Phil Jones Now Says Warming is Significant

I expect any significance is due to the cherry picking of start and stop dates,methods used to crunch the numbers, and so on. From WUWT:

Climate warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, according to Phil Jones, the UK scientist targeted in the “ClimateGate” affair.

Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant – a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change.

the rest: Phil Jones does an about face on “statistically significant” warming

To be fair, when Prof. Jones last commented on the subject he did say that the temp rise was just barely not significant. The warm 2010 bumped it up just enough to become significant. If 2011 is cold enough to bump it back down again, will he make another remark on the subject?

I expect he was the subject of a few choice remarks by people from the warm side of things, due to his making that previous statement. If things do down again then he might decide to just clam up. Probably a wise decision for a man in his position.

Links to the O’Rly? remarks by the commenters on the WUWT post:

• Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science – takes issue with the meaning of the analysis
• Statistical Significance since 1995? Not with HadCrut! Lucia, at the Blackboard, says, “I don’t know what Phil Jones did nor do I know what data he used or what method he used. But if I claimed statistical significance for tests I do without accounting for serial autocorrelation or using a one sided test, people would scream bloody murder or patiently explain that I am daft.”
• Bishop Hill remarks: Jones: post 1995 warming “significant”
• Does a Global Temperature even exist?
• The Air Vent comments: Experts or little white lies?

 

Statistically Speaking, Weather Is Climate

I just noticed that the word Statistics starts with Statist… Hmmm… does that explain something about the AGW crowd and their use of iffy numbers? Or is it merely one of those coincidences that we really should ignore? (wink)

(If you really want to know what Statists are all about, then check out: Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto)

Anyway, the real point of this post isn’t about which words start with which series of letters.

Every time the weather gets unusually warm we see reports in the media that run along the lines of, “GLOBAL WARMING!!! WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!!”

The climate science crowd winks at the alarmism, smiles, and writes another grant request.

Yet, when the weather gets colder it’s written off as natural variation, conveniently ignoring the fact that if natural variation is cooling thing then natural variation will also warm things up. It will also enhance any other warming trend just as the cool cycle will enhance any other cooling trend (eg: volcanic eruption.)

Of course, the same refers to the “Is It Climate?” question. If it’s warming then it’s definitely climate, if it’s cooling then it’s weather.

Watt’s Up With That has an article up on the subject:

Sure is cold out there, unusually so. By “unusual,” I mean the temperature is on the low end of the observed temperatures from previous winters.

Of course, we don’t have any more than about 100 years of reliable measurements, so it’s possible that the freeze we’re experiencing now isn’t as unusual as we suspect. But, anyway, it still sure is cold.

If you recall, a lot of global warming models predicted it would be hot and not cold, and to risk redundancy, it sure is cold. Does this dissonance between the models’ predictions and what is actually happening mean that those models are wrong?

No. But it sure as ice doesn’t mean that they are right.

Here’s the rest: Statistics expert Briggs: Actually, Weather Is Climate

Makes sense to me. If warm weather is evidence for warming, then cold weather is evidence against it. This is probably one of the reasons that global warming became climate change.