Torturing Climate Data and Other Heresies

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, June 06, 2015

D Day

The single most complex single day operation in the history of mankind; The Apollo Mood Landing was second.

I seem to have broken my right ear hearing aid: I hear nothing in my right ear, but if I stuff the left ear hearing aid into my right ear – it doesn’t stay there of course but I can conduct the experiment – I can hear,

Alas my left ear is much more deaf than my right, so the wrong hearing aid got broke. Monday I will go out to COSTCO where I hope they can fix it; or I will order another. And perhaps it is time to see if there any better than Costco.

It is rather disturbing to be this deaf. Among other things it makes using the telephone impossible. Perhaps I can find earbuds that work with my iPhone. It would mean taking out the hearing aids to use the earbuds. I wonder if there is a better way. It’s no fun being deaf.

More on this tomorrow.

NOAA Research Presents Evidence Against a Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ (journal)

By JUSTIN GILLISJUNE 4, 2015

For years, scientists have been laboring to explain an apparent slowdown in global warming since the start of this century, which occurred at the same time that heat-trapping emissions of carbon dioxide were soaring. The slowdown, sometimes inaccurately described as a halt or hiatus, became a major talking point for people critical of climate science.

Now, new research suggests the whole thing may have been based on incorrect data.

When adjustments are made to correct for recently discovered problems in the way global temperatures were measured, the slowdown largely disappears, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared in a scientific paper published Thursday. And when the particularly warm temperatures of 2013 and 2014 are averaged in, the slowdown goes away entirely, the agency said.

“The notion that there was a slowdown in global warming, or a hiatus, was based on the best information we had available at the time,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information, a NOAA unit in Asheville, N.C. “Science is always working to improve.”

The change prompted accusations on Thursday from some climate-change denialists that the agency was trying to wave a magic wand and make inconvenient data go away. Mainstream climate scientists not involved in the NOAA research rejected that charge, saying it was essential that agencies like NOAA try to deal with known problems in their data records.

At the same time, senior climate scientists at other agencies were in no hurry to embrace NOAA’s specific adjustments. Several of them said it would take months of discussion in the scientific community to understand the data corrections and come to a consensus about whether they were reasonable.

Some experts also pointed out that, depending on exactly how the calculation is done, a slowdown in global warming still appears in the temperature record over the past 15 years, though it may be smaller than before. These scientists have never accepted the notion that the slowdown represents any major problem in climate theory, but they said they believe it was real and demands an explanation.

A leading hypothesis to explain the slowdown is that natural fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean may have temporarily pulled some heat out of the atmosphere, producing a brief flattening in the long-term increase of surface temperatures.

NOAA is one of four agencies around the world that attempts to produce a complete record of global temperatures dating to 1880. They all get similar results, showing a long-term warming of the planet that scientists have linked primarily to the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests. A huge body of physical evidence – notably, that practically every large piece of land ice on the planet has started to melt – suggests the temperature finding is correct.

Yet the temperature record is plagued by many problems: thermometers and recording practices changed through time, weather stations were moved, cities grew up around once-rural stations, and on and on. Entire scientific careers are devoted to studying these issues and making corrections.

In their paper published online Thursday by the journal Science, and in interviews, scientists at NOAA said that in coming months they would roll out new versions of their temperature record that incorporate numerous improvements.

The previous record showed that temperatures from 2000 to 2014 had warmed at about two-thirds the rate of temperatures from 1950 to 1999. In the new analysis, the rate of warming in those two time periods is basically identical.

NOAA said the improvements in its data set included the addition of a huge number of land measurements from around the world, as a result of improving international cooperation in sharing weather records. But the disappearance of the slowdown comes largely from adjustments in ocean temperatures.

The ocean covers 70 percent of the earth, and thus the temperature at its surface has a huge influence on the overall record. Yet ocean measurements in particular are plagued by difficulties.

For many decades, into the mid-20^th century, the main measurements came from sailors hauling up buckets of seawater and plopping thermometers into them. The buckets varied, the thermometers varied, and some of the sailors were more diligent than others about following instructions. On average, scientists believe, the water tended to cool off a bit before the temperature was recorded.

NOAA had long believed the data glitches from the buckets had largely disappeared after World War II, but new information suggests that bucket measurements continued on some commercial vessels for decades after the war. The new NOAA data set attempts to correct for this and other problems in the ocean records.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington long critical of climate science, issued a statement condemning the changes and questioning the agency’s methodology.

“While this will be heralded as an important finding, the main claim that it uncovers a significant recent warming trend is certainly dubious,” said the statement, attributed to three contrarian climate scientists: Richard S. Lindzen, Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger.

