Deceitful Climate Scientists 2010

UPDATE 1 April 10, 2010: I had hoped the chicanery was finished, but it is not. As California continues to cool, NOAA has again changed their color palette so that the coldest colors are now 20 degrees colder than normal. Previously, it was only 15 degrees colder. For the entire month of March, 2010, the coldest color was only 5 degrees colder. See color chart at the end (Figure 3) - Roger [end update]

Much has been written, and spoken, about scientists behaving badly, especially those scientists involved in the debate over whether (and how much) the Earth is warming, but more especially, what causes the warming. There are at least two camps, those who maintain that man's activities caused inordinate warming, and those who maintain that any warming, if it actually does exist at all, is entirely or almost entirely natural. I refer to the two camps as the Warmistas and the Skeptics. Sometimes, the former camp is labelled as the Carbon Is Gonna Kill Us All Crowd. The Warmistas resort to devious tactics, distortions, making up data, perversion of peer review processes, withholding their data and methods, and in some cases destroying the data. Skeptics have the better view, in my opinion, because the science just does not support the idea that man-made trace gases (especially CO2) in the atmosphere can warm up the Earth.

This post shows a blatant example of the devious tactic of distortion, that is, using human perceptions to hide a blatant cooling. The instigator, or distorting entity, in this case is NOAA Regional Climate Center, where NOAA is an acronym for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a part of the United States government. As some of my readers will remember, I sometimes post an article on how California fared in the most recent month, as to average temperatures. The information is from www.calclim.dri.edu, and shows how the state is doing each day via color-coded maps. Two such maps are shown below as Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Note the devious tactic? No? See the text below Figure 2 for an explanation.

Figure 1

California temperatures March 2010

Departures from Average

Figure 2

California temperatures April 2010

Departures from Average

The temperatures for the first few days of April are extremely cold, relative to the temperatures for March. The color bar (the key) below Figure 2 shows the dark blue zone to be 9 to 12 degrees F below the average. Such very cold temperatures would be off the chart if they were presented using the color scheme of Figure 1. To the casual observer, it would appear that April is not all that cold, as the dark blue under the Figure 1 scheme is only 3 to 4 degrees F below average. Yet, by carefully selecting their temperature palette, the Warmistas at NOAA make it appear that nothing much is going on. The reality is that it is cold in California. There was a snow storm just today, April 4, in the Sierras.

One could speculate as to why the Warmistas find it necessary to resort to such deviousness. Is it so the children are not scared? Perhaps so the general population will not notice that it is colder than usual? Perhaps there is a technical reason, say, the graphics program NOAA uses does not have any more colors in the software? Perhaps it is just because some NOAA employee likes blues and magenta, so the chart receives those colors? There could be many reasons.

Yet, this is a favorite technique of the Warmistas, to use visual techniques to attempt to over-emphasize warming and downplay any cooling. One can simply refer to a chart where world temperature anomalies are shown by various colors, and the colors are skewed to the reds and oranges. These colors are normally associated with hot. Blues are normally associated with cooler or cold. The NOAA charts above do the same, using oranges and reds for the hotter anomalies.

The Warmistas also choose the scale of graphs where numbers are charted so that a tiny change appears mountainous. The famous graph of CO2 in the atmosphere, from Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, does this. The start of the graph is at approximately 300 ppm, and the end is at approximately 400 ppm. This produces a large, ascending curve. Yet, the entire data is only a few hundred ppm. In the grand scheme of things, this is a trace gas. Warmistas do the same for temperature anomalies, where charts present data in 0.1 degree C increments. An increase of 0.5 degrees is bally-hooed as amazingly important - yet many places in the world change from -20 degrees C to +30 degrees C during the course of a year.

So, we can keep tabs on the Warmistas as they continue in their efforts to scare the adults, or even to hide the decline. It certainly is cold in California during the first week of April. Temperatures have declined, and dramatically.

One would have a difficult time in determining that it is indeed much, much colder than normal, by looking at the devious charts from NOAA.

That's ok, NOAA. We're on to you.

UPDATE 1: As Figure 3 below shows, NOAA has changed the color palette so that the state appears warmer than it would be if the previous color scheme had been maintained. Essentially, the chart below shows a lot of green area, which would be blue under the previous scheme. Green "appears" to be "not so bad," whereas blue "appears" to be cold. -- Roger

Figure 3

California temperatures April 1 - 8, 2010

Departures from Average

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey.