| Friday,
December 4, 2009
Raising the Dams
Dr. P.:
Efforts are indeed already under weigh
to raise dams in the
Tennessee Valley:
http://www.tva.gov/news/releases/julsep09/dam_modifications.htm
"TVA is raising the elevation of four of its dams to
help reduce the risk of flooding in the unlikely event of weather more
extreme than any conditions ever recorded in the region. TVA will place
temporary, wall-like structures on top of earthen embankments of the Fort
Loudoun, Tellico, Cherokee and Watts Bar dams in East Tennessee, raising the
top elevation of each embankment about four feet. The extra height would
prevent water from overtopping and damaging the earthen embankments...
A recent update of TVA’s river modeling program
determined that the maximum floodwater elevations could be higher than
previously calculated if a highly unlikely, worst-case winter rainfall were
to occur in the upper part of the Tennessee Valley watershed...
He said structures to raise the embankments are
scheduled for installation by Jan. 1, 2010, because large regional floods
are most likely to occur in winter and early spring. The interim measures
are expected to remain in place until long-term, permanent solutions can be
identified, evaluated and implemented."
The press release does not state whether the update of
the river modeling program was informed by Americanogenic Global Warming
considerations. Perhaps not, my old agency has always seemed more pragmatic.
Jim Watson
At least it's shovel ready. And not entirely
unreasonable. In the name of flood control TVA inundated more land than had
ever been flooded in the worst floods, but it did generate power and
stabilize what was left. Of course the goal was to get more government
control of power; see Amity Schlaes
The Forgotten Man for that story. It's still the best history of the New
Deal I have encountered.
============
on junk science
Jerry,
http://www.pjtv.com/video/Poliwood/
Climategate_Hits_Hollywood%3A_
Should_the_Academy_Rescind_Gore%27s_
Oscar%3F/2780/
Is specifically about "An Inconvenient Truth", but
gets into good sequences on junk science and the misuse of science for
agendas. Lion Chetwynd is quite succinct on this.
Phil
Dramatic. I really don't give a damn about Oscars.
I do care about the Nobel Prize, and about scientific credibility. What's at
stake here is a lot more important than Gore's ill gotten billion.
==
As if ClimateGate is not big
enough yet....
As if ClimateGate is not big enough yet there is a
researcher that claims NASA has been stonewalling him on an information
request for their raw data and discussions while they were massaging it.
Researcher: NASA hiding climate data
http://www.washingtontimes.com/
news/2009/dec/03/researcher-
says-nasa-hiding-climate-data//print/
He is most interested in the discussions while NASA
was revisiting their data in 2007 leading to 1934 being found to be the
hottest year in modern history. Then they massaged their data again to make
1998 and 2006 the hottest years with 1934 third.
NASA refuses to release the information.
Is NASA part of the climate fraud?
(And finally a "buzz" item rumor: Apparently none of
the emails released in those 61 megabytes of data in any way implicate
NASA's Hansen, already shown to cook his data. And Hansen is going around
saying any decision from Copenhagen is bound to be flawed and it'd be better
if they went back to start the whole thing over. Based on this coincidence,
Hansen is being accused, in some of the further out blogs, of being the
"hacker". Is Barbara Boxer going to be so keen on prosecuting the leaker if
it's the newly suspected Hansen himself?)
{^_^}
Since Climategate affects Hansen as much as anyone
else in that camp, I can't believe he was involved in the "hacking". It may
be that a whistle blower was conforming with the Freedom of Information Act.
Someone's conscience got the better of him.
NASA was certainly part of the climate conspiracy.
Just how much was unwitting isn't clear, but not all of them were deceived.
Jump on the bandwagon and as long as you're up, get me a grant.
==
Climategate continued,
Hi Jerry,
One of the best responses to climategate has been from
Derek Lowe on his blog In the Pipeline (http://pipeline.corante.com <http://pipeline.corante.com/>
), scroll down to the post "Data, Raw and otherwise". Note this blog is
written by a true scientist (he is a chemist), and I think sums up the
opinion of many working scientists. The problem with "Big science" is the
reliance on public funding Science deals in uncertainty and can never give
an absolute answer, Politicians cannot deal with uncertainty, this results
in tension and causes academic scientists to trim the results to meet
political objectives( off course individual scientists have personal
political beliefs and objectives, who doesn't). Lowe (and I) work in
industry and have an alphabet stew of regulations to obey (GPMP, ISO 9000
etc) which mean we could not get away with doctoring the results. (the
lawyers would have a field day if we did and got caught) It is time that
Public Science was required to meet similar standards with punitive
sanctions if they do not. As an aside the Information commissioner is
apparently investigating the reported criminal actions of CRU in avoiding
the Freedom of Information Act (Sunday Telegraph 29/11/09 "Grandfather who
forced climate scientists into U-turn"
Yours Andrew Deacon
==
"I assume that what is there is highly damaging. These
guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal
discussions about this."
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/>
--- Roland Dobbins
Note that this is the Washington Times, not the
Post. The main stream media are still stonewalling the story.
==
Your comment about Larry Summers
Hello Jerry,
You said this (all true): "Larry Summers, President of
Harvard, said in a faculty meeting that one possible explanation for the
undoubted fact that there are few women in the top levels of mathematics and
physics might include a hereditary factor, his senior faculty got the
vapors, and he was soon hounded out of office as President of Harvard, not
for losing more than half the Harvard endowment, but for having the temerity
to propose that as one possible hypothesis. His hypothesis wasn't met with
data or argument, but with scorn and derision, demonstrations, and
eventually he was forced out. That was a blow against science; but few seem
to have noticed that."
This is a piece by 'La Griffe du Lion' on the same
subject, inspired by Mr. Summers' fate:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm
I suppose that it is too late for Mr. Summers, but in
any case, even if the article had been available BEFORE Mr. Summers' ill
advised public utterance of the truth, he would have learned that facts are
never a defense in such cases anyway.
Bob Ludwick
I am not as interested in the truth of Summers'
conjecture -- we know that Marie Cure was a sharp cookie and we can name a
lot more of them, so you can't use gender as a means of weeding out people
to be sent to schools for bright young things -- as I am in the integrity of
the scientific process. Science is still the best tool we have for finding
workable hypotheses about the nature of the world. I do not want to see it
ruined.
==
A Short Explanation of How Climategate Matters, and
went so wrong
Jerry
http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/
crudgate-why-this-cant-be-swept-under.html
This is the best explanation of the reason how AGW
went off the rails, and why the manner in which it did so, is so
important....science v politics v ideology..
Geoff
Please let me know if anything I say offends you. I
may wish to offend you again in the future.
Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."
==
: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Jerry,
What is happening with Hadley CRU emails may represent
nothing more than an aggravated case of a problem that is common in many
areas of science. In science there is always competition for attention and
funding, the tendency to form cliques around certain hypotheses and the
attempts to cut off the oxygen for researchers taking alternative approaches
that might invalidate their research.
The problem has been aggravated in Climate Science
because so many politicians and bureaucrats are using AGW to advance their
own political agendas. The worst abuse seems to be for scientists who agree
with the AGW hypotheses, but think the warming will be milder than the IPCC
climate models suggest and don't require a radical reorganization of
civilization or like Freeman Dyson who suggested that the warming would be
mostly beneficial for humans. Even scientists who preferred a carbon tax
instead of cap and trade were lambasted.
I suggest you read this paper by John P. A. Ioannidis
called "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False".
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:
doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 This section seems particularly
appropiate:
Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other
interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research
findings are to be true. Conflicts of interest and prejudice may increase
bias,u. Conflicts of interest are very common in biomedical research, and
typically they are inadequately and sparsely reported . Prejudice may not
necessarily have financial roots. Scientists in a given field may be
prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or
commitment to their own findings. Many otherwise seemingly independent,
university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give
physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure. Such
nonfinancial conflicts may also lead to distorted reported results and
interpretations. Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review
process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their
findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma. Empirical
evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely unreliable .
Joel Upchurch
I wouldn't go that far; the process has worked
pretty well: look around you.
But this is the danger.
============
Climate Data
Jerry,
One of the aspects of claims about global temperatures
is that satellite data shows MUCH smaller increases than those claimed by
people who use terrestrial sources. There are some assumptions which are
involved in interpreting radiometer data, but there is much less room for
fiddling with the results.
The Warmists are much taken with ground stations, tree
rings, etc. The advent of GPS units and digital cameras has made it possible
for the citizen scientist to survey the U.S. Historical Climatology Network
(USHCN) stations. In fact there is a good web site at:
WWW.SURFACESTATIONS.ORG
Many are exemplary, but a large minority are troubling
to say the least. Several pictures are attached. I have seen the one in
Wickenburg, Arizona, and can vouch for it. The Goddard Institute people
always say "Trust us, we have made the needed corrections!" Unfortunately,
when you get into the data, you find that the good stations, which curiously
show only slight if any warming, are often "corrected" to show much more.
Whatever is actually happening with the climate, the
picture of the science and scientists is not a pretty one. Well, I see Mann
has thrown Jones under the bus. It will be interesting to see who the "John
Dean" is.
Alan
The Santa Monica Airport was once surrounded by
bean fields. It is now in a highly developed area. How does one adjust for
the urban island effect? I don't know, just as I do not know how you factor
in sea temperatures at various depths, or air temperatures at various
latitudes and altitudes. What weight do you give a ground station in North
America in comparison to a sea temperature taken at equatorial latitudes and
20 fathoms depth? What about air temperatures? The whole notion of a single
figure of merit for the temperature of the Earth seems a bit absurd to begin
with; I have never heard a good explanation as to why one set of measures of
that would be better than another. What about the temperature at the top of
Mount Everest?
===========
: Classroom demonstration,
There's actually a really good "Teaching Moment"
contained within the Clmategate story, Goode Doctor. One of the emails --
quoted in the Washington Post, of all places -- is a query from one of the
researchers saying "Why is the sum of least squares negative?"
If one tells a class -- called "Computers in Public
Administration" -- to bring up Excel and start trying to find a number which
is negative when squared *and* find positive numbers which can be summed to
a negative, a few minutes will give the class some (admittedly elementary)
practice with Excel and demonstrate why there are people who are
flabbergasted (in lieu of a blunter term) at what these emails show.
Which means that the IPCC true believers either have
to demonstrate that the data which resulted in a negative least-squares has
an inconsequential effect OR show us the magic wand which made everything
work.
Yours Aye, Rod
PS: Sly Drool. Step into my parlor, Goode Doctor, and
let me tell you a sea story. There's no reason to assume you've studied
Naval Architecture though it wouldn't surprise me. Nonetheless, a bit of a
backstory. It's useful, when calculating and estimating hogs and sags and
stability of a ship -- especially a merchant ship -- to think of it as a
beam. This is called "beam theory" and thereby hangs a tale...
In the early 90s, I was reviewing a course in ship
construction & stability when I came across a lesson called "beam therapy".
My mind flamed out, cold. I finally waylaid a Naval Arch person who read the
lesson plan, started laughing, and said "Beam Theory." Of course it's beam
theory...
This was back when keyboarding skills -- antediluvian
that I am, I still call it "typing" -- weren't as ubiquitous as now and the
school had put a admin person to work with a pile of diagrams and a
dictation tape.
Murphy, in other words, never sleeps. But you knew
that.
===========================w
Poppy Gate
I am simply astounded!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270413,00.html
David March
Not all is as it seems...
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