No cause for alarm at five-year mid-point of the Armstrong-Gore climate “bet”
By J. Scott Armstrong
In 2007, University of Pennsylvania Professor J. Scott Armstrong’s attention was drawn to former VP Gore’s concerns about global warming. Having spent five decades studying the science of forecasting, Armstrong decided to examine the basis for the forecasts of global warming. He was unable to find a single scientific forecast to support the claim that the Earth was becoming dangerously warmer or colder.
Instead, he found that some scientists were using improper forecasting methods to make forecasts. Professor Armstrong alerted Mr. Gore to this fact and suggested that they cooperate in a validation test of dangerous global warming forecasts. He suggested a 10-year bet for which he would forecast no long-term trend in climate, while Mr. Gore could chose forecasts from any climate model.
After a series of emails, Mr. Gore declined, apparently sticking with his claim that no time could be devoted to further study, because we were near a “tipping point,” a position backed by James Hansen of NASA. Professor Armstrong claimed that nothing new was happening, so there was neither cause for alarm nor need for government action.
Professor Armstrong nevertheless determined to pursue his proposed test of the alarmist forecast. By using the commonly adopted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change forecast—3°C of warming per century—to represent Mr. Gore’s position, the theclimatebet.com has tracked the Armstrong-Gore “bet” with monthly updates.
Mr. Gore should be pleased to find that his grave concerns about a “tipping point” have turned out to be unfounded. As shown on theclimatebet.com, Professor Armstrong’s forecasts have been more accurate than Mr. Gore’s for 40 of the 60 months to date and for four of the five years. In fact, the latest global temperature is exactly where it was at the beginning of the “bet.”
Professor Armstrong was not surprised. With some minor exceptions, his forecast was consistent with evidence-based forecasting principles. In contrast, the IPCC’s forecasting procedures have been found to violate 72 of the 89 relevant principles.
When he proposed the bet, Professor Armstrong expected to have a somewhat less than 70% chance of winning given the natural variation in global mean temperatures for a ten-year period. In light of the results to date, he expects an even better chance of winning, but as Yogi Berra said, “It’s not over till it’s over.” Furthermore, policy decisions will require validations testing for hundreds of years, not for just one decade. At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean temperatures for 16 years.
January 19, 2013
Mann is such a whiney baby. On the other hand, maybe he has reason to since the edifice he built his career on is crumbling like clay in the rain.
Will Gore declare bankruptcy before the bet is up?
Dallas Beaufort says:
January 19, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Will Gore declare bankruptcy before the bet is up?
Gore has been bankrupt practically for ever. Intellectually bankrupt, that is.
Another drive-by from Mosher. Not only predictable but sadly becoming the norm from him.
To the Annonn who posted the comment “Mosh comment like cryptic bunny carrot.”
Please note that this comment is not sufficiently cryptic to properly mock Mr. Mosher.
This guy? Gotta love the initial comment on scientific forecast / forecasts by scientists …..
Oldie but goodie. ;*)
A. Watts says above:
“At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean
temperatures for 16 years.”
Have a look at smoothed HadCRUT3, or even UAH smoothed by the
smoothing method used for smoothing HadCRUT3. It looks to me that
only the last 11 years (HadCRUT3) or 12 years (UAH) had a flat linear
trend.
So let’s see now.
We start off with a fake bet. Anyone think that if I made a fake bet with Anthony and built a web site around that it would be in any way legitimate?
Then we have:”He was unable to find a single scientific forecast to support the claim that the Earth was becoming dangerously warmer or colder.” Did he not look or did he just close his eyes when evidence appeared like the anti-Darwin loons do.
And then we have a supposed expert in data analysis propose a bet based on a statistically invalid short 10 year time span. We know from the noise in the measurements and the natural variability in the climate system that this is too short a period.
And the bet started beginning 2007 which means the 10 year period is up end 2016. 4 years to go.
Methinks passing judgement on this fake bet now is premature.
Reblogged this on RubinoWorld.
As an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.) I have been delighted over the years at the efforts of a Penn professor to challenge forecasts of climate change disaster and am equally delighted that a lower grade academic from Pennsylvania State University has gone apoplectic because an intelligent person like Nate Silver finds agreement with Dr. Armstrong. The incredible thing about Mann’s Huff Post piece is his smear of Nate Silver because he got a degree in Economics from the University of Chicago. That Silver is a self-described liberal suggests an open mind on his part. Pity that Michael Mann’s mind is so closed.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
January 19, 2013 at 8:11 pm
A. Watts says above:
“At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean
temperatures for 16 years.”
To the nearest year, there has been no warming at all for 16 years, statistical or otherwise, on several data sets:
1. HadCrut3: since May 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to November)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 10 months (goes to December)
3. RSS: since December 1996 or 16 years, 1 month (goes to December)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/plot/rss/from:1997.0/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1
This analysis indicates for how long there has not been significant warming at the 95% level on various data sets.
