A year or so ago, there was a lot of fuss around the talking point, originating with Richard Lindzen of MIT that “There has been no statistically significant warming since 1995?”At the time, I observed that this meant nothing more than “given the variability in the data, we need at least 15 observations to reject the null hypothesis at 95 per cent confidence”. Thus, it was totally unwarranted to slide, as Lindzen and others did, from “no statistically significant warming” to “no significant warming” or even, in Lindzen’s case “warming has ceased for the past fourteen years”. Sad to say, most of the “sceptics” who profess to “make up their own mind” on the issues, are either too lazy or lack the mental equipment to learn the basic statistics needed to understand this point, and therefore unthinkingly repeated Lindzen’s claim. But, to anyone who understood the issues, it was obvious that a couple more observations in line with the observed warming of recent decades would be enough to bring the trend to statistical significance.
With 2010 over, we now have 16 observations starting in 1995, and (unsurprisingly to anyone who followed the argument thus far) the upward trend is now statistically significant at the 5 per cent level[1] That is, if climate change since 1995 (the time of the first IPCC report, and well after Lindzen announced himself as a sceptic) had been purely random, the odds against such an upward trend would be better than 20 to 1 against.
The obvious question is whether Lindzen will now concede that his claim, and the inference he drew from it, has been falsified, and that warming has not in fact ceased as he suggested. I’m willing to bet that what we see is evasion, obfuscation of or outright silence, not only from Lindzen, but from all of those who parroted his claim.
fn1. My estimates based on the Hadley data used by Lindzen gives an estimated trend of 0.012 degrees a year, with a t-value of 2.45.
John Quiggin 
The significance of agnotology is that the scientific humanist revolution has withered on the vine and failed. The dream of a truly democratic society with an educated citizenry making enlightened decisions for the common good is dead. The dream has been killed by unfettered imperialist capitalism which destroys everything it touches.
Yes, You ge thte proff’s point tho.
Shift the goalposts, put a blindfold on and because a dozen different reputable people offer a 95% likely scenario, affording a virtual consensus; you loudly proclaim, “not until a tonne of elephant crap lands on my head, from that opening giant bucket hovering above, will I presume a likelihood”.
The problem with this is, in the meantime, many other quite innocent people will have to get to have their lives mucked up as well.
As for Ikonoclast’s reading, I’d say yes. The twenty first century parallel to the sixteenth/seventeenth Catholic church and Habsburg empire rejection of Copernicus and Galileo.
Catallaxy is writing on a similar topic. Is Sinclair Davidson</a
simply writing in an area outside his expertise or is he merely providing propaganda to the ill informed.
Here’s a mental exercise to assist in estimating the chances of any action being taken to prevent AGW (Anthropogenic global warming).
Current world population = 7 billion (almost).
No. who have never heard of AGW = 3.5 billion (estimated and incl children).
No. who have heard but dont understand = 1.5 billion (est)
No. who have heard but are deniers = 1.0 billion (est)
No. who understand but do nothing = 0.9 billion (est)
No. are doing something about it = 0.1 billion (est)
If anything, I think my estimate of 100 million people (actually doing something effective against the AGW trend) is probably an overestimate.
This 100 million would include the scientists (except the fringe deniers), effective policy makers on this issue (thin on the ground) and private citizens who have done something genuine* to reduce their carbon footprint.
*Note: I mean those who have radically reduced their carbon footprint and not just taken some token action like getting a few solar panels while still running 2 cars and flying away on annual ski-ing holidays.
Note: I mean those who have radically reduced their carbon footprint and not just taken some token action like getting a few solar panels while still running 2 cars and flying away on annual ski-ing holidays.
Ikonoclast ; You have hit the nail on the head – nobody wants to give up their lifestyle
The problem with people such as Lindzen is that once the damage done that their derailment of the GWA action can be quantified, the full cost to humanity will as meaningful as trying to comprehend the vastness of space. Accountability will be meaningless, as nothing that is now will be the same in the future. Lindzen himself, along with all of the self interested politicians and obstructive profiteering “business”people, will be amoungst of the billions of casualties of the 5 degree C world into which we are plummeting. The Lindzens are themselves just a statistical blip on the graph of how this disaster unfolds.
The only thing that matters absolutley is what happens in the coming months with our own political process and its outcome for action. I think it is time for a totally non political conscience vote in parliament on the matter of urgent action to prevent runaway global warming.
There needs to be an absolute irrevocable mandate to proceed with urgency, independent of politics.
With apologies to Bill Clinton, “It’s the population, stupid.”
AGW wouldn’t be very problematic for a global population of 1 billion, with today’s technology. Sadly, perhaps inevitably, we humans have overwhelmed every corner of the world – truly, humans are a plague upon the Earth. Global population is now unsustainably large, and I fear that the likely future includes continuing growth and widespread food and security crises.
Which will lead to a population of 1 billion, REJ. The catch is, Ron, technology will not survive the transition, so it is a pretty bleak future for the 1 billion who will be living mostly in the stepps of Russia, Northern Canada, Tasmania, New Zealand, The Falklands, Southern Africa, the Cape, and Antarctica. With a huge, hot, violently dangerous gulf between.
While I’m never particularly optimistic about sound statistics coming from Lindzen and others, it is nice to see one of these issues put to bed. The unfortunate thing, however, is that it needs to be put to bed. While we have passed Fisher’s magical 5 per cent mark, one extra observation does not make the argument. The confidence of rejecting the null hypothesis of no warming has increased from slightly less to slightly more than 95 per cent.
If the 2010 figure had not resulted in the 5 per cent mark being passed, it would not have significantly changed the strength of the case. If we had continued to gain new data points over the next five to ten years and the significance mark was still not obtained, that would have been another matter.
A quick aside, John – your twitter link on this site does not work properly – I think there is a space between your first name and surname where there should not be.
The arguments of Lindzen and any others like him are demolished by data coming from the Argos programme. The oceans are heating and accelerating in their heating. This is a system of such enormous size that it takes a fundamentally massive environmental process to make it happen. The feed back is well under way with atmospheric H2O increased already by 4% leading to the unprecedented rains and floods now accelerating in frequency. These are phenomenon way beyond statistical arguments about air temperature and time.
But interestingly the recent floods are a pointer to the future. Now that we have kicked off this CO2 buildup and the methane buildup that follows I expect to see, even in what is left of my lifetime, how the Grand Canyon was formed, and all of California’s oil at the same time. There is an Australian microlight enthusiast living in the US who has a website http://www.emuvideo.com at which he posts videos of his flights over the Arizona wilderness and the Grand Canyon. When you see this landscape from the air it is blatantly obvious that this landscape was carved by massive amounts of rainfall. Rainfall way beyond anything that we can comprehend today, but we are getting a little glimpse just now.
So how our environmental future plays out now is that as the poles melt, the ocean heats, and water surface area increases, atmospheric H2O skyrockets and some time later as the temperature passes through 4 deg C heading for 5 deg C global temperature rise, the ocean currents start to stall. This causes stagnent seas which with the massive runoff from the land carrying huge nutrient loads become huge algal bloom fields. At this point the process of atmospheric restabalisation begins. The algae begin reducing the disolved CO2 from the seas and sink to be entrapped in the bountiful sediments forming beneath them, and the oil replenishment starts.
The is a catch. There is not enough CO2 in the system to create anything like the original oil fields. Where has it gone? It is in the methyl hydrates in the deeper seas. So there are 2 possibilities. We might get a short cycle of a few thousand years, or we might a hugely extended cycle of atmospheric scrubbing, tens of thousands of years, if the methane in the hydrates boils off to be later captured by the algae and resequestered as oil.
What a shame I can’t be around to see how the whole process plays out.
One might have added that even if one didn’t have a grasp of the 95% confidence threshhold for “statistical significance” that the broader principle — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — ought to have kicked in, at least for those claiming to stand within the scientific paradigm.
I am having a good crystal ball day today.
It occurs to me that the big fashion item in 150 years will be human scalp overcoats.
With the massive and drastic environmental upheaval and the subsequent dislocation that is well underway with a 3 deg C global temperature increase, most mammal species die out. Human populations are decimated by violent weather events (winds of 300 kph become common) starvation and disease, the only source of fur like materials will be from humans themselves. So a future burial right will involve a scalping to preserve the only other animal organic material easily available other than feathers.
That is a nice combination, future fashion designers can do a lot with feather and fur.
