Category Archives: View

View from Chaos Manor, Tuesday, January 27, 2015

I am trying to get everything to a new machine and I find myself in a complete state of confusion. I am trying to go from Word 7 to Word 10 because 7 has some incomprehensible bug that randomly kills autocomplete and sometimes spell checking. Drives me crazy.

Over time I will catch up despite the stroke.  Bear with me. I will have more comments.  Meanwhile, I will not bore you, I hope.

Perhaps we can sum up Global Warming.

1. Is the Earth getting warmer?

Yes. Of course. No one denies this. It has been warming at about a degree per century. This trend started in the early 19^th Century, ending the Little Ice Age. For a while in the last Century there was a cooling trend that frightened some of those who watch such things, but after about twenty years the warming resumed. For the last twenty years the warming has been very slight, and some argue that it has stopped, but most observers believe the Earth will continue to warm at about a degree per Century for another hundred years.

2. Does human activity contribute to this warming?

Yes. Of course. We add CO2 to the atmosphere, and that contributes to warming. The disagreement is on how much effect this has: how much warmer are we now than we would be if there were no human released CO2 in the atmosphere? But we do not know this, because the warming is fairly slight, and while models tell us we had 1.4 degrees warming since 1880, we can’t know because we don’t know to any tenth of a degree how warm the Earth was in 1880. We think we know to a half degree accuracy, but that’s not even certain, and depends on how we average a great many numbers, some of which we know come from instruments influenced by urbanization any other non random factors not climate change.

We know that it was warmer in Viking times than now, and surely that was not due to Medieval human activities. It happened, and climate models do not explain it. There were other warm times in human history.

We may need to do something; but that will be expensive, and economy wrecking schemes to tax coal in the US will do little or nothing to halt the trends. We can say we tried and bankrupted ourselves in a good cause, but that isn’t true. Mostly we need to admit that we don’t know.

Climategate, the sequel: How we are STILL being tricked with flawed data on global warming – Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-sequel-How-we-are-STILL-being-tricked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html

Although it has been emerging for seven years or more, one of the most extraordinary scandals of our time has never hit the headlines. Yet another little example of it lately caught my eye when, in the wake of those excited claims that 2014 was “the hottest year on record”, I saw the headline on a climate blog: “Massive tampering with temperatures in South America <https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/massive-tampering-with-temperatures-in-south-america/> ”. The evidence on Notalotofpeopleknowthat, uncovered by Paul Homewood, was indeed striking.

Puzzled by those “2014 hottest ever” claims, which were led by the most quoted of all the five official global temperature records – Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) – Homewood examined a place in the world where Giss was showing temperatures to have risen faster than almost anywhere else: a large chunk of South America stretching from Brazil to Paraguay.

Noting that weather stations there were thin on the ground, he decided to focus on three rural stations covering a huge area of Paraguay. Giss showed it as having recorded, between 1950 and 2014, a particularly steep temperature rise of more than 1.5C: twice the accepted global increase for the whole of the 20th century.

========

For industrial and scientific instrumentation, calibration needs to be relatively frequent (usually annual, and some instruments more frequently; in the lab where I’ve sometimes worked, calibration was effectively daily).

This also gets into the rather deep subject of accuracy of a measurement (e.g., how close is the measurement to the actual value being measured) and the precision of the measurement (e.g., how closely do a series of measurements of the same quantity match). A frequent example of difference is made from target shooting. A shooter who fires ten shots, all of which hit the bullseye of the target, is both accurate and precise. A shooter who fires ten shots which are uniformly distributed within, say, the 8 ring of the target (assuming the bullseye as the 10 ring) would be accurate (the average of the shots is on the bullseye) but not precise. A shooter who is aiming at the bullseye and puts the ten shots into a bullseye-sized group to the right of the 8 ring boundary is precise (good grouping) but not accurate.

So in the example, if the analyst compares measurements for one fixed temperature station with consistent calibration over a period of time, AND if there is nothing changing about the environment (e.g. no nearby human activity which adds heat to the environment), one can reasonably say that there has been a change in temperature (2 degrees, in the example) for that station between the measurement periods as a matter of precision.

