In a People puff piece (I guess that’s redundant), no mention made of Al, Jr. It appears to have been rather a lavish affair:
The youngest of Al Gore’s three daughters, Sarah Gore, 28, married businessman Bill Lee in Beverly Hills on Saturday, family spokesperson Kalee Kreider confirms to PEOPLE.
The bride, who is taking her husband’s last name, wore a gown by Monique Lhuillier at the wedding, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
They run from about $2k to $10k. And I think that it’s wise of her to take her husband’s name, since people may not like Al Gore, but nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee.
Willie Nelson performed at the reception, according to a family friend who was there and described it as “a great party.”
And Willie ought to know. So, you know, maybe Al, Jr’s pharmacy came in handy.
The Gore family hosted a rehearsal dinner for 75 family and friends the previous evening at Beverly Hills’ Crustacean restaurant, a longtime favorite of the Gores.
Executive chef Helene An created a six-course tasting menu that included Chilean sea bass and roasted crab.
Chilean sea bass and (since it was roasted I expect) Alaskan king crab are both overfished, according to sources.
“Al was the life of the party,” says a source. “He and Tipper rocked on the dance floor.”
It’s true: I’ve never seen such a natural talent for The Robot.
But I want to emphasize once again what a tragedy it would have been had Al, Jr. died crashing his Prius with a head full of psychotropics, whereas those dopey privileged teenagers in New York state? They had it coming.
Is she hoping her new name will help her get past being a Gore?
‘Cause nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee!
“nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee.”
Confess. This whole post was designed around using that line, wasn’t it?
I report, Major John. I am a completely unbiased and objective intelligence. I am an invisible eyeball.
With fingers. And a keyboard.
TIm Blair is pointing out that the Sea Bass served at the wedding feast (I wish the young couple well) is apparently in danger of going extinct. More of Papa Gore’s care of the environment he alleges to worry about?
I suppose that going after people’s family is easier than attacking what they advocate, especially when they have a vast majority of the world’s scientists saying the same thing. I honestly don’t know what you must be reading if you think that Gore’s message is so utterly false, but then I read recently how 68% of Republicans don’t believe in evolution.
Are there any environmental policies you guys can live with? It just seems to me that anyone who says anything about environmental issues is an extremist or a whacko. How much longer can we go on with this “The world is the world’s biggest toilet” school of thought?
Evolution is a concept that maintains its integrity irrespective of belief in it. This can be proven scientifically. To frame evolution as a belief system is to equate science with religion. This is far more damaging to the integrity of the practice of science than anything a happy band of creationists could ever hope to achieve.
How long do you plan to be floating turds like that in it?
To frame evolution as a belief system is to equate science with religion. This is far more damaging to the integrity of the practice of science than anything a happy band of creationists could ever hope to achieve.
Is this the new talking point they are teaching you in Bible school? This is just another of your ridiculous semantic games to get around actually committing yourself one way or the other. I believe that the earth is spherical. Is that equating science with religion? The only people who frame evolution as a belief system are the religious nuts who desperately cling to a literal interpretation of the Bible. It isn’t a belief system; it is the cornerstone of modern biology.
Attacking the wording of a phrase (in this case a single word, “beliefâ€Â) or the bearer of the news (Al Gore) means that you don’t have to say that you agree with the scientists, thus keeping your neo-con credentials intact while not coming off as a complete idiot who dwells in willful ignorance.
ronaldo
Breath into a paper bag already.
Evolution is not the cornerstone of modern biology, it is a theory that attempts to explain origin of species through selective process and spot genetic mutations. The theory has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt despite the work of some scientists who, with evangelical fervor, proclaim its truth as mere fact. This is not a creationist/religious argument but one that reflects the principles of scientific proof. There are aspects of the theory that continue to raise questions for many scientists so framing this as a Republican or Fundamentalist Christian dogma war ignores the science which, I believe, is the point that happy was trying to make.
