The Economist remains overconcerned, but at least its editorial board recognizes how unrealistic the warm mongers are:
In short: thinking caps should replace hair shirts, and pragmatism should replace green theology.
But that doesn’t support the collectivist agenda.
Sorry but no. They support carbon taxes.
There remains no convincing proof, even if we are affecting climate by raising CO2 levels, that we are causing harm to the future. Raising the price of entry for the third world is unacceptable, and asking those of us in the developed world to don hair shirts for no appreciable gain is also unacceptable.
NASA’s assertion about 2014 being the hottest year since the 1980s was a statistical one, which had a confidence level of 48%. In other words, it probably wasn’t (1998 probably was).
Aside from that, what single piece of evidence is there that any climate change that may be taking place has harmed or will harm anyone?
According to NOAA, the confidence levels for various years being the warmest year in modern history are:
2014: 48%
2010: 18%
2005: 13%
2013: 6%
1998: 5%
It is quite unlikely that 1998 was the warmest year. Measurements in 2015 have run quite a bit ahead of 2014’s, so when this list is updated in a couple months the new most-likely candidate for warmest year will be 2015, and the rest will fall in probability.
Remember how last year’s freakishly cold winter all across the northern hemisphere required invention of the term “polar vortex”? All 50 states had snow.
Warmest year ever – if you have no memory.
Obviously 2014 didn’t have the highest average temperatures measured everywhere, just on average. NOAA’s 2014 global climate global climate report has a nice world map showing the year’s average temperature relative to the recent average. There were three “much cooler than average” areas, in the North Atlantic, at the tip of South America, and the Eastern United States. We remember it as a cold year because it was, for us. But the rest of the planet was either near-average or warmer, including large areas with record heat, which is why the global average measurement set a new record.
“Global average temperature” is a physically meaningless concept.
The NOAA isn’t using satellite data to calculate their “global average temperature”. They are only using ground stations.
Tell you what. You tell me that a freakishly cold winter across the ENTIRE northern hemisphere, along with snow in Australia in December, is the warmest year on record. I’ll piss down your back and tell you it’s raining.
“Global average temperature” is a physically meaningless concept.
Sort of a 50% chance that this is hottest year ever since we created this composite index of world temperatures whose equation and inputs we won’t share with anyone.
“Global average temperature” is a physically meaningless concept.
You post approving links to articles by Judith Curry in which she uses that concept. Why does she use it if it’s meaningless?
You tell me that a freakishly cold winter across the ENTIRE northern hemisphere
The NOAA reports show large areas of the northern hemisphere with above-average temperatures in both the winter of 2013-2014 and the winter of 2014-2015. It wasn’t freakishly cold everywhere.
since we created this composite index of world temperatures whose equation and inputs we won’t share with anyone
NOAA appears to have posted a lot of information about their temperature data here.
Why does she use it if it’s meaningless?
Because she has to use their own terminology to show that even on their own meaningless terms they’re wrong.
Jim, why did the term “polar vortex” ever appear? What was it that weather forecasters were trying to explain with that new term? How is it that the polar vortex lasted from January to April of 2014, and yet it’s the warmest year on record? How does the snowfall in Australia in December 2013 (mid summer for them) equate to “warmest year on record”?
I’ll tell you how. “The warmest year on record” is a blatant LIE. The people telling this lie are counting on average people not being able to remember LAST YEAR. The people telling this lie think the rest of us are stupid.
And Jim, you KNOW we are on to your little game. Yet you continue to lie to us, knowing that we know you’re lying. Why waste your time?
“The warmest year on record” is a blatant LIE.
2014 had the highest average global temperature measurement according to both the NOAA and NASA, and I believe scientific organizations in the UK and Japan as well. Your contention is that they are all making it up, because it’s impossible for a year with polar vortex and snow in Australia to nonetheless record higher average temperatures overall?
As I said composite index invented not long ago:
2003: Extended reconstruction of global sea surface temperatures
2004: Improved extended reconstruction of SST
2008: Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land–ocean temperature analysis
They keep “improving” the dataset? They keep changing the dataset, and the best they have is a 50/50 chance?
I love this tidbit from version 3: “However, the addition of satellite SSTs introduced a small residual cold bias (in the order of 0.01°C). ”
Uh Oh, can’t have a bias showing cold, need to revise it!
But, it gets better: “There were attempts to correct these biases as mentioned in “Improvements to NOAA’s Historical Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880–2006),” but the adjustment did not fully compensate for the cold bias.”
Oh noos…. what to do: “While this small difference did not strongly influence the long-term trend, it was sufficient to change the rankings of the warmest months in the time series. Therefore, use of satellite SST data was discontinued.”
The data didn’t support the theory, therefore they jettisoned the data!
Its been a few years since I took a stats class but none of those look good enough to base any conclusions on much less policy. Also, IIRC, last year when they announced it was hottest year ever, it was by tenths or hundredths of a degree, well within margin of error of the measuring instruments.
You know it isn’t Science when they don’t recognize the margin of error.
The NOAA probabilities listed above are an expression of the margin of error. The average temperature measured in 2014 was higher than in any previous year, but by a sufficiently small amount that there’s about a 50% chance that one of those earlier years was in fact warmer than 2014, due to the margin of error. We can rule out any year before 1998 as being warmer than 2014, because the margin of error is not enough to bridge the difference in those measurements. And as years go by, and new measured temperature records are set, the small probability that 1998 was the warmest year (which was down to about 5% as of the beginning of 2015) will dwindle to nothing.
The numbers are the CL and even for the most mundane use of statistics, a 95% CL is required and even then, there is a real chance of making the wrong conclusion. A 48% CL is useless.
When I said margin of error, it was in reference to the sensitivity of the measuring devices. What is the margin for error, or the sensitivity, on those devices?
I’m no statistician and I certainly could be missing something here but a 48% CL wouldn’t cut it in the business world.
Oh wait, you aren’t quoting a CL. You meant probability but this is a past event that has been observed. Either it was the hottest year or not. The only way that changes over time is if the observations change.
The Economist may not be correct but they still have fantastic writers.
Precisely what in that article contradicted anything a ‘warm-monger’ is saying?
Precisely who made a claim the article contradicted warmongers?
The article made a few good points. The military can offer us a good lesson on the climate. You fight your way out of an ambush. You don’t sit on your duff in the kill box. Raising taxes is like sitting on your duff but increasing research in different areas makes sense. In order for humanity to thrive, we need massive amounts of power. Nuclear makes sense. But do the people advocating AGW apocalypse want us to thrive?
What the climatists want to do is like applying leaches to treat the sniffles, when the patient doesn’t even have an infection.
It can always be ‘the warmest year on record’ when you’re allowed to change past temperature records at will.
If I’d tried that in my Physics degree, my tutors would have laughed at me and given me an F. But that was back in the days of
Oops. That was meant to be ‘back in the days of real science’.