Captain Bligh's Logbooks To Yield Climate Bounty 232
Pickens writes "The BBC reports that researchers are digitizing the captains' logs from the voyages of Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle, Captain Cook from HMS Discovery, Captain Bligh from The Bounty, and 300 other 18th and 19th century ships' logbooks to provide historical climate records for modern-day climate researchers who will use the meteorological data to build up a picture of weather patterns in the world at the beginning of the industrial era. The researchers are cross-referencing the data with historical records for crop failures, droughts and storms and will compare it with data for the modern era in order to predict similar events in the future. 'The observations from the logbooks on wind force and weather are astonishingly good and often better than modern logbooks,' says Climatologist Dr. Dennis Wheeler from the University of Sunderland. 'Of course the sailors had to be conscientious. The thought that you could hit a reef was a great incentive to get your observations absolutely right!' The logbooks will be online next year at the UK's National Archives."
Re:In before the global warming discussion (Score:3, Informative)
The work in climate engineering (or whatever it's called) is good too. We shouldn't assume that the Earth will always be habitable by humans without us needing to fight for it. None of this is going to make us 'poor' either, that's a lot of hooey. The economy runs on work, any kind of work will do. It might mean some businesses fall while others are created, but that's how capitalism works.
Re:Shhh! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:3, Informative)
There was plenty of skepticism about evolution (or at least, Darwinian evolution) when the theory first appeared. But it's been vetted for 150 years now, and with modern forensics, DNA sequencing, and even the observation of speciation events, there's really no credible evidence disproving the central tenets of Darwinian evolution. Though there have been some huge advancements in our understanding of it. For instance, while IANAEB, it is my understanding that evolutionary biologists no longer view evolution as a straight-line sequence from simpler animals to more complex ones, like Darwin did. Instead, we now know that our understanding of what constitutes a "species" is pretty arbitrary and creatures in the wild cross species lines quite often. Instead of a tree coming up from a single ancestral organism, life is more like a complex web, with some branches ending, some continuing, and some merging back into the main trunk (or another branch).
And don't even get started on the tags, they just make it more confusing!
Re:Bligh was a genius (Score:3, Informative)
Actually all the evidence points to Bligh being the very opposite of a despot. Check out the number of floggings on the voyage. (pretty much none, in an era where weekly floggings were the norm.) He was not in fact a harsh disciplinarian, and neither was Cook, who was his mentor. Of course the type of voyage they were doing was not routine, and so the crews were not the usual scum of the earth. I think the problems was that Cook had the strength of character and leadership to cope with any problems, while Bligh did not. Obviously Fletcher Christian became a problem.
Blighs voyage to Timor in an open boat rates as one of the greatest navigational feats of all time.
Re:Even modern data isn't accurate (Score:1, Informative)
Watts spent most of his meteorology time as a TV weatherman, so he assumes everyone else has just heard of the urban heat island effect. In fact it makes little difference and NASA already corrects for it. He's like the Kent Hovind of meteorology.
Re:Even modern data isn't accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Modern data IS accurate. The report you linked to is not. You are going to LOVE this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk [youtube.com]
That weather station location study discussed in the video you linked to attracted the attention of NOAA who wrote a reply:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf [noaa.gov]
Those white boxes which make up the old style weather stations that Anthony Watts (the guy who did the video you linked to) is investigating are called "Stevenson screens".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenson_screen [wikipedia.org]
They form the oldest weather network in the US. They have been replaced with much newer units. The stevenson screen setups don't even have anemometers.
But the data from those stations are only a very small fraction of all of the weather measurements taking place on earth. Satellites have been used extensively:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements [wikipedia.org]
As have radiosondes attached to weather balloons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosonde [wikipedia.org]
as well as many other natural indications.
Quoted from the above linked video:
> In order to test the validity of Mr. Watts' accusations,
> the NOAA scientists made a comparison of
> temperature trends, using Mr. Watts' data. Two graphs
> were plotted using the same technique. One analysis
> was for the full data set of 1221 US weather stations.
> The other used only the 70 stations that Mr. Watts and
> his volunteers classified as "good" or "best". If climate
> denier theories are correct, the temperatures at the
> optimally sited stations should be markedly different
> from the data as a whole. In fact, the curves show
> virtually no difference. That's right. Even using the
> cherry-picked stations listed in Watts' publication, the
> data -- according to leading scientists at NOAA --
> shows no evidence of distortion.
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:5, Informative)
For the last decade there has been no global warming, at all, while producing more CO2 than ever.
1. 10 years of noisy data is not significant enough to reverse the significance of the warming trend over the entire instrumental record. 2. The last decade as shown a warming trend of 0.11C/decade [realclimate.org].
Scientifically, this _necessarily_ throws global warming into serious doubt.
So long as science relies on whacky stuff like statistics, no it doesn't.
Re:Bligh was a genius (Score:5, Informative)
"Captain" Bligh of the Bounty was a lieutenant. Young and still a bit green as a commander.
Bligh and _2/3rds_ of the crew were placed into a small dingy and set adrift. Having only a compass and sextant he went 6700km and nailed the nearest British outpost Timor. Only one man died on route.
Further wikipedia concisely notes:
"The Bounty's log shows that Bligh resorted to punishments relatively sparingly. He scolded when other captains would have whipped and whipped when other captains would have hanged. He was an educated man, deeply interested in science, convinced that good diet and sanitation were necessary for the welfare of his crew. He took a great interest in his crew's exercise, was very careful about the quality of their food, and insisted upon the Bounty being kept very clean."
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:2, Informative)
All the evidence, carefully selected and taken as a whole, shows that human activity has increased the global surface temperatures of the earth.
Why is that strange to consider?
You think we're ghosts or something who can't affect the world around us?
Re:Shhh! (Score:3, Informative)
Yawn:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/english-vineyards-again/ [realclimate.org]
Re:Shhh! (Score:2, Informative)
So many urban myths quoted in a single paragraph, that's probably a new record ...
The Romans in England grew wine grapes
The Romans tried growing wine in England, but they failed, producing very poor quality wine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_from_the_United_Kingdom#Roman_to_19th_Century [wikipedia.org]
England's wine industry is currently thriving due to global warming.
the Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland. Vinland was in Labrador.
There has been cattle in Greenland for decades. New Scentist has a good article on this myth:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11644-climate-myths-it-was-warmer-during-the-medieval-period-with-vineyards-in-england.html
And the current extended "solar minimum" would seem to indicate that slightly cooler temperatures are more likely than any warming.
Even with this solar minimum, 2008 was the 7th hottest year on record, 2009 is predicted to the 4th hottest, and 2007 is around the 3rd hottest.