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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.)
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.
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.
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
And would you ever admit that you're wrong if the logbooks do support it? We already see from the tone of your statement that you've already decided that there is no climate change.
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of evidence, that's called denial.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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.
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!
Too bad it's of limited use. Day 175: No breadfruit.
Day 176: No breadfruit.
Day 177: Breadfruit.
Day 178: No breadfruit.
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of evidence, that's called denial.
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of carefully selected evidence, that's called denial.
There, fixed that for ya!
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
For the last decade there has been no global warming, at all, while producing more CO2 than ever.
1. 10 years of noisy data is not significant enough to reverse the significance of the warming trend over the entire instrumental record. 2. The last decade as shown a warming trend of 0.11C/decade.
Scientifically, this _necessarily_ throws global warming into serious doubt.
So long as science relies on whacky stuff like statistics, no it doesn't.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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!
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What source is putting 2005 at a higher temperature than 1998?
When you read the article linked to you will see that the issue here is not whether two selected years are hotter and colder than each other (eg. 1850 vs 2005), it's whether the decadal trend is rising, steady or falling. Do you already understand why even if the trend over the last decade were falling (it wasn't) that would not necessarily be significant when viewed against all of the data from the instrumental, a fortiori the extra-instrumental, record?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke