8a. Climate Change - Phil Jones and the 'no warming for 15 years'
Channel: potholer54
Date: 2010-02-20

The perfect example of what I was saying in my last video appeared soon after it was uploaded. The Internet was abuzz with a quote from Professor Phil Jones that there has been no global warming since 1995.
   But is that what he actually said? Once again, we need to go to the source -- Jones's own words -- rather than Internet gossip based on an interpretation of what he said. If we check the primary source, it's a very different story. In fact, Jones and his team did detect warming since 1995. In this video I go to the source, and find out why the tabloid press got things so wrong.

    I have to correct part of the video where I gave an example of what an 80% statistical significance would mean (for the statisticians out there, this is a p-value of 20%). I said this would mean 80% confidence that global warming was a real, underlying trend, and not the result of background fluctuations.
   While some statisticians accepted this as a broad explanation for the layperson, others felt it deviated too far from the precise meaning, which is this: 
   =If global warming was not happening, there is only a 20% chance we would see this result.=
    A 90% statistical significance (if that's what Jones achieved) of the 1995-2009 temperature data would mean If global warming was not happening, there is only a 10% chance we would see this result.
    
Link to Daily Mail story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html

Link to transcript of BBC interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm