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Are you guys still spreading misinformation about the hockey stick?!

It's 2007...

A new visualization Bruce Herr and I recently completed is being featured in this weeks New Scientist Magazine (thearticleis free online, minus the viz). They did a good job jazzing up the language used to describe the vizpower struggle, bubbling mass, blitzed articlesbut they also dumbed down the technical accomplishments. I guess not everyone gets as excited about algorithms as I do.Before I talk anymore about the viz, though, let me mention its appearing at the NetSci 2007 Conferencethis week, and hopefully a varient will appear at Wikimania later this summer as well. The viz is a huge 5 feet by 5 feet when printed, and I only include a low res, smaller version here. At some point high qualityart prints of it will appear at SciMapsfor sale to fund further visualization research.

Now for the good stuff. Much like my visualization of the netflix prize competition data, we began this piece byrepresenting the dataas a network. In this case the nodes in the network are wikipedia articles and theedges are thelinks between articles. We then (with some help from our friends at Sandia) used an algorithm to lay out all 650,000nodes (wikipedia articles) that had at least one link in such a way that similar articles are near one another. These are the yellow dots,which when viewed at low res give a yellow tint tothe whole picture.

The sizes of the nodes (circles, dots, whatever you want to call them), are based on a model of revision activity. So large circles indicate that an article might be controversial, or the subject of lots of vandalism, or just a topic whose content frequently changes. We labeled only the largest nodes, to keep it readable. Thereis an interactive version of this in the works based on the google maps platform which will change the labels and pictures used as the user zooms in or out. Stay tuned for that.

The image used for each tilewas selected automatically, simply by using the first imagein the most linked to article among all the articles inthat tile.We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images that appeared.

Our hope for this visualization approach, which we continue to improve on,is that it could be updated in real time to give a macro sense of what is happeing in Wikipedia. I personally hope that some variation of it will end up in high schools as a teaching tool and for generating discussions.

28 April 2007

Oh dear, if by 'ignored entirely', you mean "one click away", you're right. Listing something as unaddressed doesn't make it so, particularly when TFA directly links to it under the heading "the great hockeystick debate" , summarized as 'arcane statistical arguments'.

Did you read the article at all? I guess not, as it certainly agrees with the fact that the Sun's output affects climate, but shows quite clearly that the current level of output cannot account for current temperature changes. There's a whole page devoted to the issue.

They even use Solanki's figures on sunspot activity! And provide a nice link near the bottom showing that there's no correlation between solar activity and warming over the last 40 years.

Once again if you read the article there's a whole point devoted to the issue which describes the difference between forcings (e.g. CO2) and feedbacks (e.g. water vapour) and has a handy graph showing relative forcings.

Mars is irrelevant.

Most disputed? Scientists dispute the degree of the relationship for sure, if you read the article there's plenty about that. They don't dispute there's a causal link though.

Even if you ignore or disagree with entirely, there's still the issue of ocan acidification as well.

If you'd read the article this was covered.

Didn't see the debunking of the global warming on Mars and the moons of the outer planets in our solar system occuring now too.

Oh, I don't know, maybe if you'd read the article you'd have found it?

RealClimate has also debunked that particular talking point.

"The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states."

Because not all of the ice caps float? They do in the Arctic, but both the Greenland ice cap or the West or East Antarctic ice caps rest on solid ground. Between them if they melted entirely sea levels would rise 68m, obviously this isn't going to happen no matter what, but the issue is dealt with in the article here.

Okay, for one, this one is obviously skewed. I modeled this in Excel, and wow, it's way less threatening when you actually show a real scale on the Y axis, as opposed to skewing the graph for shock value. I mean, we jump all over Tom at Tomshardware for having done this kind of thing, why should we eat it up when a "real scientist" sends it to us? We knew it's not a valid representation of the data when Tom presented it in his context, so what's different here?

Second. this guy is even worse. Where's the calculated effect of terrestrial water vapor, i.e., the stuff near the ground? It makes a way bigger difference than any of the sources listed there. In fact, compared to the CO2 value, the effect of water vapor in the troposphere wouldn't fit in that pic at all. "Anthropogenic?" Uh, sorry, but contributing less than half a percent to that CO2 value annually doesn't make all that carbon "anthropogenic."

I'm pretty much done with these people. I really fail to see how having half the highest CO2 concentrations of the past million years is going to do anything, and especially with the relatively minute contribution Homo sapiens, would be warming the world more than having an atmosphere in the first place.

Smells like scare tactics to me.

Okay, for one, this one is obviously skewed. I modeled this in Excel, and wow, it's way less threatening when you actually show a real scale on the Y axis, as opposed to skewing the graph for shock value. I mean, we jump all over Tom at Tomshardware for having done this kind of thing, why should we eat it up when a "real scientist" sends it to us? We knew it's not a valid representation of the data when Tom presented it in his context, so what's different here?

