The National Climatic Data Center (part of NOAA) set up a series of requirements for sites that are to be a part of the Climate Reference Network (CRN).
The most desirable local surrounding landscape is a relatively large and flat open area
with low local vegetation in order that the sky view is unobstructed in all directions except at the lower angles of altitude
above the horizon.
Notice how they don't mention large parking lots as being desirable locations.
Five classes of sites ranging from most reliable to least are defined:
Class 1: Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (less than 19 degrees). Grass/low vegetation ground cover less than 10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 3 degrees.
Class 2: Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding vegetation less than 25 centimeters. Artificial heating sources within 30 meters. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 5 degrees.
Class 3: (error 1 degree C) Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
Class 4: (error greater than 2 degrees C) Artificial heating sources less than 10 meters.
Class 5: (error greater than 5 degrees C) Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such as a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.
With 70% of the ground temperature measurement sites surveyed so far, only 3% of the sites meet the most stringent set of requirements that insure data accuracy. 8% of the sites fall within the second best level. When combined only 11% of the surveyed sites meet the requirements set to be considered accurate. How can anyone think that is 11% accuracy is good enough?
20% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 3 category and are off by about one degree celsius.
58% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 4 category and are off by two or more degrees celsius.
11% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 5 category and are off by five or more degrees celsius.
Real science can only take place with accurate data. Why would anyone without an agenda oppose fixing the problems that have been found?
Again, if you want more information or would like to see photos of just how fucked up the location of some of these sites are you can get that information here:
So having large asphalt parking lots, concrete sidewalks, large buildings, air conditioning units and the like being within feet of an instrument that measures temperature do not skew temperature readings being taken???
I know people who like to use the word 'denialist' are under the opinion that the world is composed of people who are extremely gullible, but we're not actually *that* fucking stupid.
Moving the stations that make climate measurements away from things that either generate heat (like an air conditioning system's heat exchanger) or even things that simply absorb and release heat (like buildings, sidewalks, or pavement) just makes sense.
We seriously need to move some of the stations where temperature data is gathered. When the National Weather Service's temperature sensors are often surrounded by large brick buildings, concrete sidewalks, and asphalt parking lots, you're just not getting good data. Anybody whose car has a thermometer that measures outside temperature can tell you that just driving from the countryside into an area full of buildings and asphalt results in very real temperature increases. Having the official instruments that measure climate change be in highly developed areas is resulting in temperature measurement records that are not trustworthy.
Recently, a National Weather Service temperature sensor in Hawaii was racking up day after day of record temperatures before they discovered that the sensor was not only located in the middle of all the runways of the Honolulu airport, but that the temperature sensor was malfunctioning and was reporting temperatures many degrees higher than they actually were.
When compared to measurements taken at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center only four miles away (which is outside the highly developed area) temperature measurements were *seven* degrees cooler. Did the weather service invalidate the temperature records that by the faulty sensor in the middle of the airport runways? Nope. All that faulty data is now being used to 'prove' global warming.
A survey of the official National Weather System ground temperature measurement instruments is underway and a huge number of problems have been observed. More information on this survey and photos of just how fucked up some of the instrument placements are is available here:
I bought (OK, my parents bought) my first Mac back in 1985 when I entered college. In the late 90's I sold Macs and handled training at the local Apple dealer. I'm no Apple hater, but forcing users to buy a more expensive device to get something that should be a user upgradable in the first place is definitely an Apple strategy.
With iPods and iPhones, there is no good reason not to include a microSD slot to allow for user upgradable memory except that it would cut into Apple's profit margins. Apple's ability to charge $100 for an upgrade whose cost is minimal and will become even smaller over time is not something that is occurring by accident.
In the recent past, remember that Apple only put a DVD burner (Superdrive) in the most expensive version (good, better best) of their various computers. At any PC vendor, you could configure a cheaper computer to include a DVD burner, but Apple likes to milk it's customers.
Also there is Apple's refusal to release something that Apple fans have been requesting for well over a decade. Why is there no mini tower Mac with easily user replaceable parts?
I'm afraid the answer is that with an iMac, if the graphics chip gets too slow for what you are doing you have to purchase another whole iMac instead of being able to swap out just the graphics card.
After decades of being nickel and dimed to death by Apple, I'm now the proud owner of my very own Hackintosh where I am free to configure my machine any way I see fit. Since Apple doesn't see it's way clear to provide normal expansion options to it's users, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the new Trek was the abundance of 'shaking the camera during filming' shots I was subjected to. Can we give that a rest?
