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Captain Bligh's Logbooks To Yield Climate Bounty
Pickens writes "The BBC reports that researchers are digitizing the captains' logs from the voyages of Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle, Captain Cook from HMS Discovery, Captain Bligh from The Bounty, and 300 other 18th and 19th century ships' logbooks to provide historical climate records for modern-day climate researchers who will use the meteorological data to build up a picture of weather patterns in the world at the beginning of the industrial era. The researchers are cross-referencing the data with historical records for crop failures, droughts and storms and will compare it with data for the modern era in order to predict similar events in the future. 'The observations from the logbooks on wind force and weather are astonishingly good and often better than modern logbooks,' says Climatologist Dr. Dennis Wheeler from the University of Sunderland. 'Of course the sailors had to be conscientious. The thought that you could hit a reef was a great incentive to get your observations absolutely right!' The logbooks will be online next year at the UK's National Archives."
The mutineers were really the scum of the earth. They ended up knifing each other to death on the island where they settled. Bligh on the other hand made the most spectacular sailing feat of all time in order to get to Fiji, in a small boat with hardly any provisions. (The accusations against him btw are largely based on legend, not fact.)
If the logbooks don't support human-induced climate change, the media will ignore them.
Don't you DARE call it "science" when skepticism is met with derision.
I'm sure that this is going to devolve (pun intended) into a discussion about global warming (an argument often put against global warming is that we just don't have enough data to prove it exists). Regardless to how people feel about said subject, I hope you guys focus on how cool it is that we're preserving old information from paper-rot.
didn't the little ice age end last century? that means the world is supposed to be warming unless the ice age temperatures are considered normal?
We need transcripts of the logbooks of 16th century pirates and merchants, to accurately measure the temperature when pirates abounded.
Global climate change is true. Even if it's not true causing pollution is not good.
Hopefully these logs will provide support for global climate change but if not it could be argued that reporting techniques of the time were crude.</quote>
I like this train of thought. You can't lose. "Hey, if this supports our theory, then it can be hailed as definitive proof. If it conflicts with our theory, well, they were wrong, and it'll be easy to discredit."
It common knowledge that nothing on this planet ever changes. Most certainly not the temperature or weather!
Of course, three thousand years ago, the Sahara was a savannah and not the desert it is today. But we all know that's just the product of oil companies' propaganda.
The climate on shore is, well, far from dreary. Safe to say all hands finding no restrictions to exploration of terrain. Clear, smooth and moist in all the right places.
I see what you did there!
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
There's little hope that the log books had accurate temperature readings, but the climate change could be inferred from things like snow depths on fiji. In fact I'm pretty sure the average snowfall on fiji has remained pretty constant in the last couple centuries, potentially refuting this whole global warming thing.
Sheldon
Captain Bligh's log for April 28, 1789 contains only this scrawled entry:
"I'll see them all hanging from the highest yardarm in the British Fleet!"
I hit a reference to this in the Analog magazine I'm currently reading:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
Entitled "Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?" it reviews the accuracy of the current US surface temperature measurement network and finds it woefully lacking for the sort of analysis that results in things like 0.7 degree changes over decades.
As a quick summary, there are the following issues with the temperature measurement methodology:
1. The measuring statements are often either surrounded by asphalt or in the air path of air conditioning exhaust or other hot air.
2. Data points are often not collected, and the missing points are created by interpolation.
3. Exterior finish specification changed from whitewash to latex paint, and that change has a significant impact on measurement results.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
I think what the climate change people are saying is that the movement from world cold to world less cold is faster then in our past. Maybe it is the other way from what the dinosaurs had. I do not know why they care so much about CO2. We need to deal with the other pollution 1st.
The thought that you could hit a reef was a great incentive to get your observations absolutely right
And filters out the data of the people who got it wrong!
Of COURSE human activities have an impact on CO2 levels. It's just that, compared to NATURAL causes, the anthropogenic factors are relatively small. Primitive "slash and burn" agriculture probably released FAR more CO2 than our more "refined" techniques do today. Trees? North America probably has more forested acres now, under cultivation, that EVER grew wild. I agree that we need to reduce CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels, but I would further suggest that petroleum is too valuable as feedstocks for chemical processes to be wantonly incinerated for fuel. We should be heating our homes with electricity - from NUKES! Or solar-power satellites.
