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The previous open thread dropped off the front page, so here's a new one.
...keep an eye on the left sidebar of this blog. There's a listing there of the times and dates when the prize announcements will be made. If all goes well, the list will be automatically updated with the names of the winners, as soon as the announcements are made.
The first announcement, for the…
If you read the comment threads on the Lancet study you will know that David Kane frequently pops up with dark hints the authors committed some sort of fraud. Well now he has argued that the Lancet study is likely to be a fraud because the response rate was so high. [Update The post has been…
Ed did it. Janet's doing it. And, since I totally lack any artistic ability and creativity, I'll do it as well. In the comments to the open thread I posted last week, pough even volunteered an initial design. As I mentioned, I liked the font but I was thinking of something, well, more microbial…
RE: The Australian's War on Science XIII
Looks like the appropriate questions are being asked over the University of Queensland 'environmental' research program, that was announced in that The Australian article (funded by the Institute of Public Affairs right-wing think-tank)
Some details are in this The Australian article
Note the following:
I believe that Dr Possingham is a reputable scientist.
Three PhD students have been selected. One will be looking at the effect of controlling land clearance in Western Queensland as a means of reducing greenhouse emmissions. Another will look at agricultural practices and chemical usage.
So they are funding the sort of research that is done anyway by agricultural scientists. I worked on a research project examining the impacts of Endosulfin on riverine ecosystems in Northern NSW. The impacts were ugly, but very difficult to demonstrate in the wildly variable rivers of that region. A big issue in the agricultural sector is lack of scrutiny of it's impacts. So more research is better. At least this research will examine environmental questions, and you can bet it gets even more peer review than is usual.
Good luck to the students involved; it's an odd arrangement under which they will be working.
The New Zealand Government has backed down on its emissions trading scheme, in the face of extensive lobbying.
http://weblog.greenpeace.org.nz/climate-change/something-is-rotten-in-t…
This comes days after Prime Minister Helen Clark was given an award by the United Nations for this and other legislation.
As is so often the case, reality imitates satire
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0805/S00101.htm
Craig Allen, I think I'll still ask the same question: are AUD 350,000 really enough for doing any serious work with crops and trees?
I'll pollute this thread with a query for you non-US folks - are people overseas interested in our current political squabble between Obama/Clinton?
In reply to bi:
It depends entirely on what is done. If you assume (say) $50,000 per PhD student (including the stipend, administration costs and research costs), then you could fund 7 researchers. A single brilliant and lucky person could do amazing earthshaking paradigm shifting work. Or dozens might successfully submit mediocre theses that reveal little. If the university lets the Institute of Public affairs interfere with the research activities then the later becomes more likely. But then why would a student spend years trying to skew their findings to suit a right-wing think tank's perspective? Especially when they will be under intense scrutiny. They are perhaps more likely to turn out to be fiercely rigorous and independent - which means in my opinion that their findings are likely to be at odds with the IPAs beliefs.
Craig Allen:
The research costs are what I'm talking about. The scholarship page says the stipend's AUD 35,000 per annum, which means with 7 researchers the amount of money left for other stuff will be AUD (350,000 - 35 * 7) = AUD 105,000, and that's across all the projects.
I'm just not sure if this remaining amount of money is enough for doing any serious work with trees and stuff -- I'm not familiar enough with this area to have a ballpark estimate, which is why I'm asking.
I don't think that PhD students will consciously try to skew their findings towards what Marohasy et al. like, but if they're not given enough resources to do proper studies, they may be forced to conclude their research with an "I don't know" answer, which is what the inactivists want.
ATTN: Tim
How much of the 350,000 would the university expropiate (i.e., ripoff) for overhead? Or is this paid seperately and directly by the IPA to the university as a percentage of the grant?
What major NA newspaper would be similar to the Australian?
I get the idea it is fairly right wing.
What's the deal on the rabbits? Have they been wiped out? Or are they still out there denuding the countryside?
I don't know how much UQ would take -- it might not be anything.
I think the Washington Times would be the closest NA equivalent.
Rabbits have most definitely not been wiped out, though rabbit calicivirus has greatly reduced their numbers.
Cool, an open thread just when I need one!
I'm off to monitor endangered beasties in the wilderness for a week and a half, so I will have no access to Deltoid during this time. Please don't do too many exciting things whilst I'm away - else I won't be able to regather all the threads when I return!
Is it Bad when one has half a dozen threads rotating in permanently opened in tabs in the background on Firefox?
A short lesson in University economics, besides salary you have to account for fringe benefits (retirement, etc) another ~20%. Overhead, facilities and administrative costs, UQ, whatever tends to be fixed for government grants and variable for private donations. Different places charge it differently. For example, there could be a charge on only salaries, on all direct costs except equipment, etc. Local rules determine.
A large portion of the "AGW is a serious problem" argument seems to be that most of Climate Science Experts believe it to be so (I'll stipulate that for the purposes of this post).
I've been trying to come up with a similar issue on which many AGW alarmists are likely to be on the other side. I think I may have found one.
What's your opinion regarding minimum wage laws?
Yikes. You're not going to argue that there is some sort of consensus on minimum wage, are you?
New Pew Research survey: A Deeper Partisan Divide Over Global Warming-
Less than half of Republicans surveyed say the planet is warming. Only 19% of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is anthropogenic.
Those that have tried to spin this as a political issue have done their jobs well. Disgusting.
Depends on how they're implemented, as is true of so many things.
Here in Oregon, some years back restaurants were forced to pay servers minimum wage - voters rejected the argument that paying them a couple of bucks an hour was fine because tips would give them a livable wage.
Restaurants predicted they'd be forced out of business, etc. Usual gloom-and-doom bullshit from right-wing business interests. Restaurants are booming, people are still tipping 15%+, servers are making more money, etc. No evidence at all that applying minimum wage laws to servers have hurt the business, nor servers (that's always the argument - "business only opposes minimum wage laws because it will put those the law claims to help out of work!!!!").
Also our minimum wage was raised quite a bit over the federal level. "fast food outlets will no longer hire people!" was the hue-and-cry from the Right. Yet they still seem to be in business ... hmmmm ... strange, that.
Vicipædia dicit:
The source cited is
...whatever that is.
Even if this is true, the survey question itself is a bit oddly phrased, since "helping small businesses" isn't the only thing that matters when deciding whether to set a minimum wage. I'm curious to know what economists in general (not just from e.g. the Fraser Institute) think about the effect of the minimum wage at large.
per Wiki (which knows all)
They reference: Fuller, Dan und Doris Geide-Stevenson (2003): Consensus Among Economists: Revisited, in: Journal of Economic Review, Vol. 34, No. 4, Seite 369-387 (PDF)
The point here isn't the particulars of minimum wage laws. The point is that I think it can be seen (with some mental gymnastics) that a debate here on the topic would result in a role reversal. Conservatives (I hate the labels, and they aren't perfect) would be talking about how minimum wage laws are known to be bad as "settled economic science". Liberals would be focusing on the paper that goes against the grain by arguing that they have no negative effect, etc.
It's also interesting that in trying to browse the internet on the topic of economic consensus regarding minimum wage, I get about the same sort of stuff that I'd get if I searched on climate science consensus about AGW. The hits are chock full of lists claiming 100's of economists are on their side.
BillBodell:
Who wrote this? It's not even remotely close to what the paper actually says. I've corrected it to report what the paper actually says:
Bill,
Economics is not a physical science. It's a dismal science. Or, in the case of conservatives, a happy religion.
Anyway, this is the page BillBodell was talking about, and here is the paper which the (totally garbled) original statement was referring to.
Jon,
I don't think that people take a view on AGW due to their polictical party affiliation so much as they have a worldview that leads to them seeing things such as AGW in a way that makes them Democrats or Republicans (to the extent they actually have a consistent worldview).
I used to wonder why people always seemed to end up on the same sides of seeming very different issues such as abortion, Vietnam(Iraq), welfare, the environment etc. Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions" cleared it up for me.
lb,
Steve Chapman said that Economics is known as the "Dismal Science" since it is so often in conflict with our favorite past-time "Wishful Thinking".
bi,
Thanks
Vision is the problem. The real world doesn't give a shit about vision. "belief" in climate science isn't a matter of "vision", it's a matter of accepting reality regardless of whether or not it clashes with your vision.
And Thomas Sowell - another economist, go figure - is vision-driven to the extreme. I wouldn't trust his opinion on anything that might conflict with his extreme right-wing point of view.
We've seen with Lance (assuming he does have a physics degree) just how deeply "vision" can conflict with rationality, even among those with scientific training.
Economists are among the most guilty of the wishful thinkers. Wishful thinking assigns zero or near-zero value to ecosystem services, clean air, clean water, etc.
Economics is the dismal science because it's track record is dismal (and, it's not science, but that's another discussion).
dhogaza,
So I'm guessing that you haven't read it yet?
The book doesn't argue for one vision over the other, it just explains what they are. Aren't you curious as to what motivates those that keep disagreeing with you?
"Vision" controls initial impressions, it doesn't substitute for reality. However, one's initial impressions will generally influence what questions get asked, which may influence what answers result.
Bill,
I have no idea who Steve Chapman is, but Wishful Thinking is the unit measure of economics.
It is a made up game, constrained by reality only when it blindly slams into real physical limits.
Physical reality does not care about Thomas Sowell's crank Platonic mysticism.
AGW alarmists are economics deniers!
In #19, bi wrote:
Thanks for those links. Note the change in opinion on that question from 1990 to 2000 (Agree dropped from 62% to under half, while Disagree and Agree with provisos increased from 37% to 54%). This isn't as clearcut a shibboleth as BillBodell may think.
Do you think I'm going to read a right-wing nutcase crank in order to learn what my "vision" is?
Bill,
Call me when economists from all fields schools form a rational scientific consensus. I won't be waiting up.
Wasn't it Churchill who said, "If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three"?
"are people overseas interested in our current political squabble between Obama/Clinton?"
since nobody else answered
friend of mine just got back from London, says yes. horserace style.
I didn't realize that liberals don't believe in economics. I'll have to look for another example.
Well, I took this test and it placed me as a socialist... I disagree with that, I am on the left/liberal end of the American Political spectrum, but I guess that my belief that a society should take care of it's least probably gave me the sobriquet.
Now on to minimum wage: personally, I think that minimum wage laws in this country are not strong enough. A person making minimum wage should be able to afford a small but clean apartment ($500 - $700), be able to buy food ($200 - $300), pay for basic utilities (phone, electric, heat, water, garbage: $50, $50, $50, $20, $20), medical care (single payer, anyone? I'll use what my employer is charging me: $240) and clothing ($50). Nothing extravagent, just the basics in Maslow's hierarchy. In most places in this country that is around $10-$14 an hour and that does not include transportation. Slap on another $2-$3 an hour if decent public transportation is not available. Ever wonder why you don't live like your parents if you have a $20/hr job?
Now back to the reality based world. Dhogaza, I generally (always) agree with you, but I do have a friend who is the general manager at a large and successful resturaunt here in Bozeman. He is a good liberal, but he had a similar objection to having to give raises to his front of the house people. Bear in mind that is a large busy resturaunt/bar which collects a ton of money every night of the week and the people in the front of the house make pretty damn good tips. Several of my dependents (the bartenders) are able to buy houses with their tips, and this is not a cheap housing market... Like every other business there is a raise pool which is shared amongst all of the workers, and his point was that why should he have to give a mandatory raise to the best paid workers in the house when that cuts down on the amount of money he can use to give raises to the people in the back end of the house? Now YMMV -- front of the house people in less successful resturaunts don't make as much from tips and might be able to benefit from an increase in the minimum wage, but when the servers are making more than $200 a night in tips it seems as though the reduced wage makes some sense. BTW, when this was up for a vote two years ago in Montana, he voted in favor, even though it did not have an exception for servers. I guess what I am trying to say is that if there is a server exception it needs to be predicated on the volumne of the resturaunt. Oh, and by the way, I haven't seen any joints going out of business here (well, Hardee's decided to close most of their Montana stores, but this was not related to the minimum wage...). And Captain Mac's (Mickey D's) and the others were already having to pay $10/hr because they couldn't get people to work for minimum wage, in fact, only a sucker would work for $10/hr in the fast food joints...
The executive summary here is that minimum wage laws really don't seem to affect overall employment rates and may help people who are just a bit farther up the economic ladder. The problem is that the minimum wage is not a living wage. When I was a kid earning minimum wage (at that time $2.35/hr) I was able to rent a shared house with a bunch of friends and live a relatively decent life. If I earned minimum wage today, I would be on the street.
BillBodell spouts senseless nonsense:
>I didn't realize that liberals don't believe in economics. I'll have to look for another example.
Us liberals (in the USA sense) do believe in economics, it is just that we prefer the reality based version. See Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman for examples of the reality based take on econ.
I believe in results. Conservative economists (and most seem to be conservative) have a horrendous track record.
Laffer curve vs. hockey stick. Trickle-down economics vs. climate science.
BillBodell wrote:
[Mother's Day](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR20080…) probably won't work.
What the study shows is that there is a trend away from the AGW theory. Like it or not the thruth is getting out...Remember a lie travels around the world before the truth gets out of bed. If a warming trend does not happen soon the trend ( too doubt) is going to increase.
The Canadian CBC for the first time showed "ice Bergs" floating off our Atlantic coast without saying anything about "caused by global warming".
Old timers could not recall ever seeing so many icebergs at one time.
The CBC never missed a chance to blame everything on AGW but as I said it didn't come up this time. Either, someone was asleep at the wheel, or they are starting to look a little deeper into cause and effect.
We have seen more than usual amounts of sea Ice between Greenland and Canada this year and the sea temp around Atlantic Canada is below the mean.
bi:
You could do a lot of research with $100,000, or not much at all. Depends on what you are doing.
Taking the PhD student looking at the carbon sequestration/liberation implications of land clearance and clearance control policies - It would probably involve both GIS analysis of ecosystem types and landuse patterns, trips out west to sample soil and biomass, plus the use of equipment to estimate carbon content of the soil and biomass. The most significant costs are going to be vehicle running costs along with a field assistant's wages (for safety reasons you can't have someone wandering around in the middle of nowhere by themselves).
In the work on the riverine ecosystem impacts of pesticides that helped with, the travel and assistant costs were again a big part of the expense (a $2000 return trip for 4 days sampling every month) as well as the wage of the assistant. There were also lab costs for ecotoxicology experiments.
$100,000 would be a bit tight for 7 PhDs all doing field work, but not all of them would be doing such studies. Some might be primarily doing desk and computer based research.
But in the end, it would just be 7 people among a national research effort involving thousands. The Institute of Public Affairs obviously thinks that all the rest are deluded, are producing dodgy, slanted science and that their 'non-biased' independently-minded team will therefore be able to have a disproportionately large impact. I think that they are in for a rude shock. You could spend millions, but the obvious decline of natural ecosystems that is occurring in response to the pressures and degradation associated with the way we use this continent will not go away.
I just wrote the following on Jenifer Marahosy's blog where a bunch of denialist free marketeer types are crapping on about how immoral Al Gore is because he apparently remarked that global warming is likely to make disasters like the recent Burmese cyclone occur more frequent.
... The real lesson that should be taken from each these cyclone disasters is that the unconstrained and careless conversion of natural ecosystems to economic uses (such as in this case the clearance of mangroves for shrimp and fish farming) eliminates or compromises the ecological services that they provide, and this can have very unpleasant consequences.
In this case the storm buffer that the mangroves previously provided was not valued appropriately because it was something that everyone got for free, and the potential negative consequences were some theoretical future threat. On the other hand, the profit to be made by clearing the mangroves could be pocketed by individuals, and declining natural capital could (in the short term) be ignored by those making the profits.
Many of those profiting (the corrupt dictatorship and army) did not have to worry about potential negative consequences because they are insulated from them by their wealth and privilege.
The farmers were probably willing to ignore future consequences because they were focussed on the immediate benefits to themselves and their families, and preferred not to recognize 'inconvenient truths' about the longer term implications of their mangrove clearance practices.
So the lack of effective, far-sited regulation and planning to protect natural capital has led to a disaster, as it did in New Orleans.
Let's say that a raise in the minimum wage would result in increased earnings for 90% of minimum wage workers but in 10% losing their jobs and that those that who lost their jobs were those that were the hardest to employ and needed the jobs and experience the most (this is just hypothetical, I'm not saying that this is what would happen and I know that most of you would not agree that this would be the result). It's just the basis of a thought experiment.
If this were the case, would you be in favor of raising the minimum wage?
"Wasn't it Churchill who said, "If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three"?"
and yet somehow he found Keynes utterly indispensable when it cam to running the war-time economy and managing Britain's debt.
It's amusing to see people who disdain denialists' dismissal of climate science engaging in equally uninformed dismissal of economics.
The Canadian CBC for the first time showed "ice Bergs" floating off our Atlantic coast without saying anything about "caused by global warming". Old timers could not recall ever seeing so many icebergs at one time. The CBC never missed a chance to blame everything on AGW but as I said it didn't come up this time. Either, someone was asleep at the wheel, or they are starting to look a little deeper into cause and effect."
Or the Harper government has indulged in the normal conservative practice of stacking the public broadcaster's board with their placemen.
There is an economic consensus on minimal wage laws - in the United Atates, current minimum wages are low enough that increasing the basic wage moderately is unlikely to have a significant economic impact either positively or negatively.
Bill Bodell's hypothetical question ignores at least three of the major impacts of raising the minimum wage:
- it increases the available work force by encouraging discouraged workers to re-enter the labor market;
- it increases the total consumption level (since it essentially transfers money from business owners who are on average richer and more likely to save part of their income) to low-income workers who are more likely to spend all or most of the money. The resulting economic stimulus tends to increase the total employment rate;
- in many industries, there is a degree of monopsomy power held by employers (briefly they can pay less than the rational market price for labor and increase their profits at the expense of consumers and workers).
As to Bill Bodell's question, it depends much on whether we are talking about a society offering non-starvation-level unemployment benefits, or a "society" that doesn't.
Most of the "working poor" in the U.S. would be honestly unemployed, and recognizable as the problem they represent, in Northern Europe.
Ian Gould:
I'm with Rattus here. Nobody dismisses reality-based economics, and actually observing the disasters wreaked by the alternative version makes its dismissal informed.
The difference with climate science is, that there, the corresponding points of observation are mostly still in the future.
But there is also a similarity between climate science and economic science: both can successfully inform public policy even in the face of substantial uncertainty. Churchill apparently mastered that art; our disastrous latter-day wannabe churchills, not quite.
Gavin's Pussycat,
The history of Friedmanite predictions of untold horrors should governmental regulations be allowed to propogate has been pretty dismal. I cannot personally think of a case where the free marketeer prediction of disaster have come true. In most cases environmental regulations have been much less expensive to implement than was predicted by conserative economists. In fact, conservative economists have been basically wrong about everything. Saying that economics can adequately address policy issues seems odd to me, given the history of economic predictions.
On the other hand, we have a pretty good idea of how much the globe will warm given a 2x increase in CO2. The problem is that current climate models do not really seem to adequately model the imapacts of current warming on ecosystems. Current observations seem to indicate that the larger system is more sensitive to perturbations than the models indicate. As an example changes in the cryosphere seem to be happening at a much faster rate than models indicate. It just seems to me, from looking a the data that is being collected that current climate models are too conserative, but we ignore them at our peril. We should however ignore the economic arguments (they don't take into account externalities) and take what our observations are telling us very seriously.
Gavin's Pussycat, Rattus Norvegicus:
Actually, when there is a consensus among economists, the non-economists who disagree tend to be on The Other Side.
A case in point is Clinton's proposed "gas tax holiday", which exactly zero economists endorse.
bi writes:
I think you'll find that 90% of economists, of almost any stripe, think the minimum wage is a bad idea. This is the only scientific issue I know where the disconnect between the public and the scientists is this huge. 90% of the general public think the minimum wage is a good idea.
And in my experience, you can't explain it to them. They're too emotionally committed to it. I was myself, until I studied economics. If you support the minimum wage, generally you believe that people who are against it support money-grubbing bastards who want poor people to live in even greater poverty. The idea that the minimum wage might be making the poverty worse not only doesn't occur to them, it sounds insane to them. It's kind of like the way small children don't really believe it when you explain that the tall thin cup holds the same amount of liquid as the short fat cup.
Barton,
The Whaples survey suggests that 90% is rather high. He found 48% of PhDs in the American Economic Association favored eliminating minimum wage laws while 37% wanted an increase. Do you think there's some flaw in this survey (I'll admit I haven't looked at it closely, so it could be junk)?
I'm open to the possibility that the minimum wage is counterproductive, but I don't see the consensus that you apparently do. Obviously, I'm not trusting sources like the National Center for Policy Analysis, but if you have a good source or explanation, please share.
It sounds insane because there's nothing to back it up.
And don't tell me about all the poor young black men in ghettos who'd suddenly find jobs if we were able to offer them work at $0.25/hour. The bastions of poverty in this country are in no way due to minimum wage.
If I may, a little humor...
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
- Laurence J. Peter
A party of economists was climbing in the Alps . After several hours they became hopelessly lost. One of them studied the map for some time, turning it up and down, sighting on distant landmarks, consulting his compass, and finally the sun.
Finally he said, ' OK see that big mountain over there?'
'Yes', answered the others eagerly.
'Well, according to the map, we're standing on top of it.'
In #39, BillBodell asked:
BillBodell, it seems you've moved past denial and anger and into bargaining. This is progress. Now there's only a bit of depression before you reach acceptance.
For those who favor a higher minimum wage, what do you think would be the economic impact of raising it to $50 an hour? Just a thought experiment.
It's more like a lack-of-thought experiment.
#52: "For those who favor a higher minimum wage, what do you think would be the economic impact of raising it to $50 an hour?"
Me at 42: "There is an economic consensus on minimal wage laws - in the United Atates, current minimum wages are low enough that increasing the basic wage moderately is unlikely to have a significant economic impact..."
Which one of the qualifiers in that statement sid you not grasp?
It's like asking a denialist if he thinks there'd be a net economic benefit from the Earth's surface temperature was increased to 80 degrees celsius.
"The history of Friedmanite predictions of untold horrors should governmental regulations be allowed to propogate has been pretty dismal. I cannot personally think of a case where the free marketeer prediction of disaster have come true. In most cases environmental regulations have been much less expensive to implement than was predicted by conserative economists. In fact, conservative economists have been basically wrong about everything. Saying that economics can adequately address policy issues seems odd to me, given the history of economic predictions."
The conservative economists are in the minority.
Unfortunately, they have a disproportionate influence on public policy and get more media than they deserve.
robert,
My point was that minimum wage laws are not good or bad by themselves. It's the effect they have on those that we are trying to help that matters. If the effect on the disadvantaged is positive, then I'm in favor. If the effect is negative, then I'm opposed. I believe the effect is positive for white middle class teenagers and 2nd income spouses and negative for teenage minorities and the disadvantaged. Therefore I'm opposed.
I won't bother arguing the particulars here (I don't think we'll have anything new to add to an issue debated by people that have devoted their lives to it), but here are a couple of things to think about. Very few minimum wage earners are heads of households. Almost nobody has worked steadily for 10 years and is still making minimum wage. Most minimum wage earners are teenagers, 2nd earners and entry level workers. It is entirely possible to start at McDonalds at minimum wage and end up as a manager. Workers who are reliable, show up on time and work hard are not easy to find. Entry level jobs at minimum wage are a great way for inexperienced workers to demonstrate these abilities. A young person with no experience and a questionable background might get a chance to show that he can do the job at $5 an hour. At $10 an hour, he might never get the opportunity.
It might be hard to imagine that paying workers an extra dollar an hour will lead to less demand for workers, like it's difficult to imagine that a 50 cent rise in gas prices will lead to less demand for gas. But that's how supply and demand works (and there most definitely is a consensus on that).
Bill, claims that "most" US minimum wage earners are teenagers are overstatements of the situation.
From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2007.htm
"Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up almost half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 7 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with fewer than 2 percent of workers age 25 and over."
In other words - fewer than half of people on the minimum wage are teenagers and the majority of employed teenagers earn above the minimum wage.
It's also worth noting that if you increase the minimum wage from $5.85 per hour to, say, $7.00 you're increasing the wages not just of the people currently on the minimum wage but also for anyone earning less than the new minimum.
As for hypotheticals - the US minimum wage fell in real terms by around 29% in the between 1979 and 2003 - anyone want to argue minimum wage earners would be even better off if we cut their current wages by, say, another 30%?
Given the fact that most Western countries actually have minimum wages, this is a rather academic discussion. However, most non-American (and properly American) economists generally don't think minimum wages are a bad thing - rather the debate is about the size of it.
There are several reasons for this. One is the historical perspective. Economists are not blind to the human costs of low or non-existing minimum wages, and most economists are also aware that the job of economists are not to make political proposals (which is what a minimum wage is) - rather it's to help politicians to make proposals by trying to map the consequences of their ideas. Killing of the minimum wage might theoretically increase the national economy as a whole (a somewhat doubtful claim), but there will be major human costs (as can be observed in the US).
Another reason why economists are not opposed to minimum wage per se, is the fact that low-income wages are actually working money, as Ian explained. This is why many economists opposed the idea of trickle-down economics (aka tax breaks for the rich), as these have been shown to be ineffective. Instead they propose that the wanted effect could be reached through either increasing the pay of low-income people, or reduce their tax burden (though that is often non-existent).
Ian
I did not say
I said
In #56, BillBodell contended:
There's not as much consensus about that as you suggest. Did you notice how the proportion of surveyed AEA members who agreed with the "standard" minimum wage effect had decreased from 1990 to 2000? Wonder why? It was because of stuff like the Kreuger and Card studies on minimum wage that were published in the intervening period. Although there's consensus on the theory, there's an empirical question about elasticity of demand in low-cost labor (and, for that matter, in the price of gasoline) that sows doubt about what happens in the real world.
But it's good that you are worried about the different effects of economic policy changes on the poor and the not-poor. Kinda commie of you, don't you think?
robert,
I, and most like-minded people, are very concerned about the poor and disadvantaged. The trick is that I care about the actual results of policies, not just their initial good intentions. When we oppose well intentioned policies that we believe will have negative consequences, people think we don't care. We don't care about intentions, just what really happens.
Low-cost labor and gas are relativly inelastic, but not perfectly so.
I did not write "Bill claims that..." I wrote "Bill, claims that...".
I was addressing you , not attributing the claim to you.
Yeah, the Right has such a stellar record regarding concern for the poor.
And I like the emphasis on "belief", not facts.
Crooked Timber has a discussion on minimum wage. One key point explaining why the Holy Law of Supply and Demand utterly fails when it comes to minimum wage:
People aren't widgets, either morally, or empirically.
Ian,
Ah, those pesky commas, sorry about that.
BillBodell averred:
It's slightly worrisome that you consider distributional effects of net welfare change to be a trick but I welcome your newly found empiricism nonetheless. This is exactly why your minimum wage issue is not the wedge issue that you initially appeared to think it was. Despite the good intentions many have had in opposing minimum wage laws, their actual result on US employment appears to be negligible.
I've been reluctant to post at length since we're talking economics on a global warming blog. We've gone far a-field from where I started (which was related to GW). But, since everyone is continuing to post on it, I guess I'll keep going until someone asks me to stop.
Actually, I just read the "Crooked Timber" post referred to above and, surprise, I'm back on the original topic.
From Crooked Timber
and ...
If I change a few phrases so that we have:
Another thing that must be pointed out: given the AGW bias of the climate science profession as a whole, it's not hard to imagine that studies that do find the AGW effect are considerably more likely to be published. I'm not accusing anyone of scholarly fraud here. But the fact is, there are lots of different datasets you can use, lots of models to go with, lots of variables to include or leave out, and lots of ways to slice and dice the data. It's not unheard of for researchers to opportunistically try different models and methodologies until they hit upon one that gives them the results they want
And ...
I've subsequently stayed away from the AGW literature for a number of reasons. First, it cost me a lot of friends. People that I had known for many years, for instance, some of the ones I met at my first job at Georgia Tech, became very angry or disappointed. They thought that in publishing our work we were being traitors to the cause of climate science as a whole.
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
BillBodell wrote:
The difference, of course, is that the theoretical effect of minimum wage laws does not appear to be supported by empirical examinations, while the theoretical effect of global warming does.
Yeah it's pretty understandable that there should have been minimun wage anxiety in a country with a Gini coefficient of 0.4 or so.
Robert:
Indeed. And where's the counterpart to Oreskes's consensus paper? The claims of a "consensus" on minimum wage on Wikipedia are either unsourced, or totally distanced from what the sources actually claim.
Meanwhile, here's another super-duper argument from the inactivist universe:
he's baaack:
John R. Lott, Jr.: High Gas Prices Are Not Something New
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355157,00.html
a two second skim locates this:
"Ironically, Democrats won the 2006 elections and took control of both the House and the Senate by promising they would reduce gas prices."
which strains credulity to the breaking point (for the reality based community, of course) and another ten seconds gets us
http://www.democrats.org/agenda.html
@ Bill @ 67: The difference between the economists and the AGW is that the economists start with a pre-existing theoretical model (which I shall caricature as free markets always clear, government interventions which change prices always raise inefficiency). THis model is based on a priori axioms with very little connection to the real world, and was largely invented by Jevons and his followers to use as a political weapon against Ricardo and Marx.
Climate scientists, by contrast, did not start with a theoretical model that the world was warming and strain their data to fit. Though the "in the 70s they said there would be an ice age" meme is vastly distorted, it does reflect the fact that (due as we now know to aerosol dimming) climate science back then was unsure what, if any, effect humans were having on the climate. The fact that 99%+ (to summarise Oreskes) of climate scientists now agree that the climate is warming is a convergence of opinion driven by the data and represents a great shift away from the pre-existing uncertainty. The equivalent in economics of such a shift would be the University of Chicago Economics Dept suddenly announcing that Keynes was 100% right.
BB:
and the laws of physics as a whole,
In my ongoing effort to construct a genealogy of climate conspiracy theories, I found that a certain prominent inactivist theorized, back in 1992, that global warming was invented to help usher in some sort of New World Order.
Also, global warming was a plot masterminded by the British royal family working in cahoots with commies. No way I could've made this stuff up...
Chris C.
"you are quite ignorant on this subject."
Had the same thought about your post.
"For one thing, you should know very well that 10 years of temperature is far too short a time interval to look at given the signal-to-noise ratio."
It's too short for what? It's not to short to determine that what your are getting is not the supposed signal, and you have no way of knowing that the 10 year trend won't turn out to be signal rather than natural variation.
"Your cherry pick fest is not impressive."
Neither is your. The warmers cherry pick one thirty year trend line and act like they are ready to predict climate forever from that. Nothing could be more absurd. Furthermore, their best cherry picked thirty year trend does not support their trend prediction.
"Even if there was warming or cooling over the last 10 years (in fact, a best fit line does give slight warming)"
No it doesn't. It shows no warming and in the case of RSS, it shows slight cooling.
http://bp0.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SCzoV9FfAOI/AAAAAAAAABM/1ycUWBwSZMw…
"it could all be simply due to chance."
Now that is truely the most idiotic thing that you have ever said. You think that the climate wakes up in the morning and decides," oh, it's March 07, think I'll go down." There is no such thing as noise or chance or random movement to the climate. Everything happens for a reason. There may be natuaral variation type causes like PDO, solar, volcano, Milankovich, albedo, etc that you and the climate scientist do not fully understand, but there is no trend movement that happens "by chance".
"What's more, the projection of 0.2 C/decade does not mean that every subset of 10 years necessarily warms by 0.2 C."
Yes, that's true. But it does mean that for whatever time and magnitude combination you spend below that .2C trend you have to spend an equal amount of time and magnitude combination above the trend. If you don't, then you don't have a .2C trend.
"While you claim to believe that CO2 is not the only thing that effects climate, and claim to be well aware that no one else believes that, your implications are that it IS the only thing that influences climate."
I have made no such implications. You are confusing climate with climate trend. My statement is that the .2C trend is caused by CO2 - at least according to the warming cultists. Variation around that .2C trend can happen due to natural variation. But in the long run, like 30 years, that .2C trend should show itself if it actually exists, because the elements of natural variation will not mask it permananently.
"Next, the greenhouse effect does not work by "reflecting" heat. This is a rather elementary concept."
My take is that the CO2 molecule absorbs radiation in a very specific frequency band. If that frequency was on it's way to outer space, then it can be intercepted by CO2. Later the CO2 will re-radiate the frequency, and there is a chance that it will not get re-radiated in the direction of space, but rather in the direction of the earth. That is a simplistic explanation, but that is my take on the process; what is yours, and how does it change our debate?
"You are right that the ~3 C of warming will eventually be realized, but it does not need to be realized in nice linear steps."
I never said that it would be realized in linear steps - only that it would be realized. Therefore the temperature increase that should result from the CO2 buildup over the last ten years, that has not been realized, will be realized. Meaning the whole thing not a coin toss.
"It will take many decades to reach 560 ppmv (the "first" doubling) and still more time for equilibrium."
Who cares about the 560 ppmv. You don't need all of it for the effects of some of it to start working.
Equilibrium also doesn't matter. For a thirty year bet you will not get the full temp effects of the CO2 that you put in towards the end of that time period, but then at the beginning of that time period you were already getting the effects of CO2 that was put into the system before the time period started.
"Now we will need to get warming over the next 15-20 years to maintain confidence in the IPCC projections, but I really don't think you understand any of this."
It's utterly simple, why wouldn't I understand it? What you don't understand is that the ten year flat temp period may not falsify the IPCC projections, but it does bring them into doubt. The main reason that it does this is that the elements of natural variation that would give us such a flat period don't seem to exists. And nobody in their right mind would try to explain it as happening "just by chance".
"However, the system is still chaotic with multiple feedbacks both positive and negative, (ice sheets, sea ice, biosphere, cloud formation, etc.), and meaning that unforced differentiation can introduce some pre-cooked results into even a long-term forecast. In addition, there are these things called specification and sampling error (the latter applicable to GCMs only deductively in that these must be consistent with empirical outcomes) you may have heard of which will also cause random innovation around your point estimate."
LOL. Now there is a true load of handwaving bullshit for you. Take note anyone who wants to babble as though he knows something when he knows nothing, take lessons from Majorajam.
"So you choice of bet is indeed giving Annan less than even odds by his own forecast. "
Even the outcome of your own mad rant don't support that conclusion. Note your, "both positive and negative" and your "random innovation around your point estimate".
"You're trying to show climate scientists lack the courage of their convictions by making it abundantly clear you have none."
1. I'm not a climate scientist and I don't make predictions that the legislatures of the world will use to impose trillions in taxes upon the world. I develop software. Now if you want to place some bets on my software doing what I claim it will do or not doing it, then we can talk.
2. Annan has often challenged people to bets based upon their predictions. He doesn't offer them a bet on his own predictions, he simply cherry picks what he thinks he can exploit. It's time that he stood behind his own predictions. He is a professional climate scientist and he should be willing to stand behind his work. If he is right, then I stand as much chance of loosing my money as he does his. You can whine and scream and complain like the baby bitch that you are, but the bottom line remains the same; warming cultists are frauds, cowards, and hot windbags. They want to strut around pretending that they are the saviours of the world when they don't even believe their own bilge. And of course when they are ultimately proven wrong they will still be patting themselves on the back claiming credit for the "good intentions".
And if you don't mind, leave your "angry inch" out of the discussion. No one cares about how you entertain yourself.
MZ:
"The first one: James predicts 0.2 C per decade. Plus minus something. Tilo takes this as the center and would have James win only if it's more than 0.2 and Tilo win if it's 0.19 for example. So only 0.5 for James if James is 100% correct."
No, he doesn't have to be 100% correct. If he claims that the trend is .2C per decade, then he still wins even if it is bigger than that. From his perspective it's a 50 - 50 bet. The reason to take it is to prove that he actually means something by his predictions and that he is not making overly pessimistic predictions knowing that he will have his ass covered by large error bands.
"This is clearly not demonstrating how much James is believing in the 0.2 C (plus minus some of course). For example, if we assume James believed he is 90% certain and Tilo has 10% correct, then James' odds would be only 45%. Only a fool would bet then."
