Guest post by Steve Goddard
Archimedes had his eureka moment while sitting in the bathtub. Newton made a great discovery sitting under an apple tree. Szilárd discovered nuclear fission while sitting at a red light.
There was a time when observation was considered an important part of science. Climate science has gone the opposite direction, with key players rejecting observation when reality disagrees with computer models and statistics. Well known examples include making the MWP disappear, and claiming that temperatures continue to rise according to IPCC projections – in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Here is a simple exercise to demonstrate how absurd this has become. Suppose you are in a geography class and are asked to measure the height of one of the hills in the Appalachian Plateau Cross Section below.
Image from Dr. Robert Whisonant, Department of Geology, Radford University
How would you go about doing it? You would visually identify the lowest point in the adjacent valley, the highest point on the hill, and subtract the difference. Dividing that by the horizontal distance between those two points would give you the average slope. However, some in the climate science community would argue that is “cherry picking” the data.
They might argue that the average slope across the plateau is zero, therefore there are no hills.
Or they might argue that the average slope across the entire graph is negative, so the cross section represents only a downwards slope. Both interpretations are ridiculous. One could just as easily say that there are no mountains on earth, because the average slope of the earth’s surface is flat.
Now lets apply the same logic to the graph of Northern Hemisphere snow cover.
It is abundantly clear that there are “peaks” on the left and right side of the graph, and that there is a “valley” in the middle. It is abundantly clear that there is a “hill” from 1989-2010. Can we infer that snow cover will continue to increase? Of course not. But it is ridiculous to claim that snow extent has not risen since 1989, based on the logic that the linear trend from 1967-2010 is neutral. It is an abuse of statistics, defies the scientific method, and is a perversion of what science is supposed to be.
Tamino objects to the graph below because it has “less than 90% confidence” using his self-concocted “cherry picking” analysis.
So what is wrong with his analysis? Firstly, 85% would be a pretty good number for betting. A good gambler would bet on 55%. Secondly, the confidence number is used for predicting future trends. There is 100% confidence that the trend from 1989-2010 is upwards. He is simply attempting to obfuscate the obvious fact that the climate models were wrong.
Science is for everyone, not just the elite who collect government grant money. I’m tired of my children’s science education being controlled by people with a political agenda.
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Wholly agree that selecting a short segment of a long, squiggly line and declaring that whatever trend that segment shows will extend forever into the future is a sin.
But I am not too clear about Szilard ‘discovering nuclear fission.’ I thought that was Hahn. Do you mean, Szilard’s insight into the explosive implications of uncontrolled fission?
AS we build this bridge to reality (climate changes are natural cycles), there seems to be more and more creatures lurking under the bridge in threads of late – hhhmmmmm…
>>>
Just an antidotal observation, but in surfing the net for articles on recent AGW articles (Climategate) originating from the “old” media sources and allowing comments, there seems to be a trend developing.
The comments are becoming more skeptical / cynical by a significant margin. I place it a close 70% (anti) vs. 30% (pro) AGW. That must be somewhat frustrating for article creators who used to see their musings well received.
I’d be interested in what other thinks about this ?
How interesting. The 1967-2010 graph looks just like this one:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SnowOnBally.GIF
the last snow on a peak north of my town from 1902 to 1983 (the readings stopped on Aug 3rd, so I don’t know if the snow ever melted that El Nino year).
Snow cover varies, and has been doing so quite well, all by itself, long before AGW came along and threw dirt on it.
Suppose you are in a geography class and are asked to measure the height of one of the hills
The question is meaningless unless you first have specified the height above what?.
Some people are not climatologists and others have no clue about statistics.
However, some climatologists complain if non-climatologists talk about climate.
But why are those climatologists all the time dealing with statistics? And even try to be creative in a rather stupid way?
Wasn’t McIntyre and the Hockey Stick story not lesson enough for them? Ridiculous.
“So what is wrong with his analysis? Firstly, 85% would be a pretty good number for betting. A good gambler would bet on 55%. Secondly, the confidence number is used for predicting future trends. There is 100% confidence that the trend from 1989-2010 is upwards. He is simply attempting to obfuscate the obvious fact that the climate models were wrong.
Science is for everyone, not just the elite who collect government grant money. I’m tired of my children’s science education being controlled by people with a political agenda.”
Science is for everyone. Snowboarding is for everyone too, but wear a helmet and start on the bunny slopes.
A confidence interval is about distinguishing a random distribution from a pattern. By convention, you need to be 95% confident in your trend in order to reject the null hypothesis. 90% is on the bleeding edge of acceptable. Less than 90% is not statistically significant by any measure.
This is basic, basic scientific procedure, and was not invented by elitists to confuse people like you, Mr. Goddard. It’s analogous to the belying techniques used in climbing: yes, everybody does it; no, it’s not immediately obvious to an outsider why we do it that way; no, it is a very bad idea to ignore the procedure because you think the “elitists” have it in for just-folks.
Talk about serendipity – here and here and here (Newton’s telescope) and there’s more but too much to explain.
Perhaps I need to change the link under my name. The wiki is growing, albeit slowly.
I too am tired of the silliness of interpretation of “trends”. It is just ridiculous to choose one relatively short period of data and ignore what has gone before.
Having been raised on a farm (sheep station in NSW, Australia), I well remember older folks remarking with seeming wisdom “It’s never been as bad/good/dry/wet (fill in the dots) as this before!”.
