Bastardi's Wager 672
DesScorp writes "AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi has a challenge for climate scientists. He wants one or more of their rank to accept a bet about temperature trends in the coming decade. Bastardi is making specific predictions. 'The scientific approach is: you see the other argument, you put forward predictions about where things are going to go, and you test them,' he says. 'That is what I have done. I have said the earth will cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data.' Bastardi's challenge to his critics — who are legion — is to make their own predictions. And then wait. Climate science, he adds, 'is just a big weather forecast.' Bastardi's challenge is reminiscent of the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager, where the two men made specific predictions about resource scarcity in the '80s."
real science (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
And what is that useful point? To inject more politics and bullshit into the scientific process? I'm sorry, but despite what these oil-company backed think tanks say, there is no global scientific conspiracy to force you back into the dark ages and to live like vegan hippies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no real debate. The people who actually know the science are largely in agreement about the conclusions. The "debate" being spoke of is faux debate stirred up by people from think tanks funded by oil companies. It's about as meaningful as fundy wackos going on about how there is large debate over the legitimacy over the theory of evolution.
Keep drinking the coolaid (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd raise this guy .1 degree C and say temps will decrease 0.3C in ten years (but that has to be hedged for the rise in air traffic in China).
You just accidentally your own argument.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here [realclimate.org], knock yourself out.
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's no debate, then the global warming high priests will be all too happy to take up his wager.
Unless their theories don't make predictions that specific. It's perfectly possible to have a theory which is undisputed but whose predictions are long-range and apply to the big picture. Tell me, does the theory of evolution by natural selection allow you to predict how long it will take for speciation to occur again within Homo sapiens?
Re: (Score:3)
IMHO it's a challenge to the various climate models - put up or shut up.
It also provides a benchmark, defined (accepted) by the climate scientists in advance, against which they can test and refine their models 10 years from now. IOW, if I predict that the tree in my front yard will grow its branches an average of two inches per year (according to some measure) for the next ten years, then we have a substantive prediction against which the reality can be compared. If I'm wrong, then we have a good set of
Re:real science (Score:4, Informative)
Climate science no more works that way than statistics predicts the results of individual coin flips.
Trend lines? Sure. But if Bastardi has genuine complaints about the trend lines being inaccurate, the statistical models, the correlation of A and B, he could do exactly what any other scientists does - make a genuine experiment debunking the current set.
But since actual temperatures fall squarely in the middle between the best and worst case scenarios predicted some 30 years ago now, he's decided he wants to run with a PR stunt with the predictable result that during the 7 years he's wrong will never be mentioned in conservative circles, but the two or three years that are below average in Lake CuCooLander will be trumpeted 24/7 as a complete debunking of climate science - and never mentioned again when it regresses to the mean.
Golly Gee Willikers I would love to, but it seems I'm going to be busy hitting my head against the wall for the next decade.
Pug
Re:real science (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't say that at all. Statistics of a fair coin flip say that you might get 0, 5, 10, or any integer number in between, heads. It tells you that you're more likely to get 5 (probability 0.24609, if my math is right) than 0 or 10 (probability .00097 each), but it does not rule out 0 or 10.
I make the probability of getting 4, 5, or 6 heads on 10 coin flips to be 0.64648. If I bet you that there will be 4, 5, or 6 heads, and in fact there are some other number, does that mean my theory was wrong? Nope.
Similarly, climate modeling tells us that we are more likely to have a warming trend over the next decade. It does not rule out cooling -- due to, say, a volcanic eruption, or a decrease in insolation, or some other factor unrelated to greenhouse gasses and urban heat islands temporarily overwhelming the warming trend. (Or due to some brilliant new technology that extracts huge amounts of CO2 and methane from the air, or some massive change in human behavior.)
Re: (Score:3)
After all, statistics says that if one flips a coin 10 times, one will get around 5 heads and 5 tails.
I would like to know where you took statistics. If you did a single trial of 10 coin flips and got 8 heads and 2 tails, would you regard statistics as a debunked science?
Re:real science (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the Theory of Evolution does not do that. But, it does say that if one takes two isolated communities and puts each under different and contradicting pressures, the communities will select for different traits and THAT can be tested.
Yes, and climate change theory says that if you add more greenhouse gases to a system then the temperature of the system will rise on average over time, and THAT can be tested. It just doesn't say by how much, in a decade.