Second. this guy is even worse. Where's the calculated effect of terrestrial water vapor, i.e., the stuff near the ground? It makes a way bigger difference than any of the sources listed there. In fact, compared to the CO2 value, the effect of water vapor in the troposphere wouldn't fit in that pic at all. "Anthropogenic?" Uh, sorry, but contributing less than half a percent to that CO2 value annually doesn't make all that carbon "anthropogenic."

I'm pretty much done with these people. I really fail to see how having half the highest CO2 concentrations of the past million years is going to do anything, and especially with the relatively minute contribution Homo sapiens, would be warming the world more than having an atmosphere in the first place.

Smells like scare tactics to me.

For example, in the "it was warmer in the medieval warm period" one, and how vineyards were common, it says (yes I'm paraphrasing) "well wine production is higher today than then, so obviously it's at least as warm now."

It says that in passing, and does not base its entire argument upon it, but you are disingenuously presenting their statement as if they did.

They also direct you to their related article "Climate myths: It's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?" which you obviously elected not to read.

Not only is it not clear that it actually was warmer during the short-lived so-called "Medieval Warm Period" it is clear that CO2 levels were lower.

Also the most glaring is any section that mentions the LAG between temperatures and CO2 concentrations. They even STATE that there's a lag BOTH ways, but then try and marginalize the findings by saying "well we know it's a greenhouse gas, therefore it is causing the effect" even when the "effect" is 800 years before the cause.

Actually, they specifically discuss the results of aerosols mitigating the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially in the case of volcanic eruption.

One of three things is true: Either you didn't read much of the article[s] they presented, you are too stupid to understand them, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what they have said in order to make your argument look better. I make no claim to know which of these is the case.

Not to mention completely ignoring the largest damning piece of evidence: lack of accelerated upper atmospheric warming. All of the climate models that predict warming also predict that the upper atmosphere will warm FASTER than the lower, since that's where the gases are that are absorbing the extra energy.

It is not even remotely true to say that "all" of the climate models that predict warming also predict that the upper atmosphere will warm faster than the lower. Not even close. And in fact, global warming specifically addresses the troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere.

Marz is warming also btw so let me guess ... we have robots here... we have robots there... Its the robots! They cause global warming.

People really need to think for themselves and not follow the "Flock" or buy into the Brainwashing drive by media.

Article 2 http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/dn11658 states "The great majority of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was put there by the developed world, with the US alone responsible for an estimated quarter of emissions since 1750" right after the first article http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/dn11638 states "It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources."

Which it is ? How can anybody know what to believe in the face of such huge inconsistencies ?

Article 2 http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/dn11658 states "The great majority of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was put there by the developed world, with the US alone responsible for an estimated quarter of emissions since 1750" right after the first article http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/dn11638 states "It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources."

Which it is ? How can anybody know what to believe in the face of such huge inconsistencies ?

Look at the rainfall predictions.
 
  http://environment.newscientist.com/data/images/ns /cms/dn11657/dn11657-1_365.jpg

Their best estimate is that there will be 10-20 inches less rainfall in some of the poorest areas of the world, not to mention most of europe. What exactly do you think less rainfall is going to do? People are going to starve. Maybe that's not a concern for you when you can drive down the street to the McDonalds and get a big mac, but for people who live by subsistance farming its really bad news. The whole "won't affect me" attitude is a lot of the problem. Crank up the A/C and keep watching Fox news.
 
And by the way, the "more arable land" would be in areas that aren't currently farmed, so we'd be chopping down even more trees and compounding the problem by wrecking even more carbon sinks.

Did you even read the article?

That was the 16th myth on the list.

"Bullshit" to what. All the peer reviewed articles. Anyway they answered your "questions". http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ climate-change/dn11647 Just believe in ID, it has more prove that the stuff you pull out.

A better link with no subscription required.

It should be noted that this is the sixth of seven Centennial Challenges to go unawarded since 2005 by NASA. They have strict contests because they actually intend to implement the winner's idea. 150 kgs on 30 Watts? Good luck, nobody should be ashamed not to hit that mark!

I'd hate to be accused of not FTFA'ing, but I'd hate to read an article that starts off with a picture of german chicks in bikini's and speculates that germany could experience a tourist boom because of global warming.

People are sure taking their time wising up to global warming. The responses, like this article, tend to sidestep the issue by either suggesting that "it might not be that bad in some places," or suggesting that scientists might have gotten this whole "global warming" thing wrong, after all "climate change happens."

