The scientific organisation operates five Aurora borealis radars in the Nordic region, two of which are stationed beyond the reach of mobile phone networks in the remote Svalbard Islands that belong to Norway. The Kiruna scatter radar, in turn, is experiencing problems similar to those in Sodankylä.Well, I guess I'm a bit surprised that research into the Northern Lights is still active. They should just ban mobile phones.
An EISCAT radar situated in Tromsø, Norway, keeps sending a powerful radio signal into the upper atmosphere, less than a thousandth of which is then scattered back to the surface. These soft whispers are then caught by using 300-tonne, house-sized dish antennae of the scatter radars.
These “whispers” will provide scientists with information, for example, about the Northern Lights, as the upper atmosphere contains electrically charged particles, from which the radio signal scatters.
“These days, at times the mobile phone traffic blots out the quiet scattering”, explains Professor Markku Lehtinen from the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, which is an independent department of the University of Oulu.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Today's news from Tromsø
Mobile phone coverage in Finland and Norway is interfering with a type of radar used to research the Northern Lights:
Gittens on Abbott
I like this summary by Ross Gittens of how Tony Abbott is running the carbon tax argument:
I don't like using the L-word, but Tony Abbott is setting new lows in the lightness with which he plays with the truth. He blatantly works both sides of the street, nodding happily in the company of climate-change deniers, but in more intellectually respectable company professing belief in human-caused global warming, his commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 and the efficacy of his no-offence policies to achieve it.He grossly exaggerates the costs involved in a carbon tax, telling business audiences they will have to pay the lot and be destroyed by it, while telling the punters business will pass all the costs on to them. He forgets to mention that most of the proceeds from the tax will be returned as compensation.
He repeats the half-truth that nothing we could do by ourselves would reduce global emissions, while failing to correct the punters' ignorant belief that Australia is the only country contemplating action. Last week's news that Britain's Conservative-led coalition government has pledged to cut emissions by half within 15 years is ignored. Economists call this mentality ''free-riding''; the old Australian word for it is ''bludging''.
Today's comment to Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt keeps tediously repeating Robyn Williams' carelessly worded comment re 100 m of sea level rise, prompting me to comment at his blog today:
UPDATE: comment was let through. That's good. Someone asked for a link, I have tried to reply to provide it.
Keith, who seems to have been here and thinks I'm a nasty person, says Andrew did acknowledge the Watts result on his radio show. I would be curious to know when so I could listen. Is it too much to ask Bolt to acknowledge it on his blog too, given that he has previously given surfacestations.org lots of skeptic publicity? I don't think so...
Andrew, you're big on pointing out carelessly worded statements by any "warmenist", yet won't dare mention that Anthony Watts, the person who runs the world's largest skeptic blog, recently disproved his own claim that the US mean temperature record had been inflated by weather station siting issues.We'll see if that makes it through his thread minders.
Be honest and admit your own fellow traveller made a major false claim for years, and you swallowed it all; helped promote it, in fact.
UPDATE: comment was let through. That's good. Someone asked for a link, I have tried to reply to provide it.
Keith, who seems to have been here and thinks I'm a nasty person, says Andrew did acknowledge the Watts result on his radio show. I would be curious to know when so I could listen. Is it too much to ask Bolt to acknowledge it on his blog too, given that he has previously given surfacestations.org lots of skeptic publicity? I don't think so...
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Cannabis madness - yet again
ABC The Drum - High risks: cannabis and psychosis
I always like to read comments by psychiatrists condemning the use of marijuana due to its mental health risks. There's a heap of such material it to be found in this article by journalist Quentin Dempster reporting on a symposium on cannabis and mental illness held last week.
Here are some examples:
The point is once again made that the problem seems to be higher concentration of THC in hydroponically grown cannabis. Some cannabis can be grown with more of the 'protective' component CBD, and the suggestion is made this "milder' form of cannabis could be legalised.
However, if it is the THC that many users like (for the quality of the high it gives them), and there is already a well established industry providing for that, is legalisation really going to have much effect on the illegal industry?
I have my doubts.
I always like to read comments by psychiatrists condemning the use of marijuana due to its mental health risks. There's a heap of such material it to be found in this article by journalist Quentin Dempster reporting on a symposium on cannabis and mental illness held last week.
Here are some examples:
Both the Mental Health Review Tribunal in NSW and the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre have said publicly that if cannabis was removed from the chemistry of young brains, the incidence of schizophrenia in this country would be dramatically reduced. Adolescents who start to use cannabis at any time are considered particularly vulnerable because the human brain does not complete its development until the early to mid 20s....The comments are worth reading too, with, I think, many more people coming out than in years past to condemn marijuana for the mental health problems they have seen develop in someone they know.
Professor Jan Copeland, director of the NCPIC (www.ncpic.org.au) a government-backed preventative agency, told 7.30 NSW that if cannabis was taken out of the picture the incidence of schizophrenia in Australia could be reduced by 8 to 14 per cent. She could not be more specific. That guesstimate was based on overseas studies. There have been no studies in Australia. This is revealing....
