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."
Bligh was a genius (Score:3, Insightful)
We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:2, Insightful)
If the logbooks don't support human-induced climate change, the media will ignore them.
Don't you DARE call it "science" when skepticism is met with derision.
In before the global warming discussion (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that this is going to devolve (pun intended) into a discussion about global warming (an argument often put against global warming is that we just don't have enough data to prove it exists). Regardless to how people feel about said subject, I hope you guys focus on how cool it is that we're preserving old information from paper-rot.
Re:Global climate change is true! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully these logs will provide support for global climate change but if not it could be argued that reporting techniques of the time were crude.</quote>
I like this train of thought. You can't lose. "Hey, if this supports our theory, then it can be hailed as definitive proof. If it conflicts with our theory, well, they were wrong, and it'll be easy to discredit."
Shhh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, three thousand years ago, the Sahara was a savannah and not the desert it is today. But we all know that's just the product of oil companies' propaganda.
Re:Shhh! (Score:1, Insightful)
We generally know why the climate changed in the sahara region just as we know pumping enormous quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causes a warming tend. Non-anthropomorphic causes of warming do not satisfactoryly explain the current warming tend.
Re:Bligh was a genius (Score:5, Insightful)
He was probably not much worse than the average captain of the time and nowhere near the league of George Vancouver when it
comes to being a heavy-handed hardass. But genius or not, he was no saint, never really learned to balance power and personality - witness his
time as Governor of New South Wales - and obviously didn't learn enough from Captain Cook about leading men.
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:2, Insightful)
I am sure Fox news would gladly pick up on it.
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of evidence, that's called denial.
Even modern data isn't accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
I hit a reference to this in the Analog magazine I'm currently reading:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf [wordpress.com]
Entitled "Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?" it reviews the accuracy of the current US surface temperature measurement network and finds it woefully lacking for the sort of analysis that results in things like 0.7 degree changes over decades.
As a quick summary, there are the following issues with the temperature measurement methodology:
1. The measuring statements are often either surrounded by asphalt or in the air path of air conditioning exhaust or other hot air.
2. Data points are often not collected, and the missing points are created by interpolation.
3. Exterior finish specification changed from whitewash to latex paint, and that change has a significant impact on measurement results.
Re:it's all about the snowfall (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:In before the global warming discussion (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, those logs have already survived decades on a medium that requires no special equipment to read. How many records have we lost over the past 40 years simply because of changing hardware and file formats? In that time we've gone from delay line/ferrite core memory to 2TB hard drives. To say nothing of thousands of different file formats.
Call it a digital dark age. Will someone be able to read this post in 50 years?
Re:Even modern data isn't accurate (Score:2, Insightful)
answers here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-man-is-an-urban-heat-island/ [realclimate.org]
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of evidence, that's called denial.
You can't keep calling it skepticism when faced with a continual stream of carefully selected evidence, that's called denial.
There, fixed that for ya!
Re:Shock Horror - the climate changes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you seriously think that hasn't been considered? Seriously? Do you seriously think that climatologists all over the world are so mind-numbingly stupid that that hasn't occurred to anyone? Yes, that has been addressed, time and again. We are *worsening* and *accelerating* the warming. No one has said that climate never ever changed until humans screwed stuff up. The only way you can ask that question is if you've only gotten your information from right-wing BS sources like Beck.
The idea is that we are having a negative impact on our environment, and that we should try to minimize that as much as possible. No one said we can master global climate and roll back the clock. The simple acknowledgement that human action can degrade the environment in which we live is not egotistical--it's pretty much the opposite of that. It's not arrogant to say we have the capacity to damage our environment. If you think we can have no impact on the environment, then sit in a closed garage with a car running for a few hours. Should you turn off the car and open the garage door, or would it be arrogant to think you can avoid killing yourself by cutting back on the pollution you're pouring into your immediate environment?
Re:Shock Horror - the climate changes! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they're all thick as posts. So dumb, several types of rocks have more intelligence. They are so woefully short of understanding their instruments, they regularly burn down their labs. They have so little knowledge of the animals they study, they leave out saucers of milk for the lions. Heck, most of the vulcanologists think the red oozy stuff is badly made jello!
And they thank you for pointing out that you, a mere Slashdot reader, have managed to understand more about global climate change in five minutes of careful study (six, if you include the fox news commercials) then they've learned in ten years of careful data collection and vigorous debate. Wow! What a champ you are!
