Is this “national debate”?
There’s been a big “todo” over a tweet made by Trade Minister Craig Emerson saying that Andrew Bolt was wrong to claim the world hadn’t warmed for 16 years. (Which means Emerson disagrees with the UK Met boys, the latest IPCC draft report and all the major data.) Werner Brozek at WUWT went through the largest global temperature data sets:
For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
For UAH, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hacrut3, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hacrut4, the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
For GISS, the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
So Bolt was correct.
Was Emerson in denial, or is there something else going on?
In Tuesday night’s show on 2GB, Trade Minister Craig Emerson rang in to defend himself and talk with Andrew Bolt, which is admirable, but in a blink it became an exercise in extreme frustration. It was painful.
The point of the discussion was supposed to be whether or not there was a pause of “16 years” of no significant warming. Emerson’s reply was that since this decade was warmer than the last (according to the same UK Met Boys), he was right and Bolt was wrong. This is a bit like saying 20 years equals 16 years. It’s innumerate: 20 ≠ 16. The numbers matter. In a simple test of “statistical significance”, making the test period longer and sweeping in more data changes everything (more data makes any trend “more significant”).
Emerson appeared to be in complete denial of the data, and the usual experts. Emerson went on to argue that it was “warming” for 20 years, then 50 years, even 250 years, taking an inanity to it’s logical extreme. But warming that didn’t happen after 1997, won’t be “found” in 1982 or 1896 either. Nothing in an earlier year would change anything about the statistical significance of the pause for the last 16 years.
Emerson doesn’t seem to realize that the world could be “technically” warming in the last 16 years, but the measured change could be so small as to be insignificant. If the rise is too tiny, it could be mere chance in a noisy dataset, and no half-decent scientist would claim that the world was warming knowing that it was statistically insignificant.
Bolt fruitlessly kept trying to get Emerson to admit that there was no significant warming for 16 years. He might as well been talking in Urdu. Indeed perhaps they were talking in different languages. With Bolt talking the language of statistics, while Emerson used unscientific English and stuck to the warmist script.
Emerson has an economics background, to PhD level. Is it possible that he didn’t realize the difference between warming and “significant warming”? Don’t they teach statistics in economics?
This tiny warming trend could be meaningless noise. It’s not statistically significant, so it’s accurate to say warming has paused. Graph: David Evans | Source: Hadley UK Met Office.
Warning: more nonsense coming
Listeners ended up the twilight zone… Emerson saying the Met office predicts warming too. Does he realize that (a) the Met office have been predicting future warming every year for the last 16 years (and look how well that worked out for them), and (b) even if they are right and it warms to freakishly hot conditions in a monster El Nino in, say, 2014, unless some kind of time-bending wormhole is fritzing current physics, there is no way that can affect the trend as measured between 1997 to 2012? Do I need to explain why?
I guess it’s OK. He’s only the Trade Minister.
O.
Without dates and details all talk of trends is pointless
Emerson’s argument was practically innumerate, turning this into gibberish. If I ignore the numbers and dates I can say “it’s warming” and “it’s cooling” and I’m right both times! (It’s warmed since 1680, and cooled since 5000 BC).
In the end, Emerson rather desperately seemed to be trying to show that Bolt was wrong to be a skeptic, but that’s very different from the small, exact question of warming or not in the last 16 years. Bolt was trying to keep the radio moment to one single defined point, and it seems his big mistake was in assuming that Emerson understood concepts like “statistical significance” and could rationally think about one point at a time.
Am I being too harsh? What’s the alternative? That Emerson knew exactly what he was doing and hoped he could get away with confusing the audience by pretending to answer the question by using the right keywords for the wrong reasons?
And the Labor Party calls us the deniers.
Is this what a national climate debate is? (Is a doctorate in economics worth anything anymore?)
Emerson could have ended this long ago, if he just tweeted: ‘Apologies. Bolt was right about “16” years. Technically, it’s warmed, but not enough to be statistically significant.’ How hard is that?
If you feel masochistic the interview can be heard here. Emerson appears about half way through the program.
A big H/t to Matt J inPerth. Thanks!
Agony. Mine from listening, theirs from trying so very hard to twist and spin.
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And lie!
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As I pointed out the othe day, picking different dates for different data sets – 23 years for one, 19 years for another – to try to prove there has been no statistically significan warming for 17 years is simply fiddling the figures. Even worse, the figures fiddled are wrong. NASA’s GISS shows warming of 0.2something over the time frame quoted, not the 0.12 +/- 0.12 or whatever is claimed. Apologies for being imprecise, I’m on the phone so referencing isn’t easy. However, if you want to check the raw data it is freely available. So I’m calling a monster fail on this ongoing bit of trickery.
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Ricki
Can’t Really Accept that Proposition.
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I have posted this on three threads because I am that flabbergasted by it. I received the following email at my work email account today from Greg Combet and I have kept the same bolding and links as per the original email …
There is so much wrong with this, I hardly know where to begin, but I am sure you will provide some good suggestions …
Truthseeker. Obviously I have to post on this. Everyone got those. I’ll move your comment to that thread asap! – Jo
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Is it verified?
06
Other people have got it.
Combet is beneath contempt.
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All the proof I need
Waldorf: You know, the opening is catchy.
Statler: So is smallpox.
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How about other people
got it.
How jolly you are today.
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I rang Greg Combet’s office and they confirmed that it was legitimate. Asking a sceptic for $10, that’s desperate.
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that sounds more like proof, although now we need to verify turtle.
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GA,
I have seen turtles therefore i know they exist.
I never got one of these i suspect it was caught in the defence spam filter.
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Just ring G. Combe’s office!
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After you’re satisfied it is proven, are you going to ask how the e-mail addresses were obtained?
I didn’t get one yet.
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as far as I remember Mark D, you are not a constituent.
I’d like a bit more elaboration on this. If the email addresses were collected as part of the ministry’s ongoing processes and correspondence then I there is a problem with them being appropriated for personal political gain.
If they were obtained by Combet’s political office then, like it or not, this is allowed (but still rude). The office should keep email details of matters addressed to the minister separate to those addressed to Combet the MHR.
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GA,
I was thinking the same thing but then again even the best internet scams operate without borders.
It would be very easy for Combet to get my email address in fact he could get his hands on thousands (probably near on 100K) of them very easily but no one here that i have spoken got one.
Interesting how he is only trying to defraud the general public.
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Gee, No I am not a constituent of his but how would one know that from an e-mail address alone? Someone would have to know more (like you do) to filter such a list.
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It depends on the list MD. They might collect names that are deemed likely to be from Australians in some way. I say “deemed likely” rather than “verified” as I’d agree with Craker’s assessment that they would not be able to be confident about the sender’s identity.
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I received the identical email.
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This stuff is just amazing; going on and on about irrelevant trivia.
The background is this:
The world temperature anomaly variation are well documented over the last half a million years and in the last 4 previous ice age recoveries the temperature has been higher than the present.
In all 5 cases temperature anomalies seem to have risen by almost 3 C deg.
The graph above shows a range of 0.4 C deg.
In this, the fifth ice age recovery, the next logical step if we extrapolate the trend is that we will enter a very dramatic cooling period again which will last 80,000 years or more and no amount of carbon dioxide can save us from that inevitability.
Craig Emerson is talking about a time period of 16 or 20 years; in scientific terms that is the definition of insanity.
But well all know that anyhow.
KK 🙂
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KK – Craig “Whyalla” Emmerson is the definition of insanity. That cooling period of 80,000 years is a real bugger – imagine what it will do to the price of firewood.
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Hi David,
I didn’t think of firewood.
The price of real estate in the tropics is going to boom.
As I’ve mentioned before over and over: New York was covered during the last Ice Age by an ice sheet almost a mile thick!
They are just surviving there now in Winter but come the big freeze everyone takes off for Florida and Mexico.
KK 🙂
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Degrees are pretty much meaningless once one is committed to politics, particularly the Labor/Green brand, where one must speak the mantra of the hive mind without question. I doubt it is the fault of Emerson’s lecturers and supervisors so much as it is the fault of his life choices to become an advocate and politican, rather than a seeker of the truth.
Labor politicans, in particular, are required to spruik certain key phrases regardless of the reality, as we saw when you showed the leaked Cabinet brief some months back. One phras I particularly hate is “carbon pollution” … it is not so much that it is scientifically inaccurate, so much as the fact that it is grossly condescending to anyone with even an average IQ.
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Yes, Bulldust, but traditionally politicians misled with spun, deflected questions or just ignored them. Now, Labor people are outright lying, and when caught they simply refuse to admit they are caught.
Case in point – Thompson – three means of identifications at the brothel – but “it wasn’t me”.
Or, Swan with his electoral flyer saying they delivered a surplus. Never admitted that the most plainly unambiguous English sentence was factually false.
Emerson as above.
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki simply deleted his tweet and it ‘never happened’. (Sad for his career that he jumped onto the climate Titanic at the last moment).
How is it that this happening?
I think the left has adopted the position of “Never ever ever admit you are wrong or apologise” which works because we are now so tribal. You see, if they admit they are wrong – everyone has to accept it – and it shakes the faith of even their tribal followers. If they refuse to admit fault, no matter how unlikely or absurd, their believers can hang onto the twig of doubt and continue to believe in them – by simply exercising Orwellian double think – this is normally false, but because it was said by my leader in whom I have faith or who looks after my interests, no matter how unlikely, maybe it’s true in this case or at least I can simply repeat it. It avoids cognitive dissonance.
So ’16 = 20′ could be true, just in that circumstance, which is a lot easier to do, than throwing out your whole ideological framework.
The fault here is the interviewers and journalists for not punishing bold faced lying and rewarding truth. They must pursue lies and literally laugh at someone telling a bold faced lie – either during the interview or after fact checking at the next interview. Every Swan interview should now start with “So, about that pamphlet…” until he tells the truth.
PS:
The conservatives refuse / haven’t caught up with this strategy and consequently suffer. For example, I suspect Alan Jones should not have apologized for the ‘died of shame’ remark (it was faux outrage anyway) – most of his followers, me included, could have said – yes, it’s just a figure of speech, obviously he didn’t mean it literally, get over it. Those that hate him would just continue to hate him anyway. However, he apologized, got absolutely no credit for it from the left – it justified even more loathing and attacks, and his supporters had nothing to defend him with. So, while we should not lie, of course, maybe we should be more assertive and less willing to eat humble pie in this political climate.
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On the other hand, it is distinctly possible that Alan R M Jones was spot on!
We’ll never know for sure.
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Well there’s technical qualifications and then there’s personal integrity.
Never forget “Jensen’s Flat Earth Four.”
I treat their pejorative title as an ironic badge of merit, not as a put-down. Dennis Jensen was one of the few parliamentarians with a science degree, the only with a PhD, and he was later gagged from speaking against the carbon tax in 2011 probably due to the rebellious report he co-authored for the Senate in 2007.
Just a few pages on the Internet that have not forgotten this event…
• Jennifer Maharosy – Parliaments Review the Evidence on Global Warming: A Note from Bob Carter
• Citizens Electoral Council – Parliamentary report devastates ‘Global Warming’ scam
• SMH – Global warming theories leave dissident MPs cold
• Greenpeace – Climate sceptics leave the Parliament
and of course
• Jo Nova – Labor censors Dr Dennis Jensen — denies peer reviewed science. (*hooray*)
When things looked bleak, a principled few made a stand.
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It’s simple. If there’s been no statistically demonstrable warming, there’s been no warming. Period.
Emerson wouldn’t be the first PhD to make a public fool of himself.
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Precisely.
“Technically, it’s warmed, but not enough to be statistically significant.”
In other words hasn’t warmed. The slope may be greater than zero (a regression line will almost always have a slope not equal to zero) but if we calculate the 95% confidence limits on the slope we find that they include zero i.e. we have no confidence that the slope is real and not just “noise”.
Of course one can argue that this is a type 2 error in statistics i.e. we accept the null hypothesis (no warming) when it is actually false. A type 1 error would be rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true 5% by chance alone). One must remember statsitics are only tools to make decisions.
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Yes. But twice!!!
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He has already done that with his Garrettesque, Whyalla impersonation.
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Yes … but for a considerable proportion of the population, that always works. And they vote, too
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Most of our local (Australian) defenders of CAGW on air or TV use the brief argument, paraphrased as, “The climate has warmed over the last century and the last decade has been the hottest on record,” implying we are to blame, ignoring the historical evidence of climate cycling, warming and cooling with periods of decades, centuries and millenniums. When there has been a period of warming, one would expect an interval of several years, or a decade or so, with little or no change and then gradual cooling. That carbon dioxide increase may have some effect is not disputed, but is small compared to natural climate change.
Scientific measurements have given us the numbers to play with, but the historic record has made fools of many people.
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Can you say there has been statistically significant warming in the surface air temperature series in the past 16 years? No.
Can you say there has been statistically significant pause in the surface air temperature series in the past 16 years? No.
Not too difficult is it?
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Apologies for the snark, it is unbecoming but I’m hungry and don’t want to cook 🙁
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Thats not how statistics work. One has a NULL hypothesis H0 in which we say there has been no significant warming. Then we try to disprove this with an (there could be more than one) alternative hypothesis H1 which could be there has been warming.
We then collect the data do the stats tests.
If we can reject the NULL hypothesis we can say that there has been significant warming. If we cannot reject the NULL hypothesis then this does NOT prove that there has been no warming. All we can say is that we cannot demonstrate there has been any warming.
We are not in the business of proving negatives. The onus is on the warmists to reject the null hypothesis with unadulterated data.
This is the way stats and science work.
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A more sensible H0 would be that the trend hasn’t changed.
Anyways, that sort of boolean hypothesis testing is outmoded and poor statistical practice.
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A more sensible Ho and we wouldn’t have many of the policies that we do now!
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Sexism is uncool
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Warming is uncool.
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Which trend?
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I think what Tristan should could have said if he had framed his arguement better is that the data does is not sufficiently robust to allow a conclusion that excludes warming as a possibility. NOT rejecting a null hypothesis is not the same as saying alternative hypotheses are wrong (as you seem to be implying). If data is poor then a type II error can occur.
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Actually, I meant what I said 🙂
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maybe, but if you’d done it my way you might have avoided that particular response. Not saying you would not have got a response though!
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Understatement.
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Tristin said:
Fine.
Yes we can. A “pause” refers not only to a certain time but also to a time preceding it. Unless the warmists want to relinquish the significant warming prior to the last sixteen years, they are logically compelled to agree that the current 16-year ‘warming’, that is insignificantly different to zero warming, is significantly different to what preceded it. It is also significantly different to what the models predicted.
It is for some and it is for you.
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Has there been statistically significant change in the amount of sea ice cover in the past 34 years? Just a bit. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/14/1594211/death-spiral-bombshell-cryosat-2-confirms-arctic-sea-ice-volume-has-collapsed/
To save you sullying your computer by linking to news web site, I’ll summarise. Winter Arctic sea ice volume in the past couple of years is not much greater than summer ice volume was 30 years ago. Summer minimums are 80% lower than they were when Queen and the Police were the biggest bands in the world.
Is this likely to have an impact on global temperatures?
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Well, the previous Disappearing-Arctic-Ice panic occurred as Volare slugged it out with the Kingston Trio for Top of the Pops. (Don’t know if it was worse than the scare of the early 1920s.) Anyway, after the temperature plunge of the 1960s had brewed up far too much Arctic ice for people’s comfort…Dancing Queen!
But there I go rambling on about the past. Tell me more about present Antarctic Ice…Whoops!
I was supposed to say Arctic, wasn’t I? Never mind. Just contact Skeptical Science. They can find the warming in every cooling.
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Robert, I appreciate the humour.
Raw data for the Arctic from those commies in Norway:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
WUWT’s sea ice page:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
See a trend downwards?
Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain. The same ratio as record high temperatures to record low temperatures.
If you want to argue that the Antarctic is gaining ice on land, well that’s a different kettle of calamari. Antarctica is a desert: the air is too cold to hold much moisture, so there isn’t much precipitation. If the air warms up, it can hold more water, and that means more snow…
Doh! Facts can be terrible things.
To repeat: is a shrinking ice cap likely to have any impact on temperature? To put it another way, des your margarita warm up as the crushed ice melts, or after?
01
A shrinking ice cap is always an alarming thing for those given to alarms. 1922 and 1958 come to mind. Me, I be cool. I remember when the ice went the other way after the 50s, and this is better. It too shall pass, of course.
Now, when you are filthy rich from selling oil like those Norwegians you can afford to be commie. Look at all the crappy leftist nonsense Australians can afford by selling mountains of coal. Need more crappy leftist nonsense masquerading as conservation? Dig some more coal.
Now, I’m not against selling coal, by the way. I rather object to burning it domestically in clunkers that waste about 30% over a nice new unit. And when that Arctic Ice does its increase thing – it’s up and down like a yoyo – and CAGW takes its place beside Tulipomania and witch-burnin’, I’d like to be left with a little something that’s new and that works.
Meanwhile, you and Phil will always have Cancun.
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Robert, I’ll give you +1 for being funny but I’d have to consider docking you several points for being an Egyptian crocodile – in de Nile.
What sort of fact would convince you that Arctic ice is melting at a rate which is being affected by human-induced climate change? What’s your red line? Make it a forecast and we can bet on it.
Come on, I know you’re following this thread and my comments. You’ve bounced back to me twice in the past three hours.
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Ricardo, of course I’m following this thread, you cunning sleuth. Hence my posts!
Now, as far as your red line and your bet, I am sane. I do not know what the Arctic Ice will be like at any future point. Further, I know that nobody else knows. (Models confirm etc, but they do anything under torture.)
Nobody knows about future climate. At various times in the Holocene it’s been warmer than now and colder than now. Climate being fantastically complex and fluid, it is only possible to know little bits. I’m perfectly aware of Arctic ice alarms of various sorts since the 19th century. I wouldn’t dream of contributing to the current one. If you want more warming up there, and more melt, you may get it. Congrats, if it matters to you.
As a conservationist, I’m concerned particulate pollution could have cooling effects on atmosphere, and melting effects on ice – and bad effects on most things. As a needy human I know that a Mount Laki combined with a solar minimum would quickly put other concerns “in the shade”, if you’ll forgive the pun. This is why I am staunchly pro-development. Why am I excited by hydro on the Congo? A billion people burning twigs and dung don’t show up in carbon fiddles because there’s no way of sending them a tax bill. But they’re “consumers”, don’t worry about that.
I prefer a billion more people with widescreens and shopping malls and obesity problems – who don’t scavenge for dung and twigs and suffer quaintly. Thanks very much. As for population, if you haven’t noticed that prosperous middle class societies don’t breed enough, you need to give that some thought. Fall out of love with death.
To this conservationist, talk nukes, talk efficient NEW coal facilities, talk hydro, talk reforestration (especially moso bamboo). Talk lovely money, well spent.
And as for the UN, GIM, and Goldman Sachs…they can have my steam on a cold morning.
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Yo Robert. Don’t worry about the 11-year solar cycle, it’s small beer compared to the Milankovitch cycles.
Population stabilisation: critical. Europe would be losing people without migration. Ditto Singapore, Japan. The US and Australia are borderline.
Rich people don’t have many babies: is that your point? Agreed. I spent a decade working on health and education in the third world but I would be denigrated as a ‘one world socialist’ for letting slip that I used to be employed by a development organisation that got money from the UN. Oh bugger.
No idea who or what GIM is but I would wipe my backside on Goldman Sachs’ annual reports if they weren’t printed on such slick paper.
Particulate pollution – yeah well, I’m not sure if that’s a + or – in the temperature equation, but it certainly isn’t a + for health. Creates clouds, deflects heat – dunno. Turns snow black, absorbs heat – definitely. It’s complimicated, as George Bush would say. Gets in lungs, causes tens of thousands of premature deaths a year – for sure. I don’t know whether coal or fracked gas is worse: depends on a whole bunch of x factors.
Nuclear: get back to me when thorium reactors actually work. So far, the nuclear industry has only managed to shut down eight reactors safely, which is roughly the same number that have blown up. And that’s not even considering the possibility that someone might actually want to do something naughty with the leftovers. I don’t remember any terrorist state every threatening to conduct a solar weapon test…
Just because people in the Congo don’t have 24/7 electricity doesn’t mean they need coal or nuclear power. That hasn’t exactly done the trick in India, where brown-outs are as common as chapatis. The DRC doesn’t need a national network of copper cable if they’ve got mobile phone towers and microwave relays. Solar panels and gas back-up might do the job. Or hydro.
Bamboo: bloody marvellous stuff.
So we can agreee on a lot. However, 80% of summer Arctic sea ice has vanished in 34 years. That’s dramatic. It could screw with all sorts of global climate systems. Bit late now.
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One thing funnier than watching these two “debate” is someone reading and commenting on an opinion piece about their “debate”.
I failed to find an analogy but when trying for some reason I thought it would be like watching Waldorf and Statler debate the topic. This lead me to realise that I’ve become Waldorf and Statler; I turn up no matter how bad it gets. And I am funny too.
Statler: “You think this constitutes cruelty to animals?”
Waldorf: “Not unless you’re watching it”
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Clarke: This is like a really bad episode of Clarke and Dawe.
Dawe: Well it’s not quite -that- bad
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I have a suggestion.
Produce exactly the same graph as is being discussed but make a couple of changes to it.
Shift the time scale so that 1997 becomes 2007.
Change the vertical axis so that it appears to be measuring something like:
“Public Dissatisfaction with Federal Government Policy on XYZ”
Then show it to Emerson and see whether he claims that the graph is still rising or whether he suddenly sees a plateau.
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What “not significant” for 17 to 23 years (depending on data set) actually means is that until you have that much data you cannot with 95% certainty separate between an ongoing trend and no warming. With shorter time series (given observed year-to-year variations) either is possible, neither is supported.
That doesn’t mean you can statistically claim “it’s warming” for the last 16 years based _only_ on that data. It also doesn’t mean you can claim “it’s not warming” based _only_ on that data, as there is just not enough data in that short time span to separate those claims. The only thing you can confidently state is “not enough data over that short interval” – which is why climate trends are discussed on the basis of 25-30 year periods, when you have enough data to make a determination.
* Over no period spanning from anywhere in the instrumental record and ending in the present is warming statistically excluded.
* Over no period spanning from anywhere in the instrumental record and ending in the present is the the null hypothesis of no warming statistically supported.
* And over any period spanning from anywhere in the instrumental record and ending in the present with enough data to separate the two – it is warming.
That means there is no statistical support whatsoever for “warming has stopped”, it’s simply not a valid claim.
—
“…does Emerson not know statistics?” – Anyone claiming “no warming” should face the same question. Because they clearly do not.
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KR saves me some typing, thanks KR!
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This comes down to the question of semantics.
I could just decide to look at the raw data and subtract the temperature in 1997 from the temperature today. That would be a definition of how much warming or otherwise there has been between then and now. It is negative.
If I want to move from raw data to trends then I need to define what my trend parameter is. If I select 10 or 15 years then once again I can claim no warming to 95% confidence. That is good enough for me and the point is quite well understood except in cases like this where someone like Emerson desperately needs and escape and wants to quibble.
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Keith L
To claim “no warming to 95% confidence” requires two things – first, that warming along previous trends is excluded (it is not excluded).
Second, and more precisely, that you test for “no warming”. That means you need a stated null hypothesis to contrast to your hypothesis of “no warming”, then you need to show statistically that the data supports your hypothesis while excludes the null hypothesis at 95% certainty. That’s a different test – and it fails for all data sets ending in the present with a null hypothesis of the long term (~30 year) trend.
—
The claim “no warming to 95% confidence” is simply false. And demonstrates a lack of statistical knowledge.
Not semantics – numbers. And actually looking at the numbers shows that your claim is not supportable.
—
Claims made from single data points (1997/now) are truly absurd. It was 0C over the weekend here, 10C today (in February, Northern Hemisphere). Can I conclude that summer is suddenly here? Last week it was also 10C; looking at 10C and 0C, can I conclude that we’re heading to absolute zero?
No. And the same holds for “…subtract the temperature in 1997 from the temperature today…“. That’s not even wrong.
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KR It all depends what you are talking about.
I stated correctly that if you want to just look at raw data rather then artificial statistical constructs called ‘trends’ then you could define the warming as being the difference betwen then and now.
I never claimed that that definition would have any useful relevance for the real world but it is quite a valid definition.
eg, If you were walking for days up and down over mountains you might ask yourself at some point “how much altitude have we gained since we started?” and the answer could well be ZERO.
The answer would change as you climb up the next hill but it is a perfectly valid question if you just want to talk about data points.
If you are trying to determine the operations of mechanisms governing warming of the planet then you have to be a bit more careful about what trends you rely upon. You are still entitled to choose whatever time parameter you like but it does not necessarily shed any light on the underlying mechanism of change.
This now depends upon what model you are talking about. You seem to be trying to separate ‘warming trends’ from background noise. Well that is a rather arbitrary separation. If you had a perfect model it would include all effects and replicate exactly what was measured, ‘noise’ and all.
So once again it really depends upon what arbitrary trend number you choose and what you define as noise.
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“Claims made from single data points (1997/now) are truly absurd”
What claims? Hmm?
Your problem seems to be that you have an irresistible urge to extrapolate for no reason.
I am making no claim about the future, I am simply stating a fact about the raw data – how you choose to misinterpret this is entirely up to you.
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Keith L – You stated: “I could just decide to look at the raw data and subtract the temperature in 1997 from the temperature today.”
I see no way to interpret that statement other than the cherrying-picking of single points. Which is neither statistically sound nor supportable, any more than estimating temperatures the rest of the winter by looking at two individual days in February.
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KR, The data starts a long time ago in CET which is backed up by proxies, we got bloody cold back then and a lot of people died. The warming since then has been a gentle upward slope, sadly we are not quite back up to speed as far as past temperatures are concerned. Thus if we are not yet as hot as we used to be, what is the problem?
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I choose the period from 1150 AD to present. Gosh, it’s warming….
00
That itsy-bitsy , teensy-weensy instrumental record..
Go jump in the Lake, moron !!!
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KR,
Just so i am clear what you are saying is that over the bare minimum period of time or longer the data supports warming, the only way non warming can be supported is if we look at data that is less than the bare minimum is this correct?
What is the bare minimum time, 25 or 30 years? We currently have 17 to 23 years of non warming depending on the source so my question is do we continue on our current course of taxation and legislation for the full 25/30 years and then stop and re asssess the data and if we find there has still been no warming we then wind back the legislation in a vain attempt to undo the damage or do we take a pragmatic approach and say if there has been non warming for 17 years minimum lets just watch this space for a while, lets not press ahead with more damaging legislation until we know for certain that there is actually a need for it.
Would you agree with the statements above?
142
Crakar24 – “We currently have 17 to 23 years of non warming depending on the source …”
The point is that your statement is simply wrong, an incorrect statement. We currently have 17 to 23 years (depending on the data set) where there is insufficient data.
That means claims of “non warming” are not statistically supportable.
314
KR,
My comment has been edited to your satisfaction
Q1,
Just so i am clear what you are saying is that over the bare minimum period of time or longer the data supports warming, the only way non warming can be supported is if we look at data that is less than the bare minimum is this correct?
Q2,
What in your opinion is the bare minimum length of time in years for us to make a determination as to teh global trend in temperature?
If you could answer these questions then i will re word the remaining of my original comment in a manner to your liking.
61
There’s no ‘bare minimum’.
30 years is the convention IIRC.
No one looking for rates of change in the surface temp record would do so without controlling for ENSO, volcanism, solar etc.
210
so 30 years is the bare minimum
41
Hi Tristan
“would do so without controlling for ENSO, volcanism, solar etc.”
I know exactly what you mean.
Spooky.
Controlling the “results” by using the highly unknown and poorly quantified effects of those other inputs that have been so easily dismissed by the Warmer crowd.
For those things the two big issues are periodicity and temperature effect.
None are well documented or reliable enough to use in “controlling” the Surface Temperature Anomaly.
KK
81
Crackar
When you are dealing with an effect which has periodicity of about 110,000 years yes that’s one
hundred and ten thousand years; the idea of 30 years being in any way significant is :you pick a word
or phrase:
– a joke
– stupid
– aimed to mislead
– doubly stupid
or all of the above.
They would have us believe that a snapshot of variability in the warm phase of the cycle is full of meaning and that an analysis of 0.03% of the data range is relevant?
Warmers?
KK
60
have a look at the periodicity here:
Over 110,000 years for the last few cycles.
We are at the left of the graph.
The strong indications are that it gets very cold (drop 8 C deg) very quickly and that the present warm period of 8,000 years is pushing things a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
KK
70
Crakar24
What I am saying, based on the numbers, is that there is _no_ period ending in the present wherein “no warming” is statistically supported. None. Claims otherwise are demonstrably false.
If you look at too short a time period, you don’t have enough information to distinguish between an ongoing ~0.17C/decade trend and zero – that does not mean you can claim one or the other, just that you cannot make the determination to that level of confidence. One or the other may be more likely with insufficient data, but you cannot make a statistical claim of confidence.
The minimum time depends on the data, and as Werner Brozek has correct stated, ranges from 17-23 years for five major data sets. That’s given the data, the observed ARIMA(1,1) noise (noise simply defined as not-signal, the short term variations rather then long term trend), etc. 30 years is a conservative estimate, and quite supportable (see here). 25 is likely sufficient, but it depends on the data present.
Short term claims, too short to separate trends from variation, are just noise, and they are not supportable.
—
As a side note, we can look at data in addition to the atmospheric temperature anomaly – such as sea level rise, ocean temperature change, or cryosphere changes – all of them indicate warming over the long term, with the second and third showing warming with statistical significance over the last 15 years.
013
KR,
I will now assume that you answered yes to Q1 and you answered 25years to Q2.
Thankyou for being so open, honest and frank in your response.
40
Well since you are the stickler please define what you mean by
“noise simply defined as not-signal, the short term variations rather then long term trend”
What is long? short? How are those numbers determined?
Are you going to tell us that noise is caused by non-physical effects? Random magic?
Of course not. All you are doing is trying to determine in a rather vague way what you want to include in your model and what not to.
71
Kevin C to the rescue!
26
KR,
By the way i forgot to mention
No they dont, sea level rise indicates……sea level rise etc, etc, etc next thing you know you will be using GPS data to calculate wind shear to calculate temperature change rather than a thermometer, ooops you alraedy tried that.
If you want a honest and open debate about this then i suggest you start behaving like you want one, anser simple questions with simple answers not mumbo jumbo in a vain attempt to bullshit your way out.
The bullshit baffles brains approach might work with your close friends but not here.
102
KR:
Translation: “The measured surface temperatures are causing me discomfort because the expected warming trend isn’t clearly identified. Therefore I shall hide the expected heat in places that are too difficult for a skeptic (or anyone) to prove there isn’t global warming.”
Is that about right KR?
61
Crakar24
WRT sea level rise: acceleration, while over the longer term indicates warming, requires a long time period to see in that data. See Church and White 2006 – for an acceleration in sea level rise to indicate statistical significance (to distinguish between acceleration or no acceleration, the second derivative) requires ~100 years of data. The rate of acceleration is small, and requires a fair bit of data to separate from variations.
This, by the way, is from direct measurements – tide gauges and satellite altimeters.
I’ll make it as simple as I can – not simpler. If you ignore important parts of the question, you will get wrong answers. While those may be emotionally satisfying, they would still be incorrect.
—
Keith L
In signal analysis, “signal” is what you are looking for, “noise” is not. In this case the signal is a long term trend (which could be zero, positive or negative), while the noise is short term non-trending variations (ENSO, for example). And to determine whether your short term slope is the result of signal or noise requires sufficient data that the slope observed has less than a 1/20 chance of having occurred due to the short term variations and your null hypothesis slope.
The amount of data required depends on the short term variations and the size of the slope. A slower, more subtle trend would require more data, more time, to find against variation than a steep one.
Otherwise you could falsely conclude that your hypothesised slope is supported. Which, as with these 10-15 year estimates of atmospheric temperature anomaly, would be unsupported by the data.
