1. Mann providing access to his data is irrelevant. Everyone is free to gather the same data themselves. In fact, if one were truly afraid of some wort of bias by Mann's data gathering, then that is the only responsible thing to do.
2. The problem with the 1998 work wasn't with the data collection, it was the statistical analysis of the presented data (i.e. math). Fact: If you bothered to do any research about this, you would have known this.
The thing is though, I don't know any company, let alone a university research lab, that's making outrageous claims about what could be achieved today. It's always at least 10 years down the road.
Now excuse me, I've got to go read up on all the the groundbreaking work being done on space elevators. I think there's something that can climb a nylon rope 10 feet now. What a wonderful time to be alive!
In all honesty, it's not terribly surprising that both Mann and McIntyre failed to get their statistics correct. Neither are statisticians, and in all honesty, a lot of the mathematical analysis by non-mathemticians are just plug and chug with some technique that's been passed down and explained cargo-cult style.
It comes down to that the thought that Mann in 1998 got his math wrong when performing principle component analysis over the data, particularly while using Bristlecone Pine cores. (Which I have to say is an amazing organism. They live at least 5,000 years. Wow. Just wow.) The 2008 Mann paper does two different analyses, one with tree cores, and without. The hockey stick remains in both.
Mann should have given McIntyre the data, which he started to do, but then stopped for some reason. Why, I don't know. I suspect there was some personality clash, but that's just speculation on my part. Just release the data. Who cares? If someone wants to examine the samples directly, then let them if they real credentials (i.e. a PhD in climatetology or some other related field). It's just impractical to give access to every Joe down at the bar, samples can be damaged. It's a scientific resource worth millions, not an exhibit at a hands-on museum.
Perhaps the most interesting for you would be this link than contains links to the Mann's data, and statistics source code to analyze the data correctly. You just have to download R.
PNAS is open access, and the Nature article linked to in this comment comes from Mann's homepage, so you should be able to read them both. My original link to MBH98 was to Nature's site, and they want you to pay $32 to read the article if you don't already have a license.
Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.
You mean it took you this long to figure out that there really aren't that many climetologists in the world, and that they all go to the same conferences?
The only question is why did he choose the words "hide" as opposed to "correct" and "decline" as opposed to "error" which the skeptics (of this breach) are trying to imply, that "hide the decline" has the same meaning as "correct the error". I would argue to everyone, that the word hide implies falsification or concealment. So the author was knowingly manipulatin data to conceal the truth. Where the truth is some statistic that indicates there has been a lowering of the trend.
Oh please. Like in your private emails and informal talks with your colleagues are super precise with your words. Next you'll be telling me that when you said, "Jim fucked the code," you literally meant that Jim printed up the code, drilled a whole in the middle of the stack papers, and proceeded to penetrate it with his penis, or that when you said that "the server blew up," you literally meant that the computer experienced a Baysplosion.
Why didn't he use "error" instead of "decline?" Easy. He knows what the error is. The error goes down ("declines").
You're trying to hold on to your preconceived notion of some sort of grand conspiracy in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
Actually that's not funny. After all, the pigs already use infrared sensors to search homes without a warrant looking to bust up harmless pot farms. Maybe they'll add cool televisions to their targets when they invade our privies.
Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.
This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.
Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:
Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time-dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) ad 1400.
Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".
Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.
The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, "MBH98" hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects. We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular "hockey stick" shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.
So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."
Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy, named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly
I agree, unison is great. I used unison for several years to sync machines. It worked great for linux-linux, and seemed to mostly work for linux-mac/mac-linux syncs as well. The main problem was with resource forks causing a bunch of._foo files, but there's not too much you can do about that if you're copying data from HFS+ to something else. It's been a while since I used unison (I gave up my desktop, and now only use a laptop.), but seems like unison has the ability to actually merge files by fire off something like meld to resolve conflicts. That's a big win.
