Everybody's Talking About The Weather But No One Is Betting On It... Yet

On Saturday Nate Silver, polling and Oscar guru, tossed off a bet to climate change skeptics, following the grand tradition of science-based bets (nothing illegal here!):

1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25.

2. The challenge proceeds in monthly intervals, with the first month being August. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the winning and losing days and the loser writes the winner a check for the balance.

There is also an eligibility threshold:

You are eligible for this challenge if:

1. You live in the United States and provide me with your home address and telephone number (I will provide you with mine) and,
2. You are a regular (at least once weekly) contributor to a political, economics or science blog with an Alexa traffic global ranking of 50,000 or lower.

The reason for the latter requirement is because I want to be able to shame/humiliate you if you back out of the challenge or refuse to pay, as I'd assume you'd do the same with me.

I have emailed Mr. Silver to say yes to this proposition, subject to a couple of modifications.

First, where is the love?  Alexa ranks me at a mere 180,000 or some such.  I blame the "Typepad" hosting (while I search for Blogger Viagra).  However, I am confident that I am somebody, so perhaps Mr. Silver will relent on this point.

As to the hometown, oh, bother.  Mr. Silver's original post was in response to a Powerline effort from Minneapolis; after researching that, I am not inclined to double down and check out my hometown, too.  We started in Minneapolis, so let's continue there.

Finally, Mr. Silver proposes the Weather Underground as a data source (free registration required!).  That won't be as much fun for people following along and there may be a data matching problem - presumably we want the daily averages to be based on the same station that is providing the daily data for 2009.  My suggestion is the use use the staid old National Weather Service, which reports data for Minneapolis - here are daily averages, and the resource to churn out monthly reports.

I will keep people apprised of developments.

DISCLAIMER:  In the event legal questions become a problem, let's agree on charitable donations as a means of settlement.  If clouds darken his day for too long, Mr. Silver will be contributing to Clean Air Cool Planet.  In my name, natch.

ADDENDUM:  Hmm, can we both be idiots?

WHERE WE STAND:  I sent Mr. Silver an email at 1:05 PM indicating my acceptance subject to the modifications noted above.  As of 10:45 PM (my bedtime, since the Yankees won a while ago) I have not heard back, and he did set a Monday deadline.  I left a comment at his site noting this, but that comment is still being held in moderation, so I really am the invisible man just now.

Oh, well - apparently the clock is running out on me, possibly for reasons which were mentioned in my initial post - the NWS expects the cool weather in Minnesota to continue for a few more months.  Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Too bad.  If my non-residency in the Minneapolis area had been invoked as the technicality disqualifying me, I was hoping to volunteer either Captain Ed or John Hinderaker as my Minneapolis surrogate (I am strangely capable of curbing my conscience long enough to get a bet down), but there won't be time to work that magic unless Mr. Silver extends his self-imposed deadline.  Time will tell.

WE ARE ON THE SAME PAGE, AND THE SAME WEATHER MAP:  Mr. Silver responds, with kind words for my blogging and a candid explanation that, although he was born at night, it wasn't last night:

But can you use somewhere other than your hometown? No, that would be a problem. I'm fully aware that this is a somewhat "bad" bet for me for the next 30-60 days in about 10% of the country - an area which happens to include Minneapolis. After that, basically the whole
country is expected to have average-to-above-average temperatures through the middle of 2011.

If someone from MSP or Chicago or Milwaukee happened to want to take the bet -- that's fine, I'm a man of my word (although I'd hope that person would not be a total weenie and would continue the bet for longer than 30 days). But if I allow people to cherry-pick their location, I'm just printing money for them, and it sort of defeats the purpose, which is to illustrate that *on average* the country is getting (slightly) warmer.

Feel free to re-print this on your site.

Hmm, "total weenie"?  I prefer to think of myself as a value shopper, although "weasel" is OK, too.  My intention had been to back the stats jockeys at the National Weather Service for a month, maybe two (depending on how the updated forecast came in in mid-August).  Like Mr. Silver, I want a bet I can feel good about, so we don't have anything here.

Oh, well.  Opportunity was knocking, but it was on somebody else's door.  And props to Mr. Silver, who managed to run a bluff past the table.

Comments

[peter]

Nobody really uses that expression, "Oh, bother" anymore, Tom.

[Tom Maguire]

Troubling.

[Tom Maguire]

Oh, yes, if any of the regular crew want in on the bet, let me know. On my side! Anyone who wants to back Silver may as well let me know, too - maybe we can have some side bets.

[Rather than puzzling out the - pardon the term - semantics, can I just decide Silver's a dick at leave it at that?]

Isn't a rank of 180,000 lower than a rank of 50,000?

