* Posts by Burb

103 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2010

Page:

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

Burb

I recommend ViewRanger. Well worth the annual subscription, giving access to all UK 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps. One feature that makes all the difference compared with Google maps is that it gives you an immediate indication of which direction you are walking in.

BoJo, don't misuse stats then blurt disclaimers when you get rumbled

Burb

Apart from all of these concrete additional costs that you mention - and I have no idea how much they will add up to - unless we do manage to get all of these magical trade deals that offset the inevitable drop in our exports to the EU, the loss of inward investment in manufacturing that is currently predicated on our being in the EU, the loss of various jobs in the City and so on, it is likely that we will suffer a permanent drop in our GDP compared with what it would have been. IIRC, it would only need to be a 0.6% drop in GDP to wipe out the so called savings from our contributions.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

Burb

Re: Rate of change

"How do you calculate rates of change, then? I thought it actually was finding the difference between the start point and the end point and dividing by time. If it's not, can you clarify how you do?"

You might do that for a very smooth data set, which shows no noisy behaviour, but that certainly does not apply to the CET set does it? You can see swings of 2 C year to year in CET. Even if the long term trend was of no change in temperature, you would still see such year to year changes. It is in the nature of it being local rather than global data and, in particular, local to England, which, because its geographic position, will inevitably see a lot of variation. Drawing a straight line between a high and low value that happens to be 50 years apart does not tell you anything because the noisiness of the data could mean that shifting your start point by one year could change the sign of your so called rate of change. Clearly that is not a robust measure of anything.

As for what you should be doing, you need to consider the data as a whole and use some sort of regression method, possibly in conjunction with some smoothing. Actually, what you probably would want to do is to consult with somebody with expertise in statistics and data analysis.

Burb

Re: Rate of change

"Your wish is my command:

Largest 50 year temperature changes"

I suspect you are still not getting it. You don't calculate rate of change - which is what we were talking about - just by picking two end points and differencing them.

Burb

Re: Rate of change

And you are completely missing the point. His 'point of view' was to post a list of highest year on year variations (in either direction) in a discussion about rate of temperature change. The latter is clearly about multi-year trends not about how much change there is in a single year. In fact it is usual when looking at trends to smooth over a number of years to remove short term noise. This isn't a matter of opinion; what he posted didn't make any sense and that should be clear to anyone with a basic level of numeracy and scientific understanding.

Burb

Re: And it's not complicated either

"If the temperature is the same now as it was 130,000 years ago, why aren't the sea levels 6 metres higher now?"

Because it takes more than a century for that much ice to melt, that's why. Why are you having so much difficulty understanding it? Do you really think you have spotted something that noone else has? Or is it more likely that you don't know what you are talking about?

Burb

Re: Rate of change

"Looking at individual year 'changes' in CET is fun, but obviously it's not only cherry picking but it's picking cherries one at time, slowly. Look at the overall trends."

Exactly. You would think that readers of this site might be a bit more scientifically literate than average and this stuff isn't all *that* difficult to understand. Yet at time of writing Pompous Git has 4 up votes and no down (though soon it will be 1).

Burb

Re: Rate of change

Annual change ranked according to rapidity? What does that mean? Do you just mean year on year annual change? Isn't that just measuring noise?

Burb

"The satellite record doesn't agree with the adjusted surface temperatures."

The different satellite records don't even agree with *themselves*. And do you have any idea what sort of 'adjustments' have to be made to satellite data to get anything half sensible out of the raw data? Not to mention that the process involves running what could only be described as a computer model, which doesn't bother me per se, but I thought such things were the spawn of the devil to your sort.

How to build a city fit for 50℃ heatwaves

Burb

Re: Green Loons

Bit of a non sequitur there Mr Pompous Git as we were talking about data analysis techniques, not physical models. In any case, T R Oke's speciality is in 'local climate' such as the climate of a city and urban heat island effects. The book you mention, last updated in 1987, seems mainly to be concerned with such issues and with climate near to the ground. I find it odd that you did not come across AGW in your 'tertiary studies', given that I first came across it in O Level Geography in the early 80's; it was certainly mainstream science by the end of the 70's.

Incidentally if we are doing anecdotes, the only person I can think of having any sort of argument in real life about mainstream climate science was also a creationist so I guess we are quits there.

Burb

Re: Green Loons

"For a start, 2014 wasn't the hottest year on record. Try 1998, during the El Nino."

Let's for the sake of argument assume that you are right and 2014 wasn't hotter than 1998. As others have pointed out there is uncertainty in all of these measurements, in which case I don't know how you can be so confident about 1998. But leaving that to one side, let's suppose 1998 was a bit hotter. 1998 was, as you say, a massive El Nino. 2014 wasn't even an El Nino and yet even you could not deny that it was pretty close to 1998. Does that not tell us anything?

This 1998 cherry picking 'argument' has run its course and is likely to be blown out of the water by 2015 temperatures (and possibly 2016 going by previous El Nino years). Will you reset the clock at 2015 then or will you finally see the fallacy of the argument?

Burb

Re: Green Loons

@fluffybunny "That's 18 years and 9 months."

Ha ha! I mentioned cherry picking a particular year in my first post. You are picking a month! Monckton would be proud of you.

Burb

Re: Green Loons

@Ivan 4: "you only get the hottest year if a) you don't read the information that it is only 37% likely"

Actually it was 38% for NASA and 48% for NOAA. Which makes it more likely than any other year that it was the hottest. And it wasn't even an El Nino like 1998.

"b) if you 'adjust' the figures you use to make that prediction"

I'm not interested in conspiracy theories about adjustments to data. Here's why:

1. The methods are openly discussed and/or are available in the scientific literature.

2. There are very few areas of science where raw data do not need some sort of processing to get meaningful results out of them.

3. Many temperature adjustments are in a downward direction.

4. The BEST study was funded to try to prove that the adjustments made thus far were erroneous. It ended up pretty much agreeing with earlier results.

I'm not saying it applies to you, but many people who spout off this conspiracy nonsense about adjusting surface temperature data tell us in the next breath that we should be trusting satellite data.

Forgive me if I'm unpersuaded. Write some papers if you are such an expert.

Burb

Re: Green Loons

When you say 'utter lack of warming' how does that square with 2014 being the hottest year on record by most measures, 2015 being set to be hotter still and, if the usual pattern of El Nino years is followed, 2016 being likely to be even hotter?

The fact is that the upward trend has not changed for the last few decades. There are variations around the trend but there is no statistical test you can do to show that the trend has changed. (Note that cherry picking a particular peak El Nino year is not a valid statistical test - you would be 'embarrassing' yourself if you were to claim otherwise.)

As for models, they are only supposed to give a rough idea of long term trends. They are not meant to model year to year variations or multi-year cycles such as ENSO as these have a random unpredictable nature. Models do demonstrate such random features but the exact patterns of the cycles will vary from run to run and usually model output is expressed in terms of averages over a number of runs. Of course, there is a single 'run' of Earth's real climatic system and one would not expect to be able to compare this directly against average results. Another point that is often forgotten is that assumptions have to be made about time-dependent boundary conditions for a given projection, which is another reason why it would be naive to expect exact correspondence between a projection and reality.

So what would the economic effect of leaving the EU be?

Burb

Re: impact of uncertainty

"The majority of trade between the UK and the rest of the EU is inwards to the UK. Europe would be shooting itself in the foot by erecting trade barriers against itself. In short, the Germans would lose sales and that is not on!"

You are right about the balance of trade being more inward than outward but our outward trade is nevertheless substantial and we won't improve the situation by cutting it off. The EU is the biggest trading bloc in the world and it's on our doorstep so I'm not sure what is supposed to take up the slack. Europe will be pretty pissed off if we leave the EU so I can't see them being too sympathetic about negotiating favourable trading arrangements for a while. We would not be in a very strong position; we still need to import stuff and, if we choose not to import it from Europe, we are at least going to have to deal with much higher shipping costs.

Climate: 'An excuse for tax hikes', scientists 'don't know what they're talking about'

Burb

Re: @Cipher - In the 1970s...

"Ahem, YES THEY WERE!!

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

There's more, I'll leave that for you to find..."