People claim that climate change is settled science, and it seems to me that settled science should be able to predict a temperature change over a decade, especially when there is allegedly so much data.
Yes. The science that says AGW is occurring is settled. That doesn't mean we have a precise model for how fast it will occur. Having a big-picture question settled and having a precise model are two very different things. It is no way implied by something being "settled science" that it should be able to make a specific type of prediction with a specified amount of data.
Seriously, why can't they just publish a table that says if a decade from now the CO2 level is x, then the increase in temperature should have changed by y?
Because there are literally thousands of confounding factors, and that's just counting ones that are identified. They probably could publish a table saying that if a decade from now the CO2 level is x and nothing else changes, the increase in temperature will be y, but then things will change, like the number of sunspots or the number of farting cows (methane is also a greenhouse gas) or the amount of heat people generate heating their homes or the acreage of plant biomass or goodness knows what else, and their prediction won't apply anymore, but everyone will make hay with how it was wrong and fail to appreciate the unmet assumption.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is simply that they don't -at all- have confidence in their methods. There are several basic problems :
Climate is chaotic. In fact, mathematical chaos theory *is* the original climate theory. Literally. Chaos theory started out as an analysis of long-term weather trends over Britain
Long term weather isn't climate, Mr. Bastardi.
Re: (Score:3)
That means that, mathematically speaking, AGW could be 100% accurate today, and that still doesn't give you one iota of predictability. Weather, and long term climate could still become totally unresponsive to CO2 overnight. More specifically in a given chaotic system *any* prediction (within certain limits) *will* happen, just not known when. In a chaotic dataset, there is *no* way to predict the future, no matter the amount and accuracy of the available data, nor can the quality of the system help you (except - if you're God and know *everything*. By that we mean the position of every last atom, photon and neutrino in the universe. This is often joked about - if a person can't give the lotto outcomes for the next 100 years, he can't give you the weather -or climate- in 100 years either.
A subtle but important distinction, but chaotic systems are ones in which if you did know the position of every last atom, photon and neutrino in the universe you could predict the system's behavior, the basic problem is that we can't and small deviations in any of the initial conditions will produce drastically different outcomes. Chaotic systems are deterministic by definition but hypersensitive to their initial conditions. From wiki [wikipedia.org]:
This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.
What this means is that while accurate long-term predictions are imposs
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Tell me, does the theory of evolution by natural selection allow you to predict how long it will take for speciation to occur again within Homo sapiens?
No, but more importantly it doesn't claim to be able to. AGW claims to be able to predict the future, evolution merely explains the past.
A "scientific theory" that makes no testable predictions is no scientific theory at all. The theory of evolution, specifically, predicts that population characteristics will change over time in response to the environment. Not just that it has happened in the past, but that it will continue to happen whenever there is a population with non-uniform heritable characteristics.
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There's no debate in the scientific literature. Obviously, there's a debate among laymen.
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Yes, but that is WEATHER. You see, CLIMATE is different than WEATHER. It really is. His claim that climate is "just a big weather forecast" either shows he's a complete idiot when it comes to climate science or he's trolling.
Climate science is NOT a big weather forecast. Weather is just ONE factor in determining the overall climate of the planet.
I'd be more than willing to take his bet on the condition that the bet is off if extraordinary events occur (large volcanic eruptions or an large meteor impact, for
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
He's making a 10-year prediction. I think that'd be more "climate" than "weather".
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no debate, because the chicken littles AGWers are shills for the enviromental wacko socialists. The lack of debate is magnified by pointy heads in academia who think they are smarter than everyone else. It is about as meaningful as the exact number of crickets are chirping tonight.
Yep. You're right. A group of fringe wackos whom nobody takes seriously somehow managed to control an entire branch of science. It's just like how the atheist lobby completely controls biology, right? How do they manage to do that? Who knows, but they must have a way, because a conspiracy theory is the only way to explain the lack of debate!
How you got modded "insightful" for a post that absolutely no insight at all is beyond me.
Apparently quite a bit about how the real world works is beyond you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right. There is no debate. No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity and there's very little evidence of warming at all (in fact there's a lot of historical evidence that we're entering a cooling period).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2u4zNGtnY8&feature=related [youtube.com]
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Excellent example of a bad analogy, there.
The person making the prediction (being asked the question) in this case may not be a client scientist, but he has a track record of accurately describing temperature in the future.
