[Phys-L] Re: [Political Action] The nature of the lack of proof (climate warming)

[anngeorg at PACBELL.NET (Bernard Cleyet)]

"... and physicists in general are just not good at picking up signal under the noise level; they don't want statistics, and they don't want signal-processing if they can avoid it: ..."


Reminds me of trying to convince (I strongly suspect he was playing
devil's advocate, but must be a very good poker player.) the instructor
of an intermediate lab that beta absorption had an end point.  It's just
gone under the noise he'd say.  So I did some garage Physics;  counting
for longer and longer times w/ increasing sheets of Al foil, and always
detecting a difference (statistical), until finally I had to give up
when variation in the background became too great to "handle".  Of
course I was detecting Bremsstrahlung X-rays.  At least that's my
theory.  {It was, exponential.}

"[I know of course, that to pick signal from deep under noise it is helpful
to correlate a  putative model against raw data in noise - but models are
  too easy targets for the incredulous]"


So, pure gamma absorption is, w/ very good Chi square, exponential.  No
way is beta "above the noise".

bc, who finds quite interesting the correspondence of red states and the
slave states and territories.

p.s. the first and second more difficult (w/ correspondingly large
number of credit points) advanced labs involved signal processing:  EPR
and Brownian motion.


Brian Whatcott wrote:

> It's interesting -  the subject given  to this thread is quite apposite:
> the global warming advocates tend to be European, or Democrat or Socialist.
> The global warming debunkers tend to be American, or Republican
> or Conservatives.
>
> Evidence is not enough: I suppose if one is a part of that steeply
>  increasing population of skin cancer victims in Australia say,
>  or South America -  that is a kind of evidence to which one can relate,
> no matter what one's politics.  But that isn't about global warming,
>  specially - it's only about an ozone hole.
>
> And I sympathize with one who finds the objective evidence unconvincing:
> it's still barely above noise level: and physicists in general are just not
> good at
>  picking up signal under the noise level; they don't want statistics, and they
>  don't want signal-processing if they can avoid it: so it hardly matters that
> I pointed to papers from every ivy league college and blue-ribbon society
> in the
> science biz: you will not be convinced if your leitmotif is tree-huggers
> versus
> solid American business: chimney scrubbers cost an awful lot of money to bet
> on a hunch after all, to name one trivial manifestation....
>
> For this and other reasons, I deliberately erased any paper citing a model
> or its predictions from the list I offered.
> [I know of course, that to pick signal from deep under noise it is helpful
> to correlate a  putative model against raw data in noise - but models are
>  too easy targets for the incredulous]
>
> Brian W
>
> At 09:15 PM 12/15/2004,  "David T. Marx" <dtmarx@ILSTU.EDU> you wrote:
>
>
>
> > I know there's no shortage of literature on the topic.  I have read a lot
> > of it.
> >
> > Most of the articles involving species assume climate change is occurring
> > and then
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