Thursday, March 29, 2007

Changing tires in a changing climate

Dr. Turbo at "May Shrink Or Fade" has collected an impressive climatological data set in a long-term study of how soon after the vernal equinox he removes the snow tires from his car.



Actually, in the grand scheme of climate studies, this really isn't a huge collection of data. Nevertheless, with only eleven degrees of freedom, this data rejects the null hypothesis that the tire-changing date is not getting earlier every year with 90% confidence. Which is basically the conclusion that thousands of scientists working for years on the UNIPCC came to.

Good work, Doctor! The government might take bold steps to reduce carbon pollution or it might do nothing at all; either way, this tire changing chore won't last much longer.

1 comment:

Turbo said...

Two caveats to my data:

1) Somewhere in there I moved from mountainous Vermont, to mid-elevation New Hampshire, to sea-level Smallish State. This probably confounds the data.

2) I made a big mistake in taking my snow tires off in March this year.