UAH global temperature, down a bit in August

reply to: LazyTeenager says: September 2, 2011 at 6:13 pm

Doug Proctor muses If the pattern is there and it is useful, use it. Work out the reasons later (like CERN CLOUD).
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So, since there is a 99% correlation between divorce rate and apple production, are you going to fix to divorce rate problem by banning the growing of apples or are you going to improve apple production by forcing everyone to divorce?

A couple of my favs for “Correlation is Not Causation” have to be:
Less Pirates Cause Global Warming, More Pirates Equals Less CO2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming
Drinking 2+ cups of coffee per day = 1/2 the chance of suicide http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/03.14/CoffeeWontGrind.html (of course, this one may have panned out, but not sure)

2011 8 +0.325 +0.323 +0.327 +0.157
If the figure for the global anomaly is + 0.325, why is it shown as +0.33 on the graph?

Rational Debate says:
September 3, 2011 at 12:25 am
reply to: LazyTeenager says: September 2, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Reply to both Lazy Teenager and Rational Debate, re correlating one thing to another without direct causation evidence is a bad and foolish thing:
Both of you are engaging in the arguments of rhetoric that were raised in the early days of Greek philosophy. The idea that because a process CAN be abused is reason to avoid it being used.
My objection is that patterns that are visible and easily worked should be used until they are proved to be unusable. I am a fan of the 19th century philosopher-thinkers who revolutionized both science and philosophy by contradicting the orthodox, faith-based view of the world by drawing conclusions from what they observed and following through with expectations based on data (hear you might say “history”). (Without computers and high-level math, by the way.) If what they predicted came true, then they worked out possible explanations. As long as the explanations continued to provide true visions of the future, they held to those explanations, though ready to change them at any time that observations failed to conform to expectations.
The American philosopher William James clarified the philosophy of Pragmatism earlier worked up by Pierce (forget his first name). Truth, James said, is something we can never actually get to, the world being more complex than we can grasp at any time, and our abilities to find what we need being less than complete. The best we can get is close to the truth. As long as we recognize that, we will do just fine.
“Truth” according to James and Pragmatism, has three parts: 1) that the new idea doesn not fundamentally violate what we already recognize as being true, 2) that the new idea leads to other, apparent true things that we would not recognize without the new idea, and 3) that it has `cash`value, a term meant to show that the new idea is useful. If the new idea has these three things going for it, we call it a `truth`and add it to our collection of things we know to be. Until something shows up to contradict it meaningfully, that is.
(I know your rhetorical skills (by the way, Google `rhetoric`to find out why this way of thinking is grand for lawyers but not for discovering how reality is) will play hell with James` first concept, that the new idea can`t contradict previous `truths`, could be used to say the warmists are more right than the skeptics. Unfair (the trouble with rhetoric in general is that it uses `straw men`and cheap shots like ad hominem attacks to win arguments that reason and logic can`t). Previous truths – like the IPCC meme – were recognized as faith-based, not observation-based. Faith-based truths are immediately set aside and a type of understanding that is not being reviewed. That the earth was flat was an understanding much to the level that man and his activities signficantly affect the world climate: a type of intuitive knowledge, not data based. So let us pass on the rhetorical argument you might try to use at this point.)
When I look to the temperature record and see patterns – of which there are so many, and which lead, by the way, to the concepts of the Milankovich theories of glacial cycles – I claim that we use the cycles as being meaningful until proven otherwise. Just because a claim can be made that patterns can be found in random data – like the temperature and number of pirates – does not mean that the pattern you are seeing is false. It means that SOME of the patterns you are seeing – like the pirates one – are false in the causative sense. I get that. I suggest, though, that the cycles we see in the temperature records ARE real and not random.
Here the Pragmatic concept of truth arises. I say there are cycles that exist and are easily shown in the temperature record. Let us use those to predict the future. Do they work – that is what you need to know.
The possibility of failure is not the same as the reality of failure. Random data can be coerced into patterns. Much is being done – in my eye – with computer simulations and statistical algorithms that is suspect ONLY because the patterns that are being found are so subtle that you MUST use your high-powered computational skills ad `p`type derivatives to know whether they are meaningful or not. In the climate science debate we are talking about big, big features. Global things, solar system things, catastrophically big things. If extreme subtlety is required to find the signatures of these big things, they do not exist. Bigfoot is not to be found hiding in a rabbit hole.
So, read a book, you say. On Statistical Methods and Errors of Observation, I suppose. Been there. Once you are outside of a book and in the world, you see how observation is more solid than – in theory – it might be. The world churns on and on, doing its thing. Patterns emerge because in harmony requires less energy than chaos to maintain.
Some of the patterns we see in the temperature record may reflect resonance rather than a simple driver. Resonance is the constructive interference of drivers. A hurricane that pulls up warm water when it was warm air that causes the hurricane could lead to a reinforcing cycle you could call a resonance pattern. (Not saying it does, just that there is a simple example.) The important thing is to recognize something that appears to be repetitive and significant and use it until you have hard evidence that it is a perception problem rather than a data problem.
The IPCC fundamentally says that what climate did before is not what is happening now. That means that patterns of old are different from patterns now. The patterning of climate is unavoidable; if it is all random, neither side has an arguable position, and certainly not a predictive one. You can argue where patterns end and chaos begins, but even farmers in China 4000 years ago knew that cycles existed, and that knowledge of those cycles could be used to good benefit.
So: I see cycles in the last 160 years of the temperature record. I do not think that Fourier analysis is inappropriate, especially if it gives us a prediction for the future that reflects powers bigger than man and his CO2. If CO2 is not a significant driver of our climate, then you can be assured that the actual drivers wax and wane with time in very serious patterns. Chaos does not rule the universe (though catastrophic events occur, called Punctuated Equilibrium in some circles).
So before you tell me that observations of patterns is untenable, tell me why – outside of rhetorical, book-based arguments of potential problems – that these climate or temperature or sea current patterns are NOT indicators of time-related events in the World. The World of practice, not theory.
By the by, has any study suggested that during colder times economic opportunities are less and therefore honest sailors resort to villainry to get ahead, or during warmer times there is so much sea commerce that well-fed but lazy, villainous sailors find piracy too easy to ignore …