Even the perspectives of a lifetime are not necessarily representative of the whole history of the planet. Nevertheless we seem to be programmed to act as if they were. But that is not a scientific approach is it?
Very nice. This article is a keeper.
When will SeaLevelGate “surface” ? I’m waiting for it;
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Szilárd discovered nuclear fission while sitting at a red light.
There was a time when observation was considered an important part of science.
Er, how did the red light help?
“Science is for everyone, not just the elite who collect government grant money. I’m tired of my children’s science education being controlled by people with a political agenda.”
Thank you, Anthony, truer words were never spoken! At the University of Illinois School of Public Health, I’m surrounded by the “elite.” What’s been happening with climate change has also been happening with bird flu (remember that?), bioterrorism, maternal/child health and other such silos.
The educational infrastructure is damn near indestructible, thank you for your service towards intellectual honesty.
Of course there is nothing magic about the 90% level of confidence, but having set that to be his own level of confidence, Tamino is well within his right to state that he doesn’t believe that snow extent hasn’t increased since 1989. His analysis is really straightforward.
The reason this data doesn’t convince Tamino’s (that is, why it doesn’t exceed the 90% confidence level) is that the snow extent is so variable. Looking at the second chart you have posted one can see that variability. Would I bet it’s going to be higher next year? Not after seeing this graph and reading Tamino’s analysis.
Statistics is all about trying to stop arguments such as “…it is abundantly clear …”, which always tend to generate more heat than light, and I for one will not fault Tamino from going there.
Thank you Steve. Skilful observation (one first “ell” – I’m British; final “ell” is just one “ell” for both UK and US) is the root of all good science.
Steve,
You will be pleased to know that the propaganda disguised as science routinely fed to school children doesn’t always get through to them.
On the BBC’s Countryfile tonight a Herefordshire school was was featured showing off its newly erected wind turbine. John Craven was desperately trying to get one of the pupils to say that the turbine was a good thing because it would prevent global warming and save the planet, but all he got was a rather befuddled girl suggesting that it might help the ozone layer!
Ah, Tamino. When he posts, “it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
If that graph were of increasing temps, increasing sea levels, cases of drought, etc, he’d vehemently defend that very same graph.
“I’m tired of my children’s science education being controlled by people with a political agenda.”
Move to Kansas…
Given the quality of the CRUminal’s science, you can imagine their eureka moment occurred while on the toilet 🙂
Robert (12:09:01) :
You usually have a point to make.
Nothing jumped out at me, so I’ll attempt to translate:
Folks can’t possibly understand science unless they become scientists.
If that was it, it spells real trouble. Science, along with a lot of other subjects, is rapidly disappearing from the classroom.
Steve, they seem to think you are trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill but, in fact they were the ones that were doing exactly that with their hockey stick and bad science. Even today on Science Daily there is an article proclaiming increased global temperatures “could” cause atmospheric blocking and make for stronger storms,etc,etc. It never seems to end.
@ur momisugly Robert (12:09:01)
I’ll take what you say about needing a 95% confidence limit on the actual snow extent from 1989 to 2009. It looks to this simple maths grad’s eye that it is obviously upward, but what the heck. It’s Sunday night here in the UK and after a nice meal with nice wine I can’t be bothered to do anything that requires more than a Mk 1 eyeball.
So, let’s agree that there’s no confidence in that observed result.
Now, did the models predict that NH snow extent would decline over this period? It’s 20 years so you can’t pull the “it’s just weather” option.
I assume to get the output of those models published the predictions must have shown a 95% or better confidence limit. Otherwise it would, surely, be meaningless to publish. Just going off what you said here.
No? If not, then what was the point of them being published (we can all “make stuff up”)?
If they did have such confidence limits then the models must be (in sound scientific terminology) “pure crap”.
I look forward to hearing your iPhone’s response.
Dave
mkurbo,
Public sentiment is a fickle thing. The CAGW crowd experienced the perfect storm over the last few months with Climategate, Copenhagen, and the winter storms.
A freakishly hot summer and the public opinion could swing back the other way.
One thing that I hope is here to stay, however, is the realization that the conspiracy theory in the CAGW camp, that there is Big Oil lurking around every corner and behind every skeptic was, at the very least oversold if not outright paranoia… and that much of the criticism from both the professional and citizen scientist commnities is honest.
Up until, at the urging of the Montbiots, RC, etc – significant portions of the public and media really thought we were no better than the tobacco lobbyists of 20 years ago. I’m hopeful that, at least at the level it existed at prior, is gone for good.
Leif Svalgaard (12:02:45) :
Suppose you are in a geography class and are asked to measure the height of one of the hills
The question is meaningless unless you first have specified the height above what?.
I’ll go with the obvious for $1,000, Leif. Where the geography class lives.
In the case of current climate, we have mulitple generations all living at the same time. Measuring climate changes would only become believable if all present were taken into account.
mkurbo (11:57:22) :
I’d be interested in what other thinks about this ?
I agree with your observation, but say that the mood is stunned, shocked and upset/hurt as well as frustrated.
In civil engineering and geotechnical circles the measurement is usually expressed as height AMSL (above mean sea level). A good engineer will qualify the measurement, for example, as 1,023m AMSL. So if the person answering the question doesn’t qualify their answer then it is the answer that is meaningless.