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NOAA has a bunch of mysterious sounds, each scarier than the next. Try "Julia" or "Slowdown" on for size, but not if you're by yourself in the dark thinking about what lives on this planet that we don't know about.

NOAA has a bunch of mysterious sounds, each scarier than the next. Try "Julia" or "Slowdown" on for size, but not if you're by yourself in the dark thinking about what lives on this planet that we don't know about.

here's a link to a wave file of Bloop, sped up 16 times. Fark had this earlier today.

And as far as a private entity doing this, unless traffic becomes a widespread quality of life issue that gets the politicians attention, I doubt the government would ever get involved to provide this information for the benefit of the US population...

Tornadoes which can cause massive death and destruction are the domain of agencies like the NOAA/NWS. Traffic that can annoy and frustrate drivers in a localized area is the domain of local news at best.

As long as the data is properly anonymized its like a Cellular version of a US Census... Just in real time and a whole hell of a lot more interesting. How many TVs does the average household have? Who cares, I want to know how many beowulf clusters :D

N.O.A.A. == National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aka "1337 w347h3r d00dz" part of the USA Department of Commerce (??) Can't help you with TD, though

National
Oceanographic and
Atmospheric
Administration

They do Climate Research for the gov. (I expect their funding will probably be chopped by the current admin like many other useful organizations...)

So for an example of what they do...
They try to simulate the entire planet (and then some---solar flares, orbits, etc) to attempt to predict when it's going to rain, and when it's going to rain Lava.

Definitely one of the cooler websites for the sheer Scientifically curious geek in all of us...

http://www.noaa.gov/

Refuting global warming
You provide evidence that global tropospheric temperatures are decreasing. However, these measurements are actually further evidence of global warming. If the greenhouse effect is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, less heat makes it back into the upper atmosphere as measured by satellites. Check out this article from the NOAA, especially paragraph 3 (although the whole thing is pretty interesting). Also note the results of a NAS study that examines the data you referenced. They conclude that global surface warming is definitely real and that the satellite data does not invalidate these measurements.

Refuting importance of CO2 compared to H2O in global warming
Your source states that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and that it exists in much greater concentrations than CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore, global warming should be closely related to an increase in atmospheric water vapor, with the effect of CO2 being negligible. However, if we grant that global surface temperatures are increasing, were are left wondering why atmospheric water vapor is increasing. This document from the WMO explains how CO2 emissions affect the climate by increasing the amount of water vapor in the air. Basically, the CO2 traps a bit of heat near the surface. The warmer air holds more water, and this additional water in turn leads to more warming. The "push" from the CO2 basically changes the planet's water distribution, with more water in the air and less elsewhere. You can consider the CO2 an indirect cause, but it definitely leads to warming. On a related note, here's an interesting article from NASA which suggests that an increasingly moist atmosphere may harm the ozone layer as well. Note the quote in paragraph 7.

Refuting rising sea levels
This article was by far the most entertaining source you provided. I love the part in paragraph 10 where Lord Bumpershoot (or whatever his name was) complains about convicts vandalizing his test equipment. According to your source, the sea level measurements in this area seem to be decreasing. However, consider the observations from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite, which uses a radar altimeter to map global sea levels. There appears to be a clear upward trend of about 3 mm/year. Judging from the data, it's apparent that the global mean sea level is increasing.

On a final note, I noticed from your previous posts that you seem to be a Bush supporter. It looks like the Bush administration has reversed its position on the existence of global warming. I'm totally shocked. Are you? :)

..network camera. I just read about this a couple of days ago. Live from the North Pole
The company that makes the linux powered network camera is stardot

Sure. Here's a story about one of the ecosystems.

Actually I thought the domes didn't so much protect the antennas from the elements as hide which direction the antenna was pointed. With satellite photography what it is now, it becomes very easy to see things as big as antennas and see exactly where they are looking. The domes probably did a little bit of both.

The NWS puts protective domes around their NEXRAD dishes. Since they have no reason to hide the dishes from spying eyes, one can assume that its purpose is protecting the dish from inclement weather. Of course, they're not entirely successful.

I never knew there were parts of the North Pole that had trees and grass!

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-1914.jpg.tmp
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0144.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0149.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 16-1632.jpg

It looks like a nice place to live, actually.

I never knew there were parts of the North Pole that had trees and grass!

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-1914.jpg.tmp
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0144.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0149.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 16-1632.jpg

It looks like a nice place to live, actually.

