If you are looking for the best pictures of the ash plume flowing away from Iceland, then check out the NASA page [LINK].
Air traffic has been pretty badly impacted by the safety precautions, with a blanket ban on flights over much of northern Europe over the past five days. Things look to be getting back on track now, with the UK, France, and Germany opening their airspace starting today [LINK].
A troubling aspect of the ban on air traffic is a backlash against it [LINK]. Apparently there are a number of voices saying that grounding the flights is too cautions, including some airlines. These dissenters say that the precautions aren't based on this volcanic eruption, but on "theoretical" approach.
This line of thinking strikes a familiar chord, I think. It seems that there is a general pattern for science-based decisions, which tend toward being conservative, to be questioned by interested parties. Of course, in this case "interested parties" is a euphemism for people/corporations/industries/governments who have a financial or personal stake in the situation. The usual argument goes something like, these scientists are overly cautious (or alarmist) and the problem isn't that bad, and we should be making decisions based on what is really happening and not what some fancy computer model says.
Let us be quite honest in saying that the science-based findings will be conservative. Decision making based on science follows that. This is best summed up by the old phrase, "better safe than sorry." I think this is the right way to go. There are times when calculated risk is the right approach, but when the choice is between people perchance dying in plane crashes (and airlines making tons of money) or people NOT DYING but being stuck somewhere for a couple of days (and airlines losing some money), what is the right approach? Well, I am betting that there would certainly be some questions if planes started falling out of the sky. Better safe than sorry.
Another aspect of this story is that the decision-making process would certainly be better served with better real-time data. There's no doubt that if we had better in situ observations of the volcanic ash plume, then we would have a better idea of whether it would be safe for airplanes to fly. But guess what? There's really no money for these kinds of observations. Not in Europe and not in the USA. Sure, you can turn to the NASA satellites and get a lot of information. But the real-time information that can be gleaned from the satellites is limited, both because of the satellite coverage and technology, and also because of limited personnel who have the ability to analyze the data. I'm guessing a good amount of real science will come from this eruption, but it will take months (and years) to be done. Better observations could be collected by using balloons, mobile observing platforms, and aircraft. These all require the proverbial boots on the ground. There have to be scientists/technicians on the ready, with the equipment ready to go, a way to get to the site, and personnel to ingest the data and provide analysis to decision-makers. There's no doubt the capabilities exist, and there are scientists who would be willing to do the work (and excited to do it), but there aren't usually resources for that kind of science.
So for those who say that we shouldn't rely on models and statistics for decision-making, I think this is a false dichotomy. It is either that or nothing at this point, but the better way to go is to choose both models and statistics along with real-time observations. I'd also be willing to wager that many of those on that side of the debate would not want to put the money on the table for the kinds of observational networks and responses that they are calling for. In the end, isn't the existence of the risk enough to warrant a response? Isn't it better to be safe than sorry? Given the available resources and the collected knowledge about the risk, I can not see any other recourse.
2010-04-18
2010-03-27
Joanne Simpson
This news is now several weeks old, but somehow I forgot to mention it here. Joanne Simpson, a pioneer of tropical meteorology, and specifically a giant in the business of clouds, died 4 March 2010. There's a decent obituary via USA Today [LINK]. That obit also points out one of the stories that I've heard several times, which was that Simpson wanted to study meteorology, Rossby told her to study issues related to tropical clouds saying it would be "an excellent problem for a little girl to work on because it is not very important, and few people are interested in." There's a better piece, with a fantastic photo, on the NASA site [LINK]. In the day or so following her death, the tropical meteorology community was aflutter; the obituaries and news stories aren't exaggerating Simpson's importance to meteorology (and climate science more generally), she truly changed the way people think about the atmosphere and about clouds.
2010-03-19
Streamlining your workflow
Just watched this video showing how one guy keeps his references organized. It's included below, and worth watching. My own citation organization isn't as clean, but uses basically these same tools. (Read that as: this is how I should do it!)
I'll also note that I'm a bit conflicted about whether to use BibDesk to organize my files. The definite pros are that I'm already using it to organize my references and that it is free. I've been using Yep! to organize my documents, which don't always need to be in my bibtex library, and it is a pretty nice application. The downside is that it isn't free (I got it in one of those bundles). I think Yep! is very similar to another application called Papers that I know some people like a lot.
