For you enjoyment: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/08/21/sucides-increase-due-to-reading-atrocious-global-warming-research-papers/
My favorite Briggs comment: Who in God’s name reviewed it? The awfulness of their method is so obvious that even a Harvard grad can see it.
Cliff

Since you can get an RE statistic equal to zero with a reconstruction consisting of nothing but the value 0 repeated over and over, this statement [that an RE over 0 is significant] indicates a naivety which is remarkable in people whose work relies so heavily on understanding their own statistical tools.

It highlights to me once again the oddity of climate science, which is that it is the only scientific field of study whose subject is not a physical phenomenon. Physics studys the physical world and how matter interacts physically, chemistry studys elements and molecules and their chemical interaction, biology studies life … but climate science studies not the physical phenomenon of weather, but the average of weather. Thus the subject matter of climate science is not a physical phenomenon, it is a mathematical average. I can think of no other physical science for which this is true.

Now, you’d think that people claiming scientific expertise in a field whose subject matter is not a physical phenomenon but a mathematical average would have some grounding in the mathematics of averages and standard deviations and their unbiased estimators, along with error values and their measurement and propagation, and the like.

And you’d think that people delving even further into the study of said mathematical average, people who were say involved in trying to estimate said mathematical average using proxies, would be well versed in calculating and understanding things like RE and R^2 and CE and LTP and STP and autocorrelation …

But as you point out, this is far from the case.

w.

The “proof” is that of Theorem 7.3 page 29 in Li’s paper, but I stopped reading it when I saw that he is extending the test function h from ideles to adeles by 0 outside ideles and then using Fourier transform (see page 31).

My brain just exploded. Again.

I have a transcript if you email me, but these lines were good (or bad).

PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I just look at what the scientists say. There’s a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change – 4000 of them. Guys in white coats who run around and don’t have a sense of humour. They just measure things.

DR TIM FLANNERY: That is the most important thing. Stop burning coal and other fossil fuels and stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because that is what is warming the atmosphere and that is what’s driving the changes.

DR JAMES LOVELOCK: At the best, wind power cannot provide more than a tiny fraction of the energy needs of civilisation. I think it’s one of those things politicians like because it can be seen that they’re doing something.

TARA BROWN, reporter: So, if nothing else, their (politicians’) hearts are in the right place?
DAVID EVANS: Yeah, sure, however their brains are in the wrong place and we didn’t elect them for their hearts, they’ve got to use their brains as well.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-AU&brand=ninemsn&vid=dd6f3ba8-3dee-4bca-95b4-a335633132fc

I never realised before that statistics was such a flexible branch of mathematics, whereby one can invent a statistical test for significance if you don’t like the ones everyone else uses. And get it published in Climatic Change.

“Perception is reality” is a fundamental concept in today’s information-saturated world. Few have the time or the energy to critically examine the stream of information coming their way from a wide variety of sources concerning a wide variety of topics.

Anyway …. My informal poll of a variety of friends and neighbors inside and outside of my usual scientific/engineering circles indicates the following general belief concerning recent temperature trends, both regional and global: The strongly upward trend predicted by the Hockey Stick in 1998 has not only been fully realized over these last ten years, it has actually been exceeded.

So I ask them, on what basis do they believe this, i.e. that the predicted upward trend has in fact been fully realized, or even exceeded?

The responses generally go like this, more or less: “We hear about this topic on the news all the time, a strongly upward trend is the gist of what the news is reporting as fact, and no one with any credibility has offered any kind of contrary evidence or contrary information that temperatures are not rising as fast as was being predicted ten years ago.”

Topic 2: 1984 as an Operative Paradigm in 2008:

David Eisenbeisz: …. Incrementally, the scientists are becoming tools of the State, and as such, they are just as prone to the type of doublespeak we are accustomed to hearing from politicians….

I am in regular contact with the “scientists” you speak of and they are in no way tools of state influence operating within a 1984 style of paradigm. It’s all about money, influence, and the self-congratulating egotism which goes with being “right” about some important social, economic, or environmental question.

The reality here is that The State has become the scientist’s own tool for promoting their own power and influence in the economy and in society — the basic motivation being attainment of the significant economic and personal rewards which go with gaining that kind of power and influence over millions of other people.

The global warming industry — although mostly a state-owned business operation — is just that, a business operation functioning in a decentralized, globalized marketplace, of which these climate scientists comprise an important human resource both as departmental managers and as production workers in the industry’s day-to-day information manufacturing operations.

I believe personally that here in the US in the Year 2008, government-owned global warming businesses have become an important manpower sink for scientific and engineering talent which in previous decades would have been otherwise employed in America’s smoke-stack, industrial supply, and/or consumer goods manufacturing industries.

So … I do not believe that anything like a 1984 mind control paradigm is responsible for the general public’s perception that the world’s actual temperature trend over the last decade is now confirmed by direct measurement to be sharply upward, in general conformance with AGW alarmist predictions.

It’s all about what kind of information generates a business profit within this globalized, decentralized information/ideas marketplace.