There are a number of numbers that people compute which appear to be due solely to the fact that with so much computing power at people's fingertips, the urge to calculate cannot be restrained. Thus people calculate for every stock in the stock market its "200-day moving average." The point eludes me. You can't sell for the 200-day average. That 200 days is significant suggests that the dynamics of the stock market are somehow driven by base-10 arithmetic. Why not a 128-day (200 in octal) average?
But I digress. The ability to compute has led climatologists to calculate smoothed trends for climate changes. A well known German named Stefan Rahmstorf has determined that with his secret smoothing technique, a long-term global warming trend is obvious. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit is arguing that Rahmstorf's method is actually a 15-year triangular filter with some serious defects.
I have a more fundamental point. A 15-year smoothed trend isn't anything real. It's a construct. If it were a construct that helped, it would be one thing. Kinetic energy is defined as one half mass times speed squared. Why not the whole shebang? Because at one half, and with a well chosen definition of potential energy, you get an extremely valuable principle of conservation.
So artificial constructs are not automatically to be discarded, but one has to wonder what value there is in an oddly weighted 15-year average of temperature. Temperature at a given moment is a valuable piece of knowledge. Temperature over a 24-hour period can give a reasonable estimate of the need for heating a home, for instance. There may be some physical significance to the average of a year, but I'm not sure.
But a weighted number over 15 years? It's gibberish. The granularity becomes 15 years. You can do the computation once and then repeat 15 years later, although it's then no clear why you wouldn't just do an equal weight average.
But to get an annual trend out of a 15-year smoothing, as climatologists now do and announce breathlessly to the press, is preposterous. There is no physical reason, no theoretical formula, that depends on the period or the smoothing method. It's a construct without purpose except to impress the ignorant reporters of the mainstream media.
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Joseph Romm, Zealot Extraordinaire
My first, and evidently only, encounter with Dr. Joseph Romm of the Climate Progress blog ended on Sunday with my being banned. For the record, I ran across an old posting from last December where Dr Romm, in separate places, first proposed a $1000 bet that the second decade of the millenium would be warmer than the first and later said that it was "certainly likely" that the increase would be .25C. I challenged him to make the bet at .25 C rather than .1 C, which was his formulation.
When I realized that I had posted to something that nobody was watching any longer, I switched the comment to a current subject. Romm replies that I was making up his statement. I clarified several times but he just got angrier and finally banned me at the end of an irrational rant. You may still be able to read it. It's been there for two days so I guess it doesn't embarrass him.
Reading the blog extensively, I've been struck by how much Joe Romm sounds like the Reverend Billy Bob at the Saturday night tent revival. They have a book, which I can't remember, in which everything is explained. Anyone who doubts the absolute certainty of AGW should simply read The Book. Switch AGW for the Second Coming of Christ and there's an eerie parallel.
Ordinary people can make mistakes. Romm made a mistake by remarking that .25 C in the next decade is certainly likely. In the end, he effectively retracted the statement by criticizing it, but in such a way that it seemed as though I had made the claim rather than him.
Romm is plainly in the hysterical wing of AGW enthusiasts, and he's probably making a good living at it. He's a zealot. Zealotry isn't always bad. Zealots brought about the American Revolution. However, they also brought about the French, Russian and (perhaps first) Iranian revolutions, along with the Spanish Inquisition. On balance, they are to be feared.
Romm and his crowd need to start delivering, or the rabble will grow unruly. We are seeing very little actual warming, none for a few years. The oceans are rising but they have been rising on a geologic time scale and the current increase is minimal. There have been no tropical islands disappearing under the waves. There has been no outbreak of tropical disease in northern climes. Crops are not failing. Hurricanes are not becoming more common.
Maybe this will all happen. Most rational skeptics agree that the basic physics favors some degree of AGW, and since this is a poorly understood process, it's possible that everything claimed for it is true and the current slow progress is a long term trend masked by a short term anomaly. All this is possible.
But it's not certain, and it's bad science to claim that science knows more than it does. It's also bad for science to risk its long-established reputation for sober and non-political investigations. If in a few years, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk will be able to accurately portray the scientific community as having abandoned objectivity for activism, it will be a sad day.
When I realized that I had posted to something that nobody was watching any longer, I switched the comment to a current subject. Romm replies that I was making up his statement. I clarified several times but he just got angrier and finally banned me at the end of an irrational rant. You may still be able to read it. It's been there for two days so I guess it doesn't embarrass him.
Reading the blog extensively, I've been struck by how much Joe Romm sounds like the Reverend Billy Bob at the Saturday night tent revival. They have a book, which I can't remember, in which everything is explained. Anyone who doubts the absolute certainty of AGW should simply read The Book. Switch AGW for the Second Coming of Christ and there's an eerie parallel.
Ordinary people can make mistakes. Romm made a mistake by remarking that .25 C in the next decade is certainly likely. In the end, he effectively retracted the statement by criticizing it, but in such a way that it seemed as though I had made the claim rather than him.
Romm is plainly in the hysterical wing of AGW enthusiasts, and he's probably making a good living at it. He's a zealot. Zealotry isn't always bad. Zealots brought about the American Revolution. However, they also brought about the French, Russian and (perhaps first) Iranian revolutions, along with the Spanish Inquisition. On balance, they are to be feared.
Romm and his crowd need to start delivering, or the rabble will grow unruly. We are seeing very little actual warming, none for a few years. The oceans are rising but they have been rising on a geologic time scale and the current increase is minimal. There have been no tropical islands disappearing under the waves. There has been no outbreak of tropical disease in northern climes. Crops are not failing. Hurricanes are not becoming more common.
Maybe this will all happen. Most rational skeptics agree that the basic physics favors some degree of AGW, and since this is a poorly understood process, it's possible that everything claimed for it is true and the current slow progress is a long term trend masked by a short term anomaly. All this is possible.
But it's not certain, and it's bad science to claim that science knows more than it does. It's also bad for science to risk its long-established reputation for sober and non-political investigations. If in a few years, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk will be able to accurately portray the scientific community as having abandoned objectivity for activism, it will be a sad day.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Encounters with the radical wing of AGW
I chanced on a Web site about climate change through a link at a blog that I pay a lot of attention to. It's Climate Progress and the guru is Joe Romm. After running through some links, I found a posting from December that included the following two items:
So for all the deniers and delayers touting the coolest year of the decade (if the decade starts in 2001) meme, I stand by my offer to bet $1000 that the decade from 2010 to 2019 will be warmer than the decade from 2000 to 2009. I’ll even give you 2-to-1 odds or spot you 0.1°C. And I’ll even agree to use the HadCRUT3 global mean surface temperature data set (but, no, I can’t agree to use the satellite data, since it covers parts of the atmosphere that are projected to cool).
Any takers?
And later, "JR" made a response to "Charlie":
Lots of things tweak warming, but barring another major volcano soon, the next decade is certainly likely to be above 0.25°C warmer than this decade.
So I posted a comment, and JR replied:
"“Denier” is a loaded word, bringing to mind the phrase “holocaust denier.” A good many of us are simply skeptical. The physics looks promising and it’s possible to dismiss the less than stellar correlation between CO2 and global temperature as noise, but there is an awfully poor signal-to-noise ratio here for the sort of pompous dogmatism that I read.
I’m not a physicist but I’ve got a good grip on math and I’d be quite willing to take up the offer of a $1000 bet on the second decade versus the first that was proposed back in December. I posted that response to what I then discovered was a December posting, so probably nobody has noticed. I’ll repeat it.
In December, the statement was made that it was “certainly likely” that the second decade would be warmer by .25 C than the first. I’d be happy to take that as a bet, $1000 straight up odds. It seems that $1000 is an acceptable amount to risk, and the statement implies that the odds strongly favor the hotter temperature. If that’s the case, this should be acceptable. If it isn’t, the statement should be withdrawn.
[JR: You deniers kill me -- or at least future generations. That statement was never made -- to clarify, you wrote "I'd be quite willing to take up the offer of a $1000 bet on the second decade versus the first that was proposed back in December." That statement of yours refers to a bet offer that was never made. I just can't waste time with people who misstate what is easily read on this blog.
Since you all think it's cooling, then the fair bet is whether the next decade (starting in 2010) will be warmer than this one. I'll bet $1000 it is and I'll give you 2-to-1 odds, and I'll even give you the Hadley data, even though the NASA data is probably more accurate. I'll also give you a straight up $1000 bet that the next decade will be 0.1°C warmer, with an extra $100 to the winner for each 0.01°C above or below that. If that isn't acceptable, you really should stop with your disinformation spreading.]"
