Hey, Buddy, take Hansen with you on your scuba tour of lower Manhattan.
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Comment on ‘Pause’ : Waving the Italian Flag by kim
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by Myrrh
I suggest you ask the person who told you so, ’twas not I.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by Steven Mosher
I don’t think I can justify that the GISS method is superior I know that it is superior. I know this from experiment.
Experiment:
Take a full globe of synthetic temperature data. Data for every place and time. Since you have full data for every place and time you can construct the true average of this field.
Sample: use GHCN as a filter for sampling. This means you sample the field at the places GHCN does and at the times it does. So, if GHCN samples New york city from 1898 to present, your sample of the synthetic field will also only have data for 1898 to present.
Construct an average from this sample using;
1. CRU method
2. Giss method
3. Berkeley method
compare the average as calculated by the various methods to the true average.
When you do this you will have a measure that shows the error enduced by the averaging method. we are talking about the METHOD.
The CRU method.
A. Only use stations that have enough data in the 1961-1990 period.
B. average stations within a grid
C. normalize by area.
D average.
The GISS method.
A) Build reference stations, using temperal constraints
B) create equal area grids
C) average within grids
D) average.
The Berkeley method. ( otherwise known as the optimal method )
A) construct a temperature field from all data solving both the time and space problem simultaneously.
B) average the field.
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the differences arise from two issues
1. using all available data.
2. gridding / weighting.
If you look at synthetic perfect data where you know the true average
and then you apply the 3 methods to a sample of the data, you can test the ability of the method to capture the true average. This is known as a test of method. Sadly, it has not been done before. Part of the reason is that the code for the methods wasnt available. But now the code is available and you can test it for yourself.
My goal in life in not to do your damn work for you. My goal is to fight to free the data and free the code that will make it easier for you to do your own damn science and move out of the realm of rank speculation and into the realm of informed judgement.
The test is easy. It is one proposed long long ago by those of us on climate audit. The result.. well you tell me what do you expect?
and will your mind be changed by actual results?
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by A fan of *MORE* discourse
Cartoon 
You mean Dilbert isn’t an historical documentary? 
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by MattStat/MatthewRMarler
If there’s one thing we can’t afford, it’s “affordable energy.”
One of the things that we don’t know now is how much solar, wind and biofuels will cost to manufacture 20 years from now. I am big on what we don’t know now that we will know much better 20 years from now. In recent years, multiple technologies have been developed, and overall costs of production have been reduced. If the costs of production are made to decline sufficiently, then the costs of the products will be driven by competitive bidding, not just by the cost of production, as with fossil fuels.
There was a time when he might have said: if there is one thing we can’t afford, it’s for everyone to have a personal computer. It was true at the time. Or, if there’s one thing we can’t afford, it’s to put jet engines on all our aircraft. That was true at the time.
Energy won’t ever be “cheap”: it will be priced by the market. However, it can with diverse investment be cheaper than what it is now. The Bush Administration appropriately (in my opinion) expanded oil and gas development; they also expanded support of solar, wind and biofuels R&D, and that was appropriate as well. The Obama administration went overboard, but that isn’t proof that the level of support provided by Bush was wrong. I doubt that the exactly optimal amount of support is known, but continued development of the alternatives looks worthwhile to me.
I track the cost of PV power in my neighborhood. Now, at the unsubsidized price, if I wanted to air-condition my home then PV panels would be a less-costly alternative than electricity from the grid — this is CA were other poor policies have driven up the cost of electricity, but the cost of PV panels is declining, and it seems that this calculation works some places in AZ as well. A few schools in CA and AZ have installed roof-mounted PV panels to reduce the cost of their electricity. This is a rather specialized application in a unique environment, but I expect that solar power will expand out of its niche in the future.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by climatereason
Mosh
Its the figure that Richard hmself gave me.
Whichever way you cut it thats an awful lot more stations than the cooling that is supposedly restricted only to Southern Greenland and some parts of the tropics as quoted by the IPCC. CET is part of that number as testified by my complete failure with outdoor tomatoes in the last few years…Well, not complete failure, we managed to get 5 fruits which had to be ripened indoors. I still havent replaced all the supposedly hardy plants Ive lost in the last few years.
tonyb
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Comment on ‘Pause’ discussion thread: Part II by Gareth
I am commenting late on this post, but there are some aspects of the Nuccitelli article that really annoy me.
1) Anything other than the AGW signal is described as “noise”. Noise implies a random process. Often the origin of noise is in the measuring instruments not the system under study. Sometimes it refers to random processes in the environment. But it is either not real or not important. The distinction between random errors and sytematic errors is basic science. Here the possibility that there are any systematic trends in climate other than AGW is simply dismissed. A clear case of “motivated reasoning”.
2) The Sceptics/Realists graph. No, realists look at the data without drawing any arbitrary lines on it. You can fit a straight line to any dataset. That does not mean there is “really” a linear trend and the variation is just “noise”. The Hadcrut dataset (that Rose was commenting on) clearly shows that warming has plateaued.
3) Some model runs have shown this effect (And that is from the Met Office!). If you are going to make a prediction it has to come *before* the events predicted “Oh yes I’ve been able to get a model with 200 free parameters to do this” is not science.
4) Nuccitellis ocean heat graph lacks error bars, which would be quite big.
The standard of scientific reasoning here is really very, very poor. That is depressing. And the fact that so few members of the public have the scientific education to spot it is even more depressing.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by Brandon Shollenberger
And now, unable to dispute what I say, lolwot resorts to making things up about me:
Your method also produces seeming silly results. For example taken literally your method wrongly concludes temperature has stopped rising whenever a pause occurs in the data of any length.
I’ve never promoted any approach as being right. I’ve simply pointed out lolwot uses stupid and bizarre approaches. Even if that weren’t true, it is not a defense of a methodology to say other methodologies suck too. And even if it were, nothing about looking at the OLS trend of a period does what lolwot claims unless the data has no variance at all, something which could never happen in temperatures.
Put bluntly, lolwot isn’t responding to anything I’ve said, he’s making things up about what I have said, he’s making things up about simple calculations, and he’s not even being amusing anymore. As such, it isn’t worth spending my time responding to him. Anyone who is interested in an honest examination of the data would quickly see lolwot’s approaches are stupid, bizarre, and deceptive. They’d also quickly see his conclusions are insane (such as claiming increased uncertainty falsifies the idea of global warming having stopped).
I hope the reason most people don’t call him out on it is they are just ignoring him. Anything else would be depressing.
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by MattStat/MatthewRMarler
I’m afraid there is going to be continued gridlock as long as the GOP controls the House. In the Senate, there are at least a few people in both parties who are willing to meet behind the scenes and talk compromise, but not in the House, not right now, anyway.
I disagree with that. If the Republicans hold the House and take the Senate, and if Romney is elected president, then I think it likely that many restrictions, subsidies and mandates on energy development will be removed, and that alone will be a net gain for the US.
On the whole, I thought that it was worthwhile to read the interview. Thank you again Prof. Curry.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by Steven Mosher
you will be interested in what Ar5 has to say about sunshine.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by Steven Mosher
Dear kim
“kim | October 22, 2012 at 1:22 am |
moshe, ‘when the warming returns, as it must’, gives you hopelessly away as a man of faith rather than of science.”
I admit you are correct. I am a man of faith.
I put my faith in the best explanation we have.
We reason properly when we reason to the best evidence.
So, yes I put my faith in science.
diabolically yours,
moshpit
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by randomengineer
lolwot nobody ever claimed that the _only_ place strategic materials were found is hostile countries. The ones needed for creating hybrid vehicles in mass seem to be however. I said these “tend to be concentrated in” not “the only.” Big difference for those of us who speak English or not creating strawmen.
And since the point zoomed by your pointed head I’ll reiterate — materials needed for any technology marked ‘X’ are just as likely to be located in a place that doesn’t like us, hence the notion that merely replacing oil with ‘X’ will result in unicorns because we’re not paying hostile regimes big $ for oil is simply wrong. Regardless of what ‘X’ is, much of it will tend to be in places that don’t like us or will extort.
And now using a big honkin’ crayon we’ll sum up for you — the same resource problem currently attributed to oil will ALWAYS exist regardless of what that resource is, so this argument being applied to oil as if it’s unique is something that only the congenitally stupid can buy into.
And you bought into it. Surprised, I am.
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by Climate Weenie
Probably missed in the macro measures of efficiency is personal consumption.
The US is a large country, but also wealthy.
When we travel to see grandma ( or Vegas, or a presidential flight to catch a broadway musical ) we use energy not to produce, but because we can afford it for pleasure or entertainment.
When we jack up the AC or play interminable hours of video games, we use the energy because we can afford to, not for productive gains.
Business efficiency is probably higher than noted.
Personal energy use because we have a large country with a continental climate is a big factor.
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Comment on The Myth of Affordable Energy – Interview with Ed Dolan by sunshinehours1
“Let’s allow paranoid fantasies to dissuade us from a more careful analysis.”
Joshua, thank you for the succinct explanation why the loony green left hates of shale gas.
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by jcbmack
lolwot I admit I like your sense of humor:) I also admire your tenacity to respond so much and get your claims across. I do not think I have ever commented so much on this blog:) I usually just read it and occasionally comment… this is the only blog on CS I truly trust. I will admit I visit Watts and Steve too… sometimes post on Tamino. I gave up on RC a long time ago. Anyways how is that trend line validated by empirical data, physics and stats?
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Comment on Italian seismologists: guilty(?) by David Springer
It opens up the door to anyone harmed by an expert’s hasty opinion to criminal charges for it. This works both ways as people can die because a predicted calamity doesn’t happen and where people are harmed, financially or physically, in their response.
So it basically means if you’re a professional in the relevant field you better make damn sure you don’t give any half-cocked warnings out or make damn sure you convey with no ambivalence that the prediction isn’t… what to call it… oh yeah… that the prediction isn’t “settled science”.
This is a wonderful thing. Long overdue.
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Comment on Italian seismologists: guilty(?) by Bad Andrew
Does this cover ‘projections’?
Andrew
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Comment on Italian seismologists: guilty(?) by Wagathon
Of course–the weatherman in Lake Havasu City is supposed to say its 10° cooler to get people to drive over from Phoenix.
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Comment on Italian seismologists: guilty(?) by manacker
Judith Curry
I was appalled when I first heard the news of this on Swiss television.
After hearing more details, I am even more appalled.
Early warning science on natural disasters (example tornado warnings) has been around a while, but still relies on empirical data that are anything but consistent. Warning systems are better than they were, but still relatively primitive. And tornado strikes are easier to forecast than earthquakes.
Earthquakes can hit anywhere, but we all know the regions that are at greatest risk. But no one knows exactly when an earthquake of what magnitude will strike where.
As you have written earlier, scientists have to walk a thin line between crying “wolf” or being “Pollyannas” when it comes to predicting natural disasters (both approaches tend to result in apathy in the general public in the long term).
A second problem that may be generic. The Italian justice system is a laughing stock in the rest of Europe. Mafiosi assassins get away free while criminal investigators get murdered.
The sloppy and apparently politically motivated criminal justice system surrounding the Amanda Knox trial and conviction that was overturned on appeal last year and is now set for acquittal appeal next March is a specific example.
This case is another.
The really bad thing in my mind, however, is that it sets a precedent whereby scientists are de facto made guilty of resulting damage, destruction and loss of human life caused by natural disasters they did not foresee properly and in time.
Scary.
Plus it will lead to scientists issuing daily warnings of disasters too fierce to mention in order to cover their rear ends “just in case”. So everyone eventually ignores the dire warning and goes to sleep when “WHAM!”.
But the “scientist” is off the hook.
Max
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Comment on Sunday Mail . . . again by jcbmack
Acceptance of un-touched, un manipulated surface temp records that provides a consistent reference temperature to begin with. Then we can organize the data and look at uncertainty using the appropriate metrics and statistical tools in a conservative fashion. There was a time when I was all gun ho about the most advanced statistical methods and a time when the latest GCM output had me all in awe and wonder. Now it really is about using the appropriate methods in the proper measure to the right degree and not trying to extrapolate too much from a large range of uncertainty. I notice the same for students and even seasoned researchers–they can get caught up in seeing the patterns they want to and choosing inappropriate methods because they look cool and sound sexy for funding:) Also there are some excellent papers published on the surface temp records showing how a warming bias; these papers, largely (not all of them) were created with much better validated and verified methodology. One small point thermodynamics on macro scales is immutable… but more on that later.
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