Is something rotten in Alaska?
February 2nd, 2010 by Joel
Via an open thread on Deltoid, I discovered a link to this article by E.M. Smith (reposted on Watt’s Up With That), looking at an odd map he’d managed to generate using a temperate map generator on the NASA GISS site. The map generator’s pretty fun to play with.
A map of the temperate anomalies can be generated by entering a base period and a time period. As I understand it, it then takes the difference in mean temperature between the baseline period and the time period and draws that on a map. Pretty simple, right?
Now, if you use the same base period as time period, you’d expect that the map anomalies would all just be zero, right? Well, almost. The default settings exclude ocean data, and E.M. Smith does not change that. Without the ocean data and a 250km smoothing radius, you actually get the following map:
What’s going on? Well, the short answer is that in the GHCN data, 9999 is used as a flag value to designate missing data (see the help file at the bottom of a map page, “Missing data are marked as 9999.”). As there’s no ocean data, 9999 appears there. Now, probably those should be greyed out. In maps that have a different base period and time period, grey is used to designate regions that don’t have any data.
However, the simple fact that this was almost certainly just displaying a flag value didn’t stop the conspiracy! Oh no! Presumably, those 9999 values are leaking into the real graphs and causing all the red values in a map like this one:
Nice idea. So I ran with it. Don’t know how long this GISS map stays up on their site, but I just did 2009 vs 2008 baseline. The “red” runs up to 10.3 C on the key.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_250km_Anom12_2009_2009_ 2008_2008/GHCN_GISS_250km_Anom12_2009_2009_2008_2008.gif
So unless we’ve got a 10 C + heat wave compared to last year, well, I think it’s a bug
So I think this points to the ‘bug’ getting into the ‘non-NULL’ maps. Unless, of course, folks want to explain how it is 10 C or so “hotter” in Alaska, Greenland, and even Iran this year: what ought to be record setting hot compared to 1998…
I’ll leave it for others to dig up the actual Dec 1998 vs 2009 thermometer readings and check the details. I’ve got other things taking my time right now. So this is just a “DIg Here” from me at this point.
It’s not the color red that’s the big issue, it is the 9999 C attached to that color… Something is just computing nutty values and running with them.
BTW, the “missing region” flag color is supposed to be grey…
Now, this is something of a leap: how unlikely is it that unusual values in the ocean would magically happen to manifest themselves as warming in Alaska or Greenland – let alone Iran – rather than in, oh, say, the oceans. Never mind the idea that a modest change in temperatures between two years is especially unlikely. But, even though this claim is extremely unlikely, let’s do a little investigating.
So, the question: was the temperature in Alaska during December 2009 really 4-12.3°C warmer than 1998, or are those 9999s leaking through? This is what the temperature map NASA’s GISS temperature map shows:
Happily, this is an easy question to answer if you actually look at the data. I downloaded the unadjusted mean GHCN data for the various sites in Alaska (the headers are 42570398000-425704820011). I picked out all the sites which had data for 2009 (I’ve also uploaded the raw data for 1998, 2008, 2009 for these sites so you can look at them if you like). Note that the temperature values are in tenths of a degree.
| Header | Location | Dec 1998 | Dec 2009 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 425700260000 | Barrow | -186 | -196 | -10 |
| 425701330000 | Kotzebue | -173 | -121 | +52 |
| 425702000000 | Nome | -147 | -94 | +53 |
| 425702310006 | McGrath | -222 | -182 | +40 |
| 425702610000 | Fairbanks | -209 | -198 | +11 |
| 425702730000 | Anchorage | -100 | -67 | +33 |
| 425703080001 | St Paul | -22 | -18 | +4 |
| 425703160000 | Cold Bay | -22 | 14 | +36 |
| 425703260000 | King Salmon | -125 | -46 | +79 |
| 425703610000 | Yakutat | -30 | -22 | +8 |
| 425703980000 | Annette Island | 19 | 12 | -7 |
I’ve helpfully marked highlighted the differences for those sites in Alaska in the region which are particularly red in the map. There appears to be some sort of correlation. The average temperature difference between Dec 1998 and Dec 2009 at those sites is 4.9°C warmer. The darkest shade of red represents an anomaly of between 4 and 12.3°C, so, Alaska is properly represented. The average, Alaska-wide, was 2.8°C warmer.
