That letter signed by 16 scientists saying there’s “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” to the Wall Street Journal has caused a great disturbance in the farce. At last count there were no less than 19 blog rebuttals plus one new WSJ op ed piece trying to convince the alliance that all is well. It didn’t work.
But, they know the AGW Alliance Death Star has been compromised before its mission can be completed, the Rebellion has seen the plans and the Alliance knows it is only a matter of time before “the consensus” blows apart. Reports are that “Michael Mann has been tweeting furiously“, but the reinforcements he’s bringing in may not be able to stop the Rebellion as its ranks swell with ordinary people.
Here at WUWT, we had our best day ever on January 31st with 229,000 views from ordinary people, exceeding the heady days just after Climategate 1 and Copenhagen. People are coming in out of the cold to embrace the warmth and declare it good, while laughing at the folly of the alliance.
Meanwhile, the Bad Astronomer (Phil Plait er, not Jim Hansen) has been spinning in low orbit trying tell alliance forces that the past 10-15 years of stalled temperature rise are just a statistical illusion.
William Briggs, Statistician to the Stars, schools Plait on what statistics really is and writes:
Remember when I said how you shouldn’t draw straight lines in time series and then speak of the line as if the line was the data itself? About how the starting point made a big difference in the slope of the line, and how not accounting for uncertainty in the starting date translates into over-certainty in the results?
If you can’t recall, refresh your memory: How To Cheat, Or Fool Yourself, With Time Series: Climate Example.
Well, not everybody read those warnings. As an example of somebody who didn’t do his homework, I give you Phil Plait, a fellow who prides himself on exposing bad astronomy and blogs at Discover magazine. Well, Phil, old boy, I am the Statistician to the Stars—get it? get it?1—and I’m here to set you right.
The Wall Street Journal on 27 January 2012 published a letter from sixteen scientists entitled, No Need to Panic About Global Warming, the punchline of which was:
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Plait in response to these seemingly ho-hum words took the approach apoplectic, and fretted that “denialists” were reaching lower. Reaching where he never said. He never did say what a “denialist” was, either; but we can guess it is defined as “Whoever disagrees with Phil Plait.”
The WSJ‘s crew said, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.” This allowed Plait to break out the italics and respond, “What the what?” I would’ve guessed that the scientists’ statement was fairly clear and even true. But Plait said, “That statement, to put it bluntly, is dead wrong.” Was it?
Plait then slipped in a picture, one which he thought was a devastating touché. He was so exercised by his effort that he broke out into triumphal clichés like “crushed to dust” and “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” You know what they say about astronomers. Anyway, here’s the picture:
See that red line? It’s drawn on a time series—wait! No it isn’t. Those dots are not what Plait thinks they are. They are not—they most certainly are not—global temperatures.
Read the whole rebuttal here, well worth your time.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You can’t mess with reality, Here in the UK, EVERY day this month has been colder than the rest of the year!
/whatever
Tamino has also weighed in on Briggs’s post: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/william-m-briggs-numerologist-to-the-stars/
Joel, I tried reading “Tamino’s” article but I couldn’t get past distracting phrases using words such as “evil”, “denialist”, “stupidity”, plus the peculiar frothing at the mouth strawman rants. If he had good points to make (which is possible), I suspect they would be lost on any readership attempting an objective assessment.
ONLY if your agenda is to link CO2 to global warming do you insist on a 25-30 year time frame.
Even more recently, they have been insisting on looking ONLY at the 1976-2000 (+/- a year or so) as being the indicator.
Looking at 2000 onwards does NOT suit their agenda.
Extending the date back to te MWP.. does not suit their agenda.
Extending to most of the last 10,000 years to look at the NATURAL, but somewhat chaotic cycles of climate, does not suit their agenda.
I object to that distasteful statement, (my emphasis added to highlight astronomy). I’m not personally aware of anywhere where astronomers are fixated on pink unicorns or any other kind of superstition or flights of fancy.
See if you find any astronomers wondering where the unicorns are:
http://www.amateurastronomy.com/index.htm
http://www.cloudynights.com/
Perhaps you’ll notice that astronomers, for the most part, are serious observers and are often skilled mathematicians.
Perhaps you intended to slime astrologers and not the folks who gaze at and measure the celestial bodies.
Great post Briggs! You’ve got the trolls howling and trailing their broken wings trying to divert the crowds.