The problem is that there's a ton of evidence for global warming, and the natural progression of climate change *is* taken into account. Furthermore the effects are going to be more significant than the temperature increasing in a few places... There is a significant risk of a *massive* rise in sea level if the west antartic ice sheet melts http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962

Sounds like that HBO exec needs some DRM, Digital Rectal Massage, buy a couple guys with baseball bats who thinks he sure has a pretty mouth.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap- safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html
Again...we already have a cure for cancer. Slashdot wasted time could be better spent finding a cure for HIV

If you steal $100,000 (real dollars) of items and gold from someone in WoW, would you get arrested by the government?

From http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7865"A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion of carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software "bots" to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap- safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html
We've already got a cure for cancer.

Yay! I found the study (or at least a couple of articles that links to the study)! I'm not THAT guy anymore!

Article based on World Commission on Dams Study
Article based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Study

1) Train Yourself in Pakour. Become proficient.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0

2) Get a hold of artificial spider silk + convenient dispenser
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/01 14_050114_tv_spider.html

3) Fashion a pair of Gecko setae gloves, boots and other convenient body areas
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3726

4) Fabricate a Kevlar Spidey suit
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=Quirks&artic le=UPI-1-20070416-18110300-bc-britain-hoodie.xml

5) Obtain DARPA Spidey sense

6) Profit! ...err save humanity!

Affirming my first post. So yeah, I'm not going to hold on to my "foolish" beliefs no matter what people say. I am actually posting research affirming my position that poeple do indeed have a type of 6th sense...

link

I swear there was an article about this posted to Slashdot at one time or another. Guys like seeing people get what they deserve, remember.

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/ mg19425993.300-some-forests-may-speed-global-warmi ng.html

Trees add to global warming too, ya know.

When we have the tech to get to such a planet, the 2.5G wouldn't be an issue. Just slip into one of those nice Power Suits which we already have today.

Sunrises and sunsets on the planet must be spectacular. If you could stand on its surface, you would see its red host star looming 10 times wider in the sky than our own Sun appears.

Team member Xavier Delfosse from Grenoble University in France says he hopes that spacecraft missions will probe the world for signs of life over the next decade or two.

"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," says Delfosse. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life."

I think the real problem is Patents. No we shouldn't abolish them, but we should stop giving frivolous ones. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/crazy.html http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn965 Google Ridiculous Patent for more Honestly we should have some common sense. Yes you can patent the lightbulb, or A new motor, but some of this stuff is ridiculous.

NewScientist has an article with an explanation here.

And let me (a geezer who is most likely older than the principal in question) defend the students.

These teenagers, as well as most teenagers in general, do not understand and will not consider implications of their actions before doing something stupid.

That's the nature of teenagers. Always has been. See Teenagers fail to see the consequences .

Purposefully publishing lies in printed form with the willful intent to harm someone's reputation is called slander, and is punishable by law. These kids clearly did exactly that.

If somethiong is so over the top that it is absolutely unbelievable, it's not slander. For instance, if I accuse you of eating human babies, it isn't likely to be slander (or at least I hope not, is there a lawyer in the house?) TFA lists all sorts of sordid things he's supposed to be doing, from molesting children to drugs. Clearly, nobody with an IQ greater than 65 would ever believe this crap.

The principal's daughter was emotionally distraught when she discovered the pages, as well as the principal.

Well, I've been emotionally distraught. Should I sue? That's just childish; even more childish than what the teenagers did. As an earlier poster mentioned, the principal is supposed to be the adult here, and clearly wasn't acting like one.

It's just a prank, and I, too, see where his anger comes from, but adults are supposed to be able to control their anger. I've finally learned personally that anger is almost always counterproductive.

This has, however, hurt his reputatiion; I wouldn't hire him. Not because of the stupid MySpace page, but because of his reaction to it. Most employers want employees with a little maturity, and this dumbass showed none whatsoever.

Were the kids wrong? Sure, but they're kids. The principal has no such excuse.

Toshiba announced research on a technology for fast charging li-ions over two years ago. This was using nanotech materials for an improved anode (maybe cathode too), enabling fast charging (80% charge in one minute) and long life (99% capacity after 1,000 charges). A similar approach was also annouced, about the same time, by Altair Technologys in Reno. It's all about increasing the effective surface area of the anode, and perhaps making it from stronger stuff.

In traditional Li-ion cells, a big wear factor is that the anode can form a parasitic battery with the electrical contact, causing the terminal to eventually wear out, faster as you approach full cycling the battery. Heat is also a factor, in both terminals and the full cell... the higher internal resistance of the Li-ion vs. NiMH (or better still, NiCAD) limits peak power, and also increases the risk of damage or, particularly in quesitonably made cells, explosions.

Dramatic improvements in both of these are necessary to enable practical (in a commerical sense) pure electric vehicles (BEV). There's no conspiracy necessary... traditional NiMH cells are a problem for full electrics.. which the actual reason none of these cars have been successful. Not to mention the expense... the Toyota EV-RAV4, for example, cost $42,000 and gave you about 100 miles on a charge.. and that with Toyota still selling them at a loss (as they did in the early days of the Prius, too).

In a hybrid, the batteries are only partially cycled (my 2003 Prius runs the NiMH cells over 40% of their capacity range; Toyota extended this to about 60% on the models starting in 2004), and that keeps them very long lived. Natrually, better batteries make a better hybrid, but the fact my Toyota can only go about 2-3 miles on a full charge doesn't impact its general use; the issues around battery technology today make the BEV a small niche product.

But the energy density is just too low even full cycling NiMH to make a BEV with mass appeal... most people would demand at least 200-300 miles of range, charging times on-the-road similar to that of petrol fueling (not the minimum of 15-30 minutes you'll have with today's cells), and long life (full cycling NiMH, they're good for about 500-1000 charges).

Once you have a higher density cell that doesn't wear out and can be charged in under 5 minutes, full EVs will be practical enough for a mainstream automaker to POSSIBLY launch a full production car, not just an experiment. This is critical technology for improving hybrids as well, and keep in mind that all practical FCEVs will also be hybrids (fuel cells suck at peak power demands, they like to be slow and steady, so you need a battery or supercapacitor to enable the peaks).

Or it could be that the news that it failed on April 07 was sent back in time and appeared on April 02. They should not be messing with fundamental physics like this.

Get in line, they're already being developed.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7271&f eedId=online-news_rss20

There has been some work on this but they are having stability problems: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6434.
--
Durable solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Digital Compact Cassette - same form factor as ye olde analogge cassettes so you could play them in a DCC player, but recorded digitally. Was supposed to be a consumer format, but never caught on as CDs dominated.

It wasn't all bad news though - the technology used to make the read/write heads found its way into beer making:

  http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6121

mmmm beeeeeer.

This article from 2000 talks about an Australian called Bryan Roberts http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16722574.800 -reach-for-the-sky.html. It didn't seem to go anywhere when it was first mooted. It's a crazy idea, identical to the one cited above, but is about the most practical and practible idea going - the only serious objection is "what if a plane crashes into the tether".

I checked your link; that is not made-up be creationists. The confusion comes in differences in measuring the commonality of genes. When humans DNA is compared with chimpanzee DNA, they are compared by base-pairs. The comparison with bananas was did not involve that level of detail. A clarification, from New Scientist magazine, a source of that statistic, can be found here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523584.000 -people-arent-bananas.html

Computer World should do its homework better.

Heh.

When the earth's magnetic field polarity finally swaps, these folks are going to be SO annoyed.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4985

For the rest of us, it's a good thing that our GPS receiver belts will still point north.

*grin*

"Stracher's research suggests coal wildfires in China burn 200 million tonnes a year, equivalent to about 20 per cent of the total used by the US for power generation." http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3390

"Carbon dioxide emissions from personal vehicles in the United States equaled 314 million metric tons in 2004. That much carbon could fill a coal train 55,000 miles long--long enough to circle the Earth twice." "Although SUVs currently trail small cars as sources of carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming (67 million metric tons or 21 percent of all U.S. auto emissions), they will soon be in first place and will remain a leading cause of global warming on U.S. roads for many years." http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/au toemissions.htm

So you can see...if we got rid of coal fires, we could get rid of 360 MILLION tons of CO2 per year...that's 5 times as much as every last hated SUV in the United States. Imagine the joy of countless Al Gore-types if we suddenly passed a law condeming every Hummer, every Suburban, every gas-guzzling pickup to a junkyard...and yet we ignore something 5 times as large. Like I said, all of the political work that's going on to encourage things like carbon trading and the banning of SUV's has one thing directly in its sites...MONEY. There are carbon trading floors already set up, and the government is ready to dole out trillions worth of these "credits" to politically-connected people. Make no mistake...there will be little environmental impact, because a huge amount of CO2 is coming from sources other than humans.

I'm actually surprised that we haven't developed synthetic blood before now.

Like this?

Also, the only benefit of having O- blood is a regular phone call from the Red Cross begging for a donation. Although you may not necessarily see that as a benefit, depending on your particular level of lonliness.

There has already been an example of successful gene therapy with retroviruses, and no they didn't get caner, they were cured of cancer.

However the blood-brain barrier is a limitation to brain gene therapy. So in 2003 a UCLA research team inserted genes into the brain using liposomes coated in polyethylene glycol.