I agree that there's no need for new regulations, except to transition the power grid en masse, but since the utilities have been wanting this for a while now, it certainly seems like this sort of transition would move naturally. The only thing would need to be worked out would be technical details, but those are easily taken care of.
I disagree that there wouldn't need to be investment. The current meters don't have anyway of knowing what the current price is. There would need to be someway of sending that information to the customers.
I have a feeling that it will happen. Just no time soon. After all, HDTV finally got deployed after what? 15 years? There's money involved with a smart grid. The real question is if the US will get a smart grid early or late.
If recent US history is any guide, I fully expect the US to get a smart grid deployed 5 to 10 years after every other industrialized nation has one.
True, but if you want to seriously impact demand, you have to inform and encourage people at scale. Depending on everyone to step up and do this on their own, just doesn't work to practice.
It's not a large amount of data. It's just the current demand at that instance. In order for customers to be able to regulate (i.e. shift) demand, they need to know when the power was needed and what price it was charged. Simply saying "You owe us $x," doesn't really give you enough information to shift demand effectively. Receiving a simple total, like you proposed, is exactly what we have now.
The smart grid off peak scheduling tricks have always relied on customer controlled technology. The idea was always to have the real smarts being in every appliance in the home. The smart meter would inform the appliances what the current price of electricity was, and your refrigerator would decide whether or not to cycle for a particular hour based on that information.
Even the big bad profiling of the different appliances would be useful. I'd like to know that my refrigerator or air conditioner is costing me $x, and that if I upgraded to a smarter and more efficient model, my costs would go down to $y. Right now it's guess work.
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Well yes. And it's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with it. Fox has long been known to be biased from both left and right (e.g. Jonah Goldberg). Is it awkward and troubling for a media outlet to be singled out from an administration? Sure. At the same time though, it's not exactly that FoxNews has been on the up and up. It never was. Even when it was launched it was heavily promoted on conservative talk radio. I'm sorry, but when I hear "It's fair and balanced!" from Rush Limbaugh, I'm suspicious. Now if this endorsement was coming from the Columbia School of Journalism or the Annenberg Political Fact Check, or the Pulitzer Prize winning St Petersberg Times' Political Fact Check, then yes. But an unabashedly biased source, no thanks.
Interesting this (parent) got modded troll but not the one saying how it must suck to have such shitty vision.
Well I can answer that. There's an ongoing campaign by some segment of mods to mod down ever single post of mine. (Thus my.sig) They've been doing it for a month now. Don't take my word for it. Read my comment history. Every single one, regardless of content has been modded down by griefers.
I expect this to be modded down as well. Yet, I still have "excellent" karma.
It's going to take than some punks to drive me off of a website I've read for 11 years.
Not everyone has a problem that is so easily remedied. The people I've seen that need these things already have inch thick glasses.
Don't be so cavalier about something when you don't know the specifics. Because you're comment sounds like some jackass telling someone in a wheelchair that there doesn't need to be a chair lift, because "the stairs are right there."
If there's a genuine medical need for special equipment like a larger monitor then of course it's good practice to provide that where it's economically viable to do so.
"Good practice" and "economic viability" don't enter into the equation. It's the law.As it should be. You can't simply say "Well that costs money, so no." That's unlawful discrimination. Now not everything can or needs to be accommodated, but easily rectifiable things must. Even if you think that it's "too expensive," it's the employer's responsibility to search out equally effective, less costly options, and "must also consider whether funding for an accommodation is available from an outside source, such as a vocational rehabilitation agency, and if the cost of providing the accommodation can be offset by state or federal tax credits or deductions. You must also give the applicant or employee with a disability the opportunity to provide the accommodation or pay for the portion of the accommodation that constitutes an undue hardship."
But that's after they've sought medical advice and can support a need for special treatement. The reason you need to worry about other staff asking 'Why does Bill get a freaki'n big screen TV?!' is because you don't have a good explanation for it. That should tell you evrything about the situation.
You do have a good explanation for it: "Bill can't see."
Honestly, if you're worrying more about some pathetic gossiper versus your responsibilities under the law, and a civil society, you have more problems than having to make a CostCo run.
Also keep in mind that, unlike France, China was never defeated, in no small part due to the fact that the civil war was effectively put on hold to defeat a common foreign threat. Even the UK was weak until there was US intervention with lend-lease and of course the actual sending of troops. Without that foreign assistance, it's unlikely how much longer Britain could have held out against Germany.
All I'm saying is that you shouldn't overestimate the strength of one Ally and underestimate the strength of another, while simultaneously ignoring almost half of the founding permanent members.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Mann providing access to his data is irrelevant. Everyone is free to gather the same data themselves. In fact, if one were truly afraid of some wort of bias by Mann's data gathering, then that is the only responsible thing to do.
2. The problem with the 1998 work wasn't with the data collection, it was the statistical analysis of the presented data (i.e. math). Fact: If you bothered to do any research about this, you would have known this.
The thing is though, I don't know any company, let alone a university research lab, that's making outrageous claims about what could be achieved today. It's always at least 10 years down the road.
Now excuse me, I've got to go read up on all the the groundbreaking work being done on space elevators. I think there's something that can climb a nylon rope 10 feet now. What a wonderful time to be alive!
Well releasing a HOWTO in manga form will surely eliminate that. I can hear it now, "What? It's not read from right to left? Worst manga ever!" ;)
In all honesty, it's not terribly surprising that both Mann and McIntyre failed to get their statistics correct. Neither are statisticians, and in all honesty, a lot of the mathematical analysis by non-mathemticians are just plug and chug with some technique that's been passed down and explained cargo-cult style.
McIntyre's paper (23 pages)
It comes down to that the thought that Mann in 1998 got his math wrong when performing principle component analysis over the data, particularly while using Bristlecone Pine cores. (Which I have to say is an amazing organism. They live at least 5,000 years. Wow. Just wow.) The 2008 Mann paper does two different analyses, one with tree cores, and without. The hockey stick remains in both.
Mann should have given McIntyre the data, which he started to do, but then stopped for some reason. Why, I don't know. I suspect there was some personality clash, but that's just speculation on my part. Just release the data. Who cares? If someone wants to examine the samples directly, then let them if they real credentials (i.e. a PhD in climatetology or some other related field). It's just impractical to give access to every Joe down at the bar, samples can be damaged. It's a scientific resource worth millions, not an exhibit at a hands-on museum.
The conclusions of all the investigations was that Mann didn't do PCA right, like how McIntyre said, but McIntyre didn't do it right either.
Perhaps the most interesting for you would be this link than contains links to the Mann's data, and statistics source code to analyze the data correctly. You just have to download R.
Nice try. I can cherry pick as well.
Conservatives Rehnquist and Kennedy siding with with power against the the weak as usual.
Liberals Breyer and Ginsburg defend the people against the powerful as usual.
Face it. This was not your typical Right-Left divide.
Sorry about that.
The original MBH98 "Hockey Stick Paper" is "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859
The latest work, correcting for the concerns brought up in 2003 is "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia" (Mann et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. USA 105, pgs 13252–13257; 2008)
PNAS is open access, and the Nature article linked to in this comment comes from Mann's homepage, so you should be able to read them both. My original link to MBH98 was to Nature's site, and they want you to pay $32 to read the article if you don't already have a license.
If you really cared, you'd read the paper. It's linked to above.
This is perhaps the best satire I've ever seen on /.
+infinity
Well, I think the big thing that this data-dump shows is that it's actually a small group of tightly knit e-mail connected individuals that are driving a whole lot of the AGW effort.
You mean it took you this long to figure out that there really aren't that many climetologists in the world, and that they all go to the same conferences?
That's called a research community.
