
USA Temperature: can I sucker you? - xg15
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/usa-temperature-can-i-sucker-you/
======
freedomben
Honest question: Why such vitriol against "climate deniers?" The term "climate
denier" is loading with negative connotation just on it's face, and it's
rarely used in isolation in an otherwise respectful way.

There will always be people that disagree with you about something. Some are
honest, some are not. Why be an asshole and treat people poorly and
disrespectfully? That makes you as bad or worse than them IMHO. Even when they
are being assholes (which many are), it is an act of immaturity to lower
yourself to that level.

How do you expect to win over hearts and minds when you approach people like
that? The worst thing you can do when trying to convince someone of your
opinion is offend them by stereotyping, generalizing, and straw-manning their
position. How do you feel when people do this to you? Do you find yourself
intellectually engaging with them, thinking that they might have some good
points?

~~~
luckydata
Because their stupidity is going to kill us all. I'm very vitriolic against
people that are trying to kill me and my family, I can't help it.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Do you not see how your reply to the OP's sincere question amounts to the same
lackluster, overgeneralized, and lazy intellectual stance that the people
you're criticizing take on climate science?

You couldn't have more aptly proved the OP's point.

~~~
froogie
Honestly, I do not see it that way.

To me it seems as if sizable chunk of people believe in nonsense, and the
nonsensical beliefs and actions based on such beliefs are detrimental not only
to the people holding such beliefs, but every single living entity on this
planet, future generations included.

How is that acceptable? With what right do the people holding these beliefs
keep acting the way they do?

It is the reaponsibility of the rest of us to stop this madness as soon as
possible. It is the responsibility we as species hold to our ancestors and
future generations.

If it is all in vain for you. Fine. But please do consider other living
organisms as as important as you, for _you_ are one of _us_. We are in this
_together_.

------
techsupporter
> We can completely ignore the fact that over the years the average location
> of all the contributing stations has moved slightly northward to colder
> territory[.]

Woah, that's not something I'd considered. Are weather stations that
contribute to NOAA operated by the volunteer public, kind of like Weather
Underground? Either way, that's pretty interesting that there's a distinct
northward migration in at least one "demographic."

~~~
gok
That graph is...questionable. The entire Y axis only covers 55 kilometers. I’m
sure the NOAA has more principled ways of accounting for station movement.

~~~
martinpw
55km is not insignificant though. Some _very_ rough estimates - 55km is 0.5%
of the distance from the equator to the pole. If the temperature range between
those two extremes is 50C then the shift corresponds to a net cooling of
0.25C, which seems like it would have a noticable impact on those graphs.

Obviously there is more to it than that, but I don't think it makes it a non-
issue.

------
sschueller
Toxic chemicals in our water and air. Plastic in the ocean. Etc. Etc. These
are all things that are killing us and are proven to be bad.

We have to do something irregardless if climate change is mann made or not.
The debate is irrelevant (at least until we get everything else cleaned up)

Even climate change deniers want clean water.

~~~
mikeash
Clean water is fairly distinct from climate change. Greenhouse gasses are
mostly harmless aside from their warming effect, and the stuff that makes air
and water unhealthy doesn’t warm the planet.

Sometimes these two things go together, such as when replacing coal power
plants with renewables. But sometimes they’re in opposition. For example, the
Volkswagen emissions scandal was that they increased particulate pollution in
order to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. In diesel engines, there’s a
tradeoff between CO2 emissions and other emissions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Erm, VW, decreased particulate emissions during testing in order to pass the
testing and have the vehicles be higher powered (and more polluting) under
normal use. They did it to sell cars and make profit; they weren't doing it to
save the planet.

~~~
mikeash
They did it to meet fuel economy numbers. CO2 emitted scales pretty much with
fuel burned.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I may be misremembering, but AFAIR They artificially reduced diesel
consumption figures by having the vehicles run different power curves during
testing. Meaning they used more fuel, and made more particulate emissions than
they claimed to. So they made it look like the cars would use less fuel than
they actually did.

~~~
mikeash
Some searching around reveals a lot of discussion about increased fuel
consumption in fixed VWs. For example:
[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/12/drivers-
loss-o...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/12/drivers-loss-of-
power-vw-emissions-fix-class-action)

VW disputes this but I don’t know if they can be believed.

------
Ivoirians
It's despicable, isn't it? Like, there are climate change deniers that are
overly-skeptical or gullible and buy into the mountains of misinformation. And
then there are those like Steve Goddard who sit down every day and work their
asses off creating said misinformation (check his twitter). Actively
manipulating and cherrypicking data to deceive for personal gain (whether it
be paychecks, political favor, whatever).

And they're winning, considering only half of Republicans believe climate
change is even happening, let alone that it's manmade. This was probably the
stupidest possible problem for the American political machine to make a wedge
issue.

~~~
briandear
A fair question: has the climate alarmist side not cherry picked or even used
fraudulent data to suit their cause as well?
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-
emails-climate-jones-chinese)

Our skepticism isn’t about the climate changing, (remember when it was called
global warming?) it’s a skepticism about the causes and the degree to which
human influence plays a significant role. Any time there is any skepticism at
all, we get labeled “deniers” or otherwise ostracized. That’s pretty unique in
science, usually skepticism is considered a healthy part of the scientific
process — unless it’s concerning a topic that has substantial political
implications.

Given that a large segment of the climate change advocacy also
“coincidentally” support far left economic policies as a “remedy,” how can it
be a surprise that people like me have a deep skepticism of the whole human-
caused global warming debate. Another time we had “settled science” with so
much politicization was when Eugenics was being advocated.

[http://www.michaelcrichton.com/why-politicized-science-is-
da...](http://www.michaelcrichton.com/why-politicized-science-is-dangerous/)

I’ll predict the inevitable downvotes, which really only proves the point:
debating human causes of climate change is akin to debating the existence of
Jesus Christ.

~~~
glhaynes
_" (remember when it was called global warming?)"_

I keep seeing this phrase lately. What does it mean? [To clarify, I'm asking
about why people keep saying "remember when it was called…" as though it
proves some point about it. Global warming is still an accurate description of
the predicted and confirmed phenomenon.]

~~~
orf
It's a common argument deniers make to try and spread FUD.

> They used to call it global _warming_ , then they rebranded it to (the more
> accurate) climate change because their narrative was coming apart/everything
> is fine/elitist climate scientists trying to get money. If they can't even
> get their story straight why should we believe them??

> This message was brought to you by the 'Sensible Patriotic Americans Against
> Climate Change Nonsense' (funded by Exxon).

~~~
martinpw
The irony is that the phrase "climate change" was actually pushed initially by
a Republican advisor (Frank Luntz) as it was considered less frightening to
the public than "global warming".

The other irony is that this phrase was used a lot of few years back when many
were claiming there was no warming going on by cherry picking the 1998 El Nino
spike as a starting point for temperature graphs. Then the argument was -
there is no warming, so the alarmists have stopped using the term "global
warming". Of course with recent warming this particular cherry picked argument
has fallen apart, but for some reason the meme persists.

I don't think the people who use the phrase even think about what they are
saying. It is just part of the Gish Gallop that gets thrown out where number
of words makes up for lack of solid argument (initial post that used this
phrase up above being a perfect example of this)

~~~
philipkglass
_The irony is that the phrase "climate change" was actually pushed initially
by a Republican advisor (Frank Luntz) as it was considered less frightening to
the public than "global warming"._

Academic publications were using the phrase "climate change" to discuss the
warming effects well before Frank Luntz. He may have been important to putting
that phrase in front of the general public, but "climate change" isn't a
euphemism invented by PR hacks. The foremost summary assessments are assembled
by the IPCC -- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose first report
came out in 1990.

Here are publications from 1980 and 1970 also using the phrase to discuss
warming phenomena.

"On the Distribution of Climate Change Resulting From an Increase in CO2
Content of the Atmosphere", Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, January 1980

[https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%28198...](https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%281980%29037%3C0099%3AOTDOCC%3E2.0.CO%3B2)

"Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change", Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, October 1970

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC283289/?page=1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC283289/?page=1)

~~~
martinpw
I don't think we are disagreeing. I'm just pointing out that the phrase was
deliberately pushed out into the wider public discourse for specific political
motivations, and it is ironic that this phrase is now being used by those same
political forces to cast aspersions on scientists.

~~~
philipkglass
It appears that I was trying to correct a misconception you do not actually
hold. I've seen apparently well meaning people claim that "global warming" was
rebranded "climate change" by Frank Luntz to make it sound less scary, while
both terms have been in widespread use among scientists since before the issue
became widely known among the public.

~~~
canhascodez
Yes, but more to the point, they are not synonymous except in very recent
history. Theories of climate change were needed to explain evidence of the Ice
Age long before anyone thought that warming was a concern, back in the early
19th Century. The evidence that climate could change was also generally
distinct from the evidence which established that CO2 could change the
climate. Global warming is a subset or result of climate change.

------
bjourne
We really need to do something now! The summer has been un-fucking-believably
hot. Climate change is not something that will happen in the "future" \-- we
have to avoid a global ecosystem collapse in the next 10-15 years. :(

~~~
splintercell
I know the Pascal's wager argument for action on Climate change (which is that
if there is even 1% chance of climate change being real then why not act on it
since the downside of acting is nothing <to one political ideology>), but the
question is, what if climate change is NOT man-made?

If there is even 1% chance that climate change is a naturally occurring
phenomenon then all our efforts to 'stop' greenhouse gas emissions is not
going to give the results we want. Maybe building levies and moving cities
inland be a better action plan? Maybe faster economic growth is a better
solution than subsidized solar and wind.

I am trying to figure our arguments against the above argument.

~~~
canhascodez
Climate change _is_ man-made. We know how much oil we're burning, and we can
measure the atmospheric CO2 carbon ratios, and also measure volcanic
emissions. The picture is very consistent. There's also no real hope for an
alternate mechanism. The actual effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2
is to push the CO2-rich region further out into space. Physics dictates that
this _must_ warm the Earth, by ~3.7 W/m^2 per doubling[0].

The history of the theory is perhaps relevant here. CO2-induced climate change
was proposed in 1896[1], and shortly thereafter it was stunningly refuted, by
multiple independent lines of evidence. Over the next fifty years, the
soundness of that evidence was called into question, and eventually the weight
of evidence was sufficient to shift the consensus. We have been trying to
disprove AGW for more than twelve decades. At this point, we need a very large
effect, because the H2O-CO2 feedback loop is pretty ugly, and the effect also
needs to be small enough to not notice. There's not really any candidate
theories beyond absurdities like, "everything we know about thermodynamics is
wrong," or "CO2 molecules have free will and like to play practical jokes on
scientists". Failing that, I'm deeply sorry to say that AGW is real.

[0] [https://www.skepticalscience.com/christy-crock-6-climate-
sen...](https://www.skepticalscience.com/christy-crock-6-climate-
sensitivity.html) [1]
[http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf](http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf)

~~~
splintercell
I guess you don't know "Pascal's Wager" argument for climate change.

Because this is equivalent of hearing "But Bible is real, God himself wrote
that in the bible, how dare you suggest that there might be 1% chance of God
not being real?" in an actual 'Pascal's wager' argument.

~~~
canhascodez
Do you know what empiricism is?

~~~
splintercell
Do you know what a thought experiment is?

~~~
canhascodez
Are thought experiments empirical?

~~~
splintercell
Nope

~~~
canhascodez
So then, thought experiments can be valuable aids to scientific understanding,
but they can't establish the truth or falsehood of any empirical claim. The
two statements, "I have faith that God exists," and "carbon dioxide is a
greenhouse gas" are not only not equivalent, they are not _comparable_.

But, even setting aside issues of validity, your premise is that there is a
not-inconsiderable chance that global warming is not caused by humans, and
this premise may be rejected. Error is inherent to measurement, but that does
not mean that all statements are equally likely. You don't get to just say,
"Assume that the error bars are convenient for my argument"; that's not how
empiricism works. AGW is predicated on optics and thermodynamics, and saying
that AGW is not true is equivalent to saying that there is a problem with our
understanding of those topics. That's the sort of claim where you should
really be very specific and have strong evidence, but really, if you're
arguing with thermodynamics, you're going to have a bad time.

If you really want to offer a skeptical argument, it _must_ be an empirical
argument. In order to make a plausible empirical argument, you need to take
into account all observations relating to that phenomenon. This can't be done
without learning the science. There are empirical avenues which could lead to
the invalidation of AGW (it was considered disproved for decades, after all),
but thought experiments are not empirical.

------
patrickg_zill
The first thing that jumps out at me, actually, is the use of a shorter time
period than is likely available. From 1900 or 1920 to now is a pretty short
time period.

We have (some) records dating back to the mid-1700s:
[https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-
records/groups/0...](https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-
records/groups/027.html)

------
bmmayer1
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess" \- Ronald Coase

------
ethagknight
Meta question: am I being suckered by his presentation of an unsuckered
baseline? What about 1850? 1800? 1200?