If the same is true of every station in the ensemble of temperature stations, they again you could claim that the temperature change is true as a matter of precision.

However, where the example falls short is that you are measuring a two degree change in temperature over a one-year period with one degree precision. (This is, of course, ignoring the effects of weather, which will dominate the trend over daily to annual time frames. We will also assume in what follows, as appears to be the assumption of the example, that the ensemble of measurements which is being reported is actually being measured as deltas from the baseline temperature of each individual station; if the air temperatures are being reported and the temperature difference is later calculated from the air temperatures, then we can no longer ignore accuracy in the statement of the problem.)

The climate change "problem" is that the researchers are attempting to measure a 0.02 degree change in temperature over a one-year period ( 2 degrees Fahrenheit per century) with one degree precision. In the midst of "weather," which consists of, typically, 20-30 degree daily variations of temperature; variations of the daily average temperature by roughly 5 – 15 degrees up and down, once or twice each week, as weather systems pass; and annual variations of the weekly mean temperature ranging from near zero at the equator to (roughly) 20-40 degrees in most of the Continental US, to something in excess of 60 degrees at the poles.

So for global averaging, it is necessary to maintain consistent precision of calibration as well as consistent accuracy of calibration (that is, if the thermometer was exactly 10 degrees off for the first measurement, it has to still be exactly 10 degrees off for the final measurement, in order for precision to be maintained) for all thermometers over the ensemble time. Over decades of time. And again assuming no systematic changes in the environment of each temperature station, such as construction of a 10-story building and associated parking lot.

Again, it comes down to the same bottom line: the perceived change is temperature is significantly less than the accuracy and precision errors of the instruments over annual time frames.

As I have said before, demonstrating the claims of the global warming alarmists over 100 year time frames would require input data accuracy (and analysis precision for their models) on the order of 10 parts per billion, or 8 significant digits, as measured by the contribution to the global heat balance.

Jim

Educational financing

Check out

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/upshot/a-quiet-revolution-in-helping-lift-the-burden-of-student-debt.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&abt=0002&abg=0

Warning – It may raise your blood pressure. Take your pills before reading. <g>

R

“When I was young, everyone got measles; sometimes you might visit someone who had it so you’d get it over at a relatively convenient time, since you were going to get it. Now enough have inoculation that it’s not inevitable.”

—————–

When I was young, my parents saw two pock marks on me, and wondered if that was proof I had contracted Chicken Pox.

Fast forward decades later, I am now in my 40’s and am feeling run down. A trip to the doctor shows I have Chicken Pox and we have our answer.

Getting that as an adult, as many people will tell you, is pretty awful. I can agree from hard experience.

My mother exposed me to Mumps early in life, which is analogous to what you have stated in your narrative. That worked as expected, the Chicken Pox trick did not.

Me, I am all in favor of voluntary vaccination paid for at the state/local level with public funds.

For the police to start using the awesome power of the state to tell parents what to do with their children, ought, in my opinion, to be done only with a court order endorsed by a jury.

Brice

Dear Dr Pournelle,

You are wrong to think that measles is a relatively benign disease of childhood. There are significant complications at all ages, but particularly in those under 5 and over 20 or so.

According to the CDC, a generally reliable source – unless you are deeply paranoid – about 1 in 10 will get an ear infection, as many as 1 in 20 will get pneumonia, about 1 in 1000 will get encephalitis leading to convulsions and possible deafness and retardation. As well the mortality is about 1 or two children for every thousand cases, usually due to pneumonia.

In the longer term there is a condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) which is a progressive and fatal neurological disease seen about 10 years after measles infection in about 4 in 100000 cases. This is now almost unknown in the US, Australia, where I am, and other countries with high immunisation rates.

When compared with the risk of a serious complication (life threatening) from the MMR vaccine the balance of risk v benefit is very heavily in favour of vaccination.

Smallpox has been eradicated by vaccination. Polio was set to be eradicated till the idiotic interference of intelligence agencies in the program in Pakistan was used to try and identify Bin Laden’s DNA leading to the murder of numerous vaccination program workers and setting back the goal of elimination there and elsewhere.

Kind regards

Nick Hendel

MB, BS, FRACS

Measles is not trivial, but the risk from vaccination is lower

Jerry,

With respect to these links on your blog:

Scientists say destructive solar blasts narrowly missed Earth in 2012

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2I1SV20140320?irpc=932

–

Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012 http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/

I just want to point out that much is being made of this, but in point of fact the flare and resulting CME went off nearly 180 degrees AWAY from Earth. (Yes, I went back and looked at the data and video awhile back, when I became aware of it — which wasn’t until sometime in the first half of 2014 if memory serves. And since I watch solar activity quite closely, aided and abetted by Jim, and have done for many years, that in itself says something, I think.) As it takes about 25 days and some fraction for the Sun to rotate on its axis, that’s something between 12 and 13 days out from being "aimed" at Earth. So I guess it kind of depends on your definition of a "near miss."

But yes. As you and I have discussed in the recent past, there is most certainly a danger. There is one theory (or perhaps it is a hypothesis; I’m not sure how much data supports it as yet) that Carrington-level events tend to occur on either side of an extended solar minimum. As the Carrington event itself occurred on the upswing from an extended minimum, there is, I suppose, at least SOME evidence. And most definitely modern infrastructure is highly susceptible, and is ill-prepared, despite much urging of the appropriate politicians and bureaucrats.

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

Dr. Pournelle,

Just to show that Congress is not completely asleep at the switch regarding EMPs and Solar Flares (considered equivalent threats by them), H.R. 3410 was introduced and passed during the 113th congress. It died in Senate cimmitee. It took three visits to my congresscritter’s office and several emails and phone calls to find out about it. I’ve had no response to my communications from my senators regarding this issue.

I hope you might encourage your readers to reach out to their representatives to get this passed again.

H. R. 3410, Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA)

· Chairman Michael McCaul, Committee on Homeland Security

· Sponsor: Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)

· Cosponsor: (21) 2 D’s and 19 R’s

· Summary:

o Critical Infrastructure Protection Act or CIPA – Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Assistant Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate to: (1) include in national planning scenarios the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events; and (2) conduct a campaign to proactively educate owners and operators of critical infrastructure, emergency planners, and emergency responders at all levels of government of the threat of EMP events.

o Directs the Under Secretary for Science and Technology to conduct research and development to mitigate the consequences of EMP events, including:

(1) an objective scientific analysis of the risks to critical infrastructures from a range of EMP events;

(2) determination of the critical national security assets and vital civic utilities and infrastructures that are at risk from EMP events;

(3) an evaluation of emergency planning and response technologies that would address the findings and recommendations of experts, including those of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack;

(4) an analysis of available technology options to improve the resiliency of critical infrastructure to EMP; and

(5) the restoration and recovery capabilities of critical infrastructure under differing levels of damage and disruption from various EMP events.

o Includes among the responsibilities of the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) relating to intelligence and analysis and infrastructure protection to prepare and submit to specified congressional committees:

(1) a comprehensive plan to protect and prepare the critical infrastructure of the American homeland against EMP events, including from acts of terrorism; and

(2) biennial updates of such plan.

· Background:

o Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an instantaneous, intense energy field that can overload or disrupt at a distance numerous electrical systems and high technology microcircuits, which are especially sensitive to power surges.

”[1] Large-scale EMP effects can be produced either through a single nuclear explosion detonated into the atmosphere, or non-nuclear devices.

[2] Congress established the EMP commission in FY2001 to assess the threat of an EMP attack on U.S. infrastructure.

[3] The EMP commission’s 2008 report determined that an EMP attack “creates the possibility of long-term catastrophic consequences for national security,” but argued that U.S. vulnerability could be reasonably reduced by coordination between the public and private sectors.

[4] U.S. critical infrastructure remains vulnerable to an EMP event despite the warnings laid out by the EMP commission. H.R. 3410 would begin to address this vulnerability by creating planning scenarios in the event of an EMP attack, and by educating first responders on how to respond to an EMP attack.

· Note: EMP interference is generally damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. The damaging effects of high-energy EMP have been used to create EMP weapons.

