Steven Mosher says: I want to thank folks for the kind comments about climategate.
This is how delusional you have become, only ONE person (Rob Ricket) made an inaccurate climategate comment referencing you.
Bob
December 13, 2013 8:18 pm
Steve Mosher, ” It starts in location X. on a moutain top. For 10 years it records a summer temperature of 10C.
Then you move it down to the valley. The summer temperature goes up to 15C
What do you do.”
Don’t use it. It is a protocol violator.
E.M.Smith
Editor
December 13, 2013 8:39 pm
@ur momisugly ferd berple says:
December 13, 2013 at 6:23 am:
Well there’s my problem….
I put myself through school partly as a “Night Auditor” at a hotel. It had the old “Posting Machine” method with large cards for each room and a ledger where errors were to be noted. I spent many long nights back figuring how various folks screwed things up so I could “undo them” with the right double entries… I started learning “bookkeeping” at about 8 from my Mum who did the books for our family restaurant.
Then in high school I had a Chemistry / Physic teacher (Mr. McGuire) who rigorously enforced that the Lab Book Was Sacred. “NO ERASURES!”. (It was an automatic fail to have an erasure mark on any lab work). Only a single line through the prior writing and a new entry were allowed.
I simply can not abide the idea of a blind change of old data. The original MUST be kept and a full record of how the new is created appended. Anything else is a fail. @ur momisuglyBit Chilly:
There is an oscillation between Arctic and Antarctic temperatures. I think it is driven by lunar tide effects (the moon has a long cycle effect on how much water is in which hemisphere, not just a monthly effect. http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/why-weather-has-a-60-year-lunar-beat/ ) So the fact that the Antarctic is getting colder while the Arctic had some melt is absolutely normal. Changes in total water volume in the circumpolar current near Antarctica whack into Drake’s Passage and that changes how much cold water goes up the spine of S. America and into the central Pacific. The rest is time delay and elaboration.
On top of that, layer in some solar changes (that happen in step with the lunar tidal cycle due to orbital resonance effects) and that changes the atmosphere on a very long cycle. Thus our recent warm phase that has now crashed into a cold phase. Low UV now means lower deep ocean energy delivery and more IR driven prompt surface evaporation. More “heat pipe earth” cooling the oceans, less heat build up.
IMHO, you will see it in a lot less than a decade. It’s happening now. @ur momisuglyJason Bates:
I’ve wondered the same thing. In the data there is a pronounced shift. It happens at a specific point in time for each region. The “lows” start getting clipped from the record. The highs do not go up, but the lows just don’t go as low. I did a long series of postings on it (search on “hair graphs” at chiefio.wordpress.com or look in the http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/dtdt/ category). http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/the-world-in-dtdt-graphs-of-temperature-anomalies/
has some examples.
I’ve not worked out exactly what caused it. Two things changed at about the same time. Large areas moved from Liquid In Glass to MMTS electronic measurements (and often pulled the sensor closer to buildings due to the wires…) and the QA method changed (in a way I think may toss low excursions – local ASOS stations at airports are used to toss ‘outlier’ data…)
And there is the massive loss of stations at altitude, and a dramatic increase in the use of airport stations as a percentage.
In any case, it all comes down to “station issues”. Individual long lived stations do not support the notion of Global Warming. Only homogenized fictions do…
Janice Moore says:
December 13, 2013 at 12:20 pm
A Story with a Moral
+++++++
very clever and timely dear Janice.
john robertson
December 13, 2013 10:21 pm
First the drive by troll style comments on many threads this year, make obscure sarcastic mocking, diversionary comments, never return to follow up or explain.
Now an ever increasing defensiveness.
If the data is crap, what is produced from, dicing it up and mixing it around, can only be manure.
Mr Mosher, are you annoyed at yourself for wasting a year?
Or is there more in the “BEST methods”, to make you unhappy with yourself?
Steven: I am begging you to reply in a cogent manner to my questions without subterfuge. Just come out with it.
Richard D
December 13, 2013 10:56 pm
It’s a lot more fun to talk about what you actually do and why than to engage in the usual round of ad hominem bashing that often occurs.
__________________________________________-
And much appreciated as it’s an opportunity to learn from scientist actually involved in the process,
I was one of the first commenters on this article, and was contentous. I see raw data manipulated all the time to suit the user’s needs. Typically the analyst is looking to either make a name for thselves, or a salary.
Sleepalot
December 14, 2013 6:45 am
Zeke Hausfather says:
December 13, 2013 at 6:32 pm
“Don’t have much time before I need to run for dinner, but a few things in this thread caught my eye:”
That’s your exit strategy, is it?
“Stephen Rasey: the march of the thermometers meme was so 2010.”
You changed the name of the great dying of the thermometers? Why, strawman or denial? Here’s the CRUtem3 count: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/8293832934/
“Berkeley uses ~40,000 stations, (…)”
How many for 1880?
rgbatduke
December 14, 2013 7:47 am
A Story with a Moral
(and, yes, I believe it is a true story — you need not to get the point, though, I think…)
Once there were three wealthy Persian kings who were brilliant astronomers.
Interestingly, you’re posting this in a science discussion on a website devoted to skepticism, so commenting is, I presume, fair game.
There isn’t one single thing about this 2000 year old myth, written hundreds of years after year 0 by people that were not there, that you find dubious based on mere common sense and everyday experience? The fact that the two Nativity myths in the New Testament unambiguously report that the birth occurred during the reign of two different Herods — Herod the great in one (who died in 4 BCE, which was at least a year post birth if we are to believe the utterly unconfirmed myth about the slaughter of the innocents) and Herod Antipas in the other (positively identified in Luke by his reference to Quirinius, who wasn’t appointed governor of Syria until 6 CE). So the story you believe is true isn’t physically plausible (if somebody told you the same story happened yesterday you would automatically disbelieve it — in fact when people DO tell stories JUST like this in association with religious cults and all of the other religions of the world you DO routinely disbelieve it) and isn’t even told consistently within the “divinely inspired” New Testament.
Science is all about believing things that are the best things to believe, given the evidence! We hold extended discussions on the list about how susceptible scientists (who should know better) are to confirmation bias, interspersed with a liberal dose of accusations of dishonesty. If you can’t and don’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) trust the honesty of contemporary observers (because, in another oft-cited complaint, those observers make a living and gain status from their work on the basis of their claims of an implausible disaster) why in the world would you trust the honesty of Nth had reports (basically anecdotal hearsay, not admissible in any court in the world) from the second century, long after the events supposedly being recounted, that are at best individuals that were making a living and gaining status from their work on the basis of claims of an implausible apocalyptic disaster?
If, esteemed madam, you are indeed a hardnosed skeptic, I strongly urge you to read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus, followed by a good pass through: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm
It is my experience that Christians who most avidly defend their religion in general haven’t actually read the Bible, and certainly haven’t either properly studied it or subjected it to anything like a critical analysis. The Skeptics Annotated Bible will help you a lot with that, because it highlights and lays bare the thousands of direct contradictions in biblical text, the hundreds of places where God, Moses, and countless other “saints” behave really badly (on any ethical basis you like), the manifold places that statements in the Bible are baldly absurd or contradicted by science.
You owe it to yourself to doubt your own faith by exposing it to a ruthlessly honest skeptical process. If you carve out a special exception, one set of rules for religion and another for science, how can you possibly blame honest climate scientists for following the rules of science and arriving at a conclusion that — true or not — is infinitely better founded than your religious beliefs?
rgb
Jason Bates
December 14, 2013 11:22 am
@E.M.Smith says:
December 13, 2013 at 8:39 pm
My personal, very naive assessment of the situation is that the change in trend from the raw data to the homogenized record is related to the relative oversampling of urban or semi-rural stations with respect to true rural stations and the assumption that a collection of stations should have better data than the individual stations from which the collection is composed (this is the underlying assumption which justifies the use of nearby stations to correct “errors” in the record of individual stations).
