A Predictive Model of Quarterback Success in the NFL

Cleveland Sports Economics

Photo Credit: Keith Allison via Flickr Creative Commons

This is Part III of a three-part series (Part I, Part II).

Introduction

The NFL rookie quarterback class of 2016 has fan bases around the country with a long list of questions:

• Los Angeles: Is Jared Goff already a bust?

• Philadelphia: Can Carson Wentz be a franchise quarterback?

• Dallas: Will Dak Prescott be an all-time great?

While those three franchises head into the 2017 season with their starting QB set in stone, the Week 1 starter for the Cleveland Browns remains an open question. That’s because most of us in Cleveland remain unsure about the following question:

• Cleveland: Can Cody Kessler be a playoff-caliber starting quarterback in the NFL?

This last question has motivated this three-part series on Kessler. But the historical perspective offered in Part I and the most likely career comparables provided in Part II only indirectly…

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Crazy litigious climate : “citizens have a constitutional right to a stable climate system”

Watts Up With That?

Making America Great Again? USA leads the way in frivolous climate lawsuits

From the “next, let’s sue because the weather was bad for my picnic today” department comes this study that shows just how crazy it’s become. I mean really, what’s next? Sue Exxon because a hailstorm damaged the roof of your house? Or sue the feds the because the Red River in North Dakota flooded in the springtime yet again, because that’s what it does? I would not be surprised if we see something like that this year. The idea that people can litigate action for a “stable climate” is as ludicrous as expecting the universe to revolve around the Earth, something egotistical yet ignorant humans once believed. Stable climate is nothing more than a fable. And, just where in the US Constitution does is say we have a right to stable weather or climate? Nowhere.

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Via…

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No, Santer et al. have not refuted Scott Pruitt

Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Leo Goldstein

Dr. Ben Santer. Photo by A. Watts

The MSM is actively promoting a new piece of dubious “climate science”: the article Tropospheric Warming Over The Past Two Decades doi:10.1038/s41598-017-02520-7, https://archive.is/EOXfw by B. Santer et al., published in Nature Scientific Reports on May 24.

For well-known reasons, Santer et al decided to debate not scientists, but Scott Pruitt, the new Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The authors of the article (SVP for Santer vs. Pruitt) have beef mostly with Pruitt’s statement about warming hiatus in the last two decades:

After a recent Senate confirmation hearing, Scott Pruitt – the new Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – received a written question regarding observed warming estimates. In response, Mr. Pruitt claimed that ‘over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming’.

Dr. Roy Spencer debunked SVP on…

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Roy Spencer on ‘Santer takes on Pruitt’

Tallbloke's Talkshop

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt
As Dr Roy Spencer points out: ‘You can’t build a case for human-caused warming by relying on natural warming! (But, they did anyway.)’

A new paper in Nature: Scientific Reports by Santer et al entitled Tropospheric Warming Over the Past Two Decades begins with this:

After a recent Senate confirmation hearing, Scott Pruitt the new Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency received a written question regarding observed warming estimates. In response, Mr. Pruitt claimed that over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming. We test this claim here.

Now, exactly how does one scientifically test a claim of “leveling off of warming”?

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Huge reserves of natural gas under East Texas will fuel the future economy, experts say

Tallbloke's Talkshop

Credit: tylertexasonline.com
Some experts call it ‘unprecedented’. But as the Tyler Morning Telegraph reports: ‘there’s a caveat. Technically recoverable doesn’t mean profitable – yet.’

As far back as 1911, geologists predicted that significant mineral wealth lay below East Texas, in what was then called the Woodbine Stratum – a formation above the Haynesville Shale.

And Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner proved them right in 1930, when the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well struck oil just outside Henderson in western Rusk County.

It was really just a drill stem test – they weren’t expecting to hit anything. But at 3,592 feet, Joiner tapped into what was for years thought to be the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. But no-one predicted the vastness of the energy wealth available here.

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Uncertainty about the Climate Uncertainty Monster

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

The many dimensions of the climate uncertainty monster.

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How dependent are GISTEMP trends on the gridding radius used?

Climate Audit

A guest post by Nic Lewis

Introduction

Global surface temperature (GMST) changes and trends derived from the standard GISTEMP[1] record over its full 1880-2016 length exceed those per the HadCRUT4.5 and NOAA4.0.1 records, by 4% and 7% respectively.  Part of these differences will be due to use of different land and (in the case of HadCRUT4.5) ocean sea-surface temperature (SST) data, and part to methodological differences.

GISTEMP and NOAA4.0.1 both use data from the ERSSTv4 infilled SST dataset, while HadCRUT4.5 uses data from the non-infilled HadSST3 dataset. Over the full 1880-2016 GISTEMP record, the global-mean trends in the two SST datasets were almost the same: 0.56 °C/century for ERSSTv4 and  0.57 °C /century for HadSST3. And although HadCRUT4v5 depends (via its use of the CRUTEM4 record) on a different set of land station records from GISTEMP and NOAA4.0.1 (both of which use GHCNv3.3 data), there is a great commonality…

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Estimating Cloud Feedback Using CERES Data

Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

As usual, Dr. Judith Curry’s Week In Review – Science Edition contains interesting studies. I took a look at one entitled “Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models“, by Ceppi et al., hereinafter Ceppi2017. The paper looks at the changes in the radiative effects of clouds. From the paper:

The radiative impact of clouds is measured as the cloud-radiative effect (CRE), the difference between clear-sky and all-sky radiative flux at the top of atmosphere. Clouds reflect solar radiation (negative SW CRE, global-mean effect of −45 W m−2) and reduce outgoing terrestrial radiation (positive LW CRE, 27 W m−2), with an overall cooling effect estimated at −18 W m−2 (numbers from Henderson et al.[36]).

The Ceppi2017 Figure 1 shows that almost all of the models report that as the modeled surface warms, the modeled clouds change in such a way as…

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NASA: Human activities now affecting space

Watts Up With That?

From the “worse than we thought” department and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center comes this:

Space weather events linked to human activity

Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us. Space weather — which can include changes in Earth’s magnetic environment — are usually triggered by the sun’s activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a new look at the mechanisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system. Such information can help support NASA’s efforts to protect satellites and astronauts from the natural radiation inherent in space.

From 1958 to 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ran high-altitude tests with exotic code names like Starfish, Argus and Teak. The tests have long since ended, and the goals at the time were military. Today, however, they can provide crucial information on how humans can…

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Health insurance and pre-existing conditions

The Writer in Black

There is much talk about “pre-existing conditions” and their effect on health insurance.  One of the reasons that politicians find it so difficult to replace, let alone repeal the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (and how many untruths are in that title?  Every word, including “and”).

Here’s the problem.  It doesn’t matter how popular it is.  It doesn’t matter how many people want it.  It doesn’t matter how great the idea sounds.  Requiring insurance to cover pre-existing conditions without allowing that insurance to charge for that coverage commensurate with the extra cost destroys health insurance.

Let me break that down for you.

In statistics there’s a concept called the “expectation value.”  It’s simply the “numeric value multiplied by the probability of it happening.  It’s also the average that would happen over many, many cases.  Like this.

The probability of getting “heads” in a fair coin toss is 0.5 or…

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