Rubber Duckies For Global Warming Research

The Wall Street Journal has a look at global warming research using rubber duckies. The toys have been employed in tracking ocean currents since 1992; but recently NASA robotics expert Alberto Behar released 90 yellow rubber ducks into the melt water flowing down a chasm in a Greenland glacier. "Each duck was imprinted with an email address and, in three languages, the offer of a reward. If all goes well, Dr. Behar hopes that one day they will emerge 30 miles or so away at the glacier's edge in the open water of Disko Bay near Ilulissat, bobbing brightly amid the icebergs north of the Arctic Circle, each one a significant clue to just how warming temperatures may speed the glacier's slide to the sea."

Comments

Re:NASA's shoddy (fraudulent?) work

[Ambitwistor]

Let's publish the rubber duckies for Global Warming Research and ignore Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA headed by James Hansen which published falsified data.

I hate to break it to you, but making a clerical mistake is not the same as "falsifying data".

This is simply another proof that the mainstream media is no longer interested in facts or reporting unbiased news

Uh, no, it's a sign that quickly-fixed data reporting errors which have no impact on any major climate studies are not front page news.

I also hate to break it to you, but minor errors are found and fixed in scientific data sets all the time. It's only news when the data error is the basis for some important scientific conclusion. (That has been the case, for instance, with the XBT ocean thermometers and the UAH satellite data.)

Your post is a prime example of how ridiculously polarized the global warming debate has become. You're grasping at straws, man. A mistake in two month's data reporting, which has nothing to do with James Hansen personally, is not a global scientific conspiracy nor a disproof of global warming.

just like during the election of the Anointed One

Anointed One? Yeah, you really sound like an impartial arbiter of scientific accuracy. You might want to tone down the hypocrisy while whinging about "bias".

Re:NASA's shoddy (fraudulent?) work

[izomiac]

Clerical mistakes can happen, but in this case it's essentially falsifying data just without the intent. If something unexpected happens then one should look for errors first. Instead, it seems like this researcher just assumed that it was more support for a theory he liked. Little things like this can add up across various studies, leading to a theory being unduly strong (self perpetuating). In any case, it's pretty shoddy work to let an obvious outlier make it into a study.

how ridiculously polarized the global warming debate has become

Quite true. Personally I've become nearly apathetic upon the realization that both sides exaggerate to the point of dishonesty. Well, really it's the extremists on either side that do the lying, but since the issue is so polarized there's the illusion (perhaps becoming reality) that they speak for their respective groups.