Seeing the environmental forest

It's amusing to me whenever a science denier cites the ice cores in Greenland as "proof" that global warming either a) isn't happening or b) isn't a big deal. It's a horrible argument for deniers to make. Here's why. First, we're talking about ice cores taken from one location in Greenland. Not only is it one single location, but it just happens to be Greenland's highest point (10,660 feet/3,249 meters above sea level) and near the center of the continental glacier that covers Greenland. Guess what? It's going to be cold up there, just from the elevation alone, to say nothing of how all that ice affects the local temperature. Location matters. It's amusing that the same deniers who claim urban heat island when trying to explain away any warming trends seem to forget that when faced with factors that would decrease the rate of local temperature change. Second, when we talk about global warming, we mean the entire planet, which is fa...

Okay, I'm back.  Sorry for the lengthy gap between posts but work and losing my laptop intervened.  Now to get back in the saddle. A reader by the pen name of cosmicomic asked several questions on my last post concerning James Taylor's claims about winter-time cooling in the US.  Since NOAA's climate-at-a-glance widget didn't work properly for him, I thought I'd post a video of what one should see as well as expound on the bogus method Taylor used.  Specifically, I'll examine Taylor claim that winters in the US have cooled, with the cooling trend dating back to 1930. First, a very brief tutorial by yours truly on using NOAA's widget and what you should see when you do: Now, Taylor's claim that US winters have cooled since 1930 is already in trouble. The simple linear regression model done by the widget shows that US winters have warmed by an average of +0.18ºF/decade since 1930. ARMA time series regression shows that the warming trend since 193...