June, 2017, Part 3, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Believing Bogus Data But Ignoring Reality

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) We have often talked about the myths of “the science is settled” and “97% of climate scientists” claim mankind is causing massive global warming and climate change. Despite the idiocy of these claims, climate change advocates keep throwing them out without knowing how wrong they are.

Thus, as a community service, let’s start off today’s discussion with a review of how stupid that 97% number is. Kay Francis, writing for the IHave The Truth website on May 29, 2017 did a nice review of how the bogus 97% number was arrived at:

• The basis of the 97% was a calculation based on a tiny sample of 77n climate scientists.
• Of all the scientists and climate scientists in the world, this wide misused statistic is based on the opinions of only 77 people.
• This tiny sample is actually a tiny subsample of a survey that was done back in 2009 by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) that was actually only a brief two question online a survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists by two researchers from the University of Illinois.
• As a side note not mentioned in the article, it is my recollection that one of the researchers was a masters candidate, i.e. she did not even have a masters degree in the field yet never mind being an experienced Phd scientist.
• The 3,146 people responded to the survey and then the data was manipulated and cut and hacked down to only 77 respondents, out of which 75 said that mankind was causing significant global warming and climate change.
• Thus, out of the 10,257 surveys sent out, the conclusion is based on less than .8% of the population mailed and less than 2.6% of the respondents.
• Larry Bell of Forbes sums up the results nicely: “Then of those [3,146 that actually took the survey], only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic. That “98% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered “yes.”

Now, do you want to believe 75 people or do you want to believe the 31,000 scientists that have signed on to a resolution since 1998 which stipulates that: “…there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

As a trained statistician, I kinda freak out when non-statisticians use numbers carelessly like this. We have no idea if the original sample was balanced and representative of the reality of the world and we have no idea if the respondent pool was skewed and whether or not the respondent poll was correctly adjusted, or adjusted at all, to represent the population. But we do know that certain publication criteria was used to get to the tine sample size of 77 and thus, guarantee the answer the researchers wanted.

There is an old statistician saying that goes as follows: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” This is a classic example of data torture, you start with 10,000 people, you get responses from 3,000 people, you then put specific and biased restrictions on who you want to count and you then assume that a tiny, tiny subset of respondents, that you artificially created represents the world. Bad research with bad results, all done under the guise of data torture.

2) For almost twenty years, the Earth’s overall temperature stood still. This long, flat trend created a serious problem for global warming advocates whose dire predictions needed the Earth’s temps to continue to rise steadily over the years in order for their theories and views to be valid. 

In desperation, global warming advocates went into overdrive to save their precious theory. They started coming up with hypotheses that all of a sudden the extra heat was being stored deep in the ocean depths or that global warming had simply “paused,” as if it was a marathon runner who stopped to catch his breath. Or more conveniently, they simply ignored the pause in rising temperatures and pretended it did not exist.

But then 2016 came along and it was a very hot year. All of a sudden, global warming advocates were back in full throat and yelling that global warming was back, based on one data point! They were mostly silent when almost twenty years of data points showed a trend of flat temperatures but then burst out when one data point, 2016, experiences hot temperatures.

But as a statistician will tell you, one data point is not a trend. According to an article published in the journal, Science of the Total Environment, in February:

• Despite the findings in 2016 that the temperatures at the South Pole were warmer than usual, sending global warming advocates into a frenzy, this recent study indicates that the Antarctic Peninsula has actually been cooling over the past three decades.
• The study also concluded that there has been a “slow-down of glacier recession, a shift to surface mass gains of the peripheral glacier and a thinning of the active layer of permafrost in northern AP islands.” In other words, it is still  cold down south

One data point does not make a trend, around the world or at the south pole. We already know that the higher than usual temps in 2016 were caused by a massive El Nino weather effect in 2016, an effect that been dissipating and with it, the return to cooler temperatures. One data point does not make a trend, despite what Al Gore types and their resultant hysteria claim.

3) One last point for today. In recent Senate hearings, Senator Bernie Sanders showed his ignorance when it comes to misusing statistics when he claimed that: “97 percent of scientists who have written articles for peer-reviewed journals have concluded that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.” 

Of course, he was referring to the stupid, invalid and bogus survey dissected above where 77 people are considered to be 97% of ALL scientists. Still no cure for stupid...or ignorance.

That will do it for today: basing conclusions on bad data and bad research and ignoring real data from the real world. Sounds about right for your typical global warming/climate change advocate, even those sitting in Congress. More to follow.

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