Monday, July 20, 2009
Hannan Nate Silver Cools Off Climate Change Denialists
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM
1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25. 2. The challenge proceeds in monthly intervals, with the first month being August. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the winning and losing days and the loser writes the winner a check for the balance. 3. The challenge automatically rolls over to the next month until/unless: (i) one party informs the other by the 20th of the previous month that he would like to discontinue the challenge (that is, if you want to discontinue the challenge for September, you'd have to tell me this by August 20th), or (ii) the losing party has failed to pay the winning party in a timely fashion, in which case the challenge may be canceled at the sole discretion of the winning party.Silver's attempt to introduce accountability into the climate change debate is, ahem, a breath of (cold) fresh air. Even though I'd argue that the flat-earthers make this mistake more often, both sides of the global warming debate are guilty of using small sample-sizes (like one cool weekend in July or one scorcher in April) to make the case for their side. And, in almost every case, they all come off sounding like uneducated assholes. To that effect, it may come as no surprise that, two days out, Silver has no takers.
Comments (9)
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I wonder if one side will have to prove that the temperature difference is caused by human activities or will we just continue along with the science of Advanced Primate Capitalist Guilt.
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Moost,
You're two years too late with your denialist garbage.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined it was more than 90 percent certain that human activity causes climate change. The report is available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
Being a stats geek, I'm willing to take his challenge. But, I work for a living, so it'll have to be a penny instead of $25 a day.
Instead of writing this pompus jackass a check though, I'll write checks to Greenpeace, and the fundie charity of my choice.
Of course, Silver picked an El Nino year, which will produce a lot of outliers. I think this was stupid of him, but we'll see.
"Rockstar statistician Nate Silver..."
There's no such thing as "rockstar" statistician.
Tell you what, Nate:
You pay me $25 every day for the entire rest of your life that you are incapable of proving that a perfectly linear one for one correlation between variations in man made, so-called "greenhouse gasses" and variations in average global temperatures has existed for every single second of the entire timespan of human existence on this earth - and I'll pay you $25 for every day that you can prove that it does exist.
Because that is the only thing on earth that would ever actually prove it.
I do admit, I have never seen a term like "90% certainty" in a scientific paper before. I have seen that type of term in political type writings before. Are we to take political works as scientific gospel now?
@Gilbert Martin
"...a perfectly linear one for one correlation..."
One-For-One Linear? What about Three-For-Nine Linear? Or 5-To-82 Linear? Would they be OK?
That phrase right there is the part where you automatically disqualify yourself from any group, real or imagined, axiomatic or postulatory, in the entire timespan of of human existence who has ever had any relevance in any scientific discussion anywhere. The world is not linear.
@Moost
You haven't read many "scientific-type" writings then. You should investigate this new thing called the "Confidence Interval"? I learned about it back in the '80s when I was taking engineering classes. It's very subversive. It's been linked to some European-types, I think. Commies, probably.
"That phrase right there is the part where you automatically disqualify yourself from any group, real or imagined, axiomatic or postulatory, in the entire timespan of of human existence who has ever had any relevance in any scientific discussion anywhere."
Nope - you can't prove that any more than you can the existence of man-made global warming.
Yup.
The keyword here is *linear*. Your stated requirement for a linear correlation is faulty.
I'm not interested in proving anything to you. I'm pointing out the fact that nonlinear systems abound in nature, particularly where chemistry and transport phenomena are involved.
