Contact Joe
To contact Joe, the Diatribe Guy, without humiliating yourself with public comments, you may send e-mail to: geezep@yahoo.com.
Also use this e-mail to order my CD directly from me, if you wish. If you’d like to preview it first, or puchase it elsewhere, you can find it at CD Baby or DigStation
Digital Diatribes 
Nick Alexander said
Hi Joe…
I just discovered your page. I really liked what you had to say about Catholic rock, and am thrilled you have a CD out.
Is the CD up on iTunes? I think it may get some good mileage there.
Also, have you considered joining the community of http://www.topcatholicsongs.com ? We have found that, by highlighting the individual songs of a recorded effort, and linking them to specific themes (whether based on the liturgical calendar, or on specific key-phrases…), it has drawn a great deal of attention to different artists.
In a few weeks, we will be running a Top ten list for confirmation songs… that is, music that a teenager can enjoy, but can also call him/her to greater holiness. If you have songs that befit that, and are on iTunes, it may be a great way to promote your stuff.
Let me know…
Nick
Diatribical Idiot said
Nick, great to hear from you. And before I answer you, let me just say that I’m a huge fan of parodies! I can’t tell you how many of those I tooled around with back in the day. Ah, good times…
Anyway, according to CD Baby, the my CD, Avant-God, should be available on iTunes. I am slow on the draw with the marketing push I need to give this, but it’s slowly coming around. I will most assuredly check out the site you rference above to see if it’s something I want to pursue.
As for confirmation, the song Holy Water is probably most directly applicable (though it is not written specifically with Confirmation in mind) with “the water” being a euphemism for the Holy Spirit. The song was purposely written in a somewhat enigmatic way so that one could think of it in the context of baptism, or simply a rejuvenation of acceptance of the Holy Spirit, or as a literal reception of a sprinkling of holy water. The lyrics do include the idea of conscious acceptance that could apply to Confirmation. Now, this is the most “in your face” song on the CD from a rock perspective, so it’s never going to be something that would get played at Mass… Other songs will only be indirectly applicable, but will definitely be consistent with a walk in the Catholic faith.
Thank you so much for the comment. I am definitely looking for ways, as an independent guy, to let people know about the CD, so I’m open to all suggestions.
Robin Edwards said
Joe,
I have just re-visited your blog and am interested in the prediction of “anomalies” and in particular in your depth of feeling about such predictions.
My guess is that you use an underlying model that is based on linear trends – in other words that the climate tends to behave in a linear fashion, modified by random errors assumed to have a mean zero, to be independent and I guess normally distributed.
I have some reservations about the appropriateness (or otherwise) of such a model.
My doubts stem from the work I’ve done over the last several years – about 15 I think – which has convinced me that although climates seem in general to fit trend lines with effectively zero slope for periods ranging from months to 100 years they also tend to change in a stepwise fashion at seemingly random intervals. Such changes for a given site can be of the order of two degrees C, and take place over a period of three months or even less.
I wonder whether you have come across any evidence for widespread abrupt changes, because if this is how climate really behaves, “accurate” forecasting by any method I have come across seems to be an impossible goal. I would certainly not attempt it anyway!
I have loads of diagrams that illustrate this hypothesis, and would be willing to send you some, as GIFs to your email address. I do not seem to be able to send diagram to blogs as yet. Maybe there’s a method, but I don’t know it!.
Regards,
Robin
Diatribical Idiot said
Robin, thanks for your comments. I invite you to read the following two entries, which I think will shed some light on how I am using the trends in my analysis:
While I do use linear trend lines, the model itself is based on anticipated changes in the slopes of those trend lines, based on the pattern and weighting of historical changes to those slopes.
So, I fit trends, recognizing that the trend line changes each month. I then calculate the record of month-to-month changes in the trend line. I then calculate an “acceleration” of sorts by calculating the second difference of the change. I then use a type of credibility weighting procedure based on actuarial concepts, to weight past second differences in previous months such that the weighted (predictive) value versus the actual value in the next subsequent month produces a minimum least squares value. Once the optimum weights are determined, the next month’s anomaly can be calculated backwards by taking the predicted second difference, then calculating the first difference that produces that calculation, then calculating the slope that produces that first difference, and then calculating the anomaly that produces that slope.
The rational here is precisely to recognize that temperature changes do not occur linearly, but there is an underlying assumption that, given enough weighting points, we can pick up the tendencies of the temperatures to shift. This is limited by the number of weighting values (which I am trying to expand as time goes on). There is a further limitation in that the least squares determination is made on the first subsequent data point, so while it may have immediate predictive value, it will be less predictive further out. However, I have never claimed to be building a model that predicts monthly anomalies in perpetuity. But as an exercise in curiousity, I will be interested in seeing how far in advance there seems to be predictive capabilities to the model.
All this being said, the amount of my retrospective testing is in the calculation of the minimum least squares estimate. In order to go back and test everything, it would be a monumental task. Since this is just a hobby of mine, until somebody actually pays me to work on stuff like this, I’m afraid I’m limited by the amount of time I’m willing to spend on it 😉
Atmoz said
Joe,
Can you send me your current temperature anomaly prediction model for forecast verification purposes?
Thanks.
TMLutas said
Apologies but I used a link to your 9/08 HADCRUT post to use as an example of graphs showing a negative trend from the 1998 peak. The current global cooling article asserts that it is pretty much a 1970s phenomenon and that came and went. I’m looking to extend coverage to the recent uptick in global cooling articles. You’re getting slammed a bit in the discussion page.
Diatribical Idiot said
No problem. I find it amusing that I get “slammed” for simply providing graphs and stats of the data. All my posts include overall trend charts and longer-period charts that can be just as easily considered an argument for warming. The line showed that demonstrates the length of time one can go back to show a flat or cooling line is just that. It’s a point of interest.
I find the slams more amusing than anything. Don’t worry about it. I stand by my analysis, and am always willing to take suggestions on other ways to look at the data. I have no personal stake in the results.
Diatribical Idiot said
TM, I just checked the source you were referring to (the Wikipedia discussion). The person doing the “slamming” is Atmoz, who above asked for my projection model.
I had an e-mail exchange with him, and while he made no mention of the discussion on Wikipedia, he identified himself and his field to me and stated the purpose for the request. It is clear from the comments that he is not a Global Cooling proponent, but that’s fine. The projection is based on a clear, objective methodology and will be seen as such. If there are improvements that could be made that are a flaw in the current model, then I’m more than happy to have anyone check it out.
Clearly, I am simply focusing my work on statistical analysis, and not climatology. I make no claims that the model is any good for actual forecasting. It’s an exercise of interest, to see if it actually does pan out.
Anyway, thanks for the concern. But if I were concerned about such things, I wouldn’t post my thoughts anyway.
Robin Edwards said
Hello again, Joe,
Just (at last) re-visited your site, and really enjoyed it again. I would like to contact you via email if possible, so that I could show you the approach I’ve used since about 1992 in regard to “Climate” temperature data. Currently I am interested in the possible sunspot connection, which has been stimulated again by David Archibald’s contribution to the recent conference in New York, in which he focusses in part on the length of the sunspot cycle.
A major interest of mine is trying to find a mechanism that could account for step changes in “climate”. It is simple enough to find many, sometimes large, steps, but a rationale for their occurrence totally evades me.
Please email, if you can find time.
Robin (Bromsgrove, UK)
The Diatribe Guy said
Sorry for the late reply, Robin.
I don’t see an e-mail address, and I haven’t checked my Yahoo address for at least a week. I will make sure to check it by the end of this weekend and get back to you, if you’ve sent me a message. If not, you may send an inquiry at geezep@yahoo.com.
