Out of the Warehouse: Climate Researchers Rescue Long-Lost Satellite Images 136
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Once stashed in warehouses in Maryland and North Carolina, images and video captured from orbit by some of NASA's first environmental satellites in the mid-1960s are now yielding a trove of scientific data. The Nimbus satellites, originally intended to monitor Earth's clouds in visible and infrared wavelengths, also would have captured images of sea ice, researchers at the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center realized when they heard about the long-lost film canisters in 2009. After acquiring the film—and then tracking down the proper equipment to read and digitize its 16-shades-of-gray images, which had been taken once every 90 seconds or so—the team set about scanning and then stitching the images together using sophisticated software. So far, more than 250,000 images have been made public, including the first image taken by Nimbus-1 on 31 August 1964, of an area near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Besides yielding a wealth of sea ice data, the data recovery project, which will end early next year, could also be used to extend satellite records of deforestation and sea surface temperatures."
warehouse (Score:5, Funny)
is this from Warehouse 13?
Re:warehouse (Score:5, Insightful)
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Straight to the pointless debate (Score:3)
I read this article earlier.
Here's the things people are going to fixate on, without having near enough data actually genuinely analyze them.
The article states that Antarctic Ice was way larger in are in 1964 than it is today(or was in 1972, the until-now earliest satellite data date)
And the deniers are going to fixate on the fact that there were holes in the ice.
And since there's not a lick of expert analysis vis-a-vis the implications for climate change involved there, I can't bring myself to care, what some people on slashdot are going to conclude without the numbers.
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I read this article earlier. Here's the things people are going to fixate on, without having near enough data actually genuinely analyze them.
The article states that Antarctic Ice was way larger in are in 1964 than it is today(or was in 1972, the until-now earliest satellite data date) And the deniers are going to fixate on the fact that there were holes in the ice.
And since there's not a lick of expert analysis vis-a-vis the implications for climate change involved there, I can't bring myself to care, what some people on slashdot are going to conclude without the numbers.
Not to mention that if it doesn't go for how the AGW claimers want, then they'll just say the sensors were not accurate enough and write it off with the other side will point to the data as showing no AGW issues.
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Not likely since AGW is based on science, and scientific method. Where as deniers are just a bunch of dolts with no science behind them. Ask yourself this: How come AGW deniers never talk about the actual science?
They make post like you do: No evidence, no data, every scientist, every agency, every competing country are all in some conspiracy and only the enlightened few* can see 'The Truth!'
*get over yourself already
Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't just flamebait. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
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Some of the sensationalist claims made by IPCC and ilk not scientific at all, and they've backpedaled on some of them in latest climate report
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Once again you don't talk about AGW science facts, only you misunderstanding of a high quality science report.
BTW AGW and Climate change are different things. If you can not understand even that basic fact, then you have no hope of understanding the basic facts of AGW.
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IPCC AR5 WG1 dismisses the models outright as running "too hot" and replaces the data with "expert opinions".
You haven't read it - have you?
Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:5, Informative)
You mean where they say "Observed changes in global mean surface air temperature since 1950 (from three major databases, as anomalies relative to 1961–1990) are shown in Figure 1.4. As in the prior assessments, global climate models generally simulate global temperatures that compare well with
observations over climate timescales (Section 9.4). Even though the projections from the models were never intended to be predictions over such a short timescale, the observations through 2012 generally fall within the projections made in all past assessments. The 1990–2012 data have been shown to be consistent with the FAR projections (IPCC, 1990), and not consistent with zero trend from 1990, even inthe presence of substantial natural variability (Frame and Stone, 2013)."
Is that where they dismiss the models outright? Perhaps *you* should read it.
Your claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
Re: Straight to the pointless debate (Score:2)
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Not likely since AGW is based on science, and scientific method. Where as deniers are just a bunch of dolts with no science behind them. Ask yourself this: How come AGW deniers never talk about the actual science? They make post like you do: No evidence, no data, every scientist, every agency, every competing country are all in some conspiracy and only the enlightened few* can see 'The Truth!'
*get over yourself already
FYI - there are temperature sensor records going back to the early 1900's. However, they discount a good chunk of them saying that the sensors were not accurate or reliable, etc. All I'm saying, is that if the data does't align to their beliefs then they very well may say the same thing here - that the satellite's sensors used to capture the data were not accurate enough to use for the purpose of climate science, etc; and therefore toss out the data.
It's not like they haven't done the before.