As far as Al Gore, we can agree that he is not a scientist. My problem with him is that he’s overstating the potential for disaster in a deliberate attempt to strong arm the world into responding in a way that meets his agenda. Even some of his pet scientists have admitted that the movie grossly exaggerated the potential for damage. We scoff because he follows in the footsteps of eco freaks past who have predicting the end of the world for about 40 years now. Some of us are funny in that we’d like to review the data, seek opinion and consider the costs vs the problem. This coupled with Gore’s gargantuan familial carbon footprint, his part ownership of several mining operations and the fact that he pays his carbon indulgences to his own company leads us to both question and ridicule, thus causing the collateral damage of credibility to the entire plea.
I reject the notion that we have to swallow the kool aide exactly as framed by you and others like Gore as being the only doctrinally acceptable narrative. We’ve had extensive discussions framing both sides of the issue. You might be persuaded that we’re dealing with settled science but a certain level of common sense demands the asking of questions.
If that makes me and anyone who feels like me a toxic trash burning, spotted owl hunting, DDT spraying, CO2 spewing neo con synagogue burning religious hoo haa, then feel free to color your world.
Boy, ‘Naldo sure hates it when he tries to serve up a flame war and somebody turns the other cheek.
Funny how he skipped right over this bit, ain’t it?
And then he goes on to rant about “talking points from Bible school”. Heh.
tw: gnawing becomes
I get this image of the two of them sitting in the middle of dance floor, rocking back and forth, ropes of spittle flowing to the floor…
“Boy, ‘Naldo sure hates it when he tries to serve up a flame war and somebody turns the other cheek.”
When someone shoots a couple of rounds from a cap gun, you don’t reply with howitzers.
TW: moral criterion – yes, I do try to follow them.
Sorry, Major John.
I embrace the time tested doctrine of overwhelming force.
I learned it in Bible school…
He’s just arguing against the strawman he brought.
Then there’s the irony of someone beating his breast over people not “believing” in evolution while screeching that we should be trying to prevent the climate from changing a teensy little bit. Um, ‘naldo, climate change has been a major driver in evolution, and that change has not been driven by humanity. The Ice Ages came and went without an SUV in sight.
And which side of the debate treats certain figures *cough* Algore *cough* as near-religious. No one’s attacking Algore’s family; they’re attacking his hypocrisy. I take maybe two flights a year, and live in a small condo. Algore jets around the world, owns multiple homes, and one of those homes consumes many, many times as much energy as an average family of four. I don’t pose as an environmental activist while knoshing on endangered fish and crustaceans.
And I love this:
That’s just sad.
I, for one, know the Earth is spherical — or rather, nearly spherical. As I understand, it’s actually closer to pear-shaped, with a bit of a bulge south of the equator. See, I’ve educated myself enough to understand the arguments and experiments, conducted some of them myself, and don’t merely have to take it as a belief.
But then again, I don’t accept that anthropogenic global warming is a looming disaster that requires us to reorganize society in a way that, oddly, puts the Algores of the world in power.
So what do I know?
You don’t? Why not?
especially when they have a vast majority of the world’s scientists saying the same thing
A heady mix of argument from authority and fallacy of composition. The vast majority of the world’s scientists aren’t climate scientists. Moreover, many published climate scientists would appear to be very poor statisticians (see the Wegman/BASA review of Dr. Mann’s work for an infamous example). Fitting gigantic intertemporal models is very, very difficult work, and you’d be hard pressed to find a degree-granting program in climate science that provides a background adequate to the task.
So, wrong on the logic and possibly wrong on the math as well. Shall we go for the trifecta? Sure. Climate science has a sociology like any other profession; papers that don’t show an anthropogenic signal in climate change are about as likely to get published as clinical trials that don’t show a significant treatment effect, or policy analyses that don’t show a significant TOT effect (of the hypothesized sign) for the intervention. This is common enough that there’s a name for it: Publication bias.
Finally: Consider myself a scientist, drive a Hybrid, believe evolution’s the primary driver of speciation, but wouldn’t piss on Al Gore if he were on fire. The man’s a fraud.
They’re too bulky, they take too long to reload and they’re useless at close range. An M-16 with an M-203 grenade launcher provides the versatility of full auto fire and the explosive punch you’ve just got to love. It’s a much better choice.
Pablo:
Good combo, but I think the Mk-19, w/ its HEDP rounds might be a leetle more useful in some cases.
This includes penetrating shtoopid, since the round can punch 2 inches of armor plate.
“Then there’s the irony of someone beating his breast over people not “believing†in evolution while screeching that we should be trying to prevent the climate from changing a teensy little bit.”
Progressives only believe in evolution in a historical sense, Rob. They have every intention of intelligently designing the future.
“They’re too bulky, they take too long to reload and they’re useless at close range. An M-16 with an M-203 grenade launcher provides the versatility of full auto fire and the explosive punch you’ve just got to love. It’s a much better choice.”
Ah, but you’re forgetting the flechette (“Beehive”) round. A thing of beauty and a joy to behold. Not so much from the muzzle end, though.
B Moe: Well put. Boils constructivist rationalism down about as well as I’ve ever seen it done. That’s a great “hook” for conversations about the subject, I’d bet.
TW: dazzled 1,050,359. Well, it sure impressed me.
As Tim Blair points out, the Chilean Sea Bass is an endangered species being illegally fished to the edge of extinction. Eat Hearty, Al!
I am not going to be a hypocrite and bust Al’s chops for serving Chilean Sea Bass, since the local Kona Grille serves this delectable morsel sauted in butter and olive oil, and it is sinfully delicious. I will point out that despite their derision of the “rich and powerful”, algore is certainly amongst them. Fuck, I probably could not afford a bottled water with a lemon there, and the money they spent could have stopped global warming in its tracks, or purchased some more carbon offsets from himself.
Evolution is not the cornerstone of modern biology, it is a theory that attempts to explain origin of species through selective process and spot genetic mutations. The theory has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt despite the work of some scientists who, with evangelical fervor, proclaim its truth as mere fact.
This might please your preacher but your 8th grade science teacher will be shaking his head in disgust. Evolution is accepted by scientists, period. It is no more a theory than is gravity. Scientists have noted adaptations in a species in as little as one generation (a Galapagos Island finch, read about it in Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale). I’m sorry if this conflicts with the Bronze Age religious myths you interpret literally. I’m no climate scientist but everything that I read about the subject points towards global climate change resulting from human activity. Meanwhile, you people make Al Gore out to be Lex Luther. Neither evolution nor global climate change are the least bit controversial in other industrialized countries. I suspect this is because they don’t have so many religious fundamentalists.
You might be persuaded that we’re dealing with settled science but a certain level of common sense demands the asking of questions.
Common sense tells me that 10 cylinder automobiles and little reliance on mass transit is a recipe for disaster, but I guess I’m just a enviro-whacko to you folks. Luckily, I mostly live in Seattle with the other hippies. We adopted the Kyoto Accords unilaterally and we also have big plans for incorporating bicycles into the urban transit model.
Bravo! Ronaldo has spoken. The streets shall flow with the blood on the non-believers.
TW : Reichstag gory. This thing is creepy.
Oh, I simply must have the details of how Seattle adopted a treaty. And the bicycles? Pedal now, plan later.
Common sense tells me that I already have a smaller carbon footprint than all the blowhards that are lecturing me.
Last time I took a plane anywhere? Five years ago.
Common sense tells me that 10 cylinder automobiles and little reliance on mass transit is a recipe for disaster, but I guess I’m just a enviro-whacko to you folks.
You’re not an enviro-whacko, Renaldo. You’re a do-gooder busybody who wants not only to tell us how to live, but to force us to live that way. You’re desperate to make people believe that fast cars are evil. And as people consistently fail to believe you, or to live as you prescribe, you turn to “experts” who come up with a “crisis” that will force them to give up things which they value, but you abhor.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You’re obviously a distinguished scientific mind, Renaldo, so I’m sure you’ll recognize this maxim. Now, don’t you think that the claim of man-made global warming extensive enough to extinguish a significant percentage of the human race is a fairly extraordinary one? Is it really so bad that skeptics demand proof equal to the claim?