The pharmaceutical and pain relief benefits of CBD (cannabidiols) in cannabis have been studied internationally but one experienced psychiatrist, Dr Andrew Campbell, told the symposium paracetamol would have just as beneficial analgesic effects.
The point is once again made that the problem seems to be higher concentration of THC in hydroponically grown cannabis. Some cannabis can be grown with more of the 'protective' component CBD, and the suggestion is made this "milder' form of cannabis could be legalised.
However, if it is the THC that many users like (for the quality of the high it gives them), and there is already a well established industry providing for that, is legalisation really going to have much effect on the illegal industry?
I have my doubts.
Multiversal
Multiverse = Many Worlds, Say Physicists - Technology Review
An interesting post on the suggestion by Susskind & Bousso that "the multiverse and the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics are formally equivalent." But this only holds if we are in a "supersymmetric multiverse with vanishing cosmological constant":
UPDATE: Mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong says that even he can't really make sense of this and other papers that try to draw similar multiverse/quantum theory connections, so don't feel so bad!
An interesting post on the suggestion by Susskind & Bousso that "the multiverse and the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics are formally equivalent." But this only holds if we are in a "supersymmetric multiverse with vanishing cosmological constant":
If the universe takes this form, then it is possible to carry out an infinite number of experiments within the causal horizon of each other.Clear? Well, no of course not, and its untestable. But still, of interest.Now here's the key point: this is exactly what happens in the many worlds interpretation. At each instant in time, an infinite (or very large) number of experiments take place within the causal horizon of each other. As observers, we are capable of seeing the outcome of any of these experiments but we actually follow only one.
Bousso and Susskind argue that since the many worlds interpretation is possible only in their supersymmetric multiverse, they must be equivalent. "We argue that the global multiverse is a representation of the many-worlds in a single geometry," they say.
They call this new idea the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics.
UPDATE: Mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong says that even he can't really make sense of this and other papers that try to draw similar multiverse/quantum theory connections, so don't feel so bad!
Interesting
Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States: What do 500 years reveal about gays in America? - By Johann Hari - Slate Magazine
Quite a few things I didn't know about homosexuality in modern history are mentioned in this review.
Quite a few things I didn't know about homosexuality in modern history are mentioned in this review.
Speculative physics, again
Small bangs and white holes
The article suggests that maybe some gamma ray bursts are from white holes.
Well, if anything is up for grabs, how about naked singularities, I wonder?
The article suggests that maybe some gamma ray bursts are from white holes.
Well, if anything is up for grabs, how about naked singularities, I wonder?
Northern view
Further to my new found interest in Tromsø, Norway, here is a nice webcam feed from the university there. Even now, midnight has quite a lot of brightness.
I should work out how such feeds are embedded.
I should work out how such feeds are embedded.
Colebatch on carbon tax
Let consumers carry the can on carbon
My favourite economics writer has a good explanation of the Carmody suggestion to tax consumption of carbon instead of production.
I think his explanation of the problems with the idea is particularly worthwhile noting. As Colebatch himself has had a change of heart about this, it is clearly is not a case where it is obviously better than the alternative; just arguably better.
UPDATE: Alan Kohler's column about what Australia needs to do is also well worth reading, and makes considerable sense to me.
My favourite economics writer has a good explanation of the Carmody suggestion to tax consumption of carbon instead of production.
I think his explanation of the problems with the idea is particularly worthwhile noting. As Colebatch himself has had a change of heart about this, it is clearly is not a case where it is obviously better than the alternative; just arguably better.
UPDATE: Alan Kohler's column about what Australia needs to do is also well worth reading, and makes considerable sense to me.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Arctic dreams
I mentioned recently that I'm reading a biography of Herbert Dyce Murphy, the Australian Antarctic explorer (well, he was on the Mawson expedition) who seems to have led an unusual life.
Before he was off to the Antarctic, he had several whaling and other trips through Arctic waters. No doubt, it's reading about this that has caused me to have dreams lately about visiting towns in spectacular Arctic settings.
Which has led me to releasing while awake that I know next to nothing about what's in the Arctic circle, and whether it does have any decent towns or cities in scenic locations.
So, first stop, to refresh my memory of how the Arctic Circle is even defined, it's off to Wikipedia. It's more complicated that I thought:
Anyhow, there is lot more land within the Arctic Circle than I would have guessed:
I didn't realise so much of Greenland was within it, or quite that much of Russia either.
So, how do I find a nice town inside the Arctic Circle? Googling around led me first to the Canadian town of Inuvik. However, this photo from the town's home page, indicates that it hardly counts as Paris of the North:
(And make sure you don't miss the Inuvik Petroleum Show that's on in June.)