I'll also note that I'm a bit conflicted about whether to use BibDesk to organize my files. The definite pros are that I'm already using it to organize my references and that it is free. I've been using Yep! to organize my documents, which don't always need to be in my bibtex library, and it is a pretty nice application. The downside is that it isn't free (I got it in one of those bundles). I think Yep! is very similar to another application called Papers that I know some people like a lot.
2010-03-15
Impact in North America?
There's been a lot of talk about an extraterrestrial impact in North America about 11,000 years ago. The idea is that such an event could have contributed to the extinction of North America's megafauna, like giant ground sloths and wooly mammoths. A new paper in PNAS by Haynes et al [LINK] examine the evidence from several "Clovis" sites. These are sites where remains of the Clovis people [wikipedia] have been found. Their analysis finds no strong evidence of an extraterrestrial impactor, and especially damning to me is that they find no enhancement of Iridium, which is a fingerprint for impacts.
While they are careful to say that they haven't ruled out an impact, I think this is strong evidence that the other hypotheses (e.g., human hunting) are more likely to have led to the megafaunal extinction.
While they are careful to say that they haven't ruled out an impact, I think this is strong evidence that the other hypotheses (e.g., human hunting) are more likely to have led to the megafaunal extinction.
2010-03-01
News from the paper of record
Al Gore wrote an Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes on 27 February, and I think it is worth reading [LINK]. He covers a little science and a lot of the politics of global warming.
Meanwhile, there is going to be some kind of review of the IPCC reports [LINK]. Let's consider that this is a ~3000 page assessment of the totality of climate change. Over the past month, about three years since the release of the report, two errors have been discovered. One is mentioned in one paragraph of the second report, and misreports the time it will take for Himalayan glaciers to melt [cf. LINK]. Note that this isn't the official IPCC projection for melting, which is in the first report [cf. LINK]. The second error is that in another part of the second report, there's a statement that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea-level. This number was given to the IPCC by the Dutch government [LINK], who now decry it as an error [LINK]. Here, it should be stressed, this statement was not a scientific finding of the IPCC, the report was just using the Netherlands as an example of a country that is susceptible to sea-level rise; it is. I'm not sure why these two errors -- essentially typos -- have caused this firestorm of controversy, nor why that would warrant an independent committee to review the IPCC (which is itself a review). It is theatre of the absurd.
Also in the meantime, the Vermont legislature is working to close down a nuclear plant [LINK].
Vermont might regret this decision, as the EPA is beginning to go forward with a plan to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases [LINK]. As early as 2013 the largest emitters will be subject to regulation. This is later than regulation should happen, but it is good to see that even if the elected politicians won't act to do something, the EPA is going to be able to. Of course, as the article details, democrat congress members from coal-friendly states are trying to stop or slow this regulation. This is a surprisingly obvious example of politicians being beholden to big industry.
Meanwhile, there is going to be some kind of review of the IPCC reports [LINK]. Let's consider that this is a ~3000 page assessment of the totality of climate change. Over the past month, about three years since the release of the report, two errors have been discovered. One is mentioned in one paragraph of the second report, and misreports the time it will take for Himalayan glaciers to melt [cf. LINK]. Note that this isn't the official IPCC projection for melting, which is in the first report [cf. LINK]. The second error is that in another part of the second report, there's a statement that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea-level. This number was given to the IPCC by the Dutch government [LINK], who now decry it as an error [LINK]. Here, it should be stressed, this statement was not a scientific finding of the IPCC, the report was just using the Netherlands as an example of a country that is susceptible to sea-level rise; it is. I'm not sure why these two errors -- essentially typos -- have caused this firestorm of controversy, nor why that would warrant an independent committee to review the IPCC (which is itself a review). It is theatre of the absurd.
Also in the meantime, the Vermont legislature is working to close down a nuclear plant [LINK].
Vermont might regret this decision, as the EPA is beginning to go forward with a plan to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases [LINK]. As early as 2013 the largest emitters will be subject to regulation. This is later than regulation should happen, but it is good to see that even if the elected politicians won't act to do something, the EPA is going to be able to. Of course, as the article details, democrat congress members from coal-friendly states are trying to stop or slow this regulation. This is a surprisingly obvious example of politicians being beholden to big industry.
