You're missing the point. The lines are only overlapping because he blended in data from a single source. Second, if you look carefully, you can see the different colors at the end. And finally, the obvious interpretation from somebody looking at the graph is to assume they all continue. Nobody is going to think "maybe the graphs stop" unless they were familiar with the original data.
Yes, we're in agreement that it's not a good choice of figure, and can potentially be misunderstood. Of course, the overall impression of the figure--that global average temperatures are higher than they have been for hundreds of years--is supported by many other lines of evidence. And the document includes references to the actual scientific papers where the same evidence is displayed in a manner that is complete and supported by adequate explanation. So the likelihood that anybody has actually been misled in any meaningful way by that particular bad figure is pretty much zero. All I see is some people who don't like the conclusions of the science trying to use one bad choice of figure representation to discredit the entire body of science--which is far, far more misleading than that one bad figure.
I'm sorry, are you saying you took data from independent sources, labeled them as such, and then mixed and appended data from another source so that they convey a message by strength of agreement that isn't there?
I've taken data figures and displayed them as a cover image without explanation. In such a case, it is always possible that the image could be misunderstood or misinterpreted.
The CCE review disagrees with you, both from a legal perspective and policy perspective.
Yes, I suppose that might be important to lawyers and policy wonks. I'm not one of those; I'm a scientist.
You act as if transparency is a bad thing.
It certainly can be if it is carried to extremes beyond what is justified for appropriate validation of scientific conclusions. Organizing data for public presentation consumes scientific resources, and if scientists are tied up in red tape organizing every note and scrap of code to make it publicly available and comprehensible, it will offer no benefit, just impede the progress of science. And I can't help suspecting that this is the true objective of many of the people who are insisting upon it--to slow down work that is leading to conclusions that they don't like.
There's also value in reviewing the original experiments for flaws, so that they are not repeated and that each analysis is strengthened. That is the point of having peer-reviewing in the first place.
As somebody who actually does peer review, I can tell you that that is not what peer reviewers do. We do not review the primary data and check the calculations. Frankly, nobody with the knowledge and competence to do a proper job of peer review has the time or inclination to do that. We verify that the conclusions follow from the data provided, that the methodology is adequately described to allow replication, and that discussion is balanced and acknowledges both previous work and contrary views.
And I think that what we've seen with the Global Warming question demonstrates that having people scrutinizing calculations and code for "flaws" has if anything been an obstacle to the advancement of scientific knowledge rather than an asset. With an endeavor as complicated as scientific research, if you look hard enough, you can always find "flaws," or at least aspects of the approach that are debatable enough that they can be characterized as such. Over and over--going back to the early attacks on Mann's "hockey-stick" paper, we've seen critics who are unhappy with the conclusions of climate research seize upon inconsequential flaws and misrepresent them as somehow invalidating the overall conclusions. There has not been one single si
You can't tell where the lines end because the graphs were blended together with data from a single source.
No, I can't tell because the lines are overlapping, and I can't tell whether one stops or not. I think the figure is a bit misleading, and although I've done it myself, it's probably not really a good thing to do to use a data figure in this kind of casual manner as a cover illustration. But for an image that is not referenced in the text, and anyway conveys the correct overall impression--bit deal. Incidentally, what scientists refer to as a "figure legend" is not the brief annotation on a graph of which line is which, but a detailed text description of a paragraph or more in length that describes how the figure was produced and what it represents.
The CCE review doesn't agree with you: "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the University and, indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science."
Yes, I agree that Jones shouldn't have gotten pissed off and stonewalled, even if the FoI demands were obviously abusive. The proper thing to do would have been to pass it over to his university's legal department, and have them formally reject the demands in accord with regulations. So yes, like a lot of scientists, he's impatient with red tape and jumping through legal hoops when it interferes with his research. That's not a good thing, but once again, as a scientist I can't get very upset about it--I'm more concerned with whether the science is right.
What he should have done is just put up and documented all his data on a webpage for that anybody that cared to look at it.
No, most of the data was not his. You do not hand out somebody else's data to a 3rd party. That would be a violation of scientific ethics (which tends to be more important to scientists than jumping through legal hoops). All of the data required to replicate his conclusions was available from the people who actually owned it (one of the inquiry committees did it in a few weeks), so there was no valid basis for demanding that his research group dig through old records for scraps of unnecessary information on a completed project. The appropriate action would be for the university to formally reject the demands in the legally correct manner.
One way to validate that science is to document your steps and have others check them. Mistakes should be corrected. You sure sound like a scientist who doesn't care too much about integrity or openness.