Too bad it's of limited use. Day 175: No breadfruit.
Day 176: No breadfruit.
Day 177: Breadfruit.
Day 178: No breadfruit.
Have any of these climatologists considered climate change is a natural cycle of the planet?
Why... no! No they haven't! Thank you for bringing that to their attention.
How astute of you to see what none of the several thousand PhDs working the subject for the last few decades have noticed. I'm sure they'll get to work on your brilliant insight right away.
(I know, you want me at your next party...)
... left something to be desired as far as the morale of his crew was concerned.
Have gnu, will travel.
Responding only cause you got modded up
Of course they considered it, the ice records to which you refer were constructed by climatologists. I mean... it was their idea.
The evidence doesn't show that, it shows temperature increases out pacing co2 but the co2 increases first according to ice cores. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Co2-temperature-plot.svg
Calling it a psuedoscience is just name calling.
A super volcano has a massive cooling effect, they throw up a ton, many tons of sediment and global cooling gasses into the atmosphere this basically shadows the earth and cools the earth, krakatoa is a good example. Next when volcanoes produce a lot of co2 they do not produce more than mankind does and they don't produce a lot of other greenhouse gasses we do. We make 120x the CO2 vs all the volcanoes (including underwater). http://environment.about.com/od/greenhouseeffect/a/volcano-gas.htm
Egotistical? Hell I bet if we set our minds to it mankind could cut down every tree on the planet in a half dozen years. We've wrapped the planet in wires. Built cities so wide spread that at night (on the dark side..) when you look at the planet from space you clearly see lights across the whole damn thing. We could easily extinct almost any animal we choose in a year. Saying humans can't have an impact because the world is so big is very 1800s of you but I assure you it isn't still true.
Propaganda? When is the last time 1000s of scientists got together and lied? Hell pretty much ALL scientists (over 95%) in agreement. NEVER.
Hmmm, my analysis of The Odyssy (written in the 9th century BC), suggests that the climate in the Mediteranean was pretty much the same as today while sea levels have gone down dramatically in some areas and up in others.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Do you seriously think that hasn't been considered? Seriously? Do you seriously think that climatologists all over the world are so mind-numbingly stupid that that hasn't occurred to anyone? Yes, that has been addressed, time and again. We are *worsening* and *accelerating* the warming. No one has said that climate never ever changed until humans screwed stuff up. The only way you can ask that question is if you've only gotten your information from right-wing BS sources like Beck.
The idea is that we are having a negative impact on our environment, and that we should try to minimize that as much as possible. No one said we can master global climate and roll back the clock. The simple acknowledgement that human action can degrade the environment in which we live is not egotistical--it's pretty much the opposite of that. It's not arrogant to say we have the capacity to damage our environment. If you think we can have no impact on the environment, then sit in a closed garage with a car running for a few hours. Should you turn off the car and open the garage door, or would it be arrogant to think you can avoid killing yourself by cutting back on the pollution you're pouring into your immediate environment?
No, they're all thick as posts. So dumb, several types of rocks have more intelligence. They are so woefully short of understanding their instruments, they regularly burn down their labs. They have so little knowledge of the animals they study, they leave out saucers of milk for the lions. Heck, most of the vulcanologists think the red oozy stuff is badly made jello!
And they thank you for pointing out that you, a mere Slashdot reader, have managed to understand more about global climate change in five minutes of careful study (six, if you include the fox news commercials) then they've learned in ten years of careful data collection and vigorous debate. Wow! What a champ you are!
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
Agreed that the GP is using faulty logic. However, "Even if it's not true causing pollution is not good" is something worth studying further.
Oceans fix CO2 and plants metabolize CO2 to O2 (well-known facts). CO2 is a greenhouse gas of sorts (known fact). Humans pump out a not-insignificant amount of CO2 through industrial processes (known fact). Whether we're messing up the climate or not is something we can never really prove, either way; rather, it's a question of whether investing the money in improving industrial processes to be more efficient in their recycling of CO2 production. I think the whole climate change propaganda is missing the point on this.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
No need to go back that far, just look at the first IPCC assessment report issued by the UN. Then look at the second, third, and subsequent. The initial report concluded that natural causes are to blame. Then read what Nils-Axel MÃrner, the leading Swedish paleogeophysicist has to say about the UN fudging the numbers in later reports. Then read the recent IPCC report, and note that the #1 concern is cow farts. Thus conclude it's all about bullshit.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Go read a book.
