Mike Lorrey writes- PAY ATTENTION CLIMATE ALARMISTS:
“The phrase ‘correlation does not imply causation’ goes back to 1880 (according to Google Books). However, use of the phrase took off in the 1990s and 2000s, and is becoming a quick way to short-circuit certain kinds of arguments.
In the late 19th century, British statistician Karl Pearson introduced a powerful idea in math: that a relationship between two variables could be characterized according to its strength and expressed in numbers. An exciting concept, but it raised a new issue: how to interpret the data in a way that is helpful, rather than misleading. When we mistake correlation for causation, we find a cause that isn’t there, which is a problem. However, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation — of counterfeit relationships and bogus findings — grow larger.”
From Slashdot: The History of ‘Correlation Does Not Imply Causation’
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From the Slate article referenced by Slashdot:
The graph below, again from Google Books, shows the shift in language that marked this change in spirit: Up until the early 1900s, causation showed up more often than correlation in the corpus; then the concepts flip. (I’ll let someone else explain why correlations have been trending downward since 1976.)
D Böehme,
The case for current warming being caused by CO2 does not require that it is unprecedented or unusual, and stands on the physical properties of GHGs and their known existing effects on the earth’s climate. Your “null hypothesis” is illogical and unfalsifiable.
Apologies to D Böehm for misspelling his name.
H.R. says:
October 3, 2012 at 2:40 am
Gunga Din says:
October 2, 2012 at 8:49 pm
“Every day I that I go to work when I come home from work, my dog wants a treat.
Therefore, if I never went to work, my dog would never want a treat.
Or maybe if I never came home from work, my dog would never want a treat?
More reasearch funds are needed.”
Fess up; your dog has you well-trained ;o)
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That is what my wife keeps telling me.
Maybe if she stopped telling me that my dog would never want a treat?
More research funds are needed.
Andrew Adams,
We know that the Earth experienced warming without any assistance from CO2 during the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period, the late Holocene Optimum and the Early Holocene Optimum. Therefore alternative explanations of warming ARE required to exist. The most likely cause of the current warming is some combination of the factors which caused the previous warmings and it would be a very good idea to research them. There is no shortage of candidate explanations, which don’t have to be mutually exclusive, the most prominent being ocean oscillations and cosmic rays.
Your assertion that computer models based on the CO2 hypothesis match observations and, in fact, predicted them, is jaw-dropping. The models can only be made to match observations retrospectively by continually introducing post-hoc parameter adjustments and fudge factors such as aerosols. The models wildly exaggerate warming, principally because they get the magnitude and sign of water vapor feedbacks wrong. Hence the need for aerosols to dampen the warming from predicted to actual levels.
We know that the warming effect of CO2 is logarithmic and that the IPCC says that a doubling of CO2 will produce a temperature rise of 3.3 degC (central estimate). Therefore, a rough and ready estimate of the effect of CO2 can be obtained as follows :-
3.3 = X ln(2) therefore X = 4.76
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the late 1800s is alleged to have been 278 ppm and it is now 398 ppm. So, since the late 1800s we should have seen a temperature rise of around
4.76 x ln(398/278) = 1.7 degC
from the effects of CO2 and associated feedbacks alone. To this should be added any warming from natural causes, urban heat island effect and dodgy data adjustments by climastrologists. Instead, we have only had warming of 0.8 degC including natural causes, UHI and dodgy adjustments. Doesn’t this make the models look a tad shaky ?
andrew adams,
You are new here, otherwise you would be up to speed on the climate null hypothesis, which is easily falsifiable: simply show a current climate parameter that exceeds a past parameter during the Holocene. The curent climate is extremely benign by Holocene standards. Nothing unprecedented is happening. Temperatures, precipitation, storms, droughts and floods have all been more severe at times when CO2 was much lower.
But don’t take my word for it. Arch alarmist Kevin Trenberth states that he wants the climate null hypothesis reversed, placing skeptics in the position of having to prove a negative. Trenberth understands what the null hypothesis means to his climate beliefs, and he doesn’t like it one bit. But by wanting to re-define the null to his liking, he is acknowledging its legitimacy as a corollary of the scientific method.
Nothing observed today is unprecedented or unusual.
Nonsense. The rapidity is unprecedented. The role of human contributed CO2 is unprecedented.
It has all happened before
Not with this rapidity and human contribution.
and to a greater degree
Not in modern human history.
Temperatures, precipitation, storms, droughts and floods have all been more severe at times when CO2 was much lower.
CO2 is not the sole driver of climate. The Milankovitch cycle, to name one, likely played a role in driving the Holocene climate.
Moreover, a human global economy was not in place in the Holocene and, if it were, the climate change was gradual.
Thomas T
The rate of warming during the periods 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 was 0.16 degC per decade, the same as in the period 1970-2000. Phil Jones of the CRU has admitted that there was no statistically significant difference.
Although there were not enough thermometer-based weather stations prior to the mid-1800s to allow a global mean temperature to be calculated, the Central England Temperature record is a thermometer-based record extending continuously back to 1659. This indicates that temperatures rose during the period 1695-1735 at more than 3 times the above rate.
I’m afraid the claim that the recent rise in temperatures is unprecedented is bovine faeces.
As an undergraduate student in chemistry, I felt a need to study statistics so I could make better sense of my own data. I obtained and studied cover-to-cover a copy of William Volk’s “Applied Statistics for Engineers” (1958, one volume of the marvelously useful McGraw-Hill Chemical Engineering Series).
I learned that statistics is not for amateurs.
When I see ‘scientists’ attempting to use anything more complex than a mean and variance, such as a regression, I think of three famous quotes: “Hey, Bubba! Watch this!” (Redneck Epitaph), “Do not try this at home!” (standard TV caveat preceding dangerous stunts), and “Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action” ( J.W. von Goethe, German writer).
Anyone claiming that a Null Hypothesis (not just climate-related, but ANY Null Hypothesis) is illogical and unfalsifiable has absolutely no understanding whatsoever of science or the scientific method.
Of course, given the quality of schooling in much of the world these days, it doesn’t surprise me that many people don’t understand what a Null Hypothesis is and why it MUST be used as a baseline in any scientific discipline….
Another thing that highly annoys me is the claim that “Anthropogenically Produced CO2” is somehow NOT part of “natural variability”.
When a beaver builds a dam, it isn’t somehow “unnatural”, now is it? When man builds a dam, this is not in any way “unnatural” either.
As the great band Love & Rockets once sang,
“You cannot go against nature, because when you do… go against nature, that’s a part of nature too!”
Nothing that man does is “unnatural”. It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to do something “unnatural”. Everything that man does can be accounted for by physics, and anything “unnatural” would violate physics.
As such, any CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere IS ACTUALLY part of “natural variability”. It is possible to ASSUME the the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would be different in the absence of natural human actions, but that just proves that natural human actions are a part of natural variability. However, it is also possible to hypothesize that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the direct result of more CO2 being released from the oceans as they naturally warmed, and as the oceans again undergo their natural cooling cycles, they will begin to absorb more CO2, thus reducing the atmospheric concentration. If this does occur, then it will be increasingly difficult to quantify the human contribution. Sure, we can get a pretty good estimate of how much CO2 our activities RELEASE into the atmosphere, but what we release into the atmosphere through our activities doesn’t really seem to “hang around” in the atmosphere for very long, so it is very difficult to quantify what the “natural” level of CO2 in the atmosphere “should” be right now.
Thomas T.
Your confusion lies with the idea that “Modern Human History” has no significance whatsoever when studying the climate of the Earth. The climate of the Earth can only be understood on geologic time-scales.
To assign any significance whatsoever to the minute time-frame encompassed by “Modern Human History” is silly.
Also, within “Modern Human History”, Greenland used to be, well, GREEN. Vikings settled there, and grew bountiful crops. Greenland isn’t particularly green anymore, because currently it is too damn cold there to grow much of anything. As such, it is quite trivially easy to prove that even within the timescale that you call “Modern Human History”, Greenland HAD TO HAVE BEEN WARMER in the PAST than it CURRENTLY IS NOW. If it had not been warmer in the past, I doubt very much that the Vikings would have bothered settling there, because I doubt that they would have been able to get any crops to grow. And yet we know, from archaeological evidence that the Vikings did indeed inhabit Greenland, and they did indeed grow crops there.
So, according to your hypothesis, were the Vikings in possession of some magic which allowed them to grow bountiful crops in permafrost?
djake – you have it right.
The relative effect of water vapor = 33,000 ppm * 90 percent = 29,700
The relative effect of CO2 = 380 ppm * 8 percent ~ 31 – or about 1/970 that of H2O, which establishes beyond any doubt that CO2 effect on climate is infinitesimal.
And that’s before we consider the ratioo of man’s activities to CO2 activity (probably less than 1/1,000 of total CO2 activity – also infinitesimal.
So in total you have 1/(970*1,000) as the effect of human activity on climate i.e., about a million to one odds against it. An infinitesimal of an infinitesimal.
PeterB in Indianapolis says:
October 3, 2012 at 9:52 am
– – – – – – –
PeterB in Indianapolis
I think you are on the trail of the fundamental false premise of the ideological environmental movement. I think their false premise is they merely posit that anything that man does to impact the universe for his own benefit, achieved from his uniquely rational cognitive processes, somehow makes man a malevolent entity. They think mankind is a disease when using his mind to impact the universe. I conclude that the ideological environmental movement is fundamentally anti-mind.
Absurdly, the ideological environmentalists try to use their minds to convince us by intellectual argument that being anti-mind is better. They self-contradict.
John
Thomas T has been shown to be wrong over and over and over on multiple threads. He refuses to acknowledge any of it, and continues to spew his nonsense. We are supposed to accept him at his word when he says things like “Nonsense, the rapidity is unprecedented”? Who is the d-nire here?
Philip Bradley says:
October 2, 2012 at 10:29 pm
For the umpteenth time, absent chance (coincidence), correlation is proof of causation.
What MarkW said above.
You’ve also “begged the question” by simply defining everything else possible as a cause in the real world of real science as “chance [coincidence]”. Therefore, while what you’ve said is “true” by definition, it does not itself relate to the real world of real science. But as to the current topic here of statistical correlation vs real causes, if words don’t relate to the real world, who cares? Answer, people for whom the repetition of some of the PNAS’s CO2CAGW “tenets” as empirically untethered dogma [mere verbiage] is just o’ so soooothing:
“Thomas T says:
October 3, 2012 at 9:11 am”
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but do not see any
rabidrapid responders on this thread belonging to Cook’s Crusher Crew from Paranoiaville (CCCP***). If there is anyone commenting on this thread from CCCP then would you kindly self-identify in the name of the intellectual integrity of the Cook blog venue?***any correlation to the acronym of the former Soviet Union is amusingly just coincidental and not intended. : )
John
“What is important here is that at present no other parameter, such as solar or earth tilt, etc, correlates well with the observed rapid increase in global temperature.”
This is the old argument:
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation):
assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.
It excludes such things as the Urban Heat Island Effect (probably the major “contributor” to “warming”, other land use effects, the death of the thermometers (many less measuring sites than ther used to be), “adjustments” made to the temperature record (always making it seem colder in the past and warmer now), changes in measuring methods (newer paints over screens replacing tho old whitewash, different methods and instruments, gridding, bad siting), the warmup from both the Little Ice Age and the 70’s ice age scare (the question here is not what made it warm up, but what made it get colder to warm up from in the first place), the medieval Warm period (just as warm as now, no SUV’s), and many others. Thus the phrase “at present no other parameter” is a false statement, many other parameters can also correlate.
There is also no “observed rapid increase in global temperature”, rapid, where is this rapid? Careful measurements show no increase in over 100 years, no unprecedented rise seen compared to the history of the Holocene, the only place a “rapid” increase is seen is in the now discredited “hockey stick”, which was a flat out, bald faced lie, and in models, which are fiction.
Thus the above statement is false in every way.
You need to get out more.
David Ball says:
October 3, 2012 at 11:11 am
Thomas T has been shown to be wrong over and over and over on multiple threads. He refuses to acknowledge any of it, and continues to spew his nonsense. We are supposed to accept him at his word when he says things like “Nonsense, the rapidity is unprecedented”? Who is the d-nire here?
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That’s why I asked if he was a member of the BBSB, the “Baffle them them with Bulls**t Brigade”.
(Though I think on the SkS Super-Secret thread they prefered to be called “Komment Krushers” or something like that.)
Gunga Din says:
October 3, 2012 at 11:53 am
BBSB covers it nicely. I am not sure if anyone has already suggested Anthropogenic Science Squad, ……8^D
Thomas T reveals his ignorance of the subject once more:
“The rapidity is unprecedented.”
Wrong.
The fact that CO2 has been rising steadily without any acceleration in natural global warming indicates that any effect from CO2 is so small that it cannot be measured. And if it cannot be measured, AGW is only a conjecture.
It excludes such things as the Urban Heat Island Effect (probably the major “contributor” to “warming”
Yet, posters here did not question:
Central England Temperature record is a thermometer-based record extending continuously back to 1659. This indicates that temperatures rose during the period 1695-1735 at more than 3 times the above rate.
You do know that the Central England Temperature record during that time period 1695-1735 included indoor temperature measurements? Skepticism is selective on this website, if the data is useful, it is not audited.
The curent climate is extremely benign by Holocene standards. Nothing unprecedented is happening. Temperatures, precipitation, storms, droughts and floods have all been more severe at times when CO2 was much lower.
You do realize that our knowledge of Holocene climate, and your statement, relies heavily on decades of research, curiosity and scientific method of many, many climatologists? On this thread climatologists are both universally damned as being frauds…yet relied upon heavily for understanding.
dcfl51,
My remark about not requiring alternative explanations related to modern warming, not past warm periods. For those clearly alternative explanations are needed and no one denies there are known factors other than GHGs which can cause warming, they just don’t explain the warming in recent decades. I’m not sure why you think that highly speculative and unproven theories about ocean oscillations and cosmic rays are a more plausible explanation that GHGs.
I said nothing about climate models or how they compare to observations – you certainly don’t need a model to predict that increasing GHG levels will cause warming, you don’t neccessarily need them to make a rough estimate of how much warming to expect. Still, your claims about models overestimating the warming do not allow for the difference between transient and equilibrium sensitivity, you overestimate IMHO the effect of UHI and remarks about dodgy data adjustments are just cheap shots. Also, you say we have to allow for “natural warming”, but how do you know the net effect of natural factors has not been negative rather than positive? Having said all that, let’s accept for argument’s sake that the observed warming is a bit lower than expectations – why does that logically mean that the warming we have seen is not due to GHGs? Surely it would be more of a problem if there had been more warming than expected?
Thomas T:
Let’s assume you’re right, and humans are cooking the planet with CO2. Okay? Now tell me, here in Melbourne, daily temps can vary by 25-30C, and yearly temps can vary by around 45C.
So we raise the temp 2C. Scary, isn’t it? That’s less than the temp change between 6am and 6:30am. With rapid unprecedented warming occurring each morning, shouldn’t you alarmists be trying to stop the sun rising?
http://drtimball.com/2012/environmentalists-create-another-false-claim-about-climate-change/
Philip Bradley:
At October 3, 2012 at 5:37 am you say to me
I have sampled a bridge you may want to buy.
Richard