Comments on Natural Variation - Autism Blog: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Absolutely Occurri...

Global warming is the huge threat for all world.No...

2008-12-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

Global warming is the huge threat for all world.No one is thinking,How to over come it.But day by day new technologies are introducing which are basic reasons of global warming.

Anon: I don't think global cumulative CO2 emission...

2008-08-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

Anon: I don't think global cumulative CO2 emissions would confound heat-island causes. You need to consider the detrending. A fluctuation of cumulative emissions would have to cause a fluctuation of the heat-island effect, with a pretty good lag. That's a bit convoluted.

The cumulative CO2 model is a good model for the total amount of excess CO2 in the atmosphere that is anthropogenic. I'm not sure the same thing works when we're talking about cities. The urban heat-island effect is caused by buildings, mostly.

It's not just emissions either. In this post I show that CO2 concentrations as ascertained from ice cores have basically the same 3rd-order detrending as cumulative CO2 emissions.

As to temperatures, I'd suggest using sea surface temperatures instead. No urban confounding there. To get an idea of how SSTs would detrend, see this graph of the 15-year central moving averages of SSTs in the northern hemisphere.

Of course, there are also standard responses to your proposed confound, e.g. this explanation by RealClimate.org.

I would expect that cumulative fuel usage and Urba...

2008-08-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

I would expect that cumulative fuel usage and Urban Heat Island effects would also correlate, perhaps with a time lag as well. There is a fair amount of evidence that UHI effects contaminate the temperature record -- see the "Watts up with that" blog. How do you know that you are not simply measuring this correlation? It is a Human-caused temperature rise, although limited to urban areas and not relevent to the entire globe.

My expertise in this topic is quickly being pushed...

2008-07-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

My expertise in this topic is quickly being pushed to its limits so I probably will have to make this my last reply here.

I understand your argument regarding my question referring natural causes but it is predicated on the assumption that both CO2 and temperature readings are evenly distributed. Not a bad assumption as most things are evenly distributed. Unfortuanately one look at the Petit et al. analysis of the Vostok cores reveils that this isn't true.

The cores show that temperature is heavily left leaning for the vast majority of time until about ten thousand years ago at which point for a reason I cannot fathom it changes into a cyclical cycle of upward and downward trends +- 1 degree C above and below current temperatures.

Although the Petit et al. mesurements stop about 2k years ago it it is obvious that we could very well be at a peak right now and just happen to have started our industrial revolution at the same time it was going up, ie nature is affecting temperatures and not us.

I know of no fault on your part with regard to this, your math or what little I know of it seems sound. The problem lies with the many who seem to use science to push their agendas instead of figureing out how the world works. Keep up fighting the good fight and of course read both sides of the debate, even if a person or persons involved have no idea what they are talking about, it is always educational.

Thank you very much. This was a great help.

2008-07-13T04:57:00.000-07:00

Thank you very much. This was a great help.

The same goes for nowhereman, whose last comment I...

2008-07-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

The same goes for nowhereman, whose last comment I had missed previously. Cumulative CO2 emissions model atmospheric concentrations rather well.

Clearly, there must be CO2 emissions from other sources, but those emissions are roughly in equilibrium with the environment, enough to keep the atmospheric concentration between 260 and 280 ppmv. The current level of 370 ppmv means our contribution is about 90 ppmv.

If I model cumulative CO2 vs. atmospheric concentration, I get a nearly perfect fit. I can get slightly better fits if I assume a half-life. I've modeled different half-life assumptions, and the best seems to be 70 years.

And as I said, using data corrected for a half-life of 50 years produces the same result. The general trend is roughly the same with high half-lifes like this.

Again, there's a correlation, and it can't be explained away by imprecisions in the data.

Jim...1) Your nitpick of terminology is irrelevant...

2008-07-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

Jim...

1) Your nitpick of terminology is irrelevant. It's well known that atmospheric CO2 has gone from about 300 ppmv to 370 ppmv in the last 50 years, and this increase is anthropogenic. The atmospheric half-life of CO2 is high, probably 70 years.

And as a matter of fact, I've repeated the analysis considering a half-life of CO2 and the results are the same.

There is a correlation with high statistical significance, and it can't be explained away simply because you think it would've been better to do the analysis in some other way, or because you think I didn't use the proper terminology to describe things.

2) The NH has warmed faster, and it's not difficult to imagine why that is. While the slope would not be as steep in a SH analysis, I can assure you it will still be there.

Finally, while I didn't mention detrending in this post, that's for all practical purposes an equivalent way to look at what I did. I compared the residuals of the time series trends. That's effectively the same as comparing detrended time series.

I think I did mention a few times that the whole purpose of doing this analysis is to show how coincidental trends can be controlled for. I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

If you can suggest a different method that can be used to control for possibly coincidental trends, do let us know.

1) If you would like to posit a new theory that h...

2008-07-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

1) If you would like to posit a new theory that human emissions of CO2 cause global temperatures to rise irrespective of all other CO2 in the atmosphere, you should publish it to the world.

But that is NOT the theory of AGW, as you have implied in your title. By your conjecture, we should believe that even if nature sequesters CO2 faster than humans emit it, the temperature would still rise. I'd love to see that theory fleshed out.

2) Since the Southern Hemisphere has shown virtually NO warming for at least thirty years, inclusion of this temperature data will further weaken your already-weak statistical conclusions.

I would be happy to read and comment on your explanation of "coincidental trends are controlled for via detrending." But since your latest comment was the first time you've mentioned detrending in this post, I'll need a link to wherever you might have expounded such explanation.

Jim, your points are unconvincing. 1) If I'm tryin...

2008-07-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

Jim, your points are unconvincing.

1) If I'm trying to show that human CO2 emissions cause global warming, I should model human CO2 contribution vs. temperature.

Of course, I could also model CO2 atmospheric concentrations vs. temperature, but then you or someone else would say, "well, maybe temperature causes CO2 levels to go up." (Furthermore, there aren't as many data points available as far as observed CO2 concentrations - a technical point).

If you must know, there's a clear correlation between cumulative CO2 emissions and measured atmospheric concentrations. I've looked at this data as well.

2) If you think that the analysis won't hold if I look at global temperatures as opposed to NH temperatures, you're dreaming, frankly.

Also, there's not a thinking person on the planet who disagrees that from 1850 to present both carbon dioxide and temperature have increased. That alone will cause a positively-sloped line. There is nothing at all impressive about your statistics.

You don't have to be impressed by my statistics, but it would be nice if you'd at least read them. As I explained, coincidental trends are controlled for via detrending.

Good grief!There is too much wrong with this analy...

2008-07-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Good grief!

There is too much wrong with this analysis to do a thorough critique, but here's a couple of points:

1) When you're trying to validate a theory, you have to use measurements of what's ACTUALLY IN THE THEORY. For AGW, this means you have to model the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. You cannot choose related measurements like estimated human emissions of CO2 just because they make your case better. It wouldn't be much more ridiculous to regress global temperature against the residual emissions of Joseph's own car!

2) If you wish to prove Anthropogenic Global Warming, you'll need to use temperatures from the whole globe. You cannot simply ignore the entire Southern Hemisphere. And you really should test other temperature data sets using your methodology, especially the UAH and RSS satellite measurments, which although not perfect, are at least a consistent measurement across the whole planet.

Also, there's not a thinking person on the planet who disagrees that from 1850 to present both carbon dioxide and temperature have increased. That alone will cause a positively-sloped line. There is nothing at all impressive about your statistics.

I don't understand how you handle the fact that th...

2008-07-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

I don't understand how you handle the fact that the earth has cooled in the last 10 years.

It is handled primarily by its being untrue. I've seen the data myself. Here's Tamino's deconstruction.

Secondly, it is handled by it being irrelevant. Long term I don't see any significance in the trend of the last 10 years. There's a lot of noise in the data, which is clear from Figure 1.

I don't understand how you handle the fact that th...

2008-07-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

I don't understand how you handle the fact that the earth has cooled in the last 10 years.

How is that fact displayed.

I have been thinking over your methodology once ag...

2008-07-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking over your methodology once again at work and figured something out. (I think often and do so that I may one day be good enough to come up with theories of my own relating to Psychology (my chosen field).

