The Farmer’s Almanac has been around since the 18th Century–and they are reliable on long range weather prediction. Their results predicting weather are enviable, 80% accurate on specific regions and temp/precip.
The Farmer’s Almanac has 16 regions for the United states and was right on for predictions on temp and precipitation for 15 of the 16 regions for the winter of 2012 and 2013. 94% right, even better than their claim that they are 80% correct throughout their history of predicting weather.
That’s long range. For example I have the 2014 Almanac and they are making long range predictions for 16 regions of the US.
The formula they use is driven by sunspots and other factors and the foundational work was by Robert B. Thomas in 1792.
On page 202 of the 2014 Farmer’s Almanac they discuss their methods in general, even though they have a secret formula.
Then they proceed with a complete monthly prediction for the 16 regions of the United States. That takes nerve.
“Over the years, we have refined and enhanced that formula with state-of-the-art technology and modern scientific calculations. We employ three scientific disciplines to make our long range predictions, solar science, the study of sunspots and other solar activity: climatology, the study of prevailing weather patterns, and meteorology, the study of the atmosphere. We predict weather trends and events by comparing solar patterns and historical weather conditions with current solar activity.”
Predictions can be more reliable if you start with the fact that the universe is a stable place, with all kinds of feedbacks that prevent catastrophic chaos–something people need to remember. The universe we have is a friendly and stable place. We would not be if the sun was in in a different place in the galaxy or the Planet Earth in a different place in the solar system–we are just plain lucky, now, aren’t we.
Reminds me of a wonderful book by a great man treated badly by Iowa State U. Guillermo Gonzalez wrote The Privileged Planet: how our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery.
The faculty at Iowa State said he was not academic enough, but what they meant was he introduced a mystery/religious point of view in described the unique place in the Universe that we occupy. I State Cyclones refused him tenure.
I wonder if the IPCC modeling cottage industry players keep a Farmer’s Almanac on the desk? Or if they ever consider that we are in a special place in the Universe.
I’m pretty sure that the only people who think Farmer’s Almanac is correct 80% of the time are the editors of Farmer’s Almanac. Anyone who actually bothers to compare actual data to prediction will discover that the Farmer’s Almanac even with hedged and generalized predictions is right about as often as a random guess is right.
It is actually quite amazing, how similar the first passages of Genesis are to what scientists actually say happened, especially considering the words are several thousand years old.
Genesis wasn’t meant to be an exact science text. It was meant to give a general description to people who, for the most part weren’t scientists, and couldn’t even read, how the universe and their world was created. And to that effect I think it does a good job. And yes, It may have been 7 days, – but how long is a day to God?
In 2006, I saw a Wiggles concert on the IA state campus. It was one of the last ones featuring Greg Wiggle. (He was replaced by Sam Wiggle due to Greg’s health problems.)
George, you describe what might be a way to be always pretty good at [predicting weather, but the Almanac is the real Deal.
They do their predictions for the 16 regions for every month on whether the weather will above or below the moving average for the region. So they can’t get a good score by saying–it’ll be the same.
So why am I explaining these things? The Almanac is cheap and it explains things–they aren’t an exotic cult. Find out by buying one.
$6.99 off the shelf, price on the book. All kinds of cool astonomy stuff and agricultural and gardening info. Small book but almost 300 pages.
And if you read their predictions, they don’t just go for predictions on a monthly average and whether it’s above or below the average for that month for that region, they also predict for short spciffic times, for example 3 day periods longer for changes, like rainy.
What you say about the Farmer’s Almanac may be true to a certain degree. But what’s remarkable is that even if they use this kind of prediction methodology, recently they have still beat NOAA on predictions. Most likely because the government feels compelled to include global warming theory in its predictions. The point being that if you keep including erroneous factors, your prediction ability falls below that of flipping a coin.
I think you will find that 80% of the time tomorrow’s weather will be the same as last today’s weather. So if I make that prediction, I will have the same prognostication ability as TFA. But it is the other 20% that makes all the difference.
The same principle works for the stock market, BTW.
Bob, don’t forget, a LOT of people use “creationism” to refer to 7-day pop-into-existence creationism, which the vast majority of Christians do not believe. Christians use the term creationism to include everything from 7-day creation (which I personally think is a heretical belief as it is directly contradicted by evidence. As God does not lie, it must be a symbolic story) to intelligent design and the divine clockmaker theory (or divine dynamiter for big bang theory).
If I recall, the Farmer’s Almanac predictions are fairly general, which increases their chance of being right.
It seems you are mixing creation with evolution. My SIL is one of the evolution high priests and he doesn’t mix evolution with creation. We have fun discussing what theories are, falsification and the fact that his experimental is more along the lines of intelligent design. It does seem like a religion.
I post-doc’d under a creation chemist. I did stereochemistry, chiral micellar catalysis, and let him handle creation. 40 years ago he wasn’t past the idea stage, but he had some interesting stereochemical templating results.
I like the commentary from Doubting Thomas, a lot.
I am not junk science, that’s Milloy, I am just a reader and I put up something I thought was informative about Farmer’s Almanac,
I am an Iowa boy and have suffered through many disappointments as a Cyclones fan. I know that I was smart enough to get into medical school and Iowa State’s vet school wouldn’t have considered me a decent alternative if all their choices got sick and died.
I mentioned Privileged Planet because it was a fascinating book about the unique nature of our astrophysical place in the universe.
I have no aversion to flame wars, I am not an intelligent design advocate, just a skeptic about Darwinism and I put up some of the reasons why the physics biochemical reactions and the time limits and opportunity limits of random shuffling just aren’t satisfactory without a lot of hope and faith.
I thought Privileged Planet was a compelling discussion and the reaction of I State faculty was predictably politically correct, just like the panic of the Baylor Faculty over Dembski.
When the selfish gene was suggested, I thought–is he kidding, he is talking like a priest of the High Holy Church of Darwin. How about the lazy gene or the arrogant gene or the spoiled gene. Anthropomorphism of a double helix stranded bunch of base pairs? Dawkins is a cold, evidence driven man? A hard nosed scientist? Well i guess so unless he wants to make some rhetorical points and get around some problems with his pet ideas.
I admire your way with words, Doubting Thomas. Skepticism is a good place to be, and dissent, and sometimes even dissidence.
I’m a little confused here. Junk Science is criticizing a school because they felt this guy was a little too metaphysical for them? I thought that was the problem, Too much religion and mysticism. My vibe is that Junk Science intensely disagrees with Intelligent Design and doesn’t recognize it as a science either. Or did I miss something? Iowa State, my alma mater, is a tech school, and as such are a little more demanding of scientific orthodoxy. They have fewer flakes in their faculty and it’s a wonderful school with a beautiful campus. Not flake free, just fewer of them.
Having said that, I am a little sympathetic to Gonzalez’s plight. My understanding is that he wasn’t bad at his work, but he was a heretic of the first order, that being to question evolution. Evolution does seem to be some sort of litmus test in academia. I find it odd that you can embrace all the Gaia theory, e.t. intelligence, or exobiology you want, but to criticize evolution appears to be blasphemy.
I don’t want to start a flame war like happened on a recent article. But I feel evolutionists act much like climatologists. I feel there is a lot of unsupported conjecture and a certainty in its promotion that is not warranted by the evidence. Disagreement seems to almost instantly result in ad hominem attacks. I have yet to see a discusion of the weaknesses of evolutionary theory where the proponents didn’t start name calling and marginalization. So reminescent of discussions of global warming. What’s ironic is seeing warming skeptics engage in the exact same arguing tactics that they so despise from warmists, but use freely when arguing evolution.