Time for Serious Science on climate change.  We’ve got Nobel prize winning physicists releasing their science at a dot org web site.  They will do what no one has done before.  They will do Nobel level science on climate change data.  Here’s (pdf) their Special Sauce.

B) the application of a quality control and “correction” framework to deal with erroneous, biased, and questionable data . . .

If you know anything about applied statistics you read that line with a chuckle.  You can drive a truck through all the holes that process permits and anyone dumb enough to accept the premise will be trapped with the conclusions you manufacture.  You just have to get them to accept that dubious assertion of correcting biased data which, as persuasion science teaches us, is easier when you have a Nobel prize, a dot org web address, and a press kit.  The rest is just sophistical statistics.  Think about this like a real scientist rather than somebody with a little time, a new web address, and a desire to debate.

You cannot execute experimental science on climate change.  No one is in a position to randomly assign anything to any controlled and compared conditions.  The nature of nature does not permit this gold standard scientific method.

The next best method is an observational approach that is most similar to well-done public opinion survey research.  You create a well defined population, then draw random samples from that population with reliable and valid measurement of each element in the sample.  Gallup, for famous example, begins with a population of all registered voters, then works like a dog to draw random samples of 1,400 people and asks each the same question under the same conditions.  And, working hard with this kind of method, scientific pollsters still get the outcome wrong – remember 2000?  The election was simply too close to discern with this good, but not ultimate, method.

Apply this thinking now with climate change.  Throw a fishing net over Earth then within each opening of the net shoot thermometers into randomly selected locations in each opening.  Now take a reading from each thermometer in all locations the same way over a long period of time.

While this fishing net approach is clearly not experimental, it is pretty good science and would be better than licking your finger and sticking it in the wind.  You’d still be wary and skeptical with any results you obtain with this method, but you could build a good research literature that you might be able to tie into experimental results from lab or field settings.  Then, taken together, you might not only know something, but also be able to change something.  Good climate science can be done.  Good public policy on climate change can be done.

But realize that the Berkeley Earth project does not have this kind of science.  No one has yet to throw that net around Earth, shoot thermometer-arrows into randomly selected locations within each net hole, and then collect the same observation the same way at all randomly sampled locations.  The only data anyone has on climate is from biased samples where the location of the hole is biased, the thermometer location is biased, the thermometer type is both biased and variable, and the data analysis is biased, variable, and not even statistically significant!  The Berkeley Earth project blows past those limitations with this notation.

Robert Rohde, our chief scientist, obtained more than 1.6 billion measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations around the world.

Nearly two billion data points!  Imagine the size of that Excel spreadsheet!  And nearly forty thousand thermometers!  And, excuse me I didn’t quote this but, they have two hundred years of data!

Of course, the Berkeley Earth project did not obtain two billion data points from their thermometers.  No new data here.  They took old data with all the biases of sampling, measurement, and time, and invented some kind of Nobel applied statistics that takes a biased database of two billion data points and makes it True.  Let me requote them on this.

B) the application of a quality control and “correction” framework to deal with erroneous, biased, and questionable data . . .

It is impossible to de-bias a biased sample of any data no matter what size the database.  Prove this without any math.  If anyone knew how to reliably and validly de-bias a biased sample he would be the Queen of Tomorrow who could know not only the outcomes with climate, but with the stock market, Presidential elections, and which person at the end of the bar would actually do this but not that on the first date.  Only God knows how to de-bias a biased sample and because no one since Nietzsche believes in God, the claim must be ipso facto, summa cum laude, and dipsy doodle false.

If you are willing to work a bit harder than this Thought Problem approach, you need to peruse this paper and look carefully for all the “correcting” their new analytic method requires.  The team moved between hypothesis and analysis as they derived their results.  They did not start with one explicit system of “correction” and then run the data to see if it fit.  Rather, they made some corrections, ran the data, compared the data to some model, then made more corrections, ran the data, compared the data to a model, and ran the this process until they got bored or ran out of corrections.  You also have to remember that with the tremendous sample size, you can obtain results that have stupendous markers of statistical precision, yet may not explain that much or that well.

