Monday
Mar222010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Having a lovely time...
Mar 22, 2010 Climate: Curry Climate: Statistics Judith Curry drops us an electronic postcard from the Royal Society seminar on uncertainty - "it's absolutely fascinating" she says.
The good news is that we can soon share in the fun, since the proceedings are going to be made available as podcasts.
Reader Comments (6)
Judy's comment is here. If she's enjoying it that probably isn't a bad sign. Take that in conjunction with the fabulous VS continuing his progress on Bart's site. Though in his own terms it's going at a snail's pace, he's the first guy I've seen to use the Akaike Information Criterion on climate time series, a key measure to deal with the problem of overfitting that I remember well from time series development leading a successful hedge fund in the 90s. Willis Eschenbach gave a helpful summary yesterday of where dhogaza and others have been getting it wrong. Add up all that's happening and I think another biased inquiry is pretty meaningless. The action is all elsewhere, outside official channels. But if events like this one arranged to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society can help, even better.
Calling Atomic Hairdryer.
Do drop me an email if you are in the environs of the Royal Soc tomorrow - it would be good to say hi.
I wasn't planning to be, but if there's something interesting on, I could be in the area. I think I've settled on some of your designs so would make cash for t-shirts easier to arrange :)
Sorry OT.
Anyone who had followed the VS/Bart/Tamino war of statistical interpretation last week might be interested to know that Lubos Motl has a couple of interesting and amusing memos on the role of stats in experimental science, and highlighting the differing standards of confidence required by the hard sciences versus the soft.
His latest is here, which includes his censured posts at tamino, and various hilarious outraged responses drawn from the faithful.
"Judith Curry drops us an electronic postcard from the Royal Society seminar on uncertainty - "it's absolutely fascinating" she says."
How can she be so sure?
How can she be so sure?
By invoking the Climate PUP (Post normal Uncertainty Principle).
As is well known, climatologists are big fans of the "basic physics" without actually knowing any. The "basic physics" was used regularly as the de facto authoritative argument when asked to counter the views of sceptics on tv, in newspapers etc.
Whenever the "basic physics" was invoked, journalists, all masterful in the Humanities and English Lit would cower, unable to respond, trembling as they remember those horrible equations they failed to grasp at school. So never was a follow up question like, "well, could you, er, show us this basic physics then?"
Post climategate etc, with climatologists feeling a little put upon, The Royal Soc has decided to help out by drafting in some real physicists and good mathematicians to teach them something about uncertainty.
No doubt they will have mentioned at some point during the course that the real physicists have been dealing with the quantum universe bounded by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle since early twentieth century, and that it annoyed Einstein considerably.
This will no doubt have calmed the climatologists, as they've now seen a way out of the holes they have dug themselves. Thus the new hypothesis, the climateer's own PUP is born, and the name of Heisenberg will be for ever more forgotten. Well, by the MSM and AGW promoters everywhere, at least.
The PUP, born during this very last few days and being given widespread coverage in all the alarmist outlets, says the more uncertain we are about the future climate, the more we must do to stop the future climate happening.
Naturally, our Great Leaders will look at this grave realisation and understand, for the good of humanity, that because of the uncertainty of what exactly it is we must stop, we must therefore be careful not to actually do anything physical or practical, as this would lead to increased uncertainty.
What we need then are precisely carbon neutral actions, like, oh I don't know, what about some nice new regulations, taxes, and artificial markets, all wrapped up in nice fluffy white polar bear marketing.
Oh, that turns out to be exactly where we are at.
So, it's all worked out nicely. Hooray!