That's the sound Ben McNeil's point makes as it sails way over Andrew Bolt's head.
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Great. I've just read the comments on both sites and I'm going to be depressed for the rest of the day. So much concentrated stupid.
Thanks Tim; previously I had regarded Weart's "A Saturated Gassy Argument" as the nadir of AGW dystopic gibberish but McNeil's piece, which channels Weart, now has that honour; even I know that sunscreen blocks UV not IR; and the old Venus argument;
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Rethinking_the_greenhouse_effec…
Great stuff!
Did _you_ hear that whooshing sound cohenite?
One cannot hear the whoosh when one is yammering constantly and plugging one's ears with one's digits.
See? Cohenite didn't hear that one, either.
Hear no date, speak no data, see no data.
Especially don't see this paragraph from McNeil:
> cohenite: even I know that sunscreen blocks UV not IR
Another whoosh!
The stupid - it burrrrrns! Make it stop!
> cohenite: Thanks Tim; previously I had regarded Weart's "A Saturated Gassy Argument" as the nadir of AGW dystopic gibberish but McNeil's piece, which channels Weart, now has that honour
Didn't understand Weart **or** McNeil, did you?
said the lawyer to the physicist.
cohenite continues his habit of using verbosity as a (failed) means of covering up his own lack of ordinary sense.
cohenite is a lawyer and he thinks quoting someone is hearsay.
Yes Ed, I was thinking of this paragraph;
"Wearing sunscreen reduces the risk of skin cancer, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change. Very simple."
Understanding one should lead to understanding of the other; at least in McNeil's ivory tower. I forgot irony is in scarce supply around here.
Tim; all evidence has some probative value, even if it isn't always to the side submitting it; hearsay is forbidden on the basis that the source isn't available for cross; saying what someone said to you is your evidence not their's.
I'd love to get you guys in court.
Sophistry may cut it in the court room, but it won't fly in science.
I am not a scientist (or even a lawyer) but,
"Understanding one should lead to understanding of the other" - I think the point is that understanding science should lead to understanding both.
> I think the point is that understanding science should lead to understanding both.
Actually the point is more direct than that. The fundamental science is the same in both cases. People who assert than CO2 "is not a greenhouse gas" should also expect to get the same nasty sunburn with or without sunscreen lotion.
Caveat: I am not a lawyer. I am a physicist.
And that's your problem MarkG.
You're too close to it to have a disintersted pov.
You can only get that from someone like cohenite, who, not having a clue, can express a completely unbiased opinion.
MG the physicist; in litigation the core areas of dispute are arrived at by agreed facts; here are my submissions;
1 2CO2 ~ 3C [p666, AR4]
2 CO2 increased by ~ 30% from 1900 - 2000
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/docs/GeoffJenkins.ppt#448,5,Atmosph…
3 Temperature movement from 1900 - 2000 was ~ +0.4C
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/smooth.jpg
4 The solar forcing from 1900 - 2000 was ~ 0.16C [AR4 p193]
5 The effect on temperature of the Great Pacific Climate Shift was ~ 0.3C [McLean and Quirk]
Central issue in dispute; where is the CO2 affect from 1900 - 2000?
>Central issue in dispute; where is the CO2 affect from 1900 - 2000?
Actually Matlock, the central issue here (in the central subject and your link) is "is there an Greenhouse effect" not "how significant is the Greenhouse effect and how well does temperature correlate with CO2?". Your link claims there is no greenhouse effect, I assume this means you agree. With that assumption, let me say, you could not be more wrong in this.
Two comments on your newly raised issue: It's pointless debating CO2 sensitivity if we don't even have agreement that there is a greenhouse effect. Secondly, I'll need the full journal reference for "McLean and Quirk".
And there's the problem cohenite - the facts.
You see, CO2 is a forcing of temperature, but not the only forcing of temperature. This goes to very basic mutliparameter explanations of causes and effects, taught to first-year science undergrads, and your dissembling here reflects a lawyer's way of operating - which has nothing to do with science.
You might be able to spin a credulous and uninformed courtroom with your selective presentation of facts, but you will not be presenting an accurate, or indeed even a representative, overview of the physics with such selectivity.
See, by your methodology I should have been morbidly obese since childhood, because I have a huge appetite and caloric intake, and because we know that weight correlates with the amount eaten. Oh, but hang on - genetics and exercise also play their parts, as do the nature of the food intake, health status, and other factors. Thus, I am a beanpole, but somewhat less so since an injury curtailed the number of sports I played.
My weight has the same relationship to how much I eat as the temperature of the globe has to atmospheric CO2 concentration - there is a relationship, but it is compounded/ameliorated by other factors, and this is reflected in the complexity of the temperature trajectory.
You are either naïve, and/or scientifically ignorant, and/or mendaciously misrepresentative of the facts if you insist otherwise. Perhaps it applies to law, but in science, whilst one is entitled to one's own opinion, one is not entitled to one's own facts, nor to one's misrepresentation of them through selective reporting.
Bolt's blog is a hoot! I sometimes go in there and give the bees nest a good whack. Just don't expect an amiable response.
By the way great work Tim! Perhaps McNeil was being just a tad too subtle for Bolt.
BJ, there is no such thing as a credulous and uninformed courtroom; that's one of the virtues and results of an appellant system; and of course the single biggest lack of virtue of the AGW debate; but anyway, since MG is revealed as an ordained advocate of Arthur Smith [and incidentally MG don't assume what I believe] with nothing more to other I'll take it that the only submission your side is offering is that CO2 makes the Earth slim.
Cohenite:
>3 Temperature movement from 1900 - 2000 was ~ +0.4C
Erm.
Funny, because when i look at the Hadcrut Anomalies the change is from -0.4 to +0.4. A total of +0.8:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
But if we look at your own evidence:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/smooth.jpg
I read about -0.2 at 1900 and about +0.5 at 2000. The total is +0.7.
I suggest you stick to the day time job.
Nuh; NASAGISS goes from -0.1 to +0.3 = +0.4; but take your 0.7, take away solar and ENSO and you still have bugger all for CO2.
>Nuh; NASAGISS goes from -0.1 to +0.3 = +0.4; but take your 0.7, take away solar and ENSO and you still have bugger all for CO2.
A lawyer pointed us to a graph that was different to the one they got their data from???
You linked to a blog graph.
But you claim to get your figure from NASAGISS.
How does that stack up in a court?
Maybe you shouldn't stick to the day job. Have you tried stacking shelves?
>Secondly, I'll need the full journal reference for "McLean and Quirk".
It appears to be unpublished. And the only cites I can find for it are by cohenite in comments on blogs. But he thinks it reasonable to put it forward as "agreed facts".
NASAGISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Looks the same as the other graphs to me.
I get -0.2 and +0.45 = +0.6
Whatever graph we look at, it seems you knocked off about 30% to 50% of any gain.
What is it called when a lawyer does that in court?
Sorry, i'm happy to correct myself from my last post:
NASAGISS
'I get -0.2 and +0.45 = +0.65'
@MarkG: Thanks for the clarification.
