Jeff Id is looking into integrity failures in Climate Science. Which reminded me of a job I once did.
Integrity failure cascades are not unfamiliar to me. As a contractor I see a LOT of that.
At one company that shall remain nameless I encountered the following.
1. A poorly designed circuit board that did not follow design rules for its logic components. Lines at least double the maximum length.
2. I pointed this out. Showed the people (managers, engineers) the references.
3. The company men pointed out that the prototypes were working fine and I was just being an “old lady” about the matter. Besides it would cost $100K (because of the burn rate) and one month to do a new spin. Customers wouldn’t like the delay.
4. Ten pre-production prototypes were built and they worked perfectly – boy were they laughing at my unwarranted concern. The rest of my work was excellent so they just wrote off my concern as “engineering perfectionism”.
5. Production started – 90% production failure rate. That is when I left. They wanted me to stay on to work production to get the pass rate up. I declined.
6. Of those that passed production tests 99% failed in the field
7. They lost $3 million on that one and it cost them a lot of customer good will.
LMAO
You can only violate the rules so long until it comes back to bite you.
I think the lack of integrity in climate “science” will follow a similar path. The wheels are already starting to come off. Only big wobbles for now. But it won’t be long before the wobbles turn into collapse.
I will then have another opportunity to LMAO. I’m looking forward to it.
Watts Up With That has the news the sceptic community has been waiting for. The CERN experiments done by Svensmark et. al. [Update: actually they were done by Kirkby but they validate the Svensmark hypothesis] show that clouds are significantly affected by cosmic rays.
...it appears that a non-visible light irradiance effect on Earth’s cloud seeds has been confirmed. The way it is posited to work is that the effect of cosmic rays (modulated by the sun’s magnetic variations which either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays) creates cloud condensation nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. With more condensation nuclei, more clouds form and vice-versa. Clouds have significant effects on TSI at the surface.
Even the IPCC has admitted this in their latest (2007) report:
“Cloud feedbacks are the primary source of inter-model differences in equilibrium climate sensitivity, with low cloud being the largest contributor”.
If a significant effect has been left out of the models that means in the general sense that they are not even wrong. All the sensitivities used to come up with the current results will have to be adjusted to account for the new cloud factor. Effects once attributed to something else will have to be attributed to clouds. And estimates of future solar activity will have to be added to climate models. And we are not doing such a good job of predicting solar activity. The current decline in solar magnetism was unpredicted. So what does that tell us about the future of the climate? That it is very hard to predict.
Long-anticipated results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva appear in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (25 August). The Director General of CERN stirred controversy last month, by saying that the CLOUD team’s report should be politically correct about climate change (see my 17 July post below). The implication was that they should on no account endorse the Danish heresy – Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that most of the global warming of the 20th Century can be explained by the reduction in cosmic rays due to livelier solar activity, resulting in less low cloud cover and warmer surface temperatures.
There are a a LOT of careers and vast sums of money involved in the "CO2 is going to kill us all eventually" idea. They will not go quietly. In the history of science they never have.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck
Rather often these days the idea that CO2 is destroying the planet is touted. Well OK. This is important. Really important. I get it.
So how about a War to stop China from making so much CO2? Its output is expected to be double the US output by 2020. That is a doubling every ten years. They have to be stopped. They are destroying the planet.
We need to go to war with China to save the planet.
I have brought that up in several "Global Warming Is Gonna Getcha" threads. What do I get in return?
Silence.
Which is to say we are not dealing with a real save the planet movement. We are dealing with Watermelons. Green on the outside. Red on the inside. It is about political power in America.
Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their daughter and her toddler brother before killing themselves.
Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.
[snip]
[the] parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.
Hypocrites. Didn't they realize that the heat from burning gunpowder contributes to global warming? Too bad for the kid though. Usually with these kinds of situations the "cause" is irrelevant. If they hadn't latched on to global warming flying saucer people might have sufficed.
If you have been worried about global warming the latest news will give you some comfort.
Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets (see here and here)that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites over the years. As of early 2011, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002.
So what does the graph show? Global temperatures are falling like a rock and are now .02 degrees C below the baseline. Of course if the coming of an Ice Age (or even a Little Ice Age) worries you this is bad news. I have reliable reports that it is rather difficult to grow food crops under ice.
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
It all starts from the simple idea that increasing internal radiation reflection (Greenhouse Gas Theory) increases temperature. Fine so far. But there are complications. The climate system is not simple physics. For instance: surface water absorbs energy. And the Earth's surface has a LOT of water. Well the water evaporates and you get clouds. Clouds are very complicated. Sometimes the water vapor precipitates out of the atmosphere and you get rain, or snow, or sleet, or hail. This is part of an energy transport system (heat pipe)in the atmosphere. Clouds also complicate the radiation picture. They reflect from both sides. Which matters day AND night on Earth but only day for incoming radiation. And that is just one aspect of the system. Vegetation varies radiation depending on type and amount.
The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc
Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.
Engineers have always been the biggest sceptics (I prefer the Brit spelling) of the CO2 causes global warming hypothesis.
Engineers spend decades in efforts to match simple deterministic systems to complex environments.
Back in the 80s I (electronics engineer) used to worry about second order effects (deviations from simple laws) caused by the non-linearity of materials. We are now in third order territory with occasional forays into fourth order effects. Climate is like 14th or 40th order stuff. And very non-linear. It is possible (not likely) for 12th order effects to have first order results (chaos).
Is it possible to do decent predictions in short time frames? Maybe. I saw Piers Corbin on Nightline the other day and he has claimed to have predicted much recent weather and predicts a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Piers Corbyn’s presentation showed the major advances in power and skill now achieved by his Solar-Lunar-Action-Technique (SLAT) of weather & climate forecasting which now includes the ability to predict from months ahead extreme events all over the world and changes in the Jet Stream such as those which caused the West Russian heatwave and the Pakistan super-deluges and floods and marked their ending in mid August 2010. In his presentation Piers showed a film of the double sunspot superfast solar coronal ejection on 14th August and the consequent Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance and the predicted jet stream disruption – See:
I'm trying to figure out what a Just Climate™ actually is. But there is no doubt that what ever it is, we need it. Well I need it. For sure. Which is why I’m all for Climate Justice. How much will it cost to move the climate of Central America to Northern Illinois? It is unjust that my heating bills are so high this early in the season.
I do have a proposal that will reduce the cost of justice some. The move only need be done during the months of Dec., Jan., Feb., and March. That should reduce the costs by 2/3rds over a year ’round solution.
Ted Turner favors a global one child policy in order to (you know what is coming) Save The Planet™.
Mr. Turner – a long-time advocate of population control – said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.
“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.
With four children I am right up there in the ranks of future enemies of the State and certainly a current enemy of Mr. Turner.
I wonder if Mr. Turner has given much thought to enforcement? What will be done to children that the parents want and the State doesn't? Of course if the parents don't want them and the State doesn't either I'm sure some mutually acceptable solution can be worked out to keep immediate and future consumption down.
Environmental groups and industry seem headed for another battle over regulation of greenhouse gases, as President Barack Obama said he will look for ways to control global warming pollution other than Congress placing a ceiling on it.
"Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way," Obama said at a news conference Wednesday, a day after Democrats lost control of the House. "I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem."
Legislation putting a limit on heat-trapping greenhouse gases and then allowing companies to buy and sell pollution permits under that ceiling narrowly passed the House in 2009 as a centerpiece of Obama's domestic agenda, but it stalled in the Senate.
Republicans dubbed the bill "cap-and-tax" because it would raise energy prices. They then used it as a club in the midterm elections against Democrats who voted for it. Thirty of the bill's supporters were among some 50 House Democrats whom voters turned out of office Tuesday.
"It's doubtful that you could get the votes to pass that through the House this year or next year or the year after," Obama said Wednesday.
If he starts in with EPA regulations or some such the Rs in Congress could gut the EPA budget. No money for you suckers.
And passage doubtful? More like impossible. Especially with coal state legislators in Congress violently opposed. If it couldn't get past the Senate when it was dominated by Democrats how much more unlikely is it to get passed with the new crop? Especially when you consider that some of the new Senators like Mark Kirk will be seated as soon as the election results are certified.
It would seem that one of our satellites may have been misreporting Earth temperature data for as much as a decade.
US Government admits satellite temperature readings “degraded.” All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.
Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true.
However, NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to state how long the fault might have gone undetected. Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade’s worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic ‘NOAA-16’ satellite.
‘NOAA-16’ was launched in September 2000, and is currently operational, in a sun-synchronous orbit, 849 km above the Earth, orbiting every 102 minutes providing automated data feed of surface temperatures which are fed into climate computer models.
NOAA has reported a succession of record warm temperatures in recent years based on such satellite readings but these may now all be undermined.
World-renowned Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball, after casting his expert eye over the shocking findings concluded, “At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”
Let me add that this error - if confirmed - will have no effect on the climate. It will, however, hugely affect the Global Warming debate. Except I think the science does not matter. After all it is the political agenda that drives things. Jeff Id agrees. Tim Ball seems to be leaning in that direction as well.
I was reading Watts Up With That and came a cross this link to a pdf in the comments which describes the response of the State of Texas to the EPA intent to rule us by regulating CO2 production.
In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called on each state to declare its allegiance to to the Environmental Protection Agency's recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations - regulations that are plainly contrary to United states law.
And that is just the first sentence.
Now catch this one:
On behalf of the State of Texas we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.
And that is with 5 1/2 pages to go. Read the whole thing. Some very nice intemperate language.
From the sounds of it you would think the government of Texas has gone over to the Tea Party movement in whole or in part.
Click on the above image and learn how to spread it around.
In a soon to be unreleased paper the journal Naturewill announce that Global Warming Caused by CO2 is statistically connected with increased erectile function in human males. One participant in the study was especially enthusiastic. "With another doubling of CO2 I could go all night." His sorely taxed partner was unavailable for comment.
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OK.
I get paid from Amazon if you order from any of the links provided. I will give you an honest opinion of any products I have ordered if I blog about them.
If you don't trust me read the Amazon reviews. If there is no review you are on your own.
If you pay me enough and promise to cover my lawyers fees I may say something nice about you. Or I may not. Enough is generally more than you can afford. Unless you have a a really really big bank account or more that a few large gold bars under the mattress.
If you do pay I expect to be transported to a country with no extradition treaty with the US.
If I review a book it may be because the author or publisher sent me a review copy. Other wise I will quote a review of some one else. If I say a product looks interesting it is because it interests me. Sometimes I will link to books so you can educate yourself on a subject and so I can make some off the sale.
If some one employs me I will probably say good things about them as long as the money keeps coming. Or I may say nothing. To keep out of trouble with their lawyers.
That covers most of what I can think of. I'm getting old and sometimes I don't think of everything.
And if you have read this far please Buy Something From Amazon. I can use the money - well actually I will use the proceeds to buy something from Amazon. I get a better deal that way.
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