To illustrate my point, consider the following five hypothetical stations in a small, relatively sparsely populated region. Stations one through four all show a slow, gradual increase in temperature over the course of a decade. Station five shows a flat trend for the first three years of the decade, a sharp downward spike during year four, and a gradual upward slope for the remainder of the decade, ending the decade at a level just slightly lower than at the beginning of the decade.
The BEST process would, if I understand it correctly, insert a breakpoint in the data for station five at year four, adjusting the data upwards so that the downward spike was eliminated. The homogenized data would then nicely match the regional trend of slowly increasing temperature in the area.
Now let’s consider what “actually happened” in this hypothetical example. Stations one through four in this hypothetical were located in semi-rural areas which experienced moderate population growth over the course of the decade, and thus the environment around the station changed gradually.
Station five was located in a national park. In year four, a fire occurred to the north of the station, decimating a region of forest that had previously served as a windbreak, allowing a steady north wind to blow across the station lowering temperatures slightly. During the rest of the decade, new growth slowly replaced the old, and the wind break filled back in.
So, in each of the five cases, the temperature changes were “real” (in the sense that the station faithfully recorded the temperature change of its immediate surroundings), and yet the extrapolation to the region as a whole is false. The problem lies with the homogenization process, and the assumption that the data of the first four stations (which largely agreed with each other) was better than that of the fifth. In reality, the fifth station had the best quality data (despite of the downward spike and subsequent uptrend).
This is the entire problem with any data set that includes systematic biases; the four semi-rural stations experienced correlated error because the underlying process which led to the error was correlated. The slicing and kriging technique, in this hypothetical, serves to exacerbate, rather than diminish, the error. The systematic error of the four has served to introduce bias into the fifth masquerading as a “correction” for the random error to which the fifth was subject.
Alternatively, suppose the fire had occurred to the south of station five, allowing more direct sunlight to reach the area surrounding the station. Then, we’d see an upward spike, followed by a gradual downward trend. Again, the slicing method would shift the latter part of station five’s data downward; however, this time it leads to an overall trend that moves in the “wrong” direction, making it more likely that the homogenization process would interpret subsequent random noise as additional break points to bring the station’s data back closer in line to the other four. Once again, we find the highest quality dataset to be the one that is getting homogenized, and thus the homogenization reduces the overall quality of data for this region.
Now, you might say that these are rather far fetched examples – and you’d be right – but keep in mind that these are hardly the only plausible situations which might lead to such circumstances, and these are the type of circumstances that computer data analysis cannot (yet) catch. Furthermore, the primary driver behind the largest potential source of bias – human development – is increasing, and therefore it is no surprise to me that a homogenizing process that fails to (and, by nature, cannot) account for this bias leads to a trend higher than that seen in the raw data.
Basically, the fundamental problem is this: any time the analysis finds a discontinuity in the data and inserts a breakpoint, the resulting temperature shift for that station is only as good as the quality of data used to compute that shift – ie., only as good as whatever composite of nearby stations the software is using. Now, if the majority of the stations had good data most of the time, this wouldn’t be a problem; likewise, is the major sources of error were random we’d expect them to cancel out of the composite and we’d be fine. However, we know this isn’t the case! Many – perhaps most – of the stations are downright terrible, subject to both random and systematic error, and while the slicing may help eliminate the former, it also serves to propogate the latter.
Now, if I had seen a detailed, quality analysis of how such a scenario (or similar ones) could not affect the BEST dataset, then I’d be more inclined to trust it. Alternatively, an estimation of how likely such events were, and how much they might effect the dataset overall, would be welcome (although I suspect nearly impossible to do in practice). In the absence of either of those, I’m forced to treat the BEST dataset as fiction – or, at best, a faithful reproduction of the average temperature of the few square meters surrounding each station in its database.
Jason, wise observations on programmatic processing of data. Unless you know the history of each set of data, the updates are just as likely to make the data worse not better. And the more data you have the harder it is to qa the data.
rgbatduke says:
December 13, 2013 at 10:07 am
+++++++++
Long post, but worth the read. The basic problem I have is that there is no way, none at all, to honestly say that the UHI effect is taken care of such that the data used produces a reasonably reliable temperature record. I recall reading (a good several years ago) on the NOAA website about the “5 supposed algorithms” used to compensate for the UHI effect. It read something like –in conclusion after applying the algorithms, the resulting warming temperature trend/outcome was what we had expected due to the anthropogenic warming, so we know the adjustments were correct.
As an process engineer, I was so taken back with what I had just read it sealed in my mind at that point that science was dead – and the political witch hunt was well in progress.
Steven Mosher knows for certain that the released BEST products do not improve upon our understanding of the temperature past. At some point, we need to judge for ourselves what is true and move on.
Janice Moore
December 14, 2013 3:05 pm
Vukcevic,
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you are saying to me at 2:50pm on Dec. 13th. I’d like to respond, but, well, I can’t.
Janice
******************************************************* Dear Mario, thank you.
***************************************************
Dear Mr. Brown,
I have so many, many, things I would like to say to you. But, I can’t. This is, indeed, a science site (and thread). I realized when I posted my story that many of you guys would not believe it to be truth, to be, as you characterize it, a “myth.” I thought if I just wrote clearly and skillfully enough that the metaphors and analogies and allegorical parallels would be obvious. Obviously, I need to work on my writing skills. Please believe me, although I used a Bible event for my allegory, and it occurred to me, I think, because of the time of the year (the 3 guys in the photo certainly did not elicit it, heh), I was not trying to use a science thread to promote my religion. My religion is just such a part of me that it naturally comes out in my writing.
Oh, I want to respond to you so much, here! I’ll just say that, from my research and from reading the Bible (and I am more than a little familiar with the text of the Old and New Testaments) and history, I can see that you have made several factual errors and, from my educational background, I can see that your understanding of the hearsay rule of evidence appears to be inadequate.
Thanks for letting me know that I failed so utterly abysmally at creative writing. Always good to be made aware of one’s weaknesses. Can you believe it? I actually thought I might have communicated something in that story worthwhile even to non-believers. Truth hurts, but truth and nothing else, is what matters.
Oh, and, Merry Christmas! #(:))
Janice
E.M.Smith
Editor
December 14, 2013 3:50 pm
@Janice:
There’s a lot of folks who read what you wrote and liked it, but didn’t say anything. There is more to life than what passes as science these days. (There is also no fundamental conflict of science and religion – that’s another “progressive” myth. Most of our best scientists of history were highly religious…) @Jason Bates:
I think that’s about right.
At this point large parts of the GHCN are essentially “The History Of Airport Growth”… Then add in the swap to electronic gizmos and the homogenizing makes it all into a “warming trend”. Look at the individual data and it is not a warming. The highs do not go up. It is a loss of cold excursions. Loss of cold excursion data is not the same as increasing hot days.
I’m pretty sure that tarmac and sunshine are part of the loss of cold excursions. That electronic measuring may have some issues to the low side. That short wires pulling things closer to buildings and vehicles and further from trees clips some lows. That the QA and homogenizing to “fix” the data also averages out the low excursions more than the highs. Maybe even that since the ’70s there have actually been fewer really cold days (as solar and lunar effects had some warming of the lows); but recent news seems to be demonstrating that the cold lows are back.
It will be interesting to see if the recent cold is preserved once the data hits GISS, Hadcrut, etc… There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…
In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
EM, when you look at the min and max surface records, what you describe is exactly what I see.
Follow the link in my name to see this in the surface station measurements.
