Lies, damned lies, and statistical significance of climate trends

Posted on 3 December 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Today I read another article talking about “statistically significant warming” (link) and I wondered how anyone could know what is statistically significant without knowing the nature of the underlying natural variation.
tidesSo, let’s introduce a very simple model of some underlying natural variation. The scenario is that we are measuring water level and that natural variation is giving +/-1m of variation occurring every 12-13 hours.
As can be seen, there isn’t much else going on except this natural variation.
Now let’s suppose that we want to detect whether there has been some “significant change” to this variation. Continue reading →

Posted in 1/f | 1 Comment

The Green-Blobby

Posted on 3 December 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

GreenBlobbyThe greenblob is a gross overweight uncaring parasite on humanity. Now Jo Nova has gone better referring to the “Green-Blobby” – Spot on!
When Owen Paterson ex minister at Defra referred to his concern about the green lobby:

I leave the post with great misgivings about the power and irresponsibility of – to coin a phrase – the Green Blob.

By this I mean the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape. This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely. (Telegraph)

He summed up my own disgust at the heartless people with their snouts so deep in the trough of public money that they can’t see their own hypocrisy: funding their own lavish lifestyles usually from fossil fuel money and shameless moralising over the rest of society as these terrorists try to frighten society to give way to their evil policies; policies where the poor, old and sick fund the bird mincers whilst they cannot afford to heat their homes properly because of these evil taxes on fuel.
But now Jo Nova (or someone on her blog?) has given it that finishing touch and is referring to them as the:

Green-Blobby

Blob – a life form like an amoeba which has no backbone and lives in the scum. Usually infectious, toxic and harmful.

Posted in Humour | 2 Comments

If sea ice is back to "normal" what does this imply about global temperature

Posted on 2 December 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

For years whenever someone mentioned the decline in sea ice I would respond “but that’s what we would expect to see after the temperature rise from the little ice age”.
In other words, if temperature rises – as we are assured it has – that must mean that there was less sea ice. So, a decline in sea ice did not say anything we did not already know.
However reading climate4you
I came across a graph of total sea ice and that showed that the sea ice had recovered recently:
TotalSeaIce It certainly shows that the total sea ice is above the average of 1979 to 2013, but what does this tell us as roughly half will be above and half below this line. Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | 3 Comments

Wikipedia lies

Posted on 2 December 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I came across this sentence today:
“Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 (which amounts to a forcing of 3.7 W/m2) would result in 1 °C global warming, which is easy to calculate and is undisputed. ” (link)
Professor Hermann Harde has shown that if you use the latest HITRAN database of greenhouse gas spectral absorption and not the out of date version used by the IPCC, rather that 1C the warming is calculated to be equivalent to 0.6C. (see: Only 0.6C warming – IPCC must now scale down warming prediction)
As Professor Hermann Harde is an undoubted expert in CO2 gas absorption and as the main difference is that he has calculated the figure based on the latest database, it is almost certain that not only is this “1C” figure disputed but it is almost certainly wrong.
To put this figure in context. This one figure amounts to the “science” behind this global warming scam. CO2 is s greenhouse gas, the effect of doubling it (without considering negative feedbacks) is about 0.6C. This figure is almost certainly the best figure available and the 1C used by the IPCC is at best mistaken at worst an outright fraud.
Easy to calculate
If it’s so easy – why did they get it so wrong? The truth is that it involves a huge amount of computer time to do a proper spectral line-by-line calculation using the detailed spectral data from HITRAN. In other words it is a fairly technical and computer intensive calculation.
But please do not attemt to change this on Wikipedia. Every article on climate is so biased and full of lies like this that all you will do, is remove the obvious lies like this making it less obvious that Wikipedia on climate is nothing but greenblob propaganda.

Posted in Climate | Comments Off on Wikipedia lies

Scots: more words for rain than Eskimos for snow

Posted on 28 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

rainIt is often claimed that “Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow”, but I wondered whether this is true or if there were more Scottish words for rain. First, the truth about the Eskimo or Inuit:

David Robson, New Scientist 2896, December 18 2012, Are there really 50 Eskimo words for snow?
“Yet Igor Krupnik, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in Washington DC believes that Boas was careful to include only words representing meaningful distinctions. Taking the same care with their own work, Krupnik and others have now charted the vocabulary of about 10 Inuit and Yupik dialects and conclude that there are indeed many more words for snow than in English (SIKU: Knowing Our Ice, 2010). Central Siberian Yupik has 40 such terms, whereas the Inuit dialect spoken in Nunavik, Quebec, has at least 53

So there are up to 50 words. But how many words have we got in Scotland for rain? I’ve compiled the following list many of which I do not know so I’ve marked those I personally use with a *star.
Aftak (an easing or lull in a storm or rain)
Aitran (piercing cold, persistent rain)
Ask, Yask (a variant of ask, a fine rain, drizzle)
Baffin (Buffeting? The drenching and buffeting one gets when exposed to a storm)
*Beating down (heavy sidewards rain)
Bleeter, Bleatery (A passing storm of wind or rain)
Bowder (a great squall, blast, a heavy storm of wind and rain)
*Bucketing down (fills buckets)
*Buffeting (blustery wind usually with rain)
*Coming on to rain (looking like rain)
*Dab (A fine rain, a drizzle)
Dag, dagg (light drizzly, more or less steady rain Orkney)
Daggle (to fall in torrents)
*Damp (fine rain)
*Dash ‘a dash of rain” (a sudden fall of rain)
*Deluge (a sudden heavy fall) Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, General, Humour, My Best Articles | 36 Comments

Is the earth expanding? Massively!!

Posted on 27 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I’ve come across this video by chance. It breaks the known principles of science so it must be wrong, but I’m scratching my head trying to work out how to make it fit in with what I know. Have a look and please tell me what you think.

Posted in General | 11 Comments

Proof: cold can be turned into warm.

Posted on 27 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic


There is a certain vociferous group who refuse to accept that a cold object such as a blanket or the sky can make a warmer object warmer. After a few drinks, I found a very simple way to prove then wrong.
To demonstrate this I have taken one of many glasses of warm English beer which for the sake of argument I have assumed has had some ice added to in the top to make it cold so that now the top half is cold.
We can write the equation of black body – or perhaps this is insipid English beer and not for example Guinness I should call it brown-bodied radiation – whatever – the formula across the gap between the two halves is as follows:

Ep= πR2 σT4 Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Humour | 12 Comments

Simplified atmospheric model

Posted on 27 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I want to examine three extreme models of the atmosphere: entirely transparent, entirely opaque and entirely transparent to visible and opaque to IR. From this I will show that the presumed adiabatic lapse through the atmosphere of “33C” must be too low and a better figure is closer to 36C
For information on models etc. see previous articles:

(1) Entirely transparent Model

If the atmosphere is entirely transparent, then it has no interaction with either visible or IR. It therefore neither gains nor loose heat from the atmosphere. Therefore as the only place that gains or looses heat is the surface, then the temperature will be determined by this surface. Assuming a uniform temperature (not true – but good enough for this), we come down to a simple blackbody:

Model of earth

Model of earth


Incoming radiation Continue reading →

Posted in Advanced Greenhouse Theory, Climate, My Best Articles, Proposals | 14 Comments

Cloud feedbacks

Posted on 27 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

When I try to model cloud feedbacks, I start getting some startling figures with likely warming for a doubling of CO2 is as low as 0.1-0.2C. Clearly this is the reason they “can’t” model clouds – because this whole scam falls apart.
Note :all figures unless otherwise stated are in W/m-2
As you will see from previous articles:

I’ve been looking at the greenhouse effect and have moved onto the Trenberth climate model:

Typical climate model as shown on many alarmist websites.

Typical climate model as shown on many alarmist websites.


Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Proposals | 6 Comments

In defense of Ramsay

Posted on 26 November 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I am going to take the highly unusual step (for me) of defending an academic against a blog post on Bishop hill.
The issue at stake is carbon 14 dating as used by archaeologists to derive dates. And as I’m an amateur archaeologist I will declare I have an interest. As carbon 14 is one of the most useful tools to an archaeologist I feel that it is very important for those who use these dates to get to the bottom of this issue.
As such I have spent the day looking at this and cannot understand how it has reached the stage where Keenan is threatening legal or police action. What concerns me most is that I cannot find any evidence of any intentional distortion, nor that similar issues in the past have been ignored, nor that Ramsay has not listened and would not use a better methodology if it were practical. In contrast to what we have seen on climate, the letter from Ramsay to Keenan as posted on Bishop Hill appears to be almost the paradigm of pragmatism & honesty which we sceptics are always asking for, particularly the statement:

“all models are wrong but some are useful”

Moreover, Ramsay acknowledges that Keenan is largely correct but identifies a number of problems with using Keenan’s preferred methodology.
This is hardly the hallmark of a “fraud” as suggested by Bishop Hill.
The important thing here that climate sceptics need to appreciate, is that there simply is no reason why archaeologists as a group would want to see false Carbon 14 dates. Indeed, I can think of absolutely no reason why they would not wish to improve the techniques if this were practical. It therefore seems to me, that Ramsay has acted reasonably and from the evidence available, Keenan has not. Much of the issue seems to me to be whether the methodology advocated by Keenan is practical and/or gives sufficient improved dating to warrant the added complexity which in itself could introduce additional errors as a result of using a more opaque methodology.

Posted in General | Comments Off on In defense of Ramsay