scare tactics

Albany Times Union,  December 14, 2008

Obama left with little time to curb global warming

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid.

Albany Times Union, July 20, 2009

Cool, clouds, rain, repeat

During what some are calling "the year without a summer," farmers, gardeners and nurseries are dealing with a steady drumbeat of cool, rainy days. People looking forward to outdoor parties and barbecues are putting on warmer clothes and dodging deluges..........

The result of all this? So far, the warmest day of the year in Albany was April 28, when the temperature hit 90  degrees . There have been just nine days with temperatures above 80 since June, which Johnson called "pretty pathetic."

In New York City, temperatures failed to top 85  degrees in June -- one of only three times on record when the mercury didn't hit that mark.

By, the way, I'm not taking Nate Silver's sucker bet over @ 538.com. He's willing to bet on global warming for the next thirty days. Since he's a baseball number junkie, he knows exactly what he is doing. And so do I.

Let's say Johnny Damon is a career .300 hitter who in is the midst of "career cooling" dropping his sustainable long term average to .250. I catch Damon at the tail end of a 10 for 60 slump and then take a bet that over the next 100 at-bats Damon won't hit .300 over this period. I'd be pretty dumb. But Silver's set this up to goad people to bet on the basis of recent unusually cool weather and pick their pockets on the uptick. 

The concept as Nate well knows is "regression towards the mean". Damon's prior .167 performance had to adjust back to .250.  So let's say he hits .310 over the next 100 at-bats, and "proves" he is a .300 hitter in the Silver theory? Say what? He's gotten back to .256. which is about his new "sustainable" level and well under the old .300 level.

Silver's 30 day time line is just long enough to catch the uptick of the regression and not long enough to ascertain if the mean actually moved.  Nice try, Nate.

I can recall sweltering on hot day in midtown Manhattan pre-Rudy trying to meander around the various three-card monte artists on the sidewalk.  They are now long gone, and so far in 2009, so is the sweltering heat.