Richard D
December 14, 2013 4:23 pm
E.M.Smith says: December 14, 2013 at 3:50 pm
There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
____________________________________
A truly terrific post, thanks
Richard D says:
December 14, 2013 at 4:23 pm
E.M.Smith says: December 14, 2013 at 3:50 pm
There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
++++++++
Richard: Well said. Of course I agree with you. But – but BEST did something incredible. According to Mosher, they sliced into datasets (that were adjusted faithfully by people who know it should be warming). BEST (used “skeptical methods” to extract the goodness from what Mosher refers to as “crap” raw data to estimate the correct resulting information (with great precision beyond that which the sensors are capable of reading) that shows CO2 is causing the warming – according to nervous looking Rohde.
What a team effort, everyone doing their part, and no one answering our skeptical questions without obfuscation.
The way the data was adjusted to supposedly correct for the UHI effect, reminds me of the”Jump to conclusions mat” from Office Space.
Richard D
December 14, 2013 5:54 pm
@ur momisugly Mario Lento
That’s a fun video, thanks. I’m Canada on this one, as I really don’t know enough about Best to make a judgment on the science. I’m certainly not prepared to impugn their motives or integrity of their science, either. I’m learning here and try not to interject too much unless it’s little stuff concerning basic physical sciences and human biology. I do appreciate hearing first hand from working scientists including Mosher and the many learned commenters here.
========================================================================
The answer is “C” on both counts.
What’s happening is that data from sites that were never intended to give a “Global” temperature is being used for something for they are unsuited. The sites are fine for local weather forecasting (when properly sited) but not uniform enough to give a true “Global” perspective.
It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. You might get a taste that satisfies your taste buds but your belly is still empty.
Janice Moore
December 14, 2013 6:44 pm
Thank you, so much, E. M. Smith, for your kind words and encouragement — and accurate definition of the subject areas. Thanks for taking the time. Have a good time at Grandma’s Kitchen tomorrow! Boy, I’ll bet that place has really great cinnamon rolls and pecan pie and brownies and….. oooooh, boy, I think I need to go get a snack. #(:))
****************************************
Mario Lento — LAUGH OUT LOUD, that video was so funny. Thanks for posting it. I can just see that REALLY happening. My brother has told me a few stories (he used to work (maybe…. he still does, but, we’ll just not go there… (I mean, since the internet is essentially a big giant billboard)) with some guys a lot like that)… . Hey, what do you know! For once I didn’t leave off an end-parenthesis!
**************************** @ur momisugly Richard D — yes, we noticed that you are again promoting Mr. M0sh-er as a “scientist.” I measure things and observe stuff and write down what I saw and slice and compute averages and all sorts of junk like that. Guess that makes ME a scientist!! Cool! If everybody’s somebody,
no one’s anybody.
Scientists Gilbert and Sullivan (et. al.).
Why not just say, “I think Steven M0sh-er is neat. He is good at ____ (fill in blank with what he is actually competent at)”?
Well, off I go, now, skipping merrily, singing: I’m a scientist, I’m a scientist, I AM A SCIENTIST! If M0sh-er’s one, then I am, too!!! Wheeee! {and that crash you just heard was my brother throwing a basketball at me but miiiiiiiissing ….. ha, ha, ha, ha, haaa — ooops. Gotta go.}
Thanks, Gunga Din. Excellent sources. Really, there has not been a genuine issue about Jesus’ historicity for a long time. That question was answered fully a long time ago. I sure do appreciate your coming alongside once again. Hopefully, he will read them. I have some sources I was thinking of too, but, you know what? He is a very bright man. If he really wants the answers, he will find them. Let’s pray (I already did) a believer whose intellectual abilities he respects crosses his path. This kind of discussion should be done in person, not by written correspondence. If I lived within an hour’s drive of him (and with his wife there, too, if he has one), I’d get together and talk. No, no, ya know, I wouldn’t. (What am I saying!) It needs to be someone he respects (v. a v. academia). That rules me out.
And, GREAT double entendre, there. As to the commenter, highly likely; as to the Messiah, for sure!
@Zeke Hausfather at Dec 13, 6:32 pm
cc: Sleepalot at 6:45 am Stephen Rasey: the march of the thermometers meme was so 2010. Berkeley uses ~40,000 stations, and 2012 has more station date than any prior year (it increases pretty monotonically.
Like Sleepalot says, 40,000 stations for what time frame?
I ask again,
How many segments have those 40,000 station been sliced into?
What is the distribution of segment lengths?
What percent of segments are shorter than 10 years? Shorter than 20 years?
Do long segments get greater weight than short segments in the kriging?
15.7 Million “Monthly Mean Observations”
Point of order: A “Monthly Mean” is not an observation. It is a calculation of about 30 min and 30 Max observations.
While we are at it,…. Suppose we have a month with 30 straight days of 10 C lows and 20 C highs. Mean is 15 C for 30 days straight.
What is the mean standard error of the monthly mean with 30 days of 15 C daily means?
My answer: We didn’t make 30 observations of 15 C means. We observed thirty 10 C lows and thirth 20 C highs which gets us a mean of 15.00, a sample standard deviation of 5.04 C and a mean standard error of 0.92 C. I don’t see error bars on anomaly plots anywhere near this big.
Back to 15.7 Million Monthly station means. 40,747 stations
So that is an average of 385 months / station or 32.1 years / station.
IF we assume 5000 stations with 100 years of data,
That leaves 35,757 stations with an average of 22.6 years of data.
When you look at the data by country, the Bad Science meter starts pinging.
Look at Algeriafor instance:
Prior to 1875, there are fewer than 10 thermometers.
Perhaps non prior to 1850.
1875-1915 there are 10 to 25 one year might have 25% fewer than the previous.
1915-1930 drops to as low as 2 and works it way back to 10-12.
1930-1975 15 to 30. with 1957 being an obvious break point of many stations.
1975-2011 30 to 76 stations, with some years dropping to 20. 1980-2000 there are large swings from 60 to 35, so many of these stations are contributing very short segments.
So one again I ask, how short are the segments you use?
Finally, at the top of the Algeria page, you have the average temperature plot for Algeria.
It runs from 1787, even though not a single thermometer is in Alteria until 1850 and only 2 thermometers within 500 km of Algeria most of the time from 1800 to 1850.
Yet BEST reports the 95% confidence range on the temperature of Algeria in 1825 is only 1.1 deg C (+/- 0.55 deg C)
BEST just cannot admit that it doesn’t know the temperature. Better to make it up and plot the party line than limit yourself to good data.
Stephen R, I have a copy of NCDC,S Global Summary of days. It has 120 million samples from 1929 on. Most of those samples 2-3 million per year happen after ~1973. In 1930 iirc there 100-200 stations. Only a small number have 40+ years of data. I do know that BEST has other older station data, but I don’t see them having significantly more data after the 40’s or 50’s. It just doesn’t exist.
@Mi Cro at 6:46 am Only a small number have 40+ years of data…….. It just doesn’t exist.
Yet, BEST believes it knows enough to chop these precious few long station records into bite size bits to create a paper mache it can shape to its liking.
The entire premise of BEST is that the discontinuities are noise and the gradual instrument drift and contamination are signal. It might be true in a few cases, but anecdotes of moving stations from peaks into valleys cannot justify the carnage.
rgbatduke
December 15, 2013 8:23 am
Thanks for letting me know that I failed so utterly abysmally at creative writing. Always good to be made aware of one’s weaknesses. Can you believe it? I actually thought I might have communicated something in that story worthwhile even to non-believers. Truth hurts, but truth and nothing else, is what matters.
Oh, and, Merry Christmas! #(:))
Dear Ms. Moore,
Truth is indeed what matters. I am not unfamiliar with the rules of hearsay evidence, and there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that is not hearsay evidence with the possible exception of some of the letters of Paul, and all Paul can give evidence for is Paul, not Jesus. Even so, something like half of the letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul are now known to be forgeries, just as e.g. the Book of Genesis is a work that is cobbled together with contributions from many writers (and cultures!) to the extent that the Rabbinic community has had to generate midrash to explain some of the apparent contradictions between (for example) the six-day creation myth — and I use the term myth very precisely because I can recite direct evidence chapter and verse that any reasonable person would have to accept that the Universe is not six thousand years old, was not created in six days, that evolution happened, that basically 100% of Genesis never happened. One cannot even find a plausible basis for part of it being a legend (assuming that you know the difference between a myth, a legend, and actual history on a continuum).