2010-02-23
The deniers grasp at straws
I just saw this great post on ClimateSafety [LINK], and had to direct others to it. Some conclusions about sea-level rise have been retracted, and it is being reported as another instance of 'those-wacky-climate-scientists' getting something wrong. Cries of alarmism. Seeds of doubt about global warming. Et cetera. Well, the retraction is because they upper limit the original conclusion stated (for sea level rise this century) is not actually the upper limit; the actual upper limit (until better constrained) is much higher.
A terrific example of terrible science reporting, and the desperation of climate change deniers.
A terrific example of terrible science reporting, and the desperation of climate change deniers.
2010-02-22
"This is not your father's quark-gluon plasma."
It's awesome when you actually do get to break the laws of physics: [NYTimes][via Kottke]
2010-02-21
Arguments about how to smooth a timeseries
When considering the arguments of climate change deniers, my preferred approach is give the benefit of the doubt first, try to understand what they are saying, and evaluate the science. This approach, of course, usually fails immediately because most of the denier arguments are not based on science at all. There are a few of them, though, that claim that science is on their side. One of these guys is Willie Soon, an astrophysicist who has been claiming that the sun causes climate change for the last two decades [LINK].
These results seemed preposterous to me. First, there is nothing novel or interesting about the results, which is a prerequisite to publish in GRL. They show nothing other than that they can't duplicate other people's graphs, which could be interesting if they had done a robust analysis and shown that the previous work had errors. Their point that different smoothing methods gives different answers is very well known, and trivial.
Later that year, Michael Mann published a paper in GRL that is basically a repudiation of the Soon et al work. The paper is titled: "On smoothing potentially non-stationary climate time series." It is more technical than the Soon et al paper, but also easier to understand. The point is to show that there are objective measures for smoothing techniques. He shows one such measure, which was used in his previous work, and shows that it captures the non-smoothed times eries better than the other methods (including the one used in Soon et al 2004). The conclusion is bolstered by comparing to a frequency-domain approach; the two methods agree well. Another example is given, applying the same smoothing methods to a different time series (a measure of the cold season North Atlantic Oscillation). In this case, the method that is best for the northern hemisphere temperature anomaly is the worst match. The point is that this time series does not appear to be as non-stationary (i.e. not such a strong trend at the end of the time series) as the other series, and that an objective measure of the smoothing gives a simple way to evaluate whether the smoothing is appropriate.
The Mann paper makes some interesting points about how to smooth time series that could be non-stationary. More important than that, it explicitly shows that an objective criteria needs to be applied to make any judgements about these kinds of analyses, which essentially blows the Soon paper out of the water because their argument was essentially, 'different methods give different answers, so there's no way to know what is right.' Finally, from reading these two papers (which I encourage you to do), we see the basic difference between doing science and trying blindly to poke holes into science. While the Soon et al paper tries to evoke scientific doubt, it ultimately fails because the methods are sloppy, no hypothesis is actually tested, the conclusions are not robust, and the points they try to make are clearly exaggerated. The Mann paper takes a more objective look at the data and methods, and teaches us something interesting about time series analysis and the nature of two important climatic time series.
If this is the quality of the Soon et al literature when they can get it into mainstream journals, I have to wonder how bad the papers that are hidden away in obscure journals really are.
Background on Willie Soon
The deniers love Soon because he's a real scientist. He's been able to actually publish climate-related papers pretty consistently, too, which gives him a lot of credibility (compared to other prominent deniers). I've been looking into Soon's publications, just for fun, and have noticed a few important aspects of his publication record. I haven't actually found a CV for Soon, but he does have a URL that has a directory called myownPapers-d, which I assume is his archive. This assumption might be wrong, since (1) there are quite a few non-reviewed papers in there (magazine articles and denier-think-tank "reports") and (2) there is at least one paper not credited to Soon by to Richard Mackey. So one thing that is a red flag is that most of the climate papers that Soon has published are in a journal called "Climate Research [LINK]." Why is this of note? Well, because this journal has pretty much been blackballed by the actual climate research community because of the number of dodgy papers that have gotten through "peer review" and published in CR. Now, a lot of the controversy about that journal is related to Soon himself [cf.], so maybe we should give him a pass there. (side note: the typography of CR is pretty nice, even if the content isn't) Well, except that he's also publishing in the notorious Energy & Environment. And the unknown Physical Geography. And New Astronomy. These are not what one would call mainstream science journals. But, in browsing that directory, I also found two papers in GRL, which is a mainstream journal. The second trend in these papers that I noticed was a proclivity to use 'wavelet' analysis; I'm not sure what to make of this, as it is a reasonable approach to time series analysis, but it is more complicated than other methods which are just as valid.Soon et al 2004 versus Mann 2004
One of the GRL papers that Soon has is from 2004 and has the title: "Estimation and representation of long-term (>40 year) trends of Northern-Hemisphere-gridded surface temperature: A note of caution." [DOI] I am not going to try to simplify their analysis, since it is dead simple to understand. They take a global average temperature record (HadCRUT) and apply three kinds of smoothing using 40-year windows/intervals (running average, Hanning-window, and wavelet). They get different answers for the different methods, and then consider the difference of their estimates compared to other published estimates. They can't match the temperature anomaly at the end of the IPCC TAR at the end of the record (nor the Mann papers), so they try a few ad hoc adjustments to their filtering. They conclude -- and I am not misinterpreting or misrepresenting them -- that since they can't get the same answer then the IPCC must have misreported their methods and that the magnitude of global warming is very sensitive to the method of smoothing.These results seemed preposterous to me. First, there is nothing novel or interesting about the results, which is a prerequisite to publish in GRL. They show nothing other than that they can't duplicate other people's graphs, which could be interesting if they had done a robust analysis and shown that the previous work had errors. Their point that different smoothing methods gives different answers is very well known, and trivial.
Later that year, Michael Mann published a paper in GRL that is basically a repudiation of the Soon et al work. The paper is titled: "On smoothing potentially non-stationary climate time series." It is more technical than the Soon et al paper, but also easier to understand. The point is to show that there are objective measures for smoothing techniques. He shows one such measure, which was used in his previous work, and shows that it captures the non-smoothed times eries better than the other methods (including the one used in Soon et al 2004). The conclusion is bolstered by comparing to a frequency-domain approach; the two methods agree well. Another example is given, applying the same smoothing methods to a different time series (a measure of the cold season North Atlantic Oscillation). In this case, the method that is best for the northern hemisphere temperature anomaly is the worst match. The point is that this time series does not appear to be as non-stationary (i.e. not such a strong trend at the end of the time series) as the other series, and that an objective measure of the smoothing gives a simple way to evaluate whether the smoothing is appropriate.
The Mann paper makes some interesting points about how to smooth time series that could be non-stationary. More important than that, it explicitly shows that an objective criteria needs to be applied to make any judgements about these kinds of analyses, which essentially blows the Soon paper out of the water because their argument was essentially, 'different methods give different answers, so there's no way to know what is right.' Finally, from reading these two papers (which I encourage you to do), we see the basic difference between doing science and trying blindly to poke holes into science. While the Soon et al paper tries to evoke scientific doubt, it ultimately fails because the methods are sloppy, no hypothesis is actually tested, the conclusions are not robust, and the points they try to make are clearly exaggerated. The Mann paper takes a more objective look at the data and methods, and teaches us something interesting about time series analysis and the nature of two important climatic time series.
If this is the quality of the Soon et al literature when they can get it into mainstream journals, I have to wonder how bad the papers that are hidden away in obscure journals really are.
2010-02-16
Further craziness about Jonathan Leake
Stunningly bad journalism seems to be this guy's modus operandi: [LINK]
The Donald
Essentially a validation of many of the things I posted yesterday:
Donald Trump: 'With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore.'
[LINK]
The source: The Daily Mail
Donald Trump: 'With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore.'
[LINK]
The source: The Daily Mail
2010-02-15
an overuse of the '-gate' suffix
There have been a lot of 'gates' flying around, on both sides of the climate "debate." By "debate," of course, I mean the public relations war being waged by a few people who've decided that the climate either (1) isn't changing, (2) is changing but not because of people, or (3) maybe is changing and maybe because of people, but it doesn't matter because (a) it won't affect anything, (b) will actually be beneficial, or (c) is too expensive to stop. These few people appear to me to be waging this war against everyone else, except the people who believe in any of the previous anti-climate-change ideologies, even when they are mutually exclusive beliefs. This inconsistency among the climate change deniers is obvious, but has not been a useful point in convincing people of their delirium. These few people are the leading edge of a wedge, and right behind that leading edge are opportunistic types who are willing to jump on a bandwagon and blindly follow, either for personal gain or to support their own ideological inclinations.
