Graph Jam
Some of you may be familiar with the site GraphJam. Users contribute graphs (pie charts, line graphs, scatterplots, bar graphs, Venn diagrams, etc.) designed to make a point in a humorous way.
We all know that I love graphs. Here’s a post where readers get to do the actual work! I call on readers to make their own humorous graphs illustrating the foibles of the so-called “skeptics” about global warming. You’ll have to post the graph somewhere else and link to it in comments. Contributions should be the original work of the commenter. I’ll start:

If there’s a good response, then I’ll consider making another post to show off the best creations.

56 responses so far ↓
Dan Satterfield // August 6, 2009 at 9:25 pm |
I like. How about more!
Lockwood // August 6, 2009 at 9:40 pm |
Here’s one I posted about a month ago… I think it confused most of my readers, so I had to clarify it in another rant here.
Lockwood // August 6, 2009 at 10:06 pm |
Sean at Cosmic Varianceposted an appropriate chart earlier today, and I made a minor alteration to it.
Kevin McKinney // August 10, 2009 at 3:41 pm |
Sadly, we may need an “honesty” dimension, too, as there as some lying so-and-soes out there. They are even less worth engaging than the nuts, except that their lies need to be refuted consistently to blunt the infamous Goebbels technique.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)
Lockwood // August 6, 2009 at 10:47 pm |
Okay, here’s one specifically for the occasion. I’ll see if I can come up with others.
Lockwood // August 7, 2009 at 12:37 am |
Aannnd… here’s one more.
jg // August 7, 2009 at 1:16 am |
Here’s a diagram for the Ven catagory: Ven diagram, scientific field of view
jg // August 7, 2009 at 1:30 am |
I erred in my previous post. I’m trying to correct the link: Ven diagram, scientific field of view
[Response: This one is still broken, but I fixed it in your previous comment. You left out the "http://"]
jg // August 7, 2009 at 1:36 am |
Last try. If the link doesn’t work, following the link from my screen name should. Thanks and sorry for thet inconvenience.
Ven Diagram, field of view
thank you,
John G
Craig Allen // August 7, 2009 at 2:03 am |
This one at Grist is tangentially relevant, but sadly spot on for the topic it illustrates.
Curious // August 7, 2009 at 7:02 am |
Latest analysis of sea level data (here or here:
Sea level trends
Barton Paul Levenson // August 7, 2009 at 9:12 am |
jg, it’s “Venn diagram.”
Horatio Algeranon // August 7, 2009 at 1:59 pm |
Denialism Lags Reality
Ray Ladbury // August 7, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
Horatio–like it.
Curuious–Oh, ouch! That’s gotta leave a mark!
Deech56 // August 7, 2009 at 3:46 pm |
Horatio – it’s a sine of the times…
Didactylos // August 7, 2009 at 4:17 pm |
I give you “False Hope: A Denier’s Guide to the 2008 Melt” (with apologies to the NSIDC).
The inset graph and comments are actual claims (paraphrased) made last year by real climate change deniers.
Soon be time for a 2009 version…. already the deniers seem to believe ice extent has bottomed out. Bless their woolly minded little hearts.
P. Lewis // August 7, 2009 at 4:32 pm |
Horatio’s phase relationship is about correct, but I think the amplitudes could do with tweaking.
dhogaza // August 7, 2009 at 4:34 pm |
Didactylos – very good!
dhogaza // August 7, 2009 at 4:36 pm |
If you do a 2009 version, don’t forget Scott Goddard’s “ice has recovered” posts at WUWT back in … April, IIRC.
Hank Roberts // August 7, 2009 at 4:53 pm |
Yeah. Plenty out there to follow up and quote:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/warming-waters-driving-arctic-ice-retreat/#comment-33449
gravityloss // August 7, 2009 at 9:28 pm |
You could do that glacier picture with actual data… or is it already? It should have the not shrinking or growing circle too…
Horatio Algeranon // August 7, 2009 at 11:04 pm |
Sven Diagram
jyyh // August 8, 2009 at 8:54 am |
Re:Curious, would the lowest line there be the “the millimeter scale is wrong, THIS is the real data”?
Curious // August 8, 2009 at 1:00 pm |
Excuse me for insisting so much on sea level trends, but Tim Lambert has very good graphs on this new technique to obtain nonlinear trends. Besides, it is pure science, as you don’t need to use any evil computer model ;-):
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/pielke_srs_new_statistical_tec.php
Horatio Algeranon // August 8, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
With sincerest apologies to NASA GISS, whose lovely graph Horatio has cluttered with unnecessary noise.