Nor am I unfamiliar with the actual history of the New Testament. I suggest that you read Ehrman’s work — Ehrman began his life as a born again Christian, attended a Christian undergraduate institution focussing on Bible studies because he wanted to read the word of God in the original, attended Yale for graduate school in pursuit of the same dream, and learned that there is no such thing as the original. We have only fragments of a handful of bible texts from the second century, and there is obvious, visible drift in the texts from century to century.
Over the course of his studies, Mr. Ehrman lost his faith, because he was in pursuit of truth (and was well-educated and well-equipped for it) — if anything the bulk of his education and life experience predisposed him to belief. He simply found that there is no substantive basis for the set of syncretic beliefs and tenth hand texts that eventually became “Christianity”. I think you’d find the well-documented, clearly reference discussion in Misquoting Jesus to be very illuminating even as it overwhelms you with a continuation of your cognitive dissonance on the issue.
I’m also well-aware of the practice of Exegesis and Hermeneutics — which might liberally be reinterpreting ordinary language to hide apparent contradictions in a document that is supposed to be divinely inspired and hence free from all error. I have a very difficult time understanding how any reasonable person could imagine that the Bible is free from all error, especially after reading Ehrman (and that is the NEW Testament, which is far closer to original source material, whatever it might have been). I also find it absolutely incredible that any reasonable person could read, e.g. Numbers 31 and conclude that Moses was a good person, suitable for Jesus to hang out with during the transfiguration. When it comes to slaughtering the Midianite old men, women, and children down to babes in arms and fetuses in bellies except for the young virginal females who he gave to his troops to enslave for sexual pleasure, what exactly would Jesus do? When Jesus speaks of preaching in parables in order to deliberately deceive some of his listeners so that they would not believe and thereby be damned, which is this? Ethical perfection? An error (misquote) in the New Testament? Or is it itself a self-referential piece of hermeneutic obfuscation that would cause a perfectly reasonable person to experience a certain abhorrence towards the speaker (and thereby be damned)? I don’t see any real winners here, and this is the tip of a very large iceberg that is there for anyone to read the minute that they take off the hermeneutical blinders they’ve been raised with.
Again, the fundamental issue is that you clearly use a dichotomous criterion for the evaluation of hypotheses as possible truth. If someone today claimed to be able to cure blindness by rubbing filthy mud and spit into their eyes, you would instantly recognize that to be stage magic at best, conducted with a shill of some sort to take in a gullible audience. You know that because mud (especially middle eastern first century mud, trust me) is literally teeming with bacteria and consists of small pieces of grit that abrade and damage the eye, and the human mouth is the dirtiest and most dangerous part of their entire body and the saliva of another human — especially a human from long before proper dental hygiene was invented — is not a plausible cure for any possible sort of blindness any more than madness is caused by devils or disease is inflicted on humans because they pissed God off. You know that it is incalculably more likely that anyone that makes such a claim is lying, or that the actual events are being misreported, because the claim doesn’t even make sense and because you do have a world of experience with cunning liars who want to profit from uncritical acceptance of “magic”. You have no trouble at all rejecting the claims of miracles in e.g. Hinduism or Paganism, because they are obviously myths (mixed, perhaps, with an unknown base of legend). Why is it that you cannot apply the same criterion to your own belief in a similarly “impossible” mythology?
Indeed, the very way you address me (or “us”, as others seem to share my skepticism) as “non-believers” is highly revealing. What does “belief” have to do with anything? I do not “believe” in science, I accept it as anything from highly implausible, plausible but unproven, plausible and indeed likely to be true, and almost certainly true, on the sole criteria of mutual interwoven consistency and evidence. I have written an entire book explaining why not just my own knowledge but everybody’s knowledge should arise from these criteria — to the extent that all knowledge is the belief, well or poorly founded, that each assertion in an entire ontology, an entire worldview, is probably true, we should use the best possible criterion for sorting all of this out without bias, not the worst one, which is uncritical acceptance of whatever you are told on the basis of some sort of authority.
I urge you to stop “believing” in things. Instead, subject all of the possible plausible truths you encounter to a truly skeptical process, one that begins by confronting your own biases on the matter and then looks at the evidence available on the same basis that you do for everything else, not with one set of rules for religion and a second one for the physical principles that govern the operation of the electrical lights by means of which you are able to read this reply. I can tell you precisely why I believe the latter, and can propose experiments of any rigor you care to suggest that will (I am enormously confident — as confident as I am that my laptop will continue to function, that the sun will appear to rise tomorrow, that a pen, released above the ground, will fall) validate my beliefs and you can conduct those experiments without my presence and be convinced no matter what your preconceptions as long as you rely on evidence to determine the best basis of belief.
What experiment can you possibly suggest to validate one single belief in any of the substantive content of the Bible? The best that you can offer is to “trust” the supposed authors (where my only possible reply is the best philosophical statement Ronald Reagan ever uttered — “Trust, but verify” which is sort of like no, you should never just “trust” a claim, you should be able to verify it or treat it as unproven and usually rather dubious). If I invite Jesus (a supposedly all-powerful God) to appear before me in my den as he supposedly appeared to Saul/Paul and “hundreds of others”, he either declines or, more likely, either never existed or did exist as an ordinary human and is simply dead, and dead is dead. Clearly it would not violate my free will for him to appear there any more than it violated Paul’s (who was, recall, actively persecuting Christians as Saul at the time). Clearly, if Jesus is all loving, he does not want me to be damned, and given that my disbelief is in the very best of faith according to entirely defensible rules of evidence as the basis of good belief, he can hardly fault me for doing my best and thereby disbelieving in him. And of course, it would take a being that could take an (at least) 5 trillion light year diameter Universe and pop it into existence out of nothingness less than zero “energy” (or whatever Gods use for their dynamical process) to save my soul by appearing, changing some water into beer, and explaining my errors as gently and patiently to me as I explain errors to my equally blameless students. It would be easier for Jesus to save me by providing some concrete basis for belief than it is for me to type a single tedious keystroke of this long reply.
Yet he never does. Which would be sad indeed if he does exist — it wouldn’t speak well for his moral compass any more than it would speak well of my own if I failed to gently help my students with their errors and to do the reproducible, double blind, experiments and measurements that would convince anybody reasonable that they are errors and that they aren’t something that I or anybody else “just made up”. This and other mysteries, such as why Jesus never heals amputees, are easy to understand if one hypothesizes that Jesus is a legend or possibly even a syncretic myth, and that the stories of “miracles” in the Bible are without exception non-reproducible myth, hearsay evidence, anecdotes, from long, long ago and a very superstitious age.
Paul did have some good one liners. At some point, the human species does indeed need to put away its childish things and grow up. Actual belief in non-verifiable, physically implausible mythology is one of those childish things.
rgb
Pamela Gray
December 15, 2013 10:05 am
I love plain martinis. With vodka. Not gin. Just vodka. And not that flavored vodka crap they’ve been advertising. Can’t stand the saccharine sweetness of Shirley Temples, honey whiskey, or any of the other popular flavored up spirits that line the shelves of the liquor store these days, though apparently many others do. The back and forth between rgb and Janice reminds me of the battle of tastes between untouched alcohol straight up and sugared mixed drinks with flavored alcohol. I don’t want to have to ask my bartender, “What’s in this?”
As for biblical accuracy, it is highly instructive and accurate in this: It describes humanity’s historical effort to explain their wonderings about things they cannot wrap their seeing eyes and inner worries around. Seen in that light, it is one of the greatest Existential compilations of all time. And I love reading it.
