Ping Bil Slowman; The global warming hoax reveiled

Joerg · Dec 1, 2009

Uwe Hercksen wrote:

Joerg schrieb:

Bill mentioned "the glaciers aren't going to be coming back any time
soon" which isn't right.

Hello,

it is not possible that the ice volume a shrinking glacier lost in
several decades is replaced in several years again.

But it is over the course of several hundred years:

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch/about/press_coverage/article_de.html?ID=182

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

John Fields · Dec 1, 2009

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:59:30 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

The deceit is yours. You say that I claimed that one could

" extract energy from a varying magnetic field
surrounding a conductor by wrapping a solenoid around the conductor? "

but this was - in fact - your misunderstanding of what I actually said
-

" Wrapping a clamp-on meter around one line means that there is
current
circulating around the clamp - the current that goes through the
selected line in one direction is matched by equal and opposite
current flowi g through the other lines in the other direction. The
coupling coefficient is unlikely to be good, but it is finite."

The clamp-on meter is in fact an openable toroidal core, which lets
you thread one of the power comapnies wires through the centre of the
core without breaking the wire, creating a one-turn primary.

---
You know that now, but your refusal to reply to:
---

<QUOTE>

Wrapping a clamp-on meter around one line means that there is current
circulating around the clamp - the current that goes through the
selected line in one direction is matched by equal and opposite
current flowi g through the other lines in the other direction. The
coupling coefficient is unlikely to be good, but it is finite.

---
Yeah, but so what???

What he was talking about was wrapping some turns around the conductor,
like this:

.. OOOOOOOOOOOOO
..----------------------
..
..----------------------
.. OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Where the dashed lines represent one of the power conductors and the
'O's represent the "some turns" wrapped around it.

Do you think current will be induced in the solenoid if it's wound that
way?

<END QUOTE>

---
Indicates that back then you were in the dark about how a clamp-on meter
works, otherwise you would have simply stated that the transformer was
toroidal.
---

You extract power from the primary winding by winding a secondary
around part of the toroidal core, in the usual way.

---
Which is what I stated at the very beginning of the thread, and for
which you now seem to want credit, Mr. Cheater.
---

The solenoid is entirely your invention.

---
Nope, it was Joel's, and your disagreement with my evaluation of the
impossibility of transferring power through it meant that you believed
power _could_ be transferred that way until you found out it couldn't.

JF

Jim Thompson · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:06:55 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:37:34 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
[snip]
Indeed! I like to also point to a book (upon which I'm now quoted on
the backside proving his lack of good taste!) --

Ian Getreu's "Modeling the Bipolar Transistor"

-- which is now finally again available as a Lulu reprint.
Wonderful!

hehe. Now if the two people in the world who may care would just buy
a copy!

My wife would scold me if I got another historical book. A few years ago
I vowed to clean house so I don't occupy all the hallway closets with my
business stuff

Now would be time to market this to universities. I think that students
wanting to head for chip design should read it. Although the era of the
BJT is essentially over in many, many markets.

Indeed! Though I already own a copy, I no longer do my own
modeling... the foundries provide everything I need.

I haven't done a purely-BJT chip in probably 10 years. Now running
about 30% BiCMOS and 70% pure CMOS.

[snip all the proofs that government IS THE PROBLEM]

History is very important, and quite well documented because the Romans
were sort of perfectionists in this area. Archaeologists always came
across as honest and modest folks, at let to me. So when they find
evidence I usually believe them. And they did find evidence here, big time.
I think you are making too much out of far too little. But I don't
know what you see and perhaps you will be able to walk me through your
path so that I get it and agree with you. I already said a couple of
things bother me about the released letters and I've just today
admitted one of the general areas of that. None of it changes what
the knowledge I've gained in specific areas where I've spent my time.
Not in the least.
Schnidljoch is just one example of many, of passes in the Alps that have
been mostly or completely free of ice in the not too distant past (Roman
era). There is proof of that and I have pointed that out, with link. You
can actually go there and look at the stuff they found. Then it got
colder and they became covered in thick ice, became glaciers,
unpassable, uninhabitable. Just like large swaths of Greenland did. Now
the ice begins to melt again and lots of scientists panic ;-)

[...]

Well, I suppose I need you to inform me about all this.

In a nutshell, this is the story of what happened (a lot of the more
detailed write-ups are in German):

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch/about/press_coverage/article_de.html?ID=182

I can almost here some of the guys from East Anglia exclaim "Oh s..t!
Why did they have to find this?" ;-)

Our real problem now is that the American lamestream media are NOT
COVERING THIS.

Might I suggest that everyone cancel their newspaper subscriptions?
Tell them, as I did, "I don't PAY to be fed leftist weenie pablum".

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice

John Fields · Dec 1, 2009

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:17:00 -0800, "JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:41:47 -0600, John Fields
jfields@austininstruments.com> wrote:

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:27:20 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

So you have demonstrated what Bill is to your satisfaction. Well and
good.

Could you now just ignore him, even you are getting frustrated with
the way his evasions waste everybody's time.

---
Yes, you're right.

The points I made were valid and my science was clean, no matter how he
chooses to rail on, so it's time to disengage.

Thanks.

---

What is it JT says? Something like "Let him die, alone and
forgotten".

---
Something like that...

JF

Joerg · Dec 1, 2009

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:06:55 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:37:34 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
[snip]
Indeed! I like to also point to a book (upon which I'm now quoted on
the backside proving his lack of good taste!) --

Ian Getreu's "Modeling the Bipolar Transistor"

-- which is now finally again available as a Lulu reprint.
Wonderful!
hehe. Now if the two people in the world who may care would just buy
a copy!

My wife would scold me if I got another historical book. A few years ago
I vowed to clean house so I don't occupy all the hallway closets with my
business stuff

Now would be time to market this to universities. I think that students
wanting to head for chip design should read it. Although the era of the
BJT is essentially over in many, many markets.

Indeed! Though I already own a copy, I no longer do my own
modeling... the foundries provide everything I need.

I haven't done a purely-BJT chip in probably 10 years. Now running
about 30% BiCMOS and 70% pure CMOS.

This is a problem for designers like me when we need space-rated stuff.
Slim pickens these days, you can have chicken with noodles, noodles with
chicken or chicken on top of noodles, that's pretty much it :-(

History is very important, and quite well documented because the Romans
were sort of perfectionists in this area. Archaeologists always came
across as honest and modest folks, at let to me. So when they find
evidence I usually believe them. And they did find evidence here, big time.
I think you are making too much out of far too little. But I don't
know what you see and perhaps you will be able to walk me through your
path so that I get it and agree with you. I already said a couple of
things bother me about the released letters and I've just today
admitted one of the general areas of that. None of it changes what
the knowledge I've gained in specific areas where I've spent my time.
Not in the least.
Schnidljoch is just one example of many, of passes in the Alps that have
been mostly or completely free of ice in the not too distant past (Roman
era). There is proof of that and I have pointed that out, with link. You
can actually go there and look at the stuff they found. Then it got
colder and they became covered in thick ice, became glaciers,
unpassable, uninhabitable. Just like large swaths of Greenland did. Now
the ice begins to melt again and lots of scientists panic ;-)

[...]
Well, I suppose I need you to inform me about all this.

In a nutshell, this is the story of what happened (a lot of the more
detailed write-ups are in German):

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch/about/press_coverage/article_de.html?ID=182

I can almost here some of the guys from East Anglia exclaim "Oh s..t!
Why did they have to find this?" ;-)

Our real problem now is that the American lamestream media are NOT
COVERING THIS.

That's why there is the Internet

And AFAIR Rush covered it, like usual with gusto.

Might I suggest that everyone cancel their newspaper subscriptions?
Tell them, as I did, "I don't PAY to be fed leftist weenie pablum".

The only reason why we still have our rather left-leaning local paper is
that there ain't anything else. There is a small one that's much more to
my political likings but a bit provincial for my taste.

When semi-retiring some day I'll probably drop it (if it hasn't gone
under by then anyway) and subscribe to the Wall Street Journal instead.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Jim Thompson · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:01:14 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]

Might I suggest that everyone cancel their newspaper subscriptions?
Tell them, as I did, "I don't PAY to be fed leftist weenie pablum".

The only reason why we still have our rather left-leaning local paper is
that there ain't anything else. There is a small one that's much more to
my political likings but a bit provincial for my taste.

When semi-retiring some day I'll probably drop it (if it hasn't gone
under by then anyway) and subscribe to the Wall Street Journal instead.

Rich Grise · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:53:55 +0100, Uwe Hercksen wrote:

Jim Thompson schrieb:

Uninformed leftist loon.

are you able to proof the "uninformed" in any way?

Do you mean "prove"? When I proof it, I find that it's spelled correctly. ;-)

But don't take JT too seriously - he's still a rabid Bushist, and even
though he's an old fatass that wears Fred Mertz pants, he has an ego as
big as Al Gore's. ;-)

CHeers!
Rich

Rich Grise · Dec 1, 2009

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:59 -0800, Joerg wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:

Anyway, yes I have a problem with this kind of frank comment. But I saw
the fuller context. I'd like to know if you went to the actual
exchanges, yourself, or if all you've done is read some angry summary
and got angry yourself without taking _your_ time to see for yourself.

Unless you or someone else proves that these emails were faked or pulled
out of some hat then this is very serious. And I hope the two congressmen
who want to have this investigated prevail with their efforts. The people
of this world have a right to get to the ground of this.

Does putting it "in context" make it any less criminal?

Thanks,
Rich

Rich Grise · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:12:09 -0800, dagmargoodboat wrote:

Even so, if the NAMDO--which affects temperatures and weather and
clouds--isn't understood, as you concede, how did those climate models
accurately project and integrate the effects of those clouds over all that
simulated time? If the GCM doesn't know how many, how reflective, and how
widespread the clouds are, how can it compute and integrate the solar
input to calculate total warming? It can't.

It's bogus.