Hopefully, the cycle of companies with large expenses and no profits being purchased by the stupid will come to an end. We all know how profitable Skype has been for after eBay paid 2.6 Billion dollars for them. Not to even mention how profitable Youtube has been since Google paid a mere 1.65 Billion dollars for them.
Apple is sitting on a buttload of cash right now, but wouldn't it be a hell of a lot more logical for them to build a fab with it? They certainly have been gathering in a whole lot of chip design expertise lately.
If netbooks running Win 7 can't run Word alone without thrashing the hard disk, it doesn't sound like you would want to try running three apps at once.
All modern OS's support multiple cores. Unfortunately, not all application programmers are smart enough to be able to write code to take advantage of this. Having the OS and it's compilers change single threaded code into something that can take advantage of multiple cores *for you* is what Apple is working on.
One of the nice things about Apple is that they follow the philosophy of Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky says: "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
With the LLVM Compiler and GrandCentral, Apple has been working for years now on a way to better take advantage of machines with many cores. Once again, they are making a leap that Microsoft will not be able to match for many years.
Of course, with the way multicore architecture has come to the forefront, I kind of wish Be OS had survived since it was designed to be multicore from day one. I have a feeling it's pervasively multithreaded nature would kick Apple and Microsoft's ass on modern hardware.
Do you honestly think that just because you and your ilk stopped using the phrase Global Warming, we will forget what you've been predicting all these years?
You've all spent the better part of a decade saying that man made CO2 is causing catastrophic temperature increases. Unfortunately CO2 is still on the rise, but temps are now dropping instead of rising.
Now you guys think you can suddenly claim that you didn't really mean 'global warming' but were talking about 'climate change' all along? Man made CO2 is causing huge temperature increases, except where it's causing huge temperature drops??? Really????
If NASA understood solar cycles, they wouldn't already be a year off on their prediction for when the next solar cycle would begin. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
How about everyone take a deep breath and Google for 'Macbook Firewire card'.
The Macbook does come with with one of those seldom used ExpressCard/34 slots on it. It took me all of five seconds to find an expansion card for that very slot that offers two Firewire 400 ports and one USB port for 40 bucks with a one year warranty. Other options offer Firewire 800 connectivity at a price premium, of course.
I have a feeling this will not give access to target disk mode. (although I'm not sure if that is the case) If so, that will give the haters something to still bitch about.
It's a win-win for the people who just wanted to hook up their Firewire peripherals and the haters who are compelled to tell the world that this Macbook is teh suck because it doesn't run on rainbows and My Little Pony farts.
Since there was more support from the Democrats than the Republicans, you can't really blame this on one party. Frankly, America needs to learn that when both the Democrats and Republicans try to rush something through Congress together the normal citizen is pretty much screwed. In the past we've gotten great bipartisan bullshit like the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and NAFTA this way.
Learn, People! When both parties are saying the same thing at the same time it can only mean that the same special interests have their hands up their bought-and-paid-for-asses and are feeding them the same lines.
How a rational person can feel that Microsoft would never, ever feed anyone false answers for bullshit marketing reasons is beyond me. I assume you think you are rational, even if I don't.
Microsoft abandoned sensible version numbers as they have traditionally been used when they assigned the first release of Windows NT the version number 3.1.
Similarly, Apple's failure to call Mac OS X Version 1 is just as ridiculous and just as marketing driven. Now they face the retarded situation where their major version releases are.1 releases and their service packs are.0.1 releases.
At least that is closer to traditional version numbers than Microsoft's system of pulling version numbers out of their sales and marketing department's asses.
I only include versions on the same evolutionary tree. The DOS based Windows evolutionary tree would include Windows 1.0, Windows 286, Windows 386, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME with a few minor others tossed in. That evolutionary line died out and is not offered for sale.
The Windows we know today is based on Windows NT which began with version 3.1 and progressed as I have mentioned in the above posting.
Windows NT was written under the leadership of it's chief architect, Dave Cutler, who previously was one of the designers of Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX VMS Operating System. If NT was based on anything, it was based on VMS and not OS/2.
The current versions of Windows derive from Cutler's total redesign of DOS based Windows.
As other people have pointed out, for a time Microsoft sold two different evolutionary lines of Windows simultaneously. The DOS based versions thankfully died out with the horrible Windows ME and are no longer sold. You can include these evolutionary dead end versions if you like, but people more in the know will not include versions unrelated to those sold now.
Are you saying that versions of Windows prior to Windows NT version 3.1 that were based on DOS have anything to do with the OS code used in XP or Windows Vista?
Windows NT represented the type of total code reset that TFA is discussing. The code before it was irrelevant,although they stuck with the user interface choices prior versions had made. Also the programming API's were very similar.
Versions of Windows built on top of DOS are completely irrelevant when discussing NT based Windows versions like Vista and the upcoming "Windows Seven". They are on a completely different evolutionary tree.
Are you under the impression that a lot of DOS based Windows 3.1 code was used in Windows NT 3.1? Microsoft included a compatibility subsystem to run Win16 programs on Win32, just as Apple's Blue Box ran classic Mac OS programs on Mac OS X. In both cases the old OS architecture was dead and gone.
Windows 1.0 = Windows NT 3.1 (Microsoft's Marketing department called the first version of NT version 3.1 because that was the version of the old DOS based Windows they were selling at the time. NT was newer so it just couldn't start with a lower version number!)
Windows 1.5 = Windows NT 3.5.1
Windows 2.0 = Windows NT 4.0
Windows 3.0 = Windows 2000
Windows 3.1 = Windows XP
Windows 4.0 = Windows Vista
So the next version of Windows that people are calling Windows 7 is actually going to be Windows 4.1 since they say they are going to stick with the Vista architecture on the next version.
There was a time when a much leaner Microsoft highly respected and rewarded employees who could write good code. These were the people who rose to positions of responsibility. Today, Microsoft is run by Sales and Marketing and coders are viewed as an expense. Until this situation reverses itself, don't expect any improvement in the product they create. They are too stupid to realize their product is the code. Ballmer being from sales only reinforces this problem. Perhaps he should be moved to a chair throwing division that does the monkey boy dance, and someone who can both create great code themselves and manage coders should be brought in as CEO.
Typo. Microsoft forced IE 7 on me. I have XP's Automatic Update set to 'Notify me of updates, but don't download or install them'. Did that prevent Microsoft from forcing IE 7 on me? No.
If Apple had forced Safari on me the way Microsoft forced IE 7 on me, then I would agree we had a problem. For the people who clicked a button on a window that popped up without looking to see what the damn thing actually said, you are morons. Offering software isn't that big a deal. Forcing it on you is.
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The most desirable local surrounding landscape is a relatively large and flat open area with low local vegetation in order that the sky view is unobstructed in all directions except at the lower angles of altitude above the horizon.
Notice how they don't mention large parking lots as being desirable locations.
Five classes of sites ranging from most reliable to least are defined:
Class 1: Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (less than 19 degrees). Grass/low vegetation ground cover less than 10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 3 degrees.
Class 2: Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding vegetation less than 25 centimeters. Artificial heating sources within 30 meters. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 5 degrees.
Class 3: (error 1 degree C) Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
Class 4: (error greater than 2 degrees C) Artificial heating sources less than 10 meters.
Class 5: (error greater than 5 degrees C) Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such as a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.
With 70% of the ground temperature measurement sites surveyed so far, only 3% of the sites meet the most stringent set of requirements that insure data accuracy. 8% of the sites fall within the second best level. When combined only 11% of the surveyed sites meet the requirements set to be considered accurate. How can anyone think that is 11% accuracy is good enough?
20% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 3 category and are off by about one degree celsius.
58% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 4 category and are off by two or more degrees celsius.
11% of the surveyed sites are in the CRN Class 5 category and are off by five or more degrees celsius.
Real science can only take place with accurate data. Why would anyone without an agenda oppose fixing the problems that have been found?
Again, if you want more information or would like to see photos of just how fucked up the location of some of these sites are you can get that information here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
So having large asphalt parking lots, concrete sidewalks, large buildings, air conditioning units and the like being within feet of an instrument that measures temperature do not skew temperature readings being taken???
I know people who like to use the word 'denialist' are under the opinion that the world is composed of people who are extremely gullible, but we're not actually *that* fucking stupid.
Moving the stations that make climate measurements away from things that either generate heat (like an air conditioning system's heat exchanger) or even things that simply absorb and release heat (like buildings, sidewalks, or pavement) just makes sense.
We seriously need to move some of the stations where temperature data is gathered. When the National Weather Service's temperature sensors are often surrounded by large brick buildings, concrete sidewalks, and asphalt parking lots, you're just not getting good data. Anybody whose car has a thermometer that measures outside temperature can tell you that just driving from the countryside into an area full of buildings and asphalt results in very real temperature increases. Having the official instruments that measure climate change be in highly developed areas is resulting in temperature measurement records that are not trustworthy.
Recently, a National Weather Service temperature sensor in Hawaii was racking up day after day of record temperatures before they discovered that the sensor was not only located in the middle of all the runways of the Honolulu airport, but that the temperature sensor was malfunctioning and was reporting temperatures many degrees higher than they actually were.
When compared to measurements taken at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center only four miles away (which is outside the highly developed area) temperature measurements were *seven* degrees cooler. Did the weather service invalidate the temperature records that by the faulty sensor in the middle of the airport runways? Nope. All that faulty data is now being used to 'prove' global warming.
A survey of the official National Weather System ground temperature measurement instruments is underway and a huge number of problems have been observed. More information on this survey and photos of just how fucked up some of the instrument placements are is available here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
I bought (OK, my parents bought) my first Mac back in 1985 when I entered college. In the late 90's I sold Macs and handled training at the local Apple dealer. I'm no Apple hater, but forcing users to buy a more expensive device to get something that should be a user upgradable in the first place is definitely an Apple strategy.
With iPods and iPhones, there is no good reason not to include a microSD slot to allow for user upgradable memory except that it would cut into Apple's profit margins. Apple's ability to charge $100 for an upgrade whose cost is minimal and will become even smaller over time is not something that is occurring by accident.
In the recent past, remember that Apple only put a DVD burner (Superdrive) in the most expensive version (good, better best) of their various computers. At any PC vendor, you could configure a cheaper computer to include a DVD burner, but Apple likes to milk it's customers.
Also there is Apple's refusal to release something that Apple fans have been requesting for well over a decade. Why is there no mini tower Mac with easily user replaceable parts?
I'm afraid the answer is that with an iMac, if the graphics chip gets too slow for what you are doing you have to purchase another whole iMac instead of being able to swap out just the graphics card.
After decades of being nickel and dimed to death by Apple, I'm now the proud owner of my very own Hackintosh where I am free to configure my machine any way I see fit. Since Apple doesn't see it's way clear to provide normal expansion options to it's users, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it.
The thing that annoyed me the most about the new Trek was the abundance of 'shaking the camera during filming' shots I was subjected to. Can we give that a rest?
Hopefully, the cycle of companies with large expenses and no profits being purchased by the stupid will come to an end. We all know how profitable Skype has been for after eBay paid 2.6 Billion dollars for them. Not to even mention how profitable Youtube has been since Google paid a mere 1.65 Billion dollars for them.
Apple is sitting on a buttload of cash right now, but wouldn't it be a hell of a lot more logical for them to build a fab with it? They certainly have been gathering in a whole lot of chip design expertise lately.
If netbooks running Win 7 can't run Word alone without thrashing the hard disk, it doesn't sound like you would want to try running three apps at once.
All modern OS's support multiple cores. Unfortunately, not all application programmers are smart enough to be able to write code to take advantage of this. Having the OS and it's compilers change single threaded code into something that can take advantage of multiple cores *for you* is what Apple is working on.
One of the nice things about Apple is that they follow the philosophy of Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky says: "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
With the LLVM Compiler and GrandCentral, Apple has been working for years now on a way to better take advantage of machines with many cores. Once again, they are making a leap that Microsoft will not be able to match for many years.
Of course, with the way multicore architecture has come to the forefront, I kind of wish Be OS had survived since it was designed to be multicore from day one. I have a feeling it's pervasively multithreaded nature would kick Apple and Microsoft's ass on modern hardware.
Do you honestly think that just because you and your ilk stopped using the phrase Global Warming, we will forget what you've been predicting all these years?
You've all spent the better part of a decade saying that man made CO2 is causing catastrophic temperature increases. Unfortunately CO2 is still on the rise, but temps are now dropping instead of rising.
Now you guys think you can suddenly claim that you didn't really mean 'global warming' but were talking about 'climate change' all along? Man made CO2 is causing huge temperature increases, except where it's causing huge temperature drops??? Really????
Shenanigans!
If NASA understood solar cycles, they wouldn't already be a year off on their prediction for when the next solar cycle would begin. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
God, Macbooks are teh suck then. My 400 dollar Compaq has an ExpressCard slot.
How about everyone take a deep breath and Google for 'Macbook Firewire card'.
The Macbook does come with with one of those seldom used ExpressCard/34 slots on it. It took me all of five seconds to find an expansion card for that very slot that offers two Firewire 400 ports and one USB port for 40 bucks with a one year warranty. Other options offer Firewire 800 connectivity at a price premium, of course.
I have a feeling this will not give access to target disk mode. (although I'm not sure if that is the case) If so, that will give the haters something to still bitch about.
