Guest essay by Dr Tim Ball
Never try to walk across a river just because it has an average depth of four feet. Martin Friedman
“Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.“ Evan Esar
I am not a statistician. I took university level statistics because I knew, as a climatologist, I needed to know enough to ask statisticians the right questions and understand the answers. I was mindful of what the Wegman Committee later identified as a failure of those working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paleoclimate reconstructions.
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.
Apparently they knew their use and abuse of statistics and statistical methods would not bear examination. It was true of the “hockey stick”, an example of misuse and creation of ‘unique’ statistical techniques to predetermine the result. Unfortunately this is an inherent danger in statistics. A statistics professor told me that the more sophisticated the statistical technique, the weaker the data. Anything beyond basic statistical techniques was ‘mining’ the data and moving further from reality and reasonable analysis. This is inevitable in climatology because of inadequate data. As the US National Research Council Report of Feb 3, 1999 noted,
“Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.”
Methods in Climatology by Victor Conrad is a classic text that identified most of the fundamental issues in climate analysis. Its strength is it realizes the amount and quality of the data is critical, a theme central to Hubert Lamb’s establishing the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). In my opinion statistics as applied in climate has advanced very little since. True, we now have other techniques like spectral analysis, but it all those techniques, is meaningless if you don’t accept that cycles exist or have records of adequate quality and length.
Ironically, some techniques such as moving averages, remove data. Ice core records are a good example. The Antarctic ice core graphs, first presented in the 1990s, illustrate statistician William Briggs’ admonition.
Now I’m going to tell you the great truth of time series analysis. Ready? Unless the data is measured with error, you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses! If the data is measured with error, you might attempt to model it (which means smooth it) in an attempt to estimate the measurement error, but even in these rare cases you have to have an outside (the learned word is “exogenous”) estimate of that error, that is, one not based on your current data. (His bold)
A 70 – year smoothing average was applied to the Antarctic ice core records. It eliminates a large amount of what Briggs calls “real data” as opposed to “fictional data” created by the smoothing. The smoothing diminishes a major component of basic statistics, standard deviation of the raw data. It is partly why it received little attention in climate studies, yet is a crucial factor in the impact of weather and climate on flora and fauna. The focus on averages and trends was also responsible. More important from a scientific perspective is its importance for determining mechanisms.
Figure 1: (Partial original caption) Reconstructed CO2 concentrations for the time interval ca8700 and ca6800 calendar years B.P based on CO2 extracted from air in Antarctica ice of Taylor Dome (left curve; ref.2; raw data available via www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/taylor/taylor.html) and SI data for fossil B. pendula and B.pubescens from Lake Lille Gribso, Denmark. The arrows indicate accelerator mass spectrometry 14C chronologies used for temporal control. The shaded time interval corresponds to the 8.2-ka-B.P. cooling event.
Source: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2002 September 17: 99 (19) 12011 -12014.
Figure 1 shows a determination of atmospheric CO2 levels for a 2000-year span comparing data from a smoothed ice core (left) and stomata (right). Regardless of the efficacy of each method of data extraction, it is not hard to determine which plot is likely to yield the most information about mechanisms. Where is the 8.2-ka-BP cooling event in the ice core curve?
At the beginning of the 20th century statistics was applied to society. Universities previously divided into the Natural Sciences and Humanities, saw a new and ultimately larger division emerge, the Social Sciences. Many in the Natural Sciences view Social Science as an oxymoron and not a ‘real’ science. In order to justify the name, social scientists began to apply statistics to their research. A book titled “Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences” (SPSS) first appeared in 1970 and became the handbook for students and researchers. Plug in some numbers and the program provides results. Suitability of data, such as the difference between continuous and discrete numbers, and the technique were little known or ignored, yet affected the results.
Most people know Disraeli’s comment, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics”, but few understand how application of statistics affects their lives. Beyond inaccurate application of statistics is the elimination of anything beyond one standard deviation, which removes the dynamism of society. Macdonald’s typifies the application of statistics – they have perfected mediocrity. We sense it when everything sort of fits everyone, but doesn’t exactly fit anyone.
Statistics in Climate
Climate is an average of the weather over time or in a region and until the 1960s averages were effectively the only statistic developed. Ancient Greeks used average conditions to identify three global climate regions, the Torrid, Temperate, and Frigid Zones created by the angle of the sun. Climate research involved calculating and publishing average conditions at individual stations or in regions. Few understand how meaningless a measure it is, although Robert Heinlein implied it when he wrote, “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”. Mark Twain also appears aware with his remark that, “Climate lasts all the time, and weather only a few days.” A farmer asked me about the chances of an average summer. He was annoyed with the answer “virtually zero” because he didn’t understand that ‘average’ is a statistic. A more informed question is whether it will be above or below average, but that requires knowledge of two other basic statistics, the variation and the trend.
After WWII predictions for planning and social engineering emerged as postwar societies triggered development of simple trend analysis. It assumed once a trend started it would continue. The mentality persists despite evidence of downturns or upturns; in climate it seems to be part of the rejection of cycles.
Study of trends in climate essentially began in the 1970s with the prediction of a coming mini ice age as temperatures declined from 1940. When temperature increased in the mid-1980s they said this new trend would continue unabated. Political users of climate adopted what I called the trend wagon. The IPCC made the trend inevitable by saying human CO2 was the cause and it would continue to increase as long as industrial development continued. Like all previous trends, it did not last as temperatures trended down after 1998.
For year-to-year living and business the variability is very important. Farmers know you don’t plan next year’s operation on last year’s weather, but reduced variability reduces risk considerably. The most recent change in variability is normal and explained by known mechanisms but exploited as abnormal by those with a political agenda.
John Holdren, Obama’s science Tsar, used the authority of the White House to exploit increased variation of the weather and a mechanism little known to most scientists let alone the public, the circumpolar vortex. He created an inaccurate propaganda release about the Polar Vortex to imply it was something new and not natural therefore due to humans. Two of the three Greek climate zones are very stable, the Tropics and the Polar regions. The Temperate zone has the greatest short-term variability because of seasonal variations. It also has longer-term variability as the Circumpolar Vortex cycles through Zonal and Meridional patterns. The latter creates increased variation in weather statistics, as has occurred recently.
IPCC studies and prediction failures were inevitable because they lack data, manufacture data, lack knowledge of mechanisms and exclude known mechanism. Reduction or elimination of the standard deviation leads to loss of information and further distortion of the natural variability of weather and climate, both of which continue to occur within historic and natural norms.
Margaret Hardman says:
June 16, 2014 at 8:29 am
Dr Ball says that up to the 1960s there was basically the mean and little else in statistics. It is a shame he chose not to check that because he might have found that many statistical techniques predate the 1960s by a good distance in time. Lines of best fit – 1800s. Bayes theorem – 1760s. Student t test 1900s. Correlation 1880s. I thought the piece was about the missing standard deviation. The piece was actually about telling us things vary therefore it can’t be caused by humans. That’s tired and stale and not true. Chalk one up to ignorance on Dr Ball’s part.
Statistics began as an attempt to make sense of data. It grew out of the ideas of probability. Statistical techniques are really about measuring probability still. I believe in most areas of science one standard deviation isn’t enough. Two or more is the gatekeeper. Five in some areas of physics. What an ingenious pursuit all of this is!
Margaret, you honestly need to read articles with an eye to the actual subject, which, in this case, was not statistics in general but rather how statistics are purportedly employed in climate “science.” The number of SDs that are regarded as significant tends to vary as you say by discipline, but the fact is that two SDs, while treated as a “Gate Keeper,” still falls within “Las Vegas odds,” and many operators actually avoid implications of significance in less picky fields than Physics.
As concerns the SD, in climate data, it is often missing, as Dr. Ball says.
Duster, I had no more in my eye when I read Dr Ball’s piece. It was transparent enough. It wasn’t about the missing standard deviation which got one mention right at the end, but about the idea of variability which, as I suspect you well know, is a tired and discredited attempt to cast doubt on the causes of climate change.
