Whilst Doug would not wish it to be seen as such there are two parts to this challenge:

1. Find a way to have a better than 90% detection of a 1C/century trend in a naturally varying climate signal.
2. Break the encryption code

Starting with the signal, the first (mental) step is to differentiate the signals in order that the trend now becomes an offset. Now we have a simple question of distinguishing between two frequencies of 0Hz – and a quick mental Fourier transform tells me that we can ignore all other frequencies except the 0Hz because they are all orthogonal (and so provide no useful information).
So, basically this test (except in the fertile imagination of GW believers), boils down to 1000 gradients and deciding which are biggest/smallest so they are most likely to have had the ±1C/century added. We can work out what confidence Doug places on this test from the figures: $100,000 prize and $10 entry fee. This suggests that there is less than 1 in 10,000 chance of allocating 90% of gradients correctly using the only test available: “is it big/small enough to be likely to have the ±1C/century added”.
The only question is what threshold to use to decide it has/has not the ±1C/century added. For this we can go back to the “Fourier transform”, work out the scale of variation and the profile from all the frequencies free from the ±1C/century added. However, although this is a pretty trivial task, it is pointless, because if Doug is capable of understanding the statistics involved, and capable of generating suitable random sequences, he is clearly capable of checking whether he could lose the prize subject to the only test: just a simple threshold test.

The Encryption Key

If Doug is going to lose money, this is where he is vulnerable. The key encoded answer:
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
This is 500 characters long and consists of characters a-zA-Z0-9/+ Thus in total 64, so, this is a 64bit number. The first thing I noticed was the unusually high number of of pairs:

99…cc…ll…ooIl…AAl449xrr…99…UU…uu…ZZXcAgg…77…CC…

There are 15 in 500 characters, but there should be only 500/64 = 7.8. Therefore there are twice as many repeating characters as should occur by chance. This means that the 64 bit number we see is not random! This reminds me of the way the German enigma machine was broken (where characters were repeated). Thus it appears that whatever way Doug Keenan has chosen to encode the text, it is not random and thus (unlike the first challenge), it may be broken. Also, unlike the first challenge, the “code” must make sense to a human, so we will be able to check if the decoding is valid because the answer must make sense. This is in sharp contrast to the first part of the test, where there is no way to validate whether the method we chose is valid except by paying this $10 and asking.

The response

Surprisingly, the person who alerted me to this contest was Gavin Schmidt with his comment, which when I traced it back was this twitter exchange:

Bishop Hill @aDissentient
Climate scientists can win $100,000 by demonstrating their statistical prowess! bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/11/1…
There’s Physics @theresphysics
@aDissentient The phrase “more money than sense” springs to mind.
Robert Grumbine @rgrumbine
.@theresphysics @aDissentient Note the entry fee. It’s a handy way to pick up some dollars with no danger of paying out.
Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
@rgrumbine @theresphysics might be worth $10 to just answer ‘none’ – the whole thing might just be his idea of a joke.
2:09am · 19 Nov 2015 · Twitter for iPhone

From which I can deduce two simple facts:

1. That they are aware of the challenge and cannot now say they did not enter “because we didn’t know about it”.
2. That they think it is trivially simple and so they have no excuse that it was “too complex” for them to enter (as I would have guessed from their whole casual attitude to natural variation).

They will not enter

Instead, given their ignorance of the statistics as portrayed in their tweets and yet again by anders on Bishop Hill, they have no idea what they are dealing with – so in order to understand how futile the task is, they will first have to talk to someone who understands the statistics involved. And whilst they will only tell them how futile the task is, it might introduce them to the statistics of natural variation so that they too are on the first step to becoming a sceptics.

Will GCHQ/hackers enter

The idiots on climate haven’t any chance, but in effect what we have here is a $100,000 challenge to break a code that doesn’t appear random, and so appears to be breakable.

I was looking at the new version of UAH and I was reminded everyone that it’s 18 years without warming …

 
 

This is an interesting study. I’ve not got time to look at it in detail, but I can’t obviously spot anything wrong with it.
Why the basic global warming hypothesis is wrong; CO2 climate sensitivity exaggerated 21X
What it suggests is that the Lapse rate is not a constant irrespective of CO2 as those producing the 3C warming estimates assume, but that the lapse rate changes with CO2 levels. And because the important heat exchange is at the top of the atmosphere (see advanced greenhouse model), the effect is to counter the change in CO2 with a change in lapse rate

Parameter sensitivity analysis of the lapse rate for 2xCO2. CS (FAH): Climate sensitivity with the fixed absolute humidity.

The summary

Continue reading →

Congress is to launch a “House investigations” this week into the researches and top officials from the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who recently changed their temperature measurements to show warming.
The action follows the illegal and unconstitutional actions by NOAA refusing a subpoena from their oversight committee demanding to know the internal deliberations that lead up to a supposedly “Groundbreaking” climate study. This study sharply contrasts with satellite data showing no warming for around 18 years and other physical evidence such as the growing Antarctic ice, the normal level of global sea ice and even Greenland surface ice shows an increase from 1990.
But the interviews are not enough to placate the stalwart Chairman of the House Science Committee who are charged with oversight of NOAA. This champion of science: Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex) has stepped up to the mark to put pressure on NOAA to force them to comply with their legal and constitutional duty to submit to oversight and provide the emails.
Lamar wants the thousands of e-mails between researchers and NOAA’s political appointed staff because he believes it will show political meddling in what is supposed to been “science”. Moreover he believes the emails will prove that NOAA changed the way they handle temperature measurement purely to refute the physical evidence showing that global temperature has “paused” for at least a decade  [18 years].

To the question: “If it’s not legally biding, can we tear this thing up, … is it a futile exercise”
Bill Lao, SOSventures (planting trees as Carbon indulgences) admits it is futile:
BL: “Well … I kind of say yes, in some respects it is futile, having sat through the process internally, you know, … the targets won’t be binding so, so who’s going to adhere to them?”
Interviewer: “That doesn’t sound very positive”
BL: “No, it’s not, well, one of the nice things about the UN process is that we NGOs do go and get to talk” (Note, as said previously, that buy in – not happening this time!!)
BL: “The actual progress is grindingly slow. Because the process relies on consensus” …
Interviewer: “What would be success in Paris?”
BL: “Success in Paris would be that there is a state change … so far I haven’t seen that, I haven’t seen an inkling of that”.
http://finance.yahoo.com/video/paris-attack-police-check-belgian-141209518.html
Note date appears to be 12th Nov before the appalling events in Paris

According to a report in ABC in Australia:
French prime minister Manuel Valls said:

But he said the conference would “probably” be reduced to the official negotiation.
“We are in the process of looking at that but everything which was outside of the COP (climate talks), a whole series of concerts, of rather festive events, will be without a doubt cancelled,” Mr Valls said.

However, it still appears the Governmental meeting continues:

“No head of state, of government — on the contrary — has asked us to postpone this meeting. All want to be there,” Mr Valls said on RTL radio.

The Effect

Continue reading →

At last Common sense start to prevail:

A series of events linked to a UN climate summit in Paris in two weeks will be cancelled over security fears, Manuel Valls told local radio on Monday morning.
The conference will be “reduced to the negotiation” with “concerts and festive events” likely to be called off in the wake of the country’s worst ever terrorist attack, the country’s prime minister told RTL.
Source: Climate Home

Hopefully about now, dozens of  different civil servants are saying words along the lines of “ce n’est pas possible”, to the political idiots who want to run COP21 instead of a war on terror. Also, hopefully a lot of politicians are pointing out the extreme vanity of putting a conference first – one that is widely accepted will be a failure – ahead of the security of French citizens.
Hopefully common sense prevails. However, if common sense had prevailed, we wouldn’t have the hysteria over global temperature nor would there have been an open door to immigration that has led directly to these terror attacks.
So, I would like to talk about the many different ways that the present situation makes those in France and at COP21 vulnerable, even to explain how easy it would be to attack COP21. But there’s no point because, either (hopefully) I would be proved wrong, or I would not be listened to, be proved right, being proved right will be no recompense. Indeed given the madness of the response and the selfishness of those eco-lunnies attending COP21, it is very likely they would accuse me of “aiding terrorism” merely by pointing out how easy it would be to attack COP21. But the true villains are the stupid people who open the door to terrorists not those trying to highlight that the door is open.
 

The previous article was removed as the logic led me to believe that it could have been a small help to potential terrorists and whilst COP21 are too stupid to help themselves, I have no intention of helping any terrorists.

That COP21 should be postponed is a non-brainer given the huge policing requirements even before the Paris atrocities. But when COP21 will now need increased policing and there are regional elections in France at the beginning of December, something is going to have to give and is it:

• Dealing with the “declared war” from the leeches in Syria?
• Investigating this appalling war crime
• Allowing French democracy to continue having elections
• To continue with talks even Greens are saying will be a failure (and when the physical evidence overwhelming points to no warming)

However, I now have confirmation that at least some in France see common sense:

-SUNDAY 15- -François Holland receives heads of parties, including his predecessor and right rival Nicolas Sarkozy who has request the postponement of the COP21.
Translated from: Liberation: Attentats de Paris: le film des événements

My prediction is that when all the “office staff” arrive on Monday and realise just how stupid it is to go ahead with cop21 given the impossibility of managing it with all the other things going on, it is very likely it will be tactfully cancelled.