Well just wow… Phil. = Phil Plait. I had some reasonably intelligent discussions regarding waves with him back before he merged with U.T. He was actually interested in learning (I surfed then, and I’m an EE, so waves are interesting). Then he got all self righteous. Then Phil. demonstrated his lack of understanding of the basic mechanism of feedback (transients in particular… long story). At the time I brushed it off as arrogant climsci trying to claim that such a PhD granted knowledge of all things, i.e., Phil. = moron… I had no idea. Figures. Phil. never really presented any evidence of a uniquely keen insight into the workings of our universe… he got famous simply for pointing out the obvious flaws in moon hoaxes in one big collection. Shoulda stuck with that.
Mark
James Sexton writes.
“BEST is a land only study and isn’t representative of global temps.”
No, it’s representative of land temps, as are the surface stations temperatures used in different subsets, with different processing, by NCDC, GISS and HadCRU. And yet all of them show similar trends.
The global surface sets mix in SSTs as well. And the satellites estimate lower-troposphere temperatures worldwide. They all broadly agree too.
“Nor is it complete. Nor is the data up to date.”
BEST is not, the others are more so.
“It is laughable that any alarmist would reference BEST.”
No alarmists here. Are you just name-calling?
“I would imagine BEST put enough egg on their face.”
I don’t know how you imagine that. BEST put egg on the faces only of people who were sure it would contradict the others, but then it didn’t. It confirmed yet again (as others have too) that GISS, NCDC and CRU have been doing a good job. And the globe is warming.
Damn, Joel, you’re an educated physicist yet you still think Grant “time series analyst” Foster really gets it? Sigh.
Mark
Glenn Tamblyn
February 1, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Just a repost of what I put up for Briggs. I notice WUWT has copied his bit of plagiarism.
So what exactly are you doing Mr Briggs? You take an ANIMATED GIF that is meant highlight how climate skeptics tend cherry pick short periods vs climate realists preferring to look at the big picture then try to make some point about the statistics of an illustrative diagram! You even went to the trouble converting the GIF file into a JPG, just to make sure no-one would be able to see the real image.
###
WOW, One more data point demonstrating the state of the propaganda. I bet you even believe what you wrote! To say that lefties are delusional would be an understatement.
Gneiss says:
February 1, 2012 at 5:43 pm
And the globe is warming.
Shouldn’t that be….And the globe was warming?
OK, I just checked out the Tamino post being mentioned. There we find Briggs admitting that by model he meant “average,” and stating that an average assumes the data that went into it “is measured without error.” Seriously, he wrote that.
Joel Shore says:
February 1, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Tamino has also weighed in on Briggs’s post: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/william-m-briggs-numerologist-to-the-stars/
======================================
Hand-waving in its finest fashion. But, this is what occurs when you have people who don’t understand numbers and how they are suppose to be treated. Linear trends have no predictive power and they don’t prove much of anything except to show an “average” direction of where have gone (past tense). What they do is ask a question…….. Why?
Tammy is disagreeing with Briggs about what the graphic means, but using the same methodology that went into the graphic, is the same methodology which shows us there has been no warming for “well over a decade.” So, we have to ask, which is it? Is Briggs right or are the WSJ fellows right. Tammy can’t really have it both ways.
No offense to anyone, but…… I greatly appreciate honest statisticians. But, statisticians are lawyers of numbers. Law is to Justice as numbers are to Truth.
TedK says:
February 1, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“…Perhaps you’ll notice that astronomers, for the most part, are serious observers and are often skilled mathematicians.
Perhaps you intended to slime astrologers and not the folks who gaze at and measure the celestial bodies.”
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/02/wsj-publishes-collective-letter.html
Good point TedK…it gets a bit rough around here at times. No honest, competent scientific pursuit deserves ridicule IMHO. And yes, Briggs has them on the ropes. Big fun.
Gneiss says:
February 1, 2012 at 5:43 pm
No alarmists here. Are you just name-calling?
===========================================================
Friend, were I name calling, I can assure you, you would have no question. I simply use that as a descriptive term for people alarmed by CO2 and global temps. I’m happy to hear you’re not an alarmist. So, you then agree with the central theme of the WSJ fellows? Their main thrust was there wasn’t much to be concerned with. I happen to agree.
