Wednesday, July 14, 2010

A simple puzzler

OK bunnies, what's Monckton class about this graph from Cryosphere Today


9 comments:

carrot eater said...

I don't know, but I also don't know how you can have a negative area.

I don't like graphs where the axes go someplace impossible. In this case, I don't even understand why it happened. It's not as if that's what the program automatically did to center the data on the chart.

EliRabett said...

Toldja it was simple:) Eli has been looking at this damn thing for years and today it struck him.

carrot eater said...

That's all it was? Well, I still ponder: what on earth software comes up with that as default axes?

Gareth said...

Monckton has now posted at WUWT asking for people to flood Abraham's university with calls for disciplinary action. As a consequence, I have posted this:

We the undersigned offer unreserved support for John Abraham and St. Thomas University in the matter of complaints made to them by Christopher Monckton. Professor Abraham provided an important public service by showing in detail Monckton’s misrepresentation of the science of climate, and we applaud him for that effort, and St. Thomas University for making his presentation available to the world.

If you support Abraham, please visit Hot Topic and leave a comment in support.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/support-john-abraham/

EliRabett said...

Hey, there's a whole thread at RC full of complaints that their posts are not simple enough. As to Carrot Eater's question about what kind of dumb software does this sort of stuff, the kind students use on their lab reports.

(If you look at it the ordinate has 20 units exactly. The software probably forces it to some multiple of ten)

Anonymous said...

I expect it is a work in progress. The lower section is probably meant to contain the anomaly, cf
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png

Richard C

Anonymous said...

Something on the line that current year's ice cover last week is similar/higher to the average of the last X years. The eternal weather versus climate issue.

MickeyMinnieMouseJon

EliRabett said...

Richard C is correct, they butchered the update. Since this is linked they right one will show up today and Eli will paste the old one in.

Anonymous said...

Not-munchkin class, but confusingly dual purpose. Richard C has it - The +3 to -3 zone is used for producing the anomaly graphs. You can see it on the global graph lower on the page, where total extent and anomaly appear on the same chart.

In September 2007, by CT's calculations, sea ice extent dropped below 3 million sq kms. The "tale of the tape" graph charts anomalies over 30 years, but if you look at September 2007, a little bit of red intrudes at the top of the chart - this is the actual extent measurement dipping into the area reserved for the anomaly.

Duckseason