Comments on: Kelly’s Comments

By: Axel

Axel — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:41:48 +0000

in the above story ….
“Three of the five MIT scientists who commented in the week before Copenhagen on the leaked emails, (see http://mitworld.mit.edu!video/730)”

That Video URL has changed and now is here ?
http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-great-climategate-debate-9529/

By: John Costello

John Costello — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:11:28 +0000

The bottom two autmamtically geneated posts after the article refer to very different Kellys.

By: Eye on Britain (2)

Eye on Britain (2) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:08:15 +0000

[...] SOURCE [...]

By: Neil

Neil — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:29:47 +0000

The approaches taken by these computer based scientists remind me of my former life as a macro-economist.

Economics considers itself a science (social science that is). At its heart is teh analysis of human behaviour, but it is then wrapped in statistical data collections and mathematical analysis. From this we create macro “models” of the economy. Media etc chomp at the bit for the forecasts (unemployment, GDP, inflation, interest rates and exchange rates etc) that come from the mouths of these all knowing economists. In the background the models are “recalibrated”, dummy variables are added etc in an attempt to make the modelled output match reality.

Surprisingly enough humans and the global economy are a little too complicated for these forecasts to be particularly accurate (although you will never see a confidence interval reported).

It still amazes me that people (mainly politicains and investors) put some much weight on the comments of economists. It amazes me even more that people beleive the modelled outcomes of the global environment given the relative scarcity of true data and the inherent errors in it collection, let alone the obvious complexity of the environment as a whole!

By: QBeamus

QBeamus — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:17:07 +0000

Yeah, this has been a source of amusement and outrage to me for some time now. I’d noticed the same quote Ross pointed out. And then NPR ran this headline: “The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025

Confirmation bias run amok.

By: Richard T. Fowler

Richard T. Fowler — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:46:55 +0000

Mr. McIntyre, What just happened? Some of my comments have just disappeared after Bender responded to them, and some of the rest have been moved to the bottom of the page. Is there some way of reverting the conversation back to the way it was? RTF Steve: Chill. the comments were OT for this thread and moved to the new thread on Arthur Smith. Nothing was deleted. I used to be able to move comments easily, but can't in the present setup.

By: bender

bender — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:37:36 +0000

All the series go up from ~1870 to ~1930. After that they vary, but general drop down (though not so much as they rose). Net effect is an overall 20th c. rise. Key point: It is the uptick from ~1960 onward in (h) that appears to be extremely dependent on the anomalous Yamal (f).

For this reason I have no reason to buy into your “instrumental padding” hypothesis for Fig 1. Prove me wrong.

By: bender

bender — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:32:52 +0000

What are you – a lawyer? So now I need to rephrase to avoid a lawsuit?

This is a numbers game and text only takes you so far. So don’t take my text and suppose there’s more precision in it than the language itself will allow.

I rephrase: The *degree* of uptick appears to be heavily dependent on one tree.

The only way to know for sure is to recreate the series without that tree.

By: Richard T. Fowler

Richard T. Fowler — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:29:21 +0000

On Fig. 1, for the period 1950-end, all of the series except one of the Yamals go down, not up.

In your words:

———-
The uptick at the end of series h in Fig 1 appears to be attributible solely to none other than Yamal’s “stay thirsty” tree.
———-

RTF

By: ZT

ZT — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:21:29 +0000

Who or what convinced Kelly to allow his views to be unrepresented in the inquiry report that bears his name?

I am guessing that there must have been an impressive fixer operating behind the scenes.