On 08/01/2013 20:14, Chris Angelico wrote:
On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:55 AM, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 08/01/2013 06:35, Chris Angelico wrote:
... it looks
quite significant to show a line going from the bottom of the graph to
the top, but sounds a lot less noteworthy when you see it as a
half-degree increase on about (I think?) 30 degrees, and even less
when you measure temperatures in absolute scale (Kelvin) and it's half
a degree in three hundred.
Why on Earth do you think that the distance from nominal surface
temperatures to freezing much less absolute 0 is the right scale to compare
global warming changes against? You need to compare against the size of
global mean temperature changes that would cause large amounts of human
suffering, and that scale is on the order of a *few* degrees, not hundreds.
A change of half a degree over a few decades with no signs of slowing down
*should* be alarming.
I didn't say what it should be;
Actually, you did. You stated that "a ~0.6 deg increase across ~30 years [is
h]ardly statistically significant". Ignoring the confusion between statistical
significance and practical significance (as external criteria like the
difference between the nominal temp and absolute 0 or the right criteria that I
mentioned has nothing to do with statistical significance), you made a positive
claim that it wasn't significant.
I gave three examples.
You gave negligently incorrect ones. Whether your comments were on topic or not,
you deserve to be called on them when they are wrong.
And as I said,
this is not the forum to debate climate change; I was just using it as
an example of statistical reporting.
Three types of lies.
FUD is a fourth.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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