Everybody knows Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Therefore, garbage into a garbage "model" yields Garbage Squared. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Dec 1, 2009

On Nov 28, 8:51 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 2:13 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 26, 5:26 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

James Arthur thinks that climate models can't predict any more than a
fortnight ahead before they blow up. Oddly enough they can, but
weather models can't.

If I ever wrote that, it was a mistake. But I don't believe I ever
did. (But since you keep saying it, and Joerg lives in Oregon, it
must be true.)

You said it all right. You seem to have - very wisely - requested that
your post was not to be archived, and have managed to contain your
outrage at being caught making a fool of yourself until the original
evidence had evaporated.

No, if I said it, it's still here in the archives. Maybe you've
confused me with someone else.

Since I included the date and time and source of your post in my
response to it,

"On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:08:17 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com"

I'm tolerably confident that I wasn't responding to anybody else, and
yet there doesn't seem to be a corrseponding post in the archive that
I can get at.

I can't explain your mistake, nor do I care. I don't remember saying
climate models diverge after a fortnight, nor can I imagine saying
that because I know it isn't true. If I did make such a mistake, it'd
be all over the internet in archives and on hard drives everywhere.
Have at it.

I make no attempt to stay abreast of the latest modeling, there's no
need, any more than I need to follow and understand every nuanced
detail of divining rod construction or voodoo-doll design. They don't
matter.

I know from my own understanding that today's modeling can't possibly
predict over the timespans climastrologists claim, and I have,
independently, the word of a worker in the field to confirm it.

As far as I'm concerned, I won't bother taking long-term forecasts
from models (or divining rods) seriously until they prove themselves.

<snip>

As a second measure of global climate models (GCM), we know from
actual life how poorly the models predict El Nino, or hurricanes, or
other near-term phenomena that depend on accurate understanding of
real temperature, deep ocean currents, or other quantities critical to
long-term projections (if those are even possible), but which are not
known well enough to make even short-term predictions.
As a 3rd measure of GCM, before you graced s.e.d. with your inquiries,
I related that I got that same info (above) from one of the persons
*responsible* for one of the main climate models. That person said
GCM are important and useful tools in understanding climate, and for
making predictions as far as several weeks into the future. Beyond
that, says (s)he, the models quickly diverge uselessly from reality..

James Arthur doesn't know the difference between a global climate
model, which predicts over a span of year and a global weather model
which falls to pieces in about two weeks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28_2/text/cli.htm

I know the difference. But suppose I didn't--it still doesn't
matter. Cast aside your irrelevant bile and consider: we're in a 10-
year cooling trend. I don't remember any stern warnings from
climastrologists this was imminent, do you? Quite the opposite. But
your memory is better than mine--you remember things that didn't even
happen. Maybe you could cite those warnings for us.

Or is 10 years "just weather," and not climate?

In this context it is a lot closer to weather than climate.

If you were anything like as au fait with the current state of climate
modelling as you claim, you'd be aware that the current explantation
of the relatively slow warming over the past decade involves the
influence of the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which is
still relatively poorly understood, though we are now starting to get
useful information from the Argo program (which you'd know all about
if you were as well-informed as you like to pretend).

I don't claim to be current on this, any more than I keep pace with
Tom Cruise's progress to the next level of Thetan-hood. But, above
you've just offered a story, not a theory, not an explanation, not
something quantified, tested, or proved.

Even so, if the NAMDO--which affects temperatures and weather and
clouds--isn't understood, as you concede, how did those climate models
accurately project and integrate the effects of those clouds over all
that simulated time? If the GCM doesn't know how many, how
reflective, and how widespread the clouds are, how can it compute and
integrate the solar input to calculate total warming? It can't.

It's bogus.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

Dec 1, 2009

On Nov 28, 10:36 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 5:15 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
Or just do an error-budget analysis. The AGW contribution alleged
from CO2 is, well, not even clear. A range of estimates from ~0.25 to
1 W/m^2 out of roughly 300W/m^2 has been offered. (That wide an
uncertainty band is pretty pathetic on its face, isn't it?)

Check out the ranges of forcings estimated here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

" * water vapor, which contributes 3672% [a 2:1 range]
* carbon dioxide, which contributes 926% [3:1]
* methane, which contributes 49%
* ozone, which contributes 37%"

These aren't, stictly speaking. forcings.

If you had read further down the page, you would have come across this
line

"It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes an exact
percentage of the greenhouse effect. This is because some of the gases
absorb and emit radiation at the same frequencies as others, so that
the total greenhouse effect is not simply the sum of the influence of
each gas. The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for each gas alone;
the lower ends account for overlaps with the other gases.[8][9]"

Forcings are calculated for for actual atmospheres containing
specific concentrations of gases and this particular source of
uncertainty largely goes away. Since the lapse rate means that water
vapour concentrations drop away quite rapidly with increasing
altitude, this isn't an entirely trivial calculation.

For the record, you have just proved - once again - that you don't
know what you are talking about.

You skipped the introductory sentence:
"When these gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse
effect, the most important are:"

So, you've made a useless distinction. In IPCC-ian cant, "forcing"
means yet something else to what it meant in common language.

The upshot is still that--whatever the term-of-art be in your
particular cult--the heat inputs from those sources are not accurately
quantified, and their uncertainty dwarfs the heating thought to be
from manmade CO2.

It might be if it had been offered by someone who knew what they were
talking about. These are the sorts of numbers that Christopher
Monckton comes up with

http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html#sec7

More reliable sources seem to be able to come up with a narrower
range.

http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/?p=204

They estimate it using models:

"So how is Radiative Forcing calculated? For the most
part, it is estimated using data from what is referred
to as General Circulation Models (GCMs). These
models use numerous methodologies[...]"

As I mentioned in the post to which you are responding, (a point also
made in the wikipedia page you cited, but don't seem to have read
either), the greenhouse effect of each gas in the atmosphere depends
on the concentration of the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
and you have to construct a model of the atmosphere before you can
calculate a radiative forcing for that atmosphere.

I read it, but I don't get your point. The alleged contribution of
these GHGs to Earth-warming in Earth-atmosphere is what matters,
nothing else.

It's not a mystery, it's a planet, with a well-known atmospheric
composition. So the correct measure of GHG-warming potential would be
of each gas' contribution in the mix as naturally occurs on Earth, or
dF/dConcentration in close approximations of that mix, or some such,
obviously.

If they don't know that exactly, they don't know anything.

If you want to insist the mix varies widely, having large effects,
then you have to show that your model accurately predicts how much
water vapor and so forth appears everywhere on the planet, at all
levels of the atmosphere, and integrates that correctly over time.

You can't meet that burden.

And still you should be able to supply one overall measure of each
gas' influence, to a precision better than the AGW you're asserting
for CO2. Just integrate the contribution, per volume, over the
atmosphere.

That gives a number, per gas, that could be listed in that table.
And, to be of any use, it'd better be an accurate number.

gives a figure of 1.66 W/m˛, with a range between 1.49 and 1.83 W/m˛.

The same source goes on to give a 4:1 uncertainty range(!) for net
anthropogenic forcing:

"Overall, the total net anthropogenic Radiative Forcing
is equal to an average value of 1.6 W/m˛ [0.6 to 2.4 W/m˛].
This means a warming of the climate."

IIRR these are 95% confdence limits, and include quite a lot of
uncertainty to cover features of the atmosphere that the current
generation of climate models, running on the current generation of
computers don't model well.

We may be able to do better in a few years

Despite your protestations: 4:1 bounds on a 95% confidence interval.
That's a joke, of course.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

Dec 1, 2009

On Nov 28, 11:17 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 5:53 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

<snip>

Global Climate Models fail simple tests like that. They don't know
from ocean currents.

Yet. Because we don't yet have the ocean current data to plug into
them.

That's one reason long-term predictions from global climate models
don't and can't work. Your explanation of that failing doesn't make
it go away.

They don't accurately model clouds.

Yet.

Without
those things you can't model heat flow from the equator to the poles,
which is what drives our entire climate.

Nonsense. You just can't model as accurately as you could if you had
the data about the ocean currents and didn't have to smear out the
effets of clouds.

Without clouds, you're not modeling life. They cool the days, and
warm the nights, in case you hadn't noticed.

GCMs perforce have to integrate those heat inputs; if they don't, they
don't work. It's that simple.

The heat still has to get from the equator to the poles, and you can
plug in black boxes that will do it well enough for government work.

That *is* our climate. They
assume static ice sheets and static vegetation, i.e., semi-static
albedo. IOW, they run on hamsters. And they're missing some wheels.

They're getting better, but they still aren't predictive 100 years or
even 20 years--or even 10 years, as we've just seen--into the future.

Of course they are predictive. It's just that the predictions are a
good deal less than perfectly accurate.

So, pointing to GCMs as proof of apocalyptic prognostications of doom
is, well, bogus. They just aren't nearly that good yet--they don't
handle all the many factors well enough--and even if they did we have
no way to prove they're right, to know they haven't omitted something
important, or just plain made a mistake.

They aren't proof of apocalyptic prognostications of doom. They are
tools that let us see that if we continue to inject CO2 into the
atmosphere at the current rate or faster, the world will be several
degrees warmer than it is now within a hundred years or so

You can't draw any such conclusion. It's entirely possible we'll have
more clouds, or more reflective clouds, and the whole thing will
balance out. Or it could all be horribly worse. The models just
can't say.

It seems entirely likely we'll be warmer in 100 years than now--we've
been warming ever since the last ice age (during this interglacial
thereof, technically). Not long ago elephants had fur. Now they
don't.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

Jon Kirwan · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:50:40 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:25:27 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:25:52 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
much snipped, my apologies

In general, there is no profit for a science team to duplicate work.
If they duplicate the work and get the same or similar results from
it, they've merely stared at their belly buttons and wasted a lot of
money in the process. If they duplicate the work and find an error,
then a correction is made and science moves on. But the team doesn't
really get much credit for it. It reflects more upon the team that
made the error. The ones finding it merely did a 'clean up' job that
shows they can follow procedure like they should be able to and really
doesn't reflect on their creativity and ability to "do science." So
again, they wasted their time even if they helped fix an error that
someone else should have caught.

An example of this later case is the artifact of the diurnal
correction that had been incorrectly applied to MSU T2LT raw data by
Roy Spencer and John Christy. For years, scientists outside this
inner circle had been "clubbed" by the University of Alabama's results
that conflicted with pretty much every other approach by teams all
over the world. Both Spencer and Christy were repeatedly asked to go
back through their methodology to see if they could find an error.
Over and over, they insisted they didn't need to do that. Finally,
Carl Mears and Frank Wentz apparently got sick and tired enough with
the continuing conflict that they decided to waste their own precious
time to duplicate the efforts by Spencer and Christy. That effort, by
all rights, should have been Spencer and Christy's efforts. But since
they weren't taking action, if finally all came to a head. In any
case, Mears and Wentz went through all the trouble to secure the data
sets and then attempt to duplicate the processing. In the end, they
discovered an error in the diurnal correction used by the Alabama
team. Once shown their error -- and it took them four or five months
to admit it -- they publicly made corrections to their processing and
republished old data which then, while on the lower end of the
spectrum, was "within" the range of error of the results of other work
long since published. At that point, though, Spencer and Christy's
work had been tarnished and Remote Sensing Systems began publishing
their own analysis in parallel. It happens. But there isn't much
credit given for this. Just credit taken away.

Most scientists want to find creative new approaches to answering
questions that will confirm or disconfirm the work of others -- not
duplicate the exact same steps. Or they want to solve new problems.
That illustrates creativity and leads to a reputation. Novelty is
important.

_Methods_ and _results_ are disclosed, though. But software programs
and interim data aren't that important. ...
But raw input data is. That's what it was about.
Yes. However, raw data has been fairly easy to attain, my experience.
Very much _unlike_ raw data in the clinical/medical field where
_everyone_ seems to consider it highly proprietary.

Mind telling me what raw data you asked for?
Sea level data. A FTP link would have sufficed.

That isn't raw data, Joerg. It's digested and developed from several
methods applied to a range of data sets taken in a variety of ways
from sites all over the world, each of which have their unique
characteristics that need to be understood and applied to develop a
sense of 'global sea level'.... all of which goes through refinements
and changes, from time to time. Assuming, of course, that you meant
to have "global sea level data" when you wrote "sea level data."

It would have helped you a lot had you known what you were looking
for.

I did. I asked for the local water level _readings_. Before that request
I had already found quite a few data sets on my own. When that data did
not corroborate what they had published I asked for more of that data.
To be able to understand where their conclusions came from.

By 'local water level' were you talking about a specific area? Or
everywhere in the world? There are many instrumentation differences,
methodology of measurement differences, and so on, if you are talking
global. On the other hand, if you were talking about the SF bay area
and some specific team and time frame, I think you'd probably get the
data.

Here in Portland, we have a NOAA weather office, for example. They do
things like read temperatures, monitor rain precipitation, snow
precipitation, wind speed and direction, and the usual lot of your
basic measurements. Some of the data is intermittent -- snow fall has
ceased to be measured, about 10 years ago, and monitoring wasn't begun
until perhaps the 1950's. Some of it is continuous, like temperature,
going back a ways. However, the locations of the measurement, the
type of measuring instrument, the frequency and timing of those
measurements, and the calibration methods used have changed over the
years. Even though there is some digesting of the data before it
makes it into their SF6 preliminary product, it's still not reliable
and certainly not usable as a continuous dataset without a lot of
specific information to help.

Much of that information isn't even available on the web. Even the
more recent data only goes back 5 years -- by policy, after this late
Bush took office and had key staff in Washington DC _order_ (I've read
the order, personally) the datasets curtailed on the web. They do
have data going back further and, upon request, sent me much of it.
However, to make use of that data as well as other data that still
remained only in paper records, I has to personally visit the office
and take days of time going through stacks of old papers and copy out
calibration standards and references and methodology.

And that is just one process variable for one site.

So what exactly were you asking for?

Have you ever sat down and actually _read_ a report on these kinds of
subjects? I mean, really just one of them? Or the IPCC AR4
discussion, even? If you had, you'd know that "sea level data" isn't
"raw data" without my saying so.

Here, take a look at this one from this year:

http://www.igsoc.org/annals/50/50/a50a043.pdf

1.12mm/year, or 0.77mm per the other guys. Whew, we won't drown then )

Mostly, I wanted to point out the effort required to fuse even just a
couple of data sets. My above comments give you even more about it.

By the way, 1.12mm/year represents perhaps (in my opinion) the single
largest source of rise, right now, except perhaps thermal expansion.
In other words, mountain glacier loss is pronounced and not to be set
aside or laughed at. Broadly speaking, it's important and widespread.

Since you were discussing mountain glaciers earlier, you have given me
a segue. It's really a very simple paper that illustrates the issues
involved when trying to see if there is a way to develop an improved
understanding by joining datasets from different sources and means.

Now, I think you can understand the reaction if you were writing to
some scientist about glaciers and asking for "glacier levels." They
wouldn't really know what you meant if you were asking for the raw
data. Which raw data?

I often deal with this when writing module specs. Since I can never
assume how well versed the readers will be there is a lot of underlying
data and explanations. A regular engineer like you and I won't read
those but they are still provided.

If the AGW folks want to make a case they better do the same, be open.
Especially now since the trust of the public has been thoroughly shaken.

Well, the report I cited provides all you need to know. From there,
you can realize the assumptions and know at least some of what else
may need to be examined further. You know the data sets, broadly
speaking, and can track those down (or ask for more details.) You
know the results and methods and probably could get very close to
replication, if you put in the work he did. What else should have
been included?

Suppose I asked you about the getting access to "capacitor values?"
You might wonder, "Um... which types of capacitors? What values,
exactly? Do they need to know about temperature or voltage effects?
What application is this for?" Etc. And then you'd begin to wonder
if the questioner had any clue, at all, asking like that.

But I would not brush them off.

Depends. If the subject were far, far more complex and the question
illustrating much, much further to go in terms of education... you
might. I think I definitely would brush them off, because I frankly
care about my time, unless they somehow showed me the were serious
enough to work hard for their own opinion. If someone is serious and
can show it, I usually agree with you. I love it when people want to
know things and are willing to put in the sweat to get there. But
there are so many people out there who aren't.

And in climate science, it's is _so_ politicized and there is _so_
much money there for those willing to do little other than confuse and
waste others' time, that you really _do_ need to be a little careful.
Even the late Bush administration actively worked hard to "make this
political." I only wish the world were different. But it isn't.
Still, many scientists are generous people and a lot of them will give
away their time even when the questioners msy only be asking to be
annoying and will never do anything with the effort granted them.

Best foot forward is to show you have put in some time, first, and
know just a little bit about what they've done and are currently
interested in. Just as that would be a best foot forward with you.
For example, I know that you look for other than boutique parts and
often have a cost/space issue and sometimes deal with controlling RF
power levels fewer have to. If I were writing to you for information,
it might go just a little further perhaps that I was at least aware of
some of your own concerns and could couch my request in a way that
presents well.

It's just good practice.

I would.

This is why I said it helps if you inform yourself by actually doing
some serious, sit-down reading of the material. Get familiar with the
issues of the day. Learn a little, first. By then, you can refine
your questions to something they can make good sense of and place it
into a context they understand.

I mean, how many times have you seem people writing in about
electronics and asking some bizarrely phrased question that makes it
patently obvious they have no clue, at all? And you know, before even
thinking about answering, that anything you say will only make it
worse? "There is too much current for my radio to work right. How
can I lower the current?" Stuff like that where you not only know
they have no clue, you know there is NO CHANCE that you can give a
short, directed answer that helps, either.

Then I ask questions. Like "What is it that you don't like with the
sound of your radio?"

I think you know what I mean, though. They might be asking also for a
lot of work on your part in the request. (Presumed here, because when
you ask a scientist for 'sea level data' you probably are asking for
an hour or two of their time, if for no other reason than to explain
to you the caveats of it.)

And yes, taking your point it would be nice if scientists would ask
you for more about what you plan to do or what problem you are trying
to solve, so they can better advise you even if they don't plan
themselves to provide everything. Often, they can refer you to
someone else, or a good book on the subject.

It really does help a lot to do some reading on your own before going
around asking questions.

I don't mean to be flip or abrupt, Joerg. Your question is the kind
of question that non-specialists really might have to help them think
about things. But you also have to understand this from the side of
someone who is deep into the details (like you are, here.) Consider
how you might have to respond in similar circumstances.

The data you asked for isn't 'raw data.'

It may not be called that and I only used that expression here for
brevity. What I asked for was sea level data from stations. Can't be
that hard.

Yes, it can. Which stations? How long of a period? Did the
instrumentation change? If so, when and when and when? Did the
locations change, too? If so, what are the calibration differences?
How were they determined and with what precision and variances, based
on methods used? What methods were used? Have there also been
changes in the land mass, itself, based upon satellite observation or
other geologic information that confounds the measurements in the
interim? Etc. I'm only just getting started.

... If you are going to attempt
replication (and sometimes you do want to, as mentioned), you want to
do it with a "fresh eye" to the problem so that you actually have a
chance to cross-check results. You need to walk a similar path, of
course. To do that, you want to know the methodology used. And of
course you need the results to check outcomes in the end. That's all
anyone really needs.

If you are creative enough to take a different approach entirely in
answering the questions, then you don't even need that.

The methods and sources used are an important trail to leave. And
they leave that much, consistently. Beyond that, it's really just too
many cooks in the kitchen. If you can't dispute or replicate knowing
methods and sources, then perhaps you shouldn't be in the business at
all.

When you say "underlying data," I haven't yet encountered a case where
I was prevented access if I were able to show that I could actually
understand their methods and apply the data, appropriately. ...
Why is it that one would only give out data if using "their methods"?
I didn't say "using their methods," Joerg. I said that I understood
them, or tried to. In some cases, I frankly didn't fully apprehend
what they did and they simply helped me to understand them and then
still gave me access. In any case, I wasn't saying that was a "gate
keeper" as you seem to have imagined. If you read my writing with
understanding, you've have gleened that I was suggesting that they
want to know if I am semi-serious or just some random gadfly.

