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Dec_24_2008 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=oymyakon-the-coldest-town OK. They're putting the cart before the horse with "is expected" here... > "But if you want cold, visit Oymyakon, which this winter is expected to > reach (or perhaps exceed) its record low temperature: a bone-chilling > minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 68 degrees Celsius) reached on Feb. > 6, 1933. It is a record matched only by nearby Verkhoyansk, Siberia, > which endured minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 7, 1892." But if they turn out to be right, I think we can put the global warming idea to bed once and for all. An 1892 record, matched in 1933, then not matched again until 2008/2009. It's kind of hard to explain global warming when you're seeing record low temperatures of the once in 50 years variety. If they tie (or exceed) the record, it would seem that either the warming is not global or Oymyakon isn't part of the globe. Catastrophy cancelled. Phew. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#ColdWeather24Dec08 |
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Sep_23_2008 Read later... Linzen - "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?" http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Lindzen23Sep08 |
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Sep_05_2008 Amazing! I actually understand what this guy is saying (mostly). http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3586 If I never use it for anything else, at least Numerical Linear Algebra class helped me with blog reading. Now, how long until I forget? Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#MannAgain05Sep08 |
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Aug_21_2008 I watched a Nova program on "Global Dimming" the other day. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/ The FUD style of the presentation made me suspicious, plus, I thought I remembered something about global dimming having reversed itself. (Seeing NASA's Dr. James Hansen featured prominently didn't fill me with confidence in the accuracy of the piece either...) So I just searched scholar.google.com for "Global Dimming" and found, in the top 6 headlines... o "From Dimming to Brightening: Decadal Changes in Solar Radiation at Earth's Surface" - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5723/847 o "Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming" - https://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/mknut/2006GL028031.pdf o "Two-decadal aerosol trends as a likely explanation of the global dimming/brightening transition" - http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006.../2006GL026471.shtml I've only scanned the Abstract/Introductions so far, but they all mention that dimming ended during the 1980s and solar radiation hitting the surface has been increasing since then. The NOVA scare-piece didn't mention a word about brightening. According to them, the Global Warming signal has been hidden by global dimming and it will be getting worse as the air clears. Now I find that the last 7 years, years while temperatures have been cooling, have apparently been years of brightening, not dimming. That sort of blows the ~dimming masks warming~ theory out of the water. We've now got global brightening + CO2 growth = dropping temperatures. That's odd. The more deceptions/ommissions I catch these activists in, the less I'm inclined to believe anything they have to say... Which reminds me... Hansen made a statement in the NOVA program. He said something along the lines that it's unfortunate that we've had global dimming, because if not, it would have warmed faster and we would have recognized it sooner and thus had more time to prepare. Let's imagine that the whole scare-story is true for a minute and think through his claim for a moment. Warming faster -> More time to prepare(?) I think that guy likes to hear the sound of his own voice. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#GlobalDimming20Aug08 |
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Jul_25_2008 Wow! Someone's going to turn a blog brainstorming session into an open journal of the Nature/Science variety? Nice idea, but I'll be *really* impressed if it works out. Good luck to 'em anyway... http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3343#comment-280716 Though I'm not quite sure what's wrong with PlosOne. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#NewJournal25July08 |
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Jul_25_2008 Saved this one in my signature files. July 18, 2013 isn't that far away. I like when they say stuff that's falsifiable. http://www.sundancechannel.com/blogs/ecommunity_news/390362833 "Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months." ==> Al Gore (July 18, 2008) I wonder what happens to that 75% when ice coverage goes up, not down, during 2008? Only 4 years left and more ice left to melt. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Gore25July08 |
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Jul_21_2008 http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb114/issue114.pdf > The complainants said that the public is much more familiar with weather > forecasts - and their uncertainty - than with climatology. The > complainants said that, because the difference between weather and > climate may not be well known among the general public, the description > of climate models as unreliable could have misled viewers about the > ability of scientists to predict climate: because viewers may have > understood climate models to be the same as weather forecasts. The global warming alarmists claim that the skeptics in the great global warming swindle cofused "climate" forcasts with "weather" forecasts. They're afraid the viewers may have been misled into attributing the forecasting accuracy of weather forecasts to climate forecasts. I don't know if it's right, but a common definition I've seen for "climate" is the 30 year average of weather. If that's right, it seems to me that a rigorous climate forecast generated before July 21, 1978, has probably never been compared to observations. Track record == 0. So if the alarmists want the climate models to stand on their own record, instead of the record of weather forecasts, it seems to me that the climate forecasts have nothing at all to stand on. The alarmists might want to talk about hindcasting, but that's not the same. Weather forecasts can be made to hindcast accurately too. In order to evaluate the accuracy of a climate prediction, there first has to be a prediction and an observation. It seems to me that we don't have those. So Mr. Gore wants everyone on the planet to change our lifestyles now based on forecasts which aren't just unproven, but are even untested and won't be tested for another decade or more. (although it has been noted that Mr. Gore seems unwilling to change his own lifestyle). I think they'd do better to run on the track record of the weather models than to run on no track record at all. The skeptics were doing them a favor. While we're at it, here are the bits that I picked up as major findings of OFCOM o On balance it did not materially mislead the audience so as to cause harm or offence. o Not in breach of Rule 2.2 o Breach of Rules 5.11 and 5.12 (in respect of Part Five of the programme) And here are the rules - Rule 2.2, which states that Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience; - Rules 5.11 (due impartiality must be preserved on matters of major political controversy and major matters relating to current public policy), and - Rule 5.12 (in dealing with such major matters, an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes.) So four parts out of five were squeaky clean. One part was found to be insufficiently impartial, although not materially misleading. Not exactly the impression I get from the Deltoid blog where I got the link: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/ofcom_rules_that_the_great_glo.php Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Globalwarmingswindle20July08 |
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Jul_02_2008 "Computer Science and Engineering Distinguished Lecturer: Why The Algorithm Might Soon Be The Only Game in Town" http://www.researchchannel.com/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=22340&fID=345 I started watching this in on-demand when I should've been doing homework, but turned it off since it was distracting me. I still need to finish it. It's very interesting. The lecturer is Bernard Chazelle, from Princeton University. Reminds me a little of Wolfram's New Kind of Science. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Algorithm02July08 |
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Jun_26_2008 So with Hansen's "put the oil executives on trial" and violate the Hatch Act testimony the other day, I got to thinking. Twenty years ago, Hansen predicted a 1 degree C rise in temperature by 2000. He was pretty close to the mark in 1998. However, the "consensus" temperature now is that there has been somewhere around a 0 degree rise from 1988 to today. Hansen's own temperature agency is the only one that's still grasping onto the ceiling tiles. Now I like to think of the temperature as being like a lottery number. One temperature today another tomorrow and today's temperature doesn't tell me much about tomorrow's. That seems superficially true, but it's really not. For a global average surface temperature to change, heat either has to be added or subtracted in the system. Tomorrow's temperature is today's temperature +/- some change in heat content. Alarmists claim that CO2 reduces the amount of heat that gets subtracted (I think of it more like a blanket or a dam than like a greenhouse). That implies, though, that Hansen's predictions can't just pick up where they left off. If he predicted a rise of 1 degree by 2000 and 2 degrees by when-ever, say 2050.... and we have now lost that predicted degree of heat, then he's got to start over. The missing heat has to be subtracted from his 2050 prediction, because his 2025 prediction made the implicit assumption that the 2000 heat would be there. i.e. the most heat available for his 2050 (or when-ever) prediction is now 1 degree. Not a change that I find particularly terrifying. In other words, his predictions are cumulative. Any time the real-world system is observed to have lost more heat than predicted by models, that missing heat has got to be subtracted from any other predictions which assume that the "missing" heat would be there. I think this is probably what Roger Pielke, Sr. has been trying to say a bunch of times on his web site, but he throws delta's and sigma's and latex out there and my eyes glaze over. Seen in another way, if Hansen's 1988 prediction was right, then it means that by adding CO2 to the atmosphere we have avoided a degree's worth of cooling from heat loss that would have happened between 1988 and now. Probably not a bad thing, since food production in today's temperature range depends upon the length of the growing season. (Unless, of course, you believe the Hansen/GISS standard, complete with unknown methods and unquantified surface station contamination, over the other 3 standards. If you believe Hansen's numbers over the other three, maybe the sky can still be falling.) Personally, I still think his predictions are implausible. But I'm thinking that even if his predictions are on-target, the reasonable interpretation is a non-alarmist interpretation. Maybe we really did start fending off a cooling cycle right at the time that Hansen made his predictions. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#WarmingCumulative26June08 |
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Jun_04_2008 Linking two complex networks... The Earth and the Sun. Read later (after June 12). http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#ArmyTSI04June08 |
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Jun_02_2008 UAH global temperatures in near time. http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Globaltemps02June08 |
