Links tagged “chris mooney”

Statistician Dr. Matt Briggs: Mooney shows a graph from their paper which is so silly that I refuse to picture it. He presents this graph, as do the authors, as if it were data. Which it is not. It is the output from a preposterously complex regression model (they “control” for 13 things!). Baseball fans: when do more beanballs, and hence more retaliations take place, in chilly April when the season has just begun and all are of good cheer, or late in hot August when tempers are up and when games start to feel a lot more crucial? Is the observed discrepancy therefore caused by climate change? Good grief, what a rotten paper, what a rotten theory.

'For 1 degree Celsius of warming, he'd expect about a 1 percent increase in interpersonal conflicts, a category that includes crimes like assault and robbery but also road rage and fights at baseball games.'

Mooney: 'For instance, one of the studies cited in the new meta-analysis is a 2011 paper published in Psychological Science (discussed in more depth here) showing a relationship between hot temperature days and the number of retaliatory beanballs thrown by Major League Baseball pitchers. The figure below shows their results in more detail:

Credit: Richard Larrick et al, 2011, Temper, temperature, and temptation: Heat-related retaliation in baseball. Psychological Science, 22, 423-428. Reprinted with permission.

The study's lead author Richard Larrick, a professor at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, explained in an e-mail the psychological research linking heat with shows of aggression.

[More on WaPo's Chris Mooney's statistical silliness: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?s=mooney

'Just before the longest major hurricane absence in U.S. history began, some guy (Stu Ostro) became convinced that CO2 causes hurricanes'

Climate Depot response to Stu Ostro: 'Extreme weather convinced you of man-made global warming claims?! Does  lightening  and hail and crop failure make you a believer in witchcraft as well? Stu, did you even examine any evidence before you made your extreme weather beliefs public? Ostro truly experienced a 'faith-based' conversion. It sure was not based on science.' See: ‘Extreme Weather Report 2012′: ‘Latest peer-reviewed studies, data & analyses undermine claims that current weather is ‘unprecedented’ or a ‘new normal’

'The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years'

'...where they can find affirmation and escape factual challenges to their beliefs. (This is an excerpt from Chris Mooney's new book The Republican Brain)

'It's even more chilling that there is a whole new movement afoot by the promoters of man-made global warming theory to intimidate climate skeptics by using new brain 'research'

'And this was fairly clear, even before this study. And that is at least as bad as claims about denying science, and many would say it's even worse. I certainly would'