There is a flaw in this here. The flaw is simple really. By using CO2 emmisions instead of atmospheirc CO2 concentrations you have caused a problem. As has already been stated by minds greater than my own, we produce only 5% of the CO2 that is created. Granted 5% is huge, very Huge, but not on a scale like this. Simply put there is too much going on in nature to simply ignore it. Lets say we massively increase our CO2 production by 300% but nature dropps her production by 20% - 30% due to natural variation. This would cause a drop in CO2 concentrations and hense a cooling.

I still do not buy that CO2 causes warming, infact I think it more likely that CH4 would cause these effects though I am not sure to what degree. But I was not critisizeing AGW just this particular methodology. I hope you understand my objection to this work.

This is wonderful page. Keep up the good work!

2008-07-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is wonderful page. Keep up the good work!

Just writing to invite you to join a new social su...

2008-07-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

Just writing to invite you to join a new social support group for Autism @ http://www.weareautism.org. Would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Regards.

Stephen

Edward Townes makes AT LEAST two statements that a...

2008-07-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Edward Townes makes AT LEAST two statements that are provably false.

One is that temperature always leads C02. It's a chicken-egg cycle around the start and end of glaciations, and other times, such as supervolcanoes going off, after the particulates settle the GHGs clearly lead temperature, unambiguously.

Another is that the temperature data is not corrected for distortions. Not only is that false - in fact, most of the historical temperature distortions happened to minimize and mask the actual warming - but when a small subset of the temperature record, namely a fraction of US surface temperature, through multipurposed weather stations were claimed by Anthony Watts, a non-scientist in thrall to Stephen McIntyre, a non-climate-scientist, his crew took photos of weather stations and claimed they were distorting the record. Unfortunately for Watts, when he was put on the spot and forced to quantify the distortions, he HAD TO ADMIT they were imperceptible. It was a huge, glaring defeat for the climate audit people. They simply think the word has not gotten out yet.

This doesn't detract from the basic point that the analysis accounts for noise like allegedly distorted surface records. It just means that the countervailing "evidence" is nonexistent the instant it's scrutinized.

I thought over your analisis and am trying to figu...

2008-07-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

I thought over your analisis and am trying to figure out a hypothesis test for this and the best I came up with that does not require a controlled lab experiment is an ANOVA test. The two IVs would be CO2 and Solar irradiance and the DV would of course be temperature.

Without knowing much about the AGW literature, I predict there are dozens of papers that do multivariate analysis of CO2 and Solar irradiance, and do find CO2 to have an independent effect. The problem is that multivariate analysis is too abstract and probably not convincing to most laypeople.

Another problem with multivariate analysis is that there can always be a variable you did not control for. Plus the modeling in multivariate analysis might not be adequate. For example, you might include 'year' as a variable to control for unknown time-dependent variables. But the part of the equation that controls for year will not be nearly as good a fit as the third-order polynomial fit I'm using in this analysis (which essentially amounts to a tight control for 'year' applied to both variables).

One final note, GHG emmisions may not be the most accurate measure so try instead world consumption of hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil etc...). That may be a more accurate measure.

This page explains how CDIAC emission statistics are estimated. It's based on production. It's reasonable to suppose that most of what's produced is consumed; or what's consumed is uniformly reflected in what's produced, year after year. Either way, I made it a point to only consider anthropogenic emissions and not emissions from other sources.

Oh no I understand you statistics and your reasoni...

2008-06-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

Oh no I understand you statistics and your reasoning. I am not fully aquainted with your methodology as I have taken only basic statistics courses and am only familiar with the pearson correlation. (I excelled in hypothesis testing though and received an A and an A-... still mad at myself for the A-)

As I said I understand the basic theory behind your argument and am working on figureing out this new kind of analisis.

My only suggestion is that you state your findings cautiously if your intent is mearly to demonstrate the effectiveness of your method. If your intent is to prove a point then I would say you have done a good job of advancing your point to legitamacy.

One other thing I thought of while picking up garbage in the hot sun at work today. I thought over your analisis and am trying to figure out a hypothesis test for this and the best I came up with that does not require a controlled lab experiment is an ANOVA test. The two IVs would be CO2 and Solar irradiance and the DV would of course be temperature. My logic is that if you take the early portion of the industrial revolution and compare it to the mid section and our much later end section then it stands to reason that as the early portion had little anthropogenic damage then the temperatures would be lower then later on.

I like this as you can also see if their is an interaction between CO2 and solar irradiance. I figure that CO2 though wont warm the atmosphere it may slow its cooling a little, and hense an interaction.

I still don't like this much though as it is not controlled and so any data that comes out of it is colored by this one way or the other. I don't know though how to build a controlled experiment though that would be acceptable. So my problem will continue with AGW for awhile till I see something convincing (other than corelations no matter how astounding they are)

One final note, GHG emmisions may not be the most accurate measure so try instead world consumption of hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil etc...). That may be a more accurate measure.

Hi Nowhereman. I can appreciate that the method is...

2008-06-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

Hi Nowhereman. I can appreciate that the method is not straightforward. What I attempt to do with this sort of post is go over the analysis in a way that can be followed (and replicated) by someone who is not necessarily versed in statistics. I personally see that the data is completely convincing. I'd like others to see it as well. This is not necessarily easy to do.

Let me explain it in a different way. There's a general trend of cumulative CO2 emissions. But actual cumulative CO2 emissions have a wobble around the trend. The same is true of temperature. The thing is that the wobbles around CO2 and temperature trends match almost perfectly. Also, the temperature wobble lags the CO2 wobble by about 8 years.

Correlation is not causation, but when you have this repeating and consistent pattern, I don't see what other than causation could explain it. If CO2 is not causing temperature anomalies, then it would have to be something else that associates with human CO2 emissions.

As far as I'm concerned, AGW is proven. Anyone who feels otherwise is just unfamiliar with the data.

I am replying to your post on my blog. I think thi...

2008-06-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

I am replying to your post on my blog. I think this is good work overall, the statistics involved are still over my head although I may sit down and study them. Because of this I cannot comment on your math (I am impressed by the 99.999% correlation).

It dosn't answer my question of whether or not CO2 causes temperature increases. I do not doubt the correlation just the causeation.

One other problem I have is that it has not been demonstrated in a controlled lab environment that CO2 increases cause temperature increases. That really does not bode well.

Other then that I like your work in Autism. I supposedly has aspbergers syndrome (I will deny it to the death!!!) and so this is interesting. Keep working at it.

I've started a new blog called "Residual Analysis"...

2008-06-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

I've started a new blog called "Residual Analysis" that I will use for non-autism posts like this one. I don't think it will be an active blog.

I've written a post on the association between storms and global warming.

What is the lag time between solar activity and gl...

2008-06-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

What is the lag time between solar activity and global tempratures?

I don't know the official answer to that, but I did do this comparison. One year after gives a slightly better slope than the same year. It deteriorates after that. So I'd say it's most likely 1, but could be 0, which would make sense.

(I do not get statistical significance comparing SunSpot to temperature residuals, btw, just a trend, but that might be just because I don't have enough data points).

"And BTW, it does not correlate with cumulative CO...

2008-06-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

"And BTW, it does not correlate with cumulative CO2 emissions."

What is the lag time between solar activity and global tempratures?

I do know the difference between lag time and cycles.

A Solar cycle (for sun spots) is 11 years long. Ac...

2008-06-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

A Solar cycle (for sun spots) is 11 years long. Active solar cycles increase temps. The new and current Solar cycle is weaker.

Right, but a lag and a cycle are very different things. As you can see in Figure 2, the cycle of the residuals is roughly 80 to 90 years, although it seems to change. This is just how the human-caused cumulative CO2 cycle changes relative to the third-order polynomial fit. This cycle is what is clearly driving temperature fluctuations roughly 10 years later. (I've done additional calculations and the lag is actually between 7 and 9 years, probably 8).

If we were to plot SunSpot number residuals, for example, in Figure 2, you'd see that's a much tighter cycle. And BTW, it does not correlate with cumulative CO2 emissions. (I actually had confirmed this).

I did not see Reasic's post number 5. However the ...

2008-06-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

I did not see Reasic's post number 5.

However the question still remains. How much (or little) change in solar activity and for how long would have a global impact on temperatures (positive or negative)? How would this effect CO levels? Lower CO levels will reduce agricultural output. What is the optimal CO level from a human perspective?