Global Warming

Hmm, it seems there is more out about global warming and the data still says the Earth is getting warmer. First, via here, a study finds the same basic ‘hockey stick’ graph using different methods. Being a math guy, I love this:

The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values for proxies and temperatures (where they have a known overlap) are input, and the methodology works backward to refine the relations at other times. To determine past temperatures, Tingley typically had to manipulate about one million matrices, each consisting of 1,296 columns and 1,296 rows.

Yay, matrices.

In another report:

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA’s year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

and as a check:

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

At this point I should put this graph in again:

I really don’t see that cooling trend, but maybe if I bang my head against some walls I will.

You can see the stupidity:

It’s what happens within the past 10 years or so, not the overall average, that counts, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.

“I don’t argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years,” said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. “We started the cooling trend after 1998. You’re going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.

“Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?” Easterbrook asked. “We can play the numbers games.”

This comment should, by itself, should eliminate Easterbrook in any respectable argument: he either has just shown he does not understand the concept of statistics or is not an honest debater.

Here’s a nice typical scatterplot (it looks at numbers gathered for counties used in the 2004 American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau):

It has an upward linear trend with the usual amount of spread for a correlation of .67. There are lots of questions to be asked about the data to decide if this shows some real relation, but saying there’s no relation because of the point (77678, 32.8) which lies quite a bit below the line is stupid. And it’s always the averages that matter in statistics (well, or median or …the point is it’s never a few points that matter).