I read quite a few actually, but there's one book I'd particularly like to read, namely the one you are citing to establish your claim that the Pitcairn Islands have seen 250 years of continuous child rape. Or was that merely defamatory? (And yes I'm familiar with the more recent events).
Seeing Mel Gibson as Christian, while I'm sure it gave you a stiffy, is not an accurate portrayal.
What do you base this certainty on? I'm sorry, I don't share your homo-erotic attraction to Mel Gibson. I haven't actually seen the movie you are referring to, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. But look Bligh was not the first, nor would he be the last captain to suffer mutiny. It's his subsquent career that reveals the full extent of his ineptitude. And once familiar with his failings, that particular mutiny will be seen in a different light.
As far as the rebellion, your own link provides plenty of information indicating that success on the part of Bligh was nearly impossible given how many factors were stacked against him.
You're right. Bligh was never going to achieve what he sent out to do. He simply lacked any political or interpersonal skills. To carry out his ambitions would have required both of these in abundance. Apparently he also lacked any realistic understanding of his limitations or even the ability to learn from his past mistakes in mishandling command. He was a pretty nifty sailor though, it's a shame they let him anywhere near any position that required people skills. What legacy (apart from the street bearing his name) did he leave behind in NSW?
Compare and contrast Bligh's litany of failure with the tenure his successor Macquarie who eventually was recalled because London became alarmed at his being too successful and, not to mention, independent (a la Douglas MacArthur in Japan).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Some of the old data can be of great quality - so these exercises can be highly useful.
A couple of decades ago, I worked - as a student intern - at British institution. A question came in on wave heights in the North Sea ... a firm was wondering about engineering tolerances for oil rigs and such. I had to go to the data: much from the last few decades was already computerized and I did a quite stats analysis - and was surprised at how many BIG waves were observed. This would be very costly to the rig builders ... so I was told to go and re-sift the recent data and dig up older data. The recent data sift yielded the same output. The old data ... going back to the 1700s ... showed the same statistical patterns (so long as you squinted at it a bit - the responsible sailors either were not at sea and certainly were not taking measurements in big storms, or didn't get to survive). The outcome was - as I recall - that in this particular spot of the North Sea, you'd see a wave (or cluster of waves) over 40' high every two or so months.
The reason for the tight correlation, of course, is that the data was being taken the same way: sextants and the like, with data literally tabulated by hand: and - registered vessels had someone on board whose job it was to take and log the data - it wasn't something done ad hoc. The systemic errors were consistent for two-plus centuries. Data since the 1980s is automated and since the 1990s is from satellite maps.
Oddly enough yes. You haven't trumped the entire field of meteorological sciences, sorry.
Historically rapid temperature changes (in geological times) have coincided with significant events or more specifically extinction level events such as a super volcano or asteroid impact. The temperature of this planet does not vary rapidly in the space of 200 years on its own. a heating or cooling event occuring naturally should take thousands of years, not hundreds.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
They should search all the old maps to locate the sea monsters and Atlantis.
I know Dr Wheeler; at one point he was reported as researching the weather and ice patterns leading up to the Titanic's sinking. Nothing came of this, and I did a study myself.
My web domain.
Why is the Beagle only noted for Darwin when the other Captains are mentioned by name ? Robert Fitzroy was the captain of the Beagle on Darwins voyage, and it is his logs that are being digitized.
How about you produce some quotes to prove that? I say you are lying.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
... the logbooks will be online next year at the UK's National AAARRRchives!
This mixture is probably better represented in Brazil today than the US, so it gives a sneak peek into what humans will look like in the future.
This will probably happen unless someone or group releases some "race" specific/tagged bioweapon. Of course we could easily see an entire human "race" bioweapon that would be near unstoppable, say it had a very long incubation period.
I think if we do make it 500 years civilization will be pretty neat though, just judging by the last century of development. It's a big "if" right now though I think.
Yawn!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
My Babylon
This reminds me a lot of something one of my grad-school professors did: he looked at Lewis & Clark's compass & sextant measurements to re-construct the magnetic field declination in the interior continental US ~200 years ago: http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/13/10/ they were remarkably accurate at dead reckoning direction & distance.
carefully selected evidence
If the entire AGW is built on carefully selected evidence, then you should have no problem providing evidence for that from the preponderance of literature out there.
Try to find a single peer-reviewed article published since 2000 that unequivocally uses carefully selected evidence, and has not been subsequently corrected. That would be a very instructive exercise for you, instead of merely parroting what other people have said to be true.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Yes you are correct that the climate has changed plenty of times in the past. The question is: How do you know that? Let me answer for you: Some dedicated researchers figured it out for you, told you, and you believed them. As you should, since they know what they're talking about.
Do you realize how much overlap there is between the people saying the thing you automatically believe, and the people saying the thing you automatically don't?
Fuck "common knowledge". Climatologists sure as fuck are aware that the climate has changed before without human intervention. Yet they have ample reason (as in evidence) to suggest this change is different, and those reasons even take into account previous change. Maybe you should tell one of them how the Sahara was a savannah, and therefore anthropogenic global climate change isn't occurring, because that's such a good argument!
So yeah. You won a fight against an imaginary layman less educated than yourself. Congratulations. Of course your implied counter-logic of "climate change happened before, therefore this time isn't our fault" is equally flawed.
If you get rid of the "common knowledge" aspect of your post, you're basically saying "Scientists say X which is true, and that obviously means the scientists who say Y are wrong." Except the scientists who say X don't agree with that conclusion. I wonder why? Oh yes, because it's bullshit. Your knowledge is no better than that of the strawman you burned.
The enemies of Democracy are
You know the British sailors were called "Limeys" because they drank mojitos made with lime!
So it should go like this:
Day 176: No breadfruit. Got Rum!
Day 177: Breadfruit. Got Rum!
Day 178: No breadfruit. Out of Rum!
Day 178.5: MUTINY!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I don't think you need to link realclimate.org, because if I'm not mistaken, the OP was generated by a script that grabs random misconceptions from realclimate.org and strings them together. Or the same was done manually. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
I think you're mistaking realclimate.org for some other site. realclimate.org specifically refutes the inane misconceptions that are out there from AGW deniers.
My Babylon
I think you're mistaking realclimate.org for some other site. realclimate.org specifically refutes the inane misconceptions that are out there from AGW deniers.
Nope, I'm well aware. That was my whole point, that realclimate.org is basically a list of well-refuted misconceptions. So by creating a post by stringing those together, you're creating a post that is pre-refuted.
Even though my "theory" is just a joke, I don't think it's an accident that at least when I last looked at it, the OP was modded funny. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
Dear Fellow Human,
You have shown incredible disrespect to a large number of hard working professional people. If any one of these people came to your work place and mocked you in this manner you would become quite upset. Please consider the following. The basic principles involved in actually understanding climate are not difficult. If you are capable of high school math and are willing to accept a few results from thermodynamics and physics in general you can actually do the math yourself. A simple model of radiative equilibrium is actually something you can write down and solve with pencil and paper, yes even including an atmosphere with "greenhouse" gases. After that, yes, it does become more complex. It turns out that the climate system contains many interconnected processes that respond to forcing in feedback loops. Computers do become necessary. However, the physics and mathematics behind it all are accessible. Please do yourself the favour of using your mind a little. You might be surprised how useful a tool it is.
Let's see. Take a bunch of guys, sail them around the world to a paradise island full of naked women who screw like others say "Hello", with sunshine, good food, and pristine waters... Then tell them they've all gotta give it up and go back to working their butts off like slaves on a trip home to smelly england where fishwives throw crap onto the streets. Yeah, he was a real genius ;)
Wait I can't keep up. Is it global cooling? Is it global warming or is it climate change? Is climate change mean it is getting cooler or warmer. Does not climate always change over a long period of time. Boy the chicken littles have it all covered how can anyone disagree. Is their a group advocating for climate stagnation where nothing happens. Just clean up the air for its own sake and stop attempting to use scare tactics to extract the maximum taxation possible. You all know the monies will be used for some cockamamie scheme or to enrich the politicos. C'mon you know its all an attempt to enrich someone other then those taxed...