| Friday, August
10, 2007
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Subject: NASA corrects climate data: 1998 not the
hottest year
Hi Dr. Pournelle,
I've just been pointed at an interesting report on the
methods NASA used to calculate temperature data, and significant errors that
were found. I apologize in advance if you are getting a lot of mail on this
topic: when I saw it, I thought you'd really like to see it, and I think
others will feel the same way.
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/
2007/08/1998_no_longer_the_hottest_yea.html
In short, the researchers concluded that the algorithm
must have had a "Y2K Bug" in it. NASA has now tacitly acknowledged the
error, by releasing corrected data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
According to that data, the hottest year on record was
not 1998, but 1938.
All the best -
Brian Thomson, Dublin IE
Both these links are interesting. I fear I
am unsure of the definition of the mean climate anomaly. I can guess, and I
expect my guesses are correct, but I haven't actually found a formal
definition.
Determining the Earth's temperature cannot
be easy. There are air temperatures at various altitudes. Sea temperatures
at various depths. Earth temperatures at surface and various depths. Just
how those are averaged to produce a single figure of merit for a year seems
an impossible task, and the number derived would be highly sensitive to the
formula employed; I could go out onto my balcony and take the air
temperature, or the globe temperature (put a thermocouple in the center of
a black-painted copper shell about the size of a baseball; it gives an
average of the air temperature and the radiant environment; we use globe
temperature in human factors to estimate thermal stress environments).
Would I be justified in calling the globe
temperature in the shade on my balcony the global temperature? Of course
not. Suppose, though, that I get all my readers to do that, and we daily
average all those measurements each day, then average the daily
temperatures; would that be the Earth's temperature for the year? Probably
not, but if 50,000 of you responded, we would have a number that we could
compare year after year to determine trends. Would that be as good as the
single figures of merit that NOAA and/or NASA uses? I have no idea, because
I don't know what local condition changes the NOAA/NASA temperature stations
undergo over the years, nor do I know how NOAA/NASA derives that single
figure of merit.
We do know that some NOAA /NASA ground
stations underwent drastic changes, with air conditioning units installed
near them, bean fields converted to Condos, land around airports built up
and blacktopped. We know that urban high temperature islands exist and
affect the temperature downwind; while that is certainly man-made warming,
how Global is it? I have never seen that explained.
When I try to ask questions like this in
press conferences featuring people like Hansen, I am told that my questions
are either too elementary and display my fundamental lack of qualifications
to cover the story; or they are too complex to be answered in this
conference; or, sometimes, I get a frank "I don't know." When I
ask for references, for a book that will answer the elementary question of
how we derive a single figure of merit for the temperature of the Earth I
never get an answer; and I can't find a web site that explains it. It may
well be due to my fundamental ignorance in these matters. I am not a
meteorologist or climatologist and I have had only sophomore level courses
in earth sciences. On the other hand I do have advanced degrees and
considerable experience in operations research and I understand mathematical
models and means of testing their correspondence to reality. I know
something about suboptimization and multivariate analysis. I think I can
understand the answers to my questions if someone will explain it all to me.
The Earth may we warming. We know darned
well it was warmer in the Medieval Warm period than it is now. When we have
vineyards in York and dairy farms in Greenland and vineyards in the Viking
Vinland, we can begin to believe the Earth is as warm now as it was then.
We know it was a lot colder during the
Little Ice Age. We can believe it's warmer now than it was in 1900, and that
1900 was warmer than 1800. We don't have good quantitative handles on those
differences, and different models and measurement proxies produce results
that differ more than many of the asserted warming trends.
I had a short dialogue with a Global
Warming Advocate in NASA about a year ago but little came of it. I really
would some discussion on this matter, but what I usually get is accusations
that I am just not paying attention, or I must be in the pay of an oil
company.
Is there an oil company out there who
would like to pay me? I doubt I'd accept your offer, but I'd at least like
to know how much we're talking about. Alas, the only pay I get for these
comments is from reader subscriptions and renewals.
========
RE: Jesus' General : When
being brown is illegal
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
> Nonsense. A moron was picked up for graffiti. He
was sentenced to 120 > days. He told authorities he was born in Mexico
and was Mexican. He > never claimed citizenship. He was deported. > >
Being a moron it took him a long time to get found.
Told them? In those words? Never claimed citizenship?
Doctor, have you ever worked with the mentally
disabled? I have, it is easy to manipulate someone disabled into an
"admission" to something you want to hear, and/or to get one barely literate
to scrawl a signature on a form he doesn't understand.
The people who dealt with him have every incentive to
"find" illegal aliens to justify their jobs -- you know this from your own
"iron law of bureaucracy".
I have every belief that this story is true: a
mentally disabled man from a family where English is the second language was
assumed because of his ethnicity to be in the country illegally so paperwork
was created to support that assumption and he was tricked or otherwise
("just sign this and we can leave you alone") gotten to sign some of it,
even though the reality was that he was a native-born citizen of the United
States.
I further note that not once, not even when he was
arrested in a domestic dispute as he once was, did Samuel Konkin have to
worry about being investigated and/or deported as an illegal alien. What
does that tell you about equality under the law for those of Latino vs.
Canadian extraction, Mestizo vs. Caucasian?
> Ye gods, I live here. Our hospitals are closing
because they are > swamped with illegals. San Diego is > in bankruptcy
because of illegals.
That may well be -- but it's not this man's or his
family's fault, and is irrelevant here, or so it seems to me. He is entitled
as a citizen to equal justice under the law, and he didn't receive it.
Sincerely,
David K. M. Klaus
I continue to say nonsense. No one wanted
that outcome. No one is proud of the result. There is no great pressure in
Los Angeles to deport illegals. I wish there were, frankly: that is, I
wouldn't go looking for them, but illegal aliens who are convicted of
crimes, and crimes, ought to be conducted to the border as soon as their
time is served. That does not happen.
A citizen who does not claim citizenship
and signs a waiver of an extradition hearing has waived his rights. That he
was a moron is apparently not all that obvious (nor is it actually
established in a court as of yet.) He sruvived on his own so he is not
entirely bereft of abilities.
We had here a bad situation and anyone in
authority would have corrected it had he been aware of the situation. No one
said being brown was illegal.
However the ACLU figures it has found a
GOLD MINE as does the family, and they all want millions. If you want to pay
that, feel free. I don't.
I understand that this country is now
expected to sacrifice all the freedoms we ever had in the quest for
egalitarianism. I confess I do not care to join that train. I do not want a
bilingual United States. I believe in the melting pot. My Latin-origin
neighbors speak English, and while their diet is probably different they are
indistinguishable from my Anglo-Saxon and Ashkenazi and Greek origin
neighbors.
I can work up outrage against bureaucratic
folly, but not in this case. This is a shakedown.
========
Subject: Bird feeder
I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and
filled it with seed. Within a week there were hundreds of birds taking
advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.
But then the birds started building nests in the
boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue.
Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio
tile, the chairs, the table...everywhere.
Then some of the birds turned mean: they would dive
bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket.
And others birds were boisterous and loud: They sat on
the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and
demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.
After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back
porch anymore.
I took down the bird feeder and in three days the
birds were gone.
I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests
they had built all over the patio.
Soon, the back yard was like it used to be......
quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal.
And now, the plot shift you've been expecting...
Now lets see... our government gives out free food,
subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born
here to be an automatic citizen.
Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands.
Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services;
small apartments are housing 5 families; you have to wait 6 hours to be seen
by an emergency room doctor; your child's 2nd grade class is behind other
schools because over half the class doesn't speak English; Corn Flakes now
come in a bilingual box; I have to press "one" to hear my bank talk to me in
English; people waving flags other than "Old Glory" are squawking and
screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
Maybe it's time for the government to take down the
bird feeder.
John
=========
Subject: Clark's theory about industrialization
Jerry,
The article by Nicolas Wade begins by posing a pair of
questions:
> For thousands of years, most people on earth
lived in abject poverty, > first as hunters and gatherers, then as
peasants or laborers. But with > the Industrial Revolution, some
societies traded this ancient poverty > for amazing affluence. >
Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this >
transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A >
scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English >
archives has now emerged with startling answers for both questions.
Dr. Clark's theory may help explain why
industrialization was confined to certain countries. But I thought the how
of the transition was largely driven by the invention of several critical
pieces of technology, the first of which was the steam engine. Even with
lots of appropriate cultural values, the creation of high energy
civilization wasn't going to occur until a technical means to create energy
intensive industries had been invented.
Perhaps the importance of the development of the steam
engine is a given to the economists and historians who study these matters.
But it wouldn't surprise me to find that even they take for granted (i.e.,
fail to appreciate) the amazing amplification of capability that comes from
having more than human muscle, horse, oxen, and the occasional water wheel
to run a civilization.
CP, Connecticut
========
Subject:
Dresden and Strafing
Dr. Pournelle, I always enjoy reading your work, both
fiction and non-fiction, and I particularly enjoyed your comments on modern
war, Hiroshima, and Dresden. But it seems that the story of Allied strafing
of German civilians during the Dresden attacks is false, according to
several German historians. Check out these links;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/719201.stm
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=254351005253088
I know your admirable passion for accuracy, so I
thought I'd pass this along.
Thanks,
Tom Schafer
Interesting. I had not heard the strafing
story until I went looking yesterday, but it seemed reasonable. Actually,
the most effect air campaign in World War II was P-47 hunter-killer train
busting: strafing trains and destroying transportation in the local battle
theater area. That turned out to have near-decisive results in allowing the
advance of the ground forces. It was also highly efficient. The city-busting
campaigns, on the other hand, certainly had some effect on the war, but the
many studies and surveys have yet to quantify that.
The case can still be made that in the
European campaign the allocation of the bomber command resources to more
tanks and trucks, flying officers to infantry and tank platoon leaders, and
so forth, with the USAAF strictly limited to support of the ground army, the
war would have ended a year earlier without the near total destruction of
German cities. I didn't say that case is established; but it hasn't been
entirely refuted either.
The problem is that the ground support
advocates didn't realize the importance of air supremacy, which can only be
established by design. You don't swat hornets one hornet at a time; you
destroy the nest. You don't win an air supremacy campaign by dogfights. You
destroy the airfields, fuel supplies, and fuel delivery infrastructure. That
works, and air war experts understood it. Unfortunately they went further
and decided that ball bearing factories could be destroyed with the iron
bombs available at the time despite the horrible costs of those raids.
I am as appreciative of the wonderful
movie Command Decision as any other, and Gable does a wonderful job of
putting the Air Corps case forward; but the movie also shows the costs. It
implies that the Schweinfurt raids were a great success and helped destroy
the Luftwaffe and German air manufacturing capability. The evidence is
nowhere near that clear.
When Gable made his speech about the
Luftwaffe's amazing record it was all true: the Luftwaffe had made
blitzkrieg possible. The French defenses of the river lines relied on
artillery placed well behind those lines, with firing patterns to disrupt
any attempt to get infantry and armor across the river. The Luftwaffe was
able to silence that artillery so that the panzers could cross the rivers;
after that the Fall of France was inevitable. But that had nothing to do
with Strategic Air Power, city busting, morale destruction, or anything
else. That was the direct application of air power to military strategy. The
Grand Strategy of allocation of so many resources to strategic air looks
like a mistake.
The problem is that this falls between
Grand Strategic, Strategic, Operational, and Grand Tactical levels. The Fall
of France was due to Guderian and Manstein's ability to unleash blitzkrieg
where France had expected a more static situation. They did that by
combining air power with armor and infantry; classical combined arms grand
tactics. Theorists noticed the Fall of France. It took a while to understand
how it happened; but it was clear that the Luftwaffe was important.
It was not a vindication of the Douhet
theory of strategic air war, summed up by the Technocracy organization's
formula for war: build a huge fleet of flying wings. "The Wings of
Technocracy will pass over the enemy's cities. They need not pass but once."
The Technocracy people stated it that baldly, but most advocates of
strategic air power thought in those terms. Put enough resources into
bombers and you will win the war in weeks. Don't mind defense. The bomber
will always get through, and once enough bombers do get through...
I don't have time to complete this; I've
written much of it before, including professionally. The generalization that
any one branch of a combined arms army cannot be allowed to dominate is
true; but that doesn't mean that the different branches should get equal
resources. The Manstein Guderian force that took France was well balanced.
Not optimal, not perfect, but Good Enough.
I am rambling and I don't have time to
organize this.
Things to think about: we sacrificed 400
years of development of International Law in going to the World War II total
war with no rights of neutrals and not even the theoretical attempt to spare
non-combatants. Those who defend doing this say there was no choice: we
could not defeat the enemy any other way.
That may not be true. It is almost
certainly not true of the war in Europe, which might have been won on the
ground in 1944. (Note that Patton prayed for air power weather during the
Bulge; but what he prayed for wasn't B-17 and B-24 weather. What he wanted
was tactical air strikes in the immediate theater, and when he got them he
was able to punch through.)
It would not have been true of Japan: a
ground force invasion of Japan to force an occupation would have been
incredibly bloody. We could have forced Japan back to the home islands,
starved out the outposts, and reduced Japan to a minor power required to put
all its resources into agriculture; and with carriers we could have achieved
air supremacy (we pretty well had that anyway; the fire bombing bombers had
their guns removed to allow larger bomb loads because they didn't expect any
fighter opposition). With carriers we could have destroyed the entire
internal communication system, railroads and ferries, without massive
civilian casualties.
Since our declared war aim was
Unconditional Surrender (something rather unusual in the history of war) it
could only have been accomplished by ground invasion; but reducing Japan to
a non-entity on the strategic scene would not have required that, and would
not have been all that expensive. But that's for another discussion.
My point was the the West could have
survived and won without throwing out The Law of Nations.
=========
Global Warming - Blogger finds
Y2K bug in NASA climate data
http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+
bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm
Blogger finds Y2K bug in NASA climate data
Years of bad data corrected; 1998 no longer the
warmest year on record
An example of the Y2K discontinuity in action (Source:
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) My earlier column
<http://www.dailytech.com/New+Scandal+
Erupts+over+NOAA+Climate+Data/article8347.htm>
this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to
assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of
these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org <http://www.climateaudit.org/>
. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange
discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of
January, 2000.
These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and
James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying
to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre
with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre
reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling
of the raw data.
McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied
<http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1868>
and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the
next data refresh.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures <http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt>
, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now
1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second
place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now
all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart
form, along with a more detailed summary
<http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/
08/1998_no_longer_the_hottest_yea.html> of the events.
The effect of the correction on global temperatures is
minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on
the U.S. global warming propaganda machine could be huge.
Then again -- maybe not. I strongly suspect this story
will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.
Bob
The first lesson: "scientists" who use
secret and proprietary algorithms are not acting properly. When the
Administration required Hansen to shut up speaking for the government, it
was proper to do that: Hansen's secret algorithm was suspect to begin with.
I am hardly astonished to find that it wasn't useful: after all the
algorithm was selected to give global warming results.
The second lesson: the Y2K bug was more
serious than we thought, but we didn't see where it had the big effect. But
Global Warming has been hideously expensive, and apparently it's due to the
Y2K bug. Wow.
Now see below
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