For RSS the warming is NOT significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.126 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH, the warming is NOT significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut3, the warming is NOT significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut4, the warming is NOT significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.098 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS, the warming is NOT significant for over 17 years.
For GISS: 0.116 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Lazy Teenager,
Dr. Armstrong is an expert in data analysis and he understands well the “bet” that he has made. The IPCC’s AR4 report stated their confidence that the earth’s average surface temperature would increase by an average of 0.2 degrees C per decade going forward from the date of the report. If one takes the decadal average of the GTA from the 1880’s to the 2000’s (using NOAA’s database) and then does a first difference of these decadal averages in order to make the time series non-stationary, the standard deviation of this once-differenced time series is .098 degrees C. This is not surprising since the standard deviation of once differencing the GTA time series for one year, two year, five year, 10 year, etc. period is about 0.1 degrees C over whatever period one chooses.
So Dr. Armstrong has chosen a 10 year period because he knows that the standard deviation of a detrended time series of the GTA is 0.1 degrees over any given period and choosing the 10-year period means he has chosen a length in his forecast that would be seen as meaningful by people who understand statistics. This means that his forecast of no change in the GTA over a 10 year period can be statistically tested against the IPCC’s forecast of a 0.2 degree C increase decade-on-decade since the difference between the two forecasts is two sigma or the standard statistical measure of significant difference between these two data points.
In other words, those who have a clear understanding of statistics can understand well that if the GTA trend over the 10-year period of Dr. Armstrong’s “bet” is zero, then the claim that the decadal increase in the GTA will be 0.2 degrees C over time is statistically refuted. Lazy Teenager, you and others who seem not to have a clear understanding of statistics always claim that periods of a decade (or whatever) are too short to make valid comparison are in fact completely wrong. Lazy Teenager, you are the one who does not understand the natural variation in the climate series and it is you that does not understand that a 10 year period is sufficiently long to make a test of a decadal temperature forecast given the nature of the forecast made in the IPCC’s AR4 report.
Sorry,
I should have said stationary time series earlier rather than non-stationary in my above post. Once differencing a time series eliminates linear (or close to linear) trends and makes a non-stationary time series stationary. A stationary time series is effectively noise and its variation over time can be analyzed in order to understand the natural variation in the data after any trend has been eliminated. Thus, the once-differenced standard deviation of the GTA tells us the natural temperature variation in the climate over any given period, This natural variation is, according to the GTA data, about 0.1 C over whatever period length chosen.
>>
davidmhoffer says:
January 19, 2013 at 1:48 pm
. . . but as Einstein would have quipped, that’s not right, that’s not even wrong!
<<
Einstein may have appreciated credit, but I believe Pauli’s considered the quote’s original author.
Jim
In his video’d talk Armstrong makes a distinction between “scientific forecasts” (those that are based on the principles of scientific forecasting, a topic on which he is a specialist) and “forecasts by scientists,” which he considers to be mere expressions of belief, as poorly based as predictions by other groups of experts, like economists.
=========
I don’t think the head post was written by Armstrong, although he is given the credit for it, because it refers to him in the third person.
If you subtract 0.29 deg. C. from the UHA satellite data set for the lower troposphere from 1998 on then the trendline is virtually flat. What happened in 1998?
100,000,000 plus reason say St Gore has already won no matter what the facts .
Is Steven Mosher says: becoming a once only event on these postings?
Don B said on January 19, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Looks like Galina and Vladimir should win that bet. Though that might depend on what was agreed as the yardstick, and the exact start and end dates.
I don’t know how you get Wood For Trees to show separate means. Guess I have 5 years to find out.
@ur momisugly Jim.
Thanks. That article solves a problem. Yogi Bear is internationally famous, and I and my friends used to wonder why he was called “Yogi”, since he didn’t practice any sort of Yoga. It seems he was named after this baseball guy.
“Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters consider global warming to be at least a somewhat serious problem. However, they remain closely divided as to whether it’s caused primarily by human activity or by longer term planetary trends. And few are willing to pay significantly higher utility costs or taxes in an attempt to address the global warming issue. Forty-nine percent (49%) are not willing to pay anything more. Another 25% are willing to pay only $100 a year. Just 19% are willing to pay $300 a year or more. ”
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Does anyone have a link to the Nate Silver article endorsing Armstrong that has offended Mann?
“Michael says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Where are these 89 principals listed and justified?”
If you’d been paying attention, you would notice that Prof. Armstrong has written on the subject voluminously in peer reviewed journals and at least one book.
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Forecasting-Researchers-Practitioners-International/dp/0792379306/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358690353&sr=1-1&keywords=scott+armstrong
LazyTeenager says:
January 19, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Methinks it would be nice if you followed your own advice. 🙂