I sure would NOT want to get jerked around by every nut and, if I
refused, to then get tarred and feathered by you because I decided I
didn't feel up to it.
But if the scientist took the time to write a few sentences, why not
just send a link to a web site with the data?

Because it doesn't exist? Sometimes, the data is developed as an
output of specific methods applied to a range of datasets coming from
a variety of sources of varying pedigree/provenance and there are a
host of error bounds and other assumptions, known about and unknown,
applied in order to generate an internal result that is then
summarized. The interim data is internal and, frankly, doesn't really
matter. They've disclosed the methodology and sources in the paper
and they very well may not wish to send you the internal work product.

Then I would have appreciated a link to that paper.

Yes, I agree.

Doesn't bother me in the least, if so. I've had to replicate results
by following procedures. In fact, it's good for you to have to work
for it, like that. Helps you understand things better when you have
to do it, yourself, too.

It doesn't have to be
exhaustive, just some place from where one can probe further and, most
of all, something from official sources (such as NOAA or other
countries' agencies).

May not be there. However, the raw data (like tree ring counts from
some Scottish researcher looking at a certain set of preserved trees
at a particular museum) is often available. Now, if you want that
tree ring data from yet another researcher looking at fossilized trees
from Tibet, 10 years earlier, then you might need to contact someone
else. And if you want that fused together in some kind of new data
set, you might need to contact someone else... if that fused data is
the explicit OUTPUT of a paper.

Just like in electronics. You get to know the signal inputs,
conditions, and drive requirements... up to a point. And you get to
know the outputs... up to a point. As far as the internals go? Maybe.
Maybe not. If you are informed, you can probably "work it out" on
your own. You don't need them to disclose everything. It's not
entirely different, except that scientists disclose a LOT more I think
and take a less-proprietary approach. So even better, in my opinion.
But you really don't _need_ the internal work product. You can access
the raw data inputs because they are usually the explicit outputs of
someone else's work. You can use the outputs, too. But you don't
have a right to dig into the internal stuff.... if you want it, you
really need to ask VERY NICELY and you need to let them know a lot
more about you and what you intend to do with it.

All I wanted was the input and it's got to be there. Measurements,
averages, from the stations.

Read my above comments. It's not 'that easy,' except to someone who
hasn't ever done this. But of course, to those ignorant of the
details everything seems 'easy.' Boy did I learn that digging my own
foundations and perimeter wall cement forms! Just the very idea of
'digging a level base' seems easy enough to conceive. Until you go
there and dig it out. Not the work, but what you find. I found
biotic material here going twice as deep as I wanted to dig, in one
corner of the area. And NONE of the books told me how to deal with it
-- except to say that the foundation needs to based upon inert ground.
So I knew I had a problem. It took me days to work out the answers
and remove all of the 'bad' material leaving cavities, develop
engineered fill on my own, learn how to tamp it down properly and
bring the cavities back up, and move earth around the area to bring a
more uniform appearance. Damn! I just wanted a level foundation.

Reality impinges.

Nothing is easy. Especially this stuff.

I'd want the same thing. Otherwise, I might spend the next 10 years
of my life having to either teach that person step by step or else
have them paste my name all over the internet, saying that they have
all this data directly from me all the while completely and totally
misinterpreting it to everyone else... but looking like they know
stuff because __I__ gave them the data and I cannot deny that fact.

Nope, I would not refuse. One can give out the data plus a link to
teaching material. I often point email requesters that are more in the
league of your example "my radio uses too much of the wrong current" to
web sites thta teach the basics. In this day and age there is an
abundance, and learning is essentially free. When I began answering
requests in the late 80's and early 90's that was not the case at all,
lots more work. Yet I always answered them (they had my address from
publications).

I think I have every right to control _my_ time. Sometimes, I think
the effort is worth it and, since I generally agree with your
approach, I often try. But in the end, _I_ decide when and where I am
willing. Sometimes, I've got other things going on (like my daughter)
that require my time and it's just a bad time that the request comes
in. So I brush them off. I usually try and send them somewhere
slightly useful and spend _some_ time, even then. But if the number
of requests were high, perhaps, and my personal circumstances very
demanding at the time... I might not respond at all. If the
questioner is serious, they will either write in a few months or else
they will find someone else. I don't owe anyone my time, though.

Basically, I treat them respectfully as I'd want to be treated by
someone else asking _me_ for a favor. Do that and you get a long
ways, my experience.
That's what I always do. In requests as in replies.

It's good practice. I wish I followed it as well as you do.

That's exactly what I'd not want to do. In my case all I wanted to look
at is where exactly sea levels were rising and by how much. After
finding lots of data from places where it didn't happen I was brushed
off with the remark "Well, the ocean is not a bathtub". Here, I would
have expected a set of data that shows that I am wrong. But ... nada. Great.

snip of material I'll respond to later when I have time
Do you honestly feel they owe you an education, Joerg? It's a lot
better to show that you've at least made some effort on your own.
YMMV, of course. Act as you want to. I'm just suggesting...
I did not want an education, just a hint as to where underlying data
might be. I don't think that's asking too much.

Maybe you are. Maybe you aren't. But "sea level data" doesn't cut it
unless you are more specific.

Well, I got some of it on my own and told them, so they knew exactly
what I was after. I just wanted some more (that I couldn't find), from
areas which corroborate their claims. But anyhow, it's history, I am not
interested in that particular data anymore.

Show me what you know about getting 'sea level data.' What
instrumentation is used, Joerg? Where and over what periods of time?
What areas are markedly different in their methods? How have methods
changed over time? How are they calibrated? How do you calibrate the
differences in means and methods against each other (how do you match
up measurements from one method with another, even in the same area?)
How have positions of instrumentation changed and why? How does land
level changes affect results? Which satellites and instruments aboard
are also used in all this? How are they used? What processing is
required merely to get a measurement out of satellite based equipment
that can be used, in the first place? How long have they been in
space? Etc.

What work have you really done, here? Seriously. What puts you in
the position of being able to come to your own opinion on any of it?

Where are your callouses? Show me.

Jon

Jon Kirwan · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:45:06 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:59 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:25:52 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
snip
If you want to point out the specific letter that bothers you (quote a
significant sentence or two so I can find it in my saved copies), I'd
be happy to look at the case and see what I think of it. I might even
write and ask about it -- though I won't necessarily expect an answer.
Might get one, though. But I could at least offer my take on it, if I
knew a specific case you were considering.
Don't remember the link but a quick search turned up some of them in an
article. Tell me this isn't true:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/emails-that-damn-cru-head-jones
I really hate that link -- bastard ads. I need to disable the things,
someday.

Suggesting that it may be best to destroy some data in case a FOIA
request comes in ... I mean, can it get any more gross than that?
Okay. Before I commment, let's be a little more precise about it,
Joerg.

The quote your web site provides is, "Think Ive managed to persuade
UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to
do with Climate Audit." I used the word "destroy" and searched your
web site for a quote that includes that word and didn't find it. So
I'm going to ask you to point out where they quote a climate scientist
saying they'd destroy data if an FOIA request arrives, on your web
site. ...
Quote, in the first email on that page: "If they ever hear there is a
Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think Ill delete the file
rather than send to anyone."

That's an emotional comment and probably wishful thinking, not a
certain promise to act. I might write something like that if I felt
harassed.

Please don't do that in any public role. Can get you into legal trouble
even if something can't be found later, especially if they can't find
out who dunnit.

Yes, it may be pretty stupid to say.

It's gross, IMHO.

Quote, further down: "A couple of things dont pass on either

2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but
this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith
and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think weve found a
way around this."

Okay. Let's pop up the mail and post the whole thing, Joerg:

: Mike, Ray, Caspar,
:
: A couple of things - don't pass on either.
:
: 1. Have seen you're RC bet. Not entirely sure this is the right way
: to go, but it will drum up some discussion.
:
: Anyway Mike and Caspar have seen me present possible problems
: with the SST data (in the 1940s/50s and since about 2000). The
: first of these will appear in Nature on May 29. There should be
: a News and Views item with this article by Dick Reynolds. The
: paper concludes by pointing out that SSTs now (or since about
: about 2000, when the effect gets larger) are likely too low.
: This likely won't get corrected quickly as it really needs more
: overlap to increase confidence.
:
: Bottom line for me is that it appears SSTs now are about 0.1
: deg C too cool globally. Issue is that the preponderance of
: drifters now (which measure SST better but between 0.1 and
: 0.2 lower than ships) mean anomalies are low relative to the
: ship-based 1961-90 base.
:
: This also means that the SST base the German modellers used
: in their runs was likely too warm by a similar amount. This
: applies to all modellers, reanalyses etc.
:
: There will be a lot of discussion of the global T series with
: people saying we can't even measure it properly now.
:
: The 1940s/50s problem with SSTs (the May 29 paper) also means
: there will be warmer SSTs for about 10 years. This will move
: the post-40s cooling to a little later - more in line with
: higher sulphate aerosol loading in the late 50s and 1960s70s.
:
: The paper doesn't provide a correction. This will come, but
: will include the addition of loads more British SSTs for WW2,
: which may very slightly cool the WW2 years.
:
: More British SST data have also been digitized for the late
: 1940s. Budget constraints mean that only about half the RN
: log books have been digitized. Emphasis has been given to
: the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean log books.
:
: As an aside, it is unfortunate that there are few in the
: Pacific. They have digitized all the logbooks of the ships
: journeys from the Indian Ocean south of Australia and NZ
: to Seattle for refits. Nice bit of history here - it turns
: out that most of the ships are US ones the UK got under the
: Churchill/Roosevelt deal in early 1940. All the RN bases
: in South Africa, India and Australia didn't have parts for
: these ships for a few years.
:
: So the German group would be stupid to take your bet. There
: is a likely ongoing negative volcanic event in the offing!
:
: 2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet
: also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests
: for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re
: Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.
:
: I can't wait for the Wengen review to come out with the
: Appendix showing what that 1990 IPCC Figure was really
: based on.
:
: The Garnaut review appears to be an Australian version of
: the Stern Report.
:
: This message will self destruct in 10 seconds!
:
: Cheers
: Phil

Now that you can read the whole thing, tell me exactly what you think
these emails are about and why you imagine they are trying to find a
way around having to disclose them. I can think of a lot of reasons.
There is a great deal of frank conversations that proceed in arguments
about which side of the bread the butter should go. And sometimes,
the heated discussions that led up to a final draft really were
expected, by those participating, to be (and should be) kept private.
An shotgun FOI request, made in the hope of finding anything and
something to create confusion out of would indeed be fought hard
against.

