Tuesday
Mar092010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill It's the wrong dataset Gromit!
Mar 9, 2010 Climate: Models Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface Marcel Crok writes:
This morning, there was lot of noise in the Dutch media (unfortunately in Dutch only) about new research that was claiming a dramatic warming of 4 degrees in 2050. The news report quoted Dutch econometricians from the University of Tilburg. They had done a statistical analysis of temperature data and the influence of CO2 and solar radiation and concluded that aerosols masked much more of the warming of greenhouse gases than previously thought.
Unfortunately, the econometricians concerned didn't read the instructions on the tin before use. Most amusing.
Read it here.
Reader Comments (15)
Talking of Gromit, has anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between our scientifically illiterate UK Minister for Climate Change, and Gromit's good friend, Wallace?
It's a side-issue on this topic, but sloppy language suggests sloppy thought processes.
The climate movement use the word "masking" in a weird way. For ordinary people and other disciplines the word "masking" means "hiding". Some effect is bigger than the measured reading because of measurement error.
Here's another correct use:
But sadly for the climateers it covers situations where "counteract" or "balance" or "negate" would be more correct - and help towards clear thinking.
Sorry, guys, but the aerosols were reducing the other effects - not masking them.
They also need to avoid the word "warm". This is ambiguous - do they mean a flow of heat into something - or do they mean the temperature going up? You could put a lot of heat into an iceberg and the temperature not move.
Once again we have vague terminology revealing vague thought processes.
Thank you Bishop. I saw thus alarmist nonsense on the nu.nl site this morning and couldn't believe my proverbial mince pies.
The story was prominently there as the lead headline for hours, as though climategate was a yet-to-happen inconvenient truth. Somewhat amusingly "the big story" is now nowhere to be found on the frontpage of the site and is also soundly relegated to last story on the science page there. That's better!
By way of compensation the mainstream media has been busy attacking the previous 'old labour' climate minister for employing climate spin doctors at the cost of hundreds of thousands to the taxpayer. Also in Dutch only, sorry. The hundreds of comments on the story largely reflect the sceptical viewpoint of the Dutch public these days, thankfully.
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/6237738/__Cramer_betaalt_spindoctor_tonnen__.html
Jack Hughes,
Does reducing instead of masking fit the context of:
?Further to Jack and Kevin's excellent points, isn't it time for climate scientists to give up the use of masking in favour of the word they were obviously reaching for: masquerading? Thus "new research from Holland presents a dramatic masquerading of 4 degrees by 2050" and "aerosols once again masqueraded as an explanation of the lack of warming after World War II by greenhouse gases".
the netherlands sounds like a great place for the following then!
9 March: AP: Outside science academies to review warming panel
The beleaguered global warming panel has found an outside group to review how it makes its reports.
The InterAcademy Council will be given complete control to review the rules, procedures and reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Recently, a handful of unsettling, but relatively minor, errors have been found in the climate panel reports issued in 2007.
The Netherlands-based organization of 15 national science councils will pick the scientists for the review. Details will be announced Wednesday at the United Nations...
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_CLIMATE_PANEL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-03-09-18-04-17
truly amazing how they just carry on as if 'the science is settled'.
Same thing happens here in Canada: every year, Statistics Canada calculates what it calls its "Low Income Cut Off". Every year, it warns people and organizations NOT to use this as the "poverty level". Every year, people and organizations use it as such. Its like waiting for spring...
Jack H,
I think that the everyday meaning of masked and the statistical meaning of masked aren't the same thing -- jargon always leads to some confusion. If you have two data sets A (say shell isotopes) and B (say temp) and one of these say A has very little variablility (varies between 0.0001 and 0.0002 to 5 decimal placles -- like 0.0001, 0.00013, 0.00014 etc) then you can't really run a correlation however you can synthetically add some known noise to provide the variability, this new data set C contains *masked* values from A. You then run your correlation, of course your standard error has increased but if you find a strong correlation then you at least can make a prelim finding and give youself a reason to look for more data. So masked doesn't mean hidden but a particular type of adjustment -- of course the researcher should stipulate the code used to mask so the work can be checked but if the noise is truely random then other esearchers will get different masked values but very similar correlation.
If you follow the links given below the article you find the following:-
"If you want to examine the detection of anthropogenic climate change, we recommend that you use the Jones temperature data-set. This is on a coarser (5 degree) grid, but it is optimised for the reliable detection of anthropogenic trends." How do they do that without making the tacit assumption that the anthropogenic trend is present?
emckeng: great spot. It's 'reliable detection' that gets me. As if. It's all nonsense, Jabberwocky building on the settled science of Edward Lear, with graphics courtesy of The Far Side.
March 9, 2010 | pat
Gosh, unsettling but relatively minor. Imagine what a major error would lead to.
While we're defining terms, might as well look it up.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unsettling
The example given for definition 2 sounds appropriate somehow.
Get over it everyone. They achieved the correct result.
As Wegman said, "Wrong method + Correct result = Great science"
Or..er...something like that
Courtesy of WUWT the original article appears to be this one: http://center.uvt.nl/staff/magnus/wip04.pdf
Oops I forgot, the first paragraph is a humdinger. No lack of objectivity from these authos. /S
"optimised for the reliable detection of anthropogenic trends"
Another weaselly appropriation of an innocent term, but I suppose 'fiddled' would have given the game away. Dr Jones continues to surprise with his approach to scientific method, but then I suppose that's what happens when you try to make friends with major-league con men like Mann and Hansen.