andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-513 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: The National Climatic Data Center has tentatively announced that 2010 is, get this, “tied” for warmest on record. Presumably they mean it’s tied to the precision that they quote (1.12 F above the 20th-century average). The uncertainty in the measurements, as well as some fuzziness about exactly what is being measured (how much of the atmosphere, and the oceans) makes these global-average things really suspect. For instance, if there’s more oceanic turnover one year, that can warm the deep ocean but cool the shallow ocean and atmosphere, so even though the heat content of the atmosphere-ocean system goes up, some of these “global-average” estimates can go down. The reverse can happen too. And of course there are various sources of natural variability that are not, these days, what most people are most interested in. So everybody who knows about the climate professes to hate the emphasis on climate records. And yet, they’re irresistible. I’m sure we’ll see the usual clamor of som
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 The National Climatic Data Center has tentatively announced that 2010 is, get this, “tied” for warmest on record. [sent-1, score-0.528]
2 Presumably they mean it’s tied to the precision that they quote (1. [sent-2, score-0.355]
3 The uncertainty in the measurements, as well as some fuzziness about exactly what is being measured (how much of the atmosphere, and the oceans) makes these global-average things really suspect. [sent-4, score-0.221]
4 For instance, if there’s more oceanic turnover one year, that can warm the deep ocean but cool the shallow ocean and atmosphere, so even though the heat content of the atmosphere-ocean system goes up, some of these “global-average” estimates can go down. [sent-5, score-1.269]
5 And of course there are various sources of natural variability that are not, these days, what most people are most interested in. [sent-7, score-0.167]
6 So everybody who knows about the climate professes to hate the emphasis on climate records. [sent-8, score-0.629]
7 I’m sure we’ll see the usual clamor of some people touting this, while other people claim it’s due to biased measurements, or that it’s true but has nothing to do with anthropogenic carbon dioxide, or whatever. [sent-10, score-0.46]
8 Also noteworthy is how incredibly poor the National Climatic Data Center website is. [sent-12, score-0.229]
9 Fuzzy graphic and logos, jarring colors…looks like it was designed in about 1998. [sent-13, score-0.315]
10 and clicking on “What’s New” does not find the press release that they just issued today, about 2010 being tied for warmest year on record. [sent-15, score-1.018]
11 Perhaps they should hire a 12-year-old to spend an hour making at least a better front page. [sent-16, score-0.247]
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Introduction: The National Climatic Data Center has tentatively announced that 2010 is, get this, “tied” for warmest on record. Presumably they mean it’s tied to the precision that they quote (1.12 F above the 20th-century average). The uncertainty in the measurements, as well as some fuzziness about exactly what is being measured (how much of the atmosphere, and the oceans) makes these global-average things really suspect. For instance, if there’s more oceanic turnover one year, that can warm the deep ocean but cool the shallow ocean and atmosphere, so even though the heat content of the atmosphere-ocean system goes up, some of these “global-average” estimates can go down. The reverse can happen too. And of course there are various sources of natural variability that are not, these days, what most people are most interested in. So everybody who knows about the climate professes to hate the emphasis on climate records. And yet, they’re irresistible. I’m sure we’ll see the usual clamor of som
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Introduction: I. State of the Climate report The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released their “State of the Climate Report” for 2009 . The report has chapters discussing global climate (temperatures, water vapor, cloudiness, alpine glaciers,…); oceans (ocean heat content, sea level, sea surface temperatures, etc.); the arctic (sea ice extent, permafrost, vegetation, and so on); Antarctica (weather observations, sea ice extent,…), and regional climates. NOAA also provides a nice page that lets you display any of 11 relevant time-series datasets (land-surface air temperature, sea level, ocean heat content, September arctic sea-ice extent, sea-surface temperature, northern hemisphere snow cover, specific humidity, glacier mass balance, marine air temperature, tropospheric temperature, and stratospheric temperature). Each of the plots overlays data from several databases (not necessarily indepenedent of each other), and you can select which ones to include or leave
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Introduction: A NY Times Environment blog entry summarizes an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looks into whether there really is a “scientific consensus” that humans are substantially changing the climate. There is. That’s pretty much “dog bites man” as far as news is concerned. But although the results of the study don’t seem noteworthy, I was struck by this paragraph in the blog writeup, which is pretty much a quote of the PNAS article: For example, of the top 50 climate researchers identified by the study (as ranked by the number of papers they had published), only 2 percent fell into the camp of climate dissenters. Of the top 200 researchers, only 2.5 percent fell into the dissenter camp. That is consistent with past work, including opinion polls, suggesting that 97 to 98 percent of working climate scientists accept the evidence for human-induced climate change. Two percent of the top 50, that’s one person. And 2.5 percent of the top 200, that’s five
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Introduction: This one was so beautiful I just had to repost it: From the New York Times, 9 Sept 1981: IF I COULD CHANGE PARK SLOPE If I could change Park Slope I would turn it into a palace with queens and kings and princesses to dance the night away at the ball. The trees would look like garden stalks. The lights would look like silver pearls and the dresses would look like soft silver silk. You should see the ball. It looks so luxurious to me. The Park Slope ball is great. Can you guess what street it’s on? “Yes. My street. That’s Carroll Street.” – Jennifer Chatmon, second grade, P.S. 321 This was a few years before my sister told me that she felt safer having a crack house down the block because the cops were surveilling it all the time.
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