The best way to validate science is to carry out your own independent analysis of the same (or even better, independent) data. This has now been done by multiple independent groups (including one of the inquiry committees), so Jones's conclusions are very thoroughly validated, indeed. And no, while I think that primary data that might be of use to others should be made available to the public, I don't think that any valid scientific or public purpose is served by requiring scientists to spend limited research funds on organizing things like routine computer code and research notes into a publicly accessible form. If research dollars are going to be invested in validation, I think it should be done properly--by independent replication.
You're looking at the wrong graph. The graph that Phil Jones was talking about was this one [skepticalscience.com], supplied for a WMO report.
So you accept that the figure I showed, as well as of the figures published in the actual scientific literature are fine--you are complaining about a single figure not even in the text of a report--a cover illo (which frankly, is drawn in such a way that I can't tell which line ends where). I'll confess that I've personally occasionally used scientific images as cover illustrations, without bothering to provide a figure legend or indeed any explanation of what was depicted, just as a pretty picture. Prior to this, it would never have occurred to me than anybody might take kind of thing seriously as data presentation. I suppose that I should be more careful in the future. Clearly, you never know when the cranks will come out of the woodwork.
What they wanted was all the data so they could verify how they came up with their results. This includes raw data as well as any meta-data and derived data, along with any code.
And considering that at this point multiple independent investigations have succeeded in reproducing and validating Jones's conclusions from the data available from national weather services, without any need for Jones's "metadata and derived data," it is hard to see such demands that Jones's group take up valuable research time to collect and send out all of this unnecessary material as anything other than sheer harassment. So yes, Jones shouldn't have gotten pissed off and decided to stonewall--he should have called up his university's lawyers and gotten them to send out the appropriately worded legal rejections appropriate for abusive FoI demands. I suppose that Jones's failure to jump through the appropriate legal hoops on command may be a big deal to legalistic bean counters. As a scientist, I am more concerned with the validation of Jones's science.
You don't label three sources of data that show variation on a single graph which then all remarkably converge to the same stunning conclusion. You just don't do that. There's nothing arguable about it.
It is perfectly legitimate, and often done, to show multiple sources of data on the same graph. There's nothing particularly "stunning" about the conclusion that modern average global temperatures are higher than temperatures measured or deduced in the last several hundred years. This has been known for a long time, and is supported by numerous lines of evidence, and is entirely noncontroversial in scientific circles. However, if data from one source has been truncated, the best practice is to note that this has been done, and provide an explanation, or at least a reference, to why this was done.
The key is matching the historical proxy data to the thermometer data, which only goes back to 1850. What's deceptive is making it look like the proxy data from separate studies matches the real temps when they were just blended.
And then there's still also the issue of withholding data and erasing email.
While there was some talk about erasing mail, there is no evidence that any mail was actually erased. (Hardly surprising...if they'd actually erased the email, surely they would have also erased the email suggesting that they erase emails) So apparently, cooler heads prevailed.
Which data are you talking about? The data analyzed by CRU? That data was always available from the weather services that acquired it and owned it (although some charge a fee for access). The question was whether a scientist that they shared the data with, but who did not actually the rights to it, was required to provide it to outsiders under a Freedom of Information demands, even though doing so would have been a violation of scientific ethics (you do not share somebody else's data). The only improper thing seems to be that the scientists involved got pissed off and simply ignored what they considered to be unreasonable demands, instead of getting their university's lawyers to issue a formal refusal for cause.
You are talking about a single graph that was arguably misleading, in that it was not clearly labeled to indicate that tree ring data known to be incorrect, based upon actual temperature readings, had been dropped and the correct actual temperature data shown instead (although this was widely acknowledged and discussed in the scientific literature, where the same data had been correctly presented). Nevertheless, the conclusions of the graph are supported by a wide range of other data, so even if you misunderstood what the graph depicted, you would still draw the correct conclusions about the temperature trend.
Quite a lot of sound and fury over a single rather minor error in presentation.
Despite numerous allegations of flagrant misconduct, the NSF could not find even one that could be substantiated (just like all the previous investigations). The fundamental conclusions have been replicated over and over. The supposedly "missing" data was readily found. The statistical errors that were real turned out to be inconsequential with respect to the overall conclusions.
But because the NSF committee was unable to prove a negative, it's "a far f*cking cry from exoneration"?
Man, I hope I'm never accused of a crime with you on my jury.
Except that scientists don't get to put much of that grant money into their pockets. Most scientists live fairly modestly, because their salaries are limited by university policy. And most of that grant money goes to pay graduate students and postdocs at about minimal wage (considering the hours they put in). The only important thing that grant money buys you is the ability to do more research--more long hours for modest pay. That's OK with scientists, because the enjoyment of discovering new truths about nature is pay enough. Of course, you have to believe that what you are doing is correct. Working long hours at modest wages to support a false theory is pretty much any scientist's definition of Hell.
If you are looking for people who are making the real big money, you'll find it in the pocket of petrocompany executives and big investors (who happen to also be the people who fund much of the global warming "skepticism'')
Yes, run the experiment..... oh yea, we can't because we don't have a couple of spare earths around.
So everyone runs computer models and expects us to believe the results of that instead. But I have seen some of what passes for climate modeling and it is pathetic. And it has NEVER produced a testable result. There are ZERO predictions made by a 'reputable' climate scientist from 10 or twenty years ago that matched reality 10 or twenty years later.
No model can predict the weather a day in advance 100%, none can predict a week or a month out with much skill and by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance, i.e. zero skill.
Short term behavior is unreliable so long-term averages must also be unreliable? Do you even think about what you are saying? Nobody can reliably predict the roll of the dice or the spin of a roulette wheel. Does that mean that casinos can't make money by betting on the long-term trend?
Name one useful prediction of AGW theory. Now tell me how many attempts have been made to falsify it. Hint: zero because such a test can't be devised and wouldn't be funded if it could. Such a test can't be devised because AGW makes no testable predictions
The science is settled. Bullshit, and anyone saying that can't be a scientist or care one whit about it. Science is always one result away from a revolution. One testable, repeatable result trumps any theory.
Sure, tomorrow we may find discover some object that is not affected by gravity, and have to switch to an "intelligent falling" theory. But it's not likely. So while there will almost invariably be some scientist, somewhere, willing to challenge any theory whatsoever (scientists being a contentious lot), some theories are about as close to settled as any science every gets. AGW certainly falls into that category, with over 95% of scientists actively publishing in the field agreeing that temperatures are rising as a result of human activity
Re:Does anyone really like 3D?
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Beyond HDTV
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I like 3D. I've even been using the feature of my TV set that converts ordinary 2D into surprisingly convincing pseudo-3D
Re:3D - and Resolution Maxed-Out?
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Beyond HDTV
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The name is a marketing gimmick. But the point is true. At a fairly typical viewing distance, the resolution of the screen is close to the limits of typical human vision. This is the point of diminishing returns--the improvement in resolution from Apple's "retina" display is noticeable to most people, but there will be little perceptible benefit to further increasing resolution.
Re:i posted a story about this a few months ago
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because images moving in rapid succession do not ask our eyes to do anything unnatural to their physiological and neurological design
We do not experience the real world as a rapid succession of static images, so yes, it is unnatural. It produces a variety of perceptual artifacts, such as when a car's wheels appear to be spinning backwards because the rotation of the wheel is beating with the frame rate. And modern movies expose the viewer to a huge number of unnatural experiences: Arbitrary changes in focus, depth of field and point of view. Perspective and motion cues that tell your brain that it is seeing a 3-dimensional image, yet the eye's focus tells the brain that the image is flat.
Fortunately, as neuroscientists have long known, our visual system does not have a rigid design. Many of the cinematographic devices used in modern video would doubtless cause ill effects such as nausea, vertigo, and eyestrain in somebody seeing them for the first time. But we have grown up with video, and our brains have learned to interpret the video representation of a 3 dimensional world.
Re:Eyes ... can't ... focus ... everything ... blu
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So does the 24 Hz refresh rate or the 48 Hz flicker of a regular movie bother you?
Almost all video, with the exception of a few animated films, is 3D, in that it depicts a 3D world, and causes the brain to construct a 3-dimensional representation of the action. Stereoscopic vision is only one of many cues that the brain uses to infer the three-dimensionality of the world around us. Others include perspective, motion parallax, and accommodation.
It's not a matter of pain receptors, it's a matter of causing harm. Your brain is accustomed to interpreting two images from your eyes, which are an established distance apart. Movies in 3D do not precisely replicate those parameters, and thus your brain has to compensate, and teach it to handle 3D data under different parameters.
And this is true for movies in 2D as well. In a 2D movie, perspective and motion parallax gives the impression that objects are at different distances, yet your eyes have to focus and converge a single plane, the plane of the screen. Even worse, objects on the screen may be out of focus, yet no matter how much you strain to bring them into focus, you cannot. Worse, the image is substantially distorted if your seat is not precisely centered in line with the center of the screen, so your brain has conflicting cues: perspective and motion parallax indicating that the image is 3-dimensional, yet focus and convergence cues as well as image distortion indicating that it is not. In one respect, stereoscopic displays reduce the discrepancy, as the convergence now agrees with perspective and motion parallax (although still not with focus).
And indeed, there are many people who claim that 2D movies hurt their eyes or give them a headache. And in fact, in this study, the average discomfort from the stereoscopic stimuli was only slightly greater than that discomfort from looking 2D stimuli.
