Chimp Predicts 6-8 Atlantic Hurricanes in 2010
Via press release: Washington, DC: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s track record in predicting the number of Atlantic hurricanes is so abysmal that a trained chimp could do better, says The National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The group is putting this claim to the test, issuing a 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Forecast today determined by a chimpanzee, “Dr. James Hansimian.”
Video links follow.
A video of Dr. Hansimian and his methodology can be found at www.nationalcenter.org/HurricaneForecast.html or http://tw0.us/DNm.
or watch it below:
The forecast is being issued in advance of NOAA’s May “Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook,” expected to be released next week.
“NOAA’s May outlooks have been wrong three out of the last four years – or 75% of the time,” said David Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research. “We think our chimp can do better. He hasn’t been wrong so far. Of course, this is his very first hurricane season forecast.”
The video isn’t intended to needle NOAA for its erroneous forecasts, but to make a larger point about our current understanding of climate.
“NOAA’s forecasts have been wrong not because of a lack of dedication or competence of its forecast team, but because climate science is really still its infancy,” said Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research. “We should remember this as we consider whether to adopt economically-ruinous caps on energy. If we can’t rely on 6-month forecasts, how can rely on forecasts of what rising carbon concentrations will do to our climate 25, 50 or even 100 years out?”
The National Center for Public Policy Research is also issuing a challenge to NOAA.
“If, at the end of the hurricane season, Dr. Hansimian’s forecast turns out to be more accurate than NOAA’s, we challenge the agency to make him an honorary member of NOAA’s hurricane specialists unit,” said David Ridenour. “In return, if NOAA’s forecast is more accurate, we’ll include a prominently-displayed mea culpa on our website.”
Dr. James Hansimian, says the video, is “author of the book, ‘The Banana Curve: No Tricks Needed,’ published by East Anglia University Press.” The video was filmed on location in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 24, 2010 – before the latest predictions by either Colorado State University’s forecast team, which is led by Phil Klotzbach, or the forthcoming predictions expected from NOAA.
Dr. Hansimian is played by Kenzie, who starred “Chim Chim” in the 2008 Warner Brother release “Speed Racer,” appearing with actors John Goodman, Emile Hirsch and Susan Sarandon. Kenzie also had a guest spot on the VH1 reality show, “Hogan Knows Best,” starring Hulk Hogan.
A second video will be released on December 1, at the conclusion of the hurricane season, with Dr. Hansimian’s reaction to the performance of his forecast against the NOAA forecast.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, non-profit – somewhat less stodgy and more irreverent – free market foundation based in Washington, D.C. It is a truly independent organization, receiving 98% of its funding from individuals through hundreds of thousands of donations. No individual, foundation, or company provides the organization with more than a fraction of one percent of its annual revenue.
Permission to use video on-air or online is granted so long as appropriate attribution to the National Center for Public Policy Research is included and the National Center is informed of its use. Please use the telephone, fax or email contact information at the top for all inquiries.
Actually that would be “twenty oh five”.
I love it! I tell ya, WUWT could become a very popular one hour television program somewhere, in my opinion. With some of the best comments included.
No big deal. It appears that trained chimps are now doing peer review for certain publications.
And a group of them all reaching in the same direction for bananas is called a consensus of chimps.
I didnt do so bad with my tarot card reading last year.. hehe.. This year maybe I will try for named storms and include the pacific:) Lets see how I fair against the chimp and NOAA. ROTF
“economically-ruinous caps on energy”
Then why do more progressive, Kyoto-ratifying countries like Sweden, Japan, and the UK generally have lower unemployment than the US?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2129rank.html
Dan says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I’m a hurricane researcher, and while I agree that hurricane forecasts are not great, this monkey stunt is a little ridiculous. The hurricane forecasts are effectively just applications to the upcoming hurricane season of historical statistical correlations between a few pre-season indicators, most notably ENSO indices, and historical hurricane activity. The correlations explain only limited amounts of the variance, but over many years they should predict with decent accuracy active vs. inactive seasons. However, for any given year of course a monkey could do better, in the same way that a monkey could guess any future quantity and beat a trained forecast once (or twice etc., with decreasing probability) regardless of how accurate the forecast actually is. Moreover, to use this stunt to mock climate science is inapproriate.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I’m a professional sales person, I work on salary and when I increase over my budgetted sales target – most every year for 23 years so far – my sales bonus is based on the calculation of how much I am over. In effect the company pays me out of the extra profit my sales above the budget reaps the company. If my work was sometimes up, sometimes down, normally inaccurate and if I did not accept criticism well or express my work was too serious to be mocked, I could not do my job. I am often told a Chimp can do my job or my nose is brown or “no salespeople go to heaven”, etc. The point is, if I fail to reach my target, I lose a signifiacnt part of my potential earnings – thus I rarely fail. If I failed to reach my target twice in a row and I have a lack of faith in my management team, I get the joys of testing the the unemployment market… I am a chemical engineer, graduated from MSU in 1987, no less a scientist than you, I just ply my trade in a performance driven market. I use my scientific background to educate customers and bring effective barrier into flexible packaging. And a really cute chimp, might be able to do my job, managed properly, lighten up!
Why did you leave Spain off your list?
ZT: May 18, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Isn’t torturing/training the chimp into ‘acting’ a little cruel?
Only if he was forced to sit through some actual weather briefings in order to get into character…
Dr. Hansimian has been urgently sent to the Gulf area to fix the oil spill with his supernatural powers and with his prophet´s blessings. Some informants say that he is planning to stop the leak with a big, really big VIRTUAL hockey stick made with NOAA´s latest supercomputer portable game gadget.
What matters, of course, isn’t the total number of hurricanes, but how many make landfall or near landfall, and the intensity of those which do.
My moneys on the monkey:-)
It appears that Dr. Hansimian was using a Monte Carlo simulation as opposed to the “random” walk used by the CRU …
Hurricanes are an even more doubtful choice of indicator for any kind of climate effect. Based on “analogous” years, this year is setting up like 2005 in terms of SST and other factors. Another Katrina? Has to reach land first. The rebound year of an El Nino usually produces lots of TS in the Atlantic basin.
It is okay to poke fun but better to concentrate on actual, factual misrepresentations, as there are plenty of them to go around.
May I remind Dr. James Hanismian, with all due respect, that many of the state-of-the-art computer models have excellent records of prediction: they are able to “predict the past” with “great accuracy.”
Predictions for the current season are not worth bananas, but, as climate systems are forced with the proper physical parameters (co2 input from human economic persuits), they become very accurate again for use in predicting the future. So, we areable to base economic and energy policies on catastrophic climate models.
Now may I ask, Dr. Hanismian, has your model been able to do that? You will need a little more than dice if you want to get into some real monkey business. Nice try, chimp.
Regarding the article Amy Ridenour states
“NOAA’s forecasts have been wrong not because of a lack of dedication or competence of its forecast team, but because climate science is really still its infancy,” said Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research……..If we can’t rely on 6-month forecasts, how can rely on forecasts of what rising carbon concentrations will do to our climate 25, 50 or even 100 years out?”
FYI:
Hi People could you please pass this fact onto Amy Ridenour so she can stop displaying how ignorant she is regarding weather and climate (hint hint they aren’t the same thing and she’s confusing the two).
A hurricane is a weather condition. Weather is the state of the atmosphere as measured at any given time point.
The atmosphere is a chaotic system, so small changes to one part of the system can grow to have large effects on the system as a whole. It is theoretically impossible to make useful day-to-day predictions more than about two weeks ahead, imposing an upper limit to potential for improved prediction skill.
Climate is”average weather,” or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time usually 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The variables which determine climate are numerous and the interactions complex, but they are stable over the long term and there is general agreement that the broad outlines are understood, at least insofar as the determinants of historical climate change are concerned. Climate is predictable.
Nobody can predict the Weather in Las Vegas for August 6, 2010 but I bet you million dollars the Las Vegas Climate will be hot and dry that month. I bet you another million the Atlantic Climate supports hurricane formation this year and Europe’s Climate does not.
Climate not predictable ? Wanna bet?
The funny thing is that all those figures that Johnny D quoted were from 2009 (est) and were estimates, if you look at stats for the UK you will note the “claimants” for the unemployment payments stand at 8% while the stat for “working age employment rate” is at 72% indicating that 18% of working age people are unemployed. That tells me that 10% of the unemployed are not getting benefits, it is all how you present your “facts”. Here is a a quote from the site I got my info from….
“If David Cameron’s incoming coalition government wanted reminding about the economic policy challenge that lies ahead, Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers need look no further than today’s dire official jobs figures. Higher unemployment (including more unemployed young people), fewer people in work (especially full-time work), an increase in redundancies, a fall in job vacancies, and especially a record number of economically inactive people sends out a clear SOS message on the state of the UK labour market.
@ur momisugly John D.
The UK’s unemployment has been hidden by years of dodgy Labour fiddling – school leavers and others being marginally paid and trained in droves to do stuff no employer needs, a great way to hide unemployment until the kids hit adulthood. Labour has also inflated public service employees by over a million in recent years. These factors are a part of the reason the UK economy is in such dire straits; figures released today suggest something in the trillions and climbing. Greece has run out of money and so has Spain, where each artificial ‘Green’ job created has cost at least three real jobs.
In our suburban London street today, I watched a big group of men and women in green fluro jackets, hard hats, gloves and face masks (fallen leaves and chocolate wrappers must be dangerous these days!), weilding brooms and some pushing handcarts sweeping the street. I remember my parents derisory laughter in the 1950s at newsreels shot in Russia showing large groups of women sweeping Moscow streets and thus keeping unemployment down.
ZT says:
May 18, 2010 at 7:03 pm
“Isn’t torturing/training the chimp into ‘acting’ a little cruel?”
Yes, just a sad state of affairs all around.. Very likelyOnce that juvenile chimp grows to full size, it’ll be way too much for its handlers to deal with, what with the limb-removing strength and digit-severing teeth, so it will be sent to to best case, a sanctuary or zoo, or worst case, a research facility to be experimented on. There are exceptions of course, but rare.
@wren
They’re not monkeying with the chimp’s forecast to exclude numbers like 99. The chimp is rolling a pair of dice. He can get numbers 2 – 12 from them with greater possibilities for mid-range numbers.
Some clever fellow, probably not a monkey, figured out that NOAA’s predictions of named hurricanes each season is remarkably similar to numbers, including the mid-range bias, you’d get rolling a standard pair of dice.
Look at the predicted vs. actuals for the past 8 years. You can’t statistically tell that series apart from a series of dice rolls with the exception of the number 15, which was the actual number for 2005, which isn’t possible with a pair of dice. It would appear NOAA is using a standard pair of dice too so it was impossible for them to roll the correct number in 2005 as well. LOL
Year NOAA (Actual)
2009 4-7 (3)
2008 6-9 (8)
2007 7-10 (6)
2006 8-10 (5)
2005 7-9 (15)
2004 6-8 (9)
2003 6-9 (7)
2002 6-8 (4)
It’s a joke, son. Climate forecasting that is…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/18/think-tank-says-trained-chimp-can-predict-hurricanes-better-than-noaa%E2%80%A6-and-puts-it-to-the-test/#comment-392978
Zeke the Sneak says:
May 19, 2010 at 8:22 am
Satire at it’s best. 🙂
DaveE
Dan says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
“I’m a hurricane researcher, and while I agree that hurricane forecasts are not great, this monkey stunt is a little ridiculous. ”
Yes, it might look ridiculous, until you remember this;
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/16806/Climate_Scientist_Quits_IPCC_Blasts_Politicized_Preconceived_Agendas.html
Doesn’t NOAA stand for No Accuracy At All ?
There is no trick, I bet on Dr Hansimian !
There is something to be said for using chimps rather than NOAA scientists to predict storm and hurricane frequency, but I have found looking at the entrails of dead sheep to be equally successful and a lot cheaper – you don’t have to feed a dead sheep, and your local abattoir will usually be happy for you to pop in for a free forecasting session. (You may even get to keep the entrails).
Dave Springer says:
May 19, 2010 at 12:42 pm
@wren
They’re not monkeying with the chimp’s forecast to exclude numbers like 99. The chimp is rolling a pair of dice. He can get numbers 2 – 12 from them with greater possibilities for mid-range numbers.
Some clever fellow, probably not a monkey, figured out that NOAA’s predictions of named hurricanes each season is remarkably similar to numbers, including the mid-range bias, you’d get rolling a standard pair of dice.
Look at the predicted vs. actuals for the past 8 years. You can’t statistically tell that series apart from a series of dice rolls with the exception of the number 15, which was the actual number for 2005, which isn’t possible with a pair of dice. It would appear NOAA is using a standard pair of dice too so it was impossible for them to roll the correct number in 2005 as well. LOL
Year NOAA (Actual)
2009 4-7 (3)
2008 6-9 (8)
2007 7-10 (6)
2006 8-10 (5)
2005 7-9 (15)
2004 6-8 (9)
2003 6-9 (7)
2002 6-8 (4)
It’s a joke, son. Climate forecasting that is…
====
Jokes are supposed to be clever. This attempt at a joke is dumb.
You can’t statistically tell the series apart from a number of dice rolls? Try rolling dice 7 times and see how many sets it takes you to come up with the sequence: 3, 8, 6, 5, (forget 15), 9, 7, 4.
People who think climate forecasting is a joke, find it hard to laugh when they find out Hansen’s most likely scenario global temperature forecast he made back in 1988 for the 1988 -2020 period is on target with actual 2010 global temperature.
Wren,
Its sad that alot of the scientific literature from the 1980s perfectly predicted the current observed increase in temperature but people will ignorantly parrot the line of a washington policy wonk that “scientist can’t predict a hurricane how can they predict the climate”
Here’s a nature article from 1986…….
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v319/n6049/abs/319109a0.html
mr.artday says:
May 18, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Are you talking about the hurricane forecasting groups, climate modeling groups, the IPCC or other?
Exactly how many immiserate billions have gone to seasonal tropical storm forecasts?
I generally prefer the Klotzbach/Gray forecasts because:
1) They’ve been doing it longer,
2) Several of the NHC folk were grad students at Colorado State under Bill Gray,
3) K&G have much more detailed analyses and postmortems than the NOAA reports I’ve seen.