~~~
appleiigs
The article says his available data starts at 1895.

However, the point of the article is to reverse engineer a biased chart, and
to show it's biased intentions. The article does not try to determine whether
climate change is real or not (even though the author's opinion is obvious).

So it doesn't matter if the author's data is limited... it matters that the
author of the biased chart has been cherry picked.

------
oh_sigh
What part do climate change deniers deny? Is it that the mean global
temperature is going up, or the idea that it is going up because of human
activities? I thought it was the latter.

~~~
conception
It was the former and then the was overwhelming evidence. Then it was the
latter... And now there's overwhelming evidence. So it's morphing into "it's
too late there's nothing we can do!" Or it's not possible to organize etc.
Still not helpful.

~~~
johnchristopher
There's also "Yeah but it might be a good thing long-term" which was recently
superseded by "But it's good for the economy and the market will fix it if
it's really that bad.".

------
mnm1
The problem is that the kind of people that would be convinced by proper
graphs and analysis like this are not the kind of people that need convincing
on this issue. They are not the type of people who value science, logic, or
reason. No matter the evidence, they will place beliefs and unsubstantiated
opinions ahead of evidence and in places like the US, where people are often
taught that beliefs are equally or more important than evidence and facts, you
get a culture of anti-intellectualism that supports policies that hurt the
entirety of humanity. We should remind people that beliefs are just opinions
and as the old adage goes, opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one and
they're not particularly interesting or compelling. They certainly should not
be the basis of policy.

------
clircle
This p-hacking without looking at the p-value, just graphs. Love it.

------
nkurz
_There’s a graph going around the internet from Steve Goddard a.k.a. Tony
Heller, claiming to show that temperature in the U.S. has been declining,
using only high temperatures, using only summertime temperatures, using only
data since 1918, based on a simple average without taking into account new
stations coming online or old stations retiring or area-weighting or any of
that “expert” stuff_

I like that this piece makes clear how conscious choices of which data to
present (and which not to present) can make an argument more convincing
without actually lying. I don't like that it makes accusations about a
particular person doing so without the courtesy of linking to the person being
accused. If your argument is strong, it's usually better to let the reader
judge for themselves whether your accusation is accurate. Failing to do so can
undermine an otherwise strong argument.

I'm not familiar with Goddard/Heller. Searching for Tony Heller, I find
[https://realclimatescience.com](https://realclimatescience.com). It includes
a lot of graphs very similar to the ones Tamino dissects. The ones I saw were
going day by day, looking at average temperatures for that day over the last
100 years. It's good to know that the start date might have been cherry picked
to make the graph look better, and that this is based on raw unadjusted data,
but it doesn't seem inherently unfair to use a particular day rather than the
average for the entire year.

Is there a better "smoking gun" where he makes the more grandiose claims that
Tamino accuses him of doing? Maybe, but without a direct link I wasn't able to
find it. And in the absence of better evidence, as long as the graph is
clearly labelled "Summer Average Maximum Temperature", I have to say that it
seems unlikely that he's actually guilty of "claiming to show that temperature
in the U.S. has been declining", and more likely that he is making the more
direct claim that summer highs have not been increasing. Which given recent
newspaper headlines, I do find to be an interesting counterpoint.

Searching for Steven Goddard, I find this:
[https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/who-is-steven-
goddard/](https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/who-is-steven-goddard/). I like
that he clearly links his pen name to his real identity, and makes clear his
scientific and environmental background, and admits that he is not actually a
climate scientist. Does "Tamino" have a similar page? Who is he, and what is
his background? It felt odd for one pseudonymous author to be calling
attention to the fact that someone else was using a pseudonym. At this point,
based on a tiny amount of research, I feel a little more comfortable with
Heller/Goddard than with Tamino.

~~~
bibixii929
I imagine the blog post already assumes some familiarity with the people
concerned, as this particular circus with arguing about global warming has
been going on for a long time by now.

------
bagels
This site has malicious ads on it.

------
cfuen71
And they are trying to convince me using charts with a truncated y axis? How
about doing it with charts that are not misleading?

~~~
martinpw
What would you propose for a zero value on the Y axis? The only number that
actually makes sense is zero Kelvin (since 0C and 0F are just arbitrary
numbers). At that scale you will not see anything. But that doesn't mean
nothing is happening.

The charts are fine.

~~~
cfuen71
At a 0-100 Celsius scale, or whatever is the equivalent in Fahrenheit, there
will be an almost impossible to see increase over the time span of 100 years.

I'm not saying nothing is happening, but those charts are completely
deceiving.

~~~
kisstheblade
How would you chart your body temperature? Starting with 0 kelvin? Then you
could conclude that all is well because you can't spot a 2 degree increase,
right?

------
wolco
What worries me more than climate change is the radioactive waste being pumped
into the ocean daily for 6 years and no one is talking about it.

------
m3mpp
Look at the temperature chart for the last 10,000 years, the greenland core
ice temperature, GISP2 for example, and you'll see a completely different
picture.

Everything looks extreme when looked at a very small scale...

~~~
systoll
[http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GISP210kla...](http://hot-
topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GISP210klarge.png)

Here’s the GISP2 data, plus samples from the past two centuries.

Still seems pretty extreme to me.

~~~
m3mpp
I think this one shows it even better: [http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-
content/uploads/2011/01/GRIPtempBo...](http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-
content/uploads/2011/01/GRIPtempBoxlarge.png)

And yes, there's a fast climb, but it's not the only instance in history, look
at 800AD, 200AD, and a lot more in the past, it seems to be the way the temp
fluctuates, very sharply.

If we get back to the 10,000 years chart, do the last 150 years seems off the
chart? If anything, it shows that we're cooler than the last 10,000 years.

~~~
systoll
A graph that starts at 1840 doesn't show the past 10 000 years at all -- in
the long view, that's all just a bunch of noise. What happened to the
'completely different picture' that the 10 000 year view held?

Here's the 10 000 same graph with some colours
[https://i.imgur.com/GWhaGCU.png](https://i.imgur.com/GWhaGCU.png) Blue
periods were colder than 2009. Yellow periods were warmer. The past 10 000
years were mostly colder than 2009, and we've only gotten warmer since then.

And... precedent isn't the main issue here. Those large bumps have causes.
This time, the cause is us. It's up to us [collectively] whether we want this.

Maybe the Roman Period's ~-29.75C represents a better climate for humanity
than the 1855 levels. That's right around that '2 degree limit' people talk
about. If that's a target, it's about time to transition out of making 'as
much CO2 possible as fast as possible'.

------
craftyguy
Great. More 'ammo' for climate change deniers to take out of context and
spread around.

Most folks would not bother with trying to understand the points this article
is making when presented with the 'no change here' graph. HN readers are not
'most folks' so this type of data manipulation is obvious and wrong to many
here.

~~~
mmastrac
I wouldn't say that - he's basically reverse engineered the graph that a
climate change denier is already using for evidence and shown how it's
basically cherry-picked BS.

Clearly the denialists are already well-versed with this particular approach.

~~~
seiferteric
I don't even believe that people that produce such graphs are real deniers. I
think there is a lot of money to be made by for people like this and they are
in the "climate denier industry". Someone going out of their way to produce a
graph like that must know what they are doing and have ulterior motives.

------
stukh
This is a very nice blog post. Quite instructive. Recently, several times I’ve
run into people tell me that temps in the U.S. are rising and I’ve wondered
why they make such a claim. The blog sources the claim and overall the point I
take from the blog post is that it’s easy to deceive people since people seek,
by and large, confirmation of preconceived ideas rather than the truth.

~~~
mikeash
I don’t think you actually understood it. Its point is that the temperature
really is rising, and you have to resort to tricks to show that it’s not.

~~~
stukh
I think my comment has been badly misinterpreted given the down voting. I’ve
reread my post and I’m not sure why it has been so misinterpreted. Clearly I
failed to convey my intent. Obviously the blog post is about how one can
construct a misleading graph by cherry picking data.

The blog shows how one can cleverly display data to reinforce a prior belief.
In this case the prior belief is that temperature is not rising. Recently I’ve
encountered a number of people making the claim that temps have been
declining. I’ve wondered why this claim is being made and now I know the
source. As shown in the blog post the source is a purposefully misleading
graph. As stated by the author this misleading graph has recently been making
the rounds on the internet.

~~~
mikeash
I think you must have forgotten a “not” or otherwise made a typo that reversed
the meaning of your comment.

“Recently, several times I’ve run into people tell me that temps in the U.S.
are rising and I’ve wondered why they make such a claim.”

As written, your comment sounds like you don’t understand why someone would
say temperatures are rising, and ascribe it to confirmation bias rather than
climate change.