So let's start with what some are still calling "climategate," despite the fact that it should be more accurately be called "stolen-email-gate" or something (some of the climate-related blogosphere has taken to calling it "swifthack" in analogy to the swift-boat smear of the 2004 USA presidential campaign). The most significant update is that Michael Mann of Penn State has been exonerated by a University investigation. One aspect of the investigation will continue, but it seems pretty likely that will be cleared up soon too [LINK1, LINK2]. Another bit of news related to this is that Phil Jones talked a bit with Nature, defending his own science, but really there isn't much new information in the piece [LINK]. Finally, at UEA, the investigation is starting to get going, but without Phil Campbell, who left the panel because of possible impartiality [LINK].
There have suddenly been a bunch of other "scandals" in climate science. But not really. They seem to revolve around some errors in the IPCC reports. There's a paragraph in the "impacts" report that incorrectly reports the rate of shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. There's also some confusion about a statement about how much of the Netherlands is below sea-level. The important thing to realize here is that these are tiny details in a sea of information in the IPCC reports, and none of the conclusions about climate change rely on these statements.
These errors in the IPCC have been reported extensively in mainstream media. This has lead some to look at the sources of the reports, which seem to be coming disproportionately from two reporters: Jonathan Leake and David Rose. These reporters are reported to have essentially fabricated and/or distorted information for their stories. There is extensive coverage of the details on Deltoid and RealClimate [see also LINK]. Depending on which side you're reading, these are called "journalismgate," "leakegate," "rosegate," "Africagate," "seagate," etc. And it is all utterly asinine. The reporting in the Times (Leake) and Daily Mail (Rose) is undeniably bad and irresponsible. If these news outlets were interested in the credibility and integrity of their reporting, they would sack both of these writers, apologize, and have real science journalists set the record straight. That won't happen because both are in the business of publishing salacious stories of dubious quality.
There's a trickle down effect. Just sitting here watching CNN, I saw weatherman Chad Myers [LINK] citing the Times Online story in reference to whether there is anthropogenic global warming! As if this one, already discredited, report could show that thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of research papers have all been wrong. Oops, you got us, we didn't know any journalists would be interested. And you'll notice from the link that Myers has a history of being a climate change denier. In the span of two minutes, I heard him make at least three statements doubting the science of global warming. This hurts because most Americans' closest source of science news is their TV meteorologist [LINK], and a surprising number of TV weatherpeople have doubts about the science of global warming [LINK].
When I sat down to write this post, I was infuriated; irate that climate science is continually skewed and contorted to twist people's ideas of what is happening in the world. I thought about writing angry emails, or pleading with prominent science communicators to help expose the irresponsible reporting and illuminate the science and evidence behind global warming. By the time I pasted in that last link, I had convinced myself that science and reason have lost another battle. The scientists are losing the PR war, outgunned, outmanned, and outspent by agents of denial. News abounds showing the increasingly obvious role of climate change in the world's ecosystems and geopolitics, yet more and more Americans (and Europeans) doubt even that the world is warming, and all the while plans to mitigate global warming are being stalled by India and China (and others). Not to be a downer, but I now just wonder how long it will take before the evidence is so overwhelming that it can't be denied? Do we have to see the collapse of major ice sheets, or only a truly ice-free Arctic in summer, or maybe the inevitable 2-degree Celsius global warming? What is the evidence that people really need to see? As a personal matter, I'm having that feeling that many scientists have in these situations, which could be summed up: "I'll just stay out of all this and keep doing my work."
So let's start with what some are still calling "climategate," despite the fact that it should be more accurately be called "stolen-email-gate" or something (some of the climate-related blogosphere has taken to calling it "swifthack" in analogy to the swift-boat smear of the 2004 USA presidential campaign). The most significant update is that Michael Mann of Penn State has been exonerated by a University investigation. One aspect of the investigation will continue, but it seems pretty likely that will be cleared up soon too [LINK1, LINK2]. Another bit of news related to this is that Phil Jones talked a bit with Nature, defending his own science, but really there isn't much new information in the piece [LINK]. Finally, at UEA, the investigation is starting to get going, but without Phil Campbell, who left the panel because of possible impartiality [LINK].
There have suddenly been a bunch of other "scandals" in climate science. But not really. They seem to revolve around some errors in the IPCC reports. There's a paragraph in the "impacts" report that incorrectly reports the rate of shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. There's also some confusion about a statement about how much of the Netherlands is below sea-level. The important thing to realize here is that these are tiny details in a sea of information in the IPCC reports, and none of the conclusions about climate change rely on these statements.
These errors in the IPCC have been reported extensively in mainstream media. This has lead some to look at the sources of the reports, which seem to be coming disproportionately from two reporters: Jonathan Leake and David Rose. These reporters are reported to have essentially fabricated and/or distorted information for their stories. There is extensive coverage of the details on Deltoid and RealClimate [see also LINK]. Depending on which side you're reading, these are called "journalismgate," "leakegate," "rosegate," "Africagate," "seagate," etc. And it is all utterly asinine. The reporting in the Times (Leake) and Daily Mail (Rose) is undeniably bad and irresponsible. If these news outlets were interested in the credibility and integrity of their reporting, they would sack both of these writers, apologize, and have real science journalists set the record straight. That won't happen because both are in the business of publishing salacious stories of dubious quality.
There's a trickle down effect. Just sitting here watching CNN, I saw weatherman Chad Myers [LINK] citing the Times Online story in reference to whether there is anthropogenic global warming! As if this one, already discredited, report could show that thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of research papers have all been wrong. Oops, you got us, we didn't know any journalists would be interested. And you'll notice from the link that Myers has a history of being a climate change denier. In the span of two minutes, I heard him make at least three statements doubting the science of global warming. This hurts because most Americans' closest source of science news is their TV meteorologist [LINK], and a surprising number of TV weatherpeople have doubts about the science of global warming [LINK].
When I sat down to write this post, I was infuriated; irate that climate science is continually skewed and contorted to twist people's ideas of what is happening in the world. I thought about writing angry emails, or pleading with prominent science communicators to help expose the irresponsible reporting and illuminate the science and evidence behind global warming. By the time I pasted in that last link, I had convinced myself that science and reason have lost another battle. The scientists are losing the PR war, outgunned, outmanned, and outspent by agents of denial. News abounds showing the increasingly obvious role of climate change in the world's ecosystems and geopolitics, yet more and more Americans (and Europeans) doubt even that the world is warming, and all the while plans to mitigate global warming are being stalled by India and China (and others). Not to be a downer, but I now just wonder how long it will take before the evidence is so overwhelming that it can't be denied? Do we have to see the collapse of major ice sheets, or only a truly ice-free Arctic in summer, or maybe the inevitable 2-degree Celsius global warming? What is the evidence that people really need to see? As a personal matter, I'm having that feeling that many scientists have in these situations, which could be summed up: "I'll just stay out of all this and keep doing my work."
2010-01-28
UEA CRU update
Well, in really the first blow against the University of East Anglia in the "climate-gate" scandal, something called the Information Commissioner's Office (www.ico.gov.uk) has apparently found that the university did not handle Freedom Of Information Act requests properly [LINK1 LINK2]. I should mention that LINK1 is pretty slanted in their coverage, and not very clear about what is going on, while LINK2 is mostly concerned with the FOI stuff and not so much in this particular case. I can not find anything on the ICO website, nor on the UEA site to corroborate the news reports. In any case, there will be no prosecutions because of the time between the violation and the complaint. The previous CRU statements say they did handle the requests appropriately, so this finding should elicit some response, I'd think.
As a reminder, the requests for information started flooding the CRU scientists when climate change denier websites started provoking their readers to use the FOI to get the CRU temperature data. The product that the CRU produces is a melding of temperature observations from many stations around the world, using (somewhat) sophisticated mathematical tools to blend the records and make a reasonable estimate of global temperature. As far as I can tell, the FOI requests seek the raw data that CRU uses as input for their processing. As has been covered by numerous blogs and news sites, most of this data is publicly available from the sources institutions. The CRU does not "make" this data, and does not "own" this data, so it would really be the wrong place to request that data; it isn't their job to provide someone else's raw data to the general public. (That requires resources that the CRU doesn't have.) Some of the data is obtained by special agreements with the source institutions, such as national weather services, and the CRU is not allowed to reproduce or disseminate that data. This has been made pretty clear, both to the denier/skeptic community as well as the scientific community. I do not understand why some people continue to declare that the CRU has been hiding data.