You do not see part of the exchange, because I immediately responded that I was challenging him to bet at .25C, not that he had done so. He suppressed my comment and edited his own, reiterating that I was suggesting that he had already made the bet.
So I responded again, and so did he:
"JR, since you are now editing my posts before anyone gets to see what I say, this is probably a waste of time, but let me make myself unamiguously clear. You said in December that you would take a bet based on the second decade versus the first. You offered to wager $1000. In the same post, you said that it was “certainly likely” (with the caveat about a volcano) that the rise would be at least .25 C.
I don’t intend to take your bet as offered. I’m just saying that if you have $1000 to risk and think this is an odds on proposition, why aren’t you accepting it?
[JR: Shame on you. Let me make myself unambiguously clear. You are banned. I offered two wagers for deniers. Later on, I made a statement that I believe it is certainly likely that the rise next decade would be 0.25 C warmer than this one. The fact that you refuse to take a two-to-one bet that the next decade will be warmer than this one, or an even money bet that the next decade will be 0.1°C warmer than this, but are fabricating a claim that I offered a wager that the next decade would be 0.25 °C than this one, which is of course beyond the very upper end of recent decadal warming or most GCM predictions -- is proof that you are conceding that the planet is warming much faster than the models suggested and that your denial-oriented posts are pure B.S. Please go elsewhere to post comments. I'm only interested in people here who actually believe what they are posting, even if it is crap.]"
I said once, I thought, and then clarified twice that I did not claim that he had already made the bet, only that he should. For this he restates for the third time that I have misrepresented him and so he bans me.
It certainly seems that climateprogress.org is interested in "deniers," as they call all who disagree with them, but only the idiots. There are plenty of idiots who don't believe in AGW and if you're selective, you can swat away the straw men that they set up by the dozen.
However, when someone calls you on the fact that you have both said that a .25C rise is "certainly likely" and later that it is higher than even his most supportive science claims, he kicks me off the site. I think even Rush Limbaugh, someone I personally loath, has more integrity.
So for all the deniers and delayers touting the coolest year of the decade (if the decade starts in 2001) meme, I stand by my offer to bet $1000 that the decade from 2010 to 2019 will be warmer than the decade from 2000 to 2009. I’ll even give you 2-to-1 odds or spot you 0.1°C. And I’ll even agree to use the HadCRUT3 global mean surface temperature data set (but, no, I can’t agree to use the satellite data, since it covers parts of the atmosphere that are projected to cool).
Any takers?
And later, "JR" made a response to "Charlie":
Lots of things tweak warming, but barring another major volcano soon, the next decade is certainly likely to be above 0.25°C warmer than this decade.
So I posted a comment, and JR replied:
"“Denier” is a loaded word, bringing to mind the phrase “holocaust denier.” A good many of us are simply skeptical. The physics looks promising and it’s possible to dismiss the less than stellar correlation between CO2 and global temperature as noise, but there is an awfully poor signal-to-noise ratio here for the sort of pompous dogmatism that I read.
I’m not a physicist but I’ve got a good grip on math and I’d be quite willing to take up the offer of a $1000 bet on the second decade versus the first that was proposed back in December. I posted that response to what I then discovered was a December posting, so probably nobody has noticed. I’ll repeat it.
In December, the statement was made that it was “certainly likely” that the second decade would be warmer by .25 C than the first. I’d be happy to take that as a bet, $1000 straight up odds. It seems that $1000 is an acceptable amount to risk, and the statement implies that the odds strongly favor the hotter temperature. If that’s the case, this should be acceptable. If it isn’t, the statement should be withdrawn.
[JR: You deniers kill me -- or at least future generations. That statement was never made -- to clarify, you wrote "I'd be quite willing to take up the offer of a $1000 bet on the second decade versus the first that was proposed back in December." That statement of yours refers to a bet offer that was never made. I just can't waste time with people who misstate what is easily read on this blog.
Since you all think it's cooling, then the fair bet is whether the next decade (starting in 2010) will be warmer than this one. I'll bet $1000 it is and I'll give you 2-to-1 odds, and I'll even give you the Hadley data, even though the NASA data is probably more accurate. I'll also give you a straight up $1000 bet that the next decade will be 0.1°C warmer, with an extra $100 to the winner for each 0.01°C above or below that. If that isn't acceptable, you really should stop with your disinformation spreading.]"