So far, the models can’t reliably predict today’s weather, when set for conditions 50 years ago. Why on Earth would we believe that these same models are reliable for predicting the next couple of centuries?
I am a scientist, Renaldo. My degree is in Physics. Having seen how difficult it is to model interactions at the subatomic level, I have some understanding for how difficult it is to model interactions at the global level. I’m also old enough to have lived through the global cooling scare (The Ice Age is coming! The Ice Age is coming!), the population explosion/mass starvation scare, and the predictions that Peak Oil would hit before the turn of the century and we’d all be living on subsistence farms.
In all of these cases, True Believers tried hard to get the government to force people to conform to a way of life that they believed was the Right Way. While these True Believers weren’t bad people, they were recognized by others as a means to gain power and influence. After all, when people are begging for the government to interfere in people’s everyday lives to a greater and greater extent, you’d have to be an idiot not to want to be one of those doing the interfering.
When you can produce proof that meets the standards of your claim, then I will change my behavior. I’ll do it willingly, because I will see that it is in my best interest. That being said, I will NEVER grant you and your political allies the power to dictate how I live my life based solely on inconclusive studies, political wishes, and deeply-held feelings.
Get busy with your research, or get used to disappointment.
I’m no climate scientist but everything that I read about the subject points towards global climate change resulting from human activity.
Probably because a relatively small community has ginned up a field and a literature by citing one another, and the rest of the scientific community, due to the usual professional deference and not having time to check the numbers themselves, does the silence-equals-assent thing. See Wegman’s comments before the House committee around this time last year, particularly what he wrote about the quality of “independent review” in climate science. The words “dying from embarrassment” come to mind.
Have you read any Lakatos? It’s relevant.
And if you think climate change has been estimated by anything like the straightforward means available for determining the acceleration of gravity, you’re woefully ignorant of the history and methods of science. Climate science is awash in half-buried fossilized auxiliary assumptions, questionable parameter values and poor model selection. All those bad choices have now snowballed into a research programme with a lot of momentum.
Those Kyoto Accords get good mileage.
ronaldo’s lack of self reflection can only be reflected by this:
“This might please your preacher but your 8th grade science teacher will be shaking his head in disgust. Evolution is accepted by scientists, period. It is no more a theory than is gravity.”
Your idea of science has many religious overtones. There are many scientists who continue to question and challenge aspects of evolutionary conclusions and, when I have time, I’ll type you up a list. They include geneticists, microbiologists, anthropologists, astrophysicists and others. Many of them don’t throw out evolution completely, they’re just holding up a hand to the Dawkins of the world who want them to proclaim his understanding of evolution as settled science and continue the process. You, on the other hand, would just assume accept what evidence we have and can be tested as enough for a faith based declaration that evolution is solid fact, end of discussion.
How very totalitarian and unenlightened of you.
“Neither evolution nor global climate change are the least bit controversial in other industrialized countries. I suspect this is because they don’t have so many religious fundamentalists.”
Beyond your obvious Christophobia I’m left to conclude that Europe, being smarter and older than we, must be right. We bow to Europe’s enlightenment.
“I’m no climate scientist but everything that I read about the subject points towards global climate change resulting from human activity.”
Perhaps you need an instruction of the difference between “everything I read about” and “everything written.”
“Common sense tells me that 10 cylinder automobiles and little reliance on mass transit is a recipe for disaster, but I guess I’m just a enviro-whacko to you folks.”
Your honor, the prosecution rests.
You and those that think like you are the problem. Rather than seek a balanced, science based approach to environmental issues you are absolutely driven, driven I tell you, to proclaim the clear common sense that cars and factories and THE WHOLE DIRTY HUMAN RACE IS KILLING US!!! From Silent Spring right up to present day carbon hysteria you grasp at the fragments of science that satisfy your theology of the rape of mother earth. Nobody is suggesting that we spew and dump anything we want and most of us support both the concept and practice of sound ecological practices. The difference is we haven’t taken the communion of the First Church of Gaia.