A “Newspoll” selection homogenised weather stations, that only cover a micro fraction of the globes atmosphere, is hardly conclusive scientific evidence that it is either, warming or cooling.
It is a fraud to assert on that basis, that the atmosphere is warming.
There is conclusive ‘proof’ that the proponents of excessive government are fraudulent to assert that the introduction of a carbon tax will stop the climate changing.
Would these include him saying “no statistically significant warming in the past 15 years” where, of course, the last 15 years now starts in 1996. This strawman that will never die and shows the intellectual dishonesty of the proponents. It’s amazing that someone who purports to be a climate scientist attaches any climatic significance to data from a period of 15 years. As I point out repeatedly, much less than 30 years is not even long enough to measure the climate, let alone changes in the climate. But perhaps Lindzen has a “lying for Jesus” attitude.
Bilb:
Lindzen is 70 and will be 71 next month. I don’t think he will live long enough to see the above.
Well Lindzen after being more right for a decade in his early career may be heading into a phase of being not so right
“Lindzen hypothesized that the Earth may act like an infrared iris. A sea surface temperature increase in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth’s atmosphere.[37] This hypothesis suggests a negative feedback which would counter the effects of CO2 warming by lowering the climate sensitivity. Satellite data from CERES has led researchers investigating Lindzen’s theory to conclude that the Iris effect would instead warm the atmosphere.”
Maybe it helps to have a steady supply of students providing fresh ideas to test and be right about.
But then he knows way more than I ever will, so it is up to the atmosphere to decide.
ChrisOneill,
Some people we should cryo freeze, and thaw at an appropriate time in the future. I can think of a few.
OT but very topical – may I suggest a thread dedicated to the political implications of the Tuscon shooting:
The Left-liberal line that the shooter is a Tea Party sympathiser and terrorist seems to be a complete crock. The shooter is some misty-eyed dreamer of the Chapman variety, some reports characterize him as a “Left-liberal”.
The rush to judgement to blame the Tea Party stands in stark double-standard contrast to the media-academia’s endless thumb-sucking and fence-sitting when presented with a clear case of (Left-wing) political terrorism, such as the Fort Hood massacre. Occam’s razor is apparently banned under OH&S rules of political engagement.
But this tragedy presents a political opportunity to a shrewd operator. If Obama is smart he will use it to head off the Right-wing revival.
The parallels with McVeigh and the Contract with America movement are striking. Especially the prospect that Obama could do a Clinton and use this moment to pivot against the Right-wing.
Shooting an attractive blonde Congressman is definitely uncool. I predict that this moment will be the long-awaited turn around in the Tea Party movement.Lot of prospective Tea-Party voters will be turned off.
So in that sense the Left-liberal political instinct to pin this assassination on the militant Right-wing is sound.
While I don’t wish to conflate agnotology and Strochiasticism, for the moment I will listen to the sheriff who has actually spoken to the alleged assassin:
I will also note that it seems somewhat unlikely a left-liberal would choose to assassinate an ideological ally and I seem to have missed the US left indulging in superheated rhetoric about reloading instead of retreating.
Jack Strocchi, some good news for the latest reports indicate Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in Tucson and a prominent supporter of solar energy is awake. But on a sad note other reports indicate eighteen other people were also shot by Jared Loughner, 22 who is a fan of Sarah Palin and the tea party movement and six have been confirmed dead including a 9-year-old girl, a federal judge and one or more of Ms. Giffords’ aides. As to whether he acted alone is uncertain.
@Alan
Perhaps one need look no further than the inflammatory media style than to wonder why events like this occur.
Mordoch for one is not in the habit of genteel reporting and we have covered this issue before on another thread
the level of right wing vitriol in the media has many things to answer for (and Id like Murdoch to just disappear between you and me. He was labelled a warmong in inflaming the Iraq war. He is a warmonger – and this is just another symptom in my view of an entirely sick media).
@Jack Strocchi
Oh for goodness sake Jack – you just cant help yourself. You are so desperate to shift this one on to some left liberal when it just aint so buddy.
Your political punditry on this one is expected (you keep favouring the right even when they are so wrong) – you are re living the 1970s with right heroes living in your head (and 30 years later the aristocracies are riding high and everyone else is sinking but you cant face it),
and you are so wrong on this one you have lost all credibility at being a political pundit.