You do not see part of the exchange, because I immediately responded that I was challenging him to bet at .25C, not that he had done so. He suppressed my comment and edited his own, reiterating that I was suggesting that he had already made the bet.
So I responded again, and so did he:
"JR, since you are now editing my posts before anyone gets to see what I say, this is probably a waste of time, but let me make myself unamiguously clear. You said in December that you would take a bet based on the second decade versus the first. You offered to wager $1000. In the same post, you said that it was “certainly likely” (with the caveat about a volcano) that the rise would be at least .25 C.
I don’t intend to take your bet as offered. I’m just saying that if you have $1000 to risk and think this is an odds on proposition, why aren’t you accepting it?
[JR: Shame on you. Let me make myself unambiguously clear. You are banned. I offered two wagers for deniers. Later on, I made a statement that I believe it is certainly likely that the rise next decade would be 0.25 C warmer than this one. The fact that you refuse to take a two-to-one bet that the next decade will be warmer than this one, or an even money bet that the next decade will be 0.1°C warmer than this, but are fabricating a claim that I offered a wager that the next decade would be 0.25 °C than this one, which is of course beyond the very upper end of recent decadal warming or most GCM predictions -- is proof that you are conceding that the planet is warming much faster than the models suggested and that your denial-oriented posts are pure B.S. Please go elsewhere to post comments. I'm only interested in people here who actually believe what they are posting, even if it is crap.]"
I said once, I thought, and then clarified twice that I did not claim that he had already made the bet, only that he should. For this he restates for the third time that I have misrepresented him and so he bans me.
It certainly seems that climateprogress.org is interested in "deniers," as they call all who disagree with them, but only the idiots. There are plenty of idiots who don't believe in AGW and if you're selective, you can swat away the straw men that they set up by the dozen.
However, when someone calls you on the fact that you have both said that a .25C rise is "certainly likely" and later that it is higher than even his most supportive science claims, he kicks me off the site. I think even Rush Limbaugh, someone I personally loath, has more integrity.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Clean water or rising waters
A number of things have started me thinking again about global warming and the analysis of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish "skeptical environmentalist," that if we're going to address the world's ills, it makes sense to choose the ones with the greatest possible benefit for the least cost.
So despite Al Gore, I don't see anybody being swamped by rising oceans. Subsiding land is a problem, especially in deltas, but this has nothing to do with global warming. Stopping the rise in CO2, which thus far actually hasn't had a measurable effect on the rate of rise, would cost trillions, if it were possible at all. Moving people out of the fringe regions would cost a fraction. Having fewer people there in the first place, by producing and distributing a trillion condoms, is probably more economical yet.
Contrast this with clean water. There are definitely people dying, millions of them every year, because they don't have access to clean water. I don't know how much it cost per thousand people now, but putting this problem on a high priority list and developing high volume technologies would make the solution a lot cheaper. Certainly not more than a few hundred dollars per person.
So we might redirect the money we spend on Iraq and Afghanistan, provide clean water to a half billion people in the Third World and save a couple million lives annually. Or we could try to reduce CO2 emissions, or at least make them stop rising quite as fast, and delay but not stop global warming. And the consequent rise in ocean levels which have cost the lives to date, rounded off to the nearest whole person, of nobody.
Pick one.
So despite Al Gore, I don't see anybody being swamped by rising oceans. Subsiding land is a problem, especially in deltas, but this has nothing to do with global warming. Stopping the rise in CO2, which thus far actually hasn't had a measurable effect on the rate of rise, would cost trillions, if it were possible at all. Moving people out of the fringe regions would cost a fraction. Having fewer people there in the first place, by producing and distributing a trillion condoms, is probably more economical yet.
Contrast this with clean water. There are definitely people dying, millions of them every year, because they don't have access to clean water. I don't know how much it cost per thousand people now, but putting this problem on a high priority list and developing high volume technologies would make the solution a lot cheaper. Certainly not more than a few hundred dollars per person.
So we might redirect the money we spend on Iraq and Afghanistan, provide clean water to a half billion people in the Third World and save a couple million lives annually. Or we could try to reduce CO2 emissions, or at least make them stop rising quite as fast, and delay but not stop global warming. And the consequent rise in ocean levels which have cost the lives to date, rounded off to the nearest whole person, of nobody.
Pick one.
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