More like ~ 25%
How about these agreed facts:
1 2CO2 ~ 3C [p666, AR4]
2 CO2 increased by ~ 25% from 1900 - 2000
3 Temperature movement from 1900 - 2000 was ~ +0.7C
4 The solar forcing from 1900 - 2000 was ~ +0.12 W mâ2 (90% conï¬dence interval: +0.06 to +0.30 W mâ2) [AR4 p193]
5 The effect on temperature of the Great Pacific Climate Shift is denialist bulldust.
Submitted as evidence.
Note that while the mean increase of the complete gistemp data set is ~0.6C, most of the warming since about 2000 (yes, cohenite, warming!) is above the trend line.
Using the hinged trend lines gives a more accurate estimate of ~0.8C over the entire time period.
I submit that even a year to year comparison of 1900 and 2000 gives a difference in the gistemp data of no less than 0.46C and that the comparison of the coldest monthly anomaly in 1900 and the warmest month in 2000 gives a difference of 1.1C!!! (since cohenite seems to have no objection to selective use of data).
I submit that cohenite couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a map.
6. ...and another 0.7C will catch up with us any time now, even without any further CO2 increase... nice thing, living on an ocean planet.
Funny, I can just see Cohenite as a pettyfogger.
6. ...and another 0.7C will catch up with us any time now, even without any further CO2 increase... nice thing, living on an ocean planet.
Funny, I can just see Cohenite as a pettyfogger.
Correction:
1900 - 2009 mean increase is ~0.73C.
So many brains, so little sense around here.
You are correct Tim, the original McLean and Quirk paper was, shock, horror, not PR! But its a favourite of mine because it got me kicked off Tamino's site; incidentally the NASAGISS temp chart I use is Tamino's; I keep it for sentimental reasons; here is the sacrilegious M&Q paper;
http://mclean.ch/climate/Aust_temps_alt_view.pdf
Quirk subsequently got it PR in, shock, horror, E&E;
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mscp/ene/2009/00000020/F0020001/a…
Of course the concept whereby the [natural] variation in upwelling produces ENSO transition and abrupt temperature variation, does have some substantial followers;
http://www.uwm.edu/~kravtsov/downloads/GRL-Tsonis.pdf
You guys have the patience of Job.
You **do** realize that cognitive dissonance is a denier lifestyle choice, right?
I had a look at the piece by McLean and Quirk (BTW, the software has removed the underlines between Aust, temps and alt) and am not in the least surprised that there was difficulty in publishing it. He (McLean, who wrote the main part) has apparently divided the years 1950 to 2006 into three portions, one up to 1975, one from 1981 on and a short piece joining the two.
Looking at the data, I see no reason whatsoever for doing this procedure in preference to fitting a single straight line regression. In the paper I could see no statistical justification for doing so.
If this were presented in an undergraduate project report it would get criticized. If a post-graduate student presented this they could expect to be given a very rough ride.
By his own words...
Cohenite, you are your own hostile witness.
Peachy @ 18, a belt in the head with a 2x4 cluestick would be too subtle for Bolt (and cohenite).
As Robert Merkel (I think) pointed out, lawyers are not trained in systems thinking, which is why they tend to have such massive blind spots.
I have a question for any lurkers out there who can show they were undecided before this discussion. Are any of you swayed by the assertions of cohenite? What about being swayed the other way toward the evidence and science? The argument against cohenite becomes easier and stronger if the rational here know no one is falling for the B.S. of the cognitively challenged. Remember to post evidence that you were bonafide undecided before being run over by the rhetorical skills of cohenite.
Further, Can anyone here provide some background on cohenite that would allow us to see whether he/she/it is a paid lackey of the denial industry intending to cause all concerned citizens of the world to waste their time arguing against cohenite's idiocy when better things need to be accomplished?
My final thought question is simple: What do we do?
Mark Schaffer - "What do we do?"
We wait for whatever is going to happen to happen because:
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
Friedrich von Schiller
German dramatist & poet (1759 - 1805)"
Mark @38...
cohenite has no value.
The educated response to cohenite from the other posters is where the real value lies.
Mark; I'm a lawyer who makes his own way in the world ripping off the gullible and credulous; as all lawyers do. I receive no stipend, largess, renumeration or any dispensation from any industry except aforesaid industry of human failing; caveat emptor knuckleheads.
I wander over here occasionally to what I regard as the most belligerent of the pro-AGW sites to see if any head-turning info has been produced by the AGW industry. Unfortunately I am perpetually disappointed by the same old patronising assertions; Ender, for example, is obviously one of the 'gods'; your plaintive plea for info on me is typical; surely the idea that 'denialism' is a massive, well financed corporate group opposing common-sense and altruism is now just a refuge of the paranoid; oh, sorry.
Noone has mounted any counter-argument of substance against my agreed facts; Richard Simmons appears to be the only one to have read McLean and Quirk's original piece but has made no mention of the Tsonis paper or the mass of evidence to support the upwelling reduction and the immediate temperature response; the consequent 'step-up' in temperature makes a mockery of the smoothing trend for the 20thC which gives a higher trend line than a point to point comparison of averaged anomalies.
I'd really love to get you guys in court so you could meet a real god; they're called "Your Honour".
"Noone has mounted any counter-argument of substance against my agreed facts;" - cohenite
Besides those that just produced the scientific data - mere quibbles against the authority of cohenites references to blog posts, his "agreed facts", also colloquially known as personal opinions, which less kind poeple refer to garbage.
Cohenites lawyering is best suited to Jennifers courtroom, where he really does have a jury of his peers.
cohenite:
Whoopee doo. Noone has mounted any counter-argument of substance against my agreed facts. In any case, here is my argument against your so-called agreed fact 4:
AR4 p193 actually says:
My argument is that cohenite makes up quotes. Doing this in court might give him fun with contempt of court. BTW, any introductory student of climate science knows that forcing is not measured in C or degrees C for that matter. cohenite is so ignorant.
So does Robert French think your guys are "real gods"?
Cohenite said:
>So many brains, so little sense around here.
Just to remind you (I know you would like that!), you stated:
"Temperature movement from 1900 - 2000 was ~ +0.4C"
Yet, 3 graphs (two of which you stated you used) clearly indicate a 'temperature movement' that is higher.
Now i'm not a lawyer, but maybe you can explain what 'perjury' means?
cohenite
I've just wasted an hour of my life by having a look at the model proposed by McLean, i.e. the change between 1976 to 1980 and constant temperatures otherwise, as depicted in his figure 4.
His model results in a reduction in the sum of squared residuals that is statistically indistinguishable from those of the linear fit, in other words the two models describe the data equally well. However, McLean needs to use 4 free parameters to fit the data, whereas the linear fit just takes 2. McLean's model: FAIL.
You see, ___that's what peer-review is for___, to weed out the worst stuff. As this kind of "research" seems to be your favorite kind of "science", don't expect me to take anything you say serious in future.
Hey, what do you expect from a sophist like cohenite?
They think that altering the arrangment of words alters reality.
To answer a question, I'm a lurker and a lawyer. And cohenite doesn't look persuading to me. His initial suggestion, to establish agreed facts is a good one.
But of course this works against the inactivist side. The usual jumping around, there is warming or not, there is warming but not caused by humans, it is the sun and so on.
Once the fact of warming is agreed upon, you can't go back to "no warming since [insert date here]".
Once it is established what the sun did, you can't go on babbling about the sun or mars.
And so on.
So his own method defeats him. And if your own evidence doesn't support your claims, you have failed anyway. (nicht schlüssig!)
Shorter legalistic cohenite:
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'
From, appropriately enough, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'.
cohenite writes:
1. Your figures are wrong. NASA GISTEMP at
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Gives -0.25 K at 1880 and +0.44 K at 2008. That's not the way to measure it--you do a linear regression rather than just counting the endpoint--but even using that crude method, the increase is 0.69 K, not 0.4 K.
2. I personally regressed temperature anomaly 1880-2007 on ln CO2, dust veil index, and four different measures of solar activity (TSI, Sunspot number, years since minimum, years since maximum), the latter taken one at a time to avoid multicolinearity. Ln CO2 accounted for 76% of the variance, DVI for 2%, and none of the solar measures was significant. Sunspot number came closest at t = 1.4. So Solar doesn't do a damn thing, or to be more accurate, it hasn't in the past 128 years.
And ENSO is an oscillation--in fact, that's what the "O" stands for. An oscillation can't affect a trend.
Also: Sentence first, trial later!
Barton, I am not sure that cohenite knows why one uses a linear regression to determine the delta T over time, but I would be very interested to hear why he thinks that simply using the end points is the way to go.
Come on cohenite - time to trot out your understanding of scientific/statistical analysis.
What on earth did cohenite do to capture so much attention? Can't be the force of his arguments, so I suppose it must be his rhetorical skill (not yet in evidence on this thread), or maybe there's a thrill associated with trying to debate a laywer.
Have you guys nothing better to do than revel in his ignorance?
You might have a better experience debating a detective. Detectives collate evidence to construct a case. Lawyers take on a case and then develop the argument.
Sound familiar?
Hi all,
It looks like no one is falling for cohenite's rhetoric so I would like to see what people are doing to reduce their own carbon footprint. My wife and I have one small economy car, we make the purchases we do as carefully as we can and make them last, we have a small paid for home with extra insulation, low flow water appliances, desert landscaping (especially appropriate for the Las Vegas climate), solar panels on the roof, etc. My question is are there clever suggestions for us to continue to improve our lives while reducing our impact? Help us all out of this mess we find ourselves in.
Mark Schaffer
>It looks like no one is falling for cohenite's rhetoric so I would like to see what people are doing to reduce their own carbon footprint.
1. Haven't driven a car for 10 or so years.
2. Cut my electricity bill by about 30% this winter/autumn. But have a green tariff in any case.
3. Try and buy local produce.
4. Never fly.
5. Cycle, walk and use buses.
6. Recently started using 'eco' paints, for decorating.
Been there, done that, in the US, though in this case it was "Your Honors".
Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has to treat CO2 as a pollutant under US environmental law. The *conservative* US Supreme Court (has a 5-4 conservative edge).
We've replaced all our incandescent bulbs with CFBs. We always try to turn off the light on leaving the room. We turn off surge suppressors connected to any appliance that draws parasitic power when off (e.g. microwave and TV). My wife is walking to and from work more instead of having me drive her. We eat a fair amount of chicken but very little red meat. And we haven't gone on a vacation per se in several years.
Hi Paul,
Very cool! When my wife and I buy groceries we use reusable bags and use/eat smaller portions. I hate the waste of throwing food out so we are making extra efforts not to overbuy food. It is very hard to buy local in Las Vegas so we do what we can. After the end of June I will be biking to the grocery store and maybe using the bus.
Does anyone have experience with solar domestic hot water heating systems to share?
I don't believe in personalizing science-related controversies. As an informational point, though, the main troll in this thread reminds me strongly of the sort of lawyers creationists get to fight their battles:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/05/brief-freshwate-1.html
Secondly, I'll need the full journal reference for "McLean and Quirk".
The shot heard 'round the world. Hopefully, this will be the response from now on, and not on blog comments, but in "debates," public discussions, everything.
They pretend they can discuss science, do they? Well then, since they came to the science playground, they play ball with science playground rules.
My final comment, anyway:
When I start my unicorn ranch, I am going to fence it in with cohenite, because clearly it's a mineral that is impervious to reality.
Hi Marion,
And here I was thinking that it was the bozone layer at work around cohenite:
http://heardman.blogspot.com/2004/12/bozone-layer.html
Some more for cohenite's already overloaded cognitive faculties:
The organization he used to be an executive director of? The George C. Marshall Institute. Brilliant. Why am I reminded of Marion Delgado's gem from a few weeks back, "Corporate shill struggles with inner hypocrite"?
Some quick ripostes; bluegrue has indeed wasted his time because he clearly hasn't understood the point of McLean and Quirk's analysis; McLean and Quirk have seperated the data before and after the 1976 shift; they have done a standard deviation on both sets of data which are essentially similar to a low standard error; this had the effect of isolating the shift and the contemperaneous temperature shift; that is to say the temperature trend wasn't in all the data but in the shift; bluegrue's preferred linear regression for the whole data would mask that effect by spreading the temperature change over all the data; the issue is, which method most fairly represents the temperature effect? If bluegrue doesn't like what M&Q have done he should read the Tsonis link I provided earlier; Tsonis deals with the same shift and the fact that temperature/climate trend is based on abrupt changes rather than a gradual change as would be shown by OLS; this is why I have used a point to point depiction of temperature change during the 20thC; I can't see how bluegrue would disagree unless he is arguing the shift and the concurrent temperature change didn't occur.
Finally, Barton who ignores the fact the temperature chart I provided was Tamino's graph of NASAGISS data; and the solar info was from AR4 which gave a solar forcing of .12w/m2 which translates to ~.16C. This is markedly down from what TAR estimated, about .4C. The point is, if Barton wants to argue about the source he can argue with IPCC and NASA not me. As for ENSO being an oscillation and not being able to affect temperature trend; this is bunk as White and Cayan show;
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/papers/auad/Global_Warm_ENSO.pdf
#62 Wow! I'd read and enjoyed the article from the NY Times but hadn't appreciated the Washington organisation he hilariously described as "project(ing) an image of rationality but (did) not indulge too much in actual reasoning" was a denialist front funded by Exxon. Perfect.
People who know how to reason, and how to argue in good faith (ie by presenting their reasons for believing a particular hypothesis is correct, and by presenting any facts/data that may count against their hypothesis), really p-ss me off when they go off and develop a rhetorical argument from preferred conclusion back to something to support that conclusion - they ignore anything that might weaken their conclusion. Too much of the wasted words on the sceptical side of the arguments about AGW are either to sow confusion among the wider public, or to win an argument by any (rhetorical) means necessary.
So much of the arguments against AGW are not about advancing scientific understanding among the scientists, and the broader public. Instead, the arguments are of the cohenite variety; lots of hot air, lots of equivocation, but no substance.
My approach is to largely ignore the Cohenites of this world and instead to do the following:
* walk instead of drive (don't own a car and won't);
* bus or train when it is too far to walk;
* hessian reusable bags for transporting groceries;
* use low power globes instead of tungsten originals;
* grow own produce, eg oranges;
* limit water consumption and use greywater where feasible;
* catch rain and store in a rain water tank;
* don't buy crap that looks good but hardly ever gets used;
* live in easily maintained house or unit.
None of these are difficult, especially if you live in a town near a decent sized city (eg Adelaide).
Cohenite cannot prevail if we all individually cast a forensic microscope over our current consumption patterns, and dig out the lurking inefficiencies and assumptions made about the best way to do something. There is money to be saved by doing this periodically. Remember, the Cohenites do not own the issue, they do not own us.
You displease me. Be gone Cohenite, be gone.
That whoosh is the sound of Ben's head being pulled out of Tim's ass. This guy would have a hard time debating a 10 year old and this guy is a climate scientist? Oxymoron any one? Kind of like polysci or computer scientist. Not a scientist just a moron.
As for sunscreen,clothing works better and has been used for thousands of years. UV only became a problem when we started taking off our cloths and exposing ourselves to full sunlight after a long cold winter. Like Ben, it is simple, but whoosh, when your head is up your ass it is hard to get the crap out of your ears so you can hear the words of those who can actually think.
bluegrue at 45:
"cohenite
I've just wasted an hour of my life by having a look at the model proposed by McLean, i.e. the change between 1976 to 1980 and constant temperatures otherwise, as depicted in his figure 4.
His model results in a reduction in the sum of squared residuals that is statistically indistinguishable from those of the linear fit, in other words the two models describe the data equally well. However, McLean needs to use 4 free parameters to fit the data, whereas the linear fit just takes 2. "
cohenite blathers in response:
"bluegrue has indeed wasted his time because he clearly hasn't understood the point of McLean and Quirk's analysis; McLean and Quirk have seperated the data before and after the 1976 shift; they have done a standard deviation on both sets of data which are essentially similar to a low standard error; this had the effect of isolating the shift and the contemperaneous temperature shift; that is to say the temperature trend wasn't in all the data but in the shift;"
IOW, cohenite fails on basic understanding of statistical analysis - and he doesn't even know it. cohenite, what bluegrue said there, is that there is no statistical justification for the added free parameters that McClean introduces to his model. There are, in general, statistical tests to justify adding parameters to a model, Failure to improve the fit over the base model means that McClean's model would pass NONE of them.
These guys continually attack Mann et al on statistics, but then they vigorously defend this kind of garbage, and they wonder why no on who knows anything at all takes them seriously.
Look up Kent, the point is way over your head.
I did not consider the Tsonis paper because that would only be appropriate as an explanation if McLean & Quirk found a step increase in the temperature. However, McLean completely failed to demonstrate that there was a step increase in the temperature so there was no point in going any farther.
Bluegrue - I'm glad you actually did the regressions on the data. I considered it but decided it was not worth the effort. (My apologies for getting your name wrong in an earlier comment.)
The first part of this seems to say that they divided the data into an earlier subset and a later subset and found that the two each had lower standard deviations than the data as a whole. This would be true for any data in which there is a linear trend. It provides not the slightest evidence for a step increase in the data.
"which method most fairly represents the temperature effect?" Clearly the linear regression because it requires a lower number of parameters to attain the same goodness of fit.
BTW: Don't confuse me with That Other Guy ;)
Richard; M&Q are not saying each "subset" have lower SDs than the whole data but that they have similar SDs to each other with markedly different average temperatures. This means there is a natural break in 1976; clearly there was a transition between one climate phase [-ve PDO] and another [+ve PDO] with each climate phase having different temperature trends; are you really saying there was no such transition? I would have thought that was uncontroversial. Perhaps a better way of depicting the correlation is with an R2 analysis; if the 1976 Climate Shift demarcates temperature and determines temperature trend you would expect a high correlation between the PDO phase and temperature trend.
Cohenite
Yet again you make a fool of yourself no one cares what you think, you're an idiot.
cohenite:
Yes, that was in the cited AR4 p193.
No, that was not in the cited AR4 p193. cohenite likes to play the contempt game. I wouldn't be hiring him.
Barry at #52 wondered why folk here spend time responding to cohenite. Well, it's because he produces so much faff to which one might respond...
Cohenite, bluegrue is a physicist â are you seriously trying to tell us that he has less ability to understand a paper than do you, as a lawyer?!
But the above was just a preamble. The real example of cohenite's cluelessness is to be found in the sentences that follow:
I laughed so hard that I gave myself a headache!
The thing is, I doubt that cohenite understands why his pseudoscientific gobbledegook is meaningless. In his own mind it obviously means something (unrelated to reality) â either that, or he thinks that he can fool people who have a better mathematical education than he.
Cohenite, if you are serious about statistical analysis of multiparameter systems composed of multiple forcings superimposed over cyclical events, I suggest that you knock on tamino's door and ask for some assistance with some proper time series analysis. You're not going to cut any mustard with a couple of means, a couple of standard deviations, and an arbitrary cutoff point that appears to delineate a 'transition'. Such an approach is naïve â to put it nicely.
cohenite:
Let's all thank cohenite for giving us another proof by irrelevant citation. That paper by White and Cayan says nothing about ENSO's having any long term trend or causing any long term temperature trend. From my reading it is mainly about the mechanism by which the world warms up during El Ninos.
Proof by irrelevant citation is one of the special skills possessed by credulous people like cohenite.
It most certainly does not. The two sets of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 have identical standard deviations yet there is no natural break between the two. In fact, the numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 also has the same SD. I strongly suggest you take a basic course in statistics.
I see no evidence for it whatsoever. If you do, it is likely an optical illusion caused by the three lines being added to the data.
I found it rather baffling myself. I thought I'd worked out what he was trying to say but, judging from his reply, clearly I had not succeeded.
Richard, I think what he's _really_ trying to say (or perhaps splutter) is, "but Algore is fat, and anyway Clinton did it too!!!1!1!"
here is the paper, for those who haven t found it so far:
[Australian Temperature Variations - An Alternative View](http://mclean.ch/climate/Aust_temps_alt_view.pdf)
for a start, the temperature they are looking at is that of Australia. it is a typical denialist approach, to dismiss a global explanation for warming (CO2 increase) and to blindly accept a local one.
the things that others told you, obviously went over your head. so here the same again, in very simple terms:
you will use a step function (and two separate linear regressions), if the result will be significantly better.
for example the data 1;1;1;1;1;5;5;5;5;5 has a pretty bad linear fit (R²=0.76), and it can be significantly improved, by doing two separate (and perfect) linear regressions.
things get more complicate with another, more realistic dataset: 1;2;2;4;5;9;10;10;12;13
obviously a rising line of numbers, with a clear "step" between 5 and 9 and two minor "outliers" in both halves of the dataset.
laymen (and lawyers) might think, that a separate regression over both halves should give a better fit. but this assumption is false. (the tiny outlier of the double 2 becomes much bigger, if you halve the dataset)
so in short:
1. the analysis of australian data is rubbish, because even if it was true, it couldn t explain the global warming.
2. the analysis is rubbish, as bluegrue described above.
Brnard J:
>Cohenite, bluegrue is a physicist â are you seriously trying to tell us that he has less ability to understand a paper than do you, as a lawyer?!
Lawyers are actors, the court is their theatre.
cohenite writes:
No, it doesn't. First of all, a positive forcing won't translate into a negative temperature change. Second, with a climate sensitivity of 0.75 K/W/m^2, a 0.12 W/m^2 change would result in a 0.09 K change. You divided when you should have multiplied.
I took my figures directly from the NASA GISTEMP land-ocean anomalies page, which I listed a link to. Did you follow the link?
BJ, take a bex and have a good lie down.
Richard; 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7,8,9,10,11,12 may be 2 sets with identical SDs as the before and afters in M&Q also have; BUT they have different average temps and the trend in the before in M&Q is DOWN.
Hopeless, the lot of you; your witness allowances are cancelled. Only Barton has a point with the ~ [that's an approximation not a -ve Barton] 12 w/m2 being 0.09; actually about 0.11 instead of 0.16C as I said. At last I've learnt something from the oracles; now I can go and wash up.
Considering that the first seven of the 27 points in the data set are below the average I think this is very unlikely. Do they (or you) have figures for the calculated regression line and r2? I did not notice them in the paper (or even that they made this claim) but to be able to state that the trend was negative you have to have this information.
Cohenite, if your learned colleague leading the prosecution systematically points out the wet-tissue weaknesses of your case, would you tell him/her to "take a bex and have a good lie down"? Seriously, you are making an arse of yourself.
Oo, where to start?
First, there is no 'trend' where "the before in M&Q is DOWN" if, by "before", you are referring to 1950-1974. Using [these data](http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/meant03.txt) from the BoM I determined that the slope of the regression line is +0.0119. This is not "DOWN", and even if it were, such a description is meaningless. To demonstrate this you could perform a test of significance on the data, or you could simply look at the R2 value (0.0653) to instruct you in this.
You simply don't have sufficient power to say that there is anything but a random pattern in this short, noisy period, even though the slope of the regression line is "UP".
The selection of 1976-1980 as a "transition" period is meaningless cherry-picking, especially as, by doing so, 1975 has been conveniently forgotten in the process. Shift the time-frame by a year either way, or include 1975 in the analysis, and the apparently incredible transitional warming is actually much less.
Did you notice how the 1950-1974 and 1980+ standard deviations (0.42 and 0.34 respectively) compare with the deviation for 1910-2003 (0.31)? In a similar vein, did you notice how the 1950-1974 and 1980+ R2 values (0.0653 and 0.0571 respectively) compare with the R2 value for 1910-2003 (0.3224)? Do these facts tell you anything?!
Here's some homework for you. Using Richard Simons two sets of numbers, I randomised the groups to give the types of 'trends' you claim existed, with the same standard deviation and mean relationships.
1
2
2
5
3
6
4
3
5
1
6
4
7
7
8
12
9
8
10
10
11
11
12
9
'Analyse' using your approach, and comment.
OK, the table burped.
Here are the two abscissal sets:
(2, 5, 6, 3, 1, 4) and (7, 12, 8, 10, 11, 9)
I'll leave it to you to plot them again consecutive ordinal values, and thus to analyse.
The McClean paper would be hilarious right from the start, if it weren't sad.
It brings the crazy right off the bat:
Paragraph 1.
"That the correlation between temperature and the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide is far from strong and consistent has apparently been of no concern."
This is simply wrong and delusional - and has no supporting cite. In fact, the paper has only 2 citations, references.
Then-
There is not a single statistical significance test, in either the McClean paper or in the Quirk appendix. None. They don't test or report if their model is significant. They don't test or report if it is any better than the standard linear model. They don't report or test any of the standard statistical methods for finding change points in time series data.
They simply arbitrarily place two change points in the analysis, one at at 1976, and one at 1980 (McClean) or 1979 (Quirk). They do this without any supporting analysis whatsoever. They eyeballed it. Hell, I can eyeball a bigger step (using their alleged analysis) at about 1955, or between 1985-1988. Does McClean's utterly unsupported choice of dates actually produce a better model than these would? And what does that do to McClean's "Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1975" argument? He has NO ANALYSIS WHATSOEVER of the statistical validity of his choice of break points at all, or over other possible break points. Massive fail.
And even then, even when McClean eyeballs a break into existence right at the point he wants there to be a break and then argues - look! a break! - their model simply does not support the conclusion.
Their model produces a trend from 1950 to 1974 of 1.13C / century (no significant test reported).
Their model produces a trend from 1981 to 2006 of 1.66C / century (no significance test reported).
Their model produces a trend from 1976 - 1980 of 29.2C / century (no significance test reported).
IOW, strong positive trends in all three of their reported periods.
They leave the year 1975 out of their model altogether - that alone disqualifies them from any serious consideration.
Then at the bottom of page 3 they demonstrate that if they MAKE UP DATA FOR A VALUE AT THE END OF THE SERIES, AND SUBSTITUTE IT IN PLACE OF THE REAL DATA they get different trends. Duh!!! And that the impact on the trend of changing one value near then end of a 56 year time series from 1950, is less than the same change is on the 25 year portion of that time series from 1976. Double-double duh!!!! And then they try to argue that this tells us that the time 5 years from 1976 - 1980 is the reason for that?! Gaaaahhh!!!!! Truly dumbfounding idiocy.
McClean uses that idiocy derived from made-up data to disembowel his own argument on page 4, and he doesn't even know it. He is to discredit the positive trends in the 25 year periods, and says:
"The sensitivity of these 25-year trends to very few years of atypical temperatures was
illustrated above, when a relatively minor adjustment to the data for one year reduced the
trend by more than 0.55 oC/century, so the trend may be largely the product of chaotic effects
of various climate factors."
Again, double-double duh. Too-short time series in noisy data give non-robust trends. This is why 30 year periods are generally acknowledged as the minimum for detecting climate events - that is the minimum time for a robust, statistically significant trend to emerge from the amount of noise that is known to be superimposed on the climate.
But if McClean is trying to argue that 25 years trends are not robust - THEN WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT HIS 5 YEAR TREND!!!
His entire argument reduces to:
Those positive 25 years trends aren't robust, and are likely to actually not reflect any actual increase in temperature, but the short 5 year trend from 1976 - 1980 tells us everything we need to know about this 56 years of data. (Oh, and please don't notice that I shoved 1975 off behind a curtain somewhere).
Quirk's supporting appendix is worse.. He does include 1975 - but his model reduces that allegedly-explanatory short trend to FOUR FUCKING YEARS OF DATA, and argues that this is proper because the variance of his fits before and after that period are similar. WTF? I don't know what to do with that - it's not even 'not even wrong.'
Cohenite (#81)
From McLean & Quirk
Note the 'before' trend is up, not down (and, as Bernard points out, is statistically indistinguishable from zero).
McLean & Quirk
This is something that should NEVER be done unless you have good a priori grounds for believing that there was a problem with the data collected in that year. You might be justified, for example, in deleting a year if there was a major volcanic eruption that caused unusually low temperatures but even then it would be incorrect to simply replace it with the average of the years on either side.
Looks like cohenite's Q+R 'paper' is the scientific equivalent of hearsay.
Well done vultures; M&Q have the odd problem; and my mistake for saying the pre 1976 period had a down temperature trend; I was referring to the full La Nina period from the 1940s but my error in not clarifying that. Some new proposed agreed facts;
1 There was a transition from La Nina to El Nino conditions in 1976.
2 In 1976 there was a diminution in upwelling [See McPhaden and Zhang, Guilderson and Schrag, Myers, Wijffels and Pigot]
3 As a result of 2 there was an increase in SST with at the very least an increase in Pacific equatorial temperatures [Myers, Wijffels and Pigot]
4 The term "Great climate shift" is a valid description of this event; see Tsonis;
http://www.uwm.edu/~kravtsov/downloads/GRL-Tsonis.pdf
Issues;
1Is the GPCS responsible for some or most of the temperature increase in the latter 20thC
2 Did the effect on temperature of the GPCS occur abruptly over the course of a year or 2 with no other temperature increases, incremental or otherwise.
Cohenite
Bugger off.
You are an idiot.
Yet again you demonstrate yourself of being incapable of understanding... well anything really
"and my mistake for saying the pre 1976 period had a down temperature trend;"
Yet again another Cohenite mistake.
Remember Cohenite - dumb as a box of hammers... Or maybe believing ten impossible things before breakfast...
How long will you carry on this argument by imbecility?
"1 There was a transition from La Nina to El Nino conditions in 1976."
Cohenite your theories about it just being El Nine, require you to FIRST prove that El Nino is not, in anyway, affected or related to AGW.
Thanks to Lee, BJ et al for going through M&Q. Honestly once I read it I completely lost interest in the entire thread. The "paper" itself has no value except as an object lesson in how an otherwise apparently erudite mind can go completely off the rails.
Cohenite: Not one of your references backs up your arguments or even says what you seem to think it says. It's not clear to me that you care.
cohenite:
" Well done vultures; M&Q have the odd problem..."
Guffaw. Cohenite, they offer no evidence - none, nada, zip zilch - that their model is correct or even plausible. They are "allegedly" doing time series analysis, but they apply no statistical time series tools to the problem. None at all. THEY DID NOT BOTHER TO TEST THEIR MODEL.
And even if they had, the model does not support their conclusions. They try to handwave away the positive slope of the 25 year trends - and yet, they rise. EVEN IF that partitioning was statistically valid, which it is not (and they don't even claim it is, which is telling), it still demonstrates continual warming through the 20th century.
This paper does not have "the odd problem." It is abysmally wrong in every single last piece of its substance, from beginning to end. And I find it telling that YOU fail to respond in any substantive manner to my review of the paper.
cohenite, pounding the table doesnt work when the jury has come to realize that you have no law and no facts to pound.
Cohenite:
Interestingly, Tsonis et al. are very tentative in the body of the paper, saying
Cohenite:
Before this needs to be answered, it has to be shown that a GPCS had any effect on the temperature, something that McLean and Quirk have singularly failed to do.
I see no evidence that there was a negative trend from the 1940s to 1975. What value do you get for the slope and the r2?
Cohenite.
I gave you a very simple task at #83/84 to do, to reflect the 'analysis' that you believe is appropriate for the Australian mean annual data.
There are two sets of six numbers. How long does it take to do the three regressions required to cover the 'combinations' defined by your type of 'transition'? Really, is it so difficult to do? You pretend to having the cred to rub shoulders with scientists in their analysis of data - show us how you would do it.
For heaven's sake, the sets are even constructed to reflect the fundamental mean/standard deviation patterns and the slope patterns you were so enamoured of in the Mc/Q 'paper'.
Tell you what, to make it more reflective of the trends in the Aussie mean temp data, I've re-randomised the first set to follow the actual "before" 'trend'. Thus the data correspond with every statistical character that you say the Mc/Q data exhibit:
(2, 4, 6, 3, 1, 5) and (7, 12, 8, 10, 11, 9)
So, can you now derive the R2 values, the means and standard deviations (duh!), and the slopes, and tell us what they mean, (especially as the trends and the 'trends' are all "UP")?
Interestingly, the results are even more clear than they would have been with the previous analysis. I'll be kind and not request that you determine the significances of the relationships, although as with previous commentary, the R2 values should tell you all that you need to know in this respect.
Please note: the eyes of all of your Denialist compadres are no doubt on you, waiting for you to show those smart-alecy AGW proponents that they don't know how to do even the most basic of analyses. The fact that Lee pretty much pointed out at #85 exactly where all of your (and Mc/Q's) analysis and interpretation bungles are, surely will not prevent you from educating us in the 'reality' of the data.
Michael, I would suggest that it's more like the scientific equivalent of a hostile witness...
I'm eagerly awaiting cohenite's interrogation of the very simple data set to show us why this witness, and the Mc/Q witness, are not hostile to his case.
The odd problem is that the whole 'paper' is a 'problem', to put it nicely.
Cohenite said:
Here in the U.S. we have rules about who can claim to be an expert. We'd love to get you in court, too, but there are no experts in climate denialism. Nobody bothers to do enough work to qualify as an expert.
As to the hearsayness of the evidence, let's just say that the cross examination tends to smoke out those who don't know their burros from their burrows. Accurate research, vetted through peer-review publication, rather gets around hearsay complaints. Newton's long dead, but we still accept his insights into motion and momentum, especially in the case of colliding automobiles. Judicial note often cures the problem.
Be careful what you wish for, Cohenite. Creationists always put up a good fight until the briefs are filed and notices sent for deposition. Climate denialists will do the same.
Meanwhile, have you thought about putting your denialism into good action? Try arguing down your home insurance rates, rising due to climate change. Let us know when you convince the actuaries they are wrong. (You're familiar with the business records exceptions, I presume.)
Enough with the creationism! As for putting my denialism into action; as a matter of fact I am; I'm buying all the coastal properties I can.
BJ; do your own chow test;
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/strucchange/index.html
My wife usually does my stats and she isn't home right now.
It's a pretty funny thought, but does anyone here believe cohenite's bragging about court?
The way he talks about it make me think of someone inadequate trying to big note himself.
Good for smile, but also a little sad in the after taste.
A final note since Ed has raised the issue of practical applications of scepticism and an appropriate example given the calibre of the debate from the believers and a suitable destination for that belief;
http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?9904555
Cohenite.
It not complicated. Just do a couple of high school-level descriptive statistics, and interpret them.
You don't need your wife to do this for you, and you don't need to use R.
Or are you afraid of the answer?
Cohenite.