There are some of those stolen emails that seem pretty damning, though. Based on what I have seen (and I have intentionally avoided reading the stolen emails), I am not surprised that the ICO would find some faults with the handling of some FOI requests. That said, however, I think there is a reasonable counter-argument, and that is that the CRU was flooded with inappropriate FOI requests and did not have resources to handle all of them. I don't know what the law is in the UK, but I would think that it would be easy to show that most of these requests were unreasonable and would have been denied anyway. This doesn't excuse the CRU, they should have done better, but I'm convinced that these requests were not in good faith, and they were motivated by a desire to bury the CRU scientists in bureaucratic paperwork and distract them from their jobs.
One final side note. Are these stolen emails even admissible evidence? They are stolen property. Would their authenticity have to be verified independently? My hunch is that if the CRU/UEA denied that these emails were authentic, they could avoid some of this difficulty. However, I also guess that the CRU has implicitly stated that the emails are real, and maybe that makes them legitimate evidence. This seems like a thorny issue, and it'd be interesting to hear someone who knows about these issues discuss the case.
As a reminder, the requests for information started flooding the CRU scientists when climate change denier websites started provoking their readers to use the FOI to get the CRU temperature data. The product that the CRU produces is a melding of temperature observations from many stations around the world, using (somewhat) sophisticated mathematical tools to blend the records and make a reasonable estimate of global temperature. As far as I can tell, the FOI requests seek the raw data that CRU uses as input for their processing. As has been covered by numerous blogs and news sites, most of this data is publicly available from the sources institutions. The CRU does not "make" this data, and does not "own" this data, so it would really be the wrong place to request that data; it isn't their job to provide someone else's raw data to the general public. (That requires resources that the CRU doesn't have.) Some of the data is obtained by special agreements with the source institutions, such as national weather services, and the CRU is not allowed to reproduce or disseminate that data. This has been made pretty clear, both to the denier/skeptic community as well as the scientific community. I do not understand why some people continue to declare that the CRU has been hiding data.
There are some of those stolen emails that seem pretty damning, though. Based on what I have seen (and I have intentionally avoided reading the stolen emails), I am not surprised that the ICO would find some faults with the handling of some FOI requests. That said, however, I think there is a reasonable counter-argument, and that is that the CRU was flooded with inappropriate FOI requests and did not have resources to handle all of them. I don't know what the law is in the UK, but I would think that it would be easy to show that most of these requests were unreasonable and would have been denied anyway. This doesn't excuse the CRU, they should have done better, but I'm convinced that these requests were not in good faith, and they were motivated by a desire to bury the CRU scientists in bureaucratic paperwork and distract them from their jobs.
One final side note. Are these stolen emails even admissible evidence? They are stolen property. Would their authenticity have to be verified independently? My hunch is that if the CRU/UEA denied that these emails were authentic, they could avoid some of this difficulty. However, I also guess that the CRU has implicitly stated that the emails are real, and maybe that makes them legitimate evidence. This seems like a thorny issue, and it'd be interesting to hear someone who knows about these issues discuss the case.
2010-01-27
Will Obama talk about climate legislation in the SotU?
The NYTimes suggests he should [LINK].
I'd like to see the Prez get up there and shame the Congress for acting like a bunch of whiny babies. With a "filibuster-proof" 60 votes, what did the Senate get passed? Not health-care reform. Not energy reform. The Judicial Branch seems to have taken matters into their own (conservative) hands with campaign finance. Now, with the filibuster on the table, what will get done? Is the Congress paralyzed from the neck up without at least 60 votes on every bill? Ridiculous. When the Dems were threatening the majority Republicans with filibustering, Trent Lott schooled them by essentially threatening to change the way the Senate works through a risky parliamentary procedure [LINK]. Should the Dems turn to this "nuclear option" now, even though they cried foul when the shoe was on the other foot? There's certainly a lot more murmuring about the filibuster being unconstitutional now than I remember then. I do think, though, that having the legislative process completely derailed by the minority party is counter to the values upon which the republic is founded. The filibuster is a bad thing when used for bad reasons. The other side of the coin is that requiring more than a simple majority enforces a conservative (in the real sense of the word) evolution of law, since the most radical ideas will not be passed.
