Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I always love seeing what Science magazine thinks is important. In their June 10th edition, in their “BY THE NUMBERS” section, they quote Nature Climate Change magazine, viz:
1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050, a 14% decrease, according to a report online 29 May in Nature Climate Change.
I busted out laughing. Sometimes the AGW supporters’ attempts to re-inflate the climate alarmism balloon are an absurd burlesque of the scientific method.
Truly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. I love it that they claim to know, to an accuracy of one square kilometre, both a) the current amount of Arctic lands reachable by ice roads around the globe and b) how that amount will change over the next forty years.
People continue to be perplexed that what they like to call the “scientific message of the dangers of climate change” is not reaching the US public. Over and over it is said to be a communications problem … which I suppose could be true, but only if “communications” is shorthand for “trying to get us to swallow yet another incredible claim”.
The idea that a hyper-accurate claim like that would not only get published in a peer-reviewed journal, but would be cited by another peer-reviewed journal, reveals just how low the climate science bar is these days. Mrs. Henniger, my high school science teacher, would have laughed such a claim out of the classroom. “Significant digits!” she would thunder. “What did your books say about significant digits”.
“The output of a mathematical operation can’t have more significant digits than the smallest number of significant digits in any of the inputs,” someone would say, and the class would grind on.
This waving of spurious accuracy is useful in one way, however. When someone does that, it is a valuable reminder to check your wallet—you can be pretty sure that they are trying to sell you something.
Because scientific studies have shown that when someone comes up with hyper-accurate numbers for their results, in 94.716% of the reported cases, what they are selling is as bogus as their claimed accuracy.
w.
Willis Eschenbach,
I’ve been reading a translation of the Russian RHYTHMODYNAMICS by Yuri N. Ivanov http://www.mirit.ru/rd_2007en.htm a theory that may be cracked, but so far a fun read. He makes the following observations:
“Natural phenomena do not require recognition: they simply are, like it or not. But their interpretation is prone to subjectivity, the interpreter’s talent as well as the condition of society which is the main customer of scientific interpretations. A society of feudal level of development requires appropriate interpretations, like existence of a philosopher’s stone with the help of which one can obtain lots of gold from lead.” …
“Modern views on objectivity of scientific knowledge are rather varying….The modern wise men are interested in such scientific mysticism: one can make a good profit answering allegedly vital questions posing mankind. Lots of these wise men are well aware that they are actually ordinary conmen. But such confession would mean their expulsion from ‘science’, the only source of these ‘wise men’s subsistence. So you can imagine what might happen should someone come to expose their ‘tricks’. In short, the old saying that “the road to knowledge is measured by inquisition fires” still holds true.”…
“Competition between scientific schools is really mind as well as science disturbing process, particularly if one speaks about formation of its fundamental elements. The modern world of science is affected not so much by the competition of ideas as by the fight for financing, a reflection of a general social scramble for better life. The winners are always those with stronger administrative power and media backing. Under such conditions any competition in the sphere of ideas is nipped in the bud. Sometime they simply steal those ideas. The fundamental science of the 3rd millennia is driven by the law of the jungle where might is right! Obviously for this very reason, to preserve the status quo, a commission to fight pseudo science was created in 1998 under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Science.”…
“One should understand that people of Newton, Maxwell, Lorentz, Puancare, Einstein, De Broile standing are not born every year; they are too few, while their followers are numerous. And these followers, especially those with bureaucratic background, are eager to reap the fruits of the glory which belongs not them, but the founding fathers. Trying to conceal their mental inaptitude they are doing their best to block the progress of new ideas by organizing struggle with the so-called pseudo-science or by falsifying the results of scientific research which they’d brought in and backed.
Are they trying to say; because of man made co2 caused by mans activity including logistics, man made global warming is happening? and because of this theoretical climate change, it poses a threat to logistics (the management of the flow of goods and services between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the requirements of customers).
If they are, that figure of 1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050, means that there will be less logistical activity therefore less co2 from mans activity reducing man made global warming… well, you get the idea!
It’s like man made co2 causes man made global warming which causes more precipitation that removes man made co2 from the atmosphere and that causes man made global cooling.
This quoted estimate of 1,211,287 Square kilometers is irrelevant in predicting the amount of “Ice road-accessible Arctic lands” that will change over the next forty years because the whole basis for the argument relies on the ice roads melting due to the effects of man made co2.
It says on this website I’ve linked below that Man Made Carbon Dioxide 3.225% and Natural Carbon Dioxide is 96.775%. And Carbon dioxide is 0.039% of the entire Atmosphere according to the “Composition of dry atmosphere, by volume” stated on wikipedia.
(Inconvenient estimations all round me thinks!!) /jk
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
Hoser says:
June 29, 2011 at 12:37 am
The appearance of accuracy intended to lend credence extends to computer models. [large snip]
———————————————————————————————————————
When one starts playing with massive numbers of calculations using a computer you need to take into account the internal representations used to represent the number by the programing language being used.
It is possible after repeated mathematical operations that the answer being produced is completely out of the ballpark.
Mike,
“I saw no support your claim that they claimed to be actuate to 1 sq km. It is obvious they are making rough estimates.”
The value is in the link you just provided – table 1. You just didn’t see it because you have to click on it to get the full size. It gives the total value as 1,211,287 sq km, just as Willis said. Now explain why this does not represent a precision to 1 sq km.
Sure – you’ll hear that, but the question is from who, and where, and how can you understand the prevalence of who’s saying it where? And how to you understand changes in the prevalence? If you go to a Tea Party convention you’ll hear it a lot. If you hang out at this site you’ll hear it a lot. The fact is that there are a lot of people in the U.S. – polls show close to 50% – who believe that anthropogenic climate change isn’t happening.
However, then you read that some 76% of Americans trust or strongly trust scientists as the source of information about climate change.
OK – so perhaps that limits your widespread conclusions to some 24% of the American public. So let’s dig down deeper. Some % of that 24% no doubt includes Young Earth Creationists (a majority of Republicans believe that humans were created in their present form by god less than 10,000 years ago) who inherently distrust anyone who might say that humans could affect changes in the climate no matter where the weight of the scientific evidence might lead to. Some other % of that 24% would include political extremists of one sort of another who are entirely convinced about conspiracies of libz and commies to control the world – and as a result would disbelieve the science promoted by “elitists” no matter the scale of the claims or the strength of the supporting evidence.
What that leaves you with, Willis, is a relatively very small % of the public who are disbelieving the work of climate scientists because they think that their claims are inflated.
That leads us to the determination that your assertions, Willis, are based on your tribal orientation rather than the facts that we can establish. Your gathering of evidence is selective and it diminishes the outcomes of your analysis.
Tsk, tsk, Willis. Didn’t your mother teach you that two wrongs don’t make a right?
“Math: 1 + 1 = 2
New Math. 1 mod n + 1 mod n = 2 mod n when n>2
AGW Math 1 + 1 = 8 (+/- 6)”
A thing of beauty.
The big mines in the far north have to do all of their heavy hauling in the winter. Without ice, you can’t have ice roads. Much of the terrains up there are a swampy mess when they’re not frozen. And if the surface didn’t freeze every year, vast regions would become completely inaccessible, except by air. They are assuming that they can predict which routes will no longer freeze enough to support heavy traffic.
Heaven forbid that the big mega mines up north might have to invest in honest to goodness infrastructure like real paved roads.
Tim Folkerts says:
June 29, 2011 at 5:21 am
They could have said “1,211,287 Square kilometers +/- 20%” for example.
Or, If they wanted to be more honest, they would say “1.2 million Square Kilometers +/- 20%.
There’s a very basic lack of integrity inherent in the article, but who cares about such things? It’s all about “communicating” climate change to an ever-increasingly skeptical public, so the ends justify the means.
I hope nobody minds if I ask a slightly off-topic question.
Some of the side-discussion in this thread has renewed my interest in something I tried unsuccessfully to research a while ago, namely the relative accuracy of thermometers throughout history. Reading on Wikipedia, for example, leads me to believe that we measure temperature nowadays to a hundredth of a degree, but that most certainly hasn’t always been the case. The question is in several parts:
– What is the usual accuracy for a thermometer used in weather stations?
– What was the accuracy historically? e.g. if it’s +/- 0.1C nowadays, when was it +/-1.0C? When +/-2.0C?
– What was the accuracy when thermometers were first used to measure in meteorology, and how quickly did that accuracy improve?
“trying to get us to swallow yet another incredible claim”
This would be accurate if it said “ridiculous” instead of “incredible”.
What Willis Eschenbach says in his June 29, 2011 at 12:27 am post I kind of agree with but,
Since I am not a climate scientist but rather a high school drop out with a ged and an AS degree I cannot dispute the math nor the ability to stick a thermometer in the earths several butts and tell the world to party like it’s 1910 or the earth will burn up. So, I read the “harry_read_me” file and the climategate emails and have set my own standards as follows:
When harry comes forward and explains his “read_me” file and how and why he MADE UP the numbers;
when the “team” comes forward and explains their emails to my satisfaction;
when algore admits to lying throughout his false movie
then I could be convinced about cagw.
I haven’t heard a word from harry, the emails were whitewashed but never investigated and algore is still a liar.