Sincerely, Jan Stepka

Phil Tharp is questioning computer science and computer engineering math requirements. I’ve been seeing the same thing.

I graduated from CSU in 1984 with a B.Sc. in Computer Science. At that time, if you took 3-5 more classes, you could graduate with a secondary degree in Applied Mathematics. At the very least, you had a minor in Applied Mathematics. We spent a lot more time on theory and foundational math in CS back then, less on programming.

I spend a lot of time with recent grads in CS in the software company that I work for. In some ways, they’re better prepared than I was: more in-depth knowledge of practical hands-on topics like networking and programming. Not so much math or theory, though. It hampers them when technology moves on from what they were taught, or if they’re presented with a problem for which they don’t have a cook-book recipe. At that point, they’re frantically googling for answers.

Thankfully, there are cook-book recipes for most problems that programmers run into nowadays, so this isn’t a significant restriction. About once a year, though, someone comes to me with a problem that isn’t readily solved by google and for which I have to dust off my old skills. They’re just not taught much anymore.

Now, it’s likely that other schools besides CSU or UC teach more theory and/or mathematics with computer science still. Top-tier schools like Caltech, Stanford or MIT come to mind. I don’t come into contact with grads from places like that too much. But for the state schools in the West, I’ve been noticing this trend for the last 20 years or so.

All the best on your recovery!

Chris

It is a problem.  Statistical inference is difficult and design of good experiments more so.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Sunday, January 25, 2015

Not posted until Monday

I had a large Mailbag yesterday, and some of the discussion continues so I’ll put that in today. The issue involves statistical inference, and what is taught as “Stat 101” in Departments other than Mathematics. Even in Engineering schools – some not all, but the trend continues – they are now teaching cookbook “Stat” which involves how to calculate means and standard deviations, but do not explain the assumptions made to draw valid inferences from the data. Often they do teach real Statistics in MBA programs, oddly enough.

I also intend to do an essay on why we should abolish the Air Force and return to an Army Air Force which is not a separate service. The purpose of military forces is to win wars. The purpose of the Air Force is—well, they no longer know. When we had SAC we knew – “Our profession is peace” was not just a slogan – but that too is neglected in the Modern Air Force. Deterrence and maintenance of nuclear weapons, being ready to use weapons when your fondest wish is that they will never be used – that does require a different kind of military. We once had that in SAC but the end of the Cold War was the end of SAC, and the nuclear deterrence force is, well not what it once was. It is subject to the Iron Law now.

As to the rest of the Air Force, it is more interested in the Air Force than winning wars, and considers supporting the field army as beneath contempt. A slow old Warthog does a much better job, but there is no glory in that. Best to use fast jets… which of course are imprecise and cause a lot of collateral damage. Everyone knows that a force of propeller driven P-47 fighters of WWII would be more effective for supporting the field army than what we use. And the Army must be crippled, not allowed to have effective air power in taking territory. You must use modern jets at high speed.

Now the Air Force has a mission that the Army at present does not have: Air Supremacy. And that is a different mission from supporting the field army. It involves engagements with Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) as well as strikes against the enemy base of operations. The glory is in air to air combat, but that is not the effective way to air supremacy.

That is the main argument for an “Independent Air Force” and the bitter fights that ended with creation of USAF. It is true, ground army commanders tend to select the wrong targets to sortie against, and endanger air supremacy; thus the argument for independence, which USAAF eventually won (before SAC existed or any but a few knew would be needed.) Hiroshima ended the debate. But now the Cold War ended and USAF killed SAC as not glamorous – not career building any longer. As to the Warthogs, give them to the National Guard! Real pilots don’t need them!

Sure, I exaggerate but not much: the Air Force keeps trying to get rid of the Warthogs, but never by giving them (and the ground support mission) to the War Department. Better that GI’s die tan USAF give up a mission even though it does not want it.

Drones will change all this, but why wait?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Thursday, January 22, 2015

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Barry Goldwater, 1964, in a speech written by Harry Jaffa

Harry Jaffa, RIP. We had not corresponded regularly since I left academia to become a full time writer, but we were close enough before that. He was a guest lecturer to my political philosophy classes, as I was to his at Claremont, and we attended several conferences together. At that time I was mostly associated with Russell Kirk and Stefan Possony, and getting more into actual politics; Harry was the intellectual inspiration of the Goldwater movement (not that the Senator was not his own man, and although he was not primarily an intellectual he certainly understood the issues.) In 1969 I was co-director of Barry Goldwater Jr.’s successful Congressional campaign and could have gone to Washington as a Congressional staffer, but I did not like the political game; Harry was one of those who advised me not to get into the political game.

Harry’s inclusion of the Cicero quote in Goldwater’s speech came as a surprise to everyone. In those days Johnson ran on a platform of being moderate, and made Goldwater look like a raving maniac eager to nuke everyone. Johnson was successful, but he also used divisive and deceitful advertising, such as the little girl and the countdown to atomic explosions. When Goldwater suggested that we ought to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, Johnson said that was the most trigger-happy thing he had ever heard. As Johnson said that I was looking at strike photos of US strikes in Laos, but of course neither I nor Harry nor Senator Goldwater could say so. I had clearance and I suppose Harry did also (mine was from being an intelligence analyst.) I used to wonder who we were keeping it a secret from. The North Vietnamese surely knew they were being bombed, and presumably told their Russian allies… the only people it was secret from were the American people.

Over the years we had less and less contact, which is a shame. It was always a delight to discuss the Federalist Papers, which he knew intimately as I was learning about those vital documents. I thought I knew them when I got my doctorate, but not so.

We did not agree on the importance of Strauss, and with Harry’s death one of the most informed and articulate followers of Leo Strauss is gone.

The world will miss Harry, even those who never heard of him.

I went for a walk outside the house today. The sidewalk cracks are hard to ignore when you are in a walker.  Lunch time now and my schedule is not my own, more later…

It was a pleasant walk, and I look forward to many more, and longer. Tiring but that is good.

Senate Rejects Climate Measures NYT

By CORAL DAVENPORTJAN. 21, 2015

The Senate on Wednesday twice rejected measures declaring that humans are causing climate change <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> . But in the course of those votes, 15 Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted yes. Mr. Paul, who is considered a likely presidential contender next year, was joined by Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, among others. Two other potential Republican presidential candidates, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, voted no. It was the first time in years that senators had voted on a climate change measure, and it came in the course of a debate on a bill forcing approval of the Keystone XL <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/k/keystone_pipeline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> oil pipeline. President Obama is expected to veto the bill if it passes, as is likely, but lawmakers are using it to send their own political messages. Democrats had hoped to force Republicans on the record on the issue of climate change by introducing the two amendments.

And so the politics continue without noticeable actual science

On climate models and 0.1degree accuracies

Lies, damned lies, etc.

Jerry,

Mike of course has it correct. Measurements made by hundreds of instruments, not calibrated to a consistent standard, representing different times of day at different locations over years of time, cannot be averaged in any meaningful fashion to create a statistically meaningful grand ensemble. And of course the temperature measurements are not independent – the temperature of the water an hour later and 20 nautical miles distant is highly correlated with the temperature of the original water sample. Finally, of course, we are estimating systematic air temperature from a variety of metrics including seawater temperature for comparison with modern air temperature measurements.

Admittedly one can make corrections for all of those factors, but said corrections are of course model-dependent and hence subjective – and such corrections are one of the criticisms of the GW people in their consistently manipulating data to make the past appear cooler so as to exaggerate the effects of warming.

And of course extrapolations of such data into the future, even under the simplest of assumptions (the linear data hypothesis with uncorrelated random errors) diverge hyperbolically from the midpoint (in time as determined by the weighting of the measurements if available, assuming that the measurements are uniform in weighted error across the period), so that the forecast error diverges as (elapsed time)^2 measured from the midpoint time.

Jim

Dear Jerry Pournelle PhD,

Your blog entry today (or maybe yesterday your time) with Mike clarifying the necessity of having a "set of data that is not in statistical control" made me understand the root of the problem. Your blog is truly a source of knowledge, and more importantly a gentlemanly discussion of difficult matters. From now on I am proud to be a platinum subscriber.

Respect,

Rune Aaslid PhD

Most social science departments offer their own statistics courses because the math dept. statistics courses are too hard or require prerequisite courses. Of course this is because real statistics is hard, and requires real math. Stat in the Education Dept. or in Psychology is really cookbook stat on calculating means, and standard deviations, but has little to nothing about distributions, assumptions, or requirements for valid inferences, which is why so many “experiments” cannot be repeated even though they are “significant to the 10% level” etc.  They often mean nothing.  Alas this is true in some “hard” sciences,too. The worst of it is that many scientists who know much about physics know little about statistical inference and the assumtions in their models.  I was fortunate in that Paul Horst required me to go to the math dept for probability and statistics, which led me to operations research  which turned out to be more valuable than psych.

One reason for this journal is to encourage rational debate. I don’t presume to know everything even if I sometimes appear to pretend to, but I have many readers with great expertise.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Wednesday, January 21, 2015

There are two important matters today. One is the State of the Union, and the other Windows 10. The State of the Union had no surprises, and either warrants short shrift, which many have given it, or a longer thoughtful analysis, and there are plenty of them as well.

The Microsoft streaming of the show is still slow – to me anyway – and will have to wait.

Riding The Red Horse http://www.amazon.com/Riding-Red-Horse-Christopher-Nuttall-ebook/dp/B00QZD9H5K has a number of stories and essays, and is worth your buying. My non fiction contribution is an essay on simulation I did for Avalon Hill in the 70’s –and it is still pretty good. They found and asked my permission, and I am told I’ve already earned a good dinner out of it… Next I think comes a revival of There Will Be War.

.

Windows 10 looks better every time they talk about it, but we’ll have to see the implementation.

Best Windows 10 News

Jerry:

You may have already heard, but Microsoft is borrowing from the Apple playbook and offering a free upgrade to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users for the first year.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/operating-systems/23119/windows-10-release-date-specs-and-pricing-announced

Best wishes for your continued speedy recovery,

Doug Ely

More on both of those later. Do not forget that although the official unemployment rate is low – well, 5% — there are 100 million former workers who are now not working and have given up trying. This is defining unemployment down, but they still do not have jobs and may never do so. That would be Depression most places. How long can we afford this?

Our Federal Government at Work

Roland Dobbins wrote, and you posted in Mail>

Eric Holder does something right, for once.

Mr. Dobbins is usually quicker on the uptake than that. Stop and think about what that order actually does. It stops state and local troops from gaining funds and property under Federal asset-forfeiture rules *unless the Feds are involved in the case*. I foresee a massive uptick in the number of cases the Feds are called in on, and a consequent increase in the amount of information provided to the Federal government about crimes previously handled at state and local levels.

—

Meredith Dixon

We will have to see, but centralization is one of the Democrat goals.  They used to be for States’ Rihts

All you zombies

If I may wave a small Australian flag the movie Predestination was made by two science fiction fans in a warehouse in Melbourne on a tiny budget.

They followed the story dead accurately and though they did add some extra plot they said in an interview that they had to as the original story was not enough to make a full film. Their extras are generally sympathetic and in line with the mind twisting nature of the story.i

It’s certainly not ruined, and i recommend it to you. If any one reading this does not know the story, i !d suggest reading it first as, though it is completely fair, it was a serious puzzle for my wife, who is not a fan.

try it, you’ll like it

***** David

Good.  I could live with Puppet Masters – sort of  — but Starship Troopers was too much.  Glad to see this was made by someone who likes Robert

Climate Science and Statistics

"But it is absurd to say we know the average temperature of the Earth in 1900. Ocean temperatures then were taken with a bucket and a mercury thermometer and were no more than 1 degree of accuracy if that."

Dr Pournelle, you have studied statistics; how can you come up with a statement like that?

Of course all those plus minus one degree measurements from 1900 would not have been off by the same calibration error. So your argument is not correct, one of the great ideas of statistics is that you can average out errors in individual measurements.

Still love your blog (the original!)

Rune

Well, a significant bias in the measurements can be counted out (all mercury thermometers were calibrated by 100Celcius and 0Celcius – or that is what would have been proper procedure in those days)

Moreover, the inaccuracies in the measurements should be distributed according to the Gaussian curve. (That’s basic statistics, if you disagree you have to give a good reason why)

Regarding enough measurements, I do not have the exact information but my belief is that it should be sufficient. I’ll investigate tomorrow after finishing my charitably work in cerebral hemodynamics.

Thanks Jerry for all your SF writing (have read all your books) but especially your BYTE chaos manor columns which were my greatest inspiration during the 80ties.

Your Rune

(BTW you’re absolutely right about the Greenland warming in the early middle age, I’ve flown up the valleys on the west coast of that island and seen old Norse foundations coming up where the glacier was retreating.)

Your correspondent confuses the precision of a single measurement (a fact) with the precision of the estimate of a mean (a parameter). It is not legitimate to calculate the mean of a set of data that is not in statistical control. For example, measurements taken off one production line really should not be averaged with the measurements off another production line; and even measurements taken at different times might not be usefully averaged. For example: here:

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/03/now-and-then-on-reads-that-average.html

it would be illegitimate to calculate a grand average of the paste weights to characterize the process. There was in fact no "process," no "statistical distribution" whose mean value might be estimated by the grand average.

In addition to the precision of the measurement and the standard error of the mean measurement, we must also consider that you could have an estimate of ±0.001 around the wrong value. STAT 101 professors in non-mathematical courses have a lot to answer for.

Mike

Which begins to explain what we are discussing.  Our estimates of world temperature in 1880 cannot be to 0.1 degree accuracy.  Individual ones, yes, but not of their averages, and certainly not of their weighted averages (the weights making up for missing data).  I am no statistics expert and don’t make my living at statistical inference.  Mike does. There are many reasons to question averages accurate to 0.1 degree and taken 100 years ago.

I do not think we have enough measurements from enough places to know the Earth’s temperature to any 0.1 degree  in 1880.  I do not believe we have enough to know to that accuracy NOW.

Of course the Earth is warming.  In 1776 Col. Hamilton dragged cannon across the frozen Hudson to Harlem Heights. Inn 1835 t5here were market stalls on the Thames ice in md winter. It is never that cold now –or seldom cold enough to freeze to walking thickness on either river. Of course it warmer now.  But HOW Much warmer and why? We do not know, and pretending we do is not science, and makes me fear politics.

Check out this post: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/01/2014-as-the-mildest-year-why-you-are-being-misled-on-global-temperatures/

Roy Spencer, PhD.- 2014 as the Mildest Year: Why You are Being Misled on Global Temperatures

Most of the scientists of my close acquaintance must be in that other 3%. Which means that there is a surprisingly LARGE "3%" — which means that the 97% concurrence is being fudged some kinda way.

Also, let’s see:

Admittedly it wasn’t 2014, but 2013 when the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar desert in the world, was hit with a record snowfall, the deepest in at least three decades.

BUT–

An Antarctic research team and their ship — AND the rescue icebreaker ship — were trapped in extensive Antarctic ice — during the Antarctic SUMMER — in 2014. (Jan 2014) The Middle East is experiencing TWO exceptionally snowy winters in a row. (Dec 2013 – Jan 2014, Jan 2015) Eastern Australia had the highest snowfall totals in at least a decade. (Jun/Jul 2014) Blizzards hit the UK in Dec 2014.

And let’s not forget the polar vortex in North America (Canada to Mexico!) AND Great Britain AND Siberia AND Northeast Asia in 2014. (Dec 2013 – Apr 2014)

So…yeah. I REALLY believe we had the warmest year on record in 2014. </sarc>

(Yes, I can provide numerous URLs to news articles on all of those if desired. Or you can simply Google.)

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

OOOOoooooo.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

That link I just sent? Quote:

"…Yet the Nasa press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous ‘warmest year’, of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much…"

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html#ixzz3PJS30fx9

BUSTED.

Stephanie Osborn

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.