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 
show us the cooling Tony G
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/hottestsummer/default.asp
@Jill Rush
More to the point, it is right because the provenance of the opinion is local in all of the metaphoric and literal senses of local. What one hears over the back fence, reads in one’s local paper, what seems intuitive, what one thinks one sees with one’s own eyes, hears repeated by someone socially similar to you in a register in which you are comfortable, is more authentic and reliable than anything else. Education and responsibility to a wider community makes people remote and thus subverts their credibility. They could be acting for others. Their location presses upon the point of average man’s existential angst.
That is, if you will, the populist episteme and it’s scarcely limited either to America or the delusionals in the battle over climate policy. It’s the context in which one can begin to make sense of what has been called agnotology or epistemic closure. It’s a whole new paradigm of knowledge, and delightfully from the point of view of the most privileged stakeholders in the system, the gatekeepers of this new knowledge are those best placed to define everyone’s “local”. From such an epistemology did the narratives and themes of f*scism emerge.
This is a time for all who want to foreclose a descent into misanthropic public policy to assert the primacy of evidence and intellectual rigour in human affairs.
Alice, the other day I raised the issue of the NSW Liberal Party being divided and should have stressed that the problem has a lot to do with two wright-wing factions and the Taliban Catholics. But lately Cardinal Pell has upped the ante by criticising progressive Catholic MPs whom he claims “fly under the Christian or Captain Catholic flag” but “blithely disregard Christian perspectives” when they vote in parliament on moral issues. Well that is a distortion of the facts for MPs have an obligation for good government and to make laws for the people of NSW whom have varying religious beliefs.
As an example of the success of Agnotology with respect to climate science – meet TonyG.
To the specific example, it’s clear to me that there was deliberate intent to confuse the specific technical term ‘statistically significant’ with ‘significant’ and therefore create the distinct and demonstrably false impression of ‘none at all’. I’m inclined to think that Ocean Heat Content, trends in land ice and Sea levels are more appropriate indicators of global climate change than surface air temperatures, but that’s another issue.
As a question put to leading climate scientist Phil Jones it demonstrates that whoever composed that particular question knew that ‘statistically-significant ‘ is a technical term requiring a technically correct answer, knew that the period was too short to allow an unequivocal answer, knew that the general public would equate ‘no statistically significant global warming’ with no real warming. And knew that Phil Jones would answer it honestly. Turning that honesty against him and deliberately misinterpreting what was said is a clear example of the depth of intellectual dishonesty climate science denialists will stoop to.
Like the ‘no cooling since 1998’ argument that uses an exceptionally hot year as both cherry picked start point and baseline for all future temperature changes as well as deliberately failing to give consideration for a known natural variation – ENSO – as basis for arguing that climate change is all natural variation, it just demonstrates their complete lack of scientific integrity. And yet we have a would-be Prime Minister who seems quite taken by such arguments – and enjoys strong support within his party and in the wider community. Scary.
Sorry John, the above should have been posted at NSW Labor Headed For Defeat.
@Fran
I agree about the need for evidence and logic. Tony G’s current forensic problem is, however, independent of evidence. He tells us that a quantity cannot be measured and then tells us the value of that quantity. There is no universe in which that argument can be valid, whether the real universe of climate change or even the delusional universe of Tony G.
Well here is the “ultimate and final word” on agnatology, and every thing else
http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2011/01/08/are-the-qld-floods-the-result-of-kevin-rudd-speaking-against-israel/
An observation on the discussion on agnotology: as I read the arguments of TonyG, for example, the implication of his argument about what we know and need to know about climate change before we do anything seems to be that unless we have totally complete and utterly accurate knowledge of some matter relevant to an issue, say the reality of climate change, we should do nothing.
If this rule were applied more generally the result would be that we would end up doing nothing about anything because we don’t have complete and utter knowledge of everything.
Is not the question here of knowledge that is fit for purpose – that is we generally act on the basis of relatively limited information. We make assessments about its relative accuracy, adequacy and reliablility for the purpose at hand.
BilB – rather a lot of collateral damage. I’d have expected Godlike accuracy but I think the ‘inland tsunami’ missed Kevin Rudd’s home completely.
@Fran Barlow
And just to underscore the point I made above, here is Rachel Maddow, describing the parallel conservative universe of undebunkable made up stuff at work.
This is the context within which the recent events in Tucson take place, and of course much else that bears balefully upon public policy more generally.
For the record, this clip was posted on 4/11/2010, well before the Tucson matter.
#10 Fran Barlow – Good clip Fran but you just know that those who are in the parallel right wing conspiracy universe would not watch or if they did wouldn’t believe that the stuff on FOX wasn’t true.
The matters that Rachel raises however are not over the back fence but mainstream media which is rumour and innuendo – the stuff of Communist and other dictatorships where people are brainwashed.
The depth of ignorance was illustrated for me by a radio clip of a Tea Party representative in regard to the events of Tucson where it was all the fault of the left wingers who support Fascism and Communism and nothing at all to do with the actions of the Tea Party people who just know that the USA is the greatest country on earth – which seems to be enough to exonerate Sarah Palin for her violent references and images.
This kind of response shows how deep the problem is that Prof Q refers to and that plausible deniability doesn’t even come into it. It really is a parallel universe where “facts” are made up and repeated until people think that the “facts” must be right otherwise it wouldn’t be on TV or in the newspaper. Should we really be discussing brainwashing as a phenomenon?
I love the line ‘those things aren’t just stupid, they’re true on the political right’. But then she’s a lesbian vampire so why would you believe her. It’s really hard not to laugh, and yet it’s so dangerous.
gerard @ #26 said:
The "power of the syllogism" depends on the veracity of the premises and the facility of the operator. In gerard's case its very much GIGO. He might want to get his logical evaluator checked out, it seems badly in need of a reconditioning.
Left-wing is the political movement that empowers lower-status disadvantaged or despised groups groups.
Traditional lower-status Muslims face social sanction from the higher powers that be in the Middle East, whether they be Baathist states the IDF or the Pentagon. Thus radical Islamism is Left-wing as it fights for lower class, disenfranchised and dispossessed Muslims, for better and worse..
Radical Islamism is obviously not liberal. The fact that radical Islamists also oppress other lower-status people, such as women, children and other religions, is neither here nor there. Pecking orders are ubiquitous, even, or especially, in prisons.
So to restate the syllogism:
Left-wing parties empower the lower-status
-> Palestinians are lower-status
-> Radical Islamists support Palestinian uprising
-> Fort Hood shooter was a radical Islamist
-> Fort Hood shooter was Left-wing
And this logic accords with empirics. The Fort Hood shooter carried out his act of terrorism on behalf of Palestinians, an attempt to empower the lower-status. And he directed against the US military, an agency that establishes the higher-status.
QED
Leftwing parties empower the lower-status
-> Elites are upper status
-> John Howard was bitterly critical of elites
Ergo)
John Howard is a leftwinger
Strocchissticism does not validate all syllogisms and the Strocchiastic definition of leftwing would, according to most teabaggers, include their movement.
Alan @ #14 said:
You are confused, identifying Right-wing with the (allegedly higher-status) elites and Left-wing with the (allegedly lower-status) populus. A common error amongst simple minded ideologues, whose sense of irony deserts them when attempting social analysis.*
My definition of Right-wing or Left-wing does not refer to the status of the representing party, which is as Michels noted always run by elites of one sort or another. It refers to the status of the represented social group.
The Culture War is the exception that proves my rule about the politics of status differentials. It reverses ideological polarities because the conflict hinges on a conflict over the relative status of the traditional majority and fashionable minorities
Cultural Left elitists represent fashionable “constructivist” notions of higher status. ie minority NESB, colored races, non-Christian religions. Cultural Right populists represent traditional conservative notion of higher-status ie majority Caucasian race, Christian religion and Constitutional ruler.