It's a win-win for the people who just wanted to hook up their Firewire peripherals and the haters who are compelled to tell the world that this Macbook is teh suck because it doesn't run on rainbows and My Little Pony farts.
Since there was more support from the Democrats than the Republicans, you can't really blame this on one party. Frankly, America needs to learn that when both the Democrats and Republicans try to rush something through Congress together the normal citizen is pretty much screwed. In the past we've gotten great bipartisan bullshit like the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and NAFTA this way.
Learn, People! When both parties are saying the same thing at the same time it can only mean that the same special interests have their hands up their bought-and-paid-for-asses and are feeding them the same lines.
Actually, you have the strange delusion that just because Microsoft started pulling version numbers out of it's ass that everyone did.
Wow... You're really retarded, aren't you?
How a rational person can feel that Microsoft would never, ever feed anyone false answers for bullshit marketing reasons is beyond me. I assume you think you are rational, even if I don't.
.1 releases and their service packs are .0.1 releases.
Microsoft abandoned sensible version numbers as they have traditionally been used when they assigned the first release of Windows NT the version number 3.1.
Similarly, Apple's failure to call Mac OS X Version 1 is just as ridiculous and just as marketing driven. Now they face the retarded situation where their major version releases are
At least that is closer to traditional version numbers than Microsoft's system of pulling version numbers out of their sales and marketing department's asses.
I only include versions on the same evolutionary tree. The DOS based Windows evolutionary tree would include Windows 1.0, Windows 286, Windows 386, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME with a few minor others tossed in. That evolutionary line died out and is not offered for sale.
The Windows we know today is based on Windows NT which began with version 3.1 and progressed as I have mentioned in the above posting.
Windows NT was written under the leadership of it's chief architect, Dave Cutler, who previously was one of the designers of Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX VMS Operating System. If NT was based on anything, it was based on VMS and not OS/2.
The current versions of Windows derive from Cutler's total redesign of DOS based Windows.
As other people have pointed out, for a time Microsoft sold two different evolutionary lines of Windows simultaneously. The DOS based versions thankfully died out with the horrible Windows ME and are no longer sold. You can include these evolutionary dead end versions if you like, but people more in the know will not include versions unrelated to those sold now.
Are you saying that versions of Windows prior to Windows NT version 3.1 that were based on DOS have anything to do with the OS code used in XP or Windows Vista?
Windows NT represented the type of total code reset that TFA is discussing. The code before it was irrelevant,although they stuck with the user interface choices prior versions had made. Also the programming API's were very similar.
I rate thee funny. :oP
Versions of Windows built on top of DOS are completely irrelevant when discussing NT based Windows versions like Vista and the upcoming "Windows Seven". They are on a completely different evolutionary tree.
Are you under the impression that a lot of DOS based Windows 3.1 code was used in Windows NT 3.1? Microsoft included a compatibility subsystem to run Win16 programs on Win32, just as Apple's Blue Box ran classic Mac OS programs on Mac OS X. In both cases the old OS architecture was dead and gone.
I hate it when people get this one wrong.
Windows 1.0 = Windows NT 3.1 (Microsoft's Marketing department called the first version of NT version 3.1 because that was the version of the old DOS based Windows they were selling at the time. NT was newer so it just couldn't start with a lower version number!)
Windows 1.5 = Windows NT 3.5.1
Windows 2.0 = Windows NT 4.0
Windows 3.0 = Windows 2000
Windows 3.1 = Windows XP
Windows 4.0 = Windows Vista
So the next version of Windows that people are calling Windows 7 is actually going to be Windows 4.1 since they say they are going to stick with the Vista architecture on the next version.
There was a time when a much leaner Microsoft highly respected and rewarded employees who could write good code. These were the people who rose to positions of responsibility. Today, Microsoft is run by Sales and Marketing and coders are viewed as an expense. Until this situation reverses itself, don't expect any improvement in the product they create. They are too stupid to realize their product is the code. Ballmer being from sales only reinforces this problem. Perhaps he should be moved to a chair throwing division that does the monkey boy dance, and someone who can both create great code themselves and manage coders should be brought in as CEO.
Typo. Microsoft forced IE 7 on me. I have XP's Automatic Update set to 'Notify me of updates, but don't download or install them'. Did that prevent Microsoft from forcing IE 7 on me? No.
If Apple had forced Safari on me the way Microsoft forced IE 7 on me, then I would agree we had a problem. For the people who clicked a button on a window that popped up without looking to see what the damn thing actually said, you are morons. Offering software isn't that big a deal. Forcing it on you is.