*reads comment thread at Dale’s place*

Good Lord. What a bunch of Charlies. This is the top political blogger in the UK, is it?

I like this.

Could I suggest a simpler way to calculate the yearly averages in excel, rather then using access?

1. Create a new column.
2. Use this column to create a 12 month rolling average. Starting from December of the first year, average the 12 months proceeding.
3. You should now have a new column, from which you want to extract every twelve value. You can do this using the autofilter tool. Hi-light the header row for the columns. Click on data in the menu bar, then filter->Auto filter.
4. A number of drop down buttons should appear on the header row. Click on the one for month then click 12.
5. You should now have filtered the data so you can only see every 12 month. You can now plot your yearly average.

Tom, don’t forget that he is the top political blogger as voted by his readers.

So you have shown the average temprature in Oxford is increasing.

However, Victor NEKent has shown that the highest and lowest tempratures (if we accept these are June and December – I’d have thought a bit later for both myself) are not increasing. His methods show that perfectly well.

Man-made global warming as a theory claims the earth is getting hotter, which is translated by non-experts as the maximum temprature (and the minimum temprature) rising. However, Victor’s figures appear to show this is not the case at Oxford, even if average temprature is rising.

At this point the realisation that Oxford is an Urban Heat Island kicks in. Built up areas are generally warmer than more rural areas, so as Oxford has got larger and more urbanised, and also had more heaters and cars (and people), the average temprature should generally increase (as people heat their houses/studies/libraries that bit more). So showing an increase of average temprature in Oxford is no more useful in proving man-made global warming than showing that the highest and lowest tempratures are staying fairly constant. All it shows is that Oxford has got warmer on average. Incidentally, this also makes 1961-90 (during the late twentieth-century expansion of Oxford) a pretty poor choice of average.

I am intrigued as to why this averaging warming has not affected the hottest and coldest tempratures, which might be worth examining.

John:

To be honest, I could have done it that way, but as I already had Access open for something else, the laziest route to getting the annual means was just to query the worksheet.

Unity,

A seperate issue to explain. Why is 1961-90 used as the baseline for the variation from the average mean? If this is convention, have you tried e.g. 1915-44 (encompassing a couple of wars for no reason I can think of) or 1853-82 and seen what these produce. I have seen 1961-90 before, and I am unclear as to why this has particular significance (unless the methodology was set up in 1990).

Unity:

That’s cool, I just thought this might be an alternative for people who don’t have/know how to use access.

Because it’s quiet at work today, I did the analyse for the data from Heathrow. You can see it here.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6798/heathrow.gif

I saw that and thought no one would be stupid enough to actually take that crock seriously. Oxford is apparently cooling – so global warming doesn’t exist! We’re saved!

It’s almost as if the Tories want to live up to the expectations of the ‘stupid party’ label.

What’s more amusing is that Dale’s mate’s ‘method’ is entirely capable of producing results that a) show global warming is happening and b) would be rejected on methodology grounds by every climate scientist in the world.

Watchman:

Urban heat islands is just one of those zombie denier arguments that refuses to die even though its been pulled apart already – see:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm

Man-made global warming as a theory claims the earth is getting hotter, which is translated by non-experts as the maximum temprature (and the minimum temprature) rising. However, Victor’s figures appear to show this is not the case at Oxford, even if average temprature is rising.

So you’re argument is that Victor’s right precisely because he’s an idiot who doesn’t understand the science and lots of other people are similarly misinformed and/or idiotic?

So that’s the argument from popular ignorance, or ‘Argumentum Ad Tabloidum’.

Hohoho – even this skeptic agrees with you on this!

Watchman:

With reference to the heat island effect, peer reviewed studies (such as the one given below)have shown that contrary to popular opinion, there is no significant extra warming in urban areas.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf

AFAIK, the choice of 1961-90 as the baseline reference period stems from the fact that:

a) a multi-decadal mean reference point is needed to avoid the reference point being skewed by short-term temperature trends/cycles/events such as the El Nino/La Nina cycle, and

b) its the first multi-decadal period for which we have a solid mass of reliable, high quality, instrumental data for surface, sea and atmospheric temperatures.

We don’t use 1915-44 or 1853-82 because the data quality is less certain and the baseline would, therefore, be less reliable.

Unity, I love you. Great work and may I say…

EPIC IAIN DALE!

Not being funny – and granted – good stats Unity. But is this argument only being fought err… nowhere? Does anyone really give a shit? Are we being played with a bit?

Fair play global warming – bit of a problem and stuff but we’re utterly skint, we’re fighting a war on 2 fronts, Pakistan is liable to implode, China is buying up the US faster than Speedy Gonzalas and it’s all a scam for Goldman Sachs to get more cash and keep the developing world (when did we stop using 3rd world?) in penury for another couple of hundred years.

It must be Christmas.

Unity/John,

Are you saying that urban areas are not warmer than rural areas? If so, how comes snow was not settling in the centre of Birmingham earlier this week but was in all the surrounding areas? I have actually walked through a medieval gateway in one town where cars inside were frost free and outside were frozen over, such is the effect of structures on temprature.

I know from experience of a large number of towns and cities that the more built up an area the warmer it becomes. So we can’t discount the fact that Oxford (our subject of debate here – I am not questioning the overall Met Office figures) has got warmer. Urban heat islands may be discredited, but it would be rather odd to find that the temprature in Oxford could be expected not to have generally increased since 1853 considering the increase in size, occupation and energy consumption within the city. Call this what you like, but in a like for like comparison, a site such as Oxford should be warmer as it becomes more urbanised.