You might not ask your cardiologist to change the oil in your car, but that's kind of the reverse example. Would you ask a physicist to design an overpass?
Re:real science (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really, his winter forecasts [google.com] for every year since 2005 have been wrong. His method is that of a fortune teller, ie: make lots of predictions and highlight the ones that are by chance correct or close to correct.
On a side note, climate scientists are not adverse to betting against global cooling [realclimate.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No analogy is perfect - just that you have to go through life deferring to experts... the CORRECT experts.
but he has a track record of accurately describing temperature in the future.
Where the "future" is defined as the very short-term. I would dismiss any climatologist who tries to contradict a reputable meteorologist when it comes to next week's forecast, just as I am dismissing the musings of a meteorologist who has never himself built a climate model.
Would you ask a physicist to design an overpass?
Certainly not if there were a civil engineer available!
Look, I'm all for being skeptical - I was once called "the most cynical per
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On the contrary, models are routinely benchmarked by their ability to reconstruct the past. There are also other ways to test models, here [nasa.gov] is a good write up of how large volcanic eruptions can be used to judge the accuracy of models.
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I wonder how many papers about that have been rejected because they aren't "on message"? Probably quite a few.
Re:real science (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact is the debate would be too boring for anyone to care. If there is a warming trend or a cooling trend (and there's no clear evidence either way, face it...) we're talking about a temperature change so small no one not using this as an excuse to get more funding for something or get (re-)elected cares. That's why it's so insane. Those that want to embrace the whole "Climate change" insanity couldn't care less about the climate (Hello Al....) they just want power over others and money to do as they please.
THIS HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT SCIENCE OR CLIMATE (any more than traffic tickets are about public safety)!! WAKE THE HELL UP!
Re:real science (Score:4, Informative)
Luckily NASA has already performed that experiment. Peter Sinclair created a youtube video detailing the experiment and the results [youtube.com] (results appear ~5:10 mark). Apparently this contra-evidence annoyed Watts so much that he filed a false DCMA notice against it [desmogblog.com].
In other words if you don't like frauds, you should not be using Anthony Watts as a source.
Re:real science (Score:4, Insightful)
All I've seen of late is rhetoric on both sides.
This is also rhetoric - it's a very old trick to silence your critics.
1. Challenge your opponents to make predictions on a 10 year timescale.
2a. If they accept, for the next 10 years you say "You can't criticise me yet, wait til the 10 years are up!"
2b. If they don't accept, for the next 10 years you say "Clearly you don't really know what you're talking about or you'd have been happy to accept my 10 year challenge."
And that gives you 10 years where you can bat away any criticism, without needing to produce any evidence, and take the moral high ground while you're at it.
3. After 10 years, make a very slightly revised challenge (for the following 10 years). "Ah, yes but if we include the new Blenkinsop adjustment then yes it would have warmed slightly in the previous 10 years, but that minor fluctuation is nothing to the cooling that will take place in the following 10 years..."
4. Repeat ad infinitum.
And hey presto, you can say whatever you like for as long as you like.
Joe Bastardi isn't "oil backed" (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody forced NASA to use an inferior (but Greener, just ask 'em) material on the (6, count 'em, 6) SRB's of the Columbia leading to a failure that caused the loss of that shuttle and crew.
The inferior foam was used on the external tanks, not the solid rocket boosters.
Re:real science (Score:5, Insightful)
"All too often people let their emotions / politics / media-lust get in the way of doing actual work towards understanding the planet we live on.
And THAT, my friends, are the truest words I've ever heard uttered regarding this debate.
Article doesn't live up to expectations (Score:5, Informative)
Showmanship is fine. After all, the Randi foundation has used the showmanship of its million dollar prize for a while now to punch holes into all kinds of quackery. But as I read through Bastardi's claims and comments, I was disappointed to see nothing new and some pretty standard failings.
“The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says this is the warmest decade ever — well, that’s like you wake up every morning and weigh 175 pounds, and one morning you wake up and are 175.1.”
No, it's more like weighing 175 lbs in the last decade, and then discovering that your average in the current decade has been 176. And that your weight has been increasing for the last 5 decades.
We started using objective satellite data in 1978.
He must have missed all the commotion about satellite data that revolved around what satellites are measuring, how they're measuring it and how their data fits into all the other data that's been collected. Specifically: a temperature station on the ground that produces a different reading than that of a satellite looking at infrared emission for that geographic area isn't (necessarily) wrong. It is measuring something completely different, and merging the two is hard.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, a tiny gas, part of this huge system. You’re trying to tell me that’s going to control the system and influence the energy of the system? When you have things like the sun, which is obviously the greatest contributor to the world’s energy? It almost defies common sense.
I started to lose confidence at this point. It's a standard argument from incredulity: I don't understand this, therefore it can't be true. He also confuses what's causing global warming: it's not only the energy input that controls how much warming occurs, but also how much energy is lost to space. And the problem that everyone's been talking about is that less energy is lost to space than before.
CO2 is still increasing, and the overall temperature has leveled off.
Because CO2 isn't the only thing that controls the Earth's temperature. If he had actually read the research and would understand climate science, he'd know that, and he'd know that this bit of info is widely known. My personal prediction 5 years ago was that we'd be getting back to a regular warming schedule in the next 1-3 years, based on nothing else than knowing that the sun was entering a quiet period then.
That’s not how the atmosphere works — for every step it takes away from the norm, the more likely it is to turn back
I don't know if he was misquoted, but that's not how the atmosphere works. There is nothing in the atmospheric cycle that regulates CO2 movement. Oceans absorb CO2, plants consume it, but that's not the atmosphere. Finally, he is not providing any numbers for his belief that the atmospheric CO2 content is controlled by negative feedback loops. Historic data on CO2 concentrations would actually indicate the opposite - that there can be wild fluctuations.
Fifth, today’s weather exhibits no unique patterns that require a unique explanation. They’re nothing we haven’t seen before
Now we're getting into weather. If he's going to lecture people on climate patterns and predictions, he should stay on topic.
And that’s just Bastardi’s point. It’s disingenuous to say we have conclusive proof of the future of such a torturously complicated system.
Ok, not something he said, but still - another lame argument from incredulity. There's plenty of complex systems out there, and many have been understood - just not by everybody.
Whereas a significant portion of today’s climate scientists are politically motivated, Bastardi has only one incentive in his job: accuracy. He
Re: (Score:3)
Rereading my points as you posted them, it is clear that... they're not that clear. And that fault is solely mine.
Let me rephrase them.
My main beef with the first paragraph is that he argues that he doesn't understand how it could be, therefore it isn't. The reason I lost confidence is that this is such a basic logical fallacy, rooted solely in a personal flaw, that I'm forced to consider whether that personal flaw is coloring his entire approach. My commentary after that about the sun and its impact on glo
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Re:real science (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much. Incomplete information can be as destructive as bad information. Think about it...
From a programmer's standpoint, having a boatload of incomplete information from a client is a coin toss. Sure, you can get started on the project, and hey, maybe you can adapt your design to meet whatever pops up when the client finally gets around to giving you the missing information. Or you could waste time and good money going in the wrong direction for several months, with the low morale (among your team) when you realize you need to completely redesign the project.
A major problem lays with the definition of science. People speak of a "unanimous consensus" among Climate Scientists, which is nice, in much the same way as we might have a "unanimous consensus" among Computer Scientists or Chemists or Physicists. What more, science is not decided by committee or consensus (such things are more related to theology), but by reproduction of results by scientists performing the same experiment independently of one another. You have a hypothesis (a conjecture), observation and experimentation, followed by a theory (after many scientists have performed the experiment and have verified the results, and a fair amount of time has passed). The emphasis is on reproduction of results, by experimental validation. Making a prediction as per the hypothesis, and seeing if it comes true.
To repeat, reproduction, not consensus, is what matters. We do not teach children that the theory of gravity was verified by a bunch of scientists a long time ago, and that was that! Instead, we pull out the monkey and the dart gun (popular physics experiment), have them voice their predictions, then voice the prediction according to the theory of gravity, and perform the experiment. Students are free to play with the toys and to try to prove or disprove the theory of gravity. It's the prediction, then the proof, that solidifies the superiority of the scientific method over the navel gazing that passes for science (as reported by the media) today.
Science is not some holy priesthood where only the properly initiated can read and understand an experiment's results. Sure, there is some unique knowledge to the branch of climate science, as there is to physics, biology, computer science, etc. And yes, there may be a brief period of learning vocabulary, methods, and algorithms unique to that branch. However, to imagine that anyone who does not possess the title of "Climate Scientist" may not offer a dissenting opinion is utter madness.
Would I shun a mathematician who points to the break down of one of the algorithms in my program, just because he isn't as learned in programming languages as myself?
What more, the results these scientists offer is one of statistics, not experimental validation. This makes for weak evidence, which is not helped by their inability to properly store (and not tamper with), if rumors prove true, the raw data. Would you allow the election of a politician, if the method for counting had been altered? Should we take the people who tallied the votes at their word, given that they set fire to the original ballots, and we have no way to verify their results?
If you happen to (subconsciously, or even consciously) favor the politician (whom the possibly tainted vote) shows in the lead over the other politician, you might say that even if the vote had been altered, it could not possibly be altered by such a margin as to swing the election. Or if you didn't favor the leading politician, you might disagree, and affirm that it may matter.
In such areas of such areas of science where correlation wishes to give rise to causation, it of the utmost importance to avoid any appearance of tainted results.
On another note, why are some people resistant to these results? Why do they fight so fiercely? Well, some it is religion, some it is disbelief that human beings are capable of such worldwide changes, some it is the taint of the results making them hard to swallow and for others you are asking t
Re: (Score:3)
To repeat, reproduction, not consensus, is what matters.
Good point. Let me ask you something: what do you call it when a group of people rework the experiment and come to the same conclusion? In other words, what do you call it when a result is reproduced on a large scale? Yep, consensus.
And For The Record... (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, meteorologists are not climatologists. This is little different than engineers imagining themselves as physicists.
Re:And For The Record... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a physicist building a bridge.
Re:And For The Record... (Score:4, Funny)
only takes a small effort for him to think he knows bridge building, without ever actually having built a bridge.
Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For the record, telling engineers that they have no business making bets with their physicist "betters" is likely to get you laughed at by both engineers and physicists.
Correct (Score:3, Insightful)
meteorologists are not climatologists.
That is correct. Meteorologists are not foolish enough to pretend they understand climate well enough to predict what the climate will do for the whole earth over an extended period of time.
They are also actually judged by results instead of claiming any result obtained verified what they were claiming.
Re:Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
They are also actually judged by results instead of claiming any result obtained verified what they were claiming.
Meteorologists. Weather predictors. The guys who have been the butt of accuracy jokes for hundreds of years. Are judged by results. That, that right there? That is an interesting position to take.
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Meteorologists don't predict climate at all. They're weathermen, not scientists, and the scope of their predictions is entirely different.
Apples and oranges, but of course faux skeptics like yourself would like to muddy those waters, eh?
Re:Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
The day climatologists perfect the science is the day meteorologists will be able to give forecasts with extraordinary accuracy. Meteorologists ride on the coattails of climatologists success.
Re:Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
The day climatologists perfect the science is the day meteorologists will be able to give forecasts with extraordinary accuracy. Meteorologists ride on the coattails of climatologists success.
It's rather the other way around. Meteorology models were around before climatology models were. And accurate climatology models won't help meteorology predictions at all. Climatology knowledge is at the wrong time scale to help with weather predictions. It's like claiming that you'll be able to drive precisely and without error because you know exactly how far it is to your destination.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no reason to believe, even if we were right about CO2 emissions increasing the average global temperature by 6C, that we should reduce CO2 emissions at all. Even if you take, as a given, that temps are rising, and anthropogenic CO2 is causing it, there's not a shred of evidence that the particular distribution of increased average temperature will be detrimental to humanity.
In any case, every plan for CO2 mitigation, according to the very models which are hyped to encourage us to stop using petrole
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if hundreds of millions have to relocate (as they do, every year through various migrations over the world), what's the overall harm if you've got more arable land, quicker navigable trade routes through the arctic, more plant growth due to CO2, and more food to feed the starving?
Simply shouting "the sky is falling" isn't science. Show me your falsifiable hypothesis, and clearly identify what observations (historical or future) would refute it. No matter what you may believe about whether or not ther
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Most predictions I've seen stop at the end of the 21st century. It's uncommon to see climate predictions past 2100. This is the case firstly because the predictions will be less accurate the farther out the are, and because we simply don't need to make predictions past 2100 to know that we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly.
Astounding. So, the models can't accurately predict the short-term climate, and they can't accurately predict the long-term climate, so we're supposed to accept that there's this magic time period over which they are accurate?
Re:Correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. They are wrong more often than right. They are the butt of jokes for this very reason.
