Post by havelock on Aug 25, 2010 19:43:08 GMT
Richard L. Smith has been Professor of Statistics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, since 1991.
"Smith began with a slide show about the role statisticians play in climate change research. He noted that many criticisms of climate change research in the news recently are not new and that robust criticism is a natural and necessary part of the scientific process. He did agree that climate science would benefit from a fuller and more open discussion in which differences of scientific viewpoint are addressed as part of an ongoing scientific process.
Smith illustrated his points with the “hockey stick” temperature time series and statistical analyses of claims that global mean temperatures have decreased since 1998. From his temperature trend analysis, he concluded there was no evidence of a decrease in temperatures post-1998. In fact, allowing a change in slope in 1998, the analysis showed the temperature trend increases after 1998, more so after adjusting for El Niño.
Addressing the hockey stick controversy—a critique of the statistical methods in the 1998–1999 analysis of Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes showing the temperature time series from tree ring proxy data having a hockey stick shape—Smith said subsequent authors showed the basic hockey stick shape to be valid. He illustrated this using the “principal components analysis,” in which the hockey stick shape emerges as one includes higher components, which are necessary for proper application of this technique.
Smith concluded his talk with slides about data access and peer review. Regarding the former, he noted, the “climate science community is already one of the most open about making data available to the rest of the scientific community and the general public.” Concerning peer review, Smith urged climate skeptics to publish their results in scientific journals, rather than on blogs and other unofficial outlets, and emphasized the role journal editors and reviewers must play to realize this."
from magazine.amstat.org/blog/2010/07/01/congbriefingclim710/
"Smith began with a slide show about the role statisticians play in climate change research. He noted that many criticisms of climate change research in the news recently are not new and that robust criticism is a natural and necessary part of the scientific process. He did agree that climate science would benefit from a fuller and more open discussion in which differences of scientific viewpoint are addressed as part of an ongoing scientific process.
Smith illustrated his points with the “hockey stick” temperature time series and statistical analyses of claims that global mean temperatures have decreased since 1998. From his temperature trend analysis, he concluded there was no evidence of a decrease in temperatures post-1998. In fact, allowing a change in slope in 1998, the analysis showed the temperature trend increases after 1998, more so after adjusting for El Niño.
Addressing the hockey stick controversy—a critique of the statistical methods in the 1998–1999 analysis of Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes showing the temperature time series from tree ring proxy data having a hockey stick shape—Smith said subsequent authors showed the basic hockey stick shape to be valid. He illustrated this using the “principal components analysis,” in which the hockey stick shape emerges as one includes higher components, which are necessary for proper application of this technique.
Smith concluded his talk with slides about data access and peer review. Regarding the former, he noted, the “climate science community is already one of the most open about making data available to the rest of the scientific community and the general public.” Concerning peer review, Smith urged climate skeptics to publish their results in scientific journals, rather than on blogs and other unofficial outlets, and emphasized the role journal editors and reviewers must play to realize this."
from magazine.amstat.org/blog/2010/07/01/congbriefingclim710/