kulu, if you read the actual report referred to in "Freakonomics", you will find that the authors were very careful to factor in every possible cause of the drop in crime. They found that only very minor amounts of the total drop could be attributed to such responsive measures as increased police, etc.

In the end, what they were left with was one factor no-one had ever taken into account: Roe v Wade.

Leavitt and Dubner's work is particularly salient here, because first there was the situation where the experts were confidently and unanimously forecasting a disaster. When the disaster not only didn't happen, but actually reversed, the same experts then scrambled to find answers, and ended up claiming that the real world (as opposed to modelled) result actually vindicated them, because it was their wise and timely advice that had saved the day.

What Leavitt and Dubner showed was that neither was true.

What had really happened was that the real world had thrown a completely unanticipated spanner into the works of the experts' neat modelling. The real world has a bad habit of doing that.

Perhaps that's why some experts seem to prefer models to the real world.

Oh, and Leavitt and Dubner also make another point that is salient here: Information Asymmetry.

Information Asymmetry is the situation where "experts" become completely convinced of their own expertise, and use the information they hold to exert power over another party, or indeed simply rely on the others' *assumption* of the experts' superior knowledge to exert undue influence and maximise gain.

Their point is that Information Asymmetry is always used to increase the power of one party over the other.

kulu, if everyone knew of the successes I've had addressing the martians issue, they'd make me king.

Ozandy, kulu tells us you are an expert. What is your field and qualifications?

Curmudgeon: I raised the issue of latent heat because, as Bugsy said, it is just one example of the complexity of climate science. You keep banging on about time series temperature graphs of a single location, I just wanted to show why this was not necessarily indicative of the real issues. Floating ice vs land based is a different issue with its own complexities and I did not introduce it. Energy not= Temperature was my goal concept.
The fact is temperatures *are* rising in some locations, in others it is the minimum temperature that is rising, not the maximum. In other places the hydrodynamic cycles and phase changes mean that temperature is barely affected. Energy can also be in the form of kinetic/dynamic systems such as the Gulf Stream: If it shuts down it could result in an ice age for Europe...or maybe the effects of Methane will override it...or not. Common sense is a very poor guide! Only peer reviewed science that can be disproved (unlike the alternative methodologies) is the answer.
Offering a single time series for one location and claiming it disproves a *hugely* complex topic is either disingenuous or ignorant, or possibly naive.
odo: The complete picture is becoming *more* scary, not less when true science rather than simple misconceptions is taken into account. When animals (migrations, breeding times, populations), chemistry (water, soil, air), winds (large scale and cyclonic)... ie. When total energy is measured, not "GW=temperature" you start seeing why there is almost complete scientific consensus on the issue.
fungochumley: Removing the straw man and tackling the issue honestly is not moving the goal posts, it is called facing reality.
I know folks would rather it went away, and I too disagree with many of the proposed "solutions" to it but there is science and there is ignorant pontificating. Given the damage that dogma causes, I'll take science, no matter how scary or unprofitable.
Thank you kulu, I will continue to assist the genuine skeptics while trying to avoid looking like a zealot.

Mark, in your rush to decry my ‘case’ as weak, it appears that you have failed to notice that I did not actually make one.

The ice-water experiment appears to have some relevance to the topic of climate-change because it explains in a most basic way how energy transfer and storage can happen to a system without a corresponding change in temperature, at least for a temporary period. It seems to me to be more relevant to climatology than criminologists predicting American crime rates in the 1980s. In fact the only similarity there I see is the word “forecast”.

I’m not abusing you Mark, but I feel that science generally (medicine&environment especially) is ill-served by journalists that only understand science very broadly, but not in much depth, and I have as much distrust of economists as anyone and think that we all have been badly served by them. But the general public listen to journalists and politicians listen to economists because they don’t understand the science either. But they think they do when you put a dollar sign on it.

I’m honestly trying to understand the topic objectively and I stand by my statement that I don’t think you are well qualified to tell me what is and isn’t relevant. To demonstrate this, I plotted the Hadley site data you quoted in another thread for the last 11 years in Excel. It appears that the only data point that gives a trend line ever so slightly downwards (about 0.01 over the decade) is 1998 because it is at the start of the series. If you plot the trendline using the last 11 data points (1999-2009) then the trend is more inclined upward (about 0.05 over the decade& double that if you omit 2009 as incomplete). How is this to be interpreted? I suspect it’s merely a case of just cherry-picking the data, starting with the highest point in recorded history to show the slightest of downward trends, but even though I don’t know what time frame is optimal for making an accurate assessment, I’m fairly certain that neither do you.

Ozandy/Bugsy
Ozandy, you seem to think that I'm talking about temperatures in a single location. There are five sites that track global temperatures. Bugsy refers to one, Hadley,... the others are Goddard, NOAA/NCDC, UAH and RSS .. the first three rely on an extensive network of instrument sites the last two are satellite sites. I give a link to Hadley in the article. As I noted if one looks at the graphs of those global temperatues without benefit of extensive training in climatology it looks suspiciously as if temperatures are coming off a peak.
Bugsy you try to get around that by selecting the years.. Dunno what series you're using but the main one is HadCrutv3 and there's no need to graph it your self (although I have done that). Just look at the one in Hadley I link to - there is a pronounced peak over the past decade. A data file is also attached. It becomes clearer if you take a five year running mean (where each point is an average over five years). So its not confirmed yet but if temperatures continue to decline as they have been doing then a lot of scientists will be very embarrassed indeed. Perhaps two years? Really four before they are forced to admit the models aren't right. Look at the sequence in the Hadley data particularly for the last three or four years, bearing in mind that last year was unusually cold (this year represents a recovery, but its below the year before) - its already a good way towards the scientists being embarrassed.
Now I'm sorry if you don't like being dictated to by a mere journalist (albeit a former science writer with a dusty degree in science), but I did lay out my reasons why the ice business was not relevent - and you can see for yourself it isn't. No one is suggestions that the glaciers have suddenly become a heat sink for the world.
Hope that helps.

Oh, now I can see why American criminology in the 1980s is more relevant to climatology than basic science class physical chemistry, thanks Mark.

You certainly make it sound like having the benefit of extensive training in climatology is somewhat undesirable when interpreting climate data.

As for the ‘cooling trend’ data, you are still not getting it are you? I am not “getting around” anything by picking the years, I was demonstrating exactly how the data you are using is cherry-picked (by you picking the years). I used the data you gave here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9010#143451

I used this series because it’s one that you picked and you invited people to spot the trend.

When you start at the maximum (i.e. 1998, the hottest year on record), the trend is hardly likely to go up is it? What happens to the trend, if you start at 1999, 1997, 1996 or indeed any year before or after 1998? The ‘cooling trend’ disappears. In fact 1998 appears to be the only year that you can start with that shows a ‘cooling trend’. I invite anyone else to chart the same data and see what you get. It does not seem to matter to you that 11 of the warmest years on record have been within the last 13 years. But then, we can’t all have the benefit of a career in journalism to steer us right.

It seems to me you are guilty of exactly the same sin that you are warning others against: trying to predict the future. It seems just like the stockmarket where everybody is trying to bet on a sudden trend reversal on the smallest of data fluctuations.

I’ll make prediction, if in several years time the ‘suspicious cooling trend’ does not come to pass, I’m betting that you will resolutely refuse to be embarrassed. But I guess we’ll wait and see.