Pekka Pirilä On the net perceptions are what matters.
That isn’t necessarily. For some netizens, what matters are propositions and evidence.
Perhaps perceptions matter to you, and that is what you have said: you personally perceive a change in the balance of this blog, but you are unconcerned with the accuracy of your perception.
DocMartyn notices “With each tick of the clock …”
… the oceans have heated, the sea-level has risen, and polar ice-mass has shrunk … globally, without pause, through many decades of years, and without obvious limit … and now the troposphere temperature pause is ending too.
Purely on the science, the time has come for rational skeptics to accept the Amici Science (Friends Science) worldview … scientifically, naturally, morally, economically, politically, and (soon) legally.
That’s common sense, eh Climate Etc readers?
You’ll soon adjust to this scientific reality DocMartyn!
Young climate-researchers in particular appreciate this well-grounded scientific reality, don’t they Judith Curry?
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The Seattle Lesson A good person without a gun can stop a bad person with one.
Today’s XKCD shows what pretty much every scientifically literate citizen thinks about climate-change …
… except for an ever-shrinking ever-more-bizarre cadre whose median life expectancy is about 15 years (and shrinking).
That’s obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
I am not qualified in the field of ‘climate science’, or any science for that matter! But I am very interested in it, mainly because the ‘alarmist’ side of the debate shows signs of cult-like influences. These influences appear to be when the scientific method, and the scientific need for extraordinary evidence, are often largely ignored. The technical term for this is ‘cognitive dissonance’. The alarmists feel uncomfortable when they discover that their beliefs don’t match up with reality. One of the ways they reduce the cognitive dissonance is by ignoring or denying any information that conflicts with their existing beliefs. Also, they may justify the behavior by changing the conflicting cognition (eg. the warming has just paused and is sure to return at a later date, or the missing warmth is hiding in the deep oceans – where we can’t measure it). .. A parallel with this in the dark world of apocalyptic religious cults is when the world does not end on a certain date, and it is assumed that the calculations were wrong, or the deity has decided not to punish mankind after all.
I was also interested in many of the scientific discussions that concentrated on what was really happening in the world, including the discussions that explained the extremely complex and chaotic nature of the climate system, and the very large number of internal and external variables.
In New Zealand, there is/was a talkback host on NewstalkZB that convinced me and many other listeners to research the topic, and not just blindly *believe* what we were being fed by the mainstream. … (Note that the history of science shows that a new hypothesis and new papers are not necessarily incorrect if they don’t follow the ‘mainstream’ theories.)
I often try to remember the wise words of our old teachers :-
~ note the scientific need for extraordinary evidence;
~ ensure that the hypothesis agrees with the experiments and real-life observations;
~ recall the story about Kepler preferring the most precise observations, rather than his dearest illusions;
~ remember that science isn’t based on consensus or belief, and correlation does not prove causation;
~ remember that the ‘claim of consensus’ is used only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
One of my blog posts that I think is relevant is here :-
http://foresight-of-hindsight.blogspot.com/2012/01/evidence-shows-no-global-warming-for.html
Since the post is dated Jan 28, 2012, it might have been one of the first blog posts to mention the lack of overall global *warming* for a significant number of years!
I am a self employed CPA in Mound, Minnesota. We do a lot of form 1040s similar to the H &R Block model. I am the volunteer Treasurer of a small 501(c)(3) non-profit park. One of my small plans in progress is an attempt to introduce some native wildflowers and/or prairie grasses.
If I have a relevant area expertise it would be reading financial statements. I graduated from the U of Minnesota with an accounting major.
In 2013 I took an interest in trying to figure out what was going on with Global Warming? It’s been an interesting journey. I’ve been introduced the concepts of the non-linear, of bistable systems, of chaos theory, and of regimes. My physics and math skills are not much beyond a high school level, though I had some basic programming classes and business statistics classes.
So I have to rely on things like concepts, and to try to fit nature into income statements and balance sheets. Occasionally in my readings I’ll see, On all size and time scales. Are things many orders of magnitude apart, similar? In my short so far journey, I’ve started to conclude, maybe that’s how nature is put together and how it works.
The Left builds houses of cards as the economy tanks.
I like to experiment, I thought at least some of the group would find this interesting or that it would stimulate ideas or at least conversation.
> I’m not going to believe your unproven and untested hypothesis.
I too prefer my hypotheses proven.
So to summarize your points Monfort, you prejudge the data, you prejudge me, and you prejudge parts of this series you have not even seen yet. And then you argue with the evidence that is right in front of you… an obvious correlation cannot be so because of what you have already decided.
Have I left out any of the other points you are making?
Judith Curry: “I like to experiment, I thought at least some of the group would find this interesting or that it would stimulate ideas or at leas conversation.”
Well, it certainly has stimulating some interesting conversation, but probably not along the lines you had expected.
Ragnaar -
So why not evaluate the causal impact of agricultural product more directly if that’s the mechanistic link? How do you address time scales – does the stock market perform better in the summer than the winter, during warm years than during cold years? Has the stock market moved in correlation with agricultural production more generally? Are some sectors of agricultural production more important than others? Wouldn’t evaluating those relationships help to explain some causal relationship? If the noted correlation is unaffected by any of that, doesn’t that undermine the notion of some causality?
Creative graphs are a great way of selling stocks and other investments. They are a terrible way of deciding how to invest, unless they disclose an actual mechanism that demonstrates not necessarily causation, but at least some actual relation between two trends.
I wonder what Steve McIntyre would say about this with his history in mining (and paleo-climate) hockey stick graphs?
Tom McLellan
You can no more predict the future than I. Why do you even need to talk about proof? If you can make money, by predicting stock movements, for example, why don’t you just do it.
Why would you care if anybody believes your ability or not? If you are providing information purely in a spirit of altruism, why do you charge? Do you charge to ensure that only those that do not need extra money are the only ones who receive it?
Why not disburse the information – after having made your $10000 per week – to the unemployed with a small stake to start them off. The result would be that everyone would be able to live without actually working, the Government’s social security and tax revenue problems would be solved, and world peace would ensue.
Give me a break. You are selling an uncertain future to the gullible. A competitive field, with tribal fights between the quantitative method of divination, which pretends to predictive ability by examining company and other performance, and the Chartists, who believe that the visible part of the chart predicts the part that has not yet happened.
As with technical analysts, so with Warmists. Prediction after prediction, as long as somebody else is paying. Bet your life on the result? Surely you’re joking! Other peoples’ lives? No problem.
With many chaotic systems – and I assume the financial system is essentially one – predictions of the future may or may not come to pass. This is not particularly useful information, is it? It is hardly a surprise that chaotic behaviour in one system correlates to that of another at some point in time. This might explain the plethora of high correlation between say numbers of pirates and nominal global temperatures.
Certainly worthy of further investigation. From time to time, order appears embedded within chaos – apparently randomly and unpredictably. It would be nice to be able to predict apparently random occurrences of such things as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts etc., with sufficient precision to be useful. So far, so bad. I live in hope.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Your evidence is trivial. I am being charitable. Look, this crowd is not going to buy your story. You are wasting your time. Stick with the naive investors, who are too lazy to do proper research. Dazzle them with pretty charts. You are not going to snag any clients here. Well. maybe one. I won’t mention his name. Looking forward to II and III, Tom. I think they call it a trilogy, in the show biz.
==> “The chart makes it pretty clear to those willing to see it that there is a relationship;”
You seem to be going back and forth. You say you’re not interested in causality and then you say that there is a relationship.
How do you determine if there is a relationship if you have no interest in causality and no theory about a causal mechanism?
==> “But the visual correlation is enough to say that it is at least a partial contributor,”
And here, again, you imply causality (if not total causality). What is the nature of that causal relationship?
willard (@nevaudit): “I too prefer my hypotheses proven.”
Well, they don’t have to be “proven,” per se, but there has to be at least some evidence in support of them.
I don’t think that McIntyre would bother to say anything. I admire his restraint.
Did you actually read Kahan’s or just look at the graphics?
The scientists who developed the HPV vaccine are not the people who are distrusted, the program by which girls were targeted to receive the HPV vaccine was not designed by scientists. The program to vaccinate girls and not boys, so creating a huge viral reservoir was not ‘scientific’, it was someones idea of a good idea. Now, associate a technological science based development, with a policy that invites scorn in a large segment of the population and science/policy become fused in peoples minds.
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