Comments at that link boggle the mind! People actually defend cherry picking data, and refute peer reviewing?!
I fear you're correct Kate; the education system is in crisis.

"People actually defend cherry picking data"

Ignorance is Strength. Orwell was a lapsed commie. He knew what he was talking about.

In layman's terms the error is called "The Texas sharpshooter error". It basically works like this. A man with a rifle stands blindfolded in front of the side of a barn. After blasting away (blindly) in the general direction of the barn wall until his ammunition is exhausted he takes off the blindfold, looks for the closest grouping of bullet holes, paints a target around it with the tightest grouping of shots at the centre and declares, "There, that's what I was aiming for!". It's a perverse combination of non-sequitur and tautology.

Beg to differ DrD, but Texans (not leftoids though) seldom miss what they aim for.

Fifty (50) Days of Decision.

But, Allah-Mo's 'Path to Salvation" trumps Gaia's 'catastrophe', TORedStar says with a rhetorical question.
...-

"Barack Obama must attend climate change talks to avoid 'catastrophe' for the planet

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, has warned of 'catastrophe' for the planet unless President Barack Obama and other world leaders ensure a deal on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of the year."
urlm.in/dgnk
...-

"Westhead: Pakistan's 'Path to Salvation'?"

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/pakistan/article/711968

Demonstrating once again that it is easier to make sh1t up than to do actual science. Easier to get grants for it, too.

Sounds like "settled science" to me.

The use of tree ring data to illustrate temperature changes is fraught with problems. That those doing the study would actually use more than one species of tree is nuts (pardon the pun). As anyone aho has grown a crop can relate, wider tree rings are the result of more than just temperatures during the growing season. Factors like rainfall sunlight pests weeds disease and maturity of the tree all have an impact. To cite temps as the only cause is utter folly. To then throw out some ring data as being not relevant is idiotic and either grossly ignorant or a willful attempt to fudge the data. Any objective person in the field would have pointed these problems out even before embarking on the study.

In effect, our statistical genius has uncovered the 'smoking gun' of the Mann hockey stick graph, which is undeniable in its use of deceptive, hand-picked data, to fit his pre-determined conclusion.

Unfortunately, our society at large is too lazy (and stupid) to scratch the surface and try to understand the fundamentals of statistical analysis , or 'climate change', for that matter.

For those of you that may have taken some form of statistics in your post-secondary life, as I have, you will realize that you can bend and twist data sets in many ways, to achieve results of various outcomes. The common man turns blue when you start 'splaining it......its easy to see how todays 'lemmings' (the environuts, leftards, etc) are convinced, their principles are based on emotions, rather that real analysis. It means they have to think, instead of react.

Since science became politicized by both European fascist and communist regimes,it is simply a control tool utilized by technocratic martinets and scientific dictatorships. The methodology of the scientific community which is patronized by the political oligarchy, has become as venal and as the political theater.

It's now all a game of my scientist is smarter than your scientist in justifying wealth redistribution and global regulating.

It's all academic anyway. Finding an anomaly in a 1000 year window does not make it a climate anomaly. It would still need to be shown that it is a rare event with respect to climate history. If that could be shown, it would then need to be shown that man is the causal factor in the anomaly.

To me it looks like either Mann still has a lot of work to do or I don't know what I'm talking about. Probably the latter.

If Martin Luther were alive today, he would have a blog like Steve's. He had to settle for nailing his findings to the door of the church. Steve is another voice pushing to force a reformation in an institution (modern peer reviewed science) that he loves more than the practitioners of same seem to, as they are blinded by political power and the profits behind selling carbon indulgences.

Are hockey sticks made from trees anymore?

Al Gore's hockey stick fantasy is touched upon in "Not Evil Just Wrong". It was actually challenged and discredited by Canadians, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, both from Ontario.

When James Hansen, the NASA scientist who vociferously & frequently spoke of the hockey stick data supporting the notion of Global Warming, was presented with the facts that the hockey stick data was faulty, he could not get himself to commend these Canadians for adding truth to the debate.

A quick look at Hansen's Wikipedia entry reveals something interesting:

In 2006, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) selected James Hansen to receive their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility "for his courageous and steadfast advocacy in support of scientists' responsibilities to communicate their scientific opinions and findings openly and honestly on matters of public importance."

How's that for irony?

Seems all studies done now days, including medical studies, are done with the desired end point in mind. Was surprised to read how the data in health studies regarding obesity, cholesterol, diabetes, etc. is manipulated to get the desired results. Remember this next time you read a study that says x causes this disease. A lot of variables are eliminated if they change the results to the one that is desired by the researcher.