Of course its doubtful whether white cultural elites really do care to enhance the status of minorities. They are generally concerned about degrading the status of other white people, generally those less educated but with more money ie rednecks, crackers etc.
Minorities are just pawns in a white persons status game.
I know, I know, you prefer a straightforward morality play where the Left-wing wear the white hats and support the masses. But the Cultural Left’s agnotology over anthropology means that this problem has long since eluded its intellectual grasp.
* Which is why contemporary social satire is dominated by Right-wing cultural critics eg Wolfe, Humphries, Christian Lander. Mainly directed at the grotesque ideological contortions of cultural elitists “radical chic” SWPL etc
Ooo, a fallacy of the undistributed middle – haven’t come across that one since first year! Let me have a go!
My dog enjoys bones
Skeletons are bones
Osteopaths enjoy working with skeletons
Therefore my dog is an osteopath
Left wing radicals empower cafe latte sellers
Italians are cafe latte sellers
Berlusconi supports Italians
Therefore Berlusconi is a left wing radical cafe latte seller
Strocchi can’t even get his premises right. Radical terrorist Islam is mostly supported/bankrolled by extremely wealthy aristocratic Sunni sheikhs as a way of distracting their populations from demanding democracy and a fair share of the oil money. Their populations are mostly Shia and are commonly targeted by the radical Sunni groups Strocchi claims support them against their masters. It is to laugh, ne?
As for the claim that current left-wing violence is somehow the equal of current white right-wing violence, I defy Strocchi to read the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s Insurrection timeline and tell me there is no connection between violence and the right at this point that far outweighs the other side.
Strocchi’s true problem is that in his racially prejudiced soul he is no more able to countenance a black president than the Tea Party are and so will excuse anything that would rectify the situation. I suggest that he take a look at the Insurrection timeline entry for February 19 2010 and see if he can honestly and completely dissociate his own position from the sentiments expressed therein.
Bingo! A Strocchi white power rant against the agnotology of anthropology which refuses to recognise that whites are the natural ruling class, right on cue!
Jack #13. Unfortunately your logic fails you at the first step.
Left wing parties MAY empower lower status people – then again they might disempower those of lower status.
So might right wing parties – Nazism and Fascism are examples of this. Intolerance knows no allegiance. However at the moment it appears that intolerance has taken root in the right wing and those leading the charge are prepared to lie and to damn the consequences as long as they oppose taking any action on climate change and many other things. They cannot see how things can be done differently to business as usual and have an antagonistic attitude which helps them believe that lying doesn’t matter as long as they can get people to think what they say is true.
My reading skills are reasonably good. After reading the latest Strocchiastic fulmination I confess I am not quite sure what he is saying, except that apparently taxing an opponent with Cultural Left elitism is a complete refutation to all arguments. If Jack’s premise required further definition, as he admits by giving one, then the fault is in his original statement of his syllogism. As far as I know John Howard did not at any time place on record his intent to use ‘elites’ in the same sense as Jack, so I am not completely sure why Jack gets to retroject his definition into Howard’s statements.
Just quietly I would have thought that people like John Stewart and Stephen Colbert made some slight contribution to political satire, but then they may be Cultural Left elitists who do not count.
@James Haughton#16
Can I have a go? how about this one:
All Radical Left Wingers are atheists (Empirical)
All Radical Islamists are Radical Left Wingers (Proven by Strocchi)
Therefore all Radical Islamists are atheists.
This revelation may be just shocking enough to bring about the end of the war on terror without another shot being fired!
Non-FoxNews watching UnAmerican Globalised Radical Atheist Islamic Communist Terrorist Oil Industry Foreign Business Owner undermining us with cheap labour, no human rights, no environmental or safety standards, Free Trade, manipulated excessively low exchange rates and an unfair much higher saving rate, driving up prices because they refuse to remain poor, as God intended, threatening us because they also refuse to stay unarmed and leave us with undisputed military domination, again, as God intended? Is there any other sin that can be attributed to this ultimate bad guy?
