This is a poor analysis. There's no justification for binning hourly temperature data into 3-year intervals and comparing the _median_ over time (an aggregate metric which ignores outliers, in a system where outliers drive the behavior of interest). Nor does this article perform any systematic test to confirm or deny a global trend - just pointing to some cherry-picked graphs with questionable assumptions and saying "hmmm" does not make an interesting analysis. Sorry, just don't publish shit like this unless you have something to say and viable data to back it up.
Hot or Not?
61–70 of 179 posts
Re: Hot or Not?
#62The 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…
Do you have any specific concerns with this work (other than that the results appear to upset you)?
Re: Hot or Not?
#63Given the massive lack of trust in media, and to a lesser degree the popular science community, we need a more formal system of information similar to the justice system.
In america the justice system has the judge (representing the state) and the jury (representing citizens). other countries have similar tribunals , each member with a different allegiance.
For science, we need a strong and formal amateur tier to review and corroborate results. Though this exists now, it's not formally engaged with science reporting. and there's no method to compare amateur results to professional.
What OP is doing here is bolstering amateur observation and he should be praised for that. I'd like to see research like this given more resources and exposure to build trust in scientific findings.
Re: Hot or Not?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do think the global temperature is rising, but you can't say things like 'what I considered hot as a kid is different than what I now consider hot' and be taking seriously scientifically. Its an interesting anecdotal point but that's about it. I'm sure the data for where you grew up as a kid is available for the last 50 years, so get the data and give a real numbers to numbers comparison. I have actually done this…
> Its an interesting anecdotal point but that's about it I hate quoting Bezos about this, but it's catchy and thought provoking: when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.
That's extremely context specific. You can imagine something like in social sciences where people have quite finely tuned but subjective personal awareness of human behavior and some data makes a coarse but objective measurement of it. It's hard for the data to be as "accurate" as the personal experience, so it can easily be wrong. But "it was colder when I was a kid" vs temperature measurements is the other way around.
Re: Hot or Not?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's comments like this that serve as a reminder of how we can't have valuable discussions about a topic of importance without it degenerating into name-calling and allegations of disloyalty to "science". Too many have become so fearful of climate change they are no long in the realm of a scientific discussion. They are worshipping a religion. The author of the article made a good faith effort to simply look at the d…
Michael Crichton isn’t a scientist, though, why should we care about or even acknowledge his opinion on global warming as if there is some scientific merit to it?
Oh, please. He was capable of conveying complex topics in a way most people can understand. Not just as a novelist, but his past education in medicine and many different fields. He was truly a renaissance man, if that has any meaning today. Not saying he's always right, but he is just as capable as anyone else to weigh in. Science does not thrive when its confined to just a group of experts talking to each other.
Re: Hot or Not?
#66Why would the median temperature be a useful measurement here? Quick, what is the median of these numbers: -2,-1,0,1,2 And what is the median of these numbers: -7,-1,0,1,2 Of course the average and median are identical for a perfectly distributed normal distribution. But part of science is supposed to be reducing the noise from your signal. Why are you adding noise in your quest to investigate the average temperature…
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.
Re: Hot or Not?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
But local changes of environment would have been expected to increase temperature readings? More asphalt, more buildings...
Not necessarily, it could just as easily go the other way (thermal sink dropping the average).
Re: Hot or Not?
#68Seems 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 dig deeper into the discrepancies”. If I wrote an article with data suggesting that drinking bleach is healthy, I’m obligated to add a disclaimer that says not to take this to heart just yet.
Re: Hot or Not?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't really draw climate change conclusions from the input data though, that's the fallacy that breaks this whole article at the foundation. Let me rephrase that to make it even more clear: if climate change to date would be such that it would show up in datasets like these then we would not have needed any climate research to begin with. We're talking about 1 degree average change over a 60 year period across t…
You're not wrong. "I don't have the data or tools at my disposal to do this properly" Should not prevent you from trying, sharing, and learning. However, it definitely should prevent you from trying to change other people's minds.
The part of "it definitely should prevent you from trying to change other people's minds" clearly tries to change other people's minds.
What data or tools do you have so that you are in the position to change other people's minds?
Re: Hot or Not?
#70Seems 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…
How big is the enormous body of scientific work?