http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2400

Specifically:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2400#comment-164463

So many JEG threads I could not keep them straight

I am under the impression that the spacial cross correlations in climate aren’t monotonically decreasing functions with distance and this is due to some structure in atmospheric and oceanic flow pattern. And that seems to be all “teleconnections” means.

I think in portfolio theory, these sorts of ideas about cross-correlations are used to figure out how to get the broadest degree of diversification while buying the fewest numbers of different types of stocks. (Because of structure and known patterns of correlation, you can get decent diversification by not selecting stocks entirely at random.)

So, presumably, you can do similar things when trying to estimate global temperature. It strikes me it would take rather a lot of care to do it correctly. But, yes, in principle, a thermometer in CA on place might, statistically speaking, give us a guess about what’s happening in Paris. (Though, I bet Parisian’s rely on thermometer in Paris.)

I cited a JEG paper on the thread on ENSO cant find it now

Steve: You cited http://digitalcommons.libraries.columbia.edu/dissertations/AAI3249076/ It’s password portected.

Teleconnections. The simplest explanation I got was that weather in once place was connected
( correlated) to weather in another place. The physical mechanism was rossby waves.. Stationary
patterns in circulation. My sense was that the teleconnection argument was merely a way of hand
waving away sparse sampling. That is, I sample battle creek michigan, it’s correlated with Paris,
therefore I’ve “effectively” sampled Paris.

Bender, however, has explained it quite differently. So… Time for me to visit primary texts.

FWIW

Steve & Ross:

I appreciate that the BCP “secret sauce” is the real issue, and has been since MBH98, but the tabular screwups — and Mann’s refusal to fix them, a decade later — are too rich, too absurd, too… Monty Python to let pass. Mann is still spinning his pseudoscientific blather, his Team is still behind him, 95% of even scientists can’t follow the statistical arguments….

But everybody understands hubris, and idiotic stubbornness, and refusal to face critics. It makes a great story, that anyone can follow, and opens the door, for anyone not totally close-minded, to all the other good arguments made here about sloppy Climate Science and spending terabucks on stuff that may well do more harm than good. It would be a real pity to bring on the (overdue) next Ice Age, while impoverishing ourselves in the process.

Hmm. So what’s needed, besides you guys writing up a formal technical note to JGR? (which absolutely needs a weblink back to the “rain in Maine… on the Seine” stuff here.)

We need a popular treatment of this, in an influential publication. Hmm-2. The WSJ is already sympathetic, and has a history of running long debunking articles. Any readers have contacts there? Any hungry pop-science writers in the audience?

Which brings me to the next point: I (and many others) think CA needs a better “Introduction for Newbies” section, partic since traffic is up with your major award. Steve, you don’t need to spend your limited time on this — this is where guys like me, who can follow your arguments but don’t have the technical background to advance them, could make a real contribution. A wiki-style collaborative effort would seem the way to go. Steve, could you start a new thread for this, so we can get the ball rolling?

Cheers — Pete Tillman
–
“Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.”
(with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke)

It’s technologically easy to make tapes. So, seeing a tape might be interesting for us and the discussion JEG started here. We would see if and how he addresses issues like simple sloppiness, R2, teleconnections etc

I read up a bit and I know understand what the word teleconnections means.