Decoding Climate Change with Perl, gnuplot and Google Earth | Hacker News Reader

Decoding Climate Change with Perl, gnuplot and Google Earth

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43 pointsAnon8434 comments

I'm sorry, isn't the elephant in the room the admission that the HadCRUT data was shown to be corrupted/inaccurate?

And that a few lines of Perl automated the error checking to such an extent that the errors just popped up?

How exactly am I to have confidence in the rest of the numbers?

Have a link about the inaccuracy of HadCRUT data? Or are you referring to the small problem mentioned in the article? As it was fixable, I would assume it is not a problem anymore - it shows the scientific process worked for once.

Characterizing it as a small problem, and "fixable" seems to minimize the very obvious fact that a few lines of Perl caught problems that should have been caught well before the data was released.

First, it's easy to tease out a previously unseen characteristic of a data set if you tickle it in the right way.

Second, you may be underestimating the power of "a few lines of Perl." :)

The data is public, so anybody could have double checked it and found that error. Somebody now did. This is how it should work - it is the only way it can work. Errors can always happen, but scientists are supposed to double check.

If the error was deliberate, it would have made no sense to publish the data in such a way that the error could be caught easily.

Here is the most recent sign that that data is 'cooked'.

On Tuesday, the Moscow based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data... Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for unknown reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations, according to the IEA.

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/12/was_russian_cl...

Believe what you want to believe. Since you are jumping to conclusions, I don't think discussion would make sense.

The fact remains that the data set has been published openly. If it is cooked, everybody is free to point it out.

I hope the IEA has published the missing data from the Russian territory? Then it should be a simple matter of another Perl script to complete the data. Problem solved. If you have a link to the missing data, please provide it.

However, I don't think such a data set should just be used as a proof for anything. The perl script in the article her was an interesting play, but I don't think the person who wrote it is a climate researcher. He is just some guy visualizing some data that was floating around. The interpretation is another matter.

There were 877 new snowfall records set this week. That would be rather unlikely if we are experiencing catastrophic warming. Also there is this (from Watts Up With That) "Keep in mind, everyone sorta has to admit that CO2 by itself doesn’t do much. Even at current concentrations, it’s a teensy weensy bit of the atmosphere (.00038) that soaks up only a teensy weensy bit of the sun’s long-wave radiation at a particular high altitude in the tropics (the tropics account for about 80% of the Earth’s energy budget). Moreover, we have long since passed CO2 concentrations which are more than sufficient to flag down 99% of that wavelength."

Sigh. Snowfall tracks atmosphere water content, not temperature. In almost all climates, the "coldest winters" are uniformly the dryest. Oddly, it seems like the people who parade this canard (despite constant refutation by those who know what they're talking about) are also the least likely to be alarmed by heat waves...

So blizzards have nothing to do with cold temperatures ? The week of December 15th - 815 new snowfall records, 304 new cold records, and 403 lowest maximum temperature records. Seems like they go together to me.

Seems like they go together to me.

Why yes, it seems like the climate is changing.

This is apropos of nothing. ajross already pointed out the problem with the snowfall claim, and the article only talks about land surface warming, not CO2.

The "global" in global warming implies more than the "world" in world series baseball. When you had those storms, it was pretty hot over here.

Comparing to the average temperature between 1961 and 1990 seems spurious. If this window of time were changed you would probably get substantially different anomaly results.

Can someone run the numbers using a different time frame as the baseline? Can someone who is not an uneducated ignoramus like myself explain why it matters?

The shape of the graph should be exactly the same only shifted up or down. That's the good news. The bad news is that this is only true for a single station. The shape of the curve for the global average could be seriously affected by the fact that hundreds of new stations were being open around the world.

excellent. thank you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles Global warming WILL occur, regardless of man.

The question is what is the value of the subcomponent of temperature variation caused by man. I would argue that it is nearly impossible to isolate this value. It would require models of every other natural cause of temperature variation, from the galactic position of the solar system to the water cycle, and confidence estimates of these models. Weather is a prototypically complex and chaotic system.

Rather than allocating resources based on an answer to a nearly impossible to answer question, we should tackle questions that are more solvable like "relation between cancer rates and environmental pollution" (aka things that could have the same policy effect i.e. curbing emmisions) and remember that acute, immediate events can have a far more deleterious effect on global temperature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

THe Milankovitch cycles don't seem very relevant here, don't they appear across hundred thousands of years (I just skimmed the Wikipedia article)? Also, if Milankovitch can predict cycles, wouldn't it contradict your assumption that we can't infer anything about climate at all?

Superb point about resource allocation. That such an approach hasn't been taken is the root of my skepticism about the global warming apocalypse.

There are debatable aspects of climate change - but I hope these clear, data-driven, illustrative works help convince the tech community that if you can trust the science in the papers provided, that the outcome is clear.

I also like to mention the decision matrix - I forget the term in game-theory - but the possibility space is 2x2 - either global warming is man made or isn't on one axis, and on another axis is that humanity acts on this information is doesn't.

In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good. Moreover - even if the warming is from natural causes, trying to understand and alter the global climate is an important skill to have for a species with ambitions to survive for thousands more years, at least.

Your analysis of the 2x2 possibility space is simplistic and wrong. I'll attempt to quickly illustrate this.

We assume the desired goal of mitigating global warming is to save the lives of poor of those in poor countries. An argument can be made that the relatively rich will face changes, but will be able to adapt.

So the do nothing and no global warming scenario, while on its surface may not seem to have any negative effects, its effects in fact are quite devastating. The money and attention that we are focusing on global warming could be used to address problems that are actually killing people today. Some simple examples, are vaccination, education, disease research, building infrastructure etc.

So the question is best phrased as giving what we know now, what can we do to mitigate risk and save the most people. Some solutions are:

0. Family Planning & Birth Control

1. Nuclear power

2. Research into drought resistant crops and crops that can grow in warmer environments.

3. Improved monitoring of the earth

4. Research into new energy technologies, so that they can be deployed when they are mature enough.

So I'm not advocating any action over any other, I'm merely pointing out that your analysis is heavily flawed.

I agree with everything you say, except for "Family Planning & Birth Control". The last thing we want is government enforcement of birth rates; prosperity takes care of that without taking away anyone's freedom. Most prosperous nations have lower-than-replacement birth rates among the wealthy citizens, and that's actually going to become a serious problem unless we can make more poor people wealthy.

By 'wealth', I don't mean just money, I mean everything that goes into a better quality of life: Freedom, food, water, housing, education, and energy. In my opinion the first and last are the keys: people must be free to pursue activities which will improve their lot in life, and energy must be abundant and inexpensive to enable people to act on their freedom. With plentiful energy, food can be produced with minimal labor, water can be cleaned, materials for housing can be produced cheaply, and all of the above can raise people up from struggling for subsistance so that they have the time to devote to education.

Finally, in a world full of industrious, well-educated, and free people who have plenty of energy at their disposal, the problems caused by global warming can be tackled and solved whatever they may be. Dikes can be built, farms can be moved, even whole populations can be relocated.

I completely agree with you that the government enforcement of birth rates is immoral and should not be attempted. When speaking of birth control, I'm talking about mitigating the population explosion that's happening in the third world by providing, making accessible for little or no money, modern birth control methods. Providing free or low cost birth control is relatively inexpensive and would have significant increases on quality of life and on the overall state of humanity in the world. Of course it should be optional, and it doesn't need government involvement -- this an issue non profits can successfully attack.

Modern birth control methods cost money; someone's got to pay for them if the third-world people you want to stop making babies aren't going to. I believe that money can be better spent on improving the lives of those people. Better food, water, and housing will help make those people healthier, which will improve the infant mortality rate, which will naturally lead to a reduction in the birth rate. One reason poor people make a lot of babies is because many of the babies don't survive and a higher birthrate is necessary to ensure the survival of the next generation. With a lower infant mortality rate, it becomes an economic burden to have too many babies, so most families cut back to just one or two children. This is a trend that can take a couple of generations to become widespread, but large changes like this should be slow so they're not disruptive.

According to an editorial in The Lancet¹, there are 200 million women worldwide who want contraception but don’t have access to it. Simply providing family-planning services is five times cheaper than other carbon-emission-mitigation technologies.

I submit this as an excellent example of a policy measure that would help prevent global warming if the scientific consensus is right, and provide a genuine social good even if the consensus turns out to be wrong.

¹cited by the AP, here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/18/tech/main5319878.s...

> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good.

That actually depends on the "act". Any "analysis" that doesn't have such a dependence is bogus, even if it is in an easy to understand format.

> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good

This is the kind of statement that fuels skeptics. If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good." Skeptics are suspicious that some are using global warming to advance unrelated causes which (conveniently) require the same actions; namely, higher taxes, more regulation, bigger government.

They might further ask why, if, in your possibility space, there is natural warming, are we sure that we should act to reverse it? That is, there is a chance that a slightly warmer planet might itself have more net benefits than costs.

> If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good."

I think the point is that of the four possible outcomes (in order of costs: no action and no climate change, action and climate change is real, action but no climate change, climate change is real but no action), this is the second worst outcome.

All other things being equal it really comes down to a risk assessment. Yes - this, the third option, would be seriously painful from an economic point of view. But the fourth, which is what the overwhelming majority of climate science tells me you're proposing, would be an unmitigated catastrophe.

We're being asked to make a bet. My bet goes on spending the money for the same reason I have life and income protection insurance. I don't think it's a waste of money if I fail to die prematurely or incur serious injury. Plus, in real terms, the cost is similar.

You would probably think life insurance wasn't such a good bet if the premiums were 90,000 per year for a 100,000 payout. It's silly to talk about whether "climate insurance" is a good bet without assigning numbers to the premium and payout.

We can make the same matrix for other hazards/mitigation schemes too. For example, we should spend 100 billion dollars on an asteroid defense system!