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Erika Lovley, on the curious phenomenon that when Gore gives a speech, about half of the time the weather is colder than average: While there's no scientific proof that The Gore Effect is anything more than a humorous coincidence, some...
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
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Category: Global Warming
Posted on: November 26, 2008 4:18 AM, by Tim Lambert
Erika Lovley, on the curious phenomenon that when Gore gives a speech, about half of the time the weather is colder than average:
While there's no scientific proof that The Gore Effect is anything more than a humorous coincidence, some climate skeptics say it may offer a snapshot of proof that the planet isn't warming as quickly as some climate change advocates say.
See David Roberts and Joe Romm for more details on Lovley's stenography.
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Comments
In my half-baked climate triglossia theory, I think that'll be H1-level language with L-level content.
I guess it's like Dante's Divine Comedy turned upside down. Dante is serious content written in a rustic tongue; this is comedic content written in a serious tongue.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | November 26, 2008 6:06 AM
I think that The Gore Effect is proof positive that we are within about 8 weeks of entering an ice age. It's true: I saw it in a movie.
Posted by: Jivlain | November 26, 2008 8:16 AM
Must be the big girls' day out.
http://tinyurl.com/5hfu3l
Posted by: WotWot | November 26, 2008 12:32 PM
Forgive this mathematician for his foolish question... but wouldn't that make the temperature average or warmer than average about half the time when Gore speaks?
To put it another way, isn't this exactly what we would expect?
Posted by: ChrisC | November 26, 2008 4:54 PM
Yeah, what ChrisC said.
Posted by: saurabh | November 26, 2008 6:42 PM
ChrisC:
Alarmist Inquisitor! You see, the skeptics are discussing only the cold days, because they have to counter the Leftist Bias of the Mainstream Media, which is Liberal Fascist.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | November 26, 2008 10:32 PM
Its the pirates. As one of Eli's sage commentors put it
"It's all related to an increase in "R".
As pirates increase, so does "R" (also sometimes spelled "Arrr") and as "R" increases, so does the correlation between pirates and global warming (and pirates and everything else, for that matter)
Everyone who visits Anthony watts' site understands this."
Posted by: Eli Rabett | November 27, 2008 8:06 AM
Well, in this case, I think I have to tweak Tim & others, at the risk being serious:
0) Erika's articles were awful, but did she actually write: "about half the time, weather is colder than average" or some mathematically equivalent statement?
1) Her article Tracking the Gore effect does not actually say that, nor does the other. Does she say it somewhere else?
2) She actually did write:
"The so-called Gore Effect happens when a global warming-related event, or appearance by the former vice president and climate change crusader, Al Gore, is marked by exceedingly cold weather or unseasonably winter weather."
3) Originally, I was going to discourse on the the issues of arithmetic mean vs median, symmetric distributions (in which mean = median), skewed distributions (in which they may not be), and the general problems when one uses imprecise English to talk about math.
That would have led to the usual questions:
When someone makes a statement that is actually mathematical, or has mathy-words like:
One must always ask:
a) What exactly does the statement mean, in real math? Does it mean anything anything useful? ("It is unusually cold somewhere" may be true, assuming there is a clear definition of "usual", but the statement isn't very useful.)
Of course, the original statement is vague anyway, i.e., "marked by cold weather." What does that mean? Cold weather in the town where Gore speaks? in the state? somewhere in the world?
b) Does the data exist to actually confirm or deny the statement?
c) Does the author actually have that data?
BUT, since she didn't actually write the "average" statement, the point is moot, except to remind people to check what somebody really wrote, so if you need to criticize them, you can do it appropriately. :-)
4) Meanwhile, maybe somebody with the time might follow my advice in Climate Progress. It's not obvious whether this is naivete or something else, and if the former, there may be constructive approaches to helping her (& Politico) get educated.
Posted by: John Mashey | November 27, 2008 11:15 AM
Maybe it beacause he speaks both in winter and summer.. some days are cold and some are hot.
