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.
They might argue that the average slope across the plateau is zero, therefore there are no hills
Or worse, that those hills are the product of curved space or from an entanglement of strings or its differences in level have been caused by the attraction of a tiny nearby “baby black hole”…
So we must get back to straight reason and leave behind all that nightmarish post modern “science”.
Leif Svalgaard (19:01:26) :
“Steve Goddard (17:55:23) :
Over geologic time, there is little if any correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature.
Methinks I showed you there was, when you asked me to ‘prove it’… Have you already forgotten?”
Leif, if that proof was not private and you have the time could you please post the reference. It would be most appreciated.
Hahn had no idea what he was looking at in 1938 when he “discovered” fission. He thought he was looking at transuranium elements that behaved like barium, etc. It was Lisa Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, who saw that Hahn’s results pointed toward fission, and they promptly put together an experiment to prove their conjecture even though Meitner was a refuge from Germany at the time, had no real laboratory, and barely had any institution at which to work.
Steve Goddard (08:37:46) :
Here is the image of the entire Rutgers winter data set
Now plot the graph of top of the model predictions [on the SAME graph]. I have lost count, but methinks this is the fifth or so time I ask.
David Porter (09:12:28) :
“Steve Goddard (17:55:23) :
Over geologic time, there is little if any correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature.
Methinks I showed you there was, when you asked me to ‘prove it’… Have you already forgotten?”
Leif, if that proof was not private and you have the time could you please post the reference. It would be most appreciated.
Over on topic http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/17/northern-hemisphere-snow-extent-second-highest-on-record/
Steve showed a graph of CO2 and T for the past 4500 million years and claimed that the Figure showed no correlation:
“Steve Goddard (08:33:37) :
You claim a correlation in the CO2 vs. temperature graph. Please prove it.”
My answer then [and now] was:
Reading off your graph at 500 million year intervals [one has to use equidistant times – otherwise one could read off a million points between 1.1 and 1.2 million years ago, say, and get any correlation one wants] I get:
Mya CO2 dT
0 280 1
500 300 4
1000 1000 5
1500 1500 6.5
2000 1900 7.5
2500 2000 8
3000 2100 8.5
3500 2200 9
4000 2300 9.5
4500 2500 10
linear correlation dT = 1.5 + 0.0034 CO2[ppm] with R^2 = 0.9358. Highly significant. A t-stat of 10.8 for the trend with p-value 5×10^(-6).
Steve,
“Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of Science?”
😀
Mark
R Gates
“It takes MORE heat, not less, to produce heavy snowfall.”
Oh, of course! So those great big dunes in the Sahara are made of… yellow snow?
Steve
“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.”
It isn’t clear to me. It looks like noisy data points around a fairly steady mean. Flat trend if anything over the time frame shown. But that’s a good thing, IMHO.
Leif,
That was complete BS. There is almost no data available from the Precambrian.
Try doing the same analysis at 50 million year intervals starting in the Cambrian Era at 570 million years ago.
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd137/gorebot/Geological_Timescale_op_927x695.jpg
Mark Young,
What is the air speed of a swallow?
Leif Svalgaard (06:08:00) :
h2o273kk9 (23:31:32) :
And this 30 year time frame was established where, precisely? I must have missed that meeting.
You were not even born then. Long before there was a climate debate, meteorologists [formalized by The World Meteorological Organization (WMO)] established and generally agreed upon the dividing line between weather and climate being at 30 years. This is, of course, arbitrary in a sense. Perhaps it should be 31 years or 29, but the order of magnitude is about right, or so they found empirically, and have agreed upon as a useful standard or norm in order to be able to compare data from different providers.
————–
I would like to see a historical reference on this one. This preoccupation wth climate as a function of shortish periods of time sounds awfully recent to me.
Leif, you stated that Darwin “… did not know how natural selection could work its magic, namely by the digital nature of heredity that ensures fidelity in preserving that which has been selected. Today we know the gory details [DNA, genetic code, etc] and that is what makes evolution a fact.”
Darwin did know about genetics, Mendelian or otherwise, even though Mendel tried to draw his attention to it. However, he succeeded in making evolution an accepted theory even in the absence of this information. Your explicit description of heredity as having a ‘digital’ nature is philosophically interesting, and shows how often our scientific understanding of nature is shaped by technological metaphors. When Descartes’s understanding of nature prevailed,and God was seen as a clockmaker, organisms were seen as being comprised of mechanical parts. The ‘digital’ analogy of the 4 DNA bases that always combine as base pairs was explicitly drawn by geneticists and scientists and the public began to talk about how people are ‘wired’. It was a powerful metaphor, but has not been borne out by the results of genetic mapping. The one-gene-one-enzyme paradigm has had to be jettisoned and many of the preconceptions about genetic coding were bought into question when ten years ago the human genome was discovered to contain only around 30,000 genes – about 1/3 to 1/10 of the predicted outcome based on the complexity of the human organism. The interactions between the DNA, RNA and other cellular components are far more complex than any computer code.
Incidentally, while we use technological analogies to describe biological phenomena, scientists also always use economic analogies to analyze and describe the environment. Ecology as a branch of science is profoundly influenced by economic theory.
Oops! Darwin did NOT know about genetics – sorry for skipping the essential word.
Steve Goddard (05:41:56) :
Anthony Fallone,
At no point have I ever made any attempt to predict the future of snow cover. I have not made any hypothesis about a cause and effect relationship between the year and the snow cover. I have simply observed the undeniable observation that winter snow cover has increased over the last 20 years. Statistics has nothing to do with it.
Had I made a prediction of how further increases in the X-Axis affect the Y-Axis, then your argument might be valid. But that is not the case.’
Leif Svalgaard (05:54:52) :
‘Dr Anthony Fallone (02:25:00) :
‘Scientific hypotheses can be elevated to theories by fact, and theories can have differing degrees of empirical content but a scientific theory can never ever be a fact.’
Nobody said that or, at least, implied that. The theory is about facts or tries to describe facts. Kepler’s laws are not facts, but a description of observed positions of the planets [those were the facts], and eventually General Relativity is a theory of and explanation for the fact of gravity. Darwin’s work was mainly a description of the fact of evolution with a theory attached that gave a plausible explanation for that fact.
That the Earth is round is a fact, which can be explained by Newton’s laws [which also explain why the Earth is not a sphere, but has a flattening brought about by the rotation of the Earth].
Gravity is a fact with or without Newton. Evolution is a fact with or without Darwin. Both men provided a description and a theory of the underlying facts.’
I am baffled at these two ‘responses’: Steve Goddard is ranting at me for making an argument to him which I did not, while Leif Svalgaard has taken a quote within my comment as my own words and proceeded to shred it, quite properly. The only thing I object to in his analysis is the frequent use of the term ‘fact’, which, as I stated previously, does not have any place in any scientific discourse. There are no such things, just temporary states and positions waiting to be overthrown by fresh experimentation and observation. This is, I know, a difficult view for any human mind to take, being counter to normal human thinking, which demands certainties-the reason why ‘the science is settled’ was received so readily by the general public, at first. We would all like everything to be neat and clean, in bite-sized chunks called ‘facts’-in the same way that the quantum view of the atom will never displace the ‘miniature solar system billiard ball’ view in the general imagination.
Steve Goddard (10:08:46) :
That was complete BS. There is almost no data available from the Precambrian. Try doing the same analysis at 50 million year intervals starting in the Cambrian Era at 570 million years ago.
Cherry picking again…
Your graph showed data in the Precambrian.
The dips in temperatures are when there were significant glaciations [likely due to orbital changes combined with distribution of land and open/close of sea straits].
And there is a good deal of data from the Precambrian. Your Figure is a bit deficient, I’l agree to that, here is more on T billions of years ago: http://isotope.colorado.edu/~geol5700/8.pdf The correlation between T and pCO2 can be found on slide 10.
Veronica,
Then you could also infer that The Himalayas don’t exist
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/63/7763-004-DBAD80D3.gif
Steven Goddard:
Your article was a bit confusing to me. The title indicates that you want to emphasize the importance of skillful observations in science. Specifically you focus on observing the extent of snow cover for the last 20 or so years and point out that snow extent has increased and state that this proves the AGW predictions about snow extent were wrong.
Was it wise for the AGWers to make any predictions about snow extent from 1989 on? Isn’t snow extent for a 20 year period more a weather thing than a climate thing? We can skillfully observe snow extent increasing for the last 20 years but it neither proves nor disproves anything about AGW.
Analyzing ocean heat content trends and measurement limitations and dynamics seems much more relevant to climate (to me).
You mentioned something about relaxing the standards from 90% confidence to 55%. That is exactly the wrong direction to go in this climate debate.
You mentioned that science is for everybody. Not sure what you meant by that. Most everybody can benefit from studying science but few have the ability and preparation to advance science.
Unlike almost everybody who writes articles for this site, I haven’t seen a summary of your background.
The example about the hill height was a great example to show how important context is. As Dr. Leif points out, context is everything. Maybe you are thinking of building a house there and want to know where it is relative to the 100 year flood plain. Maybe you want to know how high it is from where you are standing. If the height of the hill is listed on a map, it is probably listed as distance above sea level.
