Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Scary Stories


Chris Horner finds it amusing that members of Mensa -- who are supposed to be, like, all smart and shit -- have invited the archfiend James Hansen to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming synod, or convocation.

How can bright people believe, like the UN Secretary General, that computer model scenarios of the future are more frightening than Hollywood movies? Because they’re . . . real?

Well, apparently because they also accept observed, um, truths like “It is now firmly established that Earth’s global surface temperature is increasing and that human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the primary cause of that global warming.”
Horner may not know much about climate modeling, but he knows what he likes. And he likes this:


Most people, when they attempt to win an argument by posting a graph, make some effort to explain what the graph measures, and how, and why, and so forth. Horner can be forgiven for this oversight, as he's writing exclusively for blue-ribbon experts in the field of applied neopaleoconservato-climatologographical discoverism.

As for me, I write for the Plain People of the Blogosphere, who may not have much book-larnin', but know how many apples makes four. Thus, I think I should point out that the "2002" on the bottom left represents the year 2002, while the "2008" on the right represents the year that we're all enjoying right now, viz., 2008.

What we have here, in other words, is a six-year snapshot of temperature anomalies and CO2. The latter is going up. The former are fluctuating, but trending downwards.

You may have heard it said that there are insufficient data to support AGW; after all, instrumental temperature records only go back for over a century. No such objection is thinkable in regards to six years' worth of data, though. This one graph, spanning a mere three-quarters of the Bush administration and ending with a global cold spell, solves all problems, answers all objections, and refutes, in absentia, any "computer modeling scenarios" that predict this trend won't persist over the next decade.

Regardless, the conclusions Horner has drawn from it are wrong. And I have a chart that proves it.


What more evidence could anyone want?

Horner's no alarmist, generally speaking, but he is sincerely worried that Mensa is in danger of being "hijacked" by "activist members," just like the American Meteorological Society (which has apparently been taken over by zealots who insist on looking at climate data collected prior to 2002). A scary story, indeed.

Just for the record, the World Meteorological Organization measures climate averages over 30-year periods, in order to eliminate natural year-to-year variation. The question is: Are they crazy, or just plain stupid?

5 comments:

chris said...

Odd. There's nowhere to leave a comment.
Although I suppose "WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!!??"
isn't really a comment.
But I was going drop this link:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/
Just for the head-exploding wonderfulness of it.
The math is beyond me but much hilarity ensues in the comments.

Phila said...

Odd. There's nowhere to leave a comment.

NRO blogs don't have comments. They find it cramps their style.

chris said...

Cramps are their style.

Ali said...

The temperature dipped below 65 last Saturday, thus proving Hansen's point.

Anonymous said...

Attention polar bears: Global warming has been disproven. You may return to your sea ice immediately. And don't try that "but it's not there" crap on us: we have a graph.