What? He was handed the emails by Charles the moderator and wrote a book about them, he didn’t break anything. It is amazing how bad these myths keep getting spun out of reality,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/13/climategate%E2%80%94the-ctm-story/
Mosher is a legend in his own mind.
This is how delusional you have become, only ONE person (Rob Ricket) made an inaccurate climategate comment referencing you.
Steve Mosher, ” It starts in location X. on a moutain top. For 10 years it records a summer temperature of 10C.
Then you move it down to the valley. The summer temperature goes up to 15C
What do you do.”
Don’t use it. It is a protocol violator.
@ur momisugly ferd berple says:
December 13, 2013 at 6:23 am:
Well there’s my problem….
I put myself through school partly as a “Night Auditor” at a hotel. It had the old “Posting Machine” method with large cards for each room and a ledger where errors were to be noted. I spent many long nights back figuring how various folks screwed things up so I could “undo them” with the right double entries… I started learning “bookkeeping” at about 8 from my Mum who did the books for our family restaurant.
Then in high school I had a Chemistry / Physic teacher (Mr. McGuire) who rigorously enforced that the Lab Book Was Sacred. “NO ERASURES!”. (It was an automatic fail to have an erasure mark on any lab work). Only a single line through the prior writing and a new entry were allowed.
I simply can not abide the idea of a blind change of old data. The original MUST be kept and a full record of how the new is created appended. Anything else is a fail.
@ur momisuglyBit Chilly:
There is an oscillation between Arctic and Antarctic temperatures. I think it is driven by lunar tide effects (the moon has a long cycle effect on how much water is in which hemisphere, not just a monthly effect. http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/why-weather-has-a-60-year-lunar-beat/ ) So the fact that the Antarctic is getting colder while the Arctic had some melt is absolutely normal. Changes in total water volume in the circumpolar current near Antarctica whack into Drake’s Passage and that changes how much cold water goes up the spine of S. America and into the central Pacific. The rest is time delay and elaboration.
On top of that, layer in some solar changes (that happen in step with the lunar tidal cycle due to orbital resonance effects) and that changes the atmosphere on a very long cycle. Thus our recent warm phase that has now crashed into a cold phase. Low UV now means lower deep ocean energy delivery and more IR driven prompt surface evaporation. More “heat pipe earth” cooling the oceans, less heat build up.
IMHO, you will see it in a lot less than a decade. It’s happening now.
@ur momisuglyJason Bates:
I’ve wondered the same thing. In the data there is a pronounced shift. It happens at a specific point in time for each region. The “lows” start getting clipped from the record. The highs do not go up, but the lows just don’t go as low. I did a long series of postings on it (search on “hair graphs” at chiefio.wordpress.com or look in the http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/dtdt/ category).
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/the-world-in-dtdt-graphs-of-temperature-anomalies/
has some examples.
I’ve not worked out exactly what caused it. Two things changed at about the same time. Large areas moved from Liquid In Glass to MMTS electronic measurements (and often pulled the sensor closer to buildings due to the wires…) and the QA method changed (in a way I think may toss low excursions – local ASOS stations at airports are used to toss ‘outlier’ data…)
And there is the massive loss of stations at altitude, and a dramatic increase in the use of airport stations as a percentage.
In any case, it all comes down to “station issues”. Individual long lived stations do not support the notion of Global Warming. Only homogenized fictions do…
Janice Moore says:
December 13, 2013 at 12:20 pm
A Story with a Moral
+++++++
very clever and timely dear Janice.
First the drive by troll style comments on many threads this year, make obscure sarcastic mocking, diversionary comments, never return to follow up or explain.
Now an ever increasing defensiveness.
If the data is crap, what is produced from, dicing it up and mixing it around, can only be manure.
Mr Mosher, are you annoyed at yourself for wasting a year?
Or is there more in the “BEST methods”, to make you unhappy with yourself?
Steven: I am begging you to reply in a cogent manner to my questions without subterfuge. Just come out with it.
It’s a lot more fun to talk about what you actually do and why than to engage in the usual round of ad hominem bashing that often occurs.
__________________________________________-
And much appreciated as it’s an opportunity to learn from scientist actually involved in the process,
I was one of the first commenters on this article, and was contentous. I see raw data manipulated all the time to suit the user’s needs. Typically the analyst is looking to either make a name for thselves, or a salary.
Zeke Hausfather says:
December 13, 2013 at 6:32 pm
“Don’t have much time before I need to run for dinner, but a few things in this thread caught my eye:”
That’s your exit strategy, is it?
“Stephen Rasey: the march of the thermometers meme was so 2010.”
You changed the name of the great dying of the thermometers? Why, strawman or denial? Here’s the CRUtem3 count:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/8293832934/
“Berkeley uses ~40,000 stations, (…)”
How many for 1880?
A Story with a Moral
(and, yes, I believe it is a true story — you need not to get the point, though, I think…)
Once there were three wealthy Persian kings who were brilliant astronomers.
Interestingly, you’re posting this in a science discussion on a website devoted to skepticism, so commenting is, I presume, fair game.
There isn’t one single thing about this 2000 year old myth, written hundreds of years after year 0 by people that were not there, that you find dubious based on mere common sense and everyday experience? The fact that the two Nativity myths in the New Testament unambiguously report that the birth occurred during the reign of two different Herods — Herod the great in one (who died in 4 BCE, which was at least a year post birth if we are to believe the utterly unconfirmed myth about the slaughter of the innocents) and Herod Antipas in the other (positively identified in Luke by his reference to Quirinius, who wasn’t appointed governor of Syria until 6 CE). So the story you believe is true isn’t physically plausible (if somebody told you the same story happened yesterday you would automatically disbelieve it — in fact when people DO tell stories JUST like this in association with religious cults and all of the other religions of the world you DO routinely disbelieve it) and isn’t even told consistently within the “divinely inspired” New Testament.
Science is all about believing things that are the best things to believe, given the evidence! We hold extended discussions on the list about how susceptible scientists (who should know better) are to confirmation bias, interspersed with a liberal dose of accusations of dishonesty. If you can’t and don’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) trust the honesty of contemporary observers (because, in another oft-cited complaint, those observers make a living and gain status from their work on the basis of their claims of an implausible disaster) why in the world would you trust the honesty of Nth had reports (basically anecdotal hearsay, not admissible in any court in the world) from the second century, long after the events supposedly being recounted, that are at best individuals that were making a living and gaining status from their work on the basis of claims of an implausible apocalyptic disaster?
If, esteemed madam, you are indeed a hardnosed skeptic, I strongly urge you to read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus, followed by a good pass through:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm
It is my experience that Christians who most avidly defend their religion in general haven’t actually read the Bible, and certainly haven’t either properly studied it or subjected it to anything like a critical analysis. The Skeptics Annotated Bible will help you a lot with that, because it highlights and lays bare the thousands of direct contradictions in biblical text, the hundreds of places where God, Moses, and countless other “saints” behave really badly (on any ethical basis you like), the manifold places that statements in the Bible are baldly absurd or contradicted by science.
You owe it to yourself to doubt your own faith by exposing it to a ruthlessly honest skeptical process. If you carve out a special exception, one set of rules for religion and another for science, how can you possibly blame honest climate scientists for following the rules of science and arriving at a conclusion that — true or not — is infinitely better founded than your religious beliefs?
rgb
@E.M.Smith says:
December 13, 2013 at 8:39 pm
My personal, very naive assessment of the situation is that the change in trend from the raw data to the homogenized record is related to the relative oversampling of urban or semi-rural stations with respect to true rural stations and the assumption that a collection of stations should have better data than the individual stations from which the collection is composed (this is the underlying assumption which justifies the use of nearby stations to correct “errors” in the record of individual stations).
To illustrate my point, consider the following five hypothetical stations in a small, relatively sparsely populated region. Stations one through four all show a slow, gradual increase in temperature over the course of a decade. Station five shows a flat trend for the first three years of the decade, a sharp downward spike during year four, and a gradual upward slope for the remainder of the decade, ending the decade at a level just slightly lower than at the beginning of the decade.
The BEST process would, if I understand it correctly, insert a breakpoint in the data for station five at year four, adjusting the data upwards so that the downward spike was eliminated. The homogenized data would then nicely match the regional trend of slowly increasing temperature in the area.
Now let’s consider what “actually happened” in this hypothetical example. Stations one through four in this hypothetical were located in semi-rural areas which experienced moderate population growth over the course of the decade, and thus the environment around the station changed gradually.
Station five was located in a national park. In year four, a fire occurred to the north of the station, decimating a region of forest that had previously served as a windbreak, allowing a steady north wind to blow across the station lowering temperatures slightly. During the rest of the decade, new growth slowly replaced the old, and the wind break filled back in.
So, in each of the five cases, the temperature changes were “real” (in the sense that the station faithfully recorded the temperature change of its immediate surroundings), and yet the extrapolation to the region as a whole is false. The problem lies with the homogenization process, and the assumption that the data of the first four stations (which largely agreed with each other) was better than that of the fifth. In reality, the fifth station had the best quality data (despite of the downward spike and subsequent uptrend).
This is the entire problem with any data set that includes systematic biases; the four semi-rural stations experienced correlated error because the underlying process which led to the error was correlated. The slicing and kriging technique, in this hypothetical, serves to exacerbate, rather than diminish, the error. The systematic error of the four has served to introduce bias into the fifth masquerading as a “correction” for the random error to which the fifth was subject.
Alternatively, suppose the fire had occurred to the south of station five, allowing more direct sunlight to reach the area surrounding the station. Then, we’d see an upward spike, followed by a gradual downward trend. Again, the slicing method would shift the latter part of station five’s data downward; however, this time it leads to an overall trend that moves in the “wrong” direction, making it more likely that the homogenization process would interpret subsequent random noise as additional break points to bring the station’s data back closer in line to the other four. Once again, we find the highest quality dataset to be the one that is getting homogenized, and thus the homogenization reduces the overall quality of data for this region.
Now, you might say that these are rather far fetched examples – and you’d be right – but keep in mind that these are hardly the only plausible situations which might lead to such circumstances, and these are the type of circumstances that computer data analysis cannot (yet) catch. Furthermore, the primary driver behind the largest potential source of bias – human development – is increasing, and therefore it is no surprise to me that a homogenizing process that fails to (and, by nature, cannot) account for this bias leads to a trend higher than that seen in the raw data.
Basically, the fundamental problem is this: any time the analysis finds a discontinuity in the data and inserts a breakpoint, the resulting temperature shift for that station is only as good as the quality of data used to compute that shift – ie., only as good as whatever composite of nearby stations the software is using. Now, if the majority of the stations had good data most of the time, this wouldn’t be a problem; likewise, is the major sources of error were random we’d expect them to cancel out of the composite and we’d be fine. However, we know this isn’t the case! Many – perhaps most – of the stations are downright terrible, subject to both random and systematic error, and while the slicing may help eliminate the former, it also serves to propogate the latter.
Now, if I had seen a detailed, quality analysis of how such a scenario (or similar ones) could not affect the BEST dataset, then I’d be more inclined to trust it. Alternatively, an estimation of how likely such events were, and how much they might effect the dataset overall, would be welcome (although I suspect nearly impossible to do in practice). In the absence of either of those, I’m forced to treat the BEST dataset as fiction – or, at best, a faithful reproduction of the average temperature of the few square meters surrounding each station in its database.
Jason, wise observations on programmatic processing of data. Unless you know the history of each set of data, the updates are just as likely to make the data worse not better. And the more data you have the harder it is to qa the data.
rgbatduke says:
December 13, 2013 at 10:07 am
+++++++++
Long post, but worth the read. The basic problem I have is that there is no way, none at all, to honestly say that the UHI effect is taken care of such that the data used produces a reasonably reliable temperature record. I recall reading (a good several years ago) on the NOAA website about the “5 supposed algorithms” used to compensate for the UHI effect. It read something like –in conclusion after applying the algorithms, the resulting warming temperature trend/outcome was what we had expected due to the anthropogenic warming, so we know the adjustments were correct.
As an process engineer, I was so taken back with what I had just read it sealed in my mind at that point that science was dead – and the political witch hunt was well in progress.
Steven Mosher knows for certain that the released BEST products do not improve upon our understanding of the temperature past. At some point, we need to judge for ourselves what is true and move on.
Vukcevic,
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you are saying to me at 2:50pm on Dec. 13th. I’d like to respond, but, well, I can’t.
Janice
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Dear Mario, thank you.
***************************************************
Dear Mr. Brown,
I have so many, many, things I would like to say to you. But, I can’t. This is, indeed, a science site (and thread). I realized when I posted my story that many of you guys would not believe it to be truth, to be, as you characterize it, a “myth.” I thought if I just wrote clearly and skillfully enough that the metaphors and analogies and allegorical parallels would be obvious. Obviously, I need to work on my writing skills. Please believe me, although I used a Bible event for my allegory, and it occurred to me, I think, because of the time of the year (the 3 guys in the photo certainly did not elicit it, heh), I was not trying to use a science thread to promote my religion. My religion is just such a part of me that it naturally comes out in my writing.
Oh, I want to respond to you so much, here! I’ll just say that, from my research and from reading the Bible (and I am more than a little familiar with the text of the Old and New Testaments) and history, I can see that you have made several factual errors and, from my educational background, I can see that your understanding of the hearsay rule of evidence appears to be inadequate.
Thanks for letting me know that I failed so utterly abysmally at creative writing. Always good to be made aware of one’s weaknesses. Can you believe it? I actually thought I might have communicated something in that story worthwhile even to non-believers. Truth hurts, but truth and nothing else, is what matters.
Oh, and, Merry Christmas! #(:))
Janice
@Janice:
There’s a lot of folks who read what you wrote and liked it, but didn’t say anything. There is more to life than what passes as science these days. (There is also no fundamental conflict of science and religion – that’s another “progressive” myth. Most of our best scientists of history were highly religious…)
@Jason Bates:
I think that’s about right.
At this point large parts of the GHCN are essentially “The History Of Airport Growth”… Then add in the swap to electronic gizmos and the homogenizing makes it all into a “warming trend”. Look at the individual data and it is not a warming. The highs do not go up. It is a loss of cold excursions. Loss of cold excursion data is not the same as increasing hot days.
I’m pretty sure that tarmac and sunshine are part of the loss of cold excursions. That electronic measuring may have some issues to the low side. That short wires pulling things closer to buildings and vehicles and further from trees clips some lows. That the QA and homogenizing to “fix” the data also averages out the low excursions more than the highs. Maybe even that since the ’70s there have actually been fewer really cold days (as solar and lunar effects had some warming of the lows); but recent news seems to be demonstrating that the cold lows are back.
It will be interesting to see if the recent cold is preserved once the data hits GISS, Hadcrut, etc… There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…
In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
EM, when you look at the min and max surface records, what you describe is exactly what I see.
Follow the link in my name to see this in the surface station measurements.
E.M.Smith says: December 14, 2013 at 3:50 pm
There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
____________________________________
A truly terrific post, thanks
Richard D says:
December 14, 2013 at 4:23 pm
E.M.Smith says: December 14, 2013 at 3:50 pm
There’s a reason they continue to diverge from the satellite data, and it isn’t because the satellites can’t measure well…In any case, the land history of temperature data is not suited for purpose to demonstrate some supposed 1/2 C warming. It just doesn’t have the quality, precision, accuracy, or completeness.
++++++++
Richard: Well said. Of course I agree with you. But – but BEST did something incredible. According to Mosher, they sliced into datasets (that were adjusted faithfully by people who know it should be warming). BEST (used “skeptical methods” to extract the goodness from what Mosher refers to as “crap” raw data to estimate the correct resulting information (with great precision beyond that which the sensors are capable of reading) that shows CO2 is causing the warming – according to nervous looking Rohde.
What a team effort, everyone doing their part, and no one answering our skeptical questions without obfuscation.
The way the data was adjusted to supposedly correct for the UHI effect, reminds me of the”Jump to conclusions mat” from Office Space.
@ur momisugly Mario Lento
That’s a fun video, thanks. I’m Canada on this one, as I really don’t know enough about Best to make a judgment on the science. I’m certainly not prepared to impugn their motives or integrity of their science, either. I’m learning here and try not to interject too much unless it’s little stuff concerning basic physical sciences and human biology. I do appreciate hearing first hand from working scientists including Mosher and the many learned commenters here.
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The answer is “C” on both counts.
What’s happening is that data from sites that were never intended to give a “Global” temperature is being used for something for they are unsuited. The sites are fine for local weather forecasting (when properly sited) but not uniform enough to give a true “Global” perspective.
It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. You might get a taste that satisfies your taste buds but your belly is still empty.
Thank you, so much, E. M. Smith, for your kind words and encouragement — and accurate definition of the subject areas. Thanks for taking the time. Have a good time at Grandma’s Kitchen tomorrow! Boy, I’ll bet that place has really great cinnamon rolls and pecan pie and brownies and….. oooooh, boy, I think I need to go get a snack. #(:))
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Mario Lento — LAUGH OUT LOUD, that video was so funny. Thanks for posting it. I can just see that REALLY happening. My brother has told me a few stories (he used to work (maybe…. he still does, but, we’ll just not go there… (I mean, since the internet is essentially a big giant billboard)) with some guys a lot like that)… . Hey, what do you know! For once I didn’t leave off an end-parenthesis!
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@ur momisugly Richard D — yes, we noticed that you are again promoting Mr. M0sh-er as a “scientist.” I measure things and observe stuff and write down what I saw and slice and compute averages and all sorts of junk like that. Guess that makes ME a scientist!! Cool!
If everybody’s somebody,
no one’s anybody.
Scientists Gilbert and Sullivan (et. al.).
Why not just say, “I think Steven M0sh-er is neat. He is good at ____ (fill in blank with what he is actually competent at)”?
Well, off I go, now, skipping merrily, singing: I’m a scientist, I’m a scientist, I AM A SCIENTIST! If M0sh-er’s one, then I am, too!!! Wheeee! {and that crash you just heard was my brother throwing a basketball at me but miiiiiiiissing ….. ha, ha, ha, ha, haaa — ooops. Gotta go.}
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Here are a few links which deal with some of his objections. The last has the most info but might be the hardest to follow. It’s more a list of facts rather than a narrative.
http://www.cortright.org/birth.htm
http://judahsdaughter.hubpages.com/hub/The-Bible-Reveals-when-Jesus-was-Born
http://www.versebyverse.org/doctrine/birthofchrist.html
He came once. He’s coming again.
Thanks, Gunga Din. Excellent sources. Really, there has not been a genuine issue about Jesus’ historicity for a long time. That question was answered fully a long time ago. I sure do appreciate your coming alongside once again. Hopefully, he will read them. I have some sources I was thinking of too, but, you know what? He is a very bright man. If he really wants the answers, he will find them. Let’s pray (I already did) a believer whose intellectual abilities he respects crosses his path. This kind of discussion should be done in person, not by written correspondence. If I lived within an hour’s drive of him (and with his wife there, too, if he has one), I’d get together and talk. No, no, ya know, I wouldn’t. (What am I saying!) It needs to be someone he respects (v. a v. academia). That rules me out.
And, GREAT double entendre, there. As to the commenter, highly likely; as to the Messiah, for sure!
@Zeke Hausfather at Dec 13, 6:32 pm
cc: Sleepalot at 6:45 am
Stephen Rasey: the march of the thermometers meme was so 2010. Berkeley uses ~40,000 stations, and 2012 has more station date than any prior year (it increases pretty monotonically.
Like Sleepalot says, 40,000 stations for what time frame?
I ask again,
How many segments have those 40,000 station been sliced into?
What is the distribution of segment lengths?
What percent of segments are shorter than 10 years? Shorter than 20 years?
Do long segments get greater weight than short segments in the kriging?
15.7 Million “Monthly Mean Observations”
Point of order: A “Monthly Mean” is not an observation. It is a calculation of about 30 min and 30 Max observations.
While we are at it,…. Suppose we have a month with 30 straight days of 10 C lows and 20 C highs. Mean is 15 C for 30 days straight.
What is the mean standard error of the monthly mean with 30 days of 15 C daily means?
My answer: We didn’t make 30 observations of 15 C means. We observed thirty 10 C lows and thirth 20 C highs which gets us a mean of 15.00, a sample standard deviation of 5.04 C and a mean standard error of 0.92 C. I don’t see error bars on anomaly plots anywhere near this big.
Back to 15.7 Million Monthly station means.
40,747 stations
So that is an average of 385 months / station or 32.1 years / station.
IF we assume 5000 stations with 100 years of data,
That leaves 35,757 stations with an average of 22.6 years of data.
When you look at the data by country, the Bad Science meter starts pinging.
Look at Algeriafor instance:
Prior to 1875, there are fewer than 10 thermometers.
Perhaps non prior to 1850.
1875-1915 there are 10 to 25 one year might have 25% fewer than the previous.
1915-1930 drops to as low as 2 and works it way back to 10-12.
1930-1975 15 to 30. with 1957 being an obvious break point of many stations.
1975-2011 30 to 76 stations, with some years dropping to 20. 1980-2000 there are large swings from 60 to 35, so many of these stations are contributing very short segments.
So one again I ask, how short are the segments you use?
Finally, at the top of the Algeria page, you have the average temperature plot for Algeria.
It runs from 1787, even though not a single thermometer is in Alteria until 1850 and only 2 thermometers within 500 km of Algeria most of the time from 1800 to 1850.
Yet BEST reports the 95% confidence range on the temperature of Algeria in 1825 is only 1.1 deg C (+/- 0.55 deg C)
BEST just cannot admit that it doesn’t know the temperature. Better to make it up and plot the party line than limit yourself to good data.
Stephen R, I have a copy of NCDC,S Global Summary of days. It has 120 million samples from 1929 on. Most of those samples 2-3 million per year happen after ~1973. In 1930 iirc there 100-200 stations. Only a small number have 40+ years of data. I do know that BEST has other older station data, but I don’t see them having significantly more data after the 40’s or 50’s. It just doesn’t exist.
@Mi Cro at 6:46 am
Only a small number have 40+ years of data…….. It just doesn’t exist.
Yet, BEST believes it knows enough to chop these precious few long station records into bite size bits to create a paper mache it can shape to its liking.
The entire premise of BEST is that the discontinuities are noise and the gradual instrument drift and contamination are signal. It might be true in a few cases, but anecdotes of moving stations from peaks into valleys cannot justify the carnage.
Thanks for letting me know that I failed so utterly abysmally at creative writing. Always good to be made aware of one’s weaknesses. Can you believe it? I actually thought I might have communicated something in that story worthwhile even to non-believers. Truth hurts, but truth and nothing else, is what matters.
Oh, and, Merry Christmas! #(:))
Dear Ms. Moore,
Truth is indeed what matters. I am not unfamiliar with the rules of hearsay evidence, and there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that is not hearsay evidence with the possible exception of some of the letters of Paul, and all Paul can give evidence for is Paul, not Jesus. Even so, something like half of the letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul are now known to be forgeries, just as e.g. the Book of Genesis is a work that is cobbled together with contributions from many writers (and cultures!) to the extent that the Rabbinic community has had to generate midrash to explain some of the apparent contradictions between (for example) the six-day creation myth — and I use the term myth very precisely because I can recite direct evidence chapter and verse that any reasonable person would have to accept that the Universe is not six thousand years old, was not created in six days, that evolution happened, that basically 100% of Genesis never happened. One cannot even find a plausible basis for part of it being a legend (assuming that you know the difference between a myth, a legend, and actual history on a continuum).