Is Silver attempting to embarrass popular bloggers who mock the confusion of anecdotal temperature data with proof of AGW by betting "low-rank" blogs on short-term temperature trends?

[RichatUF]

Doesn't GMax do the counterparty risk stuff?

[Extraneus]

Alton Brown uses it all the time, peter.

[MayBee]

I want $25 for every person on tv who, after a hurricane or tornado, suggests its due to climate change.

[DebinNC]

I bet Obama would love a good hurricane or tornedo to respond to and increase his favorability stats. OTOH, the FEMA head is one of his "see how bipartisan I am" Republican hires who'd probably offer an unwelcome comparison of competence/experience v. lack thereof.

[Der Hahn]

I'm a paying Wunderground user but when I've accessed WU from a public computer I've never been asked to register. Maybe you are seeing the request to sign up a WU membership. $5 bucks (a year) and WU will get rid of the ads on the pages for you. FWIW, I think they mostly spin NWS forecasts and data into an HTML generator (they also aggregate non-official weather stations and have the usual bunch of website fru fru) to come up with their info but it's probably better to go directly to the source to avoid issues about which stations are being used for the reports, etc.

[PeterUK]

Another nail in the AGW coffin. The Gore Effect.

[That yaphound gives me the blannies.]

We'll soon see the Hansen Effect; civil disobedience is support of climate skepticism.

[I think blanny is singular, you seedy ol' quack.]

I mean 'in' support of climate skepticism.

[PeterUK]

Time to lose "Climate Skepticism".How about Climate Confidence.The planet worked before we were here and it will work after we have gone.

[Original MikeS]

I may be too old fashioned, but I've found the best way to respond to challengers like Nate Silver is a quick "bitch slap."

[Original MikeS]

I prefer "Climate Catastrophe Skeptic."

[PeterUK]

Warmers are no different to the other Millenarian cult which have reared their insane heads over the centuries.Except some of the bastards have found a way of making money out of it.

[daddy]

">http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE56J3YH20090720?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true"> This is pretty cool.
Last week we learned Dragonfly's can routinely fly 18,000 Kilometers over the Indian ocean in big Kenyan/Indian/Maldive round robbins. Then JMH posted some killer shots of dust crossing the Atlantic westward to Central America.
Now we find Chinese dust clouds rising 5 miles high, and then circling the entire planet eastbound, and sinking into the Pacific 13 days later on the second lap around the Earth.

Think any of that has been encorporated into our Global Warming models?

Nah.

[JM Hanes]

Nate Silver's foray into odds making is an almost emblematic global warming maneuver, isn't it? "OK Skeptics, prove your case using my cherry picked data. Can't do it, can ya? QED, suckers!" At least he tips his hat to the global warming controversy; it's "settled science" in the NYTimes stylebook.

Pealing Back Pavement describes a new home improvement trend in cities like Soeul. Where once "a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting" the city, the Cheonggyecheon has now been "liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks."

By building green corridors around the exposed waters, cities hope to attract affluent and educated workers and residents who appreciate the feel of a natural environment in an urban setting.

Environmentalists point out other benefits. Open watercourses handle flooding rains better than buried sewers do, a big consideration as global warming leads to heavier downpours. The streams also tend to cool areas overheated by sun-baked asphalt and to nourish greenery that lures wildlife as well as pedestrians. [Emphasis mine.]

What I'm watching is the mission creep:

And even with the loss of some vehicle lanes, traffic speeds have picked up because of related transportation changes like expanded bus service, restrictions on cars and higher parking fees.

“We’ve basically gone from a car-oriented city to a human-oriented city,” said Lee In-keun, Seoul’s assistant mayor for infrastructure, who has been invited to places as distant as Los Angeles to describe the project to other urban planners.

I've spent a crazy-making hour trying without success to locate the designs for a "newly imagined" city unveiled by some Obama task force, a few months ago. He issued a typical litany of disclaimers when the model reorganization elicited suspicions about an urban agenda disguised as stimulus. I'm not sure whether I just can't come up with the right search string or whether that whole "conceptual" initiative has been repositioned behind a White House firewall. In any case, the vision of urban, anti-auto, putatively "sustainable" renewal above could have come straight from the President's playbook.

My irony meter perked up at the report that Seoul’s "assistant mayor for infrastructure" has been invited to share his experience in riverine restoration with..... Los Angeles.

[matt]

the traffic jams in Seoul are still there and still unbelievable, but they put up eco buildings so it's all good. The hell of it is that all the vegetation freezes in the winter anyway. Nothing like those Korean winters.

[A.S.]

I was going to mention that Peter @2:44pm is obviously not a Good Eats fan, but I see that Extraneus @3:04pm beat me to it...

[A.S.]

Also, BTW, Weather Underground appears to have a monthly report available, including both an actual temperature for each day and the average that that date, without any free registration required.

See, e.g., the report for Minneapolis in July:
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KMSP/2009/7/18/MonthlyHistory.html#calendar

(Scroll down to the calendar.) By the URL, I infer that site is from the Minneapolis airport weather station - which would seem to me to be a pretty good source. I *assume* that the actual and the average temperatures are from the same station, but cannot be sure.

This Weather Underground monthly chart would seems to me to be usable if Nate Silver wants to use Weather Underground and not the National Weather Service.

[Carl Pham]

Er...wait a minute. The way you calculate an average is by adding up the temps and dividing by the number of them you have. If you subtract the average from each number as you add it in, then, addition being associative, you get zero automatically. That is, the net amount owed in each direction at the end is zero by definition. Seems like a perfectly safe bet.

This only holds as long as the average isn't changing much, of course. So if he's taking temps today and subtracting last year's average temp, he's quite safe. If he's subtracting the average temp in the early 80s, he's screwed, because current average temps are lower. If he picks average temps in the 70s, he wins, because current average temps are higher.

Even people who believe strongly in AGW note that the effects are very small trends superimposed on far larger seasonal and annual and even decades-long fluctuations. Depending on what he defines to be "the average" that you're going to use, this bet can easily be rigged either way.

So I encourage you to go for it, Tom. Just make sure you ask "the average" to be the average over the last 100,000 years, i.e. so that it includes the entire last Ice Age. You'll do well.

[A.S.]

Sorry, I did not link to the Weather Underground monthly chart of actual temperatures and average temperatures for Minneapolis, above, and it appears to be cut off. Let me try again.

Link to Weather Underground Chart for July

I think I have linked it now.

BTW, I quickly reviewed the Weather Underground charts for Minneapolis for July, June, May and April. If Tom would have been able to make the bet with Nate Silver on March 31, he would have cleaned up. Here's what I can see:

April:
15 days below average
11 days above average
4 days exactly average
Tom wins $100

May:
12 days below average
19 days above average
0 days exactly average
Nate wins $175

June:
18 days below average
11 days above average
1 day exactly average
Tom wins $175

July:
16 days below average
3 days above average(!)
1 day exactly average
Tom wins $325

[A.S.]

Last comment before I stop spamming Tom's comments.

Here are, according to Weather Underground, the actual and average high temperatures for each day in July for Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Bridgeport, CT. I count 17 days below average high temps, and only 2 days above average high temps (both time by all of 1 degree).

[daddy]

Regarding Earth's Seasonal temperature changes, ">http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090703.html"> this interesting NASA photo is a worth a look.

And ">http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-112"> here's a better photo of whatever slammed into Jupiter yesterday.

[Eric B]

Nate Silver's original post was full of errors, especially his point on how we've had more above average days in Minneapolis than below average this summer. I contacted him about this on Saturday, but he has not responded, nor has he fixed his post.

He tried to compare a weather sensor on the roof of a building on the U of MN campus with a very expensive and well maintained weather sensor array at the MSP airport. For his daily temps, he used the U of MN sensor, for his averages he used the MSP averages. Not only are the sensors located more than five miles from each other, but you're obviously going to get inflated temps on the roof of a building, especially when said roof is dark/black.

As A.S. pointed out above, if you compare the correct sets of data you'll see that Minneapolis is indeed below average this year and for the time period that Nate Silver highlighted.

What's funny about Silver's post is how he made fun of people that don't "understand" statistics, when he himself made a major blunder in his statistical analysis.

[mark l.]

a consideration...

what is the average based on?

10 years, 20 years, all available data?

nate wouldn't take the 10 year average, because it would be a sucker's bet.

betting against all available data, even assuming its accuracy, would mean that you would have to have a temp lower than the 50 of the last hundred years, very roughly speaking.

realistically, you should only bet against the last 10 year average if you are doing it for profit and to demonstrate the VERY POOR correlation between co2 and temp.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

So, Nate's saying that in response to the observation of cool weather in Minneapolis as evidence against global warmingness, he wants to make a bet that the temperature is really higher over a short multi-day interval, unless it's in Minneapolis.

[plt]

I hate to tell you this, but the odds on your bet depend on how many years over which the average is computed. If it is over the last ten years, you will clean up, because the temperatures over those years have been high and (in my opinion) our temperatures for the next decade or two will trend lower. If, however, the average is computed over the last 30 or 40 years, the average will be lower than our current temperatures, even if our current temperatures are declining. Check out this chart:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jun/lo-hem-jan-jun-pg.gif

I don't believe in human-caused global warming, but your bet depends a great deal on how the average is calculated, sorry to say.

[DADvocate]

I wonder if Silver proposes the bet simple based on regression toward the mean. Using that principle, he wouldn't lose by much, or win by much, making it a fairly safe bet for anyone on either side. However, if we used Cincinnati in July, he'd lose his ass. Three days average, 17 days below average so far.

[plt]

If Mr. Silver had any real conviction in the science global warming, he would make a bet that the monthly global deviations from the mean temperature, as measured by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) will go up from here each month, year over year.

In fact, it would be even better to bet on the monthly deviations as measured by satellite (University of Alabama at Huntsville), since these are not subject to the same measurement errors as land-based temperature stations are. But the climate alarmists don't really know the science, and I seriously doubt that he would take such a bet if he really does know the science.

It seems to me that, given the near-term forecast for most of the country, he is the weenie for setting the parameters of the bet in the way he has. A truly science-based bet would be based on average global temperatures.

[kcom]

Nothing whatsoever about the betting proves or disproves the A in AGW. It's a sucker bet for either side because it proves nothing. You might as well play the lottery because the lottery has as much to prove about AGW as this bet does.

Tom, steal his money if you can, I'm sure he deserves it, but other than that, it's meaningless.

[clarice]

Obama now tracking lower than Carter:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/presidential-approval-tracker.htm

[clarice]

Time for another Newsweek cover of him and something fresh from Robin Givhan about how Michelle is single handedly reviving the US fashion industry and looks even more styish than Jackie.

Pump it up, MSM, the turkey you sold us is starting to smell foul.

[Alec Rawls]

The crucial question is what baseline is used for calculating the average temperature. Taking a quick look at Weather Underground, I couldn't tell.

If they use the average over the instrumental temperature record, then we are near the peak of the hundred year record, and even with substantial cooling, will remain above the average for a substantial period.

The bet ought to be whether we go up or down vis a vis the same month last year. i.e. Is the world right now warming or cooling?

[theAmericanist]

Leaving aside technical (and thus, vital) questions about how the results would be measured, thus determining who won: didn't Silver make a perfectly honest bet, in fact one structured AGAINST his interests and FOR his convictions -- which you weren't willing to match?

He specified "hometown". Betting his way on HIS hometown, he's likely to lose, because the short-term weather for Minnesota is likely to be slightly down.

But you're not willing to make the same bet on YOUR hometown, for the opposite reason: exactly as he said, you want to cherry-pick a city.

Face it -- that's dishonest. What's more, you know it. He's not bluffing -- YOU are.

Everybody knows that climate change is distinct from weather, the way the short term is different from the long term. String enough short terms together, you get to the long term result, of course. But that doesn't mean that any particular short term measurement won't be above or below whatever the long term trend is.

Likewise, that any particular hometown might be above or below over a given period of time doesn't prove anything one way or the other about the overall climate. But put enough of 'em together, you have what is quaintly called "evidence".

Silver's bet is for bloggers to put up their hometowns. As he noted -- honestly -- and you dishonestly did not concede, there's no bet if bloggers picked whichever city they figured most likely to measure the way they want it to go. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that IS the way to bet."

Silver offered an honest bet -- if you really do NOT believe that the climate is changing to be warmer, then why wouldn't you bet that your hometown temperatures over some reasonable period of time wouldn't be down a little? (Unless, of course, like Silver your hometown might be trending the other way at the moment and UNLIKE Silver, you're not willing to back your convictions anyway.)

He really believes that the climate is warmer -- so EVEN THOUGH his own hometown's short-term weather is predicted to be cooler, he is willing to bet that against your hometown. You're not.

So you tried to con him, then chumped out when he called you on it.

[clazy]

Betting on a single town to "prove" anything about climate is ludicrous. GEt over it Americanist.

[Christopher Taylor]

Given the temperature on average is dropping worldwide and has been for almost 10 years the bet is a joke made by someone apparently clueless about the their environment, meteorology, and science to begin with.

[goodspkr]

There is a problem here. Nate Silver doesn't know what he's doing in this bet.

Since he's targeting the skeptics of AGW, he should be creating a bet that would test AGW. He's not.

The greenhouse effect doesn't affect the high temperature every day, it affects the low temperature. So if he really wants to bet on greenhouse gases causing global warming his bet should be about the low temperature each day.

Right now as it stands, he's betting that there is global warming not caused by CO2. And he seems to break the AGW alarmists code by equating weather with climate.

All things considered, Nate Silver really isn't a good advertisement for the alarmists.

[JorgXMcKie]

Okay, Americanist, will you bet with me that the average global temp will go up, month-on-month for the next decade (which presumes global warming, even allowing for the current temp 10-year plateau), or will you "chump out"? I suggest $100/mo to make it interesting.

[goodspkr]

"didn't Silver make a perfectly honest bet, in fact one structured AGAINST his interests and FOR his convictions -- which you weren't willing to match?" theAmericanist

I read your posting and have to say, no he didn't make a perfectly honest bet, one structured AGAINST his interest. He's using whatever average temperature the Weather Underground uses. Since most alarmist like to say the last 10 years have been the hottest ever recorded, wouldn't it be a more honest bet to say using the average temperature over the past 30 years (when they alarmist say AGW really took hold to see are the temperatures really going up or not).

Certainly including the last 30 years raises the average, but if global warming has occurred does an average which includes the cold temperatures of the 40s through the 70s not artificially decrease that average.

But I stand by my previous posting. Measuring the high temperature each day is less revealing about the current debate than measuring the low temperature each day.

[daddy]

Another brand new ">http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/archaeology.php"> study by climate scientists from the University of Hawaii concerning a massive Global Warming period on Earth 55 million years ago leads to this conclusion:

"A global warming event 55 million years ago cannot be solely explained by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a study published in Nature Geoscience shows. Richard Zeebe from the University of Hawaii and his team highlight GAPS in scientists' understanding of impacts from intense and rapid climate change."

"Carbon dioxide released at the time can only account for a fraction of the temperature rise. So far unknown mechanisms must have contributed significantly to the ancient warming."

I thought the discussion was over about what caused Global Warming.

[julietkilo]

Careful, not all weather stations are accurate.

http://www.surfacestations.org/

[Stan]

julietkilo hits the nail on the head. Not only are the stations not accurate, but their readings are "adjusted" many, many times before they get into the permanent datasets. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the warming "observed" comes from the sum of the various adjustments made to the raw data.

[Semanticleo]

Americanist, Nate's entire temper tantrum was in response to a post that someone else had written about how cold it's been in Minneapolis this summer. Nate's whole spiel was that it's not cold in Minneapolis, and only stupid global warming deniers could even think such a thing.

But as people pointed out in the comments on Nate's post, in the comments here, and everywhere else that people discussed this fraud's 3-card-monte-style bet, Nate's completely wrong (even with his cherry-picked data).

When Tom called him out and was willing to put his money where he mouth is, Nate didn't have the balls to stand behind his screed about the weather in Minneapolis, and caved.

Nate's a liar, a coward, and a cheapskate.

[kcom]

And again, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with anthropogenic global warming. The temperature could be 120 degrees every day for the rest of the summer and it still wouldn't prove or disprove anything about why the temperature was higher than average. There are at least four levels of assumptions built into the global warming scare tactics:

1) The world is warming
2) It's caused by rising C02
3) The cause of that rising C02 is primarily or overwhlemingly humankind
4) All kinds of bad, bad things will result from the warming

This bet barely serves to provide one tiny data point in determining the truth of the first assumption. The rest it doesn't even touch. It's entirely meaningless to the topic of AGW.

It may be meaningful to a discussion of the Farmer's Almanac, however, and the question of whether Minneapolis is having a relatively cool summer or a relatively warm summer in 2009. But that's hardly earthshaking.

[theAmericanist]

There's a difference between refusing a sucker bet, and chumping out. If you don't know the difference, you're probably already a chump.

I was just noting what Silver's bet WAS -- which our host evidently knew, because he promptly tried to change it, AND pretend that he was taking him up on the bet. Honest, you guys are dumb as dogshit, and think everybody else must be, also... cuz, after all, the guys who agree with you, really ARE this stoopid.

Silver's bet was essentially: yo, bloggers -- global warming? My hometown against yours.

Everybody knows that Minneapolis' temperatures are likely to be down in the short term, so Silver is already spotting you guys points. All you have to do -- IF you're serious -- to take him up on his bet, is to put your hometown against his.

That's not what our host was willing to do. He actually said -- sucker! -- that he'd bet, umm... hey, how about SILVER'S hometown, the one he'd already conceded was trending down?

When Silver called him on that bullshit, he chumped out. The rest of you guys are weaseling around like you don't know the difference -- and, in fairness, you just might be that stoopid.

So I'll make it simple (and note, NONE of this has to do with the merits of arguments about global warming): a fair response to Silver's bet would be for Reynold's to say, okay -- I'll put Nashville against Minneapolis.

[Assistant Village Idiot]

Silver states his bet is in frustration over skeptics' anecdotal evidence - how often someone will sneer at the idea of AGW during a chilly patch. He's got a point. It is bad science. The AGW people used to trot out these small-sample anomalies to scare us, now we're using equally inadequate data to refute them.

