
One of the difficulties encountered by many projects involved in responses to climate change, is the lack of reliable long-term data that can form a baseline for improvement. We can usually only capture static information for a relatively recent 'time slice', which makes prediction of trends almost impossible. We can see that, for example, something is getting more or less, higher or lower, longer or shorter, richer or poorer, larger or smaller, but we can't say what that represents in a long-term trend. Where we do, the mathematics and especially, statistics, of regression analysis and the analysis of variance, are (sadly) often beyond the ken of many scientists let alone the average person in the street, and the mass media that is supposedly informing them.