Of course, if I _presumed_ at the outset that they were evil and
sinister... then some of my thoughts might simply go in the direction
of supporting that assumption. But open your mind enough to allow the
idea of presuming they aren't evil liars, but faced with someone
putting in FOI requests just to hassle them and hopefully find
something they can misquote and use in the public venue without
context. (Hmm. Maybe like this letter.) If you don't start with the
'evil' assumption, you might find there are other ways to read this.

One has to approach this neutral and with only the law in mind. In
America we are blessed with some excellent laws that truly empower the
public, such as FOIA.

So, if this work and also the emails were done on the public nickel and
FOIA grants the public rightful access to that, then nobdoy is entitled
to take the standpoint "Oh, but I don't like that and I will find away
to dodge this requirement". Nobody.

What should happen now is a solicitation of denied or shorted FOIA
requests. Should be easy because the requesters will be eager to furnish
such information. Then see what was delivered or not delivered. Then,
find out whether there was something that should have and ask why it
wasn't. If necessary under oath.

What I don't get is why they put this sort of stuff in emails, and under
their work accounts. I mean, technically they could have used some
hotmail account or whatever. Or the phone.

By the way, I'd love to see the 10 million emails "lost" by the last
Bush administration. I _do_ imagine there is a lot that would
interest the public. And legitimately, too; not just some prurient
interest.

I'd assume the current administration would be busy exploring this if
there was anything they suspected.

Looking for a way around FOIA is illegal, at least in America. I don't
know about the legal consequences in the UK.

No. Looking for a way around FOI requests in the US is often
considered 'standard practice.' If you are so naive as to think
otherwise, you really need to get out more. There are good reasons
and bad. Some good reasons might be that responding fully to the FOI
might create a new precedent or be considered excessive. An FOI
request, for example, for ALL FEDERAL AND STATE DISTRICT AND CIRCUIT
COURT RECORDS GOING BACK TO 1781 might be such a nasty beast.

Why? Then you simply charge reasonable fees and if the requester still
wants to go ahead I believe the budget crises, clerk layoffs and such in
many districts would be solved

Perfectly horrible in terms of scope. And responding to it might set
a precedent that even crazy-minded requests like that must be equally
met.

Only for requesters with fat bank accounts. Remember, FOIA information
is _not_ always free of charge. They can't charge $100 for a dozen pages
but they can for a box full of pages.

Regardless, looking for an out is NOT illegal. What would be trouble
would be having a court order specific compliance with the request and
then to refuse even that much. Scoping the lay of the land about it,
or 'wanting' to find a way to avoid a response, isn't in and of itself
illegal. It's just normal.

I never said anything criminal has happened. But openly thinking about
dodging a rule or law would be a good hint to probe further. Many people
have been caught because they talked about their strategies.

... Also, take note that they are talking about dealing with what
really _is_ a gadfly -- Climate Audit. I'd like you to point out, on
this site, where a climate scientist is quoted saying this about any
other requestor (your statement above doesn't identify Climate Audit
and I consider that an error in presenting the problem, Joerg.)
No. FOIA is FOIA. If a data source falls under that law the holder of
the data does not have the right to decide on his own to disobey such
law. Unless national security is affected, of course, but then he'd have
the obligation to notify authorities about that.

If only it were that clear.

It is. In case of doubt a court would need to decide.

Also note that I wrote "_If_ data really has been deleted ...". Meaning
I do not accuse them. But I would really want someone to investigate
because they are influencing public policy.

Okay. So we can set aside the accusation of deleting climate data.

I didn't accuse but said that there is a chance that it happened, not
that it did happen or so-and-so did it. Of course there will now be many
people who say it happened and the PR for the AGW folks will turn very
ugly. Lots of opinions are formed at the neighorhood pub, after a few
brewskys.

In
some countries that is considered a criminal act (when you actually
delete it) and AFAIR a probe into this has been contemplated by two US
congressmen. And I think they are darn right to demand one now.

If data really has been deleted in this sense I guess some folks better
look for a nice place somewhere where they have no extradition. Maybe
Brazil?
snip of more I'll have time for, later
I'll admit this to you. The comment I quoted from your web site is
one of the two things that bothered me. But you really seem to be
seeing things there I don't, too. So lay this out carefully for me.
I'd like to see what you see, and what supports it.
Hope I did above

Maybe. We'll see.

Anyway, yes I have a problem with this kind of frank comment. But I
saw the fuller context. I'd like to know if you went to the actual
exchanges, yourself, or if all you've done is read some angry summary
and got angry yourself without taking _your_ time to see for yourself.
Unless you or someone else proves that these emails were faked or pulled
out of some hat then this is very serious. And I hope the two
congressmen who want to have this investigated prevail with their
efforts. The people of this world have a right to get to the ground of this.

Oh, I think the emails are real. Though I can't say for sure, of
course. Could be doctored. But what I've read through 'looks real'
to me. So I tentatively conclude they are.

Some of them bother me. But I realize that these people are real
humans who have genuine emotions. I take the good with the bad, as I
said before. None of us are perfect.

No, we aren't. However, the style in those emails is something I have
never ever seen in business. It is a style that I do not like and that
raises suspicion.

I'm bothered by some of them, too. But you know? The emails I copied
out are some megabytes in size and cover _some_ interactions of _some_
people involved. They are a 'random snapshot' of some kind, but also
selective by their very nature. I think if the fuller context were
out there (all emails by all climate scientists) we'd find more, but
still on balance would find serious people working generally hard to
do serious and meaningful work, fairly and honestly. There will be
exceptions, of course. And some will obviously be less professional
and still others will do poor work, as well, that others know about
and snipe on about. But I think the _weight_ of it would be something
to be proud of.

As I said, though, these are people like you and me.

Jon

Jon Kirwan · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:06:55 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:37:34 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:25:52 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
snip

I think one most sensible people distinguish when to spend their time
and when not to. You do that. So do I. Some people writing in this
group (and other groups) are both ignorant AND willfully so AND where
it is clear they won't spend their own time "getting better." If you
decide that is the case, you don't write. Why should you? We all
have better things to do. On the other hand, if you have a serious
inquiry from someone who _is_ ignorant but at least shows some earlier
work -- even if that effort was in the wrong direction, it was engaged
seriously -- then you may feel better about trying to correct them or
point out some thought of yours that may help them.

Climate science is fraught with well-funded confusion, discord, and
the sewing of far less certainty where there is far more available.
Some scientists are ... wary. They've been caught flat-footed. (I
have been, too.) They might imagine a sincere request, respond in a
fair minded way, and have it cherry-picked and plastered without
context or understanding. At some point, one gets kind of sick and
tired of that, you know?

I do my diligence, first. By reading their recent work and related
materials, for example. When I write to them, I almost always have
something to say that shows them that I've done some work on my own.
That always seems to help a lot. It shows I respect their time by
first spending my own and therefore am obviously not out to just waste
theirs. A dialogue can start from there. But it really helps to not
ask others to spend their time when you haven't spent your own, first.

In a similar way, it helps to know that someone has at least tried to
understand a BJT and maybe even build some things they want to
understand a little better, but don't, when posting a BJT question. If
a poster hasn't ever read a single page of a single book on the
subject, never tried anything, and just jumps in with some completely
random request for "plase expln me how the bjt wroks?" question,
well... yeah.. it's not likely to get anything but suggestions to go
put in some time first (and maybe even learning some English, too.)
True. Sometimes I simply point them to "The Art of Electronics"
Indeed! I like to also point to a book (upon which I'm now quoted on
the backside proving his lack of good taste!) --

Ian Getreu's "Modeling the Bipolar Transistor"

-- which is now finally again available as a Lulu reprint.
Wonderful!

hehe. Now if the two people in the world who may care would just buy
a copy!

My wife would scold me if I got another historical book. A few years ago
I vowed to clean house so I don't occupy all the hallway closets with my
business stuff

Now would be time to market this to universities. I think that students
wanting to head for chip design should read it. Although the era of the
BJT is essentially over in many, many markets.

[...]

Hmm. I hadn't read this, earlier. You anticipated my reply and I
anticipated yours, too. As I said, the public won't get behind a
carbon tax that will merely line the pockets of power or capital. So
we agree there.
But body politicus might sock it to us and impose a carbon tax anyhow.
Because it's a gravy train for them, like almost all taxes are.
I _hate_ this "fact of life," Joerg. I think it is disgusting and
vile. And I think you are right. Bastards, all. But there it is.

(Frankly, I think the public _could_ at least give some fair
consideration to the idea _if_ the funds were returned to them in a
manner that was appropriate and fairly handled and didn't wind up
instead paying down some debt they'd forced down our throats at a
different time or lining someone's already deep pockets. The public
understands the idea of fairness well and also is quite properly very
incensed and angered by unfair treatment. I not only agree, I'd get
angry, too.)
This is _the_ reason why we must get to the ground of what really goes
on behind the curtains of AGW proponents. Because once a carbon tax is
there pork will be doled out, and it will not leave us even if the whole
AGW really does turn out to be a hoax (which I think it could ...).
Remember how we kept financing the Spanish-American war until a few
years ago?

I'll give you more examples. I had to drive from here, in Oregon, to
Chicago. When I reached Michigan and especially Illinois there were
all these toll booths. Seemed like every 2 or 3 miles. Supposedly,
to pay for the roads. Which is patently false. They had been paid
for decades before. And they were collecting a LOT MORE than the
maintenence costs were, after. These were INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS paid
for by FEDERAL TAXES!! My money. Your money. These were not some
local drag, either.