On the ve
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If you can't bring yourself to care, why did you post?
That aside, it's good that it was recovered, though it is, to be fair, still a snapshot in time. Now if they had something over multiple years from that period, we could get a better picture.
Nota Bene: "way larger" isn't exactly precise, especially given any competent chart on sea ice coverage over periods as small as a couple of decades. We've seen sea ice grow like crazy over the past two years, after all. ;)
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No we have not seen 'ice grow like crazy'. Not at all.
We have seen some more snow fall in some area, but the overall loss dwarfs that new snow fall.
Stop thinking surface, and start think mass.
Antarctica and Greenland are losing 450 billion tons of ice every year
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Well, as a skeptic, here's what bothers me:
The ground station temperature data has been quite thoroughly manipulated, always "adjusted" in the direction of confirming the theories of the researcher making the adjustment, Pardon my skepticism about that data.
The satellite data, however, has no such shadow over it. It's good, solid data - the sort of thing one expects in science. But now there's this new satellite data that must be "processed" to be understood. If it's just photographic evidence like ice c
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What would you expect to happen if there are correctable errors in the data and the theories are correct?
The raw data should be open and verifiable against the original film so that anyone can double check the data and the conclusions. But somehow I do
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What would you expect to happen if there are correctable errors in the data and the theories are correct?
What would you expect to happen if there are correctable errors and the theories are false, but the researcher was dodgy? Same result.
Data that doesn't allow you to distinguish these cases isn't scientific. That's the difference between "evidence" and "pleasing story", after all. Reproducibility is everything: the scientific method is built on the foundation that a skeptical opponent of your research can repeat your experiment (or measurement) and be forced to come around. If you're "adjusting" your dat
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NASA did destroy a large amount of imagery in the 1980s, despite a public outcry I certainly contributed to. The official line was that no one knew how to read the warehouses full of 7 track tapes to for conversion to CD (the 2400 foot tape could store 5 to 140 MB depending on density). The obvious reason was no one wanted to spend the money to replace all the classified pixels with innocuous ones. And so mankind lost a large amount of wealth.
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Everyone here on /. shouting: I want to see the raw data, never would look at it if he had a link. /. poster that look like:
How useful are billions of lines of text to a random
time latitude longitude hight temp air-pressure humidity wind-speed wind-direction
20140903230000 52N13'04" 05W07'11" 435m 13C 1011mb 45% 11kn 223degrees
???
I arrogantly proclaim no one here who ever shouted for 'raw' data ever looked at raw data or on top of that has the simplest clue what to do at all with such raw
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no one here who ever shouted for 'raw' data ever looked at raw data
Wrong. This is why your opinion doesnt matter. Its based on nothing and because its based on nothing, you are more likely to be wrong than right. In this case, you are wrong. 100% wrong.
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So YOU looked at the raw data, or how do you conclude I'm wrong?
And, if so, what did it help you? And if so, why do you never post links with raw data, when people demand for it?
Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:5, Insightful)
they are deniers, not skeptics. Skeptics apply critical thinking and make an effort to understand the science.
Deniers don't do either.
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That's $125 per terabyte. Here [amazon.com] is 4.7TB for $19.45, which is $4.14 per terabyte.
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Oops, that's 0.47 TB for $19.45, which is $41.38 per terabyte.
Here [amazon.com] is 1.25 TB for $22.95, which is $18.36 per terabyte. You won't be able to fit 160 TB of that in a 4U enclosure, but maybe in a filing cabinet.
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What bothers me is: are these the same climate researchers who constantly sensationalize the magnitude and effects of climate change, and then come out and tell us they were lying because they didn't think we'd handle the truth being 10 times worse, and then "leak" sensationalized committee conclusions about how climate change has caused "irreversible damage" and "cannot be stopped" and tell us that they didn't mean for us to see that?
I won't be surprised when they leak that our climate change is threat
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You are not a skeptic. Skeptics use critical thinking skills. You are a denier who thinks they are skeptical.
"The ground station temperature data has been quite thoroughly manipulated, always "adjusted" in the direction of confirming the theories of the researcher making the adjustment, Pardon my skepticism about that data."
False.
" But now there's this new satellite data that must be "processed" to be understood."
Like ALL satellite data.
You really don't know what you are talking about. Why don't you turn yo
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The satellite data, however, has no such shadow over it. It's good, solid data ...
You don't think satellite data is highly processed? Satellites can't measure atmospheric temperature directly at all. What they measure is microwave emissions from atmospheric gases (mostly O2 I think) as a proxy for temperature. Then taking into account the orbit (and possible decay of orbit), time of day and other factors they calculate a temperature for a rather nebulous area of the atmosphere (not the surface temperature). The good solid data we get from the satellites is a measure of microwave emis
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Sure, but it's processed in an objective way much like most measurements in science: with a known error bar with normal distribution, by methods grounded in the underlying physics that have themselves undergone peer review, and that aren't being "adjusted" after the fact to fit theory.
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I'm sorry but you're going to have to prove that surface temperature measurements a "being adjusted after the fact to fit theory". A lot of people assert that but they never bother to seek out the scientific explanations for those adjustments. Here is a blog post [judithcurry.com] about the reasons and methods for adjustments to the surface temperature record with cites to relevant peer reviewed papers about it. If you want to claim the adjustments to surface temperature records are invalid that is the information you nee
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The ground station temperature data has been quite thoroughly manipulated, always "adjusted" in the direction of confirming the theories of the researcher making the adjustment, Pardon my skepticism about that data.
Strangely enough BEST [wikipedia.org] (partially funded by the Koch brothers) actually found that was not true. They actually found some the adjustments were over-correcting for warm bias and actually reducing the actual warming trend by a small amount. Unsurprisingly, adjustments are made to correct both unusual up and unusual down spikes in the temperature records which are often caused by changes in staffing, location, and methodology at temperature stations.
The satellite data, however, has no such shadow over it. It's good, solid data - the sort of thing one expects in science.
I don't think you actually know what you're talking about. [wikipedia.org]
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Aren't adjustments, done with scientific reasoning, just a form of processing?
I dont know about the satellite data, but in the case of the surface record, there can be no scientific reason to adjust temperature measurements. Such measurements are the core of the science .. things are measured and the values are what they are. It is never scientific to process past measurements and then call them "corrected" (which is what the climate folks are doing with the surface record.)
I also dont know if all of these "corrections" are biased one way or the other, but surely if these "correct
Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont know about the satellite data, but in the case of the surface record, there can be no scientific reason to adjust temperature measurements. Such measurements are the core of the science .. things are measured and the values are what they are. It is never scientific to process past measurements and then call them "corrected" (which is what the climate folks are doing with the surface record.)
That statement is false.
Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment, and Bayesian inference.
There are many reasons why one might get the idea that past temperature records have systematic inaccuracies that may require correction. The urban heat island effect is one large one, which tends to produce higher uncorrected temperatures over time. The phenomenon is simple in principle: cities generate heat, have more dark surfaces, and trap heat in buildings etc which gets re-radiated at night. Weather stations sited near cities have typically become increasingly surrounded by them over the past century, because cities have grown.
Ergo, the instrumental temperature record from many stations needs to be corrected downward to account for this effect, if we want to pull out the environmental temperature (what we are generally interested in.)
This is what we do all the time in science. We start with a raw instrumental measurement and then apply various theory-dependent corrections to infer the underlying quantity we are actually interested in. For example, at the LHC, physicists measure the raw detection rates of various particles in multiple detectors, and then correct them for known background rates etc (frequently using ancillary measurements in the same detectors to determine those rates) to infer the presence (or absence) of the Higgs boson.
What you are saying is "never scientific" is in fact the core of the scientific process, and it makes no difference if the original data were taken today or fifty years ago: they are open to justifiable correction by anyone who sees fit. If you have the idea that the corrections applied are unjustified, feel free to challenge them, but please don't go promoting your fallacious vision of what science is and how it works.
And by the way, if you are interested in what an analysis of the uncorrected instrumental temperature record looks like at one particular station, here is an example: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=... [tjradcliffe.com]
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You don't 'correct' the data. The data that was collected is completely accurate in the context of being close to a city.
Accurate data + apply correction != accurate data.
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Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:4, Interesting)
Or another way of thinking of it is you're using the measured data to estimate a hidden variable which is what you're really interested in. E.g. in this case you have a number of measurements near cities, and you're trying to estimate the global/wide-area average temperature. So you apply a correction to get from city temperature to an estimate of the wide-area average temperature.
(This is mostly in response to GP).
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What correct means in this case is 'control for known variables.'
As an example. Suppose you have a thermometer above a surface that will make the thermometer read 2 degrees warmer.
You control the variable(correct). and subtract 2 degree for the appropriate times.
That is just a simple example i an ideal world with no other factors. Don't take it to e anything more than that.
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But the temperature isn't 2 degrees cooler, it is exactly what the thermometer measured.
Yes cities are heat islands. But a heat island isn't a magical thing that makes thermometers read higher than reality.
You can't 'correct' the accurate measurement. It was that temperature at that location.
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No it is cooler. ... however I realize this years later, so I have to correct the data.
How dumb are you?
I have a thermometer which is supposed to measure air temperature. But it measures the radiation of a nearby black rock. During 10:00 till 19:00 this causes a roughly +2 degrees increase on the measurement, so I subtract that.
If I had realized during the time of the measurement I had placed the thermometer elsewhere
It was that temperature at that location.
No it was not. It was a number showing up on a dev
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Depends if you are navigating by magnetic north or true north.
If you were using magnetic bearings with your GPS then you will be just as lost as relying on the compass with GPS bearings.
If some dope seriously compromised the thermometer's accuracy, say buy putting it near a radiative surface, then accuracy is lost and you have to throw the data out.
You can't average out the error and just subtract it from all the numbers. The data is useless - you cannot repair inaccurate data.
But they aren't 'correcting' f
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If some dope seriously compromised the thermometer's accuracy, say buy putting it near a radiative surface, then accuracy is lost and you have to throw the data out. You can't average out the error and just subtract it from all the numbers. The data is useless - you cannot repair inaccurate data.
Where you're talking about measurements, there's a difference between accuracy and bias. An accurate instrument with a known bias can still be useful.
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Don't know what you mean with 'magnetic bearing with GPS' GPS figures the course by tracking your position and using the last two positions (or a set of positions) to calculate your bearing. Nothing magnetic in it.
The rest of your post is simply wrong. As sailor I have to work with un precise measurements all the time. If would throw away the data I had nothing :)
Regarding the temperature measurement you only need to put a 'true' measuring thermometer besides the old on after you have enough measure points,
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Why should a GPS system correct for magnetic variations is beyond me. It does not use magnetism. It uses GPS satelites. You likely don't mean GPS but a course/chart plotter (which also uses GPS but might have the magnetic instruments you mention - I did not dig into that so far, no idea, never had the impression it had that), I talked about a hand GPS.
No the compass was fine. I was sailing close to La Hague with a tital current of 8.5 knots.
The magnetic compass had ofc problems (boat was chartered) but the
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What about corrections for changes in the instrument doing the measuring or corrections for changes in the time of day of the measurement? The UHI correction is just correcting for a known bias in the measurement.
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Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment, and Bayesian inference.
Changing the data that you observed decades after you observed it is not "systematic observation."
It is "doing stuff so that the systematic observations arent used"
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If you are measuring sea level from the same spot every year, and then later you find out that the spot you are on has been rising slowly over the years, you would be perfectly scientific in trying to account for the rise when using the now known-to-be-flawed data. The important thing is that you be open about what you did with the raw numbers so that others can see what you did.
Re: Straight to the pointless debate (Score:1)
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Why would one correct for the heat island effect? It is in fact the truth; the climate in cities can be quite different from the suburban areas (same with weather, if the heat island is dry it ends up diminishing or even killing off a lot of rainfall, or it can feed a system if the ground is saturated and it's hot, adding a lot of additional humidity in a localized area).
The heat island is a true localized climate (sometimes temps are over 10F lower only 10 miles from the city of St. Louis), like some dese
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Or, deniers were simply pissing off the researchers. [skepticalscience.com]
Re:Straight to the pointless debate (Score:5, Interesting)
I happen to live near one of the main weather stations which was caught up in that FOX News brouhaha and happen to know about the local history. tl;dr as usual, the whole story was all a load of vaporous bullshit. And apparently it worked since you took the bait.
One hundred years ago the local weather station was established outside the harbor master's office down by the docks (and the water). The city grew up and forty years ago or so the weather station was moved 500 feet up a hill to outside the local observatory, which is surrounded by forest.
Moving a temperature sensor away from a large body of water, out of a "heat island" of now-paved urban roads, out of a canyon of concrete and glass buildings, and to a higher elevation will all change the readings of the sensor. If you want to keep a continuous record before and after moving, before and after various construction projects and re-roofing nearby, and before and after population changes, you're going to have to figure out and apply a correction factor for each of these things.
There is nothing particularly unusual about our local weather station's story which hasn't been repeated in most cities around the world. So it is not surprising that noisy long term time series need to be cleaned up before being fed into sensitive predictive models. It would be dishonest not to if you know there was a change in the sampling history which required it.
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There is nothing particularly unusual about our local weather station's story which hasn't been repeated in most cities around the world. So it is not surprising that noisy long term time series need to be cleaned up before being fed into sensitive predictive models. It would be dishonest not to if you know there was a change in the sampling history which required it.
But at that point, aren't you really basically just making it up? Granted, even satellite temperature sensors drift, but it seems that the re
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Aren't adjustments, done with scientific reasoning, just a form of processing?
GP referred to image processing [wikipedia.org]. An example would be a filter that improved contrast or made edges more visible. These are well-understood and repeatable. Also, nobody is talking about hiding the raw data, so you would be free to grab the raw data and try processing it yourself.
The temperature data records have been adjusted by government agencies (NOAA, NASA, GISS) and the adjustments seem to just be "fudge factors"; someone j
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Read the article:
" September 1964 covered about 19.7 million square kilometers—an area slightly larger than the United States and Canada together, and larger than that seen in satellite data from any year between 1972 and 2012."
Today is 2014, and antarctic ice (as shown by their photo), looks nearly *identical* to 2014, even after 50 years.
Do you deny that 2013 and 2014 exist, and that arctic ice has increased to the point that matches their observations in 1964?
Do you also deny that in 1966, there wa
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Good catch, I like their visualization tool here: http://extranet.nsidc.org/Nimb... [nsidc.org]
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any similar visualization for the arctic.
I think the take away from their work shows just how much natural variability there was, even during a regime of significantly less CO2:
“And the Antarctic blew us away,” he said. In 1964, sea ice extent in the Antarctic was the largest ever recorded, according to Nimbus image analysis. Two years later, there was a record low for sea ice in the
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2014 is not above average, how do you come to that strange idea?
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And until someone works out what we're supposed to do about it, we can all sit around and argue about whether or not we caused it. Like a bunch of people in a traffic accident swearing and shouting at each other and not one bothering to use the brakes. Sure, knowing it's us must lead us to find out why it's us, which might lead us to find out how we stop doing whatever-it-is.
Fact is, in EVERY discussion, every news story, every article, every paper I see, there's endless blame, "confirmation", etc. and ye
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I believe it's the other way around: we're prevented from talking about changes because we're too stuck on the large number of people who insist that the answer is "do nothing because nothing is happening/it's not our fault/it'll all be OK," based on information that is usually outright wrong.
The short answer to "what do we do?" is "cut back on CO2 emissions". How we do that is a genuinely good question, since it breaks down into questions like "Who will cut, and how much? What will they do instead? How wil
Actual Reality (Score:2)
Well, you have a few stumbling blocks:
a) While the mechanism for AGW is pretty obvious and indisputable, the actual predicted value of climate models has been lacking. That's just a fact. They are getting better, and they will get better, but it is fact that they are inaccurate today.
b) The private sector is already pricing risk due to climate change into models for various natural disasters. Right now this is just best guess based on the models, but as the models improve, so will the risk models based o
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Until that actual cost is well known and understood by all parties, it will be politically impossible for anyone with any degree of skepticism towards the government in general to agree to let government decide what that price should be.
There are estimates of the cost, and they are considerable. The error bars are wide, but they are enough to at least start to move forward on some kind of system that will allow us to price in the effects that aren't being accounted for. Insurers are accounting for the effects, but not manufacturers or energy-producers, who can continue to produce as much CO2 as they want with no pricing effect at all. In fact, the possibility that there might be future costs encourages them to burn more now, raising the fi
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Here is the thing.
Every time series discussion starts to happen, certain politician derail, misdirect, or blatantly stop the discussion.
It doesn't fit their constituent theology and/or ideology.
Since disease means the world will become too polluted and warm for human civilization, most main stream 'cures' won't be worse.
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using sophisticated software (Score:2)
>using sophisticated software
I wonder what that means. Is it more sophisticated than the software I use day to day? What makes it sophisticated?
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What makes it sophisticated?
Well my first guess would be geolocating the images to the proper location on the earth, projecting the data in to a digitized map grid projection and storing the data in a science archival format.
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It means new and complex.
It's a horrid term, but it's been used regarding software since the beginning of software.
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It never uses the wrong fork or puts it's elbows on the table.