I have watched the “science” unfold with the constant changing of the rules by supporters of algore and cagw.
There is just too much money to be made to allow so much trust to politicians like ipcc, greenpeace, wwf and algore.
Mike says:
June 29, 2011 at 4:48 am
I saw no support your claim that they claimed to be actuate to 1 sq km. It is obvious they are making rough estimates.
———————————————————–
“1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050, a 14% decrease, according to a report online 29 May in Nature Climate Change.”
Are they sure the number is 1,211,287 or maybe it’s 1,211,000?
Why wouldn’t they say ” approx. 1.2M km squared”………………………… who knows?
@ur momisugly Mike
1,211,287 is accurate to 1 sq kilometer (7). That’s the number they presented, instead of something actually mathematically correct like 1,210,000 (three sig figs). Hyper-precise like that where you can go all the way down to the last sq kilometer digit, is mathematically a no-no unless all their values had this number of sig figs and this high of precision.
It just shows bad form and untrustworthy math, and is something that shouldn’t have (and wouldn’t have in my field) made it through peer-review.
Skeptic Tank says:
June 28, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Research shows that 73% of all people who use the term “research shows”, are just making stuff up.
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That research has since been discredited.
And why the extra “k”?
Willis: “In this case, the important idea is that the claiming of false precision is a sign the promoters of the numbers don’t understand uncertainty”. I realize that and agree with your point completely. I apologize for sidetracking the discussion. My teacherly instincts got the better of me.
When a “scientists” tells you that 9 thousand tons of ice per second are melting in Greenland, they are not being scientists. A scientists tells you both sides of the story.
When a scientists tells you that 9 thousand tons of ice per second are melting in Greenland, and it will take 10 thousand years for it to all melt, then they are being scientists.
There used to be a time when you had to be good in math to become a scientist. Then they invented climate science and suddenly you didn’t need math. Just give your paper to another climate scientists with poor math skills for peer review and you will get a pass. Opposing papers with the correct math were no problem, simply don’t allow them through peer review.
That is why Steve McIntrye is so feared and hated by climate science. He took on Mann, the number 1 bad boy in climate science that the mainstream fears to cross, and defeated him. He showed that Mann’s math was wrong, and the hockey stick disappeared from the IPCC.
Climate Science is not science. It is environmental activism dressed up to look like science, using strong arm bully tactics to keep the faithful in line. Step out of line and ask questions, like Judith Curry and you are branded a heretic. Forget the scientific method. It matters not if the science is true, so long as enough people believe it is true.
Mike says:
June 29, 2011 at 4:48 am
Mike, a rough estimate would be a number like “1.2 million square kilometres”. It is only reported to the nearest million, or something like that, because it is the “rough estimate” you mention above.
They have said that the loss is 1,211,287 square kilometres. Since they report the number to the nearest square kilometre, this is the precision they are claiming—one square kilometre.
w.
Derek Sorensen says:
June 29, 2011 at 5:31 am
I dunno if it’s online. I quoted the entire thing from page 1248 of the 10 June 2011 dead tree version except the last line, which says (explanation mine)
w.
sandw15 says:
June 29, 2011 at 10:40 am
Your exposition was not a sidetrack, it just didn’t need to go in the head post. As a comment it was great.
w.
“1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050”
They probably meant to say 1,211,286.66666666666666666666666666666… but the editor made them round it up.
Unless the climate science paper doesn’t toe the consensus line, then a combative reviewer will “go to town” on it.
Max Hugoson wrote
“Wrong. The answer is 11 and the number of significant digits is 2, still.”
“If it is truely one significant figure, I believe that when you add 9 X 10^-1 plus
9.8 X 10^0 you get 1 X 10^1, or an answer with only ONE significant figure. (As the lowest significant figure of the two numbers added. “
Wow! I think we just went from adding 2 numbers which were precise to the tenths place to getting an answer which could range somewhere between 9 and 12.
Maybe people ought to get together and agree on a way to handle this so that measurements are interpreted more or less the same by everybody. Oh yeah, somebody already thought of that.
There is an explanation at this website:
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch1/sigfigs.html
Or a little more detail at this website:
http://www.usca.edu/chemistry/genchem/sigfig2.htm
Pay special attention to the sections on addition and subraction.
I was mistaken.
If the answer is 10, the 1 is the estimated digit.
Correction
“Wow! I think we just went from adding 2 numbers which were precise to the tenths place to getting an answer which could range somewhere between 0 and 20.”,
This gaffe is worth a small chuckle, like reading a mispelt word.
Yes, I know its “misspelt”.
Yes, I no it’s “it’s”.
You get the iddea.
The beauty of the slide rule was that it was hard to kid yourself.