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NASA Releases Free Global Climate Model Software
ink_polaroid writes "NASA has released its Educational Global Climate Model (EdGCM) for high school and university desktop computers. The software incorporates a 3-D climate model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York. It wraps complex computer modeling programs with a graphical interface familiar to most PC users."
It would be pretty cool to simulate enviromental doomsday scenarios such as the one seen in the movie The Day after Tomorrow.
That's great. One of my favorite software packages in the world is Nasa's World Wind, but when I tried to show it to my parents (both high school science teachers), the reaction was the same: we don't have time or computers to use this.
The state of public education (at least in California) is so poor that this is going to be great for college-level students, but much of the target audience will be left out due to budgets and a testing-centric curriculum.
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Is it fsp or rts? Is it multi-player and/or single player? And is there a God mode?
Approx. 40mb downloads page
l ler.sit OS X
ftp://ftp.giss.nasa.gov/pub/edgcm/EdGCM_Mac_Insta
I think it allows your average high school student to control the weather, evil genius style, but with an easy PC interface.
More interesting would be simulating the terraforming of mars. Could we raise the temperature sufficiently by introducing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? How about if we used a massive orbital mirror? Or maybe we could grind one of the moons into dust and make an artificial ring to increase ambient light. Inquiring minds want to know.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Here is the story which just hit the wire:
In further news today: 1000's of computer's around the World today began running climate modeling software.
The Combined heat output from all this extra computer processing is expected to bring most model predictions forward by several years due to the extra heat expended.
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SETI - The project were you can look for life on another planet whilst help kill off the current one quicker. I mean would an `intelligent` form of life be chucking out loads of extra signals wasting resources; Search for dead planets maybe, but intelligent life, HA.
It would be pretty cool to simulate enviromental doomsday scenarios...
I thought they already said that in the story outline - yes, here it is:
It wraps complex computer modeling programs with a graphical interface familiar to most PC users
Obviously here they are talking about the Blue Globe of Death.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We ARE ALL DoooooooMED!!!
They are science related topics, which fits the "News for Nerds" part of the masthead.
For example:
NASA (space) Releases (verb) Free (adjective) Global Climate Model (science) Software (computers)
How can that possibly not be appropriate for slashdot?
Would be nice if they had a Linux port. Or if the source code is made freely available, someone would have written a clone [or hopefully nicer ;-)] UI!
Phew! I read "climax control software" first.
Use the same inaccurate software global warming hoaxers use to make their claims! Ignore the fact that the software isn't even able to predict cloud cover!
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
You might also want to check out the following (Distributed Computing) project:
ClimatePrediction.net
The whole nature of chaotic systems is that iterative models cannot be used to predict future events. You can create models that demonstrates a theory, but the model is of little use in predicting what will actually happen.
Some things never change - death, taxes, and the fact that the climate is always changing.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
They have a followup article here., in which they comment a little more on the book, and they also comment on Crichton's lecture Aliens Cause Global Warming.
If you're not RealClimate.org, here's how the site describes itself: "RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science." I really think it's one of the better sites on the topic.
My personal take on it? Based on themes present in almost all of his fiction, Crichton really doesn't like scientists.
Hey, there is more OS X stuff there than Win32! No linux version, but hey, it still feels fucking cool.
Although everyone needs to stop copying the brushed metal and aqua buttons. If you are going to do it, don't make it look like shit.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
I wonder if you could get the source. NASA part of the US government, right? Well, anything created by the US government is, by law, in the public domain. Wouldn't that include the source code? Also, as long as it's not classified, it should be available under the Freedom of Information Act of 1997 (1997?).
Scientist: "Global Warming is real, and we must study it more"
Liberal: "The world will end next week! Stop using oil"
Conserv^H^H^H^H^H Republican: "Global warming is a myth created to hinder my business"
Nerd: "I wonder if there is any software that can be used for climate modeling"
"We recommend that you NOT leave the GCM running on a Windows laptop unattended. We have found that some Pentium laptops have difficulty dissipating heat and may shutdown (hibernate) without warning causing the climate model to crash. This does not appear to harm the laptop, but can corrupt GCM output files."
You heard it here first, laptop heat can cause infertility and crash the planet!
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If you're having trouble downloading it, you can get it here.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
Well, now that we all have a climate simulation software on our computers we can all backup our claims what will happen to earth with good simulation data.
Dr Cox probably has something to do with this software. This article in Nature seems to fit the overal description of the model the software uses. Some people have used this model to suggest that trees should be cleared so as to stop them becoming a source of CO2 others have used it to suggest he is a stooge. I don't know much about Dr. Cox but it seems he is attacked by the fringe from both sides of Climate politics, normally a sign that someone is at least honest. Your quote directly relates to the "tree" debate and will drive both sides into a frenzy.
