Dana Nuccitelli's meany mode is like stinky cheese

Dana (Scooter) Nuccitelli, lead attack kid at the SkS Treehut gets schooled.

Bishop Hill writes:

Last week I ribbed Dana Nuccitelli and Gavin Schmidt over the former’s comparing the mean of the Aldrin paper to the mode of Lewis’s. Here’s the quote:

One significant issue in Lewis’ paper (in his abstract, in fact) is that in trying to show that his result is not an outlier, he claims that Aldrin et al. (2012) arrived at the same most likely [i.e. the mode] climate sensitivity estimate of 1.6°C, calling his result “identical to those from Aldrin et al. (2012).”  However, this is simply a misrepresentation of their paper.

The authors of Aldrin et al. report a climate sensitivity value of 2.0°C [per the paper, the mean] under certain assumptions that they caution are not directly comparable to climate model-based estimates. When Aldrin et al. include a term for the influences of indirect aerosols and clouds, which they consider to be a more appropriate comparison to estimates such as the IPCC’s model-based estimate of ~3°C, they report a sensitivity that increases up to 3.3°C. Their reported value is thus in good agreement with the full body of evidence as detailed in the IPCC report.

I (BH) was somewhat taken aback when Nuccitelli subsequently denied having done this:

Me: @dana1981 And you can’t really duck the fact that you compared mean to mode. @ClimateOfGavin @wattsupwiththat

Nuccitelli: @aDissentient You have a strange definition of the word “fact”, but that’s not news.

Me: @dana1981 You are denying comparing mean to mode?

Nuccitelli: @aDissentient Sure. While we’re at it, I’m also denying that the moon is made of cheese.

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It seems that Dana got taken to task by Tom Curtis at SkS, and now there’s been another one of those silent changes at SkS.

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Bish continues:

In the comments, Tom Curtis is remonstrated about Nuccitelli accusing Lewis of misrepresenting the match between his PDF and Aldrin’s,

Dana correctly describes Lewis as claiming that the mode (most likely climate sensitivity) of his result is identical to the mode of Aldrin et al, but then incorrectly calls that claim a simple misrepresentation.  It is not a misrepresentation.  The modes of the two studies are identical to the first decimal point.

Now it has all changed. Look at the Skeptical Science page again

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More here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/22/sks-quietly-withdraws-allegation.html

For those that want to learn what the difference is between mean and mode, about .com has this simple and helpful tutorial: The Mean, the Median and the Mode

Heh. How does that stinky moon cheese taste Dana?

Richard Drake nails it in comments:

Well done for plugging away at these matters. Sensitivity has a central role in the IPCC framework and argument. Although use of mode rather than mean may seem a small detail it isn’t. As we focus in on such things it’s getting harder to paint sceptics as ignorant bigots – largely because of Nic’s excellent work.

Apr 22, 2013 at 10:38 AM | Richard Drake

Maybe Lew can do some polling of non skeptic websites to prove how Dana was right all along and those of us pointing out Dana’s improper statistics usages are just Moon Landing Deniers.

Related articles

• On Dana1981’s Meaningless ENSO Exercise at SkepticalScience (wattsupwiththat.com)
• Dana’s Planet (The Air Vent)