14
Mark D. – “Is that about right KR?”
No.
02
KR,
We are talking about temp trends from the thermometer/Sat records so we should stick to that, if you feel the need to draw upon other data sets (sea level etc) then it suggests to the reader that the evidence to support a warming trend in the thermometer/sat data record is not there, ie bullshit baffles brains.
For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years.
For UAH, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hacrut3, the warming is not significant for over 19 years.
For Hacrut4, the warming is not significant for over 18 years.
For GISS, the warming is not significant for over 17 years.
So lets get back on topic, you claim 25 years is the bare minimum time to see a trend and as we only have 23 years of RSS data that shows no trend you then believe we should continue for another two years on the presumption that AGW will cause the temps to rise, we could have another look in 6 or 7 years depending on the source you prefer.
My next question is this, IF in two years time RSS show that for the past 25 years there has been no significant warming would you then concede the theory of AGW to be falsified?
31
Crakar24 – “…as we only have 23 years of RSS data that shows no trend…”
That is a misstatement. Going back 23 years for RSS, there is a 0.126 ±0.135 °C/decade trend – positive, but not enough data to rule out short term variations. Not “no trend”, but rather a trend without enough data to separate expected warming from the null hypothesis.
If in two years RSS data for the past 25 years (which would be 1990-2005 at that point) has a trend range where the 2σ trend range excludes the longer term trend of ~0.13 °C/decade – I will agree that the warming trend has decreased. And I’ll be quite cheerful about it.
If that 2σ range excludes 0 °C/decade, however, as the data from 1987.25-now does (0.124 ±0.112 °C/decade) – there will still be statistically significant warming given that 25 year period.
If the temperature trend is positive and the 2σ range includes zero, there will still have been warming – just not statistically significant against short term variations, a warming that _might_ be due simply to those variations.
And if the trend is negative, and the 2σ range excludes zero – then and only then there will have been statistically significant cooling over those 25 years. But I consider that rather unlikely…
That would require falsifying spectroscopy, GHG and water vapor concentration observations, not to mention satellite measures of outgoing energy changes, etc.
So – no, I would not.
What that would indicate to me is one of several possibilities – that there has been a large short term natural variation in the opposite direction (volcano, large La Nina, solar decline), or that one of the anthropogenic forcings (aerosols, soot, CO2, etc.) has changed in some fashion.
In other words, a significant decline in the rate of warming would indicate (IMO) that one of the causal factors has changed – not that the last 150 years of physics has been invalidated.
—
This whole “16 year” nonsense depends on cherry-picking 1998, a 3σ El Nino. Including just a year or two more or less shows a trend twice as high; a serious clue that your trend is due to noise.
If you look at the larger picture, use the data available rather than blindering yourself to look only at subsets – that entire 1998-present period has a mean that is higher than the trend over the satellite period – see here. The short term trend has not dropped as far below the longer term trend as the 1998 El Nino went above it, and that 16 years of data causes an increase in the long term trend.
And, as shown here, the last 15-16 years mean being higher than the longer term trend is also true of GISS, of HadCRUT3/4, and of UAH data.
01
Moderators: My apologies – I apparently mistyped my email by one character; the previous comment is mine.
[fixed that] ED
01
KR, Maaaate, if your warming is caused by increasing levels of CO2,and the atmospheric levels of CO2 have continued to rapidly climb over the last 17 years,would you not expect the global average temperature to continue to rise as they had for the previous 20 years, ,as per the climate models… If you can continue to believe in the models, and the theory, of CAGW, there is something seriously wrong with your logic circuits.
40
Comment threads like these really underscore the need for greater statistical numeracy in our society.
Multivariate linear regression should be taught in high school, not 2nd year stats, as should basic data exploration, particularly the interaction between signal and noise.
There are plenty of areas of climate science that are difficult to grasp without tertiary training, basic observations concerning the surface temperature record should not one of them.
Then again, if people were actually interested in having an informed view regarding the temperature records, the information is freely and easily available.
11
ian hilliar – CO2 level is an important forcing, and is currently the major factor driving temperatures upwards, but it is not the only forcing in play. Changes in insolation, volcanoes, soot, methane, halocarbons, ozone, land use, ice coverage/albedo are also in effect, along with acyclic influences such as the ENSO, AMO, and simple weather variation. You have to consider the whole picture, not just single influences.
And, as discussed on this thread, you need to look at enough data to see if there is a trend in addition to short term variations. You cannot expect a uniform monotonic trend in the presence of those variations.
13
Uniform, monotonic replies, on the other hand…
12
Tristan, the discussion starts with the reference to the analysis done by Werner Brozek % WUWT. If you want to suggest that he lacks sufficient training or expertise to make his analysis then by all means offer up some evidence.
KR is at least making a decent argument about statistical methods. You on the other hand are making worthless color commentary.
Underline WORTHLESS.
20
There’s no analysis to speak of. Anyone can plug in the numbers and come up with those trends, even you 🙂
03
“That means claims of “non warming” are not statistically supportable.”
Neither are claims that it is warming…
Get over it, Noddy !!
52
And if you say 16-23 years is not enough time, then you CANNOT use the period from 1975-1998 to say that warming has actually occured at all.
Why not go back to the MPW (warmer) and the RWP, (warmer again)
These show that current temps are ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT !!
71
Are you stupid or what? Insufficient data according to who? Listen, I can tell you that this summer was hotter than last, but you will tell me there is not enough data to say that. Pfffff!
20
I must be doing it wrong, because when I use the HADCRUT4 data, finishing in November 2012, and allowing the start date to vary, the earliest start date where a warming rate of zero is within the 95% confidence interval is April 1997, which is less than 16 years ago.
Can someone statistically literate give me a start date and 95% confidence intervals on the decadal temperature trend for the latest start date that includes a zero value in the confidence interval?
BTW, does anyone run classes in how not to mangle sentences…
16
KR? Tristan?
01
What data/site are you using?
00
Wood for trees…
02
Don’t worry. Had a read of how the Skeptical Science trend calculator worked, and it turns out that you really do need to include autocorrelation. Without it the uncertainty in the trend is smaller.
23
And what does that SkS trend calculator show you JB?
HADCRUT4 – Trend: 0.104 ±0.105 °C/decade (2σ)…..from 1994.5 – 18.5 years! (1980 – 2010 autocorrelation)
51
JB
You are looking for a statistically relevant starting point for the CO2 vs Temp Anomaly.
I would suggest you go back about 400,000 years to get the right perspective.
KK 🙂
11
So is it 17 years, or 23? Be consistent across the data sets.
02
All land/ocean data sets @ 1980 – 2010 autocorrelation.
GISTEMP – Trend: 0.112 ±0.114 °C/decade (2σ) – 1995 – 18 years
NOAA – Trend: 0.101 ±0.102 °C/decade (2σ) – 1994.3 – 18.7 years
HADCRUT3 – Trend: 0.113 ±0.113 °C/decade (2σ) – 1993.5 – 19.5 years
HADCRUT4 – see above
RSS – Trend: 0.129 ±0.129 °C/decade (2σ) – 1989.5 – 23.5 years
UAH – Trend: 0.159 ±0.163 °C/decade (2σ) – 1993.3 – 19.5 years
00
All land/ocean data sets since 2000 (1980 – 2010 autocorrelation):
GISTEMP – Trend: 0.066 ±0.174 °C/decade (2σ)
NOAA – Trend: 0.038 ±0.162 °C/decade (2σ)
HADCRUT3 – Trend: 0.004 ±0.167 °C/decade (2σ)
HADCRUT4 – Trend: 0.038 ±0.160 °C/decade (2σ)
Land only since 2000:
BEST – Trend: 0.180 ±0.344 °C/decade (2σ)
NOAA – Trend: 0.131 ±0.281 °C/decade (2σ)
Satellite since 2000:
RSS – Trend: 0.004 ±0.268 °C/decade (2σ)
UAH – Trend: 0.110 ±0.266 °C/decade (2σ)
00
The issue is essentially doctrinal in nature. Emerson is part of the Labor cohort who have stuck their necks so far out, like other PhD’s, e.g. Flannery, Lewandownsky, Garnaut et al, none of whom are “correctly” qualified to comment on climate science if we took their denigration of those whom they labels as “deniers” to heart. It’s more “argument from authority” tainted with a religious zeal for political correctness (ice is melting and polar bears are heading for extinction because we don’t have enough solar panels or wind turbines and the rent seeking industry requires more entitlements ). Self-delusion for an objective observer.
“Not statistically significant” is not difficult for any Year 12 student, undergraduate, PhD or whatever to comprehend. In psychological terms, it’s projection: one denies one’s own issues (of guilt or fault) and projects them to another (“you are the problem, not me”) as a deflection away from the reality and admission of being wrong (time to move on). At one level Emerson understands the argument, however, he’s loyalty to, and shackled by, the political doctrine of AGW doctrine he holds by choice.
We might wish he and others would accept reality and hold a healthy scepticism to whatever issue it is, until it stacks up. Like “deniers” and others who choose the path of independent thinking seeking the reality in the complexities in Nature, than a belief system they adopt without careful enquiry or investigation. Emerson and his ilk are a waste of time and energy. It’s the fence sitters who need objective information, to clearly understand the issues and argument the MSM will not acknowledge and convey. They swing in their vote, and will hopefully add considerable fuel to Labor’s funeral pyre come the election. .
120
Facts are facts, not “doctrinal”. However, by linking climate change to the Labor party, you have illustrated quite well your conservative ideology. If you wan free markets, let’s stop giving the polluting carbon-burning industries handouts.
02
Craig Emmerson singing on 1 July 2012 on the day that the carbon dioxide tax con began sang about Whyalla but failed to mention that the reason why the steelworks did not close down was taxpayer subsidies paid by the federal government to BHP. What a deceiver he is.
He failed to mention the closure of Kandos Cement and the Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter in NSW, and other businesses, or subsidies to the Alcan smelter Vic and other businesses.
110
I agree that Emerson didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but I found myself saying – “Andrew, shut up and let him have his say no matter how stupid it was”.
91
Don’t be surprised that a member of Gillard’s Cabinet does not do statistics. After all, the Minister for School Education wants all school children to achieve above average results!!!!!!
90
That’s a classic Peter,
But possibly outdone by this.
In our own area we had the principal of the major private school announce to the world at large that at his school:
” 2% of all HSC Candidates were able to be placed in the top 5% of the State.
Stats are a tricky item at the best of times.
KK
30
That’s a good argument to avoid the school, if the principal is that illiterate and innumerate.
02
No, not really.
If you did that you would end up at NO school.
Everyone is human and can make errors in technical stuff.
It’s when people pushing a wheel barrow with a broken wheel say: ” I’m OK.”
Now that’s a problem.
Some people get on here and push their little wheel barrows around and around and we watch them in amazement.
And we say: “hey dude, you are going around in circles”.
And in reply they say:
“No. I’m not going round in circles;
the IPCCC said I’m not and besides I have a PhD in Climate Concern and Awareness,
So I can’t be going round in circles.”
Of course if someone else is pushing your barrow for you, a common occurrence in these deluded times,
maybe you should jump out and have a look at what’s going on.
You may have been taken for a ride.
KK 🙂
10
“No” is not a rebuttal, KK. Except to a two year-old.
I wasn’t having a crack at you, just the comment that “2% of all HSC Candidates were able to be placed in the top 5% of the State”.
1. That’s a bad result.
2. “Placing” students suggests bombing them in without qualifications.
You shouldn’t feel persoanlly insulted unless you ARE the principal in the anecdote. In which case, my commiserations, I’m sure you’ll be able to find another job soon enough.
I’m still confuzzled: do you think I’m pushing a wheelbarrow, or riding in it? I can’t do both at the same time.
Oh, BTW a wheelbarrow only has one wheel – at the front. So if it’s flat or broken, it’s just harder to push. There’s no reason for it to go in circles…
02
Hehe.
Reminds me of the – possibly apochraphyl – story of the British MP who (after a boozy lunch) stood up in The House and got into a lather about “almost 50% of school children were below average in literacy and numeracy”.
40
I have a problem with the the word ‘pause’ which Bolt has used as well because it implies that the warming will resume — it may or it may not — it is a concession to the unproven assumptions of the alarmists.
Bolt has said that he has been told Emerson is a closet sceptic in which case it must be messing with his mind to have to promote a policy which he knows is BS and will economically harm his own country.
Either that or he’s an unmitigated sleaze bag.
120
I agree on the ‘pause’ thing. I have noticed that it is used as a way of implying that they just know warming will resume.
I prefer the word plateau as it implies no guess about the future.
90
I posted this on another thread (WA State Labor leader has it both ways: Carbon Tax bad but trading good. No. No. No.) and it may have been overlooked by many.
CSIROh! – Climate of Deception? … or first step to freedom?
Management consultant’s report on CSIRO document prepared at request of ABC-Radio’s Steve Austin.
Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts. February 4th, 2013
Full PDF – http://www.conscious.com.au/docs/new/CSIROh_20130201a.pdf (be sure to follow all links in paper)
60
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has given 15 million dollars to Kiribati for development. He’s going to the UN Security Council to warn them of sealevel rise from CC. The world authority on sea level changes states that the change in sea level is next to nothing.
70
So has anybody done a study on why exactly Kiribati is having problems? Is it due to development, destruction of mangroves etc.? Or is the seabed subsiding? (its on the ring of fire, no?)
30
Like Craig Emerson I too have a Phd, mine is in common sense, if he too had this esteemed qualification he would likely see what an idiot he is, its truly staggering we let people like this run our lives !!
PS; Phd’s in common sense are readily available on the Internet but no politicians may apply.
50
It is not possible to change somebody else’s mind.
It’s strictly DIY.
They must see a compelling reason to undertake that DIY.
When confronted by somebody who has compelling reasons NOT to change their mind, it is demonstrably a total waste of time and effort to try to change their mind.
I suspect that when e.g. Andrew Bolt tried to diminish the “compelling reasons” apparently held by Craig Emerson; Emerson reiterated those reasons not because they were compelling to Emerson, but because they are a distraction that convinces casual observers. When defending a compelling reason, one addresses the substance of the reason; which in this case, is a void of semantics encased in a shell of fallacies.
So nothing for Emerson to defend; except to polish the shell and try to distract with how shiny it looks.
80
Right on the button, Jo:
“Bolt fruitlessly kept trying to get Emerson to admit that there was no significant warming for 16 years. He might as well been talking in Urdu. Indeed perhaps they were talking in different languages.”
Welcome to our age of ruthless sophism. The point of public political argument – especially on matters climatic – is not to be “right” (Bolt) but to “win” by fair means or foul (Whyalla-wipeout Emerson).
As the philosopher said:”We must regard objective truth as an accidental circumstance and look only to the defence of our own position and the refutation of that of our opponent. This has as little to do with truth as the fencing master considering who is in the right when a quarrel leads to a duel” (or an argument on talk-back radio).
Bolt blogger, Victoria, also right on the button:
“You (Bolt) make the same mistake here (on your blog) as you did last night on the radio: responding as though Dr Emerson came onto your show to discuss whether there had or had not been a pause in warming in the past 16 years.
Dr Emerson is a very clever man. He knows his evidence (while true in context) did not address your 16 year warming pause and the evidence you provide for it. He knows that a decade can be warmer than the decade that proceeded it in circumstances where there has been a pause in warming for 16 years. He knows talking about warming over a century doesn’t address a pause in warming for 16 years.
Dr Emerson came onto your show not to debate the science but to bait you into exasperation, and to discredit you as a mainstream interviewer by being able to say “Bolt doesn’t listen, Bolt just talks over people, why would we come on his (Sunday) show.”
You make the mistake in thinking you somehow didn’t make your arguments clear enough. You could never make your points clear enough for someone who had no intention of listening. had no intention of conceding a truth in your case, who wasn’t there to have a contest of ideas.”
victoria3220 (Reply)
Wed 13 Feb 13 (05:27am)
120
Emerson came on the radio not to debate Bolts question but to promote Global Warming “Action” IE The Carbon Dioxide tax. This is not about science, it is about Politics. To demolish Climate Change Doctrine, we need to demolish not the science but the Pseudo Scientific Mystique that protects the shoddy science from being defunded
The response to Combets e-mail needs to be – There is a snowballs chance in hell of me sending you any money, unless you stop giving it away to green charlatans and start using it for the good of mankind. Then shame them into more humane thinking. For example defunding climate change would free up sufficient funds to implement the NDIS, install the Proton cancer treatment facility, immunise a small country against measles or build a new port for our exports. Attack the inhumanity of CAGW countermeasures, like burning food for fuel, and the fuel poverty being seen among the elderly, and the decrease in food aid since government subsidised ethanol was put into fuel. Point out how disgusted you are at their inhumanity.
It needs to be made clear that “The end of the world is nigh” message is tired and worn out, and that we don’t believe it any more, and that we want policies that improves the lot for PEOPLE, and not just the rocks, oceans and atmosphere. Make it clear that People, ordinary Australians come FIRST before all that – not LAST.
And always remember – it’s not Scientific!, it’s POLITICAL
80
I am at a loss at how Jo Nova here proves she does know a thing about statistics and what the term significant trend really means!
I am also at loss at to what on earth she on about.
Either way it is obvious she has NEVER done her homework like all “good” girls should. She simply chooses a rather blinkered methodology in the form of true Ad Hom attacks on personality and character.
Her long winded style has only earned her the right to speak to fringe thinkers found here. This is not unlike a Witch crafted Coven of disfranchisement – a Right Wing Coven of Bigots.
322
You are at a loss to know anything.. its called all-round IGNORANCE !!!
You are more like fringe non-thinker… an irrelevance.. As you will find out later this year. 🙂
And you know zero about maths or statistics, except what you copy from the non-entities at SkS.
You say she uses adhom, then do it yourself, you hypocritical moron.
Go back to the Green ooze from whence thou came, slimo !!
62
Andy,
How can you get annoyed by him.
he’s so far off target that it’s hilarious.
Rite wing koven of big otts.
WTH is an Ott when it’s at home?
KK 🙂
20
Yeah, I get annoyed by moronic idiots. I spent year dealing with low IQ 15 year olds.
I expect more on a grown ups forum, yet here he is with a primary school mentality presuming to comment of stuff iobviously he has absolutely no knowledge of.
Lewindowsky would be proud of him. Staight from the Combet handbook.
50
“…a Witch crafted Coven of disfranchisement…”
Jo, have you got your misogyny speech ready, like a GOOD girl? Never mind what disfranchisment means, it sure sounds like a sexist ad hom.
80
@Ross
You’re off your meds again you incoherent old coot.
Learn to spell and learn how to put together a coherent sentence.
Then learn some civility and good behaviour when visiting someones blog. A little manners goes a long way.
Take the above as a metaphoric slap on the back of the head Ross, and remember to take your meds just like your psych told you to.
71
Quote:
“Either way it is obvious she has NEVER done her homework like all “good” girls should.”
Misogynist. Sexist.
30
Ross, you’ve broken all the rules of decency and insulted just about everybody but this is common for people who can not justify their beliefs and produce the evidence. Ross you may be surprised to know that sometimes we like to be proved wrong, it only makes us smarter and that should be your aim, prove us wrong.
40
Ross James said:
I’m at a loss to find any substance in your ad hominem rant. What Jo is on about is Emerson being not only wrong, but oblivious not only to accepting argument, but even to recognising it. You are obviously have the same handicap as Emerson in not understand the difference between current temperature and current (for 16 years) temperature change. It is the same as not knowing the difference between displacement and velocity and not understanding that a plateau can be high but still be a plateau.
And if you a “good” little warmist who hates conservatives (see below) you would no doubt belong to the politically-correct minions. Imagine the handbag hit squad if the sceptics started talking like that about a vocal female warmist. Political correctness is a set of rules imposed only on people that the Left don’t like.
Idiotic pot-kettle! She in detail show why Emerson was wrong and how his conclusions necessitate the disregarding of data from the main temperature data collection centres. She also showed that, like you, he doesn’t understand the difference between ‘warm’ and ‘still warming’.
You come here and utilise the “good” grace of Jo in hosting your comments to insult her (and others here) with a barrage of smears uninterrupted by argument. That is SO the way of the dedicated warmist; never miss an opportunity to demonstrate your dishonesty and small-minded nastiness.
Ross, you are an insufferably rude and arrogant idiot.
30
Ross Smith said:
There is some additional hypocrisy begging attention. This appeared at the end of Ross’ homogeneously rude post:
Ross has the front to call us bigots after delivering the most vilifying post that I recall seeing here.
Ross, Jo allows you to post your opinions here, even while you are insulting her. A warmist Jo’ wouldn’t give detractors such voice. When I posted actual argument on Joe Romm’s site, without any ad hominem, it was deleted soon after it appeared. All subsequent attempts were blocked. That’s the leftist modus operandi, silence your opponents by any means available.
20
LOL ! Found Combet’s email in the JUNK folder and marked SPAM … my computer is smart !
60
I’ve never been stupid enough to bother writing to Combet.. The guy is obviously a totally egotistical, “I know everything” wannabe…. so why waste even one second on him.
Hopefully the people of his electorate will by now have realised what a useless nonce he is and kick his lying deceitful ass into the sea some time this year.
41
I heard the Emerson call, and it was a stunt. Combet’s bad language and his email…a stunt.
We have a generation of middle-class leftists, best termed the GetUp Greens, who believe that they have nothing to justify, nothing to verify. They are right because of who they are. They are the New Puritans, and they know, they just know.
It’s just a matter of dragging along the rest of society with stunts. The righteous just know, and the unrighteous can only be controlled and cajoled by stunts. Because if we did not react to stunts we’d be among the righteous. We’re the overweight rednecks waddling through malls. They know our level: we have to be constantly diverted and surprised.
So it’s a stunt a day. What will it be for Friday?
50
Actually it is Mr Bolt who does not understand maths and the term “statistical significance.”
The last 16 year period is simply too noisy to conclude what the temperature is doing, warming cooling or static within 95% confidence limits.
Taking two data sets from 1997:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
Hadcrut3: Trend: 0.008 ±0.135 °C/decade
Hadcrut4: Trend: 0.046 ±0.124 °C/decade
That is, the Hadcrut3 data says that there is a 95% chance that temperatures have warmed by as much as 0.143 or cooled by as much as 0.127 °C/decade.
For Hadcrut 4 the range is from warming by 0.170 to cooling by 0.078 °C/decade.
A time period of 16 years is simply too short to tell you what is happening.
With longer time periods the signal to noise improves but you have to go back at least two decades before you can make a meaningful statement on whether temperatures are warming or cooling (for Hadcrut4 data): The longer the time period the narrower the range of uncertainty:
1995: 0.098 ± 0.111
1990: 0.144 ± 0.080
1980: 0.158 ± 0.045
1970: 0.164 ± 0.031
1960: 0.132 ± 0.025
And so on the further back you go.
So those who pick short periods of time and declare them “not statistically significant” are actually explaining why their data should be ignored.
They are setting the data up to fail. Only multidecadal trends are meaningful.
211
You link SkS , expect to be ridiculed… they are a CAGW sympathiser, propaganda, lying deceitful, bunch of w….ers.
Now go back further when there wasn’t a cool period between two warmer periods
Use RAW data from late 1930’s or (we have only just reached max temps from 74 years ago, and even then only with a whole heap of urban heat influence)
Or go back to the MWP, which was warmer than now, and RWP which was warmer again.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT CURRENT TEMPERATURES OR TRENDS.
Do…… you……..understand… !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
134
“Only multidecadal trends are meaningful.”
Why?
If one were measuring the effect of natural cyclical temperature drivers then there may be some validity to that claim. However if it is assumed that any warming trend, if it exists, is due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2, possibly due to human use of fossil fuels, then one must show why, in that case, only multidecadal trends are meaningful.
It becomes a purely statistical problem only if one forgets that we are interested primarily in the known relationship between increasing CO2 concentrations and the possible resultant increases in temperature.
It seems axiomatic that using more extended periods of temperature data are more likely to pick up cyclical natural climate drivers and invalidate the use of such records as a measure of CO2 driven temperature increases.
Conversely how long does it take for increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to have a measurable effect on the observed temperature.
50
Skepticalscience – Rewriting History
Anyone who links non-Skeptical science, where they delete & alter after the facts, is a loser.
72
That’s all fine and dandy Phil, but when the IPCC 3rd assessment report (1995) claimed a Discernible Human Influence on Climate, the warming had started in 1978.
My math says that’s 17 years. Too bad the data used by the IPCC wasn’t ignored at the time. We might have saved ourselves many billions of dollars and countless human resources.
The hypocrisy in this AGW debate is breathtaking.
102
The third IPCC report came out in 2001.
11
Go and CHECK to see how they “crafted” the data. Folded, spindled and mutilated the data. The raw data were treated with disrespect. Those manipulating the data have no idea of what the data represent in the real world.
The data used to establish numbers to describe “climate”, climate then being entirely anthroprogenic and abstract. They are totally inadequate for describing the thermal state of the system that makes up terrestial climate.
The average global climate means only one thing; that one has wasted resources in collecting temperature data and calculating it.
They can’t even be bothered working out the true mean enthalpy of the air thoughout the day; even using the AWS data that they can get as frequently as once a minute. Even calculating the “extreme enthalpies” for a day is something with which they don’t seem to care to bother.
FWIW; on the “stinking hot” Tuesday this week; the enthalpy changed from a sweltering minimum of about 50 kJ per kg of dry air to 61 kJ/kg. Right now, just after midnight with the cool night providing relief, it’s sunk to 51 kJ/kg. The heat content of the air hasn’t changed very much at all; despite it being about 5⁰C cooler now than during that sweltering night. A quick check of the likely maximum enthalphy during the past 24 hours shows that there was more heat in the air (64 kJ/kg) than when the 42.3⁰C was recorded on Tuesday… and it only got to 27.9⁰C yesterday (@09:48)
The water vapour provides a huge “buffer” for energy compared to the dry air with which it shares volume. The dry bulb temperature is, by itself, woefully inadequate for determining the actual heat content of the atmosphere.
Dry air climate models have no hope of being realistic.
61
So what you are telling me Philip Sheehan is that we need at least a thousand years to really know what might be happening. Good. So what TF are all you alarmists on about?
41
As of this moment there are 11 “don’t likes” on my post.
Of the negative comments here:
two are simply bitching about the fact that the simple statistical calculator appeared on a website they do not like,
one says the temperature data is not accurate (the argument here is whether Bolt or Emerson understands the statistical significance of that data, regardless of it’s accuracy),
one goes into a theoretical discussion of the role of CO2,(irrelevent to the statistical analysis of the temperature data sets),
one gets the date of the 3rd IPCC report wrong rendering his argument false (temperature trend from 1979 to 2001 is positive and statistically significant Trend: 0.145 ±0.095 °C/decade (2σ)),
And one, Backlsider gets a special mention because his statement that I am telling him that we need to go back a thousand years to know what is happening when my post clearly shows that you only need to go back to 1990 is particualrly boneheaded.
These people may or may not have ticked the “don’t like” box but at least they gave reasons for disputing it.
I take other “don’t likes” as a badge of honour because it tells me that these “skeptics” simply don’t like the facts (and they are mathematical facts, not opinions)that I present, and are simply shooting the messenger.
13
Well Phil
I have no evidence, which puts me with the Warmers pushing CAGW who “feel” that it must be true because as
they say: “just look at all the CO2 coming out of that Coal fired Power Plant smoke-stack!”.
But even though I have no evidence I can still “feel’ that I don’t like your trolly behaviour here or your
SkS style of pseudoscience.
Dr of what fill, you still haven’t answered.
KK 🙂
ps. Did you see the news this morning.
Governments of both Spain and Germany are scared whitless about a voter backlash over electricity subsidies
to renewables and have pulled the plug.
Big Green is NOT amused and are going to sue both Governments for “losses”.
It’s not a decline; it’s an AVALANCHE of awareness that CAGW is nothing but a Power and Money Scam.
KK 🙂
Enjoy.
10
KK. I am not writing about “psuedoscience”. Still less electricity prices in Spain.
I am presenting a mathematical analysis of data. That is what this section is about:
The Emerson v Bolt argument on air… does Emerson not know statistics?
People might not like the mathematical facts, but that does not make them false. I don’t like the fact that if I borrow $1000 on my credit card at a cash advance rate of 21.24% PA after a year I will have to pay back $1212.40, but it does not change the maths. (I may look at the facts and decide not to borrow money in that fashion, but decisions based on the mathematical facts do not alter the mathematicalfacts.)
Now, you don’t need a PhD to understand basic statistics. But since you ask mine was on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. It is in the overlapping area of physics and chemistry. So with this background I had some sympathy with the view of the physicist (I think it was Lord Rutherford) who said “If you have to use statistics you have not done the experiment properly.” Mind you that was before the quantum revolution which found that everything that happens in the universe is probabalistic.
NMR has applications in biomedicine(one of its variants is MRI nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging). So when I started dealing with the biological applications of NMR, which involves the enormous complexity of living things rather than the relatively simple structure of molecules which had been the subject of my PhD studies, I had to come to grips with statistics.
00
Whoever is putting Red Thumbs against Phil and Ricki, please stop.
They get payed on the basis of the number of those, it proves to their masters that they have been active,
If not accurate.
KK 🙂
00
Dr Phil,
Says:
“Only multidecadal trends are meaningful”
I would go even further and say that the bare minimum could be one thousand years.
That’s about one percent of the Astronomic Orbital behavior that drives the system at the moment.
When discussing the relationship between CO2 levels in the air and World Temperature (which is bit vague) the ONLY graph or data set which has the necessary resolution are those showing the last 400,000 years.
The connection between CO2 and Temperature is evident, just not the cause of the link.
Closer examination shows that temperature LEADS CO2 levels by about 800 years.
Now.
My suggestion of 1,000 years was just a headline getter but my point is that discussion of the CO2 vs Temp
Anomaly in periods of 16 or 30 or 50 years is just a JOKE because the driving orbital mechanism at work has a
period of 100,000 years or so.
KK 🙂
11
ps. Phil
Just in case you missed it:
“Did you see the news this morning.
Governments of both Spain and Germany are scared whitless about a voter backlash over electricity subsidies
to renewables and have pulled the plug.
Big Green is NOT amused and are going to sue both Governments for “losses”.
It’s not a decline; it’s an AVALANCHE of awareness that CAGW is nothing but a Power and Money Scam.
KK 🙂
Take away the money and “It’s Gone.”
Global Warming disappears in the Northern Hemisphere as Governments try to explain all the snow piled up at people’s doorsteps in terms of Man Made CO2.
Ha ha
10
Data for a time period of 16 years will tell you about those 16 years (and no other sixteen years). Obviously.
Data for a period of 30 years will tell you about those 30 years (and no other 30 years). Obviously.
Because time is a continuum not a set of blocks, and because all trends are temporary, and weather trends notoriously so, all prediction and extrapolation is frivolous.
What passes for “climate science” among alarmists is a mix of blatant manipulation and sheer frivolity. Disgraceful stuff.
101
Thanks for an animated statistical discussion. It shows that finding non-significance depends on how you frame the question. One aspect of the debate does smack a little of showing a good stockmarket performance by picking the right date range. It makes plausible sense that humanity radically altering the environment of 3 continents over the last 500 years would have an environmental effect. So would digging up millions of years of sequestered carbon and burning it. One answer to many of our local and global environmental issues would seem to be addressing the issue of population growth. A critical point missed by the left.
10
Hoisted on their own petard?
In 2009 Phil Jones had informed a colleague by e-mail that he would be concerned about the quality of the IPCC climate models if the stop in warming continued beyond 15 years.
.
Phil Jones-
BBC interview, Saturday, 13 February 2010:
Q. Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
A. Yes, but only just.
.
Ben Santer, SEPTEMBER 7, 2011:
Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.
.
It’s official: the Alfred Wegener Institute Antarctic Neumayer-Station III is a meteorological observation station that’s been measuring air temperature and other magnitudes in Antarctica for 30 years, which is the period of time used to define climate for a region.
The results are clear and indisputable.
The AWI writes in its press release:
At the Neumayer Station it has not gotten warmer over the last 30 years.”