"The climate will warm more in the future but the ability of the land to store carbon dioxide will be compromised," he said, adding that warmer soil was less able to hold the greenhouse gas.
Now I'm no climatologist but it gets hot here in Australia. When the Roo's, Sheep, Cows, Dogs, and other big animals want to escape the afternoon heat, guess where they go. They even scratch at the dust every now and then to reveal cooler earth underneath. Experienced farmers (rancher's if you like) leave at least one big tree accessable to thier stock.
I recognise some of Dr Cox's research and I think his "complexity" approach to the Climate is very interesting. The "dimming" effect seems to me well documented but poorly explained by anything else other than soot from coal & oil. Just like I doubt he is advocating mowing down trees, I also doubt he is advocating pumping soot into the air to keep cool by "almost canceling out the greenhouse effect".
I think his message is that humans can influence the climate but at the moment that is sort of accidental, hard to quantify and potentialy very dangerous for Humanity. So we should aim to learn about the factors and how they interelate before we try "hacking" the Climate, say by suddenly eliminating soot without considering CO2 & methane concentrations, "cloud seeding", and all manner of biofeedback.
I think we are learning (possibly the hard way) that we do have a significant and often detrimental impact on the biosphere and if we continue to ignore it Humanity will end up like a neglected Goldfish.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
At last my plans to dominate the world are complete. With this software I will be able to
place my chaos butterflies with precision and inflict devastating storms on my enemies!!!!!
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
DAMN. That was funny. One of those rare instances where + 5 just isn't enough.
Laws are for people with no friends.
http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/ warming_earth/skeptics.htm
s cience.php
"Laypeople frequently assume that in a political dispute the truth must lie somewhere in the middle, and they are often right. In a scientific dispute, though, such an assumption is usually wrong." - Paul Ehrlich
"It is human nature to protect your own interests. We may recall the extensive and incredibly successful campaign of the American tobacco companies to conceal the link between cancer and the use of tobacco products. For decades, they knew the reality of the addictive nature of nicotine and the carcinogenic effects of tobacco use. For decades, they successfully kept that reality hidden from the American public.
The oil, coal, gas, and mining industries stand to lose tremendously if the truth about global warming becomes accepted by American society. As the tobacco industry invested millions in keeping its deadly secret, so also have the oil, coal, gas, and mining industries attempted to hide and discredit the link between CO2 emissions and a warming earth. They have funded, promoted, and used as witnesses a handful of greenhouse skeptics, who have widely and loudly proclaimed that global warming is a myth."
Here is a mainline anti-global warming site. How long does it take to ferret out the who is doing it and if they have an agenda. Is this the future of dis/information???
http://www.globalwarming.org/
How can we combat disinformation campaigns in science with a puplic increasingly ignorant of scientific process (scientific method, peer review)?
To back up the parent poster, consider the following:
We are unable to predict the electron density at a specific point in a a metal wire, at a given time.
Yet, we _are_ able to predict the total behaviour of electricty in a wire. Given that electricity is motion of electrons, how does this arise?
Well, this is a common situation, where models of behaviour at different scales are related only through a very small number of parameters.
For example, we can predict the magnetic behaviour of a system from just two parameters (for an binary antiferromagnet), yet to calculate the behaviour of the electrons (which cause said magnetism) takes of the order of 100 or so (and about 15 orders of magnitude longer).
So for practical calculations on magnatic things, you don't need to do the quantum mechanical calculations, just the much simpler ones.
Sure, technically these are inaccurate. In my experience, we're off by 0.001%, and by about 3-5% in the second derivative. That's so accurate, that there are very many additional cases where the calculations show two possible results, and the experiments arn't accurate enough to tell these apart. Or, in plain terms, good enough.
I use magnetism and electricity as examples here, because if these agrregate models didn't work, then the computer that you are using to read these works also wouldn't work. That's a pretty solid argument for the usefulness of these types of models.
Brining this back to weather and climate, the weather researchers call 'weather' individual and specific data points, like cloud cover, rainfall on a day, and so on. 'Climate' is things like total rainfall per year, average temperature in a month - much broader, less specific information.
Be careful of the quality of software. In the 80s there was a lot of hype about climate modeling based on a simple planetary weather program. The software represented the atmosphere as a single vertical profile of physical conditions. When modelers plugged in the post-nuclear dust clouds it prodicted huge temperature drops. However, more sophisticated "3D" models thta inorporated oceans and continents and wind currents found much smaller effects. These defects didnt really slow down biased scientists who kept on promoting their political agendas nonetheless.