I haven’t the inclination to rehash the BEST fiasco, but, you are correct, it falls in line quite nicely with the rest of the rent seeking Malthusian misanthropists works. So, I gather you didn’t know he ran a side business with his daughter, prior to the study?…….. an advisory group of sorts on how best for businesses to deal with climate change as I recall. To my knowledge, they’re still at it.
Oh, and what do they all show? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:2002/plot/best/from:2002/trend That warming ended over a decade ago. If you can’t tell, that’s BEST’s data reflected in the graph.
2010 – 2011
2009 – 2012
And then there’s this.
Phil. is pegging the meter. We’re not buying what he’s selling.
Camburn writes,
“Shouldn’t that be….And the globe was warming?”
You’re right, Camburn. 2010 was the warmest year on record, but 2011 was cooler, so global warming has stopped.
“I don’t know how you imagine that. BEST put egg on the faces only of people who were sure it would contradict the others, but then it didn’t. It confirmed yet again (as others have too) that GISS, NCDC and CRU have been doing a good job. And the globe is warming.”
No.. It showed that the calculated value of the global land temperature, was increasing.
The somewhat childish attempt at discounting UHI effects made it basically worthless.
James Sexton writes.
“Friend, were I name calling, I can assure you, you would have no question. I simply use that as a descriptive term for people alarmed by CO2 and global temps.”
[SNIP: You are pushing it. We DO mind. Refresh yourself with regard to site policy here. -REP]
Interesting to see the flood of Warmistas attempting to impose a misguided orthodoxy on long term readers of this blog after some negative press. Perhaps they are attempting to form a self-appointed Inquisition to stamp out heterodox views. Of course, their views are more religion than science. They even appear to have their own Question 96 of a Prima Secundae proofs based squarely on circular reasoning.
Point of clarification: As I understand the expression, ‘native trolls’ is an oxymoron. A regular commenter who contributes to the discussion, but holds a minority or contrary view, is not a ‘troll’. A troll is a drive-by trouble-maker who likes throwing grenades into a thread just to stir things up, an agent provocateur. By this definition, Joel Shore, for example, is not a troll.
Now back to your regularly-scheduled discussion.
/Mr Lynn
Gneiss says:
February 1, 2012 at 6:03 pm
OK, I just checked out the Tamino post being mentioned. There we find Briggs admitting that by model he meant “average,” and stating that an average assumes the data that went into it “is measured without error.” Seriously, he wrote that.
==================================================
English your first language or interpretive skills a bit diminished?
Here’s what he said, “Actually, of course, an average is a model—at least if you want to attach any meaning to it. It at least assumes the data that went into the model is measured without error.”
You would have seen my comment there as well, but sadly after a bit of wait in moderation, my comment is now just well, gone. Maybe you can go and comment to Tammy and pass on a thought for me. ……. Intellectual cowardice isn’t very becoming a person who purports to seek scientific truth.
Here’s what I wrote…verbatim.
A simple question, really. But then, they are often the hardest to answer.
Gneiss says: February 1, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Only GISS thinks 2010 was the hottest on record. UAH and CRU seem to disagree:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_December_2011.png
Gneiss says:
February 1, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Camburn writes,
“Shouldn’t that be….And the globe was warming?”
You’re right, Camburn. 2010 was the warmest year on record, but 2011 was cooler, so global warming has stopped.
Finally, you are getting it….however……when you say 2010 was the warmest year on record, you had better qualify the data set, as it isn’t in other data sets other than GISS.
And we do know that GISS has had a divergence problem with the nothern edges compared to satillite data.
And the level of confidence, because of the extrapolation goes down, so….yah…..if you ignore statistics, you could say 2010 was warm according to GISS.
HOWEVER……..with that in mind……was 2010 warm compared to the Holocene climate? No sir…it was NOT. So…….I hope you understand this please. After all, the Holocene Optimum had temps similiar to that hot 2010 for centuries on end. And sir…..it may have even had spikes much HIGHER than our current temperature.
AndyG55 writes,
“No.. It showed that the calculated value of the global land temperature, was increasing.”
Which pretty much every source of information we have has confirmed.
“The somewhat childish attempt at discounting UHI effects made it basically worthless.”
Except that so many other studies have reached the same conclusion.
If you still believe UHI caused the BEST, GISTEMP, NCDC and HadCRU temperature increases you aren’t even reading this site. Fall et al. 2011?
Mr Lynn
February 1, 2012 at 6:40 pm
###
You are quite right. Thanks for pointing this out.