Is this science?

! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

According to the BBC, scientists have produced “further compelling evidence” that increased solar activity has no effect on climate change.

Further compelling evidence?  I’ve yet to see any evidence that it isn’t but I have seen evidence that it is.  So where do these scientists get their information from?

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

20 years?  Global climate change happens over 100s of thousands of years, how can 20 years worth of data be used to accurately predict changes to the pattern of climate change that has occured naturally for millions of years?  And they only concentrated on solar cosmic ray activity, none of the other types of radiation the sun throws at the planet and which scientists have previously shown correlates with changes in global temperature.  Examples are here, here, here, here … shall I go on linking to examples?

Climate change propagandists are striving, bizarrely, to use as small an amount of data as possible to predict global climate change.  Previous attempts have used a century’s worth of data, others have gone back further, but the trend now amongst the propagandists is to use less data in a bizarre parody of accepted scientific logic that the more data you have, the better your chances of proving a theory.

So, using this new scientific method, I have made some predictions of my own:

  • Based on the last 5 years worth of data, the number of people killed in Iraq will increase to 10 billion over the next century and the number of buses and planes blown up by terrorists will be in the thousands annually by the year 2020.
  • Using data from the last 2 years, the price of a 3 bedroom flat in London will be £3bn by 2015.
  • Based on the last hour’s worth of data, I will drink 24 cups of tea and 24 cups of hot chocolate every day.
  • Finally. using data from the last 30 minutes, I will write a post on climate change every 2.3 seconds by the end of September.

As you can see, using small amounts of isolated data, anything can be statistically proven.  It doesn’t mean that I will be selling my children to Albanian slave traders to raise the capital to buy a house in London expecting a 10,000% profit in 7 years time.

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10 comments

  1. Allie (93 comments) says:

    Yes, it’s science. Have you actually read the story? The reason they looked at the last twenty years’ data was to see if there was any substance to the claims of the climate-change sceptic Henrik Svensmark. You remember, the guy whose claims formed a big part of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. They’re not limiting the data ‘in a bizarre parody of scientific logic’; they were using the data that would substantiate – or not – the claims they were investigating. And guess what? It turns out the evidence doesn’t back up Svensmark’s claims.

    Now you can whine all you like about it (and I’m struck by how little of your post relates to the story, which of course makes perfect sense if you haven’t actually read it) but yes, it’s science.

  2. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    Twenty years is not enough, it’s an insignificant amount of data in the context of global climate change that happens over 100s of thousands of years.

    You remember, the guy whose claims formed a big part of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

    And you will, of course, recall that Al Gore’s film footage of polar bears apparently drowning was fabricated and only the other day the lead author of the IPCC report on climate change released the “news” that the Wilkins Ice Shelf was about to collapse when it collapsed 10 years ago.

    Amusingly, the BBC has just reported that cooling sea temperatures in the Pacific are going to bring the temperature of the earth down. But they were at pains to point out that it didn’t mean global warming wasn’t happening, just that the globe was cooling this year. But only temporarily, it doesn’t change the pattern of climate change. Which is that it goes up and … er, down. Oh how I laughed.

  3. William Gruff (138 comments) says:

    Yeah Wonko, you cynic you!

    Fuckin’ biff ‘im Allie!

    Yeah!

    Were Henrik Svensmark’s data limited to the previous twenty years? You do not say; you merely state that his detractors used the data that proved the contrary, thus implying that they ignored that which supported his arguments.

    You write as though ‘science’ were entirely objective and incontrovertible, which it isn’t (which is why so much research ends up in the bin), nor is it ‘logical’ (the definition of a metre is no more ‘logical’ than the length of a king’s arm, nor is counting in tens instead of twelves, or sixteens). Few scientists are inspired thinkers; most are simply educated mechanics using more highly developed fag papers to set the timing of more evolved machines with slightly better screwdrivers. As good as they are, mechanics are from infallible.

    Science should not be left to scientists to misrepresent.

  4. Allie (93 comments) says:

    Once again, both of you: read the story. They looked at twenty years of data because the Sun’s cosmic-ray activity is cyclical, and the lengths of the cycles is eleven years, hence twenty years of data gives them a complete cycle and some either side. They were testing Svensmark’s hypothesis; that’s how science works.

    Grow up, Gruff. The data disproved Svensmark’s hypothesis. Did anyone imply that they ignored other data? No. And your last sentence is beneath contempt. Scientists are the people best placed to explain and interpret science. Who else do you think should have the job?

    I’m fascinated as to why any mention of climate-change brings some people out in a rage. It’s as if some people think that trying to treat the planet, and our fellow human beings on the planet, with care and respect is somehow a bad idea.

  5. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    Allie, did you look at the graphs I linked to? They indicate the opposite to what Terry Sloan – a particle physicist and not a climatologist – is saying.

    Is two cycles of the sun enough when global climate change happens over hundreds of thousands of years? Or is it convenient to stop there because if you go back further you get the data that convinced scientists we were heading for an ice age?

    The issue of fair trade, lowering food miles, cutting our use of finite resources is completely separate to the global warming scam but the two are conflated by the propagandists because it blurs the lines and gives them a get-out clause when they’re exposed as liars and frauds.

  6. William Gruff (138 comments) says:

    Well, Allie, Climate Change has certainly brought you out in a rage, which, scientifically, might indicate a certain innate intolerance to ‘variation’. That notwithstanding, if you reread what you have written you may see that you implied that data were ignored, unless English is not your first language. Whether or not, it seems that reason is not your first recourse. Twenty years is a very long time, to a child, but in the great scheme of things it’s insufficient to justify limitless research funding from a piggy bank that is far from infinite and fed by an ever dwindling band of increasingly overburdened wealth creators. You’ll have to work for a living when you leave school – don’t choose science as a career.

    The best thing you can do with your daily copy of The Guardian is to make firelighters of it, before reading it: We’re heading for another ice age, haven’t you heard? But then, how could you? That was the doom-laden prediction of twenty years ago (ten years after we were all to be dissolved by acid rain), before the present solar cycle and, it seems, your birth.

    Grow up yourself, sonny!

  7. Allie (93 comments) says:

    Indeed I did, and they certainly seem to. I was just intrigued at how narked some people get when scientific evidence doesn’t support them, and wondered why that should be.

    Who said anything about fair trade or lowering food miles?! Was that an attempt to answer my last paragraph?

  8. Allie (93 comments) says:

    No, Gruff, I’m not at all enraged; it’s more quiet, detached amusement. A couple of rungs below pointing-and-laughing, if that helps. And no, I didn’t imply that any data was ignored.

    Why does this issue get you so cross? And – forgive me for repeating the question, but you don’t seem to have addressed it – who, in your opinion, is best placed to explain and interpret science?

  9. Andi (82 comments) says:

    If Wonko’s logic holds up, and I use the last few hours I was in the pub as a reference, by the end of the month I will have drunk 450 pints of cider… Actually, now that I’ve typed it out, that seems to be below my usual average…

  10. William Gruff (138 comments) says:

    You’ve got me there, Allie, you’ve got me there.

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