Posted by
Catmman on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:49:05 AM
The pair calculated a 32.782412% increase in zombie attacks if CO2 increased to twice its pre-industrial rate. “Clearly, this is a very troubling result,” said Dr. Harrister, “If we don’t do something soon, the streets will be filled with blood.”
Of course
this "study" is satire, but why is this claim any more ridiculous than any other made by the warming alarmists? The author of the above "study" makes this point well in
this accompanying article:
A day ago my number two son and I sat over a bottle of wine and he suggested that if global warming caused temperatures to increase, then we would see an escalation in the number of zombie attacks because, obviously, there would be less cold weather, which everybody knows slows attacks from the undead. I wrote this up in the approved New York Times format, and, to my astonishment, some people thought I was joking.
I was not. The post was in earnest and was an attempt to put into perspective the hundreds, if not thousands, of “studies” that purport to show the ills that will befall us when global warming finally strikes. There are three problems with these studies.
The first is their ridiculous variety, nowhere better cataloged than at NumberWatch’s “Warm List“. That page contains links, mostly to news reports to studies that ask us to believe that, for example, lizards will undergo sex changes, there will be “waves of rape“, a rash of camel deaths will occur, the Earth will spin faster (hold on!), and, worst and most frightening of all, there will be an increase in lawyers (to handle all the “who’s fault is it?” litigation, you see).
I listed only five of the hundreds on that page, which no doubt represents an undercount of the true number of worrying research reports. New ones appear daily. If you wanted to adopt a cynical attitude, you might think there is an unstated competition among researchers to see who can get the most of these or the most shocking of these things to press.
Can these studies all be true? Yes, it logically is possible, only it is absurd to think so. The probability of each and every one of these calamities coming to pass is as close to zero as you like. But that’s not the real problem. It is that each of these studies is usually taken as further proof, albeit indirect, that significant man-made temperature change (AGW) is true. “Why else, if AGW was not true, would these respectable scientists publish these studies?” people ask themselves. Only, it’s the wrong question.
To be specific: because a study appears showing the harm that AGW might cause it is not, and cannot logically be, proof that AGW is true.
The second problem with these studies is their wearying specificity and confidence, which we alluded to by stating that our zombie researchers “calculated a 32.782412% increase in” attacks. Just joking? At the site Skeptical Science, hosted by an honest man, we find that, given AGW is true, there will be “Increased deaths to heatwaves (5.74% increase to heatwaves compared to 1.59% to cold snaps)”. Really? 5.74% and not 5.73%? Are they sure? Can they even be so confident to say 5.7% and not, for example, 5 or 6%? As a statistician, I can assure you, your model and sample have to be incredibly accurate for you to make verifiable statements to that many decimal places.
These studies almost never give any indication of their uncertainty about their results or assumptions. Instead, the “findings”, or results, are taken to be a given; they are just obviously true. Stating results of a study in this fashion has its intended affect: it increases worry. But it does so to an extent that is almost never warranted. To do risk analysis of a study’s results, accurate estimates of the uncertainty and range of possible effects, including positive ones, must be present, else the study is worthless. Reports without uncertainty and estimates of range of effects again bring up the question of the author’s possible biases.
To be specific again: a research report that does not include measures of uncertainty of its results, and an explicit list of the assumptions and the uncertainty in them, is of almost no use.
This is a great article and a great read. Be sure to follow the links and read both. Or use this useful guide to identifying Zombies:
Also useful inidentifying Obama supporters, Liberals, "Greens",
most Democrats, and ANYONE on the Left (particularly protesters)