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'I ain't gots no data, and I's can'ts be wrong, therefore everything is a conspiracy'
That what you sound like to every person who actually know the science.
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I'll have Scotty redirect the Tachyon emitter to my sarcasm detector mains.
Sadly, there are people who would post what you posted without sarcasm.
It could be illegal. (Score:5, Funny)
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Priceless.
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The problem with that is most people don't realize that's what's going on.
Frankly, I think she should have forced a veto in order to get more attention to those dumb asses.
Re:It could be illegal. (Score:5, Informative)
These film were stored in North Carolina. It is actually illegal there [go.com] to predict sea level rise. There is some question about whether the law makers there banned the prediction of sea level rise or the banned sea level rise itself. But anyway these NASA scientists need to tread carefully in North Carolina.
Total bullshit on the part of the media.
You've got to learn to not believe what reporters say. Read the actual bill.
http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/... [ncleg.net]
"The Commission shall direct the Science Panel to include in its five-year updated assessment a
comprehensive review and summary of peer-reviewed scientific literature that address the full
range of global, regional, and North Carolina-specific sea-level change data and hypotheses,
including sea-level fall, no movement in sea level, deceleration of sea-level rise, and
acceleration of sea-level rise. When summarizing research dealing with sea level, the
Commission and the Science Panel shall define the assumptions and limitations of predictive
modeling used to predict future sea-level scenarios. "
The first version of the bill was the one that the news picked up and, well, just plain made up bald-faced lies about.
Here it is:
"Historic rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios
of accelerated rates of sea-level rise unless such rates are from statistically significant,
peer-reviewed data and are consistent with historic trends. Rates of sea-level rise shall not be
one rate for the entire coast, but rather the Commission shall consider separately oceanfront and
estuarine shorelines."
See the part about not including 'acccelerated rates of sea-level rise"? That's the controversial part of the bill. By taking the most extreme sea-level rise predictions, some sea-side community was announcing a need for huge sums of money to prepare for the "predicted rise". The bill was simply saying that you had to use peer-reviewed data and historical trends.
I don't have a problem with the legislature requiring both historical and peer-reviewed data for predictions of sea-level rise, and I cannot imagine any scientist having a problem with that.
Re:It could be illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)
These legislators have been slipping such clauses into the law all the time, and this time they got caught. Otherwise they would have happily forced the value of pi to be 3.0 exact.
Do you have problems with the legislators decreeing what interpolation technique the scientists must use? Limiting the data sets they might use? Or do you modify the bill after getting caught with hands in the cookie jar and then whip up prodigal quantities of false outrage?
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This was the original bill [nccoast.org]
they were circulating. See the section 2e that mandates the use of linear interpolation? Limits the data set to
post 1900? They were dropped only after getting nationwide attention.
These legislators have been slipping such clauses into the law all the time, and this time they got caught.
Otherwise they would have happily forced the value of pi to be 3.0 exact.
Do you have problems with the legislators decreeing what interpolation technique the scientists must use?
Limiting the data sets they might use? Or do you modify the bill after getting caught with hands in the cookie
jar and then whip up prodigal quantities of false outrage?
Thanks for the link to the committee bill. The outrage makes more sense now. Did that version actually get out of committee and onto the floor?
I ask because the stuff that happens in committee versions of bills is indeed often ludicrous.
I still can't find the "linear interpolation" language in any bill that was placed on the floor when I go to the state of North Carolina's legislature's web site for HR 819.
However, what you linked to was NOT passed into law.
I posted links to what was ACTUALLY passed into la
Re:It could be illegal. (Score:4, Interesting)
Total bullshit on the part of the media... The first version of the bill was the one that the news picked up and, well, just plain made up bald-faced lies about.
Here it is:
"Historic rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios
of accelerated rates of sea-level rise unless such rates are from statistically significant,
peer-reviewed data and are consistent with historic trends."
Clovis, how do you reconcile the "first version" text you quoted with this one? http://www.nccoast.org/uploads... [nccoast.org]
These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time
period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate
future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.
This version of the text totally reverses your conclusions. Was this "linear-only" text earlier than the one you quoted? Or did it come afterwards, indicating that the legislative draft actually got worse over time?
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Total bullshit on the part of the media... The first version of the bill was the one that the news picked up and, well, just plain made up bald-faced lies about.
Here it is:
"Historic rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios
of accelerated rates of sea-level rise unless such rates are from statistically significant,
peer-reviewed data and are consistent with historic trends."
Clovis, how do you reconcile the "first version" text you quoted with this one? http://www.nccoast.org/uploads... [nccoast.org]
These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time
period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate
future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.
This version of the text totally reverses your conclusions. Was this "linear-only" text earlier than the one you quoted? Or did it come afterwards, indicating that the legislative draft actually got worse over time?
As far as I can tell, HB819 was ok, then got worse, and then got better. That's how it works in committee.
The difference is that I got mine from the North Carolina legislature's web site.
nccoast is a cool web site, but their postings are not law. What you are looknig at is "PROPOSED SENATE COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE H819-CSLH-38"
Observe the word "Proposed". I haven't been able to figure out how far the -38 proposal got. I know for certain it ain't law.
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If you don't see that coming you haven't been on the Earth long enough or you've got your blinders on.
If you want to build on the coast that's fine, but call it a flood zone and get insured as such. I'd prefer you have enough sense
Re:It could be illegal. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's modded funny, yet it's all too sadly true.
City and State planning commission folks wanted to be prepared, and incorporate future sea level rise into any future construction on the coast, such as docks, ports, etc. Anything that could be affected by rising seas.
So naturally the state legislature reacts by banning any such considerations or planning for the future and force all construction to stay in harms way. Which is absolutely idiotic. And frankly, it's a fundamental ethics violation for any civil or construction engineers to follow this law. knowing that it will directly put such projects at risk for future damage, the same as leaving out structural fireproofing or any other common safety practice.
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I wonder how such a law would interact with federal mandates that DOT plan for sealevel rise or army corp of engineering projects that require the contractors to do the same? I'd assume that the supremacy clause would mean that the contractors/DOT would have to follow the federal regulations and they would be indemnified by the law being invalid as it is overridden by federal statute, but it certainly puts them in a pickle.
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There's not law that does what he says, so it's kind of a moot point!
And when it comes down to it, county commissioners, city planners, zoning officials, etc are neither bound by the availability of plans or the lack of plans. If anti-development commissioners are elected, they can vote against expansive development all they want, completely regardless of sea level rise estimates.
FWIW, I would be an anti-development commissioner!
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Reference for where the state "bann[ed] any such consideration or planning for the future"? Not to a biased media source with no sources, please.
You're absolutely right. Things are always--necessarily--better when they are centrally decided and mandated. Fireproofing is an excellent example. Thank goodness for codes that required asbestos [wikipedia.org], Tris [nih.gov], and polybrominated diphenyl ethers [wikipedia.org]. Too bad those contrarians just want to stand in the way of progress.
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Talk about a biased article. I am NOT saying I agree entirely with what happened, but the reality is that there was a moratorium on relying on the previous (2010) sea level report which predicted 39 inches of sea level rise. New standards for prediction are to be decided upon by 2016. The new standards do not look past 30 years.
I personally do not believe that any climate predictions we have right now are worth shit 30 years out, so I don't have a problem with this.
The NC coast, being surrounded for the mos
only 16 shades of grey? (Score:5, Funny)
They could have had a much more interesting picture if they had used 50.
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So Earth's not hot enough for you? Guess we need more global (bed)warming.
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coders go to 128
thanks (Score:2)
Make sure they keep the originals (Score:1, Flamebait)
As anyone who has done VR panorama stitching can tell you, software can only do so much. The output will have some issues, like things not lining up quite correctly or colors being off in one section, etc. So you have do some Photoshop work to make it look good.
Kind of like the raw data vs. adjusted data issue. If they show you the massaged data to back up a claim, but then say they accidentally lost the raw data (or outright refuse to release it, as in some cases)... well then you know they're no longer in
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" as in some cases"
Any case not involving bad faith? no? I thought not.
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you're confused, arctic ice extents now increasing last two years (from a rock bottom minimum since records started in 1970s, sure). Look forward to seeing the 1960s data.
Funny some of "the melting" in antarctica not due to AGW at all but volcanoes, some of those sensationalists need to reign it in, hurting the cause.
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"Never" is an awfully long time, especially when you are talking about the climate. What actual timeframe are you talking about?
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until the data mentioned in this article, "never" really meant "since measurements began in 1978"
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our records went to the 70s, until this article anyway
Re: Too late for that. (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a paper from the group discussing sea ice extent in 1964, using the Nimbus data:
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/699/2013/tc-7-699-2013.pdf
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