The only question is why did he choose the words "hide" as opposed to "correct" and "decline" as opposed to "error" which the skeptics (of this breach) are trying to imply, that "hide the decline" has the same meaning as "correct the error". I would argue to everyone, that the word hide implies falsification or concealment. So the author was knowingly manipulatin data to conceal the truth. Where the truth is some statistic that indicates there has been a lowering of the trend.
Oh please. Like in your private emails and informal talks with your colleagues are super precise with your words. Next you'll be telling me that when you said, "Jim fucked the code," you literally meant that Jim printed up the code, drilled a whole in the middle of the stack papers, and proceeded to penetrate it with his penis, or that when you said that "the server blew up," you literally meant that the computer experienced a Baysplosion.
Why didn't he use "error" instead of "decline?" Easy. He knows what the error is. The error goes down ("declines").
You're trying to hold on to your preconceived notion of some sort of grand conspiracy in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
Actually that's not funny. After all, the pigs already use infrared sensors to search homes without a warrant looking to bust up harmless pot farms. Maybe they'll add cool televisions to their targets when they invade our privies.
Not since 2001.
Since you didn't bother to do any research before tossing around allegations of lying, nor bothering to figure out what exactly "Mike's Nature trick" actually was, let me.
A quick google search of "michael nature global temperature" points to : "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries" by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes from Nature 392, 779-787 (23 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/33859
This was a a seminal article in the climatetology community. Mann et al took tree core samples and estimated the global temperature by measuring the spacing between tree rings. (Big rings are caused by rapid growth, which is in turn caused by warmer temperatures. Small rings, slow growth, cooler temperatures.) The fact that tree ring sizes are dependent on temperature has been a long established fact.
Let me now quote the abstract of this article in full:
Mann et al tried to create an accurate record of the global temperature by augmenting the estimated temperatures from the tree ring data with actual measured temperatures from 1981 and 1961 since these are actual known temperatures. This is known as "the MBH98 reconstruction".
Now hang on. Here's where your allegation of "systematic suppression of data" falls all apart.
In 2003, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published (*gasp*) Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, whose abstract reads:
So the worldwide conspiracy of climatetologists breaks down when they behave like scientists, and try to duplicate each others' work, fail to, and publish corrections, and warnings saying, "Hey! You this data set we've all been using? It might be wrong."
Thus begins The Hockey Stick Controversy, named after the shape of the curve at the very end of MBH98 reconstruction. Far from being suppressed, it's investigated quite thoroughly
I agree, unison is great. I used unison for several years to sync machines. It worked great for linux-linux, and seemed to mostly work for linux-mac/mac-linux syncs as well. The main problem was with resource forks causing a bunch of ._foo files, but there's not too much you can do about that if you're copying data from HFS+ to something else. It's been a while since I used unison (I gave up my desktop, and now only use a laptop.), but seems like unison has the ability to actually merge files by fire off something like meld to resolve conflicts. That's a big win.
Are you too scared to post with your real name griefer?
I agree that there's no need for new regulations, except to transition the power grid en masse, but since the utilities have been wanting this for a while now, it certainly seems like this sort of transition would move naturally. The only thing would need to be worked out would be technical details, but those are easily taken care of.
I disagree that there wouldn't need to be investment. The current meters don't have anyway of knowing what the current price is. There would need to be someway of sending that information to the customers.
I have a feeling that it will happen. Just no time soon. After all, HDTV finally got deployed after what? 15 years? There's money involved with a smart grid. The real question is if the US will get a smart grid early or late.
If recent US history is any guide, I fully expect the US to get a smart grid deployed 5 to 10 years after every other industrialized nation has one.
True, but if you want to seriously impact demand, you have to inform and encourage people at scale. Depending on everyone to step up and do this on their own, just doesn't work to practice.
It's not a large amount of data. It's just the current demand at that instance. In order for customers to be able to regulate (i.e. shift) demand, they need to know when the power was needed and what price it was charged. Simply saying "You owe us $x," doesn't really give you enough information to shift demand effectively. Receiving a simple total, like you proposed, is exactly what we have now.
The smart grid off peak scheduling tricks have always relied on customer controlled technology. The idea was always to have the real smarts being in every appliance in the home. The smart meter would inform the appliances what the current price of electricity was, and your refrigerator would decide whether or not to cycle for a particular hour based on that information.
Even the big bad profiling of the different appliances would be useful. I'd like to know that my refrigerator or air conditioner is costing me $x, and that if I upgraded to a smarter and more efficient model, my costs would go down to $y. Right now it's guess work.
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Well yes. And it's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with it. Fox has long been known to be biased from both left and right (e.g. Jonah Goldberg). Is it awkward and troubling for a media outlet to be singled out from an administration? Sure. At the same time though, it's not exactly that FoxNews has been on the up and up. It never was. Even when it was launched it was heavily promoted on conservative talk radio. I'm sorry, but when I hear "It's fair and balanced!" from Rush Limbaugh, I'm suspicious. Now if this endorsement was coming from the Columbia School of Journalism or the Annenberg Political Fact Check, or the Pulitzer Prize winning St Petersberg Times' Political Fact Check, then yes. But an unabashedly biased source, no thanks.
See what I mean? I already emailed scuttlemonkey about this.
Interesting this (parent) got modded troll but not the one saying how it must suck to have such shitty vision.
Well I can answer that. There's an ongoing campaign by some segment of mods to mod down ever single post of mine. (Thus my .sig) They've been doing it for a month now. Don't take my word for it. Read my comment history. Every single one, regardless of content has been modded down by griefers.
I expect this to be modded down as well. Yet, I still have "excellent" karma.
It's going to take than some punks to drive me off of a website I've read for 11 years.
Not everyone has a problem that is so easily remedied. The people I've seen that need these things already have inch thick glasses.
Don't be so cavalier about something when you don't know the specifics. Because you're comment sounds like some jackass telling someone in a wheelchair that there doesn't need to be a chair lift, because "the stairs are right there."
If there's a genuine medical need for special equipment like a larger monitor then of course it's good practice to provide that where it's economically viable to do so.
"Good practice" and "economic viability" don't enter into the equation. It's the law. As it should be. You can't simply say "Well that costs money, so no." That's unlawful discrimination. Now not everything can or needs to be accommodated, but easily rectifiable things must. Even if you think that it's "too expensive," it's the employer's responsibility to search out equally effective, less costly options, and "must also consider whether funding for an accommodation is available from an outside source, such as a vocational rehabilitation agency, and if the cost of providing the accommodation can be offset by state or federal tax credits or deductions. You must also give the applicant or employee with a disability the opportunity to provide the accommodation or pay for the portion of the accommodation that constitutes an undue hardship."
But that's after they've sought medical advice and can support a need for special treatement. The reason you need to worry about other staff asking 'Why does Bill get a freaki'n big screen TV?!' is because you don't have a good explanation for it. That should tell you evrything about the situation.
You do have a good explanation for it: "Bill can't see."
Honestly, if you're worrying more about some pathetic gossiper versus your responsibilities under the law, and a civil society, you have more problems than having to make a CostCo run.
And yet someone one went out of their way mod me down.
Gotta love anonymous vendettas.
Yes, but they are permanent security council members just like the other three.
France being extremely weak, I'll give you. They were defeated.
The term "United Nations", dates from 1941 when FDR referred to the Allies as the UN. He even called the US, UK, USSR, and the ROC "the four policemen," since France was defeated in 1940. Even the signatories of the Declaration by United Nations lists China as one of the primary signatories.
Also keep in mind that, unlike France, China was never defeated, in no small part due to the fact that the civil war was effectively put on hold to defeat a common foreign threat. Even the UK was weak until there was US intervention with lend-lease and of course the actual sending of troops. Without that foreign assistance, it's unlikely how much longer Britain could have held out against Germany.
All I'm saying is that you shouldn't overestimate the strength of one Ally and underestimate the strength of another, while simultaneously ignoring almost half of the founding permanent members.