Kadaka, as a student before the use of personal computing, I carried out many statistical tests, student t, chi squared, linear regression, correlation tests, by hand, on paper, using a pen and a slide rule. If I could do it at eighteen I can’t see why others weren’t doing it. Fancy computers weren’t necessary, just time and the formula.
My point, which perhaps I need to reiterate, is that Dr Ball did not bother to check the facts. He chose to make an unevidenced assertion that turns out to be wrong. In fact, I’d say it’s a whopper.
REPLY: Margaret, the “grandma with an opinion” per her own description, typically only sees what she wishes: that climate scientists are right and pure, and that climate skeptics are stupid/lying, etc., in this case, her vision is that Dr. Ball is stupid and/or deceitful. That’s fine, she’s entitled to her opinion, wrong as it may be. But here’s the thing, from the article, and there is really no way of getting around this:
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.
As the Wegman report documented, and as Steve McIntyre and others have show repeatedly, even today with his latest post on Abrams et al, Climate Science has had this unfortunate tendency to be very shoddy with statistics, and to forge their own paths with statistical methods that nobody else seems to use the same way. These “made to order” stats methods (like Mann has created for his own papers) have no basis elsewhere, and seem to fall apart badly when inspected. Margaret will of course think the same of me as she does of Dr. Ball for saying this, but frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. What matters is whether the special brand of stats we see in climate science hold up outside of that venue, and as we’ve seen time and again they don’t.
What’s funny is the example that until I made protests about it, NSIDC didn’t include time/date stamps or standard deviation in their sea-ice plots, typically pretty important stuff. – Anthony
The bottom line is a plot of the IPPC predictions that it made in the past against the atual data which has been observed. There is no statistical analysis required. The two diverge greatly and it is plain for all to see.
A cruel, but often overlooked, reality to statistics is than ALL processing done on a data series, such as removing seasonal changes, ALLWAYS adds to uncertainty in the final result.
You can subtract means to get an anomaly. Whenever you do to the data, you add to the variance of the resulting data = (the variance that was in the data) + (the variance in the average quantity you subtracted from the data.)
(Edit: it was my intention that these comments came before the comment that measured uncertainty is likely an underestimate of real uncertainty.)
Rich “It is much better to use annual means”.
No, it is not better because annual means assume exact 365 day cycles (note 28 day lunar cycle, and 0.25 day shift corrected every 4th year except on some oddball rule I forget, as just two simple examples), and from a signal processing standpoint running means produces frequency dependent phase-shifts, distorting the signal and preventing useful comparisons.
Applying one dimensional statistical techniques to time series data is wrong. Numerous previous posts about this all over WUWT.
Statisticians should be banned from doing signal processing 😛
There’s been some common sense and some nonsense in the replies to Dr Ball’s article. His recommendations on smoothing just happen to be the same as mine, and so I welcome his statement and hope that others in the climate industry will take note of it. The statement on loss of information by applying any “treatment” to original data is self-evidently correct, but smoothing – a general term for many methods of “simplifying” data by special sorts of averaging, primarily for the benefit of journalists and politicians, it seems to me, has its uses. Again, I do not smooth observational data, but I do recognise that observations are not error free on some scale. One has to take a position (arbitrarily, I think) on what constitutes a discrepancy that has an noticeable effect on ones opinion of the real-world situation. For example, is a temperature change of 0.1 C of any significance to practical people like farmers who will know that a single field can have temperature differences in various parts of noticeably more than 0.1, and that half an hour’s time difference can produce changes of whole degrees, not tenths, in the temperature of a specific site.
Incidentally, the idea of someone doing statistical calculations using a slide rule strikes me as rather funny. Stats is a digital discipline. I used to use a mechanical calculator in the 1950s to sum squares and products, and very time consuming it was too. But I did get the right answer, which you wouldn’t with a slide rule!
“A statistics professor told me that the more sophisticated the statistical technique, the weaker the data.”
And that is the exact reason why I gave up on econometrics.