The worse issue is that the bet is not structured to be even. I don't think Silver knows that and is doing it intentionally, but it's there nonetheless. The automatic assumption, that if the temp stays the same over a year's time then there were probably an equal number of days above the mean and below it turns out not to be true. There are usually more days above the mean. This is because a cold stretch is farther below the mean on a day-by-day basis than a hot stretch is above it. (Remember your algebra lessons about absolute value). Two cold days can outweigh three warm ones in figuring the mean, but the person betting warm would be up $25. (Another way to see this is to compare the absolute values of record highs and record lows for a location on dates scattered throughout the year).

Tom, the research you should be checking up on is how many days above average, how many days below average in a given year for whatever location you are choosing.

[Even when the truth hurts.]

Ah, Leo, see why I love you?

[You're a stupid little bitch, americanist]

Silver's bet was essentially: yo, bloggers -- global warming? My hometown against yours.

I'm going to take some time out of pimping your mother to mention how wrong that is, Americanist. There's no mention of comparing two towns, just ask one of your mom's johns to read the post to you. Nothing is going head-to-head unless your mother's next two customers double booked.

The concession that Minneapolis will have a cool August - what "everybody knows" - was not in evidence in Silver's original post. That only came up in his response to our host's post here. Until then, the only thing that everybody knew would be going down is your mom on any parolee with a spare nickel.

[theAmericanist]

Oh, if you're gonna try to REALLY measure climate change, you're gonna ruin the whole effect of foolishness multiplied by ignorance:

The typical skeptic of global warming makes a series of not entirely consistent arguments:

1) the world is NOT getting warmer (except it is: that's measurable);

2) if it IS getting warmer, that's normal (which could be true, but isn't necessarily benign)

3) whether it is getting warmer or not (i.e., the evidence doesn't matter: so stop trying to confuse the issue with facts), humans have nothing to do with it, and finally

4) in any case, there's nothing we can do about it.

Not to be unfair, but all global warming skeptics I've ever seen make some form of at least one of those arguments.

The typical person on "the" other side is generally arguing that global warming is real, that there are things we can do to at least slow it down, and we ought to do those things.

Folks who confuse the sport of public decisionmaking about stuff like this with the real consequences of decisions, tend to choose sides: if you don't like the ideas offered for doing something about global warming, you generally make a couple of the not-entirely-consistent (and often hysterically unreasonable) arguments listed 1-4.

All Silver did was suggest that folks place a bet: your hometown -- is it getting warmer or not, measured with a fairly reliable, generally accessible standard?

If you REALLY doubt global warming, why not put up your OWN hometown, which was Silver's bet? Why pretend you're taking him up on his bet -- when you're not actually willing to use your own hometown?

Hell, Gore didn't win the Nobel because he blew the lid off "Minneapolis warming". Some places may be cooler for a time, others warmer: that's not how the science works. But it's an honest bet for Silver to say -- well, this is the data about MY hometown: if ya wanna bet, use YOURS.

The general science is approaching Galileo levels of certainty, yanno: objects really do fall at the same rate, regardless of weight -- likewise, global climate really IS getting warmer, and the various factors that we know heat up the planet include a good many that are human-generated.

If you want to argue that the planet is NOT getting warmer -- ya gotta pretend the data doesn't exist: #1.

If you want to argue -- so what? Sometimes the world gets warmer, sometimes it gets colder, big deal! then basically you don't care about various well-understood consequences of a warmer planet. So stop pretending that those consequences aren't real -- since (#2) you've conceded it's happening, but you don't care.

#3 This is the tricky one -- and the trick (which you play on yourselves) is to pretend that you haven't conceded the fact of global warming, even as you insist on answering the secondary question, which you argue is that humans had nothing to do with it. This is where you guys abandon science altogether (cuz science easily establishes BOTH the "global warming alarmist" fact that the planet is getting warmer, AND the skeptic's view that this has happened before), because there are many human-generated factors (like carbon emissions) which clearly exacerbate conditions that correlate with, and may actually cause warming.

But that's well-thought-out, not your strong suit.

So you're left with #4, which is flat-out unchallenged dogma for you: "there's nothing we can do about it." Perhaps you should get out of the way of those who know better.

Smartest thing I ever heard about the whole issue, was said by Harm de Bly who pointed out that, from the geological evidence, the most likely consequence of global warming is actually an Ice Age, since if you melt enough polar ice you stop the conveyor belt that brings warm water from the Equator to the poles. de Bly said: "What we know from history is that the world's climate is a dangerous beast -- and we are poking it with sharp sticks."

I dunno why you guys think that's such a bad idea -- but then, I dunno why you aren't willing to take Silver's bet... with YOUR hometown.

[Semanticleo]

Uhm, the Americanist, your friend Nate Silver is the one who popped his little chubby in response to something that Powerline posted about colder temperatures in Minneapolis.

Nate Silver's the one who had so much sand in his vagina that he just had to respond to a post by someone who lives in Minneapolis about temperatures in Minneapolis, demonstrating along the way that he has no clue about the difference between climate and the weather in Minneapolis, and that he doesn't even realize that you can't meaningfully compare temperature data taken from different sites in Minneapolis that are miles apart from each other.

Powerline, which is based in Minneapolis, put up a post commenting on the cooler than normal temperatures. Nate Silver, who seems to be as ignorant as you are, "Americanist", does NOT live in Minneapolis (despite your repeated, ignorant claims that it is his "home town"). Silver's a clueless twat parked in New York, who tried to tell someone who actually lives in Minneapolis what their local weather had been like.

At the end of his demonstration of ignorance about Minneapolis, weather, climate, temperature reading stations, etc., Silver tried a little sleight of hand with some bizarro custom-made sucker bet about something no one had even mentioned -- temperatures outside of Minneapolis. Unforunately for Nate and his innumerate sycophants, no one was stupid enough to fall for his misdirection in trying to change the topic from Minneapolis. (I noticed you're trying a similar bait and switch tactic, with your strawman-filled comment -- won't work any better for you than it did for Silver.)

All Nate managed to do with his post about Minneapolis was step on his own dick. If he'd just been smart enough to just shut the fuck up about Minneapolis, fewer people would have noticed that he's a liar, a coward, and a cheapskate.

[theAmericanist]

LOL -- even for you guys, that's pitiful: I posted a simple explanation that obviously you couldn't handle, our host deleted it -- and somebody posts THAT.

No wonder sensible people regard y'all as chumps.

[boris]

get out of the way of those who know better

It is the certainty claiming to "know" things that nobody can possibly know that gives it away.

The cooling trend of the last 10 years demolishes any credibility for so called AGW "science". You might as well be telling the skeptics to stand aside for the high priests taking sacrificial virgins to appease the angry volcano.

[theAmericanist]

(snicker) When I was growing up in PT Barnum's hometown, folks were made of sterner stuff -- and in my neighborhood, if you woofed, like our host did, about "I have emailed Mr. Silver to say yes to this proposition...", you had the balls to add "except I want to make a DIFFERENT proposition".

And nobody let you pretend otherwise. So why do that now?

Silver's bet is straightforward, as quoted right at the top: "For each day that the high temperature in your hometown..."

Note that: YOUR hometown.

Otherwise (as Silver noted in his reply), it's not the same bet. It's as if I offered to bet Maguire that the Nationals would beat the Bluefish... except, um, I'm not gonna actually bet ON the Nationals cuz I'd rather bet on the Yankees: they have a better chance against... the Bluefish?

They surely do.

So it's not complex -- and that this knucklehead deletes posts that point out how he chumped out, and allows "you're a stupid little bitch" posts, suggests some unresolved issues beyond the scope of global warming.

In the end, that's why you guys are chumps: if you want to argue about global warming, or policies to deal with it, hell -- why not?

But pretending that there aren't sensible folks who realize 1) the world is getting warmer; 2) humans are doing stuff that demonstrably adds to that dynamic, 3) that's frigging dangerous, so 4) maybe we oughta do something about it, is just nuts.

I noticed this bogus "bet" bullshit, so I pointed out that 'accepting' the bet, but changing it as fundamentally as swapping the Nationals for the Yankees (against the Bluefish, mind), is chumping out.

When THAT was obvious, even to you clowns, I noted how the actual debate works: global warming skeptics make a set of 4 not entirely consistent arguments: 1) it ain't happening (except for, um, the data that says it is); 2) it IS happening, but that's normal (which may be true, but isn't necessarily benign); 3) whether or not it's happening (if YOU don't care, who cares what you think about it?), humans have nothing to do with it (which misses those annoying facts about the effects of what humans do, e.g., carbon emissions), and finally, 4) there's nothing we can do about it anyway -- which, like #2, suggests that you guys have confused kibitzing with kvetching, and stupidity with common sense.

Since that willful ignorance is essentially like pretending to accept a bet on a bad team, except that you actually offer to bet on a good team instead, I figured I should point out what smarter folks than you guys understand: that's chumping out.

[Semanticleo]

Once more, for the benefit of people like theAmericanist who are too stupid to have gotten the point the first time:

Nate Silver is the one who popped his little chubby in response to something that Powerline posted about colder temperatures in Minneapolis.

Powerline, which is based in Minneapolis, had put up a post commenting on the cooler than normal temperatures. Nate Silver, who seems to be as ignorant as you are, "Americanist", does NOT live in Minneapolis (despite your repeated, ignorant claims that it is his "home town"). Silver's a clueless twat parked in New York, who tried to tell someone who actually lives in Minneapolis what their local weather had been like.

Nate Silver's the one who had so much sand in his vagina that he just had to respond to a post by someone who lives in Minneapolisabout temperatures in Minneapolis, demonstrating along the way that he has no clue about the difference between climate and the weather in Minneapolis, and that he doesn't even realize that you can't meaningfully compare temperature data taken from different sites in Minneapolis that are miles apart from each other.

At the end of his demonstration of ignorance about Minneapolis, weather, climate, temperature reading stations, etc., Silver tried a little sleight of hand with some bizarro custom-made sucker bet about something no one had even mentioned -- temperatures outside of Minneapolis. Unforunately for Nate and his innumerate sycophants, no one was stupid enough to fall for his misdirection in trying to change the topic from Minneapolis. (I noticed you're trying a similar bait and switch tactic, with your strawman-filled comment -- won't work any better for you than it did for Silver.)

Again: Powerline posts about the weather in Minneapolis. Nate Silver writes a response about Minneapolis. Maguire offers to take the bet regarding Minneapolis. But Nate Silver is too cowardly to put his money where his mouth is regarding Minneapolis, and starts making excuses about why he won't put up any money to support the claims and predictions he made in his post about Minneapolis.

End result: Powerline guys get to laugh at the innumerate asshole "statistician" Nate Silver who tried to tell them what the weather in Minneapolis was like from his perch in New York, JustOneMinute readers get to laugh at both Nate Silver and his innumerate, strawman-building apologist theAmericanist, and everyone gets to see that Nate Silver is a liar, a coward, and a cheapskate.

[theAmericanist]

(wicked smile) Yanno, I think one of the turning points the Right took down into schmuck-itude was waaay back in 1982, IIRC. There's a lesson for you in it.

Newt Gingrich and a handful of other junior Republicans decided to take advantage of TV coverage of the House floor by making speeches late in the day, when everybody had gone home. The rules for the cameras had been to focus only on the Representative who was talking, so Gingrich and his guys started staging this bogus political theater -- directing their speeches to Congressmen who weren't there, "demanding" that they answer particular questions and charges, pretending to wait and then, gesturing like they'd won something, continuing with their speeches like they were leading some Important Debate.

Tip O'Neill heard about this crap, and ordered that the next time they did it, the cameras would pan the House chamber, showing that there wasn't anybody there -- most especially, not the Representatives that Gingrich, et al, were pretending to be "challenging". It was a pretty stark public humiliation for Gingrich and his guys: they were bluffing, and they got called on it.

But, being the kind of folks who have come to exemplify the Right, Gingrich and his clowns decided that the guy in the wrong was -- O'Neill, because he had changed the rules on them.

They actually filed a protest.

So Tip O'Neill took the House floor himself, and said exactly what was happening: that Gingrich and his guys had been playing to the cameras, pretending to be debating opponents who weren't there and who, they pretended, had no answers to the questions that they were pretending to ask.

Tip said: "That's the lowest thing I've ever seen in this House."

A dozen years later, O'Neill was dead and Gingrich was Speaker himself: didn't turn out well, as I recall.

But that 'let's pretend we're tough' playing to an audience that ain't there, has really come to dominate the "conservative" side of the debate on a whole lot of stuff -- like leaving "you're a stupid little bitch" up, while deleting actual replies.

LOL --the epitome of chickenshit.

[Semanticleo]

It looks like brilliant commenter "theAmericanist", who has deigned to appear and educate the rubes, is too stupid to realize that no one is deleting his comments, but that there is more than one page of comments per post.

I'll offer a bet* on his continued idiocy -- $25 for each pissy, whining comment he makes in which he both lectures everyone here about how stupid they are and that he's being opporessed because his comments are being deleted.

* Terms and conditions: 1. Offer not valid in Minneapolis. 2. Results of the bet will be judged solely by me, using criteria to be determined once I figure what they need to be to win. 3. Offer not valid if I belatedly realize that I'm going to be the one owing someone else money.

[We are cooling, folks.]

er, Americanist. The globe is cooling because of oceanic oscillations probably driven by the sun. The magnitude of the effect of CO2 on climate, yea even the sign of the effect, is unknown. It is probably too small to be easily measurable because the effect is too weak to even keep the earth warm. Check the thermometers. For how long kim estimates a while.