I never knew there were parts of the North Pole that had trees and grass!

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-1914.jpg.tmp
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0144.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0149.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 16-1632.jpg

It looks like a nice place to live, actually.

I never knew there were parts of the North Pole that had trees and grass!

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-1914.jpg.tmp
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0144.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 11-0149.jpg
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/npole/images/noaa-2002-04 16-1632.jpg

It looks like a nice place to live, actually.

It's great the images have the temperatures on them

on THIS ONE the temp got up to a blistering
20.5 F -- but most are around 8-15 degrees.

I wonder how long the hardware will last in extremes like that.

A year? two?

GOES is fast for data, but doesn't support voice.

ATRS supports voice, but for data it's about 100 baud. Yes, 10 characters per second. Still, slow e-mail is better than no e-mail.

HF radio is only voice and links us to McMurdo. From there, they can patch you into the phone system.

Back to the VoIP topic. . .

We've used Cisco's IP phones both at McMurdo and over GOES. There's a delay as the signal goes up to geosynchronous orbit and back, but you get that on the phone too. It's just like using the telephone. It works great. It's never gotten choppy or dropped out while I've been used it. We call it "The Bat Phone".

Did you know that GPS has a drift built in

The Drift your are probably? talking about is called Selective Availability and we remove in May 2000, by President Clinton. The is an margin of error though that works out to as much as 70M. Nore detail here

Yes. In fact, I love in Norman, Oklahoma, and we have several Crays hard at work on weather prediction and modeling. The National Severe Storms Laboratory houses several, as does Sarkey's Energy Center. Specifically, Sarkey's has a very nice Cray J-90 that I get to play with. ;)

Jouster

For the love of God, or Webster, or both Funk and Wagnalls, it's Arctic, not Artic.

A little review...

Artic

Arctic

Artic

Arctic

Sheesh.

...try going to the National Weather Service instead, at least, if you're looking for U.S. weather information. No annoying pop-up BS!

1. Civilian: this is what anyone can access. This was discontinued because companies were about to come out with units that compensated for the programmatic imperfections the satellites were feeding the receivers. It was accurate to within one hundred meters, and is still applied on a regional basis (for instance, Iraq still has Civilian-level GPS accuracy).
2. Military: this is now what both civilians and the general military share. It is accurate to within approximately twenty meters.
3. SpecOps: this is what the SEALs, DEVGRU and all their friends use. It is accurate to within approximately one meter.

Or you could try this site or this one to get the current declination.

Page 5 of the NOAA Budget Request fact sheet collection (PDF alert).

That's one piece of $148 million increase to some NOAA offices.

And that's only NOAA, let alone NASA and other US agencies that do climate research.

Sure, it's not the billions that some would want, But it is not what one would expect if you just listen the mainstream "environmentalists".

Not a hidden agenda, but not the outright gutting that some would have expected. This is a typical Bush move: he's about right if both sides are screaming.

Conservatives in the US aren't as anti-environment as many would believe. In local politics, area Republicans are beating the pants off Democrats (in a strongly liberal state) partly because they are out in front in environmental issues.

Strange, eh?

Observation: few Yanks would claim to begin to understand UK politics, but I have repeatedly run into Brits who think they understand US politics. Wonder why that is?

A pipe bomb in a crowded subway can kill more people, but it does not level houses, flatten trees, cause flooding, mudslides and all sorts of lovely stuff that a tropical storm does. nor does it release,
according to this page up to 6.0 x 10^14 Watts/day of energy. any idea how that stacks up to the hiroshima nuke?

Global warming, whether caused by humans or not, is nothing to scoff at, either. Many people, particularly in third world nations, live on the coastline, in areas that would (and will) be innundated if and when a higher global temperature causes ocean levels to rise. This is a serious threat to the lives and livelihoods of many people. People in the third world can't simply move and buy another house, nor can they afford to maintain a system of dikes like those of the Netherlands. Whether or not humans caused global warming, it exists, as the collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf indicates, and it is a threat.

In addition, it's true that a certain amount of melting, calving of icebergs, and such occurs with the change of seasons in Antartica. Thank you, whoever noted that sun causes ice to melt, for stating the obvious. But the Larsen Shelf was not noted for being susceptible to such seasonal oscillations - indeed, it was incredibly stable, and old. Ice sheets that are 200 meters thick and more than 3000 square miles big don't form or melt overnight. The instability which caused the collapse was a relatively recent development. That such a stable chunk of the Antarctican ice should disintegrate is of great concern.