That was sheer crap.

Out here, in the Portland metro area (1.5 million people big) there
was a bridge built across the Columbia river as part of I5. When it
went in, they added tolls. I paid 25 cents to cross the bridge, 'back
in the day.' They said that when the bridge was paid for, the tolls
would come out. Sure enough, when the capital costs were paid, they
pulled the tolls and it's now free to travel across.. these last
decades.

Back east, if a toll goes in... it stays forever. So I'm told by
those living there, anyway.

Wrong-minded and liars besides. At least here, our politicians did
the right thing. It does happen.

Now you know exactly why I am squarely against a carbon tax or anything
of that sort. Taxing is what lots of AGW folks want and the public
doesn't want.

[...]

Instead, I see stone-walling, blocking, shouts, accusation.
At whom, exactly? Climate Audit? If so, doesn't bother me in the
slightest. I completely understand. I wish they maintained a better
outward appearance. But I do understand. I spent years debating in
personal, 1:1 email, with one of those at Climate Audit. I'm fine
with ignoring them. I finally had to admit that years of his
disrespectful yelling at me was at an end and stopped responding to
him. So I personally understand.
That's personal preference. But it gives no right to scientists to
refuse a FOIA request or contemplate doing that. Not in my eye and also
not in that of the law.

As I wrote in another email, I don't know if "looking for a way out"
is actually illegal. And you've admitted that "destroying data" is
more your suggesting than an explicit admission you uncovered. So
think the jury is still out. ...

That's the point, I hope there is going to be a jury. Or a judge.

... And yes, if Climate Audit gave me an FOI
request, I'd probably assume it wasn't because they were serious about
applying informed analysis to see if there was a real error (because
there is a place and time for that they can already use) but instead
because they are "looking for dirt" to use in smearing people.

An honest climate scientist should not be afraid of dirt.

I completely disagree with you on this point, Joerg. It shows such
naivety that it is shocking to me. I've already talked about, and you
admitted, that propaganda works on the bulk of the population. There
is no good reason to cooperate in making the job of propagandists
easier. Mud simply sticks. That's the end of it. You don't give
them more ammo to work with, if you can avoid it.

As you admit earlier here, the McDonald's approach _works_. Just
paint an emotion and people are driven like sheep by it. And this
technical stuff is beyond their ken, anyway. Or they don't have the
time because they have a life, too. So a good smear compaign works
wonders. Always has. Always will. And reading through emails is a
great way to find some really nice 'sizzle.' The public won't care
about the meat, anyway.

Yep. And I hope those scientists have learned their lesson, that one
does not write such stuff.

[...]

snip
Joerg:
I believe the findings by the Swiss at Schnidljoch were pretty powerful.
If you don't think so, ok, then we differ in opinion here.
I don't know anything comprehensive about that. So no real opinion
about it.
Then I might use your own words: You need to bone up on this stuff.
No, I don't. If you want to inform me more fully because it is
important _to you_ that I know about it, that's fine. The mere fact
that I'm ignorant really means that I don't know everything there is
to know. But I already knew that. Oh, well.
Now you are contradicting yourself. You told me that I need to dive
deeper into climate science to have an opinion. I told you that you need
to dive deeper into the climate of the past and now suddenly that is wrong?

No, I'm just saying I don't know anything about "Schnidljoch." Never
even heard of it until I read your words. It does happen to be true
that I live a limited life.

See? Same here. I've got to work to earn a living, then there needs to
be family time, and volunteer work which I won't sacrifice to study
reams of climate stuff because then I'd let people down. This is why we
all must rely on other source we can trust for much of our opinion-building.

History is very important, and quite well documented because the Romans
were sort of perfectionists in this area. Archaeologists always came
across as honest and modest folks, at let to me. So when they find
evidence I usually believe them. And they did find evidence here, big time.
I think you are making too much out of far too little. But I don't
know what you see and perhaps you will be able to walk me through your
path so that I get it and agree with you. I already said a couple of
things bother me about the released letters and I've just today
admitted one of the general areas of that. None of it changes what
the knowledge I've gained in specific areas where I've spent my time.
Not in the least.
Schnidljoch is just one example of many, of passes in the Alps that have
been mostly or completely free of ice in the not too distant past (Roman
era). There is proof of that and I have pointed that out, with link. You
can actually go there and look at the stuff they found. Then it got
colder and they became covered in thick ice, became glaciers,
unpassable, uninhabitable. Just like large swaths of Greenland did. Now
the ice begins to melt again and lots of scientists panic ;-)

[...]

Well, I suppose I need you to inform me about all this.

In a nutshell, this is the story of what happened (a lot of the more
detailed write-ups are in German):

http://www.oeschger.unibe.ch/about/press_coverage/article_de.html?ID=182

I can almost here some of the guys from East Anglia exclaim "Oh s..t!
Why did they have to find this?" ;-)

I'll look later when I get some time. I probably WON'T get enough
time to form an opinion about it, though. Too busy over the next few
months and I _know_ in advance that it will take me weeks of research
to become comprehensively informed, if not months. I even suspect
_you_ aren't comprehensively informed on this. So maybe I should wait
until you agree with me, jointly, to walk the same walk here and both
become _fully_ informed on this issue before I proceed. Why should I
waste my precious weeks of life, if you aren't willing?

Jon

Dec 1, 2009

On Nov 28, 11:18 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 2:44 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 26, 5:26 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
Of course you can see that easily, independently, if you just look at
the models, see how incomplete they are, how rudimentary our
understanding of critical processes is, how loose the parameters are,
how many arbitrary and unexplained factors they apply, and so forth..

Not having spent years working on the models, I doubt very much that I
could see anything of the sort. I had enough trouble with the much
simpler simulation I wrote in 1968 to model the chemical reaction in
the reaction cell I used in my Ph.D. work.

If James Arthur can produce this model which he claims to know so much
about we could - of course - test this hypothesis, but since neither
of us has spent our professional careers improving climate models our
opinions are unlikely to be even useful, let alone decisive.

So, your argument is that you're a poor judge of source code when you
see it, and that it's all over your head anyhow. And, you can say
this without reading the code, or trying to see if it makes sense.
Therefore, the code is reliable.

No. You want me to have blind faith in your judgement of the
reliablity of the code. Granting your memory and credibility problems,
even you should be able to understand that this might not be evidnece
of sound judgement.

You argue from faith: blind faith, sight unseen, in people you don't
know, their measurements, their adjustments, their understanding of
the processes, their integrity, and their code. All these are
necessary.

In a large number of different people who are publishing comparing the
results they get from a range of different models. This sort of
process seems to work well in a lot of different areas of science, and
there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that it isn't working
in climatorlogy.

I've seen the code I critique; you say it's pure, though you've never
looked. That's faith.

I didn't say ot was pure. I said I didn't trust your judgement.

Then read it yourself you goof. Don't defend what you haven't seen to
someone who has.

<snip posting conspiracy theory>

The models aren't precise, and they aren't designed to to produce
accurate predictions over periods of a few years. They failed to
predict the current slowing in the rate of global warming because
didn't allow for the movement in the ocean circulation that the Argo
project is only now beginning to telling us about.

You'll notice that I pointed that shortcoming out years ago, here?

In another post which has mysteriously vanished from the archives?

Okay, let's just address that, shall we?

In the following post, for example, I said that you can't model
climate without ocean currents, and I explained weather models to you,
Bill:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.design/browse_frm/thread/879070f8223754b1?scoring=d&
===== Quote ====Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
From: James Arthur <dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:41:41 -0700
Local: Fri, Aug 24 2007 12:41 pm
Subject: Re: OT: is the AGW bubble about to burst?

Bill Sloman wrote:

James Arthur wrote:

<snip>

Currents move heat. You can't predict where a current will wind up
unless you can predict the other currents it will interact with. To
predict those you need to know their initial state.

If you can't predict the heat flows, you can't predict the climate.

We know that you can't predict the weather that way, let alone the
climate.

Incorrect. Weather *is* predicted that way: intial conditions input
into a finite element analysis (FEA) modelling program.

The results are surprisingly good these days, but the farther you
project the results, the greater the model diverges from reality.[...]

The equations you have to solve to do detailed predictions are too
sensitive to intial conditions for it to be possible to predict the
weather more than four or five days in advance.

AIUI, weather can be predicted decently well as much as two weeks(?)
in advance by the above method.[...]

=== <snip>==

In order to predict the climate, you have to lose the fine detail and
set up lumped approximations that capture the average behaviour of the
system - it isn't precise or exact, but it does give you a better
understanding of the system than does throwing your hands up in the
air and denying that any kind of prediction is possible.

That would be kind of useless, wouldn't it? How do you propose to
know the climate without knowing the course and temperature of the
Gulf Stream, that huge moderating influence to the U.K.'s (and
Europe's?) weather?

Surely we've not forgotten the large affect El Nińo has on our
weather? Or the jet stream, for that matter. How can one make claims
about the future climate without knowing these?

And how can you project these surface effects without knowing the deep
ocean currents?
===== End quote ====
Quod erat demonstrandum.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

Jon Kirwan · Dec 1, 2009

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:50:40 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

But I would not brush them off.

Yes, you would, I think.

I've posted _here_ in this group, perhaps some years back, very
specific sources. Others (in particular, Rich), simply ignored them
and still kicked sand at me.

At some point, you just stop wasting your time, Joerg. One does have
a life. And if others can't even be bothered to act on generously
offered time and effort _and_ references to go look for themselves,
I'm pretty sure that it becomes _reasonable_ to just stop wasting your
breath until the other side shows you they are willing to work.

I've stopped posting here on the subject for that very reason. I have
a life, you know? And if others can't be bothered, then neither can
I.

It's rational behavior, taken in context.

Jon

Joerg · Dec 1, 2009

Jon Kirwan wrote:

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:50:40 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:25:27 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:25:52 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
much snipped, my apologies

In general, there is no profit for a science team to duplicate work.
If they duplicate the work and get the same or similar results from
it, they've merely stared at their belly buttons and wasted a lot of
money in the process. If they duplicate the work and find an error,
then a correction is made and science moves on. But the team doesn't
really get much credit for it. It reflects more upon the team that
made the error. The ones finding it merely did a 'clean up' job that
shows they can follow procedure like they should be able to and really
doesn't reflect on their creativity and ability to "do science." So
again, they wasted their time even if they helped fix an error that
someone else should have caught.

An example of this later case is the artifact of the diurnal
correction that had been incorrectly applied to MSU T2LT raw data by
Roy Spencer and John Christy. For years, scientists outside this
inner circle had been "clubbed" by the University of Alabama's results
that conflicted with pretty much every other approach by teams all
over the world. Both Spencer and Christy were repeatedly asked to go
back through their methodology to see if they could find an error.
Over and over, they insisted they didn't need to do that. Finally,
Carl Mears and Frank Wentz apparently got sick and tired enough with
the continuing conflict that they decided to waste their own precious
time to duplicate the efforts by Spencer and Christy. That effort, by
all rights, should have been Spencer and Christy's efforts. But since
they weren't taking action, if finally all came to a head. In any
case, Mears and Wentz went through all the trouble to secure the data
sets and then attempt to duplicate the processing. In the end, they
discovered an error in the diurnal correction used by the Alabama
team. Once shown their error -- and it took them four or five months
to admit it -- they publicly made corrections to their processing and
republished old data which then, while on the lower end of the
spectrum, was "within" the range of error of the results of other work
long since published. At that point, though, Spencer and Christy's
work had been tarnished and Remote Sensing Systems began publishing
their own analysis in parallel. It happens. But there isn't much
credit given for this. Just credit taken away.

Most scientists want to find creative new approaches to answering
questions that will confirm or disconfirm the work of others -- not
duplicate the exact same steps. Or they want to solve new problems.
That illustrates creativity and leads to a reputation. Novelty is
important.

_Methods_ and _results_ are disclosed, though. But software programs
and interim data aren't that important. ...
But raw input data is. That's what it was about.
Yes. However, raw data has been fairly easy to attain, my experience.
Very much _unlike_ raw data in the clinical/medical field where
_everyone_ seems to consider it highly proprietary.

Mind telling me what raw data you asked for?
Sea level data. A FTP link would have sufficed.
That isn't raw data, Joerg. It's digested and developed from several
methods applied to a range of data sets taken in a variety of ways
from sites all over the world, each of which have their unique
characteristics that need to be understood and applied to develop a
sense of 'global sea level'.... all of which goes through refinements
and changes, from time to time. Assuming, of course, that you meant
to have "global sea level data" when you wrote "sea level data."

It would have helped you a lot had you known what you were looking
for.
I did. I asked for the local water level _readings_. Before that request
I had already found quite a few data sets on my own. When that data did
not corroborate what they had published I asked for more of that data.
To be able to understand where their conclusions came from.

By 'local water level' were you talking about a specific area? Or
everywhere in the world? There are many instrumentation differences,
methodology of measurement differences, and so on, if you are talking
global. On the other hand, if you were talking about the SF bay area
and some specific team and time frame, I think you'd probably get the
data.

Don't remember exactly. IIRC I asked for Asian stations where I couldn't
get at the data.

Here in Portland, we have a NOAA weather office, for example. They do
things like read temperatures, monitor rain precipitation, snow
precipitation, wind speed and direction, and the usual lot of your
basic measurements. Some of the data is intermittent -- snow fall has
ceased to be measured, about 10 years ago, and monitoring wasn't begun
until perhaps the 1950's. Some of it is continuous, like temperature,
going back a ways. However, the locations of the measurement, the
type of measuring instrument, the frequency and timing of those
measurements, and the calibration methods used have changed over the
years. Even though there is some digesting of the data before it
makes it into their SF6 preliminary product, it's still not reliable
and certainly not usable as a continuous dataset without a lot of
specific information to help.

Much of that information isn't even available on the web. Even the
more recent data only goes back 5 years -- by policy, after this late
Bush took office and had key staff in Washington DC _order_ (I've read
the order, personally) the datasets curtailed on the web. They do
have data going back further and, upon request, sent me much of it.
However, to make use of that data as well as other data that still
remained only in paper records, I has to personally visit the office
and take days of time going through stacks of old papers and copy out
calibration standards and references and methodology.

And that is just one process variable for one site.

So what exactly were you asking for?

Jon, it doesn't matter anymore

Have you ever sat down and actually _read_ a report on these kinds of
subjects? I mean, really just one of them? Or the IPCC AR4
discussion, even? If you had, you'd know that "sea level data" isn't
"raw data" without my saying so.

Here, take a look at this one from this year:

http://www.igsoc.org/annals/50/50/a50a043.pdf
1.12mm/year, or 0.77mm per the other guys. Whew, we won't drown then )

Mostly, I wanted to point out the effort required to fuse even just a
couple of data sets. My above comments give you even more about it.

By the way, 1.12mm/year represents perhaps (in my opinion) the single
largest source of rise, right now, except perhaps thermal expansion.
In other words, mountain glacier loss is pronounced and not to be set
aside or laughed at. Broadly speaking, it's important and widespread.

I know it is. But is also has been a few thousand years ago. Back then
many people were smarter than today. For example, I read about a French
architect who loudly said that building at the place where New Orleans
now is was a bad idea. And he gave the reasons. Nobody listened ...

Since you were discussing mountain glaciers earlier, you have given me
a segue. It's really a very simple paper that illustrates the issues
involved when trying to see if there is a way to develop an improved
understanding by joining datasets from different sources and means.

Now, I think you can understand the reaction if you were writing to
some scientist about glaciers and asking for "glacier levels." They
wouldn't really know what you meant if you were asking for the raw
data. Which raw data?
I often deal with this when writing module specs. Since I can never
assume how well versed the readers will be there is a lot of underlying
data and explanations. A regular engineer like you and I won't read
those but they are still provided.

If the AGW folks want to make a case they better do the same, be open.
Especially now since the trust of the public has been thoroughly shaken.

Well, the report I cited provides all you need to know. From there,
you can realize the assumptions and know at least some of what else
may need to be examined further. You know the data sets, broadly
speaking, and can track those down (or ask for more details.) You
know the results and methods and probably could get very close to
replication, if you put in the work he did. What else should have
been included?

The report you cited is fine. However, since you said glacier melt is
the single largest contributor then why are some other estimates so way
off? Like this:

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

Suppose I asked you about the getting access to "capacitor values?"
You might wonder, "Um... which types of capacitors? What values,
exactly? Do they need to know about temperature or voltage effects?
What application is this for?" Etc. And then you'd begin to wonder
if the questioner had any clue, at all, asking like that.
But I would not brush them off.

Depends. If the subject were far, far more complex and the question
illustrating much, much further to go in terms of education... you
might. I think I definitely would brush them off, because I frankly
care about my time, unless they somehow showed me the were serious
enough to work hard for their own opinion. If someone is serious and
can show it, I usually agree with you. I love it when people want to
know things and are willing to put in the sweat to get there. But
there are so many people out there who aren't.

And in climate science, it's is _so_ politicized and there is _so_
much money there for those willing to do little other than confuse and
waste others' time, that you really _do_ need to be a little careful.
Even the late Bush administration actively worked hard to "make this
political." I only wish the world were different. But it isn't.
Still, many scientists are generous people and a lot of them will give
away their time even when the questioners msy only be asking to be
annoying and will never do anything with the effort granted them.

Best foot forward is to show you have put in some time, first, and
know just a little bit about what they've done and are currently
interested in. Just as that would be a best foot forward with you.
For example, I know that you look for other than boutique parts and
often have a cost/space issue and sometimes deal with controlling RF
power levels fewer have to. If I were writing to you for information,
it might go just a little further perhaps that I was at least aware of
some of your own concerns and could couch my request in a way that
presents well.

It's just good practice.

I would.

This is why I said it helps if you inform yourself by actually doing
some serious, sit-down reading of the material. Get familiar with the
issues of the day. Learn a little, first. By then, you can refine
your questions to something they can make good sense of and place it
into a context they understand.

I mean, how many times have you seem people writing in about
electronics and asking some bizarrely phrased question that makes it
patently obvious they have no clue, at all? And you know, before even
thinking about answering, that anything you say will only make it
worse? "There is too much current for my radio to work right. How
can I lower the current?" Stuff like that where you not only know
they have no clue, you know there is NO CHANCE that you can give a
short, directed answer that helps, either.
Then I ask questions. Like "What is it that you don't like with the
sound of your radio?"

I think you know what I mean, though. They might be asking also for a
lot of work on your part in the request. (Presumed here, because when
you ask a scientist for 'sea level data' you probably are asking for
an hour or two of their time, if for no other reason than to explain
to you the caveats of it.)

No, I was just asking for pointers. Not hours of his time. A pointer, in
the sense of your example above, would be suggesting a certain web link
or book for further studies. I have done that numerous times when I had
the impression the requester was really not of to snuff yet. There have
been cases where I thought I'd never hear anything back until half a
year later someone thanked me and that he'd now understood how forward
power converters really work (using my pointer).

And yes, taking your point it would be nice if scientists would ask
you for more about what you plan to do or what problem you are trying
to solve, so they can better advise you even if they don't plan
themselves to provide everything. Often, they can refer you to
someone else, or a good book on the subject.

Exactly.

It really does help a lot to do some reading on your own before going
around asking questions.

I don't mean to be flip or abrupt, Joerg. Your question is the kind
of question that non-specialists really might have to help them think
about things. But you also have to understand this from the side of
someone who is deep into the details (like you are, here.) Consider
how you might have to respond in similar circumstances.

The data you asked for isn't 'raw data.'
It may not be called that and I only used that expression here for
brevity. What I asked for was sea level data from stations. Can't be
that hard.

Yes, it can. Which stations? How long of a period? Did the
instrumentation change? If so, when and when and when? Did the
locations change, too? If so, what are the calibration differences?
How were they determined and with what precision and variances, based
on methods used? What methods were used? Have there also been
changes in the land mass, itself, based upon satellite observation or
other geologic information that confounds the measurements in the
interim? Etc. I'm only just getting started.

Again, all I wanted was a pointer. Like "If you want to know more about
the stations in Taiwan start with this link". That's all.

[...]

Doesn't bother me in the least, if so. I've had to replicate results
by following procedures. In fact, it's good for you to have to work
for it, like that. Helps you understand things better when you have
to do it, yourself, too.

It doesn't have to be
exhaustive, just some place from where one can probe further and, most
of all, something from official sources (such as NOAA or other
countries' agencies).
May not be there. However, the raw data (like tree ring counts from
some Scottish researcher looking at a certain set of preserved trees
at a particular museum) is often available. Now, if you want that
tree ring data from yet another researcher looking at fossilized trees
from Tibet, 10 years earlier, then you might need to contact someone
else. And if you want that fused together in some kind of new data
set, you might need to contact someone else... if that fused data is
the explicit OUTPUT of a paper.

Just like in electronics. You get to know the signal inputs,
conditions, and drive requirements... up to a point. And you get to
know the outputs... up to a point. As far as the internals go? Maybe.
Maybe not. If you are informed, you can probably "work it out" on
your own. You don't need them to disclose everything. It's not
entirely different, except that scientists disclose a LOT more I think
and take a less-proprietary approach. So even better, in my opinion.
But you really don't _need_ the internal work product. You can access
the raw data inputs because they are usually the explicit outputs of
someone else's work. You can use the outputs, too. But you don't
have a right to dig into the internal stuff.... if you want it, you
really need to ask VERY NICELY and you need to let them know a lot
more about you and what you intend to do with it.
All I wanted was the input and it's got to be there. Measurements,
averages, from the stations.

Read my above comments. It's not 'that easy,' except to someone who
hasn't ever done this. But of course, to those ignorant of the
details everything seems 'easy.' Boy did I learn that digging my own
foundations and perimeter wall cement forms! Just the very idea of
'digging a level base' seems easy enough to conceive. Until you go
there and dig it out. Not the work, but what you find. I found
biotic material here going twice as deep as I wanted to dig, in one
corner of the area. And NONE of the books told me how to deal with it
-- except to say that the foundation needs to based upon inert ground.
So I knew I had a problem. It took me days to work out the answers
and remove all of the 'bad' material leaving cavities, develop
engineered fill on my own, learn how to tamp it down properly and
bring the cavities back up, and move earth around the area to bring a
more uniform appearance. Damn! I just wanted a level foundation.

Reality impinges.

Nothing is easy. Especially this stuff.

My comeuppance was when my wife asked for some irrigation "over yonder".
I looked, ah, 10 feet tops, I'll do that Saturday. Big deal. Then I hit
one rock after the other, big ones where you think the other end of it
comes out in China.

I'd want the same thing. Otherwise, I might spend the next 10 years
of my life having to either teach that person step by step or else
have them paste my name all over the internet, saying that they have
all this data directly from me all the while completely and totally
misinterpreting it to everyone else... but looking like they know
stuff because __I__ gave them the data and I cannot deny that fact.
Nope, I would not refuse. One can give out the data plus a link to
teaching material. I often point email requesters that are more in the
league of your example "my radio uses too much of the wrong current" to
web sites thta teach the basics. In this day and age there is an
abundance, and learning is essentially free. When I began answering
requests in the late 80's and early 90's that was not the case at all,
lots more work. Yet I always answered them (they had my address from
publications).

I think I have every right to control _my_ time. Sometimes, I think
the effort is worth it and, since I generally agree with your
approach, I often try. But in the end, _I_ decide when and where I am
willing. Sometimes, I've got other things going on (like my daughter)
that require my time and it's just a bad time that the request comes
in. So I brush them off. I usually try and send them somewhere
slightly useful and spend _some_ time, even then. But if the number
of requests were high, perhaps, and my personal circumstances very
demanding at the time... I might not respond at all. If the
questioner is serious, they will either write in a few months or else
they will find someone else. I don't owe anyone my time, though.

No, neither do I. I don't owe but can volunteer it. With a group of
scientists working for and paid by our tax Dollars that can be
different. There are some where I wouldn't want my tax Dollars to go to
but they do anyhow. What can ya do?

Basically, I treat them respectfully as I'd want to be treated by
someone else asking _me_ for a favor. Do that and you get a long
ways, my experience.
That's what I always do. In requests as in replies.
It's good practice. I wish I followed it as well as you do.

That's exactly what I'd not want to do. In my case all I wanted to look
at is where exactly sea levels were rising and by how much. After
finding lots of data from places where it didn't happen I was brushed
off with the remark "Well, the ocean is not a bathtub". Here, I would
have expected a set of data that shows that I am wrong. But ... nada. Great.

snip of material I'll respond to later when I have time
Do you honestly feel they owe you an education, Joerg? It's a lot
better to show that you've at least made some effort on your own.
YMMV, of course. Act as you want to. I'm just suggesting...
I did not want an education, just a hint as to where underlying data
might be. I don't think that's asking too much.
Maybe you are. Maybe you aren't. But "sea level data" doesn't cut it
unless you are more specific.
Well, I got some of it on my own and told them, so they knew exactly
what I was after. I just wanted some more (that I couldn't find), from
areas which corroborate their claims. But anyhow, it's history, I am not
interested in that particular data anymore.

Show me what you know about getting 'sea level data.' What
instrumentation is used, Joerg? Where and over what periods of time?
What areas are markedly different in their methods? How have methods
changed over time? How are they calibrated? How do you calibrate the
differences in means and methods against each other (how do you match
up measurements from one method with another, even in the same area?)
How have positions of instrumentation changed and why? How does land
level changes affect results? Which satellites and instruments aboard
are also used in all this? How are they used? What processing is
required merely to get a measurement out of satellite based equipment
that can be used, in the first place? How long have they been in
space? Etc.

What work have you really done, here? Seriously. What puts you in
the position of being able to come to your own opinion on any of it?

Where are your callouses? Show me.

All I did was ask a simple question. True, my only work was reading
publications which sort of didn't jibe with their numbers. And I wanted
to know or find out why. But let's leave it at that now. It doesn't
matter anymore.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Joerg · Dec 1, 2009

Jon Kirwan wrote:

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:50:40 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

But I would not brush them off.

Yes, you would, I think.

After an initial request? Never.

I've posted _here_ in this group, perhaps some years back, very
specific sources. Others (in particular, Rich), simply ignored them
and still kicked sand at me.

VERY different. I haven't kicked sand at them in my requests. Just
politely asked. Just like the guy who asked me about a publication of
mine, stating that he didn't understand the math behind it. I swallowed
hard and wrote a letter back (no email back then), explaining it.
Nowadays I could have sent him a link. He sent me a thank you note back
and that he'd shared it with his group, and that now the others also
understood. All guys in the first semester ...

At some point, you just stop wasting your time, Joerg. One does have
a life. And if others can't even be bothered to act on generously
offered time and effort _and_ references to go look for themselves,
I'm pretty sure that it becomes _reasonable_ to just stop wasting your
breath until the other side shows you they are willing to work.

I've stopped posting here on the subject for that very reason. I have
a life, you know? And if others can't be bothered, then neither can
I.

It's rational behavior, taken in context.

True. However, you and I are just regular engineers. When it's someone
working on the taxpayer nickel it is slightly different. And that's
exactly why I think FOIA is an excellent tool. We needed that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Joerg · Dec 1, 2009

Jon Kirwan wrote:

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:45:06 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:59 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:25:52 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

[...]

In
some countries that is considered a criminal act (when you actually
delete it) and AFAIR a probe into this has been contemplated by two US
congressmen. And I think they are darn right to demand one now.

If data really has been deleted in this sense I guess some folks better
look for a nice place somewhere where they have no extradition. Maybe
Brazil?
snip of more I'll have time for, later
I'll admit this to you. The comment I quoted from your web site is
one of the two things that bothered me. But you really seem to be
seeing things there I don't, too. So lay this out carefully for me.
I'd like to see what you see, and what supports it.
Hope I did above
Maybe. We'll see.

Anyway, yes I have a problem with this kind of frank comment. But I
saw the fuller context. I'd like to know if you went to the actual
exchanges, yourself, or if all you've done is read some angry summary
and got angry yourself without taking _your_ time to see for yourself.
Unless you or someone else proves that these emails were faked or pulled
out of some hat then this is very serious. And I hope the two
congressmen who want to have this investigated prevail with their
efforts. The people of this world have a right to get to the ground of this.
Oh, I think the emails are real. Though I can't say for sure, of
course. Could be doctored. But what I've read through 'looks real'
to me. So I tentatively conclude they are.

Some of them bother me. But I realize that these people are real
humans who have genuine emotions. I take the good with the bad, as I
said before. None of us are perfect.
No, we aren't. However, the style in those emails is something I have
never ever seen in business. It is a style that I do not like and that
raises suspicion.

I'm bothered by some of them, too. But you know? The emails I copied
out are some megabytes in size and cover _some_ interactions of _some_
people involved. They are a 'random snapshot' of some kind, but also
selective by their very nature. I think if the fuller context were
out there (all emails by all climate scientists) we'd find more, but
still on balance would find serious people working generally hard to
do serious and meaningful work, fairly and honestly. There will be
exceptions, of course. And some will obviously be less professional
and still others will do poor work, as well, that others know about
and snipe on about. But I think the _weight_ of it would be something
to be proud of.

As I said, though, these are people like you and me.

Granted, many of them will be. But some clearly are not. I am quite
concerned when statements like in those emails are coming from people
higher up in the pecking order of an organization that is supposed to
work for the common good.

I have seen it too many times that something leaked from an
organization, it was said "oh, it's just very few bad apples" and then
an investigation found a huge morass. I hope that's not so in this case
but I believe an investigation is most certainly in order at this point.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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