Nice bit of LOOK OVER THERE again, I think the point is, Iain Dale, self-confessed premier UK blogger, is a dyed in the wool creationist…sorry, slip of the tongue…climate change denier.

Unity @13,

Are you seriously telling me that we can use temperature data from Oxford since 1853 for comparison, but it is not of sufficient quality to provide a baseline until c. 1960? Why would we use the data if it is not of measurable quality? If it is of a measureable quality high enough to use to create a temprature record, why would it not be of a measurable quality high enough to use to create a baseline. I would hope you are not here, in the realm of measurable temperatures and not proxies, saying that only recent measurements can be taken to be accurate enough to create a baseline, but that older measurements are still somehow accurate enough for the purposes of comparison.

Although I don’t really give two hoots about what Iain Dale and his pals think on pretty much anything this is still a nice demonstration of the ignorance prevalent in the denialist blogosphere. Good post, Unity.

“is a dyed in the wool creationist…sorry, slip of the tongue…climate change denier.”

He’s a marginally brighter one than the average, as he goes to great lengths to pretend otherwise, which makes him appear more reasonable than he is. I’m not especially fooled by this, particularly as the mask occasionally slips, as this bit of twittering from the C_FIT conference event at Bar 38 in Manchester on 6/10/09 shows:

@ToryOutcast : Iain Dale attacks climate change “nutters”. Sound stuff #cpc09

@ToryOutcast : Iain Dale withdraws climate change “nutters” and replaces it with “fundamentalists” #cpc09

Which makes everything all right.

Watchman…

Baseline Climate Data

Are you saying that urban areas are not warmer than rural areas? If so, how comes snow was not settling in the centre of Birmingham earlier this week but was in all the surrounding areas?

For crying out loud, nobody is saying that urban areas are not warmer.

Scientists use a number of methodologies to monitor and correct for UHI effects to ensure that the data is as reliable as possible. It is one of those “adjustments” that gets the conspiracy theorists all hysterical.

Iain Dale recently wrote on his blog that he failed his physics O level. I think that says everything that needs to be said about his ability at numerate disciplines.

Are you seriously telling me that we can use temperature data from Oxford since 1853 for comparison, but it is not of sufficient quality to provide a baseline until c. 1960?

No, I’m telling you that scientists use a reference point based on the best quality data they have available.

What matters most here is not when the reference point is taken but that a multi decadal reference point is used, because we know that there are natural warming/cooling cycles, such as El Nino and La Nina, that operate on time-scales of around a decade.

In this case, we could easily use a different multi-decadal reference point – it wouldn’t alter the overall trend – but if we were doing a detailed exercise in hindcasting in order to validate a proxy model, we’d have to allow for a slightly larger margin of error in the accuracy of the baseline when assessing the results.

As for snow not settling in the centre of Birmingham, you are aware that the roads and pedestrian area were gritted in advance of the snowfall?

Even so, as Frolix as noted, UHI artifacts are already factored into climate modelling as potentail confounding factors and allowed for, even though its been shown that their effect is negligible.

I should add that there is a distinction to make between urban areas being warmer and the data from monitoring stations in nominally urban areas. Monitoring stations are very often located in cooler parts of nominally urban areas, such as parks. But this is all checked carefully, as a basic part of the science

There is more information on this here:

UHI

Iain Dale recently wrote on his blog that he failed his physics O level.

Not just failed, which meant anything below a C-grade in those days, but ungraded.

frolix22,

Thanks. Interesting, but does not answer my question about the quality of earlier data. Also opens up the interesting question of why the decision to adopt this baseline was made despite the fact that greenhouse gases may have already caused a significant warming trend (see the second proviso), as this kind of suggests that greenhouse gases causing a warming trend has been accepted as fact by those making the decision. Would this not be anticipating the what the results might show before creating the baseline?

Which leads to the interesting question of what is meant by normal? In light of that provisio, which assumes warming results from greenhouse gases, this can only be cooling or stability. But Earth has a dynamic environment, so a period of relative stability, such as the twenty years after 1960 on the Oxford average temprature chart, can only be assumed to be normal on the unproven supposition that without mankind the temprature will remain constant.

Undoubtedly we need a baseline, and 1961-90 is a reasonable range. But to set this up with a preconception about why temperatures might rise at the end of the period (presumably because in many cases they had) is not good science.

Unity @24

If I want to know if snow is settling I look at grass and at roofs. I am well aware of the effects of grit on snowfall.

And if scientists are using a reference point based on the best-quality data, shouldn’t that now be 1971-2000? Regardless, it still implies that earlier data is of lesser quality, and therefore should not be used in the construction of models. I know this would make the subject more difficult, but is not rigour essential in science?

Slightly OT, but on the4 subject of slightly potty “skeptics”, here’s Ian Plimer finally debating AGW with George Monbiot – superb stuff!

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200912/r487279_2511549.asx

Which leads to the interesting question of what is meant by normal? In light of that provisio, which assumes warming results from greenhouse gases, this can only be cooling or stability.

………..

No.

The science just does not work on such a simplistic level.

Central is the nature of different “forcings” on the climate, both natural and man-made.

If you are really interested you should look at the IPCC report here:

IPCC Report 2007

Page 40 is particularly relevant.

Unity

You have proved two things with this post.

1) Iain Dale is a complete and utter dick-head who shouldn’t be allowed near a PC, far less a blog.

2) We’re doomed, especially if we live in Oxford.

Given the general level of intelligence being exhibited by the average human being in relation to this topic, it’s probably just as well. Bring on the dinosaurs, it’s time they got another shot.

pagar, that is my favourite comment of yours. Hear, hear that man!