It seems that with each new entertainment/communication medium, people worry that it will ruin your eyes. Reading was supposed to ruin your eyes. So was watching TV up close. Yet there is no evidence that either is harmful. To some degree, the discomfort that people feel may simply be unfamiliarity with watching shows in stereo. Modern films include many cinematographic techniques--rapid cuts, jump cuts, views from unnatural angles--that were once considered to be so disturbing that viewers would not tolerate them. Yet with familiarity with cinema, the public's tolerance of these devices has increased.
This seems to be a very nice, careful study, and the discussion of which conditions are more likely to provoke discomfort is likely to be useful to producers of 3D media. It does not, however, provide a great deal of support for the view that discomfort from this source is likely to be a major obstacle to the popularity of 3D media. For most of the conditions, even when the effect was statistically significant, on the average the subjects ranked the discomfort of the stereoscopic displays only slightly greater than that of the 2D displays. In particular, the effect size was pretty modest compared to the standard deviation
The finding that individuals are highly variable in the degree of discrepancy between accommodation and vergence that they can tolerate supports the approach adopted by Nintendo with the 3ds, which allows the user to adjust the magnitude of the 3D effect. A video game can do this because the 3D effect is generated "on the fly." With a movie, the only control the viewer has is seating position. Most stereo content in a 3D movie has a virtual location "behind the screen." The study argues that people who experience discomfort with 3D movies should adjust their seating position closer to the screen.
The finding that objects displayed with a virtual position "behind" the screen cause greater discomfort at large distances, whereas objects displayed "in front" of the screen cause greater discomfort at short distances make a lot of sense. Greater distance from the screen exaggerates the 3D "depth" of the image. On the other hand, images that appear "in front" of the screen require a more "cross-eyed" eye orientation for convergence, which can be tiring to the eye muscles. For a given distance between the right-eye and left-eye images, an object will "pop out" from the screen a constant percentage of the viewer's distance from the screen. But what is probably more important in terms of comfort is the convergence angle of the eyes, which is greater closer to the screen.
Why do research like this on just 24 people? That is NOT a statistically valid sample size.
You should take a course in statistics. One thing you will learn is that there is no fixed number that constitutes a "statistically valid" sample size; it depends upon the standard deviation of the population, which can differ for different types of measurements. Moreover, a sample size may be too small to be valid for one study design, but perfectly fine for another study design. For example, very often individuals vary quite a bit from one another, but the reaction of each individual is quite consistent. In that case, you can get by with a much smaller sample if you can do a "within subjects" study design.
If the sample size were really too small, then the results would not satisfy tests of statistical significance. The fact that they do argues that the sample size was fine.
Originally, streaming was offered as a free (and later, nominal cost) bonus to the disks-by-mail plan. At that time, Netflix had few streaming customers, and their streaming costs were low, so Netflix could afford to do this as a promotional deal to build the streaming business. But now the streaming business is built, and Netflix's licensing costs have increased 1000% or more. The costs maintaining of maintaining those licenses now approach the costs of maintaining and sending out the disks. Netflix was thinking the disk business might wither away as streaming increased, and for a while it seemed like that was happening, but evidently this has leveled out, and Netflix still faces substantial costs of obtaining, handling, and mailing out the disks. Many customers still value the disks, but Netflix can no longer afford to offer one service as a nearly-free bonus to the other. So we consumers have to decide whether both of these services are worth enough to us to pay what is (if you look at it in terms of Netflix's expenses rather than percentage increase over the original unsustainable deal) a fair cost to each.
For me, having both services, which together provide access to virtually every film on DVD, combined with the convenience of not having to drive somewhere to pick them up, is easily worth the extra 5 bucks a month. But I have 500 shows in my streaming queue and over 400 in my disk queue. Recent releases are a small fraction of what I watch, and if availability of a recent movie is delayed a month in return for more favorable licensing fees, I have plenty of other things to watch in the meantime. Your mileage may vary.
I'd call a loss of picture or freezing for a few hundred milliseconds (in a movie; many games do this on their own) a drastic and obvious effect. This would mean a loss of multiple frames, and will be clear to almost any viewer. I've never seen this with even dirt-cheap HDMI cables (and I've bought quite a few of them). I've never had any problems with proximity to power cables or transformers, either, although I suppose that it is possible that you have a very faulty power supply.
I'm not going to yank a device off of a shelf by plugging in another cable or shifting it over a bit to make room for another device, but I've accidentally unplugged HDMI cables that way. Like most entertainment shelves, it would take a concerted effort to yank a component off my shelf even if the cable were hard-wired to the device. Indeed, some of my devices have hard-wired power cables and none has ever been yanked off a shelf. But a hard-wired connection is hardly necessary. HDMI is the least reliable connection of any cable I've used, with the possible exception of s-video cables. In contrast, I'd say that toslink is about the most reliable, because it has a definitive snap connection--yet not so tight to endanger the cable or socket in the unlikely event that somebody were to yank on it hard.
You can even buy ultra-expensive power cables for AV equipment. Apparently there are actually people willing to believe that three feet of ultra-high quality power cable outside the wall can make a difference when connected to 50-odd feet of dirt cheap electrical wiring inside the walls. And they'll swear up and down that they can hear the difference.
I can visually see if my own HDMI cable is passing too close to the power adapter of my SqueezeBox when the signal is Full HD. The difference is subtle - but definitely present!
Digital transmission do not normally produce subtle effects. The border between no effect and a drastic effect is very tight. You are almost certainly fooling yourself. Get somebody to set up a "blind" test with the HDMI cable (out of sight) close to or far from your power adapter and chances are that you won't be able to reliably tell the difference.
I get the cheapest HDMI cables, I've never had a single one spontaneously lose its connection. I do wish they were locking connectors as it is easy to accidentally pull one out if you are rummaging around behind your devices, but that's true for the expensive cables as well as for the cheap ones
The more expensive cables do tend to have better build quality, but that really matters only if you are going to be doing a lot of disconnecting and reconnecting. Most people hook up a HDMI cable and never touch it again until they move or upgrade their equipment.
I've used about 8 or so $5 cables (6' or less). Never had a bad one, although you do need to make sure that you have the right HDMI spec for what you want to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we're in agreement that it's not a good choice of figure, and can potentially be misunderstood. Of course, the overall impression of the figure--that global average temperatures are higher than they have been for hundreds of years--is supported by many other lines of evidence. And the document includes references to the actual scientific papers where the same evidence is displayed in a manner that is complete and supported by adequate explanation. So the likelihood that anybody has actually been misled in any meaningful way by that particular bad figure is pretty much zero. All I see is some people who don't like the conclusions of the science trying to use one bad choice of figure representation to discredit the entire body of science--which is far, far more misleading than that one bad figure.
I've taken data figures and displayed them as a cover image without explanation. In such a case, it is always possible that the image could be misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Yes, I suppose that might be important to lawyers and policy wonks. I'm not one of those; I'm a scientist.
It certainly can be if it is carried to extremes beyond what is justified for appropriate validation of scientific conclusions. Organizing data for public presentation consumes scientific resources, and if scientists are tied up in red tape organizing every note and scrap of code to make it publicly available and comprehensible, it will offer no benefit, just impede the progress of science. And I can't help suspecting that this is the true objective of many of the people who are insisting upon it--to slow down work that is leading to conclusions that they don't like.
As somebody who actually does peer review, I can tell you that that is not what peer reviewers do. We do not review the primary data and check the calculations. Frankly, nobody with the knowledge and competence to do a proper job of peer review has the time or inclination to do that. We verify that the conclusions follow from the data provided, that the methodology is adequately described to allow replication, and that discussion is balanced and acknowledges both previous work and contrary views.
And I think that what we've seen with the Global Warming question demonstrates that having people scrutinizing calculations and code for "flaws" has if anything been an obstacle to the advancement of scientific knowledge rather than an asset. With an endeavor as complicated as scientific research, if you look hard enough, you can always find "flaws," or at least aspects of the approach that are debatable enough that they can be characterized as such. Over and over--going back to the early attacks on Mann's "hockey-stick" paper, we've seen critics who are unhappy with the conclusions of climate research seize upon inconsequential flaws and misrepresent them as somehow invalidating the overall conclusions. There has not been one single si
No, I can't tell because the lines are overlapping, and I can't tell whether one stops or not. I think the figure is a bit misleading, and although I've done it myself, it's probably not really a good thing to do to use a data figure in this kind of casual manner as a cover illustration. But for an image that is not referenced in the text, and anyway conveys the correct overall impression--bit deal. Incidentally, what scientists refer to as a "figure legend" is not the brief annotation on a graph of which line is which, but a detailed text description of a paragraph or more in length that describes how the figure was produced and what it represents.
Yes, I agree that Jones shouldn't have gotten pissed off and stonewalled, even if the FoI demands were obviously abusive. The proper thing to do would have been to pass it over to his university's legal department, and have them formally reject the demands in accord with regulations. So yes, like a lot of scientists, he's impatient with red tape and jumping through legal hoops when it interferes with his research. That's not a good thing, but once again, as a scientist I can't get very upset about it--I'm more concerned with whether the science is right.
No, most of the data was not his. You do not hand out somebody else's data to a 3rd party. That would be a violation of scientific ethics (which tends to be more important to scientists than jumping through legal hoops). All of the data required to replicate his conclusions was available from the people who actually owned it (one of the inquiry committees did it in a few weeks), so there was no valid basis for demanding that his research group dig through old records for scraps of unnecessary information on a completed project. The appropriate action would be for the university to formally reject the demands in the legally correct manner.