Yours is a faith based initiative, you just don’t know it.
They do, Dan. And I love the leather option!
I wanted that, but I was afraid people would throw blood on the seats.
I’m having mine converted to run on bacon grease. Yummy!
Can you get the Kyoto with a manual trasnmission? I love to rev the engine at stoplights.
Dan
Senior Gore is the late Senator
Junior Gore is the former VP and former Senator
Trey Gore is the pharmicist
just sayin’
Mine has the enigmatic transmission.
TW: uniformity must. Yes, that was a couple of posts back, though.
I prefer to call him Al, Jr. Jr.
I guess Seattle is supplying the carbon offsets for the races in Indianapolis next week. I wonder how big the carbon footprint is for the Craftsman truck race, the Busch race, and the Brickyard – not just the race cars, but the 300,000+ people that drive to see it. I always enjoy the handful of protestors – what a hoot !
In the last week or so, some enviro-whacko told me that my grandchildren would curse me for my heartless abuse of the environment. In keeping with the tradition, I vow to Ronaldo that I will drive my huge gas guzzling Expedition out to the races, I will rev the engine while idling in traffic for hours, and will ensure that all members of our party drive seperate cars to maximize our abuse. Can’t you feel the love, Ronaldo?
And I think that it’s wise of her to take her husband’s name, since people may not like Al Gore, but nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee.
Gads. That is just ridiculously brilliant.
I thought the nickname for “the Third” was “Trip.”
Which, for him it works on so many levels.
TW: 1868 indictment — can’t we leave Andrew Johnson out of this?
Trip Gore – that sounds right.
A historical note – Senior Gore was also quite friendly with the noted environmentalist Dr. Armand Hammer. Bought a (now closed) zinc mine from the good Doctor.
” Evolution is accepted by scientists, period. It is no more a theory than is gravity.”
I just Googled this gravity thing, and according to that theory if I drop a rock from my deck it should hit the ground in 2.5 seconds. So I dropped a rock and timed it and sure enought they were right. I will agree to this thing called gravity, but I can’t find any similar experiments proving global warming, can you point some out, ronaldo?
Meant to include evolution with AGW in the last post.
BMoe; Based upon some of the comments, I was beginning to feel a little lonely with the evolution response. Thanks, ya crazy redneck warmonger!
I think it is the best explanation, but it is not air tight. I have seen some fairly wicked arguments among evolution proponents about how it works exactly. To say it is an accepted theory does not grant it the same status as gravity.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
That was awesome, B!
I’m happy with accepted theory as opposed to gravity like assurance.
I’m easy that way.
Renaldo, If the now renamed “global climate change” is such settled science, why is it that key research such as the Mann Hockey Stick diagram of historical temperatures can’t be replicated? That’s now science, its pseudoscience.
And if Al Gore is the “bearer” of this “news”, why is it that his ridiculous exaggerations are being disclaimed by even AGW’s proponents?
I suspect it’s because they are either stupid or at best uninquisitive, along with more accepting of being led around by the nose.
If I may… the ‘Mann hockey stick’ has been replicated, in fact many a time.
PS Rusty, if you’re reading this, for reason unkown my response wouldn’t show up. There are, umm, problems with the paper you cite. If you’re interested I’ll mail you.
If I may… the ‘Mann hockey stick’ has been replicated, in fact many a time.
OK, I look at the second reference and see a few names repeated many a time. Those aren’t fully independent studies, which is something Dr. Wegman was also concerned about in his little social network analysis. If you get people adopting the same conventions and pulling the same (potentially flawed) parameterizations off the shelf, you’re not really subjecting methods to scrutiny. But as far as the first link is concerned, I’ll take a close look at it. I’ve been using and evangelizing R for about 7 years now (and S for longer) and I’m happy someone’s creating a transparent, cross-platform data and code repository for independent analysis of climate science results — my hat’s off to the people running that project no matter what side of the debate they’re on. I’m also happy they’re doing the best they can to work with something other than PCA, which sweeps a lot of data analysis under the rug (it’s how Mann nearly got away with boosting the variance of the component he wanted privileged in the analysis).
TW: bounds outvoted. Right back on track, I see.
BTW, for the “many a time” plot I’d love to see a scatter of first differences of those series. They really are all over the place.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA.
That was awesome, B!”
Progressives only support the notion that evolution isn’t always for the better, they don’t absolutely prove the theory. Nice try, though.
I vote for Ronaldo, as Douche of the Day.
Tony
South Haven, MI
Tony,
Fine. Here’s your Ignorant Fucking Hick of the Day award. You really have to work hard around here to earn that one. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to deny 150 years of evolutionary science.
DrSteve,
Mann’s response is that even using no PCA at all reproduces their ‘hockey stick’ graph and validation statistics, as expected when using PCA to summarize data, confirmed by Wahl Amman (2006) linked above.
McIntyre and McKitrick’s response fails on logic alone…
Anyway.
I find his social network analysis to be fairly unsubstantial. As John Quiggin put it;
I’d prefer some evidence that this really matters.
Anyway, thanks for the response.
Uh, you do realize there are multiple competing theories for the mechanism behind gravity, don’t you? I’m personally not up on them — the math involved is beyond anything I care to dig into — but there’s an open question on just how masses exert force on each other at a distance.
The effect is pretty solidly established, F=m1*m2*G/(d^2), but the how…
“I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to deny 150 years of evolutionary science.”
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to have a thought process as fucked up as yours. Is “unquestioningly accept” or “absolutely deny” the only cognitive responses you possess? Are you progressive leaders treating you for this severe nuance deficiency?
McIntyre and McKitrick’s response fails on logic alone…
Leaving aside whether that’s correct, representative, etc., you’ll note I never relied on anything McIntyre and McKitrick wrote in making my own argument, right? Thanks.
I find his social network analysis to be fairly unsubstantial.
Of course you do. The narrative must be served! But I trust you’ll see what I was talking about if you refer to the references section of the page you linked. One of those “cliques” is pretty well-represented there, no?
Back to my point: There are mistakes being made in this literature (I would call Mann’s off-center PCA an error, wouldn’t you?), and the sociology of the specialty is making it look like a lot of them might not be caught. In the meantime the accretion of these papers is contributing to the sense of “unanimity” in the “scientific community.”
This is looking more like a movement than a discipline.
I’m not tossing out everything these folks are working on, but it makes me nervous. Does it bother you at all?
No, it does not bother him. He believes.
There is an effort underway to locate and photograph temperature monitoring stations. Over the years, some of these have apparently gone from open fields all the way to crowded parking lots, including some close to AC compressors, the latter providing a double heat island effect in conjunction with the parking lot asphalt. Wish I hadn’t misplaced the link….
Sure would be interesting to look at an error bound analysis including the ‘minor’ modifications to the background like that.
How convenient for you.
Sure, you just thought it up all yourself.
I wonder what that Wegman report was about…
Thank you Doctor Fraud.
Rest binned unread.
Yes dear,
How convenient for you.
Lazar, have you never heard someone set aside an issue for the sake of argument? I was just saying I wasn’t addressing the merits of what you’d quoted regarding M&M — I wasn’t going to allow you to think your hand-waving regarding M&M had any relevance to what I was saying. You may be perfectly correct about the cited M&M paragraph failing to follow logically — it’s simply irrelevant to what I was saying.
Sure, you just thought it up all yourself.
I wonder what that Wegman report was about…
If you’re trying to make a point, you might want to dial up the coherence a little. If you’re suggesting I’m arrogating Wegman’s arguments to myself, there’s the little problem of all the times I used the man’s name above. “My argument” referred to my posts here. I would have thought that was obvious, but I wasn’t taking into account your apparent propensity for bad faith.
Thank you Doctor Fraud.
Nothing fraudulent about me, pal. Ph.D. in Economics from NYU, several years of coursework in econometrics at the doctoral level, and over a decade of work auditing research and doing study designs since then. What have you got, a subscription to Discover magazine?
Not that you’ll respond, since I’m apparently “binned unread” and you’ve run away to massage the kinks out of your Outer Belt.
TW: gift endings. Indeed.
Yes, and I’ve ‘heard’ of broadening a discussion. M&M’s work is somewhat central to the ‘hockey stick’ controversy no? I thought their response might be of interest. Oh well.
It seemed then from your somewhat hostile response…
that you were more interested in arguing… my patience for which is limited.
My handwaving? Must be why you snipped… “Mann’s response is that even using no PCA at all reproduces their ‘hockey stick’ graph and validation statistics, as expected when using PCA to summarize data, confirmed by Wahl Amman (2006) linked above.”
No, I suspect though you used M&M’s work, maybe via the Wegman report, to arrive at the following…
[…]
I wasn’t thinking you were dishonest here. Just wondering whether your logic/ definition of ‘rely’ is that which one makes explicit to back an argument, as opposed to that which you have read to arrive at ‘your’ opinion.
As for bad faith…
[…]
I was referring to your pop-psychology Doctor Freud…
[…]
A monkey in a tiara.
I’m genuinely sorry if I veered into intemperate (oof) remarks. I wish I could stay on top of the climate science literature better, as I really do think it’s important (note: not a denier!) but the occasional dispatches I do see from that quarter bother me.
By the way, I’ve looked at a couple of your cites (all, eventually) in response to the question on the “compare and contrast” post about “backtesting,” since I’ve long been interested in how well these models predict outside the training set, and I thought the figures on page 96 of the Liu piece were really illuminating. I would call those bad fits, but it didn’t seem to bother the authors a bit. Is that fairly standard?
TW: CIVILIS whither. As long as it doesn’t wither.
No need. But I do apologize for the ‘Doctor Fraud’ remark. That was uncalled for.
I have qualifications in science, though not up to doctorate, and it (sort of) is not what I do. You are probably hotter in general on methodology than I am. E.g. you could try explaining to me how “a scatter of first differences of those series” could be of use.
I will discuss climate science, which interests me quite apart from AGW, with anyone, and I really don’t care if they believe, doubt or disbelieve AGW, are informed or uninformed, or have issues or qualms with some of it like perhaps you do.
[JD, when I spend some time going through climate science with individuals who turn round and ascribe it to my ‘religious’ beliefs, I tend to shrug my shoulders and walk away. I have religous beliefs, but they are quite different from ‘AGW’.]
In my view there isn’t enough of this stuff.
Yes and yes.
I’ve read your point…
In short, no. If by using PCA it is the summarizing of data that we intend, a procedure may be in error excluding PCs, but I cannot see how inclusion would be at fault — superfluous maybe. Huybers chose an approach intermediate to MBH98 and M&M.
Clarification; “a procedure may be in error excluding PCs” — ‘variance’ would be more appropriate.
DrSteve,
Relating to global time-temperature series data and their fit to proxy reconstructions, since this is of some contention regarding MBH98…
Determining statistical significance of a long-term trend among relatively high amplitude and high in (at the sampling) frequency noise, is it at any point reasonable to consider r2 as not particularly useful? If the data has annual resolution, what of r2 from a five or ten year average?
Well, crap, it ate my very long wide-ranging comment. Thanks for writing back. Let me take another crack at it after this meeting.
OK. Last things first — R-squared is frequently not useful when dealing with heavily trended data. In macroeconometrics we used to detrend just about all data, plus check for stationarity, and run our models on the first- or higher-order differences. This may not be the aim of climate models, however, and that may be partially responsible for shaping my views on what I’ve seen done in climate science.
I think you have to come to terms with the amount of noise you see in the data — taking it head on, in other words. If that leaves a ton of variation for you to account for, so be it. But I guess it depends, again, on what you’re trying to explain. The data can be smoothed if decadal variation is what you’re aiming to predict. Economists model ARMA and ARIMA processes all the time, so no one’s going to cry foul for a few moving-average terms here or there!