Leif,
The graph you pointed to didn’t have any real data points. It just showed some theoretically derived curves. The point of that presentation was to say that we don’t really know what early earth temperatures were.
The Precambrian was typified by a lack of fossils and oceans. Almost all remaining Precambrian rock material is igneous. Data from that time period is not very reliable.
During the early Tertiary, CO2 levels varied by a factor of three with almost no change in temperature.
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd137/gorebot/Geological_Timescale_op_927x695.jpg
vigilantfish (10:15:50) :
I would like to see a historical reference on this one.
I’m your historical reference on this 🙂
TThe 30 years what drilled into me when I studied [and worked in Meteorology] 40 years ago]. It is hard to come up with something from so long ago. Here is what the Canadian weather office says:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc.ca/climate_normals/climate_info_e.html
“There are many ways to calculate “climate normals”; the most useful ones adhere to accepted standards. The WMO considers thirty years long enough to eliminate year-to-year variations. Thus the WMO climatological standard period for normals calculations are “averages of climatological data computed for consecutive periods of 30 years as follows: 1 January 1901 to 31 December 1930, 1 January 1931 to 31 December 1960, etc.” and should be updated every decade. In addition, the WMO established that normals should be arithmetic means calculated for each month of the year from daily data.”
Note the examples given: 1901 to 1930, etc.
It is hard to find the origin of that 30-year interval. Perhaps it goes back to the so-called Bruckner-periods of 34 years.
Enough about Darwin and what he didn’t know. The 4-base code is universal. And there seems to be some misunderstanding of the difference between the fact and a theory about the fact.
Steve Goddard (10:58:04) :
The graph you pointed to didn’t have any real data points. It just showed some theoretically derived curves.
try to look at some of the other graphs. Compare 5 [CO2] and 8 [T].
Steve Koch,
My objection is with people who use statistical manipulations to hide physical realities. Many scientists jump right into detailed math without thinking about the accuracy of the underlying assumptions.
I have described my background many times – 30+ years in science and engineering with degrees in both.
Can I ask Leif a few questions?
This is not to be answered by Science or Statistics, but by Yes or No as in a Court Case and telling the TRUTH.
Was there more snow extent in each year after 1989 than in 1989?
Was there more snow extent in each year bar 2007 after 1999 than in 1999?
Does MORE mean Increase/increasing in the English language?
vigilantfish (10:15:50) :
I would like to see a historical reference on this one.
http://www.climate4you.com/NormalClimateNormalPeriod.htm
“Official climatic normals cover a 30-year period of record, and are supposed to be updated through the end of each decade ending in zero (e.g., 1951-1980, 1961-1990, 1971-2000, etc.). The concept of a normal climate goes back to the first part of the 20th century.”
WMO Normals: World Meteorological Organization Standard Normals
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/normals/usnormalshist.html#wmo :
“Every 30 years the international meteorological community comes together to produce a document that summarizes the “normal” climate for all of the nations of the world. The effort was originated by the International Meteorological Committee in 1872 as an effort to assure comparability between data collected at various stations. International agreements eventually determined that the appropriate interval for computing a normal would be 30 years (Guttman, 1989).”
Leif,
It isn’t realistic to do comparisons vs. the Precambrian. There weren’t any significant oceans or life for much of the Precambrian. And the properties of the sun may have been substantially different. You probably knew that.
Climate sensitivity needs to be calculated during more recent periods when oceans and life forms were more mature, like starting in the Cambrian Era.
@ur momisugly Mike Monce
A 95% confidence in rejecting the null hypothesis and an r^2 value are two different things. You need an n value to relate the one to the other.
A C Osborn (11:24:59) :
Was there more snow extent in each year after 1989 than in 1989?
Was there more snow extent in each year bar 2007 after 1999 than in 1999?
Does MORE mean Increase/increasing in the English language?
A good lawyer for the defense would ask the expert witness these questions in return:
Was there less snow in 1999 than in 1993?
Was there less in 2007 than in 1991?
Was there less in 2009 than in 2001?
Does LESS mean decrease/decreasing in the English language?
” jorgekafkazar (18:59:19) :
“But it is believed that the process is making the seas much more acidic which is damaging the delicate shells of organisms that are critical to the marine food chain.”
Drivel. Unsubstantiated propaganda.”
What makes it “drivel” or “propaganda” besides the fact that it is awkward in the context of your political beliefs?
The theory of ocean acidification is basic chemistry and observations back it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification