Climate Change

Those who know me are not surprised that I am a "global warming" skeptic. But rest assured that it is not from life-long iconoclast-ism, but from years of study and experience, both in the earth sciences and in computer modeling, coupled with more years of observation of the topic than even Al Gore can claim. And, unlike Al, I began my observations with a scientific background.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of science is a form of skepticism. It takes a variety of approaches. One is that the best way to prove a theory is to try, honestly, to disprove it. Or find someone else to find holes in it. If that fails, the theory is strengthened. Another is argument in the classical sense. The Talmud is an excellent example of that. To understand the truth, scholars literally argue in the margins and others reply in the margins of the margins.

So, for umpteen years, I have looked for evidence that runs counter to the "prevailing wisdom" that anthropogenic activity is a major contributor to climate change. Whoa! That's a lot of words to describe a simple concept like global warming! Yes, it is. But notice that it is conclusion-neutral. The term "global warming" all by itself is a presumption of something. What kind of science is that?

Well, I am happy to report that not only am I not alone in this search, but it looks like more people are becoming skeptical of the "science" behind "global warming" all the time - president-elect Obama not withstanding. Unfortunately, his approach seems like the same old political thinking that got us here in the first place. He probably thinks he is pandering to the masses, but more likely he has been buffaloed by talking to too few people and not using his head.

So why am I optimistic that real science will prevail, despite the incredibly political approach taken by the UN's IPCC and RealClimate.org? Well, it's not because of the equally political opposition that has resulted in so much wasted effort between the two camps. But I am hopeful that, given time, two things are happening. 1) The poorly funded (by comparison) scientific opposition is increasingly being heard and 2) the general public seems to be awakening to the importance of getting this thing right; the serious economic consequences of government meddling in this matter can no longer be ignored.

The Internet can be thanked for this. Frankly, the establishment and their "peer-reviewed" science have failed us. Witness the origin of the original Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH98) paper with the "hockey stick" graph showing recent dramatic increases in global temperature. It was published in Nature in 1998 without any peer review. Then, in the third assessment report of the IPCC (2001), it was republished despite the fact that it completely disagreed with charts published by the IPCC in earlier reports. Why? Obviously because it agreed with the political opinion of the authors of the IPCC report. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick tried to publish a dissenting view in Nature but were rejected twice, once because the article was "too long" and again, because the 500-word revision was "too technical." What a shame, a scientific article that was too technical. They subsequently published on the Net and in Geophysical Research Letters (2005), totally demolishing the original work by Mann. They also published a corrected version of the same data which showed that there has been no significant increase in global temperature over that time period. The IPCC has yet to publish a correction and RealClimate.org continues to make excuses for Mann, et al. Not surprising, because Mann is one of the founders of realclimate.org.

McIntyre found a variety of errors in the corrections applied to the data by Mann. He also found a duplicated set of data. Here's what the corrected chart looks like. Average global temperature has actually decreased over the 450 years chosen. But what about that spike starting in 1920? Surely that's when the CO₂ began to make a difference. Well, Mann made yet another error. He applied a rather "non-standard" set of corrections there, too. McIntyre discovered that using Mann's corrections on a set of random numbers, the data always spiked at the end!

The next chart shows twelve sets of random numbers subjected to the same mathematical massage that Mann used on his data. The bottom line here is that Mann is sloppy and dishonest, he has never admitted his errors, And the folks at the IPCC who used Mann's chart without vetting it are equally careless and incapable of admitting error. This does not speak well for the IPCC nor realclimate.org. It's extremely obvious that these people can't be trusted. Yet they are asking the world economy to turn upside down, perhaps collapsing in the process! My personal approach is to refuse to believe anything they say without having it approved by an independent third party.

So much for the hot shots. But what about the rest of the members of the IPCC and who is this guy Dr. James E. Hansen who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and is a professor at Columbia? I'll have more to say about them later, but here's a clue; none of them any longer deserves the title of "scientist." Real scientists are skeptics and they spend a lot of time looking for holes in their own data and theories.

Footnote: You can click on most of the charts to see a larger version.

World Wide Words, the OED, and Bill Gates

The Oxford English Dictionary has always fascinated me. It's always amazing that people actually know, or think they know, where all these words and phrases came from. It's like an early Wikitionery, as seen through the provided magnifying glass.

This came to mind when I wanted to know the origin of "to wit." Instead of walking across the room to get my copy of the OED, I Googled it. And there is was. And it has been there since 1999.

Kudos to Michael Quinion and his labor of love, "World Wide Words." Unfortunately, he doesn't mention "kudos." But Wikipedia does!

How did we ever do without these tools? I find myself watching TV and wishing I had a laptop at hand to look something up. The Gates Foundation recently recognized the problem by making some pilot grants to libraries that will give them better Internet access.

I think I was born too soon, but at least got a glimpse of the future.

DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an arm of the US Defense Department with an annual research budget of $3 billion. It was charted 50 years ago, shortly after Sputnik, for the purpose of anticipating technological developments that might otherwise be surprises unveiled by enemies. It has since morphed into an advanced projects development agency for DOD. Earlier successes of DARPA include the computer mouse, the Internet, the Global Positioning System, and stealth aircraft.

Current projects look tame by comparison, at least the projects they will talk about. But we are assured that more life-changing inventions are under development. Some of the projects that they will talk about include:

Boomerang; a device designed to determine the origin of an incoming bullet or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). It was developed in about two months in 2004 and deployed to Afghanistan. It doesn't wait for the sound to reach it; by that time, it would have been blown to pieces. It detects the shock wave that precedes the object. Shock waves travel faster than the objects which produce them.

Knowing that you are about to be destroyed in the next few milliseconds is not much consolation, so DARPA developed the "Iron Curtain," a somewhat bulky add-on to a Humvee that both detects and destroys incoming RPGs before that can strike the vehicle.

Iron Curtain and several of the other devices mentioned here were the subject of a National Geographic special titled "America's Secret Weapons Lab." It was broadcast today and will be rebroadcast 11 December.

DARPA is also developing a self-generating network for field communication and situational awareness. For example, three or more Humvees using Boomerang could precisely pinpoint the location of a sniper or grenade launcher and communicate that information to all vehicles and personnel in the area.

DARPA and Raytheon have developed a 200 pound aluminum exoskeleton which, when energised, not only holds up it's own weight, but gives the human wearer a ten-fold increase in arm and leg power. In the example given, supply personnel could lift and load 35-pound boxes of ammunition all day without tiring. But it requires a lot of power and is tethered to the source. It's not for portable use in the field.

The WASP is an electrically-driven remotely-controlled "model" airplane about 26" long capable of carrying daylight or infrared cameras for 45 minutes.

Powerswim is a device that lets swimmers travel 150% faster than using swim fins and with less effort because it uses more powerful muscles (quadricep and gluteal muscles.) It's shape is derived from observation of whales, dolphins, and seals as they swam.

But not every project is cheap. DARPA, working with the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works, is developing the Falcon HTV-3X scram jet, capable of travelling for hours at over 4,000 miles per hour.

The Foliage Penetration Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar (FORESTER) can be carried aloft by unmanned helicopters and see through foliage to detect troops and vehicles not otherwise visible.

Perhaps their best-known project is the DARPA Grand Challenge, first issued in 2004 with a $1,000,000 grand prize for the first autonomous vehicle capable of negotiating a long obstacle course in a limited amount of time with no external control other than start and stop. Hundreds of teams have participated from high schools, universities, businesses and other organizations. The only requirement is that at least one member of the team be a US citizen. The prize was increased to $2,000,000 in 2005 and was finally claimed in 2007. The first, second and third places winners in the 2007 Urban Challenge received $2 million (CarnegieMellon, 4 hrs, 10 mins,) $1 million (Stanford), and $500,000 (Virginia Tech), respectively.

And there are hundreds of other projects that you can get an idea about by going to the DARPA web site list of on-going programs.

Zombie Science

Hmmm, I wonder if we can find an example of this in climatology ...

Zombie science: A sinister consequence of evaluating scientific theories purely on the basis of enlightened self-interest

Although the classical ideal is that scientific theories are evaluated by a careful teasing-out of their internal logic and external implications, and checking whether these deductions and predictions are in-line-with old and new observations; the fact that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice. In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status. The classic account has it that bogus theories should readily be demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists. However, in practice even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ may fail to kill, or even weaken, phoney hypotheses when they are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of lavish and sustained funding. And when a branch of science based on phoney theories serves a useful but non-scientific purpose, it may be kept-going indefinitely by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves. If this happens, real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves. Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like the real thing. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds. If zombie science is not scientifically-useable – what is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda to be deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion. Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.

c 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd

Finding Cancer in a Drop of Blood

A new test uses microfluidics to diagnose cancer with a single drop of blood at a much reduced cost.

Current testing technology takes several vials of blood and each test costs about $500. The new test needs only one drop of blood, takes ten minutes, and uses a slide costing about five cents per targeted protein.

James Heath at CalTech and Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, have founded Integrated Diagnostics to produce and sell their new blood-drop method.

The new technique uses an "integrated blood bar code chip" designed to separate organ-specific proteins from the blood and pass them through tiny channels coated with strips of DNA bound to antibodies that capture these proteins. The proteins are then coated with a material that lights up under a fluorescent microscope.

Clinical trials are underway.

Zeus, The Army Ray Gun

There has been a lot of research into weapons that use light or atomic particles destructively. But until this century, it was just research. We now know that the US Army deployed a real ray gun in 2003. Zeus, aka the Humvee Laser Ordnance Neutralization System (HLONS,) was one-of-a-kind when it was sent to Afganistan March 18, 2003. After six months it was returned to the US where more powerful versions were under development. Full deployment of Zeus is expected in fiscal year 2009.

The field-tested version of ZEUS had a 0.5 kW laser mounted on the roof of a Humvee. Current versions have more than four times that power and weigh 2,000 pounds less. They have an effective range of more than 300 meters.

During its six-month deployment, Zeus proved its worth exploding 210 explosive devices like old Russian missles and roadside IEDs. It is doubtful that it has ever been used against an enemy combatant because there is a controversy over the legality of such use under International Law.

Zeus was developed by General Dynanics. It is part of a larger DOD program call Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs.) Experimental DEWs have been around since Nickola Tesla worked on his charged-particle "teleforce" weapon in the 1930s.

Barge Cruising in France

For many years, I have dreamed of a barge trip through France, preferably the Burgundy region. Something always got in the way. Finally, with my fingers crossed, GF and I will get our chance in 2009.

We have invited a couple to join us. They have been my friends for almost 50 years. We served together in the Navy in Taiwan when I was a newly minted Ensign. I think I last saw them in the 1970s. Now that we are all retired, it's our big chance to get together again. It's going to be amazing.

The barge we have chosen is the Nilaya ("Heaven" in Indian Sanskrit) and the route will be one of the three choices in and around Burgundy. It's almost impossible to choose between them, but the skipper has asked us to rank our choices one through three.

I think the classic Burgundy Canal looks great. Market day in Dijon or wine tasting in Cote de Nuits! Another difficult choice!

Burgundy & the Petite Saône through the "waterways capital of France," wonderful restaurants, and market day in Port-sur-Saône.

Or maybe Burgundy and the Côte d'Or with a little wine tasting in Beaune?

Better yet, return every year and do them all!

And how did we find this fabulous deal? Surfing the web, of course.