Belgranoed, by God!

Sorry to return to this topic but, honestly, I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor, deluded HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics).  It is almost coming to a state of affairs that will require them to be included in any list of 'useless idiots', sneered at by the likes of 'Archbishop' Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, et al, for believing in something which has no rational basis for support.  One by one their pillars of wisdom have been undermined and brought crashing to a not particularly warm earth.  The latest attack, although I must emphasise that the authors of the attack remain strictly neutral on the question of whether the globe is warming or not, is aimed solely at the methodology employed in making forecasts.

One of the authors is J. Scott Armstrong, an international expert on scientific forecasting techniques who has published "Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners". His co-author in a recent paper (pdf format) produced for an International Symposium on Forecasting in New York is Kesten C. Green.  Here-after, I shall refer to them as A&G.  Lest some of the more excitable HAFs rush off to try and damn the pair of them for taking money from ...... (fill in hate org of choice!), neither of them were funded for this exercise.  They canvassed as many scientists and experts both pro and anti Global Warming as possible asking which source was considered the most reliable in providing a forecast of future climate.  From 51 replies, 30 scientific experts pointed at the "IPCC Working Group 1" paper as being the most credible.  So, A&G went to that paper and asked the following question: "Using forecasting principles as our guide [...], are these forecasts a good basis for developing public policy? Our answer is 'no'."   They continued, "In our audit of Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s WG1 Report, we found enough information to make judgements on 89 out of a total of 140 forecasting principles. The forecasting procedures that were described violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical." 

This is a novel attack on the whole global warming thesis for it makes no judgement of whether or not global warming exists but merely savages the methods used by 'scientific experts' to substantiate their forecasts  that the warming will increase, and thus subverts the preposterous claims of the politicians who base their policies on these very forecasts.  To ram home his criticisms, Armstrong has offered Al Gore a $20,000 bet that global temperatures over the next 10 years will remain roughly the same, as opposed to Gore's claim that they will rise dangerously.  So far Gore has not responded.  Perhaps he has in mind the famous wager between the late Julian Simon who bet that other infamous 'doomster', Paul Erlich, in 1980 that far from basic commodities such as copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten running out and therefor becoming hugely expensive over the next 10 years, the prices would actually fall.  Erlich lost but, to his credit, paid up.  I wonder if Gore would?

Just to rub in how crucially important it is that rigorous forecasting principles are applied to all forecasts, A&G remind us of some forecasts which made headlines in the New York Times during the last 80 years:

Sept. 18, 1924	“MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age”
March 27, 1933	“America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776”
May 21, 1974	“Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing: A Major Cooling Widely Considered to be Inevitable”
Dec. 27, 2005	“Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming”

They also provide us with a wry smile at the expense of some very eminent forecasters indeed:
"Although they may seem convincing at the time, expert forecasts make for humorous reading in retrospect. Cerf and Navasky’s (1998) book contains 310 pages of examples, such as Fermi Award-winning scientist John von Neumann’s 1956 prediction that "A few decades hence, energy may be free". Examples of expert climate forecasts that turned out to be completely wrong are easy to find, such as UC Davis ecologist Kenneth Watt’s prediction in a speech at Swarthmore College on Earth Day, April 22, 1970 that, "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age"

In view of their increasingly desperate plight, should we throw the HAFs a life line?  Nah!  Let 'em drown.

Comments

[Flying Rodent]

I'm agnostic about global warming myself - I only have a basic understanding of key scientific principles.

On the other hand, I would've thought you'd love environmentalists - all of you scour the web for news that confirms your firm belief that the end of the world is imminent.

You seem to think it's going to come at the hands of yobs and foreigners, whereas the greenies think it's man's iniquity that will do us in.

Any thoughts?

[David Duff]

"Any thoughts?"

My first thought, 'Ratty', is who the hell blogs at 1.40 am? My second thought was, who is this "all of you" that you refer to? I only ever speak or write on behalf of me ... ME, ME, ME!

I, too, have only the sketchiest scientific knowledge; and I, too, was agnostic on the subject until I began to read Climate Audit, Real Climate and Deltoid (amongst others) in an effort to understand both sides of the argument. Within a very few weeks I was convinced that the theories put forward by the HAFs was shot through with errors and bad, if not downright malignant, scientific bad practice.

If you (or anyone else) wants a quick and easily understood critique of just *one* of the HAFs' most basic assumptions, have a scroll down Anthony Watts's blog:

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/

with its photographs of the temperature recording sites in the USA upon which some of the so-called increase in global temperatures is based. You don't need a Nobel prize in physics to look at a photograph!

Then you can let me have *your* thoughts - which are always welcome.

[N.I.B.]

"I only ever speak or write on behalf of me ... ME, ME, ME!"

...and any similarites with Mark Steyn's writings are, of course, purely coincidental.

[David Duff]

'NIB the Obscure', for once, puts it exactly.

[N.I.B.]

Obscure? You're not *still* fuming about that joke you didn't understand, surely?

[David Duff]

Hardly, 'NIB', not least because I can't even remember what joke you are referring to - no, no, please don't tell it aain, I'm sure it was a side-splitter.

[Flying Rodent]

who the hell blogs at 1.40 am?

People who have just got home from the pub - chucking out time is a civilised 1.15 am on weekends, with some of them open 'til 2.30.

So, do you think that you and the hardcore greenies are cut from the same humanity-despising cloth?

[David Duff]

Good grief, 'Ratty', you're no more coherent at quarter past five in the afternoon than you are at 1.30 in the morning! You will have to explain that last sentence to me; or not, if you think it better left for dead!