Statisticians: "Global Cooling" a Myth (AP barf)

Associated Press ^ | Oct. 25, 2009

[Free ThinkerNY]

(AP) Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It's not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

[stephenjohnbanker]

Here be da situation:

A lie is the truth.

The truth is a lie.

If not clear on the concept, please send for my free booklet

“Saul Alinsky’s Pocketbook Rules”

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---

Now that we know for sure the original GW data was faked... looks like they will do or say almost anything to keep the lie alive.

[C210N]

Just the death throws of a religion trying to stem the tide of its believers losing faith. I feel a small amount of pity for them. Emphasis on 'small'.

On more productive use of brain cycles, what should the next "Dalton Minimum" be called? Perhaps the "Gore-on Minimum"?

[fruser1]

Here’s an Yahoo/AP link to the article ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091027/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling ) where the global cooling book is disputed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and statisticians. The basis of the dispute is the abuse of statistics by the author.

The UCS is correct, but in stating this, they have overlooked their own abuses of statistics and thereby mistakenly reveal their own, more insidious, hypocrisy.

The UCS points out the correct premise that you can get varying results by analyzing statistics depending on where you start. The situation they discuss is starting at a particular year and performing a 10 year temperature analysis. They complain that a 10 year analysis of temperatures that shows a decrease beginning w/1998 is being used as evidence of cooling, but, they counter, an increase is shown if you start in w/1997 and 1999.

Absolutely correct. You can indeed manipulate a 10 year analysis depending on what year you start.

Now, let’s take it one step further....

According to geologists, there have been 60 glaciations in the last 2 million years ( http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html ). A glaciation is when polar ice sheets advance significantly. The last such glaciation was on the order of 10-15 thousand years ago (wooly mammoth time) and, on average, glaciations occur every 33,000 years (2 million / 60).

So, if you can manipulate 10 year analysis depending on what year you start, can’t you manipulate things the same way for a 33,000 year period, depending on what 3,300 year period you start?

The answer is indeed YES, so looking at temperatures from 1880 to present to forecast future disaster is absurd. A trend of heating or cooling within this short period indicates nothing beyond what may be a normal variation within the geologic scale at which the climate operates.

And, by the way, note that human industry and agriculture were not in existence for the first 59 of those glaciations. So how did that ice recede if no people were around to screw things up? The answer is that it depends on much larger factors than people trying to live.

Folks like the UCS are well aware of these things, but will only tell you what they want you to hear.

And the ice core samples, you ask? In spite of correlations between CO2 levels and warm periods, the warm periods themselves correlate quite well to orbital phenonemon like precession ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;317/5839/793 - you’ll have to dig further to get the full article).

The bottom line is that the climate varies quite well on its own, thank you, without regard to people. Using the last 150 years of temperature data to indicate a warming trend, correlating that to human industry, and concluding that people are warming the planet and need to be stopped, only indicate that propagandists like the UCS have no regard for humanity. Like pagans, they love the trees and animals but hate you.

And don’t you forget it!

[stephenjohnbanker]

“On more productive use of brain cycles, what should the next “Dalton Minimum” be called? Perhaps the “Gore-on Minimum”? “

Hmmmm........works for me!

[SouthTexas]

We dropped 20 degrees yesterday and at that rate we will all freeze to death by the week!

[z3n]

"....according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press"

The Associated Press is a prestigious unbiased scientific agency now?

First thing they taught me in statistics class is that the purpose of statistics is to manipulate the numbers to display the message you want.

Let's manufacture some more propaganda now, eh AP?

[Parley Baer]

“analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.”

All you need to know about this story.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Statistics, is by definition, the science of ignorance. We use statistics, or rather statistical technique to make decisions in absence of precise knowledge. For the most part, it works out beautifully.

Statisticians and statistics do not prove anything. The best they can do is evaluate the likely validity of a mathematical model. A simple example would be if you tossed a coin ten times in a row and got a run of ten straight heads. This does not “prove” that the coin is biased to produce heads, or that the next toss will be a head, though this is where the smart money might go. (Actually, the really smart money will wait on the sidelines, to see what the trick is.) The best that a statistician could say is that the observed outcome would occur only once in 1024 trials with “fair” coin.

What the article says is that statisticians cannot find a “significant” downward trend. But the generally accepted threshold for significance is 95% confidence level, which means that even if the data indicated that there was a 94.9% chance of a cooling trend, that would, by that measure, not be significant. The technique favors the “null hypothesis”.

[FrankR]

"“Saul Alinsky’s Pocketbook Rules”"

Alinsky was a radical leftist...all of them perceive themselves to be intellectually superior to the rest of the population - including other radical leftists.

Therefore they assume that we shall all stand idly by while they piss on our shoes and tell us it's raining.

Alinsky's book is like the Koran - it has it's devout believers, brainwashed into thinking the tactics will work more than once.

The one think Alinsky's book doesn't contain is any mention of common sense; it's a 60's has-been, hippie protester guide, probably written during a extended drug party by a bunch of nose-picking hippies. It shouldn't matter in today's world, but, it appears the lockstep lefties still believe in it.

[stephenjohnbanker]

“The one think Alinsky’s book doesn’t contain is any mention of common sense; it’s a 60’s has-been, hippie protester guide, probably written during a extended drug party by a bunch of nose-picking hippies. It shouldn’t matter in today’s world, but, it appears the lockstep lefties still believe in it.”

Obama sure believes in it....of course he is a left wing 46 year old college student.

[SuziQ]

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

ALL of our climate is just weather's normal ups and downs. Human beings have NOTHING to do with what the climate will be in any given year, decade or century.

[GSWarrior]

Union of Concerned Scientists....enough said.

[Ole Okie]

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

Samuel Clemens' observation has so much truth to it that it's not even funny.

Mark Twain is also sometimes credited with saying that there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians. But Benjamin Disraeli is apparently the original author of this jab at statisticians.

[flowerplough]

On Global temperatures, there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics, according to Mr. Twain, but snow fell last week, and I haven’t pulled my window-unit air conditioner up from basement storage for two summers in a row. So you tell me my part of the earth ain’t cooling, I’ll call you a fool.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Ping for your comment

[Thunder90]

Using those same techniques, you can debunk the global warming data.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Lies, damnable lies and statistics.

It all depends on your choice of models. Statistical technicques can only tell if the observations fit the model. Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory is very robust with respect to data, all observations confirm it at the 100% confidence level. The great success of the AGWT advocates is the care with which they select their observations and the flexibility they show in patching their model(s). (Do. I. really. need. sarcasm. tags. here?)

[AFPhys]

I have no argument with these statisticians of the AP about the last ten years.

Anyone who wants to go through my posts over the last 1-2 years will see that I have been advising caution about the “cooling” trend.

HOWEVER, I also do not believe that there is any strong evidnence for a statistically significant warming trend over the last 130 years, and more especially that the minor warming trend that has occured is significantly correlated with CO2.

By the way, I believe that any serious scientist now must eliminate the HadCrut Data from their purview, and only use the US Temperatures, and the Satellite data. (Historical data including tree ring data must also be considered corrupt). Other world wide data has been corrupted beyond repair.