Finally, while man may not have created global warming, our industrial revolution has certainly contributed. A previous poster listed these graphs. A temperature spike and carbon dioxide spike, coinciding with the industrial revolution, are clearly visible. We have contributed to global warming. Sure, we can't stop industry, and sure, we don't have effective alternative energy sources. But we can adopt less wasteful methods of doing things, and cleaner manufacturing processes. And if we never start seriously investigating alternative energy sources, we will certainly never make any progress in that realm. So don't dismiss global warming as a liberal joke, or a tool for Greenpeace. Perhaps humans didn't create it, but the Larsen Shelf's collapse joins a growing bank of data suggesting that warming does exist, and that humans have contributed to some extent. We should be concerned, because this does affect us, and our future.

It's great to be looking out for the earth and all, but please avoid supporting bad science.

If you're unsure where you stand on the issue of global warming, you might want to look at the following two graphs. The first shows that carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising. There is no real question that this is much human induced. At the same time, global temperatures are also dramatically rising. Here the extent of human influence is more debatable. It is possible that an apparent cause (rising CO2) and an apparent effect (rising temperatures) are both happening independently but, coincidentally, at the same time. And, also at the same time, there is some other, unknown force causing the entire planet to heat. It truly is possible. But I wouldn't personally bet the world on that.

1. It only shows you X11 apps though (no aqua).

It seems you are confusing OSXVnc with Xvnc for OS X.

OSXVnc allows you to control your main (and only) Aqua/Quartz display (thus allowing you to work with your machine just as if you were sitting in front of it, as with the Windows and classic MacOS versions). I haven't tried it, but it displays all the Aqua applications and should also display Classic and X11 applications running in the main display.

Xvnc for MacOS X, on the other hand, is a patch for Xvnc that allows it to run under MacOS X. Xvnc allows you to create up to 99 X11 virtual desktops (with any X11 window manager) and run all your X11 applications (MacGimp, LyX, etc), but you can't run your Aqua applications in them.

There is also an alternative server and viewer. Theres a few viewers linked from the last link.

1. But that's the only reason I use Mac OS. For the rest I use Linux: Mozilla, AbiWord, Gnumeric, Gnome do my end-user tasks, while Xemacs/JDE, JDK, LyX, PostgreSQL, Apache, Python, Perl, GCC help with my development.

Are you aware that you can run all that software on MacOS X? Yes, even Gnome, which makes sense if you run XDarwin in rooted mode. And you can run XDarwin full-screen so you will feel like working in a Linux or BSD box. As with any Un*x box, you can also have several simultaneous X-Window sessions using Xvnc for MacOS X (which is different from OSXvnc, which instead allows you to use the native Quartz display remotely).

So, you can set up a perfect Linux/BSD-like environment, use all the tools you like, and still have access to the Apple "whistles" without without rebooting your Mac.

It's been done for years! 25 years ago, I worked for the Defense Meterological Satellite Program. In 1976, we used the same technique to rescue a (brand new) spinning satellite and lock it back into an Earth-facing orientation.

Go to NOAA NGDC topographic/bathymetric web site. There is a bunch of data and images that you can download. There are even some software.

In case you don't know, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admininstration, National Geophysical Data Center.

But without some evidence, your post is looking like a rant. Oh, and
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/home. html The last decade of the 20th Century was the warmest in the entire global instrumental temperature record
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/onpi/webextra.ns f/web/climate?OpenDocument

The article says: By relying on intricate networks and concentrating vital assets in small geographic clusters, advanced Western nations only amplify the destructive power of terrorists--and the psychological and financial damage they can inflict.

As Edward Tenner observed in Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, technologically advanced societies are far more resilient and robust than less advanced societies. He gives the example of Hurricane Andrew, which was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Yet only 15 people were killed. In less developed societies, much smaller storms and floods regularly kill thousands. In addition, south Florida recovered quickly and the net effect on the wider U.S. economy was negligible.

Technological societies include a large measure of redundancy and backup. The correct response to the terrorist threat is not the dispersal of critical assets, as this writer suggests. It is more redundancy and backup. Future terrorist attacks would have minimal effects on the wider society. The ineffectiveness of the attacks coupled with relentless retaliation should be a substantial disincentive.

Technological societies would be stronger after each attack rather than weaker.