Add another column to the data set (’tave’) and calculate the mean temperature for each month. This is the simple arithmetic mean of the mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures – (’tmax’+’tmin)/2.

You can’t imply an average temperature from min and max data. For an example, what if we have scores of 2,3,3,3,4 and 7? The mean average is 3.7 but your min/max method would give a score of 4.5 as the average.

Why the MetOffice doesn’t just give the average overall temperature I’ve no idea.

@DHG

pagar, that is my favourite comment of yours.

Thanks, mate.

My post was intended to be misanthropic and homophobic- obviously I fucked up somewhere. 🙂

It’s good to know that the Conservative party is now just copying the American Republicans. Anti science, anti abortion, anti national health service, etc etc. Basically, they are a just bunch of insane , greedy morons.

What ever ‘call me Dave’ says is all smoke and mirrors. The people behind Dave are a bunch of raving loonies. Just a shame that the Lib Dems and the Labour party can’t explain that to the British people.

What a terrific post. Thanks.

Given the general level of intelligence being exhibited by the average human being in relation to this topic, it’s probably just as well.

In the long and medium term, climate change bad enough, but its starting to get to the point where in the short term I am just as much worried by _intellect change_.

It seems the dumber and more anti-science you have to be to deny AGW, the dumber and more anti-science the right wing gets. Presumably, as the last few gaps in the science get filled in, that level of dumbness can only increase.

Thatcher, for all her faults, was a trained professional scientist. What’s going to happen when the economy is in the hands of people who have had the numeracy driven out of them by know-nothing propaganda?

What happens if that level of denialist nonsense gets applied to not just science, but history, education, health?

The observable thinning of polar ice sheets and rapidly shortening mountain glaciers are pretty compelling evidence for the fact of global warming.

Intelligent sceptics focus more on the challenging issue of how much is man-made when we recognise the real evidence for historic natural variations – such as the medieval warm period and the little ice age:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_of_the_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_in_IPCC_reports

Assessing the underlying motivation of those railing against global warming is speculative. My intuition is that they are obsessive about dismissing any possible rationale for departures from complete laissez-faire for free markets: state intervention is bad, therefore there can be no such thing as global warming.

Unity – Those are schoolboy methods

Firstly – you can import direct to excel – you don’t need to fanny about with word

Secondly, what you have produced is the mean of the mean, generally, in a time series (which is the technical name for what you have attempted to do) a technique called moving averages is used. I can’t be bothered to explain it but look it up.

Thirdly, you don’t need to “add up and divide by 30” use the “count” fiunction to count the data series and then divide by the total of the values in the range

Fourthly, how do you explain the apparent cooling in the 1960s ?

If you are going to criticise the methods of others, make sure yours are bullet proof first.

“it’s good to know that the Conservative party is now just copying the American Republicans. Anti science, anti abortion, anti national health service, etc etc. Basically, they are a just bunch of insane , greedy morons”.

Sally – get it into your head, the left are anti-science, the left are constructivists (in laymans terms believing in “nurture” rather than nature explanations for behaviour), you cannot be politically correct and pro-science, they are irreconcilably opposed. No scientists would ever claim, for example that men and women are “the same”, as many lefties did in the 1990s.
The right, on the other hand are generally “nature” (i.e scientists) your favourite terms of abuse (“brownshirts”) employed a lot of doctors, rocket scientists, chemists, physicists etc, did they not ?

Can I just ask, if the left is anti-science why is it predominantly the right that pushes for the teaching of creationism alongside evolution?

Why is it predominantly the right that oppose evidence based proposals like decriminalisation of drugs, or needle sharing schemes?

Was it the spectator or the new statesman that was recently applauding Ian Pilmer’s work, or screening a film that was essentially propaganda for the aids denialism movement,

Why is it predominantly the right that is influenced by religious groups?

I certainly wouldn’t go as far as to say that the right is anti-science but I don’t think the idea that the right is “nature (i.e. scientists) is really justified, the right has at least it’s fair share of anti science nutters.

Oh dear, I seem to have a stalker.

I guess I should take it as compliment.

41 “get it into your head, the left are anti-science”

You obviosly have never met the American Right wing, which is what the British Conservatives are turning into. The party of Churchill, is now the party of Dale, Guido , and Clarkson.

You can’t imply an average temperature from min and max data. For an example, what if we have scores of 2,3,3,3,4 and 7? The mean average is 3.7 but your min/max method would give a score of 4.5 as the average.

You can, if the minimum and maximum figures are taken from a continuous time series, provided that you assume, or can demonstrate, a more or less linear relationship between the two.

In other words, what we’re dealing with here are approximations that are of sufficient quality, accuracy and resolution to assess a long-term trend.

Unity – Those are schoolboy methods

Of course they are, that’s all you need to use to calculate the trends from this data, which is precisely the point I’m making.

Firstly – you can import direct to excel – you don’t need to fanny about with word

Have you even bothered to look at the data files?

The Oxford file is in plain text and the formatting of the main table is uneven in places, hence the need to use Word to convert it into a comma separated variable file.

Secondly, what you have produced is the mean of the mean, generally, in a time series (which is the technical name for what you have attempted to do) a technique called moving averages is used. I can’t be bothered to explain it but look it up.

I know perfectly well what moving averages are and could easily have used them – it makes no difference to the trend line – but what I specifically wanted to do here was produce a set of easy to follow instructions that would enable anyone who can do very basic maths to do their own analysis of the Met Office’s data sets.