Mike said
Joe, have you noticed how the whole global warming debate has suddenly changed recently. For years the global warmers have been claiming that the climate is warming and that the only thing that affects the climate is CO2 despite the fact that anyone with even school science could work out it wasn’t.
Now they’ve finally accepted that it has been cooling and the new orthodoxy is that other things do affect the climate and that these have been responsible for the recent cooling.
But best of all they are now saying that “the climate will warm very rapidly in the next decade”.
This is a huge bonus to the scientific community because it means we finally have them pinned down to a prediction that can be tested not after we all die or even after the global warmers retire, but literally within the next 5-10 years any failure to warm AND WARMING QUICKLY in the absence of excuses will be a categorical proof that the global warming rubbish is just that.
Mike said
And I should have mentioned that here in the UK the Met Office’s reputation for long range predictions has never been worse. Most people don’t know about their abysmal failure to predict global temperatures which has singularly failed with every prediction being above the 50% confidence interval – which is statistically likely as tossing a coin heads nine times out of nine.
Now the public have seen for themselves the same bogus forecasting in action because they promised everyone a “Barbecue Summer” and in its place we’ve had torrential rain for most of the summer – and guess what? There is an independant forecaster which uses solar data and not their huge mega computer models to forecast weather AND THEY GOT IT RIGHT WHEN THE MET GOT IT WRONG (and they’ve been doing better than the Met for years!!)
The Diatribe Guy said
Mike, it will be interesting to see the next decade. I’m just a rube looking at data and fitting sine waves and stuff, but my data says there will be a continued overall cooling with the minimum occurring around 2030. No big computers or fancy models… just a simple data analysis. Obviously, year to year there will be fluctuations. Also, my own simple analysis of correlating the sunspots to temp indicates that we’ll dip by an average of 0.1 degrees per year for as long as sunspots stay below 60 on average, will stay level between 60 and 100, and will only begin to rise again with sunspots at 100+ (18-month ish lag).
It would be kind of funny in a perverse way to have such a simplistic analytical view be correct while the complex models fail miserably. On the other hand, I don’t actually want it to be true, because I hate cold weather.
Layman Lurker said
Hey Joe how ’bout them Vikings. What a twisted world it is eh? Favre in Minny is like something out of a movie script.
The Diatribe Guy said
Why did I have the feeling there’d be a Favre comment left for me here? 😉
I don’t know how to feel. I loved the guy. I don’t want to hate him. But I must hate him while he’s a Viking. I just hope this is short-lived, not so sweet, and he finally retires for good and then we can all just remember the years with the Pack again.
Prediction: Vikings don’t do as well as everyone thinks, and Favre gets his second coach in as many years fired.
Dan Pangburn said
I just discovered your discussion on sunspots of about a year ago. The coincidence of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age (and other coincidences of low sunspot activity and low temperature) certainly suggests a connection. Others have correlated the spacing or height of the cycles with climate with spotty success. I did an evaluation that looked at the combined effect of height and width, i.e. the area under each cycle, i.e. the time-integral of sunspot count. When modulated by the 30 year trends of the PDO it does a good job of tracking the average global temperature graphs since 1880. This study is presented in one of the pdfs at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true .
Eugene Debs said
1997-1998 stood out as an exceptionally warm season most AGW “skeptics” use that period to illustrate that we are in fact cooling or at least the warming has taken a hiatus. It’s a great formula to use. For example you find the hottest period as an example and count from there to the present. If you look at 1998 to 2012 you will find weak warming and even some cooling. Unfortunately time didn’t start at 1998 it doesn’t make farmers feel better who can’t irrigate their crops, the islanders loosing precious land to the oceans Inuits who can’t trek across tundra due to no snow and ice for sled teams. How do we explain massive coral reef bleaching due to excessively heat. These are only a few examples that I could keep rattling off ad-nauseum. Never the less what were stuck with is NOT a period of pleasantly warm temperatures. It’s a catastrophic loss of everything around the world that provides us arable land, drinking water, stable land and our livelihood.