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Hot or Not?

creon.substack.com

101–110 of 179 posts

Re: Hot or Not?

#101

The scientific consensus is more than clear, doing your own "research" isn't going to make a difference except to engage with the people that are already happy to ignore science. If anything you'd have to begin to wonder in what ways airports are going to be different from global averages and I can think of a whole pile of reasons why the two would diverge (such as the presence of a large chunk of asphalt or concrete…

Don't you think it is weird that people who try to do their own research end up in the "happy to ignore science" camp, as you put it? I don't think they "ignore science", they just realize it is a lot more complicated and messy than the narrative of the scientific consensus wants us to believe.

We rely on a scientific consensus _because_ it's complicated and messy. The fact that climate change is complicated and messy is a given. Every talk on climate change starts out with it's super complicated and…, but then people get mad that it's not simple, try to make it simple themselves and get mad when other criticize them for trying to explain it in 3 pages. Then all of a sudden they don't believe in science.

Also, the IPCC put out a like 1000 page report, it's not like this information is being hidden.

Re: Hot or Not?

#102
The issue with this piece of work is that the author hasn't even attempted to think of reasons for results he/she plotted. Simply presenting provocative data without adequate attempts to explain the results is irresponsible. People will take this data and say, "See global warming isn't happening!" but that is not the right takeaway.

One possible explanation for the data is that, regardless of whether or not the Earth is getting warmer, cooler, or staying the same temperature, you would always expect some places to be getting warmer over a given time period, some places to get colder, and some places to stay the same. That's just a property of a random system. Without sampling enough points, you can't say how the global temperature is changing because you don't have enough data. Another issue is that the author largely chooses cities. It may be that cities are more likely to be built in an area if that area has a stable climate. As other have mentioned, even a 1 degree change is temp is significant, so the scale of the graphs is wrong too.

A good illustration of how random systems can do weird things is this wealth simulator: https://www.masswerk.at/misc/wealth/

In this simulator, 55 "participants" are given $45 and at each step in the simulation, each participant randomly gives another participant $1. Even though all of the action in this simulation is random, some participants typically acquire much more wealth than others. If you sampled random participants after N steps, some would gain money, and others would lose money. Rarely would the wealth of a participant stay the same. If you didn't understand the rules of the simulation, and were only presented with the data, you'd need to analyze data from all of the participants to conclude that total wealth had stayed constant.

Re: Hot or Not?

#103
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the presence of outliers the median is a better predictor of underlying long-teem trends. Subtracting the median gives the delta from zero-median. The delta would be non-zero if there is a long term effect. Here the delta is zero in a number of cases.

> In the presence of outliers the median is a better predictor of underlying long-teem trends. Not if outliers are REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT, like, say, extreme weather events.

Extreme weather events are a symptom of global warming, not a cause.

Re: Hot or Not?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point, and to add a bit: Scientific consensus does not mean the average of all opinions (i.e. "scientists on average believe in 2 degrees warming"), nor does it mean the average of all possible values of opinions ("there are people that believe in 2 degrees, and there are people that believe in 0 degrees"). These heuristics are wrong. It's a summary that needs to include reputation, credibility, trajectory…

You are merely constructing an idealized authoritarian elite of scientists whom nobody can question because allegedly their craft is too complicated for mere mortals. Sorry, but no. A lot of people have an academic education, for example, and are capable of reading scientific papers. You have to be able to make a solid point that other people can verify. The last couple of years have already shown that institutions a…

[deleted]

Re: Hot or Not?

#105

Seems a bit irresponsible to publish this analysis which seems to contradict an enormous body of scientific work (the public perception of which is quite crucial for human survival) without making any consideration of apparent discrepancies. It’s fine to observe something that seems off and write about it, but I think it would be appropriate to add “This most likely doesn’t disprove climate change, but I’m curious to…

It is in multiple places in the article, isn’t it?

Re: Hot or Not?

#106
post #71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of the article written in 2000 that said that by 2010 kids won’t even know what snow is. That article was online until about 2015 until it was so widely mocked it was finally deleted. Here’s a screenshot for you. https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/snowf...

yes, in my hometown there is no more snow in winter while 40 years ago i was happily cross-country skiing there. On the positive side - the peaches, apricots, cherries, etc. - the stuff of my childhood dreams sold back then only at farmers markets at astronomical prices by the traders from South - is now easily growing there in people's backyards/gardens. Though not oranges/mandarins nor watermelons yet - seems needi…

In Christchurch we are also getting a lot more mosquitoes than I recall as a child*, which you may get with a warmer climate, so it definitely isn’t all wins.

* Lots of possible reasons for apparently more mosquitoes: perhaps they are evolving to match the environment here?

Re: Hot or Not?

#107
post #77

> I did not cherry pick. I just looked at each "interesting region" (interesting to me) ok google, define "cherry pick"

cher·ry-pick /ˈCHerēˌpik/ verb choose and take only (the most beneficial or profitable items, opportunities, etc.) from what is available. "the company should buy the whole airline and not just cherry-pick its best assets" the author did not cherry pick. in order to cherry pick, the author needs to have had a predetermined thesis such that cherry picking only certain data points would bolster said thesis. instead, th…

How do you know he didn't cherry pick these weather stations? One thing to say that it's not clear whether he did, another to claim - as you have in your post - that he did not.

Re: Hot or Not?

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the presence of outliers the median is a better predictor of underlying long-teem trends. Not if outliers are REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT, like, say, extreme weather events.

Outliers are likely to drag the averages down, not up. The only really substantial global outlier events are volcanic eruptions, which cause a net cooling. Everything else (hurricanes and the like) is just heat moving around

We're looking at individual airport temperature records here, not global means.

Re: Hot or Not?

#109
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local anecdotes are great if you are old enough to have seen changes, because they are simple and relatable examples. In Christchurch, New Zealand, a notable example for me is that the snow line has receded since I was a child. Low lying ski fields are struggling to stay open. My parents have noticed less snow on the ground during winter at their rural place (they have been there ~30 years). > remember where the sea…

I told my kids yesterday while cleaning up when we found their sled that they are probably the last generation of Dutch kids to have used one, they don't have skates because there never is a winter long enough to make the ice safe (when I was a kid you could skate on IJsselmeer, and the ice would be 20 cm thick at the end of the winter).

That reminds me of this article I've read about the River Thames Frost Fairs... The last of which was done in 1814, with people preparing for one in 1870s or so but was cancelled.

Little Ice Age ended, you see...

Re: Hot or Not?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cher·ry-pick /ˈCHerēˌpik/ verb choose and take only (the most beneficial or profitable items, opportunities, etc.) from what is available. "the company should buy the whole airline and not just cherry-pick its best assets" the author did not cherry pick. in order to cherry pick, the author needs to have had a predetermined thesis such that cherry picking only certain data points would bolster said thesis. instead, th…

How do you know he didn't cherry pick these weather stations? One thing to say that it's not clear whether he did, another to claim - as you have in your post - that he did not.

Same problem exists with basically all research on the topic.
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