The best way to validate science is to carry out your own independent analysis of the same (or even better, independent) data. This has now been done by multiple independent groups (including one of the inquiry committees), so Jones's conclusions are very thoroughly validated, indeed. And no, while I think that primary data that might be of use to others should be made available to the public, I don't think that any valid scientific or public purpose is served by requiring scientists to spend limited research funds on organizing things like routine computer code and research notes into a publicly accessible form. If research dollars are going to be invested in validation, I think it should be done properly--by independent replication.
So you accept that the figure I showed, as well as of the figures published in the actual scientific literature are fine--you are complaining about a single figure not even in the text of a report--a cover illo (which frankly, is drawn in such a way that I can't tell which line ends where). I'll confess that I've personally occasionally used scientific images as cover illustrations, without bothering to provide a figure legend or indeed any explanation of what was depicted, just as a pretty picture. Prior to this, it would never have occurred to me than anybody might take kind of thing seriously as data presentation. I suppose that I should be more careful in the future. Clearly, you never know when the cranks will come out of the woodwork.
And considering that at this point multiple independent investigations have succeeded in reproducing and validating Jones's conclusions from the data available from national weather services, without any need for Jones's "metadata and derived data," it is hard to see such demands that Jones's group take up valuable research time to collect and send out all of this unnecessary material as anything other than sheer harassment. So yes, Jones shouldn't have gotten pissed off and decided to stonewall--he should have called up his university's lawyers and gotten them to send out the appropriately worded legal rejections appropriate for abusive FoI demands. I suppose that Jones's failure to jump through the appropriate legal hoops on command may be a big deal to legalistic bean counters. As a scientist, I am more concerned with the validation of Jones's science.
It is perfectly legitimate, and often done, to show multiple sources of data on the same graph. There's nothing particularly "stunning" about the conclusion that modern average global temperatures are higher than temperatures measured or deduced in the last several hundred years. This has been known for a long time, and is supported by numerous lines of evidence, and is entirely noncontroversial in scientific circles. However, if data from one source has been truncated, the best practice is to note that this has been done, and provide an explanation, or at least a reference, to why this was done.
The aren't "blended." They are identified and separately labeled, as you can see from the actual graph in question (p. 3)
While there was some talk about erasing mail, there is no evidence that any mail was actually erased. (Hardly surprising...if they'd actually erased the email, surely they would have also erased the email suggesting that they erase emails) So apparently, cooler heads prevailed.
Which data are you talking about? The data analyzed by CRU? That data was always available from the weather services that acquired it and owned it (although some charge a fee for access). The question was whether a scientist that they shared the data with, but who did not actually the rights to it, was required to provide it to outsiders under a Freedom of Information demands, even though doing so would have been a violation of scientific ethics (you do not share somebody else's data). The only improper thing seems to be that the scientists involved got pissed off and simply ignored what they considered to be unreasonable demands, instead of getting their university's lawyers to issue a formal refusal for cause.
You are talking about a single graph that was arguably misleading, in that it was not clearly labeled to indicate that tree ring data known to be incorrect, based upon actual temperature readings, had been dropped and the correct actual temperature data shown instead (although this was widely acknowledged and discussed in the scientific literature, where the same data had been correctly presented). Nevertheless, the conclusions of the graph are supported by a wide range of other data, so even if you misunderstood what the graph depicted, you would still draw the correct conclusions about the temperature trend.
Quite a lot of sound and fury over a single rather minor error in presentation.
Despite numerous allegations of flagrant misconduct, the NSF could not find even one that could be substantiated (just like all the previous investigations). The fundamental conclusions have been replicated over and over. The supposedly "missing" data was readily found. The statistical errors that were real turned out to be inconsequential with respect to the overall conclusions.
But because the NSF committee was unable to prove a negative, it's "a far f*cking cry from exoneration"?
Man, I hope I'm never accused of a crime with you on my jury.
Except that scientists don't get to put much of that grant money into their pockets. Most scientists live fairly modestly, because their salaries are limited by university policy. And most of that grant money goes to pay graduate students and postdocs at about minimal wage (considering the hours they put in). The only important thing that grant money buys you is the ability to do more research--more long hours for modest pay. That's OK with scientists, because the enjoyment of discovering new truths about nature is pay enough. Of course, you have to believe that what you are doing is correct. Working long hours at modest wages to support a false theory is pretty much any scientist's definition of Hell.
If you are looking for people who are making the real big money, you'll find it in the pocket of petrocompany executives and big investors (who happen to also be the people who fund much of the global warming "skepticism'')
> Now run those experiments,
Yes, run the experiment..... oh yea, we can't because we don't have a couple of spare earths around.