Wrong again. I'm asking him to provide a number where he believes that there is a 50% chance that it is bigger and a 50% chance that it is smaller. There are no error bands and no confidence that things fit into those error bands.
Your assement is wrong in another way. If I ask you to pick a coin flip you would say that you have a 50% chance of getting it right. You wouldn't include your feeling of being right as only being 50% in order to lower your odds of winning to 25%.
"The second one: Including some flattish years from the beginning which, when taking into account the natural variability of the global temperature, lower the odds that a 20 year trend including these 8 first years would be the same as the long term trend."
Wrong again. We have covered this ground before in other posts. Bottom line is that the CO2 increase for the first 8 years is still in the system and when the natural variations that are keeping it from showing are removed or reversed, then all of it's effect will show.
dhogaza:
"If not, why do you think adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere would end that variability?"
Why, dhogaza, would you generate such ignorant straw man arguments. Is that the only kind of argument that you are able to win?
NO ONE IS DENYING NATURAL VARIABILITY. But even given natural variability your argument is wrong for two reasons. First, the current ten year flat trend isn't that way because of an El Nino on the beginning and a La Nina on the end. Immediately after the 8 month of El Nino at the beginning there were 29 month of La Nina at the beginning. Go and look up the La Nina and El Nino cycles for the entire ten years. If you consider the effects across the entire 10 years instead of what just happened for brief periods at the beginning and at the end, then you can clearly see that the flat trend was not an El Nino, La Nina result. If anything, the pattern for the 10 years should have given us an upward trend.
Now, with regards to natural variability masking the effects of a CO2 rise, yes that can and will happen. The question is, how long are you going to use that excuse. We didn't see .2C per decade from 1978 to 2008. You people are trying to hedge your bets, or Annan's bets for the period from 2000 to 2030 and the possibility of seeing the .2C per decade there. That covers a 52 year period. So the question is, just when the fuck are we going to see that .2C per decade? After we are all dead and you don't have to answer for your stupidity? What natural variations are going to cover up the CO2 effect for 52 years. Not PDOs, not solar cycles, not volcanoes. Your problem is not that there are not natural variation, it's about how long you plan to hide behind it before you begin to question your high priests? Furthermore, your problem for the last 10 years is that you had 10 years of CO2 increase, no warming increase, and you are completely unable to explain the elements of natural variation that would give you that effect.
Over at biologist-cum-"climatologist" Jennifer Marohasy's blog is a denialist self-congratulating rant discussion about the veracity of the Zoological Society of London's finding that between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970.
Apparently Marohasy's cheer squad think that science has no handle on how to calculate extinction or population decline, and Tilo Reber's contribution today:
obviously hammers the last nail in the coffin of the population biologists who have tracked declines in species richness and in population sizes.
I hadn't realised prior to this that population biologists were as conspiratorial as climate scientists, and that the "sceptical" scalpel is as necessary in this discipline as it is in the case of AGW.
Perhaps I am living in delusion that there is a species-decline problem?
Tilo Reber:
Just because you're an ignorant moron doesn't mean anyone else lacks sense. The point was that the trend for the first 30 years on the graph is not the same as the average trend over the whole century. You are so predictably dense.
"I hadn't realised prior to this that population biologists were as conspiratorial as climate scientists, and that the "sceptical" scalpel is as necessary in this discipline as it is in the case of AGW."
They undoubtedly have learned the trick of the warmers. If you want billions in funding, scream the sky is falling.
So that El Niño and La Niña had equal and opposite effect? Sure if you say so. If you have any pretense to honesty, you will find a period during which CO2 rose and that doesn't start with one of the strongest El Niños on record or have any other natural forcing variation and demonstrate that such period did not warm. You cannot do a valid experiment without controls.
Moved from Pielke train wreck:
Tilo Reber:
i.e. even chance on being higher than median prediction.
Rather like saying that if you believe that overall, house owners lose money on house insurance, then you won't have house insurance because you think it's a waste of money. i.e. you're bullshitting us if you say home insurance has a net cost but still have it anyway. Annan wouldn't be bothered making this bet for the same reason I don't want to take on the risk of losing my house.
Moved from Pielke train wreck:
Tilo Reber:
What "huge error bands and huge uncertainties" is Annan hiding behind? The graph that he points to has an uncertainty s.d. of 0.009 deg C/year for the period 1995-2014. A thirty year period would have an uncertainty s.d of 0.007 deg C or perhaps less. Why are you bullshitting us that he is hiding behind "huge error bands and huge uncertainties"?
Chris O
"Why are you bullshitting us that he is hiding behind "huge error bands and huge uncertainties"?"
Quote, Annan:
"So, where does 0.11 lie in the null distribution N(0.19,0.21)? Just about slap bang in the middle, that's where. "
So basically the statement is that if you use a trend that is .19 per decade then your s.d. is .21 per decade. This means that you could have a negative trend and still be peachy - according to Annan. The standard distribution is larger than the trend.
Let's take it a step further, he is saying that for an 8 year period, if the trend is suppose to be .19, then actually getting .11 is no problem.
Annan:
"OK, it is marginally lower than the mean (by a whole 0.38 standard deviations), but actually closer to the mean than one could generally hope for, even if the null is true. In fact the probability of a sample statistic from the null distribution being worse than the observed test statistic is a whopping 70% (this value being 1 minus the integral of a Gaussian from -0.38 to +0.38 standard deviations)!"
In the 19 year example that you gave above, the decadal trend is .21 and the standard distribution of .09 is 43% of the trend. In other words, if the observed value for the period of 1995 to 2014 had been .12 instead of .21, there would be no problem, according to you or James.
In my mind this is statistical sophistry.
If you tell me that we have a .19C per decade warming trend and then when you get nothing for 8 years your model is not falsified, then I say that your model isn't worth a crap to me and tells me nothing.
And regarding your 30 year period, if your s.d. is .07/decade, then that is still a 33% variation. So instead of a .21C/decade trend you could have a .14C/decade result and still claim - no problem.
Let's take it a step further. Instead of Annan's 8 year trend of .11, today we have a 10 year trend with no warming. Even statistically you are either outside the s.d. or very close to the edge. My point here is that I don't give a fuck. Relying on the error bands may not falsify the model, but any fool with any common sense can see that the trend number suggested by the model is worthless because we never have seen such a trend and there is no reason to expect that we ever will. The model has not show us any predictive value if it cannot get closer than 33% over a thirty year period. And currently, we don't have any reason to believe that it will even get to within 33% for the period from 2000 to 2030.
Bottom line, not falisified does not mean that a model is worth a crap. And when you are bouncing along the bottom edge, as is currently the case, it may not stay unfalsified for long.
I don't pretend to be a statistician, but when someone tells me that we have a .2C/decade warming trend even if it is not emperically visible, then I call bullshit.
That is why I want a real number from the climatologists that they will stand behind. 50% chance it will be greater, 50% chance it will be less, and I will bet money on it. Not, "Well gee, it hasn't been falisified!".
"Annan wouldn't be bothered making this bet for the same reason I don't want to take on the risk of losing my house."
Yeah, it's a coin toss bet, but I doubt that 10 grand will cost him his house. Remember, I have as much chance of loosing mine as Annan does his. I consider that it would be worth 10 grand to me to see one of these pompus climate scientists actually stand behind their work. And since it is Annan's profession and since there are people casting doubt on his profession, I would think that he would welcome the chance to show that he will stand behind his work. But the frikin coward hasn't even come back with a counter offer. Absolutely nothing to demonstrate that he believes there is a .2C trend. Just cover your ass statistics.
"You're not getting the point which is that for you to deny that increased CO2 is a warming force over the last 10 years requires belief that nothing else (natural or otherwise) could have given a cooling force."
No, you are not getting the point. We are perfectly happy to accept that natural variation could have completely masked the effects of CO2 for 10 years. We just want you to tell us what that natural variation was. Because out of all of the usual suspects, none seemed to have been in play in a way that would cause that masking.
Tilo, the thing is, you have proposed the wrong bet. If you are the one proposing it, ranter than Annan or Tim, then you should be doing so on the basis of YOUR model (world view, in this case, since it is not based on any GCM or equivalent).
You claim you are entirely comfortable with a 50:50 chance of winning, which you say is fair. You also don't believe in AGW. Thus, your default (null) hypothesis for the next 30 years is no net warming. (Actually, if you acknowledge stochastic variation, then your null is that there is a 50:50 chance of some warming or cooling over that period). Of course, if you subscribe to the current 'consensus' of denialists, then you would think there is a >50% chance of cooling over that period. But let's stick with the simple odds based on a static long-term climate.
Would you be willing to "back your model" and bet $10K that there is no warming over the next 30 years? Or are you actually being a teensy dishonest after all?
"Tilo, the thing is, you have proposed the wrong bet. If you are the one proposing it, ranter than Annan or Tim, then you should be doing so on the basis of YOUR model (world view, in this case, since it is not based on any GCM or equivalent)."
I'm getting really tired of repeating the same thing to the local peanut gallery. I'm not a climate scientist. I dont't have a model. I don't deny that there is some CO2 foring. I simply want the people who are professional scientists to show that they will stand behind a prediction, rather than hiding behind statistical variation. The legislators of the world don't make policy based upon my believes. They do make it based upon the supposed science of people like Annan.
Furthermore, Annan often offers bets to people based upon those peoples predictions, but he never offers them based upon his own. He is one of the priests that you people follow. Why are you all screaming and crying like babies when someone asks your priest to show his faith. I'm not the one who is asking for trillions in carbon trading. I'm not the one who is asking for further trillions is restricted development. I'm not the one who is asking that people sacrifice their freedom based upon my prediction. So shut the fuck up and just admit that you are a pack of cowards who don't want to have your cult ever held accountable for the damage that you are doing to the world. This is about the 5th time I have answered the same stupid question. And it's the last time that I am answering it.
That's why I said:
"YOUR model (world view, in this case, since it is not based on any GCM or equivalent)."
Since you don't seem to understand this basic point: a model is a conceptual simplification of reality. Doesn't need to be mathematical, to be a model. That is why I said "world view".
Still, I'm glad you clarified that your mental model says does not say "no warming", and that you subscribe to AGW. Your argument is therefore about climate sensitivity. Good to know that - it is certainly an uncertain quantity. But isn't it convenient that you don't need say where on the 1-11C spectrum of possibilities you are comfortable to wager against.
Oh, and your aggressive and abusive counters suggest a sensible reason why: "The legislators of the world don't make policy based upon my believes."
bi:
"Alarmist Creep is a strawman sockpuppet, possibly created by Tilo Reber. And I claim my ten shillings."
LOL. I guess I was right in my assessment of you being the forum clown. Alarmist Creep and I have had many coversations at Marohasy's blog. We have never agreed in even one of them. Go and check for yourself. This is the first time that I have ever heard Alarmist ask a question that didn't conform to the warmers official manual of talking points. Therefore my shock. But of course you did behave in the predicable way. You attacked him and made no attempt to answer his question. Now that is par.
Amaranthus:
"Oh, and your aggressive and abusive counters suggest a sensible reason why: "The legislators of the world don't make policy based upon my believes.""
Really, then why do they listen to Annan after his aggressive and abusive attacks on Pielke?
And why, when I start my posts here with a simple chart that shows no warming for the past ten years, do I get this kind of response?
"Tilo, what the fuck is your point?"
Could it be that the warmers believe that they are the only ones that have the god given right to be aggressive and abusive?
I'm perfectly happy to drop the attitude. But when I'm getting attitude I'm going to be giving attitude - and I don't care who the site belongs to.
The issue is not what the temperature would be in 30 years time. The issue is what it would be in 50 or 100 or more years time when a s.d. below the expectation is still a very serious temperature rise. Thirty years is only significant in this context because it is an observation period, not that 0.4 deg C above today is relatively serious.
I thought you said the model hasn't been falsified.
The NOAA's ten year trend bottomed out at 0.10 deg C for the decade that ended in January this year. The 10 year trend has risen every month since then. 0.10 deg C per decade is not "no warming" and rising every month since January is not "bouncing along".
You wish.
I didn't say it would cost him his house. I said "for the same reason" I don't want to take on the risk of losing my house. Perhaps I should have said for the same "type" of reason I don't want to take on the risk of losing my house. Have a think about why you have insurance in general.
Barton:
"You've been told what the "natural climate events" that result in your so-called trend here several times, and you rejected the explanation each time."
Yes, I have a tendency to do that when the explanations are wrong. Funny, for some reason they don't seem to get more right with repetition. Maybe they do for you.
"I'll try once again: You are starting from an El Nino year and ending in a La Nina year. The "natural climate events" resulting in your trend are El Nino and La Nina. You picked a part of the curve that started with a jog up and ended with a job down, a technique that would have given you a flunking grade in any introductory data analysis course in the world."
Yes, except for my grade, it is still the same worn out and falsified explanation. First, let me suggest that the flunking grade would go to the person who believes that a trend line get's it's slope using only the first and the last year of data. Then, take a look at the entire data set from the NOAA site.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ens…
So, my chart starts in 1998 and ends with the most recent data.
http://bp0.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SCzoV9FfAOI/AAAAAAAAABM/1ycUWBwSZMw…
If we go to the NOAA chart and look at 1998, where my chart starts, we can see that there were four month of El Nino that would raise the front end of my trend line, giving it less up slope. And being completely honest, the effects of the El Nino of 97 probably also helped. That's 8 more month. So we can truthfully say that we had 12 month of El Nino effect at the beginning of my chart to help flatten the trend line that my chart shows.
Now, let's go to the end of the NOAA table and we can see that we have 8 month of La Nina to also help flatten the trend lines in my chart. Now, if we put on our blinders and left it at that, you may have been right. But of course we would only do that if we were AGW cultist. Since I don't fall into that camp I don't have to take my script from Tamino or from RC. I can look at all of the data.
Going back to the beginning of my charting period, we can see that we had 29 month of La Nina between July of 98 and February of 2001. All of that would contribute to giving my trend line more of a warming slope.
Now, let's go back to the end of my chart. We see 8 month of El Nino from July 2004 to Feb. 2005. Then we see six more month of El Nino from August of 2006 to January of 2007. Those two periods would also contribute to giving the trend line more of a warming slope. I have skiped an 11 month El Nino period that is roughly in the middle of my chart because it's effect may be to raise the trend line, but not to increase or decrease the slope of the trend line in any significant way.
So the bottom line is this. If we look at the entire period of my chart with no warming, there is no way to conclude that the only reason that it shows no warming is because of the El Nino at the beginning and the La Nina at the end. Given the total El Ninos and La Ninas in the charting period, it seems more likely that they would contribute to a warming slop rather than to a flattening slope. Try to understand that Barton, and then maybe both of us can stop repeating ourselves.
More like partly than completely.
You keep being told was what could cause it. When are you going to actually show that it couldn't. Handwaving is not acceptable.
Tilo,
The subject was whether starting the inane bet was analogous to making a bet on coin tosses including some already occurred. What I got through demonstrating and what you are profoundly ignorant of is that there is error around Annan's forecast (including around his point estimate of climate sensitivity) just as there is error around any forecast of the outcome of a number of coin tosses. The fact that we can't attribute the error around Annan's forecast to forcings that would influence climate over the appropriate time scale, just like the fact that we can't attribute error in the outcome of coin tosses, does not imply that you haven't locked any of it in by incorporating 7 years that were slightly below estimate. That's a fact no matter how much whining you choose to do on the subject.
It bears pointing this out because you seem to believe in your troll yeoman's work here, that you are trying to demonstrate that Annan doesn't 'stand behind his prediction' by offering a bet whose outcome will not hinge on whether or not that forecast is correct. And this in your feeble mind passes for intelligence. What a sad state of affairs that is. If you truly wanted to show or prove that "warming cultists are frauds, cowards, and hot windbags" wouldn't you offer a bet that they would at least win if they were right a majority of the time? Can't they at least have 50% if they're right to go along with their 0% if they're wrong? See, this is the problem with the modern right wing: so credulous it encourages cautionary tales like our friend Tilo here to go off tilting at windmills. Poor poor poisonous little man.
BTW, why would Annan want to make a bet with some denialist troll that would give him zero expectation of profit when losing the bet (which he thinks is 50% likely) will make him look like an idiot. Just maybe he thinks his professional reputation is worth as much as his house.
"The issue is what it would be in 50 or 100 or more years time when a s.d. below the expectation is still a very serious temperature rise. "
Considering it's poor record over 30 years, I don't see a reason to expect that it will get better over 50 or 100 years; especially considering that we will be running out of fossil fuels over that time period. That is another good question. Does the model include the phasing out of fossil fuel in the period from 50 to 100 years from now due to the fact that we will have consumed most of them. I doubt that it does. I do remember that Hansen had a model scenario that included no increase in CO2 level around 2000. And even though that didn't happen, we had less temperature increase that that scenario called for. Forgetting the error bands, that is.
"The NOAA's ten year trend bottomed out at 0.10 deg C for the decade that ended in January this year. The 10 year trend has risen every month since then. 0.10 deg C per decade is not "no warming" and rising every month since January is not "bouncing along"."
Don't know where you get your data, but maybe you need to take a closer look at this chart.
http://bp0.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SCzoV9FfAOI/AAAAAAAAABM/1ycUWBwSZMw…
The only month that made it above the trend line this year, in my char, is March. And only for HadCrut3. And only barely. Hansen's fraudulent GISS record also popped above the trend line in March. But even he has Jan, Feb and April well below the trend line.
"it may not stay unfalsified for long.
You wish."
Yes, I do wish. Apparently you wish for the temps to increase. Which goes a long way towards making my point about the warmers. They don't care about the earth or the temperature. They want more heat, more catastrophes, more taxes, more government power, more govenment control of peoples lives. It's all about politics and ego for them.
"why would Annan want to make a bet with some denialist troll"
Look, Chris, you can keep spinning your excuses for Annan for as long as you like, but it's not going to change the truth. And the truth is very simply that AGW cultist are too cowardly to stand behind their vodoo science in any other way than by flapping their lips and hiding behind statistical sophistry.