How can one man be so wrong?
@Michael of Summerhill
And in a bizarre twist, the 9-year old killed, Christina Greene was born on September 11, 2001 and had gone to the event as part of one of those “get to know about politics” life lessons. She’d been featured on some video of post-9/11 “hope of America” promotions.
Apparently she was on her “elementary” school student council and the only girl in the school baseball team. If all of that is not a media angle, it’s hard to know what would be.
That should play well in the wash up to this disaster.
Really, this story is about the intersection of several of the nastier aspects of US cultural life — ignorance, anomie, the poor state of the health (especially mental health) and education systems, especially in the south, the influence of right-wing populism, the gross differences between rich and poor and of course their bizarre and anachronistic gun laws. In another ironic twist, Giffords was a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
That’s a cultural cocktail that is always going to come up tasting extremely nasty.
Giffords was on Palin’s “take back the 20” crosshairs list and had complained about the door that was being opened after her office had been vandalised following her support for what the right calls “Obamacare”. Palin had advised the Tea Party, following the mid-terms to “reload”. We don’t know if Loughner was answering the call, but given the animus engendered amongst wide layers of borderline crazy reactionaries, something like this was always a distinct possibility. It will be interesting if an accomplice does in fact turn up, because the police are reportedly looking for one.
A link to Palin’s now deleted tweet:
Commonsense Conservatives & Lovers of America Don’t retreat! — Instead Reload!
Fran Barlow, it is a sad day for Americans and hopefully politicians from all persuasions will unite to change the law and ban guns.
@Michael of Summerhill
Something far more sweeping than a mere rethink of gun usage is called for MOSH.
Out of the 20 democrats that Palin targeted with crosshairs in this map, Giffords was one of only two that was re-elected in 2010, in an extremely close race against a Republican opponent who made Palin seem moderate. Like many others who voted for the health care bill she was apparently subject to threats by ‘town-hall’ types. After several cases of right-wing political violence in the past couple of years and a huge increase in the volume of threats to elected officials since Obama was elected, not to mention the intensity of extreme eliminationist rhetoric that is now standard on the Republican right, you really can’t blame anyone for jumping to the conclusion that the shooter might have been a teabagger.
From watching the stoner’s bizarre videos it seems that he isn’t a Palinite by any stretch, or coherent enough for any sort of political label to apply (let alone ‘left-Liberal’, seriously Jack). If he had to be categorized it would be as some sort of gold-bug with the type of obsession about currency from the Ron Paul / Alex Jones twilight zone. This type does have some presence on the fringe of the tea party movement, which attracts nuts of all varieties. In any case, police are still looking for accomplices so it’s too early to judge whether or not he was a lone nut.
He’s of the typical age for the onset of schizophrenia, which it is obvious from his videos that he has. He managed to get himself a gun in any case. With excellent timing the loathsome governor of Arizona Jan Brewer had just signed into law the right to carry concealed weapons without a permit, while gutting funding for mental health.
As for Jack Strocchi’s example of the Fort Hood massacre being ‘left-wing’ terrorism’, Jared Loughner’s videos have reminded me of the power of syllogism, which I now employ;
Fort Hood shooter was a radical Islamist.
Radical Islamism is not ‘left-wing’.
Therefore the Fort Hood massacre was not ‘left-wing terrorism’.
Link to Palin’s map not working:
Apparently Palin disagrees with Jack, because apart from filling up her comment thread with the customary poor Sarah bleating, the crosshairs map disappeared from her website faster than Russia seen from Palazzo Palin. It’s interesting that, no matter what, conservatives are always victims.
Sadly forgotten is that the number two worst terrorist act against the US on US soil, was the act of a “Freedom” fighter striking a blow against their ‘oppressive’ Federal Government by blowing up some mostly office workers and some of their children in Oklahoma. Rash words might not kill but they can lead to acts that do. Recently shocking was the issuing of ‘fatwas’ by various US politicians against Julian Assange. Even more shocking was the silence of almost all of our leaders in refusing to condemn those statements.
Getting back toward the topic of this thread, as pointed out by Jeepers Creepers, Sinclair Davidson and Co refuse to let the “no warming since 1995” meme die. They’re happy to be living in an alternate universe.