So everyone runs computer models and expects us to believe the results of that instead. But I have seen some of what passes for climate modeling and it is pathetic. And it has NEVER produced a testable result. There are ZERO predictions made by a 'reputable' climate scientist from 10 or twenty years ago that matched reality 10 or twenty years later.
Except it has.
No model can predict the weather a day in advance 100%, none can predict a week or a month out with much skill and by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance, i.e. zero skill.
Short term behavior is unreliable so long-term averages must also be unreliable? Do you even think about what you are saying? Nobody can reliably predict the roll of the dice or the spin of a roulette wheel. Does that mean that casinos can't make money by betting on the long-term trend?
Wrong
Sure, tomorrow we may find discover some object that is not affected by gravity, and have to switch to an "intelligent falling" theory. But it's not likely. So while there will almost invariably be some scientist, somewhere, willing to challenge any theory whatsoever (scientists being a contentious lot), some theories are about as close to settled as any science every gets. AGW certainly falls into that category, with over 95% of scientists actively publishing in the field agreeing that temperatures are rising as a result of human activity
I like 3D. I've even been using the feature of my TV set that converts ordinary 2D into surprisingly convincing pseudo-3D
The name is a marketing gimmick. But the point is true. At a fairly typical viewing distance, the resolution of the screen is close to the limits of typical human vision. This is the point of diminishing returns--the improvement in resolution from Apple's "retina" display is noticeable to most people, but there will be little perceptible benefit to further increasing resolution.
We do not experience the real world as a rapid succession of static images, so yes, it is unnatural. It produces a variety of perceptual artifacts, such as when a car's wheels appear to be spinning backwards because the rotation of the wheel is beating with the frame rate. And modern movies expose the viewer to a huge number of unnatural experiences: Arbitrary changes in focus, depth of field and point of view. Perspective and motion cues that tell your brain that it is seeing a 3-dimensional image, yet the eye's focus tells the brain that the image is flat.
Fortunately, as neuroscientists have long known, our visual system does not have a rigid design. Many of the cinematographic devices used in modern video would doubtless cause ill effects such as nausea, vertigo, and eyestrain in somebody seeing them for the first time. But we have grown up with video, and our brains have learned to interpret the video representation of a 3 dimensional world.
So does the 24 Hz refresh rate or the 48 Hz flicker of a regular movie bother you?
Almost all video, with the exception of a few animated films, is 3D, in that it depicts a 3D world, and causes the brain to construct a 3-dimensional representation of the action. Stereoscopic vision is only one of many cues that the brain uses to infer the three-dimensionality of the world around us. Others include perspective, motion parallax, and accommodation.
And this is true for movies in 2D as well. In a 2D movie, perspective and motion parallax gives the impression that objects are at different distances, yet your eyes have to focus and converge a single plane, the plane of the screen. Even worse, objects on the screen may be out of focus, yet no matter how much you strain to bring them into focus, you cannot. Worse, the image is substantially distorted if your seat is not precisely centered in line with the center of the screen, so your brain has conflicting cues: perspective and motion parallax indicating that the image is 3-dimensional, yet focus and convergence cues as well as image distortion indicating that it is not. In one respect, stereoscopic displays reduce the discrepancy, as the convergence now agrees with perspective and motion parallax (although still not with focus).
And indeed, there are many people who claim that 2D movies hurt their eyes or give them a headache. And in fact, in this study, the average discomfort from the stereoscopic stimuli was only slightly greater than that discomfort from looking 2D stimuli.
It seems that with each new entertainment/communication medium, people worry that it will ruin your eyes. Reading was supposed to ruin your eyes. So was watching TV up close. Yet there is no evidence that either is harmful. To some degree, the discomfort that people feel may simply be unfamiliarity with watching shows in stereo. Modern films include many cinematographic techniques--rapid cuts, jump cuts, views from unnatural angles--that were once considered to be so disturbing that viewers would not tolerate them. Yet with familiarity with cinema, the public's tolerance of these devices has increased.
This seems to be a very nice, careful study, and the discussion of which conditions are more likely to provoke discomfort is likely to be useful to producers of 3D media. It does not, however, provide a great deal of support for the view that discomfort from this source is likely to be a major obstacle to the popularity of 3D media. For most of the conditions, even when the effect was statistically significant, on the average the subjects ranked the discomfort of the stereoscopic displays only slightly greater than that of the 2D displays. In particular, the effect size was pretty modest compared to the standard deviation
The finding that individuals are highly variable in the degree of discrepancy between accommodation and vergence that they can tolerate supports the approach adopted by Nintendo with the 3ds, which allows the user to adjust the magnitude of the 3D effect. A video game can do this because the 3D effect is generated "on the fly." With a movie, the only control the viewer has is seating position. Most stereo content in a 3D movie has a virtual location "behind the screen." The study argues that people who experience discomfort with 3D movies should adjust their seating position closer to the screen.
The finding that objects displayed with a virtual position "behind" the screen cause greater discomfort at large distances, whereas objects displayed "in front" of the screen cause greater discomfort at short distances make a lot of sense. Greater distance from the screen exaggerates the 3D "depth" of the image. On the other hand, images that appear "in front" of the screen require a more "cross-eyed" eye orientation for convergence, which can be tiring to the eye muscles. For a given distance between the right-eye and left-eye images, an object will "pop out" from the screen a constant percentage of the viewer's distance from the screen. But what is probably more important in terms of comfort is the convergence angle of the eyes, which is greater closer to the screen.
You should take a course in statistics. One thing you will learn is that there is no fixed number that constitutes a "statistically valid" sample size; it depends upon the standard deviation of the population, which can differ for different types of measurements. Moreover, a sample size may be too small to be valid for one study design, but perfectly fine for another study design. For example, very often individuals vary quite a bit from one another, but the reaction of each individual is quite consistent. In that case, you can get by with a much smaller sample if you can do a "within subjects" study design.
If the sample size were really too small, then the results would not satisfy tests of statistical significance. The fact that they do argues that the sample size was fine.
Originally, streaming was offered as a free (and later, nominal cost) bonus to the disks-by-mail plan. At that time, Netflix had few streaming customers, and their streaming costs were low, so Netflix could afford to do this as a promotional deal to build the streaming business. But now the streaming business is built, and Netflix's licensing costs have increased 1000% or more. The costs maintaining of maintaining those licenses now approach the costs of maintaining and sending out the disks. Netflix was thinking the disk business might wither away as streaming increased, and for a while it seemed like that was happening, but evidently this has leveled out, and Netflix still faces substantial costs of obtaining, handling, and mailing out the disks. Many customers still value the disks, but Netflix can no longer afford to offer one service as a nearly-free bonus to the other. So we consumers have to decide whether both of these services are worth enough to us to pay what is (if you look at it in terms of Netflix's expenses rather than percentage increase over the original unsustainable deal) a fair cost to each.
For me, having both services, which together provide access to virtually every film on DVD, combined with the convenience of not having to drive somewhere to pick them up, is easily worth the extra 5 bucks a month. But I have 500 shows in my streaming queue and over 400 in my disk queue. Recent releases are a small fraction of what I watch, and if availability of a recent movie is delayed a month in return for more favorable licensing fees, I have plenty of other things to watch in the meantime. Your mileage may vary.
I'd call a loss of picture or freezing for a few hundred milliseconds (in a movie; many games do this on their own) a drastic and obvious effect. This would mean a loss of multiple frames, and will be clear to almost any viewer. I've never seen this with even dirt-cheap HDMI cables (and I've bought quite a few of them). I've never had any problems with proximity to power cables or transformers, either, although I suppose that it is possible that you have a very faulty power supply.
I'm not going to yank a device off of a shelf by plugging in another cable or shifting it over a bit to make room for another device, but I've accidentally unplugged HDMI cables that way. Like most entertainment shelves, it would take a concerted effort to yank a component off my shelf even if the cable were hard-wired to the device. Indeed, some of my devices have hard-wired power cables and none has ever been yanked off a shelf. But a hard-wired connection is hardly necessary. HDMI is the least reliable connection of any cable I've used, with the possible exception of s-video cables. In contrast, I'd say that toslink is about the most reliable, because it has a definitive snap connection--yet not so tight to endanger the cable or socket in the unlikely event that somebody were to yank on it hard.
You can even buy ultra-expensive power cables for AV equipment. Apparently there are actually people willing to believe that three feet of ultra-high quality power cable outside the wall can make a difference when connected to 50-odd feet of dirt cheap electrical wiring inside the walls. And they'll swear up and down that they can hear the difference.
Digital transmission do not normally produce subtle effects. The border between no effect and a drastic effect is very tight. You are almost certainly fooling yourself. Get somebody to set up a "blind" test with the HDMI cable (out of sight) close to or far from your power adapter and chances are that you won't be able to reliably tell the difference.
I get the cheapest HDMI cables, I've never had a single one spontaneously lose its connection. I do wish they were locking connectors as it is easy to accidentally pull one out if you are rummaging around behind your devices, but that's true for the expensive cables as well as for the cheap ones
The more expensive cables do tend to have better build quality, but that really matters only if you are going to be doing a lot of disconnecting and reconnecting. Most people hook up a HDMI cable and never touch it again until they move or upgrade their equipment.
I've used about 8 or so $5 cables (6' or less). Never had a bad one, although you do need to make sure that you have the right HDMI spec for what you want to do.