Frederick Colbourne writes about the “validity of the standard deviation”. I understand that the Std Dev is simply an estimate (there are others) of the dispersion of a set of data about its mean. It is perfectly valid for any type of data, underlying distribution notwithstanding. It is simple to calculate and is very widely understood. Frederick’s concern is about its “validity” is unwarranted. I think that he may be really concerned about computing inferential statistics (confidence intervals, for example) from a computed standard deviation if the underlying distribution – from which ones sample is presumed to been randomly drawn – happens to be substantially non-normal. This is a frequent occurrence. In fact, I have yet to learn of a naturally occurring distribution that is truly “normal”, though many approximate to it. If one uses the t distribution in computing confidence intervals from the sample standard deviation they will be realistic for approximately normal data, but could be badly wrong it the data are heavily skewed or exhibit kurtosis. If the data are from certain Weibull or log normal distributions confidence intervals computed on the assumption that the data are approximately normal can be nonsensical. It follows that one should attempt to characterize the data, possibly by plotting, before pronouncing authoritatively on its inferential statistics.
Anthony, thank you for your comment. It was nothing less than I expected. I cannot tell whether Dr Ball is being deceitful or stupid. What I was pointing out, as I am sure you are bored of hearing, is that he made an easily checkable mistake. The rest of what he wrote was pretty much an opinion piece unsullied by facts. I am glad I am entitled to my opinion. Now I have your approval for that I shall wear it with pride.
I do not buy your assertion that McIntyre or Wegman have demonstrated what you say they have. For example: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/strange_problems_in_the_wegman_report.
Robin Edwards
“Incidentally, the idea of someone doing statistical calculations using a slide rule strikes me as rather funny. Stats is a digital discipline. I used to use a mechanical calculator in the 1950s to sum squares and products, and very time consuming it was too. But I did get the right answer, which you wouldn’t with a slide rule!”.
I, too used a mechanical calculator but I have also used a slide rule and even log tables. It depended how much data was being used and how accurate it was. It was no use calculating a mean to two decimal places if the data was not accurate to one decimal place.
But I agree with every word of Robin Edwards’s second post. Too many compute means, standard deviations, variances and confidence levels from data without first having ascertained whether the distribution that they are assuming is valid or even approximately valid.
Margaret Hardman says:
“…as a student before the use of personal computing, I carried out many statistical tests, student t, chi squared, linear regression, correlation tests, by hand, on paper, using a pen and a slide rule.”
Yes that was how students of other disciplines were taught statistics but those who were really going to use statistics were first taught how to gather the most accurate data (usually by sampling), then to study the data (and as much other relevant material as possible) to guess the underlying distribution and then to test whether that distribution was even a remotely accurate depiction of the real distribution. Only then were we allowed to play around with statistical tests. And even then we were admonished to treat our own estimates with discretion.
Excellent article, thank you for sharing this. People do tend to remember a statistic when it agrees with what they already believe, and find some reason to disregard it when it does not. No where else is this more evident than in the world of climate science news. A human behavior best summed up by the expression “People use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post, for support, not illumination”
The total corruption of climate ‘science’ pal review was exposed in the Climategate email dump. If there was any honesty Mann’s MBH98/99 would have been thrown out. Mann has yet to produce his data and methodologies, although McIntyre & McKittrick reverse engineered most of it. They showed that Mann’s reconstructions were bunkum.
Long-accepted reconstructions, even by the IPCC, showed the MWP and the LIA. But the devious little Mann erased them.
Db, still letting the smoke get in your eyes. Climategate shown to be trash. Mann supported by later studies. You’ll be quoting the Oregon nonsense soon.
Margaret Hardman says:
June 17, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Odd. Seems that those “other studies” you are referring to were written by …. (dramatic pause) .. co-authors of Mann who were PROFITING (through exposure, publication, and co-operation) because of their incestuous relationship with Mann and his crew!
Further, who have “no idea” who the “peer-reviewed” co-conspirators in the cabal were either.
But, of course, “any” evil oil money contaminates “any” actual information, doesn’t it? How much so-called “science” can you buy for 1.3 trillion in tax money from a government-paid “climate” shill (er, scientist)?
Margaret, all those supporting studies merely showed there’s more than one wrong way to get a hockey stick.
More to the point, shape-supporting or not has no relevance to whether Mann’s particular constructions were honest, or not. They were not. No number of quasi-independent hockey sticks will change that judgment.
It was not Climategate that showed the dishonesty. It was not Wegman’s report. It was the contents of Mann’s own “Back to 1400 CENSORED” directory, which showed that he knew his 1400 reconstruction step failed its verification test, and that he knew his invented short-centering method falsely elevated the White Mts. bristle cone series into PC1. Despite knowing the results were false, he published anyway. In anyone’s book, that’s dishonest; anyone perhaps except those dedicated to the perversion of science in which a lie decorated with mathematics serves a “higher truth.”
And all of that is beside the basic point that consensus proxy temperature reconstructions are no more than pseudo-science. They have no physical basis whatever.
Two main scourges of life since about 1980 have been recreational drugs, and computer power in the hands of the statistically illiterate – and some people seem to be involved in both at the same time.
I find it risible that there is such an obsession with Mann, as if he were the only climatologist on the planet. I still await a clear indication that any errors he made change his results (cf Tol). I find it doubly amusing that the recursive (look the word up if you dont know what it means) behaviour displayed here is much the same as a dog chasing its tail. Fun while it lasts but gets you nowhere. Meantime real scientists get on with finding out what’s really what (I expect to see that in block quotes). Or perhaps someone will quote me the cut and pasted Wegman pages or the three quotes from 5000 stolen emails.
Margaret Hardman says:
I find it risible that there is such an obsession with Mann, as if he were the only climatologist on the planet.
Let’s restate:
“I find it risible that there is such an obsession with Hitler, as if he were the only dictator on the planet.”
See? Mann deserves the opprobrium because he is a charlatan. He still refuses to produce all his data and methodologies after sixteen years! Margaret is trying to defend the indefensible.
Next:
I find it doubly amusing that the recursive (look the word up if you dont know what it means) behaviour displayed here…
“Recursive” as in “Recursive Fury”? Ah, that’s from the odious Mr Lewandowsky. It figures. Birds of a feather, etc.
Next:
…perhaps someone will quote me the cut and pasted Wegman pages or the three quotes from 5000 stolen emails.
Yet another ad hominem fallacy. What Prof Wegman’s paper disclosed was that Mann is a charlatan. Nothing about that has changed. And if Margared wants three Climategate quotes to be doubled and squared, well, we can do that. I will be happy to open that can of worms again. Shall we?
Finally, “stolen” emails? Prove it, Margaret. Again, Margaret uses the “Oh, look! A kitten!” tactic to divert from the self-incrimination of the charlatan clique. Those emails have never been disputed by their authors. They prove conclusively that they are self-serving promoters of the debunked CAGW scam.
The CAGW clique, led by Mann, is plainly dishonest. They are dispicable censors, who have gotten honest scientists fired for the crime of having a different scientific opinion, and they are still at it. No wonder Margaret is upset. She is no different. The really amusing thing is, they are at least feeding at the grant trough, while Margaret is spinning her wheels for nothing.
Db, as ever you have surpassed yourself in splenetic wonderment. Your behaviour is recursive in the correct sense of the word. Forget the bogeyman Lewandowsky – I don’t think he will come to get you. Nor do I think Mann will but you never know since I think he might not like being called a charlatan but that’s up to him.
By the way, your rewriting of my sentence about Mann changes the meaning. I’ll leave it to your genius to spot what you did wrong. And can I bring in my “There’s a squirrel” since I think it is fairly clear that the Wegman report is littered with barely concealed plagiarism and sadly, that is no ad hominem. Now if I had said Wegman was a charlatan then that would be an ad hominem. At the risk of sounding patronising, don’t you check anything. I thought that was what skeptics did.
As for being upset, well, bored by the repetitive nature of the comments here and the articles. Spinning the wheels provides some entertainment, but the smoke coming from the wheels of the d-listers here just clouds the vision of some people. My conscience is clean on this matter. I hope that yours is too. As for getting honest scientists fired for the crime of having a different scientific opinion, please name some names. Salby – running off with the university credit card when he should have been teaching. Bengtsson – not sacked. I’m sure there’s others who have lost their jobs for the sin of being no good at it. I thought there were no conspiracy theories allowed on this site. I can hear the sound of scissors.
