"Scientific consensus" crumbles a bit more

[Tim Streater]

More scientists admitting errors, apparently:

[Brian Gaff]

Sorry I don't do Farce block, so what is the SP here?

Brian

[Tim Streater]

You don't need a facebook account to read the article.

[John Williamson]

No, but you need a farcebook log in to read the URL of the article.

[John Williamson]

That's unusual for Farcebook. So unusual, in my experience, that many people won't even bother trying to read it without logging on.

[Tim Streater]

Eh? I gave the URL in my OP. I was able to read the article without using a facebook login (I have one but never use it).

[Tim Streater]

Coo-er lor' lumme strike a light, Guv. I dint know that. Right, in the unlikely event I see another facebook URL like that one where login is not needed, I'd better note that in the post too.

[Chris Hogg]

Came up immediately for me, a page of text followed by comments. I've never had a Facebook account and certainly didn't have to log in.

[bob.smithson]

Except that if you go to see what the scientists actually said, it is

"However, in the paper we make the point that this particular feature is of shorter duration than the inherent smoothing in our statistical averaging procedure, and that it is based on only a few available paleo-reconstructio ns of the type we used. Thus, the 20th century portion of our paleotemperat ure stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions."

Note that Bjorn Lomborg 'accidentally' omitted the bit about *in the paper* to make it sound as if they were just coming clean about it. There's an an alysis at

from 22 March th at goes into details. Basically anyone fixating on the uptick is missing t he point of the paper.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Probably they are not too bad on statistics, actually - that's the sort of thing peer-reviewing CAN check. And does. What is more the problem is the assumption on which these models are based..

For example, IF you consider that ALL anomalous global warming is down to CO2, then the models the IPCC use are valid in that context, and so too are the scary projections. The maths all checks out. The problem is, is that a valid assumption to make in the first place?

AS I pointed out, that assumption has to be fudged with 'unknown positive feedaback' to work anyway, whilst the equally logical 'unknown other thing causing it' is silently ignored.

And in fact the second proposition (that basically something else we don't know about, is CAUSING it, rather than AMPLIFYING it) is looking on the odds, a better bet given the latest temperature and other data.

The same is the case with Meadows. He assumed that incidences of certain injuries were ONLY consistent with child abuse. From then on his maths was sound enough, it was his logic that was flawed.

When all you have is a hammer...etc etc..

This is the sort of error you probably need to be trained in critical THINKING to avoid. I.,e philosophy of science and/or logic.

Very few otherwise skilled scientists are actually trained in that.

And very few philosophers are employed to oversee their work, either.

Plus the media love a good scare story and the scientific press like 'peer review' but that can't actually prove anything. It merely eliminates faulty links in the chain, not whether the chain is attached to the wrong thing at the very beginning.

That's why people are likening AGW to a religion. It starts with a dogmatic statement and then follows the logical consequences of that assumption . But only the data can refute the very assumption on which it is based. Two cold winters, a wet summer in between, and no sign of runaway warming is beginning to break down that faith. And its becoming a religion in denial.

[Tim Streater]

Of course this assumes their statistical methods are robust in the first place. Remember Prof Meadow and his attempts to do statistics on cot death, which got a number of innocent victims banged up.

(See )

Meadow is/was a doctor; the scientists referred to above are, what, paleontologists? What does any of them know about statistical methods?

[Tim Streater]

Not in the case of cot deaths. He just multiplied the probabilities together and got a large number, ignoring the fact that these are not independent variables.

In any case, even if they *were* independent, thus meaning that you

*could* multiply them together and get a meaningful number, he then overlooked that he'd already chosen his target population: those who'd *already* had a cot death (see my brother's analysis above).

It's a bit like the national lottery. Hey, the odds at 14,000,000 to one against, but typically someone wins - must be a fix, right? If you're looking for something significant, it's the difference between saying that *anybody* can win, compared to saying that a *specific individual* wins. In the former case its 1/14000000 with 20,000,000 (or however many tickets are sold), which gives you a good chance *someone* wins, or

1/14000000 for a particular individual.

And these papers might well be peer reviewed - but by whom? Other specialists of the same ilk, of course. I want to know how many of these papers have their statistical methods reviewed by statistical mathematicians.

[bob.smithson]

Yes, let's move the goalposts shall we?

[bob.smithson]

On Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:28:40 PM UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote :

It's not as if possible other causes have not been investigated. Basically it comes down to energy in minus energy out. Short term oscillations can cause apparent deviations from this (e.g. if looking solely at surface temp eratures) but over the long term they even out. Basically all you are sayin g that that there *might* be some weird unknown cause that no one has thoug ht of and for which no evidence exists. Logically that is true but the us ual approach in science is that, given an explanation that has multiple lin es of supporting evidence and is better than any other available explanatio n, it is accepted with the usual caveats about its provisional nature.

You need to elaborate on this. The temperature data (I assume you mean sur face temperature?) is consistent with predictions despite what the Daily Ma il says. Other data (polar ice, glacier melt, ocean heat content, sea leve l) are, if anything, exceeding IPCC predictions.

[whisky-dave]

I tend to avoid reading to much into anything posted on 1st April or mentio ns 1st April.

I was even suspicious when our IT taining team sent us all the courses they do. On 1st May an introduction to windows XP. Lets see I'm currently running W7 and the IT services have just ordered 150

0 new PCs which for them makes everything easier as they'll be installing t he same software on all PCs. Are they really going back to XP on new machin es , I doubt it. I'm awaiting a reply from the training officer.

My Q , is this a failed April fool or are we really going back 12 years in sortware as the way forward ?

[The Natural Philosopher]

On the other hand if you have an explanation that doesn't fit the observed facts, yu shouldn't go around telling people it is gospel.

No, it is NOT.

Other data (polar ice, glacier melt, ocean

No they are NOT.

>

[bob.smithson]

Again, can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested in how you have come to your current viewpoint and what evidence you are taking into account. I a m a complete amateur who has looked into this off and on over the last few years and I have yet to find a convincing big picture argument from the 'sc eptical' community. The problem is that the arguments range from denying th at the greenhouse effect exists at all to pretty much accepting climate sci ence but arguing that we'll just live with whatever happens. These all seem to coexist happily on the same blogs. For people who are politically moti vated to disbelieve the science, this is fine; they are happy to read somet hing one day and something contradictory the next without worrying how they relate to each other. I'm especially put off by conspiracy theories. If t here is an alternative consilient scientific theory I'd be more than happy to consider it. Which is why my question to you is genuine as you seem to have given this more thought than many.

[The Natural Philosopher]

there is no competing theory really because frankly no one knows exactly why the climate varies.

What you can say is that on the actual evidence of temperature measurement that the IPCC built its case upon in the first place, the evidence now refutes the theory.

The best skeptical site is wattsupwithat.com

You will have to judge for yourself how compelling the arguments are.

Most skeptics don't start out by being that way: the evidence - or lack of it - gradually converts them.

[bob.smithson]

I think the operative word there is 'exactly'. It's the 'we don't know ever ything therefore we know nothing' argument.

How does the evidence refute the theory? My understanding is that only a na ive interpretation of the surface temperature graph could lead to this conc lusion. I'm assuming that you have some more substantial insight than that though, which is what I am digging for.

OK. I'm familiar with that one. I find that it suffers from the scattergu n approach that I was complaining about. I was hoping you would be able to point me in the direction of something that is a bit more measured. Nevert heless, if that's the best one then at least I can focus my attention on it .

Interesting. I'm naturally sceptical about all sorts of things. As an exa mple, you say that there is a lack of evidence. Now, I've read about plent y of evidence. I accept that I am not qualified to judge it but there are plenty of people who are qualified who have come to the opposite conclusion to you. How do I decide whom to trust? If you are correct and it is so obv ious to you, why is it not obvious to the experts? Unless there really *is* a massive global conspiracy. But that's where my scepticism really kicks i n.

[dennis]

There isn't lots of evidence. There are a few temperature records from which the data is extracted, put into various models and produce results.

Various models produce different outcomes even though they all have the same records.

What makes people skeptical is the fact that none of the models used to predict the outcome agree with the actual measurements. So while they have been fiddled with to match the historical record they aren't much use for predicting the future. There is also the secret processing of the records to produce the data fed into the models. Why exactly do they need to be secret?

Take the popular met office model.. it predicts a rise twice what has actually happened, uses data you can't look at and is frequently used by the scaremongers to justify their war on GW and so called deniers.

The reason the models fail to predict the future is actually quite simple, the model makers don't understand what is happening. What you can see is that CO2 isn't having the effect it was claimed it was going to have. If you have any real evidence it is doing what was claimed the world would be interested.