However, Russell S. Vose, chief of the climate science division at the Asheville center, pointed out in an interview that while the corrections do eliminate the recent warming slowdown, the overall effect of the agency’s adjustments is to raise the reported global temperatures in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries by a substantial margin. That makes the modern global warming appear somewhat less severe than it otherwise would.

“If you just wanted to release to the American public our uncorrected data set, it would say that the world has warmed up about 2.071 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880,” Dr. Vose said. “Our corrected data set says things have warmed up about 1.65 degrees Fahrenheit. Our corrections lower the rate of warming on a global scale.”

Even if the warming slowdown in the early 21^st century was real, there seems to be little question that it is ending. By a small margin, the global temperature hit a record in 2014, and developing weather patterns suggest that record will be broken by a larger margin in 2015.

Maybe by two hundredths of a degree! Fantastic! And all that from data adjustments.

On torturing data until it confesses

Hello Jerry,

Dr. Curry wrote about the ‘debunking’ paper on her blog ( http://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/ ) . At the time I copied and pasted the above link, it had garnered 491 comments.

The ‘pause’ disappeared when, after comparing the data from the precision thermometers on the buoys , deployed for the express purpose of obtaining high quality ocean temperature data, was compared with sea surface data collected by random sailors measuring the temperature of a bucket of water by immersing a hand held glass thermometer in the bucket and writing the observed temperature in a notebook OR by having another random sailor read the temperature of the engine cooling water inlet, when they thought of it, and log it a different notebook. None of the ‘sailor collected data’ had an intrinsic precision better than approximately 1 degree (actually, +/- 1.7 degrees according to one of Dr. Curry’s posters), even if the sailors, all of them, actually read the thermometers correctly. As for the engine inlet temperature, I’m positive that the ship designers went to great lengths to put precision, calibrated thermometers in the inlet pipes to make sure that they knew the temperature of the water being used to cool their engines to a small fraction of a degree.

So, after comparing the precision buoy data, which shows no warming, to the sailor logged data, the paper writers took the obvious step of adjusting the BUOY data to match the sailor data and voila: warming, with a significance value of 0.1. For normal science, the significance value has to be 0.05 or less, but this is Climate Data. Data from the ARGO system, the most precise and widest coverage ocean temperature data ever collected and which also shows no trend, was not used at all by the authors of the paper which debunked the ‘pause’.

When we have shenanigans like this, routine in Climate Science, being performed by leading ‘Climate Scientists’ and we have sitting US Senators demanding that anyone who questions them be prosecuted under the RICO statutes, and mainstream media and academia fully on board with BOTH the bogus science AND the prosecution of doubters, it makes anyone with a passing interest in constitutional government and personal freedom pretty antsy. Or should.

Bob Ludwick

There certainly seems to be precious little rational debate on the quality of climate data and the importance of the location on input data to the accuracy of prediction. It may be that the reliable buoy data is from too few areas – I would assume so since I doubt they have many in the middle of the ocean – do they need ship data; but their own study shows that the ship data were less reliable than the buoy data. Perhaps I misunderstand? But the ship data certainly seems inherently less reliable, and therefor predictions mad from that data must have a greater error margin. Yet the cold snap of the fifty to 75 era seemed real enough; they had plenty of alarms about the coming of the new Ice Age during the 70’s and early 80’s, so they must have taken that seriously. And there were no thermistors in existence prior to World War II, so any comparison to temperatures of that time were going to be based on prewar temperatures taken with buckets and mercury thermometers by sailors who were not likely to read closer than a degree and probably more like the nearest 5.

I am persuaded that proper science treats the data as primary, not as something to be adjusted to fit the theory.

And we do not have all the data. We know little of the heat effects of undersea volcanism. We know a fair amount about the effects of spectacular volcanoes like Tambora and Krakatoa and the Iceland volcanoes that Benjamin Franklin observed on his voyages to Europe. We are discovering that there are yet effects from Tambora that we are just now finding. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/200-years-after-tambora-volcano-eruption-unusual-effects-linger-180954918/?no-ist Why do we allow people to pose as scientists when they do not follow scientific method, and who seek to label all their opponents as corrupt?

We trade the benefits of science for social justice. We sow the wind.

Fred on Scientism

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Scientism.shtml

“Because we live in luminously foolish times. Mr. Khan cites, not approvingly, a scientist who wanted to have another dismissed from his position for being an evangelical Christian. Why? Well, you see, the manner of thinking of religious people renders them incapable of science.”

Charles Brumbelow

Fred is as usual very much worth reading.

White Collar Automation in USAF

I recall Herman Kahn writing, though I do not recall where, that the 473L system had basically exterminated much of the middle management of the United States Air Force.

This was back in the 1960s.

http://scienceservice.si.edu/pages/052125.htm

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Middle management generally grows back.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326780&

Batteries Charge for Energy Role (EE Times)

Drivers: Smart cities’ rise, solar cost declines

Jessica Lipsky

6/4/2015 07:17 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO – The rise of smart cities and the decreasing cost of renewable energy systems is rapidly changing the power management market. The resulting decentralization of electricity sources requires new power management solutions and business models, which will drive a multi-billion dollar market in the next 10 years, market watchers said.

Using battery storage can decrease the cost of load shifting, stabilize the frequency of a power grid over the course of a day, and add power to existing systems, Yole analysts wrote in a paper titled “Energy Management for Smart Grid, Cities and Buildings: Opportunities for Battery Electricity Storage Solutions.” Access to clean energy, CO² emission reduction, and energy independence are among the many benefits of shirking traditional modes of consuming power, the paper said.

As traditional business models based on centralized energy sources become obsolete, the market for energy storage systems will surpass $13.5 billion by 2023, analysts said.

“The growing market share of intermittent renewable energies (wind, photovoltaics) in electricity generation reveals a strong interest in stationary battery energy storage systems,” Yole Senior Analyst Milan Rosina said in a release. “Recent cases in China, Japan, and some European countries have shown that the further deployment of renewable energy sources in many areas of the world will require electricity grid upgrades, larger deployment of suitable energy storage systems, and development of suitable energy management solutions.”

Yole’s paper pointed to batteries as particularly attractive energy storage systems in buildings that have both solar and traditional electricity sources. Excess photovoltaic electricity can be stored in batteries and cheap energy can be drawn from the sun or the battery during the day when electricity rates are high; grid power can be used at night when overnight rates are lower. Excess locally-generated electricity can also be sold to the utility.

Yole analysts also envisioned a “community storage” model where several neighboring houses with solar roofs will be connected to one large battery system. A Yole spokeswoman said the main focus on energy storage is in the residential sector.

“The residential storage market entry barrier is rather low with strong synergies to other products/applications,” Yole Analyst Coralie Le Bret said. “The value chain for residential electricity storage market is still greatly dispersed and composed of many small players — more than 50 players offer commercial solutions and others will release their products soon.”

Low cost non-disruptive power storage would change much; the sun don’t always shine when you need power, and you don’t always need as much power as you could get when it does shine. And of course low weight power storage is needed for electric cars.

Medical Data, Cybercriminals’ Holy Grail, Now Espionage Target nyt

By REUTERSJUNE 5, 2015, 9:47 A.M. E.D.T.

SINGAPORE — Whoever was behind the latest theft of personal data from U.S. government computers, they appear to be following a new trend set by cybercriminals: targeting increasingly valuable medical records and personnel files.

This data, experts say, is worth a lot more to cybercriminals than, say, credit card information. And the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach revealed on Thursday suggests cyberspies may now also be finding value in it.

Cyber investigators from iSight Partners said they had linked the OPM hack to earlier thefts of healthcare records from Anthem Inc, a health insurance company, and Premera Blue Cross, a healthcare services provider. Tens of millions of records may have been lost in those attacks.

All three breaches have one thing in common, said John Hultquist of Dallas-based iSight. While cyberespionage usually focuses on stealing commercial or government secrets, these attacks targeted personally identifiable information.

The stolen data “doesn’t appear to have been monetized and the actors seem to have connections to cyberespionage activity”, said Hultquist, adding that none of the data taken in the earlier attacks had turned up for sale on underground forums.

A source close the matter said U.S. authorities were looking into a possible China connection to the breach at OPM, which compromised the personal data of 4 million current and former federal employees.

Several U.S. states were already investigating a Chinese link to the Anthem attack in February, a person familiar with the matter has said.

China routinely denies involvement in hacking, and on Friday a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said suggestions it was involved in the OPM breach were “irresponsible and unscientific”.

Hultquist said iSight could not confirm that China was behind the attacks, but similar methods, servers and habits of the hackers pointed to a single state-sponsored group.

BLACK MARKET FLOODED

Security researchers say that medical data and personnel records have become more valuable to cybercriminals than credit card data.

The price of stolen credit cards has fallen in online black markets, in part because massive breaches have spiked supply.

“The market has been flooded,” said Ben Ransford, co-founder of security start-up Virta Laboratories.

The result: medical information can be worth 10 times as much as a credit card number.

And as electronic clinical records become more standardized…

Epicycles are still more plausible than ‘string theory’.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html>

The elephant in the room is ‘climatology’, of course.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins <roland.dobbins@mac.com>

Infidel!