The scatter (or more properly a pairsplot, a matrix of pairwise scatters) on the first differences is just a quick visual check of how well the turns are lining up. Visuals can be misleading but it never hurts to actually look at the data that way. In looking at the Liu exhibits I see a lot of missed turns. An econometrician would normally be worried about that.
I think Mann made a mistake in not fully standardizing the data he used in his PCA. I’m sure it struck Wegman as a pretty fundamental mistake because it’s a known pitfall with PCA that you have to center on global means (not short-center) and standardize variances or you get units artifacts. There are other problems with PCA, mainly model selection issues, but this plagues much of statistics, quite frankly.
Here’s what I’d love to see happen in climate science:
(1) An outside review of the major models, taking each parameter value back to its original dataset and checking the estimation process. It seems some things are being pulled off the shelf like physical constants and used in study after study when they should be constantly checked and re-estimated.
(2) A sensitivity analysis on model specifications (and output) relative to every series in the database, especially the proxies. If it totally changes the results if you include Graybill and Idso, what does it say about the model? We used to have this issue in development economics with Zimbabwe and human capital accumulation models — everyone knew that their data was a leverage point and so it was one of the first questions anyone ever asked. You ran the data twice — once with Zimbabwe, once without.
(3) As noted, more validation of models by determining how well they predict out of sample. Train on 80 percent of the data and use the other 20 percent for testing fit.
I’m sorry to be so demanding when it comes to this work, but I audit data and studies for the Feds and I see mistakes made in high-profile analyses all the time. You can do even a thorough examination of what someone’s reported doing, but until you actually run their code on their data you should always reserve a little skepticism. I’ve seen Federal studies undermined because someone used the wrong WEIGHTS option in their SAS programs — that level of detail.
Ok, to check if I understand… the above procedure compares model against residuals; processes uncoupled from a trend? Atmospheric co2 springs to mind; the trend is anthropogenic emissions minus ocean uptake, superimposed are small fluctuations from feedbacks between sea surface temperatures and natural carbon cycles. The former being well understood and modelled, the latter not so.
No problem with the above.
Thanks, having never really understood the need for annual resolution when, except under truly exceptional forcing, a climate signal doesn’t emerge below five to ten years.
Ok.
Huybers did full standardization, and seems to prefer doing an average of series over doing PCA, whilst MBH and M&M did not.
M&M respond though it ain’t necessary…
MBH claim it has no effect on the reconstruction.
Huybers though notes a better match with record averages using fully standardized input…
[…]
Given the expertise and funds, absolutely fine. It is I believe common practise to vary parameters within plausible bounds, check the output against observations, to get an idea of what a reasonable value is and the error associated.
That it is dependent on two series, that the dataset is small for that step.
Doubtless… and it’s needed. Eager research scientists, the coarse filter of peer-review, and meticulous auditors, you all need the other, you help each other. The wheels turn. The science improves. One fascinating, elegant process.
Absolutely no problem with the above. Thanks for the depth and detail of your response, I appreciate your input.
Much to think about.
Good good stuff. Thanks. Looks like I’d agree with Huybers, though I’d stress that I think standardization means means and variances. It also looks like we agree there are some excellent places for all the research funding to go.
Ok, to check if I understand… the above procedure compares model against residuals; processes uncoupled from a trend?
Not exactly, the higher-frequency shocks aren’t residuals, though they no doubt have associated (and maybe even time-varying) errors. The point is that if you have a model, this often implies falsifiable propositions about the levels and first derivatives of the model, and since you need to detrend trend-stationary data anyway (or lose all those nice Gauss-Markov properties that let you do anything) you test how changes induce changes, and toss the model if it’s wrong.
Atmospheric co2 springs to mind; the trend is anthropogenic emissions minus ocean uptake, superimposed are small fluctuations from feedbacks between sea surface temperatures and natural carbon cycles. The former being well understood and modelled, the latter not so.
Well, get cracking! :-)
Someone once asked me whether I’d seen An Inconvenient Truth. I replied that I couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t rather read all the references. This is why. Thanks!