Sunday, November 01, 2009

No, global warming hasn't stopped (part 94)


No prizes for guessing which "provocative book" he is talking about, and of course the "global warming has stopped" meme has been kicking about the delusionosphere pretty well for ever (eg see here). What he did was quite neat - sending off the time series of temperature data to a bunch of statisticians without telling them what it was, and asking them for their analysis. I would have preferred to disguise the data in some way (any linear transformation) but that's a bit of a nit to pick. Of course the statisticians gave the same answer that all competent climate scientists have already given, cos this stuff is hardly rocket science and there is no evidence for a marked drop in trend (mind you, the models suggest the trend should be accelerating, not just continuing). Cutting-edge science it is not, but it is an interesting and well-constructed news feature.

Best comment prize goes to Deep Climate, in the thread to Stoat's post

RP jr didn't write about it, so it must be right.

Sad but true.

Gavin Schmidt can be spotted highlighting the chances of a new temperature record next year. Obviously he's been reading McLean et al's ground-breaking paper where they show for the first time that ENSO affects global temperatures :-)

I've been keeping an eye on the ENSO forecasts recently myself, not because I care about ENSO itself - I don't think it has much of an effect here (cue Japanese scientists telling me how important it is) - but rather due to its likely effects on global temperature. The Hadcru temperature anomaly has been about +0.5C for the last few months, and the old 1998 record was +0.526C. The weekly pdf updates presented on this page give an accessible summary of recent ENSO status and predictions. According to it, the ENSO is "expected to strengthen and last though Northern hemisphere winter". It is almost certainly late now for this year to break any records, but given the lag of about 6 months in ENSO's effect, every extra month of positive ENSO index from here on means additional warmth next year.


6 comments:

crandles said...

>"I've been keeping an eye on the ENSO forecasts recently myself, not because I care about ENSO itself ... but rather due to its likely effects on global temperature."

and how much was that bet for? £100?

I have been keeping an eye on it too:

PositionsOrdersMargins Contract Posn Avg Last TrdPL $ Bid Ask

European Union - reduction of CO2 emissions under UNFCCC Cancel all
EU.TARGET.DEC09.>10% -7 77.5 - - 7 All
Climate Change Prediction: Al Gore versus Prof. Scott Armstrong Cancel all
GOREvARMSTRONG.ARMSTRONG 0 0.0 70.0 0.00 -1 All
2009 Global Average Temperature Cancel all
2009.GLOBALTEMP.TOP5 +205 43.1 49.0 208.68 12 -205 All
Last named storm of 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season (June 1st - Nov 30th) Cancel all
LAST.STORM.09.HENRI +28 22.1 60.0 107.71
LAST.STORM.09.IDA +32 21.5 30.0 27.22 -4 All
LAST.STORM.09.JOAQUIN +21 17.2 9.0 -17.24 7 All
LAST.STORM.09.KATE +5 14.1 2.0 -6.05 10

That badly formatted cut and paste shows I have a $2050 bet on 2009 being in the top 5 with the odds in my favour but given the ENSO forecast and the best correlation I have found, I estimate the probability at 90%. Last transaction was at only 49.

Anyway, if you say you want a market on it, shouldn't you be prepared to join in?

James Annan said...

Chris,

Is that Intrade or somewhere else? I think you have a good deal, I almost said in my post that 2009 looked like being about 3rd or 4th hottest.

I did try one of the betting sites some time ago, but IIRC my Japanese location made it dodgy for some reason. But maybe I should have another go. The units are $100, so taking on that ask of 38 at 55 means a total win of 45*38=$1710 on a stake of $2090 (probably with some dealing costs), right?

crandles said...

Hi,

Yes it is intrade, but they are only $10 units so each .1 is 1c.

If credit card has US connection the transfer by credit card may be blocked so I used a bank transfer.

Besides bank changes on the transfers to from Intrade, their charges are:

5c per trade if you accept someone elses price, nothing if you set a price and someone else accepts.

10c for each winning contract. (This can be reduced a little by setting a sell at say 99.3 but there is no guarantee it will be taken by a loser.)

So the 38 is a risk US$210.9 for a profit of $165.3

crandles said...

>"every extra month of positive ENSO index from here"

At the time you wrote that the last SOI figure I found was +0.6 but that means cooler temperatures some time later. Since then however the October figures have come in at SOI of -2.7 and ONI at +0.9 which are both much more in line with El Nino strengthening.

The 38 no coupons at 55 were withdrawn rather than taken up by anyone.

Steve Bloom said...

Re RP Jr., I think "indisputable" is more apt than "true."

crandles said...

Just wondering if you had joined and grabbed those 264 2009.top5 coupons at 70 that I was considering before they were snaffled?