Blogger Finds Bug in NASA Global Warming Study? 755
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DailyTech, a blogger has discovered a Y2K bug in a NASA climate study by the same writer who accused the Bush administration of trying to censor him on the issue of global warming. The authors have acknowledged the problem and released corrected data. Now the study shows the warmest year on record for the contiguous 48 states as being 1934, not 1998 as previously reported in the media. In fact, the corrected study shows that half of the 10 warmest years on record occurred before World War II." The article's assertion that there's a propaganda machine working on behalf of global warming theorists is outside the bounds of the data, which I think is interesting to note.
Re:US vs World (Score:1, Insightful)
Or is it because the US is surrounded by very large bodies of waters on two of its sides which help to isolate it to a certain degree? (no pun intended)
this is good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, dumping billions of tons of Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere is not a good idea, period. However, this refined data shows the warming trend in a more accurate light, and that is all to the good.
I see this as (yet another) great victory of the scientific method, and in this case, aided by a sharp-eyed blogger. The beauty and strength of scientific truth lies in its "weakness": its provisionality - things are only true until proven otherwise.
This is very good news.
RS
Re:oh lord (Score:4, Insightful)
Won't change anything at all.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much like every serious issue in American politics.
No, we aren't biased... (Score:2, Insightful)
Interestingly, if you look at the parent directory of the referenced "corrected" data, you get a much different picture [nasa.gov].
Sure, the blogger did find a Y2K anomaly, but this doesn't discredit global warming the least; it just shows that the US isn't warming quite like the rest of the world.
Quit trying to Confuse me with Facts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:this is good. (Score:5, Insightful)
The blogger reversed engineered them from the data. Hardly the open scientific process you are ascribing to it.
Also, NASA has very quietly updated the numbers, replacing the old ones without reference. No transparency there.
Try again, pollyanna.
Re:Very biased article (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone goes to the trouble of reverse engineering the algorithm, and finds a pretty obvious error. Yet you are picking on one sentence? Sheesh. I'd think you'd be jumping on the closed-sourced original scientist instead.
Re:this is good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hume's Maxim (Score:2, Insightful)
If you disagree with "Intelligent Design," that's fine. But can you refrain from making side jabs at those who study it by saying that "real biologists" don't believe it? One of the biggest misnomers is that intelligent design even precludes evolution... it doesn't. It simply ascribes a source. You can bash whatever line of it you want, but please don't make blanket assumptions and emotive appeals.
I can't wait to get modded into oblivion on this one.
Re:Very biased article (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, the point is that NASAs data was wrong, and they have admitted to that and corrected it. (In some places; if you read the comments of the linked article, you can see that NASA still has some pages with the old data in it. Probably not maliciously, though, just an oversight.)
Re:War of words. (Score:3, Insightful)
That isn't global warming, that's a single data point.
That sound you hear is every scientist repeatedly banging their head against a brick wall.
Re:War of words. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, that is, you've already made up your mind on the subject, in which case anything that supports your view will suffice as "proof".
Re:this is good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:War of words. (Score:5, Insightful)
Global warming is just that - GLOBAL
You are making the common mistake of confusing weather with climate.
Re:Very biased article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:US vs World (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well, well, well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people have been criticizing the DailyTech article for the line "Then again-- maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media." It should be noted that the original blog entry [norcalblogs.com] does not contain this or other indications of paranoia, and attributes the people involved in the discovery.
Woah (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution and the big bang are still considered theories, Newton's law of gravity, over 300 years old is still considered a theory, and you are telling me you consider global warming, which just cropped up over the last 10-20 years, is 'scientific fact'? Get out of here.
Re:Hume's Maxim (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hume's Maxim (Score:2, Insightful)
If this were some random blogger saying that this same data was actually showing that global warming was even worse than some would have you believe, you'd be on here saying "told you so!, told you so!".