The weather thingie (warming, cooling, windy, hopie changie, horrible hurricane, 'bad weather, panic nowhoww...) was a Unka Mo stlong commie ilk money grab right from the get go. When the unca mo/UN crowd lost their control over the sale of high profit oil (via the Saddam 'oil for food' scam changed to the 'oil for discount $$' UN and 'others' collaboration) they had to figure out another way to gain control over humans so they invented the Climate warming thingie. There was never any 'science', it was always a $$/power grab. Msm collaborated.

Sda has been on top of the rhetoric right from the beginning; most people are not 'on board' with radical measures to combat 'hot air' because people like hot air vs freezing in the dark for no reason and most people like to spend their $$ on things that they consider to be valuable to themselves and their families. Most people would like to forget about feeling obligated to worry about hot air - most people would rather see pollution cleaned up. Our Prime Minister has stated that our priority, in this nation, will be pollution clean up...not 'buying' hot air to fund the enemy.

Once upon a time I thought it would be possible to predict stock and commodity prices by observing previous price and volume data. Using a RadioShack TRS 80 I created an equation by trial and error that eventually matched the historical price graph. Before I put any money down I tried it on paper to see if the equation would predict future price action.
No.
So I tweaked the equation again to meet the latest prices then tried it on paper again.
It didn’t work.
Making a formula to match previous random data does not necessarily predict the future.

"Are hockey sticks made from trees anymore?"

Yeah, not so much anymore. I think only one manufacturer makes them, most have moved to composite materials. Spezza is hoarding them because he likes them a lot better (in Ottawa, can you tell...:^))

JCL

DanBC, you are absolutely correct about bending and twisting data. This was all too apparent when I took the 1st year statistics course for the Registered Industrial Accounting degree in the 1960s.

Proper PEER-REVIEW involves in carefully vetting the reviewers. Such things as just being acquainted with the researcher makes the prospective reviewer ineligable. This is to eliminate bias.
When McIntrye and McItrick presented their review of Mann's first "hockey stick" to the journal SCIENCE...the editors sent their work to "peer review"---the reviewers included individuals who not only were acquainted with Mann but had co-authored studies. This is not PEER REVIEW it is PAL-REVIEW and the "peer-review" report reflected this. The report did not refer to the work of either Mann or McIntrye/McItrick but instead amounted to ad hominem attacks upon McIntrye/McItrick.
This is what passes for science now.
The much quoted IPCC is reputed to be circa 2500 "Scientists" but the vast majority are not even geologists but are communications, anthropoligists, political scientists and computer programmers.
They quite simply just make sh1t up after editing out genuine (inconvenient) science.

I was listening to a climate debate on radio a few weeks ago, the usual back and forth. but when it was winding down the warmist asked plaintively...but isn't it the right thing to do anyway, even if we don't know?
We'll be hearing that a lot in the near future as a justification for past behaviour and a rather limp attempt for continued stupidities.

biff jupiter,
You're right about this nonsense so called "precautionary principle" (also argumentum ad ignoratum) i.e. we don't know so we should "err on the side of caution" and cap and trade, carbon capture or whatever. The so-called precautionary principle is another logical fallacy. The best way I find to illustrate the fallacy is to quote the (in)famous words of Catherine the Great, "It is better that a thousand innocents should perish than that one spy go free." Its appeal all depends upon which side of the application of the principle one happens to fall. If you're one of the thousand innocents; well . . . Likewise, if you're an impoverished citizen of a developing country then the precautionary principle would imply, keep producing coal-fired electrical generating plants because that is the quickest way to prosperity. The enviro-loons, unfortunately, don't seem to give a hoot about people in the third world.

All this reminds me of the ancients who developed elaborate equations to chart their astral observations based on the earth as the centre of the universe. All the equations worked fine UNTIL an observation didn't fit; they then re-did the equation to make it fit. By the end they had some mighty fine and long, complex equations.

These AGW guys are too lazy to re-do the equations; they discount the new observation as an anomily and carry on with same old equation.

This folks, is todays scientific research.
The same stringent standards, probably threw out a cure for cancer years ago.

Simply because some lab coat wearing retard, with all the official papers to show his "qualifications", didn't agree with the results in front of his/her well scrubbed pointed face.

I'll never defer to a so-called scientific expert, as long as I live. A bunch of arse-sniffing yesmen all of 'em.