Climate Noise
Curious // August 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm |
After reading this (available here), I would empirically derive this general tendency:
http://cambioclimatico.webcindario.com/skeptic.jpg
Curious // August 8, 2009 at 3:18 pm |
Re: jyyh
I’m sorry, English is not my first language and I’m afraid don’t get your point. A copule of quick comments, though:
Regarding the data, the light-blue line is the actual data from satellite altimeter (TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason) as shown in Cazenave and Nerem 2004). The grey line is based on tide gauges from Church and white 2006.
Regarding the scale, the whole graph is from Rahmstorf et al, Science 2007. Thus, if you want to make a point about the scale, I would suggest you to submit a (more detailed) letter to Science, I will read it there inasmuch as I find your point being off topic in this thread.
jyyh // August 8, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
Ah, the standard meter hasn’t been cut shorter? Glad to hear that, though I would be taller if it was.
Horatio Algeranon // August 8, 2009 at 5:26 pm |
Incidentally, Horatio has heard through the intermousetubes that NASA applies a special filter (allegedly named the “Cooler Heads Filter”) to all their data to yield their graph.
Though Horatio has not yet been able to get a copy of the filter code (even Horatio’s mole at NASA has not gained access to it — not yet, but we mice [and moles, voles, shews, etc] have ways of making men talk), through untold hours of supercomputing, Horatio has discovered what he believes to be a good approximation. It reproduces the NASA graph fairly accurately (with just one minor glitch), so Horatio has some confidence he is on the right track.
Horatio will soon be publishing his results in Wine, Cheese & Environment (so stay tuned), but for now, suffice it to say that the filter involves a non-linear (heavily) weighted combination of Wattnoise, Lindzenoise, Mottlynoise and (much) Ballyhoonoise.
Lockwood // August 8, 2009 at 10:41 pm |
This one’s not so GraphJam specific, but amusing nevertheless.
Jim Bouldin // August 8, 2009 at 11:56 pm |
Where’s that one with the thermometer calibrated in denialist quotes Hank?
Hank Roberts // August 9, 2009 at 1:10 am |
You’re thinking of Skeptical Science, I bet. I thought of it too:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Don’t fail to register so you can submit the URLs for newly discovered original material for the database. It’s important these numbers be correct!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/add_article.php
where you’ll see the invitation once logged in:
“… To submit a skeptic webpage, it must:
* Be skeptical about anthropogenic global warming
* Contain some original content. Eg – not just a reposting of another article. However, excerpts from other articles are okay.”
Lockwood // August 9, 2009 at 3:32 am |
One more.
Horatio Algeranon // August 9, 2009 at 7:41 pm |
“Through the Magnifying Glass”
Horatio Algeranon // August 9, 2009 at 7:48 pm |
Try that again
“Through the Magnifying Glass”
dhogaza // August 9, 2009 at 8:50 pm |
Good one, horatio.
CM // August 9, 2009 at 9:14 pm |
Re “thermometer”, there’s this wonderful Toles cartoon — I know I owe the link to Hank, so maybe it’s what Jim was looking for.
Curious // August 10, 2009 at 9:26 am |
The skeptical attribution of 20th Century climate change:
http://cambioclimatico.webcindario.com/Skeptical_Attribution.JPG
Since we can explain 350% of the warming without any GHG at all, there is little little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.
Ray Ladbury // August 10, 2009 at 1:59 pm |
Curious, great. I’ll wait for your climate model that reproduces Earthlike climate with no greenhouse forcing. Of course, you still have to explain why Earth is 33 degrees warmer than it ought to be given its distance from Mr. Sun, but I’m sure that will be trivial . Go ahead. We’ll wait.
[crickets chirping]
dhogaza // August 10, 2009 at 3:07 pm |
Ray, I think “curious”’s graph is meant to ridicule, not boost, skepticism. Check out his earlier graph of skepticism vs. knowledge, and also this thread’s topic (solicitating such graphs).
I think he’s poking fun at the fact that denialists simultaneously claim “it’s the sun!” “it’s UHI and therefore not warming at all!” “it’s ENSO!” … “it’s [anything at all]” …
A mutually contradictory “debunking” of climate science…
Hank Roberts // August 10, 2009 at 3:46 pm |
Don’t fail to look at the rough-draft-sketch postings from Tom Toles.
