Global Warming and Math Errors

Forget climate change, is there global warming? That is the question that our world leaders should really be asking. If they honestly sought the answer they would be hesitant in introducing costly legislation that may stifle the world economy. Before you run me over with a green bus, here is one reason to be more skeptical about our climatic future predictions.

Not every thing published by climate scientists is accurate or meaningful. One of the worst examples is a paper on Antarctic warming over the past 50 years by Eric Steig et al that made the cover of January 2009 issue of Nature magazine. Their paper concludes that the Antarctic is warming by 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade. This is what the press focused on, that hard and fast confirmation that the Antarctic was warming by 0.12 degrees C per decade.

That is a lot of warming until you look at the Confidence Intervals (CI) of the calculations that indicate the warming could be much less. The original CI was +/- 0.07 degrees C per decade. So the warming could be 0.05 degrees up to 0.19 degrees per decade. Unfortunately the authors found an error in their calculations. With the correction applied the CI was increased by about 40% per Dr. J. Huston (Hu) McCulloch who was one of, if not the first to find the error. With the revised CI, you can have 95% confidence that Antarctic temperatures may have increased over the past 50 years or maybe they didn't. It is a virtual coin toss. Kind of like your local weather person saying there is a fifty percent chance of rain. Not something I would base policy on. You can follow the debate on this paper at the realclimate and climateaudit blogs.

The authors defend their results, but errors like this tend to make many wary of accepting complex temperature reconstructions as fact. Because of this and similar errors in peer reviewed literature there is a growing number of well educated skeptics. Engineers and mathematicians are entering the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) skeptic camp. Why? Because they understand the math . They all understand that green house gases can cause warming of our atmosphere, just the how much is the question. The answers they are getting are not adequate mathematically to convince them that AGW is a crisis. As previously mentioned, Dr. Hu McCulloch independently found the error in the Steig et al paper. Dr. McCulloch is not a climate scientist. He is professor of economics and finance at Ohio State University. So many in the climate science fore front may dismiss his hobby of studying climate science. But math is math. Dr. McCulloch is well versed in the statistical procedures used in climate science.

The Steig paper also highlights a second problem, lack of adequate peer review. While everyone is human and prone to make mistakes, the peer review process is designed to reduce the number and magnitude of the errors. The system may not be working as well as planned, possibly because the right peer reviewers are not being utilized. With the complex and often innovative statistical procedures used in climate science, it would seem that more experts in statistics would be invited to review papers. The errors found post publication would not be that important if it were not for the gravity of the political decisions being made based on these papers. Like it our not climate scientists are in the headlines and their work will be carefully reviewed after publication. Errors will be found and corrections made. These corrections are often overlooked by the media, scientists and policy makers.

Another issue is the use of outdated papers for new publications. More current papers by authors are often ignored even when their new papers radically alter the conclusions of their previous papers. With so much laying on the line all these studies need more peer review, before and after publication, before they are included in major reports like the fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Concerned climate scientists are attempting to build a complete data base for proxy reconstructions. That means they are aware of the problems. The data base should include raw data, mathematical procedures including computer codes and reviewer comments. A huge and needed undertaking, but what kind of press coverage does it get? None to speak of, but with the Steig paper we have great press coverage of proof of Antarctic warming to the confidence level of a coin toss?

I rarely write about the conflicts in our climate crisis any more because frankly most people don't care because they are just trying to survive the latest statistical modeling SNAFU which was economic in nature. Still even if only a few read this article perhaps a grass roots ground swell can be started to keep our politicians from passing insane carbon credit legislation based on data that may be as accurate as a coin toss. That could head off our next crisis, over spending on a problem that may not exist.

I will attempt to highlight some interesting issues in the global temperature average that have been glossed over by many attempting to drive policy in the near future. BTW this article can be modified to edit content and comments pro or con will not be deleted.

This article was published for nonpayment. It has not been reviewed by Associated Content and Associated Content does not endorse the views of this author.