I guess that as someone who does [not deny](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php#c…) that he is the [secretary of the Climate Sceptics Party](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php#c…), "Dedicated to expose the fallacy of Anthropogenic or man-made Global Warming (AGW)", it must be pretty annoying to find that you have sourced a 'paper' that shows "UP[ward]" trends in temperature for every period that you considered, and that this trend is statistically significant if the analysis is done properly.
Of course, if the globe is warming it ain't CO2 wot's doin' it, even though it is a greenhouse gas, and even though humans are emitting it into the atmosphere, "because climate changes naturally"...
100!
Got there first.
what happened to cohenite - is he still waiting for his wife to come home and do his homework for him??
Shorter cohenite:
I know totally nothing about statistical analysis, but I know the globe is experiencing a cooling trend. Here's a bunch of scientific papers which I don't understand squat, but which support my view.
To save everyone else the trouble of following cohenite's links in 95 and 97 (above), one is to the download page for some statistical software (?) and the other is to an abstract for a paper about sewer failure (??)
If anyone can enlighten me about how either of these inform the debate I'd be obliged.
Of course, it looks like they were just a couple of links randomly thrown up by Google for "statistics" and "environment".
David at #103.
The software link is for an add-in to program R, a rather nifty (and a little bit demanding) program beloved of many statistical analysts. I suspect that cohenite was attempting to show how clever he is, but if he gets his wife to do his analysis for him, there's no way that he'd actually have a clue how to use R himself.
After all, if he actually had a clue, he'd know enough about basic regression descriptions to know that there's nothing profound to find in the randomness of the two data sets (from #93) beyond the basic lessons about the illegitimacy of cherry-picking and the pitfalls of attempting over-interpretation.
It's a pity that he is impervious to this lesson, as he has swanned right in after McLean and Quirk to make, as the latter two do, the same errors in 'analysis' and interpretation as are described in the preceeding sentence and in previous posts by many commenters on this thread.
The paper reference is surely a suggestion, in a rare moment of lucidity, about where the ideas of cohenite and his colleagues deserve to be flushed...
Bernard,
You've got poor cohers stumped.
He's had to resort to asking for help from his like-minded friends over at Jennifers Blog of Credulity,
".....a Chow Test needs to be done;.....But Iâll need some assistance to do that so the vultures are having some fun at my ineptitude not appreciating that their argument is predicated on the incredible assumption that there is no climatic effect from the climate shift between La Nina and El Nino." - cohenite.
Now that will be a laugh.
Michael.
I don't even bother with the Bog these days, but I did wonder if cohenite would attempt to recruit others to his task. But did he really say this?!
Even for a lawyer, cohenite appears to be overly happy to misrepresent his opposition.
I (and I am sure many others here) have never assumed, said or even implied that "there is no climatic effect from the climate shift between La Nina and El Nino". To the contrary, at [#17](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1657582) I noted that the planet's temperature trajectory is dependent upon multiple complex factors. This of course includes oscillations such as ENSO, although cohenite needs to be careful that he is not being tautological, or even simply irrelevant, in his attributions of cause and effect in climate phenomena.
Lee said it well about the Mclean & Quirk 'paper':
The point being made by many on this thread regarding this 'work' is that the BoM annual mean temperature data was not parsimoniously (or even sensibly) 'analysed' by McL&Q.
Without a significantly detailed and scientifically-justified a priori protocol for incorporating a suit of indicators to identify 'transition' states in the climate, chopping a time series into pieces as McL&Q/cohenite are wont to do is Bad Technique. Cohenite and his revered McL&Q rely upon non-statistically justified reference to the Southern Oscillation index in order to identify a 'transition', and completely ignore any and all other climate parameters that might legitimately be considered relevant.
This is cherry-picking.
That cohenite cannot understand this; that he is unable to follow the most basic of pointers that would demonstrate to him that his and MCL&Q's 'results' fail the principles of careful and of parsimonious analysis; that he is now apparently recruiting others to cover his arse: all indicate how removed from basic statistical procedure he is.
That he doesn't seem to understand the relationships between signals, noise, numbers of data points in a time series, and how all three are legitimately analysed to detect significant trends, only confirms this.
That he has avoided answering a few simple questions with regard to commenting upon the dummy data puzzles me, unless it is because he realises that by doing so he makes a mockery of his own [prior description](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1661913) of the Bom data.
Still, if he wants to Chow down on the dummy data, and tell us the story as to why he did so, I would be happy to hear his explanation.
I'd be even more intrigued to see him or his mates do the same to the BoM data, and explain how they managed to account for all climate-modifying parameters when picking, as an explanation (a la SOI), any that they believe marks a 'transition'.
Cohers' befuddlement is final proof that his ability to objectively assess the 'papers' he champions is zero.
He simply likes to believe what he thinks the papers mean. The rest is just hot air.
Doesn't courtroom argument depend very much on ensuring that witnesses tell selected bits of truth but rarely if ever the whole truth? I would think that expert witnesses should present testimony in keeping with the standards of their profession and if their conclusions are widely different from the mainstream I'd hope the other side are competent enough to know and show that to be the case. I'm, not convinced that's the case.
Actually recent criticisms of advocates in courts around here were scathing, many being completely unfamiliar with the cases in question, their arguments poorly made and often incomprehensible. It looks to my like their peers seem most reluctant to do any kind of serious review and the bodies that should be holding them to high standards appear more concerned with maintaining the appearance of high standards by rarely finding fault with their professional collegues - they're more likely to act like defence advocates for their incompetent peers.
In any case I think that science has a better record of getting things right than courts do. It's certainly much more able to review and revise in the light of new data. Of course all the new data re climate change continues to support AGW and strengthen the case for action.
Cohenite, will you lead a class action against major CO2 producers when those coastal properties get affected by rising sea levels?
Bernard, I knew cohenite's first link was for a R package. I've heard of it, but wouldn't have much of a clue using it (and I guarantee I've got a hell of a lot more mathematics that cohenite). I just couldn't see its application to a question that most of us could answer with pencil and paper and, in my case, an elementary statistics text.
Stay tuned dingbats, I haven't put the white flag up on this one yet; and BJ, you do go on.
> cohenite: I haven't put the white flag up on this one yet
Just a flesh wound, eh?
Cohenite,
you have no credibility so why will you bother coming back here.
You have no idea how science works. You seem to think that EL Nino and ENSO are completely unrelated to AGW, with no proof.
You are what is known as - an idiot.
And I'll 'go on' some more.
Cohenite, Mclean and Quirk are attempting to posit that the Australian temperature record is the result of natural phenomena, rather than arising from any CO2-related warming.
Given that they are attempting to refute a global phenomenon (AGW), how does one justify taking global or semi-global phenomena (e.g. ENSO) and applying them to the analysis of what is effectively a local temperature data-set? The reach of such oscillations is, after all, greater than to just the Australian context, as is the influence of CO2 itself...
Given that you are considering global phenomena, what process are you employing to determine that your focus on local responses allows you to detect signal over noise; that is, what is your resolution?
Given that oscillations (e.g. ENSO) are effectively noise around a signal, why is it legitimate to consider one 'transitional' stage in isolation, rather than to account for several complete oscillatory periods?
Given that climate is, as everyone acknowledges, a complex beast, why is it legitimate to consider one aspect (e.g. ENSO) in your (and McL&Q's) "alternative hypothesis" and omit the large number of other impacting factors in scales of both space and of time?
Are understanding dawning yet? If not, I and many others here are prepared to continue "going on".
Are Is understanding...
Cohenite (#111)
Cohenite is clearly approaching this in a different way from a scientist. A scientist would present their best evidence and arguments, but if the other person's evidence and arguments were better, would be willing to modify their views (although some scientists do get attached to their pet hypotheses). Being persuaded that someone else's ideas are better is generally no big deal. Cohenite, however, sees it as a personal defeat. Given this attitude, I don't think there is any chance of him ever changing his mind.
Why does expecting you to be able to justify your claims turn me into a dingbat?
Following up on Michael's comment [at #105](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1669230), I stumbled upon [this](http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/gaia-%e2%80%93-saved-by-the-se…):
Cohenite, along with your other homework, please detail where "sod and other lumps of dirt argued that ENSO doesnât exist".
I do apologise Richard; I was directing my comments at Nathan who seems to be on the turps again and channeling the Vecchi and Soden thesis of El Nino look-a-like effects caused by ACO2.
BJ; you raise a couple of point about the locality of ENSO effects and the oscillation versus trend disparity. It is true that M&Q concentrate on Australian conditions but a cursory glance at GMST trends also show an upward trend about 1976 and M&Q note this on p4 of McLean's section.
Your comment about oscillations being just noise around a signal is really the guts of this issue with, according to you, the real trend from AGW emerging from an effectively trend-stationary ENSO oscillation. I hope to show some analysis contrary to this soon, but feel free to continue berating me in the meantime.
"the analysis of australian data is rubbish, because even if it was true, it couldn t explain the global warming.
the analysis is rubbish, as bluegrue described above.
Posted by: sod | May 28, 2009 4:20 AM"
And BJ, you regard ENSO as merely noise around a signal so I think I was entitled to assume you thought ENSO was non-existent. After all, if something has no effect its existence is rather tenuous.
Cohenite
You are truly stupid.
I did not argue that ENSO was an AGW signal. I said that your theory require ENSO to not be affected AT ALL by AGW - something that you just decided was true, with no evidence. It's a spectacularly stupid idea.
"I hope to show some analysis contrary to this soon..."
Oh God, not Bob what's'his'names 'analysis'... Spare us the rubbish.
Cohenite:
"And BJ, you regard ENSO as merely noise around a signal so I think I was entitled to assume you thought ENSO was non-existent. After all, if something has no effect its existence is rather tenuous."
And you wonder why people don;t take you seriously when you arrive at stupid conclusions like this?
You can't treat science like a rhetorical game. All you show is that you are a dunce.
And by the way, with respect to this comment:
"I hope to show some analysis contrary to this soon..."
Why were you declaring your ENSO theory as fact when you hadn't even done any analysis?
Very good nat, now I'm being insulted for taking on board what you brainiacs objected to in M&Q and then going off to prepare a response to that.
Cohenite:
"Very good nat, now I'm being insulted for taking on board what you brainiacs objected to in M&Q and then going off to prepare a response to that. "
No, you are being insulted because you are a moron and you keeping posting here proclaiming that AGW is wrong and blah blah blah. It's tiresome rubbish.
Why did you claim that AGW could be explained by ENSO when you hadn't done the analysis?
Cohenite
You should also note that I insulted you because you said something that was clearly stupid:
"And BJ, you regard ENSO as merely noise around a signal so I think I was entitled to assume you thought ENSO was non-existent. After all, if something has no effect its existence is rather tenuous."
If you keep saying stupid things people will assume you're stupid.
Nathan, you say at #124: "If you keep saying stupid things people will assume you're stupid."
Would it not be more accurate to say, in this case, that if you keep saying stupid things people will deduce that you're stupid?
i fitted the "periods" to global GISS temperature.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1950/to:2005/plot…
the theory simply doesn t make the slightest sense.
Sod,
I think you need a 4th degree polynomial to make it make any sense... :)
cohenite writes:
How does "exists as noise" translate to "doesn't exist?" For that matter, how does "exists as noise" translate to "has no effect?"
Just out of interest cohenite, what is your a priori hypothesis, your intended methodology for determining which are the relevant factors that have an impact on Australian mean annual temperature, and your statistical procedure for analysing the significance of your a priori-determined impactors?
Michael at [#105](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1669230).
Do you have a link to that comment of cohenite's? I'm curious to see how the cheer-squad at Marohasy's may have responded.
I have had a quick look through some of the threads and searched, but nothing relevant seems to come up. I just don't have the patience at the moment to wade through the endless mullock-heaps to find the source.
it is in ["defining the greens part 12"](http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/defining-the-greens-part-12/?c…)
Easily one of the strangest things I've seen written here. Do you believe in waves? If so, do you think they affect the tides? If they don't affect the tides, does that make their existence tenuous?
Here BJ,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/defining-the-greens-part-12/?c…
And no takers, partly because Jen deleted further comments on it.......a sensible move on her part.
I'm hoping that Graeme Bird will offer his services to cohers.
No sign of cohers.
Does this mean that he has "put the white flag up on this one"?
If cohenite is still contemplating how to twist the dummy data, and/or the McL&Q 'paper' results, into demonstrating how his/McL&Q's interpretation of the 20th century+ warming follows their 'model' above that of climatologists around the world, he might like to follow John Mashey's [post on the "Always Click on the Links" thread](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/06/always_click_on_the_links.php#c…).
Most especially, cohenite might like to contemplate [this post](http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/05/18/climate-denial-crock/#comment-157…) of John's, and comment on the implications of the [figure 1](http://i41.tinypic.com/2i88s2.jpg) and [figure 4](http://i41.tinypic.com/2uzw93b.jpg) graphs. I did a similar thing last year with 30-year slope data from GISS, following a process I use for change in body size in poikilotherms, and got a similar result.
John's exploration is far more thoroughly detailed though, and nicely explained, and importantly, he put has it out there for others to contemplate.
I would very much like to hear the result of any such contemplation by cohenite, and especially what he might think about the various time-scale slope plots in the figure 4 graphic have to say about temperature change, and particularly so in the context of his and McLean & Quirk's theories.
Cohers may have decided not to bother as Jennifer Marohasy makes a revolutionary claim. Perhaps her treatise is about to appear in some internationally recognised journal,
"I reckon it would perhaps be easier to believe in Creation than AGW. Both are theories in my view easily disproven "
Cyfrowe Wydania.
If you are after more information regarding the dodgy statistical process cohenite attempted to use to show a step in a dataset, a process that he has so far not attempted to reflect in an analysis of some simple [dummy data](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1664460), you might be interested in [James Annan's comment](http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/07/editorial-standards-at-agu-jo…) on exactly this type of nonsense, in a discussion of that [McLean, de Freitas, and Carter paper](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/ahh_mclean_youve_done_it_again…).