104 replies to this topic

[Michelle]

Br Cornelius, on 07 December 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

You really just don't understand the concept of stats or trends do you

Maybe, but neither does the average person. Those of us that try and come to the truth of the matter see conflicting reports from various sources and we have to come to our own conclusions. We can see the contradictions and why should we take your word for it?

I've been an environmentalist, or tree hugger if you will, all of my life and I have a difficult time believing this isn't a natural earth cycle. It may be eccelerated by a hundred years, but it's still coming...with or without us.

[Br Cornelius]

Michelle, on 07 December 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

Maybe, but neither does the average person. Those of us that try and come to the truth of the matter see conflicting reports from various sources and we have to come to our own conclusions. We can see the contradictions and why should we take your word for it?

I've been an environmentalist, or tree hugger if you will, all of my life and I have a difficult time believing this isn't a natural earth cycle. It may be eccelerated by a hundred years, but it's still coming...with or without us.

The point about ignorance of the complex subject of stats  is not that we should all be capable of understanding them (I have only a tenuous grasp of the finer points of stats) but that we should understand our limits and defer to people who are experts who do understand them. The cult of the amateur expert who is capable of slaying established experts with a cursory glance over some internet blogs is frankly insulting.



Your assertion of the dominance of natural cycles seems to be purely a matter of belief, which of course you are entitled to, but until you present robust evidence to counter the science of AGW it will remain an unsupported belief.

It is not as if you have a whole heap of credible climate scientists who agree with you here. its not about been a tree hugger, its about credible evidence and well supported arguments.

-------------

Dr Richard Muller has this to say about what Little Fish is attempting to perpetrate in this thread;

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“That’s incorrect...I mean, what they have done is an old trick. It’s how to lie with statistics, right? And scientists can’t do that because 10 years from now, they’ll look back on my publications and say, ‘Was he right?’ But a journalist can lie with statistics. They can choose a little piece of the data and prove what they want, carefully cutting out the end. If I wanted to do this, I could demonstrate, for example, with the same data set that from 1980 to 1995 that it’s equally flat. You can find little realms where it’s equally flat. What that tells me is that 15 years is not enough to be able to tell whether it’s warming or not. And so when they take 13 years, and they say based on that they can reach a conclusion based on our data set, I think they’re playing that same game and the fact that we can find that back in 1980, the same effect, when we know it [was] warming simply shows that that method doesn’t work. But no scientist could do that because he’d be discredited for lying with statistics. Newspapers can do that because 10 years from now, nobody will remember that they showed that.”

We have a trained environmental statistician here on this discussion who is calling Little Fishes bluff - who would you believe.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 07 December 2012 - 10:39 PM.

[Michelle]

Br Cornelius, on 07 December 2012 - 10:32 PM, said:

That seems to be purely a matter of belief which of course you are entitled to, but until you present robust evidence to counter the science of AGW it will remain an unsupported belief.

And you can disregard thousands of years of weather patterns.

[Br Cornelius]

Michelle, on 07 December 2012 - 10:40 PM, said:

And you can disregard thousands of years of weather patterns.

Climate always has drivers - mainly external but on a geological time scale continental drift plays a significant part. The science of climate is all about understanding those external and internal forcings and then applying them to understanding what is going on now and into the future.
CO2 is the only variable known to plug the gap between natural forcings and the observed climate trend. It is not acceptable to invoke some mysterious hidden variable without having a testable description of what it actually is. CO2 is  a well understood physical phenomenon which has been demonstrated to have a significant influence within the paloclimatic record and so its use as a mechanism to explain current warming is an extrapolation from evidence.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 07 December 2012 - 10:49 PM.

[Doug1o29]

Little Fish, on 07 December 2012 - 09:30 PM, said:

if I want to calculate the trend for the last 15 years, then I do not need the data from years previous to those 15. all I need is the data for the last 15 years, and I should not throw away any data as a declared "outlier". to throw away the el nino and not throw away the la nina's and el ninos that followed is fraudulent, so we should use all the data over the last 15 years.

But you still need 30 data points to calculate a statistically valid trend.  With 15, you have a skewed result.  Climate data is an autocorrelated time series - last year's data point is a better-than-average estimate of this year's.  It lacks independence and because of that, a whole lot of calculating is needed to make the corrections.  I just finished doing that with 482 tree ring series.  It's a pain and I can understand why you don't want to do it.  But if you want a relaiable result, you don't have a choice.

One other problem:  a trend is a point-value.  It only describes the rate of change at one point in time.  The trend could change five minutes after you measured it.  It could have been different (and probably was) seconds earlier.  So even if you have one, it's not of much use.

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I have explained the point to you SIX times now as to why we should look at 15 years of data. here for the 7th time - a flat trend of 15 years falsifies the gcms - that is what the gcm modelers and NOAA stated in 2008 - in order to assert that co2 is a scary life threatening primary climate driving gas that the gcms animate it as, the temperature trend will always show a rise over any 15 year period - their words, not mine.

Saying it again doesn't change the fact that your math is all screwed up.

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the main temperature dataset used by the IPCC, HADCRUT3 and used in the graphs I showed is a monthly dataset, so 15 years of data contain 180 data points. the trend over the last 15 years is flat as I already showed you.

So now you've decided to introduce another set of variables to the problem.  The problem that you're up against here is that by using monthly values, you have added a lot of variability to your dataset.  And that widens your confidence interval.  What you are tring to do is prove that the rate of slope is zero.  But with a wide confidence interval, you can't disprove values that differ widely from zero.  You have accomplished nothing.

BUT:  By adding twelve dummy variables (one for each month) to the model, you can improve your accuracy considerably.  That will give you 180-13=167 degrees of freedom.  That should be enough.  Did you do the math?  What did it show?

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no global warming for fifteen years falsifies the famous fear flooding fanatical fatalists fantastical fantasies.

You haven't disproven global warming during the 15 years in question, yet, but I'm anxious to see how you modeled the months.  You might actually succeed.  Time to show your work.
Doug

[Little Fish]

Doug1o29, on 07 December 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

You haven't disproven global warming during the 15 years in question

what I have proven is your (and cornelius') willfully inability to understand what the point is.
never did i say or mean "i have disproven global warming".
go back and read my posts, or shall i explain the point for an 8th time?

what did the modelers and NOAA say was the benchmark to show a discrepancy in the gcm models?

[Number Fingers]

If they demand a graph going back to the 1970s, here's one (taken from NOAA satellite data compiled by Roy Spencer).  Not that it matters in the end, because this one will just be poo-pooed too. I think very few sceptics would deny that there was general warming from the 1970s into the 2000s, but of course, it just leads to the old question: is it from AGW or just natural fluctuations of the Earth's climate?

According to the AGW hypothesis, If increasing CO2 is the main driver of temperature, there should be a very clear upward trend line because CO2 in the atmosphere has been accelerating year upon year without slowing down.  But they've probably figured out a way now to get around that little problem too.  After all, they get to have their cake and eat it too, as I've been told.

Br Cornelius, on 07 December 2012 - 10:32 PM, said:

The point about ignorance of the complex subject of stats  is not that we should all be capable of understanding them (I have only a tenuous grasp of the finer points of stats) but that we should understand our limits and defer to people who are experts who do understand them. The cult of the amateur expert who is capable of slaying established experts with a cursory glance over some internet blogs is frankly insulting.

I don't personally believe this.  We should not defer to experts simply because they are, or claim to be, experts.  That's the same as listening to a priest because they studied theology and claim to be in closer communion with God.  If the expert is wrong, it is okay for even a child to point it out.  In the end, the expert always has to be held accountable.

You laugh at amateur internet scientists, but I would laugh in the face of any professional scientist who tries to use the word consensus to say that the science is settled.  To me these scientists are worse than the amateurs who are trying to understand the science and the facts and are pointing out problems with the data.  The scientists should be delighted that discrepencies have been found and that there are questions still to be answered.

They shouldn't be trying to ignore or belittle sceptics who have shown a greater ability to engage in real science.  Science isn't about being an expert who blindly studied in university anyways.  An amateur can be more of a scientist than the professional, if the amateur follows the scientific method more thoroughly than the expert.

[Br Cornelius]

Little Fish, on 07 December 2012 - 11:54 PM, said:

what I have proven is your (and cornelius') willfully inability to understand what the point is.
never did i say or mean "i have disproven global warming".
go back and read my posts, or shall i explain the point for an 8th time?

what did the modelers and NOAA say was the benchmark to show a discrepancy in the gcm models?

Your basic  premise is wrong (that you can cut out a short time series and analyse it) and so the conclusion you have attempted to draw is equally wrong. You have no argument and you either  cannot see it or are been willfully ignorant.

Br Cornelius

[Br Cornelius]

Number Fingers, on 08 December 2012 - 08:02 AM, said:

If they demand a graph going back to the 1970s, here's one (taken from NOAA satellite data compiled by Roy Spencer).  Not that it matters in the end, because this one will just be poo-pooed too. I think very few sceptics would deny that there was general warming from the 1970s into the 2000s, but of course, it just leads to the old question: is it from AGW or just natural fluctuations of the Earth's climate?

According to the AGW hypothesis, If increasing CO2 is the main driver of temperature, there should be a very clear upward trend line because CO2 in the atmosphere has been accelerating year upon year without slowing down.  But they've probably figured out a way now to get around that little problem too.  After all, they get to have their cake and eat it too, as I've been told.










I don't personally believe this.  We should not defer to experts simply because they are, or claim to be, experts.  That's the same as listening to a priest because they studied theology and claim to be in closer communion with God.  If the expert is wrong, it is okay for even a child to point it out.  In the end, the expert always has to be held accountable.

You laugh at amateur internet scientists, but I would laugh in the face of any professional scientist who tries to use the word consensus to say that the science is settled.  To me these scientists are worse than the amateurs who are trying to understand the science and the facts and are pointing out problems with the data.  The scientists should be delighted that discrepencies have been found and that there are questions still to be answered.

They shouldn't be trying to ignore or belittle sceptics who have shown a greater ability to engage in real science.  Science isn't about being an expert who blindly studied in university anyways.  An amateur can be more of a scientist than the professional, if the amateur follows the scientific method more thoroughly than the expert.

The demand for a clear upward trend denies the internal variability of the system on short time scales. This is what the whole debate with Little Fish is all about - should natural downturns of climate (in this case induced by a dominant series of La Nina's) mask the upwards AGW trend over short time scales - the answer is yes. This is why climate scientists are not interested in short duration variability. There are at least 8 short duration downward trends within the overall upward trend of the last 180yrs. They are not significant statistically and this is why 30 years is the minimal significant duration in assessing overall trends.


A priest has no recourse to evidence and no requirement to provide evidence to support his belief so the comparison is not valid.

Maybe you would like to design a computer chip after a few hours reviewing a blog on  computers. You see there is a process of acquiring knowledge in a rigorous and systematic way which allows you to do things which others can not. This is applicable especially to fields such as stats which are not linear in the concepts which they employ - they require specific specialist training to understand.

Just because the field of climate science has come to a conclusion which you do not like doesn't means that that conclusion hasn't been arrived at through the same rigorous process as the computer chip designer. The folly of the Amateur is that he believes he knows better with absolutely no real knowledge other than belief.
A trained scientist acquires as p0art of his education a set of reasoning skills which generally allows him to distinguish the difference between real evidence and evidence designed to deceive.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 08 December 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Look at what happens to the trend when you filter out the El Nino La Nino oscillation;



http://www.nature.co...ature06982.html

Br Cornelius

[Number Fingers]

The priest comparison is apt because in previous centuries it was deemed wrong simply to question the priest, as it is now wrong to question the climate 'scientist'.  The church did point to many truths that provided evidence of God.  Even Aquinas said that there was concrete evidence of God (i.e. through creation and through Jesus) up to a point, but the final acceptance of God always required faith, because God's existence could never be known for certain.  And that was the position of the church ever since: a combination of evidence and faith.  This was affirmed with the introduction of modern science in the 1600s.  For instance, the perfect, precise workings of living bodies under a microscopic were claimed to be evidence of God's meticulous perfection.  So too, the perfect motion of all the bodies in the solar system, all working in universal harmony.  Unlike today, during the Enlightenment the priests (and some philosophes) believed that science validated religious faith.

The evidence they were seeing was in front of them, it just didn't apply to God at all.  It's misattributed evidence.  Which is what you get when you approach a topic with prejudice.  The exact same can be said of warming and CO2, as they connect these two different components through an intermediary of faith.

And I wasn't talking about the process of using knowledge to create technology.  I was referring to the scientific method: i.e. upholding the goals of repitition and of empirical observation.  I know Michael Mann lies, simply because he refused to ever release his data.  It's that simple for me.  It shows he's no scientist, thus his data is spurious.  But what's absolutely worse is he knows he lies, otherwise he would show his work and stand by it.

Br Cornelius, on 08 December 2012 - 08:37 AM, said:

A trained scientist acquires as part of his education a set of reasoning skills which generally allows him to distinguish the difference between real evidence and evidence designed to deceive.

This certainly sounds romantic, and would be fantastic if true, but in most cases, if someone goes into a field with a certain bias, everything they learn will confirm that bias.  Many scientists still stand behind Mann or Gore, even though everything they said was pure alarmism.  Gore even bought his mansion in a place, that according to his documentary, will be under 20 feet of water when the sea rises.  Like Mann, even he doesn't believe in his own alarmism.

[Number Fingers]

Br Cornelius, on 08 December 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Look at what happens to the trend when you filter out the El Nino La Nino oscillation;



http://www.nature.co...ature06982.html

Br Cornelius

lol

If those oscilliations are helping to drive climate, of course it looks more drastic if they're removed.

That's like proving a car goes from 0-100 mph in 2 seconds by removing the revving up from 20-80.  You'll end up with a similar spike.

[Br Cornelius]

99% of science is engineering - your failure to see that there is no significant difference between the engineering applied to computers and climate shows you really do not understand what goes into verifying a theory. You obviously have no scientific training or you would be loath to make such a sweeping mis-statement. I did not accept the existence of the theoretical higgs boson until the engineers found it.  


Manns hockey stick is based upon readily available data and has been duplicated by many other methods using other datasets. He has not lied - he has been verified by the scientific method (repetition by peers).
Science works from first principle evidence. the first principle evidence for AGW is the physics of greenhouse gases. The second strand of foundational evidence is the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere - the system is collecting heat. There are no acts of faith in these facts they are verifiable physical phenomenon. The rest of climate science is about how these basic facts play out within the planetary system.

All your other errors flow from a failure to understand the difference between science and belief.

The basic reason why most people reject the accumulated evidence of climate science is because it contradicts their foundational beliefs. These can be political (generally right wing), economic (free market liberalism), religious (God wouldn't let it happen) or conspiratorial (the powers that be are out to kill us).  

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 08 December 2012 - 10:54 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Number Fingers, on 08 December 2012 - 10:26 AM, said:

lol

If those oscilliations are helping to drive climate, of course it looks more drastic if they're removed.

That's like proving a car goes from 0-100 mph in 2 seconds by removing the revving up from 20-80.  You'll end up with a similar spike.

The ENSO oscillation has been shown to be temperature neutral - that is it has no overall effect on the mean temperature. It is valid to filter it out because it has a dramatic effect on short term variability and prevents clear understanding of the trend underlying it.

IT IS NOT A CLIMATE FORCING - it is a response. It is like the knocking you get when you drive a car with wheel imbalance at a specific speed -  it only occurs in response to a specific set of variables which it doesn't create.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 08 December 2012 - 10:43 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Undoubtedly the rate of warming over the last 15 years has slowed, but it certainly cannot be used as evidence that the theory of AGW is invalidated.

Br Cornelius