Betting

UAH November Anomaly

14 Comments

Place your bets on the November UAH value that will be posted at Roy Spencer’s blog in early December in the slightly ‘bot resistant form below:


The cut-off date is Nov. 15, 2010.

Due to last months flurry of voting by “spambots who can add”, I modified the database and script as follows:

  1. Answers now sometimes require users to enter something after the decimal place.
  2. The exact solution to the arithmetic problem is no longer provided in one of the hidden fields. This reduces the possibility that voting was by ‘bots who can read hidden fields.
  3. The system still may permit some ‘bots to bet. But it also tries to count how many times they tried to fill out the form and eventually, won’t show them a new one. (If you are human, I advise using your back button if you enter the wrong sum. That will save you typing.)

As with all betting scripts, this is only partly tested. That is: I’ve entered a few bets for me. I entered a few for “spambot”. I deleted most of these from the database. It seems to work. But if you see glitches, let me know. Meanwhile, wager some quatloos.

14 thoughts on “UAH November Anomaly”

  1. OK, I give. Do I need to find a spam bot to fill this out 🙂

    Processing Entry
    The correct sum was 5.7; you entered 5.7. You’ve tried 2 times.
    I’m sorry Ed Forbes, you made a mistake filling out the form. If you are human, please try again.

  3. Hmmmm Ed. Try again. Oddly enough, if you have infinite patience and enter 3 times, it will record your bet (and tell me you tried 3 times.) But if you do that, don’t use the back button.

    But I still need to figure out why it doesn’t like you. Did you get an error flag for bad email? Or anything like that? (I can enter manually for you too. Just tell me in comments.)

  5. Processing Entry
    The correct sum was 0.6; you entered 0.6. You’ve tried 2 times.
    I’m sorry Neven, you made a mistake filling out the form. If you are human, please try again.
    .
    Third time worked.

  6. Sorry Neven,
    I wonder what’s wrong? I looked at the database and lots of people entered on their first try. I hate semi random problems!
    I’ll take a look though.

  7. I think I adverently entered “3” rather than “0.3” and the foerm accepted it. Perhaps people enetering realistic entries are being rejected? Do you need to “reverse the polarity” of a test in the form?

  8. Tim– You can reenter. Or, I can fix that for you.

    I didn’t code for “reasonable” bets. I guess I could, but then I’d have to decide what’s reasonable! (The ‘bots do enter silly bets sometimes. But with La Nina coming on, ‘0’ might end up close near the bottom of La Nina, so…. a ‘bot could win!)

  9. I coded to change the test a little and also modified the error message to give me more information. Still works for me…. Arghhh!!!

  10. Thanks – I re-entered my bet. I’d better start winning some quatloos or I’ll have to break out the 1969 Rigillian Tranya!

  13. The big discrepancy between RSS and UAH for October, again demonstrates the rather poor accuracy of the models using satellite measurements of IR emissions to calculate surface temperature. For some period of time, the two models used the same data from the same platform (satellite) to calculate the monthly anomaly. Even at that point, the two models didn’t agree well.

    Now we don’t know whether they are using the same data input. Furthermore, clearly the methods that Spencer and Christy are using to modify the reported result (to eliminate the spurious annual cycle in the UAH anomaly) are different from RSS, leading to monthly discrepancies. The hemispheric, mid-latitudes, etc. data show poor agreement between the two models as well. Given that even when they used the same data, there was significant disagreement month to month, especially at the regional level, the evidence is pretty strong that these models are not nearly as accurate as some on this discussion board believe.

    This raises some really big questions about the comparison of 1998 reported anomalies to the anomalies reported after AQUA and subsequent satellites were launched in 2002. If the two models disagree so much using the SAME input data, we can safely assume that the accuracy of their models would be even worse using DIFFERENT input data from a DIFFERENT platform.

    In short, the reported anomalies based on models using satellite IR measurements have a major reproducibility problem when compared to different method platform and data processing model. Clearly the reported anomalies from actual temperature measurements at the surface should be given more weight in assessing the rate the surface atmospheric layer of the Earth is warming.

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