I think that’s what counts. The word “climate” refers to conditions of long period of time. Usually 30 years, but shorter periods can be used if seen necessary. However, I think anything less than 10 years is more weather than climate.

Climate change hasn’t stopped since this decade is record warm and a lot warmer than the previous one.

I think this shows perfectly what’s this all about: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/stupid-is-as-stupid-does/

1980-1997 = flat

1997-1998=step up about 0.3

1999-2008 = flat

Hard to believe CO2 warming produced this step function, which looks like noise, weather, what have you.

Three points however.

One. The ENTIRE premise of ALL of the AGW-power-based taxes and government controls is based on a 1/2 of one degree rise in temperatures that (are claimed to) correspond to rising CO2 levels since WWII.

However, the ONLY time in the earth’s 4+ billion year history when both CO2 and temperatures have BOTH been rising at the same time is the 26 year period from 1972 through 1998. In the ten-year period since 1998, temperatures have been steady, or arguably, falling slightly, despite a steady increase in CO2 levels. If only one year in 37 showed a declining temeprature, that’s noise/weather/whether/wonder/why/why not/weird results and means nothing.

but when ten years of the AGW-extremist’s precious 37 year trend show complete opposite results of Hansen’s politics? That becomes meaningful!

Two. Realists MUST use any means available (including statistics) to show that the AGW’a-politically-driven-conclusion of taxes, government-controls and death is wrong.

Three. Why a straight line? Up, down, flat, or vertical. Temperatures across times are NOT linear, and any model that pretends to compare real-world data with a straight line will be wrong.

Use a sine wave. (Or a cosine wave if you are left handed, or prefer the metric system for sum reason.) Model the temperatures since 1908 WITH A SINE WAVE and you will see a long, natural rise and fall that match closely to a 70 year cycle that shows the high point in 1935-1945, the lows in 1970, the high point in 1995-2005, and today’s slow fall from the 2004-2006 peak. That curve, though harder to plot, WILL match real-world measured dates. Er, data. 8<)

But to try to match a flat line? No – You can ALWAYS be shown by a AGW-extremist to be wrong. Because, with a straight line, you ARE going to be wrong.

These data are preliminary and have not undergone final quality control by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Therefore, these data are subject to revision. Final and certified climate data can be accessed at the NCDC – http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov.
Record Report

000
SXUS76 KPDT 231815
RERPDT

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PENDLETON OR
1115 AM PDT THU OCT 23 2008

…NEW DAILY RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES FOR OCTOBER 23RD…

NOTE: STATIONS MARKED WITH * INDICATE THAT THE STATION REPORTS ONCE
PER DAY. FOR CONSISTENCY…THESE VALUES ARE CONSIDERED TO HAVE
OCCURRED ON THE DAY THE OBSERVATION WAS TAKEN BUT MAY HAVE ACTUALLY
OCCURRED (ESPECIALLY FOR MAX TEMPERATURE) ON THE PREVIOUS DAY.

STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS
RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN

PENDLETON(ARPT), OR 29 / 1984 29 (TIED) 1934 :SINCE MID
*UNION ES, OR 20 / 1980 17 1928
WALLA WALLA, WA 32 / 2000 32 (TIED) 1949 :SINCE MID

stan Says:

Re: Tenured Prof (#161),

Prof,

The country club of climate scientists would not bother anyone, if they didn’t use their club to influence govt policy. But they use their little club to try to impose enormous costs on everyone else in the world. Some in the club are even demanding that anyone who disagrees with the club be thrown in jail.

This may not be a focus of Steve’s, but it is a really big deal to a lot of his readers.

Bottom line — when the country club members use the club’s activities to demand significant sacrifices be imposed on the rest of the world, the rest of the world should have the right to demand that the club be competent, open, transparent, and honest in its dealings. And that right is not dependent on whether they like McIntyre or want to blackball him.

When the club started pushing the world around, the world got the right to push back. And looking under the rock is the first step.

Are the statistical arguments without value?…I’d say no, because at the 500′ level, which is where many of us engage in this lunacy, it’s nice to have a few things in your hip pocket so you can say “Yeah…well if that’s true, why isn’t THIS true?”, in an attempt to make someone realize that the “science” is maybe not what they think it is.

In a war, you need both privates and generals…and the pay is the same, whether you’re fighting or marching.

JimB

The political advantage to be gained by use of statistics is real. Opposing politicians would be ill-advised to say “bah, it’s only statistics”, that would be an admission of defeat. They have to answer like with like and produce their own statistics to seek to persuade the volatile audience against the government’s position. That the refutation might be based on just as flimsy ground as that being refuted is neither here nor there. It is not, at heart, an argument about who is right but about whether one side is to be allowed to deploy machine guns while the other side limits itself to water pistols.

Undertaking a statistical analysis on a set of data is, of itself, no more useful than doing a crossword. Its utility comes from the conclusions you draw (or invite others to draw) and from the consequences of those conclusions. As has been said here many times no one would give two hoots whether the world is warming unless it had adverse consequences. The warmists use statistics to conclude both that the world is warming and that the warming will have a seriously detrimental effect. From that point they advocate radical changes to the way we live. None of that stands without their supporting statistics and none of it can be challenged effectively without challenging those statistics.

One victory might spur your opponent into undertaking another statistical exercise which (as if my magic) comes to the same conclusion as the one you disproved. Your choice then is to say either “I give up, I’m tired of this game” or “ok, let’s see if his second attempt is any better”. And if you can cast sufficient doubt on his second method you are faced with the same choice when his third appears. There is no way out of this apart from surrender.

There is, however, an important side effect of being able to challenge a succession of analyses sufficiently strongly to force your opponent to have another go. Where his work is relied on by politicians to press for a particular policy, the fact that the reasons for that policy are re-cast time and again because flaws have been identified can (not will, but can) throw doubt on the policy itself. It is a war of attrition – you cannot avoid the attrition if you want to win the war.

I believe the only thing that can stop it is cold weather. No science, statistics, posturing or calling shenanigans will do it, there is too much money involved. Currently we are in a downtrend or flat trend, the sun is quiet and it is becoming evident that the trend is continuing through winter. I am not particularly religious but we are definitely not in the drivers seat on this one.

Pointing out that the downtrend is clearly real, using as simple an example as I could find seemed important. I think Anthony Watts understood the statistics and significance of the demonstration immediately just as he has followed the solar, ice and measurement stations so well.

You are the last of a dying breed. Keep fighting the good fight…

The beautiful thing about mathematics, particularly statistical mathematics, is that you can apply such analyses to any set of data; whether such data is the computed output of f(xyz), or is random, or chaotic, or simply quite arbitrary.

A good example would be to start with say the Manhattan telephone directory, where all the numbers derive from some sort of rules, at least they are all ten digits, counting area codes, but otherwise there is no rational connection between the number and the exact location of the telephone that rings, if you dial that number. But it is trivial to compute the average, or mean, the median, or any other statistical parameter associated with that book of raw data. But it doesn’t mean anything to anybody (but a statistician). And when they print a new phone book in say three years; nothing meaningful can be ascertained from the differences between the statistical analysis of the two editions of the telephone book.

Do any of the people who call themselves climatologists, actually do anything that involves Physics, or Physical Chemistry, or Oceanograph, or Geology; or anything that is real science.

Mathematics as you know, is all pure fiction; it isn’t any universal truth. We made it all up in our heads, out of whole cloth. We had darn good reasons for doing that; to create tools to describe the functioning of our science models; which are themselves all fictional as wel.

Absolutely NOTHING, that we use or talk about in mathematics, actually exists anywhere in the real universe.

There are no points, no lines, no planes, no circles or spheres; none of those things exist.

The equation x^2 +y^2 +z^2 = r^2 describes a sphere in Euclidean geometry, but no way does it explain something like 8km high mountains on the surface of such an object !

It is no wonder that the GCM computer geeks seem to rule the roost in climatology; they don’t seem to even need any input form the real universe to work their magic.

All such things are perfectly good data sets to work the wonders of statistical mathematics on.

The results are quite meaningless of course.

A good example of statistics run amok arose in the Viet Nam War era, when somebody decided to have a draft lottery based on birthdates. The calendar days were assigned sequential numbers from 1 for Jan 1, to 366 for dec 31, including Feb 29 of course.
Numbers were drawn out of a hat, figuratively speaking, and perosn born on that date were chosen first to go into the military conscription program.

Within days of that very first draft lottery; the walls leaked statisticians, who started to pronounce the lottery unfair, and biassed, because more people with low numbers in Jan-feb were chosen early, in the view of thes math whizzes.
Now in such a draft lottery, there are factorial 366 possible draft outcomes; each one different. That is one huge number; I’ll let you math jocks calculate that for yourselves, since I don’t have a good calculator handy at the moment.

So these mathematical geniuses pronounced the first draft lottery to be not random; and they made this momentous gaffe, on the result of one single sample out of factorial 366 possible outcomes.
One of those possible outcomes was to have the numbers come out as Jan1, jan2, jan3,…..dec28, dec 29, dec30, dec31, in exact calendar order.
That outcome, which would have shocked the world, is no more unlikely, than the real outcome that occurred with that first draft lottery.

Statistics gives no information about any single event. Now if they had a draft lottery every second, and did so for the entire estimated age of the universe; you might get enough “experimental” data to say the lottery was non random; but genius level statisticians reached that conclusion based on a single data point

I agree that statistics can certainly be a valuable tool, but a bad master. Derek said that “STATISTICS NEVER PROVES SCIENCE…” – I thought it was the case that statistics do not PROVE anything. The scholium is simply a set of techniques for understanding trends in large masses of data. What never seems to be realised is that statistics will happily indicate any trend you care to look for – people seem to think that just because I have calculated a rising trend in pet ownership amongst left-handed Norwegians that this is somehow of importance….

I am not so sure I am with Derek when he warns against joining battle ‘on the enemies’ ground’. It is true that there you will be mired in manipulation, and your words will be twisted to make it seem as if you are always loosing.

But the battle will not be won only amongst the politicians and warmist propagandists. Many non-mathematical scientists and other opinion formers currently believe because they have no time or inclination to read beyond the propaganda, and cannot believe that some complex maths can be anything but correct. They will need to be led gently away from this belief – just telling them that they are dead wrong will not persuade them. They need to see disputation in maths to understand for themselves that lies can be numeric as well as verbal. This is where Steve McIntyre scores highly. He stresses that he is neither a ‘warmer’ nor a ‘denier’ – he just wants to see good science, so he spends a lot of time uncovering appalling statistical malfeasance. And this difficult position which he has held is now standing him in good stead – ‘warmer’ science institutions are able to listen to him, because he is scrupulously polite and talks their language. It is from work such as his that the huge walls of the AGW hypothesis will first start to crumble.

Whew! A thread ending blog if I ever saw one!

So I don’t make any enemies here, understand that I fully agree that statistics are useful tools and can produce meaningful results. Furthermore, I have a TREMENDOUS appreciation for Anthony running this site, and undertaking the efforts he has in the interest of truth.

However in this case of Anthony vs Tamino, we have a case of two different conclusions, implying two totally opposite conclusions derived from THE EXACT SAME DATA SET. This is where statistics become a trap, a point not lost on the Warmists. If you set out to claim something like AGW that certainly will never be proven factually and scientifically, it is in your best interests to stay out of the arena of proof entirely. Thus the warmists prefer to present one manipulated statistical conclusion after another. The result is that right minded people like Anthony feel compelled to diligently rebuke the data, pointing out procedural errors as any good scientist would. Problem is he’s not dealing with scientists, he’s dealing with political propagandists, who feel no compulsion to bear the burden of proof. So after spending much time and effort debunking one claim, he is met with 10 more, and it goes without saying that they will be flawed too. So how many months weeks or years should he waste giving them thorough review? It’s a diversion. The agenda will be pushed on through other avenues, while Anthony struggles pores over reams of statistics that we all know are bunk from the outset. And at that point, his good intentions, and diligent efforts are all for naught.

So while Anthony’s strength is statistics, mine is outwitting shitheads. And in this case, my strengths may pay better dividends against such an enemy as the Warmist crowd. As such my post is nothing more than the best intentioned, best reasoned, most altruistic advice I can offer after considering the bigger picture and the cast of characters involved. Anthony’s talents are too valuable to waste grading the half-assed statistics homework of amateur scientists and professional propagandists.

To determine the alhpa, you would first need to know what a complete measurement of world temperature would require. I’ve never seen anyone say what that would be and can’t imagine what one would look like. I would be inherently complex, given the size, distribution, and dynamic nature of the atmospheric temperature. The number physical locations would be extreme and would have to be near continuous. From what I’ve read, satellite measurements give a pretty near comprehensive data set. However, in that case, measurements would not be statistical (ie a sample of the whole) but actual measurements of the whole. Statistical calculations would not be relevant. How you combine and evaluate the numbers would obviously involve mathmatics but not confidence intervals for actual temperatures.