Is the software you are running open source? If so, where can I download it?
If it is not open source then one factually does not know a thing about the nature of the results.
Getting back to the theoretical question, if the input data is not the raw data and taken "as is" then the methods of statistics we have today do not apply. What would then be interesting is to see the same analysis of the raw and "massaged" data and compare the results. If the results are different then one can gauge the effect of the massaging.
Here's another example. In my line of work I routinely see studies from the pharmaceutical industry, where science intersects heavily with commerce. Spin Is King in this industry. No. It's Profit actually, but you get the idea ...
A drug rep recently gave me a spiel about a new product containing melatonin, a natural hormone, synthesised by them to hopefully enable 'natural sleep'. [ If you're jet lagged it's largely because your personal melatonin release cycle is askew from the Earth's rotational cycle ]. So 'facts' were presented to me for reading, in pamphlet style. One claim especially intrigued me ( paraphrased ) - 'none of the possible harmful long term effects that are associated with the commonest class of drugs currently used for night time sedation ( benzodiazepines ) have been found in our product'. As this seemed an ambitious claim for a new product I asked for clarification. I was shown a study paper that I pored over for a couple of minutes before I found, literally in finer print, one of many explanatory notes to the relevant graphic favourable to their product in this regard. No single patient studied had ever taken more than 21 tablets. It was a three week study at most. So the parameter space at 3 weeks plus ( of continuous consecutive nightly use ) remains entirely untouched. And no medico in their right mind would freely interchange 'three weeks' with 'long term' as descriptive phrases for time intervals. So the information presented to me was purely an exercise in perverting language constructs ( attempt at hidden semantic replacement ).
Note their conclusion is correct based on the data inputs : 'none of the possible harmful ..... have been found in our product', and their analysis of the data given could well have been technically flawless. But the question of the goodness of long term use of melatonin, by their studies at least, remains entirely open. Any conclusion might yet still be true. As you can sense, that's not the core problem here. It's the validity of the process used to decide that which is key.
Along the lines of the 'no longer global warming but now climate change ben franklin' wording choice. It's the old committee rule - he who writes the agenda wins the day. An example. Why are polar bears white? One line of reasoning says that's inexplicable because polar bears have evolved without natural predators, so why would they need to camouflage themselves? Ergo white coloration is non-adaptive, and away you go on some further path of reasoning. However that, if you've noticed, is simply because other possibilities weren't on the original list. So it is in fact quite probable that they have undergone selection for white appearance because it's their prey that need to be fooled. Hard to sneak up upon your lunch if your are high contrast black, say, against a snow background [ to be more exact polar bear hairs are translucent, and so their color is mainly induced by light from surrounds ]. Hence low contrast whiter bears are better fed than the darker ones, have more offspring, and in time will dominate a population of bears that compete amongst themselves for limited common food sources, etc .....
So what's happened with the 'warming' to 'change' word substitution is to broaden the output/predictive end of the intellectual process, to encompass any input, any output and any process. Thus anything might be true as a result if 'anything goes'. Thus specifically they can legitimately say anything they like and not be contradicted - as the 'facts' can now fit any hypothesis. And vice versa. Again the question of the direction, if any, of the world's actual climate behaviour remains quite open. But the process to decide that has lost it's ability to discriminate alternatives at any level of higher detail or granularity beyond 'anything goes'. [ specifically the natural language traditional usage of the word 'change' has semantics such that it's use implies non specificity of outcome. That tomorrow won't be the same as today, is the strongest statement that can be made if one chooses to use 'change' as a process descriptor.]
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Another junk science example. We have a chap DownUnda, Tim Flannery, who has made a pretty penny writing and selling doom & gloom environmental disaster books. Two years ago, in a radio interview, he firmly predicted that Brisbane's water supplies would virtually dry up in 2010. He issued a number of figures for each of the water catchments in south east Queensland, he claimed as based upon his modelling, predicting nearly zero percent in the regional dams by now. As I speak, all bar one are within 5% of 100%. So he was recently quizzed about the ( diametric ) discrepancy for that description. Without missing a heartbeat ( and probably because he knew such an obvious question would be posed ) he said ( paraphrased ) : "well that's still climate change, we have another model that accurately predicts that scenario". He really said that! Three points.
Firstly in 2008 he used the phrase 'global warming', but has switched to 'climate change' now.
Secondly he used the word 'accurately', without specifying the only implied consistent usage in this context, that being the outcome followed correctly from inputs given ( correct intra-model behaviour ), and not 'accuracy' as regards reflection upon actual real world events.
Thirdly, and most obvious really, he has a whole kit of scenarios, all suitably internally consistent, but none with attachment to the real world as inputs.
[ So he's now known as Flip-Flop Flannery .... ]
Hence if it's a dry year, whip out the 'drought' code. If it was a wet year, reveal the 'flood' code. Each is post facto, and none refer to this actual planet by the test of measured data point comparison. In primary school we used to call this style 'making it up as you go', and for such a well educated man he has simply produced a tertiary education level presentation of the same calibre. Oh, and he is still selling books quite well, I think because he has cleverly hooked into the 'Man is Bad, Nature is Good' religiosity that is entrenched in his followers. So like Harry Potter, or James Bond say, you can keep the franchise going by keeping the basic plot device while twiddling with the version details for the sake of novelty. He politely declined to record a punt for 2012, so maybe there's hope for him yet. Of course one needn't bother with rational debate, that's optional, just blow up the other kids in your classroom instead. Shades of Erich Von Daniken actually ......
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
An example. Why are polar bears white? One line of reasoning says that's inexplicable because polar bears have evolved without natural predators, so why would they need to camouflage themselves? Ergo white coloration is non-adaptive, and away you go on some further path of reasoning. However that, if you've noticed, is simply because other possibilities weren't on the original list. So it is in fact quite probable that they have undergone selection for white appearance because it's their prey that need to be fooled. Hard to sneak up upon your lunch if your are high contrast black, say, against a snow background [ to be more exact polar bear hairs are translucent, and so their color is mainly induced by light from surrounds ]. Hence low contrast whiter bears are better fed than the darker ones, have more offspring, and in time will dominate a population of bears that compete amongst themselves for limited common food sources, etc .....
The poor polar bears, they look so cute and cuddly until one tries to cuddle them. I was struck by the use of the image of the polar bear with no ice in sight as an icon for global warming. I have never come across a single word in public about what it wrong with that picture.
What is wrong with it is that it is a picture of a polar bear. That means the sun is up. That means it is summer. That means the ice is supposed to melt.
As poetic justice, the photographer was simply a nature photog with no environmental axe to grind. She was surprised to see her photo expropriated by so many and is seeking royalty payments in line with the apparent worth of the image.
Quote:
So what's happened with the 'warming' to 'change' word substitution is to broaden the output/predictive end of the intellectual process, to encompass any input, any output and any process. Thus anything might be true as a result if 'anything goes'. Thus specifically they can legitimately say anything they like and not be contradicted - as the 'facts' can now fit any hypothesis. And vice versa. Again the question of the direction, if any, of the world's actual climate behaviour remains quite open. But the process to decide that has lost it's ability to discriminate alternatives at any level of higher detail or granularity beyond 'anything goes'. [ specifically the natural language traditional usage of the word 'change' has semantics such that it's use implies non specificity of outcome. That tomorrow won't be the same as today, is the strongest statement that can be made if one chooses to use 'change' as a process descriptor.]
Cheers, Mike.
The climate is always changing therefore the result from flipping a coin is equally correct. Just in case we are in a period where the climate is not changing that is an anomaly showing there is change.
US NBC TV evening news back in July, "paradoxically global warming can bring on an ice age." First I was surprised by the use of such a long word for American consumption. Second by the apparent ignorance that ice ages are not warm.
Oh Suzanah, don't you cry for me
It rained so much the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot
I froze to death
With a banjo on my knee
Another ploy, if you like, has been the argument or advocacy by 'referral to authority'. Roughly speaking this goes 'so and so said it, so it must be true'. Now it's not unreasonable to claim ignorance of specifics and arcana thus, similiar to specialist evidence in law courts, we need to rely upon devoted intellectual resources. However one can go too far, and also like a law trial one ought to examine the veracity of any claim to specialist knowledge.
Pardon the long post but I did not keep the URL for this article. It is appropriate as the melting "geniuses" I have met on the web cannot be dissuaded from citing the anonymous, high school level Wikipedia as an authoritative source. The self-proclaimed authority on global melting turns out to be no more than another ignorant politician.
=====
Telegraph, Wednesday 20 October 2010
Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business,
latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday
Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV.
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about
everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books
including Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work,
How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His
website is www.jamesdelingpole.com.
Professor Hal Lewis is not an irrelevant, senile, old fool
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 15th, 2010
When Professor Hal Lewis wrote his now-famous letter of resignation to the
American Physical Society earlier this week, climate change alarmists were
quick to respond with their usual wit, aplomb and generosity. Here were
some of the excuses they offered as to why this terrible man must at all
costs not be taken seriously.
1. Professor Hal Lewis is a physicist not a climate scientist and therefore
unqualified to comment on climate science.
2. He’s old. Old people are, like, really senile.
3. We haven’t heard of him before. How can what he say matters if we haven’t
heard of him before?
4. He’s probably just some shill for Big Oil, like all the other deniers.
5. He hasn’t published enough papers, so he’s hardly a real scientist
6. OK, so maybe there’s a possibility he’s not senile, but he’s definitely
too old to have stayed in touch with all the zippy modern climate stuff that
the experts at places like RealClimate know about.
Some of these views you’ll see expressed by the host of trolls who flocked to my popular blog on the subject. Others, you’ll find expressed by bloggers like this character here (sample quote: “Who is Hal Lewis? I’ve been studying physics for 30 years, and I’ve never heard of him.â€) and this blogger here who calls himself the Stoat but whose real name is William Connolley.
Here is Connolley in action on his blog, scrabbling for dirt:
So, where are the papers? You can’t have a scientific career without papers.
There are some early ones – The Multiple Production of Mesons from 1948 with Oppenheimer, no less. Or Multiple Scattering in an Infinite Medium, 1950 – worthy maths-ish thing, I’d guess. But past the late-50’s early 60’s it suddenly gets very thin indeed. I’d guess, without knowing more, that he gave up science and moved into admin.
And here he is, in his role as a Wikipedia editor caught by Watts Up With That doctoring Professor Lewis’s Wikipedia entry so as to edit out that all-important resignation letter.
William Connolley – a green party activist – has form in this regard. Lots of
form – as I first reported here last year – drawing on Lawrence Solomon’s definitive National Post expose “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articlesâ€.
Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information
source the world has ever known ' Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003,
just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel,
Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's
articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental
temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global
cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the
Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick
graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the
scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer,
two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his
early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His
control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it  more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred " over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
Anyway, Connolley’s latest escapade has proved to be the straw that broke the
camel’s back for the Wiki administrators. He has now been banned from writing on “Climate Change†for Wikipedia. (H/T Bishop Hill). As too has the similarly fanatical Kim Dabelstein Petersen.
This is glorious news for those of us on the side of truth and reality. According to Solomon “he is arguably the world's most influential global
warming advocate after Al Goreâ€, which sounds like overstatement until you
remember that Wikipedia is “the most popular reference source on the planetâ€
and that Connolley managed to skew almost every one of its entries on Climate Change to his fervently warmist perspective. The Climategate scientists tried and failed to disinvent the Medieval Warm Period. But on Wikipedia, Connolley very nearly succeeded by pouring cold water on its significance and by trying to rename it the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
Remember too that it was Connolley who helped up the Warmist propaganda site
RealClimate which – despite its reassuring-sounding name – is essentially the
black ops wing of Michael Mann’s Hockey Team. So his scalp – (bushy, with
comedy bear attachment, see sexy photograph above) – represents a
considerable coup for the cause of climate realism.
In fact, this has been a good news week generally for us goodies in the great
climate wars. Best of all, of course, are the glorious tidings that
cricketlovingjetsettingbeardgrowingrailwayengineeringsoftpornwritingtrollimpe
rsonating Dr Rajendra Pachauri is to stay on as chairman of the IPCC.
Dr Benny Peiser thinks this will be bad news for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth
Assessment Report:
"As long as he stays the IPCC will not restore credibility," he said. "Everybody knows that so there is a risk that the next report will not be taken that seriously."
Exactly, Benny. Why else do you think we’re all jumping for joy?
=====
Myself, I got interested in the subject in the late 80s with [url]http://www.giwersworld.org/environment/aehb.phtml [/url] and put this together as a draft manuscript. I couldn't get any interest in it so I left it in the very rough shape and did not expunge the super-patriot opening. Keep in mind those were the days when conservatives were conservatives and neo-conservatives were still Marxist-Leninists looking for a new place to work mischief.
Well, I've been ( nominated as ) an expert medical witness in about six significant court cases in my ~ 25 year career ( and another half dozen 'idle' matters ). Including two murders and a manslaughter in fact. I remember very well the fairly sharp focus upon me by all interested parties in the courtroom before I'd answered a single question of relevance to any case at hand. Once I had about an hour of examination/cross-examination to divulge/ascertain my level of experience and knowledge for the section of medicine of interest to the case. On another occasion it was deemed that I had insufficient expertise, whereupon I still gave testimony but the 'weight' of my opinion was downgraded appropriately. This is not a failure, or anyone's fault, simply that the court had to look elsewhere to answer certain questions on the day. I didn't fit the bill.
One could legitimately object to requiring say, a criminal standard of proof ( beyond reasonable doubt ), for scientific matters. Fair enough, but I would retort that much that poses as science today doesn't even approach a civil standard of proof ( more probable than not ). Even worse there is all too frequently no quality metric applied what-so-ever, so no comment can be made along such lines. A bit like chemistry prior to Lavoisier, it was neither right nor wrong, just haywire ....
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Another worthy comment about legal type approaches to proof ie. can we extract any useful/fruitful approaches to the analysis of complex and important contentious scientific questions ( preferring that to rhetoric, politicking, ad hominem etc )? A major piece I think would be establishing commonly viewable data sets, available to all parties. This has long been a key feature of court room process. As the CRU matter has demonstrated in spade-fulls, the minimum is to have (a) revelation of the data sets at all and (b) with utter transparency in the manner of their mode of construction and distribution. This is a 'provenance'/'audit trail' approach to facts, as already very successfully practised in many scientific areas like astronomy, paleontology and the like.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
...
One could legitimately object to requiring say, a criminal standard of proof ( beyond reasonable doubt ), for scientific matters. Fair enough, but I would retort that much that poses as science today doesn't even approach a civil standard of proof ( more probable than not ). Even worse there is all too frequently no quality metric applied what-so-ever, so no comment can be made along such lines. A bit like chemistry prior to Lavoisier, it was neither right nor wrong, just haywire ...
Polemic without qualification assumes a context.
A standard of evidence is dependent upon to use to which the conclusions are put. If it is a purely scientific thing then that standard is whatever the scientists in the field feel is appropriate to the material. If it is just another datum or an expected result it is not worth time time to examine the evidence. But if the result is contrary to what is expected then the first demand is to see the evidence and a more complete disclosure of the methodology. The greater the deviation from the expected the greater the demands. That is the standard and we see it all the time.
But when a claim of science becomes the basis for legislation it means behavior is being criminalized and as such beyond a reasonable doubt is required not just for the act that is criminalized but for the basis of the law itself.
One does not have to go back very far to find the BS of "recovered memory syndrome" leading to convictions regarding ritual, satanic child abuse/sacrifice to Satan. One still finds it today with the recovered memories of by the father when the adult child "remembers" the rape. And that is supported by statute of limitations in these cases being changed from years after the act to years after remembering the act. And all of this in the face of PTSD as well as every day experience saying the problem is that forgetting is impossible not recovering what was "buried".
In the matter of criminalizing behavior based upon the supposed science then certainly the science has to be held to the same standard as the crime itself. One certainly cannot have the science as a popular guess as the basis for criminal statutes. I do not see this is an unreasonable standard because of its the application of the science.
Now I agree the law does not work that way. A thing is criminal regardless of the reasonableness of the scientific basis for the law such as many of the drug laws. But the drug laws are not based upon the science. Global warming laws are being based solely upon the trash science of those who dream of being the next Carl Sagan and hawked by journalism majors.
Ignoring the criminal aspects of it, the imputed costs of the proposals are in the hundreds of billions which is a lot of money even if in dollars. That should be criminal.
And then the political sell of wind power and promoting the installed capacity in MW-hr while never saying the real yield is only 1/4 of the installed capacity. Never relating the spike in corn prices to the US tax subsidies for turning it into ethanol that takes more energy to produce than it yields. Nor does it do a thing to shut up the Jane Fonda school of nuclear physics which could have reduced oil consumption by half if all electric plants were nuclear.
The list of insanities goes on and on.
The melters believe there has been a warming else what are they claiming to measure. Where are the catastrophes? or as someone asked, the Thermogedons? They are always in the future. In fact they have all been ten years in the future since 1987 or so. Even today they are still ten years in the future. Why should anyone worry about as no matter what the year the disaster is always ten years away? Rather like nuclear weapons of Iraq and Iran they are always only a few years away even decades later. This is nothing but political scare tactics. It walks like a duck. It armagedons like a duck. Therefore it is a politician with the mind of a duck.
.... the melting "geniuses" I have met on the web cannot be dissuaded from citing the anonymous, high school level Wikipedia as an authoritative source.
( edit ) Oh, this is golden! They have sock puppets, meatpuppets, move wars, lame-edit wars, griefing, page-name wars, revert wars ( when does your opponent sleep? ), wikigroaning, battlefield conduct, ..... it just goes on and on. What a hoot! Makes our forums here look so tame, and gives sociopathic trolls vast virtual continents to 'conquer'. Suits me fine. Maybe it's better than World of Warcraft .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
( edit ) Another worthy comment about legal type approaches to proof ie. can we extract any useful/fruitful approaches to the analysis of complex and important contentious scientific questions ( preferring that to rhetoric, politicking, ad hominem etc )? A major piece I think would be establishing commonly viewable data sets, available to all parties. This has long been a key feature of court room process. As the CRU matter has demonstrated in spade-fulls, the minimum is to have (a) revelation of the data sets at all and (b) with utter transparency in the manner of their mode of construction and distribution. This is a 'provenance'/'audit trail' approach to facts, as already very successfully practised in many scientific areas like astronomy, paleontology and the like.
Another issue is the application of science to people. It was bad enough when Eugenics was a science. It generated a brisk trade in certificates of good ancestry. But using economics to guide legislation only means people affected by the law will find new ways to beat the system which are different from the economic analysis which guided the legislation making the entire exercise futile.
So also the carbon laws. In countries which have such laws the carbon footprint has gone down but the world footprint continues to rise as though nothing had changed. How is that possible? The countries with the laws export the carbon emitting jobs to other countries, mainly China these days, and the people have outsmarted the laws. The entire carbon trading scam is nothing more than siphoning off part of the trade with ZERO ability to stop the increase in carbon emissions.
This kind of insanity is at the heart of the issue. NOTHING can be done without lowering the standard of living of the world. And life expectancy correlates with standard of living. Reality says we can only build nuclear reactors at a certain rate even if we exterminate the Jane Fonda clones. Reality says we have to endure decades of only one more decade to live before we run out of oil. And that is what they other half of the greenies really say -- we will run out of fossil fuel before we melt. Greenies never contradict each other in public.
Given what I know is the reality it is difficult to avoid falling into a belief there is a conspiracy of greenies and melters. But a long time ago I learned never to assume conspiracy when simple stupidity will suffice to explain it all.
.... the melting "geniuses" I have met on the web cannot be dissuaded from citing the anonymous, high school level Wikipedia as an authoritative source.
I made a few contributions to wiki over the years -- nothing interesting. Then one day in soc.history.ancient or sci.archaeology referred me to wiki to back up his claim about biblical Israel. And there it all was right from the Septuagint but without the least reference not even the Septuagint, aka Old Testament.
So I started making some changes with references to at least put things on what they claimed to want such as Palestine being mentioned seven times by Herodotus in the mid 5th c. BC and no mention of Judea. The changes were reversed. I asked why Herodotus was not a reference to Herodotus and was told solid references were required for any entry. I then noted there was not a single reference, much less authoritative, to any of the entries on biblical Israel and asked why there were any entries at all on the subject. BANNED of course.
Social networks formed there very quickly. The believers in a biblical Israel and melters and who knows what else control what is entered. It results in imposing the lowest common denominator of knowledge, aka high school level.
Thus I am not surprised at this Connelley matter. That the guy who started it thought it could succeed I can only put down to youthful idealism.
Bringing it all back home ...
I started with Seti back in 2000. Their code was closed but it was an FFT algorithm which are a dime a dozen. Hard not to use one that works. I haven't made an issue of this project's source code as it does not appear to be doing more than pure analysis using tools as hard to get wrong as FFTs. I did have an issue with Milkyway but I think my exchange there clarified the issue -- not that I like it. Orbit is still beta so no issue yet. And these are the only ones I participate in because 1) pure physics and 2) difficult to do the wrong thing.
Climate modelling? I can write a climate model. And since when I originally wrote the manuscript 20 years ago today my local net of two quads and an older single core is probably on the order of the super computers in those days.
But the problem is ever since I taught myself FORTRAN II in 1967 on a time share teletype I was involved in computer modelling one way or another. A long list and largely classified but I never lost sight nor was I ever permitted to lose sight of real world validation of models.
One cannot validate climate models in the usual sense. However one can look backwards and see there were no disasters from any climate changes in the past. Not even ice ages were disasters. The only thing of interest in "recent" times is the mass extinction of megafauna where human involvement is not supported by the evidence.
The only saving thing to suggest is these climate media whores are ignorant of everything beyond their immediate environment.
I haven't made an issue of this project's source code as it does not appear to be doing more than pure analysis using tools as hard to get wrong as FFTs.
Yup, it's signal analysis, suitably configured for the context. My guess would be that how to best tweak for intelligent guesses about putative signals is probably the 'arguable' part, if at all. We've never detected/heard a gravitational wave you see.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Is the software you are
)
Here's another example. In my line of work I routinely see studies from the pharmaceutical industry, where science intersects heavily with commerce. Spin Is King in this industry. No. It's Profit actually, but you get the idea ...
A drug rep recently gave me a spiel about a new product containing melatonin, a natural hormone, synthesised by them to hopefully enable 'natural sleep'. [ If you're jet lagged it's largely because your personal melatonin release cycle is askew from the Earth's rotational cycle ]. So 'facts' were presented to me for reading, in pamphlet style. One claim especially intrigued me ( paraphrased ) - 'none of the possible harmful long term effects that are associated with the commonest class of drugs currently used for night time sedation ( benzodiazepines ) have been found in our product'. As this seemed an ambitious claim for a new product I asked for clarification. I was shown a study paper that I pored over for a couple of minutes before I found, literally in finer print, one of many explanatory notes to the relevant graphic favourable to their product in this regard. No single patient studied had ever taken more than 21 tablets. It was a three week study at most. So the parameter space at 3 weeks plus ( of continuous consecutive nightly use ) remains entirely untouched. And no medico in their right mind would freely interchange 'three weeks' with 'long term' as descriptive phrases for time intervals. So the information presented to me was purely an exercise in perverting language constructs ( attempt at hidden semantic replacement ).
Note their conclusion is correct based on the data inputs : 'none of the possible harmful ..... have been found in our product', and their analysis of the data given could well have been technically flawless. But the question of the goodness of long term use of melatonin, by their studies at least, remains entirely open. Any conclusion might yet still be true. As you can sense, that's not the core problem here. It's the validity of the process used to decide that which is key.
Along the lines of the 'no longer global warming but now climate change ben franklin' wording choice. It's the old committee rule - he who writes the agenda wins the day. An example. Why are polar bears white? One line of reasoning says that's inexplicable because polar bears have evolved without natural predators, so why would they need to camouflage themselves? Ergo white coloration is non-adaptive, and away you go on some further path of reasoning. However that, if you've noticed, is simply because other possibilities weren't on the original list. So it is in fact quite probable that they have undergone selection for white appearance because it's their prey that need to be fooled. Hard to sneak up upon your lunch if your are high contrast black, say, against a snow background [ to be more exact polar bear hairs are translucent, and so their color is mainly induced by light from surrounds ]. Hence low contrast whiter bears are better fed than the darker ones, have more offspring, and in time will dominate a population of bears that compete amongst themselves for limited common food sources, etc .....
So what's happened with the 'warming' to 'change' word substitution is to broaden the output/predictive end of the intellectual process, to encompass any input, any output and any process. Thus anything might be true as a result if 'anything goes'. Thus specifically they can legitimately say anything they like and not be contradicted - as the 'facts' can now fit any hypothesis. And vice versa. Again the question of the direction, if any, of the world's actual climate behaviour remains quite open. But the process to decide that has lost it's ability to discriminate alternatives at any level of higher detail or granularity beyond 'anything goes'. [ specifically the natural language traditional usage of the word 'change' has semantics such that it's use implies non specificity of outcome. That tomorrow won't be the same as today, is the strongest statement that can be made if one chooses to use 'change' as a process descriptor.]
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Another junk science example. We have a chap DownUnda, Tim Flannery, who has made a pretty penny writing and selling doom & gloom environmental disaster books. Two years ago, in a radio interview, he firmly predicted that Brisbane's water supplies would virtually dry up in 2010. He issued a number of figures for each of the water catchments in south east Queensland, he claimed as based upon his modelling, predicting nearly zero percent in the regional dams by now. As I speak, all bar one are within 5% of 100%. So he was recently quizzed about the ( diametric ) discrepancy for that description. Without missing a heartbeat ( and probably because he knew such an obvious question would be posed ) he said ( paraphrased ) : "well that's still climate change, we have another model that accurately predicts that scenario". He really said that! Three points.
Firstly in 2008 he used the phrase 'global warming', but has switched to 'climate change' now.
Secondly he used the word 'accurately', without specifying the only implied consistent usage in this context, that being the outcome followed correctly from inputs given ( correct intra-model behaviour ), and not 'accuracy' as regards reflection upon actual real world events.
Thirdly, and most obvious really, he has a whole kit of scenarios, all suitably internally consistent, but none with attachment to the real world as inputs.
[ So he's now known as Flip-Flop Flannery .... ]
Hence if it's a dry year, whip out the 'drought' code. If it was a wet year, reveal the 'flood' code. Each is post facto, and none refer to this actual planet by the test of measured data point comparison. In primary school we used to call this style 'making it up as you go', and for such a well educated man he has simply produced a tertiary education level presentation of the same calibre. Oh, and he is still selling books quite well, I think because he has cleverly hooked into the 'Man is Bad, Nature is Good' religiosity that is entrenched in his followers. So like Harry Potter, or James Bond say, you can keep the franchise going by keeping the basic plot device while twiddling with the version details for the sake of novelty. He politely declined to record a punt for 2012, so maybe there's hope for him yet. Of course one needn't bother with rational debate, that's optional, just blow up the other kids in your classroom instead. Shades of Erich Von Daniken actually ......
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: RE: An example. Why
)
RE: Another ploy, if you
)
Pardon the long post but I did not keep the URL for this article. It is appropriate as the melting "geniuses" I have met on the web cannot be dissuaded from citing the anonymous, high school level Wikipedia as an authoritative source. The self-proclaimed authority on global melting turns out to be no more than another ignorant politician.
=====
Telegraph, Wednesday 20 October 2010
Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business,
latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday
Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV.
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about
everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books
including Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work,
How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His
website is www.jamesdelingpole.com.
Professor Hal Lewis is not an irrelevant, senile, old fool
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 15th, 2010
When Professor Hal Lewis wrote his now-famous letter of resignation to the
American Physical Society earlier this week, climate change alarmists were
quick to respond with their usual wit, aplomb and generosity. Here were
some of the excuses they offered as to why this terrible man must at all
costs not be taken seriously.
1. Professor Hal Lewis is a physicist not a climate scientist and therefore
unqualified to comment on climate science.
2. He’s old. Old people are, like, really senile.
3. We haven’t heard of him before. How can what he say matters if we haven’t
heard of him before?
4. He’s probably just some shill for Big Oil, like all the other deniers.
5. He hasn’t published enough papers, so he’s hardly a real scientist
6. OK, so maybe there’s a possibility he’s not senile, but he’s definitely
too old to have stayed in touch with all the zippy modern climate stuff that
the experts at places like RealClimate know about.
Some of these views you’ll see expressed by the host of trolls who flocked to my popular blog on the subject. Others, you’ll find expressed by bloggers like this character here (sample quote: “Who is Hal Lewis? I’ve been studying physics for 30 years, and I’ve never heard of him.â€) and this blogger here who calls himself the Stoat but whose real name is William Connolley.
Here is Connolley in action on his blog, scrabbling for dirt:
So, where are the papers? You can’t have a scientific career without papers.
There are some early ones – The Multiple Production of Mesons from 1948 with Oppenheimer, no less. Or Multiple Scattering in an Infinite Medium, 1950 – worthy maths-ish thing, I’d guess. But past the late-50’s early 60’s it suddenly gets very thin indeed. I’d guess, without knowing more, that he gave up science and moved into admin.
And here he is, in his role as a Wikipedia editor caught by Watts Up With That doctoring Professor Lewis’s Wikipedia entry so as to edit out that all-important resignation letter.
William Connolley – a green party activist – has form in this regard. Lots of
form – as I first reported here last year – drawing on Lawrence Solomon’s definitive National Post expose “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articlesâ€.
Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information
source the world has ever known ' Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003,
just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel,
Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's
articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental
temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global
cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the
Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick
graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the
scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer,
two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his
early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His
control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it  more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred " over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
Anyway, Connolley’s latest escapade has proved to be the straw that broke the
camel’s back for the Wiki administrators. He has now been banned from writing on “Climate Change†for Wikipedia. (H/T Bishop Hill). As too has the similarly fanatical Kim Dabelstein Petersen.
This is glorious news for those of us on the side of truth and reality. According to Solomon “he is arguably the world's most influential global
warming advocate after Al Goreâ€, which sounds like overstatement until you
remember that Wikipedia is “the most popular reference source on the planetâ€
and that Connolley managed to skew almost every one of its entries on Climate Change to his fervently warmist perspective. The Climategate scientists tried and failed to disinvent the Medieval Warm Period. But on Wikipedia, Connolley very nearly succeeded by pouring cold water on its significance and by trying to rename it the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
Remember too that it was Connolley who helped up the Warmist propaganda site
RealClimate which – despite its reassuring-sounding name – is essentially the
black ops wing of Michael Mann’s Hockey Team. So his scalp – (bushy, with
comedy bear attachment, see sexy photograph above) – represents a
considerable coup for the cause of climate realism.
In fact, this has been a good news week generally for us goodies in the great
climate wars. Best of all, of course, are the glorious tidings that
cricketlovingjetsettingbeardgrowingrailwayengineeringsoftpornwritingtrollimpe
rsonating Dr Rajendra Pachauri is to stay on as chairman of the IPCC.
Dr Benny Peiser thinks this will be bad news for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth
Assessment Report:
"As long as he stays the IPCC will not restore credibility," he said. "Everybody knows that so there is a risk that the next report will not be taken that seriously."
Exactly, Benny. Why else do you think we’re all jumping for joy?
=====
Myself, I got interested in the subject in the late 80s with [url]http://www.giwersworld.org/environment/aehb.phtml [/url] and put this together as a draft manuscript. I couldn't get any interest in it so I left it in the very rough shape and did not expunge the super-patriot opening. Keep in mind those were the days when conservatives were conservatives and neo-conservatives were still Marxist-Leninists looking for a new place to work mischief.
Well, I've been ( nominated
)
Well, I've been ( nominated as ) an expert medical witness in about six significant court cases in my ~ 25 year career ( and another half dozen 'idle' matters ). Including two murders and a manslaughter in fact. I remember very well the fairly sharp focus upon me by all interested parties in the courtroom before I'd answered a single question of relevance to any case at hand. Once I had about an hour of examination/cross-examination to divulge/ascertain my level of experience and knowledge for the section of medicine of interest to the case. On another occasion it was deemed that I had insufficient expertise, whereupon I still gave testimony but the 'weight' of my opinion was downgraded appropriately. This is not a failure, or anyone's fault, simply that the court had to look elsewhere to answer certain questions on the day. I didn't fit the bill.
One could legitimately object to requiring say, a criminal standard of proof ( beyond reasonable doubt ), for scientific matters. Fair enough, but I would retort that much that poses as science today doesn't even approach a civil standard of proof ( more probable than not ). Even worse there is all too frequently no quality metric applied what-so-ever, so no comment can be made along such lines. A bit like chemistry prior to Lavoisier, it was neither right nor wrong, just haywire ....
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Another worthy comment about legal type approaches to proof ie. can we extract any useful/fruitful approaches to the analysis of complex and important contentious scientific questions ( preferring that to rhetoric, politicking, ad hominem etc )? A major piece I think would be establishing commonly viewable data sets, available to all parties. This has long been a key feature of court room process. As the CRU matter has demonstrated in spade-fulls, the minimum is to have (a) revelation of the data sets at all and (b) with utter transparency in the manner of their mode of construction and distribution. This is a 'provenance'/'audit trail' approach to facts, as already very successfully practised in many scientific areas like astronomy, paleontology and the like.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: ... One could
)
Polemic without qualification assumes a context.
A standard of evidence is dependent upon to use to which the conclusions are put. If it is a purely scientific thing then that standard is whatever the scientists in the field feel is appropriate to the material. If it is just another datum or an expected result it is not worth time time to examine the evidence. But if the result is contrary to what is expected then the first demand is to see the evidence and a more complete disclosure of the methodology. The greater the deviation from the expected the greater the demands. That is the standard and we see it all the time.
But when a claim of science becomes the basis for legislation it means behavior is being criminalized and as such beyond a reasonable doubt is required not just for the act that is criminalized but for the basis of the law itself.
One does not have to go back very far to find the BS of "recovered memory syndrome" leading to convictions regarding ritual, satanic child abuse/sacrifice to Satan. One still finds it today with the recovered memories of by the father when the adult child "remembers" the rape. And that is supported by statute of limitations in these cases being changed from years after the act to years after remembering the act. And all of this in the face of PTSD as well as every day experience saying the problem is that forgetting is impossible not recovering what was "buried".
In the matter of criminalizing behavior based upon the supposed science then certainly the science has to be held to the same standard as the crime itself. One certainly cannot have the science as a popular guess as the basis for criminal statutes. I do not see this is an unreasonable standard because of its the application of the science.
Now I agree the law does not work that way. A thing is criminal regardless of the reasonableness of the scientific basis for the law such as many of the drug laws. But the drug laws are not based upon the science. Global warming laws are being based solely upon the trash science of those who dream of being the next Carl Sagan and hawked by journalism majors.
Ignoring the criminal aspects of it, the imputed costs of the proposals are in the hundreds of billions which is a lot of money even if in dollars. That should be criminal.