So why is that the only one that anyone ever mentions? A *magazine* article!

A minority of scientific papers were predicting an ice age in the 1970s. You could not be bothered even to cite one of those.

See here for a survey of 1970s papers: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

Scientists warn of FOUR-FOOT sea level rise from GLACIER melt

Burb

Re: Evidence?

"Not sure where you are getting your facts from."

This, for example:

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/~/media/shared/documents/policy/Climate%20Change%20Statement%20Addendum%202013%20Final.ashx

Note that when there have been relatively rapid changes, they have tended to be accompanied by large scale extinctions so the point remains that we want to avoid rapid change if possible.

Burb

Re: Evidence?

"Change is most certainly the norm."

However it has not been the norm during recent human history, during which agriculture and stable civilisations have been able to develop.

The current *rate* of change is not the norm, making adaptation very difficult for many plant and animal species.

That there has been change in the past is not a reason passively to accept damaging change now, given that we have realised that we are the cause of that change and have the ability to do something about it.

On much longer time scales there will indeed be large changes not initiated by us. *If* we survive long enough we might develop the technology to cope with them.

Burb

Re: New record set for Antarctic Ice today.

"I wonder how that squares with the news that Antarctica is melting...?"

The clue was near the beginning of the quote that you reproduced. Antarctic *sea* ice.

Ancient telly, check. Sonos sound system, check. OMG WOAH

Burb

"It's a damn shame that Logitech stopped selling the Squeezeboxen."

I agree.

However, Squeezebox is not dead. The software is open source and there are various hardware solutions from smartphones to Raspberry Pi to new dedicated audiophile hardware that is under development (google communitysqueeze).

Sonos and I: How home media playback just gets SO FRUSTRATING

Burb

Re: F.Y. Logitech

And another one from me.

Note that Squeezebox is not dead by a long shot. The software is open source and there are various options for creating new players such as installing a player app on a smartphone (Squeezeplay + SqueezeCommander on Android, or iPeng on the iPhone). As suggested above, it is possible to get working a player based on a Raspberry Pi. However, probably the most interesting thing on the horizon is something called Community Squeeze, which is "a project to produce an audiophile quality Squeezebox compatible music player". This has made huge progress just in the last few months.

Boffins agree: Yes we have had an atmospheric warming pause

Burb

Re: Oh dear - oh dear oh dear oh dear

@btrower

"I don't know enough to say for sure, but my hunch is that something similar to what is described in this paper will give much better predictions of future temperature and it is basically an elucidation and quantification of the null hypothesis that the climate will continue on as it has:

http://www.clim-past.net/9/447/2013/cp-9-447-2013.pdf"

All that paper does is fit curves. It uses Fourier analysis to show that temperature records over a particular period can be modelled reasonably well with 6 'cycles'. It does not propose any physical mechanism to explain what those putative cycles might be. The whole point about Fourier analysis is that you can take *any* function and break it into a sum of cycles!

Burb

Re: WHO CARES!

@btrower

"If you think about it, the CO2 we are supposedly polluting the atmosphere with had to come originally from the atmosphere"

Yes but we have dumped millions of years worth of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in about a century.

"...over ranges near where we are now CO2 concentrations are driven by temperature, not the other way around"

What is the mechanism for this? Where is the CO2 coming from?

"http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html

That shows that we are not at a peak, that we could easily be going up sharply without violating the null hypothesis that it is business as usual and that over ranges near where we are now CO2 concentrations are driven by temperature, not the other way around."

What you are missing is that there is good evidence that initial temperature rises in the past were driven by Milankovich cycles and that CO2 levels increased when the oceans heated sufficiently to start releasing CO2. This does not argue against CO2 as a greenhouse gas; the effect would have been to amplify the effect of the initial forcing. Indeed changes in insolation due to orbital variations would not alone have been sufficient to account for the temperature swings seen in the past.

"I do not expect that it has a whisper of a chance to cause anything approaching a runaway feedback loop."

Who is claiming this? Positive feedback does not imply runaway feedback.

"Re: Where is all the human CO2 going if it isn't causing the increase in CO2 level?

This is what I call the 'argument from ignorance' , characterized by the generic notion that because you cannot think of any other explanation, your explanation must somehow be correct."

Possibly, you might have a point if all that anyone had done was to think of a couple of things off the top of their head and write them on the back of an envelope. Whereas in fact, people have put a lot of effort into investigating and measuring sources and sinks of CO2. Plus there are various fingerprints that point towards the fossil fuel origin of increasing CO2 such as complementary reductions in O2 and changes in the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere.

Boffins find MEXICAN WAVE pattern in random climate wobbles

Burb

> > It looks very much like the Sun is not a dominant player in global warming.

> You do realise that *all* our daily energy comes from the Sun don't you?

> It single-handledly drives our entire climate.

> How can you make a statement that it is not a dominant player in anything to do with our climate?

Every time the relationship between the sun and climate change is discussed on these AGW stories, there is a posting like this one and it inevitably gets a majority of thumbs up. It makes me despair at the lack of capacity for logical thinking that many people seem to have.

Nobody is saying that the sun is not a dominant player with respect to the climate.

What they are saying is that IF, as most scientists believe, solar output is not going up THEN it can't be a driver for global warming.

And even though some people are arguing in comments above that maybe solar output has in fact gone up according to some criteria, that is an argument about the premise, not about the implication. It doesn't justify comments like skelband's.

US Republican enviro-vets: 'Climate change is real. Deal with it'

Burb

@Andreas Koch Re: @ Burb - @ AC 0647hGMT - Whatever.

"Lazy, are we? I'm not going to play Russell's teapot with you; there's lists of them about, google it."

Somehow I missed this reply yesterday. I think it was because I was looking out for a more substantial answer than you have been able to give.

No - I am not lazy. I have been looking for an answer to this question for about 3 years now and I haven't found a convincing answer to it. The very few names I am aware of on the 'sceptic' side who seem to be close to genuinely qualified scientists have been debunked too many times to be taken seriously any more (e.g. Lindzen, who has all but admitted that his 'iris earth' theory was wrong, or Spencer, who has a string of well-documented errors under his belt as well as having admitted that one of the motivations for his opinions is his evangelical Christian beliefs).

As for Freeman Dyson, his position is ambiguous as pointed out elsewhere, and I seem to recall that his statements have been of a very general nature and have revealed that he has not made much of an effort in getting up to speed on climate science.

Burb

"Just because a majority believes something does not automatically mean it is true."

True. I would expect that a majority of people in the USA, for example, do not believe that AGW is true.

The real question is the majority of whom, their credibility and their credentials. I am still waiting for a alternative consilient scientific theory that explains the evidence as well as the the current mainstream understanding of climate. Let me know if you can point me towards one.

Burb

Re: What I have yet to hear

"is the freaking 100's of scientists actually telling me what the correct temperature of the planet is, and at which point in time this was. On average, over the lifetime of Earth, temperatures will have been in the, for us, uninhabitable range."

Just because the temperature has in the past been outside the habitable range for human civilisation as we know it and, left to its own devices, will do so in future isn't an excuse for forcing temperatures outside that range now. Obviously on long time scales there will be natural variations that might make things very uncomfortable for us but if we can survive a few centuries and continue the sort of technological progress seen in the last 100 years or so maybe we would have the technology to do something about it by then.

Burb

Re: Utter tosh

" '[O]ur world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth's atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected."

Every single one of these claims is utter tosh..."

Why? Just because you say so?

Burb

Re: Utter tosh

"BTW Anonymous Coward (and I can understand why you want to remain anonymous!) 'Hundreds of credentialed climate scientists' is a figure taken from a widely discredited 'survey' of allegedly 12,000 scientists. Once you dig into the figures, you will find that a grand total of 65 actually agreed with that statement. (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10772757.htm)"

This is nonsense. The arguments being made in these 'discreditings' are like saying that biologists do not agree with the theory of evolution because they do not explicitly say so in every abstract of every paper that they publish.

Incidentally, there have been a few similar surveys over the years, with slightly differing methodologies, and they have all reached broadly the same conclusion. I am not aware of any surveys to the contrary, certainly nothing with any degree of rigour.

Burb

Re: @ AC 0647hGMT - Whatever.

"There are likewise other scientists who say the opposite or something in between, probably with the same credentials. So?"

So...

1. Tell me who they are.

2. Tell me what their credentials are.

3. Tell me what their theories are.

Global warming fingered as Superstorm Sandy supersizer

Burb

@speedjunky:

"What did I see in the Sunday Mail last night, an article with the headline,"Finally proof that there is NO global warming", it went on to state that the global temperatures are NOT rising, showed a nice pretty graph where the temperatures have levelled off for the past 15 years!!"

I'm pretty sure your post is meant to be a parody. Am I right?

Burb

Re: Scientific Terminology

"The problem with current 'peer-reviewed' climate science is that it is often fraudulent. An obvious example is the latest Marcott et al paper reviving the hockey-stick, which has just been shown to have passed peer-review as a PhD thesis without the hockey-stick graph ending, and then had that added later for publication."

Interesting. Where has this been shown?

Climate scientists link global warming to extreme weather

Burb

Re: "On record-breaking extremes"

I can't believe you just slagged off someone for posting a link to RealClimate and then had the nerve to link to Roy Spencer.

Burb

Re: Ice Age onset causes climate oscillations

"The article doesn't seem to address the ice growth in the Antarctic at all ...."

Perhaps one reason for this is that ice is not growing in the Antarctic.

BBC: What YOU spent on our lawyers in Secret Climate 28 debacle

Burb
WTF?

Re: Surprising....how?

"In reality, we have no real idea of rate of change over history."

"there is actually a great deal of evidence to suggest climate changes can and have occured very swiftly (as in a few years or even months) in the past"

?

Climate shocker: Carry on as we are until 2050, planet will be fine

Burb
FAIL

So you start off by saying:

"We can expect the usual 'common purpose' CAGW alarmist trolls to completely ignore reports such as the one Lewis highlights."

Note that this report fully accepts AGW and is clear that something needs to be done about it. All it is saying is that according to its analysis climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the range of most likely values (which are derived from a number of inputs such as this one, so there is no inconsistency here). If true, this means we have a bit more of a breathing space than we thought we might have.

But then you say:

"so-called 'man-made climate change' (still no proof, at all, anywhere, from anyone)"

Which surely means that you think hat this report is complete rubbish like all of the other 'alarmist' research?

So why do you give it more credence?

'Fail' for complete and utter logic failure.

Burb

Re: I was in bed last night fantasizing away....

@Graham Dawson

Not this one again. A shift towards neutral from basic is acidifying.

Just like -2 is more positive than -3. It's a fairly simple concept.

Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming

Burb

Re: @Burb

@AC "Your statements on needing a long enough interval make sense, but that is not the line toed by the climate politics. We have x days to save the earth is a regular feature."

You need a long enough interval if you want to see an unequivocal trend in temperatures that is obvious to the man in the street. There is plenty of other scientific evidence to indicate that something is happening now but the problem is that it is less accessible to most people. The reason for the 'x days' sort of thing is that the longer that action is delayed, the harder it is going to be to do something if and when the problem is finally accepted. Maybe you are right and it's all a giant scientific conspiracy - I'd be happy if it were! But my sceptical nature suggests to me that enough scientists know what they are talking about and are not making things up. I guess all we can do is wait and see.

BTW as far as politics is concerned, there is plenty of evidence of political funding of the 'sceptic' viewpoints and in general there is a history of interference by political think tanks in areas of scientific research that have a potential for giving rise to regulations on business activities.

Burb

Re: Will it ever end?

Strictly speaking, nothing in science can be proved. But leaving that aside, the matter of accounting for variability and extracting a trend from a noisy signal is not exactly uncharted territory. Standard statistical techniques can be used, just as they are used in many branches of science that you presumably don't complain about. What you can't expect to do is to perform a single run, or a few runs, of a *physical* model and expect to get an exact prediction from it. You can get rough trends which are subject to assumptions made about conditions that will apply in the future (such as volcanoes, solar output, ENSO activity etc.).

There are different approaches to statistical analysis. If you want to analyse the data as pure data without trying to understand the variations, you are going to need a longer time interval. On the other hand, if you look at the work that Forster and Rahmstorf have done, they use multiple regression to remove the known factors and are able to demonstrate an underlying trend now that is unchanged from before this supposed period of stalled temperatures.

Another fairly straightforward way to look at this is given by http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming I would strongly recommend that you read this if you are genuinely interested in the questions you are asking. This is mainly considering the El Nino/La Nina effects, but the basic thing it shows is that the La Nina troughs are on an upward trend which is the same as the upward trend of El Nino peaks, which is the same as the upward trend of average temperatures. The reason things look like they have stalled in recent years is that La Ninas have dominated and there was a massive El Nino in 1998. You ask how long is long enough? Well, assuming these trends continue, at some point we are going to see El Nino years and those are going to be well above the 1998 peak and the troughs of future La Ninas are also generally going to be above that 1998 peak and still rising.

Final point related to this: the effects of La Nina, declining solar output, higher than expected aerosols all should be pointing towards *declining* energy input. I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why we aren't seeing that rather than seeing surface temperatures remaining at high levels, increasing ocean heat content, melting ice caps, etc.

Burb

Re: Will it ever end?

"It's relatively straightforward for them to prove their case: produce a climate model that can predict the global temperature to within reasonable error margins over a period of, say 15 years."

So how does one go about predicting such factors such as volcanoes, short term variations due to ENSO, changes in solar output, changes in aerosol concentration over the next 15 years?

Predictions of ENSO activity can't be made more than about a year in advance - if that - and yet it can dominate temperature variation in the short term (witness 1998 and recent La Nina years). However, because it is essentially energy sloshing back and forth between the sea and atmosphere, over the longer term it averages out.

Burb

Re: Global warming...

You are correct that weather is very difficult to predict but climate is less difficult. This might seem paradoxical but, roughly speaking, there are more opportunities for integration over time and space.

You make some rather vague assertions about 'other models' being denigrated. What are you referring to here?

UK climate expert warns of 3-5 degree warmer world by 2100

Burb

Re: Shirley not that meme again

> Wow, you just don't get how science works do you!

Yes I do actually. From the following it isn't clear that you do:

> You come up with a theory. Then you look at real world data (not models!) and see

> if that fits your theory. If the data fits it does *not* prove your theory is correct. It just

> means that it hasn't disproved it. If the data does not fit then it shows that your theory

> is flawed.

You seem to be a bit confused. No one is comparing models to theory. Models are part of the theory. Obviously real world data has to be measured and obviously nothing is provable in science. No one would argue with you about that, least of all me.

What it is possible to say is that if a scientific theory has predictive power, and can explain and pull together multiple lines of evidence then it is something to start taking seriously. Current understanding of climate and the role of CO2 has reached that level of acceptance in the scientific community.

The point that you are arguing is that the data does not fit predictions and that therefore disproves the theory. That is too simplistic. As has been attempted to explain to you, the temperature data from the last few years is not sufficient to disprove the predictions made. Once again: this is because of the natural variations in temperature that are superimposed on the warming trend. If you want to go purely with the measured data then you need to allow a sufficiently long period to average out the natural variations and see the underlying trend. As I explained in my earlier post, it is not even as if the natural variations are completely random - we do have a pretty good handle on some of the major causes and can explain what has been going on in the last few years.

> I have not rejected the CAGW theory, I am arguing that the data is making it look

> incredibly flaky. Even if the data had supported the theory (as it seemed to do in

> the 80s and 90s but doesn't appear to since) it wouldn't have proved it - i.e. the

> science was *never* settled.

The only data you have mentioned is atmospheric temperature data. As explained, we cannot draw conclusions from that yet. However, most heat is going into the ocean. It is the total energy balance that is important and that is in line with predictions. Melting arctic ice is in line with predictions (in fact predictions were conservative). Melting antarctic ice is in line with predictions.

> I do not need to come up with an alternative theory. Why would you even suggest that?

Multiple lines of evidence support the current theory. Contrary to popular belief the supporting evidence is not just models, though they are a part of it. If you are saying that it is wrong, the onus is on you to explain why and to provide a better explanation that fits the evidence. Pending that, scientists will stick with the current theory. That's how science works.

Burb

Re: Shirley not that meme again

"I don't need to fall back on any argument because this CAGW thing is not my theory. If temperatures had continued to increase in line with that theory then that would just mean that CAGW hasn't been disproved yet."

I'm wondering in that case what is your rationale for rejecting the theory, since the crux of your argument so far is that surface temperatures are not in line with predictions. You have pretty much said there that, if they had been, you would still reject it. So what is the basis for that? What is your alternative theory that has the same explanatory power?

Burb

Re: Shirley not that meme again

"I'm suggesting you can use any statistics you want (or just take a cursory glance at the graph). Either way, it isn't looking like temperatures are going up anywhere near the rate that climate doomsters have predicted from their models."

Historically, there have been short term variations in the temperature around a general trend. Those variations tend to be bigger than the trend. That's just the way it is and is the essence of why you can't look at a short period. You need enough data to be able to discern the signal from the noise. Where statistics comes in is being able to quantify what you can actually say based on the data that you have.

Another way you can look at it is physically and try to understand why the temperatures vary the way the do over short periods. For example, we know that there was a super El Nino in in 1997-98 which caused a temporary peak in temperatures. We also know that one of the strongest La Nina's recorded occurred in 2010-2011 and that that has a dampening effect on temperatures. We also know about the effect of volcanic activity. Attempts have been made to analyse temperature data by removing these known effects. These yield a consistent rate of warming. I know this won't convince you as it relies on statistical analysis but, even if you don't accept the details of the analysis, the ENSO effects effects over the last 15 years or so are indisputable. Do you not therefore accept that there is at least a plausible reason for the observed temperatures that is not inconsistent with an underlying increasing trend?

Burb
WTF?

Re: Shirley not that meme again

"> Eyeballing a graph will lead you astray.

Errrr... what is the point of drawing a graph in the first place if you're not supposed to look at it? That's gotta be your best comment so far. Made me laugh!"

That made *me* laugh! Are you being deliberately obtuse? Are you suggesting that modern statistics be done away with in favour of drawing graphs?

Burb

Re: Shirley not that meme again

"Can you not see the flat bit on the end? Starting to look a bit embarrassing when we've been promised ever increasing rates of temperature rise."

Can you not see that there was a bit of a steeper drop before that that has flattened out and looks like it might go up again?

Which is no more ridiculous than what you are saying. The point is that there is not enough data to say that the 'flat bit' is significant yet.

Given what we know about ENSO activity in the period we are talking about, it is in fact likely that we will start seeing an uptick before too long. I'm curious to know what argument you will fall back on if that happens.

Global warming still stalled since 1998, WMO Doha figures show

Burb

Re: "no warming since 1998"?

Badvok: which credible scientists' work refuting Anthropogenic Climate Change should New Scientist have been publishing?

Acid oceans DISSOLVING sea life

Burb

I agree with you that the title is incorrect, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that saying something is becoming less alkali is equivalent to saying it is becoming more acidic, in much the same way that it is correct to say that -2 is more positive than -3. It's a minor semantic argument that I have seen some people (not you) use to detract attention from the fact that a shift in pH is probably going to have negative consequences, whatever words you want to use to describe that shift.

I have read the story through a couple of times and I don't see anything about having our skins eaten away. The focus is very much on the impact on marine life. The title is the only issue.

UN: Greenhouse gas emissions gap is out of control

Burb

Re: We need flash gordon brown

@AC: "What is annoying is they will say this until something does actually happen and then claim victory. E.g. the cry wolf story"

What is annoying is when people make up stuff that they think the scientists are saying without doing even a minimal amount of research. No one has said that we are all going to die tomorrow. The problem is that if we continue as we are and wait for the predicted changes to happen at the time that they are predicted to happen (which *isn't* tomorrow), it will be too late to do anything about it.

No increase in droughts since 1950, say boffins

Burb

Re: Extremes?

"

Better analogy:

View 1: "Benchtop cold fusion is real."

"

Why is that a better analogy? How many peer reviewed papers supporting cold fusion have been published?

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