A Clear and Present Danger to the Caribbean: Climate Change or Climate Alarmism? Reynold J. Stone Department of Food P

1. A Clear and Present Danger to the Caribbean: Climate Change or Climate Alarmism? Reynold J. Stone Department of Food Production

3. Warming Trend

4. Percent of Days Tmax > 90th Percentile

5. Percent of Days Tmax > 90th Percentile

6. Wilks, D.S. 1995. Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences. Academic Press, San Diego. • It is not sufficient to blindly feed data to a computer regression package and uncritically accept the results. Some of the results can be misleading if the assumptions underlying the computations are not satisfied. Since the assumptions pertain to residuals, it is important to examine the residuals for consistency with the assumptions made about their behaviour.

7. Assumptions of OLS Regression • Linearity • Homoscedasticity • Independence • Normality • Outliers

8. Anscombe, F.J. 1973. Graphs in Statistical Analysis. American Statistician 27: 17-21.

9. Residual Patterns

10. Residual Plot

11. Normal Plot

12. Percent Warm Days (1958 -1978)

13. Percent Warm Days (1979 -1999)

14. Diagnostic Checks Results

15. Percent Warm Days (1958-1999)Excluding 1995, 1998

16. Conclusion #1 • The claim of an increasing linear trend in the percent of warm days in the Caribbean during 1958 -1999 has no valid statistical basis, is erroneous and misleading.

17. Conclusion #2 • Climate scientists must exercise greater care in their statistical analyses to avoid contributing to climate alarmism with erroneous and misleading conclusions.

18. THANK YOU