My recent posts touching on statistical significance in the surface temperature records have prompted some interesting responses from upholders of the climate consensus, with the general theme being that Doug Keenan and I don't know what we are talking about.

This is odd, because as far as I can tell, everyone is in complete agreement.

To recap, Doug has put forward the position that claims that surface temperatures are doing something out of the ordinary are not supportable because the temperature records are too short to define what "the ordinary" is. In more technical language, he suggests that a statistically significant rise in temperatures cannot be demonstrated because we can't define a suitable statistical model at the present time. He points out that the statistical model that is sometimes used to make such claims (let's call it the standard model) is not supportable, showing that an alternative model can provide a much, much better approximation of the real world data. This is not to say that he thinks that his alternative model is the right one - merely that because it is so much better than the standard one, it is safe to conclude that the latter is failing to capture a great deal of the variation in the data. He thinks that defining a suitable model is tough, if not impossible, and the only alternative is therefore to use a physical model.

As I have also pointed out, the Met Office does not dispute any of this.

So, what has the reaction been? Well, avid twitterer "There's Physics", who I believe is called Anders and is associated with Skeptical Science, tweeted this:

Can clarify their position wrt statistical models - in a way that might understand?

A response from John Kennedy appeared shortly afterwards, which pointed to this statement, which addresses Doug Keenan's claims, noting that there are other models that give better results and suggesting that the analysis is therefore inconclusive. Kennedy drew particular attention to the following paragraph:

These results have no bearing on our understanding of the climate system or of its response to human influences such as greenhouse gas emissions and so the Met Office does not base its assessment of climate change over the instrumental record on the use of these statistical models.

I think I'm right in saying that Doug Keenan would agree with all of this.

Anders has followed this up with a blog post, in which he says I don't understand the Met Office's position. It's a somewhat snide piece, but I think it does illuminate some of the issues. Take this for example:

Essentially – as I understand it – the Met Office’s statistical models is indeed, in some sense, inadequate.

Right. So we agree on that.

This, however, does not mean that there is a statistical model that is adequate.

We seem to agree on that too.

It means that there are no statistical models that are adequate.

Possibly. Certainly I think it's true to say that we haven't got one at the moment, which amounts to the same thing.

Then there's this:

[Statistical models] cannot – by themselves – tell you why a dataset has [certain] properties. For that you need to use the appropriate physics or chemistry. So, for the surface temperature dataset, we can ask the question are the temperatures higher today then they were in 1880? The answer, using a statistical model, is yes. However, if we want an answer to the question why are the temperatures higher today than they were in 1880, then there is no statistical model that – alone – can answer this question. You need to consider the physical processes that could drive this warming. The answer is that a dominant factor is anthropogenic forcings that are due to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations; a direct consequence of our own emissions.

Again, there is much to agree with here. If you want to understand why temperature has changed, you will indeed need a physical model, although whether current GCMs are up to the job is a moot point to say the least. (I'm not sure about Anders' idea of needing a statistical model to tell whether temperatures are higher today than in 1880 - as Matt Briggs is fond of pointing out, the way forward here is to subtract the measurement for 1880 from that for today - but that's beside the point).

All this harmony aside, I hope you will be able to see what is at the root of Anders's seeming need to disagree: he is asking different questions to the one posed at the top of this post. He wants to know why temperatures are changing, while I want to know if they are doing something out of the ordinary. I would posit that defining "the ordinary" for temperature records is not something that can be done using a GCM.

I think Anders' mistake is to assume that Doug is going down a "global warming isn't happening" path. In fact the thrust of his work has been to determine what the empirical evidence for global warming is - when people like Mark Walport say that it is clear that climate change is happening and that its impacts are evident, what scientific evidence is backing those statements up? I would suggest that anyone hearing Walport's words would assume that we had detected something out of "the ordinary" going on. But as we have seen, this is a question that we cannot answer at the present time. And if such statements are supported only by comparisons of observations to GCMs then I think words like "clear" and "evident" should not be used.