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May_29_2008 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3114#comment-254355 > So why is this all of a sudden news? Very bizarre actually, and really > makes me wonder even more about the peer review process over at Nature. This from a global warming "consensus" scientist. So even the "believers" are questioning Nature's credibility. It's a shame, between Iraq and global warming, I am immediately skeptical of anything published in Nature, The Lancet or Scientific American now. Long, long reputations for reliability ruined by a few years of indiscretion. Sad. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#NatureCredibility29May08 |
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May_23_2008 It's not short, but this presentation by Steve McIntyre (climateaudit.org, hockey-stick debunker and NASA error-finder) is a really good summary of the proxy aspect of the climate debate... http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohio.pdf Even though it's a technical subject, it's still very easy to follow. The conclusion is excerpted in this blog entry. http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003098.html Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Paleoclimate23May08 |
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May_19_2008 Someone got the GISS code running... Finally! In a matter of days too. http://dev.edgcm.columbia.edu/browser/StationData/ Interesting that it's a columbia.edu URL. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#RunningGissTemp19May08 |
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May_12_2008 The Plasma Universe --- http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/universe.html Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Plasma12May08 |
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May_02_2008 "A Tale of Two Thermometers" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/ Nice to see the main stream tech press taking notice of Hansen & NASA. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#TwoThermometers02May08 |
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Apr_27_2008 Read later... "Chemists poke holes in ozone theory" - Nature, September 2007 http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/energy/Resources/Essays/nature-kickhole.pdf (Don't know why the words in the title are not capitalized) Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Ozone27Apr08 |
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Apr_25_2008 Looks like the skeptics, surfacestations.org in particular, are contributing more to our knowledge of climate then all the alarmists in the groupthink club. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/press_release_042408_climatereferencenetwork.pdf I'm sure the funding for this came as a result of last year's publicity generated by Anthony Watts and the surfacestations.org findings. We'll actually know temperatures in the US without contamination? I hope it happens. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#ClimateMeasurementUpgrade25Apr08 |
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Apr_19_2008 Arctic sea ice anomaly at highest levels since 2001 (and possibly still increasing?)... If it passes that threshold, it looks like it will be the highest anomaly level since 1988. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg (see the red line) Funny how the press doesn't mention this when they're busy inciting panic about ice melt. They're still talking about the northern hemisphere's summer melt last year... I guess the current facts don't support their agenda quite as well. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#SeaIce19Apr08 |
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Apr_13_2008 "'Peak Oil' Paper Revised and Temperature Analysis Code" http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20070907_peakrevandgistemp.pdf On (or around) September 7, 2007, speaking of the GISS code which performs adjustments to the NOAA global temperature record, Dr. Hansen (the Censored One) wrote - "People interested in science may want to wait a week or two for a simplified version." It has now been somewhat more than a week or two.... Since no one has reported success getting the first release to compile, I wonder what happened to the simplified version which had been promised by Dr. Hansen? I hope President Bush hasn't censored it. ; -) Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#GISScode13Apr08 |
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Apr_11_2008 "Software Fundamentals Collected Papers by David L. Parnas" Edited by: Daniel M. Hoffman and David M. Weiss On the back cover, it says: "David L. Parnas is one of the grandmasters of software engineering. His academic research and industrial collaborations have exerted far-reaching influence on software design and development." On pg-337, an introduction to chapter 17 says "One of the most rewarding aspects of working with Dave on the A-7E software project was the way he challenged commonly held views. Out of these challenges came changes in thinking that frequently led to interesting new approaches..." So in Computer Science, challenging commonly held views makes one a grandmaster and brings about interesting new approaches. Contrast that with Climate Science where challenging the consensus makes one a "denialist", a "flat earther" or a "moon-landing conspiracy theorist" (or on the take from the evil capitalist oil companies). I think this is not a flattering light for client science. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#QuestionConsensus11Apr08 |
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Apr_09_2008 http://www.budburst.com Citizen scientists... Linked from- http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-04-07-budburst_N.htm?csp=15 They're going to report on how global warming is changing the growing seasons... This will be interesting. Or at least, that's what they expect to report. Last year was their first year. This year's report will be in/around July. Wouldn't it be sad if they find a reduced growing season due to recent global cooling?
