All you need is a coin

Recently a US Senator brought a snowball into Senate to "Prove" climate change is not real.  Barring the obvious differences in local "weather" and the definition of climate, I think recently the topic of conservation and carbon emissions has lost momentum.  The "greens" have lost much credibility in that their rhetoric does not always provide a complete picture or cost to the economy, and with loss of credibility other special interest groups have initiated mass marketing campaigns to sway public away from the issue.   

Let us first summarize the recent scientific literature about man-made induced climate change.  Of scientific research papers examining the effect, 3% conclude man has no impact on climate change while 97% assert man is a contributor (Env. R. Letters 8.2).  This is not reflected in the population’s belief in man-made warming which sits in the mid-60 percentile (Environics poll circa 2013). A further poll indicates approximately two-thirds of Canadians think we are doing the same or better than other countries when it comes to emissions.  Obviously there is a communication gap between science and the public, one that I think gets enhanced by private-interest marketing.  

Flashback to 1985.  Back then I was in grade 9 or 10 and blissfully unaware of the issues facing our species, my only concerns were related to playing guitar and trying (desperately) to date any number of a large female population at my high school.  Ronald Regan was president and the iron-curtain had yet to crumble.  Flash-foreword to 2015 and keeping track of the world’s temperature over that time, it has NEVER, NOT EVER gone below the monthly average temperature as determined based on all temperatures between 1900-2000.  

To put this in perspective we can look at an experiment where all we need is a coin.  Flash backward to Feb 1985 and say we flip a coin.  Heads means I predict a warmer temperature for February than the historical records show - Tails means I predict a colder temperature.  If the Earths temperature were varying randomly (the same as the coin toss) then there is equal chance of a hotter or colder temperature for the next month. In other words if we toss our coin every month and collect the data there should be approximately equal number of heads and tails for every month since 1985. 

For some short duration, possibly a few "Heads" could come up in a row, for example the summer of 1989 just before university which I particularly enjoyed.  However over the very long interval from 1985 to present (about 360 months), it would be virtually impossible to flip a coin "Heads" each and every coin toss.  Such a probability is 0.00****00001, where the **** represents 100 ZEROS! I am too lazy to type them all.   i.e., the probability of 360 warmer temperatures is ~1E-109.  Or essentially we have zero chance of observing such a rare event.

HOWEVER, THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE SEEN, 360 STRAIGHT MONTHS OF HIGHER THAN AVERAGE TEMPERATURES.  I.e., January 1985 was the last time we saw the global temperature dip below the average for that month.  The only conclusion we can draw is that temperature change on the global scale has not been following a completely random process, while small randomness still exists such an observation can only happen if the average temperature of the earth is increasing. Baring the other evidence (polar ice, migratory patterns, ocean currents, tree growth, etc...), this simple exercise is one we can do ourselves.