Get bent. Your entire post is the typical BS we hear when something comes out that doesn't fit nicely into someone's agenda. You didn't even pay attention to to the link to the revised NASA data because you were too busy wetting yourself while referring to your anti-Bush talking points.
Re:Hume's Maxim (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ahem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ludicrous troll.
re: "Why else would the first world have to pay the third world for the 'right to pollute.'" (sic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commo
To put it simply, because the benefits of processes which cause pollution, accrue to the individual or groups of individuals which create the pollution, but the costs of pollution are paid by all. Duh. Basic ethics.
Re:Very biased article (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a3200.htm [informath.org]
—when things were finally opened up, it was also discovered to be wrong.
Closed source and hidden data is the norm. It is wrong.
Re:they dont have a clue (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't know the difference between a Climatologist, and a Meteorologist, do you?
Here, let me give you a bad analogy;
Fill a bathtub with hot water. As the tub fills, throw in a few grains of rice. Now, it's the Meterologist's job to predict where the rice will be in an hour, tomorrow and 4 days from now. It's the Climatologists job to predict the temperature of the water in a year, and 5 years, and 10 years.
I just love it when people want the Climatologist to determine the position of the rice before it's put in the tub. And denounce global warming because he can't.
Re:oh lord (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me explain my concern, as it relates to another much less contravercial theory; what killed the dinosaurs. I was born in 1976. In those days, and I can remember roughly back to 80 or 81, the new hot theory was the asteroid impact; the one that caused the iridium layer at the K-T boundary. Later, as more evidence was found, it was supported and became mainstream. In the last 5-10 years or so, the hot theory questions that very well supported theory. Now they think it was a series of effects, from climate change to increased volcanism and changes in the biosphere; the rise of flowering plants; that worked together to have this effect. The KT impact on the Yucatan peninsula, was just another insult to them. Even today, I'm not sure where the consensus is. Still, no one was called a denier. Stupid, wrong, amongst other things, but never a denier.
What frightens me is the fact that your choice of words makes you sound like anyone who disagrees with you is questioning your faith. The fact is that a reasonable person could doubt the existence of global warming, or even have the opinion that global warming is caused by means other than enhanced CO2 output. The increasingly acidic tone of folks on both sides of the issue is taking away from the discussion; it's a simple fact that it's harder to convince people to agree with you when you attack the very folks you are trying to convince. The viciousness of both sides, but lately so much so the GW supporters, is troubling to me.
For the record, and I'm sure you'll want to know this. I don't believe that CO2 is causing the warming that I do believe is happening; I'm currently convinced by the evidence of those who say it's from solar activity. I have recently been convinced of that, but I'm willing to change my mind again. Granted, a strong argument would have to be made for that to happen. That being said, living in Manhattan as I do, I don't have a car and use mass transit. I also buy my power, at a 30% premium, from a supplier that generates electricity from wind and hydro. I think that everything that gets into the air when you burn fossil fuels, aside from CO2, are nasty things that I would be happier didn't get into the air.
what kind of bug? (Score:3, Insightful)
How are these small errors characteristic of a "Y2K bug"? Wouldn't we see something more gross, like the 2001 data equaling the 1901 data?
Re:Hume's Maxim (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the numbers speak for themselves.
It took ten seconds to create a plot in gnuplot with the corrected data.
I was surprised at the results. They show a random scattering of occasional really warm years, and a massive, unmistakable, consistent warming trend since 1980.
This was not at all what I expected to see after reading TFA. Maybe that's why they don't plot the corrected data.
Re:Cool! (Score:3, Insightful)
What does economic theory tell us about the last tree on Easter Island?
Re:Climate change is a fact, not warming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Woah (definitions of theories, laws, hypothesis (Score:3, Insightful)
However that graph with the associated article is far from clear.
It was colder in 1980 than any other time in the century.
A lot of the rest of it looks like a random walk.
I think people are over-reacting and over-committing before the facts are in.
I was waiting for someone to point this out... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing that the new graph lacks is a headline-grabbing "warmest year EVAR!!!". The trends are still there. The data still doesn't contradict what other data sets show. I'm glad someone spent the time to go over the data with a fine-toothed comb, and found an issue. I'm not surprised though that the new data still fits current climate predictions.
Re:Very biased article (Score:3, Insightful)
The funny thing is that Steve MacIntyre, the climate skeptic who identified the error, has a history of hyping models with even worse errors like degrees/radians confusion [johnquiggin.com].
So both sides here are capable of making mistakes. The advantage of the mainstream climate community is its robustness. Both its data sources and its models are multiply redundant. This is not the case with the skeptics' criticisms.
The other difference between the sides is that every time the skeptical side finds anything they consider a flaw, no matter how niggling (e.g. a few poorly sited surface stations), they tout it to high heaven as evidence that global warming is WRONG WRONG WRONG. Frankly, that's the behavior of cranks, which is why I am sorely tempted to call them "denialists" rather than "skeptics."
irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
They are missing the point.
Whether global warming is really happening or not is not so much important as the fact that we are belching tons (literally) of pollution into the air and water. How can anybody be against cutting down on pollution? How can anybody be against trying to preserve at least a portion of what's left of our natural envirionment? duh? Even without global warming we are still clearly systematically destroying everything on this planet.
It's because the new data didn't change the trend. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lies of omission (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Climate change is a fact, not warming (Score:3, Insightful)
Since our "ice house" is below normal CO2 concentrations on the grand scale, it would be reasonable to claim that these levels will eventually rise with or without our interference. We may be accelerating the change, but it would have happened anyway. Our civilization may suffer because of the abnormal acceleration, but will we really have to worry about environmental impacts in the next 200 years?
And if the real impacts of our activity are 200 years out or more, will any of the current infrastructure be worth anything to the future civilization?
If the risk of damage is far off, then it seems to me that we should be more concerned with the accelerated pace of the extinction of species than with greenhouse gas emissions.
Re:It's because the new data didn't change the tre (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Y2k? NOT! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but the CO2 - Temperature correlation is eliminated (at least for the US measurements), since you can't show a consistent upward trend in temperatures associated with the consistent upward trend in CO2 concentrations. So it's more like "gee it's been hot lately, but that's not anything new".
I am much less alarmed to learn that something scary happening now has also happened before and things turned out okay in the end.
Re:Well, well, well.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Check in another week. Find out how many mainstream articles have been written about global warming. This mistake is going to be in 95% of the mainstream articles, almost definately.
It is always amusing how the denyers cry that they are being censored. So literally having THOUSANDS of times more chances of having their opinions being published, compared to a study supporting global warming, is "censorship", huh?
Re:US vs World (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't assume that just because YOU don't know or understand something, no one does. Read the IPCC reports. The impacts are well known, and its effects are already starting to materialize. Some examples of predicted effects:
- Migration north of insect-born diseases like Malaria
- Shifts in plant blooming patterns
- Shifts in plant growth and viability (check out how gardeners have to change the assessment of what kind of region they're in for plant growing purposes)
- Slow-down of North-Pacific current
- Reduction in ice-coverage in arctic and antarctic.
Re:Well, well, well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, this will get a lot of press (NASA seems to get nothing but bad press these days), but almost all of it will be qualified by statements downgrading the mistake's significance. The meme: NASA screwed up again, but Global Warming is still da bomb!!!!
This is how science works . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
This only affects U.S. data, not all the other data from around the world which also supports global warming, so it doesn't mean we're off the hook. I would heave a great sigh of relief if it did.
This does underscore the need for transparency in all scientific methods, so that conclusions and methods can be properly tested.
There has been considerable science done since Al Gore's movie. Some of it continues to support the conclusion that we have made changes to our atmosphere which are causing temperatures to rise dramatically. Some data has become inconclusive. For instance, I saw one show where climbers of Mt. Kilamanjaro checked ground temperatures which revealed that increasing volcanic activity might account for some, if not all, of the ice melting that's been happening there.
But even with such corrections, there is still quite a lot of data from all over the world that indicates temperatures are rising and that it's caused by the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We can't ignore the rest of the data, unless someone can show that it, too is incorrect.
I, for one, believe that it is foolish to gamble that somehow things will turn out alright if we drag our feet or do nothing at all. There if far too much at stake. Even very small temperature changes in our past have had devastating effects on our civilization, and they occurred when our population was far smaller. Does anyone really believe that you can change the makeup of our atmosphere so drastically - increasing the CO2 by over 30% - and not have some detrimental effect? Even if you assumed that effect of changes in the atmosphere would be purely random, almost all possible changes would hurt us in some way.
I hope this latest report means we have more time to respond to the problem and will encourage a more open debate, but I don't think it means we should assume everything is going to be alright.
2 hypotheses (Score:4, Insightful)
Proportionally large changes in proportions of climate-involved gases in the atmosphere are having effects on climate. As these changes may threaten the continuation of our advanced civilization, we should closely study all available evidence and model the effects to the best of our abilities.
Hypothesis 2
Massive numbers of scientists who study climate have a secret agenda to bring down industrial civilization, and will fudge any and all data in order to convince the population to end industrial civilization before the sky falls in on us from the shaking of industry's engines.
Note the parallelism
Both hypotheses see a threat to civilization. According to the first, the threat is that the effects on climate from our activities may get away from us. According to the second, the threat is that if we listen to scientists and act prudently, they will concertedly lie to us to achieve the neo-Luddite political result in which we renounce most of our technological and economic means.
Note the absurdity
According to the 2nd hypothesis, scientists - who have been essential in developing our technologies - have now massively subscribed to the sort of anti-technology ideologies that are found in the fringes of some English departments. This is a matter which is easily amenable to sociological research. It would be trivial, really, to go out and, using solid, proven techniques, interview a broad sample of environmental scientists on their personal views of and affections towards technology. It is central to the deniers' case that scientists, as a block, hold anti-technological views. Yet anecdotally, every professional scientist I know (some in climatology) loves technology. Is the only reason that the deniers fail to conduct the basic sociological research to prove their hypothesis that they know from their own anecdotal experience that it would fail to support them?
Are they doing something worse than fudging the data: failing to collect it in an obvious place, because they know it would prove them massively wrong?
Re:2 hypotheses (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot "After decades of saying that the data didn't support the idea." So, we're supposed to believe that, rather than reacting to new data, these scientist were all bribed in some way by the Illuminati.
Re:Y2k? NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course CO2 has been higher before (Score:3, Insightful)
The point isn't that the climate we're seeing now is "TEH WORST" that there has ever been. Your entire post addresses a straw man.
The point is that the climate is changing quickly, because we are affecting it. The question is what do we do about it.
There's a lot about your post that indicates to me that you simply haven't done enough homework on this issue. Water vapor, for instance, serves mostly to reinforce warming trends caused by other forcings. It's not a long term forcing itself because it cycles out of the atmosphere so quickly. So to call it "the most important" greenhouse gas is misleading.
Re:US vs World (Score:3, Insightful)
There WAS a cooling trend for a few decades, and there still IS a "hole in the ozone". That we've largely mitigated the latter and come to understand more about the former doesn't mean that they didn't happen!
But thinking is hard, and nobody wants to do so. It's difficult to bring up too many problems at once, and few people take the time to understand the actual problem beyond what you might get in a 3-minute segment in a 30-minute newscast. (or worse, the scant sentences in a slashdot article summary) Just because YOU don't understand what the big deal is, doesn't mean there's no big deal. And just because past issues have become better understood doesn't mitigate the importance of the current one.
This is not a made-up "bogeyman" - it's SCIENCE [wikipedia.org]. And the scientific process is the ONLY process that consistently tends towards truth. To found out the truth, to be truly scientific requires the humility of knowing that YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING and that it's a good idea to really really try to find out what the truth actually is, whatever you might prefer.