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This is little different than engineers imagining themselves as physicists.
Oh be realistic now. No engineer would try to discredit himself in such a manner. ;)
I'm imagining... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm imagining myself so in love with physics that I could never imagine the possibility that I might want some money some day, or even provide well for a family. I'm imagining myself being suckered into a decade of grad school and postgrads by a professor who is on a decent salary. I imagine him telling tales of professors and the occasional 6 figure making physicist in order to excite the grad students, while glossing over the realities of the number of professorships and 6 figure salaries available compared to the number of grad students/PhDs. I imagine myself perfecting the raised eyebrow along with the expression and voice to make disparaging remarks about working for industry, and especially - (holds nose, dramatic pause;) engineers. I imagine myself buying into the hype for the first few years, and then spending the rest of my life wondering what I was thinking while either continuing to drink the koolaid or making the eventual break for freedom. Am I close?
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I don't care. He's made a prediction, let the other side do the same.
Science isn't about your degree, or the letters behind your name, it isn't about who your employer is, or any of that. It's about whether or not you are right.
Would you want to ignore a major scientific discovery just because the guy who figured it out didn't have "phd" behind his name?
If an accountant came up to me while I was working and showed me a better way to wire a network I wouldn't tell him that he's not qualified to do so and con
"objective" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah.
This is just going to boil down to both of them showing each other the evidence they collected, no doubt in their own methodology, and someones going to say it went up by 0.1 celcius and he's going to show it went down by 0.1 celcius, and they've both got stacks of paper to prove it.
Set some actual parameters for this wager and it might actually be interesting, as it is, its just the same old BS thats been happening all along.
Sea level more important (Score:2)
Once again, climate != weather (Score:5, Informative)
So this is a meteorologist who studies short-term phenomena claiming to be better at short-term prediction than people who study long-term phenomena. Wowee, zip de-doo. If a climatologist accepts his bet and loses, what does it prove? That a climatologist isn't a meteorologist, and I think we knew that already.
Re:Once again, climate != weather (Score:4, Insightful)
So....why do the climate scientists keep citing specific decades if 10 years isn't long enough for it to be climate? Why are the 2000's cited as the hottest decade and called evidence for global warming if it's too short a time period to be used for that? You can't have your cake and eat it too. The use of decades as evidence of climate has been pretty consistent for most climate related papers.
Re:Once again, climate != weather (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Once again, climate != weather (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been warming for much more than that. 20,000 years ago, there was 2,000 feet of ice above the spot where I'm sitting. If only cavemen hadn't used so much CO2 releasing fire.
Re:Once again, climate != weather (Score:4, Interesting)
"The global average temperature has been warming for 40-50 years." It's been warming for much more than that. 20,000 years ago, there was 2,000 feet of ice above the spot where I'm sitting.
Yes, but not continuously. It cooled heading into the Little Ice Age [wikipedia.org], for example.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, long term (Score:4, Interesting)
Flatlander (Score:3, Interesting)
Another weatherman who thinks what he's doing is climatology. He's a little like a 2D character in Flatland that doesn't understand 3D. I hope someone takes him up on his wager, as long as there's a disinterested 3rd party to judge the result and hold the cash.
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He's a little like a 2D character in Flatland that doesn't understand 3D.
Is this a reference to Gamow's One, Two, Three... infinity? In that case, Gamow showed ways for the 2D character to imagine 3D. There might be some hope for him yet.
I am confident this thread won't become a flamewar (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I am confident this thread won't become a flame (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.html [noaa.gov]
I like to go where the science is being done, rather than the claims from either side on what I should think based on a dare, er, I mean bet. Not a dare, a bet. That's so much more scientific. ;)
Re:I am confident this thread won't become a flame (Score:5, Interesting)
Honest and for true? (Score:2)
Indeed. I also believe in Santa Claus.
(Yeah, I'll admit that it's the fat guy down at the mall in December, not one at the north pole with magic reindeer.)
Re:I am confident this thread won't become a flame (Score:4, Funny)
It better not become a flamewar. Considering flamewars effect climate change it will influence the results.
Missed the Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
The Earth gets hotter, the Earth gets cooler.
But do WE have an impact on this variation. That is the question.
Re:Missed the Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Even before we ask that question: if the earth gets both hotter and cooler, does it matter?
Who cares if we have an impact if it doesn't matter?
