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Briggs schools the “Bad Astronomer” on statistics ( RE: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” )
watts up with that? ^ | ebruary 1, 2012 | Anthony Watts

Posted on 02/01/2012 6:19:45 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

That letter signed by 16 scientists saying there’s “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” to the Wall Street Journal has caused a great disturbance in the farce. At last count there were no less than  19 blog rebuttals plus one new WSJ op ed piece trying to convince the alliance that all is well. It didn’t work.

But, they know the AGW Alliance Death Star has been compromised before its mission can be completed, the Rebellion has seen the plans and the Alliance knows it is only a matter of time before “the consensus” blows apart. Reports are that “Michael Mann has been tweeting furiously“, but the reinforcements he’s bringing in may not be able to stop the Rebellion as its ranks swell with ordinary people.

Here at WUWT, we had our best day ever on January 31st with 229,000 views from ordinary people, exceeding the heady days just after Climategate 1 and Copenhagen. People are coming in out of the cold to embrace the warmth and declare it good, while laughing at the folly of the alliance.

Meanwhile, the Bad Astronomer (Phil Plait er, not Jim Hansen) has been spinning in low orbit trying tell alliance forces that the past 10-15 years of stalled temperature rise are just a statistical illusion.

William Briggs, Statistician to the Stars, schools Plait on what statistics really is and writes:

Remember when I said how you shouldn’t draw straight lines in time series and then speak of the line as if the line was the data itself? About how the starting point made a big difference in the slope of the line, and how not accounting for uncertainty in the starting date translates into over-certainty in the results?

If you can’t recall, refresh your memory: How To Cheat, Or Fool Yourself, With Time Series: Climate Example.

Well, not everybody read those warnings. As an example of somebody who didn’t do his homework, I give you Phil Plait, a fellow who prides himself on exposing bad astronomy and blogs at Discover magazine. Well, Phil, old boy, I am the Statistician to the Stars—get it? get it?1—and I’m here to set you right.

The Wall Street Journal on 27 January 2012 published a letter from sixteen scientists entitled, No Need to Panic About Global Warming, the punchline of which was:

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.

Plait in response to these seemingly ho-hum words took the approach apoplectic, and fretted that “denialists” were reaching lower. Reaching where he never said. He never did say what a “denialist” was, either; but we can guess it is defined as “Whoever disagrees with Phil Plait.”

The WSJ‘s crew said, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.” This allowed Plait to break out the italics and respond, “What the what?” I would’ve guessed that the scientists’ statement was fairly clear and even true. But Plait said, “That statement, to put it bluntly, is dead wrong.” Was it?

Plait then slipped in a picture, one which he thought was a devastating touché. He was so exercised by his effort that he broke out into triumphal clichés like “crushed to dust” and “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” You know what they say about astronomers. Anyway, here’s the picture:

Global warming

See that red line? It’s drawn on a time series—wait! No it isn’t. Those dots are not what Plait thinks they are. They are not—they most certainly are not—global temperatures.

Read the whole rebuttal here, well worth your time.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Conspiracy; Science; Weather
KEYWORDS: climatechange; climategate; climategate2; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax

1 posted on 02/01/2012 6:19:55 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: TigerLikesRooster; landsbaum; Signalman; NormsRevenge; steelyourfaith; Lancey Howard; ...

Maybe Our Republican candidates will hear about all of the Uproar...and get a clue!


2 posted on 02/01/2012 6:21:45 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; ApplegateRanch; Berlin_Freeper; Genesis defender; golux; proud_yank; ...
Thanx for the ping Ernest_at_the_Beach !

 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

3 posted on 02/01/2012 6:28:51 PM PST by steelyourfaith (Expel the Occupy White House squatters !!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Here's an interesting story from space.com

'Crackpot' Theory of Everything Reveals Dark Side of Peer Review

I remember reading about this theory of everything and couldn't believe it was given any credibility at all and I'm glad to hear that some scientists are slapping it down as the pure crap it is.

Science should be 50% study and 50% skepticism.
4 posted on 02/01/2012 6:29:30 PM PST by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

5 posted on 02/01/2012 6:36:57 PM PST by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: All
Link to the original WSJ piece:

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

*************************************EXCERPT***********************************************

* OPINION * JANUARY 27, 201

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

6 posted on 02/01/2012 6:39:01 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: All
Major point in the letter ....I am always focusing on the point:

************************************EXCERPT******************************************

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today.

7 posted on 02/01/2012 6:47:05 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
As I wrote yesterday ...

I know for a fact that the CFC known as R-12, the primary existing refrigerant before some professor at UC California Irvine got a Noble prize for saying that CFCs were destroying the upper atmosphere ozone layer, weighs more than air... about six times more than air. That means that R-12 released into the atmosphere drops like a rock.

Shipyard workers need to know this because refrigerants released inside a ships hull would push out - replace - air held inside the hull and kill anyone not equipped with breathing apparatus.

8 posted on 02/01/2012 6:47:46 PM PST by OldNavyVet
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
...About how the starting point made a big difference in the slope of the line...

This guy calls himself a mathematician? He is either incompetent or lying. When fitting a straight line to data the most common approach is to use a least-squared-error method. When using this algorithm over even a modest number of data points the value of any one (eg. the starting point) makes little difference - there is no particular significance to that value over the second, third, nth...

My take, lying POS. Counting on most people not being familiar with math, and their eyes glazing over when they hear one of the anointed speak... Well, I don't buy it, the Emperor has no clothes.

9 posted on 02/01/2012 7:16:01 PM PST by ThunderSleeps (Stop obama now! Stop the hussein - insane agenda!)
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To: All
Another point from the WSJ Opinion letter:

****************************************EXCERPT*******************************************

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.

10 posted on 02/01/2012 7:18:05 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: All
List of Scoentisst with the WSJ letter:

************************************************************************************

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

11 posted on 02/01/2012 7:49:12 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Defining CO2 as a “pollutant” was a gimmick perpetrated to give the EPA the power to regulate fossil fuel emissions.


12 posted on 02/01/2012 8:43:29 PM PST by haroldeveryman
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Thanks for reminding me how irritating I find this ‘bad astronomy’ guy. He seems like an arrogant twerp to me.


13 posted on 02/01/2012 8:58:35 PM PST by vmpolesov
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To: ThunderSleeps

You’re critiquing on the basis of having heard part of the discussion. Briggs was referring to an older post on his blog in which he gives examples of real time-series data in which choosing a starting point radically changes the slope of the regression line, not by omitting a data point at one end, but by choosing only to analyse a tail of the time-series: we have estimated surface temperatures going back into the 19th century. Why start at 1973? Why not 1980? or 1960? or 1940? In the older post he linked, he had a real data set in which omitting the first eighth or so of the data gave a radically different regression model. (Even changing by one year would be adding or dropping 12 data points in the example.)

Briggs is not lying and is definitely not incompetent. I am a mathematician, and I’m consistently impressed by Briggs’s insights into his own area (which is not mine, though I have a reasonable grasp of elementary applied statistics and even some non-elementary topics in statistics gleaned from helping my wife who’s in psychology with statistical analyses).


14 posted on 02/01/2012 9:23:55 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: ThunderSleeps

You’re also wrong about a single data point not making much of a difference in OLS regression with a modest number of data points: consider the two data sets

(1,1.1), (2,0.9), (3,1.0), (4,1.0), (5, 0.9), (6, 1.1)

and

(0, 0.0), (1,1.1), (2,0.9), (3,1.0), (4,1.0), (5, 0.9), (6, 1.1)

In the first, the regression line is y = 1

In the second, it has positive slope and a y-intercept less than 1.

In fact, this is a baby example of the phenomenon for which Briggs gave a more realistic example.

And, where the errant point is, does matter. If it had been (3.5, 0.0) inserted into the first data set to get the second,
the regression slope would still have been 0 and only the intercept (or rather the height of the whole horizontal regression line) would have changed.

Of course for less modest numbers, the outlier would need to be more extreme.


15 posted on 02/01/2012 9:38:16 PM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
RE: "Maybe Our Republican candidates will hear about all of the Uproar...and get a clue!"
One can hope that is the case.
16 posted on 02/01/2012 11:04:22 PM PST by Marine_Uncle
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To: The_Reader_David
Sorry, I should have been more specific. To me a "modest number" of data points is several hundred, maybe a thousand. (I routinely deal with data sets in the tens of thousands, pushing 7 figures)

In the case of a hundred or so data points, for any reasonably self-consistent data set (eg. surface temperature) that isn't likely to see wild data points then any one does not have much of a chance of drastically influencing slope of the line.

17 posted on 02/02/2012 4:59:44 AM PST by ThunderSleeps (Stop obama now! Stop the hussein - insane agenda!)
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To: ThunderSleeps
Here are Briggs's realistic time-series examples: and taken from here.
18 posted on 02/02/2012 6:00:16 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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