Realize also that this analysis is essentially a time series run on a dependent variable with no serious scientific independent variables like CO2 concentration or solar flare activity or even the number of slides in Al Gore’s Nobel prize winning PowerPoint presentation.  It simply takes biased measurements over 200 years and tries to find a higher mean and a wider standard deviation during some point in the sequence.

Finally, you need to spot what I consider the weakest element of the Berkeley Earth project.  They seem to be working towards confirmation rather than disconfirmation.  In other words, the cycle of model-correct-test seeks to confirm the global warming hypothesis rather than disconfirm it.  Merely taking a huge, but biased database, then applying various de-biasing tricks is not the same thing as actively trying to disconfirm the hypothesis.

We cannot do experimental science on climate change.  We can do good observational science on it.  But none of the data collected to date comes close to even acceptable observational research (or as Sheldon Cooper might put it, the slower, younger brother of experimental science).  This is sophistical statistics where muggles correct questionable data with numerical magic.

Now, we could do better science with this, but who wants to pay the bucks to take the Earth’s temperature?  Seriously, why does any rational person think that a single value for temperature can represent any meaningful knowledge about global climate?  It would be like haphazardly sampling your heart rate with different methods throughout the day, almost every day, computing the average value each day you’ve got data, then assuming that one averaged number says anything about the state of your body.  Think about that.  The exercise is stupid on the face of it, yet people are trying to make that one crazily measured number into something meaningful.

Given the Bad Science here, we can now look for the Persuasion because with Bad Science, Persuasion is all you’ve got.

Start first with the communications effort from Berkeley Earth.  The team is announcing their work to the public at large and making it available on a website with a dot org address.  They describe their process and make available both their data and their reports.  Nothing on the site to date is peer reviewed and published.

So what?

First, science don’t need no stinkin’ press releases and it is almost a Law of Persuasive Indication when you see scientists with a press kit.

Second, making data and reports available before publication is an invitation to debate.  The normal course of scientific communication is to publish through peer review and then do something else with it.

Third, note that the team’s edu website affiliation is not the host for this information, but rather they purchased their own web hosting account and bought this particular domain name for their own purposes.  And, they got that money from various interested sources who paid them to do this work.

If I’m doing science, I don’t give a rip about the press, the public, or my mom’s approval; I only care about peer review.  Yet the Berkeley Earth project wants to weigh in publicly before obtaining any scientific opinion.  They are taking it to the streets in a more polite and civilized form of Occupy Wall Street rather than working within peer review.  Contrast the Berkeley Earth project with the team dealing with the Speed Of Light anomaly.  That group of physicists spent three years showing their data to other physicists and only after that has issued a public communication about their data in a peer review journal where that data is now under standard scientific study.  The Berkeley Earth team is not doing the same kind of scientific communication as the Speed Of Light team.  Think about that.

Now look at this editorial.  Richard Muller offers a summary of the team’s effort in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.  You need to read the whole thing because it is an excellent example of rhetorical science.  Take ten minutes right now.  I’ll wait . . .

Jeepers.  Do you see the fabulous argument structure with Muller’s editorial.  He begins by making the anti-change case, citing the counter-arguments scientific skeptics have raised with the climate change claim.  Muller takes 1,025 words in the editorial and 511 of the words present the anti-change arguments.  He then refutes those doubts in 311 words with the magic of de-biasing biased databases which arises when you have 2 billion data points, a Nobel prize, and a dot org website.

He thus avoids the classic persuasion error of the Climate Change Chorus – demonizing the opposition.  Muller addresses skepticism with seriousness and politeness.  He presents the opposition arguments correctly and without insult, implied or direct.  He then counters the concerns with

deep looks . . . detailed papers . . . more scrutiny . . . esteemed scientists and statisticians . . . new analytic approach.

He simply asserts his team has refuted all the scientific concerns without providing anything remotely like a well reasoned argument which frankly and clearly describes the process.  Muller essentially says, trust me, we’re doing science here and the science refutes the other side.

Now look at the press response to this paper.  Pick any recent story and you immediately see the Stop The Presses! shout.  We’ve Proved Global Warming!!!  They note the high class credential of the Berkeley team (hey, there’s a Nobel in there, didja know?), those billions of data points, and, case closed.

Does anyone actually read this research?  This is nothing more than an Observational Tooth Fairy Tale.  But, since no one seems to read the reports, everyone merely follows the Rule:  All Bad Science Is Persuasive.

We are getting down to sheep and goats, wheat and chaff, and Persuasion and smoke and mirrors.  Groupon’s IPO hits the market on November 4, 2011.  You know my take on social media as the New New Thing, but they aren’t trying to fool me, only you.  They plan to laugh at me all the way to the bank.  Or at least half laugh.  Read this.

Groupon, which had to delay its initial public offering of stock this summer after regulators raised concerns about the way it counts revenue, is discounting its expectations for the IPO. In June, it was valued as high as $25 billion, but in a regulatory filing Friday, the company said it expects a valuation less than half that, at between $10.1 billion and $11.4 billion.

Hey, even half of $25 billion is a lot of billions, but you need to remember the Moral Consequences of Peace and Prosperity:  They are even more suckers with more money than usual!  Thus, a $10 billion IPO payday would be a persuasion loser by Maven standards.  Sure, LSU can beat WVU (and everyone else in the BCS it appears) but put them in the NFL and they’d get creamed by the Miami Dolphins.  Probably.

Groupon is a prime member of the Unusual Gang of Suspects, aka, Social Media, aka, Web 2.0.  This changes everything, baby.

We’ll see on November 5.  Of course, the persuasion proof of this pudding is November 5 . . . 2013.

Imagine that $10 billion is the mark of a loser.  Does that give you some insight into the Moral Consequences of Peace and Prosperity?

Man, if we’d had this at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, things would have been sooooo different.

With modern technology comes modern solutions to perennial protest problems. What to do when John Law puts His arm on you? Back in the day, you hung tough until somebody noticed you were missing. Now, there’s an app for that!

Here’s how it works: Users write a text message in advance and program a list of recipients. As they’re about to be arrested, users can hit one button and alert everyone on their list.

Now, as then, I’d ask, what kind of persuasion are you doing if your faction needs this app?

P.S.  A YouTube treat!

Art copies life at 21 seconds into CTA’s first album.  You remember CTA before they sold the bus and became Chicago.  Man, that first album was some kinda good.  The Whole World’s Listening, baby.  The I’m A Man cover alone is worth the price.  And, most relevant here, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?  Irony, baby.  And irony is metaphor and metaphor is persuasion.  It was both better and worse then.

What’s the Art (pop or otherwise) from OWS?  Photoshop.

P.P.S.  What’s the over/under for false alarms with this app?  People are forever accidently making smartphones do dumb things. Imagine the SNL sketch.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but video leaves you speechless.  Watch persuasion (YouTube), sincere persuasion, in action at the there that isn’t there according to Gertrude Stein, with the Oakland chapter of Occupy Wall Street votes.

Nearly 97% approval from the People.  Hitler never got numbers like that.  Neither did Stalin.  Saddam, yes.

So, now expect to see all of Oakland in the streets on General Strike as proposed and approved by 97% of the OWS-Oakland muggles.  Playing Michael Jackson’s Thriller after the vote is a nice touch, but . . .

. . . call me old fashioned; I’ll take Pigasus for my protest persuasion.

Certainly attracted more action than the Thriller in Oakland.

P.S. Consider the moral consequences of peace and prosperity with OWS. Kids camping out with iGizmos and all the protections of the State (hey, compare to 1968, tough guy). Back in the days before peace and prosperity, this effort got you and your head busted, but now it’s a Social Media Happening. The Whole World’s Tweeting! Gee, maybe if Fred Hampton had had a Facebook account things would have been different.

Consider this graphic that displays the number of news stories in various British journalism outlets over the past few years.

Clearly, there is variation in the number of stories per year.  While there is an average, you can also spot large changes in the general trend.  The potential persuasion impact of these variations can be well explained in an old concept called Agenda Setting.

In 1973 a young assistant professor named Funkhouser did a simple observational study that looked at three sources of information over the decade 1961-1970:  1) number of news stories on various topics, 2) public opinion polling on ranking the most important issues of the day, 3) statistical data on the Costs (money, death, time, etc.) for the various topics and issues.  Funkhouser found what has since been called the Agenda Setting effect.  He reported a very strong correlation between Source 1 (Number of Stories) and Source 2 (Public Opinion Ranking) and no correlation between Sources 1 and 2 with Source 3 (Statistical Evidence).  Importantly, Funkhouser found a sequence effect whereby Media Stories predicted Public Opinion, but Public Opinion did not predict Media Stories.  (A former graduate student of mine conducted a meta analysis of Agenda Setting for a class paper and found a Large Windowpane.  He did not publish the paper, so you’ll have to accept my word for it.)

The first persuasion lesson from Agenda Setting is that if you want to change the Public, dominate the Media.  The Public clearly follows what they read and hear in the Media, so if you want to get movement, first get Reception which means get your idea on the Media Agenda.  When that happens, the Public will soon follow.

Let’s let Art copy Life here as the recent novel, Other People’s Money demonstrates the Inside Job with Agenda setting.  Justin Cartwright explores the personal and business failings of an old British banking family in this novel.  The Tubal family desperately try to evade the Great Financial Collapse of 2008 through various grey and black manuevers.  A disgruntled employee leaks sensitive papers to an idealistic reporter making the transition from ink stained wretch to digital ink stained wretch.  Her editor reads the blog post, spots the Game, then calls in his peers at other sources to coordinate a spontaneous burst of information from independent competitors.

By four in the morning, the plan was agreed:  J.D. would leak, casually, to a colleague at the FT, a rumour that Tubal’s was in serious trouble:  there are unconfirmed reports that the balance sheet has been padded.  J.D. will follow this up on Monday in an occasional column he writes for the Evening Standard, saying that rumours were flying around the City that Tubal’s is virtually bankrupt, like Northern Rock, and for much the same reason.  There are even unconfirmed reports of inflation of the balance sheet.  By Tuesday a tip-off will lead to the editor of the Cornish Globe and Mail, who is the recipient of some anonymous documents.  The editor will adopt a high-minded attitude, saying that an innocent blog by a very junior reporter has led to an anonymous tip-off, followed by the documents appeared to him – he was once on the financial pages of a national newspaper – to be genuine.

You see the Agenda Setting.  The journalists who are supposed to be contrary competitors actually work together behind the public scene and generate multiple sources of information on the same story.  Those multiple and presumed independent sources of information will then drive public perception of the event.  Consider it now with the weather report.

I do not have the numbers on this, but I think there is a Medium to Large Windowpane change with climate change stories in the past few weeks.  Since the email leak from East Anglia, the Climate Change Chorus has shifted from a shout to a whisper, but now are getting louder again.  I do a hard scan of information on the web every day and have been doing so for several years.  We’re in a definite upswing with the weather report and that means that folks are coordinating efforts on this topic to increase the number of stories and thus drive Agenda Setting.

Realize that I am not negatively criticizing environmental players for trying to set the agenda.  They’ve clearly been doing it for many years now.  What I would suggest, however, is a recurrent failure in major downstream effectiveness in the Cascade.  They are getting Exposure/Reception, but clearly not making much progress with downstream behavior change.  They do not get the Other Guys to the Process and Response stages and tend to lose focus on the Second Rule:  It’s about the Other Guy.