Re: (Score:3)
That happened in the 70's. And the debate was pretty much exactly the same.
Skeptic: "Wait, could we please stop to discuss this?"
Environmentalist: "There's no time! We have to roll back the industrial revolution to save us from another ice age!"
Skeptic: "How do you know that? We're talking about something incredibly complex, and a 'science' that's only 10 or 20 years old."
Environmentalist: "We're experts! The debate over the science is over. We must take drastic changes immediately, or we are all Doomed.
I d
That Bastardi! (Score:2)
Re:That Bastardi! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What, did he kill Kenny or something?
Re: (Score:3)
No, but he's Dublin up on his bet...
Just as long as you don't ask.... (Score:2)
What a coincidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that he would offer this wager after the warmest year on record. A more reasonable wager would be on whether or not 2020 will be above the historical average for the past century. Smart money says "yes".
Re: (Score:2)
mod parent up.
I hadn't even thought of this connection but I think you nailed it.
What odds is he giving? (Score:2)
One data set (Score:2)
Lose / Lose Wager (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't a wager normally involve an ante?
If Bastardi wins the wager what does he gain, karma points? There will be big wins all around for individuals, businesses and governments.
If Bastardi loses the wager he loses what? It appears if we wait and Bastardi turns out to be wrong we will be behind by one more decade on addressing the issue and a heavy price will be paid by everyone.
And while he has some valuable points as far as the accuracy of climatologists making predictions his analogies seem a bit off.
He claims they are using recent trends but does not define "recent" while the trends I have seen go back several decades or centuries. In geologic time centuries are recent trends but is this what he means? I suspect not because then he questions the use of data in longer trends.
And in another analogy he compares a 0.06% change in your weight form 175.0 lbs to 175.1 lbs over a decade to a 0.6% increase in global temperature from the mean of around 57.563 F to 57.923 F. While the increase in temperature over a decade doesn't look significant his comparison is off by an order of magnitude and that is ignoring the irrational comparison of the complexities of an individuals body weight to that of global temperatures.
Anyhow, it is good to bring up questions but this wager and some of the comments seem rather dubious.
Re:Lose / Lose Wager (Score:4, Interesting)
And in another analogy he compares a 0.06% change in your weight form 175.0 lbs to 175.1 lbs over a decade to a 0.6% increase in global temperature from the mean of around 57.563 F to 57.923 F.
From 57.563 F to 57.923 F is an increase of 0.07%. You can't use 0 F as a zero point for percent increase, as Fahrenheit isn't a zero-based temperature scale. I converted to Kelvin. You could equally use Rankine, but that's unacceptably evil.
It's usually not particularly meaningful to talk about percentage increases in temperature.
To be fair, it's also not particularly meaningful to talk about percentage increases in body weight.
Average Temperature (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.
The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average. Consider using an "area based average." This sounds reasonable: put your measurements in some regular grid, assume the temperature varies continuously between those points, and compute an average. I would argue that's a terrible method, because temperature is not a continuous quantity: if you put two temperature probes any distance apart, there is no meaningful way to estimate the temperature variation between those points. It could be linear between them, it could be nonlinear such that the temperature is higher between the two points, it could be nonlinear such that it is lower between the two points.
I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.
Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?
I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?
I have a hard time believing that an area-average temperature is an adequate parametrization of climate. Or, perhaps what I'm asking is, what climate effects are actually correlated so strongly with the mean temperature (how statistically significant is that correlation)? And how geographically dependent is that correlation?
Re:Average Temperature (Score:5, Informative)
They don't take an average absolute temperature, but an average temperature anomaly, which makes a lot more sense. At each station, they measure the temperature difference between the current temperature, and a 30-year base period. Research has shown there's a good correlation between anomalies of different measuring stations, even if separated by hundreds of miles, even though the absolute temperatures between those same stations could differ by ten degrees or more.
See here for more info:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1987/Hansen_Lebedeff.html [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
This is the first post that attempts to address the issue of interpolation (there was one that indicates high spatial resolution from satellites, which is a different solution). I'll have to follow that link and read up later - I'm still not sure I'm convinced in the first principles analysis even using anomalies, because the way temperature works there is no physical mechanism that would force all anomalies to move together. My hesitation is because while bulk changes would guarantee the anomalies would
Whatever you think of it (Score:3, Insightful)
The last major AGW prediction I can recall was that England would not have snow in winter any more. Of course, now that England has had a very snowy winter, those same AGW guys are telling us, "Well, yes, that is what you can expect from Global Warming." I would put a lot more credence into the latter statement if they had told us we could expect a snowier winter in England instead of telling us that England would be getting less and less snow every year.
Re:Whatever you think of it (Score:5, Informative)
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event". "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
Here is the article from which that was taken: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html [independent.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3)
I agree with some of what he says (Score:5, Informative)
I like how Bastardi is not grinding any political axes. What he says sounds logical. If you look at the wikipedia entry on him there's mention (but no link) of Bastardi's long-range forecast for this winter, that was released by AccuWeather last October. It has already been shown to be very far off the mark of what has happened the last couple of months. So this guy's track record isn't any better than any other "weather man".
AccuWeather isn't above trying to aggrandize themselves, either. They tried to get the government to close down the National Weather Service and halt the distribution of weather satellite data to the public a few years ago.
Climate science is just a big weather forecast... (Score:4, Informative)
Scientists will win, lose, lose, and lose (Score:5, Insightful)
IANA climate scientist, but I suspect that three things will happen:
1. As this is a complicated subject, nobody can predict exactly what will be happening in 2010. Some will be right.
2. Some will be wrong.
3. Supporters will claim victory for the first group.
4. deniers will claim victory due to the second group.
5. Ten years will have passed, and we will still be arguing about whether we should do something about the issue.
Re: (Score:3)
Just goes to show how unpredictable the future is... You forecast three possible outcomes and there were actually five.
Re: (Score:3)
That's probably pretty close.
And "arguing" is exactly what's going on.
AGW proponents will still be insisting that the science is all solved. They have the all the answers, and it's as settled as evolution. The debate is over, and we have to force these laws down everybody's throat because, by golly, people aren't smart enough to realize that ethanol will save the planet.
Skeptics will still be insisting that there still hasn't been any real debate. The only people who go into climate science are already True
Re:Scientists will win, lose, lose, and lose (Score:4, Funny)
Been there done that (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at http://theclimatebet.com/ [theclimatebet.com] to see an earlier example. A similarly (un)qualified guy offered to bet that temperatures would be unchanged over ten years. He tried to get Al Gore to bet, of course without success. So he started this website to track who would have won. At first it looked good for him and he updated regularly, crowing about his success. But then things changed and started warming up. Now the website is abandoned. He didn't have the guts to document his failure. I imagine much the same will result from this new bet.
If you can predict the weather 100 years from now (Score:3)
All the predictions made so far by the AGW community have so far been totally wrong
There is no uncontrollable warming.
If early predictions are wrong, the whole model is wrong, it's not going to magically get better in later years.
Ehrlich said back in the 70's that "England will not exist in the year 2000". Obviously he was wrong. But his web page had this little gem:
So Ehrlich says that "famines of unbelievable proportions" will occur, "hundreds of millions of people starving to death" "England will not exist in the year 2000". Then Ehrlich has the audacity to say Simon is spreading inaccurate information. I don't give a damn how smart you believe you are or how many "Genius Awards" are given to you. If you're wrong you're wrong. Ehrlich is so stubborn that if you read his page you would have thought that _he_ won the bet. [stanford.edu] He (or whoever wrote the page) makes no attempt to defend the idiotic (and now demonstrably false) statements Ehrlich made, but just goes into nuance of "how things could have been worse but for...". They were not, and that was Simon’s whole point, people react to the world they live in, we are not a growth in a petri dish. Ehrlich makes all these excuses as to "why he was wrong" without saying he was wrong, because he still believes that he was right. He still believes he was right and only because those damn snooping kids did England continue to exist past 1999.
Just read Ehrlich’s page, he does more disservice to himself than anyone else could ever do. The AGW people are cut from the same mold as Ehrlich. AGW cannot be wrong as a matter of pride. It has nothing to do with science, if it did there would be a way to falsify the theory. As it stands now, you cannot. Anything that points to AGW being wrong (e.g.: No uncontrollable warming) is always countered with “OH! Didn’t you know? That’s because of global warming!” It sounds more and more like Ehrlich.
But what speaks to the heart of this issue is that the AGW supporters don’t hope beyond hope that the skeptics are right. They hope the skeptics are wrong because it is a matter of pride.
Re:Climate is what you expect... (Score:5, Insightful)