South Pole Live Camera.

or check out our South Pole Web Page.

South Pole Live Camera.

or check out our South Pole Web Page.

Well, you have to be careful about what you mean by high and low pressure systems, though. Near the surface (on a constant z surface), hurricanes have a lower pressure than the surrounding atmosphere. But near the tropopause, hurricanes tend to have a higher pressure than the surrounding atmosphere. That's all due to the fact that hurricanes are warm-core systems. Take a look at this FAQ on terrestrial hurricanes...

As for the Jovian storms, I'm not aware of the dynamics involved. Not my specialty... but it definitely sounds QUITE interesting.

-Jellisky

As a side example to this discussion of 'what constitutes a large database', the NOAA's National Climate Data Centre maintains a database of digital data of about a petabyte of climatological data. The Centre takes in about a quarter of a terabyte of data *daily*.

Your arguments remind me of the people who said the last tree would be cut down in 2001. Well it's 2002 now and I can see thousands of trees just from where I live alone.

Cute bon mot, but did you bother to read his references? Or, for example this page?

It's easy to be an expert as long as you don't have to back up your statements. Although I am not convinced that you're right, I would be interested in seeing some support for your point of view. Any references?

...before some enterprising company ditches the satellites and offers drone shots with much higher resolution. The drone technology is nothing new. If the area is hostile, you can use tiny disposable drones

From a technical standpoint, none of this is very exciting. The only real limitation is what your government will allow you to sell to the general public. In some cases, the government will do it for you with a camera on a regular old plane.

Of course, the other issue is privacy...

Heh...been out of town awhile. Caught up on the thread, and decided to catch up on a few issues. First off, I will apologize for the excessive flamage - I was posting in Having A Bad Day mode, and after reading n arguments where posters took the lack of evidence for CO2 warming as evidence of a lack of warming, I was somewhat fussy. Therefore, I apologize for treating you like a moron.

With that said, I will address the issues you bring up. First off, the data page. I felt you would be web-savvy enough to click on the "climate data" link and look at the "archived data" link contained therein. But you didn't look, so here's the full URL:

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/ cag3.html

Starts with the US, links to elsewhere.

Notice that this page does not provide hints as to what causes warming, it only shows there exists warming. This is in context to your original statement:

The earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago. --original poster

You can say this all you want, but until I see all the data to draw my own conclusion, it's just words. -- you

If it's hard evidence supporting x causes global warming, then join the club. :) But be warned - the physics behind greenhouse effects are pretty solid, and while current research might not be absolutely convincing, it's pretty damn solid. That being said, I personally am not convinced either way - there's too much natural climate change to look at as well - but I am not willing to let my political beliefs make my arguments for me, as you are so willing to do (why do you try to sound like a reasonable critic in one paragraph, and then spout "LEFTIST" ad-hominems in the next? :)

Next:
Please indicate where I stated that the global mean temperature has not risen in the last 150 years.

See above quote. That's the statement that set me off (and BTW, got me into "post flame" mode :)

I have seen no research come from you yet, so perhaps you'd like to cut down on the "hot air."

Well, gimme a break, I just started this gig. :) But, unlike most of the flamers on this topic, I have a vested interest in getting this topic studied correctly. What really pissed me off the most, I'll say, is the willingness of people to either blindly condemn (or blindly agree) with political and economic positions (or skepticism, however you define it) on what is fundamentally a scientific issue. We need those opinions, of course, but when they start to influence the research being done, we destroy our ability to objectively figure out what the hell is happening, and that's a Bad Thing in my book. When the Rush-Dittos and the Greenies start defining what the whole of humanity gets to research, and what is verboten, then we're heading for trouble.

Finally:

Do you really think that treating me like a moron is going to help me believe in your point of view?

*sigh* No, I don't. But neither will treating you like an intelligent, informed citizen, I think. Furthermore, I don't care if you believe in my "point of view" or not - you, as a free citizen of a free country (Mr. Ashcroft's railings notwithstanding) are free to believe whatever the hell you choose to believe. Fortunately, you seem to care about facts. I look for that in people, and if it appears that they want to believe in hard evidence, but occasionally take a detour in political errantry, I flame 'em. Sometimes too hard. :) I just wanted to point out that using endless "ad whatever" statements and political rhetoric are as unconvincing as the "leftist" hot air you so evidently despise. I really try to be objective in my line of work - I will, BTW, check out the site you mentioned - and from one who professes the same desire for Truth, I expect nothing less.

And if you feel the need to reply, or if you feel like I still haven't addressed issues you bring up, go ahead and reply (/. or email, your preference.) Warning: I deliberately ignored some of your points (like the "ad vericundum" argument) because frankly, they're offtopic. But I will reply to intelligent debate sans political windage. Call me a "leftist" and you'll be ignored. Looking for anti-partisan, evidence-based debate, and I'm game. The ball is in your court now - I await your reply.

cheers,

The more recent, more annoying ads are the reason I've stopped using weather.com. I like the site, but the ads are just too annoying.
I have no objection to advertisments, but I do have an objection to them if they are annoying. I used to use weather.com because they had good local radar graphics. But even their radar graphics aren't worth the annoyance of their advertisments!

Now I exclusively use ADDS, a government provided service with no advertisments (which has some nice Java tools, too).

In 1960 the most powerful earthquake of the 20th century moved the Chilean coast 60 feet in 5 minutes.
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.h tm
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/chile/

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch pushed rivers 100's of feet up mountains, created brand new rivers, caused landslides which changed the shapes of mountains and covered entired cities, and left parts of the land covered in water over a year later. (if you're in Nicaragua look for the "Las Casitas" memorial - the distant mountain which caused the landslide shows obvious changes in its shape).
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/mitch.html
http://www.acerca.org/ejd1_results1.html

Volcanic eruptions can be so great as to cause the birth of islands. There was a well-studied one in the Pacific in 2000, i believe. Also in Nicaragua is an interesting series of small islands caused by a nearby volcano loosing its top - large pieces of land were blown miles away and landed in a lake creating these islands. I dont remember the name of the lake or volcano, though i have some photos at /home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 62000/762047.stm

Natural Disasters are called "disasters" for a reason. 6000 years seems plenty for the earth to move a small bit of land a couple hundred metres.

If you look at a hi-res topograph of the area, it's not inconceivable that a few minor events could have taken a great valley and flooded it. Assume that the Yucatan and Cuba started the mountain ridge that formed this valley. Follow around through Haiti/Dominican, PR, Virgin Islands, Lesser Antilles, and down to Venezuela. The water between these peaks is very, very shallow, comparitively.

Vast majority of whom? Experts? You are trying to roll an ad numeram argument into your ad verecundiam argument, while ignoring the simple fact that destroys the validity of what you claim.

Ooh, look, somebody took a logic class, and is attempting to snowball intelligent discussion with a show of latin verbosity! I'm impressed!

(sarcasm mode off) Actually, the "vast majority" he was speaking of was meteorologists. Read the post. And yes, he's right. Atmospheric scientists do agree that the planet has warmed (and I am one and work with more.) There is data. STFW. Start with the NCDC website http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov The disagreement you hear about is about the cause of the warming, like he said. If you know of any sources of information that suggest otherwise, that suggest that the global mean temperature has not risen in the last 150 years, then post it. Try using research to support your arguments, not hot air. Political ranting crap like the stuff you spout fails all tests of logic, regardless of how "educated" you think you are.

You can say this all you want, but until I see all the data to draw my own conclusion, it's just words.

Fine. Go look at data. Familiarize yourself with the ClueStick of Fact. And remember, when you post rants on /. about science, you had damn well better know the facts, because scientists are sick and tired of ignorant politically motivated cretins (of of all flavors) misinterpreting data and twisting research to fit their own pathetic agendas. Re-read the post, look at some data, and get a life.

The article mentioned that the U.S. Military was now capable of Jamming GPS signals so that is the reason they turned off Selective Availability. So why wouldn't it be possible for the enemy to make jammers to stop us from using our own system? (or any GPS system for that matter). From what I've heard GPS signals that finally make it to the receiver are very weak and therefore a stronger signal coming from somewhere on the ground would possibly interfere. Wouldn't this be a Denial of Service GPS style? Does the military signal have some sort of antijam feature? Lets hope so.

http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov

BTW - for anyone that cares, the ozonelayer site runs on a Linux box :).

http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov

BTW - for anyone that cares, the ozonelayer site runs on a Linux box :).

Here's some statistics and information on the ozone hole from the Climate Prediction Center:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere /sbuv2to/ozone_hole.html

NOAA has an interesting page on the ozone hole, animated by days in 2001. Very cool to see the levels change and drop.