* Note they avoid saying it got cooler.
.
Now that the CAGW meme has been exposed as a failure according to their own rules, like melting ice in the arctic, they move the goal posts. (commentator KR is the example in this post.)
.
IMO, It sounded to me like Emerson intended a drive by shooting at Bolt.
He rang up with no prior warning, very obviously reading from a sheet of information, while Bolt had no notes in front of him, and with no intention to debate or address the crux of the dispute, just with the intention of frustrating and distorting any truth.
Having read what was in front of him, despite Bolt’s protestations, without addressing Bolts questions, he then claimed he was not given a fair go, knowing that time was an issue. Mission successful.
Emerson was not working alone, he had help. There are plenty of government funded UN-IPCC/WWF sycophants who would have been only to keen to help.
51
handjive
The “goalpost” was the claim of “no warming over 16 years“, and it is a false statement.
If there is insufficient data to separate “no warming” from the longer term trend (0.16-0.17 C/decade, depending on the temperature record), if the range of uncertainty is so large that it includes both, then you cannot supportably claim “no warming”. There’s not enough data to make a call.
If you look at enough data to make that determination, there is no time-span over the instrumental record ending in the present where “no warming” claims are statistically supportable.
The goalpost marked in the opening of this thread fails to stand up.
06
As for moving the goal-posts, Jo Nova’s ‘Sceptic’s Handbook’ (published 2009 wasn’t it Jo?) said there had been no warming since 2001. I guess it’s due for a revision. The 2020 version may well read “no warming since 55 million BC”.
01
I’ll include time periods too short for statistical significance in that last statement:
There is _no_ time-span over the instrumental record ending in the present where “no warming” claims are statistically supportable.
That certainly doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future – but given the physics and our emissions, it would be a long shot.
04
Quote KR:
Where were you arguing these points when Jones, Santer et al were making these statements about the time frames required?
A simple link to your comments is all you need.
Thanks in advance.
31
handjive
Santer: see this post (showing huge variations for small changes in the too-short time period, a sign of undependable results), also this post (absolute minimums for a particular data set).
Jones: see this one (15 years is too short for significance in the presence of short term variations).
Your point? Because I certainly don’t see one in your question.
—
16 years of data for any of the five mentioned temperature sets is too short for significance – not enough data to separate trend from noise, and there is _no_ time-span over the instrumental record ending in the present where “no warming” claims are statistically supportable.
03
Thanks KR.
But where do you question Santer & Jones directly 2 or three years ago after climategate when they were were “setting the time frames”?
That was the time for you to speak up.
Turning up on Jonova’s post 5 weeks ago claiming the time frame was “too short for significance” when it didn’t agree with your “beliefs” doesn’t wash. Too little too late.
In one of your comments you say 30 years is required.
I suppled a link showing in 30 years in the antarctic. Is that now wrong?
Would you like to have another go at the minimum amount of years needed?
Do you need a hand with those goalposts? They must be getting heavy.
Your sept 1 2010 comment has this quote:
“If you think AGW is wrong, find that experiment, show that it contradicts a core element of global warming, and work from there.”
Richard Feynman would be rolling in his grave, scratching at the lid with that doozy.
Besides, no experiment is needed, as real world observations have shown AGW is wrong.
(see Feynman video link directly above; the scientific method)
Even the responses then (2010) to your claim “Santers’ 17 years is the minimum” by commentors like Mark say the same thing, eg: “you will move the goal posts.”
And, here you are.
Also, how can you “contradict AGW”, when it is responsible for every weather event (except ones prior to the industrial revolution)? Now there is a time frame “too short for significance” when you look at glacial/inter-glacial periods.
What sort of climate can we expect when AGW is “tackled”?
32
handjive
Your post consists of personal attacks (Where were you when the schoolbus caught on fire? Huh, huh?), red herrings (Antarctic ice? A different data set, different trends and variations?), etc. Which seems IMO to be an attempt to scatter off into irrelevancies.
On the other hand, your post contains exactly zero discussion of the point of this thread – the focus on insufficient data (16 years) to make what in my opinion are simply unsupportable rhetorical points.
Since you have not presented anything relevant, anything regarding statistics, I have to conclude that you either have no opinion on the statistics, or agree that 16 years of data is insufficient to draw conclusions from.
Adieu.
01
Handjive, summer sea ice in the Arctic in 2012 was 80% below 1979. Would you consider that significant? You seem to prefer to point to articles suggesting – not predicting but speculating – the Arctic might – not will – be ice-free by this summer, or by 2016, or 2030. Perhaps you could lend me your crystal ball. FYI, models a few years back predicted ice cover at 2012 levels by 2050, so the loss of Arctic sea ice is tracking several decades ahead of the models. Oh yes, there was a big storm which may have influenced the extreme ice loss last year, but the trend was already way below anything in the records, so let’s not try to use that as an excuse. In any case, I’m sure you’re aware that extreme weather events are one of the most consistent forecasts of climate models incorporating CO2 forcing, so arguing “a storm did it” is just another example of the circular firing squad in action. Don’t take pot-shots at a target without checking your background.
01
Storms and extreme weather events, eh? Well, the 1950s in the US and the 1970s in Oz sure did some storming. Just as well we didn’t have CO2 forcing on top of that! There’d be nothing left of us.
Ah, the New Man at Year Zero. He can skim over the China’s Biblical floods in the 1930s like they never happened. Mahina and Galveston are like old sepia photographs. America’s Dustbowl? The inland sea, size of England and Wales, made by the Maitland Flood? Leave them lying in the drawer. New Man has got Sandy in full colour. He has worked out that people don’t look at old clippings of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They look at the coloured stuff of Kardashians in the Daily Mail.
“Extreme”, you see, is like “misogyny”. The word applies to as New Man wishes. He’s got the colour, the apps, and the Kardashian science. Just surrender.
20
Robert, you’re trying to put words in my mouth.
Buddy, I was in Cyclone Tracy, if that’s the 1970s storm you’re referring to. The houses were built of cardboard and weather satellites didn’t exist. Also, it hit on Christmas Eve when everyone was lashed, and there had been a close call the week before. That’s why people died. Larry and Yasi, which I also experienced, were better forecast and the buildings were stronger. You may not be aware that tropical building codes were changed dramatically after Cyclone Tracy.
Chinese floods: heard of the Three Gorges Dam?
America’s 1930s dust bowl: did you notice the drought last year that was worse than that?
Mahina: maximum rainfall recorded was 27 inches, which is quite a lot. Pacific Heights, however, recorded 556.8mm on Jan 25 this year without a cyclone.
Galveston had a hurricane in 1899, wasn’t it: that’s why the levies were built.
So: you’ve pulled together 113 years of extremes to prove that last year wasn’t so bad, compared with the worst events experienced in the previous century? That’s what I call sweet sweet cherry-picking.
Going back to sea ice, which was my point: there’s a hell of a lot less than there was a couple of decades ago. Any response to that?
02
Tracy was one storm. Know about the 70s and storms? Fortunately, Typhoon Tip was not local. But you really need to know about Tip if you’re into “extreme”.
1936 in the US. Don’t know about that?
Not sure why you mention the Three Gorges Dam, but here is a handy link re the ’31 flood: http://history.cultural-china.com/en/34History7420.html
Mystifying that you talk about rainfall when I talk about Mahina, but astonishing that your comment on the annihilation of Galveston is something about levies built afterwards. Is that some GetUp style spin to make Galveston go away? Turn it to sepia? Another old cherry picked?
Ricardo K, don’t refer to the past if you don’t want to look at it. And you really don’t want to, do you?
Your response is oh-yes-well before you even glance.
I have no prob seeing that Yasi, especially, was a real brute. You have to know that Mahina was its great grandmummy, and could teach Yasi a thing or two.
Now I could go on and on, till all the cherries are picked. And you could do your oh-yes-well schtick. But here’s the deal:
Extreme is the new extreme.
10
Robert 31.3.1.1.1 is a perfect example of goal-post shuffling. You referred at 31.3.1 to storms in Australia during the 1970s. When I responded, you decided to expand to global storms.
As for the rest: you ref’ed storms from before weather forecasting.
The Three Gorges Dam is on the Yangtse River, one of the rivers that flooded in 1931. That’s my point.
The Galveston hurricane happened. After that, people got smarter. That’s my point.
You’ve also ignored my point that you had to pick a century’s worth of extremes to compare with 2012 to try to ‘excuse’ the extremes of one year. Show a single 12 month period in the historical record in which the world experienced massive non-cyclonic rains and record heatwaves in Australia, dust bowl conditions across the majority of the US, a New York cyclone in October, a ‘super derecho’ storm in summer across the northern US states – very like our recent east coast whopper – and near-record blizzards.
Oh, you still haven’t addressed my original post at 31.3, which pointed out “summer sea ice in the Arctic in 2012 was 80% below 1979”. Any idea what that might do to the global climate?
01
Truly, I don’t get any of your points. Three Gorges? With a link? People got smarter after Galveston? You don’t know about storms in the 70s IN Oz? (The “s” makes nouns plural). You don’t want me referring to pre-forecasting days? You want me to re-produce 2012’s weather, with all its reportage being fresh, with some other year? For no pay? And I’m not allowed to refer to pre-forecasting days? Huh?
I can give you some horror years, if you like. But all I’ll get is oh-yeah-but-well. Isn’t that why they built levies? Isn’t that why they built a dam? Didn’t they get smarter after that?
What next? If I mention Black Thursday or Chicago-Peshtigo, I’ll get: “Didn’t they bring in safety matches after that?”
Come on Ricardo. You’re a bright lad. That K is not for Kardashian. Enough with the airhead Talk-to-the-Hand responses.
10
Robert, you haven’t addressed my original comment: “summer sea ice in the Arctic in 2012 was 80% below 1979”.
If your reference to the Kardashians is about models, think about Nate Silver and the 2012 US presidential elections. A lot of data. A lot of polls, which disagreed with each other. Silver took all the numbers, crunched them, picked every single state. Bar none. You think any of that might apply to the climate? No? You want to wait and find out?
I’ll bet you a dollar per temperature record. Every high, every station, across the world, you pay me a dollar. Every low, every station, I pay you a dollar. Deal? How much have you got to lose? I’ll stand $10,000.
Black Thursday? 1851? How many firefighters were on duty? Was Elvis the helicopter around at the time? You’re just clutching at straws, mate.
I’ve shot down every straw man you’ve put up, but you haven’t addressed my core comment. Fail. Epic fail. Put up or shut up. Last chance, Robert.
02
Robert, you haven’t addressed my original comment: “summer sea ice in the Arctic in 2012 was 80% below 1979”.
If your reference to the Kardashians is about models, think about Nate Silver and the 2012 US presidential elections. A lot of data. A lot of polls, which disagreed with each other. Silver took all the numbers, crunched them, picked every single state. Bar none. You think any of that might apply to the climate? No? You want to wait and find out?
I’ll bet you a dollar per temperature record. Every high, every station, across the world, you pay me a dollar. Every low, every station, I pay you a dollar. Deal? How much have you got to lose? I’ll stand $10,000.
Black Thursday? 1851? How many firefighters were on duty? Was Elvis the helicopter around at the time? You’re just clutching at straws, mate.
I’ve shot down every straw man you’ve put up, but you haven’t addressed my core comment. Fail. Epic fail. Put up or shut up. Last chance, Robert.
01
How many times do I have to repeat that I do not know what future climate will be. Why would I bet for or against something I have no idea about? If you improved my knowledge a thousand fold, I could not tell you. I am not arguing for cooling any more than for warming. You might conclude from this that I think people who predict future climate are a little mad.
I suppose I could once again repeat that I know of a dramatic decrease in Arctic Ice since 1979. I’ve followed the Japanese Arctic info for years. All I can say is: that’s interesting. Just like the high Antarctic levels are interesting. And since there were no sats in 1922, there’s no point referring to past scares. I’ll just get “Elvis saw from a biplane”.
The rest is just Talk-to-the-Hand, and I-Win-I-Win. If I mention a past climate disaster, it’s going to be “Elvis was the Pilot” and “They built the dam, and that’s my point”. Typhoon tip was not in Australia (thank god), hence my comment that it was not local. I’m sure if I adduce it as evidence of past climate catastrophes I’ll get: “Didn’t they get smarter and use stronger fishing rods in Okinawa after that? And that’s my whole point.”
There’s a massive history of climate swings and disasters, much of it very well documented, in England and China especially. I’m sure you’ll say: “Didn’t the scholars use quills and brushes? And that’s my whole point.”
Ricardo, I’m fond of you as I am of most people. But that teeny-bopper triumphalism and tough talk at the end of your post? But that stuff is embarrassing. Lose it forever, please.
30
Okay Robert, let’s agree to agree.
I don’t know why my post came up twice. ED, can you take one down?
To quote Tony Abbott in Afghanistan: “$h!t happens”. It certainly does in Afghanistan. A mate of mine was executed for being a journalist.
My point is: more of “it” is happening than before. Look at the recent Munich Re report. They’re hardly a disinterested party, but they log natural disasters that cost big money, and there are more of them that cost more money all the time. This is because more people are moving into more marginal areas and building more expensive stuff. On the other hand, modern technology means we get more warning for most natural disasters and better response, so the human death toll isn’t so high. It’s hard to imagine a cyclone like Bhola which hit Bangladesh in 1970 would claim so many lives today: a lot more people have cyclone shelters to go to. The Yongala sank off Ayr in Queensland in 1911 in a cyclone which wouldn’t trouble a modern freighter. Etc.
Your point seemed to be: but 1931. 1899. The Chicago fire. Dredging the bottom of every leftover bottle for the last several centuries to show that what happened last year wasn’t out of the ordinary. Which missed my point altogether, which was: there’s less ice around than there was 30-odd years ago.
Yes, fewer people in the world would mean fewer, less severe ‘natural’ disasters. The Tunguska meteorite in 1908 was a lot more massive and caused more damage over a greater area than this weekend’s fireball over Chelyabinsk, but it affected approximately bugger-all people because it was hit an unpopulated area in Siberia.
For the last time: the Arctic sea ice decrease is three times greater than the Antarctic sea ice increase. As well, there has been unprecedented thawing of the ‘permafrost’ in Greenland and other Arctic areas. That’s where this started.
Technology can get us out of trouble but it can also get us into trouble. Not many people get the plague these days, and we can do heart transplants, but on the other hand a Kalashnikov is a lot more lethal than a bronze spear (it’ll go blunt and bend before I run out of bullets).
Congratulations on slipping in the Elvis reference, I don’t think I’d get away with that because the moderator would think I was taking the pi$$.
Robert, you think I’m being disrespectful but take a look at your responses to me on this thread. Respect is a two-way street. Seek and ye shall find. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if people call me a numbskull, a numbat or a nuisance. I’m only prepared to respond to those who engage with the facts.
As for the models, the point I was originally making was that Handjive was as off-course in bagging the sea ice models as the USS Guardian was when it decided to ignore warnings that it was going to run into a coral reef.
Damn, I let you distract me. Well done.
10
Oh Gawd. We have the irrational SKS haters out in force here. The link provides a simple program, taken from a published paper, which calculates the trend and statistics for data sets. That is all.
The 30 year number is not hard and fast but just indicative of how long you have to look at the various data sets to get the error limits down to a reasonable number which tells you something meaningful. You need to examine the results for each data set to see what the limits of that particular analysis are.
“Data for a time period of 16 years will tell you about those 16 years (and no other sixteen years). Obviously.”
Yes, and that time period is not telling you much:
Hadcrut4: Trend: 0.046 ±0.124 °C/decade
The range is from warming by 0.170 to cooling by 0.078 °C/decade. Not very informative.
“Data for a period of 30 years will tell you about those 30 years (and no other 30 years). Obviously.”
From 1983:
Trend: 0.164 ±0.053 °C/decade
In other words, there is a 95% probability that the real trend over the last 30 years is between 0.217 and 0.111 °C/decade. Rather more informative and a meaningful result, don’t you think?
If you pick any data set for any period and it gives you a 95% error range that includes zero, you cannot claim it shows warming or cooling. As I said, if you pick any data set with very low signal to noise you are setting it up for falure.
I have just replied to someone over at WUWT who ran a data set from 5 years ago to the present. Here is my comment:
“The Hadcrut4 result from 5 years ago is obvious nonsense in any practical sense.
Trend: 0.080 ±0.657 °C/decade
Warming or cooling of 6.5 degrees over the next century?!?”
15
What is to like about non-skeptical science?
That link, complete with captured screen shots of their dirty work, shows that anything from that site is compromised.
Link “your simple program, taken from a published paper, which calculates the trend and statistics for data sets,” from a site that shows real science.
61
Anyone who even considers linking to SkS (sxcept as a joke) is totally and mornically irrational, and totally lacking in any scientific credibility.
They are a Propaganda site dealing in misinformation. Not a scientific site.
(and you are dumb enough to fall for their crap)
61
Andy, you are a true vulgarian. Do you have Tourette’s syndrome?
01
I think Ricky has “money in the pocket” syndrome.
It’s the only explanation I can come up with.
Why else would anybody spout all that junk and make themselves look so stupid?
KK
Get a real job Ricki.
Doing other people’s dirty work is demeaning.
10
KK, you’re getting kind of personal today.
Doing other people’s dirty work is the lot of a lot of low-paid wage slaves.
Namaste.
01
There is nothing irrational about SKS “haters”.
Do this as an experiment, then you will see exactly why people here say the things they do about it:
Post onto their website pretending to be a CAGW skeptic. See what happens. ‘Nuff said.
62
Hi Backslider.
In Nuclear term we have nearly had a critical incident: @ 32.4 we had an SkS “sandwich” with Philip Shehan and Ricky and then Philip again.
Had there been 4 in a row it would have been “declared” as an SkS Event and alarm bells would go off.
You can almost see, dangling behind them, the strings rising back up to SkS central just pulling in the right sequence to type “I’m a Climate Scientist”.
Poor guys.
KK 🙂
10
Luckily us renewable energy types don’t tend to melt down and throw radioactive fallout across half of Europe, or have a massive fail when there’s an earthquake. And North Korea wouldn’t be so scary if they’d built windmills instead of nuclear plants. And it’s easier to recycle used wind turbines than the cement from a fast breeder reactor.
I’m sorry, what were you saying?
03
“it’s easier to recycle used wind turbines”
Ha Ha
Do you know how many dead windmills there are in the US alone that can’t be “recycled’ because there is no money.
In one obsolete field alone there are 14,000 forlorn little scars on the landscape that nobody will take down.
Corruption is a horrible thing and you pay for it twice when reality strikes.
KK
30
KK, how much does it cost to guard defunct nuclear reactors that have come to the end of their useful life – usually decades before they were due to retire?
Check out the industry’s site:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf19.html
“At the end of 2005, IAEA reported that eight power plants had been completely decommissioned and dismantled, with the sites released for unconditional use. A further 17 had been partly dismantled and safely enclosed, 31 were being dismantled prior to eventual site release and 30 were undergoing minimum dismantling prior to long-term enclosure.”
Gee, there are only 500+ nuclear reactors in the world. We’ve shut down eight of them. That’s a helluva success rate. Not.
02
KK, as for your claim about defunct wind turbines, it looks like a load of hooey. Even the bloke who first complained about abandoned wind farms says so.
http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=340&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1679&cHash=a6ffbf36a98ab3ba82069d2486ebd7ae
I’ve never heard of dead wind turbines being a potential target for terrorists, unlike mothballed nuclear reactors. Provide a list of the wind farms, instead of quoting sites with names like Ihatewindbecauseitmakesmyteethache.com
14
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/lies-are-ok-if-you-believe-says-richardson/#comment-1240642
00
Ricky says:
Ricky, you could have just said “stupid” in place of “renewable energy”.
Save a keyboard, type less crap.
30
Backslider, would you like to hear my experiences of posting on “The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”?
32
Has WUWT released any numbers to back up that claim lately? They must be doing real well, on my phone the home page pops up with an ad for a gambling app. Kind of appropriate, I guess…
12
I should add in response to Ilew Jones:
“It becomes a purely statistical problem only if one forgets that we are interested primarily in the known relationship between increasing CO2 concentrations and the possible resultant increases in temperature.”
I entrely agree. And if you are overinterpreting data on the basis of statistically useless data sets that is a real problem.
As far as the relationship relationship beween CO2 and other temperature determinants, again I entirely agree and such work is the basis of climate studies:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
24
Hi Phil
Went to the link you provided and all it showed was details of some graphs based on what are WRONGLY labelled as Models.
These are not models; they are speculative projections.
Because of the massive and deliberate erosion of the data bases used, the work is irrelevant and fraudulent.
The data used on the “Projections” simply shows the results of unsupervised children playing games on a computer.
Somebody should switch it off and send them out to play in the Sun; much more healthy.
Your Climate Studies properly belongs alongside Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism. Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism and Islam as another Faith Based Religion.
Leave science to the scientists, not poorly trained and poorly disciplined Climate Scientists – Climate Science is a contradiction in terms because it is a media studies topic on mind controol.
KK 🙂
31
Faith-based statements like Tony Abbott having a “road to Damascus moment” and declaring “climate change is crap”?
11
No Ricky
You’ll have to do better:
We can all see what’s happening.
Have a think about how silly you look to people who can see through you:
Aren’t you surprised that you have been allowed to post so much drivel on this site?
It’s one of the amazing things about the Jonova blog in that it takes all comment and allows us to consider it.
Of course your home blogs do not give regular scientists any chance to express real opinion at all so they Must be Worried about all of their little gun fodder followers finding out stuff that might cause uncertainty in the little brains.
I’m sure you would feel very happy back on SkS but I can understand the mind bending boredom of being there along with the river of Believers all chanting “We believe in Man Made Global Warming, which began when men threw the first electric switch and accelerated when he started up has first car. — blah blah
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/the-emerson-v-bolt-argument-on-air-does-emerson-not-know-statistics/#comment-1241059
KK 🙂
21
KK, I’ve been edited on this site on several occasions, so your premise is invalid. I’m not allowed to say whatever I want.
I think you mean ‘cannon fodder’.
Mate, I don’t read Skeptical Science except when you folk trash-talk it.
I’ll tell you a secret: I’m here to test my assumptions because I really am sceptical. I figure, if I can’t refute your arguments then there might be something in what you say. I’d really like to be able to drive, fly, eat whatever, whoever, wherever, whenever I want, without feeling guilty. The only thing holding me back is the thought that what I do here and now might have consequences for people unborn (and things I adore, like the Great Barrier Reef).
Unfortunately, I’ve become aware that releasing a trillion tonnes of carbon – and counting – into the atmosphere might – just maybe – have some long-term consequences. I’d like to be proved wrong, but so far I’ve been able to poke fact-sized holes in every argument I’ve tackled on this site. So I’ll stick to the science, but I’m happy to engage with everything you throw at me.
Conspiracies can’t last. A secret shared is a secret no longer. Eventually someone with an internet connection will let the white cat out of the bag. I don’t know if you’ve seen this week’s Foreign Correspondent about the Australian-Israeli bloke who died in mysterious circumstances in a top secret Israeli prison, but that’s what I mean. The Israelis are, in my experience, very very good at clandestine operations but even they can’t keep things under wraps any more.
I’ve noticed on this site some mis-representing of the majority of people who follow the science and are convinced – on the basis of the evidence – that heedless burning of carbon will lead to unpredictable climate change. Most of us think we can live happy healthy fulfilling lives with lots of technology if we just stop and think, and put in place processes that minimise waste.
I don’t need a piece of plastic with every Happy Meal, in fact Happy Meals taste revolting and I’d rather make my own burgers. I don’t need to drive my car to the shops and spend five minutes looking for a car park and then walking a kilometre to the shops in the end. It’s quicker to ride in the first place. I spend bugger-all on clothing because I know what I like. I don’t need Vogue to tell me what to wear.
And I’m not alone. The UK is using less ‘stuff’s than it used to. We’ve hit ‘peak “stuff”‘. That’s not good news for the investors who are addicted to growth, but good news for the rest of us.
13
Ok Ricardo,
Maybe you could start by telling us where you get the figure of “…releasing a trillion tonnes of carbon (sic)… into the atmosphere…”.
The IPCC claim we are releasing about 3% of the total carbon dioxide annually. Furthermore, there is only about 3 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
10
MaxL, you could do the research yourself, but we’re well on the way:
http://trillionthtonne.org/
http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/insights/authors/barryjones/2012/12/05/its-cumulative-carbon-stupid-so-ccs-answer
02
I can see it’s gotten right into the core of your brain.
It can’t escape and it will drive you nutz.
Talk to a scientist today and try to avoid the looney left.
Look at their record on nature Management.
You manipulate the comments just like a graduate of SkS so don’t deny it.
They have you trapped in their nightmare.
Just one firestorm alone in Vic took 173 with 400 wounded from burns.
It was all unnecessary and it has NOTHING , nothing at all to do with making a better future.
That is possible and necessary but not with enviro nutters and opportunists taking at every opportunity.
People and nature come a bad last to these people.
KK
30
Caution
caution
Sad Drone Alert
20
Oh. I could do the research myself could I?
What makes you think I haven’t?
Well thank you for pointing me in the direction of where you get your “scientific” information from, a simple “economists” climate policy press release.
Sorry, I misunderstood your stance and your knowledge on this issue, I thought you might have enlightened me with your extensive “research” into the matter, however it seems that you are just another alarmist reciter.
30
Try again.
One year tells you nothing, beyond what happened in that year.
Sixteen years tell you nothing, beyond what happened in those years.
Thirty years tell you nothing, beyond what happened in those years.
Ergo, do not tell me what one of those periods “means” or does not “mean”. What is meaningless cannot mean.
Regarding climate, something does not become a “true trend” because it has been measured or monitored over thirty years. Emotion and self-justification are the only reason that 30 years is mooted as “informative and meaningful”.
If it’s any comfort, I’m betting on some warming since the mid-19th century, and some sea level rise starting after the Napoleonic Wars. That, if clearly established, would not be a “true trend”. It would just be stuff that happened.
Don’t feel too badly. Nobody has a clue what future climate will be like. I’m basing that on the trend of thousands of years of failure to predict what the climate will be like. I know that won’t stop the faithful leaving their temple offerings with the latest bogus priesthood. Trouble is, it’s my money they’re tossing to the UN, Kiribati, GIM and Goldman Sachs.
31
Exactly. As I told Philip Shehan, if I am to follow his reasoning, we need at least a thousand years to see anything remotely meaningful… then, as you say, that tells us nothing beyond a thousand years.
Try this Phil: http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
NOW we are looking at something interesting…. what does it tell you Phil?
60
Hi Backslider.
That’s not Long Range Weather.
This is Long Range Weather.
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/04images/Seas/415k-year-temp-graph.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/02files/Global_Warming_003.html&h=468&w=720&sz=64&tbnid=wB-bcI6AJ-rzBM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=138&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dice%2Bage%2Btemperature%2Bgraphs%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=ice+age+temperature+graphs&usg=__dj58YZt9N1TAemy9mUMACbmS1qY=&docid=6uvdiPYcd963oM&sa=X&ei=D4ggUZrINcL4mAXHmoGYCA&ved=0CD4Q9QEwAw&dur=884
00
415,000 years of “Perspective” on where we are at the moment.
KK 🙂
00
Backslider, if you’re trying to refute climate change, you should read your sources before you post them:
“The Weather Science Foundation also predicted, based on these various climate cycles, that our planet would turn much warmer and wetter by the early 2000s, resulting in general global prosperity. They also said that we would be seeing at this time widespread weather ‘extremes.’ There’s little doubt that most of their early predictions came true.
Our recent decline in the Earth’s temperature may be a combination of both long-term and short-term climate cycles, decreased solar activity {Ricardo’s note: this has been proved to be a minor influence} and the development of a strong long-lasting La Nina {much stronger} the current cooler than normal sea-surface temperature event in the south-central Pacific Ocean. Sunspot activity since in the late 2000s has decreased to the lowest levels since ‘The Little Ice Age’ ended in the mid-to late 1800s. This “cool spell,” though, may have only been a brief interruption to the Earth’s overall warming trend. Only time will tell. {It has}
Based on these predictions, it appears that much warmer readings may be expected for Planet Earth, especially by the 2030s, that will eventually top 1998’s global highest reading of 58.3 degrees. It’s quite possible we could see an average temperature in the low 60s. {This happened in 2010, even without a massive El Nino}
We at Harris-Mann Climatology, http://www.LongRangeWeather.com, believe that our prolonged cycle of wide weather ‘extremes,’ the worst in at least 1,000 years, will continue and perhaps become even more severe, especially by the mid 2010s. We’ve already seen a huge, disastrous “Mega Storm” hit the East Coast in late October of 2012. The Great Plains in 2012 saw the worst drought since the ‘Dust Bowl Days’ of the 1930s. Since the turn of the century, we’ve seen widespread flooding, crop-destroying droughts and freezes and violent weather of all types including ice storms, large-sized hail and torrential downpours.
The harsh conditions will likely lead to additional crop damage or losses resulting in higher food prices. This has been already the case since 2011.
Dr. Wheeler also discovered that approximately every 102 years, a much warmer and drier climatic cycle affects our planet. The last such ‘warm and dry’ peak occurred in 1936, at the end of the infamous ‘Dust Bowl’ period. During that time, extreme heat and dryness, combined with a multitude of problems during the ‘Great Depression,’ made living conditions practically intolerable.”
So: things are bad, they’ll get worse, if you’re worried about drought in the US you ain’t seen nothing yet.
However, there’s one point the site gets terribly wrong: “for every extreme record high, there’s also a record low extreme somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere on the planet.” In fact, there are three record highs for every record low temperature. So, no, it’s not ‘natural variation’. The world really is getting hotter.
02
Ooh Ricky you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind say Ricky:
Not MEGA in any way when she came ashore. you have misrepresented the storm, parroted the media idiots, or lied. Which one is it?
Nice sentence form there. Which is it? Oh and by the way since carbon dioxide didn’t cause the drought in the 30’s, what did?
Where have these things happened that have never happened before? Fear mongering now! Nice approach to science.
More Fear mongering, absolutely no proof! Nice approach to science.
Imagine that! Actual science saying that these things are normal……. I bet you didn’t read that carefully before posting eh Ricky? Nice propaganda too since it seems to attempt to tie the great depression as an effect of drought.
00
“Doctorate in Economics”
Clearly Emerson paid attention in the “economical with the truth” lessons
20
Would the ‘warmists’ care to get a grip on reality here? Figures of a thousandth of a degree are being bandied about and imbued with great relevance.
Don’t be absurd.
Some time ago I contacted the UK’s MetOffice, and in response to my question I was told that the electronic thermometers currently in use can measure down to tenths of a degree Centigrade only.
And here’s a graph at the top of this thread oscillating between 0.2 and 0.8 degrees since 1997 – how could anyone justify spending billions on a perceived threat based on a picture such as this?
30
Exactly. It is like watching someone measure a board with a tape measure and report that it is exactly 3034.03 meters long!
And that is only ONE thermometer, whose accuracy might be +/- a tenth. Now have a look at the helter skelter way in which “global temperature is measured. Are the measuring locations all that accurate? No. Are the measuring locations spaced evenly around the globe? Certainly not! Is the accuracy in handling the data error free? Obviously it is not. I would find it surprising if one could assign an accuracy of +/- ten degrees to “global temperature”, which of course can mean many things to different people. Of course I don’t suppose this ever occurred to Combet, Emerson, Richardson, or Obama because the fact is they really don’t care. All they care about is the next poll.
40
Pretty frightening really that Emerson’s PhD is in Economics. I’m pretty sure Econometrics is taught throughout. So a Dr of Economics is unable to understand quantitative techniques like regression and cannot even interpret graphs. Someone should send him Andrew Mountford’s book ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’. It may jog his memory. Wonder if he’s published any mind boggling papers demonstrating his wonderful grasp of econometrics? hmm … think not …
10
Backslider:
The chart tells me nothing I did not already know and have stated previously.
That the observed temperature is a result of a number of climate forcings, “natural” forcings and anthropogenic.
The theoretical understanding of the various forcings has developed to the extent that calculation of these effects gives a very good fit to the observed instrumental temperature record, and furthermore, such fits demonstrate that natural forcings alone cannot account for the warming trend.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
02
Phillip, it’s true and observable that the climate models have been pretty accurate. However, remember the parable of the blind men and the elephant. One grabbed it’s leg and thought it was a tree. One slapped it’s flank and decided it was a wall. Another touched it’s trunk and figured he had hold of a snake. And so on.
The common denominator that I’ve noticed here is that people don’t want to think that living the dream could possibly turn into a nightmare. However, they all have different explanations for why burning trillions of tonnes of carbon won’t be bad for the human race and other organisms on the planet. “CO2 is plant food. The temperature isn’t rising. It’s not rising significantly. We can’t do anything about it. The Chinese. The thermometers are wrong. It’s all a UN conspiracy to take over the world. The climate always changes. Don’t tell me what to do.”
Everyone has a different angle, but they’re all ignoring the elephant in the room. Releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is forcing the climate to change. “It’s only 3% of natural releases.” Well, if I earn $100,000 a year and I spend $103,000 a year, how long will it be before the bank takes my house?
01
What?
Are you on Ricki.
Manic, dude.
Calm down or do they pay you by the line to get posted here?
KK 🙂
10
Climate as a pretend spaceship console, with coloured buttons and levers to represent poorly understood observation sets – treated as if they were mechanisms!
Science has sunk to this, in the trashy age of Publish-or-Perish.
40
Climate is not “poorly understood”.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100322194954/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/models-2/
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
00
Dr of what Phil?
KK
Dr of WHAT?
You are an illiterate spacer like ricki.
10
Climate is poorly understood by all. It is very poorly understood by the IPCC, and by that Tammy who is not Debbie Reynolds or Sandra Dee. They actually think they can model climate. I’m not making it up.
As for those non-Kardashian models…Just remember that all the time and money spent on junk might be spent on science and infrastructure that matter.
For example, there is a climatic disaster awaiting mankind. It occurs several times a century, though the worst events are a couple of centuries back. If a Laki or a Tambora scale event were to occur – and it will eventually – we will wish we were not caught foostering with solar panels, whirlygigs and hockey sticks. It does not need to be on the scale of a Tambora, and it may not be a Decade Volcano, it won’t be Armageddon or extinction. We will just wish we hadn’t foostered, because it will be very painful and inconvenient.
Volcanism. Now there’s a good hobby for alarmists! Just don’t do your bedwetting thing. The human race survived Tambora. Actually, Laki would be worse for your travel plans and grafted tomatoes. http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/education/gases/laki.html
There’s only so much you can do in the circumstances, but cheap, abundant, reliable, accessible energy from nukes and fossil fuels would be a wonderful thing to have. And I’m not talking about burning coal in wasteful old clunkers because all the investment is flowing to those stupid medieval whirlygigs. I’m talking about shiny new energy infrastructure that will make us feel and live like progressing humans again.
30
It warmed till just after lunch and now it is cooling
30
“Emerson has an economics background, to PhD level. Is it possible that he didn’t realize the difference between warming and “significant warming”?”
No it is not possible, if those indeed are qualifications that he actually earned. SO either he is lying now, or he committed academic fraud at several points in his higher education.
This sounds like a perfect case for examining his PhD credentials, and possibly a case for revoking his degree.
20
Now that I have had my coffee let me make a very serious point.
I normally try to avoid personal criticism of commentators but Sean is a perfect example of so many “skeptics” who write about a subject he appears to know very little about and launches a personal attack on an individual calling him a lair and a fraud who dishonestly earned his PhD.
Those remarks lay Sean and this blog open to legal action for defamation, not that Emerson could be bothered. Too bad, but Ms Nova should take note.
On an earlier post someone suggested that another commentator should try posting a “skeptical” argument on SkS and see how they get on. I replied:
‘Backslider, would you like to hear my experiences of posting on “The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”? ‘
The moderating practices on that site are appalling.
On SkS I complained about an astonishingly abusive commentator on that site who was clearly also a moderator, commenting on posts of mine that had failed to appear.
My post on SkS was snipped with the moderator explaining that comments relating to the integrity of people were not allowed.
So spare me complaints by the “skeptics” on how comments are handled at SkS.
01
Philip, ignore the knuckle-dragging bullies if they’re not adding to the debate. They’ll provoke you until you react. I’ve managed to reach the point where I don’t even have bad thoughts towards my neighbour who shoots my dogs and took a pot-shot at me for letting my dog bark. The poor bugger has Alzheimer’s. I do wish he didn’t have firearms, but I’m more concerned for his wife than my own safety.
So for all the commentator who have called me Ricky, a moron, a fool, fit for medical experiments. Water, duck’s back. Feel free to call me Dick if you gets you off.
12
Sean,
I do have a PhD, am I biomnedical research scintist and unlike Mr Bolt and so many of those writng here I have an extremely good grasp of stistical significance.
The first thing you have to know is the importance if sample size.
I am currently involved (very peripherally, not taking credit)in a clinical study of a new drug treatment for a widespread and serious disease.
The sample size is 300 people in 120 clinics in the US, Europe Australia and New Zealand.
The idea that a sample size of 16 patients could tell you anything about the effectiveness of the drug is about as nonsensical as the idea that a temperature data set for the last 16 years that has an error range from 0.143 to -0.127 °C/decade, (hadcrut3)can tell you whether it is warming or cooling.
01
Sorry for the typos. very early Sunday morning and have not had my coffee.
02
So, you take sample sizes of 30 patients? Or you’ll be doing your climate sampling over 300 years?
By the way, don’t worry if “it” is warming or cooling. “It” is always doing one or the other. You only have to consider the shifts after the 1930s. Those thirties! Floods in China, dustbowls in the US, parching in Oz. Nobody wants the thirties back. Thank God for climate change!
40
No. You take a sample size that will give you a meaningful result.
In terms of global surface temperatures, 16 years is clearly insufficient to determine whether warming or cooling is occuring since the range (Hadrut3) is from 0.143 to -0.127 °C/decade.
In a clinical study, you can narrow the range to get a meaningful result by recruiting more patients.
In climate studies, you cannot “recruit” more data at will. the only way to get a statistically significant result is to go back further into the record as long as reliable data exists. For the warming/cooling issue you have to go back to 1993 (Hadcrut3 data)
Trend: 0.119 ±0.109 °C/decade (2σ)
1994:
Trend: 0.095 ±0.115 °C/decade (2σ)
And this is only just significant for Hadcrut3 data. Other data sets differ slightly.
03
The only way to get a “statistically significant result” as far as climate is concerned is to go back thousands of years – see my post below. 1993??? Pah!!
30
Philip, I could have saved you the trouble. Things warmed up a bit after about ’79. It’s sort of common knowledge.
You were the one who analogised about 16 patients, not I. But I understand you like to see a warming trend, and with great relief, I see you like it be non-linear. So you should enjoy yourself with the period post ’79. You also get a nice decline in Arctic Ice minima. I am sure you will find these observations pleasurable, or, to use your own term, “meaningful”.
If confronted with the Arctic increase of the 60s, or the current very high levels of Antarctic Ice, Skeptical Science etc will have an explanation that will comfort. If they don’t have one ready, they can manufacture within days. Enjoy!
30
Great! So, let’s take a look at a bigger sample size, then you can tell me whether its warming or cooling: http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
20
Now we get onto the another very important matter about data analysis and statistical significance that has so far been ignored here.
The assumption in this discussion is that the real temperature trend over the period of analysis is linear.
There is no reason whatsoever on the basis of what we know about what causes temperatures to vary to assume that it is, the very long term record you present and this (but you won’t want to look at it)show that such an assumption is incorrect.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
The linear function is an approximation that can be used in the short term where the signal to noise ratio hides the real mathematical relationship, but is not so low that no meanigful relationship can be identified.
01
Balderdash! I simply do not believe that the time periods being discussed (by both sides of the argument) are significant.
What do we see when we look over a significant period? The temperature goes up…. the temperature goes down. Some scientists predict that we will see cooling over the next thirty years that is far scarier than a little warming and plant food.
30
A “significant period” in human terms is a period long enough to affect humans. “Some scintists” may think that there will be cooling over the next thirty years, or at least a cooling contribution from solar cycles.
Then what happens? There will be even more CO2 in the atmosphere and the warming sun will add to the anthropogenic temperature increase.
CO2 may be plant food but in the south eatern food bowl of Australia, you can’t grow crops without water.
01
Just bought yourself thirty years there! Well played. You can be right while being wrong. Not related to the Gores of Tennessee, by any chance?
But did you know that there has been an overall increase of rainfall in SE Australia over the 20th century? Till the big falls of the 50s and 70s we were in ongoing rain deficit. That was the big prob with the Fed Drought as opposed to the Millennium Drought – they had to wait 50 years for a turnaround.
Sorry to rattle on about events that have actually happened. I’m told that’s a bore for a lot of clever folk who are more focused on what is mathematically sure to happen unless we leave suitable temple offerings on the altars of the GIM and Goldman Sachs. And buy lots of neo-medieval junk from GE. (What is it about that letter G and milking the climate dollar?)
30
Phil
That should read:
” south eating food bowl ” ?
10
I have not “bought” anything. I have just prevented a sttistical and empirical fact that we are all stuck with. The record of the last 16 years tells very little as to the long term temperature trend.
01
Damn. I wish I read these things more carefully before hitting the submit button. Apologies. That should be “present” and “statistical”.
01
Mr shehan, your patient study analogy is flat wrong. It would be correct if you suggested that we were using only 16 thermometers but that isn’t the case. This is 16 YEARS the equivalent of you running your patient study on 300 people for 16 years. Damn sure you WOULD be able to see trends in 16 years of 300 people. ADMIT THAT!
20
No.
The 16 patient number was picked out simply to demonstrate a low number which woiuld not be useful to establish anything in the clinical study, with a superficial resonance with the time period of 16 years frequently mentioned in the statistical significance argument on temperatures.
Of course a study of patients in a clinical trial cannot be directly compared with global temperature data over a time period.
The dependence of sample size on statistical significance regardless of the nature of the study and the data collection is the issue.
The fact that 16 years cannot distinguish between cooling and warming for the last 16 years is not hypothetical or speculation. It’s the result of the analysis of the data. Hadcrut3 data puts the trend for that period at
Trend: 0.008 ±0.135 °C/decade (2σ)
That is we can only say with 95% cinfidence that the real trend is between warming of 0.143 and cooling of 0.127 °C/decade
You are confused in your analogy of thermometers and time periods. (The results of the treatment are measured by the numbers of detectable virus by a blood tests taken at various intervals before during and after the treatment but I will let that slide.)
The sample size is not the number of thermometers (or blood tests or any other instrument) but the number of patients. Success is measured by the number of patients who at the end of the study have cleared the virus from their system. Using more thermometers (or blood tests) over a longer period will not alter the result.
As I noted the preliminary results indicate the treatment is highly succesful.
Period of time is only useful in a follow up study to see whether the virus has returned, but that is a different study.
I am a biomedical research scientist (if we are being formal it’s Dr Shehan) so I do know what I am talking about when it comes to statistical analysis.
12
“so I do know what I am talking about when it comes to statistical analysis.”
Hi Phil.
One of the first things to do when using statistical analysis is to obtain credible data and relevant data: none of which have been given by the IPCCCC or minions.
You may be an expert on Viruses, and that is entirely praiseworthy.
The problem here is that you are way out of your depth in this issue of CO2 based Climate Change to the point where your comments do not do your presumed qualifications any justice.
CO2 is not poisonous or dangerous to humans as you probably know, quite the contrary, it is an essential neurological regulator in humans.
See my previous discussion on Cheyne-Stokes breathing.
If we die normally, the last thing we do is EXPEL ALL OF THE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM OUR BLOODSTREAMS.
It’s the LACK of CO2 in the bloodstream that takes us over.
There must be a small amount of CO2 in the bloodstream to trigger the next breath.
OTHERWISE THERE IS NO NEXT BREATH!
If you think that CO2 causes global warming then you need to question where that idea came from
There is no scientific basis for it; you have been mislead, and if I was you I would not be happy about that.
Of course if you are just a troll then none of the above is relevant and you will just go on posting here.
I love my CO2.
KK 🙂
10
Significantly there is NO comment from Dr Phil Sheehan.
Maybe he is out of his depth on Neuroscience?
KK 🙂
10
Phillip
The 30 year period is an ARBITRARY period and has no statistical relevance whatsoever.
It is useful for Meteorologists and has no real significance for the CO2 – climate issue.
The astronomic events which are linked to Earth’s macro climate create alternating Warm and Cold events every 100,000 years or so.
The next Ice Age due soon will be a beauty and judging by the recent death and destruction by Cold in the northern hemisphere, it may have already started.
KK 🙂
10
KK Excuse me with yet another addition to my comment.
As it happens I do accept that anthropogenic CO2 causes warming, but that is not the discussion here.
It’s entirely about what statistical analysis of data sets can and cannot tell you. It does not matter what the data set comes from, whether it’s patients, ice cream sales, stock market movements or temperature data. It does not matter whether the data set is accurate or even whether it is entirely made up.
It is only about what that set of numbers, subjected to statistical analysis is telling you about that set of numbers.
01
KK. This whole section, that Emerson does not understand statistics but Bolt et al do is based on the data you call into question. My argument is that is a misundertanding of what the statistical analysis of that data says.
If you wish to tell Ms Nova, Bolt et al that their entire argumen is based on a false premise, go right ahead.
As for the 30 year period I thought I wrote above (or perhaps somewhere else like Bolt’s site or WUWT) that the 30 year period is not hard and fast.
It’s just an approximate figure for how far you have to go back into the various data records to get a meaningful result on whether the data is showing warming ofr cooling. (See Werner’s claims at the top of this section as to how far back he says statistically significabt warming appears for the various data sets.)
02
Aargh. More typos.
00
SPACER!
10
“See Werner’s claims at the top of this section ”
If you can’t argue the point yourself then there is little point quoting others on authority.
That is the prime hallmark of those who are out of their depth and don’t know what they are doing.
Go back to your viruses.
KK
10
“… so I do know what I am talking about when it comes to statistical analysis.”
Yes but do you know anything about the curve that defines the relationship between increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and temperature increases? What does it say in mathematical terms and what is its significance? All the chatter about statistical analysis in that context is irrelevant…unless it can be shown that there is a significant positive feedback effect in play.
Do we take that bit of “climate change” real science seriously or do we forget the only piece of science that tells us anything about increasing atmospheric CO2 V temperature.
If there is a present temperature “stasis”, despite atmospheric concentrations of CO2 increasing at about 2ppm/year then the only real bit of science we have may indicate:
1. That we should take more notice of that relationship and not expect significantly harmful temperature increases.
2. The feedbacks are indeed negative (which of course means kissing AGW goodbye).
20
That was my point. Thanks for agreeing.
But then you persist:
No it is you that tried to make a comparison that was poor (as you admit above).
Really Dr. Shehan, you are disputing the expert opinion of Werner Brozek at WUWT (at the beginning of Joanne’s post. Put your PhD to work and outline where his analysis is wrong.
20
Yes I am and I have.
It’s simple really. But I shall repeat it for your benefit once again.
Sttistical significance is first and formost dependent on sample size. Werners own figures show that for short timeframes there is no sttistically significant warming. But that is only half the story. His numbers also show that there is no statistically significant cooling. The time periods are too short to tell you anything much. At the risk of repeating myself:
The last 16 year period is simply too noisy to conclude what the temperature is doing, warming cooling or static within 95% confidence limits.
Taking two data sets from 1997:
Hadcrut3: Trend: 0.008 ±0.135 °C/decade
Hadcrut4: Trend: 0.046 ±0.124 °C/decade
That is, the Hadcrut3 data says that there is a 95% chance that temperatures have warmed by as much as 0.143 or cooled by as much as 0.127 °C/decade.
For Hadcrut 4 the range is from warming by 0.170 to cooling by 0.078 °C/decade.
A time period of 16 years is simply too short to tell you what is happening.
With longer time periods the signal to noise improves but you have to go back at least two decades before you can make a meaningful statement on whether temperatures are warming or cooling (for Hadcrut4 data): The longer the time period the narrower the range of uncertainty:
1995: 0.098 ± 0.111
1990: 0.144 ± 0.080
1980: 0.158 ± 0.045
1970: 0.164 ± 0.031
1960: 0.132 ± 0.025
And so on the further back you go.
So those who pick short periods of time and declare them “not statistically significant” are actually explaining why their data should be ignored.
They are setting the data up to fail.
Only multidecadal trends are meaningful.
21
As have pointed out earlier Philip, its only meaningful for whatever you want it to mean.. to you, that the globe is warming.
Nobody really disputes that the globe is warming, its a natural cycle and the data does not prove otherwise. The data also does not prove that CO2 has cause increased warming and most certainly not catastrophic warming.
If we are to continue “further back”, as you say, lets say a few thousand years, the data shows what Phil?
21
With regard to the first part of your comment.
My analogy was not poor, your attempt to turn an analogy into an equation was simply wrong.
You start mistakenly directly equating years with thermometers (which were not the instrument used for data collection, thought that the hypothetical instrument (the thermometer)equated to the sample size (the number of patients) and suggested that by extending thermometer readings out to 16 years would solve the problem it would not, the number of patients being the sample size.
I would normally be polite to someone who is not used to these concepts making such mistkes. Statistics can be difficult to grasp for the non-specialist, but since I detect a note of rudeness in your tone I will state directly that the basis errors in your analysis show a fundamental lack of understanding of the matter under discussion.
Again at the risk of repeating myself, what I am discussing is the statistical analysis of data sets.
It does not make a jot of difference to the analysis what the numbers relate to. They could be temperatures, patients, stock prices, summer ice cream sales, norwegian lemming populations – anything you like. It is only the numbers themselves that are relevant to the analysis. It does not make any difference to the statistical analysis whther the numbers are accurate data sets of real world objects or are innacurate or entirely made up.
The program that calculates the regression and uncertainty neither knows not cares where the numbers come from. It just spits out the answers. It is then up to the human to interpret what those numbers mean.
In the case of the Hadcrut4 temperature data results are clear and capable of no other interptretation than that you have to go back to 1994 to find a data set where the sample size and resultant signal to noise ratio are large enough to tell whether temperatures are warming or cooling.
12
Dr. Shehan
Lets back up a step please: May I ask you how long the drug study is expected to run?
May I also ask you to briefly outline the similarities between human physiology and the global climate systems and why you could make a valid comparison?
Thanks in advance
30
Mark D.
You are missing the point that I made at 1:31 pm and in an earlier post.
What we are discussing is the statistical analysis of data sets.
The validity of a data set in terms of statistical significance does not depend on the nature of the data. They are simply numbers. Again, not shouting here but this is the third tme I have made the point so I will emphasise it:
It does not make a jot of difference to the analysis what the numbers relate to. They could be temperatures, patients, stock prices, summer ice cream sales, norwegian lemming populations – anything you like. It is only the numbers themselves that are relevant to the analysis. It does not make any difference to the statistical analysis whether the numbers are accurate data sets of real world objects or are innacurate or entirely made up.
The only similarity between human physiology and climate systems required is that they produce data that can be subjected to mathematical (statistical) which tells whether the results are statistically meaningful.
Statistical analysis of temperature shows that data sets of temperature data covering less than about 3 decades do not produce statistically significant results. Longer periods do. Just like clinical studies with insufficient numbers of subjects will not produce statistically significant results.
The point is: Sample size matters.
Again:
So those who pick short periods of time (or small numbers of patients)and declare them “not statistically significant” are actually explaining why their data should be ignored.
They are setting the data up to fail.
Only multidecadal trends (or data from sufficiently many patients) are meaningful.
11
I would really like to hear from the person who ticked “don’t like” here why he/she did so.
As I wrote above, all I am doing is writing about mathematical analysis and in previous posts giving the results of such analysis of some data sets.
The only point I have been making here is that to correctly identify trends in temperature, you have to use a sufficiently large data set.
What’s not to like?
12
You?
31
Dr. Shehan, I am pleased that you answered one question but puzzled as to why you couldn’t bother to answer the other one. I’ll assume that you knew that your clinical study is expected to last for a period of time less than 16 years and didn’t want to mention that. You insist that 16 years is too short a time for climate but are apparently unwilling to offer an explanation for why your clinical study will produce statistically valid results with much less data and for a shorter time period.
00
Thank you KK for demonstrtaing the point I made in the section on the use of the term “denier”.
Specifically the bit about “skeptics” who think that personal abuse is a scientific argument.
00
I did not answer the question because it is based on a misconception that I hoped I had explained.
In the case of global temperature data, the phenomenon being studied is global temperature as a function of time. The sttistical significance of the results will depend on the time period being studied.
In the patient study, the phenomenon being studied is the response of the patient to the medications being administered.
Time is not a variable in the study, except for the fact that the medications for each patient were administered for either 24 or 48 weeks.
The study will last for as long as it takes to recruit and administer the treatments to 300 people from about 120 clinics in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Whether that takes 6 months or six years has no bearing on the results or the statistical analysis of the patient’s response to the treatment(s). It’s the number of patients that will determine the statistcal significance.
00
Phil
All I’m doing is offering you the same level of consideration that you give us.
You have an agenda and it’s not Science.
The only difference between our posts is that my comments are more overtly abusive while yours are more sneaky but in the end scientifically just junk science.
And you know it; and that is ABUSIVE.
So
“Thank you KK for demonstrtaing the point I made in the section on the use of the term “denier”.”
I haven’t even bothered to go to the item referred to in the denier discussion since all I am trying to do is to warn others that your posts are junk.
KK
01
KK. You have already justified my comments about “skeptics” who resort to abuse rather than scientific argument. There is no need to reinforce my point.
The argument style of such “skeptics” is fully on display in your comment.
According to you the fact that I argue the science without being abusive, which is how we scientists discuss even the most vigorous of disagreements, is called “sneaky” and the fact that you are overtly abusive supposedly counts in your favour.
The fact that I argue a scientific point of view that you and other “skeptics” (who are nothing of the sort – you reject AGW out of hand and get abusive at the presentation of evidence and argument that threatens your fixed position) is showing a lack of consideration.
Because I argue a scientific viewpoint to which you are ideologically, opposed, you claim I have an agenda and it’s not science.
You simply label an opposing scientific viwpoint “junk science” and claim that even presenting an opposing viewpoint is ABUSIVE.
Thank you again for giving the so-called “skeptic” viewpoint so clearly.
20
.
Philip,
Are you doing any work in relation to diseases in PNG? What’s biomnedical research scintist – bit of a worry?
But anyhow, Lae Hospital (PNG) needs Biomedical Research Scientists to help reopen their hospital.
10
Dave, I do and have apologised for my habit of not sufficiently proof reading my comments for typos before hitting the submit button. Interestingly these short apologies attract “don’t likes”, confirming my suspicion of the mindlessness of those who simply identify someone as an ideological opponent and automatically tick “don’t like” regardless of the content of the comment.
The weakness in my left pinky is evident by the frequently missing “a” in “sttistics” and the “e” in “scince”. Will try to do better.
Very kind of you to alert me to job opportunities.
00
Hi Phil
When you get to Lae, it has a very nice airport that runs perpendicularly in from the ocean.
Just had a look on Google Earth and it seems a bit primitive now?
I’m sorry that your apologies attract “don’t likes”; it seems unreasonable.
Although I have never felt this way myself, it is possible that some people feel that your “apologies” are insincere and this could be the reason, however poorly based.
I want to apologise on their behalf as I feel that guests on this site should be treated exactly as they treat the regular contributors here.
KK 🙂
ps. I hope your left pinky gets better real soon.
I’m sure there is no statistical point in assessing the loss of function as a percentage of all your digits; there are some statistical analyses that are a bit pointless and don’t add to the sum of human knowledge. I think your left finger comes into that category.
10
.
Hi Phillip Shelan and Ricardo K
What are your thoughts on Ross Garnaut and Tim Flannery?
30
Dave, I think you’re fishing without a hook. Good luck with that.
01
.
lok em you diggem deep wontok
20
.
P.S. You don’t need a hook to fish.
20
.
Ross Garnaut the single most biggest polluter in Australia.
Having been kicked out of PNG and listed as THE biggest single individual polluter in charge of companies that deposit toxic chemicals into river and ocean systems in the globe, he’s now on his way to China (no doubt to invest in more pollution).
This is this nutcases latest explaination of Climate Change:
What a load of SIHT?
Well let’s throw the dice Prof Ross, and solve Climate change like your avid followers like Phillip Shelan and Ricardo K do with bullsiht.
Do you support the policies of Ross Garnaut on his website and his past involvement in the destruction of PNG and it’s people through polution?
30
Hi Dave
Good outline of PNG’s numba wun polluter.
The laba Pati has tried every dirty trick in the book to divert attention from their ugly past, including their financial involvement with Global Warming.
In NSW we have just started the Obeid-McDonald inquiry with Bob ($15 mill for Kiribati) Carr washing his hands of Eddie in public.
Two weeks ago it was the drugs in Sport Inquiry: an ugly, demeaning event.
They can’t hide the stain; it’s all over them so they send their little worker bees on here to block the blog.
Never mind. We must be doing OK to get that sort of attention.
The public will likely see Garnaut tried for crimes against The Environment in PNG and then they will start to see the hypocrisy of the Politics of Global warming.
KK 🙂 .
30
OK, KK. Am I a Labor party head-kicker or the sargeant-at-arms of the Comanchero bikies? Maybe both, hey?
What’s the chance that I’m independent of both organisations?
That’s the best conspiracy theory yet! It puts me front and centre. I can’t wait to tell the boys down at the Worker’s Club Tattoo Parlour and Meth Lab for Recovering Sports Stars (carbon credits accepted).
02
You want to be REAL careful spruiking shit like that….. oops,too late, watch your back.
20
“the single most biggest polluter in Australia”?
This is parody, right? Or do you really think like a stereotype of a California valley-girl? I mean, like, you know?
To continue the quote:
“This is the probabilistic sense in which climate scientists should be understood when they say that no particular extreme event can be said to be caused by global warming, but that extreme events will happen more often and the worst will be more extreme than before. Climate change takes us into unknown territory for human civilisation.”
03
.
Ricardo K,
You say:
Please try and find the original ABC report on Ok Tedi pollution. Disappeared now – but the ABC people still have copies along with many others. You treat the death of PNG people directly attributed to the actions of OKTEDI and PNGSDP as a joke. Why?
Aren’t you concerned even if you
wereare a sargeant-at-arms of the Comancheros?20
.
SO right KK
The numbawan laba parti in OZ in ontrack for many more disappointments after the election.
1. Ross Garnaut is busy trying to shore up favour of the IPCC & China to ward of law suits coming his way for mis-appropriation of funds allocated by OKTEDI to PNGSDP to clean up the massive toxic spills – and instead ploughing money into developments of companies that he’s invested in. This will be iwithin the next year or so.
2. Peter Garrett will be off the hook as he warned the government of the dangers of the PINK BAT scheme (recorded) – but he still took a front brench position to keep quiet (but still people died). The people involved were Rudd, Swan and Gillard. There will be enquiries over this also.
3. Tim Flannery is under investigation for misleading statements regarding geothermal energy and the resultant loss of billions of government grants towards his dreams. There will be more to Tim’s errors as time progresses. Just check his income through the ABC, The ALP, the government, Private companies (needed to get grants), and promotions etc etc etc.
These are the well known stars of the ALP – many more to come.
But the Oscar goes to Prof Ross for his killing field in PNG and the money he has profitered out of this.
The comments by Ricardo K. and Philip Shehan above will also dissappear as the truth becomes available.
A video camera on their dashboard will not save them from the comet coming their way soon.
Mr. McTurd will also dissappear shortly back to the cold of his hometown – never to run an election campaign again. He is also guilty of pollution in China through RE mining and his relationships with various companies.
30
What has the Roman warm period ever done for us?…..
00
Well, if it didn’t get warm, the Romans would have thought it too cold to bother trotting over to Britain… and the Brits would still be living like Hobbits and talking in dialects.
10
Gillard is getting well and truly trashed in the polls… let’s open a book on what will happen next 🙂
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/for-gillard-the-bad-news-comes-in-threes-20130217-2elbp.html
10
KR you show amazing patience in your responses. Well done.
11
Dr. Shehan:
The way I see it, you have the misconception. I have not disagreed with what you claim about sample size. I complained about your comparison of two wholly different studies and the reality that they really should not be compared. You have taken several long tries to argue your point and in doing so simply re-enforce my point.
Funny.
As for “time not being a variable” I do believe that in human drug studies there is a time component, at minimum it would be a lifetime, or in the case of cancer drugs maybe 5 years. I imagine the study you’re involved in the treatment is effective enough to disregard time. But this would be even more reason not to compare the two.
Let me stick my neck out: You COULD do your drug study on 16 people. If all 16 respond well as per the trial rules you could very well derive “useful” statistical data. Of course, probably insufficient to convince regulators that your drug should be cleared for marketing, but still useful.
But lets look back at what you suggest that 300 individuals are required and 16 would not work. OK. We compare that to 16-23years of temperature data as insufficient but certainly all of 300 years are not required to gain meaningful results right?
Finally, you have made your point about 16 years being insufficient WRT temperature. You must realize this works both ways? You can’t claim warming, I can’t claim cooling (or no warming).
Fair enough. Call off the tax dogs and tell congress not to bother with ruining our economy over Co2. Tell them that this global climate thing isn’t so well understood after all. Tell them the truth that we are yet extremely young as far as knowing how these complex systems work and need at least 15 more years of data to really have a clue.
By the way, thank you for not being snotty as some of the other recent troll like posters here.
20
Mark. As far as yor statement goes “Finally, you have made your point about 16 years being insufficient WRT temperature. You must realize this works both ways? You can’t claim warming, I can’t claim cooling (or no warming)”
I agree entirely and have said so in exactly so many words here (admittedly a long way back). That is precisely the point I am making throughout this thread.
Those who say that the recent data shows no statistical warming are telling only half the story. It shows no statistical cooling either. Or you could say it supports both possibilites, the the error margins for between one and two decades of data giving a data range from about 0.2 C/degade warming to 0.2 C/decade cooling. That is why I say that temperature data for short periods are meaningless, and that those who choose them are setting the data up to fail.
With regard to my discussion of how statistics apply in studies other than temperature data I can’t think of any other way to put my point than I have already given. If after reviewing those points you find I am not making myself clear enough or you disagree, we will just have to agree to differ.
Thanks also for polite discussion.
00
Nobody would be able to disagree with what you have said there.
That’s never been an issue with me.
KK
00
Of course, what is at issue is that you “accept’ CO2 induced global warming, which I and other scientists
see as deliberately deceitful misrepresentation to the general public.
For an “educated” person like yourself to claim that CO2 is dangerous is either one of two things:
1. An act of Faith in believing another scientist’s unconfirmed opinion that CO2 “matters”.
or
2. Through your own investigative efforts you have convinced yourself that the CO2 – CAGW meme is true.
In either case you have been deceived by what you have been told or read and regardless you have failed
to confirm the truth of the matter scientifically and your decision to “Believe” is therefore an act of
GROSS NEGLIGENCE for a person claiming to be Educated.
There is no “proof” of man made global warming – just a lot of manipulative “hot air”.
The conclusion is self evident.
KK
00
A better way to analyse this data may be piecewise regression to compare the likelihoods of no pause in warming with that of a pause in warming
This has been done here and shows that it is more likely that there has been such a pause
00
[…] the last 16 years (1997-2013), even though CO2 levels have continued to rise (Graph modified from David Evans, using Hadley UK Met Office data (HadCrut4). RIGHT – Sea ice extent in September (the yearly minimum) has declined quite a bit since 1997 […]
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[…] the last 16 years (1997-2013), even though CO2 levels have continued to rise (Graph modified from David Evans, using Hadley UK Met Office data (HadCrut4). RIGHT – Sea ice extent in September (the yearly minimum) has declined quite a bit since 1997 – […]
00