Margaret H says:
Forget the bogeyman Lewandowsky
You quoted him. Lewandowsky doesn’t bother me. Every time I see his name, I recall the Aus student in his class who commented, “Get a bath, grub,” and laugh.
But Lew has obviously colonized your mind. And re: Mann, it is my opinion that he is ia scientific charlatan, because he does not allow other scientists the opportunity to falsify his hokey stick nonsense. They can both come and get me for having that opinion. I clearly understand that if you could, you would censor my opinion, too, just like ScAm and others have done. You climate alarmist propagandists are all alike in that way. You do not want the truth disseminated. So you censor.
Next, Margaret, it is no surprise that you don’t get it. I intended to change the meaning of your sentence, to show the world that it is, in fact, you who has the obsession. Your misdirection regarding Prof Wegman always avoids the points he made about Mann and his clique. You are trying to make Wegman the issue, when the central issue is Mann and his pals.
Regarding your last paragraph, you have no conscience. No propagandist does. Your confirmation bias and your overriding Noble Cause Corruption rule you. If you actually believe [which I doubt] that scientists are not fired or marginalized by Mann’s clique, then I advise you to start reading the Climategate emails, where they explicitly state that is what they are doing. You label skeptics as believing in a ‘conspiracy theory’, when that conspiracy has been proven beyond any doubt. It is no longer a theory, it is a proven fact.
I used to wonder how some people could be so deluded. But I’m past that now; I understand that a large fraction of humanity will make a casual decision, such as watching the Algore movie and then assuming he was being truthful, and then altering their life around defending it. That’s you. And when you have other ‘issues’, it further clouds your thinking process.
Margaret, wrote, “I still await a clear indication that any errors he made change his results” Old stuff, Margaret. Here you go. Remove Mann’s false-centering and the hockey stick goes away.
Other wonderfulness among the proxies you love include the misuse of the Yamal series, and the new science of using upside-down proxies to get them to show “warming.”
And that’s all apart from the lovely method of surgically removing the bits of proxies that disagree with the “narrative.” Tendentious Proxectomy — the new ‘proof’ of AGW science.
And all of that is quite apart from the fact that scaling tree ring, coral, or ice core series to match the temperature record is physically unjustifiable. It isn’t science at all.
DBStealey
Quoted Lewandowsky – wrong. I used a perfectly good word from the many available in the English language.
Obsession with Mann – wrong. Read his paper, read the critiques, know which one is more convincing.
Wegman – wrong. Shown to have plagiarised. End of.
No conscience – wrong. I think I know my conscience better than you but obviously you know best.
Propagandist – wrong. I dislike hypocrisy.
Firing of climate scientists – wrong. But you tell me what I think. Isn’t that the job of a propagandist?
Casual decision – wrong. My decision was based on the egregious mistakes, if I may be so charitable, provided by sites like this one, and the fact that the so called skeptical side cannot converge on a single coherent idea but splinters faster than the Iraqi army.
Watched algore movie (sic) – no, but I did watch that Channel 4 Truth About Global Warming thing a few years back because I thought it might be the case that global warming wasn’t true but it was so transparently wrong and, hey, propagandist, that it and the laughable Rose journalist at the Daily Mail convinced me otherwise. Luckily I have enough scientific training to understand when someone tries to take me for a scientific ride.
Climategate emails – wrong. Read rather a lot of the yawn inducing things and the shock horror ones in context and see a different reading to you. Strangely, my opinion is shared by all the official inquiries but I suppose there is a flag on that play.
Conspiracy theory – for goodness sake. Wrong in neon letters. Proven beyond doubt. Supporters of the birther movement, 911 truthers and other fake conspiracies would say the same about their pet conspiracies. Not a theory, it’s a fact. Send that one to Bill Maher or Jon Stewart. ROTFLMFAO.
