The Blackboard » Tricking yourself into cherry picking.

The method of simply rejecting the trees that fail to correlate does automatically bias a sample. Seems odd, but it’s true. So, even though the method seems reasonable, and the person doing it doesn’t intend to cherry pick, if they don’t do some very sophisticated things, rejecting trees that don’t correlate with the recent record biases an analysis. It encourages spurious results, and in the context of the whole “hockey stick” controversy, effectively imposes hockey sticks on the results.

Vehicles switched off at 6.30pm to create awareness on global warming risk - Chennai - City - The Times of India

CHENNAI: Exactly at 6.30 pm on Friday, as colourful firecrackers lit up the sky and the signal turned red at the Nandanam traffic junction, the
headlights of waitng vehicles went off. And, engines were switched off one by one at four of Chennai's busiest signals school and college students went around reminding motorists to switch off the ignition while waiting at signals.

Jack Handey Deep Thoughts from SNL

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
Jack Handey

SPPI: IPCC CO2 Projections are Half-Baked

The IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but, for almost eight years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 570 ppmv by 2100. This alone halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections.