- Bishop Hill blog - Models, data and the Arctic

As can be seen from the graph, CRUTEM is on the cusp of falling outside the envelope of the projections of the models, although this was surprisingly of little concern to the Met Office. As we saw a few weeks ago, the new version of CRUTEM will be issued soon, and will have an increased warming trend, which is apparently the result of a reassessment of warming in the Arctic. This involves a shift from the "admit our ignorance" approach used now to a new one incorporating a GISS-like extrapolation. The enhanced warming will shift CRUTEM back towards the centre of the envelope of the models.

This bothers me. It seems to me that for assessing model peformance, you should only compare models to data, not models to data-plus-extrapolation. If we don't know anything about the Arctic, then we should presumably test models versus data only for those regions of the planet outside the Arctic.

Monckton’s Schenectady showdown | Watts Up With That?

“There’s a CONSENSUS!” she shrieked.

“That, Madame, is intellectual baby-talk,” replied Lord Monckton.

Aggie Joke : Dessler’s 90 Year Weather Forecast | Real Science

There has been no trend in Texas precipitation or temperatures since at least 1895.

Special Booga-booga Service | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

...Or you can believe the reality:

During the past 6-years since Hurricane Katrina, global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows. According to a new peer-reviewed research paper accepted to be published, only 69 tropical storms were observed globally during 2010, the fewest in almost 40-years of reliable records.

[Texas] Never Rains but it Pours | Planet3.0

I was right about our ignorance and most everybody else was wrong. I am doubly happy to have this demonstrated, being not just relieved of the stress of everything dying all around me, but also in having my ignorance prove more correct that most people’s morose overconfidence.

Sometimes expertise means not knowing and knowing that you don’t know.