@Ikonoclast
This World Bank public opinion survey makes for interesting reading http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2010/Resources/CC_Poll_Report_July_01_2010.pdf
One of the more interesting findings is that in general the poorer the nation, the stronger the belief in the serious nature of climate change and the stronger the public opinion for action to mitigate climate change.
The Palin camp, which deleted the crosshairs map from their website, is now claiming that the crosshairs were not crosshairs at all but surveyor’s sights. No doubt that is why they pulled the map in the first place, why Palin so dramatically announced ‘Don’t retreat, re-survey’ and why her Alaska doco showed its star parading around Alaska with a theodolite. Oh wait…
And yet more on the epistemic closure/agnotology issue. As usual, The Blot is a generous sustainer:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/01/andrew_bolt_vs_percentages.php#more
I kid you not people (HT Deltoid).
Fran,
Just because a bunch of fraudsters THINK something is happening doesn’t mean squirt shyte.
If the planet is getting warmer the average global temperature would rise. The global average temperature can not actually be measured properly yet Franger. That is why the fraudsters have to use an anomaly instead of the real thing,
Unfortunately for the AGW fraudsters the actual average global temperature shows a cooling.
Tony G
If:
how do you know:
Both propositions cannot be true.
If the actual average global temperature cannot be measured how do you know know that it is cooling?
Alan, yes they can show both. Global average temperatures can not be measured with a degree of accuracy to ascertain whether it is warming or cooling., So depending how you measure it, it will show either a warming, a cooling or a static temperature.
Tony G
Um that’s a fail. You cannot believe that a quantity cannot be measured and then tell us the result of measuring the quantity.
I think AGW deniers should adopt Palin’s ‘war cry’: “Don’t Retreat, Reload” which I have alway interpreted as saying “Don’t Retreat, Get Drunk Again”.
No Alan, I think you fail , unless you can tell me what the actual average global temperature is? Please provide a link to one.
And in any event Alan, satellite measurements of the radiative energy balance show that over the last 40+ years, the planet has acquired energy, in just the quantity that separate measurements indicate and in the bandwidths one would expect from CO2-driven radiative forcing.
To deny this, one needs a whole new physics, and I don’t imagine Tony is up to it.
Franger, I think you need to brush up on thermodynamics.
If they cant work out the speed of motion of the individual atom (temperature) , how the hell are they going to work out the speed and motion of the atom multiplied by the number of atoms (mass) so affected? i.e (heat.)
@Tony G
tonyG, that is such a silly comment that you should hang your head in shame
gregI
I think you’d better brush up on the molecular theory of heat, as you and Fran do not seem to know the difference between temperature and heat.
@Tony G
I’ve got my PhD in a science discipline Tony G – I’m pretty comfortable with understanding the nature of the error you made.
gregi,
Oh goodi, enlighten us all on the “error [I’ve] made” o learned one.
Prof JQ: Your “fn1. My estimates based on the Hadley data used by Lindzen gives an estimated trend of 0.012 degrees a year, with a t-value of 2.45” is interesting as it refutes both Lindzen and the IPCC’s AR4. Your trend implies 0.12 degrees per decade, and only 1.2 degrees by 2110, yet IPCC predicts at least 3.4 degrees for its A2 scenario in 2100 (WG1: p.13).
In fact all of the IPCC’s “best estimates” for temps in 2100 are well above yours for 2110. How so?
Tony G
I don’t have to prove anything. You say both that actual average global temperature cannot be measured and that you know what it is. The question is not the actual value but how you, on your own statement, know the value of a quantity you say cannot be measured. You have joined Rumsfeldt in a whole new branch of epistemology, the known unknowable.
Rumsfeld’s real expertise was in “Not knowing but thinking you know”.
Sound point of logic Alan #35. There are links between the AGW deniers and the Tea Party – an inability to think matters through. No wonder we are in so much trouble. Once they would have known they were out of their depth but now they believe that their ignorant opinion is worth twice as much as a considered opinion because they believe it fervently and god is on their side. What a shame that they are prepared to gamble so greatly with the future.
TonyG @34,
Where ever do you get the notion that the average global temperature cannot be measured?
The global average temperature is determined by the in crease in the average night time temperature. This is when the effect of CO2 heat retention is doing its work. And that is very measureably demonstrating global temperature rise.