seems like a short time range on the geological scale, but nice graph.

On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.
The UN science body on this matter, the IPCC, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
CO2 in the Northern hemisphere reached a peak of 400ppm in 1942 - when does the warming start?

Willis says:

Actually, atmospheric CO2 was closer to 300 ppm in 1942. See the first figure in the Summary for Policymakers of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
The IPCC report was written by hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists, and it summarizes scientific understanding of global warming. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its comprehensive and carefully researched reports.

Like all analogies, this can be stretched a little. Let’s see how it holds together.

It is possible (albeit difficult) to beat the house at gambling. But you need to be very clever indeed. A classic example is blackjack. The house assumes, at the start of a hand, equal probabilities of cards coming up, and on this basis, the house wins. But then a card counter comes along. The card counter uses a better statistical model than the house; the card counter accounts which cards were played in previous hands, and uses this a priori knowledge in their statistical model. In this way, the card counter can change the bets based on this knowledge and beat the house. The house tries to modify things, of course, by using multiple decks to make the card counting more difficult, but there are still are handful capable of beating the house by application of a better statistical model than the house uses.

How does this apply to climate? Well, some clever bods have what they think is a better statistical model of climate. People like Cohn and Lins, Koutsoyiannis and Montanari, argue that the climate science “house” statistical model is inadequate. Under their more complex statistical model, the same conclusions cannot be drawn as under the “house” statistical model.

Back to the analogy - how do the casinos deal with this situation? Well, the casinos aren’t public places, so they can take photos of the few who are capable of beating the house, distribute these to the bouncers, and make sure that the people with the best statistical models can’t get in to play.

It will be interesting to see how climate science deals with this situation. I really hope your analogy doesn’t stretch to the last paragraph (all analogies break down eventually). But if you really believe the house can’t be beaten, you have a lot to learn about statistics.

(PS. Roulette can be beaten also, but the best known models are still too complex for a human to process in real time)

Willis says:

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on complicated stastical models to understand global warming because, like the casino owners, we understand the basics of how the game works. If card counting happens in your casino, there’s no need to send in the bouncers. You could just play with several decks at once, or shuffle the cards more often to make counting virtually impossible. Likewise, with roulette, you could simply stop taking bets before the croupier spins the ball. The truth is, casinos win in the long run because they understand how the game works, not because they control it and not because they chase away players with good statistical models.

In climate science, the basic physics of global warming are also understood. The rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last 100 years has trapped extra heat in the climate system. We observe this extra heat in the 50-year record of ocean warming and the 100-year record of sea level rise. Because of the extra heat in the oceans, the planet’s surface temperature has increased by about 1 degree C. Fancy statistics aren’t necessary to explain this, just simple physics.

its more or less based on what time zone one looks at. the longer trend is the dominant trend, the shorter trend will correct to the dominant trend or longer term trend. all trends end at a sum of zero.

When the dinosaurs roamed and ruled the planet there were no polar ice caps, as recently as 10,000 years ago we were in an ice age and much of the temperate zones were covered with glaciers. My theory is that the planet has been warming ever since the last ice age and that is why the glaciers are disappearing and we are not breaking new ground on warmth as Al Gore would have you believe. Wait another 30,000 years and we may be covered in ice again. Be patient.

Willis says:

10,000 years ago, the Earth was coming out of the most recent glacial period when ice sheets covered much of North America. But unlike the more recent warming, that change was caused by natural cycles, not human-generated CO2. In fact, humans have raised the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to its highest level in at least 600,000 years.

Of course, no single graph tells the whole story of human-caused global warming. It is the cumulative weight of many kinds of data and a basic understanding of how the climate works that makes the story so complete and so certain.

[...] Josh Willis graciously replied to the Climate Science weblog of August 14 2008 entitled “An Odd Weblog By Josh Willis” on the JPL weblog site [...]

Dr Willis, thanks for the reply, and before I respond, I wanted to take the opportunity to say that I have tremendous respect for the good work you and your colleagues are doing on the ocean heat content, which I think will be a valuable resource to help us understand a bit more about the complexities of the planet on which we live.

Having got that off my chest, after reading your response, I still think your analogy is flawed, and your response shows a great naivety with respect to how casinos are run, and in the relationships between physics and statistics.

On casinos, your response simply underlines my point. The house thinks it knows the games, but has to constantly change the rules as people figure out how to beat it. You concede this point in your reply, but this supports my position, not yours. If the house really knew the game, and got its model right in the first place, it wouldn’t have to keep changing the rules. (Of course, changing the laws of physics can’t be done. So the best statistical model in science becomes the “house model” anyway)

As to your opinion that casinos don’t black list legal card counters, you are very wide of the mark here as well. One example: try googling: griffin investigations card counting. And this is just one organisation that was a little too public, less than ethical and got caught out. There are many others still operating. That people get black listed from casinos for entirely legal card counting is well known, and I’m amazed you question it.

The simple physics explanation is also unconvincing in my opinion. If by “simple physics” we’re referring to (for example) EBMs, then we have a problem - EBMs don’t predict 4 years of cooling atmospheric temperatures and insignificant changes to ocean heat content and sea level, like we have just had. A typical defence to this would probably be that it is just weather noise. But this defence invokes statistics. You need a model to determine what can be considered noise and what is not. Simple physics (e.g. EBMs) cannot characterise these stochastic elements. So the separation of “simple physics” and statistics in your response makes no sense.

Of course, GCMs can (in theory) include some “weather noise”. But GCMs are hardly “simple physics”, and they are chock full of statistics in terms of the parameterisations - so even they cannot be truly separated from statistics. And how good are GCMs anyway? They don’t perfectly predict climate (which has an initial value component), so their “skill” has to be described statistically. In a system as complex as climate, you can’t get away from the statistical model. It is fundamental, and underpins the science.

So whether you are a gambler or a mathematical modeller, the statistical model is critical to success. I’m not going to speculate any further on which statistical model is the better one. Time will tell.

Willis says:
Spence_UK, thank you very much for the comments and for the compliments on my work.

I think we agree about the casinos. I wasn’t suggesting that casinos don’t blacklist people. Only that they shouldn’t really need to.

By “simple physics,” I meant that the 50-year record of ocean heat content proves that on average, the planet has been out of energy balance-absorbing more energy than it emits-for at least the last 50 years. And, the 100-year records of sea surface temperature and sea level rise suggest that the imbalance goes back even further. It’s true that the relative importance of other climate forcing, apart from carbon dioxide, should be better understood. But how can you explain 50 to 100 years of the planet gaining excess energy without at least some impact from humans increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by the 35 percent over the last hundred years?

carbon cover is not good, then we would be toast, either way we be toast or a popcicle, lets be happy where we are, and a little bit of extremes is not too bad, as long as it doesnt get outta control.