Thirdly, you don’t need to “add up and divide by 30? use the “count” fiunction to count the data series and then divide by the total of the values in the range

Why would I use the ‘count’ function, when I can just use “=average(sum(‘first cell reference’:’last cell reference’))”?

Remember, this is all a bit of a “how to” for people who aren’t used to analysing time series data.

Fourthly, how do you explain the apparent cooling in the 1960s ?

Like this…

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century.htm

Matt Munro @ 41

Even this late in the year you manage to find a strong contender for the ‘Most idiotic thing Matt Munro has posted all year’ award, well done you have kept a high standard of risible statements on more or less a steady stream and this is up there with even the most idiotic of them on just about every level.

Even if we were to your sweeping generalisation and utterly simplistic assertion regarding the left’s position on ‘nature/nurture’ debate was as one sided as you suggest as a given, surely you can see that such a debate would constitute a ‘scientific’ debate.

If we were to discuss, say homosexuality and the part that nature/nurture influences it, that would be a legitimate area of scientific study, would it not? IF the consensus among researches found that nurture was the decisive factor, how can you possibly assert that:

a) Such a conclusion was either Left or Right Wing position
b) Such a conclusion was ‘anti science’?

As for your assertion that the left are anti science, well I have news for you buddy. Had you thought about for about 4 seconds, you will have realised that it is not the Left that promote religion, deny evolution, promote intelligent design, resist stem cell research and denounce IVF. It was the church (a pretty Right wing group of people at the time) who disputed the shape of the Earth, its position both in the solar system and the Universe. Let’s face it Matt, the Right have shat the nest on Global Warming. It is your ilk that declared war against the scientific community by claiming that they were all corrupt conspirators in a massive tax fraud. It is the Right that have coughed up millions of dollars in PR fees trying to convince the public that the science community was dishonestly hiding the MWP and the like from the public when nothing of the sort has taken place. You are the people were quite happy to make idiots of yourselves by repeating progressively more ludicrous quibbles regarding the fundamentals of the science behind GW. For what? Your own fucking greed, that’s what. You cannot contemplate that you are wrong and your fucking mentality prevents you from looking objectivity at the evidence.

Every Right Whinger on the planet is the same; faced with evidence that contradicts your snivelling little prejudices, then the evidence, not you prejudices, must be biased.

On so many debates that might work, but on science. The laws of physics do not change because it would be convenient. That is why the Right are anti science by instinct (except when it happens to coincide with their prejudices); science is about objectivity and research. Being a Tory is about petty bigotry and mindless prejudice.

Another post asked what drive denialism. The answer is simple: Typical Tory greed at the cost of anything else.

@sally’s twiny

Anti-Sally.Well–it was only a matter of time.Somebody should call in the para-normal quick reaction team.This is an “anomily”if ever I saw one.
Lets hope we can stop it spreading before its too late.
Oh shit,I just remembered,it’s too late already.Millions of Sally clones were rolled of the assembly lines back in the sixties.
The question now is—-which Sally is the right-wing troll.
I suspect both of them.

For the avoidance of any doubt, the anti-Sally’s troll posts have been removed, not because of the trolling but because the idiot in question chose to use website urls linking to bestiality porn images when posting.

Interesting post, and I see Iain Dale has posed up a non-denial denial of his denial, which may be a first.
Personally, I subscribe to the Dick The Prick argument.
Global warming probably is happening, and it’s probably exacerbated by human activity, but flying a load of politicians to various capital cities around the world every now and then for an enormous talkfest is not going to solve the problem, and neither is bankrupting ourselves by building windmills all over the country. I’m not sure that I know what is going to solve it, sadly, as the BRIC economies grow.
If AGW is real, our best hope is to find ways to live with it.
On a tangential note, it would be better if Al Gore didn’t use 10x the electricity of the average American, Prince Charles didn’t take a private jet to Copenhagen, the UK government didn’t introduced a car scrappage scheme or agree extra runways. It does make those prone to suspicion suspicious.
Additionally, abusing sceptics as per some of the above posts is a bit daft.
For example ‘Jim’ above:
‘Another post asked what drive denialism. The answer is simple: Typical Tory greed at the cost of anything else.’
This assumes that ‘Tories’ and ‘Big Oil’ and all ‘deniers’ are stuffed to the gunwhales with people who have no children, or grandchildren, or who want to live their own final years in a 40 degree smog.
I think this is no less bizarre or irrational than assuming the AGW is nothing more than a plot to tax us till our pips squeak.

In teresting…oxford would have been a centre of the car industry for much of the 20thc…maybe with activity peaking in the 50s and 60s, with old technology. So it seems interesting that the temperature patterns don’t seem to show a very good correlation – to my eyes, the trend seems to go down when the emissions would have been highest. Obviously there are time-lags involved…but any thoughts on causality? A trend is just a trend…not worth much without an understanding of why the trend should be there.

In teresting…oxford would have been a centre of the car industry for much of the 20thc…maybe with activity peaking in the 50s and 60s, with old technology. So it seems interesting that the temperature patterns don’t seem to show a very good correlation – to my eyes, the trend seems to go down when the emissions would have been highest.

Your eyes need to learn to distinguish between weather and climate.

@ 44 Jim – I’ll ignore you’re puerile rant. Your gay example shows you to be berefet of the intellect to understand either the development of left wing thinking (and the philosophy that necessarily underpins it), or the actual meaning of science (clue, it doesn’t mean “debate”, which is a concept from the humanities, science establishes universal truths, it doesn’t debate). I’ll use a really simple example for your really simple brain.

Consider a totem of the left, the concept of “society”.

It can’t be measured, it can’t be weighed, it can’t be seem or touched, it has no mass. It’s a (wait for it) social *construction” ie a concept whose meaning is mediated by interractions between people.

To a scientist it doesn’t exist.

Ever met a leftie who would agree there’s no such thing as “society” ?

Case rested. Twat.

Since when did anyone on the left claim that their concept of “society” is a scientific one?

It’s fair enough that they try these sort of tricks.

This ‘war on science’ works pretty well for Republicans in the US, so I guess it’s worth a punt here.

If experts can’t even agree about a narrow scientific question, like the effects of cholesterol on the body, what hope for grandiose theories about climate change?

Listen to Dr Kendrick informing his audience that raised cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease (at least no scientific model exists to substantiate this claim) yet the NHS spends a £1 BILLION each year on the ubiquitous ‘statin’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPYaVcXo1I

In some circles challenging the statin orthodoxy may well result in accusations of ‘cholesterol denier’.

Apart from Unity (and even then I still have doubts) how many commentators understand, or have even read the source data upon which claims about the climate have been made – very few I would imagine?

I have no idea if the scientific evidence stacks up (vis-a-vis climate change) but Lord Monckton’s interview with one Greenpeace-campaigner suggests that not all activists choose to burden themselves with any substantial understanding of the evidence?

Oops – link to the interview with the climate change activist is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkB5DuveDE

“@ 44 Jim – I’ll ignore you’re puerile rant. Your gay example shows you to be berefet of the intellect to understand either the development of left wing thinking (and the philosophy that necessarily underpins it), or the actual meaning of science (clue, it doesn’t mean “debate”, which is a concept from the humanities, science establishes universal truths, it doesn’t debate). I’ll use a really simple example for your really simple brain.”

So the establishment of a universal truth requires no debate within the scientific community regarding the merits of evidence and experiments?

Universal truths are hard to prove (if possible at all) it would be insane if science set out to establish them without debate on the strength of hypotheses.

Some of the most important scientific discoveries were not discoveries of a universal truth but a significant advancement in knowledge (a good example being the various hypothesised structures of an atom that have existed) and allowed further advancement by other scientists testing their ideas further or debating their interpretation of the evidence.

your interpretation of science as a body that provides absolute truths seems to suggest some level of misunderstanding of the scientific method.

“Consider a totem of the left, the concept of “society”.

It can’t be measured, it can’t be weighed, it can’t be seem or touched, it has no mass. It’s a (wait for it) social *construction” ie a concept whose meaning is mediated by interractions between people.

To a scientist it doesn’t exist.

Ever met a leftie who would agree there’s no such thing as “society” ?

Case rested. Twat.”

I’ve met righties that won’t agree there’s no such thing as god, fairness or morality, surely those abstract concepts are equally immeasurable so to a scientist do not exist (although I’ve also met scientists that think there is such thing as a society or a god, though they’re probably left-wing or twats (as you so eloquently pointed out) so no doubt they don’t count for anything).

Unity, using a moving average trendline does make a difference, as it’s less likely to introduce artifacts (such as short-to-medium term cooling/warming periods that don’t exist) which are just the function of the mathematical formula. Lowess would also work quite nicely here.

Matt @ 50

You seem to be all over the place now. It appears that you are unable to pass up any opportunity to further humiliate yourself.

From what you appear to be saying you are attempting to suggest a belief in social constructs and the laws of physics are mutually exclusive, hence this little gem:

Matt Munro comment 40.
Sally – get it into your head, the left are anti-science, the left are constructivists (in laymans terms believing in “nurture” rather than nature explanations for behaviour),

Yet even thinking about this for a second, I and every other normal person on this thread can quite happily believe in the concept of social constructs and the laws of science. They form different parts of our existence.

No-one here would claim that anyone who believes in social constructs like, morality, ethics, property, honesty, the law, community, the Nation State, borders, manners, the highway code, capitalism, currency, culture, education, theft, murder, rape, genocide etc cannot accept the laws of physics.

Or are you suggesting that no scientist believes in the concept of honesty because he cannot weigh it?

Andrew Adams @ 51

Interesting point. Does anthropology count as a science? If so, although ‘society’ does not exist in the physical sense, surely its effects can be, albeit it in fuzzy terms? Language must be a construct of society, but science CAN define language, even if they cannot put a coat on it.

Unity, using a moving average trendline does make a difference, as it’s less likely to introduce artifacts (such as short-to-medium term cooling/warming periods that don’t exist) which are just the function of the mathematical formula. Lowess would also work quite nicely here.

I used a 6th order polynomial to map the trend lines on the graphs – this gives an identical line trend-line, whether you use a derived annual mean or a moving average, although the moving average does give a noisier graph and smooth out some of the peaks in raw data.

#53 a&echarge nurse- I thought the point about statins was that (unlike homeopathy) they could be shown to work even without a precise method of action being known. To go back a century or two, the atomists won out in chemistry long before we could ‘see’ atoms using TEM and various other types of instrument.

As for Monkton versus a greenpeace activist, Monkton is seriously wrong about the science, and I don’t have high hopes for any activists of any sort to grasp the whole of the science. The scientists themselves have trouble, thats why they end up with theIPCC report. (Of which I have read most of it)

Not doubting that the 6th degree polynomial isn’t too different to the moving average, but the latter is definitely more suitable. Unless you really are expecting the data to correspond to some natural law that fits an n-th degree polynomial function, it’s best avoided. Also, see Deltoid on denialists misusing 6-th degree curves.

Blame Microsoft for not including more options.

Anyway, I’ll get some loess curves fitted at some point later and post them up, hopefully for each of the weather stations too. Wouldn’t imagine there being much difference though.

Can I just clear up some misunderstandings about science

I did not claim that scientists don’t debate. MMGW is not about scientists debating , the debate seems to come from everyone but scientists.
I don’t personally agree/disagree with climate scientists and I wouldn’t claim a deep understanding of the data. What I disagree with is the constructions which have grown around the (most alarmist) interpretation of that data.
Even if the earth is warming, I don’t accept that is unequivocally a bad thing, because I don’t know what the effects might be. Even people who agree that warming is happening and is man made don’t know what the med/long term consequences of that might be, they are basically guessing.
I certainly do not accept that putting up a few windmills, changing some lightbulbs and going no further than Cornwall on holiday is going to change the outcome significantly.

Secondly, all this hysteria about carbon masks the really “inconvenient truth”. If we stop using fossil fuels tomorrow this is what would happen;

Within 24 hours most of the lights would go out. The old and young would die of hypothermia within a week. Within 2-3 days, even if you could get to one, all the supermarkets would be empty. Even if they weren’t, the entire financial system would have shut down so how would you buy anything.
Within a fortnight those who hadn’t frozen or starved to death would be reduced to a nomadic existience which conisted of looting, picking berries and quite possibly cannibalism. There would be no one to keep the peace and genuine anarchy would break out. Civilastion as it is currently understood would cease.

Warmers are asking me to accept that scanrio is somehow preferable to a (maybe) increase in global temperatures of (maybe) 2 degrees in (maybe) 50 years time ?? Go figure what my answer might be.

[60] true, Guthrie, statins reduce cholesterol BUT …………

The cholesterol hypothesis simply does not bear scrutiny for claims made about the role it plays (as a causative agent) for heart attack or stroke.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAE78.htm

More importantly the NHS now spends a BILLION on statins (once we factor in blood tests and cost of medical consultations, etc) – money that is NOT going into palliative care or mental health services to cite just two cinderella services.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123721/

So, to reiterate – if ‘experts’ cannot even provide definitive answers for narrow scientific questions (despite enormous cost implications), what hope when it comes to complex, and politically volatile issues like climate change?

The lack of knowledge/expertise amongst the general populace seems to be a contributory factor in the hyperbolic, and even hysterical way in which climate change debate is usually framed?
As I say, it is my impression that the technical knowledge required to unpack the various data-sets if far too challenging for casual observers to navigate at source?

what “warmists” are stating we should stop using fossil fuels tomorrow, who is telling you this is preferable?

I can’t believe someone would try and paint themselves as rational and follow it up with such an absurd strawman argument

As I say, it is my impression that the technical knowledge required to unpack the various data-sets if far too challenging for casual observers to navigate at source?

Why would you need to personally do that in order to understand the scientific arguments for AGW? Do you doubt that the data really does show that warming is taking place?

Consider a totem of the left, the concept of “society”. It can’t be measured, it can’t be weighed, it can’t be seem or touched, it has no mass. It’s a (wait for it) social *construction” ie a concept whose meaning is mediated by interractions between people. To a scientist it doesn’t exist. Ever met a leftie who would agree there’s no such thing as “society” ? Case rested. Twat.

That is one of the stupidest things I have read for a very long time.

It is very rare that I use an outright insult in an internet comment thread but I just don’t see how it can be avoided here.

As an academic philosopher my brain is almost fried just trying to come to terms with the extent of the errors in reasoning in that one single passage.

[65] well, as I understand it, Andrew the planet was hotting up and cooling down long before homo sapien’s addiction to carbon emissions

I assume you believe there is dangerous warming?

As a matter of interest when did you arrive at this conclusion and what source (specifically) helped you decide it must be so?

@66 “As an academic philosopher my brain is almost fried just trying to come to terms with the extent of the errors in reasoning in that one single passage.”

In other words like all lefties you can’t come up with a riposte so you resort to an ad hom

“academic philosopher” my arse. Patronising wanker is more like it.

Ease up Twat Munro!

“@64 what “warmists” are stating we should stop using fossil fuels tomorrow, who is telling you this is preferable?”

Sorry did I miss the bit where the green party were lobbying for lower petrol taxes and encoraging everyone to use 4x4s for the supermarket run ? The objective of the climate change campaigners is to reduce fossil fuel usage is it not ? I’m simply pointing out the logical conclusion of that perspective.
If you are not arguing to stop fossil fuel usage then you must be arguing for it to be rationed – in which case who gets to eat, and who decides ?

well, as I understand it, Andrew the planet was hotting up and cooling down long before homo sapien’s addiction to carbon emissions

Of course, but that does not mean that we are not responsible for the current warming.

I assume you believe there is dangerous warming?

Yes

As a matter of interest when did you arrive at this conclusion and what source (specifically) helped you decide it must be so?

I honestly can’t remember when, it was a few years ago. As for my sources, well it’s dificult to be specific – I was originally inclined to defer to the overwhelming majority of expert opinion (as on most subjects) but my understanding has gradually increased over the years from reading things such as the IPCC reports and summaries published by national scientific instiutions, trawling the internet and following online discussions (with the obvious disclaimers about being sure of peoples’ credentials and that they can back up the claims they make).

The objective of the climate change campaigners is to reduce fossil fuel usage is it not ? I’m simply pointing out the logical conclusion of that perspective.

No you’re not. You’re like a fifty stone man who’s been advised to lose some weight as a matter of urgency. And he protests that if he loses fourty-six stone he’ll be dangerously malnourished and in danger of starving to death and will the authoritarian lefty medical establishment be happy then eh? Eh??

i.e your argument is as idiotic as it is irrelevant.

In other words like all lefties you can’t come up with a riposte so you resort to an ad hom… “academic philosopher” my arse. Patronising wanker is more like it.

To be honest, I am not even sure how we are communicating. I mean, words don’t have mass and cannot be touched so it seems that for you they do not “exist”.

They exist in both our perceptions (measurable by neuroiscientists) otherwise we couldn’t have this conversation

@72. So you don’t want to eradicate fossil fuel usage, just reduce it ? I ask again then, who gets to use it and who decides ?

@63, the link you’ve posted there proves the contention that “for any given bizarre contrarian assertion, it’s straightforward to find someone with a doctorate in something willing to make a case for it that’ll fool the scientifically illiterate, and even easier to get said case published on Spiked Online”. It doesn’t prove much else.

@Matt, really, please stop; you’re embarrassing yourself here.

@75 if a restricted amount of a commodity is available, then you can use market mechanisms to allocate it, or you can use rationing (which can be based either on a specific amount per individual or on perceived need).

These have their pros and cons, but both are widely used, separately or together, as ways of allocating more or less everything that there is. There’s no reason why this should be any different for fossil fuel.

if you think an average of mean_max_temp and mean_min_temp is the same as the mean_temp then you don’t know your stats

So you don’t want to eradicate fossil fuel usage, just reduce it ?

Well, duh.

That you even ask such a question is enough to convince me that this is not going to be a productive discussion. But just quickly…

I ask again then, who gets to use it and who decides ?

Anyone who wants to, but they will use less, because it will more expensive. I would suggest that the market should decide for the most part, with a bit of help from the rest of us to subsidise essentials such as heating and transport.

Larry @ 80

Why not simply calculate how much fossil fuel we can use per capita then allocate fuel credits to everyone on a monthly basis. Then we can have a market for people to buy/sell as they wish?

Matt #62 – your hypothetical situation seems to involve an immediate end to the use of fossil fuels without any alternatives, leading to massive die offs etc. Back in the real world even the extremist greens are saying we need to put replacements in place and change our way of life over time, not immediately stop using fossil fuels and thus end civilisation. I’m sure you can find one or two ranters who say we should immediately go back to the stone age, although they’ll be saying it from their already upholstered caves and are as relevant as american survivalists in log cabins with a million rounds of ammo.

a&e charge nurse – interestingly enough AGW is, to judge by that article, more strongly founded than high cholesterol being bad for you, because of its roots in physics and various real world observtions such as stratospheric cooling, increased night time temperatures etc. On the other hand we simply can’t expect everyone in the general populace to understand it, and certainly the majority lack the technical knowledge to understand the roots of the matter. The world gets ever more complex and specialisation increases, such that there is simply not enough time to comprehend it all. Some people watch football and memorise many statistics about their team; others read up on science and try to understand what is going on. But there isn’t enough time to do both and have a job and other stuff. Thus at some level it has to be decided by experts or elected representatives or whatever.

@ 79 “Anyone who wants to, but they will use less, because it will more expensive. I would suggest that the market should decide for the most part, with a bit of help from the rest of us to subsidise essentials such as heating and transport”.

Doh… the market DOES decide now, and the warmist say we are using too much. I ask again, how will you ration fossil fuel usage ? I also don’t understand why you would tax something and subsidise it

For fuck sake Matt!

I wish there was something before Physics 101 and Economics 101 that I could sign you up for.

From the IMF.

The science of the issue can get pretty incomprehensible pretty quickly. And the politics are clearly very ugly. Let’s not forget, however, that much of the economics is simple.

It’s an externality, stupid — so price it.

[76] no, that’s not quite right.

There is a substantial and profitable industry surrounding statins (worth a billion in the NHS) yet the basic science does not stack up.

This is not the view of a sole contrarian (as you suggest) – look at this, there are several authorities who feel very uneasy about mass statinisation.
http://www.thegreatcholesterolcon.com/

In fact, statins are a perfect example of the consequences that arise when scientific myth and public gullibility collide.

I must admit I’m not surprised by skepticism to climate change, especially when terms like ‘denial’ are bandied about, and substantial sums of money ride on the back of belief in certain complex theories.

I also don’t understand why you would tax something and subsidise it

I think this thread has amply demonstrated that you don’t understand anything about anything, so I’m not too worried about the implications for my suggestion.

A&E:

While you right to point out that the jury is still out, to a considerable extent, when it comes assessing the effectiveness of using statins as a preventative measure, I would suggest that you take a little more care over your choice of sources and authorities.

If you want examples of sceptical commentaries and research then check out the last couple of references (48 & 49) on this Wikipedia article – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statins – both of which comes from reputable journals (The Lancet and BMJ).

Just don’t cite Colpo, who has zero credibility and can only get published either by putting out his own e-Books or in JPANDS, which has an utterly abysmal reputation for publishing politicised junk science papers by total crackpots.

In fact, if you take the time to look up Colpo’s main site – http://www.anthonycolpo.com/ – you’ll find that he’s nothing more than another diet industry shark peddling his own diet plans while trying to shit on the competition.

Sorry did I miss the bit where the green party were lobbying for lower petrol taxes and encoraging everyone to use 4×4s for the supermarket run ? The objective of the climate change campaigners is to reduce fossil fuel usage is it not ? I’m simply pointing out the logical conclusion of that perspective.
If you are not arguing to stop fossil fuel usage then you must be arguing for it to be rationed – in which case who gets to eat, and who decides ?

Can someone plot a graph showing number of scientific papers providing evidence of global warming, versus the estimated level of cognitive capability of those arguing against it?

Because the latter just seems to have dropped off a cliff recently. To seriously make an argument of the form _if you want to go to the shops, that is a form of ‘going’, so you must want to go to Alaska’_ is just beyond belief. If some 200 line computer program generated that argument, you would fire up the debugger.

I think it may be time to call a moratorium on all global warming research: any more evidence, and those opposing it may lose the mental capability to chew their food, or breathe…

How easy is it to wind you people up?

Dale must be laughing all the way to “Victor’s” stats bank.

Oh the old ‘winding up’ line, otherwise known as trolling.

Seriously, Iain wasn’t joking and winding people up with climate change denial is pretty lame.

@ 87. But I’m not using my “cognitive capacities” (age adjusted Stanford-Binet is 129 since you ask) as a reason for us all to be taxed and regulated. No one seems able to answer a simple question.
We’ve established that the consensus is to reduce carbon emissions, but how that is to be done and who should bear the consequent pain seems beyond the wit of anyone on LC, which is weird considering the amount of airtime the “let’s all panic” message gets here.
Could it be that most of the contributors are rich enough not to bear any of the pain, and hence the question doesn’t strike them as important.

@90 Carbon Tax!

We tax carbon and the funds collected are used to reduce other taxes.

As Carbon Taxes take effect their revenues will reduce and other taxes will have to rise to take up the slack but the tax burden will be neutral.

This tax would be set at a level whereby the costs of Carbon emissions are reclaimed through taxation. Unfortunately, estimates run between $7 and $154 per tonne of Carbon emitted (pdf), so we’ll probably have to do a bit more research before we know what level to set it at (or alternatively, someone with more resources than google, can find out).

Other taxes on things like petrol could be replaced with this carbon tax so everyone’s happy.

People who use carbon will bear the pain, general taxation could be set a little higher and subsidies provided for those in need, similar to the winter fuel (winter carbon?) allowance.

You wanna sign up Matt?

But that already happens……car usage is already heavily taxed (it is in fact the only form of transport that already pays for it’s externalities), the next biggest cause of emissions is commerce/industry, you would have to significantly increase taxes on gas and electricity, causing inflation, next is domestivc fuel usage, increasing taxes there disproprtionately hits the poor and elderley,and increases inflation. Next is air travle, more tax there reduces most peoples ability to travel, increases costs for business and makes imports more expensive, all inflationary. The point that keeps getting missed in the hysteria about the numbers is that it’s not just the oil companies,bankers and the mysterious ranks of “capitalists” that benefit from a fossil fuel economy, everyone does.
Anyway, even if all that were manageable, governments record on hypothecation isn’t great (Road tax doesn’t get spent on roads, nor national insurance on pensions/NHS) so I don’t beleive for a minute that other taxes would reduce.

“Seriously, Iain wasn’t joking and winding people up with climate change denial is pretty lame.”

Yes how dare you even attempt humour at such disgusting heresy: Climate change deniers should be burnt at the stake with the rest of the heretics.
Deniers, Deniers onto the fires!!!

[86] Thanks, Unity.

I do not want to derail this post by arguing the finer points of the cholesterol myth. All I’m saying is that many authorities insist the basic science propping up this hypothesis is untenable (and I agree with them).

You may not regard Colpo as a credible authority but in some ways that’s irrelevant because there are many other commentators who have arrived at similar conclusions – time will prove them right in my opinion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1638188?dopt=Abstract

To be clear – I’m NOT arguing against warming.
I freely admit I do not know enough about it (unlike the statin issue) but those who argue with such conviction that their conclusions are correct seem to be driven by political motives rather than a genuine grasp of the science.

The point is Matt that while Petrol is probably taxed at a level which reflects it social costs (as far as I’m aware, I’d be interested if someone could provide some info one way or t’other), however the majority of our carbon usage it not.

Although increasing taxes on some things would cause inflation, decreasing taxes on consumption (i.e. VAT) could partially counteract that. However, the point is to increase prices on certain goods to decrease their consumption, so worrying about inflation is to miss the point slightly, as other less carbon intense good would become cheaper.

The point you missing is that while “it’s not just the oil companies,bankers and the mysterious ranks of “capitalists” that benefit from a fossil fuel economy, everyone does” is only true to an extent. It is only true to the extent that you ignore the social cost of carbon emissions.

Benefits accrue to me by buying food grown with fertilisers derived from fossil fuels but the costs accrue elsewhere. For example, desertification, ocean acidification etc etc etc.

“How easy is it to wind you people up?”

Ah, just what we said at the top. It is all about pissing off liberals. That all You got. Certainly no science.

going back to 49….over how long a period does weather become climate? a flattish or decreasing trend when oxford was heavily industrialised but a rising one thereafter……are the causations really and thoroughly understood? Admittedly this is a single measurement station…but what is the range over which these trends might make an impact?

the climate scientists never say….(of course…because they sdemm not to have a theory that explains micro effects impacting the macro world)

Climate change deniers should be burnt at the stake with the rest of the heretics.

Well it’s more environmentally friendly than coal.

@97

30 years is the standard usually used, but there is a good duiscussion here

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/

At the risk of being branded a climate change denier where is the evidence that the rise in average temp for Oxford, and by implication the world, is man made?

The worlds climate has been through change in the past, much more dramatic than what we have witnessed so far, without the effects of man made CO2 polution being a factor. How do we know that the 1.5 degree rise in temperature is not part of some natural and as yet unexplianed fluctuation in the worlds climate?