Nor am I unfamiliar with the actual history of the New Testament. I suggest that you read Ehrman’s work — Ehrman began his life as a born again Christian, attended a Christian undergraduate institution focussing on Bible studies because he wanted to read the word of God in the original, attended Yale for graduate school in pursuit of the same dream, and learned that there is no such thing as the original. We have only fragments of a handful of bible texts from the second century, and there is obvious, visible drift in the texts from century to century.
Over the course of his studies, Mr. Ehrman lost his faith, because he was in pursuit of truth (and was well-educated and well-equipped for it) — if anything the bulk of his education and life experience predisposed him to belief. He simply found that there is no substantive basis for the set of syncretic beliefs and tenth hand texts that eventually became “Christianity”. I think you’d find the well-documented, clearly reference discussion in Misquoting Jesus to be very illuminating even as it overwhelms you with a continuation of your cognitive dissonance on the issue.
I’m also well-aware of the practice of Exegesis and Hermeneutics — which might liberally be reinterpreting ordinary language to hide apparent contradictions in a document that is supposed to be divinely inspired and hence free from all error. I have a very difficult time understanding how any reasonable person could imagine that the Bible is free from all error, especially after reading Ehrman (and that is the NEW Testament, which is far closer to original source material, whatever it might have been). I also find it absolutely incredible that any reasonable person could read, e.g. Numbers 31 and conclude that Moses was a good person, suitable for Jesus to hang out with during the transfiguration. When it comes to slaughtering the Midianite old men, women, and children down to babes in arms and fetuses in bellies except for the young virginal females who he gave to his troops to enslave for sexual pleasure, what exactly would Jesus do? When Jesus speaks of preaching in parables in order to deliberately deceive some of his listeners so that they would not believe and thereby be damned, which is this? Ethical perfection? An error (misquote) in the New Testament? Or is it itself a self-referential piece of hermeneutic obfuscation that would cause a perfectly reasonable person to experience a certain abhorrence towards the speaker (and thereby be damned)? I don’t see any real winners here, and this is the tip of a very large iceberg that is there for anyone to read the minute that they take off the hermeneutical blinders they’ve been raised with.
Again, the fundamental issue is that you clearly use a dichotomous criterion for the evaluation of hypotheses as possible truth. If someone today claimed to be able to cure blindness by rubbing filthy mud and spit into their eyes, you would instantly recognize that to be stage magic at best, conducted with a shill of some sort to take in a gullible audience. You know that because mud (especially middle eastern first century mud, trust me) is literally teeming with bacteria and consists of small pieces of grit that abrade and damage the eye, and the human mouth is the dirtiest and most dangerous part of their entire body and the saliva of another human — especially a human from long before proper dental hygiene was invented — is not a plausible cure for any possible sort of blindness any more than madness is caused by devils or disease is inflicted on humans because they pissed God off. You know that it is incalculably more likely that anyone that makes such a claim is lying, or that the actual events are being misreported, because the claim doesn’t even make sense and because you do have a world of experience with cunning liars who want to profit from uncritical acceptance of “magic”. You have no trouble at all rejecting the claims of miracles in e.g. Hinduism or Paganism, because they are obviously myths (mixed, perhaps, with an unknown base of legend). Why is it that you cannot apply the same criterion to your own belief in a similarly “impossible” mythology?
Indeed, the very way you address me (or “us”, as others seem to share my skepticism) as “non-believers” is highly revealing. What does “belief” have to do with anything? I do not “believe” in science, I accept it as anything from highly implausible, plausible but unproven, plausible and indeed likely to be true, and almost certainly true, on the sole criteria of mutual interwoven consistency and evidence. I have written an entire book explaining why not just my own knowledge but everybody’s knowledge should arise from these criteria — to the extent that all knowledge is the belief, well or poorly founded, that each assertion in an entire ontology, an entire worldview, is probably true, we should use the best possible criterion for sorting all of this out without bias, not the worst one, which is uncritical acceptance of whatever you are told on the basis of some sort of authority.
I urge you to stop “believing” in things. Instead, subject all of the possible plausible truths you encounter to a truly skeptical process, one that begins by confronting your own biases on the matter and then looks at the evidence available on the same basis that you do for everything else, not with one set of rules for religion and a second one for the physical principles that govern the operation of the electrical lights by means of which you are able to read this reply. I can tell you precisely why I believe the latter, and can propose experiments of any rigor you care to suggest that will (I am enormously confident — as confident as I am that my laptop will continue to function, that the sun will appear to rise tomorrow, that a pen, released above the ground, will fall) validate my beliefs and you can conduct those experiments without my presence and be convinced no matter what your preconceptions as long as you rely on evidence to determine the best basis of belief.
What experiment can you possibly suggest to validate one single belief in any of the substantive content of the Bible? The best that you can offer is to “trust” the supposed authors (where my only possible reply is the best philosophical statement Ronald Reagan ever uttered — “Trust, but verify” which is sort of like no, you should never just “trust” a claim, you should be able to verify it or treat it as unproven and usually rather dubious). If I invite Jesus (a supposedly all-powerful God) to appear before me in my den as he supposedly appeared to Saul/Paul and “hundreds of others”, he either declines or, more likely, either never existed or did exist as an ordinary human and is simply dead, and dead is dead. Clearly it would not violate my free will for him to appear there any more than it violated Paul’s (who was, recall, actively persecuting Christians as Saul at the time). Clearly, if Jesus is all loving, he does not want me to be damned, and given that my disbelief is in the very best of faith according to entirely defensible rules of evidence as the basis of good belief, he can hardly fault me for doing my best and thereby disbelieving in him. And of course, it would take a being that could take an (at least) 5 trillion light year diameter Universe and pop it into existence out of nothingness less than zero “energy” (or whatever Gods use for their dynamical process) to save my soul by appearing, changing some water into beer, and explaining my errors as gently and patiently to me as I explain errors to my equally blameless students. It would be easier for Jesus to save me by providing some concrete basis for belief than it is for me to type a single tedious keystroke of this long reply.
Yet he never does. Which would be sad indeed if he does exist — it wouldn’t speak well for his moral compass any more than it would speak well of my own if I failed to gently help my students with their errors and to do the reproducible, double blind, experiments and measurements that would convince anybody reasonable that they are errors and that they aren’t something that I or anybody else “just made up”. This and other mysteries, such as why Jesus never heals amputees, are easy to understand if one hypothesizes that Jesus is a legend or possibly even a syncretic myth, and that the stories of “miracles” in the Bible are without exception non-reproducible myth, hearsay evidence, anecdotes, from long, long ago and a very superstitious age.
Paul did have some good one liners. At some point, the human species does indeed need to put away its childish things and grow up. Actual belief in non-verifiable, physically implausible mythology is one of those childish things.
rgb
I love plain martinis. With vodka. Not gin. Just vodka. And not that flavored vodka crap they’ve been advertising. Can’t stand the saccharine sweetness of Shirley Temples, honey whiskey, or any of the other popular flavored up spirits that line the shelves of the liquor store these days, though apparently many others do. The back and forth between rgb and Janice reminds me of the battle of tastes between untouched alcohol straight up and sugared mixed drinks with flavored alcohol. I don’t want to have to ask my bartender, “What’s in this?”
As for biblical accuracy, it is highly instructive and accurate in this: It describes humanity’s historical effort to explain their wonderings about things they cannot wrap their seeing eyes and inner worries around. Seen in that light, it is one of the greatest Existential compilations of all time. And I love reading it.