Re: Global warming
 

He is talking about AGW.

Re: Global warming
 

What's that?

Re: Global warming
 

A hypothesis.

Re: Global warming
 

A null hypothesis?

Re: Global warming
 

Could be either null or not depending on how you couch it.

Re: Global warming
 

But what's the alternative?

Re: Global warming
 

A sofa.

Re: Global warming
 

:rofl:

Re: Global warming
 

Actual Gold Weight?

Re: Global warming
 

I am undecided on the subject of GW and on AGW (two very different hypothesis).

However:-

1. I am very much against political or activist motivated “sham” science. As I pointed out elsewhere, science is the last bastion of a rigorous, robust and transparent search for answers. We do a great many good people a great disservice when we discredit the entire field by forging, bodging and manipulating data - even if we do it for what we believe to be sound reasons. It is akin to someone breaking the law to enforce the law.


2. I work in the field of predictive analytics, based upon multidimensional data analysis. As such I am qualified to comment upon the methodologies used (but not the results achieved) in the GW/AGW research. In précis, you must first start with cleansed data, and then normalise it to ensure conformity.

In my opinion ( please note that Miss moneypenny) we have not, and to be blunt cannot, do this with the data that we have at our disposal. The reasons for this are complex, but in simple terms:

• The data required to produce a global average over a 2000 year period is impossible to collate, cleanse and normalise. You are trying to match a ring tree estimate from 1AD to a satellite thermo optical measurement from 2010. Any conformity of data will be based upon assumptions and manipulation – manipulation that could produce global warming or global cooling to order. (this is exactly the reason CRU declined to release its data despite Freedom of information ordered to do so.)


• Even the current data is incredibly difficult to normalise. Natural and unnatural events on a daily and yearly basis affect the results – natural weather fluctuations year by year, man made influences such as urbanisation around measurement sites, and a million other factors mean that it is impossible to provide an accurate average global temperature for January 2010.


• Once you do add weightings and adjustments to conform even current temperatures you are required to justify each modification, and establish a set of “rules” – to ensure that the same practice is used everywhere, every time.


• The researchers themselves have made some really bad messes of even the simplest tasks. It would appear that the CRU normalised data then threw away the original data. Further, they failed to even keep a log of changes. This is totally inexcusable. I have the hacked emails and documents, and some of the practices carried out by CRU are shocking. They were aware of instances like using data from measuring sites that they knew had been closed years before. Their data routines were generating spurious measurements, and yet they allowed them to remain because it supported the argument for GW.

• Similar to CRU, even NASA seem to have made fundamental errors in its measurements. The GISS removed a large number of higher altitude, higher elevation and more rural measuring stations around 1990 – but failed to adjust the data comparisons pre to post 1990, resulting in corrupted data.

The above isn’t knocking these researchers (although i would not admit such practices into any of my projects). As i say, global thermal averages is a very complex multidimensional problem, and i don’t think we are capable of measuring it.

The IPCC should have started out with its first paper purely discussing what measurements it was going to use, how the data would be normalised and correlated, what rules would be used. Instead it started firing from the hip.

The IPCC should be disbanded, and a new global body formed that has serious scientific based methodologies and processes.

Re: Global warming
 

Incidentally, as a little aside story to illustrate my point:

Until recently I was employed by a well known Australian university.

I found it was impossible to determine how many students the university actually had, because of the complexities in determining what was a “student”. Even faculty heads had differing opinions. There were so many different ways of measuring numbers of students it was impossible to merge them to provide one coherent number.

Now if a leading university cannot determine how many students it has, how do you think a group of scientists working in disparate research bodies across the world can agree upon what the temperature change was between 1AD and 2010.

Re: Global warming
 

Many good points, well made.

As a biologist I'm well used to trying to model complex systems myself, and I know how hard it is with even a small number of parameters. The IPCC has two major problems. the first, as you say, is the data they use to build their model. The second, of course, is that they have absolutely no way of testing their model for the purpose of refinement, which is a very necessary process when modelling any complex system.

The other difficulty with complex systems is that there are patterns of behaviour that begin to occur in all parameters when you change only one. So even if an increase in carbon dioxide is causing global warming, there is no indication that reducing it will reverse global warming. No more than you can undo an avalanche by finding the pebble that started it and putting it back at the top of the mountain.

Re: Global warming
 

[quote=Burbage;8313420][quote=Centurion;8313416]You been watching Pat Condell?

Re: Global warming
 

[QUOTE=Wol;8313728][quote=Burbage;8313420]Who?

Re: Global warming
 

According to todays Telegraph the Indian government have given up on IPCC and Dr Pachauri, and are now forming their own Climate Change research body because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...ange-body.html

Of course India (which wants AGW aid from the rest of the world but refuses to restrict its own emissions), has good reasons to dispute what the IPCC says – especially after Copenhagen failed to deliver on the aid.


Mind you, some Indians are pretty happy with the IPCC.

Take the Tata Group headquartered in Mumbai, which bought Redcar steel in the UK, then closed it, making a massive profit out if its Carbon Credits, transfering them to its own steelworks. So the polution stays the same, just the jobs move from the UK to India....

(Isnt that the socialist economists intention?)


Interestingly Dr Pachauri’s TERI research body is funded by - yep – TATA!!!!

In fact its name is Tata Energy Research Institute!!!!!

Funny that........