The last few weeks have seen substantial questioning of the quality of the analysis of the global climate record. This presentation, made to the top year at a local secondary school, looks at the Oxford climate series and shows how the way the data is presented may significantly affect judgments on how fast warming is occurring at one particular point on the earth’s surface. Apparently innocuous changes, such as varying the number of years in a moving average, can make substantial changes to the appearance of a temperature series. The notes to this presentation can be seen by downloading the PowerPoint file and clicking Notes Page in the View tab; or alternatively by downloading the PDF. Anybody wanting the raw data and the accompanying charts is very welcome to email Chris Goodall at chris@carboncommentary.com.
If your browser is not displaying the presentation properly in the embedded viewer above (Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users may encounter a problem depending on their settings), it is available for download in PowerPoint or PDF.
Tags: climate change, PDF, PowerPoint, science, statistics, weather
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Hi Chris,
Thanks for the clearly presented data – the overwhelming trends are pretty clear, as is the “noise” in the signal and evidence of short term cycles. My maths teachery background means I look for underlying trends in data and am quiet good at looking past noise, but I know my students sometimes have trouble spotting trends.
You might have been able to make a stronger point with your slides by deliberately selecting some specific time periods that show the opposite trend, then showing the big picture view.
This is the approach that climate change sceptics sometimes take – look at a specific trend of a specific short period to support their view – and it would have been nice to see that argument taken to pieces a little more conclusively.
Overall a good job.
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Here at the Democracy Center we are working hard to draw attention to the impact of climate change already happening in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. We’ve recently produced:
A a video on Bolivia’s melting glaciers (http://democracyctr.org/blog/2009/12/visit-to-cemetery-of-glaciers.html)
A new article in Yes! Magazine (http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/as-glaciers-melt-bolivia-fights-for-the-good-life).
We are also getting ready to report on the upcoming World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (http://democracyctr.org/blog/2010/03/global-climate-change-conference-coming.html), an alternative response to failures of Copenhagen.
Keep your eyes out for our coverage!
(www.democracyctr.org)
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