## Monday, August 26, 2013 ... /////

### RSS: a negative temperature trend in 16.67 years

Before you open this blog entry, you should make sure that all the nuclear power plants in your country are operational. You may need them because the text below contains a really long table (with 415 lines or so) which will be processed as $\rm\LaTeX$ using MathJax. ;-)

About two years ago, Kevin Trenberth and others promoted a paper (Ben Santer and 16 co-authors, 2011) that claimed that one needs 17 years – what a precision – to determine the existence of a global warming trend. The purpose of the paper was to inject some patience to the minds of the alarmists and the undecided – 15 years of "no warming" isn't enough to notice the absence of any warming because you need 17 and not 15 years. Your humble correspondent wrote a tirade explaining that people like Santer and Trenberth were numerologists because there can obviously be nothing special about the 17-year-long interval. The whole continuum of the frequencies contributes to the temperature change and all the confidence levels etc. are depending on the duration continuously. There's no sharp "magic deadline" after which a hypothetical trend "must" show up.

At any rate, my preferred temperature record – the satellite-based RSS AMSU dataset – has approached a point in which the global warming trend in the recent 17 years is statistically insignificant and negligible. In fact, if you include the latest 200 months i.e. 16 years and 8 months (from December 1996 through July 2013 included) into your calculation of linear regression, you get a negative warming trend!

Yes, a particular episode that helps the trend to be negative is the (globally warmer) El Niño of the century in 1997-1998 that occurred 15+ years ago.

In shorter recent intervals, the negative warming trends are about as widespread as the positive ones. In other words, the data from the 17 recent years show no noticeable temperature trend, in one way or another. Chances are high that by the end of 2013, the recent interval in which the temperature trend will be tiny and negative (i.e. a negligible global cooling) will actually extend to the full 17 years. With some sensible conventions for statistical significance, one would conclude that the record in the last 20 years or so shows no statistically significant trend in the global temperature. Compare this absence of a trend in the real world with the hysterical hype about "global warming" in the very same 20-year-long interval.

The table below contains the temperature trends in Celsius degrees per century (rounded to one hundredth) calculated by linear regression applied to the RSS AMSU dataset for all intervals whose length is between 415 and 2 months. The minus signs in the middle column indicate that we're returning a certain number of months into the past. For your convenience, I emphasize the multiples of twelve as whole years – see the number in the first column.

Because the laymen and occasional thinkers about these linear regression results are often horrified by the following observation, let me clarify it again. If you look at the table, it becomes clear that the absolute value of the temperature trend is severely increasing as you go towards shorter, more recent intervals (near the bottom of the table).

This fact does not mean that something is getting crazy about the climate. The larger absolute values of the trend are a consequence of evaluating shorter periods of time, not a consequence of evaluating more recent intervals. When the period of time is shorter, then the calculated trend is clearly dominated by high-frequency, fast, nearly random changes of the weather – i.e. by noise of a sort – while the role of a hypothetical underlying trend – if one exists at all – gets suppressed.

For example, the last line says that the temperature trend between June 2013 and July 2013 is –83 Celsius degrees per century. This doesn't mean that all of us will freeze soon and the Earth will drop below the absolute zero in several centuries from now. ;-) Such an extrapolation is of course completely illegitimate because the temperature doesn't change uniformly and linearly by any stretch of imagination. It's chaotically oscillating up and down and the shorter intervals of time you consider, the more inappropriate it becomes to extrapolate the trend from the short interval to a very long one! However, I would kindly point out that it's wrong to extrapolate the temperature trend even from 30-year or 100-year – or any other – intervals in the future, too.

A way to think about the behavior is to approximate the temperature by a random walk (or, using equivalent words, Brownian motion or red noise) which is a qualitatively realistic model to describe the behavior of the temperatures at certain timescales. Such a random walk has no underlying trend whatsoever but after $t$ months, the temperature changes by something comparable to $\pm C\sqrt{t}$ in average. The longer time you allow the climate to change, the more its temperature will change although the change will be far smaller than the change expected from proportionality.

If you divide this change by the length of the interval, $t$, you obtain a temperature trend of order $\pm C / \sqrt{t}$ which goes to infinity for really short intervals of time. And that's what you will see in the table below, too.

Finally, here is the long table of temperature trends. It's plausible that you may have to wait for half a minute for your browser and the Javascript in it to convert the table to a nice $\rm\LaTeX$ output. I found this "export as $\rm\LaTeX$" to be the simplest way to reprint the result from Mathematica to the blog's HTML source.$\begin{array}{|c|c|c|} \hline \text{#years}&\text{#months}&{}^\circ {\rm C}/\text{century}\\ \hline \text{} & -415 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -414 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -413 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -412 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -411 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -410 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -409 & 1.27 \\ 34 & -408 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -407 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -406 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -405 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -404 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -403 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -402 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -401 & 1.31 \\ \text{} & -400 & 1.32 \\ \text{} & -399 & 1.32 \\ \text{} & -398 & 1.33 \\ \text{} & -397 & 1.34 \\ 33 & -396 & 1.35 \\ \text{} & -395 & 1.36 \\ \text{} & -394 & 1.36 \\ \text{} & -393 & 1.37 \\ \text{} & -392 & 1.37 \\ \text{} & -391 & 1.37 \\ \text{} & -390 & 1.39 \\ \text{} & -389 & 1.4 \\ \text{} & -388 & 1.41 \\ \text{} & -387 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -386 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -385 & 1.43 \\ 32 & -384 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -383 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -382 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -381 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -380 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -379 & 1.46 \\ \text{} & -378 & 1.45 \\ \text{} & -377 & 1.46 \\ \text{} & -376 & 1.45 \\ \text{} & -375 & 1.45 \\ \text{} & -374 & 1.45 \\ \text{} & -373 & 1.44 \\ 31 & -372 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -371 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -370 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -369 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -368 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -367 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -366 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -365 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -364 & 1.46 \\ \text{} & -363 & 1.48 \\ \text{} & -362 & 1.49 \\ \text{} & -361 & 1.49 \\ 30 & -360 & 1.5 \\ \text{} & -359 & 1.51 \\ \text{} & -358 & 1.52 \\ \text{} & -357 & 1.53 \\ \text{} & -356 & 1.54 \\ \text{} & -355 & 1.53 \\ \text{} & -354 & 1.52 \\ \text{} & -353 & 1.52 \\ \text{} & -352 & 1.52 \\ \text{} & -351 & 1.51 \\ \text{} & -350 & 1.51 \\ \text{} & -349 & 1.5 \\ 29 & -348 & 1.5 \\ \text{} & -347 & 1.49 \\ \text{} & -346 & 1.47 \\ \text{} & -345 & 1.47 \\ \text{} & -344 & 1.46 \\ \text{} & -343 & 1.44 \\ \text{} & -342 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -341 & 1.42 \\ \text{} & -340 & 1.4 \\ \text{} & -339 & 1.39 \\ \text{} & -338 & 1.37 \\ \text{} & -337 & 1.35 \\ 28 & -336 & 1.33 \\ \text{} & -335 & 1.32 \\ \text{} & -334 & 1.31 \\ \text{} & -333 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -332 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -331 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -330 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -329 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -328 & 1.26 \\ \text{} & -327 & 1.26 \\ \text{} & -326 & 1.25 \\ \text{} & -325 & 1.24 \\ 27 & -324 & 1.23 \\ \text{} & -323 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -322 & 1.21 \\ \text{} & -321 & 1.19 \\ \text{} & -320 & 1.18 \\ \text{} & -319 & 1.18 \\ \text{} & -318 & 1.19 \\ \text{} & -317 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -316 & 1.19 \\ \text{} & -315 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -314 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -313 & 1.21 \\ 26 & -312 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -311 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -310 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -309 & 1.23 \\ \text{} & -308 & 1.25 \\ \text{} & -307 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -306 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -305 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -304 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -303 & 1.31 \\ \text{} & -302 & 1.32 \\ \text{} & -301 & 1.33 \\ 25 & -300 & 1.34 \\ \text{} & -299 & 1.35 \\ \text{} & -298 & 1.37 \\ \text{} & -297 & 1.36 \\ \text{} & -296 & 1.36 \\ \text{} & -295 & 1.34 \\ \text{} & -294 & 1.32 \\ \text{} & -293 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -292 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -291 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -290 & 1.25 \\ \text{} & -289 & 1.24 \\ 24 & -288 & 1.23 \\ \text{} & -287 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -286 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -285 & 1.21 \\ \text{} & -284 & 1.21 \\ \text{} & -283 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -282 & 1.19 \\ \text{} & -281 & 1.18 \\ \text{} & -280 & 1.19 \\ \text{} & -279 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -278 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -277 & 1.21 \\ 23 & -276 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -275 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -274 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -273 & 1.2 \\ \text{} & -272 & 1.23 \\ \text{} & -271 & 1.25 \\ \text{} & -270 & 1.26 \\ \text{} & -269 & 1.26 \\ \text{} & -268 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -267 & 1.29 \\ \text{} & -266 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -265 & 1.33 \\ 22 & -264 & 1.34 \\ \text{} & -263 & 1.35 \\ \text{} & -262 & 1.35 \\ \text{} & -261 & 1.34 \\ \text{} & -260 & 1.33 \\ \text{} & -259 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -258 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -257 & 1.28 \\ \text{} & -256 & 1.27 \\ \text{} & -255 & 1.25 \\ \text{} & -254 & 1.23 \\ \text{} & -253 & 1.2 \\ 21 & -252 & 1.16 \\ \text{} & -251 & 1.11 \\ \text{} & -250 & 1.06 \\ \text{} & -249 & 1.03 \\ \text{} & -248 & 1.01 \\ \text{} & -247 & 0.97 \\ \text{} & -246 & 0.93 \\ \text{} & -245 & 0.9 \\ \text{} & -244 & 0.85 \\ \text{} & -243 & 0.81 \\ \text{} & -242 & 0.79 \\ \text{} & -241 & 0.77 \\ 20 & -240 & 0.75 \\ \text{} & -239 & 0.71 \\ \text{} & -238 & 0.66 \\ \text{} & -237 & 0.64 \\ \text{} & -236 & 0.61 \\ \text{} & -235 & 0.6 \\ \text{} & -234 & 0.58 \\ \text{} & -233 & 0.55 \\ \text{} & -232 & 0.53 \\ \text{} & -231 & 0.49 \\ \text{} & -230 & 0.47 \\ \text{} & -229 & 0.46 \\ 19 & -228 & 0.44 \\ \text{} & -227 & 0.43 \\ \text{} & -226 & 0.42 \\ \text{} & -225 & 0.38 \\ \text{} & -224 & 0.37 \\ \text{} & -223 & 0.36 \\ \text{} & -222 & 0.36 \\ \text{} & -221 & 0.35 \\ \text{} & -220 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -219 & 0.34 \\ \text{} & -218 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -217 & 0.32 \\ 18 & -216 & 0.3 \\ \text{} & -215 & 0.31 \\ \text{} & -214 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -213 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -212 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -211 & 0.29 \\ \text{} & -210 & 0.25 \\ \text{} & -209 & 0.24 \\ \text{} & -208 & 0.22 \\ \text{} & -207 & 0.17 \\ \text{} & -206 & 0.13 \\ \text{} & -205 & 0.09 \\ 17 & -204 & 0.07 \\ \text{} & -203 & 0.04 \\ \text{} & -202 & 0.03 \\ \text{} & -201 & 0.01 \\ \text{} & -200 & -0.02 \\ \text{} & -199 & -0.07 \\ \text{} & -198 & -0.13 \\ \text{} & -197 & -0.16 \\ \text{} & -196 & -0.21 \\ \text{} & -195 & -0.27 \\ \text{} & -194 & -0.32 \\ \text{} & -193 & -0.37 \\ 16 & -192 & -0.39 \\ \text{} & -191 & -0.41 \\ \text{} & -190 & -0.43 \\ \text{} & -189 & -0.44 \\ \text{} & -188 & -0.46 \\ \text{} & -187 & -0.46 \\ \text{} & -186 & -0.41 \\ \text{} & -185 & -0.31 \\ \text{} & -184 & -0.24 \\ \text{} & -183 & -0.11 \\ \text{} & -182 & -0.02 \\ \text{} & -181 & 0.05 \\ 15 & -180 & 0.14 \\ \text{} & -179 & 0.22 \\ \text{} & -178 & 0.28 \\ \text{} & -177 & 0.34 \\ \text{} & -176 & 0.34 \\ \text{} & -175 & 0.36 \\ \text{} & -174 & 0.36 \\ \text{} & -173 & 0.38 \\ \text{} & -172 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -171 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -170 & 0.3 \\ \text{} & -169 & 0.23 \\ 14 & -168 & 0.2 \\ \text{} & -167 & 0.15 \\ \text{} & -166 & 0.13 \\ \text{} & -165 & 0.1 \\ \text{} & -164 & 0.05 \\ \text{} & -163 & 0.02 \\ \text{} & -162 & -0.06 \\ \text{} & -161 & -0.09 \\ \text{} & -160 & -0.12 \\ \text{} & -159 & -0.12 \\ \text{} & -158 & -0.14 \\ \text{} & -157 & -0.18 \\ 13 & -156 & -0.23 \\ \text{} & -155 & -0.31 \\ \text{} & -154 & -0.35 \\ \text{} & -153 & -0.4 \\ \text{} & -152 & -0.48 \\ \text{} & -151 & -0.56 \\ \text{} & -150 & -0.62 \\ \text{} & -149 & -0.67 \\ \text{} & -148 & -0.71 \\ \text{} & -147 & -0.69 \\ \text{} & -146 & -0.68 \\ \text{} & -145 & -0.74 \\ 12 & -144 & -0.78 \\ \text{} & -143 & -0.73 \\ \text{} & -142 & -0.76 \\ \text{} & -141 & -0.75 \\ \text{} & -140 & -0.74 \\ \text{} & -139 & -0.74 \\ \text{} & -138 & -0.71 \\ \text{} & -137 & -0.65 \\ \text{} & -136 & -0.63 \\ \text{} & -135 & -0.59 \\ \text{} & -134 & -0.57 \\ \text{} & -133 & -0.52 \\ 11 & -132 & -0.48 \\ \text{} & -131 & -0.47 \\ \text{} & -130 & -0.46 \\ \text{} & -129 & -0.53 \\ \text{} & -128 & -0.53 \\ \text{} & -127 & -0.56 \\ \text{} & -126 & -0.48 \\ \text{} & -125 & -0.46 \\ \text{} & -124 & -0.47 \\ \text{} & -123 & -0.46 \\ \text{} & -122 & -0.42 \\ \text{} & -121 & -0.48 \\ 10 & -120 & -0.47 \\ \text{} & -119 & -0.47 \\ \text{} & -118 & -0.44 \\ \text{} & -117 & -0.35 \\ \text{} & -116 & -0.3 \\ \text{} & -115 & -0.19 \\ \text{} & -114 & -0.15 \\ \text{} & -113 & -0.11 \\ \text{} & -112 & 0. \\ \text{} & -111 & 0.02 \\ \text{} & -110 & -0.02 \\ \text{} & -109 & -0.11 \\ 9 & -108 & -0.26 \\ \text{} & -107 & -0.37 \\ \text{} & -106 & -0.4 \\ \text{} & -105 & -0.39 \\ \text{} & -104 & -0.42 \\ \text{} & -103 & -0.52 \\ \text{} & -102 & -0.4 \\ \text{} & -101 & -0.34 \\ \text{} & -100 & -0.29 \\ \text{} & -99 & -0.12 \\ \text{} & -98 & -0.09 \\ \text{} & -97 & -0.07 \\ 8 & -96 & 0.03 \\ \text{} & -95 & 0.05 \\ \text{} & -94 & 0.19 \\ \text{} & -93 & 0.33 \\ \text{} & -92 & 0.42 \\ \text{} & -91 & 0.37 \\ \text{} & -90 & 0.39 \\ \text{} & -89 & 0.42 \\ \text{} & -88 & 0.47 \\ \text{} & -87 & 0.49 \\ \text{} & -86 & 0.36 \\ \text{} & -85 & 0.31 \\ 7 & -84 & 0.32 \\ \text{} & -83 & 0.34 \\ \text{} & -82 & 0.44 \\ \text{} & -81 & 0.56 \\ \text{} & -80 & 0.54 \\ \text{} & -79 & 0.63 \\ \text{} & -78 & 1.04 \\ \text{} & -77 & 1.22 \\ \text{} & -76 & 1.43 \\ \text{} & -75 & 1.58 \\ \text{} & -74 & 1.6 \\ \text{} & -73 & 1.63 \\ 6 & -72 & 1.75 \\ \text{} & -71 & 1.97 \\ \text{} & -70 & 2.09 \\ \text{} & -69 & 2.17 \\ \text{} & -68 & 2.12 \\ \text{} & -67 & 1.96 \\ \text{} & -66 & 1.5 \\ \text{} & -65 & 1.08 \\ \text{} & -64 & 0.79 \\ \text{} & -63 & 0.44 \\ \text{} & -62 & -0.23 \\ \text{} & -61 & -0.78 \\ 5 & -60 & -1.16 \\ \text{} & -59 & -1.61 \\ \text{} & -58 & -1.85 \\ \text{} & -57 & -2.13 \\ \text{} & -56 & -2.34 \\ \text{} & -55 & -2.73 \\ \text{} & -54 & -2.9 \\ \text{} & -53 & -3.24 \\ \text{} & -52 & -3.72 \\ \text{} & -51 & -4.2 \\ \text{} & -50 & -5.07 \\ \text{} & -49 & -6.15 \\ 4 & -48 & -6.36 \\ \text{} & -47 & -6.87 \\ \text{} & -46 & -6.65 \\ \text{} & -45 & -6.99 \\ \text{} & -44 & -7.25 \\ \text{} & -43 & -8.02 \\ \text{} & -42 & -7.22 \\ \text{} & -41 & -6.6 \\ \text{} & -40 & -5.52 \\ \text{} & -39 & -4.69 \\ \text{} & -38 & -3.57 \\ \text{} & -37 & -2.44 \\ 3 & -36 & -0.7 \\ \text{} & -35 & 1.3 \\ \text{} & -34 & 3.37 \\ \text{} & -33 & 4.41 \\ \text{} & -32 & 5.73 \\ \text{} & -31 & 6.55 \\ \text{} & -30 & 6.39 \\ \text{} & -29 & 5.86 \\ \text{} & -28 & 4.39 \\ \text{} & -27 & 3.9 \\ \text{} & -26 & 3.46 \\ \text{} & -25 & 4.92 \\ 2 & -24 & 7.15 \\ \text{} & -23 & 9.34 \\ \text{} & -22 & 12.06 \\ \text{} & -21 & 12.06 \\ \text{} & -20 & 10.79 \\ \text{} & -19 & 10.65 \\ \text{} & -18 & 6.15 \\ \text{} & -17 & -1.91 \\ \text{} & -16 & -7.49 \\ \text{} & -15 & -6.54 \\ \text{} & -14 & -8.89 \\ \text{} & -13 & -7.27 \\ 1 & -12 & -8.63 \\ \text{} & -11 & -10.59 \\ \text{} & -10 & -3.05 \\ \text{} & -9 & 2.12 \\ \text{} & -8 & -0.67 \\ \text{} & -7 & -22.67 \\ \text{} & -6 & 10.9 \\ \text{} & -5 & 12.72 \\ \text{} & -4 & 19.32 \\ \text{} & -3 & 49.8 \\ \text{} & -2 & -82.8 \\ \hline \end{array}$

#### snail feedback (21) :

Luboš, surely, ice age is coming, probably starting next year. BTW, I am cold today! :-) Even that damned Arctic ice is recovering this year...

Alex

Lucia made a graph with those kinds of numbers a year ago or some such. If you put those things into a graph and place on top of it the lines of the IPCC model predictions of the century trends, they will look really silly.

Dear Alexander, you're a nutcase who is moving from one extreme to another, just in order to find *an* extreme.

The next ice age will fully arrive in something like 60,000 years.

Earlier than that, the only thing that will be happening is as boring weather as the mankind was witnessing in the recent centuries and millennia, too.

Of course that the Arctic ice was just oscillating as before, despite predictions of imbeciles on steroids like you who predicted in 2007 that Arctic would surely be ice-free by 2013.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/18/sea-ice-news-volume-4-number-4-the-maslowski-countdown-to-an-ice-free-arctic-begins/

Right, I guess that for these reasons (that the combination would look silly), the most important and natural real-world data are banned in the IPCC reports.

Similar trend and other calculations have been done on this blog many times before, too. In 2013 it's only interesting because the no-warming period is reaching 17 years, another length scale that has been claimed to be "critical" for the verdict.

I just can't seem to find her graphs. But I agree this is the best visual method to really grasp the increasing gap between theory and reality...

Oddly enough during my occasional friendliness with mushrooms I almost invariably underwent a mind-trip about being in a soon-to-occur ice age. Was this a genuine drug-induced prophecy? Or was it because the winter weather was always chilly at the time, or am I just frigid? Only the future will tell.

ouch.

Hi Lubos:

There is something that I don't clearly understand, and it may be related to the process of the linear regression. If you pick some month, say -70 as starting point and look at the change per month, there is more or less some fluctuactions of about 0.5ºC - 1ºC in absolute value, clearly different when compared with the first 70 months, where the change is greater in absolute value. I think (just a visceral thought) that the change (not the average temperature itself, but the fluctuations) should be independent of the stating point (the 70 month shift that I arbitrarly state).

I think that I don't have the concepts clear, and It would be greatly appreciated some clarification.

Thanks for your time and efforts in TRF.

Thanks, Nivalth, but I don't exactly understand what you want to be independent of what and why.

If you're asking why the changes between the adjacent lines in the table grow larger at the end of the table, it's the same reason as I described: they are more dominated by noise. The bottom of the table contains linear regression slopes calculated from shorter periods, fewer months, and the elimination of one month (the first one) makes a bigger impact on the trend than when you switch from a 415- to a 414-month period, for example.

Dear Lubos
A question has been burning my lips since I went first on TRF and that was many years ago.
I would really appreciate if you could give me your light.
This Alexander Ac (if he is a real person) , isn't he just making up moronic statements to make you angry ?
I can't believe that a sentient being belonging to the Homo Sapiens species could write things that this Ac writes.
And what's this name anyway ?
It looks like if his parents wanted to make a bad joke (Sasa Ac ???).

Dear Tom, LOL, thanks for the question. I assure you AA is a real person. I spent 3 hours or or so with him in a train and additional several hours when he was a moderator of a debating pissing contest between me and a 75-year-old Slovak hardcore alarmist Mr Lapin in the Slovak capital. AA was a fair moderator, by the way.

I also assure you that his opinions are genuine. He believes that the world is ending for 1,000 reasons every second, check his blog at ac.blog.sme.sk

He's paid for related work - but unfortunately for him, not just the fearmongering - in Czech Globe, a self-described European Center of Excellence which is more accurately described as a Proof that the European Centrally Organized Science Is In Deep Shit.

I like plots . So working on similar stuff , I diverted time messing with turning your data into numbers and plotting them . Here's the graph with the last 60 months lopped off since the slopes get too erratic to be meaningful .

And , of course 17 years is more meaningful . It's a prime .

Thanks! I should have posted it, too. A simple command in Mathematica...

Your table appears to be compatible with a trend analysis by (as I recall) Monckton on 5 global temperature datasets (are there more?). All five showed a 5 year cooling trend, and four of the five also showed a 10 year cooling trend. The one outlier (one of the 2 satellite datasets) showed a sufficiently small 10 year warming trend that it disappeared when combined with the other satellite dataset.

Santer's new paper -

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/11/28/1210514109.full.pdf

concluded the models failed.

I think I understand now that the trends are period dependent, it is not the same 17 years or 16 years and 8 months as you say in the article, due to the high impact of the first months isn't it?

You must understand what you mean - but I don't quite understand you, sorry.

The distance between the figures on adjacent lines tends to be larger at the end of the table when only a short period is evaluated by linear regression; and the change is of course also greater in the intervals whose initial months (that are being dropped) exhibited a substantial temperature change by themselves. So if you're dropping months sometime in 1997 when the warming trend was high, or months that were warmer than the average, this has a bigger impact on the slope of the linear regression than if you're dropping months that sort of agree with the trend extracted from the following months.

Is that what you meant?

Dear Lubos I am speechless.
As I can not deny the proof of existence of Sasa Ac now, I am compelled to conclude that the law of natural selection doesn t exist anymore.
Do you think that such a species could survive in an environnement where a fully functionning brain was necessary - like for example a mammoth hunt or a visit of a swedish cavallery regiment?

I have just randomly picked ; "Ako som už spomínal v niekoľkých predošlých blogoch, viac krát som očakával prepad (alebo aspoň výrazný pokles) akciových trhov, ako dôsledok nadmerného zadlženia. Zatiaľ k tomu nedošlo"
If his statements about physics are nonsense then his statements about economy are nonsense squared .
And he is apparently surprised that his "prediction" did not realize, my god ...
This is a 20 sigma phenomenon of cosmical proportions - a living proof that Bolzman Brains do exist but are absolutely unable to meaningfully interact with the surrounding Univers - actually worse than a black hole totally scrambling any information but not interacting even by gravity.
Tell me - 3 hours in a train - was there a subject, any subject, that could lead to any sensible information exchange ?

LOL, Tom, we're clearly on the same frequency. I had to laugh while reading the same sentences about economics -and many others - as well.

Natural selection has been non-existent in the humanity at least for 100 years, I guess, so this mega Boltzmann Brain proof is probably not necessary.

By the way, I also think that many rather stupid animal species have survived for tens of millions of years so Alexander wouldn't be the first example of the concept. ;-)

In the train, we had chats about many things. Much of it was crazy but there's some sense in which I not only tolerate conversations with weird people but, in some sense, I must perversely enjoy them. ;-)

Alexander is a sort of modest person in the real contact.

Thanks Lubos.
I realize that this is anecdotical but this is not the first and only point where you appear to be isomorphic to me.
I have always been fascinated by weird people too.
And I also must admit a sort of perverse enjoyment. Of course under the communism there were many weird people - Gottwald and Jakes to name just the first and the last - but there was a large deal of danger in interacting with them and their lackeys. One could speculate that there is a correlation between having lived under communism and being sharply interested by pathological human stupidity.
Not long ago I have been torpedoed by 2 women in Paris who wanted me to sign a petition (and give money) to stop tar sand exploitation in Alberta (Canada). They were partly painted green, wore a Greenpeace sign and had a kind of predatory light in the eyes. An approximative transcription of the dialogue which I only had because I was indeed enjoying experimenting with them.
"You surely know Greenpeace and how we fight to save the future of mankind."
"Well I know Greenpeace more for its brainwashing but please do go on."
"Alberta...pollution...poor indigenous people...speculation...water poisoning....deforestation..."
"Do you know the population density in Alberta ?"
"??"
"About 5 persons/km² and that only because they exploit tar sands because otherwise it's only forest in the middle of nowhere. So there are no poor indigenous people in any significant number."
"But...deforestation...climate....Big Oil ..."
"Miss do you see forest around you ?"
"??"
"You don't and that for a good reason. Our ancestors got rid of it already 1000 years ago because they considered that living on trees and fearing wolves and bears all the time was not a good idea. You can thank them because otherwise at your age you would probably be already dead by illness, wild beasts or famine. And now please explain me why you would want to interdict to people on another continent to do what we have been doing to our benefit since 1000 years ?"
"You must be right wing (for them it was apparently considered as an insult) and understand nothing about our fight. It's people like you who are a danger for the planet etc, etc ..."
"Miss a rule N° 1 when you want money from somebody. You have only 2 ways - either to assault or to be kind. As you are physically unfit for assault, you should try kindness. Have a good day."