Tilo Reber:
That's precisely what a "strawman sockpuppet" will do, actually. Engage in weak and silly disagreements which you can easily "debunk" and claim victory over. A strawman sockpuppet is a strawman... and a sockpuppet.
= =
Bernard J.:
Dang it, who isn't in the Worldwide Warmist Conspiracy?
I would wish for understanding to flow from seeking the most objective perspective one can muster, rather than allow one's position to be biased by wishful thinking.
Obviously too much to wish from those who worship at the banks of a certain river in Egypt.
This is a handwaving argument with no quantitative basis. The El Niño in 1998 was MUCH stronger than anything else regardless of how long they lasted for. It's also at the beginning of the 10 year period so it's going to have a stronger weight in the regression than events closer to the middle of the period. You have provided no mathematical demonstration that that El Niño etc. couldn't have masked most of the effect of rising CO2 over those years (and no-one apart from nobodies is saying it masked the whole effect over the whole of the earth's surface).
"This is a handwaving argument with no quantitative basis."
So is the original argument that it is El Nino and La Nina that are masking the CO2 effect.
"The El Niño in 1998 was MUCH stronger than anything else regardless of how long they lasted for."
More handwaving.
"It's also at the beginning of the 10 year period so it's going to have a stronger weight in the regression than events closer to the middle of the period. "
More handwaving with no quantitative basis.
"You have provided no mathematical demonstration that that El Niño etc. couldn't have masked most of the effect of rising CO2 over those years"
And you have provided none that is could. So shut up and follow your own advice.
Tilo,
There are unforced natural fluctuations in the ocean/atmosphere circulation of 40-70 year duration that typically vary up and down by >0.3C. If we are experiencing such a natural fluctuation, which seems quite likely, what is notable is that there has been no downward flux, but global temperatures have been stable.
The most reasonable conclusion is that AGW has already reached the point where it is as strong as natural variability.
Look Tilo, you can keep spinning your excuses for why Annan should take your bet for as long as you like, but it's not going to change the truth. And the truth is very simply that AGW denialists are in denial about how the world behaves and can only flap their lips and hide behind statistical sophistry.
You could at least have tried to dispel this by demonstrating what was wrong with my argument that losing would make Annan look like an idiot. Instead all you can come up with is a bullshit theory. Eventually you'll be stripped bare and have nothing left but your bullshit.
"There are unforced natural fluctuations in the ocean/atmosphere circulation of 40-70 year duration that typically vary up and down by >0.3C."
Can you give me a link to these 40-70 year duration fluctuations?
"If we are experiencing such a natural fluctuation, which seems quite likely,"
Quite likely? And you people accuse me of handwaving? Quite likely because you want it to be or because you accept the prophet Hansen's stone tablets that say 3C per CO2 doubling and you think all of reality must be forced to fit that preconception.
"You could at least have tried to dispel this by demonstrating what was wrong with my argument that losing would make Annan look like an idiot."
Yes I could. And we could dance your idiotic dance until the end of time. If you think that having one of your arguments go unanswered makes you a winner - be my guest.
Look, if there is going to be negotiation on the bet, then it has to be done with Annan, not here. Do you think that I'm going to show all of my hand before the betting starts? But Annan has been too cowardly to even come back with a counter offer. So there is really no point to having a bitch slap contest with you.
You could at least say that it has not been mathematically demonstrated that these processes have masked the CO2 effect. But the fact remains that you cannot find such a masking effect without starting with a strong El Niño. Otherwise you could easily demonstrate the truth of your position. What are the chances of your proposition being true without any evidence over a long period of time?
Look it up: strongest El Nino.
The idiotic dance is your bullshit cop-out.
If you think your bullshit cop-out makes you a winner - be my guest.
So it could make him look like an idiot. OK.
Well maybe the sad fact is that you are just too insignificant to be worth going to any trouble for.
My understanding comes from a basic knowledge of radiation transfer physics, not from authority.
Your understanding seems to be based on nothing more than credulity and ignorance.
What bullshit. I'm only saying a s.d. You can call that "poor" if you want to give it a bullshit name but "poor", i.e. 1 s.d. below expectation is still very serious 100 years from now.
The bullshit never runs out with you, does it. Coal will easily last more than 100 years.
Maybe you should try clicking on the link under NOAA.
Yes, I do wish.
Yes, a believer in wishful thinking.
Is Tyler still obsessing over his cherry picking? Reminds me of his behaviour on the dot.earth thread- make silly comments and avoid talking about the actual science.
Or rather
Yes, a believer in wishful thinking.
"You could at least say that it has not been mathematically demonstrated that these processes have masked the CO2 effect."
Why should I. The warmers all over the web, including RC and Tamino are latching on to that excuse without demonstrating anything mathematically. And if they were climate scientist that were worth a shit wouldn't they want to mathematically quantify it. I mean isn't that what their job is all about? Here we have a ten year period of dead flat temperature trend and so they should be wondering what natural effects could have caused it. They have the El Nino/La Nina data available. They could try to quantify it's effects and try to make some sensible determination of how all of the cycles during that ten year period effected the trend. In my mind, that is what a real climate scientist would do. But no, the lying phonies simply grab on to the fact that there was an El Nino in the first year and a La Nina in the last and they wave their hands and go - there it is, that's the cause. Reminds me of Mann's unwillingness to update his tree ring series to the present because he knows damn well that the warming shown by the instrument records won't be there. Not to mention Mann's complete unwillingness to come to grips with Lenah Ababneh's doctoral disertation. Your camp is stuffed full of phonies.
"My understanding comes from a basic knowledge of radiation transfer physics, not from authority. "
Ah, it's true because you say it's true. Well that does it for me. Can't argue that point. Luminous says that there is this mysterious 40-70 year fluctuation that flatened the temp trend and she knows it because she knows radiation transfer physics. Nobody else knows it, but her word about her knowledge of radiation transfer physics should be all we will ever need.
"Is Tyler still obsessing over his cherry picking? Reminds me of his behaviour on the dot.earth thread- make silly comments and avoid talking about the actual science. "
I'm so impressed by the way that you filled that comment with "actual science".
"Look it up: strongest El Nino."
More handwaving. What number is "strongest" exactly? How is it quantified. Are you considering that the effect on the trend is determined not only by the magnitude of the anomaly but also by the time period that it is there? Probably not. And do you remember that the La Nina that followed that El Nino was there for more than twice as long as the El Nino. In fact, the starting period, 1998 only had 4 month of El Nino and it was followed immediately by 29 month of La Nina. You are starting to bore me in a big way with these inane arguments Chris. You are either going to have to come up with better arguments or a more reasoned approach; or else I'm going to have to punt you.
http://tinyurl.com/2arb2r
http://tinyurl.com/5727wj
Thanks Boris. Concerning your second link, I'm happy that you found help. Concerning your first link, I already posted it on #95. Now here is a test for you. What else did I say regarding the strength issue. I have confidence that you can find it and understand it. We will have a quiz tomorrow.
bi:
"That's precisely what a "strawman sockpuppet" will do, actually. "
Thanks for that irrational rant bi. You have once again earned your distinguished postion as forum clown.
Look, if there is going to be negotiation on the bet, then it has to be done with Annan, not here. Do you think that I'm going to show all of my hand before the betting starts?
Tilo, I think I have an idea of what you have up your sleeve.....you are going to change your light bulbs and buy carbon offsets to increase your chances of winning......Annan is too smart for that, he's considering putting an addition on and buying an SUV.
Sorry Tilo, I did read all 10,000 words you've written here in the past three days. I look forward to likewise ignoring your manifesto.
Betula:
LOL. You are on to me. Already did the first one. So we are probably on our way to an ice age as we speak.
I wonder, can you find a place to park a Yukon in Japan? ;)
"I look forward to likewise ignoring your manifesto."
LOL. Good one Boris. As an aside and just out of curiosity, did you ever read Theodore Kaczynski's manifesto. I did. You expect that you are going to be reading some kind of goof ball, but the guy is actually very coherent, and there is a lot of truth to what he says. The only place that the logic really breaks down is were he explains that he has a right to make his vision of the world come about through violence. In fact, if he hadn't gone down that rout and if he had simply found a publisher for his material, he could probably be a kind of green messiah today. He lived in a tiny house, rode a bicycle everywhere he went, probably had a carbon footprint that was one tenth of the average American. He was anti industialization and interested in taking care of the environment. A man before his time you might say. LOL. You should read his manifesto. I hear that his shack is available for rent in Montana. :0)
"The fact that we can't attribute the error around Annan's forecast to forcings that would influence climate over the appropriate time scale, just like the fact that we can't attribute error in the outcome of coin tosses, does not imply that you haven't locked any of it in by incorporating 7 years that were slightly below estimate. That's a fact no matter how much whining you choose to do on the subject."
So what factors behave in a way that locks them in in such a way that the CO2 forcing will be permanently masked? You apparently want to treat those factors as coin toss type factors. But coin toss factors don't lock anything in. They have zero effect on the trend. If they did, they wouldn't be coin toss type factors. I'm also not sure that there is such a thing as coin toss type factors. For exaple, if you have an El Nino, you could have it followed by a La Nina or another El Nino. But are the odds the same for both. I don't know, but I doubt it.
Let's look at it another way. Let's look at the period from 1978 to 2008. It was well below the .2C/decade trend. Well, if the trend is truely .2C, then it must manifest itself. This means that every time you have a period where your trend is below .2C, you must have a period that is above .2C - or else you will never get that .2C trend. That missing temp from the last 30 years must manisfest itself with a period that is greater than .2C. Just the kind of period that would win Annan his bet. Of course all of this would not be true if the trend is less than .2C. But if it is, Annan should loose his bet.
Look at it another way. If we haven't had .2C for the last 30 years. And if there is not going to be a catch up factor for the 30 years from 2000 to 2030, in fact if there is not even going to be a .2C from 2000 to 2030, then we will be well below the trend for 52 years. All without any significant interval where we were above .2C. If that turns out to be our result, then is the trend really .2C? Why would anyone believe that?
The second part of your long winded rant is dependent on the first part being true, and you failed to demonstrate that.
"See, this is the problem with the modern right wing: so credulous it encourages cautionary tales like our friend Tilo here to go off tilting at windmills."
Majorajam you really do need to get out of your mother's basement once in a while. Try it, you'll feel better.
Tilo Reber:
Please, Tilo, be a gigantic a-hole so that Tim Lambert can have a reason to ban you.
Tilo Reber posts:
Let's look at the Hadley Centre temperature anomalies for 1998-2007:
YearAnom
19980.546
19990.296
20000.270
20010.409
20020.464
20030.473
20040.447
20050.482
20060.422
20070.402
Regress for trend and you get a positive slope of 0.004661, which is insignificant at p < 0.64.
Now, let's take out 1998 and 2007. Now the slope is 0.024583 and is highly significant a p < 0.035.
So actually doing the math proves that including a starting El Nino year and an ending La Nina year DOES make a difference. So all your explanations to the contrary, all your babbling about the La Nina that immediately followed 1998, all your misunderstandings of trend lines and sample size and statistics and probability in general, are worthless. Do the math and it turns out YOUR CHERRY-PICKED START AND END DATES MAKE A SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE.
Deal with it.
Tilo Reber, as critical of population biologists as he is of climate scientists, sed:
So I sez:
And Tilo Reber sez:
It seems that Ol' Tilo has a bit of a prejudice against ecology types.
After his antics on Marohasy's blog he sees fit to construct, above, a strawman of breathtaking proportions when he implies that the presence of deer, foxes, squirrels and coyotes in Denver are an indication of no problem existing with respect to global species decline. And then he goes to the nub of his peeve - that those greedy population biologists are using warming to get funding.
Tilo Reber, I have been working in population biology for over ten years, and I can say categorically that neither myself nor even one of my work colleagues has used the "warmers' trick" to " scream [that] the sky is falling" to garner any funding. Many of my colleagues are exceedingly concerned about the phenological shifts that are apparent in so much of the biosphere, but our funding is based on other factors that have no need to invoke AGW in order to be considered.
Of the biologist that I do not know, but that I know of, funding applications that DO use AGW as a basis for justifying the research always do so with very good evidence for the seriousness of the work, given the available evidence of climate change effects.
Perhaps Tilo Reber will bite where all the other deniers have so far been deathly quiet. I have asked this question countless times before on Deltoid with no response - how does the denialist community account for the phenological shifts observed in the biosphere, and why are both living and non-living systems not objective integrators of warming trends in climate?
This should be something that they leap at, because at a basic level it requires none of that messy statistical stuff that so sticks in Ol' Tilo's craw. Instead, it's just simple empirical evidence to be addressed.
And whilst Tilo Reber was making sweeping generalisations about scientific disciplines in which he has no training, experience or even a modicum of understanding, he also came up with:
Sir, I most vehemently do NOT wish for temperatures to increase. The species (and their ecosystems) with which I work are imperilled by even the best case scenarios of the "warmers", and given the ridiculous number of other threats to these same species and ecosystems I would be the first to hope that AGW is a storm in a teacup, and simply an issue that I could ignore so that I can hop to and address those other issues. Frustratingly, the best evidence available for objective consideration suggests that warming is an issue.
The same perspective is most definitely the case for all biologists whom I know, and your statement says vastly more about your political leanings and paranoias than about your ability to produce a sane assessment of the state of biological science. Neither I nor any of my colleagues needs climate change as an excuse in a grant application, and you are way, way out of order to say so.
Perhaps you can stopper your vitriol and your potty-mouth for a moment and apologise unreservedly to the genuine and dedicated scientists whose reputations you have so cavalierly besmirched; or, failing that, you could try to just colour within the lines of those piccies that you are trained turn your crayons toward.
Tilo says, "So what factors behave in a way that locks them in in such a way that the CO2 forcing will be permanently masked?" Permanently masked? So a thousandth of a degree beneath forecast would count as a permanent masking of the greenhouse effect? That's some pretty good goalpost toting you've got going on there. Fyi, these are the kinds of 'errors' that get people thinking you're just a garden variety troll. I mean, even you aren't that dumb.
Back on earth, we are discussing how 7 years realized data will affect a bet that could turn on very small differences in end state mean temperatures- in fact would do if Annan's forecast were highly skillful. So we're arguing about whether seven years error around trend correlates with end state error. And, for a whole host of reasons I have outlined, (especially by way of chaotic feedback), it does. So, hence, you've offered a bet wherein Annan wins less than 50% if his forecast is 100% accurate!
As regards, 'The second part of your long winded rant is dependent on the first part being true, and you failed to demonstrate that', for a computer scientist, your command of logic is pretty shocking. No, the second part does not depend on the first. You are still in the position of defending your inane contention that a bet whose outcome does not test Annan's forecast effectively challenges him to stand by his forecast. That is true whether the bet is started in 2009 or 2000. Perhaps you should worry about your own level of core competency before you ably demonstrate your inadequacies outside of it.
"So actually doing the math proves that including a starting El Nino year and an ending La Nina year DOES make a difference."
God you are stupid Barton. You took out the El Nino at the beginning and the La Nina at the end, but you didn't take out the 29 month La Nina at the beginning and the two El Nino's at the end.
How many times do I have to tell you the same thing. I don't deny that the El Nino at the beginning and the La Nina at the end effect the trend. I deny that those are the only El Nino's and La Nina's that effect the trend. My point is that the other El Nino's and La Nina's more than compensate for the ones at the beginning and at the end. Your little experiment does absolutely nothing to address that issue.
"Let's look at the Hadley Centre temperature anomalies for 1998-2007:"
I don't need your Hadley Centre chart Barton. I have made my own from Jan 1998 to the present - April 2008. The result is a dead flat trend line. The trend is zero.
If you still haven't figured out the problem, your second experiment is a cherry pick, because it starts with a La Nina and ends with an El Nino. You did exactly the same thing that you were crying about me doing. I don't know how many other ways to get that utterly simple point through to you. YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT ALL OF THE LA NINA/EL NINOs FOR THE TEN YEAR TREND!
If you still haven't figured out the problem, your second experiment is a cherry pick, because it starts with a La Nina and ends with an El Nino. You did exactly the same thing that you were crying about me doing. I don't know how many other ways to get that utterly simple point through to you. YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT ALL OF THE LA NINA/EL NINOs FOR THE TEN YEAR TREND!
well, the difference of course is, that YOUR example is starting with the biggest El Nino event of the last couple of decades and ends with a La Nina, that denialist circles call the "NEW ICE AGE".
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/ts.gif
but you obviously have little understanding of these things, so it is slightly useless to argue with you.
Tilo is a typical example of the new denialist tactic: they talk about flat or sinking tempeartures a lot, but when the talk gets serious they won t BET against a MAJOR increase in tempearture. Tilo basically challenges people into a less than 50% bet that might end with some volcano pulling the trend down to a 0.59°C increase in 30 years. the way we know him know, he will be all over the internet again, claiming a triumph against the AGW crowed (bare any logic) in this case.
a 0.59°C increase is a major catastrophe. it means that the daugther of my daughter will know snow only from trips, photos or indoor skiing.
the effects on nature and climate are completele unknown and people like Tilo who don t know a single thing on the topic are trying to lead the discussion on how to handle this. totally bizarre.
a 0.59°C increase is a major catastrophe. it means that the daugther (sic- Although pretty much every sentence you write could qualify for one of these.) of my daughter will know snow only from trips, photos or indoor skiing.
sod, please get a grip.
Leaving aside the question of why it would be a personal "catastrophe" for your hypothetical great grand daughter to experience a snow less future, a 0.59C increase in global mean temperature isn't likely to prevent snow from falling anywhere it does currently.
"well, the difference of course is, that YOUR example is starting with the biggest El Nino event of the last couple of decades and ends with a La Nina, that denialist circles call the "NEW ICE AGE"."
Only if you define "big" according to the magnitude of the anomoly. But, obviously, the magnitude isn't the only thing that counts when forming a trend line, duration is just as important. The 10 year chart of flat temps that I presented only has 4 month of El Nino at the front. But it has 29 month of La Nina at the front immediately following that El Nino. And to offset the La Nina at the end of my chart, there are 2 El Nino's that precede it.
"but you obviously have little understanding of these things, so it is slightly useless to argue with you."
I would say that if you don't understand that time of anomoly counts as much magnitude of anomoly, then you are the cretin here.
As for the rest of your rant, it's too ignorant to bother with.
I see Bernard J. figured out that Tilo is a conspiracy theorist. But T-Reb does have a point: have you seen the diamond encrusted rims on the Jags of these climate scientists? James Annan has a gold-plated hovercraft, for Pete's sake! (Just hock your bumper, James, and finance Tilo's bet, you coward!)
And don't get me started on those HIV freaks. They get billions to study AIDS, so you know the whole thing is a fraud. AIDS is caused by gay sex and possibly too much sushi. I read so on the internet.
"I see Bernard J. figured out that Tilo is a conspiracy theorist."
You mean like the theory that goes, "Every AGW denier is hired by Exxon."
Leaving aside the question of why it would be a personal "catastrophe" for your hypothetical great grand daughter to experience a snow less future, a 0.59C increase in global mean temperature isn't likely to prevent snow from falling anywhere it does currently.
is this an indicator for your understanding of climate change?
of course a higher global temperature will mean that there will be no more snow fall at certain locations!!!
while i can only speak from personal experience where i live, there are estimates for the effects in other places:
Under the low impact and the high impact scenarios respectively, the total alpine area with an
average of at least one day of snow cover decreases 10-39% by 2020, and 22-85% by 2050.
http://www.arcc.vic.gov.au/documents/CSIRO%20snow%20and%20greenhouse%20…
low impact is a 0.2°C increase up to 2020, only half of what Tilo thinks to be a positive outcome of his bet! and it will lead to a 10% reduction of places that have a day of snow cover!
"low impact is a 0.2°C increase up to 2020, only half of what Tilo thinks to be a positive outcome of his bet! and it will lead to a 10% reduction of places that have a day of snow cover!"
The Saudis and Iraqis who saw snow for the first time in their lives this year will be horrified to hear that.
Do I hear the peanut gallery winding up a few bars of "It's only the weather!" in the background?
Well, James Annan tells me that he is in the process of developing his own estimate for what the magnitude of the warming trend will be. We can have a little fun with this by guessing what he will come up with. Maybe we can use bi's wagering system. The winner gets to put up a victory post - everybody else admits to wearing baggy pants.
Okay here is my guess.
+0.18C per decade
The Saudis and Iraqis who saw snow for the first time in their lives this year will be horrified to hear that.
Tilo, actually snowfall is a really good example of the bad sides of climate change. removing it from a place that had itis somewhere between economically bad (think skiing resort for an extreme case) and simply sad.
adding it to new places is rather bad as well. snowfall in turkey made headlines, because thsoe places are uterly UNPREPARED to deal with it.
ps: please, before any attempt of a reply, try to UNDERSTAND what i said. FOR ONCE!
let me try to explain what i mean, when i speak of "UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS".
you wrote this utterly clueless comment:
Only if you define "big" according to the magnitude of the anomoly. But, obviously, the magnitude isn't the only thing that counts when forming a trend line, duration is just as important.
now the obvious problem with this claim is, that the method used in linear regression typically is called LEAST SQUARES.
i guess a self proclaimed "computer scientist" should be able to figure out the rest for himself. lance might want to help you....
Tilo Reber:
So where is the proof of your assertion?
So a "contribution to a warming slop" is proof that the overall effect of the El Ninos and La Ninas cannot be as negative as -0.2 deg C for the decade? BTW, no-one is claiming there cannot be other sources of natural variation besides El Nino/La Nina. In any case perhaps you would like to tell us what was responsible for the 0.40 deg C of warming over the decade beginning with July 1992 or the 0.42 deg C of warming over the decade beginning with January 1974 (HadCrut3 temperatures)? These rates of warming were at least 0.2 deg C/decade above the rate caused by rising CO2. Perhaps there is some law of Physics that says natural variation can cause 0.2 degrees of warming in a decade but cannot cause 0.2 degrees of cooling in a decade. If there is such a law, we'd all love to know about it.
BTW, besides not being interested in negotiating a bet with you because you are too insignificant to go to an trouble for, perhaps Annan thinks that anyone who comes along and proposes an ambit bet when all he has proposed are bets that shouldn't be ambit bets if the proposees are honest, is just a jerk.
Well, I was going to respond to Reber in 131, and then I realized it was useless. The man is locked in his view of the world and his view of how statistics work, and he absolutely refuses to think outside the box. Doesn't matter that his worldview has nothing to do with reality, or that every statistician in the world would call his view of statistics insane. His is a closed system which nothing from outside can penetrate.
I really don't think he's stupid. His vocabulary is good and to a certain extent he can reason. But he's starting from wrong premises and refuses to let go of them no matter how much evidence to the contrary is shown him.
I suggest we all just stop responding to him. We're wasting time, effort, and bandwidth.
"snowfall is a really good example of the bad sides of climate change. removing it from a place that had itis somewhere between economically bad (think skiing resort for an extreme case) and simply sad. adding it to new places is rather bad as well"
So Climate Change moved the snow from one place and dropped it on Saudi Arabia......and I will be rooting for the Saudi Arabia Ski team at the 2022 Olympic games.
And climate change moved all the snow from the Southern Hemishere and dropped it on the Northern Hemisphere.....
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/jan08-northern-hemisphe…
And losing ski areas is bad ecomomically, but to stave off AGW, we want less people driving to ski areas, less manufacturing of ski equiptment, less fossil fuel burning ski lifts and grooming machines,less second homes and construction of resorts..... and it would be better to replace the ravaged barren mountainside with trees......because we are destroying every ecosystem on earth to satisfy our own greedy pleasurable needs and we are running out of time........
I get it....Good CC/Bad CC........only there is no Good CC remember?
A few more snippets from HadCrut3: trends for 10 year periods beginning with:
June 1851: -0.22 deg C/decade
July 1877: -0.35 deg C/decade;
July 1885: -0.25 deg C/decade;
July 1895: -0.31 deg C/decade;
August 1899: -0.32 deg C/decade;
April 1941: -0.45 deg C/decade;
May 1957: -0.21 deg C/decade;
The global warming denialists are right. Obviously it is impossible for a natural or other cooling trend to overwhelm a 0.2 deg C/decade warming trend from rising CO2 because such cooling trends have never occured in the past.
"perhaps Annan thinks that anyone who comes along and proposes an ambit bet when all he has proposed are bets that shouldn't be ambit bets if the proposees are honest, is just a jerk."
NOTE: From now on, anyone who would like to speak about Annan will have to go through his mediator/secretary first.
Signed,
Chris O'Neill
Mediator/Secretary
NOTE: From now on, anyone who would like to speak about Tilo Reber will have to go through his mediator/secretary first.
Signed,
Betula
Mediator/Secretary
I demand a raise!
So Climate Change moved the snow from one place and dropped it on Saudi Arabia......and I will be rooting for the Saudi Arabia Ski team at the 2022 Olympic games.
betula, i see how my post went over your head, so here again real slow and short:
1. skiing makes a good example, because those running are NOT supposed to be communist AGW believing greens.
2. my point was. even IF climate change would just move climate effects, like snow, around a little, it still would be bad! (one ski lift left without snow, and most probably NO ski lift, where the snow decided to move...)
you can exchange the ski lift and the snow with other economic/ecologic and other climate effects: eg, birds and lack of rain...
3. even Tilo realized, that bringing up january 2008 is stupid.
"Tilo, actually snowfall is a really good example of the bad sides of climate change. removing it from a place that had itis somewhere between economically bad (think skiing resort for an extreme case) and simply sad. adding it to new places is rather bad as well. snowfall in turkey made headlines, because thsoe places are uterly UNPREPARED to deal with it."
ROFLMAO. So now global warming is "MOVING" snow from one place to another. No cultist has ever tried harder to explain everything that happens as being the wish of their god.
"The global warming denialists are right. Obviously it is impossible for a natural or other cooling trend to overwhelm a 0.2 deg C/decade warming trend from rising CO2 because such cooling trends have never occured in the past."
Another strawman. No "denialist" has said that natural trends could not overwhelm AGW for a time. When are you going to figure out what the real argument is about Chris. What we are saying is that if there were natural trends that overwhelmed AGW for the last 10 years, what are they? Clearly if you look at all of the La Nina, El Nino cycles for the entire ten year period, that is not the answer.
Betula:
"I demand a raise!"
How about .25C per decade?
Or do you take yours as 2XCO2?
Barton:
"I suggest we all just stop responding to him. We're wasting time, effort, and bandwidth."
And worst of all, having your ego crushed as your excuses are destroyed.
ROFLMAO. So now global warming is "MOVING" snow from one place to another. No cultist has ever tried harder to explain everything that happens as being the wish of their god.
Tilo, please try a SINGLE POST, not showing total ignorance of the science!
yes, more heat will lead to more water evaporation which will come back again eitehr as rain or, SNOW!!!!
so yes, global warming might lead to more snow(fall) at certain places!
4 comments, but not a word about LEAST SQUARES. so you haven t figured out yet, why duration is NOT as important as magnitude?
sod,
Just admit that saying that your grand daughter (or was it great grand daughter I forget) will "never see snow" because of a 0.59 C increase in global temperature was silly.
Even if she happened to live in an area that rarely sees snow now, a small increase in the average global temperature is likely to be insignificant to the probability of at least one snow event in her lifetime in that area.
This is beside the point that even if snow did not fall in that area (a highly dubious proposition) she could obviously travel to areas with snowfall, unless you are not extending your silly statement to mean that there would be no snowfall even in polar regions due to your hypothetical 0.59 C increase in temps.
Then there is the notion that a snow-less future for your hypothetical progeny would constitute a "catastrophe". After living for most of my life with snowy winters I'd be damn happy to never see the white stuff again!
C'mon sod, let this one go.
"Then there is the notion that a snow-less future for your hypothetical progeny would constitute a "catastrophe"."
According to sod,the bigger catastophe may be that AGW gives the hypothetical progeny hypothermia.
Tilo Reber:
What does it matter to a bullshitting ignoramus like you what they exactly are?
Sure if you say so. Prove it.
This is beside the point that even if snow did not fall in that area (a highly dubious proposition) she could obviously travel to areas with snowfall, unless you are not extending your silly statement to mean that there would be no snowfall even in polar regions due to your hypothetical 0.59 C increase in temps.
Lance, Betula, please try to READ and understand before making stupid comments.
here is again what i said above:
a 0.59°C increase is a major catastrophe. it means that the daugther of my daughter will know snow only from trips, photos or indoor skiing. the effects on nature and climate are completele unknown and people like Tilo who don t know a single thing on the topic are trying to lead the discussion on how to handle this. totally bizarre.
i did not speak of no snow anywhere. nor of seeing snow during her lifetime.
a childhood missing the fun of snow, just because of being born one generation too late, is a minor catastrophe in comparison with other effects of global warming, but it is one.
as always in this discussions, i provided data above. while the two of you were producing mostly hot air...
Lance you have been wrong several times again. why not do some reading in between all your posting?
Under the low impact and the high impact scenarios respectively, the total alpine area with an average of at least one day of snow cover decreases 10-39% by 2020, and 22-85% by 2050.
"a 0.59°C increase is a major catastrophe. it means that the daugther of my daughter will know snow only from trips, photos or indoor skiing. the effects on nature and climate are completele unknown and people like Tilo who don t know a single thing on the topic are trying to lead the discussion on how to handle this. totally bizarre."
First of all, why would we be emitting all that C02 for an indoor ski area....if the only reason we have an indoor ski area is because we emitted too much C02?
Second, you use an illogical scenario to accuse someone of lacking the knowledge to understand your logic regarding climate...
This is a classic example of a Snowman argument.
In addition Tilo likes some pretty good books. I was going to be snarky, but what's the point? I'll be nice. You like good books Tilo, though Light in August is better than The Sound and the Fury, in my opinion.
What do you read, Lance? I'm going to guess Conrad. And you probably hate Vonnegut.
Boris:
"though Light in August is better than The Sound and the Fury, in my opinion."
Thanks for the recommendation Boris. I've been looking for something worth reading. Maybe it'll distract me from picking on warmers for a while. ;-)
Tilo:
What we are saying is that if there were natural trends that overwhelmed AGW for the last 10 years, what are they?
Chris:
What does it matter to a bullshitting ignoramus like you what they exactly are?
Tilo:
Clearly if you look at all of the La Nina, El Nino cycles for the entire ten year period, that is not the answer.
Chris:
Sure if you say so. Prove it.
Tilo:
Well, you've obviously overwhelmed me with your brilliance, Chris. Go put up a victory post. But if you don't mind, I'm not going to respond to any more of your posts, since you will just whip me like you caught me sealing chickens.
"4 comments, but not a word about LEAST SQUARES. so you haven t figured out yet, why duration is NOT as important as magnitude?"
You have a good point, Sod. By "as important", I wasn't trying to make a mathematical correlation. My point is more that you have 4 month of El Nino at the beginning and 29 month of La Nina that follows it. By, "as important", I mean the total effects of those two sets of months. But hey, this is fun and educational. It also made me think a little and I believe that I may have come up with at test that will allow us to determine the effects of those two periods on the trend. Don't know when I will have time to try it out, or what the outcome will be, but I'll let you know either way.
So you've gone into repeat mode. I suppose there's not much I can do other than keep repeating the question that you keep failing to answer, i.e., if natural trend are capable of overwhelming AGW for the last 10 years, why does it matter to anyone other than someone with a professional interest exactly which and how much natural processes caused it? It doesn't make any difference to the fact that natural processes are capable of doing this and it doesn't make any difference to the fact of observed climate sensitivity and the fact that climate sensitivity cannot be derived from observing just a 10 year period.
So it's brilliant for me to ask you to prove your assertion. I never realized what brilliance this took before.
Oh how convenient. Just when you switched into repeat mode. Don't worry, repeat mode has zero content anyway.
Tilo Reber.
Back at #129 I asked:
I am still keen to hear you response to this, and perhaps you could drag Ian Mott from Marohasy's bog blog to Deltoid so that he might throw his considered expertise into the question too.
I am also waiting for your apology for denigrating the discipline of population biology with no more grounding that your own prejudice.
"how does the denialist community account for the phenological shifts observed in the biosphere"
Probably in the same way that it accounts for the stagering .8C temperature rise in the last 157 years.
"I am still keen to hear you response to this,"
I'm sure you are. So many alarmists, so little time.
"I am also waiting for your apology for denigrating the discipline of population biology"
Please continue to breath while you do so, Bernard.
You have a good point, Sod. By "as important", I wasn't trying to make a mathematical correlation. My point is more that you have 4 month of El Nino at the beginning and 29 month of La Nina that follows it. By, "as important", I mean the total effects of those two sets of months.
yes, i understood that. the problem is, you were flat out wrong. now while you sort of admit that, you decided AGAINST going back all over the claims that you made. perhaps the fact that you were wrong would have an effect on them as well?
or some other claims might be complete nonsense?
But hey, this is fun and educational.
now i am all in favor of education. BUT:
1. as a "computer scientist" (and someone who decided to BET on it!) you should have known!
2. the internet now is FULL of DENIALISTS, who make false claims while "trying to LEARN" something about statistics.
this is the reason why you guys are called DENIALIST. the normal approach is to learn FIRST, and make claims LATER!
It also made me think a little and I believe that I may have come up with at test that will allow us to determine the effects of those two periods on the trend. Don't know when I will have time to try it out, or what the outcome will be, but I'll let you know either way.
funny, but could it be that "scientists" came up with such a test before you? that it is called "correlation coefficient" or "significance level"?
and that barton even did look at it in comment #128 above?
for the benefit of your education, again:
do NOT use only a few datapoints. do NOT start with an outlier!
Tilo Reber:
Here's a couple more facts you convenietly ignore in your non-proof of your assertion:
World temperature doesn't switch immediately with a switch in SOI. The first 8 months of 1998 were very warm, not just the first 4.
The La Niña that followed was nearly just as warm or warmer than any El Niño before 1997-98. Not much strength to make a warming trend from then on.
In any case it doesn't matter if it's El Niño, La Niña, PDO, AMO or whatever. They make diddly squat difference to CO2's warming ability.
"What do you read, Lance? I'm going to guess Conrad. And you probably hate Vonnegut." -Boris
I live in Indianapolis where Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a local legend. I love his work and have heard him speak several times. He was a cranky socialist misanthrope and I miss him acutely.
Never was much of a Conrad fan nor his stylistic successor Hemmingway. I read whatever is lying around (my ex-wife was a voracious reader and her cast offs still litter our home) or on the "new" table at the library.
I tend to favor nonfiction when choosing vacation reading.
Sorry to disappoint you but I'm no fan or Ayn Rand's writing style either although I did flirt with objectivism in my twenties.
"for the benefit of your education, again: do NOT use only a few datapoints. do NOT start with an outlier!"
Well, Sod, while you had a point and while you did in fact misunderstand my intent when I said "equally important", you have unforuntately milked that point with inane generalizations way too far.
Last night I ran the numbers on the effects of all the El Nino's / La Nina's in the ten year period. And as I thought, both you and Barton are dead wrong. I will get the charts up on the net in the next couple of days.
And while you are busy preaching, that is what happens when you go grasphing at straws in order to support your pet theories. Obviously you yourself never did a scrap of work to try to confirm of deny the assertions that you were so recklessly making. And as far as I can tell, neither did any other climate scientist that used your excuse as a cover-up.
Last night I ran the numbers on the effects of all the El Nino's / La Nina's in the ten year period. And as I thought, both you and Barton are dead wrong. I will get the charts up on the net in the next couple of days.
i am holding my breath. Tilo will demonstrate that choosing few data points and starting with an outlier is good scientific practise.
i am really looking forward to those graphs!
sod,
Does use of capital letters increase your carbon footprint? I can see that your shift key works since you did capitalize Tilo.
So am I. I love strawmen.
Tilo Reber at #166.
Can you not provide a proper answer?
Those crickets from, a few days back, are chirping again.
Bernard asks...
"how does the denialist community account for the phenological shifts observed in the biosphere, and why are both living and non-living systems not objective integrators of warming trends in climate?"
Bernard.....you have been floating this question around for sometime now without a response.
I think there are several reasons for this.....for one, it's a loaded question. It's also a leading question and a misleading question.
It is loaded in the sense that to agree with the first part, one can't deny the second part (even though you assume they do)
It is leading in that it is designed to make a "denier" see the error of his or her thinking.
It is misleading in that it asks about one type of trend and assumes all "denialists" think alike.
I think it would be more honest if you were to change a few words. Example..
Why are both living and non-living systems not objective integrators of warming and cooling trends over millions of years?
Answer.....they are.
The way I see it, is that there have always been phenological shifts in the biosphere...though mankind hasn't always been around to observe them. We feel we have to account for everything with a simple answer, but I think the number of variables interacting over long and short spans of time is too complicated to fully comprehend.
Now, back to the original question, what would people on this site say if I were to ask similarly formatted questions, for example..
1. How does the Alarmist community account for the U.S. not signing on with Kyoto in the 1990's, and why were the President and Vice President at the time, not objective integrators of the signing trend.
2. How does the Liberal community account for Bush winning the election in 2000, and why is the Supreme Court not considered a panel of experts that reaches decisions based on a consensus.
So you see, the questions may seem unfair, and of course now I will be labeled a Bush loving neo-con right winger just for raising them, even though it's not true.
People on this site don't seem to realize that it is possible for someone to agree or disagree with parts of both sides of an issue without going over the deep end.
There are extremes on both ends and I often find myself in the middle, which has served me well for a long time.
One of my problems with AGW and it's effect is with "certainty". Nobody can be certain of a climate outcome, which means the outcome is questionable. If it is questionable, then that means there are questions. If there are questions that means there is doubt. If you have doubt that means you are a denialist twit and need to be re-programmed to think a certain way........that we are inherently bad creatures that are blindly destroying the earth, and we need to pay for our wickedness through sacrifice and compensation or else burn in the eternal flames of AGW.....
Sorry, I guess one side doesn't seem as deep as the other.
"Can you not provide a proper answer?"
This is the most proper answer I can give you.
1. I haven't looked at the biosphere situation enough to want to engage in a debate on it.
2. I'm skeptical of anyone in any field that proposes that a major disaster is on the horizon.
3. I would think that on the whole the biosphere would benefit from an increase of CO2 in the air, although reference #1.
Sod:
"i am holding my breath. "
Well, if my six year old daughter doesn't use up too much of my time, I might be able to get them completed tonight. Mostly, the explanations and narrative and a little cleanup are incomplete.
But I don't want you to suffer from oxygen deprivation, so here is a preview.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ten-year-hadcrut3-enso-ef…
Note: the internal label on the final graph should say El Nino instead of La Nina.
If you are looking at these tonight, don't be surprised if things update while you are on.
Betula:
As James Annan points out, the climate sensitivity is not certain, its estimate is a probability distribution. But maybe Betula has one of those coins that always comes up heads or maybe he just had an Alice in Wonderland moment.
Data is up:
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ten-year-hadcrut3-enso-ef…
Now repeat after me.
TEN YEARS -- NO WARMING -- NO EXCUSES
Now repeat after me.
WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR STRAWMAN.
Chris says.....
"As James Annan points out, the climate sensitivity is not certain, its estimate is a probability distribution."
Saleem Huq , lead Author of the Chapter on Adaptation and Sustainable Developement, IPCC 3rd report says......
"But what can be said with certainty is that such events will occur with increasing frequency in the future, due to changes in the global climate system caused by greenhouse gas emissions attributable to human activities."
This from Nasa Earth Observatory, May 11 2007....
"Temperatures are certain to go up further."
So yes, the climate sensitivity is uncertain, however, we are certain the temperature will go up, and we are certain catastrophies will be more frequent...........got it.
Wow, Mr. Reber is still at it. I took a while off, hoping he would go away if I stopped pointing out his mistakes, but he is either a pathological liar or has the rigidity of a paranoid schizophrenic. He still says there was no warming from 1998 to 2007, despite the clear demonstration that there was.
2 + 2 = 7, DAMN YOU! NO EXCUSES!
I've preserved the demonstration that the trend is up over that period as a page on my climatology site:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Reber.html
In my view, Tilo Reber deserves special mention as a global warming denier. He has a militant ignorance that would make Senator Imhofe or Ross McKittrick proud. It's one thing to be wrong, it's another thing to make an elementary math mistake and then insist, forever, that you're right and everybody else is wrong. As the Church Lady used to say, "Well, isn't that special!"
Betula, you have the uncertainty in the climate sensitivity conflated with uncertainty over whether climate responds to greenhouse gases at all. They are not the same number. We don't know whether a doubling of CO2 will produce 2 K or 4 K of warming. What we can be damn sure about is that it will not be 0 K.
If someone hits me over the head with a frying pan, assuming I'm not already dead or in a coma, it's going to hurt -- no doubt about it. Exactly how much it would hurt (measured perhaps in James Mills's hedons?) would be uncertain, depending on such variables as the size and composition of the pan, its velocity at contact, where it hits, etc. But we can be sure it would hurt.
Barton:
"In my view, Tilo Reber deserves special mention as a global warming denier. "
Oh, goody. Do I get to have my picture in the AGW hall of infamy?
Barton, the more I prove what a fool you are the more you continue to provide me with evidence that you are a fool.
1. I use monthly data instead of yearly data. That makes me more accurate than you. You can't disagree, because one of your high priests, Tamino, told me so. LOL. If you can't figure out how to handle monthly data, that's your problem. You will just have to remain ignorant.
2. I don't throw away useful data like you do. We have four month of data from 2008. I use it, you don't. Again, I'm more accurate.
3. When there are 7 ENSO periods in a 10 year trend, I don't just throw away the start and end period so that I can have a La Nina at the beginning and an El Nino at the end like you do. Instead, I try to evaluate the effects of all seven ENSO periods on the slope of my ten year chart. Conclusion - there is no ENSO effect on the chart. See:
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ten-year-hadcrut3-enso-ef…
Now, instead of using your inferior data and your ignorant analysis, take your head out of the sand and deal with the material that I have presented. Otherwise people will think that you are an old fool who cannot see what is clearly in front of his face.
depp=true
notiz=[I remind all commenters to be civil -Tim]
OK, a few individuals, not withstanding scientific papers and official reports, should have said "we are 97% certain the temperature will go up, and we are 97% certain catastrophies will be more frequent" or some such probabilistic statement. That makes all the difference to the action bottom line, doesn't it. This plane only has a 97% chance of crashing. Sounds safe enough for me.
"This plane only has a 97% chance of crashing. Sounds safe enough for me."
Actually Chris, the proper response would have been....
This plane has a 97% chance of causing flooding in Bangladesh. Sounds safe enough to me.
Tilo Reber:
February 1971-January 1981: .2C per decade
February 1972-January 1982: .2C per decade
and > .2C per decade for all decades starting between February 1971 and February 1972
November 1972-October 1983: .2C per decade
November 1975-October 1985: .21C per decade
and > .2C per decade for all decades starting between November 1972 and November 1975
June 1981-May 1991: .2C per decade
July 1982-June 1992: .2C per decade
and > .2C per decade for all decades starting between June 1981 and July 1982
May 1988- April 1998: .2C per decade
April 1996-March 2006: .2C per decade
and > .2C per decade for all decades starting between May 1988 and April 1996.
Happy now Mr. fuck?
TEN YEARS -- NO WARMING -- NO EXCUSES
i ll be very busy over the next couple of days, so just a few remarks:
1. your analyses (sort of) supports the claim that you made above: the effect of the 8 (4+4) month el nino in 1998 is weaker than that of the combined first and second la nina, stretching nearly 36 months. but the effect is only slightly less!
2. i see multiple small problems with your analysis. you scale it in your favor, by combining the two la ninas and at the end, by your method, there are 3-4 la nina months missing. i have some doubts about the method of simply adding up the results, but simply don t know enough about statistics to evaluate it.
3. the final conclusion you posted above is FALSE. you don t understand the term "cherry picking" at all. choosing a short el nino period at the beginning IS cherry picking.
that the start of a period might fall into a 3 years (!!!!!) period of la nina is NOT.
do you have ANY reason, for looking at a period that starts in january 1998 and ends now?
4. i am repeating myself: there IS a standard method of looking at the importance of datapoints for a trend. you remove them and repeat the analysis.
Betula:
Sorry, that's a statement, not a response (unless you mean one of your usual non-sequitur responses to what I said).
BTW, you must be a fan of China Airlines with its crash risk way below 97%.
"but the effect is only slightly less!"
Yes. That is why I gave you the point about the least squares. My point about the duration being just as important is that there was so much more duration for that first La Nina than for the first El Nino.
"you scale it in your favor, by combining the two la ninas and at the end,"
You can plot them individually and add their effect, but it will not change the number.
"there are 3-4 la nina months missing."
Those month have not yet happened. And since they are not used to produce the 10 years of flat trend, it doesn't matter. If we end up getting another 4 month of cool weather due to the La Nina residual, then the 10 year trend will actually be down rather than flat.
"have some doubts about the method of simply adding up the results,"
Since the trends were created by positioning the data into their original place in the period, I suspect that the addition will be okay. But I'm not 100% sure. If someone has a reason why this does not work, I would like to hear it.
"do you have ANY reason, for looking at a period that starts in january 1998 and ends now?"
I wanted to get at least 10 years of time and I wanted the chart to be as up to date as possible. You can consider it cherry picked if you like, but warmers do not own the cherry tree. And since the effects of La Nina and El Nino are very close to equal over that time period, it turns out to be an excellent selection.
Can I welcome you to the skeptics camp now Sod?
Yes. That is why I gave you the point about the least squares. My point about the duration being just as important is that there was so much more duration for that first La Nina than for the first El Nino.
THREE YEARS! that is nearly one third of the period! and it has a slightly bigger influence that the first 8 months? wow!
You can plot them individually and add their effect, but it will not change the number.
it makes a difference for your original claim. you are comparing TWO la ninas to ONE el nino.
Since the trends were created by positioning the data into their original place in the period, I suspect that the addition will be okay. But I'm not 100% sure. If someone has a reason why this does not work, I would like to hear it.
why not use the standard method? it allows to use other standard methods to look at the significance of your results...
hint: Barton already did most of the work...
I wanted to get at least 10 years of time and I wanted the chart to be as up to date as possible. You can consider it cherry picked if you like, but warmers do not own the cherry tree. And since the effects of La Nina and El Nino are very close to equal over that time period, it turns out to be an excellent selection.
hm, at least 10 years, i guess we ll be seeing this more often now.
it is a CLASSIC example of chrerry picking!
ps: are they supposed to have an "equal" effect? did you do soem carefull analysis on the literature on this? (still assuming that your method works. it is based on the assumption that different strength la ninas and el ninos have a sort of "proportional" effect on global temperature)
"why not use the standard method? it allows to use other standard methods to look at the significance of your results... hint: Barton already did most of the work..."
What is the standard method of determining if the ENSO cycles had an influence on the slope of the trend line?
Barton did zero to resolve the issue under discussion. If you don't understand that I'm going to have to downgrade my opinion of you.
"it is a CLASSIC example of chrerry picking!"
Now you are just resorting to brain dead repetitive assertions with no support.
"ps: are they supposed to have an "equal" effect? did you do soem carefull analysis on the literature on this?"
Let me ask you, did all of the pseudo climate scientists that claimed that the flat trend was due to ENSO check to see if there is suppose to be an equal or unequal effect. In fact, they never even looked at the entire 7 ENSO periods. They simply grabbed up the excuse of a La Nina at the beginning and an El Nino at the end without trying to quantify anything. So why am I stuck doing work that should be the job of climate scientists simply because the don't want to know "the inconvinient truth".
Using Tilo's own calculations:
The '98 El Niño and the current La Niña account for a net -0.1238 C/dec. slope over the period in question.
How does Tilo interpret this as 'no effect'?
It's a mystery to me.
"THREE YEARS! that is nearly one third of the period! and it has a slightly bigger influence that the first 8 months? wow!"
Try to remember the subject under discussion Sod. It is about the influence of the periods under discussion, not about how they achieved that influence.
"it makes a difference for your original claim. you are comparing TWO la ninas to ONE el nino."
Yes, the period contained 4 El Nino's and three La Nina's. The objective is to weigh the influence of all of them on the trend. It has nothing to do with any single ENSO effect being stronger or weaker than another. In the second half of the period you had 2 La Nina's pushing the trend up and one El Nino pushing it down. That is why 2 are compared to one. In the first half of the period there was one El Nino pushing the trend down as opposed to two La Nina's pushing it up. Then there was one La Nina in the middle that had no effect on the slope, mostly because of it's position. In regard to the slope of the trend line, magnitude, duration, and position all matter.
Luminous:
"It's a mystery to me."
That's because addition and subtraction are very difficult Luminous. But try again, I'm sure you'll get it.
Hint: The answer is +0.0126
Tilo,
Yes. That would be the linear mean slope for the entire 10 years. At least according to your bizarre calculation method.
Adding and subtracting isn't so hard. Knowing what to add and subtract in order to get a meaningful result, or what that meaningful result might be, seems beyond your intellectual capabilities.
"Yes. That would be the linear mean slope for the entire 10 years."
No, Luminous, that would be the influence on the slope for all of the ENSO events counted together.
The slope for the entire period, including non ENSO periods is 0. This means that if there were no ENSO envents for the period, the slope would actually have been negative. Meaning we would have had a slight cooling.
"Adding and subtracting isn't so hard. "
That's my girl!
"Knowing what to add and subtract in order to get a meaningful result, "
Oh, you mean that the result is only meaningful if it supports your forgone conclusions. If you have to throw away some of the data to get that - what the heck.
"BTW, you must be a fan of China Airlines with its crash risk way below 97%."
Is that a statement or a response?
And how could I possibly be a fan of an Airline who's country is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol..........their flooding risk is way above 97%.
I can't help but be reminded of this brilliant statement of yours........"What else would you call it when people prefer to run airconditioning than avoid flooding Bangladesh?"
So by accusing me of being a fan of China Airlines, are you indirectly accusing me of not caring about the people of Bangladesh?
Tilo,
You did a linear regression of your data and got a slope of 0.0000? Really? Honest to gosh, really?
Try to remember the subject under discussion Sod. It is about the influence of the periods under discussion, not about how they achieved that influence.
the problem is, that you are making two different claims:
1. the 29 month la nina (actually being two different la ninas) have a stronger effect than the 4 month el nino.
you sort of tested this and came to the conclusion, that they indeed have a slightly stronger effect.
problem here is, that nobody really objected to that claim. i just pointed out that your claim about amplitude and length having the same effect was false.it looks like nobody doubts, that a VERY long la nina, can have a stronger effect than a short el nino.
why should we doubt that?
2. the flat trendline has NOTHING to do with cherry picking a el nino as start, because my analysis shows that the total effect of both phanomenons is positive
the problem with this claim of yours is (at least) with the FIRST PART.
you DO indeed cherry pick, as noone can explain why you are looking at a 10 years and 4 months period starting with an OUTLIER!
all your arguments about a long la nina being stronger than a short el nino are completely IRRELEVANT to this discussion. because it is NOT cherrypicking to start a period of analysis in a LONG period showing a certain effect.
the term CHERY PICKING is derived from picking something SPECIAL, not the COMMON!
(most of us, btw, would tell you to use a LONGER period, not a shorter one!)
"why should we doubt that?"
You shouldn't. And it is my point exactly. The flat period started out with a very short period of El Nino and a very long period of La Nina, so the La Nina had more influence than the El Nino. Both you and Chris were making noises like you didn't belive it.
"the term CHERY PICKING is derived from picking something SPECIAL, not the COMMON!"
And why would you think that 29 months of La Nina is any more common that a short El Nino with a strong magnitude.
You are grasping at straws now Sod. Your argument has been defeated. You should have learned long ago from your visits to CA to stop when you are behind and getting more behind.
10 YEARS -- NO WARMING -- NO EXCUSES
"You did a linear regression of your data and got a slope of 0.0000? Really? Honest to gosh, really?"
Close enough. Go back to my site and look at the first graph. If you want the absolute number I can get it when I get home tonight. But as you can see from the graph, it's not far enough from zero to even make the line jump to the next pixel. Click on the graph, it will expand.
Now - what is your point?
And why would you think that 29 months of La Nina is any more common that a short El Nino with a strong magnitude.
you mean more common than the STRONGEST el nino, that we have on record?
oh and you could of course take alook at the record of the last 50+ years...
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/ts.gif
You are grasping at straws now Sod. Your argument has been defeated. You should have learned long ago from your visits to CA to stop when you are behind and getting more behind.
just because this keeps being brought up, when people notice they are losing a discussion with me: i am still very proud of my part in taking apart the Loehle paper. i was right from the beginning in showing that the real problem was with his claims about modern times.
none of the recent CA topics really attrarted my interest in the way that posts in the past did. and it takes a LOT OF TIME to post there, because i get lots of replies that require answers and research. i don t have that time at the moment.
10 YEARS -- NO WARMING -- NO EXCUSES
10 YEARS 4 MONTHS, starting with the strongest el nino in recorded history, leaving the trend line completely insignificant. NO WARMING - CHERRY PICKING
"you mean more common than the STRONGEST el nino, that we have on record?"
What are the units of measure for STRONGEST? Looks like there is one of greater magnitude in 83 and that is followed by two that are much longer and also of a very high magnitude. Is that "STRONGEST" label just some more bullshit that you warmers made up.
But I'm glad that you gave me the chart. Looks like the 30 year period that you warmers are so fond of blaming on AGW is heavily dominated by El Nino's. Leave it to you guys to cherry pick time spans when El Nino dominated to make your fraudulent claims.
"10 YEARS 4 MONTHS" Even better.
"i am still very proud of my part in taking apart the Loehle paper."
Sorry, but I have to laugh, Sod. Every time I dropped in over there you were being beaten like a pawn shop drum.
Tilo,
Calculate your El Niño 3 anomaly as the beginning and ending periods of a ten year span of 0 slope.
That might give you some insight into end point sensitivity, but, somehow, I doubt it will sink in.
Oops! That should be 'second El Niño of period'(anomoly[sic] 6).
"That might give you some insight into end point sensitivity, but, somehow, I doubt it will sink in."
I don't quite know what you are talking about. If you are saying that having an anomaly at the end of a period has more of an effect on the slope than having one in the middle of a period, then of course you are right. But you are also telling me the obvious. And if you look at all of my charts, you will see that I placed all of the ENSO effects at exactly the places where they actually occurred. This means that their point sensitivity is already compensated for in the calculations.
You will also notice that in post 195 I said:
"In regard to the slope of the trend line, magnitude, duration, and position all matter."
"but, somehow, I doubt it will sink in."
Looks like you put your foot in your mouth again Luminous. Don't you ever get tired of doing that?
What are the units of measure for STRONGEST? Looks like there is one of greater magnitude in 83 and that is followed by two that are much longer and also of a very high magnitude. Is that "STRONGEST" label just some more bullshit that you warmers made up.
seriously, how much peer reviewed literature did you read on this subject? zero?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v398/n6728/full/398559a0.html
"it was by several measures the strongest on record."
http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/~axel/nonlheating.pdf
"During the mature stage of this event, the warm pool
expanded so far to the east that the climatologic cold tongue (Figure 1a) vanished"
of course you could use the single indicator for el nino strength that you ve been using in your "analysis" for el nino strength: effect on GLOBAL TEMPERATURE!
But I'm glad that you gave me the chart. Looks like the 30 year period that you warmers are so fond of blaming on AGW is heavily dominated by El Nino's. Leave it to you guys to cherry pick time spans when El Nino dominated to make your fraudulent claims.
hm. just by looking at the last 30 years, your sort of analyses might actually show that those el ninos in total REDUCE the upward trend in temperature. i am looking forward to an expansion of your analysis.
Sorry, but I have to laugh, Sod. Every time I dropped in over there you were being beaten like a pawn shop drum.
selective reading. i was wrong on CA occasionally, as i was when making comments here. happens. i invite everyone to rerread the loehle discussions to see for himself...
still wonder why you would bring that up? waiting for the CA cavalry, to come to your rescue?
Tilo Reber posts:
The issue under discussion was that you insisted there had been "no warming" from 1998 to 2007. You insisted that in big black capital letters, apparently to show how serious you were. And you insisted that over and over and over again, despite attempts by many here to point out that you were dead wrong.
In time series analysis, the "trend" is the slope of the regression line of the series under analysis regressed on elapsed time.
If the slope is positive, the trend is "up."
If the slope is zero, the trend is "level."
If the slope is negative, the trend is "down."
Since the slope is positive from 1998 to 2007, whether you use NASA GISS or Hadley Centre data, the trend is up.
It's not significantly up, though it becomes so if you remove the two outliers the sample size was cherry-picked to begin and end with. But it's up.
It's not down.
It's not level.
Thus the claim of "no warming" is disproved. Q.E.D.
To illustrate why ten years is too short to prove anything about global temperature trends, I did a little more statistical work. I took the Hadley Centre temperature anomalies for 1988 to 2007 and regressed them on the year for each period in that time -- 2006 to 2007, 2005 to 2007, all the way to 1988 to 2007. Here are the results:
Year Anom Slope p
1988 0.180 0.020 0.000 V
1989 0.103 0.021 0.000 V
1990 0.254 0.020 0.000 V
1991 0.212 0.023 0.000 V
1992 0.061 0.025 0.000 V
1993 0.105 0.022 0.002 V
1994 0.171 0.019 0.011 V
1995 0.275 0.016 0.044 V
1996 0.137 0.016 0.092
1997 0.351 0.007 0.424
1998 0.546 0.005 0.643
1999 0.296 0.017 0.084
2000 0.270 0.012 0.279
2001 0.409 -0.003 0.618
2002 0.464 -0.012 0.095
2003 0.473 -0.017 0.116
2004 0.447 -0.020 0.270
2005 0.482 -0.040 0.179
2006 0.422 -0.020 0.000 V
2007 0.402
"Slope" is the slope of the regression line. "p" is the significance -- figures under 0.05 are considered statistically significant, and I have marked those with a capital V, to simulate a check mark (the HTML here takes asterisks as an invitation to bold things). The figure for the two-year regression is "trivially significant;" a regression on only two points will always yield a "perfect," but useless, fit.
Note the clear relationship of significance to sample size. You need at least 13 years for the trend to be statistically significant. Note, too, that the 1998-2007 regression is the least significant of the lot. Outliers distort things, a point Tilo Reber should learn some day.
In short, a trend of ten years tells you nothing about whether global warming is happening or not.
Tim, is there any way to induce a monospaced font here for tables? I tried the old HTML "font" tag and Courier New, but it didn't work.
Oh, and as for Mr. Reber's contention that Hadley Centre data is vastly superior to NASA GISS data -- RealClimate informs me that the variance in one accounted for by the other is 97% (r2 = 0.97). I.e., in a statistical sense they are practically identical. This follows, of course, from the fact that most of the land and sea temperature readings they use are the same ones.
BPL
HTML tables don't seem to work either in comments (just tried, unsuccessfully; really is a downer on a science website -- c'mon Scienceblogs).
One option you have I think is the non-breaking space, but you have to keep a note of the number of characters to maintain reasonable alignment. The non-breaking space HTML entity is (ampersand)(nbsp)(semicolon) -- I'm sure you can work that out.
Heading Second Heading
R1,C1 R1,C2
R2,C1 R2,C2
But perhaps someone knows a better way
Oops! Forgot the extra HR!
BPL, P. Lewis:
You can put 4 spaces at the beginning of a line to make the line appear in monospaced font, and verbatim:
From: Hello world
To: You
Betula:
A BTW is a statement.
BTW, denialist twits think that 97% certainty means the same thing as having no doubt.
My oft-asked question is:
Betula thinks that:
Well, no, Betula. Everyone understands that I am not speaking of phenology merely in evolutionary/geological time, but rather in a context where observed phenological shifts in the 'recent' past (say, since industrialisation) are compared with evolution-scale phenology.
This is not a loaded question Betula, but your attempt to paint it so is a strawman.
Betula also thinks of my question that:
Again, a strawman.
I make no assumption at all about the conformity of thinking of denialists. And I am not asking about one type of trend - there are multiple patterns, and they go both ways, although interestingly there was a paper last week in Nature (DOI:10.1038/nature06937) where the authors examined 28 800 sets of data and found that 90% of them altered in a direction that supports, well, let's say "a certain premise"...
The equivalent amount of change in nonliving systems was 95%.
Multiple types of phenological trends, Betula, but the overall directional trend is overwhelmingly in one direction. This is sort of the point, and it is certainly not "misleading".
Betula then tries to rephrase the question thusly:
Which gets back to the strawman strategy earlier, where he can ask and answer validly without addressing the real point.
Betula then throws up:
as a final get-out-of-jail card, but this completely muddies the point.
We accept that there are a large number of variables involved in the science, and the times scales are both large and small, but hey, we are speaking about science (and its scalpel, statistics), which is designed specifically to deal with these vagaries of deriving knowledge of the world. If you think that suddenly we cannot understand phenological alterations Betula, because it's too complicated, then I guess that we can't argue that 'the numbers' disprove climate change either...
But hang on, this is exactly what the denialists are wont to do!
Smoke and mirrors, is all, Betula.
And my point still remains to be addressed - how do denialists account for the pattern of recent phenological shifts that have been documented, that is at odds with the trend in patterns observed over evolutionary/geological time?
I am truly not trying to be extreme in the asking of this question, Betula. It is simply a matter of significance, in the science of this subject, that has been very largely avoided by the denialist crowd.
Barton:
"And you insisted that over and over and over again, despite attempts by many here to point out that you were dead wrong."
No, Barton you are dead wrong. I explained it clearly in a post, but Tim mangled the post. So you can either have Tim give you the original, or if you want me to reproduce it for you, I'll do so at Jennifer's blog where it won't get mangled.
"how much peer reviewed literature did you read on this subject?"
Yeah, run out and read something and 15 minutes later tell other people about what they haven't read - truely childish.
Once again you gave me one link that fails to define "stongest" and another one that also fails to define it, but seems to imply that they are only concerned with maximum magnitude. The maximum magnitude part disagrees with the chart that you showed me earlier, and maximum magnitude that fails to account for duration is worthless in determining the effect on a trend. So once again you have failed, Sod.
"hm. just by looking at the last 30 years, your sort of analyses might actually show that those el ninos in total REDUCE the upward trend in temperature. i am looking forward to an expansion of your analysis."
They would only do so if they were weaker than the El Nino's preceeding that thirty year period. Looks bad for you Sod, you blame everything in that period on AGW, but it's clear from your chart that ENSO had a lot to do with it.
From your link:
"[3] There is some evidence [An and Jin, 2000; Wang and
An, 2001] that ENSO underwent a dynamic change around
the year 1976 from a stable to an unstable oscillating
system. This change has been linked to the famous 1976
climate shift [Trenberth, 1990]. Before 1976, El NinËo events propagated mainly westward, their amplitude was moderate, and their period was about 2-4 years. After the 1976 shift, El NinËo events propagated mainly eastward, their amplitude was significantly larger, and their typical timescale was in the order of 3-7 years."
Now we seem to have some evidence that the dynamic change that is refered to is reversing itself again. This would mean that your entire AGW house of cards could come crashing down because of faulty climate change attribution.
"waiting for the CA cavalry, to come to your rescue?"
I believe that it's Tim's peanut gallery that needs to be rescued.
Tilo Reber:
I can't help it if I'm a skeptic. Your positive net effect from your somewhat arbitrarily chosen ENSO events with a curious filter is only 10% of the magnitude of the effect of the first and last ENSO events. The converse of your filtering method is to filter out the ENSO events and thus show that the 36 supposedly non-ENSO affected months have a cooling trend. I admit, I can't explain why there was a cooling trend over 36 months. I admit, I can't explain 36 months of weather. You can take those inabilities as proof that all the papers deriving climate sensitivity are wrong and that climate sensitivity is actually zero.
BTW, you are in an excellent position for winning "Best Strawman of 2008".
In other news:
10 YEARS -- UNEXPLAINED NATURAL COOLING -- PROOF THAT CLIMATE SENSITIVITY IS ZERO
Here is a bone Chris:
A. I never claimed that climate sensitivity is zero. My claim is that it is less than what the IPCC proposes.
B. The 36 month of cooling isn't the same as 3 contigous years of cooling, those are 36 data points scattered over ten years.
C. Regarding the .2C per decade question, it is, where is the .2C per decade for what you people describe as the minimum meaningful period of 30 years. Forget GISS. I don't accept it.
Here is the last 30 year trend - it isn't there.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/hadcrut3-30-year-trend.ht…
If you can find a place to sqeeze it out, it would have to be a total cherry pick.
"Your positive net effect from your somewhat arbitrarily chosen ENSO events with a curious filter is only 10% of the magnitude of the effect of the first and last ENSO events."
Yeap, isn't it great that we all now know that there were 7 ENSO events that effected that trend and that they actually would have given a positive slope. Well, we have all figured it out but Barton. By the way, what filter are you talking about being "curious"? In any case, I'd like to see someone else make an effort to quantify the effect of all the ENSOs. Maybe you can do it and we can compare notes. Poor Barton can't. His data resolution is one year.
Tilo Reber continues with his amazing parade of militant ignorance.
Tilo, it doesn't matter that by dividing it into months you have more points. It's still ten years. As I pointed out, the temperature rose greatly from 6:35 AM to 8:35 AM, and I can divide that into milliseconds if I like, but it still won't make it a representative sample.
The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as "mean regional or global weather over a period of thirty years or more."
Thirty years, Tilo. Not ten. No matter how you spin it, no matter how you distort, no matter how you try to reinvent statistics to prove your point, your point is wrong. There hasn't been cooling over the last ten years, and if there had been, it wouldn't prove anything, because ten years is too short a period to prove anything. As I demonstrated above and everybody understood but you. You can't learn when learning would mean admitting you're wrong about something. You have what I believe Eric Hoffer described as "right man syndrome" -- given the choice of changing your beliefs or changing reality, you prefer to change reality.
Want to prove your case? Write it up and submit it to a peer-reviewed science journal. If they reject it, that's a hint that there's something wrong with it.
Doesn't even have to be a climatology journal. It can be a statistics journal. They'll tell you you're wrong, too.
But you won't listen.
"It's still ten years."
It means you miss four months of data feeble one. Climate didn't stop in Dec. 07. It also means that your resolution isn't as good.
"The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as "mean regional or global weather over a period of thirty years or more.""
Nobody cares about arbitrary definitions. Ten years is not meaningful if you can define why it doesn't follow the trend in real world, not statistical, terms. If you can't explain the natural variation that caused it not to follow it's trend, then ten years is very significant. It doesn't give the final word, but it's a good indicator that your assumptions about the causes of the so callled "underlying trend" may well be wrong.
"You have what I believe Eric Hoffer described as "right man syndrome" -- given the choice of changing your beliefs or changing reality, you prefer to change reality."
I don't think that a born again Christian has any room to question the way that other people percieve reality.
"Want to prove your case? Write it up and submit it to a peer-reviewed science journal."
Did you submit yours?
Barton:
Take at look at real data for a change!
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ten-year-hadcrut3-enso-ef…
If Tilo Reber != Jc, and that's a considerable if, it's a distinction without a difference. I am amazed by your patience guys. There is no solution or argument you could present to our friend Tilo that would magically evolutionarily promote him from jackass, but that being patently obvious doesn't stop you from trying. Hat's off to you. I mean, here you have an entity that thinks it can get away with claiming that the timing and direction of ENSO effects does not bear on the evidence of trend if their sum across time is near zero.
So the way I see it, a better approach is to wait out natural selection, because, let's face it, Tilo's vocation is to be fodder for herd thinning. And that's ok too Tilo. It takes all kinds.
"I mean, here you have an entity that thinks it can get away with claiming that the timing and direction of ENSO effects does not bear on the evidence of trend if their sum across time is near zero."
Which any fool can tell is true unless you can demonstrate that there is an everlasting built in bias to the ENSO cycles. Can you demonstrate that microbrain? Can you demonstrate that there is any reason at all why we should accept that the current ten year flat trend is the result of the ENSO cycles within that trend. I doubt it. But you can flap your flatulent lips with the best of the pretenders can't you?
Tilo Reber:
Nothing you have said supports the claim of sensitivity lower than the IPCC distribution. What is your claim that supports all your language?
What difference does that make? Your trend is coming from 36 effectively randomly chosen months. What sort of trend distribution should we expect from 36 randomly chosen months even if they are spread over 10 years (actually over 6 years 1 month because the beginning and end are taken up by ENSO events)?
IPCC expectation range for next 30 years just from sensitivity and ignoring 30 year variability: 0.13-0.30C per decade 95% confidence interval. Actual HadCrut3 warming past 30 years to April 2008 (which was expected to be lower than the next 30 years): 0.17C per decade. i.e. within the confidence interval that even ignores 30 year variability.
Heaven knows what you're talking about. The trend was 0.17C per decade.
The point is, the "signal" is only 10% of the noise. How do you know your "signal" isn't mainly noise?
One that replaces the filtered-out data with an arbitrarily chosen constant that affects the final result and one that arbitrarily decides the timing involved in filtering.
I'm not really interested in being a contestant for the "Strawman of the Year" award. Sorry.
Tilo Reber posts:
It's not arbitrary. It's an empirical result about how long a period is generally needed to eliminate the effect of year-to-year variations. Your statement above shows that you've never studied the question.
You clearly don't understand what "significant" means, either. Go back and look at my last table. The "p" column measures the significance of the regressions. The one for 1998-2007 has p = 0.64, which is not significant.
ROFLMAO!!! You're so desperate to score points that you attack my religion? I love it!
I didn't have to -- guys like Svante Arrhenius and G.S. Challenger and Gilbert Plass and Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald and James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann and Raymond Pierrehumbert have done it for me.
Chris posts:
"BTW, denialist twits think that 97% certainty means the same thing as having no doubt."
In that case, there's a 97% certainty that your delusional.
"Nothing you have said supports the claim of sensitivity lower than the IPCC distribution. "
Nothing that anyone has said supports the IPCC claim. And don't give me the crap about the distribution.
"Heaven knows what you're talking about. The trend was 0.17C per decade."
My point is that we are consistently running below the supposed trend. You can't find a 30 year period above the trend. The hoax that you warmers use is apparent. Claim a very large trend to scare the hell out of people and to give goverments an excuse to implement carbon taxation, and then when you know that the trend will come in well below what you claim, you claim that you are covered by the error bands. And you claim that your trend is still valid - even if we are always below it and never above it.
Your problem is that we may well have entered a period where the rising temperature is not going to be mainly due to ENSO, and your whole house of cards will come crumbling down.
"The point is, the "signal" is only 10% of the noise. How do you know your "signal" isn't mainly noise?"
The only noise around here is yours. Do you think that climate changes without a reason? In any case, we are talking about the claim that the current flat trend is caused by the ENSO cycles. I have clearly falisified that claim. Now you want to resort to some mysterious noise to justify the flat trend. If there is still noise in the system it could work in either direction, meaning that the ten year trend may actually be much more negative without the noise. When are you going to stop grasping at straws?
"One that replaces the filtered-out data with an arbitrarily chosen constant"
Are you nuts? I didn't use an arbitrarily choosen constant, I used the real value for the real trend line from the real data for the real period.
"I'm not really interested in being a contestant for the "Strawman of the Year" award."
No, you are interested in pulling theories out of your ass and using them to defend against real data that you don't like.
"It's not arbitrary. It's an empirical result about how long a period is generally needed to eliminate the effect of year-to-year variations."
It's arbitray bullshit, because the results of using thirty years don't tell you squat about the next thirty years. Look at the entire temperature history. You get no consistency out of a thirty year trend. There are natural effects on the climate that have all kinds of time spans and there is nothing magical about 30 years.
"You clearly don't understand what "significant" means, either."
No, I clearly don't care what significant means in terms of statistical sophistry. I care about what it means in terms of real world events. If you claim that the increasing CO2 is having a given effect on climate, then I want to see that effect unless you can explain the natural elements of variability that have prevented it from showing itself. The random noise of your statistics is pure bullshit in the real world. The climate never changes without a reason. So when you try to use statistical variation as your explanation, you are talking nonsense. It doesn't happen that way in the real world. And if you don't have enough information to explain what those elements of variation were, then you also don't have enough information to make wild claims about mankinds contribution to warming.
"I didn't have to -- guys like Svante Arrhenius and G.S. Challenger and Gilbert Plass and Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald and James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann and Raymond Pierrehumbert have done it for me."
So basically, your excuse is that you couldn't get the material that you brought here published if your life depended on it, but you want to ask other people to do what you could never do yourself. The forum seems to be full of such hypocrites.
Ok jc. So now claiming that ENSO effects have obscured temps over a ten year time horizon due to their timing and magnitude is the same as claiming "there is an everlasting built in bias to the ENSO cycles". This in addition to your interpretation that random/unattributable/chaotic noise will affect temperatures over a 30 year horizon only if they 'permanently mask' the CO2 forcing. One wonders where you get the time to erect so many strawmen, what with two imaginary careers, (I haven't forgotten about the macro markets trading), plus whatever broom must be pushed to make ends meet. As I said, no snobbery here. For a lion to live hundreds of zebra and wildebeest must die. It takes all kinds.
"So now claiming that ENSO effects have obscured temps over a ten year time horizon due to their timing and magnitude is the same as claiming "there is an everlasting built in bias to the ENSO cycles"."
Considering that the ENSO effects had nothing to do with the flat 10 year cycle, then if you claim that they were abnormal ENSO effects, you can only do that if you believe that ENSO effects are asymetric. But maybe if you stop babbling and grasping for straws and feeding me endless "maybes" you could make a clear statement about what you think the cause of the flat 10 year trend is and we can have a clear discussion.
"(I haven't forgotten about the macro markets trading)"
I've noticed that nut cases like you like to think of themselves as some kind of Sherlock Holmes. But you should probably master finding you butt with both hands before you make non existent blogger connections. I don't know who you think I am, but you are once more showing your ignorance.
Tilo Reber:
Spare us the bullshit and stick to your point:
Since you provide zero support for your claim and don't even attempt to stay with it I can only presume that your claim is nothing but a pile of crap.
July 1992-June 2002 0.40 deg c/decade. Yes 0.17 is less than 0.4.
Any other shit you want to feed us?
expected future
Yes there's been a lot of 30 year periods with the same growth in forcing of the last 30 years hasn't there? Sure are a lot of statistics available. Not to mention that you keep ignoring that the expected growth in forcing over the next 30 years is more than the growth over the last 30.
So claiming 20% faster warming over the next 30 years as occurred over the last 30 years, while CO2 would grow faster then that, is a "very large trend". You should be a timber plantation salesman.
You still don't understand what I'm saying here. All you've done is calculate the change in weather over a 6 year 1 month (actually 5 year 1 month if you ignore 2 months) period and tried to imply that that shows that without ENSO, there was significant cooling. I'm sorry but this does not show that there was no increase in CO2 forcing.
Climate? You're only talking about a 10 year period. You can't get climate out of a 10 year period let alone a change in climate.
In other news:
10 YEARS -- UNEXPLAINED NATURAL COOLING -- PROOF THAT CLIMATE SENSITIVITY IS ZERO
meaning you can't prove ANYTHING significant about climate sensitivity from a 10 year period. When are you going to stop grasping at straws that make you think you've proven anything about climate sensitivity?
And those flat lines during the non-ENSO periods were "real values". What other fiction do you know. Plenty, apparently.
What a hypocrite. The only theory coming out of someones ass is the theory that 10 years of zero trend proves the IPCC wrong. I point out that your analysis is a worthless pile of shit for saying anything about climate sensitivity and all you can do is produce more shit.
Betula:
97% sure if you say so.
"No, I clearly don't care what significant means in terms of statistical sophistry. I care about what it means in terms of real world events. "
Oh, well, OK then, that explains everything. You've stumbled into a community of people who are familiar with, and use, technical terminology of a statistical nature. No wonder you seemed so obtuse and unable to grasp the point of what people were saying to you! Glad that's all cleared up.
Not to worry Jc. I enjoy having you at attention to kick around when the dog's not available. Your secret's safe with me.
It's becoming clear to me you're oblivious to how incomprehensible these non sequitur strawmen are that you stutter onto the thread like so much spittle. That you have mistaken for argument the repeated charity of Deltoid's animal feeders recasting your nonsense into something resembling a point. And I've come to realize that I'm observing a very primitive cognition- more akin to involuntary reflex you are only vaguely aware of, like a nervous tic, than what most people experience as thought.
Which brings me to my real point- before I take leave of you for good, I should hope if you've taken nothing else away from our little conversation, it is this: Know thyself. Fear Darwin.
Tilo Reber posts, in his usual charming manner:
Of course I couldn't get it published, Tilo. There's no new information in it. I couldn't get the multiplication tables published in a math journal, either.
You don't seem to realize that you're contradicting 200 years of statistics. All I did was use the usual algorithms on the problem under discussion. That doesn't warrant publication in a journal.
You, on the other hand, are claiming that the consensus of climate scientists is wrong, based on a statistical model of your own devising. Now, that's news! Submit it to a journal, and see what happens to it.
"based on a statistical model of your own devising."
What statistical model would that be. Observations of reality?
"You've stumbled into a community of people who are familiar with, and use, technical terminology of a statistical nature."
ROFLMAO
"Not to mention that you keep ignoring that the expected growth in forcing over the next 30 years is more than the growth over the last 30."
Then Annan should jump on my bet. Oops just put your foot in your mouth, didn't you.
"Since you provide zero support for your claim and don't even attempt to stay with it I can only presume that your claim is nothing but a pile of crap."
Pretty much sums up what you should be telling the IPCC.
157 years - .8C temp rise.
39% of a CO2 doubling - .8C temp rise.
That .8C includes coming out of a little ice age, where you would expect an increase.
That .8C includes an increase in solar activity over the majority of that period.
That .8C inludes an incompletely compensated heat island effect for the instrument record.
That .8C includes a rise that is not refected in the vast majority of the proxy data.
That .8C includes a recent period where El Nino effects were much stronger than La Nina effects.
"Any other shit you want to feed us?"
Where is that 30 years of .2C again?
"You still don't understand what I'm saying here. All you've done is calculate the change in weather over a 6 year 1 month (actually 5 year 1 month if you ignore 2 months) period and tried to imply that that shows that without ENSO, there was significant cooling. I'm sorry but this does not show that there was no increase in CO2 forcing."
You might want to plug your brain back in when you post to me, cause this stuff is simply too brain dead to be real. I have made no implication that without ENSO there would be significant cooling. I think that you are the one trying to snag that strawman award. My plots have one purpose, to falsify the assertion that the 10 year flat trend is cause by choosing a period with an El Nino at the beginning and a La Nina at the end. When ENSO is removed you end up with an insignificant cooling for some period. But that is not the point. The point is that you squacking chickens are defending the abscence of any warming for the last ten years as being due to something that it clearly is not.
Regarding an increase in CO2 forcing, since there is clearly an increase in CO2, then one would expect an increase in CO2 forcing. Again, that is not the issue of debate. The issue of debate is - HOW MUCH IS IT.
"You're only talking about a 10 year period."
Oh, so it's ten year weather - what a moron. Doesn't matter what you call it. You don't get a 10 year change of trend without a reason. That's the problem with you people, you are so hung up on definitions and statistics, that your brain no longer has the ability to reason.
"meaning you can't prove ANYTHING significant about climate sensitivity from a 10 year period. When are you going to stop grasping at straws that make you think you've proven anything about climate sensitivity?"
When are you going to get the simple concept that a change in trend for a ten year period is very significant if you can't explain the variation through natural causes. Every one of you warmers is too dumb to make that simple connection. You rant on and on about 10 years and 30 years without being able to reason to some very simple facts - No trend changes without a reason and no reason is known for a flat ten year trend. All of your statistics don't mean shit because they deal in random noise and there is no random noise in the climate system - or even in a 10 year weather system, if you like.
"And those flat lines during the non-ENSO periods were "real values". What other fiction do you know. Plenty, apparently."
Now you have resorted to babbling pure nonsense again, and I've had enough of you.
For those of you who believe that nonsense about how well GISS data correlates with the other temperature records, (like Barton) here is a clear chart showing it's current and growing divergence. Up to arond 2000 Hansen's data did correlate fairly well with HadCrut3. But after Hansen was no longer getting the increases that he was advertising to any legislator who would listen, he apparently found it necessary to take things into his own hands, and "adjust" those records in a way that would continue to support his fraud. This doesn't mean that HadCrut3 isn't overcooked, but at least not as blatently as GISS.
Remember that these records use a different baseline, so the only thing that is significant here is the slope of the trend.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/divergence-of-giss-data.h…
"You've stumbled into a community of people who are familiar with, and use, technical terminology of a statistical nature."
"ROFLMAO"
Exactly. We're all having a terrific laugh at this grand misunderstanding. Glad we could find consensus.
Tilo posts:
No it doesn't. Sunlight increased over about 1910-1940, and played some role in global warming during that period. But since about 1950 it has been flat -- no trend:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/LeanTSI.html
If sunlight has been flat for the last 50 years, it can't have caused the sharp upturn in global warming of the last 30 years.
Nothing new about this here but since your memory appears to fail you, this was what I said why I suspect Annan is not interested:
"besides not being interested in negotiating a bet with you because you are too insignificant to go to any trouble for, perhaps Annan thinks that anyone who comes along and proposes an ambit bet when all Annan has proposed are bets that shouldn't be ambit bets if the proposees are honest, is just a jerk."
I'm glad you agree that I should tell the IPCC that your claim is nothing but a pile of crap but I think they would probably realize it without me telling them.
I'm not. Stop lying.
Yet another moron who doesn't realize the difference between weather and climate.
I didn't say there was no reason. I admit I can't explain 10 years of weather.
You still don't get it:
In other news:
10 YEARS -- UNEXPLAINED NATURAL COOLING -- PROOF THAT CLIMATE SENSITIVITY IS ZERO
When are you going to get the simple concept that a change in trend for a ten year period, even if you can't explain the natural weather processes that caused it, is not significant to climate sensitivity.
Anyone with at least half a brain would realize that if "the expected growth in forcing over the next 30 years is more than the growth over the last 30" then the expected growth in temperature over the next 30 years is more than the growth in temperature over the last 30, i.e. as far as I'm aware, the IPCC did not expect temperatures to rise 0.2 deg C/decade over the LAST 30 years. 0.2 deg C/decade is the expectation for the NEXT 30 years.
and various other new troll goalposts.
I've had enough of your new goalposts while I'm still kicking your "My claim is that climate sensitivity is less than what the IPCC proposes" claim over and over again. If you don't withdraw it I'll just keep kicking it. You're entitled to have enough of me but I'm also entitled to keep kicking your claim in the ass.
"Nothing new about this here but since your memory appears to fail you, this was what I said why I suspect Annan is not interested:"
You start out with nonsense and I suspect that you will continue with nonsense, so this is as far as I'm going with your post.
If the next 30 should warm faster than the current 30 years, it would increase Annan's chances of winning the bet. Therefore it should make Annan more interested in the bet, not less so as you state.
Barton:
"If sunlight has been flat for the last 50 years, it can't have caused the sharp upturn in global warming of the last 30 years."
I think that a trend line run through this sun spot activity chart for the last 150 years would show a definite upward trend. And while the last 50 years may not be bigger than what we reached 50 years ago, it is definitely bigger than what we had in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Saying that solar activity did not have an effect on the .8C is therefore a lie. Solar activity does not need to have an exact correlation with temp in order for it to own part of that .8C rise. It can own part of the rise before 1950 and then be responsible for holding that increase thereafter. Much of the additional increase that came after 76 could well come from a longer term ENSO trend. Remember, I'm talking about the .8C that we have had over the last 157years. Not just what we have had in the last 30 years.
On top of that, what about that long term Ocean buffering effect that they like to lean on so much over at Real Climate.
http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/cosmos/solarwind/Sunspot%…
Look at the period from 1976 to 1998 and notice how much El Nino dominated. There is another chunk of your .8C. And it can explain much of the change in the last 30 years.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/ts.gif
It's quite possible that only .4C or less is attributable to AGW. And that is with nearly 40% of a CO2 doubling. Considering the logarithmic nature of CO2, you could have climate sensitivity be as low as .8C 2XCO2 +- something. In any case, given the other contributers to warming, the fact that we have only had .8C, the fact that we have had almost 40% of a CO2 doubling, it definitely looks like the IPCC number of 3C 2XCO2 is too large.
You state a strawman to support your bullshit and I know that you continue with worse bullshit, so as promised I will continue to remind you of your worst bullshit since you are are hardly likely to understand your less obvious bullshit while your worst bullshit continues unacknowledged. You claimed:
Totally, utterly unsupported crap.
Utter crap in conflict with the scientific papers and it is only one weakly constrained observation type compared with several others. Annan gives a distribution of (1,3,10) for this type of observation (i.e. mean 3 deg C/doubling, 95% confidence interval 1-10 deg C/doubling.
Here is another strike against the accuracy of GISS. The majority of the world is simply not sampled.
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ghcn_giss_250km_…
And the problem seems to be getting worse when we compare what was sampled in 1978.
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ghcn_giss_250km_…
One could create a trend simply by selective droping of stations over time.
Tilo Reber posts:
Can't you read? I said rising solar activity accounted for part of the warming 1910-1940. But it has been flat for the past 50 years, and whatever its history before that, it can't have no effect for 20 years and then suddenly have warming that ramps up. It ain't the sun, pal.
And how can you believe A) that global warming isn't happening, as evidenced by your "cooling trend" idiocy, and at the same time believe B) global warming is caused by the sun? If it's not happening, the sun isn't causing it, and if the sun is causing it, it's happening. Do you really need this explained to you?
Neil Craig is, to put it politely, dissembling when he tries to prove on the Oregon petition thread that metals prices have not risen in the last ten years in real terms.
With respect to the Erhlich/Simon bet, I believe the terms stipulated inflation adjustment only, and not the very cute tactic of compensating for the fall of the American dollar compared with other currencies, nor fiddling with 'world growth rate' or with population size. And under an inflation-adjusted scenario the world would still require a 6.5% average annual rate of inflation, compounding, to see the price of the metal in my list that showed the least increase (chromium) remain 'stable'.
I did not include aluminium or iron Neil, simply because none of the sites I found yesterday had ten year data for these metals. I still haven't found a decent site for iron, and with my temporary dependence on a dial-up connection I am not going to waste too much time trying to find one, but these numbers should do:
Aluminium: May 98 ~US$0.70/pound. May 08 ~US$1.35/pound
Iron ore: : May 98 ~US $53.00/ton December 07 >US $150.00/ton.
So aluminium is slightly ahead of chromium in the magnitude of its increase, at 93% over 10 years, compared with chromium's 77%, and my omission doesn't change the fact that an average annual rate of inflation of 6.5% is required to keep the ten year price of chromium stable according to the terms of the Erhlich/Simon bet.
Now, there might be some tricky numerical plays that come into an estimate of inflation, but as I said there is no mention in the wager of fiddling for comparative currency values. If an economist would care to clarify this one way or another I'd be chuffed.
But hang on Neil, it's not quite so simple as the eventual wager between Erhlich and Simon. It seems that Simon offered terms on final prices "any date more than a year away" from the original prices, and that these final prices would be "lower than what [they were] at the time of the wager". Under this scenario Simon's bet could easily have been called many times by Erhlich over the last five years alone.
Note too that Simon proposed "a public offer to stake US$10,000 ... on [his] belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run."
Neil, metals aside (after your acknowledgement of their price increases) are you telling us that oil and grains have not increased in (real terms) price in the last 10 years?
I repeat my point: Erhlich would have won a bet with Simon if it had finished in the 10 years to this month.
Aside from your slipperiness on this, your crass and unfounded ad hominem attacks on Jody and others are really nothing short of despicable.
"Can't you read? I said rising solar activity accounted for part of the warming 1910-1940. "
Apparently you can't read. I said that solar owned part of the .8C increase that we had in the last 157 years. And that is true. The fact that it no longer increased after the 1950s is irrelevant, since it is still larger than it was from 1850 to 1950.
"It ain't the sun, pal."
You warmers seem to have very one track minds. Either it's the sun or it isn't. Get your head out of your butt. What we see is a combination of many factors. Even your god Hansen admits that solar has an effect. Can you phantom the difference between saying that solar owns "A PART" of the .8C increase and solar owns the increase?
"And how can you believe A) that global warming isn't happening, as evidenced by your "cooling trend" idiocy, and at the same time believe B) global warming is caused by the sun?"
Show me where I said that global warming isn't happening? I said that it was flat for ten years which is true. And I said that if global warming is all due to AGW, then there is no explanation for that 10 year flat trend.
Let me spell it out for you for the millionth time.
I BELIEVE THAT THE CLIMATE SENSITIVITY TO CO2 THAT IS SPECIFIED BY THE IPCC IS TOO HIGH.
I BELIEVE THAT THE EARTH GOES THROUGH HEATING AND COOLING CYCLES CONTINOUSLY
I BELIEVE THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE WARMING THAT WE HAVE SEEN OVER THE PAST 150 YEARS IS DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES.
Note confused one - I said the majority, not all.
Can you tell the difference between those statements and "global warming is not happening"?
Tilo,
What you believe has no real relation to reality.
I like how you move the goal posts, too. You accused me of saying solar had no effect. I pointed out that I had said solar had an effect, early in the 20th century. You responded not by acknowledging that your accusation was wrong, but by babbling about YOU said solar played a role. I know YOU said that. You lied and said I disagreed with that, then refused to acknowledge you lied.
Grow up.
Barton, how you do babble on. Let's look at the original statements.
Me:
That .8C includes an increase in solar activity over the majority of that period.
You:
No it doesn't.
Now, the period that I was talking about; the period that gave us the .8C, was the last 157 years. My statement about that period is clearly true and yours is clealy false. Note that I said "majority".
Tilo, anybody reading the thread can just check above to see what we actually said! Do you really think nobody is going to check? I don't believe you!
Barton:
"Tilo, anybody reading the thread can just check above to see what we actually said!"
Let's hope they do check Barton. In fact I will help them. The quote that I gave from me comes from #243. The quote that I gave from you comes from #246.