Re:Bligh was a genius (Score:5, Insightful)
(Slightly under half of) the sailors were inspired to mutiny by Tahitian pussy, or lack there of after five months of it. Bligh was too nice in letting them live ashore with the Tahitians, having relations with them, and not flogging them enough.
The Rum Rebellion happened because he tried to remove the advantageous position some people in the Sydney colony had. This position would be called a monopoly nowadays.
So, maybe not a genius, but he tried to do the right thing(tm).
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:4, Insightful)
What source is putting 2005 at a higher temperature than 1998?
When you read the article linked to you will see that the issue here is not whether two selected years are hotter and colder than each other (eg. 1850 vs 2005), it's whether the decadal trend is rising, steady or falling. Do you already understand why even if the trend over the last decade were falling (it wasn't) that would not necessarily be significant when viewed against all of the data from the instrumental, a fortiori the extra-instrumental, record?
Re:We'll only read about it if they support AGW (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear AC,
As far as I know, since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists changed their mind, there have been no scientific organizations of any importance who reject human influence on climate change.
In a recent study Doran & Zimerman concluded that there really isn't even any debate about the authenticity of global warming among those who understand long term climate processes... Practically everyone agrees that it happens. Take a look: http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf [uic.edu]
So... exactly what the are these people missing that only you are seeing?
Re:In before the global warming discussion (Score:1, Insightful)
As long as we're just guessing:
1. You do not understand what "global" means
2. You do not understand what statistical relevance is
3. You have no idea how the royal navy operated back then
Did I get three out of three?
Re:In before the global warming discussion (Score:4, Insightful)
How many have been changed to fit an agenda? On paper those are difficult to modify but how long after they are in digital form will they be massaged to promote someones religious beliefs?
Re:Shhh! (Score:3, Insightful)
how do you know the CO2 rise is man made in the first place, and not oh say from the oceans which are the largest stores of CO2?
By isotope analysis of atmospheric CO2. The isotope ratios for carbon from fossil fuels are distinct from those of carbon in CO2 outgassed from the oceans. By looking at the (changing) isotope ratios of atmospheric CO2 it is possible to track the relative origins of the increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. It turns out the increase is due to humans burning fossil fuels.
Re:Brazil (Score:2, Insightful)
Nearly every civilization has fallen, which usually meant the death of > 99% of it's people.
Easter Island, Inca's, Maya's, (and there were several others in that region), Lots of Chinese civilizations, Buddhists, Persians, Babylon, Mamluks, Ottoman (the various "muslim" (though mostly less than 10% actual muslims) civlizations), ... all have perished and taken a huge death toll in their last few years.
But we can derive a lot of hope. Western, Christian civilization now continuously exists for over 1500 years. You might even say 2000 years. That's a hell of a long time, and few others have ever reached that age.
I disagree with the bioweapon stuff. Ethnic cleansing, whether we're talking about the muslim black gold (the muslim slave trade in blacks), or even the WWII atrocities against jews and pow's were done using relatively low tech means. The vast majority of victims died of starvation and illness. The quintessential state that comitted masses of ethnic cleansing, the muslim mongol state, did so manually. Using just knives, they literally massacred their way into majority in an area larger than the entire US. Whatever the weapons, the ideology behind them is to blame. The main ideologies that have comitted massive ethnic cleansing in history are well known : islam, fascism and communism. Those are to blame, nothing else.
Besides, those massacres did not allow them to survive, and for all their troubles, they (mongols) got massacred by the arabs. Funny how things turn out.
Re:Shhh! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a classic anti-fact. What you say is completely factually correct, but a naive reading of it would lead one to conclude a total falsehood, namely that grapes were only grown in England long ago by the Romans because the climate was hot at that time. This is demonstrably false. In fact, wine has been grown in england since the time of the Romans [english-wine.com]. In fact, from that every same link
Those are the real facts. The real truth is that wine has always been grown in England irrespective of climate cycles, and it is only in the modern era that this growth has declined. As to the Vikings, Greenland is still inhabitable and the failure of their colonies had a lot more to do with deforestation and overgrazing than a cooling period.
Factual contextomies such as yours typify modern discussion of science and indeed topics in general. It's unfortunate that posts such as yours can mislead so many unwary minds, but that's simply reflective of the lack of critical thinking in our society, even among many who consider themselves educated and savvy. It takes more than unthinking digestion of facts to discover the truth.