I love stats

--by Horatio Algeranon
(with apologies to Jeffrey Moss -- "I love trash" -- and Oscar, of course)

Oh, I love stats
Anything binomial or Bernoullian or Gaussian
Anything Fuzzy or Frequentist or Bayesian
Yes, I love stats

I have here a plot that is scattered and abstruse
It's chock full of data with noise that is puce(!)
A gift from denialists who are quite obtuse
I love it because it's stats!

Oh, I love stats
Anything binomial or Bernoullian or Gaussian
Anything Fuzzy or Frequentist or Bayesian
Yes, I love stats

I've an E&E paper that's hot off the press
It's all full of holes and it sure is a mess
While most wouldn't read it, unless under duress
I'll debunk it with glorious stats!

Oh, I love stats
Anything binomial or Bernoullian or Gaussian
Anything Fuzzy or Frequentist or Bayesian
Yes, I love stats

I've an HP-25 and an old Macintosh
A (free!) "R" stats package that works great (by gosh)
The HP quit working when she went through the wash
But I keep her because she did stats!

Oh, I love stats
Anything binomial or Bernoullian or Gaussian
Anything Fuzzy or Frequentist or Bayesian
Yes, I love stats

Yes, I love, I love, I love stats.

Horatio likes statistics as much as the next anonymuse, but not nearly as much as Tamino, who is a master of time series analysis (Horatio was trained in physics and is a humble regressionist in comparison). The above was inspired by an Ode to Tamino posted by Eli Rabett on Rabett Run.

Note for the statistically (and colorically) un-initiated:"Puce Noise" is also known as "Brown noise"* or "red noise" (ie, Brownian noise). "Puce" is a brownish-red hue, of course.

*Not to be confused with "brown-nose", like Horatio.

Stupid is as stupid does

--by Horatio Algeranon

Stupid is,
As stupid does.
The Globe is cooling
Just because...

The temperature
Just yesterday
Was warmer than
It is today!

Statistics don't lie!
The trend is down!!
("Two points make a line"
Is what Euclid found.)

The winter ice,
Has recovered nice.
One whole inch thick!!
That should suffice,

To prevent its melting,
In the summer.
(For Gore, I'm sure,
A royal bummer.)

The CO2 rise
Has begun to slow.
Fallen (!!), in fact,
Two months in a row!

Which means,
Of course,
That fossil burning,
Can't be the cause,
As we've been learning.

The solar output's
On the fall.
A Maunderish Min
Has caused a stall.

A "Little Ice Age"
Is on the way!
It might arrive
Just any day!

The IPCC
Has been FALSIFIED!
That really cannot
Be denied.

They predicted warming,
When it’s been cooling!!
It’s only themselves
They have been fooling.

Stupid is,
As stupid does.
The Globe is cooling,
Just because...

Inspired by Tamino's post of the same title.

The Bjorn-again Environmentalist

--by Horatio Algeranon

I once believed,
The earth was doomed,
From toxic waste,
And fossil fumes.

I sailed with Greenpeace,
Way back then,
But I’ve seen the light,
I’m Bjorn again!

I’ve witnessed THE TRUTH,
I was naive,
It's just not grim,
Like I believed.

The “Population Bomb”,
It now is clear,
Is naught but
Enviro-alarmist fear.

And species extinctions?
Exaaaaggerated!
The polar bear?
Not near post-dated!

And Global warming?
Not so bad.
So cool it, dude!
It’s just a fad.

In recent years,
The earth's been cooling!
Scant cause for alarm,
Over fossil fueling!

The IPCC,
Has been “falsified”,
Their alarming "futures"
Unjustified.

The billions required,
For mitigation,
Would be better spent
On irrigation.

So let’s not panic,
Or make undue haste,
To act in this manner,
Is a sinful waste.

(Amen)

In 1998, Bjorn Lomborg, onetime Greenpeace activist, full time media hound and sometime political "science" statustician*, had an epiphany. He was sitting at his breakfast table one morning eating his granola and reading the Greenpeace newsletter and suddenly thought to himself, "Wow, this stuff is all complete bunk."

Thus arose The Church of the Bjorn-again Statusticians. Bjorn then wrote a bible for the faithful (The Skeptical Environmentalist), got taken to the cleaners** over his "stats" and "facts" by Harvard Biologist E. O. Wilson, Stanford Climatologist Stephen Schneider, freshwater resource expert Peter Gleick and other distinguished scientists (on the pages of Scientific American, Union of Concerned Scientists and Grist) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or, at least would be history in a world where science counted more than media hype. But unfortunately, Lomborg is still getting a hearing for his long since debunked "scientific" views in print and even in the halls of Congress.

Dr Peter Raven, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002 said of Lomborg: "...he's not an environmental scientist and he doesn't understand the fields that he's talking about so in that case, if you have a point to make and you want to get to that point, which is: everything's fine, everybody's wrong, there is no environmental problem, you just keep making that point. It's like a school exercise or a debating society, which really doesn't take into account the facts".

"Raven said that the success of Lomborg's book 'demonstrates the vulnerability of the scientific process -- which is deliberative and hypothesis driven -- to outright misrepresentation and distortion.'"

-- From the SOURCEWATCH encyclopedia.

*Statustician:
1) someone for whom "significance" means the number of times you have been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fox and similar sources of scientific "fact";

2) someone for whom "99.9% confidence" means wearing a black tee-shirt to a Congressional hearing where everyone else is in a suit and not feeling the least bit embarrassed;
and/or

3) someone who would state categorically that "Temperatures in this decade.... have actually decreased by between 0.01 and 0.1C per decade" without quoting the source of the data from which the trends were supposedly taken or providing error bars (indicating the uncertainty) on the trends.

**Good thing Bjorn was taken to the cleaners. His muscle-tee needed a good cleaning and he likes to wear it to important events (eg, to testify before Congress as a global warming "skeptic") -- though Horatio would note that black does hide the dirt (and sweat) very well***, which is why he himself owns several black leather collars (diamond studded, of course), to officiate at funerals, weddings, Papal coronations and other sacred ceremonies.

***As official fashion designer for the Vatican, Horatio has an eye for such details (which, incidentally, is also why he insists that Cardinals wear red, so the wine stains won't show)