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Bastardi's Wager
DesScorp writes "AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi has a challenge for climate scientists. He wants one or more of their rank to accept a bet about temperature trends in the coming decade. Bastardi is making specific predictions. 'The scientific approach is: you see the other argument, you put forward predictions about where things are going to go, and you test them,' he says. 'That is what I have done. I have said the earth will cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data.' Bastardi's challenge to his critics — who are legion — is to make their own predictions. And then wait. Climate science, he adds, 'is just a big weather forecast.' Bastardi's challenge is reminiscent of the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager, where the two men made specific predictions about resource scarcity in the '80s."
And what is that useful point? To inject more politics and bullshit into the scientific process? I'm sorry, but despite what these oil-company backed think tanks say, there is no global scientific conspiracy to force you back into the dark ages and to live like vegan hippies.
Or a physicist building a bridge.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So....why do the climate scientists keep citing specific decades if 10 years isn't long enough for it to be climate? Why are the 2000's cited as the hottest decade and called evidence for global warming if it's too short a time period to be used for that? You can't have your cake and eat it too. The use of decades as evidence of climate has been pretty consistent for most climate related papers.
Even before we ask that question: if the earth gets both hotter and cooler, does it matter?
Who cares if we have an impact if it doesn't matter?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
...that he would offer this wager after the warmest year on record. A more reasonable wager would be on whether or not 2020 will be above the historical average for the past century. Smart money says "yes".
They are also actually judged by results instead of claiming any result obtained verified what they were claiming.
Meteorologists. Weather predictors. The guys who have been the butt of accuracy jokes for hundreds of years. Are judged by results. That, that right there? That is an interesting position to take.
It's more like: climate is a probability distribution and weather is the specific outcome measured. If I have a fair coin, I can say that 50% of the time it will come up heads and 50% it will come up tails. I cannot say what the result of any particular flip can be, however. This is why it doesn't make sense to claim, "We can't even predict the weather 10 days from now, so how can we predict the climate 10 years from now?" One thing is a specific measurement (hard to predict) and the other thing is a probability distribution (easy to predict).
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"All too often people let their emotions / politics / media-lust get in the way of doing actual work towards understanding the planet we live on.
And THAT, my friends, are the truest words I've ever heard uttered regarding this debate.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The day climatologists perfect the science is the day meteorologists will be able to give forecasts with extraordinary accuracy. Meteorologists ride on the coattails of climatologists success.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
There is no real debate. The people who actually know the science are largely in agreement about the conclusions. The "debate" being spoke of is faux debate stirred up by people from think tanks funded by oil companies. It's about as meaningful as fundy wackos going on about how there is large debate over the legitimacy over the theory of evolution.
The day climatologists perfect the science is the day meteorologists will be able to give forecasts with extraordinary accuracy. Meteorologists ride on the coattails of climatologists success.
It's rather the other way around. Meteorology models were around before climatology models were. And accurate climatology models won't help meteorology predictions at all. Climatology knowledge is at the wrong time scale to help with weather predictions. It's like claiming that you'll be able to drive precisely and without error because you know exactly how far it is to your destination.
IANA climate scientist, but I suspect that three things will happen:
1. As this is a complicated subject, nobody can predict exactly what will be happening in 2010. Some will be right.
2. Some will be wrong.
3. Supporters will claim victory for the first group.
4. deniers will claim victory due to the second group.
5. Ten years will have passed, and we will still be arguing about whether we should do something about the issue.
If there's no debate, then the global warming high priests will be all too happy to take up his wager.
Unless their theories don't make predictions that specific. It's perfectly possible to have a theory which is undisputed but whose predictions are long-range and apply to the big picture. Tell me, does the theory of evolution by natural selection allow you to predict how long it will take for speciation to occur again within Homo sapiens?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
There is no debate, because the chicken littles AGWers are shills for the enviromental wacko socialists. The lack of debate is magnified by pointy heads in academia who think they are smarter than everyone else. It is about as meaningful as the exact number of crickets are chirping tonight.
Yep. You're right. A group of fringe wackos whom nobody takes seriously somehow managed to control an entire branch of science. It's just like how the atheist lobby completely controls biology, right? How do they manage to do that? Who knows, but they must have a way, because a conspiracy theory is the only way to explain the lack of debate!
How you got modded "insightful" for a post that absolutely no insight at all is beyond me.
Apparently quite a bit about how the real world works is beyond you.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
He's making a 10-year prediction. I think that'd be more "climate" than "weather".
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law