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Apr_08_2008 A place to play with global climate data. Very cool! http://www.woodfortrees.org/ Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#Wood4trees08Apr08 |
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Apr_06_2008 http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/accounting-for-enso-cochrane-orcutt/ So apparently, based on observed data since the report, there is a 1 in 20 chance for redeeming the 2001 IPCC predictions (or scenarios or estimates or projections or forecasts or whatever other weasle-word the IPCC "scientists" might choose). It seems we can say with 95% confidence that the IPCC's 2001 predictions were wrong. This from an AGW believer too (albeit one with an apparently level-head). On an unrelated note, I'm wondering... How do the models compare to reality if configured to hindcast Mars or Venus over the last 20 years? Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#IPCCfalsified06Apr08 |
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Mar_19_2008 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-03-19-nice-guys-harvard-study_N.htm?csp=15 Interesting article... The Prisoner's Dilemma has always fascinated me, but I've got to wonder how much the rules influence the results? > "It's a very positive message," said study co-author David Rand, a > Harvard biology graduate student researcher. "In general, the thing that > is most, sort of, rational and best for your own self-interest is to be > nice." > ... > Nowak then added a "costly punishment" component. A player could choose > to punish someone who didn't cooperate. That penalized the > non-cooperative person 40 cents, but the other player had to pay a dime > to mete out the punishment. What if the costly punishment were 20 cents? How 'bout 80 or $2.00? Would it still pay to be nice? I'll bet I could devise rules where it wouldn't... I'm thinking that this is a study of just a specific scenario. Unfortunately, Nature won't let me look at the original article, so I'll probably never know. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#PrisonerDilemma19Mar08 |
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Feb_05_2008 RSS temperature data for January, sorted by [-70/82.5] anomaly data from: ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt year mon -70.0/82.5_anomaly ----------------- 1989 1 -0.344 1984 1 -0.310 1979 1 -0.268 1993 1 -0.239 1985 1 -0.196 1982 1 -0.157 2000 1 -0.144 *2008 1 -0.080 1986 1 -0.067 1990 1 -0.051 1997 1 -0.047 1992 1 -0.028 1996 1 -0.016 1980 1 0.003 1994 1 0.082 2001 1 0.083 1981 1 0.122 1983 1 0.133 1991 1 0.135 1987 1 0.168 1995 1 0.189 1999 1 0.227 1988 1 0.269 2006 1 0.355 2002 1 0.386 2004 1 0.405 2003 1 0.466 2005 1 0.478 2007 1 0.549 1998 1 0.621 So out of 30 Januaries in the RSS record, this was the 8th coldest. The only "recent" Januaries which have been cooler were 2000 and 1993. I wonder if the stock market and the global average temperature move together. ; -) Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#ColdJan05Feb08 |
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Jan_19_2008 I guess the media forgot to tell me about the recent dramatic increase in southern hemisphere ice coverage. It looks sort-of like a record. Funny that they haven't had much to say about the southern hemisphere ice anomaly. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png Eyeballing the charts from here: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/ it looks like the 2007 total world wide ice coverage is about 24.871 sq km vs. a total worldwide average of 24.5 sq km. Watch out for those rapidly rising sea levels. With that rate of decline, I'm thinking NY city might be flooded next week. Or not. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#AntarcticIce19Jan08 |
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Jan_13_2008 So once again I'm curious about how we actually know whether or not the world is warming. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001315forecast_verificatio.html For a minute, forget about the point of this post, accuracy of IPCC forecasts vs. observational data. Instead, let's look at the 2007 global average temperature anomaly. RSS =~ 0.16 deg (Celsius, I assume) GISS =~ 0.42 deg GISS says 2007 was warmer than 2006, RSS says it was cooler. So apparently, the best scientists in the world cannot tell me the 2007 global mean temperature to within 0.26 degrees, but they still want me to believe they can detect 0.76 of warming over the last 120 years? For me, this claim is hard to swallow. Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#CurrentAvgTemp13Jan08 |
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Jan_07_2008 Alarmist articles on the left & skeptic articles on the right. I hope this turns out to be a site with integrity... http://climatedebatedaily.com/ Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#ClimateDebate07Jan08 |
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Jan_06_2008 He calls it geoengineering... I'd call it geoclimate engineering. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/192 Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#TedTalksClimate06Jan08 |
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Jan_04_2008 Solar Cycle 24 began yesterday- http://www.spaceweather.com/images2008/04jan08/newspot.jpg?PHPSESSID=jdsfhb114sajdvhedqqg9u31q7 Link for this entry: http://home.ccil.org/~remlaps/weblog_2008/science_index.html#SolarCycle24_04Jan08 |
