Thursday, February 02, 2017
A vicarious deep dive into climate change
I've had an item on my todo list for months to take a deep dive into the question of anthropogenic climate change. Alas, with everything going on right now I just don't have the time. Happily, it turns out that a Berkeley physics professor named Richard Muller has done it for me. Muller was a climate-change skeptic who did an exhaustive study of the literature in 2012 and changed his mind. He now runs an organization dedicated to sober, objective, open, and reproducible analysis of climate data. It's a model of how science ought to be done. They've done a much, much better and more thorough job of cutting through the gordian knot than I could ever hope to. So thanks, Prof. Muller!
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"I've had an item on my todo list for months to take a deep dive into the question of anthropogenic climate change"
ReplyDeleteSo instead of deep dive you found Muller – skeptic who was virtually unknown as a skeptic until he turned to the light side of science – and his website, and called it a day. That's it? That's all? Where is the science you talk about? What has Muller done for you? What light has he shed on the climate issues at hand?
I said it before, and I say it again: Spending time on climate alarm is a waste of time. You have more alarming issues at hand with your new president, you'ld do good to do something about him – so I welcome your half-assed abortive attempt at appearing "sciency" with regards to the climate issue. But don't kid yourself that you now know anything about the climate issue.
PS: The word you were looking for recently is not "Coup", it is "Machtergreifung" – the article by Yonatan Zunger you linked came quite close, just one country further to the right as a reference, and Yonatan Zunger's analysis would have been so much better.
Don't know if you have seen this, but you might find this helpful:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/
> That's it? That's all?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean "that's all"? There's a shit-ton of data and analysis on Muller's site.
Are you complaining that I didn't do all this work *personally*? What difference does that make?
> Where is the science you talk about?
It's in journals, which are nicely summarized on Muller's site. He has a whole section called "Data", including the code he used to do his analysis, and another section called "findings" if you don't want to slog through the details. Did you even bother to look?
> What has Muller done for you?
Huh? I don't know Muller. He hasn't done anything for me. And what difference would that make anyway?
> What light has he shed on the climate issues at hand?
A lot. He's done an independent reproducible analysis of the data. It's a beautiful example of how science ought to be done.
> I said it before, and I say it again: Spending time on climate alarm is a waste of time.
And Muller says it's not. More to the point, Muller's *data* and *analysis* says it's not. So why should I believe you over him? Do you have an actual *argument* to advance? Some *reason* I should not accept Muller's results? Or are you just asking me to accept your word on blind faith?
> Don't know if you have seen this
ReplyDeleteI had not. Thanks for the link.
Always, Feet First
ReplyDelete@Ron
> Muller was a climate-change skeptic who did an exhaustive study of the literature in 2012 and changed his mind.
It's a good story, isn't it? A skeptic puts together a team to verify how much "global warming" had occurred since 1750. His results would broadly confirm the pre-existing temperature series. He would convert from skeptic to belief.
Yet here is something even more interesting: this narrative was predicted in January 2011, just as the project was forming. Imagine that - a correct prediction related to global warming!
Many hoped that the Berkeley Earth project would be useful. For example, some aspects of how they treat station data are better. Eminent statistician David Brillinger was attached to the project.
Alas, the statistical results disappointed. Richard Brillinger does not appear as a co-author; instaed, Prof. Charlotte Wickham was the statistican (a former student of Brillinger).
But wait, there's more! Did you notice that Muller's paper was published in Geoinformatics and Geostatistics, published by the OMICS group (a predatory publisher). Did you further notice that the paper appeared in Volume 1 Issue 1? Yes, it was published in a journal no one had ever heard of -- because it was brand new! It didn't appear in Journal Of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres -- because it was rejected.
But . . . but . . . but . . . even more! Flip to page 7 of the paper, then look at the Acknowledgements section. Uh oh, oh no, no, look who helped fund it . . . none other than the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation! Aren't the Koch brothers the leading funders of climate disinformation in the world? Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! REEEEEE!
Remember, the first jump into a pool is feet first. You avoid breaking your neck that way if the water turns out to be shallower than you expected.
> It's a good story, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
> this narrative was predicted in January 2011
And yet the date on the article you link to as proof of this claim is dated July 2012.
And who in the world is William Briggs, "Statistician to the stars"? Oh, he's a quack. Or maybe he's a charlatan. So hard to tell.
> Aren't the Koch brothers the leading funders of climate disinformation in the world?
Yes, they are. But no one bats 1000.
WM Briggs
ReplyDelete>> this narrative was predicted in January 2011
>And yet the date on the article you link to as proof of this claim is dated July 2012.
I have no reason to disbelieve him.
>And who in the world is William Briggs, "Statistician to the stars"? Oh, he's a quack. Or maybe he's a charlatan. So hard to tell.
If he is a quack, or a charlatan, then you have another problem.
William Briggs:
1. Bachelor’s in Meteorology
2. Masters in Atmospheric Physics (transition from dynamics to probability)
3. PhD in Mathematical Statistics (studied model goodness and skill).
4. long time Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review,
5. served on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability & Statistics Committee. 6. published several articles in Journal of Climate and other atmospheric entities (including solar weather!).
7. spent years doing work in the field.
If he's a quack, then it would imply that all of climatology is quackery.
In the two links you posted, Briggs is talking about 2 levels higher than their understanding. The top level is his fault, as he has a very specific philosophy on probability and statistics and he adheres to it in everything he writes. He is also big on "the model is not the data." In the two links, he is discussing the difference between confidence intervals and prediction intervals; although as a hard-core Bayesian, he resists those terms -- plus, he likes to write in a cryptic, patronizing style.
There are other statisticians that have criticism of BEST. Even some warmers don't like it, for various reasons.
>> Aren't the Koch brothers the leading funders of climate disinformation in the world?
>Yes, they are. But no one bats 1000.
You might want to consider that they're controlling both sides.