NZCLIMATE & ENVIRO
TRUTH NO 104
JUNE 20TH 2006
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/assets/2006531205370:TemperatureTrendsVGray.pdf
plays ducks and drakes with the lower troposphere global temperature records by drawing a linear trend which includes the large El Niño peak in 1998. Because this peak is higher in the lower troposphjere than on the surface, they can use it to claim, that the "trends" are the same in both sets of records. As I point out, if you choose a different climate sequence for each which avoids the 1998 El Niño; 1958 to 1997 for the radiosondes amd 1978 to 1997 for the staellites, the "trend" in the lower troposphere suddenly drops to zero, whereas the "trend" on the surface remains high, so it cannot be due to greenhouse forcing.
Another use of linear agression was mentioned in my last newsletter, with sea level records. If you study the actual sea level records on the website
http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/psmsl_individual_stations.html
you will find that for most parts of the world recent sea level records show little change. This is particularly true of the Pacific, and includes Tuivalu and New Zealand. But the global warmers will have none of it. They conceal the actual records and make use of often fragmentary past records to claim that the sea level is rising. As with the lower troposphere temperatures they can also make use of the 1998 El Niño which gave a convenient low peak. But the usual "trend" chosen is usually over the last 100 years.despite the unlikely influence of greenhouse gases at the beginning.and the fact that few of the records are even slightly linear.
They try another trick. Your pocket calculator provides a measure of the accuracy of a linear trend with the "standard deviation". Most people do not know that this is only valid if the data are distributed on a Gaussian or "bell" curve, and even if they are, one standard deviation gives you only two chances in three that the true value falls between these limits. Proper scientists usually quote two standard deviations. which gives a one in 20 chance that the true value is within the limits.
Sea level scientists always use only one standard deviation. the data are so irregular that two standrad deviations would show up their "trends" as ridiculous
Yet another example is ocean heat. They have no hesittation in drawing a linear "trend" through a record which is plainly periodic. The beginning of the curve, in 1955, is the bottom of a trough. It goes up to a peak in 1980 and then down again to 1988, Then up, so in 2004 we probably have another peak. But a linear "trend" shows that there is a large rise since 1955, but ignores the fact that the current figure is noit much hgher than that for 1980. The periodic character is almost certainly associated with the El Niño phenomenon, but the spurios "trend" has to be blamed on greenhouse gases even when there is no temperature rise up aloft..
The trouble is, as soon as the current fall in temperature is discovered, they will soon be switching from greenhouse warming to their favourite topic of the 1970s, the coming ice age.
Cheers Vincent
Gray
Crofton Downs
Phone/Fax 064 4 9735939
"It's not the things you don't know that fool you.
It's the things you do know that aint so"
Josh Billings