Oh, yes not to mention their latte drinking proclivities, cultural left elitism and ‘black armband’ historical revisionism.
I’m just waiting for Jack to explain to supporters of the Tea Party that they are all radical lefties.
Jack reminds me of Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland.
Fran Barlow, since the topic is on ‘the significance of agnotology’ and given my limited knowledge on the subject matter and the fact I love my latte, maybe there is a link between the Tea Party, David H. Koch and the tea herbal smoke shops in Houston. Tell me I am wrong.
@Jack Strocchi
Strocchi – leans his political punditry heavily to the right (but its a right no one recognises any more, and I doubt Strocchi has any thing much to say at all about the modern right – which has become both republican and democrat, liberal and labor, and is indistinguishable).
So the right has all power.
That is the entire source of the economic problems that bedevil us. Fix a road? Mend a school building? repair a broken rail line? Make the trains run clean and on time?
Cant be done. Waiting for the private sector to fix it. Isnt going to happen.
Pr Q:
If you have a look over at Australian Denial Central, you’ll see that even though they do understand the basic statistics to know what “no statistically significant” warming means, they lack the ability with logic to know that this means something different from “no warming” or Lindzen’s “warming has ceased for the past fourteen years”. The alternate universe is alive and (some form of) well.
it’s interesting that those people focus so closely on contesting a couple of data points. The current state of the world, Queensland and northern NSW being tragic examples, fits quite closely to the broader predictions of climate science. It does not fit at all with claims like the world is actually cooling.
Alan, I tend to agree for experts knew as far back as June last year of La Nina and the changing weather pattern over the South Pacific. But as for global warming being directly responsible for warmer than usual sea surface temperatures around Australia is unknown but my guess is they are correlated.
NASA and NOAA seem to disagree with Tony G.
@MoSH
It looks like one third of the sea surface temperature increase is attributable to global warming:
Which brings us back to what degree of certainty you need before you act. The climate science predicts a world with many more extreme weather events. Given their insistence that the world is cooling (although they claim no-one can measure either cooling or warming) the climate manipulators would seem to be predicting a world with fewer extreme weather events. They should go to Pakistan, Brazil or Queensland.
Contrary to the Monckton line, addressing climate change is not all that expensive and does not require a massive expansion of the public sector. Reducing the chance of extreme weather events like these floods, even if only by 1/3, seems to me a fairly desirable objective.
Alan, it seems other scientists agree with Kevin Trenberth for Matthew England of the UNSW Climate Change Research Center argues that ‘The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon’. But if as Kevin Trenberth argues that for every ‘1 degree Celsius sea surface temperature anomalies gives 10 to 15 percent increase in rainfall’, then the science is correct about AGW and the sceptics are just raving on.
This is a great example of how illiterate is the Monckton claim that CO2 is a ‘harmless trace gas’. H2O is a considerably more more harmless trace gas but you do not want the proportion of it in the atmosphere to go high enough to do damage. I guess though, by Monckton’s illogic, the megafloods in Pakistan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia are harmless because water is not a poison.
Alan, the Monckton of NSW politics who does not believe in AGW is sceptical ‘Barry O’Farrell’, that is correct the one and same ‘Barry O’Farrell’ who has jumped in bed with nazis so don’t believe a word he says about fixing NSW for he is all bull.
@Michael of Summerhill
Which N@zis has O’Farrell jumped into bed with?
MoSH
I do not believe a word O’Farrell utters. Sadly, NSW Labor has also made it impossible to believe a word they utter. Throwing the core values of your voters out the window does that to you.
Apologies to Pr Q. This is obviously not an appropriate thread to pursue MoSH’s attempt to whitewash NSW Labor.
Fran Barlow, the media has covered the issue but for those who do not know what is going on even former PM John Howard scolded Liberal members for attending functions honouring past Nazi leaders. And Barry O’Farrell just happens to be one of the stooges on the far wright who are AGW sceptics.
MoSH, you seem to be getting a little desperate. Godwin’s law. Methinks you need a good lie down.
The majority of terrorist organizations (radical Islam, IRA, Basque separatists) tend to be somewhat left-leaning. Moreover, if you look at recent events such as the violent protests through much of the UK and Europe against government cutbacks and austerity, it would appear that the Left are somewhat more inclined to resort to violence in order to advance their political goals.
The attempt to paint Jared Loughner as a right-winger appears to be an altogether too desperate attempt by sections of the left-liberal commentariat to distract from this fact and settle the scorecard. It was an unprofessional mugging, and a fair few individuals will suffer a well-deserved loss of credibility because of it.
In any case, basic human decency suggests that one should not be too quick to exploit human tragedy for political gain, at least until the picture is really clear.
Monkey’s Uncle
I’d submit that if basic human decency suggests that one should not be too quick to exploit human tragedy for political gain it is inappropriate for you to be too quick to exploit human tragedy for political gain by identifying everything evil in the world as leftwing. In particular the association of radical Islam as leftwing is more than merely faintly ridiculous.
No Monkey’s Uncle, the truth hurts. Tell me I am wrong.
Don’t bother answering Monkey’s Uncle, for now I will tell the truth about the fraud Barry O’Farrell. On the 28 December 2010, O’Farrell admitted in an interview with Michael Smith of 2UE he does not believe in AGW. As for John Howard scolding Liberal Party members, this related to outcries from the Croatian Embassy, the Jewish and Croatian communities of Australia etc who were outraged when former Communications Minister Helen Coonan, Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and NSW Upper House MP David Clarke attended a Ustase regime function on 10 April 2007. And who can forget Lyenko Urbanchich and/or the uglies or their offshoots who now dominate NSW Liberal politics and ongoing infighting between two extreme factions for preselection. That is correct Monkey’s Uncle they are nazi lovers.
@Monkey’s Uncle
MU … you should have stopped at #41 …
#42 was ridiculous and (like MoSH), a thread hijack
Fran Barlow, I was just pointing out that O’Farrell is in the same league as other sceptics and his policies have a lot to do with the extreme right wing-faction beliefs, no more and no less. Have to go.
MoSH
A purely negative campaign is suicide for a political party.
During the federal election candidates were being directed not to talk about the government’s achievements, but to keep on talking about WorkChoices. Even now, months later, the prime minister barely gives an interview without talking about it. If the NSW Labor government retained any shred of legitimacy you would not be embarrassing yourself with this guff about O’Farrell. Every time you raise it you only remind us how NSW Labor, to an even greater extent than Federal Labor, has abandoned its own people for the big end of town. It is as persuasive as you telling us that the Kaye bill, Green legislation opposed by the Labor party, is somehow a reason to vote Labor.
Understand I have no intention of voting Liberal. My vote will exhaust before it reaches either major party. It will be the first time in my life that I have not preferenced Labor. I know that will assist the election of an O’Farrell government. I do not see that as worse than a continuation of the present government. At least there is some slight hope that Labor can recover its soul in opposition.
Alan, show me where NSW Labor is anti AGW and NSW Liberals/Nationals pro AGW. Get your facts wright for you speak with a fork tongue.
NSW Labor may well claim to be against climate change as does the Gillard government. After you take out the occasional embarrassment like the citizens assembly on delaying action against climate change as long as electorally convenient, the climate achievements of those governments come down to remarkably low proposed emission reductions, increases in MRET, a series of on again off again focus group-driven programs like Green Loans and the solar feed-in tariff, and shovelling as much coal as possible out of the ground and exporting it.
No doubt there are members and supporters of those governments who are genuinely opposed to climate change. Their influence does not seem to carry nearly as much weight as the coal exporters. NSW Labor’s avowed position on climate change would be a reason to support them only if you believed it would be followed more honestly than Iemma’s privatisation pledge.