New Breed of Wireless Sensor Developers Inspires New Tools (EE Times)

Jerry

I’m actually using one in a new product. The TI CC3300 is a complete WiFi enabled microcontroller. Draws about 130ma at 3 volts when sending data full bore over WiFi. The development board costs 60 bucks and has two 32 bit CPU’s. One runs the radio and protocols the other is for your application. The FCC certified module is about 20 bucks in quantities of a 1000.

On Jun 6, 2015 11:06 AM, “Jerry Pournelle” <jerryp@jerrypournelle.com> wrote:

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326771

New Breed of Wireless Sensor Developers Inspires New Tools (EE Times)

Bernard Cole

6/5/2015 00:01 AM EDT

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Semiconductor companies that supply the hardware/software building blocks for embedded wireless M2M and IoT apps are running into a new breed of developer. Totally different than the experienced designers of past years, many of them have no background in MCU development or in any of the many wireless protocols. The only things they have in common with veteran developers are the desire to participate in a new wave of Internet of Things designs and get their ideas to market as fast as possible. Among these companies are Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs, and Freescale Semiconductor, each with its own view of what tools a developer needs and how best to provide them.

Inexperienced developers have always been there, demanding tools that are easier to use, Texas Instruments System Applications Manager Jarle Boe told EE Times. But recently, as the excitement about IoT and wireless sensors has grown, they have increased in number. “At TI-sponsored events on such topics in the past we would get 50 to 100 or so developers on average. Now, depending on the venue, we are seeing very many more than that. And many of the newcomers are inexperienced with hardware development on MCUs and want simpler and quicker ways to develop code.”

Video link here. Developing sensor tags with a downloadable app

(Source: Texas Instruments)

To meet that need and to accelerate adoption of its recently introduced SimpleLink family of ARM-based CC2650 wireless microcontrollers, TI this week introduced its new SimpleLink Multi-Standard SensorTag IoT kit for such newbies. The kit is a complement to the company’s Launchpad platform for experienced MCU developers.

Initially the kit includes wireless connectivity tools for Bluetooth low energy, 6LoWPAN, and ZigBee apps on the CC2650 MCU. Planned for later addition to the kit is a Wi-Fi SensorTag for the SimpleLink CC3200 wireless MCU.

DARPA’s Robotics Challenge has a gender problem (WP)

By Matt McFarland June 5 at 8:29 AM

The tech world deservedly catches some flack for its lack of gender diversity.

For example, only 30 percent of Google’s employees are women. At Facebook 31 percent are women. The number are more skewed in technical roles.

As lopsided as those numbers are, they pale in comparison to the gender breakdown at the finals of this year’s DARPA Robotics Challenge, which takes place Friday and Saturday in Pomona, Calif. Eleven of the 24 teams competing are made up completely of men. Of the 444 individuals on the teams, only 23 are women. An alarming 94.8 percent of the participants are men.

The robots are designed for humanitarian purposes, but officials admit that they could be used one day as soldiers. You can learn more about the robots competing here, and watch a live stream of the event too. Just don’t count on seeing much gender diversity.

And robot nurses in the MASH

Positive Effects of Climate Change Underreported

Climate change has been going on since the beginning of time, but has been the source of intense debate in recent years. In the case of the Sahel area of Africa, climate change means 4 more inches of desperately-needed rainfall per year than in the past, according to a new study by climatologists in the Journal Nature Climate Change. The main cause of the increase is rising greenhouse gas emissions, it finds.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/06/05/climate-change-brings-needed-rain-to-africa/?intcmp=latestnews
Lee

All True. We grow more food per acre than at any time in history. Good for the jungles too.

I’m a criminal, you’re a criminal, we’re all criminals now…

https://bananas.liberty.me/youre-a-criminal-in-a-mass-surveillance-world-how-to-not-get-caught/

“There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. That is not an exaggeration.” This warning is from John Baker, a retired law professor who tried in vain to count new federal crimes created in just the past few years. The same message comes from attorney Harvey Silverglatein his book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.”

Charles Brumbelow

The phrase I grew up with, “It’s a free country,” takes on a slightly hollow ring. We have sown the wind.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Ballmer2.shtml

Turn Out the Lights and Lock the Door

I Hear the Fat Lady Singing

May 28, 2015

Breitbart: A white man in Baltimore was sitting in his car when two female er, teens got into a fight. To continue this enterprise they climbed atop his car, perhaps mistaking it for a tree. He got out and asked them to take their dispute somewhere else, whereupon fifty er, teens beat him nearly to death, leaving him with $200,000-$400,000 in medical bills. The daily grind. Life as usual. If fifty whites similarly beat an er, teen, cities would burn and the media would go crazy. In this case, silence will prevail. American-Africans can do no wrong. But something is wrong in America..