I used to wonder how people could be so deluded – wrong. Here’s how I work. I don’t take anyone’s word for it. I check. I read. I ask myself the questions that I think are important. Then I make my decision. Like I said, my conscience is clear.
As for you, I don’t know how you arrived at your decision. What I do know is you seem to assume too much. But then again, I could be wrong. I don’t take anything for granted.
Other ‘issues’ – dont know what they might be but since you know more about me than I do myself, perhaps you will enlighten me.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to Spain v Chile.
Margaret Hardman says:
Quoted Lewandowsky – wrong. I used a perfectly good word from the many available in the English language.
You lie like a child. Point out where you used “recursive” here prior to Lew’s book coming out.
Obsession with Mann – wrong.
Oh, but exactly right.
Wegman – wrong. Shown to have plagiarised.
Playing the man, not the ball = ad hominem fallacy.
I think I know my conscience better than you but obviously you know best.
As explained, you have no conscience.
My decision was based on the egregious mistakes, if I may be so charitable, provided by sites like this one…
Mistakes at WUWT are corrected via discussion. You are now being corrected, and that will continue indefinitely, until you understand the issues — which so far, you do not.
I thought it might be the case that global warming wasn’t true…
Scientific skeptics have always known for a fact that global warming has been happening since the LIA. Only Mann’s acolytes believe that the climate never changed until the Industrial Revolution — Mann’s Hokey Stick shows a flat T until then. He dishonestly erased the MWP and the LIA. And you bought that nonsense hook, line and sinker. Mann took you for a pseudo-scientific ride, and CAGW is now your religion.
Climategate emails – wrong.
A stupid assertion that is contrary to reams of evidence. Those incriminating emails have never been denied by their authors.
Supporters of the birther movement, 911 truthers and other fake conspiracies…
Margaret is falling down on the propaganda job: she forgot to mention white supremacists and creationists. Only the deluded Margaret would mention the off-topic movements that she did. Earth to Mr. Margaret: as stated above, the Climategate emails prove beyond any doubt that Mann and his clique conspired to get people fired. That is a verifiable fact — and it was done. Only a deluded True Believer would impotently try to lump fake conspiracies in with a verifiable conspiracy. Hope you’re not a lawyer, Margaret, because if that’s how you think you wouldn’t win a case.
I check. I read. I ask myself the questions…
It is clear that you don’t ask the right questions. You are afraid to ask the right questions. Your mind is closed tighter than a submarine hatch. CAGW is your religion, and mile-thick glaciers could descend once again over Chicago. You would still be parroting: “Global warming! Global warming! AWK!!”
Statistics provides a wonderful analytical tool. As a predictive tool it is totally useless.
It allows you to summarize what you already know but cannot tell you anything you don’t already know.
Db, hope you don’t come into any legal firm wanting help because you might struggle to find the exit door.
I note you have resorted to ad hominems. Since you cannot know whether I have a conscience or not beyond what I have said, what I have told you, well, Flywheel, Schyster and Flywheel might defend you but others, I’m not so sure. I find it strangely reassuring that you know better than me what I think and Anthony Watts tells me I am allowed to have an opinion, even if it is wrong. Gee, thanks. As they say in God’s greatest continent, bonzer. I didn’t know I needed to have a licence.
As for religion, no thanks. I can see why you say it but you once again don’t have a clue what I actually think and why I think it. You hope you do but that is your modes operandi. In fact, that seems to be the manner by which this site works. It’s like bread and circuses here, isn’t it? But then you know the rules, as a moderator, and know how ventriloquism is one way to keep the discussion going and one way to ensure that those who come with a rationalist philosophy quickly get outnumbered. No wonder you come across as so sure that you are right. There’s always that trembling concern that when the New York subway becomes a submarine way, you’ll still be quoting the Oregon Petition as if science is done by collecting signatures.
As for questions, I ask them, the important ones, daily. Having weighed the evidence, I come to my own decision. I don’t propagandise because I trust people to make their own decisions. Perhaps ths site could do the same.
Oh, we’ll. Back to work at Sou, Grabbit & Runne, Attorney’s At Law.