The unfortunate reality is that mitigating climate change (or reforming health-care) requires radical action, which we see is unlikely to come from the Legislative Branch. Problems like this have been dealt with in the past by circumventing the Congress. A perfect, but horrible, example is the development and subsequent deployment of nuclear weapons, which was not approved by the Congress [LINK]. Perhaps in a more transparent regulatory way, the EPA can be used to impose emissions limits [LINK]. This would be a less ideal choice, since the EPA probably wouldn't be allowed to impose a cap-and-trade system (which has been successful in reducing acid rain, LINK). Instead the EPA will impose rules, with some kind of punishment system for polluters. This "all-stick-no-carrot" approach might work, but it'd be better economically to encourage better use of resources and promote innovation and competition [VIDEO].
I'd like to see the Prez get up there and shame the Congress for acting like a bunch of whiny babies. With a "filibuster-proof" 60 votes, what did the Senate get passed? Not health-care reform. Not energy reform. The Judicial Branch seems to have taken matters into their own (conservative) hands with campaign finance. Now, with the filibuster on the table, what will get done? Is the Congress paralyzed from the neck up without at least 60 votes on every bill? Ridiculous. When the Dems were threatening the majority Republicans with filibustering, Trent Lott schooled them by essentially threatening to change the way the Senate works through a risky parliamentary procedure [LINK]. Should the Dems turn to this "nuclear option" now, even though they cried foul when the shoe was on the other foot? There's certainly a lot more murmuring about the filibuster being unconstitutional now than I remember then. I do think, though, that having the legislative process completely derailed by the minority party is counter to the values upon which the republic is founded. The filibuster is a bad thing when used for bad reasons. The other side of the coin is that requiring more than a simple majority enforces a conservative (in the real sense of the word) evolution of law, since the most radical ideas will not be passed.
The unfortunate reality is that mitigating climate change (or reforming health-care) requires radical action, which we see is unlikely to come from the Legislative Branch. Problems like this have been dealt with in the past by circumventing the Congress. A perfect, but horrible, example is the development and subsequent deployment of nuclear weapons, which was not approved by the Congress [LINK]. Perhaps in a more transparent regulatory way, the EPA can be used to impose emissions limits [LINK]. This would be a less ideal choice, since the EPA probably wouldn't be allowed to impose a cap-and-trade system (which has been successful in reducing acid rain, LINK). Instead the EPA will impose rules, with some kind of punishment system for polluters. This "all-stick-no-carrot" approach might work, but it'd be better economically to encourage better use of resources and promote innovation and competition [VIDEO].
2010-01-26
A stupid article in LATimes
I don't have anything else to really say than the title would suggest. Here's an article in the LATimes that basically says nothing at all about global warming, but does almost report on the results of a recent gallup survey [LINK]. It's an opinion piece, so I suppose that lowers expectations, but the journalism involved is piss poor to use a colloquialism. The author is Meghan Daum, who I've never heard of, but is apparently on staff at LAT. I hope I never have to read a word written by her again, it wasted several minutes of my life.
2010-01-21
No they di'n't!
Turncoats? Yes, I guess so. And doing so on a hopeless measure shows they mean it.
3 Democrat Senators support global warming [via Yahoo! via AP]
*Groan* Here's more about this ridiculous assault on science and reason: Murkowski
3 Democrat Senators support global warming [via Yahoo! via AP]
*Groan* Here's more about this ridiculous assault on science and reason: Murkowski
2010-01-20
2010-01-19
Disappearing physicist?
I have never until today heard about Ettore Majorana, an Italian physicist who was a contemporary of Fermi. A new book about Majorana's life and mysterious disappearance is outright panned in Nature (last week, LINK) by Frank Close. While I certainly won't read the book under review, I can't help but be fascinated by this bizarre story, and may have to follow up with some additional reading.
2010-01-13
The Dolphin Situation
It seems that dolphins may be "non-human persons," and deserves special rights above other animals [LINK]. Maybe we can just have the dolphins figure out a way to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere and avoid making their own underwater world an acid bath. Go Dolphins!
2010-01-12
Those Damned Tree Huggers
A thought just crossed my mind that I thought I'd share. I think that anytime you read/hear the term "tree hugger," you can immediately parse the statements of the source as biased and probably wrong. This is probably true even in those rare instances when the term is used endearingly or positively. Has this always been true? Maybe this is totally obvious. I'm going to keep my eye out for exceptions.
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