What other towns or cities are up there? Yahoo Answers indicates that the three biggest cities inside the circle are Russian, and the largest is Murmansk. Yes, I've heard of it, but what's it look like?:
Well, no one holds high hopes for Russian cities looking good, do they? But maybe I am being unfair. That glossy magazine Monocle, which I've occasionally looked at in the newsagency and wondered who on Earth it is aimed at, has a short slideshow and commentary about the city, which is kind of interesting. A little sadly, you will also see that new shopping centres in far flung Arctic Circle Russia look exactly like what's been built down the road from you:
So, what about Norway? Yahoo Answers says Tromsø is pretty big - 62,000 people. And look - it's where Joanna Lumley went to see the Northern Lights in that nice documentary she made a couple of years ago. So, some photos please:
Wow. It looks a little bit like Hobart, but with more mountains, snow and wackier architecture. (OK, maybe it's just the bridge that reminds me of Hobart.)
According to Wikipedia:
But, once again, this post proves, if nothing else, that new shopping centres, even in the Arctic Circle, look like every other new shopping centre in the world:
(I am distressed to see that they suffer from Giant Face Poster syndrome, as do some of our shopping centres, as I have noted in the past.)
Well, that's it. I'd say for towns in the Arctic Circle, Norway, and Tromsø in particular, is the place to go. Especially in September this year, when Roxette will be touring there. (Isn't the internet grand? There's not much else to be found by Googling for blogs about Tromsø, except to learn that there was an Italian uni student who went there to study* in 2007, made 6 posts about the women, the nightclubs, the drinking, and the free condoms everywhere, and that's it for his blog. I wonder if ever left.)
Of course, winning Lotto is the only foreseeable way of actual making the trip within the next 8 years. Either that or sudden exotic benevolence of a secret billionaire from my vast readership. (OK, it's Lotto or nothing, I know.)
So, that's it for my Arctic dreams. I should go finish the book.
* This strikes me as a particularly unusual place to go to university, but indeed, it does have a large university:
Before he was off to the Antarctic, he had several whaling and other trips through Arctic waters. No doubt, it's reading about this that has caused me to have dreams lately about visiting towns in spectacular Arctic settings.
Which has led me to releasing while awake that I know next to nothing about what's in the Arctic circle, and whether it does have any decent towns or cities in scenic locations.
So, first stop, to refresh my memory of how the Arctic Circle is even defined, it's off to Wikipedia. It's more complicated that I thought:
The Arctic Circle marks the southern extremity of the polar day (24-hour sunlit day, often referred to as the "midnight sun") and polar night (24-hour sunless night). North of the Arctic Circle, the sun is above the horizon for 24 continuous hours at least once per year and below the horizon for 24 continuous hours at least once per year. On the Arctic Circle those events occur, in principle, exactly once per year, at the June and December solstices, respectively....It's creeping away from me as I write.
The position of the Arctic Circle is not fixed, but directly depends on the Earth's axial tilt, which fluctuates within a margin of 2° over a 40,000 year period,[2] notably due to tidal forces resulting from the orbit of the Moon. The Arctic Circle is currently drifting northwards at a speed of about 15 m (49 ft) per year, see Circle of latitude for more information.
Anyhow, there is lot more land within the Arctic Circle than I would have guessed:
I didn't realise so much of Greenland was within it, or quite that much of Russia either.
So, how do I find a nice town inside the Arctic Circle? Googling around led me first to the Canadian town of Inuvik. However, this photo from the town's home page, indicates that it hardly counts as Paris of the North:
(And make sure you don't miss the Inuvik Petroleum Show that's on in June.)
What other towns or cities are up there? Yahoo Answers indicates that the three biggest cities inside the circle are Russian, and the largest is Murmansk. Yes, I've heard of it, but what's it look like?:
Well, no one holds high hopes for Russian cities looking good, do they? But maybe I am being unfair. That glossy magazine Monocle, which I've occasionally looked at in the newsagency and wondered who on Earth it is aimed at, has a short slideshow and commentary about the city, which is kind of interesting. A little sadly, you will also see that new shopping centres in far flung Arctic Circle Russia look exactly like what's been built down the road from you:
So, what about Norway? Yahoo Answers says Tromsø is pretty big - 62,000 people. And look - it's where Joanna Lumley went to see the Northern Lights in that nice documentary she made a couple of years ago. So, some photos please:
Wow. It looks a little bit like Hobart, but with more mountains, snow and wackier architecture. (OK, maybe it's just the bridge that reminds me of Hobart.)According to Wikipedia:
In the 19th century, Tromsø was known as the "Paris of the North", probably because people in Tromsø appeared as far more civilized than expected to foreign tourists.Mind you, it's a very chilly Paris of the North. According to a table on the Wikipedia page, the average maximum temperatures in December, January, February and March are all below freezing. (-2.2 in January.) Despite this, the main street, when you can see not under snow, looks quite normal in a quaint European way:
But, once again, this post proves, if nothing else, that new shopping centres, even in the Arctic Circle, look like every other new shopping centre in the world:
(I am distressed to see that they suffer from Giant Face Poster syndrome, as do some of our shopping centres, as I have noted in the past.)
Well, that's it. I'd say for towns in the Arctic Circle, Norway, and Tromsø in particular, is the place to go. Especially in September this year, when Roxette will be touring there. (Isn't the internet grand? There's not much else to be found by Googling for blogs about Tromsø, except to learn that there was an Italian uni student who went there to study* in 2007, made 6 posts about the women, the nightclubs, the drinking, and the free condoms everywhere, and that's it for his blog. I wonder if ever left.)
Of course, winning Lotto is the only foreseeable way of actual making the trip within the next 8 years. Either that or sudden exotic benevolence of a secret billionaire from my vast readership. (OK, it's Lotto or nothing, I know.)
So, that's it for my Arctic dreams. I should go finish the book.
* This strikes me as a particularly unusual place to go to university, but indeed, it does have a large university:
The University of Tromsø with 6.500 students and 1.700 staff members is the northernmost university in the world and one of 6 universities in Norway. It offers a broad range of subject fields in six faculties/schools with studies in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences/mathematics/statistics/informatics, law, medical sciences and fisheries science. All the main subject areas are offered at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD level. The prioritised research subject fields are mainly related to the Arctic and subarctic regions; Northern Light and space research, fisheries research, biotechnology, multicultural societies, indigenous studies, community medicine, theoretical linguistics, among others.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Friday night observations
* Just Like Heaven is a very charming movie. Probably drives hospital doctors crazy; but very charming.
* There is no better dinner in winter than ox tail stew, with mashed potato and beans, and a glass of red. (It is also the reason you just have to have a pressure cooker, even if you never cook anything else in it.)
* Tony Martin really is very funny. Why have I forgotten to bookmark The Scriveners Fancy, even though I did read it once before? I enjoyed this recent article, particularly given that I have been reading through Andrew Bolt's blog threads lately.
* Watching Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End on TV last weekend, I decided it's not so hard to follow after three viewings. Sure, it's bloated, but it's still a fantastic looking film, with some clever ideas and impressive sequences. The new movie - On Stranger Tides, has critics pretty divided whether it works as a "re-boot" of the series or not, but I'm not put off.
* I wouldn't mind seeing Thor, too. It has made a lot of money despite quite a few poor US reviews. Not sure what explains that (the bad reviews, when it is clearly a popular success - the takings did not drop off quickly, which indicates it does have good word of mouth.)
* This post is a lot like using Twitter, I suppose, but I refuse to get into social media beyond blogs. Twitter is the Fantales of social media, and barely worth the effort.
* Speaking of movies: oh dear, the first teaser trailer for Spielberg's Tin Tin movie is out; and I remain very uncertain as to whether the creepy "is that living mannequins doing the acting?" quality of motion capture movies has been overcome. Why do smart people, like Robert Zemeckis and Spielberg, think this is a good technology. I have never seen it used in a way in which I can get over the "uncanny valley", at least when it is humans being depicted. Still, I might be wrong, who knows.
* Why is there still not so much publicity about Anthony Watts being wrong about the key part of his pet project?
* There is no better dinner in winter than ox tail stew, with mashed potato and beans, and a glass of red. (It is also the reason you just have to have a pressure cooker, even if you never cook anything else in it.)
* Tony Martin really is very funny. Why have I forgotten to bookmark The Scriveners Fancy, even though I did read it once before? I enjoyed this recent article, particularly given that I have been reading through Andrew Bolt's blog threads lately.
* Watching Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End on TV last weekend, I decided it's not so hard to follow after three viewings. Sure, it's bloated, but it's still a fantastic looking film, with some clever ideas and impressive sequences. The new movie - On Stranger Tides, has critics pretty divided whether it works as a "re-boot" of the series or not, but I'm not put off.
* I wouldn't mind seeing Thor, too. It has made a lot of money despite quite a few poor US reviews. Not sure what explains that (the bad reviews, when it is clearly a popular success - the takings did not drop off quickly, which indicates it does have good word of mouth.)
* This post is a lot like using Twitter, I suppose, but I refuse to get into social media beyond blogs. Twitter is the Fantales of social media, and barely worth the effort.
* Speaking of movies: oh dear, the first teaser trailer for Spielberg's Tin Tin movie is out; and I remain very uncertain as to whether the creepy "is that living mannequins doing the acting?" quality of motion capture movies has been overcome. Why do smart people, like Robert Zemeckis and Spielberg, think this is a good technology. I have never seen it used in a way in which I can get over the "uncanny valley", at least when it is humans being depicted. Still, I might be wrong, who knows.
* Why is there still not so much publicity about Anthony Watts being wrong about the key part of his pet project?
Look up this fact, Andrew
Andrew Bolt has a post this morning in which he complains that scientists should just explain the facts, instead of making humorous videos which target him. (As it happens, I don't think that either video is all that good or funny.)
Anyway, I have been posting comments at his blog this week about Anthony Watts' failure to come up with the goods, and about the specific estimate of warming bias that he made to Bolt's face only last June. I don't think yesterday's comment got through on his "tips" page, although maybe I just didn't click "submit" or something.
So here is my attempt today, posted as a comment to his video post:
Anyway, I have been posting comments at his blog this week about Anthony Watts' failure to come up with the goods, and about the specific estimate of warming bias that he made to Bolt's face only last June. I don't think yesterday's comment got through on his "tips" page, although maybe I just didn't click "submit" or something.
So here is my attempt today, posted as a comment to his video post:
Andrew, you seem to be showing a distinct lack of interest in the fact that Anthony Watts' own co-authored paper has shown he was completely wrong when you interviewed him in June last year.
Are you having trouble remembering? He estimated that warming bias due to poor weather station siting in the US could account for .5 degree C of increase in the US temperature record.
You said that meant that 2/3 of the increase of .7 degree could be from this. Watts did not disagree.
His actual paper shows what 2 other studies had predicted - cooling biases had balanced warming biases and the US mean temperature record was accurate.
This is the second major, major claim on which Watts has been shown wrong - the other being that international weather station "drop out" was removing cooler stations and biasing the world temperature record.
This was quickly shown to be wrong, and not even "lukewarmenist" Lucia of Lucia's Blackboard believes it. Watts, as far as I know, has never retracted or apologised.
Andrew, why do you show no skepticism towards Watts? He made a wildly inaccurate estimate to your face, disproved by his own paper which he said was days away from being completed.
Do the right thing - get him back on the radio and ask him how specifically how he was so wrong, and to retract his earlier estimate made to you 12 months ago.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Tamar dreaming
Here’s another photo from the recent trip to Tasmania – looking at the ridiculously pretty Tamar River north of Launceston. Good wine, good views; a very nice part of the world.
I’m going to have to post more slowly here for a while – a series of family things are happening soon which will no doubt distract me, and I really need to stop worrying about how many people are wrong on the internet (there are so, so many) and concentrate more on finishing work.
One thing I will be looking out for, though, is Anthony Watts’ spin on his surfacestation.org paper. He has promised a post about it, and I can’t wait to hear his explanation as to why, a year ago, he was telling Andrew Bolt that bad siting warming bias could account for .5 degree C of warming in the US. There is also no excuse for Andrew Bolt to ignore Watts’ (and others) actual paper.
If you have time, drop over to Bolt’s blog and ask for him to look into this, until he does.
Anyhow, see you around.
UPDATE: I just realised that, when using Mercury browser on my iPad, it treats surfacestation.org as an address and you can link to one of those empty domain search pages. Maybe there's a setting I need to change on Mercury? Anyway, it doesn't seem to happen on Firefox on my PC, or even Safari. Rest assured it wasn't intended.
Mini black holes re-appear
Mini black holes that look like atoms could pass through Earth daily
It's been a while since I've read anything new about mini black holes, but the paper above suggesting the type that may comprise a large part of dark matter in the universe was interesting. They argue that maybe they don't evaporate in Hawking Radiation, but have matter orbiting them sort of in the way that atoms have electrons around them. They do not consider that they would be dangerous at all.
I also saw recently that Adam Helfer, who wrote a paper years ago in which he questioned whether Hawking Radiation really existed (thereby gaining some prominence in sites concerned about whether potential mini black holes from the LHC could be dangerous) has another paper out called Black Holes Reconsidered. He still questions our understanding of Hawking Radiation, and also notes that, while they seem possible in certain scenarios, no one really knows what a naked singularity would look like.
Uncertainties continue in physics, then.
It's been a while since I've read anything new about mini black holes, but the paper above suggesting the type that may comprise a large part of dark matter in the universe was interesting. They argue that maybe they don't evaporate in Hawking Radiation, but have matter orbiting them sort of in the way that atoms have electrons around them. They do not consider that they would be dangerous at all.
I also saw recently that Adam Helfer, who wrote a paper years ago in which he questioned whether Hawking Radiation really existed (thereby gaining some prominence in sites concerned about whether potential mini black holes from the LHC could be dangerous) has another paper out called Black Holes Reconsidered. He still questions our understanding of Hawking Radiation, and also notes that, while they seem possible in certain scenarios, no one really knows what a naked singularity would look like.
Uncertainties continue in physics, then.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
For attention: Andrew Bolt
Well, the failure of the Anthony Watts surfacestation.org project to prove what Anthony Watts promised for years (that is, that poor siting of some US weather stations would be shown to give a misleadingly higher-than-it-should-be temperature trend) is getting some attention in the climate science blogosphere.
Notably, a site which I will soon book mark "Wotts up With That" has a couple of posts about it, as well as Deltoid (from whose hat tip I've been getting quite a few hits this weekend.)
I would hope that more climate science bloggers will specifically post on it - particularly Skeptical Science - and perhaps someone in the mainstream media (Andrew Revkin, George Monbiot: this is important!) Joe Romm should be able to have a (well deserved) field day too.
But for this post, I want to note what some Australian skeptic sites have said about this project over the years:
Jo Nova: I have never taken this blog seriously, in the sense of believing both the arguments used or that it is particularly influential (the latter because I suspect its slick appearance -which makes it look like a funded PR exercise, even if it isn't - actually works against it.)
Anyhow, her short "Skeptics Handbook", which is chock full of wrong arguments, devotes an entire page to claiming the location of weather stations is a major issue.
I await the amended version of the Handbook, containing appropriate acknowledgement of the reassuring findings of the surfacestation.org project that the adjustments and work of the climate scientists did result in an accurate mean temperature trend. (Ha.)
Andrew Bolt: Australia's most influential climate skeptic blogger by far, I reckon, has made repeated references to Anthony Watts' work:
May 2009: A post headed "No way these stations could measure warming" ends on this note:
June 2010: in a brief note of a radio interview, Andrew notes:
June 2010: another reminder of Watts' tour of Australia, and extracts parts of the Counterpoint interview in which Watts says:
Andrew, I strongly disagree with your take on climate change, and your willingness over the years to seemingly accept anything a contrarian has said without (apparently) seeking the climate science response to the claim. (Have you ever had a detailed read of Skeptical Science?)
But, despite this, I find it hard to believe that you could not review what Watts has been saying about this pet project for years, and not now feel that you've been taken for a ride.
Care for another interview with Mr Watts where you put to him the very same things he was saying only a year ago in your studio?
I look forward to hearing it...
Notably, a site which I will soon book mark "Wotts up With That" has a couple of posts about it, as well as Deltoid (from whose hat tip I've been getting quite a few hits this weekend.)
I would hope that more climate science bloggers will specifically post on it - particularly Skeptical Science - and perhaps someone in the mainstream media (Andrew Revkin, George Monbiot: this is important!) Joe Romm should be able to have a (well deserved) field day too.
But for this post, I want to note what some Australian skeptic sites have said about this project over the years:
Jo Nova: I have never taken this blog seriously, in the sense of believing both the arguments used or that it is particularly influential (the latter because I suspect its slick appearance -which makes it look like a funded PR exercise, even if it isn't - actually works against it.)
Anyhow, her short "Skeptics Handbook", which is chock full of wrong arguments, devotes an entire page to claiming the location of weather stations is a major issue.
I await the amended version of the Handbook, containing appropriate acknowledgement of the reassuring findings of the surfacestation.org project that the adjustments and work of the climate scientists did result in an accurate mean temperature trend. (Ha.)
Andrew Bolt: Australia's most influential climate skeptic blogger by far, I reckon, has made repeated references to Anthony Watts' work:
May 2009: A post headed "No way these stations could measure warming" ends on this note:
But read Anthony’s full report here - an awesome testimony to the commitment to evidence and truth from volunteers that should shame the professional alarmists which relied on these stations for their warming scare.July 2009: Post headed "How not to measure warming" contains many photos from Watts, repeats a Pielke Snr post which pooh-poohed the NCDC's claim that siting bias were likely to cancel each other out (a fact Pielke Snr now confirms - with nary a sign of embarrassment for being wrong before,) and ends with this:
Moral: If the US data on warming is so dodgy, how much can we rely on weather stations in vast countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India? Or even in Italy (above)?Answer to Andrew: Well, there you go. The US data wasn't so dodgy after all. (Or, to be more precise, the degree to which any US data was "dodgy," it did not, as expected by climate scientists looking at how to best assess it, have any significant consequences for judging temperature trend.)
June 2010: in a brief note of a radio interview, Andrew notes:
Anthony Watts of Watt’s Up With That tells us when dodgy siting of weather stations may explain two thirds of the warming measured last century. (Examples in the clip above.)I have listened to the interview, and can confirm that Watts was claiming, only a year ago, that he was estimating, at that time, that it could account for .5 degree of bias. Bolt then said (to paraphrase): well, if the globe has warmed by .7 degree over the last century, it could be that 2/3 of that is not "real warming". To which Watts concurred.
June 2010: another reminder of Watts' tour of Australia, and extracts parts of the Counterpoint interview in which Watts says:
Michael Duffy: In which direction does the bias lie? Are you suggesting that the temperature has not got as hot as the American official historical record suggests?
Anthony Watts: That’s correct. It’s an interesting situation. The early arguments against this project said that all of these different biases are going to cancel themselves out and there would be cool biases as well as warm biases, but we discovered that that wasn’t the case.
My comment to Andrew Bolt: have you read the Pielke Snr post on Watts' blog yet? The one which notes that the warming and cooling bias did cancel each other out? The one which is consistent with earlier studies that said the siting is not the confounding issue for working out temperature trends that it seemed to be?
Andrew, I strongly disagree with your take on climate change, and your willingness over the years to seemingly accept anything a contrarian has said without (apparently) seeking the climate science response to the claim. (Have you ever had a detailed read of Skeptical Science?)
But, despite this, I find it hard to believe that you could not review what Watts has been saying about this pet project for years, and not now feel that you've been taken for a ride.
Care for another interview with Mr Watts where you put to him the very same things he was saying only a year ago in your studio?
I look forward to hearing it...
Thursday, May 12, 2011
The Lego success
Lego: Bricks and flicks | The Economist
The Economist notes that Lego is riding high, at the moment:
The Economist notes that Lego is riding high, at the moment:
After nearly going under eight years ago, Lego now has 5.9% of the global toy market, up from 4.8% at the end of 2009. That makes it the world’s fourth-largest toymaker. It is doing especially well in America, where sales last year surpassed $1 billion for the first time. Worldwide sales were up by 37% in 2010, to DKr16 billion ($2.8 billion). Net profit increased by 69% to DKr3.7 billion. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest toymakers, Hasbro and Mattel, are struggling.The article notes the success is certainly helped by its very successful Lego video games. I don't play them, but my kids do on Nintendo DS, and they certainly seem designed to have a long life and exhibit much wit and creativity. Congratulations, Lego.
Future rainfall worries
2,300-year climate record suggests severe tropical droughts as northern temperatures rise
A 2,300-year climate record University of Pittsburgh researchers recovered from an Andes Mountains lake reveals that as temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rise, the planet's densely populated tropical regions will most likely experience severe water shortages as the crucial summer monsoons become drier. The Pitt team found that equatorial regions of South America already are receiving less rainfall than at any point in the past millennium.
Let the rubbishing begin....
Anthony Watts has devoted years to running a citizens project to identity poorly sited temperature stations in the US, all the while suggesting that such carelessness meant the temperature record there was unreliable.
Now he's had a paper published (worked on with Roger Pielke Snr, whose attitude towards climate change is to say it is very serious and CO2 production should be addressed, while simultaneously playing footsies with a "skeptic" like Watts who has run numerous wrong, misleading and deceptive arguments over the years to encourage popular belief that CO2 is not a serious problem).
Pielke has a guest post up at WUWT discussing the paper in which the exclamation marks are, I think, intended to hide the lack of importance [update: in the sense of anti-climatic failure] of their findings:
It gets better:
With friends like these, the climate skeptic movement is really on a roll.
I've been saying for ages that I can't really make head nor tail of Pielke Snr's position. He just seems to like spending his time snarking at how other climate scientists are not looking at things in quite the right way (that is, his way.) The snark seems to lead to his willingness to work with anyone in an attempt to score points against the rest of the climate science community. You could say much the same of Judith Curry, although she seemingly likes to spend her time even more on the fence of the fundamental question: does she believe there is a serious need to start reducing CO2 now? She's just happy to carp on and on about uncertainty instead, but in a way which (as far as I can tell) fails completely to advance the question of how to assess or reduce the claimed uncertainty.
Watts and his supporters in comments are trying to paint this as an important contribution to the science of climate change. Well, it tells us nothing much that others hadn't already expected, but I suppose its good to have the confirmation. But it is impossible to believe that it has worked out in the way he would have hoped. All those posts of photos of weather stations too close to concrete, etc. Obviously he was encouraging belief that US temperature rise were all a silly, silly mistake that he had seen through.
Anthony Watts is already in defensive mood in the comments. He's fully expecting the snark, which so far has not been appearing at his blog in large numbers.
That should be rectified soon, I hope.
Expect much discussion of this around the climate blogs.
UPDATE: looking back through Watt's previous surfacestation posts, I see he was happy to promote a Orange County Register editorial in 2009 about his work:
Now he's had a paper published (worked on with Roger Pielke Snr, whose attitude towards climate change is to say it is very serious and CO2 production should be addressed, while simultaneously playing footsies with a "skeptic" like Watts who has run numerous wrong, misleading and deceptive arguments over the years to encourage popular belief that CO2 is not a serious problem).
Pielke has a guest post up at WUWT discussing the paper in which the exclamation marks are, I think, intended to hide the lack of importance [update: in the sense of anti-climatic failure] of their findings:
The Surface Stations project is truly an outstanding citizen scientist project under the leadership of Anthony Watts! The project did not involve federal funding. Indeed, these citizen scientists paid for the page charges for our article. This is truly an outstanding group of committed volunteers who donated their time and effort on this project!Then we get this key point:
The inaccuracies of measurements from poorly sited stations are merged with the well sited stations in order to provide area average estimates of surface temperature trends including a global average. In the United States, where this study was conducted, the biases in maximum and minimum temperature trends are fortuitously of opposite sign, but about the same magnitude, so they cancel each other and the mean trends are not much different from siting class to siting class. This finding needs to be assessed globally to see if this also true more generally.Yes: the world should be sure that they don't make the same mistake as the US has: errors that cancel each other out!
It gets better:
And here's a handy question and answer summary of his findings:One critical question that needs to be answered now is; does this uncertainty extend to the worldwide surface temperature record? In our paper
Montandon, L.M., S. Fall, R.A. Pielke Sr., and D. Niyogi, 2011: Distribution of landscape types in the Global Historical Climatology Network. Earth Interactions, 15:6, doi: 10.1175/2010EI371
we found that the global average surface temperature may be higher than what has been reported by NCDC and others as a result in the bias in the landscape area where the observing sites are situated.
A: The minimum temperature rise appears to have been overestimated, but the maximum temperature rise appears to have been underestimated.
So, the temperature which is most important for temperature in the rest of the atmosphere is the one that he thinks may be underestimated. Right. Got that.Q: Do the differing trend errors in maximum and minimum temperature matter?
A: They matter quite a bit. Wintertime minimum temperatures help determine plant hardiness, for example, and summertime minimum temperatures are very important for heat wave mortality. Moreover, maximum temperature trends are the better indicator of temperature changes in the rest of the atmosphere, since minimum temperature trends are much more a function of height near the ground and are of less value in diagnosing heat changes higher in the atmosphere;
With friends like these, the climate skeptic movement is really on a roll.
I've been saying for ages that I can't really make head nor tail of Pielke Snr's position. He just seems to like spending his time snarking at how other climate scientists are not looking at things in quite the right way (that is, his way.) The snark seems to lead to his willingness to work with anyone in an attempt to score points against the rest of the climate science community. You could say much the same of Judith Curry, although she seemingly likes to spend her time even more on the fence of the fundamental question: does she believe there is a serious need to start reducing CO2 now? She's just happy to carp on and on about uncertainty instead, but in a way which (as far as I can tell) fails completely to advance the question of how to assess or reduce the claimed uncertainty.
Watts and his supporters in comments are trying to paint this as an important contribution to the science of climate change. Well, it tells us nothing much that others hadn't already expected, but I suppose its good to have the confirmation. But it is impossible to believe that it has worked out in the way he would have hoped. All those posts of photos of weather stations too close to concrete, etc. Obviously he was encouraging belief that US temperature rise were all a silly, silly mistake that he had seen through.
Anthony Watts is already in defensive mood in the comments. He's fully expecting the snark, which so far has not been appearing at his blog in large numbers.
That should be rectified soon, I hope.
Expect much discussion of this around the climate blogs.
UPDATE: looking back through Watt's previous surfacestation posts, I see he was happy to promote a Orange County Register editorial in 2009 about his work:
When will the apologies start?These influences produce readings higher than actual ambient temperatures, Mr. Watts said. Moreover, the research revealed “major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors.”
These inflated, error-prone, tinkered-with temperature recordings are one of several measurements cited by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as evidence man-made global warming is a threat. But the Heartland study concluded, “The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. And since the U.S. record is thought to be ‘the best in the world,’ it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.”
Where space dreams and cross dressing intersect
It's that time of year in Brisbane when you can never be sure how cold it might get during the night, so it's not unusual that you can fall asleep under a quilt only to wake up too hot later.
I think it was this that led to last nights dream, in which I had arrived at a small lunar base with my own accommodation, which was actually just like a largish canvas tent, only airtight. But when I put it up (inside the existing base, so I was not in a spacesuit) I found there were lots of small pin prick hole in the fly, and I had to try to tape them up, while complaining about poor quality control at NASA.
Once satisfied with the tent, I was sitting inside it reading a book about the incredible extended isolation that the first Antarctic explorers often suffered, particularly those who had to wait out a winter. It suddenly occurred to me that this was not a good book to bring to the Moon, where I was going to be confined to my tent for about 7 months. The dream soon morphed away into something else (I was in Seattle and an elderly women seemed to think the government was controlling the weather, and then there was some sort of parody of Sex and the City going on, from which I was eventually saved by waking up feeling crushed under too many blankets.)
As it happens, I have been reading some stuff about Antarctic expeditions, but really, I would know better than to take it to the Moon in real life. One of the books (which I got in Hobart, which tends to have a lot of titles on Antarctica) is this:
It's not a bad read so far, although the author does seem almost too keen to make it clear that her relative did not enjoy being a pre War spy in drag. He certainly had an adventurous life, even apart from the lady spy period, which was fairly short anyway.
I must try to adjust the bedcovers better tonight.
I think it was this that led to last nights dream, in which I had arrived at a small lunar base with my own accommodation, which was actually just like a largish canvas tent, only airtight. But when I put it up (inside the existing base, so I was not in a spacesuit) I found there were lots of small pin prick hole in the fly, and I had to try to tape them up, while complaining about poor quality control at NASA.
Once satisfied with the tent, I was sitting inside it reading a book about the incredible extended isolation that the first Antarctic explorers often suffered, particularly those who had to wait out a winter. It suddenly occurred to me that this was not a good book to bring to the Moon, where I was going to be confined to my tent for about 7 months. The dream soon morphed away into something else (I was in Seattle and an elderly women seemed to think the government was controlling the weather, and then there was some sort of parody of Sex and the City going on, from which I was eventually saved by waking up feeling crushed under too many blankets.)
As it happens, I have been reading some stuff about Antarctic expeditions, but really, I would know better than to take it to the Moon in real life. One of the books (which I got in Hobart, which tends to have a lot of titles on Antarctica) is this:
Herbert Dyce Murphy inspired Patrick White's The Twyborn Affair; he appears as a woman in one of E. Phillips Fox's best-known paintings; he prevented Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expedition from imploding.
Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer tells the story of one man's fascinating double life - a gentleman adventurer who also dressed in drag to spy for British Military Intelligence in pre-World War I Europe.We all love a story of cross dressing explorers, don't we?In 1911 Murphy sailed to the Antarctic with the Mawson expedition for a gruelling exploration of the frozen continent, a trip of terrible hardship which claimed lives - probably unnecessarily - as this controversial view of Mawson demonstrates.
It's not a bad read so far, although the author does seem almost too keen to make it clear that her relative did not enjoy being a pre War spy in drag. He certainly had an adventurous life, even apart from the lady spy period, which was fairly short anyway.
I must try to adjust the bedcovers better tonight.
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