like you and Skip. Hence, my query is only to try to set an example for how a discourse might proceed. This may be my only question to you, but at least it will allow me to see how much stock I should put in your analyses. Please try to keep the political statements and previous offences committed in this thread out of your answer; such flaming rhetoric on both sides has gotten us to around 650 posts on this thread and the last one with almost no progress]

Sorry, GG, but observe:

their dogmatic belief that EVERYTHING happening in the climate today is because of our emissions of CO2.

See the the same straw man? Richard has to tell himself this nonsense because he has nowhere else to go.

This is what you get trying to reason with RW, although I'm not diminishing your efforts.

Richard has the 2 minutes required to explain himself regarding Laken. But watch: he won't.

[Richard's] imminent craven silence on this matter [regarding his citation of Laken] will tell more truths than 100 peer reviewed articles, and I'm going to enjoy watching it.

As enjoyable as I knew it would be--for the *nonce*.

This is your Mike Tyson, Snowman. Quite a talent scout, you.

Skip,
Yes, I know the point you are making. But I've followed this thread and the last one since the start, and I'm just trying to see if what you have previously referred to as intellectual honestly will be applied to a genuine enquiry.

Although maybe impossible to do at this late stage, I would be interested in you parking all your frustrations to one side and asking one question of Richard, well-meaning and genuinely presented, and give him the opportunity to honestly answer you. Maybe we can find out whether there is anything to his data analysis or not. If he is right (even to an extent) then he is right irrespective of his politics. If he wrong, then he is just wrong. Maybe we'll find out.

I can only hope to follow the arguments of those much more knowledgeable in the subject.

That's assuming they are telling you the truth. How can you possible accept people like Hansen as a "knowledgeable" individual on the subject when he wants the UK to stop using coal right now, which would freeze people to death? You are assuming those knowledgeable people themselves have no ulterior motives to be biased on AGW future scenarios.

to show that your methodology of choosing annual Tmax and Tmin is appropriate and relevant to the examination of long-term temperature trends in the worldâs climate?

The claim here is that the averaged mean is a better indication of trend than extremes. Except one problem. The mean is calcuated from those extremes only. The daily mean is not the daily average of hourly temps, it's just the (TMax+Tmin)/2. I have shown the two are not the same: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-mean-temp-is-meaningles…

So any average anomaly graphs of the temp are already using extreme temps in the average calculations.

Since the AGW claim is more heat waves in the future, then that must mean that the summer's highest temps must be increasing, or at the least more hotter days. That is exactly what the Canadian Evironment Commissioner said in an interview yesterday on CTV. He said AGW would make for longer and hotter summers in Canada.

He is flat wrong. And only by showing the extreme TMax temps can one show he is wrong. Besides, that 2006 paper that Chris noted https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1477/1/Stephenson.pdf also looked at summer extreme TMax. So if it was approprate for them, it is for me.

And since that study was world wide, using those seasonal extremes of TMax and TMin are quite relevant.

I plan to look at winter TMin and Tmax in detail for all of Canada to see exactly what temperature ranges in the winter are changing.

You seem smart enough to me to follow this, so I want you to think about this for a moment.

AGW theory's basic default postion is that cold is normal, and hotter/warmer is abnormal. Moving to a warmer climate regeme is bad. Adding more heat, even with an increasing TMin in the winter, is bad. Hell, even increasing summer nighttime TMin is bad! They are all "adding" heat.

But what if the reverse is true? Cold is abnormal and moving to a warmer climate regeme is returning to the normal state. Warming winters is not getting warmer, it means there is less heat lost. Thus warming is not adding new heat, it is replacing LOST heat.

I would be interested in you parking all your frustrations to one side and asking one question of Richard, well-meaning and genuinely presented, and give him the opportunity to honestly answer you. Maybe we can find out whether there is anything to his data analysis or not.

I have done this a dozen times. But since you bring it up:

Richard, question:

What, if anything, is the implication of the geographic locations of the stations selected for your analysis of Canadian "heat waves"?

GGMcGready, I will answer some of your questions. I will not respond to Wakefield since he has been and continues to be scientifically dishonest in his useless posts. As I said early on in the previous thread it is impossible to have a rational discussion with some one who is irrational and dishonest.

Firstly, his use of annual Tmax is almost useless. Why should we think that what happened on one day a year will tell us anything about global warming? For example, a station may have a maximum of one day at 35 C on one day in 1960 and the next highest might be 30 C. In 2009 it may have one day at 35 but 100 days at 34. Which would you assume was the warmer year? Obviously the year with one day at 35 and 100 at 34 but Wakefield's analysis says that they are both the same therefore no global warming (neglecting of course that you can't project global trends from one station).

I have analyzed two stations from Canada, Sachs Harbour and recently Coral Harbour. Both show high rates of warming for the annual Tmax for the past 50 years.

Wakefield used one station in southern Ontario to base his hypothesis on. Everyone in the literature agrees that Southern Ontario does appear to be cooling in the summer over the past few years. However, to extrapolate this finding to even suggest that Canada is doing the same is just bad science and it is even worse science to say that the data from one station abolishes AGW.

Wakefield consistently cherry-picks and when he is called on it either ignores it or cherry-picks again.

Now I admit that I have only analyzed data from two stations but (I just don't have the time or patience to waste on the likes of Wakefield by doing any more).

What this thread has shown, I hope, is that using as many data points, stations and countries as possible is necessary to get a true picture of what is happening to global temperatures and that it is being mostly caused by the addition of fossil carbon from the burning of fossil fuels. Data from one station does not give you any information and deliberate cherry-picking is dishonest.

It is interesting to note that Wakefield uses actual temperatures when all climate scientists switch to anomalies to describe what is happening. The huge amount of data and subsequent data analyzes required to do this makes it an impossible task for anyone who is not doing it full time. That is why people like Wakefield should be very careful in what they are doing. Unfortunately, Wakefield is not taking care nor being honest in his analyzes. He will not admit the shortcomings in what he is doing.

Since Wakefield linked to an error filled article by David Rose I will offer a quote by George Monbiot on that article:

I don't have time to deal with every one of the mistakes his article contains â it takes 100 times as long to show why a claim is wrong as it does to make it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/dec/08/david-r…

That is why scientists get so frustrated and angry with deniers like Wakefield, it is very easy to spew nonsense but it takes a long time and a lot of effort to disprove it. That is why science blogs should have active moderation to keep the S/N ratio reasonable. That is why blogs such as Deep Climate, Open Mind, RC get much more scientific content than those which do not moderate. The deniers take over, just see Judith Curry's blog (though I am inclined to think that is what she in fact wanted).

What, if anything, is the implication of the geographic locations of the stations selected for your analysis of Canadian "heat waves"?

I have picked stations with the longest records from locations across Canada that are in different regions. Well indicted on my site.

Ian, I thought you were done here. I guess the 2006 paper noted above is also wrong because they too looked at the highest TMax.

Oh, and you are lying about me only using southern ontario. Anyone who looks at my site can see I use stations across Canada. And I have used anomalies too. So another lie on your part.

Your Sachs Harbour is not increasing, unless you think a flat trend from 1940 is increasing. Here you are misrepresenting the facts on SH.

But I'm willing to bet GGMcGready will see right through you on your assertions.

Thank you Ian.
So it sounds like a case where the use of one variable (Tmax) leads to more conclusions than are justified by the data.
And I take it, as you say, that this is why climate science focuses on the anomalies, rather than the absolute temps.

Good post. If Tmax is not a prudent basis for the methodology presented, then I can safely move on.

Ian, since I am generally interested in how climate science treats the temperature data that scientists collect, any link you can provide that discusses this will be appreciated. [You can assume that I will be looking for the same information myself, but you seem to be particularly good at quickly accessing useful scientific material.]

Is anyone surprised why I get so angry with Wakefield. Sachs Harbour is not flat from 1940, it doesn't even have any data for 1940, the first complete year of data is 1956. I plotted annual Tmax from 1956 to 2006 and showed a positive increase in annual Tmax of 0.043 degrees C per year. I have done the same for Coral Harbour (1960 to 2009) and found an increasing rate for annual Tmax of 0.057 degrees C per year.

Wakefield is a liar and lies about what people here have posted.

Dishonesty in science makes me very angry - oops I said that already. It is time some one acted on Wakefield's dishonesty and moderated him into isolation, otherwise honest people will not waste their time reading such dishonest rubbish on a supposedly science blog.

Firstly, his use of annual Tmax is almost useless. Why should we think that what happened on one day a year will tell us anything about global warming?

Ian, the claim is that summers should be getting hotter, there should be more heat waves. That cannot be tested with anomalies. The highest TMax will tell us that. So will the count of days above the second upper standard deviation. Both of which I have done for across Canada.

If that is wrong, how else should I be measuring heatwaves over time? How would YOU test that?

Good post. If Tmax is not a prudent basis for the methodology presented, then I can safely move on.

Then how come it was a good enough evaluation in the 2006 paper I noted? Seems an important measure for them. If highest TMax, or deviations above the summer second standard deviation is not an valid way to test for heat waves, then what is?

Well indicted on my site.

Freudian?

First of all, you listed 14, not 17 as your site says. And I mapped them all. 6 were clustered within a few hundred miles of each other in the vicinity of Ottawa.

The other 8 were indeed "across" Canada, but in essentially four couplings: central/western BC, another near Grand Prairie, and another two in central Saskatchewan and Manitoba. None are farther north than Grand Prairie.

Do you agree with my characterization so far?

Sachs Harbour is not flat from 1940, it doesn't even have any data for 1940, the first complete year of data is 1956. I plotted annual Tmax from 1956 to 2006 and showed a positive increase in annual Tmax of 0.043 degrees C per year.

Yes, my err. It's flat since 1970. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/sachs-harbour.html You still have not answered my question. Is it flat since 1970? And how is that not relevant?

I have done the same for Coral Harbour (1960 to 2009) and found an increasing rate for annual Tmax of 0.057 degrees C per year.

I will check that location too, Ian. No comment until I check it.

Richard,
I am not writing you off just yet. I am going to read the 2006 paper you linked to. It's 22 pages and I'm a notorious slow reader of scientific texts. The paper says in the introduction: "However, analyzing changes in extremes, such as changes in heat wave duration or in the number of days during which temperature exceeds its longterm 90th percentile, requires daily data in digital form". I accept that you have referred to these requirements yourself. So, yes, I am skeptical of your approach, but generally open-minded enough to reserve judgment. I might post what I think of the 2006 paper if I feel I have anything of note to add.

GGMcGready be very careful of Wakefield's sophistry. He manages to distort meanings and definitions to confuse the unwary reader. Wakefield uses annual Tmax whereas the 2006 paper uses daily Tmax, a very different kettle of fish (red herrings in Wakefield's case). With Wakefieled's definition you only get 40 data points in a 40 year period, with Stephenson et al's definition you get 3680 data points (92 for JJA times 40).

Duly noted Ian.
Unfortunately, the link given in 2.3, which defines the indices used is not working. I'd like to know how they define the warm spell duration index, which is reported as having a significantly increasing trend.
I'm having a bit of trouble interpreting Figure 2, both for the maps and the plots. If you can assist, please do!

Hello Ian,

Yes, I've been wondering about the use of "annual Tmax", and what probability distribution that would have. On a recent post Tamino mentioned "Extreme Value Theory", but I don't know if this Tmax would qualify or what effect that would have.

Clearly this annual Tmax will exhibit much higher variability, and Richard has acknowledge that he doesn't perform any statistical test to support his claims of cooling.

"However, analyzing changes in extremes, such as changes in heat wave duration or in the number of days during which temperature exceeds its longterm 90th percentile, requires daily data in digital form". I accept that you have referred to these requirements yourself.

90th percentile and above is beyond the second upper standard deviation. I did that exact analysis you quoted here:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

As for:

With Wakefieled's definition you only get 40 data points in a 40 year period, with Stephenson et al's definition you get 3680 data points (92 for JJA times 40).

Ian is flat wrong. If you look at my graphs of full ranges, which I include, you will see a red line, the highest TMax for each year, a bottom blue line, the lowest TMin for the year, a black line which is the averaged TMean and two orange lines above and below the black lines. Those are standard deviations from the mean. To get that you have to use the full year's temp data. So he is wrong, each year with a full range shown is 365x3 data points.

If I use summer I will indicate if I use June, July and Aug, or if I'm looking for just the highest temps I will use July. What I pick for a range depends on the context of what I'm looking for. No point in including May in a summer only analysis.

What you have to be carefull of with Ian is his cherry picking of stations. Notice both of them have short recordsets. Ian, how about picking a station with a recodset that starts at least before 1910.

Clearly this annual Tmax will exhibit much higher variability, and Richard has acknowledge that he doesn't perform any statistical test to support his claims of cooling.

What tests do you want me to perform? The ones Chris did and screwed up?

Wakefield stop your insulting and dishonest remarks. I did not cherry pick I picked two at random. I will not waste my time by working on all the stations, all I needed was one to show that your very first statement on the previous thread was wrong. Canada's summers are not "cooling", one small part is (southern Ontario).

I will not respond to this thread as long as Wakefield is allowed to insult and smear anyone who contributes and shows that he is either wrong or dishonest (my bet is both).

Coby, please act now to save your blog from being overrun by deniers since no-one wants to be treated in the manner Wakefield is doing. Deniers like Wakefield want to do nothing else but flood science blogs with their anti-science rubbish and chase away honest posters by insulting them and smearing them. If this is what you want on your blog then I'm afraid I won't be contributing any more. I have spent a considerable amount of time on showing how out of touch with scientific reality Wakefield and others are but I have reached my limit.

Richard,

When you get a chance I'd like to see if you agree with my geographic generalizations regarding your heat wave analysis I mentioned in #136.

all I needed was one to show that your very first statement on the previous thread was wrong

Right... take me to task for using one station for all Canada, but it's OK for you to use one station to refute me. One station with half the records. Nice hypocrisy.

Your trend for Sachs Harbour is ONLY since 1956. Not indicative of the whole century. What if the 1920's was warmer Ian? Your increasing trend evaporates to a decreasing trend. That's my point.

You did not pick at random, you picked two with short ranges. The site pops up the range of years before you download, you can easily choose one with 100 years. That's what I made sure I did, always pick the locations with the longest number of years.

I have spent a considerable amount of time on showing how out of touch with scientific reality Wakefield and others are but I have reached my limit.

You left once, feel free to leave again any time. I'm sure people are sick of your insulting rants.

Sorry, didn't see 136. Yes, as of yet I have not downloaded all the data from the NWT, Yukon or the east coast. I plan to do so. Just takes so long to get it, month or more. Have been busy with other projects over the summer.

That said, the lattitudes of the locations is quite varied, and weather systems range over them the same. Example, Calgary vs Fort McMurray. The latter will be colder but I suspect the over all trends to match.

However, Ian's choice of Sachs Harbour is a pretty good indicator that since at least the 1970's there has been no change in summer TMax. However, that location is right on the Arctic Ocean. Bodies of water tend to moderate temperatures as I saw in Belleville.

That said, since all the rest of the locations are showing the same trend I would not expect the ones I don't yet have to deviate from that any more than I would expect locations in Southern Ontario which have short records to deviate either.

I did do Monkton NB for someone and it too showed a decrease in summer TMax.

Also skip, a heat wave in the NWT is anything over 25C. Hardly hot. I think what would be more important would be the end and begin times of the frost. That will affect permafrost. The longer the non-freezing time occurs the more permafrost will melt.

So for up there "hot" periods are less likely to be important. Frost duration would be.

That analysis has to be done using daily data, so cannot be determined with Ian's data of Sachs Harbour.

Ok, fair enough.

But for now is it fair to say that "every station" is best interpreted as "every station you looked at?"

I ask because I thought I saw both renditions of this point. Just asking for clarification . . . not trying to start a row.

But for now is it fair to say that "every station" is best interpreted as "every station you looked at?"

And I have said both, but mean the latter. I would assume that since the wide regions I have noted are doing the same thing and when I look at another station it is confirmed, one can easily project that every station will hence have the same or similar trend. (actually any differences in trends would need an explanation as to why) Problem is most stations don't have long enough records to confirm. But with one location with a short dataset within a few hours drive of another location with a long dataset, I can safely say the first location would match the trend.

That's certainly better than the climatologists who use datasets from one location to project what another would do several thousand miles appart. Too much variation. Hell even between Ottawa and Harrow (7 hours from each other) can have a 10C difference in temps at the same time.

So the daily temp ranges would be different, but the over all trends are the same.

That's certainly better than the climatologists who use datasets from one location to project what another would do several thousand miles appart. Too much variation.

I guess it just seems . . .well . . .Hey look: here its almost bedtime in Reno. I'll pick this up tomorrow after I give a final, ok Richard?

In all sincerity sleep well.

GGMcGready,

There is something you need to consider when evaluating refutations of Richard's claims and that is the difference between errors in his SQL, errors in his methods and errors in interpretation of his results.

Richard's repeated challenge to "show me where it is wrong!" in his SQL code puts the focus entirely on the trivial matter of "did the code do what I wanted it to do". Richard's flippant dismissal of Chris for wanting to take time to do his analysis properly shows he does not understand the importance of choosing his methods. Richard's breathless conclusion that AGW has been "disproven" based on an alledged decline in annual maximum daily temperature shows a reckless overinterpretation of his results.

Most of us here have been focusing on his methods and his conclusions, not on his actual analysis.

Richard has yet to provide evidence that an apparent decline (to date) in the single highest daily temperature acheived in a calendar year disproves anything. He reasonably concludes that a year on year increase in globally and seasonally averaged temperatures should at some point result in that feature in the majority of regions around the world, but he incorrectly assumes that it must be discernable now and incorrectly assumes that the trends he is seeing must continue. (even as he acknowledges that they cannot, so it is not clear what that says about anything).

Now, Richard has provided us another post, here: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can… in an attempt to expand his analysis (at my request) and answer the question "are there more heat waves?"

I looked at that post and it becomes problematic very quickly. His step 1 says to use only July temps. Why? What is the justification for this? It is not stated. Does he think that heat waves can only happen in July? I don't think this is reasonable if that is what he thinks.

He has also decided to use only stations with continous 109 year records. This again seems arbitrary, but I understand it is good to have long records. But this leaves him with only 17 stations across the entire country and he describes them as having "good representation across the country". This is simply an unsupportable statement. He has one station from all of Quebec, only two from British Columbia, nothing from any of the maritime provinces and nothing from the northern territories. His blog title is "Heat Waves Trends Across Canada" but he has not got nearly enough data to make any claim about that topic whatsoever.

At this point, why should anyone read any further? His SQL queries are by design not informative so it does not matter if he did them right or not.

Ok, Richard, I just want to *ask*--without any presumption that I'm making a profound point or insinuating you don't have a sound reply--for a clarification on some things you've said. I honestly cannot reconcile them; so I'll ask you to explain it to me.

If this [summer and winter temperature convergence] is happening in Canada, then it must be happening in the US since the effects of AGW would not be altered by political boarders. Richard, GAS thread #21

And

The continent is a single climate regime. Warm fronts from the Gulf come all the way up to Northern Ontario. Arctic cold fronts can go all the way down to Florida. The jet stream, which lowe pressure systems follow, flows around Canada in the summer, and the US in the winter, often with deep troughs through both countries. Low pressure systems pull in cold air from the north and warm air from the south as they move from west to east across the boarder. Richard GAS #46

(By the way its not a substantive issue but i'm a spelling/grammar Nazi and it grates me to see "border"--as in boundary--spelled "boarder", as in one who rents a room, gets breakfast, and tries to screw the proprietor's daughter.)

That's [referring to your method; and it brings up other question I have but I'll table those for now] certainly better than the climatologists who use data sets from one location to project what another would do several thousand miles apart. Too much variation. Hell even between Ottawa and Harrow (7 hours from each other) can have a 10C difference in temps at the same time. Richard GAS continued thread #151

Question clear?

It wouldn't be fair for me to pass any comment until I know how the 2006 paper defines the Warm Spell Duration Index (WSDI). The link in the paper that gives these indices definitions isn't working. Anyone know how they defined WSDI? Is it directly related to what we would think of as "heat waves"?

I looked at that post and it becomes problematic very quickly. His step 1 says to use only July temps. Why? What is the justification for this? It is not stated. Does he think that heat waves can only happen in July? I don't think this is reasonable if that is what he thinks.

July is the hottest month in Canada. I can certainly add more months, june and aug, but that would bring down the upper second standard deviation because june is a transition up to the highest, and aug is a transition down from the highest.

If you want I can do each month separately, though I find it difficult to believe Jans will have any heat waves.

He has also decided to use only stations with continous 109 year records.

Yes, the longest possible years to get the best trend possible. If I choose more stations, I have to DROP off data from the longer stations to match up the start year. Wanna bet if I add more stations the drop trend will change to an increasing trend? yeah, right it will.

Coby you are grasping at straws. It is very clear you consider dropping summer temps a real threat to AGW or you would not be spending so much effort to try and dismiss my analysis.

Chris' "analysis" is bogus bordering fraud. Interesting you support his pathetic attempt. Dogma at work.

Warm Spell Duration Index

http://ontario.hazards.ca/maps/trends/wsdi-e.html

In Canada, meteorological âheat wavesâ are defined by Environment Canada as:

Three or more consecutive days in which the maximum temperature is greater than or equal to 32°C.

Hence since the number of days above 30C has been dropping in Canada so too will the Warm Spell Duration Index. But if I'm forced to defend that I can certainly run tests on the data to do that. BTW, this would only be in June July and Aug.

Skip I'm not sure what you are asking for. All three of those are givens.

Further clarifying what seem to be the key points from your quotes and your clarifying response:

If this is happening in Canada, then it must be happening in the US . . .

This is the first given?

The continent is a single climate regime.

This is the second given?