And then the political sell of wind power and promoting the installed capacity in MW-hr while never saying the real yield is only 1/4 of the installed capacity. Never relating the spike in corn prices to the US tax subsidies for turning it into ethanol that takes more energy to produce than it yields. Nor does it do a thing to shut up the Jane Fonda school of nuclear physics which could have reduced oil consumption by half if all electric plants were nuclear.
The list of insanities goes on and on.
The melters believe there has been a warming else what are they claiming to measure. Where are the catastrophes? or as someone asked, the Thermogedons? They are always in the future. In fact they have all been ten years in the future since 1987 or so. Even today they are still ten years in the future. Why should anyone worry about as no matter what the year the disaster is always ten years away? Rather like nuclear weapons of Iraq and Iran they are always only a few years away even decades later. This is nothing but political scare tactics. It walks like a duck. It armagedons like a duck. Therefore it is a politician with the mind of a duck.
RE: .... the melting
)
Fine. Direct them to this authoritative Wikipedia entry then .... :-) :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Wow. They have 'edit wars' ......
( edit ) Oh, this is golden! They have sock puppets, meatpuppets, move wars, lame-edit wars, griefing, page-name wars, revert wars ( when does your opponent sleep? ), wikigroaning, battlefield conduct, ..... it just goes on and on. What a hoot! Makes our forums here look so tame, and gives sociopathic trolls vast virtual continents to 'conquer'. Suits me fine. Maybe it's better than World of Warcraft .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: ( edit ) Another worthy
)
Another issue is the application of science to people. It was bad enough when Eugenics was a science. It generated a brisk trade in certificates of good ancestry. But using economics to guide legislation only means people affected by the law will find new ways to beat the system which are different from the economic analysis which guided the legislation making the entire exercise futile.
So also the carbon laws. In countries which have such laws the carbon footprint has gone down but the world footprint continues to rise as though nothing had changed. How is that possible? The countries with the laws export the carbon emitting jobs to other countries, mainly China these days, and the people have outsmarted the laws. The entire carbon trading scam is nothing more than siphoning off part of the trade with ZERO ability to stop the increase in carbon emissions.
This kind of insanity is at the heart of the issue. NOTHING can be done without lowering the standard of living of the world. And life expectancy correlates with standard of living. Reality says we can only build nuclear reactors at a certain rate even if we exterminate the Jane Fonda clones. Reality says we have to endure decades of only one more decade to live before we run out of oil. And that is what they other half of the greenies really say -- we will run out of fossil fuel before we melt. Greenies never contradict each other in public.
Given what I know is the reality it is difficult to avoid falling into a belief there is a conspiracy of greenies and melters. But a long time ago I learned never to assume conspiracy when simple stupidity will suffice to explain it all.
RE: RE: .... the melting
)
I made a few contributions to wiki over the years -- nothing interesting. Then one day in soc.history.ancient or sci.archaeology referred me to wiki to back up his claim about biblical Israel. And there it all was right from the Septuagint but without the least reference not even the Septuagint, aka Old Testament.
So I started making some changes with references to at least put things on what they claimed to want such as Palestine being mentioned seven times by Herodotus in the mid 5th c. BC and no mention of Judea. The changes were reversed. I asked why Herodotus was not a reference to Herodotus and was told solid references were required for any entry. I then noted there was not a single reference, much less authoritative, to any of the entries on biblical Israel and asked why there were any entries at all on the subject. BANNED of course.
Social networks formed there very quickly. The believers in a biblical Israel and melters and who knows what else control what is entered. It results in imposing the lowest common denominator of knowledge, aka high school level.
Thus I am not surprised at this Connelley matter. That the guy who started it thought it could succeed I can only put down to youthful idealism.
Bringing it all back home ...
I started with Seti back in 2000. Their code was closed but it was an FFT algorithm which are a dime a dozen. Hard not to use one that works. I haven't made an issue of this project's source code as it does not appear to be doing more than pure analysis using tools as hard to get wrong as FFTs. I did have an issue with Milkyway but I think my exchange there clarified the issue -- not that I like it. Orbit is still beta so no issue yet. And these are the only ones I participate in because 1) pure physics and 2) difficult to do the wrong thing.
Climate modelling? I can write a climate model. And since when I originally wrote the manuscript 20 years ago today my local net of two quads and an older single core is probably on the order of the super computers in those days.
But the problem is ever since I taught myself FORTRAN II in 1967 on a time share teletype I was involved in computer modelling one way or another. A long list and largely classified but I never lost sight nor was I ever permitted to lose sight of real world validation of models.
One cannot validate climate models in the usual sense. However one can look backwards and see there were no disasters from any climate changes in the past. Not even ice ages were disasters. The only thing of interest in "recent" times is the mass extinction of megafauna where human involvement is not supported by the evidence.
The only saving thing to suggest is these climate media whores are ignorant of everything beyond their immediate environment.
Ah. Hmmm ... have you still
)
Ah. Hmmm ... have you still got time to take out the 'w' word after 'suggest is these climate media ... ". Please? Sorry, mod hat on there ... :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: I haven't made an issue
)
Yup, it's signal analysis, suitably configured for the context. My guess would be that how to best tweak for intelligent guesses about putative signals is probably the 'arguable' part, if at all. We've never detected/heard a gravitational wave you see.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal