Statistics

Scientific Hubris and Global Warming

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By Gregory Sloop – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Notwithstanding portrayals in the movies as eccentrics who frantically warn humanity about genetically modified dinosaurs, aliens, and planet-killing asteroids, the popular image of a scientist is probably closer to the humble, bookish Professor, who used his intellect to save the castaways on practically every episode of Gilligan’s Island. The stereotypical scientist is seen as driven by a magnificent call, not some common, base motive. Unquestionably, science progresses unerringly to the truth.

This picture was challenged by the influential twentieth-century philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, who held that scientific ”truth” is determined not as much by facts as by the consensus of the scientific community. The influence of thought leaders, rewarding of grants, and scorn of dissenters are used to protect mainstream theory. Unfortunately, science only makes genuine progress when the mainstream theory is disproved, what Kuhn called a “paradigm shift.” Data which conflict with the mainstream paradigm are ignored instead of used to develop a better one. Like most people, scientists are ultimately motivated by financial security, career advancement, and the desire for admiration. Thus, nonscientific considerations impact scientific “truth.”

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Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility

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   By Dorothy Bishop – Re-Blogged From Nature

Dorothy Bishop describes how threats to reproducibility, recognized but unaddressed for decades, might finally be brought under control.
PDF version

More than four decades into my scientific career, I find myself an outlier among academics of similar age and seniority: I strongly identify with the movement to make the practice of science more robust. It’s not that my contemporaries are unconcerned about doing science well; it’s just that many of them don’t seem to recognize that there are serious problems with current practices. By contrast, I think that, in two decades, we will look back on the past 60 years — particularly in biomedical science — and marvel at how much time and money has been wasted on flawed research.

How can that be? We know how to formulate and test hypotheses in controlled experiments. We can account for unwanted variation with statistical techniques. We appreciate the need to replicate observations.

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Greta’s Two Degrees

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By Josh – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Josh comes through with another cartoon. In case you missed it, over the weekend, Willis Eschenbach published “Planet-Sized Experiments – we’ve already done the 2°C test”

One of the truths in that article was directed at this past weekend’s “climate strikes”, inspired by 16 year old Greta Thunberg. Willis makes a lot of sense with this introduction to data:

People often say that we’re heading into the unknown with regards to CO2 and the planet. They say we can’t know, for example, what a 2°C warming will do because we can’t do the experiment. This is seen as important because for unknown reasons, people have battened on to “2°C” as being the scary temperature rise that we’re told we have to avoid at all costs.

But actually, as it turns out, we have already done the experiment.
Below I show the Berkeley Earth average surface temperature record for Europe. Europe is a good location to analyze, because some of the longest continuous temperature records are from Europe. In addition, there are a lot of stations in Europe that have been taking record for a long time. This gives us lots of good data.
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30 Years of NOAA Tide Gauge Data Debunk 1988 Senate Hearing

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

NOAA has updated its coastal tide gauge measurement data through year 2018 with this update now providing 30 years of actual data since the infamous 1988 Senate hearings that launched the U.S. climate alarmist political propaganda campaign.

In June of 1988 testimony was provided before Congress by various scientists, including NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, claiming that man made greenhouse gas emissions were responsible for increasing global temperatures with the New York Times reporting, “Global Warming Has Begun, Experts Tells Senate”.

The Times article noted that “The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century. Scientists have already detected a slight rise in sea levels.”

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BoM’s Changes to Darwin’s Climate History

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By Dr. Jennifer Marohasy – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The hubris of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is on full display with its most recent remodelling of the historic temperature record for Darwin. The Bureau has further dramatically increased the rate of global warming at Darwin by further artificially lowering historic temperatures.

This begins by shortening the historical temperature record so that it begins just after the very hot years of the Federation drought. Then by changing the daily values: that is changing the observed measured temperatures to something else.

For example, on 1st January 1910 the maximum temperature recorded at the Darwin post office was 34.2 degrees Celsius.

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Sea Level and Effective N

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Over in the Tweeterverse, I said I wasn’t a denier, and I challenged folks to point out what they think I deny. Brandon R. Gates took up the challenge by claiming that I denied that sea level rise is accelerating. I replied:

Brandon, IF such acceleration exists it is meaninglessly tiny. I can’t find any statistically significant evidence that it is real. HOWEVER, I don’t “deny” a damn thing. I just disagree about the statistics.

Brandon replied:

> IF such acceleration exists

It’s there, Willis. And you’ve been shown.

> it is meaninglessly tiny

When you have a better model for how climate works, then you can talk to me about relative magnitudes of effects.

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Global Mean Surface Temperature

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By Bob Tisdale – Re-Blogged From WUWT

This is a long post: 3500+ words and 22 illustrations. Regardless, heretics of the church of human-induced global warming who frequent this blog should enjoy it. Additionally, I’ve uncovered something about the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive that I hadn’t heard mentioned or seen presented before. It amazed even me, and I know how poorly these climate models perform. It’s yet another level of inconsistency between models, and it’s something very basic. It should help put to rest the laughable argument that climate models are based on well-documented physical processes.

INTRODUCTION

After isolating 4 climate model ensemble members with specific characteristics (explained later in this introduction), this post presents (1) observed and climate model-simulated global mean sea surface temperatures, and (2) observed and climate model-simulated global mean land near-surface air temperatures, all during the 30-year period with the highest observed warming rate before the year 1950. The climate model outputs being presented are those stored in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) archives, which were used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their 5th Assessment Report (AR5). Specifically, the ensemble member outputs being presented are those with historic forcings through 2005 and RCP8.5 (worst-case scenario) forcings thereafter. In other words, the ensemble members being presented during this early warming period are being driven with historic forcings, and they are from the simulations that later include the RCP8.5 forcings.

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