Here’s one reminiscent of the glacier graph that started this thread, but the circles are anthropomorphized and the subject is economics:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/ssi/images/Toles/s_08102009_520.gif
Ray Ladbury // August 10, 2009 at 4:29 pm |
My bad. I wasn’t sure. I just shows Poe’s law applies to climate denialists as well as fundies.
PeterPan // August 10, 2009 at 7:06 pm |
Thanks, dhogaza :). That was exactly my point, yep, that they hold mutually exclusive explanations (maybe I should have drawn 100% for each cause :-) ). The last statement was intended to show that if you can explain 350 % of the warming, you are not explaining anything at all (I bit twisted, I guess…). I always forget to give a clue, it seems I take the sarcasm for granted, as I even thought that you, Ray, were also following my flow :P A cultural difference, I guess (it’s not the first time it happens to me).
Cheers! :-D
Deep Climate // August 10, 2009 at 9:03 pm |
Curious:
That’s an instant classic!
Here is a bar chart showing the role of “skeptics” in peer-reviewed climate research. For obvious reasons, I had to use a logarithmic scale on the y-axis.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/climate-science-research.gif
dhogaza // August 10, 2009 at 11:10 pm |
The problem is that so many denialists say so many incredibly stupid things, that sometimes it is difficult to understand if a post is sarcastic or just … really dumb! :)
Ray was probably just reading quickly and didn’t understand it was sarcasm, there’s no cultural problem.
I agree with Deep Climate, it’s a great graph.
Deep Climate’s is good, too.
Curious // August 11, 2009 at 7:15 am |
I’m sorry I posted firstly as “Curious” and later as “PeterPan”, I use each nickname depending on the language of the blog and Windows tends to remember my previous nick (and I tend to forget to check the auto-filled fields).
Thanks for your comments, everyone :). I’ll keep on reading!
PS. I liked very much Horatio’s climate noise graph.
PS2. Another one.
Ari Jokimäki // August 12, 2009 at 3:44 pm |
Here’s mine:
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/the-argument/
Deep Climate // August 15, 2009 at 9:12 pm |
Contrarian Publication Record:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/contraian-publication-record.gif
From:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/08/14/dropping-the-p-bomb/
Horatio Algeranon // August 27, 2009 at 4:20 pm |
Horatio believes he has discovered the real reason that global temperature has been rising.
As shown by this graph, it’s not ENSO (as measured by either Southern Oscillation Index or Multivariate Enso Index) that is driving global warming, but instead the “Rapture Index”
When RI was advanced 2 months (by which RI leads global temp) it was found to account for fully 84% of the variance in global temperature (over the years for which Horatio could find data on RI).
Furthermore, no fancy “derivative method” was used here.
Horatio has submitted his findings to E&E ( “Endtimes and Environment”) and has good reason to believe that WUWT might also take a keen interest.
jg // September 13, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
Tamino: I just wanted to say thinks in general and for this topic because it 1) invited anyone (me) to participate, and 2) it got me looking at other contributors’ sites. I have to study your topics, which leaves me little time to follow up on the high quality comments you get. It was a pleasure hit the various websites. And last, thanks for fixing my clumsiness at the beginning. I dug a deeper whole with each correction I tried. I regret creating the clutter on you fine site. (Twice I’ve gone to your donations page and have chickened out where it needs a credit card. I wish I could mail you a check.)
thanks,
John G
t_p_hamilton // September 13, 2009 at 5:03 pm |
tg,
If you are chickening out about a credit card, the “gift cards” commonly given as presents or rebates should work for this purpose.
CM // September 16, 2009 at 8:40 am |
So many wonderful entries here… but I think DenialDepot may just be this year’s winner.
http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2009/09/arctic-sea-ice-staggering-growth.html
Coder24 // October 22, 2009 at 4:21 pm |
Even if I am wrong about the country already having reached this point of no return, where options one and two disappear and only option three remains, I feel that it will reach it very soon. ,
Sekerob // October 24, 2009 at 9:56 am |
Watts Menagerie
Kevin McKinney // November 14, 2009 at 12:27 pm |
Very good, Sekerob!–it’s been ages since I heard anything about this wonderful “recovery” our denialist friends were promising.
Kevin McKinney // November 14, 2009 at 12:29 pm |
OK, this isn’t a graph. But I can’t let the mathematically competent have all the fun, so herewith a contribution to the “graphics jam.”
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Another_Nail_In_The_Coffin_Of_Global_Warming.jpg