Stay frosty, my friends

Getting ready for the HOG chapter "Frosty Balls" ride tomorrow.



Actually not too bad if you bundle up, even at 37°.

My New Years' resolution

I resolve to eat more salads.

How Trump can pound the final nail into the Global Warming coffin

There's something floating around about how "100% of warming is due to data tampering".  It's worth your time to read it.

Long time readers know that I've been posting about climate science for quite a long time.  Newer readers who are interested in a condensed view of my opinions can read it here (it's sort of a "Climate Science 101" post for the educated layman).  Readers who want more depth and background (or who are gluttons for punishment) can get a list of climate posts here.

But everyone is familiar with the Global Warming scare machine which pumps out a never ending stream of ZOMGTHERMAGEDDON!!!11!!!ELEVENTY!!!  The climate science establishment feeds a stream of "hottest year ever" press releases to a media that is fully on board and which pushes this narrative.  Government funding to the tune of $100 Billion feeds the whole machine.

And yet the public is (rightly) skeptical of the whole thing.  Trump is making some right moves appointing skeptics to positions like head of the EPA.  Some have proposed cutting funding of climate science research by 80% or more.  These are good ideas, but won't directly address the problem of corrupted research and bureaucratic pushback.  Immodestly, I believe that I have something that will stop the global warming machine in its tracks in the space of a month, and keep it derailed for good.  And there's nothing that the bureaucracy and the scientists can do about it.

And it would be 100% scientific, which is why it would be so easy and why it would stick.  You clean up the climate databases:

If you look closely at climate data, you will find that all the major data sets consist of two parts:

Raw Data, which is the instrument reading: satellite, thermometer, or proxy (tree ring, ice core, etc). This is data straight from the sensor.

Adjustments, which are corrections applied to raw data to adjust for inconsistencies. For example, it is important to read the thermometer temperature at the same time every day. If the hottest time of the day is, say, 2:30 PM, but you read the thermometer at 10:00 AM, then the day's reading will be low. Adjustments are also made when weather stations are re-sited, and for other reasons.

An interesting question is how much of the 20th Century's warming came from adjustments, rather than from raw data?

Spoiler alert: according to the scientists themselves, over 85% of reported warming comes from adjustments to the data.  Re-stated, the data as recorded only show 15% of the ZOMGTHERMAGEDDON!!!11!!!eleventy!!! that is being fed to us.  Or all of it, if you believe the new post that's going around.

Now maybe these adjustments are actually correct, but it seems that the scientists should provide very solid and compelling reasons when and why they adjust the data.  Quite frankly, there are some good reasons to think that they are not doing this:

Anyway, lets look at the specific adjustments.  The lines in the chart below should add to the overall adjustment line in the chart above.

• Black line is a time of observation adjustment, adding about 0.3C since 1940
• Light Blue line is a missing data adjustment that does not affect the data much since 1940
• Red line is an adjustment for measurement technologies, adding about 0.05C since 1940
• Yellow line is station location quality adjustment, adding about 0.2C since 1940
• Purple line is an urban heat island adjustment, subtracting about 0.05C since 1950.

Let's take each of these in turn.  The time of observation adjustment is defined as follows:

The Time of Observation Bias (TOB) arises when the 24-hour daily summary period at a station begins and ends at an hour other than local midnight. When the summary period ends at an hour other than midnight, monthly mean temperatures exhibit a systematic bias relative to the local midnight standard

0.3C seems absurdly high for this adjustment, but I can't prove it.  However, if I understand the problem, a month might be picking up a few extra hours from the next month and losing a few hours to the previous month.  How is a few hour time shift really biasing a 720+ hour month by so large a number? I will look to see if I can find a study digging into this.  

I will skip over the missing data and measurement technology adjustments, since they are small.

The other two adjustments are fascinating.  The yellow line says that siting has improved on USHCN sites such that, since 1900, their locations average 0.2C cooler due to being near more grass and less asphalt today than in 1900.  

During this time, many sites were relocated from city locations to airports and from roof tops to grassy areas. This often resulted in cooler readings than were observed at the previous sites.

OK, without a bit of data, does that make a lick of sense?

Not to me it doesn't, and it shouldn't make sense to the Trump Administration, either.  And so my proposal:

Remove all adjustments from the climate databases and then allow them back only when justified for a single day at a single weather station.  If an adjustment is needed, then have NOAA specify why.  And report the last 100 years without any adjustments.

And this will basically kill the global warming movement.  It will reveal to the public that the data have been manipulated.  Those who complain about this will have to justify why unspecified and unjustified changes should be allowed to the data.  They will have to explain how that is scientific.  Quite, I don't see how the climate science establishment can effectively push back against this without confirming the skeptics' worst accusations.  I mean, do you want honest science or not?

And suddenly all the scientists who use that data set will have a data set without an artificial warming signal.  There will suddenly be a "97% consensus" that no warming is seen.

And this can all be done in a week.  No Congressional action needed, just the stroke of Trump's pen.  And then he can tell the EPA to justify all their new carbon rules ...

Brad Paisley - Welcome To The Future

New Year's is an occasion to think on what the new year will bring.  It's also an occasion to think on where we've been and what's changed.  Life is change, whether we like it or not, and we exist in a time machine heading into the future at a speed of one second per second.



Welcome to the future.

If only we could replace that cowboy George W Bush as President

America would no longer be mocked by the rest of the world.

President Obama expels 35 🇷🇺 diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl 🇺🇸 people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm. pic.twitter.com/mleqA16H8D

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) December 29, 2016

Damn

It was a silly movie, but she was really good in it.  She was only 20.  That was 64 years ago.  Debbie Reynolds, mother of Carrie Fisher, dead at 84.

Merry Christmas from Wolfgang

He hopes you got a frisbee, too.

J. S. Bach - Christmas Oratorio

It's Christmas by J.S. Bach.  Not sure how much more needs to be said, other than Merry Christmas to all!

Thurl Ravenscroft - You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch

The Queen Of The World thinks that I need to post something for all y'all who are grinches this year.  And you know who you are ...



I always thought that this was sung by Boris Karloff, but he narrated the TV show.  Ravenscroft  sang the song.  He also looked looked just like Clark Gable.  Who knew?

Martina McBride - O Holy Night

It is the night tonight.

90 years of movies Frederick, MD

The Queen Of The World and I are at the Weinberg Theater in Frederick, Maryland which is celebrating its 90th birthday by showing the first movie ever shown here. It's the silent film "The Strong Man", with a live accompaniment on the original pipe organ (as was done 90 years ago).

Right now (before the show), he's playing Christmas carols. He's very good, and the organ sounds spectacular.

Bing Crosby - Mele Kalikimaka (with Mickey Mouse)

The cartoon is classic Mickey.

How the New York Times knows it's wrong about Russian hacking

And how we know that they know.  A detailed analysis about how scraps of information are woven into a narrative to support the Democrats:

Here's a trick when reading New York Times articles: when they switch to passive voice, they are covering up a lie. An example is this paragraph from the above story [*]:

The Russians were also quicker to turn their attacks to political purposes. A 2007 cyberattack on Estonia, a former Soviet republic that had joined NATO, sent a message that Russia could paralyze the country without invading it. The next year cyberattacks were used during Russia’s war with Georgia.

Normally, editors would switch this to the active voice, or:

The next year, Russia used cyberattacks in their war against Georgia.

But that would be factually wrong. Yes, cyberattacks happened during the conflicts with Estonia and Georgia, but the evidence in both cases points to targets and tools going viral on social media and web forums. It was the people who conducted the attacks, not the government. Whether it was the government who encouraged the people is the big question -- to which we have no answer. Since the NYTimes has no evidence pointing to the Russian government, they switch to the passive voice, hoping you'll assume they meant the government was to blame.

There's a lot more.  All I can add is that (a) the line that "the Russians hacked the DNC to help Trump" is really weak from a facts and proof point of view, and (b) the only people who will believe it are Democratic Party supporters (like the Times) who don't care about facts and proof.  Oh, and (c) the people in (b) are entirely convinced that they are smarter and better thinkers than you and me, despite their utter lack of interest in thinking this one through.

The New York Times: All the news that confirms our bias is fit to print.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Father-In-Law has Christmas decorations up.

Joe Bonamassa - Santa Claus Is Back In Town

And it's a $400 fine for the second offense

Why I'm not posting about the "the Russians hacked the election" nonsense

Because it's nonsense, and quite shockingly low caliber nonsense at that:

Then there is the persistent incredibly STUPID story that “The Russians Did It!!”. First off, you can’t know if they did the hack, or not. (As pointed out several times already, I’m a computer security guy who had to deal with this stuff professionally for a couple of decades… it’s ‘my business’ and I’m good at it.) My first encounter with The Russians was in about 1986, so call it 30 years ago. To think that only this year they woke up and started hacking is just dumb. They are about 1/4 as active as the Chinese, so anything they have, or did, the Chinese had more of and sooner. Now look at what ‘the hack’ was (and was not): It was NOT a changing of the vote. Recounts and paper ballot States show that. (In fact, they show a little fudging by the Democrats in places like Chicago…but not enough to change the outcome since they are concentrated in places like California where the Dims already run the table). It WAS a publishing of the criminal and completely immoral actual acts and crimes of the DNC, Clinton, Media like CNN and MSNBC and ‘papers of record’ in burning Bernie and going ‘all in’ on biasing the debates (and worse). So at most, it was exposing the truth. Golly, being truthful, such a crime… /sarc

Remember, the Democrats think that you're stupid, and will fall for this drivel.

What's the cost of cybercrime?

$1 - $2 Billion a year for one botnet:

New research suggests that an elaborate cybercrime ring is responsible for stealing between $3 million and $5 million worth of revenue from online publishers and video advertising networks each day. Experts say the scam relies on a vast network of cloaked Internet addresses, rented data centers, phony Web sites and fake users made to look like real people watching short ad segments online.

[blink] [blink]

Wow.

UPDATE 21 December 2016 14:01: Fixed an autocorrect-induced typo.

What does a Climate Scientist say to climate scientists freaking out over the impending Trump Administration?

Dr. Judith Curry runs the school of Earth Sciences at Georgia Tech, and is a peer-reviewed climate scientist.  She is also a "like warmer" - she believes that the climate has been warming (as do I) and that mankind is somewhat responsible (as do I).  However, she does not see things as a crisis, and has repeatedly spoken (including before Congress) on the large uncertainties in climate science.  Her paper The Uncertainty Monster is required reading for anyone interested in the state of the science.

So what does she say to the scientists who are freaking out over Donald Trump?

Get over it, your side lost.  Changes of Presidential administrations occur every 4 or 8 years, often with changes in political parties.

Get busy and shore up your scientific arguments; I suspect that argument from consensus won’t sway many minds in the Trump administration.

Overt activism and climate policy advocacy by climate scientists will not help your ’cause’; leave such advocacy to the environmental groups.

Behave like a scientist, and don’t build elaborate conspiracy theories based on vague conflicting signals from the Trump administration.  Stop embarrassing yourselves; wait for the evidence.

Be flexible; if funding priorities change, and you desire federal research funding, work on different problems.  The days of needing to sell all research in terms of AGW are arguably over.

'Tis a consummation devoutly to be hoped, that right there.

I have no idea how something like this could happen