. . . climatologists who use data sets from one location to project what another would do several thousand miles apart . . . [are using a methodology inferior to your own].

This is the third given?

#143 "What tests do you want me to perform? "

Richard, at a minimum you need a valid test of statistical significance if you are going to claim, as you do, that annual Tmax is dropping. If it is statistically indistinguishable from a flat line then you can't make that claim.

Now, my statistical knowledge is basically limited to normally distributed data and it seems like annual extreme values wouldn't be normally distributed. I don't know that though, so you should do some of the standard tests to see what sort of distribution you have.

On a slightly different topic, you make a serious error in #142 when you say "90th percentile and above is beyond the second upper standard deviation."

No. Two standard deviations captures over 95% of the population. (Z-score of 1.96=95% to be precise). *But* that is split between the two tails of the distribution, so your two standard deviations is looking at ~ the top 97.5 percentile and above.

Your analysis shows that daily Tmax is going up while the extreme Tmax *seems* to be going down. So if you look at the top 90 percentile as heat waves you may well replicate the results of the paper.

If this is happening in Canada, then it must be happening in the US . . .

This is the first given?

The continent is a single climate regime.

This is the second given?

All I can say about these two is to watch the weather channel and observe how systems move across the US and Canada. I do that every morning. It's really quite interesting to see how systems move around. Pay particular attention to the jet stream and how it is altered by frontal systems, and how low pressure systems track the jet stream.

. . . climatologists who use data sets from one location to project what another would do several thousand miles apart . . . [are using a methodology inferior to your own].

This is the third given?

If you check EC's site you will see they have an over all picture of temperatures in Canada. Problem is there arn't stations all across Canada. In fact the number of active stations is less than 1/4 of what they were in the 1980s. I can get the actual count for you if you want it. But it begs the question, how do they know what the temperature trend has been in Northern Ontario where there are no stations? They use lower lattitude stations and "project" the data with equations. In other words, they are inventing data that does not exist.

Now, my statistical knowledge is basically limited to normally distributed data and it seems like annual extreme values wouldn't be normally distributed. I don't know that though, so you should do some of the standard tests to see what sort of distribution you have.

Not sure what more you want me to do than this:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

Understand that 100 years is really quite short to show anything long term. And that goes for the average of the yearly anomaly means too.

On a slightly different topic, you make a serious error in #142 when you say "90th percentile and above is beyond the second upper standard deviation."

No. Two standard deviations captures over 95% of the population. (Z-score of 1.96=95% to be precise). *But* that is split between the two tails of the distribution, so your two standard deviations is looking at ~ the top 97.5 percentile and above.

Your analysis shows that daily Tmax is going up while the extreme Tmax *seems* to be going down. So if you look at the top 90 percentile as heat waves you may well replicate the results of the paper.

Fair enough, will correct that, and I will check that 90% trend. Don't count on it changing.

Not sure how you get that TMax is increasing. Where do you see that?

I appreciate the additional commentary but does that mean "yes" to all three?

"Not sure what more you want me to do than this:"

Richard, I was referring to your statements about annual Tmax dropping. Quickly scanning the link you gave it looks like that is your heat wave analysis. You said earlier that your Tmax analysis is a plot of the 10 year average. I'm saying that is not a statistical test.

"Not sure how you get that TMax is increasing."

I thought you agreed that if you plot the *daily* Tmax and fit a straight line, there is a statistically significant increase.

Richard,

It would be very helpful if you would always identify which Tmax you are referring to, i.e. annual or daily. I'll try to do the same.

Blueshift. I use ONLY daily TMax. (except Ian's Sachs Harbour that has only monthly).

I did the 17 station july data at above the 10% percentile. I got the top 10% of records for each station and dumped them into a single table, and did a count for each year.

It's the top graph:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

Trend is down. The linear trend has only a 3% R2, so not significant. The other line is a 10 year moving average. The trend of that is also down.

Canada has fewer heat waves, no matter how you look at it the result is the same. So when are you going to admit this?

I thought you agreed that if you plot the *daily* Tmax and fit a straight line, there is a statistically significant increase.

No there is no increase in the full set of daily TMax. See second graph as an example:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/station-2973-muenster-saska…

I appreciate the additional commentary but does that mean "yes" to all three?

Yes it does.

Ok cool.

Let me ponder that a bit.

Lets hold these questions for a moment.

I have a question about your data, Richard, and might in fact ask you to send it to me as well. (I won't be doing anything like Chris will attempt.)

But anyway, its possible to use the data to find the exact *date* of the Tmax for any month of any year, right?

"Blueshift. I use ONLY daily TMax."

Richard, again there seems to be confusion regarding terms. If I understand you correctly, you are using daily Tmax for this current heat wave analysis. That seems appropriate.

However, this is not what I was talking about. Except in regards to 2 SD's and the 90th percentile (and kudos to you for redoing that portion of your analysis). I was talking about your main claim in the prior thread which was that the annual Tmax is declining. You said clearly that this annual Tmax was declining based solely on plotting the 10 year moving average. It is this annual Tmax analysis that I'm saying needs further work. You need to 1) determine the distribution of the values, 2) apply a statistical test to see if the decline is distinguishable from the null hypothesis.

"Canada has fewer heat waves, no matter how you look at it the result is the same. So when are you going to admit this?"

After I have time to review heat wave analysis in detail and be certain that I understand what you've done and agree with the methods. Note that I've never said anything one way or the other about Canadian heat waves. So asking me to "admit" something about them is a loaded term.

But anyway, its possible to use the data to find the exact *date* of the Tmax for any month of any year, right?

Of course.

But wait a bit for me to send it, I'm going to change the July only temps by adding june and aug so I can do a proper count of the number of summer heat waves (as per the EC definition) for those 17 stations.

I have to write two small routines to do that.

1) determine the distribution of the values, 2) apply a statistical test to see if the decline is distinguishable from the null hypothesis.

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/11/station-2973-muenster-saska… second graph is the full range of summer TMax temps for that location.

Red the highest, blue the lowest, black the average, and orange the SD. The Correlation Coefficient of the entire data set is about 3%. So very widely varied, and a straight line meaningless.

After I have time to review heat wave analysis in detail and be certain that I understand what you've done and agree with the methods.

I'm doing that now. I'm loading June and Aug records as well as the July. Keep in mind that each station is a separate MDB file, To do a bunch of stations together I have to write a routine to move the records I need into a single MDB file. The July temp data was all stations I have in one table for just July. I will be reloading that same table with June and Aug so I can count the heat waves per EC definition.

But because of family visits this weekend I likely won't get it done before monday.

"second graph is the full range of summer TMax temps for that location.

Red the highest"

So the red line, which is also your third graph, is also what you call the "highest Tmax", or what I call the annual Tmax? That is, the single highest recorded value per year.

Am I getting all of that right?

Better yet . . .

Richard I know this is asking a lot after all we've been through, but . . . could *you* do it? Could you just have Excel catch and list the *dates* of the all the days that were in the (as Blue pointed out; I hadn't thought of it) positive 2.5% tail of the distribution?

What I'm interested in are the exact *dates* of the all the days that were counted as in that extreme tail of the distribution that formed the basis of the annual totals and thus the trend lines you showed in your heat wave days analysis. Make sense?

Gosh, almost seems like some civility has broken out, if the last dozen posts or more are anything to go by.

Richard, to be fair to you, that 2006 paper does use the annual Tmax (from daily Tmax) records as a measure of climate change. Same for your Tmin. And the way you are constructing your data trends *seems* to be generally okay (I'll incur some wrath for that loose statement I have no doubt . . .) In fact, I would say that your regional trends that I have seen so far generally support part of the 2006 paper's findings, i.e. that the world is becoming both less cold and more hot, but that the rise in Tmin is faster than the rise in Tmax. Your contention that Tmax shows a declining trend *everywhere* is not supported by the paper, not at all. Note also the field significance the authors were able to apply to the Warm spell duration (WSDI). While it is *possible* that parts of Canada might be showing fewer heat waves (I really don't know, you are going to do more work on this it seems), the 2006 paper indicates otherwise for a global trend.
Like I said before, you have a ways to go in your own data analysis before you can make anything like definitive statements, but according to what the paper itself says, your own findings are actually not that controversial with respect to the tenets of AGW: "The changes in temperature extremes documented here are what one would generally expect in a warming world: decreases in cold extremes and increases in warm extremes. As the decreases in extreme minimum temperatures are greater than the increases in extreme maximum temperature, these results agree with earlier global studies . . . and regional studies."

Don't use linear regression (or polynomials!) to determine a trend's direction. Too crude. Use the Mann-Kendall non-parametric test, or other relevant techniques, though note the authors' caution on autocorrelation, etc.

You can actually help yourself here by maybe dialing down your expectations of your own analyses until you have shown some rigor in those analyses. Try to keep the strident tones and the vitriol out of your language, including your blog (and yes, I know, there are guilty parties on both sides, etc) and you will find that not all folk are bad, even those who don't necessarily agree with your world view.

FWIW: Here is one of my recent post on WUWT

Steven Mosher says on October 12, 2010 at 3:33 pm:

Its simple: C02 warms, how much is the question.

As a matter of fact, CO2 does not cause warming of near surface air.

Go to the late John Daly's website "Still Waiting for Greenhouse" at:

http://www.John-Daly.com.

On the home page scroll down at click on "Station Temperature Data"

On the world map click on the USA. In the "Pacific" section click on "Death Valley". The temperature data is from the weather station at Furnace Creek. Death Valley is driest and hottest region in North America.

A desert is an aired region with low relative humidity, low biomass of plants and animals, little or no free standing or running water, and cloudless skies. After sunrise, the land and air heat rapidly because there are few plants to block sunlight. The air heats mostly by conduction and convection. Some heat is lost from the surface by emission of out-going, long wavelenght IR (OLIR).

After sunset the air temperature falls rapidly because the land cools mostly by conduction and convection and there is little water vapor to absorb OLIR or clouds which can confine rising warm air and absorb the OLIR.

If increasing concentration of CO2 has any efffect on warming the air near the weather station, we would anticipate a small but descernible increase in mean temperature over time. The graph shows that the trend lines for the four seasons are essentially flat. Thus we can conlude that CO2 does not cause warming of the air at this weather staton.

We do not know the actual atmospheric concentraion of CO2 in Death Valley only that it will increase over time as indicated by data from Mauna Loa. Since the air is densier in the winter than in the summer, we would anticipate that the trend line for former should have a slightly greater slope than the later. The trend lines for these two seasons are flat, and this is additional evidence that CO2 has no detectable effect on warming surface air.

Check the graphs for Tombstone and Dodge City and for weather stations in Utah. Alice Springs is one other site that has shown no increase in annaul mean temperature at the Old Post Office for over a century.

-=-Harold the Chemist

PS You guys waste too much time posting comments on the climate blogs. Don't you some "chores" to do?

So the red line, which is also your third graph, is also what you call the "highest Tmax", or what I call the annual Tmax? That is, the single highest recorded value per year.

Am I getting all of that right?

Correct, SUMMERS only, june, july aug. With the blue line the lowest TMax (summer nights), the black line the average TMax. The span between the highest and lowest would be the number of days in those three months reflected in the average and the two SD.

What I'm interested in are the exact *dates* of the all the days that were counted as in that extreme tail of the distribution that formed the basis of the annual totals and thus the trend lines you showed in your heat wave days analysis. Make sense?

I will get that with the reloaded data.

Thanks Harold, very interesting indeed, will check it out. This may also be nice evidence to show that there is an upper limit on how hot any single place can get. The day length is simply not long enough to let any more solar radiation be captured and built up, even for CO2. The amount of maximum absorbtion of CO2 would be high noon, from then on the sinking sun would have less for CO2 to capture.

Skip, you are not going to believe this, but you have provided me with something I never thought to look at. I thank you very much. Check this out:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heart-beat-of-hottest-day-o…

This is the hottest day in july for each year. The Y-Axis is the days in July. Each dot is the highest day reached for that year. VERY INTERESTING AND SIGNIFICANT! See anything familiar? Want to guess why it is significant?

Wakefield is wrong again:

I did the 17 (14 actually, you can't even count) station july data at above the 10% percentile. I got the top 10% of records for each station and dumped them into a single table, and did a count for each year.

It's the top graph:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/heat-wave-trends-across-can…

Trend is down. The linear trend has only a 3% R2, so not significant. The other line is a 10 year moving average. The trend of that is also down.

Canada has fewer heat waves, no matter how you look at it the result is the same. So when are you going to admit this?

So you think that the hottest temperature only occurs in July, do you? Well, I have to inform you that that is completely wrong.

I have only done one station but I would expect other stations to show similar results.

I did Ottawa (MacDonald-Cartier Airport; 6106000; WMO 71628) since it seems to be your favourite.

During the period 1970 to 2010 annual Tmax's were distributed as follows:

May 2
June 9
July 14
August 13
June and August 1
July and August 2

You had better rethink and redo your "heat wave trends across Canada" graph.

It just goes to show that someone can use Excel and write squiggly code but they don't have a clue about weather or climate.

Some day in the future some archeo-climatologist will stumble over Wakefield's web site and think that it is a good job honest people did not believe in what he was doing otherwise we wouldn't have prepared for and prevented AGW.

I will get that with the reloaded data.

Right sporting of you; I'm indebted. Thanks for saving me the time/effort during finals week.

Skip, you are not going to believe this, but you have provided me with something I never thought to look at.

Well, hey. This is what I do.

VERY INTERESTING AND SIGNIFICANT! See anything familiar? Want to guess why it is significant?

I'll take a stab: Tmax in July has leveled/appears to show an upper limit? Am I warm? Am I cold?

[at this point I would appreciate courtesy laughter on my pun from all . . . ]

Is that what you're driving at? If not I still want an A for effort. (I've been swamped and harangued by needy students the last two days and its affecting my mindset.)

Ian, you missed the boat again. I never said July was the hottest. July is the peak summer month. Dosn't mean other months don't have high temps, but the crest of summer, mid summer, is July. I am redoing it today with june july and aug, but I'm sure you will find something in that to call me a liar.

I thought you where done with this?

And if you think it is possible to prevent AGW, well that says volumes about being a True Believer of the AGW Faith.

I'll take a stab: Tmax in July has leveled/appears to show an upper limit? Am I warm? Am I cold?

Warm, yes. Actually because of Ian's rant it shows two things.

First, this is not just from July's data, it's ALL data from 2971. It shows that the highest temp always falls in July, which makes July having the hottest day of the year.

Second, what I find interesting is that swing back and forth across the month. (The Y-Axis is days in July) When one year has the hottest day at the beginning days of July, the following year it swings to the end of the month. If not immediately the next year, it tracks in that direction. Just like a pendulum. It makes it almost predictable the day the following year will have as the highest temp.

The over all trend however, linear line through the points, is towards the end of July, but the R2 is only 2%. The 10 year moving average trends towards the end of July. But I suspect there is a heart-beat like pattern to that with a period of over 100 years. Aug can't have the highest temp of the year, so the long term trend would have to reverse and head back to the beginning of July.

From this, however, one could claim that AGW is moving the hottest day of the year into Aug. But as I have noted, and you seem to reject, correlation is not evidence of causation. This is a nice example of that axiom.

Hm.

Lot of questions about the above post, but does this statement . . .

Aug can't have the highest temp of the year, so the long term trend would have to reverse and head back to the beginning of July.

follow from this:

[The graph]It shows that the highest temp always falls in July, which makes July having the hottest day of the year [for station 2971].

Does this then refute Ian, in your view?

Does this then refute Ian, in your view?

What is shows is my use of July as the hottest month of the year is correct. Doesn't mean there are no hot days outside July.

Well, I have to say I'm still a bit puzzled but I need to unclog the P-trap under my wife's shower basin. Marriage . . . .

Anyway, will be delighted to see those significant days dated. Thanks again.

Skip, I screwed up. To get those dates I used a query I had already saved, as to get this data one needs to run a number of subqueries first. As I was getting your dates I noticed I left the critia for the month at 7. So that previous link was incorrect, and has been deleted. Ian will be jumping for joy over this.

Here is the correct graphs and your data:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/hottest-day-of-year.html

The hottest day ranges quite wildly across the summer, but still a heart-beat like pattern, with 1952 having the hottest day of the year Apr 28 of all dates. So I plotted that year's full range of temps. That summer was quite flat. This tends to support my premise that the summer can only get so hot.

So when I do the heat wave data as per the definition at EC I will be including data for 17 stations from May to Sept.

Richard, in #183 you said "I never said July was the hottest." And in #186 you say "What is shows is my use of July as the hottest month of the year is correct."

I am sure I am not the only one who is finding you to be a bit confusing. These are clearly contradictory statements, or you are using the same language all over the place but meaning different things.

Now, you are claiming to be plotting the trend in hottest day of the year, but only use July data. At least I think that is what you are doing. Ian has found that the hottest day of the year occurs in July less than half the time in the one weather station he looked at. You have not even made it clear whether you accept that statement as accurate or not.

If you continue to post can you please try to define your terms clearly and use them consistently?

It is true that the hottest month of the year ON AVERAGE is July. Yet July can not be counted on to always, or even usually, have the hottest day of the year. So what this tells you is that your metrics are too eratic, they are dominated by weather not climate signal and have no statistical significance.

I would also like to note for the record that Richard has not tried to defend himself about the lack of coverage his data has. He said "17 in all. Good representation across the country."

This is simply an unsupportable statement. He has one station from all of Quebec, only two from British Columbia, nothing from any of the maritime provinces and nothing from the northern territories. His blog title is "Heat Waves Trends Across Canada" but he has not got nearly enough data to make any claim about that topic whatsoever.

What he is really analysing is the occurence of hot days in July in a stations scattered across the southern half of Canada from the western to the central provinces.

There is no reason to expect any meaningful signal to come out of that.

P-trap fixed! I think . . .

Thanks Richard I will check that out and get back sometime over the weekend.

Hottest Day of the year

Station 2973 hottest day of each year.

Richard this was the top of the post that came up when I hit your link.

Is this what you wanted me to see? I ask because what I was really interested in was the dates of the tail-of-the-distribution days from your Canadian Heat Waves analysis. That would mean all 14 (I think most of us are assuming 17 was a typo) of the stations used for that particular analysis.

If its not feasible to do this owing to time constraints I understand.

At least I think that is what you are doing. Ian has found that the hottest day of the year occurs in July less than half the time in the one weather station he looked at.

That will be shown on Monday when I finish the new analysis.

This is simply an unsupportable statement. He has one station from all of Quebec, only two from British Columbia, nothing from any of the maritime provinces and nothing from the northern territories.

And why did I pick only those 17 stations, Coby? It's right on the posting. They are the ONLY ones I have that start at 1900, that's why. Most stations in Canada have their start years in the mid 1980s. There are only a handfull of stations that start in the early 1900's. To get the best possible timeframe to see any trends you have to choose the longest time possibe. If I choose stations that start in the 1920's, then I have to remove records prior to that for those stations with longer records, otherwise the early years gets skewed because of lack of station data.

Does that not make sense?

Is this what you wanted me to see? I ask because what I was really interested in was the dates of the tail-of-the-distribution days from your Canadian Heat Waves analysis. That would mean all 14 (I think most of us are assuming 17 was a typo) of the stations used for that particular analysis.

If you want the highest temp data for all 17 stations then it will be a three dimentional matrix of days since jan 1 as Y, years as X and stations as Z with each cell the date. Each station will have its own year's highest temp date.

Let's settle one thing first because its driving me batty.

I counted 14 on the list. Is that the correct number?

It should be 17, must have not copied them all for the pasting. The analysis was done with 17, just checked. The next one will be 17.

ok.

Coby at 190

FYI it is difficult to find _remote_ weather stations in Canada that have been at one site for a long time--like for 100 years and have an unbroken station records

In BC recorded keeping at Quatsino begin in 1895, but there a number of months with no records. Also there are many months that don't have a complete record.

In my study of the weather data from the Quatsino station I had to use some data from nearby Cape Scott.

There is a Lightstation at Quatsino, but since record keeping began in 1979 the data is not particulary useful.

For a useful analysis of weather data for North America, stations that began record keeping before ca 1930 are required, i.e., before the start of the Dust Bowl Drought.

Richard, the reasons you had for trimming your data to those 17 stations are utterly irrelevant to the fact that it is not enough data to make your claims.

No one said it was easy...well accept for you. Are you starting to understand why Chris said it takes time to do a proper analysis? You have to intelligently balance your choices. In your case you have chosen a long unbroken record above all other considerations and have made huge leaps from woefully inadequate evidence.

Richard, the reasons you had for trimming your data to those 17 stations are utterly irrelevant to the fact that it is not enough data to make your claims.

No one said it was easy...well accept for you. Are you starting to understand why Chris said it takes time to do a proper analysis? You have to intelligently balance your choices. In your case you have chosen a long unbroken record above all other considerations and have made huge leaps from woefully inadequate evidence.

This is all the data we have. How would YOU do it differently? How would YOU balance this?

Look at the bottom graph here:
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/03/precipitation-trends-for-al…

This is precipitation, but that data is in with the temp data, thus the number of records is the same for each station. Notice the shape.

So how would YOU choose the data to look for trends!? NO amount of time by Chris or anyone will change this. What possible "proper" analysis can Chris do to fix this? Unless that is Chris is working on a way to create, ex nihilo, records where none exists today.

by Richard Foot, Canwest News Service January 21, 2010
_________________________________________________________

. . . only one station -- at Eureka on Ellesmere Island -- is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Scientists%20using%20selective%2…
__________________________________________________

Sounds like he is in good company -

Richard: This is all the data we have. How would YOU do it differently? How would YOU balance this?

This is one approach: Trends were computed for 1900â1998 for southern Canada (south of 608N), and separately for 1950â1998 for the entire country, due to insufficient data

Paul,

If you really, really want to discuss this stale biscuit (of which there have been at least two versions as Smith and D'aleo backtracked from their original claims) from the great minds at SPPI, then I'll meet you at the "There is no reason to believe the Earth is Warming Thread".

Richard,

As of tonight, your Canadian heat waves link still lists 14 specific stations in total. Do you want to just tell us what the missing three are?

separately for 1950â1998 for the entire country, due to insufficient data

In other words only 48 years, no long term trend for the rest of the country, nice. If I tried that from the beginning you would be all over me for not getting a long enough recordset to see a longer term trend.

Coby I get the feeling from you that I can't win regardless of what I do. You will claim I'm doing it wrong. That to me spell volumes as you just cannot accept that summers are cooling. So that must really be a threat to AGW.

As of tonight, your Canadian heat waves link still lists 14 specific stations in total. Do you want to just tell us what the missing three are?

I'll be doing it tonight, all new page, that one will be deleted.

Wakefield's biggest lie:

That to me spell volumes as you just cannot accept that summers are cooling.

There are many lies, distortions and misrepresentations by Wakefield on the two threads devoted to his nonsense and on his web site.

However, the biggest lie of all is his claim that "summers are cooling" as anyone who has read other researchers' reports or done their own research can testify to.

Is this also going to (and again I don't know how feasible this is) have some sort of report on the *dates* of the heatwave days by station?

This is one approach: Trends were computed for 1900â1998 for southern Canada (south of 608N), and separately for 1950â1998 for the entire country, due to insufficient data

Hey Coby, you just confirmed I'm doing it correctly with my 17 stations. They are all from southern Canada.

Hey Coby, you just confirmed I'm doing it correctly with my 17 stations. They are all from southern Canada.

But I thought you were making generalizations about the whole country from your 17, not just southern Canada? Did I misunderstand you?

Claim: "Heat waves accross Canada are declining"
Reality: "There are fewer extreme heat days in July in a handful of stations in southern Canada"

Criticism: "you do not have enough data to claim what you are claiming"
Defense: "That is all I have"

It can not be put much simler than that, Richard.

It can not be put much simler than that, Richard.

If that is going to be your position, then you cannot claim ANYTHING from the data. Not hotter summers, not warmer winters, NOTHING. It goes both ways.

Agreed. (ie can not claim anything from the count of extreme hot and cold days in your 17 stations)

Wakefield whined:

If that is going to be your position, then you cannot claim ANYTHING from the data. Not hotter summers, not warmer winters, NOTHING. It goes both ways.

Wakefield fails logic 101 again. Nobody, except you in your erroneous claims, is claiming anything from the limited data you provided. Except of course that the data describe what is going on in a very small segment of the whole earth. That you will extrapolate your findings from such a small area to the whole globe just shows how wrong your whole exercise in climate science has been.

By the way, I noticed on your rainfall data page (referred to in post #200) that Cartwright, NL, has an annual rainfall of 30,000-40,000 "something or others". You omit including units (as is your normal MO). Please tell me what the "some thing or others" are, curious minds want to know if the people in Cartwright should be building an ark or not. Did you include this huge number in your calculation of average over Canada?

I've started:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-1…

The number of stations I had to drop to 15 from 17 because 2 of the stations had way too many holes even though the start date was 1900. One had several years missing in the 1910's and 1920's.

Will be doing part 2 and 3 next.

Agreed. (ie can not claim anything from the count of extreme hot and cold days in your 17 stations)

No, by your logic not from ANY of the stations taken together. If the time frame is too short for most of the stations, how can you get ANY meaningful trends?

I suspect you will not find my logic in the new post convincing either, because you are so afraid that I'm right, that TMax is dropping, and a real threat to AGW, that there isn't ANYTHING I can do that will convince you.

We are back to the dogma again.

Ian, I thought you were done with this, threating Coby and all. Just can't help yourself can you.

Wakefield, no comments on the rainfall at Cartwright yet? You are so full of nonsense and hatred towards science.

And what on earth does "threating Coby and all" mean?

I will add linguistically challenged to your long list of subjects in which you need to take remedial course work to get your self up to at least the level of junior high.

Wakefield, no comments on the rainfall at Cartwright yet

Why don't you check what the rain fall units are that EC uses. What is the most common rainfall units used in meteorology? They are all the same units.

Go to the EC site and enter that station number.

Doing a record count on these 15 stations, I noticed that only 4 go to 2009, the end of my range of data. Some of these others are also missing years inside the 1900-2009 range. Thus all I can do to the trend for summer heat waves using all the stations together is anomalies.

Doing that the summer TMax trend is still down from 1900. Summers are still cooling no matter how I look at the records.

Wakefield, have you even looked at the graph you have on your site for Cartwright? Do you honestly believe that it gets 40,000 mms of rain per year?

You are so stupid, even elementary students are told to look over their work before handing it in.

And since when is Calgary in "Central Canada"?

Richard, I am sure there are whole textbooks written on how to combine measurements from sources of varying quality and coverage. The global datasets don't remove every record that is not of perfect length missing absolutely no days or years, they intelligently analyze the data they have and use advanced statistical techniques to see what information and at what certainty can be teased out. 'it just is not as simple as you imagine. For starters, you could include stations that start a little later, all it does is increase uncertainty. Look at the error bars on the GISS analysis, the error range is .2oC at the beginning, diminishing to .1oc at the end. They don't simply draw a straight line the use 5 year smoothing. CRU uses 22 year smoothing.

"you are so afraid that I'm right, that TMax is dropping"

Actually, Richard, I have said several times that I simply do not find it significant what is happening to such a small set of data points representing a small region of the globe. Now, if this (alledged) trend continued for some length of time that was statistically very improbable given a rise in average OR if this (alledged) trend were indeed global I would find it very interesting. But there have been studies of global extreme weather events that show significantly more highs than lows.

You also still have never clearly articulated why a rising average temp driven by nighttimes and winter would not be important OR how this would prove that CO2 is not the driver of the changing climate.

You also still have never clearly articulated why a rising average temp driven by nighttimes and winter would not be important OR how this would prove that CO2 is not the driver of the changing climate.

Coby,

In Richard's defense, he actually has provided a rationale of sorts for both of these propositions (not that either has convinced me yet): Milder winters and less colds nights are pleasant; winter and summer temperature convergence must end eventually, which (somehow) demonstrates these patterns are not caused by CO2 and/or other GHGs.

I'm going back to his blog to look at the updated heat waves analysis . . . .

Ok Richard I checked it out.

A few questions:

Is Chilliwak (735) the added station from the original list of 14?

Recall that the warming trend that the AGW proponents says is happening is increasing in temps from 1850 to 1945, then a drop until 1975, then an increase since 1975.

Clarifying your view of "AGW proponents'" position: Do you think AGW proponents think that CO2 caused temperatures to rise, then drop, then rise again?

So starting the analysis too far from 1900 will not show a proper over all trend. Especially if, as we have seen in some of the stations, the warmest and coldest years were in the mid 1920's.

Do you mean "some of the stations" of the 15 analyzed for your heat wave analysis? Are there other stations for which the 1920s were *not* the "warmest and coldest years"?

And that also brings up another point about this statement from your blog on the revised link:

Thus if you want 50 stations in the analysis it would have to start in year 1911 to prevent the lower number of stations before that data skewing the results. If you wanted 100 stations, it would have to start in 1930.

Out of curiosity, does this mean you've run these analyses?

Wakefield, have you even looked at the graph you have on your site for Cartwright? Do you honestly believe that it gets 40,000 mms of rain per year?

Fuck, Ian. Do you think I make these numbers up? That's what comes from EC data!! That's TOTAL precip. If you think I'm lying GO DOWN LOAD THE FUCKING DATA YOURSELF!

I am sure there are whole textbooks written on how to combine measurements from sources of varying quality and coverage. The global datasets don't remove every record that is not of perfect length missing absolutely no days or years, they intelligently analyze the data they have and use advanced statistical techniques to see what information and at what certainty can be teased out.

In other words inventing data that does not exist. I will show why that is not realistic to do. The errors are too high, uncertainty too high. Interesting that you accept this method of data ex nihilo to show global trends, but not when individual stations are shown.

You also still have never clearly articulated why a rising average temp driven by nighttimes and winter would not be important OR how this would prove that CO2 is not the driver of the changing climate.

You have not clearly articulated why a DROPPING of summer TMax is predicted by AGW. You have been completely silent on that question.

This data trend is NOT definitive evidence of anything. Natural variation, pendulum cycles within cycles on 100 year time scales can also explain this, including summer drops. This is NOT discriminatory evidence for AGW. That's what you need and it does not exist.

What evidence do you have in the temperature records that can ONLY be explained by AGW? What would the planet be doing right now if there was no FF emissions of CO2?

Is Chilliwak (735) the added station from the original list of 14?

I'd have to check. I'm pausing this analysis as I need to do a bulk data count. I'm still seeing to many holes in the data.

Clarifying your view of "AGW proponents'" position: Do you think AGW proponents think that CO2 caused temperatures to rise, then drop, then rise again?

Well, that is the billion dollar question. Ask this group what they think. Did our CO2 emissions from 1850-1945 cause that increase in temps? I have ask that here several times and no one is willing to take on that question.

Do you mean "some of the stations" of the 15 analyzed for your heat wave analysis? Are there other stations for which the 1920s were *not* the "warmest and coldest years"?

Not so far, all the stations I have plotted that go back that far shows the 1920s were hot summers and very cold winters.

Out of curiosity, does this mean you've run these analyses?

Not yet. That graph is based on the start year for each station which I did by looping through all the station's database files, running a query to get the first year, and updating the master file with those years.

Mann and Schmidt at RC:

The problem of anthropogenic climate change cannot be settled by a purely statistical argument. We can have no controlled experiment with a series of exchangeable Earths randomly assigned to various forcing levels to enable traditional statistical studies of causation. (The use of large-scale climate system models can be viewed as a surrogate, though we need to better assess this.) Rather, the issue involves the combination of statistical analyses and, rather than versus, climate science.

http://www.e-publications.org/ims/submission/index.php/AOAS/user/submis…

Hansenâs âHottest Year Everâ Is Primarily Based On Fabricated Data

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/hansens-hottest-year-ever…

Geologic Record Shows No Relationship Between Temperature And CO2

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/geologic-record-shows-no…

Really interesting link, Richard.

Let me ask a couple of questions about it:

Would you tie your own credibility to that of Steven Goddard? I mean, after all you did cite his link.

Let me rephrase--and this is just for the sake of argument--if Goddard's critique of the GISS data and "Hansen" was shown to be flawed (perhaps even buffoonish?), how would that reflect on you?

Wow, notice how Wakefield goes all potty mouthed when backed into a corner. I never accused him of being a liar (at least not in the comment he is talking about). The minute I saw the number 40,000 (something or others) on his web site for annual precipitation at Cartwright, NL I knew that something was wrong. That is why I asked him what units he was using since 40,000 mms is ridiculous. I asked him if he believed that that value could be correct since a scientist always thinks about what his data mean.

Instead of providing a link so I could check to see if EC had, in fact made an error (I had already checked other sources and found that annual precipitation for Cartwright is approximately 1000 mms) he told me to check for myself and see that he is right. No link so I donât know who made the error but chances are, based on previous history (e.g. 400,000,000 windmills) that it is Wakefield, who is not too careful or accurate in his copying and pasting or arithmetic skills, who was the one who screwed up.

He responds to my honest request with a post filled with potty mouthed expletives.

Anyone who wants to see what the annual precipitation for Cartwright in the period 1971 to 2000 can view it at:

http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climate_normals/results_e.html?S…

Now, if Wakefield cannot or refuses to provide a link to this erroneous EC data then I will call him a liar.

Wakefieldâs dodging and squirming when challenged reminds me of this quote by a famous Scottish poet:

Oh what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practise to deceive! (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.)

Let me ask a couple of questions about it:

Would you tie your own credibility to that of Steven Goddard? I mean, after all you did cite his link.

Don't understand why my credibility, ability to do temperature analysis is based on someone else's posting. I posted it because it provides alternatives to what is presented by the faithful here. 1, that 2010 is the hottest year on record (right with record cold going on world wide) 2) that CO2 was much higher in the geological past with no ill effects and no increase in temps.

Let me rephrase--and this is just for the sake of argument--if Goddard's critique of the GISS data and "Hansen" was shown to be flawed (perhaps even buffoonish?), how would that reflect on you?

Irrelevant on me, hellova problem for AGW faithful who use Hansen as the High Priest of AGW.

I have done a bulk analysis of the 570 stations I have data for. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-2… You can download the spreadsheet of the 570.

Record cold worldwide, Richard? Not here.

Perhaps worldwide should read - places-I-take-notice-of.

Just to let you all know I have emailed Zhang asking his opinion on how cooler summers is from AGW, and how he dealt with such a poor recordset.

Record cold worldwide, Richard? Not here.

Perhaps worldwide should read - places-I-take-notice-of.

Europe, Canada, US east coast and mid west. Care to show which countries are NOT setting cold temps, that are "warmer" than normal?

Wakefield is wrong once again:

Europe, Canada, US east coast and mid west. Care to show which countries are NOT setting cold temps, that are "warmer" than normal?

Lots of them Wakefield, just look here:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/fig1.pdf

By the way, I'm still waiting for that link to EC that shows that the annual precipitation at Cartwright, NL is over 35,000 mms. I'm not surprised that you are having a hard time finding it.

Right, Ian. Those very graphs have been shown to have been fabricated.

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/hansens-hottest-year-ever…

I'll wait for the year to end and see how it trended with the rest of the last century.

Wakefield your comments are actionable. If I was associated with that work you would be in trouble. The likes of Goddard and yourself who shamelessly circulate slanderous and libelous comments are absolutely despicable. Do you live the other parts of your life in such a dishonest manner?

You are pathetic.

Coby, why do you allow the likes of Wakefield to pollute this site with his inflammatory and slanderous comments? It really lowers the quality of Science Blogs to have to sift through his drivel and dishonesty.

Irrelevant on me, hellova problem for AGW faithful who use Hansen as the High Priest of AGW.

I'm terribly confused, Richard. Please explain:

If Goddard is shown to be flawed/buffoonish, how does this hurt Hansen?

And since you cited Goddard , how would that not reflect poorly on you--again, in the hypothetical case?

I am referring now to the Goddard you *cited* in your link. You knew that right--his name was Goddard? Of course you did; you cited him.

Just need clarification.

I posted it because it provides alternatives to what is presented by the faithful here. 1, that 2010 is the hottest year on record

Out of curiosity, did you read what Hansen and the GISS people really say about 2010, or did you only read what the *author* Goddard said?

I'll rephrase. Who has said that "2010 is unequivocally the hottest year on record"--or words to that effect, and what is the implication if it turns out not to be?

Ok, Richard more important stuff to ask about. From your site after the discussion of the problem of missing data in the temperature records:

The claim is made that one can fill in gaps in one station with records from a near by station, combining the two into one recordset.

Well, not sure that is how the NOAA people would word it but lets hold off on that for a moment.

If that was even possible to get anything meaningful from doing that, this data suggests one can't hope to be able to do that until well into the 20th century, losing the beginning years.

Ok aside from the editing then lets clarify something. My question: Does this mean, then, that it is always inappropriate to interpolate/extrapolate temperature data from one station to another?

Lets give a hypothetical example. So if you had a missing record problem for, lets say . . . I don't know . . . Regina, but you did have records for say, some vicinities within a hundred miles of Regina for the years of missing data, then it would still be *in*appropriate to use some procedure of interpolation to *estimate* what the temperature of Regina was, within some confidence interval, for the years of missing data?

Is that a fair characterization of your position?

Ian if you were a normal person, you would have said "Richard, it appears the Cartwright scale is wrong, can you please check it out?" and I would have said "Thanks Ian, yeah something weird happened there, I've corrected it."

But instead you went on with the ranting you always do, so I just shovel it right back at you.

If Goddard is shown to be flawed/buffoonish, how does this hurt Hansen?

No possibility that Hansen is the buffoon? Yeah, I think so. How will your credibility suffer linked to Hansen?

I'm not citing Hansen.

You are citing Goddard. Hence the question.

Ok aside from the editing then lets clarify something. My question: Does this mean, then, that it is always inappropriate to interpolate/extrapolate temperature data from one station to another?

Wait for part 3 because we are going to do that very experiment to see what happens.

The main complaint I have is this practice is when it is used it is never stated that is what they do, and never stated as to the errors that adds to the data. Errors are multiplied together. For example, your two cases being added. If, for sake of argument, that the error is 10% once those two stations are added together. Then another station has the same problem, and it is matched to a near by station also, with another 10% error. Now when you combine all these stations into an anomaly, if I recall Physics 101 correctly, the combined error is the Pythagoras of the two errors Sqr(10%^2 + 10%^2) to give an error for the anomaly data. But one never sees these error bars on such plots, for very obvious reasons, it would swamp their plots.

I'm not citing Hansen.

You are citing Goddard. Hence the question.

Ian explicity did and so do the rest here implicity since Hansen is *THE* kingpin.

If Goddard is wrong, so be it. But until then what he shows stands as a chalenge.

I plan to test Hansen's graph claims come the new year since he has some "hot spots" in Canada.

I'm not totally following where you're getting your notion of "error".

Again, I freely admit to not being a climate scientists, but I suspect that when interpolating missing data in temperature reconstructions climate scientists use confidence intervals of some sort.

This idea of "error" as an additive quantity . . . not sure where this comes from or where you're going with it.

Wakefield, are you being dishonest again or just showing your ignorance of how GISS calculates their data? Probably both.

I suggest you go to the GISS website and look it through. It tells you how they calculate anomalies. Read carefully the part where they discuss how they use a grid system so "errors? are not added up ad infinitum as you are proposing.

Where is the EC link? Why not admit you made a mistake (note I didn't say "honest" mistake) and fess up that you screwed up?

Hansen is *THE* kingpin.

I don't understand what alleged "kingpin" status has to do with science. Could you elaborate on the term and its implications?

"...data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.

They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system's acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-h…

This idea of "error" as an additive quantity . . . not sure where this comes from or where you're going with it.

When you do measurments there is always an error component due to the scale of the instruments used to do the measuring.

When you combine two locations' temperature data together there will also be an "error". That error will come from the fact that the two locations will not have the same temperatures at the same times of the day. Where records match together, you can see how much the two locations will differ and what the standard deviation of that difference is. That SD can be used to denote an error range. So if you combine two locations to get a summer average temp of 25C, there may be as much as 5C or more standard deviation. So the real temp of the combined locations is 25C+/-5. So 65% of the time the combined temp will be between 20 and 30C.

I don't understand what alleged "kingpin" status has to do with science. Could you elaborate on the term and its implications?

Implications are that AGW would not exist were it not for Hansen. Gore would not be the eco-rich he is if not for Hansen (since Gore pays him to be his advisor).

On more than one occation Hansen has been caught inventing the data and had to change it. Hansen is to AGW as Billy Graham is to fundementalism Christianity.

Um, Richard . . .

Is #251 an effort to answer my questions in 241?

Also, the link you provide in #251 has special significance. Can you imagine why?

This is why using one station to fill another's gaps has major problems:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-3…

The link shows there has been no warming for 15 years inspite of 50% more CO2 emitted by us. The CRU admits it. So much for 2010 being the warmest on record.

From your link:

The difference in the Tmean between these two locations [Belleville and Ottowa] is:

Ottawa was as much as 8.1C warmer than Belleville on the same day. Belleville was as much as 11.7C warmer on a different day, with the average difference of -0.63C and a standard deviation of 2.20C.

I mean, well . . . again, hey. I'm not a climate modeler, but given that the average difference is *well* within a one sd confidence interval, doesn't it seem that if you didn't have one or the other station you could at least make a *reasonable* estimate of the other--on average, anyway and/or regarding annual data?

Re: 256.

Ok I understand very clearly what the link claims.

But my *question* is: Is this your response to #241?

My other question is: Is this particular link special in some way? (I think it is.)

More lies from Wakefield:

The link shows there has been no warming for 15 years inspite of 50% more CO2 emitted by us. The CRU admits it. So much for 2010 being the warmest on record.

That is a blatant lie. Here are the data from CRU for the past 15 years:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1996/plot/hadcrut3vgl…

So stop your lying. You are pathetic. Interesting that deniers used to tell everyone to ignore CRU data because "it was fraudulent." Now that it shows the lowest level of warming for all the major groups showing global temperature data it is the one being promoted by you selfish deniers. What happened to your use of UAH graphs? Oooh I forgot, they were shown to be in error. Now that the errors have been corrected UAH data are warmer than CRU. You are so stupid and that you do not see the contradictions in your position.

And where is the link to the EC data? Why do you keep linking to your dishonest and error-filled site? It only shows your dishonesty and incapability of even the simplest understanding of climate science. Why do you hardly ever link to or read real science, you know, the papers that are found in the scientific literature?

Why keep on wading, in over your head, in the slimy sludge at Goddard's site, Watt's site and other dishonest denier sites? Doesn't it leave a disgusting taste in your mouth? Your drivel sure leaves a nasty taste in my mouth when I think of what will happen if people actually do what you desire and allow the earth to become very unpleasant.

Do you know what real hunger and starvation feels like? I very much doubt it but that is what you and your scumbag friends are wishing on many hundreds of millions of people. Famine and mass starvation will be the first really nasty results of global warming. Unfortunately, it will be the people who had the least contribution to global warming who will suffer while you feast in your comfy lifestyle being completely dishonest and encouraging their fate. You are indeed a nasty piece of work.

My kook meter just exploded

PaulinMI said:

My kook meter just exploded

Yes, reading Wakefield's posts will do that.

My kook meter just exploded

This invites any number of classless ripostes.

I'll desist, but I feel like you owe me one, Paul.

Glad to see that Ian Forrester has lost none of the graceful charm that has won him so many admirers around the blogosphere.

I mean, well . . . again, hey. I'm not a climate modeler, but given that the average difference is *well* within a one sd confidence interval, doesn't it seem that if you didn't have one or the other station you could at least make a *reasonable* estimate of the other--on average, anyway and/or regarding annual data?

No, because you don't understand the error factor's influence on the new data you are creating. For example, Station A is missing a year, Station B is very short but has that year. You deturmine by correlating the overlapping years that the degree of difference between the two stations is +/-4C. That means when you fill in the full missing year of A with B a summer day would be 25+/-4C. So for all the years EXCEPT the one missing we have records of temps with error less than 0.1C except that one year now becomes +/-4C. That can make the difference of being in a heatwave range or not.

Plus, take stations C and D, with C missing the same year as A. D fills in that year but its difference is +/-3C. Now when you go to do an anomaly using A and C that year where the new data has been spliced in has an error range of +/-5C [sqr(4^2 + 3^2)]. So as you splice in more data, adding more and more stations, the +/-N error increases considerably.

Splicing in data means you also cannot do daily analysis, say how a single month is changing for A.

Lastly, analyzing this data has nothing to do with understanding climate science. This data could be anything, poll results, human hieght measurements, stock numbers. All we are doing is analyzing numbers to look for trends. Doesn't matter the source.

Nope, more stariving people today is a direct result of sending them food aid:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/fore-e/rep-e/re…

If anything warmer winters, longer growing season, cooler summers, higher CO2 will more more food production. Ian is now showing his true reasons for accepting AGW -- redistribution of wealth in classic communistic fashion.

I have what might be a compromise. If I choose only stations with 95% or more of their data which start prior to 1920. I get 29 stations that meet that criteria spread across the provinces as such:

ProvinceCountOfStnID
Alberta9
British Columbia4
Manitoba2
New Brunswick1
Ontario5
Prince Edward Island1
Quebec2
Saskatchewan5

If that is acceptable as a group to do the heat waves with I will proceed on those stations.

I'll have to think about this without rushing to judgment. By all means conduct your analysis and report it.

In any event, I still would like to know your answers to 241:

I posted it because it provides alternatives to what is presented by the faithful here. 1, that 2010 is the hottest year on record.

Out of curiosity, did you read what Hansen and the GISS people really say about 2010, or did you only read what the *author* Goddard said?

I'll rephrase. Who has said that "2010 is unequivocally the hottest year on record"--or words to that effect, and what is the implication if it turns out not to be?

Skip, you are clearly an intelligent fellow. You marshall your thoughts logically and write lucidly (a trifle pompously, perhaps, but hey, nobody's perfect). Given that, I find it difficult to understand why you keep nagging Richard with your debating-club questions. What does it matter who he thinks said what? He has proposed something far more interesting and important. Why not concentrate on that?

Given that, I find it difficult to understand why you keep nagging Richard with your debating-club questions.

Why do you ask *me* questions--such as the ones you just asked?

This data could be anything, poll results, human hieght measurements, stock numbers. All we are doing is analyzing numbers to look for trends. Doesn't matter the source.

If all of science and technology applied Wakefield's methodology to their data, we'd have to throw out a lot of science and much of the technology we depend on. It would not just be climate science that we cannot trust. And very many Nobel laureates would fall into the same category as Hansen who Wakefield labels as fraudulent.

Reconstruction using datasets with gaps is very common practice in the medical field for instance, and is becoming more important for data analysis in biotechnology. One would wonder if climate change denialists put much trust in their doctors, or the pharaceuticals, or the food they eat.

Just do an internet search for reconstruction using missing or gappy data, and it pops up in chemistry, material science, aerodynamics, geology, astronomy, etc. If Wakefield, his sources, and data analysis methods are correct, then we cannot trust the products we buy, the buildings we live in, the jets we fly in, the ground we walk on, or even where the hell this planet really is in the known universe.

I ask you these questions, Skip, in the hope - the vain one, I fear - that you will drop these irrelevant matters and let Richard concentrate on something that is really quite interesting.

these irrelevant matters

If irrelevant, then why did you not chastise Richard when her first brought them up himself?

his sources, and data analysis methods are correct, then we cannot trust the products we buy, the buildings we live in, the jets we fly in, the ground we walk on, or even where the hell this planet really is in the known universe.

Huge difference between those other aspects of life and climate science's use of fudging the numbers. Climate science is much closely related in this regard to economics. And we all know how accurate economics is. I trust economic numbers as much as I trust climate numbers when both are using fudge factors and ex nihilo data.

Climate is far more complex than other aspects of life. We can easily model aircraft flight simulations, but not climate simulations, not even a week out.

Interesting, however, was a show I watched on Nova last night on how fractal geometry is even changing how we look at medicine.

Hey Paul if your Kook meter is broken i have a bovine excrement meter you can borrow.

Analysis done:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4…

TMax is dropping across the country, summers are getting cooler.

How can anyone believe all that irrelevant data from Wakefield when he still tells us that Cartwright NL gets 35,000 to 40,000 mms of precipitation per year.

Are all your data this far off i.e. 40 times or is some of it only out by a factor of 20? I suggest you read up on QA/QC.

What a joke.

Also added this:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4b…

Not only is the top TMax dropping, but the number of days within each degree above the baseline are getting fewer.

Summers are cooling all across the country.

Ian, go check Cartwright again since you are unable to take a hint.

Wakefield and anyone else who would like to see the real precipitation numbers for Cartwright only have to look here to see that Wakefield is lying (I already gave Wakefield this link in post #231 above).

http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climate_normals/results_e.html?S…

Yes, Wakefield, I am calling you a liar on this one since I have given you ample opportunity to provide a link to the site that you claim shows 35,000 to 40,000 mms precipitation.

Are all the data you provide as fraudulent and dishonest as your Cartwright data? Whether it is just incompetence or dishonesty the end result is the same, you are posting rubbish on your site and your extrapolations from southern Canada (yes, he has nothing even close to Northern Canada in his list of stations) to the whole globe is laughable.

Ian you are a real piece of work. I fixed it asshole.

Wakefield you are just a piece of scummy sludge. Why no apology for your errors or dishonesty?

Wakefield from post #224:

Fuck, Ian. Do you think I make these numbers up? That's what comes from EC data!! That's TOTAL precip. If you think I'm lying GO DOWN LOAD THE FUCKING DATA YOURSELF!

The answer to your question of course, based on your history here, is YES! I did go and check the data and showed that your numbers were out by a factor of approximately 40.

You are definitely not a scientist, in fact you show a hatred of science and scientists. Why do you pretend to be one?

Changing data is considered a very big no no in science unless you admit that you made a mistake and apologize for the misinformation. Just changing a table or figure without notification shows how dishonest you are.

RW,

[preconceived worldview ALERT]

How much of this temperature effect in Canada do you expect is being caused by PDO?
see http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ or http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html

And would be a temporary and relatively local impact on an otherwise upward trend?

Et tu, Paule?

Don't worry, Richard. Paul rarely gives aid and comfort to the enemy like this.

Richard, if its a pain in the ass to do so I totally accept that, but again what I want to do is track the exact dates of the Tmax's used in your analysis/es.

Is the data you left for download useful for this purpose? If you say it is I'll just believe you but I don't want to waste my time.

And would be a temporary and relatively local impact on an otherwise upward trend?

Wow, you really dislike the fact that summers are cooling. What upward trend? I don't see any hint of any upward trend, where do you see one? Or are you hoping that somewhere in there, hidden, is an upward trend to summer temps?

It's clear then that you fully expected summers to get hotter, but they are not. Now you have to explain why CO2 isn't making summers hotter, or admit AGW theory is flawed.

Maybe this long term narrowing of the yearly temps has nothing to do with PDO, AGW, but is just the effects of random variation pedulum swings with periods of more than 100 years.

but again what I want to do is track the exact dates of the Tmax's used in your analysis/es.

Yes, that would be a useful test since we saw in the one station the highest day wass migrating towards Aug. Will do that this aft.

Maybe this long term narrowing of the yearly temps has nothing to do with PDO, AGW, but is just the effects of random variation pedulum swings with periods of more than 100 years.

Interesting that we both are eying a similar interpretation but with potentially radically different implications.

But thanks and kudos for dating those Tmax days. I just don't want to bother, to be frank.

By the way, Richard, Paul is a tentative AGW "acceptor" but with reservations about the appropriateness of state-planned response. He's not keen on believing the prevailing science, as I understand him; he's just made his peace with it and is wondering what if any social response is justified.

Interesting that we both are eying a similar interpretation but with potentially radically different implications.

Like what?

So my paper rewrite is going well and I have managed to spend some lunchtimes doing a bit more on the Meunster site. I've bunged everything I've done so far here: http://canadatemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/summers-are-cooling-richard-wak… (note the migration to a blog site with a less provocative title).

It's all there, have at it. In no way is it a finished analysis but I thought it would be interesting for some as it stands.

In short it appears that Richard has found a metric that, being heavily influenced by high temperatures in the 30s & 40s (did I hear someone say dust bowl? no? OK), shows little or no trend. However it is also a metric that is pretty much random so whether anything meaningful can be gleaned from it in isolation is questionable.

I'm now off to the land of no internet. Happy Xmas everybody, see you all in 2011.

Just glancing through I see that the improved growing season canard has been deployed again. Some interesting studies on that front here:

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/climatemonograph_…

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/pr21.pdf

Full disclosure - I've read neither fully. But the summaries make a strong case e.g. this from the second link: "...The results of the analysis suggest that agriculture and human well-being will be negatively affected by climate change: In developing countries, climate change will cause yield declines for the most important crops. South Asia will be particularly hard hit; Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural cropsârice, wheat, maize, and soybeans. Higher feed prices will result in higher meat prices. As a result, climate change will reduce the growth in meat consumption slightly and cause a more substantial fall in cereals consumption; By 2050, the decline in calorie availability will increase child malnutrition by 20 percent relative to a world with no climate change..."

Interesting that we both are eying a similar interpretation but with potentially radically different implications.

Like what?

Chris intimated at it. My concern, Richard, is that your "cooling/flattening" summer trend is a statistical feature of record setting heat in large swaths of North America--including a host of locations in Southern Canada--in the 1930s, and not a planet-wide feature of climate.

This is why I am interested in the precise dates of station-specific Tmaxes.

Hi Chris, thanks for the update.

Quick note in case you're still around. The formatting your site makes it difficult to see the links, particularly links that have already been followed.

Looks like Chris has had to eat some crow. So much for summers getting hotter like AGE claims is should be.

I will take issue with two statments Chris made in his blog:

One year does not even predict the next. The sample spectrum indicates that Highest Tmax is a pretty much random event.

Not so. It looks very much like a heartbeat like pattern. I will write a program to go through the points and note what the following years were after a peak year. I'll bet there is a patterm.

I think the next step will be to look at mean Tmax to get a fuller picture of what temperature was doing outside the really hot days.

No. If you want to see if this is a trend other than at the highest, you should quantize the temps into integers and count the number of days at each degree. I did this for the anomalies for the 29 stations here http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4b…. This shows that there is a downward shift not in just the highest temps for the year, but each degree past the baseline is also having fewer days in them since 1920. This shows that the drop in TMax is systemic, not an anomaly of the highest temps.

Here is the hottest days of each year for each station. The spreadsheet with the actual values is a link in this:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4c…

As for the claim that food crops will suffer, I find that very hard to accept. There are a number of other significant factors that reduce crop production, lack of irrigation water (because deep fossil water has been all but pumped out), and land degradation due to over farming. More CO2 will boost plant growth.

This paper shows the longer growing season has been a net benefit:

Qian, B., Zhang, X., Chen, K., Feng, Y. and O'Brien, T. 2010. Observed long-term trends for agroclimatic conditions in Canada. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 49: 604-618.

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N39/C2.php

In regard to the long term agricultural implications of climate change Chris argued . . .

South Asia will be particularly hard hit; Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural crops . . .

Which Richard refutes with . . .

A set of agroclimatic indices representing Canadian climatic condition . . . (from the abstract of Qian et al.

Richard, let's assume Canada makes out like bandits on climate change. How does this help Laos?

Deniers' mantra "higher CO2 and higher temperatures will be good for agricultural" is just not right. These conditions may be good for some plant species but not necessarily agricultural crops because of two lines of research.

Firstly, actual field tests with various crops and secondly metabolic research at the enzymatic level. Both sets of tests show negative effects of BAU CO2 emission pathways.

Firstly, one crop which has been studied a lot is rice since it is the staple for a very large number of people. One of the major problems found with AGW is the effect of warmer nights. Rice requires low minimum night time temperatures for maximum growth. As night time temperatures increase there is a reduction in yield. The paper by Peng at al. shows a 10% decrease in rice yields for every 1 degree C raise in minimum temperatures. Not good for millions maybe even billions of people.

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.full

Secondly, when carbon fixation aka photosynthesis is studied at the enzymatic level some disturbing results are found. The early studies showed that the enzymatic activity of isolated RUBISCO (the enzyme responsible for the fixing of CO2 into organic metabolites) was increased at higher temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations. They argued that this would be good for agriculture since it would allow for higher yields (forget about water and available nitrogen for now). However, there were always problems in getting reproducible levels of RUBISCO activity (preparations had to be aged and/or treated to give maximum activity).

Later research has shown that there is another layer of regulation affecting RUBISCO activity (as is common with many enzyme system). A new enzyme, RUBISCO activase, was found to be responsible for converting âinactiveâ to âactiveâ RUBISCO. And, surprise surprise, this new enzyme was found to be inhibited by higher temperatures and also inhibited by higher CO2 concentrations.

This finding is probably responsible for the contradictory results found in experiments where varying temperatures and CO2 concentrations on plant growth have been conducted.

http://www.pnas.org/content/97/24/13430.full.pdf

Richard,
1) Am I misremembering you saying that there had been no increased precipitation or flooding events?

2) Why are you not linking to the original article? Are you not worried that your site may be biasing their interpretation of the paper?

South Asia will be particularly hard hit; Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural crops . . .

I watched a political show up here, every day at 5pm, and they had a statistician on the show who has written a book about predictions. Apparently he went back decades into the literature about predictions from a wide range of subjects, economics, climate, etc. He found that 95% of the time predictions were wrong, some very wrong (ie the opposite). He also noted the more someone is claimed to be an expert on the subject, the WORSE they were in predicting.

Hence, I give no credence at all when I see predictions about the future which has the words "will be", "might be". etc. You can bet that 95% of the time that "will be" is actually "won't be."

I watched a political show up here, every day at 5pm, and they had a statistician on the show who has written a book about predictions Richard #297

. . . watch the weather channel and observe how systems move across the US and Canada. I do that every morning. It's really quite interesting to see how systems move around. Richard #161

. . . the more someone is claimed to be an expert on the subject, the WORSE they were in predicting . . . Hence, I give no credence at all when I see predictions about the future which has the words "will be", "might be". etc Richard #297

Its hard not to gather, from statements like these, Richard, that you feel we'd all be better off ignoring experts and watching more television. I'm sorry but the apparent basis of your world view is disturbing to me.

There is a pattern to the swings in highest to lowest TMax for each year. It's not entirely random as Chris claims.

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4d…

It's closer to being a pendulum, as I have noted many times.

Its hard not to gather, from statements like these, Richard, that you feel we'd all be better off ignoring experts and watching more television. I'm sorry but the apparent basis of your world view is disturbing to me.

No you take expert predictions with a very large grain of salt. Their batting averages are not good. That is a fact. Hence I do not trust such predictions, especially in climate science and economics. Too much random chaos.

. . . that you feel we'd all be better off ignoring experts and watching more television,

Skip, with all due respect, care to name a few of those experts who made out like bandits profiting from the economic collapse in 2008?

"Experts" may know how to do things, but when it comes to predicting the future, or guarding against unintended consequences, I am not so sure.

And you got me about right,
- AGW by CO2, yes.
- Source, strength and direction of feedbacks, not well understood.

- My capability to challenge an expert's assertions, 0.
- My capability to be cautious about the desire of the state to accumulate more power in a crisis, perceived or real, 100.

care to name a few of those experts who made out like bandits profiting from the economic collapse in 2008?

I simply don't understand where this question is coming from.

"Experts" may know how to do things, but when it comes to predicting the future, or guarding against unintended consequences, I am not so sure . . .

. . . Source, strength and direction of feedbacks, not well understood.

. . . My capability to challenge an expert's assertions, 0.

Other than to say you're "not so sure" about their predictions and planning, or that the problem of AGW feedbacks is "not well understood", right?

So you don't want to come across as a guy who thinks he can challenge expert projections about the dangers of AGW, but you still want to challenge expert projections about the dangers of AGW.

Paul, if you want to resume our discussion on policy I am willing to indulge you, as you well know, on the "Acting on Climate Change is Suicide" thread.

Richard,

Is there any chance you remember the name of your "statistician" you saw on your news show?

Is there any chance you remember the name of your "statistician" you saw on your news show?

No, and it's frustrating as I would like to read the book. I was in the can when the interview started so missed about half of it. Don't even remember the book title, was going to search the net it's gotta be there.

Is this it?

*Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe*, by Dan Gardner, who was inspired by Philip Tetlock, a business management professor at Berkeley, who himself wrote

*Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?*

Yeah, I think that was it. Nice find.

So, are we settled on Canadian TMax temps, they are dropping since 1900?

Wakefield whined:

So, are we settled on Canadian TMax temps, they are dropping since 1900?

NO

Since you made elementary errors in your precipitation data and refused to admit it (in fact insulted me when I pointed it out to you) why would you expect any sane and knowledgeable person to accept any more of your "statistics and Excel games"?

You have a vast history of simple mistakes in your mathematical and logical abilities. So I do not accept your statement. In fact, when Chris and I looked at three stations we found all three did not fit your vision of "global cooling in the summer". Your response was juvenile and childish since you insulted and tried to smear us as incompetents. You are the one who lacks ability and has no logical reasoning skills at all.

"So, are we settled on Canadian TMax temps, they are dropping since 1900?"

Richard,
Did I miss where you did the significance test on this claim?

Are you going to reply to my questions in #296?

Did I miss where you did the significance test on this claim?

Chris did this "significance test" on one station and came up with the same conclution I did, and he admitted he did. That station was hotter in the 1930s and 1940's than today, and since then has been no increase.

Now I have done across Canada with 29 stations together and got the same result. 1930-1940 was hotter than today, we are cooler since.

Sounds to me more like you do not WANT this to be true. Guess you will have to wait for Chris to analyze that data too, which I can make available.

As for 296, which paper are you referring to? And I only did that one page on precipitation, no over all change anywhere in the country.

You are the one who lacks ability and has no logical reasoning skills at all.

If you are so smart show me where I went wrong. Don't say it, PROVE IT!

"Chris did this "significance test" on one station and came up with the same conclution I did, and he admitted he did. That station was hotter in the 1930s and 1940's than today, and since then has been no increase."

So the answer is that no, *you* haven't done a statistical test.
On his site Chris S. says "The sample spectrum indicates that Highest Tmax is a pretty much random event" and "This tells you that there are no significant trends in the data as a whole, p=0.994". So where exactly did he show that Tmax is dropping since 1900?

"Now I have done across Canada with 29 stations together and got the same result. 1930-1940 was hotter than today, we are cooler since."
Again, what test have you applied that permits you to state this so confidently?

"As for 296, which paper are you referring to? "

The paper you referenced in 293. Which says "Extreme daily precipitation amounts and 10-day precipitation totals during the growing season have been increasing."

"And I only did that one page on precipitation, no over all change anywhere in the country."

So you disagree with the results of the paper you linked to?

Also, please note that the site you linked to cut off the last sentence of the abstract which reads "The benefit of the increased precipitation may have been offset by an upward trend in evaporative demand; however, this would depend on the amount of growth and productivity resulting from increased actual evapotranspiration."

Again, what test have you applied that permits you to state this so confidently?

I guess the obvious drop in the anomaly is not enough for you. You will just have to wait for Chris, I'm not going to do further tests just because you are unsatusfied, nothing will change your mind will it.

As for "random", no I showed it is not. It is more like a pendulum swinging. Random would mean any temp has equal odds, but I have shown that not to be true.

So you disagree with the results of the paper you linked to?

No, they are refering to rainfall, which has increased at the expense of snowfall, the over all trend is unchanged:

"Precipitation has a steady increasing trend from the 1920s to 1970, while the major increase in cloud cover occurred during 1936â1950 in mid-latitude Canada (Henderson-Sellers, 1989). The precipitation trend appears to have stopped in about 1970 for the annual time series but not for seasonal time series. There were increasing trends in winter and autumn, decreasing trends in spring and no trend in summer (not shown). The ratio of solid to total precipitation has also increased; but the trend is not significant."

http://www.cmos.ca/Ao/articles/v380301.pdf

Now having said that, precip measurements are very difficult to do. Here is an example why. I'm in London Ontario. We got 3 ft of snow in 36 hours due to stringers off Lake Huron. My son's place 20 minutes west of me got nothing. 20 mins east in Woodstock same, almost nothing. Along the major highway from London to Sarnia, 10 mins north of my son's, go so much show the highway was shut down for 5 days, hundreds of cars stuck on it with people trapped all night on the first of this dump.

None of that will show up in precip stations because it didn't happen where they are. Rain here does the same thing. It can downpour an hour north of me during the summer, yet not one drop here for weeks. Localized deviations play a big role, hence those precip numbers are suspect.

There is a pattern to the swings in highest to lowest TMax for each year. It's not entirely random as Chris claims.

It's closer to being a pendulum, as I have noted many times.

How to prove the roll of a die acts like a pendulum. The Wakefield method:

Given a die has just rolled X what is the probability P the next roll will be higher?
X = 1, P = 5/6
X = 2, P = 4/6
X = 3, P = 3/6
X = 4, P = 2/6
X = 5, P = 1/6
X = 6, p = 0/6

Plot this graph, and similarly for the probability of the next roll being lower.

Next roll the die about 20 times, makking a note of the outcome on paper. Now look at the sequence. Look for the numbers that immediately follow a 3, and divide into two groups (higher than 3, lower than 3) and make a note of the min/max in each group. Repeat for the other die rolls 1, 2 4, 5, and 6. Plot your results.

Look over your sequence again. Find when two adjacent rolls have been higher than the previous. What is the next number? Is it lower or higher than the previous roll?
Is the number of times it is lower greater than the number of times it is higher?

Now post your results. Do those graphs resemble anything Wakefield has posted on his blog?

Congratulations, you've just proven that a die is more like a pendulum than random.

Now reward yourself by looking up these resources:
"Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb
"The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" by Leonard Mlodinow
Apophenia
"Superstition in the Pigeon" - B. F. Skinner

"I guess the obvious drop in the anomaly is not enough for you."

Richard, anomaly has a specific meaning in climate. You are misusing the term.

"You will just have to wait for Chris, I'm not going to do further tests just because you are unsatusfied, nothing will change your mind will it."

"Further" implies that you have done any. You have done *zero* tests of the statistical significance of the supposed decline in highest Tmax. You need to know the probability that the apparent pattern isn't purely random or you can't make any claims about it. But you insist that highest Tmax is decreasing.

"As for "random", no I showed it is not. It is more like a pendulum swinging. Random would mean any temp has equal odds, but I have shown that not to be true."

I don't see how you have done that. Looking at your page on this you say for example that "At 27C, it's only a 5% chance the next year will be cooler, but a 70% chance it will be hotter". Well what percent of the records are below 27C? Because the obvious first thought is that your "pendulum" is simple reversion to the mean which would be expected for unrelated events.

You have the data already, so it should be easy to check that percentage.

wagdog nice try but wrong analogy. A dice has equal probability of a 6 than it does a 1 or a 3. The temperature data doesn't. There is more probability that a middle temp will occur than a high one. High TMax is rarer than a middle TMax. Not so on a dice. All numbers have equal probability and will be evenly spaced in their counts over successive rolls.

This is the distribution of temps for station 4333 for years 1990 to 2010:

TMaxCount of Days
121
135
149
157
1615
1725
1858
1962
2072
21112
22123
23157
24166
25220
26172
27203
28154
29119
3093
3175
3240
3323
3416
352
362
371

You need to know the probability that the apparent pattern isn't purely random or you can't make any claims about it. But you insist that highest Tmax is decreasing.

You are so convinced that TMax cannot be dropping that not even the 10 year moving average drop is enough for you.

Well what percent of the records are below 27C?

I will do that for you, but it will look like the station I did in the previous post. Random would mean an equal chance for any temp, like a roll of dice, but that is not what is seen.

It will be a normal distrubution curve, similar to human hieght.

If you wish to go on this random trend for temps, you have a serious problem with AGW then. If winter temps are rising, how is that not just a function of randomness as well as TMax? But you have claimed that increase in winter temps is predicted by AGW. You can't have it both ways. If the temp ranges in a time series are completely random, then there is NO INFLUENCE from CO2.

"You are so convinced that TMax cannot be dropping that not even the 10 year moving average drop is enough for you."

Look Richard, you are trying to do science here. That means you don't make claims that can't be proven. Eyeballing 10 year moving averages is not proof.

"Random would mean an equal chance for any temp, like a roll of dice, but that is not what is seen.

It will be a normal distrubution curve, similar to human hieght."

If I pick a random person from the population and they happen to be 5 feet tall, I'd be happy to bet that my next random pick will be taller. No pendulum, just basic probabilities.

"If the temp ranges in a time series are completely random, then there is NO INFLUENCE from CO2."

Except I never claimed that the time series is completely random. I said that you need to do the significance test to determine whether or not random variation could account for any perceived trend.

Also, yes greater temperature increases in winter than summer in general is a AGW prediction. That does not mean that such a difference will be distinguishable from chance on short time scales over small regions. You need to first look at the magnitude of the predicted effect, and the variability of the data before you can say when you would see a clearly distinguishable signal.

This all highlights why, as Chris S. said, you need to actually stop and think about what you are doing how to do it appropriately.

"I will do that for you, but it will look like the station I did in the previous post."

Forgot this part. Richard, my quote regarding 27 degrees was from your analysis here:

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4d…

Since your analysis and this discussion was based on the highest Tmax, the daily Tmax's aren't relevant. So no it shouldn't look like the station in your previous post.

So, are we settled on Canadian TMax temps, they are dropping since 1900?

I'll wait to see how the discussion of significance plays out, but even so, I repeat my concern stated above that the exceptional North American heat waves of the 30s likely explain whatever downward "trend" in Tmax appears in the data.

At the moment I have another concern: A book you haven't read (which focuses on economic and other social science forecasts by prominent *media* figures) by a guy you saw interviewed on TV is the basis for

Hence, I give no credence at all when I see predictions about the future . . .

Richard. This is just loopy. You're confident in the fallibility of climate forecasting because of an interview of a guy whose critical focus is on "experts" who attract media coverage precisely because of their outspoken positions on singular issues. I haven't read the book either, but I saw no indication that climate forecasting was even discussed.

This is right up there with declaring all of North America a singular climate "regime" based on diligent attention to the weather channel.

The dustbowl summers were an interesting regional anomaly that affected the middle of North America (including parts of Canada) the most. 1930's summer comparison to the recent decade...

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&mon…

Causes of the dust bowl:

http://weather.about.com/od/weatherfaqs/f/dustbowl.htm

It seems likely that such unique conditions will exist again in North America this century. We also have the background global warming trend that is likely to greatly enhance such events, much like we saw with the unprecedented Russian heatwave of 2010.

Trying to use seasonal average temperature in one region as "evidence" against global warming (sorry deniers, regional variation doesn't disappear with global warming) is pretty silly. Trying to claim that a trend in high temperature on a single day over one region is meaningful is ultra-silly.

No pendulum, just basic probabilities.

And if one were to plot the temperature histogram data that Wakefield has so kindly included in his comment, you get a nice normal distribution.

And according to Central Limit Theorem, averaging a large number of random variables will also be normally distributed.

Hence, using Wakefield logic, totalling five dice throws will act like a pendulum. In fact when one uses the same Wakefield analysis on a sum of five dice throws -- repeating this 1000 times for the sequence, the graphs look eerily similar in shape to what Wakefield has on his Tmax pendulum blog post.

I'd suggest calling this effect The Wakefield Randomness-Pendulum Duality principle.

If winter temps are rising, how is that not just a function of randomness as well as TMax? But you have claimed that increase in winter temps is predicted by AGW. You can't have it both ways.

If a casino suspects that someone is swapping their fair dice with loaded dice that exhibit this uneven probability distribution:
1 : 1/8
2 : 1/8
3 : 1/4
4 : 1/6
5 : 1/6
6 : 1/6

Which method will detect the fraud sooner?
(a) monitor how often a 6 is being thrown
(b) monitor how often a 1 is being thrown
(c) monitor the average of the last 10 throws

An even more interesting question is this:
If you want to live in denial that the casino is being defrauded, which method would you choose?

Haha.

If I followed the analogy properly, Wag, its actually quite clever. (Well, it might still be clever even if I am not.)

I assume (a) to remain in denial (which, if I'm seeing the analogy right, would be like looking at some version of Tmax as a way of detecting temperature tendencies).

The instability of small numbers with regard to the possible outcomes (a six-sided die)and the number of trials for option (c) make it harder for me to envision the quicker way to
detect the fraud. Both will work eventually, right? If I've done my math right the average of the loaded die will be about 3.63 as opposed to 3.5 for a fair die. Taking multiple 10-roll averages over time you will quickly see if you're over 3.5 more often than under. I honestly can't tell if this is faster than tallying the 1s, because while there is still a 12.5 percent chance of rolling a 1 in the dirty die compared to about a 17 percent chance for the fair die, and any trend even after 100 or more rolls might look like noise, a shrewd row boss might still spot it and our cheat gets his legs broken. I mean, I'm guessing you'd put more faith in the 10 roll averages (more data is always better) but the specific analogy has me hung up.

A possible limitation of the analogy is that the loaded die in question is locked toward a particular central value. What if our crooked gambler was progressively substituting dice increasingly loaded toward a higher average, but with 6 always having a 1/6 chance of being thrown--would that be more to the point of your analogy, Wag?

Trying to use seasonal average temperature in one region as "evidence" against global warming (sorry deniers, regional variation doesn't disappear with global warming) is pretty silly. Trying to claim that a trend in high temperature on a single day over one region is meaningful is ultra-silly.

Are you claiming all of Canada is "regional"?

Except I never claimed that the time series is completely random. I said that you need to do the significance test to determine whether or not random variation could account for any perceived trend.

Also, yes greater temperature increases in winter than summer in general is a AGW prediction. That does not mean that such a difference will be distinguishable from chance on short time scales over small regions. You need to first look at the magnitude of the predicted effect, and the variability of the data before you can say when you would see a clearly distinguishable signal.

Would you say that this is a distinguishing signal? Or is this "trend" just random walking?

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4e…

Hence, using Wakefield logic, totalling five dice throws will act like a pendulum. In fact when one uses the same Wakefield analysis on a sum of five dice throws -- repeating this 1000 times for the sequence, the graphs look eerily similar in shape to what Wakefield has on his Tmax pendulum blog post.

To make sure I understand you, this graph is nothing but random variation?

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4e…

Oh, and would you get a normal distribution curve rolling dice 1000 times?

What if our crooked gambler was progressively substituting dice increasingly loaded toward a higher average, but with 6 always having a 1/6 chance of being thrown--would that be more to the point of your analogy, Wag?

Take that one step further. These dice can change the weight and center of gravity of the load over a 100 throw period. Include in that a second load inside the dice which moves about with a 500 throw period. What would you expect to see?

Keep this going boys, because you are sending these analogies in the right direction. TMax change is just normal variation (randomness) of cycles within cycles.

BTW, over the holidays I'm going to write a simulation program so you can see clearer what I mean about cycles within cycles in random values.

ANALYSIS PREDICTS STATIC OR COOLING CONDITIONS FOR NEXT THREE DECADES FOLLOWED BY MODEST WARMING TO 2100

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/

Using the gambling analogy, a roulette player bets on red or black 100 times. The casino has the statistical edge, but the chances of the casino being ahead is not a lot greater than 50%. Now if the player has 100 sessions of 100 rounds, the odds improve greatly for the casino. If the player plays 100 sessions of 100 rounds at 100 casinos, even better. A truly incompetent casino analyst would only focus on a single 100-round session, and might come to the erroneous conclusion the casino doesn't have an edge or the player is cheating. Maybe the casino analyst is not really stupid, and wants an excuse to escort the player to a room for a good beatdown.

ANALYSIS PREDICTS STATIC OR COOLING CONDITIONS FOR NEXT THREE DECADES FOLLOWED BY MODEST WARMING TO 2100 -- Richard #328

From the link to ICSC Richard provided on the Akasofu paper:

"The view presented in this paper predicts the temperature increase in 2100 to be 0.5°C ± 0.2°C, rather than 4°C ± 2.0°C predicted by the IPCC."

From Richard, Post 300

. . . I give no credence at all when I see predictions about the future which has the words "will be", "might be". etc. You can bet that 95% of the time that "will be" is actually "won't be."

Another test. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4e…

This time I've counted the number of days for all those stations which are at each degree deviation from the station's baseline. You will see that not only is the highest TMax dropping, but also each degree deviations above the baseline are also dropping. That is, fewer days are landing above the baseline today than they did in the 1930's and 1940's. We are cooling in the summers across all temps above the baseline.

A truly incompetent casino analyst would only focus on a single 100-round session, and might come to the erroneous conclusion the casino doesn't...

Now apply that same logic to AGW, which only has at the most 100 years or data, but only really 40 years, the last 40 years, to claim CO2 is changing the climate. Hence I could rewite that with this:

A truly incompetent [climate scientist] would only focus on a single 100-[year] session, and might come to the erroneous conclusion the [climate] doesn't [have natural cycles].

And yes Skip, my position on predictions stands. That link did say something about "if the trend continues." I posted this as a counter to the predictions of the IPCC.

I understand Richard, but according to an author whose name you didn't remember from a TV interview regarding a book you didn't read we can both be confident that

. . . 95% of the time predictions were wrong, some very wrong (ie the opposite). . . the more someone is claimed to be an expert on the subject, the WORSE they were in predicting.

What is to prevent me from situationally applying this principle to Akasofu?

What is to prevent me from situationally applying this principle to Akasofu?

Nothing as long as you also apply it to the same degree to the IPCC.

http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=3217&Journal…

Akasofu's paper.

"We learn that the recovery from the LIA has proceeded continuously, roughly in a linear manner, from 1800-1850 to the present. " Then the last 40 years of climate change cannot be from AGW.

Wakefield, if you were really a "skeptic" rather than an idiot denier you would have found that Akasofu's paper is junk. He is not a climate scientist and has never done any work in the field except for junk science. Sounds a bit like you, a raving Dunning Kruger sufferer.

Richard in 325,

"Would you say that this is a distinguishing signal? Or is this "trend" just random walking?"

I wouldn't say one way or the other without determining how to distinguish between a real trend and a random walk. I know that there are such tests, but I don't know what they are, how much data they require etc. etc.

Are you going to tell me how many Tmax days are below 27 C?

"A truly incompetent [climate scientist] would only focus on a single 100-[year] session, and might come to the erroneous conclusion the [climate] doesn't [have natural cycles]."

Richard, you can't possibly believe that AGW is based simply on our ability to distinguish a signal over the last 100 years. Can you?

Then the last 40 years of climate change cannot be from AGW.

The paper doesn't say that.

It argues that we must consider this presumed recovery in estimating the *extent* of AGW.

In any event, I am *not* saying Akasofu is certainly wrong, because I personally am not competent to say. What I will say is that, as an individual whose specialty is *not* climate science--and his is not--I will not cavalierly accept his reduced estimate of warming over the consensus of the specialists of whom he is not even a peer.

My point is that saying predictions have been wrong in the past justifies dismissing current climate predictions now is just a subcategory of the lazy and ignorant argument that you constantly get from deniers: "Scientists have been wrong before . . . about something. Therefore I can safely assume climate scientists are wrong now."

Intellectual sloth wedded to and sustaining scientific illiteracy. Its a hick argument for people that want to hold a forceful opinion without any justification beyond a vague hunch.

Slightly off the precise topic, perhaps, but in the indulgent spirit of the season perhaps Coby will permit this entertaining little sketch from a recent BBC comedy programme.

Merry Christmas to all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-F8EO3qOVk

Are you going to tell me how many Tmax days are below 27 C?

Below the baseline yes, it's coming, but why 27?

"A truly incompetent [climate scientist] would only focus on a single 100-[year] session, and might come to the erroneous conclusion the [climate] doesn't [have natural cycles]."

Richard, you can't possibly believe that AGW is based simply on our ability to distinguish a signal over the last 100 years. Can you?

Actually, no because it is admitted that only the 40 years has there been an influence from CO2. Or do you think that 1850-1945 increase was from CO2 emissions?

Interesting you are back away from that graph I posted. It's not different than the ones before, and you claimed that was just randomness. Why is this one different. Looks pretty straight forward, the trend is down. More so with this one than the others I've posted.

Akasofu's paper is junk.

Then go tell that to the editors of Natural Science. Why don't you prepare a rebuttle and submit it to them. Until you get such published your opinion is worthless.

My point is that saying predictions have been wrong in the past justifies dismissing current climate predictions now is just a subcategory of the lazy and ignorant argument that you constantly get from deniers.

Ah, I see, only the IPCC can accurately predict tens of years into the future, especially since its track record over that past 10 years is pathetic. Let's see, some 10 years ago the CRU predicted the UK would be snow free all year round by now. Tell that to those now suffering the worst snowfall in record history there.

Your double standard is showing clearly.

Wakefield whined:

Then go tell that to the editors of Natural Science. Why don't you prepare a rebuttle (sic) and submit it to them. Until you get such published your opinion is worthless.

It is not my opinion but the opinion of honest scientists who work in the field. Of course you know that but deniers have to stick together. You are a perfect example of someone who has a bad case of Dunning Kruger Syndrome. I wonder if any psychologist is studying this thread for a perfect case study.

Let's see, some 10 years ago the CRU predicted the UK would be snow free all year round by now.

I know the alleged source of this claim. Do you?

"Below the baseline yes, it's coming, but why 27?"

My god Richard. Your page "proving" that there was a "pendulum" like rhythm used the chance of a year following one with an annual Tmax of 27C. Do you still not understanding that you need to know what the chance of any randomly selected annual Tmax being below 27C is to know whether your analysis means *anything*.

"Actually, no because it is admitted that only the 40 years has there been an influence from CO2. Or do you think that 1850-1945 increase was from CO2 emissions?"

Only you say that Richard. You have been corrected on this point multiple times. Climate change follows changes in the *net* radiative forcing. Always. Changes in CO2 concentrations always contribute to that forcing. Statistically disentangling the relative contribution may not be possible until recently when other forcings are flat or negative and we have much more accurate measurements of those forcings and the temperature. *But* that doesn't mean the radiative properties of CO2 have changed in any way.

"Interesting you are back away from that graph I posted. It's not different than the ones before, and you claimed that was just randomness."

I have done neither. For me to claim it was just randomness would require proving the null hypothesis.

"Looks pretty straight forward, the trend is down."

Oh yeah? And what are the p and r2 values Richard?

Again, you can't make these sorts of statements if you haven't done the tests of significance. How can you not understand this? Have you taken a basic stats course?

Snowman:

Bah humbug.

You don't get to spend the year reveling in your role as the Tokyo Rose of this forum and then switch to holiday cheer because you want get off Santa Claus's naughty list.

If you want to engage in civil debate, answer direct questions, and treat this serious subject with respect and sobriety it deserves, *then* I'll reciprocate your yule time niceties. If you're *really* good I might even arrange via Coby to send you that ultimate symbol of American Christmas sentiment, the inedible fruitcake--next year. In the mean time don't blame me for the lump of coal in your stocking.

Goodness me, Skip, bah humbug indeed.

Oh, and by the way, Skip, I'm shocked at your implied approval of the lump of coal in my Christmas stocking. Do I really need to remind you that coal is a fossil fuel, and that we have it on no less an authority than the sainted Hansen that coal trains are 'death trains'?

It is not my opinion but the opinion of honest scientists who work in the field.

And such was published where?

I know the alleged source of this claim. Do you?

Of course not, what does that have to do with the prediction that turned out to be completely wrong? A pediction based on their understanding of AGW. Or are you going to force me to get the exact quotes.

Or are you going to force me to get the exact quotes.

I can't force you of course. I'm just curious if you're capable.

Oh yeah? And what are the p and r2 values Richard?

R2 is right on the graph, 18%. How can you do a chitest on the values when you don't know what the expected temps should be? This is not like throwing dice when you know what the expected distribution should be. We DON'T know what the distribution SHOULD be with TMax.

I can't force you of course. I'm just curious if you're capable.

Is it true or not? Did the Met Office via the CRU, some 10 years ago, claimed that by this time the UK would be snow free? That snow would be a "rarity"?

You're sounding less sure all the time.

What's happening here, Richard, is that you're misinterpreting another one of your links you never read.

I'll let you figure out which one. Its about time you actually read the things you cite.

Is this the article you had in mind, Skip?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing…

That's it. Hey, Skip if you know David Viner, maybe you can ask him about his prediction 10 years ago now. If the lack of snow was evidence of AGW, what does the lst two year show? The answer: Global warming...

And this week in the Independant for comparison:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/elderly-at-risk-as-money…

Office for National Statistics figures show that 28,160 deaths were related to the cold weather over four months last winter, and charities â which point out that the UK has the highest winter death rate in northern Europe â fear the figure will rise this year. Earlier this month, two pensioners in Cumbria â Lillian Jenkinson, 80, and William Wilson, 84 â were believed to have frozen to death at home.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/britain-braces-for-…

The Royal Mail said it was experiencing the worst December conditions for 30 years.

Hi fellas,
I haven't posted for a while...
I have read this thread with interest; with interest indeed!
Hi Richard, nice to read you.
Hi Skip, and welcome back Snowman!
IAN! HELLO! (you are not so abusive these days... I hope I had a hand in that...)
(ahem!)
I'd like to know what you make of these two videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_kmp3vUJhzI
(please watch part 2 as well)

Ah, well, the holiday wine wears off, I get up early, and I see that Richard and Snowman have been busily revelling together in their latest triumph over AGW.

The whole thing is a case study in Denierthink: Declare the downfall of AGW, then "find" something that vindicates the declaration. But by all means do not actually READ the alleged proof.

Richard starts out brazen . . .

Let's see, some 10 years ago the CRU predicted the UK would be snow free all year round by now. Richard #342

. . . then fear compromises his grammar even more than usual. . .

Did the Met Office via the CRU, some 10 years ago, claimed that by this time the UK would be snow free? That snow would be a "rarity"? Richard #353

But that font of scientific rigor, Snowman, comes to the rescue--with a link supplied by Anthony Watts, boldy posting . . .

Is this the article you had in mind, Skip?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment . . .

The coup is consumated by Richard's declaration of victory:

That's it. Hey, Skip if you know David Viner, maybe you can ask him about his prediction 10 years ago now. Richard #356

Snowman . . . a friend in need, eh Richard? The rout is on! High fives for Richard and Snowman! Ha ha! In your face, Skip! End of story, right?

Oh, um, but . . . ah gee. There is the tiny, minor, itty bitty matter of what what Viner *really* said:

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

Viner never acted as official spokesman for the CRU--let alone the MET office. He never said "The winter of 2010 will be snow free." He said his predictions would become manifiest in 20 years, not 10. He never denied that snowfall could still strike England.

This, Richard and Snowman, is what happens when you choose illiteracy and ignorance as a lifestyle. Things that prove nothing in reality prove the worldview of Anthony Watts in his and your minds.

The lesson--not that either of you will learn it--is the axiom of Ricky Roma (played by Al Pacino) from the film *Glengarry Glen Ross*:

"You wanna know the first rule? You'd know it if you'd spent a day in your life. You NEVER open your mouth, unless you KNOW what the shot is."

Children just aren't going to know what snow is. --Dr David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 20 March 2000

Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future. The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850. --Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, 25 February 2009

Why did the Met Office forecast a "mild winter"? âBoris Johnson, Major of London, The Daily Telegraph, 20 December 2010

December 2010 is "almost certain" to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office. âThe Independent, 18 December 2010

He said his predictions would become manifiest in 20 years, not 10

No, back in 2000 he predicted the UK to be show free in 8 years.

"R2 is right on the graph, 18%. How can you do a chitest on the values when you don't know what the expected temps should be? This is not like throwing dice when you know what the expected distribution should be. We DON'T know what the distribution SHOULD be with TMax."

Its like you know which words to use, but not how to use them. I asked for the p value, and yes you can get that when doing a linear trend estimate.

You are right that we don't know what the annual Tmax distribution should look like. In fact I told you quite a while ago that you should do some tests of the data to see if it violates assumptions of normality. Its funny that you suddenly say we don't know the distribution of the data that you've been relying on.

Richard, if you don't know how these values should be distributed, then how in the world can you say that they are clearly falling?

However, you could use a Chi Square test for your "pendulum" theory. Just pull the # of annual Tmax below 27C and use that as your expected frequency. You already stated the observed frequency on your website.

I'm certain there are better and more powerful ways to test this. Maybe a more knowledgeable poster will point them out. On the other hand, this would be very easy and if you didn't get a signficant result would be pretty good evidence IMHO.

http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5980a/5980/newpage28.htm

I'd like to know what you make of these two videos.

UHIE doesn't exist according to the AGW faithful, they will find fault with it.

Interesting the Russian data is on line, definitely going to check it out.

Richard, if you don't know how these values should be distributed, then how in the world can you say that they are clearly falling?

That's funny. So the 10 year moving average isn't dropping in that graph on the top of this page: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-heat-waves-part-4e…

So I understand you correctly. Your position is that one cannot tell if this series of temps is dropping without rigorous stats testing, is that your position?

Second, on the normal distribution. I'm preparing an animation of each year's TMax distributions. It will be VERY interesting to watch. So much for "normal" distributions and what that SHOULD be. Should have it done today or tomorrow.

I'm also writing a simulator, using a series of random number generators, which should nicely simulate the temperature profiles.

No, back in 2000 he predicted the UK to be show free in 8 years.

You're just making shit up, Richard. He never said there would never be snow. Your other quotes had nothing to do with Viner.

And even so, who cares what Viner says? And even if predictions by some individuals of the regional effects of climate change have been wrong in the past, how does that disprove the overall theory of AGW? No rigorous AGW scientists thinks the manifestations of the phenomenon can be precisely forecast. All they're saying is the temperatures, in the long run, will go *up* on average.

This is not just a distortion of the record, its guilt by false association: "A climate change believer once made a flawed prediction, therefore AGW is false."

Again, Richard, your worldview is the fruit of illiteracy. You watch the weather channel and talk shows and conclude you have the world figured out. For confirmation of your biases you troll the web for headlines--or let Anthony Watts (in this case via Snowman) do the trolling for you.

What a deeply strange fellow you can be at times, Skip. You challenged Richard to produce a certain article. I did so, and asked, quite genuinely and with no hint of triumphalism, if this was the one you had in mind. And for my troubles I am traduced as someone who chooses illiteracy and ignorance.

Incidentally, I don't know what this has to do with Anthony Watts. Did he once post it on his blog? I have no idea, but if he did, so what? The article appeared in the Independent newspaper.

"Your position is that one cannot tell if this series of temps is dropping without rigorous stats testing, is that your position?"

Richard, do you understand why science employs stats and significance testing? My position is that if you want to claim something or other is "clearly" happening (as you have done repeatedly) then you had better be damn certain that the effect isn't the result of random noise. You have done absolutely nothing, nothing at all, to do so. I have been trying to help you do this but you seem determined not to test the null hypothesis on your data.

Frankly, I find it hypocritical that you claim on the one hand you can't do basic significance testing because we don't know what the distribution should be and on the other that a 10 year moving average can be used to make definitive statements about what is happening. Basically you want to play T-Ball but make us all pretend your hitting in the majors.

Blueshift, this is why there is no normal distribution to TMax. http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/does-temperature-profile-fo…

Watch the video and tell me what you think you see.

I've been leading you all this time because I want to make absolutely sure what your postions is. I'm preparing another post.

And for my troubles I am traduced as someone who chooses illiteracy and ignorance.

No. It is for your historic embodiment of both those qualities.

I asked Richard to produce proof that

10 years ago the CRU predicted the UK would be snow free all year round by now. Richard # 342

He then sent out the following distress signal:

Did the Met Office via the CRU, some 10 years ago, claimed that by this time the UK would be snow free? Richard #353

I said

you're misinterpreting another one of your links you never read.

When you provided your link to the Independent article, what did dear Richard say?

That's it. Hey, Skip if you know David Viner, maybe you can ask him about his prediction 10 years ago now.

The problem--one that would be resolved through the simple attributes of literacy and genuine inquiry--is that this article does not prove Richard's claim.

The irony of all this, Snowman, is that given a chance to make a reasonable claim--that climate science is imperfect, that climate scientists are fallible--you're both pissing it away with this outrageous straw man.

Blueshift, I'm done.

http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/exposing-faithfuls-double-s…

Nice job of exposing the double standard.

So everyone's playing the Quote Mining game, now.

Dr. Viner turned out to be correct that heavy snow would return occasionally, but it only took 10 years for it to cause chaos. He obviously could not predict economic austerity leading to under-investment in snow clearing equipment. But economics isn't an exact science.

If we can drop the Transactional Analysis Games for one moment, and consider two factors contributing to record snow falls in the UK:

1. Speeding up of the hydrological cycle, implies increased precipitation which often is in the form of rain, but takes the form of snow if the air is cold enough.

2. This cold air is being driven over the UK from the Arctic by "one of the most bizarre patterns in recent memory". As cold air leaves the Arctic, abnormally mild air from Canada is taking its place. In the last decade, climate researchers have noticed anomalies with unusual north-south circulatory patterns in the Arctic atmosphere which may be linked to the loss of sea ice due to global warming. Whether this current weather pattern is part of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly remains to be seen.

While one cannot attribute any one single regional weather event to AGW, it is still consistent with a changing climate in a warming planet.

Richard, your triumphant little trick (flipping the Tmax graphs) to ferret out the "double standard" is at least amusing.

At the beginning of that thread at that site, when I initially showed my temp profiles, these people had no problem in accepting that winter TMin was increasing. That, they said, was well within AGW theory. So for these people this graph of increasing TMin is quite acceptable:

And in fact it *is* increasing, as per your data and your claim.

If they claim that TMax is not dropping but has to be "properly" stat tested, then they also MUST apply this to TMin, which they fully accept that AGW would produce.

I thank the guys at illconcidered for playing the game and being test subjects.

Richard, you're living in a dream world.

There is probably *one* "guy" contributiong to this site who even looked at your fricking flipped graph--Blueshift. (I know I didn't.) He probably never even *saw* the original Tmax "downward trend" graph. This silly conflation of all of "us" into the "faithful" just shows how clueless your are about how we arrived at our conclusions.

I don't recall *anyone* saying that they accepted the upward trend of Winter Tmins as "statistically signifcant". Most of the contributors, such as myself didn't a give a *shit*, Richard.

Your entire point was that "Its not getting warmer; its getting less cold." And the main response was, fine--*so what*? Whether upward winter Tmins are statistically significant or not, for the sake of argument lets assume--*as you claim*--they are occuring. So what? Because this is completely consistent with AGW theory.

Repeat, Richard, *you're the one* who brought up the increasing winter Tmins, not us.

And what of the *real* summer Tmax plot? Does it really show a trend as profoundly downward as your fake graph? It doesn't, does it, Richard? That's what blueshift is questioning.

Richard, you've duped *no one*. Except yourself.

Skip, I genuinely don't know what you are talking about. You should take some deep breaths. I have made no claims and set up no straw man. I merely posted a link to an article that had been discussed.

Richard, Richard, Richard. Pay attention please.

1) I am asking you about your frequent claims regarding the annual Tmax. The distribution of the daily Tmax is not the same thing.

2) I have said from the beginning that annual Tmax is probably not normally distributed and that you should test it.

3) There are tests that you can apply *even when the data isn't normally distributed*. I linked to a page that you ought to be able to use to calculate the Chi Square goodness of fit for your data.

"I've been leading you all this time because I want to make absolutely sure what your postions is."

I'm pretty confident that you couldn't accurately state my position even now.

I genuinely don't know what you are talking about.

Such deficits in your comprehension are pervasive.

Then perhaps, Skip, you will enlighten me. What, precisely, is the Snow Man that I have supposedly set up? As you have reminded us on many occasions of the importance of honesty in debate, I am sure you will answer the question without prevarication.

Nice freudian slip there: for Snow Man read Straw Man.

Oh Richard.

Skip has responded nicely, so I'll try not to repeat him.

"This shows so clearly their bias against TMax dropping. They will go to any lengths to discredit it."

Sure, if "any lengths" means doing a basic statistical test that would be required for any publication. I guess I'm just a zealot that way.

"Increasing TMin is OK, no stat test needed because it fits the theory, but oh no, we must apply rigorous stats to prove TMax is dropping."

Let's review.

*You* claimed that annual Tmax was clearly dropping. Further you stated that this was a big deal and had major implications for AGW theory.

I asked you whether the decline was statistically significant. I explained why this question mattered and tried to point you towards some ways of answering the question.

You avoided doing this repeatedly.

Finally, you say "aha you don't know if the Tmin increase is significant, so your a hypocrite".

So now I say, "But Richard, I never said it was. It might not be since you are looking at a small portion of the globe. It isn't relevant to your central claim, and even if I were a hypocrite about this *you still haven't proven your basic claim*."

Your problem, Snowman (if I might put it so directly) is that you seem to feel I am under some sort of obligation to respond to your hectoring.

Touche, Skip. However, I thought that as you had lectured us so sternly on this matter, you might relish the opportunity to demonstrate your moral superiority. (Still, good riposte; I grant you that.)

I must likewise reluctantly acknowledge your ability to remember your own words, at least.

I make no claim of *overall* moral superiority that would induce any relish at the prospect of demonstrating it. I stick by what I always have said. I feel a compulsion to be intellectually honest. You don't.

As you feel a compulsion to be intellectually honest, perhaps you will permit me to repeat my question: what, precisely, was the straw man that I supposedly set up?

You aided and abetted Richard in his dubious claim about the CRU's/Met Office's prediction.

You disappoint me, Skip. If you look back through this thread you will see I did nothing of the kind. I merely posted a link to an article that had been raised in discussion.

But you know that, and that is why your answer is equivocal and evasive. Little sign there, I fear, of your intellectual honesty.

I repeat: where is the evidence that I set up a straw man? Either present it, or kindly concede that you were wrong.

I merely posted a link to an article that had been raised in discussion.

Oh, bullshit. You thought you were scoring a point for Richard. So did he. Give it up, Snowman.

And kindly provide evidence that the subject of AGW has become fatally politicized, the result of moral blackmail and tribalism that has corrupted independent inquiry, as proven by climate gate.

Either present it, or kindly concede that you were wrong.

Skip, someone of your oft-proclaimed intellectual honesty should be embarrassed by your lack of integrity. Challenged to produce evidence to justify your accusations, you resort to coarse language and vulgar abuse.

Everyone reading this, including those on your side, will be saying to themselves: 'Don't continue to dig yourself into a deeper hole, Skip. Just admit you made a mistake and it will be forgotten.'

Although that is sound advice, I am very much afraid you won't take it. Oh well, I suppose we will all just have to remember this incident the next time you climb aboard your moral high horse. It's disappointing, all the same. Incredible though it now seems, I had actually thought better of you.

I had actually thought better of you.

I cannot repay the compliment. I never thought highly of you.

Quit trying to make like the civil disputant, Snowman. Its too late.

Oh, and Skip, as you are forever taking others to task for their grammar, I do wish you would learn the difference between its and it's.

Heh.

Noted.

Repeat, Richard, *you're the one* who brought up the increasing winter Tmins, not us.

Yes, that is what I posted, the lowest TMin is increasing. Your side, including Coby, said that was expected under AGW and ASKED FOR NO STATS TO BACK IT UP. In other words the graphs were taken as a given.

And what of the *real* summer Tmax plot? Does it really show a trend as profoundly downward as your fake graph? It doesn't, does it, Richard? That's what blueshift is questioning.

They most certainly do show a drop, just not as much as TMin is increasing. The purpose of the excersize was not to know which graph is doing what, it was to ferrit out that you all wanted "proper" analysis done on TMax but not Tmin. When I shows a flipped TMin I was told I needed to do more stats on it to show a drop. Yet no one requests that for an increasing TMin.

Hence the double standard.

If I need to prove TMax is decreasing with stats, then I should also need to prove TMin is increasing with those same stats.

I can be asured that if I had found TMax increasing with my methods you would all be enbracing me and saying "Thankyou Richard for providing more evidence of global warming."

But since it is not, the knives are out trying to figure out what I did wrong.

1) I am asking you about your frequent claims regarding the annual Tmax. The distribution of the daily Tmax is not the same thing.

Well, it is, because it was asked of me what the full range of TMax was doing. So what you want is for me to make another animation of just the highest of each year's TMax for 29 stations. Thus each year is only going to have 29 points, not much of a bar graph. But I will endure. Will take a few days to complete.

2) I have said from the beginning that annual Tmax is probably not normally distributed and that you should test it.

That is exactly what I did, not one year is a normal distribution, you can see that in the animation. But what you are asking for is for each year what is the mean, median, standard deviation and skewness of each distribution curve. Those will show hoe far off a normal disribution each year is. And then what does that mean to you? To me it means just random cycles.

3) There are tests that you can apply *even when the data isn't normally distributed*. I linked to a page that you ought to be able to use to calculate the Chi Square goodness of fit for your data.

Chi Squared requires one to have a predicted table. How do you predict what TMax profiles SHOULD be? Not one of them, except for maybe 1977 is close to a "should be." Do you propose I GUESS at what the profile should be?

They most certainly do show a drop, just not as much as TMin is increasing.

I'm almost speechless.

Richard, you're missing so many subtleties here. First off, no one was *ever* that "threatened" by your study of select Canadian Tmaxs. No one. People were questioning it not because its a frightful challenge to their beliefs, because it isn't. Its that it is statistically dubious *anyway*.

Second, you can't accuse people of a double standard when you tell them something that does not even contradict their position.

Richard, people did not eagerly *believe* your comment about Tmins in winter. People didn't give a rats ass either way. Winters getting warmer because of AGW is something the better educated contributors of this forum *already knew*, Richard, and they knew it for way better reasons and on way better evidence than anything you've provided.

We don't give a shit about *your* confirmation of warming winters, Richard. We never did.

You* claimed that annual Tmax was clearly dropping. Further you stated that this was a big deal and had major implications for AGW theory.

I asked you whether the decline was statistically significant. I explained why this question mattered and tried to point you towards some ways of answering the question.

Yes or no. The same tests on TMax should be applied to TMin before any proclamation is made.

Richard, people did not eagerly *believe* your comment about Tmins in winter. People didn't give a rats ass either way. Winters getting warmer because of AGW is something the better educated contributors of this forum *already knew*, Richard, and they knew it for way better reasons and on way better evidence than anything you've provided.

1) Is increasing TMin an indicator that AGW is true?

2) Should not TMin be put under the same tests as TMax?

3) If TMax is shown to be nothing but random cycles of variation, would that not also apply to TMin?

4) If the drop in TMax is shown to be statistically correct, how does AGW explain that?

1. It would be one of many indicators, but it will have to be a global phenomenon (i.e., globally averaged phenomenon)

2. Sure

3. Not necessarily.

4. Again, it will have to be a globally averaged phenomenon. It may be due to increased cloudiness during the day, or even a lower solar output.

It would be one of many indicators, but it will have to be a global phenomenon (i.e., globally averaged phenomenon). -- Marco

Exactly, Richard. (Marco has an uncanny ability to beat me to these.)

Your rising winter Tmins in certain Canadian stations is *consistent* with AGW. No one who read your report pounced on it as "proof" of AGW. This is the key thing you're missing and why your eager interpretation of yourself as the protagonist in a theory-killing melodrama is so delusional.

To be blunt, Richard, I do not have complete confidence in your data or your methods. However, for the sake of argument I, along with many others contributors, have allowed your claims of rising winter Tmins and falling summer Tmaxs to stand.

By your own admission/analysis, winter Tmins have risen faster than summmer Tmaxs have "fallen". Within 14 . . . or 17 . . . or whatever the number is today . . . southern Canada weather stations.

Again, your disputants are *not* adopting one part of your analysis as proof on the one hand but questioning the "threatening" part. With the exception of Blueshift, they are granting your claims and questioning their implications. (S)he is simply asking for a statistical verification of *either* "trend."

Thats a fair an interesting point, but I don't care and never did.

3. Not necessarily.

That's interesting, I would be most interested to know how TMax can trend down through natural variation, but not TMin. If that is the case, then there would be an upper limit to how "hot" it can get.

4. Again, it will have to be a globally averaged phenomenon. It may be due to increased cloudiness during the day, or even a lower solar output.

It is global, I've shown it is happening in Ireland, and will be doing Russian data if I can get it and Australian data. It also has to be the case in the upper states.

So you are admitting that natural forcings are trumping CO2 forcings when it comes to TMax. Hence AGW will not cause more heat waves as predicted.

In light of the renewed failure to prepare the UK for a prolonged and harsh winter, the following questions need to be addressed in order to avoid future debacles:

1. Why did the Met Office publish estimates in late October showing a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter? What was the scientific basis of this probabilistic estimate?

2. Has the October prediction by the Met Office that this winter would be mild affected planning for this winter? If so, what is the best estimate of how much this has cost the country?

3. Last year, the Met Office predicted a 65% chance that winter will be milder than normal. Has the Met Office subsequently explained what went wrong with its computer modelling?

4. What is the statistical and scientific basis for the Met Office's estimate of a 1-in-20 chance of a severe winter?

5. Has the Met Office changed its view, or its calculations, following the harsh winters of 2008, 2009 and 2010?

6. Is the Met Office right to claim that the severe winters of the last three years are not related?

7. Which severe weather alerts were issued by the Met Office and when?

8. Although the Met Office stopped sending its 3-month forecasts to the media, it would appear that this service is still available to paying customers, the Government and Local Authorities for winter planning. What was their advice, in September/October, for the start of winter 2010?

9. Has the Met Office been the subject of any complaints from its paying customers regarding the quality of its advice?

10. Is it appropriate that the chairman of the Met Office is a member, or a former member of climate pressure groups or carbon trading groups?

11. Should senior Met Office staff (technically employed by the MoD) make public comments advocating political action they see necessary to tackle climate change?

12. Has the government evaluated different meteorological service providers and has it ensured that it is using the most accurate forecaster?

13. What plans has the government to privatise the Met Office?

http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/2086-gwpf-calls-for-independent-inquiry-…

In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious âWarmergateâ leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become âa very rare and exciting eventâ in Britain, and that âchildren just arenât going to know what snow isâ.
Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: âWeâve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesnât change anything.

'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.â

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-m…

[Viner] said that within a few years snowfall would become âa very rare and exciting event. --Richard

Let's see, some 10 years ago the CRU predicted the UK would be snow free all year round by now. --Richard

No, back in 2000 he predicted the UK to be show free in 8 years. -- Richard

You dug, and dug, didn't you Richard? You were dying for that "8 year" prediction, but just couldn't find it, so you just repeated the "few years" quote, which was a paraphrase by a journalist, and was never meant by Viner to mean that it was inconceivable that 2010 could have a harsh winter.

I would rub it in but your ineptitude with sources is so well documented now there's no point.

Skip, how many more years of snow will it take in the UK for him to be wrong? Oh, and I will find the 8 year quote.

The fact is the Met Office and the CRU have been wrong virtually every year with their predictions, and those mistakes are costing the UK ecomony.

"I asked you whether the decline was statistically significant. I explained why this question mattered and tried to point you towards some ways of answering the question."

Richard, here is what I said: "My position is that if you want to claim something or other is "clearly" happening (as you have done repeatedly) then you had better be damn certain that the effect isn't the result of random noise. "

Do you see any exemptions there, because I don't. However; 1) I've been trying to understand the basis of your claims. You are the one that thinks this apparently falling annual TMax is so important. Not anyone else here. 2) Coby already pointed out to you that the restrictions you've placed on the data make it unlikely for you to make any claims one way or the other regarding temperature trends.

"Well, it is, because it was asked of me what the full range of TMax was doing. So what you want is for me to make another animation of just the highest of each year's TMax for 29 stations. Thus each year is only going to have 29 points, not much of a bar graph. But I will endure. Will take a few days to complete."

No, stop (unless I missed someone else asking you for that). The distribution and standard deviation of the daily Tmax values will not be the same as the annual Tmax.

Here is what I am asking you to do:
1) For your annual Tmax plot, the one where you have simply done 10 year moving averages, test the annual Tmax values for normality. Based on the results run the appropriate regression and give us the R2 and P values, or 95% confidence or some other legitimate quantification of the uncertainty of the apparent cooling.

2) Regarding your "pendulum" theory, you have essentially said that an extreme annual Tmax predicts a less extreme next year. That sounds like simple reversion to the mean to me. What you need to do is determine if the year following an extreme Tmax is more likely to be less extreme then a randomly selected annual Tmax would be.

You have already found that "At 27C, it's only a 5% chance the next year will be cooler,", so of the annual Tmax what is the chance that a randomly chosen year will be lower than 27C?

These are very simple requests and should be easy to do. I can't make it any clearer what I think you need to do to make any sort of definitive statements about your data. If you don't do these I will assume that you are either too incompetent or afraid of the results to do so.

The fact is the Met Office and the CRU have been wrong virtually every year with their predictions, and those mistakes are costing the UK ecomony.

Since you can't document your "8 year" claim, why not document this one and try for .500?

Richard, apart from the fact that some have already pointed out to you that not all Canadian stations show what you claim, others have already pointed out that Australia doesn't show what you claim is a "global phenomenon".

Regarding my "not necessarily": it is all a matter of magnitude and spatial distribution. Blueshift also has a few challenges for you.

1) I've been trying to understand the basis of your claims. You are the one that thinks this apparently falling annual TMax is so important. Not anyone else here.

So you have no problem with a cooler summer trend with increasing CO2 even though AGW theory predicts more heat waves? How so? So yes, I do think a dropping summer trend is VERY significant, it falsifies a major prediction of AGW.

2) Coby already pointed out to you that the restrictions you've placed on the data make it unlikely for you to make any claims one way or the other regarding temperature trends.

What restrictions have I placed on the data? I've only displayed what is.

1) For your annual Tmax plot, the one where you have simply done 10 year moving averages, test the annual Tmax values for normality. Based on the results run the appropriate regression and give us the R2 and P values, or 95% confidence or some other legitimate quantification of the uncertainty of the apparent cooling.

I have posted the R2 for every graph. They run from 5% to 15%, some specific stations a little higher. How can I check the highest TMax for normality when I don't know what "normal" is supposed to be?

Regarding your "pendulum" theory, you have essentially said that an extreme annual Tmax predicts a less extreme next year. That sounds like simple reversion to the mean to me. What you need to do is determine if the year following an extreme Tmax is more likely to be less extreme then a randomly selected annual Tmax would be.

I did that in my last analysis. I am going to post some tests I'm doing over the next day or two.

You have already found that "At 27C, it's only a 5% chance the next year will be cooler,", so of the annual Tmax what is the chance that a randomly chosen year will be lower than 27C?

Randomly chosen year will require a range to choose from. If the range is 0 to 100 then the odds of an equally weighted selection would be 27% of the time under 27C. If the range is what only occurs during the summer, then the odds of a temp being below 27C is 5% from what I see.

Marco, all Canadian stations show either a drop in TMax since 1900 or flat. None show an over all increase since 1900.

As for the rest of the world:
https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1477/1/Stephenson.pdf

"rather than viewing the world as getting hotter it might be more accurate to view it as getting less cold."

http://reg.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2007/alexander.pdf

Wakefield once again shows his ignorance of both climate science and statistics:

all Canadian stations show either a drop in TMax since 1900 or flat. None show an over all increase since 1900.

The fact that you make this stupid statement just shows your ignorance. Drawing a straight line trend from 1900 or earlier to today and claim this to be an AGW trend is just plain wrong. There have been a number of changes in climate during that period, the causes for which are pretty well known. The sun was the major forcing til about 1950 or so, volcanic activity was an other factor early in the last century. At about 1955 the change in solar iradiance changed from a positive trend to a negative one and the CO2 anthropogenic forcing emerged from the background as a statistically significant trend. Thus if we want to see how climate has changed due to CO2 led forcing we only need to look at the past 40 to 50 years since this is the time period when CO2 forcing is discernible.

Thus my data on Sachs Harbour and Coral Harbour, which show an increase in Tmax during that period supports AGW. Your ridiculous Excel games show nothing of any scientific relevance. In fact, you are acting like the proverbial monkeys at the proverbial typewriters. If you plot enough Excel graphs, maybe one will be useful. I haven't seen any yet but keep plugging away, maybe by the turn of the next century you will have provided us with a graph which is meaningful and accurate. Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time.

"What restrictions have I placed on the data? I've only displayed what is."

Only choosing data from stations with a long enough continuous record, analyzing annual extremes.

"I have posted the R2 for every graph."
Which says nothing about the statistical confidence we can place in your results.

"How can I check the highest TMax for normality when I don't know what "normal" is supposed to be?"
You don't know what a normal distribution is supposed to be? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_test

"I did that in my last analysis."
No you didn't unless you've done something new that you haven't linked.

"Randomly chosen year will require a range to choose from. If the range is 0 to 100 then the odds of an equally weighted selection would be 27% of the time under 27C. "
The range and "weighting" to compare to is that of all the annual Tmax values.

"If the range is what only occurs during the summer, then the odds of a temp being below 27C is 5% from what I see."
So you've just killed your pendulum theory.
Do you have any idea why I say that?

As for the rest of the world:
https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1477/1/Stephenson.pdf

Um, Richard. You've cited this before. Remember what happened?

skip, the fact he cites this again, and completely ignores that it notes a positive Tmax trend (just smaller than the positive trend in Tmin), indicates to me he suffers from confirmation bias. I'll leave him to you guys, I'm not that interested in redebunking nonsense umpteen times on the same thread.

FORRESTER!
Ian Patrick James Forrester!
You are being abusive again!
Why can't you be nice? (I thought I had noticed a change in you. How wrong I was!)
If you have the data and evidence to back up your reply to Richard, why can't you just reply to him in a firm but polite way?
Why do you feel the need to begin your post with just his surname, (like a school-kid) and use words like "ignorance" and "stupid"?
I've said this to you previously haven't I?
You'll be grounded if you're not careful Mister!

Coby:

You're probably about done with this subject--again. As it stands I think Richard has completely dug himself into a hole so deep that a "final final" summary thread can be done and that can close the door on Richard Wakefield for purposes of this blog. He'll of course declare victory in his own mind but then again we've seen how that mind works.

Let me know if you agree and/or want help on a closing entry. I suppose in the interest of fairness you should give Richard the final word if you choose to go this route.

Thus my data on Sachs Harbour and Coral Harbour, which show an increase in Tmax during that period supports AGW.

Blueshift, are you going to give Ian the same lecture that you have been giving to me about providing statistical evidence before one can make any trend claims?

He was using your criteria, your rules, Richard. You had loudly proclaimed the same trend for "EVERY STATION". Ian's showed the opposite--statistically significant or otherwise.

Coby, just put Richard out of his misery and we'll do a summary post. I volunteer to help if you wish.

"I think Richard has completely dug himself into a hole so deep that a "final final" summary thread can be done and that can close the door on Richard Wakefield for purposes of this blog."

What insufferable, breathtaking arrogance. Try as I may, I can't recall Coby appointing you, Skip, to decide when a thread should be closed. Amazing.

What insufferable, breathtaking arrogance. Try as I may, I can't recall Coby appointing you, Skip, to decide when a thread should be closed.

Nor if you read, had I claimed to be so appointed, but the error is forgivable given your inherently constrained grasp of reality.

Here, however, is true arrogance advertising itself in print, first from someone who is bested by the simplest mathematics of trend lines:

I suspect that belief in AGW cannot last more than another couple of years, and perhaps even less. --Snowman on Hockey Stick Open Thread #30

And this one from a bold commentator who never read any of the CRU emails, as proven by his inability to answer direct questions regarding them:

Skip, that these 'enquiries' [into Climategate] are regarded by everyone in the UK as an acute embarrassment --Snowman

And the best of all, from a man now claiming to defend the integrity of a discussion thread on a forum about which he's already expressed this assessment:

This place isn't life, Skip. This isn't reality. This is a few people with nothing better to do working themselves into foaming indignation (I note the exchanges above with Richard Wakefield) . . . --Snowman

Oh, yeah: arrogance. Interesting how fast you are to see it in someone else, Snowman. At least if I ever was arrogant I'd have a *few* reasons to be.

I'm beginning to fear for Skip, I really am. Of course, we've seen this before. We know that, sooner or later, all warmists lose their grip on reality. Read the last couple of articles by Monbiot in the Guardian. Mad as a hatter. And now Skip. It is so very, very sad.

As much as I appreciate your concern; I'm doing fine.

If I were you I'd work on trend lines, and maybe remembering what you said in the past before firing off your mouth again.

Only choosing data from stations with a long enough continuous record, analyzing annual extremes.

Oh, I see I should be narrowing the years to get a long term trend, please explain how that would work.. Fewer years means LESS ability to show a trend no matter how many records you have.

This isnt my imposing of restrictions, this is working within the limitations of the data.

And I have NOT done just the extremes, I have also done ALL the TMax daily temps on many of my graphs.

You don't know what a normal distribution is supposed to be?

Of course I know what normal distribution is. What we do not know is what is "normal" for TMax. Chi Test requires an expected dataset to compare to. What in TMax is "expected". What do we test against?

"If the range is what only occurs during the summer, then the odds of a temp being below 27C is 5% from what I see."
So you've just killed your pendulum theory.
Do you have any idea why I say that?

You are thinking in one dimention. I'm preparing a mathematic model test of normal random variation with additional random cycles add in and see how the trend is working. Almost got it working.

"I did that in my last analysis."
No you didn't unless you've done something new that you haven't linked.

I will try again, run the video: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/does-temperature-profile-fo… This is ALL TMax from May to Sept for those 29 stations. Each year has about 5000 records.

skip

I agree with you about drawing an end to this pointless discussion - but I guess it is coby's site and its up to him what he does with it.

I grew bored with it ages ago when I realised that all Dick did was lie and move the goalposts, and is completely out of his depth in regards to statistics and scientific methodology. On top of which the discussion is completely moronic anyway. The numbers that are being argued about are from a tiny corner of the world and are not representative of everywhere else, and are completely irrelevant as determinants of whether or not AGW is a valid theory. Who cares whether the absolute maximum / minimum each year is increasing / decreasing? For all the REAL indicators (increasing mean temperature, increasing number of hot days/nights, decreasing number of cold days / nights, etc), observations match predictions, so why everyone has spent over 900 posts arguing over the minutae of irrelevant data is simply beyond me.

I note that marco has just grown sick of it and said he won't be back. Might I suggest that you (and everyone else) do likewise. Coby may not feel inclined to kill him off, but maybe Dick will die or simply fade away if people stop feeding him.

He was using your criteria, your rules, Richard. You had loudly proclaimed the same trend for "EVERY STATION". Ian's showed the opposite--statistically significant or otherwise.

He did nothing of the sort. Ian chose a station with half the records to see a long term, since 1900, trend. Because of that there is no way there is any trend except in his mind. Secondly the increase in Sachs Harbour was from the mid 1950s to the 1970's where it ended and has been flat since. Hence Ian proved nothing of the sort specifically if Ian has to just through the hoops that Blueshift demands.

Sounds to me you want to cut off this thread for fear I will be shown to be statistically correct.

For all the REAL indicators (increasing mean temperature, increasing number of hot days/nights, decreasing number of cold days / nights, etc),

Show me the data where the "hot days/nights" around the world are increasing.

If I do, will you promise to publicly admit you are wrong, do so on your own website, then shut the fuck up and go away never to return?

Ian chose a station with half the records to see a long term, since 1900, trend.

And you've used 14 . . . or 17 . . . or twentysomethingish . . . from Southern Canada to declare a worldwide one. Sauce for the goose, Richard.

Because of that there is no way there is any trend except in his mind.

Wrong.

There *was* a trend in the available data, which directly contradicted your claim about the universality of your alleged trend. You'll never escape this inherent contradiction in your position, Richard: No stations other than the ones you've selected will ever satisfy the arbitrary selection criteria, but this in turn *limits your generalizations to those stations.*

And the generalizations don't mean shit anyway, because there is no rule that Southern Canada can't have a leveling/declining Tmax within an overall global AGW signal.

Again, on the one hand you have--whether through conscious machination or blind arbitrariness--selected stations that fit your (impotent) hypothesis. If no other stations fit the selection criteria, then you're *prevented* from making generalizations beyond your selection. No escaping it, Richard.

skip

I guess that's fair! I stepped on your toes now your stepping on mine!! But you did castigate me once for giving Dick an excuse to change the subject, so you should be consistent and not give him one to escape my clutches!

I've got him in the corner and on the ropes, and was about to deliver the knock out blow, and now you've tagged me! (yeah - mixed wrestling and boxing metaphors there. Sorry!)

mandas bring it on. You are going to provide daily summer TMax temps, right.

skip, please show here http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/12/sachs-harbour.html where Ian has shown an increasing trend. Also, find a station in Canada that is not level, not dropping in TMax. My choice of stations and ranges is because of record limitations, not my bias. If only 6 stations in all of Canada have complete records since 1900, how am I supposed to do to get more? If only 29 stations have data from 1920, am i supposed to invent it?

Dick

Not so fast. You have to meet the criteria I discussed. You have to show the level of integrity I would expect from a scientist (yes, I know you aren't one, but we are discussing science here). That is, when you are shown the evidence, you will publicly admit you are wrong, both here and on your own website. You will then drop this subject and never raise it here again.

Agreed?

Oh - and I have temperature data (daily minimum and maximum temperatures - not just summer maximums) for every Australian station going back for as long as records were kept.

Good enough?

Ok my bad.

Skip out.

That is, when you are shown the evidence, you will publicly admit you are wrong, both here and on your own website. You will then drop this subject and never raise it here again.

I always go with the evidence. If your data shows different from Canada, I will post it on my site. But I want access to the data.

FIY, Mandas as I have noted before, my name is not Dick.

And my name isn't mandas either.

And I'm still waiting for you to agree to my condition. When the evidence shows you are wrong, you have to publicly admit you are wrong - both here and on your website.

Its a pretty simple condition based around honesty and a demonstration of scientific integrity. So how about you just simply state that you agree?

'You will then drop this subject and never raise it here again.'

This is the sort of deal the Inquisition once offered to heretics. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Snowman, you are good for comic relief, I'll give you that! Here I thought the inquisition was about torturing confessions out of people before executing them and all along it was about demanding people admit they were wrong when confronted with empirical evidence...

But now that you mention it, yea, what a coincidence!

I don't mind shutting down the thread, but would rather it just peter out on its own.

Richard has revealed his lack of understanding of his subject many times over, I am happy to let that stand for itself but people are free to continue efforts in various directions to help him see it, or ensure followers of the discussion see it. For me, there is not much more revealing than this statement from him not far above:

"It is global, I've shown it is happening in Ireland, and will be doing Russian data if I can get it and Australian data. It also has to be the case in the upper states."

He is declaring a "global" discovery based on scant data in southern Canada, Ireland and an assurance that it simply must appear everywhere else once he gets around to looking. That is not scepticism and does not rise to the level of evidence a sceptic would require to overturn 150 years of physics and atmospheric science research.

Maybe mandas will be able to make some headway with Richard with Australian data...mandas, do you need any extra tools? I have some equipement left over from my Al Gore climate science training sessions.

Glad to hear you find my modest contributions diverting, Coby. In that spirit I have a suggestion to make.

I offer this thought with due deference and humility, alert to the danger of sounding like the egregious Skip, forever trying to take control of your blog (and, incidentally, I can only admire your patience on that score; many would have given him his marching orders long ago).

Here is my suggestion: as the end of the year and the start of a new one is a time for predictions, why not invite thoughts on the next 12 months of climate news? I wasn't thinking of global temperatures, arctic ice and the like (I expect we would all agree that random variation makes a single year impossible to predict). No, I was thinking of relevant political and media matters. Will the US Congress become really aggressive in its hostility to climate 'science'? Will the mainstream media around the world begin to turn sceptical (as they already have in the UK); will the Governments of the Aussies and the Canucks become openly sceptical - will, in short the whole governmental/media consensus start to fall apart?

What do you think? Would this be a thread worth creating?

When the evidence shows you are wrong, you have to publicly admit you are wrong - both here and on your website.

How can I possibly be wrong about evidence I have not yet seen. What is happening in Canada is happening in Canada, Australian data won't change that. And Australian data won't tell us what is happening in Africa, Russia, the EU. So there would be little to admit to.

So, let's see it. Why have you held back on this for so long?

I wasn't thinking of global temperatures, arctic ice and the like (I expect we would all agree that random variation makes a single year impossible to predict). --Snowman

Not that it prevented you from extrapolating a *trend*, genius.

Comic relief indeed.

How can I possibly be wrong about evidence I have not yet seen. -- Richard now

Quite simply. If you make a prediction about it that is falsified, such as . . .

If this is happening in Canada, then it must be happening in the US . . . Again, had you continued with the site you would have found reference to the exact same thing found in Ireland and Australia . . . My prediction is this trend is world wide. If world wide, AGW is dead in the water. -- Richard then

But see Richard now, continued:

What is happening in Canada is happening in Canada, Australian data won't change that. And Australian data won't tell us what is happening in Africa, Russia, the EU. So there would be little to admit to. Richard now, continued

This is the key problem with written debate/discussion, Richard. There is always some inescapable prick such as myself who remembers everything you wrote. (Ask Snowman.)

Now notice, I am *not* making any predictions, because I have *not* analyzed Australian temp station data. As a genuinely skeptical non expert I have to allow for that nonzero probability that your analysis is both valid and can be extrapolated worldwide. I have grave doubts based on your demonstrated competence in other matters, but I'll have to wait until you and Mandas both present your varied interpretations of the Aussie data.

'There is always some inescapable prick such as myself......'

Skip, there is no need to be so hard on yourself. You should work on your self esteem. I'm sure you have some very good qualities.

I have plenty, but they aren't intended for your observation.

Skip, read my quote you posted:

"My **PREDICTION** is this trend is world wide. **IF** world wide, AGW is dead in the water."

I didn't say this trend is world wide, if it is... I have no problem being shown wrong, however, if I am right, is AGW dead? Do you have a problem beng shown wrong?

My **PREDICTION** is this trend is world wide . . . I didn't say this trend is world wide . . .

This is an argument?

Mandas,
I'm happy to yield the floor to you. I am now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Richard is either too willfully obtuse or incompetent to understand the very basic questions and suggestions I have for him.

Richard,
My final response to you. I have stated very clearly what you should do. If you think my approach to finding statistical significance is flawed, that's fine. I have no doubt there are more appropriate methods out there. They will *not* be the ad hoc approaches you have been taking, and simply graphing figures and telling the world to look at them without standard testing won't ever suffice.

Well, it looks as though everything everyone has said about Dick is right. Being very equivocal there Dick.

As I said, I have access to the data from EVERY Australian met station going back as far as records have been kept. And I will be happy to deliver it into Dick's hands. All he has to do is to demonstrate a degree of integrity and it is his.

I am not asking him to admit he is wrong - yet! All I am asking is for a statement of principles. All he has to do is to state that if and when the data shows he has been wrong, then he will publicly admit it, both here and on his own website.

Its not an onerous requirement. As I said, it is just a statement of integrity and good faith that any scientist would be prepared to state. That when the evidence shows he is wrong, he admits it and withdraws his thesis. Simple really.

As I - and others - have tried to point out, the observations from Canada are NOT repeated worldwide. I have unequivocal evidence to show that all the observations from Australia are as I suggested. Increasing number of hot days / nights. Decreasing number of cold days / nights. Longer hot spells. Less cold spells. Increasing temperatures. Etc. Etc. Etc. I have a number of papers which discuss this phenomenon and put it into the context of global observations and AGW. And I have access to all the source data. And I am willing to provide it all. As long as the information is used with integrity - and a statement of that integrity is stated up front.

Over to you Dick.

Mandas:

He doesn't like being called Dick. Now watch: this will be the excuse to equivocate.

Way to go . . .

They will *not* be the ad hoc approaches you have been taking, and simply graphing figures and telling the world to look at them without standard testing won't ever suffice.

Blueshift, you will likely not believe me, that I'm trying to get out of your requests, but what I'm about to explain happened this afternoon.

My son's wife is an profrssional engineer working for a road building company (second largest in the province). She is responsible for calculating and measuring what is required to build a road from the first scraping to the final paving. They are here now for Xmas. So I showed her my graphs. She has no problems see a trend. She said when they do their stats they just do basic linear regression, occational correlation coefficient, and some distribution graphs. They NEVER look at R2, they don't need it. She said their measurments are often more scattered than what I show, higher variation, but they get trend lines, which they use to make projections, and go on those projections knowing the degree of error in that. She said they rarely have problems with their projections, usually when evironmental conditions change (more rain for example).

She does not understand your fixation on wanting more stats to prove something that, to her, is obvious. She is currently working on her PhD.

Argument from authority, yes, but an expert opinion on the usage of stats. Basically, higher stats is academic mostly, not of practical use.

Over to you Dick.

I don't know who "Dick" is, if you are refering to me, use my correct name.

skip

As you suggested: "Quod Erat Demonstratum"

Oh . . . God.

Richard, I don't want to distract you from your dialogue with Mandas, but I have to ask: What do you *think* will be the response to #448? I mean, what do you *expect* people will say regarding your secondhand account of a relative's perfunctory assessment of data on a subject that is completely outside her alleged expertise?

Is this the part where you think someone like Blueshift or Mandas will say, "Ah shit, well. That's good enough me. Based on your description of your daughter-in-law she sounds like a pretty smart cookie. Sorry we gave you so much trouble about it."?

I'm sorry but I'm sitting here in stunned disbelief at what you just wrote.

skip

No problems - we don't seem to be having a dialogue. #448 is absolutely hilarious - but let's leave that aside for a little while.

I just asked Dick to demonstrate a modicum on integrity, and he has spectacularly failed to do so.

I am offering him a chance to prove his case beyond a shadow of a doubt. I will give him access to the data from Australia that he has said - repeatedly - that he is waiting for. He has - repeatedly - said that he has a friend who is getting it for him. And he has said - repeatedly - that as soon as he gets it he will use it to demonstrate that what he has observed in Canada is in fact a worldwide phenomenon, and that it will disprove AGW. Actually, he has already suggested it IS a worldwide phenomenon, without the evidence to back up his claims. But I will allow a small benefit of the doubt here for the time being.

Well Dick. Here's your chance. I have access to the data. More than you need. I will give you access to all the weather observations from every Australian met station for as long as records have been kept. Daily maximum temperatures from EVERY day in EVERY year that records were kept. You will get minimum temperatures. You will get rainfall data. You can even have recent information on wind, atmospheric pressure, evaporation rates, and humidity.

The only thing I am asking is for you to promise to use the data with integrity, and that IF the data proves that your thesis is incorrect, that you act like a real scientist and admit it, both here and on your own website. Why is that so difficult for you?

So please, prove to everyone here that I am both mistaken in my assessment of you, and that you do possess the level of integrity that would be expected of any scientist.

And by the way, I don't give a flying fuck whether your name is Dick or Richard, or whatever you want to call yourself. I am going to keep calling you Dick - just get over it.

You need to stop equivocating and changing the subject. Either you want this data and you want the chance to prove your case, in which case you need to make the ethical promise that I require. Or... you will act like the completely disengenuous denialist arsehole that we all suspect you are, and continue to equivocate and change the subject. In which case coby would be quite within his rights to ban you forever, and to post your equivocation on every single blog site he can find. Because sure as shit, if he doesn't, I will (and I suspect there may be a few others - Ian and Chris spring to mind - that might assist me in my endeavours).

Well, its lunchtime on xmas eve. I am about to leave the office and go home and eat lobster, prawns, oysters and crab, and drink lots of good wine and have other forms of mind altering substances. Its a beautiful warm day here in Adelaide. 34 degrees, blue skies, and perfect summer weather to go for a swim and have a typical Australian xmas.

In regards to this discussion, it looks as though the case for the prosecution can rest. Dick has proved conclusively that he has no interest in any evidence other than his small, cherry picked data set, and he has demonstrated that he would be completely unwilling to admit he could be wrong, even if he could be shown contrary evidence.

I have offered to provide the information that the mythical 'friend in Australia' was going to provide - but it seems the data would not fit Dick's preconceived worldview and it is far better to change the subject and stick fingers in ears and yell 'lalalalalalala' than to accept it. Interestingly enough, I know the REAL reason why Dick doesn't want me to provide the data - and that makes the equivocation even more hilarious. You know the real reason too don't you Dick? Why don't you share it with us? Or would you rather me explain the truth? No worries, I will!

The truth is, Dick has had access to the data all along and knows that it doesn't support his position. That is why he has banged on about the 'friend in Australia' and has focussed the entire discussion on irrelvant data points from Canada, and tried to extrapolate that to the rest of the world by belligerence rather than evidence.

There is NO friend in Australia, because getting the information doesn't require one. We live in the internet age, and it is no more difficult for someone in Canada to get the data than it is for someone in Australia. But we all know that. Anyone who wants Australian met office data can get it simply and for free. It is freely available on-line. Dick knows this - has known it all along. He just doesn't want to use it because he knows what it says.

RW is not even up the level of being a Dick, and is beneath contempt. He has no ethics, no integrity, and should be ignored or castigated for his failures wherever he shows his face on the internet. I know I will remind him of his pitiful nature if I ever come across him again.

To everyone else, have a merry xmas, happy chanuka, happy holidays, enjoyable solstice, or whatever you celebrate this time of year. I am going on a break until early in the new year. Fishing on Sunday, diving on Monday, golf on tuesday, then I might relax for the rest of the week.

that is completely outside her alleged expertise?

How is doing statistics, which she was trained to do, "out of her expertise"?

And by the way, I don't give a flying fuck whether your name is Dick or Richard, or whatever you want to call yourself. I am going to keep calling you Dick - just get over it.

So you don't mind if I call you Cunt then, eh?

Not in the slightest. Indeed, cunts are among my favourite things in the whole world.

Thanks for the compliment.

Hi guys. I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

I mustn't dilly-dally, however. I have preparations to make. The BBC - that hotbed of denialism - has just advised us that temperatures in the UK tonight will drop to 'truly exceptional levels' and may even break all-time records.

Thank heavens we have Monbiot to reassure us that these brutally cold conditions are a certain sign of global warming. Otherwise we might reflect that this is the third successive very cold winter in Europe, each colder than the one before. We might look at the ominous sun, again free of spots. The term 'Dalton Minimum' might even start to drift into our consciousness.

Fortunately, as I say, we have Monbiot, not to mention Skip and pals, to prevent us from falling into such a foolish trap - and I, for one, am most grateful.

Compliments of the season.

What? No holiday salutation for the Mike Tyson of climate change denial, Snowman?

Or have you finally faced the fact that you backed another loser and are already hoping to forget it? (Don't worry; I won't let you.)

Maybe therein lies a New Year resolution in the making--no more huzzahs for amateur posers just because they say what you want to hear.

But happy holidays all, especially you, Mandas. Even though in the southern hemisphere it will be hard to a have a pristine, *Dick*ensian Christmans. (*Cun't* resist that one.)

Fear not, Skip, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

CO2 is a trace gas that has little if any discernible effect on climate. That is the truth that will become evident to all within a short time.

Go in peace.

And the rum was just a trace component of the 7 toddies you downed before you posted the above, but its effect was evident the instant you put fingers to keyboard.

I would tell you to go peacefully but that ship sailed.

One night recently, while fighting insomnia, I started wondering whether one of these epic threads could be scored like a boxing match. This one has about 1000 posts in all, over both threads. If I treated it like a ten-round boxing match I could total up the swings, hits, misses, knockdowns, etc. for each block of 100 comments. In my sleep-deprived state it seemed like it would be an interesting, fun exercise.

However, in the cold light of day it proved impossible. Boxing has no room for one phenomenon which occurred with regularity in this particular event: the self-administered knockout punch. One of our protagonists persisted in performing this maneuver time after time. Richard, when he insisted on quoting sources who discredit his thesis, and whose work he had not read, knocked himself down & out of the fight in the early rounds, based on the three-knockdown rule.

In a way it's a shame it turned out that way; it would have been interesting trying to score another situation also unknown to boxing. This occurred in the later rounds when one of Richard's corner men, Snowman, cold-cocked him. To my knowledge it's never happened in the history of pugilism. . .

'If I treated it like a ten-round boxing match I could total up the swings, hits, misses, knockdowns, etc. for each block of 100 comments.'

You need to get out more, Opus.

God forbid someone's view of the debate should result from actually reading it.

We all need to do our part to reduce emissions and CO2 and to conserve our natural resources, which are finite. Take advantage of the sun and wind, which are forever and free! The Organic Mechanic http://www.organicmechanic.com/ has a great selection of products for home and car to do just that.

(sorry in advance to Skip, I just couldn't stand it anymore)

suzanne,
Please explain this hoarding, er, I mean conservation thing and how it works. (for example, compare to the free market allocation of resources)(and maybe, include in your discussion the natural gas wall heater I see on your website)

And perhaps, ask Spain about the "free" wind and sun power.

[CAUTION - Once you explain the above, you may realize why you don't need to worry about "conserving".]

we expect an increased likelihood of extreme rainfall events and an increased likelihood of extreme summer temperatures.

Dr. Andrew Weaver is Canada Research Chair in climate modeling and analysis at the University of Victoria, and has authored or coauthored nearly two hundred peer-reviewed studies in climate, earth science, policy, and education journals. He is an editor emeritus of the Journal of Climate, published by the American Meteorological Society. He has been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Order of British Columbia, and one of the top 20 scientists in Canada under the age of 40.

He was a lead author in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the group that, with Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is the author of two books, Keeping Our Cool (2008), and the upcoming Generation Us (April 2011).

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/qa-can-canada…

Take advantage of the sun and wind, which are forever and free!

That entirely depends on where you are. Here in Ontario in the summer half the time wind produces less than 7% name plate, 30% of the time in the summer they produce nothing at all. And the costs for that power is more than double.

Solar is worse for us, 5% name plate in the winter, worthless when we have weeks of cloudy days. Add to that even more expensive, by TEN TIMES! for power.

Hence these "renewables" for us are completely worthless. WE already get 22% of our power from renewables, real cheap -- hydro.

Uh huh.

I see.

Richard, do you agree with everything Weaver says in the interview?

And Paul:

If you want to resume this discussion about conservation take it back to the Action on Global Warming is Suicide Thread.

tell it to your friend suzanne

Fair enough.

You heard him, Sue.

Skip #468,
Isn't obvious? Dr. Weaver has all the AGW cult credentials and he said we expect X to happen, but Richard has clearly proven X isn't happening.

Therefore all of AGW is false.
QED.

Isn't obvious? Dr. Weaver has all the AGW cult credentials and he said we expect X to happen, but Richard has clearly proven X isn't happening.

Therefore all of AGW is false.

You are starting to catch on.

Weaver thinks, because of his understandings of the predictions made in his own climate models, that summer TMax will increase. But is that the trend right now? You can answer that now. It's not is it.

If you understand the role of falsefiability you will know that it only takes one observation to destroy an entire theory. How would AGW be falsified? What observations would render the theory false?

would this falsify AGW?

Global Cooling Consensus Is Heating Up â Cooling Over The Next 1 To 3 Decades

http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/global-cooling-consensus-is-heating-…

Weaver thinks, because of his understandings of the predictions made in his own climate models, that summer TMax will increase. --Richard

we expect an increased likelihood of extreme rainfall events and an increased likelihood of extreme summer temperatures. -- what Weaver said

Therefore all of AGW is false. --Richard

Um, Richard . . . Even *if* we accepted your claimed trend of Tmax, and even *if* we accepted that it can be extended beyond your (14 . . . 17 . . . whatever today's number of southern Canadian stations is), what Weaver said, and what you're saying he's saying, are not the same thing.

Repeat: What Weaver says and what you want to believe he's saying are not the same thing.

Your capacity to see what you want to see despite simple categorical distinctions is utterly stunning.

Richard, you simply live in a fantasy world, where an article you don't read can be used to prove anything you wish and a statement you don't understand can be interpreted in any manner you prefer. I don't know if you lack the capacity for critical thought or have simply chosen to forsake it in the pursuit of this delusion of being to AGW as Einstein was to Newtonian physics, but your are divested of the capacity nonetheless.

That you are a hero to Snowman is the ultimate demonstration of this.

Hmm.

So, Richard, do you agree with all the experts Gosselin lists?

Well Dick is back for the new year - just as ignorant and delusional as before.

Its a pity he is too gutless to put all the Australian data into a spreadsheet. As I said before, he knows it proves him wrong. I guess that just goes to show how unethical he is - discarding facts that don't fit his hypothesis.

Oh well, I made the offer. But of course, my prediction about Dick's lack of credibility came to pass. How about you crawl back under the rock from whence you came Dick. Liars and disengenuous arseholes aren't welcome.

I realise Richard doesn't live in Manitoba, but this perhaps should give cause to pause.

http://www.canada.com/technology/Close%20encounter%20with%20free%20bear…

Skip what does this mean to you?

increased likelihood of extreme summer temperatures.

if not TMax going higher then what?

we will find out cause i'm going to email him

Adelady, Polar Bears are not threatened by any "loss of ice". Their population is 20,000 higher today than they were in the 1950's when the population was 5,000. They are not declining, and have survived interglaial periods over the past 200,000 years, periods with ice free summers.

mandas, i have the url to get my own AU temp data, I won't be trusting you on anything. Once I finish some other projects I will write the program to download the data myself. I don't need you to provide me with anything. If you had anything you would just show it instead of playing stupid games.

Richard:

Extreme temperatures can simply be a greater frequency of higher temperatures within the known range. It does *not* require that Tmax rise--especially since AGW theory specifically predicts greater warming in winter as opposed to summer, although I suspect it does not preclude the possibility. (This again, does not even consider the limitations of your chosen data source.) I suspect Weaver's answer to you will be, "Sure, maybe Tmax would rise, maybe not. It probably would *vary by region* and depending on time frame. Whatever; I'd never thought of it as a critical issue."

So, I'll ask again, even though you won't answer because I enjoy watching you squirm and equivocate: Do you agree with all the sources Gosselin cited in your link? (I'll dispense with the perfunctory question of whether you even read your own link because of course you did not.)

Richard:

What is the basis of your distrust of Mandas?

Has he ever, in your interactions with him . . .

1. cited material which specifically refutes his position?
2. cited material which specifically contradicts other material he cites?
3. demanded refutation of material which could not even be accessed?
4. lied?

And if someone ever did any of the above, what level of trust should a reasoning observer invest in *that* person?

Goodonya Dick

You go and get that Australian data from the 'URL' that you now have. Has to make everyone wonder though - who or what was the 'friend' from Australia who you were waiting on for the data?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and state categorically that there was no 'friend' from Australia, for two reasons.

One - anyone anywhere can get the data. Dick knows it and has known it all along. But he has been lying and equivocating because he knows it doesn't support his thesis. I will make a prediction here - Dick will NEVER produce the results from Australia, because he is a lying disengenuous arsehole with no ethics or integrity.

Two - He has no friends.

It hasn't been me playing games. I offered to provide access to the Australian BOM data, and to provide papers which have already analysed it, and the BOM's own graphical representations of the data. But Dick demonstrated his unworthiness by refusing to state that he would admit he is wrong when the data showed he is wrong. Only a denialist liar with no integrity would refuse to admit an obvious error.

QED Dick.

Oh - from post #481 it now appears that Dick has become a wildlife scientist. We can add that to the list of subjects where he has no talent and no credibility.

Oh - and happy new year to everyone (Except liars like Dick. I hope he has a miserable year and all his lies come home to haunt him)

It's gonna be a long year.
(And probably in the top five hottest on record.)

What is the basis of your distrust of Mandas?

anyone who resorts to blackmail, who insults, and refuses to call people by their real names, after being asked, isn't worth even replying to.

The only thing hot for 2011 will be the hot-heads here who can't fathom that natural randomness plays a signficant role.

anyone who resorts to blackmail . . .

Blackmail?

. . . who insults, and refuses to call people by their real names, after being asked, isn't worth even replying to.

A legitimate and debatable point, but my questions were regarding trustworthiness, not individual repugnance.

Answers?

who can't fathom that natural randomness plays a signficant role.

I can fathom it, although this is probably not what you want to read or believe.

This, Richard, is simply another example of your ongoing mission of convincing yourself of silly things to sustain the delusion that your anti-AGW mission is insightful and significant.

Another example is the need to convince yourself that AGW believers claim that only CO2 affects climate.

Yet another is the desperate quest for a statement by a proponent of AGW that precludes the possibility of flat/declining Tmax in Southern Canada.

Sadly, it isn't even clever or subtle:

"I don't care what you say! *This* [insert straw man here] is what you *really* believe!"

Awww skip, you have cut me to the quick! Repugnant? Moi?

I prefer to think of myself as a magnifying mirror, revealing the imperfections and flaws in people. In the case of your dickish friend, I am highlighting the blackness of his soul which has been caused by his constant disengenuous lying, his total lack of any ethics, and his breathtaking hypocracy.

What's the matter Dick? Did my nasty name calling hurt your precious sensitivities? From someone who is not above calling others names (calling me a cunt springs to mind), you are remarkably sensitive to so-called insults.

How about you (Dick) prove that you are above the pettiness and insults that you decry, and show how ethical you can be by stating categorically that if data is provided that proves you wrong, you will admit as such. Why would anyone resist that?

Come on Dick. Its easy. Just say - 'If and when I am shown data which proves that my observations from Canada are not representative of the rest of the world, I will publicly admit I am wrong and withdraw my claims about AGW'. Its not a big ask - just a demonstration of integrity.

"If you had anything you would just show it instead of playing stupid games."

Lol!

For the record, repugnance was suggested as a legitimate point of contention, not a declaration.

Oh - LEGITIMATE point of contention huh? Oh well, I guess I'll go with that.

One of the most interesting aspects of this debate about climate change is the way that denialists like Dick grossly misuse statistics, and how 'skeptical' myths propagate around the internet without any scientific credibility whatsoever. We see it over and over again. It works something like this:

Idiot denialist blogger completely misreads (or deliberately misrepresents) the findings of some legitimate research, and publishes his (or her) totally eroneous conclusions (or lies) on his website / newspaper article.

This misrepresentation is then picked up by denialist blogger after denialist blogger, until it becomes such a staple of the denialist community that it is no longer questioned - it becomes fact (even though it is NOT fact).

Eventually, one of these idiot denialists comes in here, and cuts and pastes the relevant fact (ie lie) here, and proclaims to all and sundry that it is proof that AGW is dead / a conspiracy/ etc.

Dick is just the latest in a long list of idiot denialist to cut and paste stuff he hasn't read, from questionable sources, on a subject he knows nothing about; when a few minutes REAL research will reveal the truth. And the subject in this case is..... Polar Bears!!!!

As well as being a piss-poor climatologist and woeful statistician, Dick (in post #480) has now revealed he is an appalling wildlife scientist. His claims about quadrupling of population numbers over the last 50 years - and of the evolutionary longevity of polar bears - are simply wrong.

Estimates of polar bear numbers are - even now - fairly uncertain, but respected researchers such as Thor Larsen (Norway's University of Life Sciences) suggests that the 'guesstimate' of numbers in the 60s was 20-25,000. Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta) agrees, and states that no realistic attempt was made to estimate population numbers until the 70s, but counting wild animals is difficult at the best of times (and I can personally atest to this!) and the first estimates were highly questionable.

One thing every scientist agrees on though - polar bear numbers most probably did recover following the restrictions in hunting which came into force in the 50s - 70s, but the recovery was nowhere near the 'quadrupling' suggested by AGW deniers for their political purposes. More worrying, recent attempts to estimate polar bear populations have seen animals disappearing from parts of the previous range - and this is ALWAYS a sign of a population in decline.

The polar bear is suspected to have evolved from brown bears which were isolated during the mid-Pleistocene. Their evolution from brown bear to polar bear would have COMMENCED between 100 - 250k YBP, but as recently as 10k YBP BP they STILL had some brown bear morphology (particularly teeth). So the CRAP about the species surviving interglacials is just that - CRAP.

I don't expect Dick will apologise for his errors. I would only expect that from someone with integrity. And Dick has categorically proven he has none.

Ok - I know I haven't been following this thread all along, so maybe I missed something. Could someone explain this to me please.

About 100 posts ago, there was an argument about a prediction that the UK would be snow free in ten years (20 years?), or that snow would be less frequent, etc. I won't go into the exact argument because it is immaterial but there was Dick and Snowman (was that a deliberate pun?) on one side castigating the relevant climatologist (Viner) for supposedly predicting that AGW would cause the end of winter as we know it. And since it is a cold winter in the UK this year, then this guy is obviously wrong and AGW is falsified.

That may not be the most accurate reconstruction of the discussion and you may correct me if you want, but it doesn't really matter for the sake of this point.

This is where you come in Dick. Isn't it one of you observations that winter Tmin is increasing, and as a consequence you have stated that the world is not warming, it is just becoming less cold. And this is a good thing (you said on numerous occasions). Milder winters, longer growing seasons etc.

Sooooo....... can you all see where I am going with this one? It would appear that Dick AGREES with this Viner character. There WILL be warmer winters and less snow in places like the UK. Dick has confirmed this with observations and has used those observations to make predictions (warmer winters, 'less cold', etc).

So what was the argument about again?

can you all see where I am going with this one?

Chuckle.

I hadn't thought of that. Good point, debatably repugnant one.

I like that one, mandas. In fact, it wouldn't take much for the atmosphere to work a bit differently (clouds spring to mind as a mechanism) for a warming world to have a different statistical profile.

Show very little more than historical fluctuations in daytime Tmax worldwide, but for nights to show a steady increase. (In fact, as a non-scientist I believe that all those 'declines' during the 20thC were only in Tmax and that oceans and nights were doing their inexorable warming thing.)

So we could have lots of Richards all over the world displaying perfectly accurate graphs - while ice melts and oceans warm - and plants and crops fail for lack of frost or nights below 10C or whatever.

And the world would still be warming - I'd just have fewer, less exhausting heatwaves to contend with. And there'd be less snow in NH winters.

Polar bear evolution:

"Polar bears probably first appeared 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene and were much larger than they are today. They are the most recent of the eight bear species."

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-pola…

see also: http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=polar+bear+evolution&hl=en&as_sdt=0&…

and plants and crops fail for lack of frost

Fail because of no frost? Where did you get that one? Crop plants fail due to frost. The longer the growing season, the better the crop production.

The snow free claim by the Met Office shows that their predictions, based on computer models, is wrong. That was the point. Their computer models can't predict anything.

If, as many scientists are now claiming, we are heading back into a 1700's style cold period for the next 30 plus years, would reverse the trend seen in the past 100 years.

Hey, Skip. Why don't you email Weaver and get his meaning from him directly. If I do it and report back I will just be callled a liar. http://www.climate.uvic.ca/people/weaver/weaver.html

See also this:

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/45/17447.full.pdf+html

Note the phylogenetic tree Fig 5, Point #8. They have the split of the Polar Bear at between 200,000 and 500,000 years from the brown bear. That is, phylogenetically distinct species at 200,000 years ago.

Wakefield's dreaming again:

If, as many scientists are now claiming, we are heading back into a 1700's style cold period for the next 30 plus years, would reverse the trend seen in the past 100 years.

See:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/not-so-cool-predictions.html

for a rebuttal to this piece of denier rubbish.