A Cool Question, Answered?

Willis (having finished dinner) no harm in a black box (or a series of black boxes) provided we are simplifying (aka, as you say, no over-fitting).
My point is that the technique is interesting, as is its application to this class of problem. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but in the domain of climate modelling I don’t see enough of this kind of discussion.
The problem is the dominance of bottom-up thinking in the modelling community. My response would be the same as that to the traveler seeking directions to Dublin “I wouldn’t start from here”. It is clear that this complex system will have parts that can be modeled on this basis, but we will make more progress by also using these kinds of “black box” technique.
So I welcome this discussion, and as you will probably have gleaned I’m surprised you too don’t also focus on this aspect, and hold your powder on whether this particular implementation adds value. IMHO this will prove too pat, but a robust discussion of the place of this and related kinds of approaches is to be encouraged.

ACE News #122 (4/30/2009) reported that the intensity of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) Fe at ~350 MeV/nuc, was ~12% greater in early 2009 than in 1997-1998 and also greater than ever before in the space age. The measurements were made with the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) on ACE. As 2009 progressed the GCR intensity continued to increase until approximately New Years Eve, when the intensities of major species from C to Fe were each 20% to 26% greater than in 1997-1998 (e.g., oxygen in Panel (a) at the right). Early in 2010 the intensity decreased to 1997-1998 levels.
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ACENews/ACENews134.html

Although the new analysis suggests, perhaps surprisingly, that supernovae are on the whole good for life, high supernova rates can bring the cold and changeable climate of prolonged glacial episodes. And they can have nasty shocks in store. Geoscientists have long been puzzled by many relatively brief falls in sea-level by 25 metres or more that show up in seismic soundings as eroded beaches. Prof. Svensmark finds that they are what can be expected when chilling due to very close supernovae causes short-lived glacial episodes. With frozen water temporarily bottled up on land, the sea-level drops. – See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/topic/deep-space/cosmic-evolution/did-supernovas-boost-life-on-earth/#sthash.OGg8Q3wN.dpuf

This layman is tired of models though I understand the need to strive to prefect them in order to try to develop long term forecasts and understand our climate. But for now when it comes to determining global cooling or warming it seems to me the best course for the average guy is to watch the poles.
The second year the summer Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents remain significantly above the mean during the summer months at each pole then I will start being concerned about cooling. No corruption or “adjustment” of temperature data can change those signs. It seems to me that the satellite measurements of these extents, while not perfect by any means, as has been proven in the past, are still far more reliable and less susceptible to tampering or error than temperature data at any level from any source.

Neutral gas cloud is not at all indifferent.
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ACENews/ACENews136.html

As the end of month of June is here, for those who wish to use the CET records to prove one thing or the another, just a brief reminder:
June is the month that clearly and indisputable shows that absolutely there was no warming (regardless of the CO2 content or emissions, notch filters, multidecadal natural or any other kind of variability ) for whole of its 350 years, of the longest and the most scrutinized temperature record that there is: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
Over to you ….

Mr Svalgaard continues, embarrassingly, to fail to apologize to Dr Evans for having accused him of having acted near-criminally in deliberately using false TSI data. Instead, he tries to divert attention from his persisting falsehood by a variety of diversionary wriggles. One of the latest of these is his assertion that “The plot on the SORCE/TIM website is not a ‘historical record’, but a flawed reconstruction by Lean dating back to 2000”.
Actually, the reconstruction on the SORCE/TIM website to which I had provided a link was, as I had previously stated, by Krivova et al., though I suppose it is possible she might have relied on Judith Lean’s earlier work, as the IPCC itself has done in the past. I had also previously stated that the record went back some 400 years, not just to 2000 as Mr Svalgard has said. The TSI data on this official website is visibly strikingly similar to the TSI data in Dr Evans’ graph. On looking at the two graphs, there is certainly no respectable basis for Mr Svalgaard’s still-unretracted allegation that in using data remarkably close to that which is openly posted on the website from which Mr Svalgaard himself took (and then doctored) the graph on the basis of which he challenged Dr Evans’ assertion that solar activity had recently been declining.
It is really time for Mr Svalgaard to apologize to Dr Evans for his hasty and unjustifiable allegation that Dr Evans had knowingly used incorrect TSI data, and that in doing so he had acted in a fashion that was “almost fraudulent”. There is no respectable basis for any such allegation, and it must now be withdrawn.
The question whether Dr Evans is right to draw the conclusion from the data that TSI is falling in a manner that will have an effect on global temperature is one on which he may or may not be correct: as I have said earlier in this thread, the matter can be argued either way. But it should be blindingly obvious even to Mr Svalgaard, who is not known for his common sense, that there would scarcely be any advantage to Dr Evans in deliberately tampering with the data so as falsely to show a sharp decline in TSI, then to make a startling prediction that global temperature, far from remaining static as it has for the past couple of decades or rising as the usual suspects predict, will instead fall within not more than ten years, and then to say that if the temperature does not fall he will have been proven wrong.
It ought surely to be blindingly obvious even to the meanest and most knuckle-dragging intelligence that such behavior on Dr Evans’ part could not confer any conceivable advantage upon him. The fact is that Dr Evans did his best to put together a reasonable TSI dataset (close in all material respects to the Krivova historical reconstruction on the SORCE/TIM website); that one can apply his model to that or any other TSI dataset; and that if Mr Svalgaard does not like Dr Evans’ TSI dataset he will be free, within weeks, to apply any other TSI dataset to Dr Evans’ model.
By the same token, Mr Eschenbach should also apologize to Dr Evans. He too has used the word “fraudulent” of Dr Evans, this time because he would have liked Dr Evans to release his code and data before rather than after giving an outline of what his code and data are for. For heaven’s sake, stop whining. You have been plainly told all the code and data will be made fully and publicly available. Surely you can tell the difference between that honest approach and the approach of Mr Mann, who refuses to this day to release data for a paper that first appeared in 1998? If so, why did you accuse Dr Evans of being no better than Mr Mann in this regard?
Now, this bandying-about of the word “fraud”, when it is manifest that no fraud has been committed, is not the sort of language that marks out the man of science. To make an allegation of “fraud” is to suggest that criminality is present – in particular, a form of criminality that, where it is alleged, is calculated to damage the reputation of a man of science, in that the allegation is that the scientist has acted in a wilfully deceptive manner for his own profit or with the aim of causing loss to another. On any view, Dr Evans’ work does not fall within this definition.
Suppose that a group of researchers were to conduct a survey of many thousands of scientific papers to see how many of them stated their endorsement for IPCC’s notion that recent warming was mostly manmade. Suppose they marked their own datafile as saying that only 0.5% of the sample, explicitly endorsed that “consensus” notion. Suppose they then disregarded their own result, carefully failed to report it and instead reported that they had found 97.1% support for the consensus that defined. Suppose they then wrote another scientific paper, explicitly stating that they had found near-unanimous support for the consensus thus defined. Suppose that governments, acting on this supposed evidence of consensus as to the magnitude of Man’s impact on the climate, were to cite it as justification for predatory measures inflicting massive loss or hardship on people struggling to pay their fuel and power bills. Now, in UK law, there are two relevant offenses of fraud: fraud by misrepresentation, and fraud by abuse of the public trust that is expected of academic researchers for whose services taxpayers handsomely pay. I shall leave it to readers to decide whether, if the evidence I have outlined above is true, the group of researchers in question might, on the face of things, have committed fraud.
Now, suppose that a researcher abandons his former highly-paid job profiting from the global warming scam, shuts himself away unpaid for some years and comes up with a theory that, if it is wrong, will be shown to have been wrong within not more than a decade. How will he benefit from that, unless he is shown to have been right? To whom will he occasion any loss, other than to himself, if he is eventually shown to have been wrong? And what evidence is there of any deception? On examination, it turns out that there is none. Mr Svalgaard was simply incorrect in his allegation that Dr Evans had used incorrect TSI data. He might have used data that Mr Svalgaard disapproves of. It may even be that Mr Svalgaard is right to prefer one TSI dataset above another. But Mr Svalgaard has been too hasty in accusing the blameless Dr Evans of acting in an “almost fraudulent” fashion, and has been too dilatory in his persistent failure to apologize: a failure that will prove deeply embarrassing to Mr Svalgaard’s own reputation. For Mr Svalgaard has fallen well below the standard of probity expected of the true scientist.
As for Mr Eschenbach, he too should apologize. His use of the word “fraudulent” seems to have been more rhetorical and en passant than the calculated, deliberate and malicious use of the term by Mr Svalgaard, who accompanied it with an impertinent suggestion that Mr Evans had deliberately used wrong TSI data because he had an “agenda”, and has sullenly refused to apologize, repeating the libel on several occasions and demonstrating with each new libel and each new refusal to apologize and with each new diversionary tactic that he is not a scientist but a mere quack. Mr Eschenbach should appreciate that the use of such intemperate language is unscientific and ought to be avoided except where there is plain evidence of criminality, when, in the present instance, there is plain evidence of no criminality at all.
As for those who think I ought not to have made an issue of this, let them understand that the real battle in which we are all engaged is a battle to restore the use of reason to scientific discourse. At present, the world’s governing class has discovered that, thanks to the near-universal scientific and mathematical ignorance to which generations of State-controlled education has reduced the populace, it can manufacture scientific scare stories as justification for a vast centralization of power in the hands of new supra-national bodies elected by nobody.
In the end, the only defense against the extension of predatory, anti-democratic government to the global scale under the pretext of Saving The Planet is the truth itself. That is why it is essential that we should be careful to discriminate between actions that are genuinely fraudulent and actions that are not. And, though it is not easy to keep one’s temper while so much anti-science is peddled by the profiteers of doom, we should surely keep doing our best to try.