Posted by: jonno | November 27, 2008 4:44 PM
I think John Mashey is right.
Posted by: Vagueofgodalming | November 28, 2008 5:01 AM
I don't understand the OP. Lovley's article was surely meant to be amusing, nothing more, and like John Mashey, I can't find any mention of "about half of the time the weather is colder than average:"
Posted by: TrueSceptic | November 28, 2008 6:06 AM
I know that Lovley didn't say that "about half of the time the weather is colder than average", but that's what the Gore effect really is.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | November 28, 2008 7:35 AM
Vagueofgodalming:
Politico's apology is bunk, as DeLong and Lambert point out in their comments to Klein.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | November 28, 2008 8:03 AM
Yeah, but it exists, which is about as good as it's going to get, I think. Here, getting a newspaper to say 'we slipped' usually requires a court case, so it's progress, of a sort.
Posted by: Vagueofgodalming | November 28, 2008 9:52 AM
When you are speaking on a cellphone to someone:
a) There is the signal of what someone is actually saying.
b) There is the noise from limits of microphones, speakers, your ears, antenna location, interference from physical objects, etc.
and then,
c) There is someone holding a boombox to your head so you can't hear anyone, which one might call purposeful distortion.
Politico had an article mostly describing c) as though it was b).
They admitted to some error. At least they published Walker and Roberts letter and also Glenn Hurowtiz article.
Importantly, these were placed on the web page as prominently as the original stories, or perhaps even more accurately:
They are under "Ideas". The original "Scientists urge caution..." is under "Lobbying" :-)
Suppose the WSJ had published a similar article in the editorial page. Would the responding letter have been published?
My tentative take on this is that Politico might be reasonable and educatable on this, and should be helped. I.e., they screwed up, but then responded better-than-average.
It remains to be seen how they improve their internal processes for dealing with science topic (a) and b) in the presence of political distortion. If reasonable people can help them, that's good.
Posted by: John Mashey | November 28, 2008 10:14 AM
Gristmill has apologized to Erika Lovley of Politico for being overly harsh on her. The fault resides obviously on The Politico editors who should have spiked this facts-free puff piece.
Posted by: _Arthur | November 28, 2008 5:15 PM
Linkified frankbi's "as DeLong and Lambert point out in their comments to Klein"
Posted by: Anna Haynes | November 28, 2008 5:20 PM
...and a working link to the Glenn Hurowitz article in Politico - Scientists: Earth is still heating up
Posted by: Anna Haynes | November 28, 2008 5:24 PM
Yeah
and while we're on the subject, can I just point out that almost 40% of sick days are taken on Friday or Monday...
You can't tell me that's not proof of something.
Posted by: Aly | November 28, 2008 5:32 PM
see also: "out of the numerous bodies in the solar system we can get a temp reading on, the earth and mars are both warming, therefore it must be caused by the sun".
Posted by: z | November 29, 2008 1:33 AM
Arthur:
Where has Gristmill apologized to Lovley? And why would they hold a "reporter" completely unaccountable for her story, because it was her editor / publisher / webisher's responsibility to spike the piece? As someone who was a reporter for years, print and radio, that makes no sense to me. I'd like to see a link, because I suspect that's a misreading somewhere.
If they told her to do an egregious hatchet job or be fired, on the other hand ...
Posted by: Marion Delgado | November 29, 2008 6:01 PM
(following up)
Arthur: I found the link, and it's pretty much as you described. While young, she doesn't really match "cub reporter," and I think being "rolled" by something like Cato, the Oregon Petition, or Expelled, or the Great Global Warming Swindle, is no excuse at all.
She got, probably, BARELY enough negative feedback not to do the same thing again immediately, IMO.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | November 29, 2008 6:08 PM
_Arthur:
It wasn't facts-free, it was facts-wrong.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | November 29, 2008 7:44 PM