Goddard’s Folly

As many of you are already aware, Steve Goddard contributed a post to WUWT about the planet Venus. The theme was that the extreme temperatures on our neighbor planet aren’t due to the greenhouse effect, but due to the extremely high pressure of the Venusian atmosphere. He followed it up with another post in order to add “a few ideas which should make the concepts clear to almost everybody.”

Monckey Business

As often happens, Eli Rabett has yet another fascinating post, this time about how Barry Bickmore has solved some of the mysteries created by Christopher Monckton. Monckton responded to the expose of his misdeeds the way he usually does: by threatening Bickmore. But you can read about that from the Rabett (honor among bloggers and all that).

Open Thread

Another open thread. Enjoy!

How Low can you Go?

Stephan Lewandowsky has posted a rather scathing critique of the paper by McLean, de Freitas, and Carter, a summary of the comment which decapitates it, and now McLean has replied. It seems he finally found a venue where his reply wouldn’t be rejected for the nonsense it is.

Or has he?

Temporarily Offline

We’re moving. That means that for nearly a week we’ll be without internet access. That of course means I’ll be unable to moderate comments — so if yours waits in moderation for a long time, I hope you’ll understand. I might be able to get a moment here or there during the “blackout” — but I can’t guarantee it.

Bad Bayes Gone Bad

In the last post I discussed what I thought was a mistaken application of Bayesian analysis. I didn’t claim that Bayesian analysis isn’t appropriate for the problem, in fact I showed the kind of Bayesian analysis which I think is appropriate. But some readers objected to my claims; I think we have some Bayesian zealots out there.

Good Bayes Gone Bad

A reader recently linked to a book about information and inference, which definitely leans toward the Bayesian rather than frequentist view of inference. I do too. But I’m not the avowed anti-frequentist that some Bayesians are.

The Power — and Perils — of Statistics

A recent article in ScienceNews calls into question scientific results established by statistics. It was excerpted by WUWT at great length (I wonder whether Anthony Watts knows the difference between “fair use” and violation of copyright), apparently an attempt to discredit global warming science because, after all, it uses some statistics. Of course Watts fails to consider the outrageous statistical follies coming from his side of the fence (many from himself and his contributors). Lubos gets in on the act, purportedly defending statistics but insisting on a ridiculously high confidence level — and of course, getting in some potshots at global warming science himself.

Still Not

Those who can’t bear to believe that the laws of physics govern global temperature, still want to maintain that it’s a random walk. They base this on the fact that the ADF (Augmented Dickey-Fuller test) doesn’t reject the presence of a unit root, if you refuse to use the BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion) for model selection and you’re willing to ignore the Phillips-Perron unit root test.

Not a Random Walk

Euler appeared, advanced toward Diderot, and in a tone of perfect conviction announced, “Sir, , hence God exists—reply!”.

One is tempted to be amazed how often such arguments are made about serious issues. But it shouldn’t be such a surprise when one considers how often people are taken in by such sophistry. If you can’t persuade them with logic, dazzle them with bullshit.