One of the things our technological world
does is produce lots of numbers, too many in fact. Every day in our press we
see Labour, the LibDems and the Tories picking different ones to justify their
position or trash the other side. Too much information can lead to clever folk
playing the stats for their benefit.
There are, out there, people who specialize
in understanding which numbers are worth looking at (signals) and which ones
simply pack the sample and can, in the wrong hands, distort it (noise). The
trouble is those with an axe to grind tend to dislike these folk; whilst they
get the right trends and debunk bad economics, poor thinking or trash science,
they are rarely popular amongst pressure groups.
There are, of course, two things you can do
with statistics. You can predict or you can forecast. Prediction means you have
seen the trends, taken out all the noise and are willing to make absolute
statements about what will happen. Forecasts are gentler, suggesting what might
happen. Deciding what statistics tell us is a science in itself but the
mathematicians who have the skills to do it hardly ever get asked for their
opinions.
Let me give you an example of how
statistical trends can be misread.
In 1916 the British Army started issuing
tin helmets to their troops. After six months the statistics showed an increase
in head injuries and at a War Cabinet meeting a ‘specialist’ contended that the
troops were getting over confident because of the helmets – he suggested they
be withdrawn. It took a professor of mathematics to show that they were looking
at the noise not the signal. Deaths by head injury were actually massively
reduced and so reported head injuries that were none fatal were increasing. Signal
and noise and the inability of a scientist to see through the fog almost caused
the biggest mistake possible.
Scientists know all about this phenomena.
In fact they often use it to their advantage. Take the passive smoking debate
for instance. In its early days there were no supporting statistics, just a huge
amount of sympathy for Roy Castle’s wife and a lot of businesses (particularly
airlines) who saw advantage in an excuse to ban smoking. Then along came GP’s
to oblige those in favour of a ban. They were told to classify every
respiratory problem in a child whose parents smoked as ‘passive smoking’. There
was not a shred of evidence for this assertion, they just did it – and hey
presto science emerges that can allow scientists to make preposterous claims
about the effects of passive smoking. Bad, dishonest science wins the day. Yet
the signal, the fact that particulate concentrations in exhaled smoker’s breath
are too low to represent a threat to others is ignored. It is ignored because
the ones following the noise say they have data – they don’t, they invented it,
but it sticks.
But the best, the very best use of noise
has to be Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) or man-made global warming as it’s
known.
There is so much data about; caused by
scientists knowing that if they utter the AGW phrase governments will throw
money at them (even scientists have to eat). And scientists are good at turning
the statistical data their own way. Even when the mathematicians are screaming
at them about finding the signal within the noise. They don’t want to look.
They select the data that fits their views and anybody who dares to say
otherwise is called a flat earther, an idiot or worse. It doesn’t even matter
when the maths bods say they are just trying to point out facts about the data
– dare to question and you are a Luddite.
But the AGW mob made a fatal mistake. If
they had stuck to forecasting, and screaming about the likelihood that the
world would end, they would probably have been fine. But they chose instead to
predict. In fact for the last 10 years they have been making hard predictions,
even as mathematicians told them they were not working hard enough with the
data and that there was no possibility of making predictions with so much noise
in the system.
Of course, when you get carried away like
that and start reading things into the data that isn’t there, you will
ultimately hit problems. According to the predictions made in 2003 the earth
should be 0.3 degrees warmer than it is now (that’s a lot evidently) but it
isn’t. In fact it’s cooler than it was in 2003. Interestingly when this
prediction was made two mathematicians pointed out that the Pacific Carbon
Sink, which stores heat and carbon had switched itself off in 1980, that data
showed it did that sort of thing and that if it came back online nothing
(REPEAT NOTHING) would happen. These two guys barely got out with their lives!
The Pacific system turned back on in 2004.
Since then it’s been storing carbon and heat (as it does) and dissipating that
heat though deep flow systems, cooling as it goes.
It may continue to do this for 50,000 years
or 5 years – nobody knows because we don’t understand how it works. It is,
however, a major signal in amongst the noise of the data collected by
scientists who then bleated about their findings. As I say, their mistake was
in making predictions.
2003 – the Arctic ice mass would be gone
completely by 2010; the ice is thicker this year than since records began
2004 – 70% of UK rivers would dry up by
2014 – take a look outside!
2005 – the glacial waters that feed
California with it’s water supply would be gone by 2010; today they are thicker
than ever
and then you get the crazy stuff
2006 – there would be a 60% increase within
10 years of the incidence of scale 9 earthquakes – nobody can predict
earthquake likelihood, they can’t even say how the after shocks will work
2007 – the warm water currents that keep
the UK’s climate temperate would shut down by 2015 as a result of increased ice
melt in the Arctic – today this weather system is stronger than in recorded
history and again, nobody knows how it works
2008 – the jet stream would head south
creating polar conditions behind it (in the UK). The jet stream has sat further
north than ever before for the last 4 years and nobody knows how it works!!
And this stuff continues. Every major
weather event is put down to AGW (even the floods we are having now which seem
to be directly linked to the jet stream speeding up as it does on a 300 year
cycle) without science, facts or in many cases the slightest attempt to prove
the statement.
The message for the AGW scientists is stick
to forecasts. Predictions using bad science tend to lead to egg on faces. Of
course it would be better to invite the mathematicians in to find the signals
and eradicate the noise from the statistics. Unfortunately the work in that
area done so far would suggest what many think; that we are insignificant in
the weather systems of this big rock we live on and there’s nothing we can do
to stop it managing itself.
Sobering thought given all those expensive
wind turbines, solar panels and the billions spent on ‘green issues’. It can’t
be true surely? That governments and their scientists are conning us for their
own benefit and spending our money pointlessly?
