Saturday
Apr122014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill That was quick
Apr 12, 2014 Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface Anthony Watts records the release of a new paper by Shaun Lovejoy of McGill University, which claims to have shown that the chances of recent temperature change being natural are close to zero.
With 99% certainty claimed for the results, all sorts of alarm bells are sounded, and sure enough holes are being picked in the results already: Monckton here and Matt Briggs here.
I think it's fair to say that this particular paper is going to sink without trace.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=8061
Reader Comments (14)
For me at 99%, like the missing heat, it never actually broke the surface.
So we are now 99% certain that the blade of a hockey stick is different from the shaft?
I had a brief look at the paper. If I understand correctly he compares the late 19th+20th century temperature (equivalent to the blade of a hockey stick) with 19th century data (the shaft) derived from hockey stick papers. If you believe the hockey stick is an accurate record of temperature then this result, maybe, means something.
You can prove current temperatures are 'unprecedented' provided you assume they never changed in the past.
Nick.
From one of the comments on Briggs' ode to joy, I'm pleased to discover that I share a rule-of-thumb with Rutherford:
Why not 97% certain ?
Wat kind of organisation picks such figures out of the air or gerrymander them ?
..breaks the 'too good to be true rule'
You don't need statistics to prove that, since the LIA - the what can only be described as beneficial recent but temperate global warming is, 100% natural. Actually, the ancients, from Egypt, to China and our own Indo-European ancestors had it sussed about glorious solar induced influence on the weather and uncluttered by statistics but they had to be able to predict the seasons, astronomy also was a key to unlock the secrets of the heavens.
We have been taught to think of them as primitive sun worshippers but science has proved that our ancient forebears - were right after all, and it was not just clutching at stars.
Perhaps the easiest way for a non-scientist to see what utter nonsense that paper is, is to verify--by finding and looking at a graph of the global mean surface temperature going back to 1900 or earlier--that the temperature (according to the consensus climate data) warmed between 1910 and 1940 by the same amount it warmed between 1975 and 2005, yet the earlier warming period is not attributed to CO2 or any man-made climate change, while the latter is. So the author(s) of this latest academic paper are thoroughly incompetent, because they neglect that rather obvious fact that defeats their efforts from the very outset. Many have pointed this fact out, over and over, but the "denier consensus" (as represented here by Z...D...B...) will not acknowledge that they have, in fact, been defeated long ago, and they are only like little spoiled children, shouting "NO, NO, NO!" to their elders who are trying to correct them and make them behave.
Dnfft
He just pointed to the hockey stick and did a brilliant rain dance, using bad math, as they all do, these bitter enders.
And it made it to slashdot (hotbed of AGW) in record time too: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/04/12/1237210/study-rules-out-global-warming-being-a-natural-fluctuation-with-99-certainty
toys, pram, out, of, thrown, the
Form a sentence.
Apr 13, 2014 at 1:20 AM | Harry Dale Huffman
What exactly is the 'explanation' for the 2 equivalent 20th century warming periods that exist in the slightly iffy data that most of the scientists use?? also is the dip in the middle 'explanation' aerosols still??
As I commented over at WUWT, any so-called physics paper that says "with 99% or 99.9% certainty" when using manipulated data, long term proxies, etc is simply lieing. It is crap.
Since he is only 99% certain that the warming is anthropogenic he will no doubt soon be applying for new grants to try and reduce the 1% uncertainty. There was a time when the times in athletics were measured to tenths of a second but for many years now they have been measured to hundredths of a second. Lovejoy will probably be continuing his research even when he is 99.9% certain that the warming is anthropogenic - even if there is no warming!
Some of you may be interested in an article I wrote some time ago on this subject:-
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/the-occams-razor-oscillatory-model/
It provides a (wilfully) fallacious argument proving that there has been no significant variation in temperature. To avoid any confusion, the argument has exactly the same validity as Lovejoy's i.e. none at all.