It’s not just me. A commenter on Watt’s Up With That, carrot eater, points out:
First station I tried: Goose, Newfoundland.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.403718160005.2.1/station.txt
is 8.6 C warmer in Dec 09 than Dec 08.
Let’s look for other stations in red splotches in Dec 09, compared to Dec 08
Egesdesminde, Greenland 5.1 C
Fort Chimo, Canada. 10 CLooks like I found your 10 C difference between Dec 08 and Dec 09. Third station I tried. Hence, the range of the colorbar.
Let’s see what else we find.
Danmarkshavn, Greenland. 2.7 C
Godthab Nuuk: 5 C
Inukjuak Quebec: 6.6 C
Coral Harbor: 8.6 CSo I’ve found a bunch of stations that are between 5 and 10 C warmer in Dec 09 compared to Dec 08.
This is a fun game, after all. Let’s say I want to find the biggest difference between Dec 09 and Dec 98. There are lots of red splotches on the map, and the colorbar has poor resolution. So I’ll download the gridded data and have a look.
Scrolling past all the 9999s for missing data, and I find that I should be looking at some islands north of Russia. I try some station called Gmo Im.E.T, and I get:
Dec 09 is 12.3 C warmer than Dec 98. First try.
So, yeah, this “bug” turned out to just be a weather fluctuation. Colour me surprised. Yet another climate change “skeptic” claim which does stand up to the data.
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Photo #5 – Galahs
January 27th, 2010 by Joel
Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla), photographed in Canberra, Australia.
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Photo #4 – Australian Magpie
January 26th, 2010 by Joel
Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen), photographed in Canberra, Australia.
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Video #1 – Dolphins
January 26th, 2010 by Joel
Inshore bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), recorded off Moreton Island.
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Photo #3 – Sunset
January 10th, 2010 by Joel
Sunset over Moreton Bay.
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The Quest to Scrape the Lowest Barrel
January 8th, 2010 by Joel
GilDodgen, quoting Pierre-Paul Grassé (in defense of Pierre-Paul Grassé: I’ve only found this quote in creationist screeds, it may have been manipulated):
What gambler would be crazy enough to play roulette with random evolution? The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Durer’s “Melancholia” is less infinitesimal than the probability of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye; besides, these errors had no relationship whatsoever with the function that the eye would have to perform or was starting to perform. There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it.
It’s called natural selection. The idea has been around for a while now. If you’re going to argue against evolution, despite having never heard of it, you’re pretty much disqualifying yourself from the game. There is no law against being entirely ignorant of what you’re arguing against, but it does have the unfortunate drawback of making you look entirely ignorant, and thus incapable of intelligent comment on the subject.
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Photo #2 – Inshore bottlenose dolphins
January 7th, 2010 by Joel
Inshore bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), photographed near Moreton Island.
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2009 Reading List
January 6th, 2010 by Joel
This is a partial list of the books I read in 2009, with some (short) thoughts on each. It’s partial, as I’m current 1200km away from my bookshelf (the horror…) and didn’t keep a list. Here we go:
Mathematics
Fermat’s Last Theorem (Simon Singh)
My favourite read of the year – Simon Singh takes us on a fascinating tour of the history of Fermat’s Last Theorem and of Andrew Wiles’ approach to proving it. One of its best attributes is its wide appeal – you don’t know any great deal of mathematics to follow it completely and enjoy the story, yet I don’t think it will disappoint enthusiastic mathematicians.
Prime Obsession (John Derbyshire)
Another book I’d highly recommend is John Derbyshire’s Prime Obsession, concerning the Riemann hypothesis. The book is more technical than Fermat’s Last Theorem, but nonetheless still perfectly approachable for a non-mathematical reader.
A First Course in Coding Theory (Raymond Hill)
I was set this book as a textbook for an introductory coding theory course this year, but I thought it was so well-done that I’m including it here.
Evolutionary Computation
An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms (Melanie Mitchell)
A solid and well-written introduction to some of the theoretical aspects of genetic algorithms, including genetic algorithms. Good for beginning researchers in the field (such as myself!)
A Field Guide to Genetic Programming (Poli, Langdon, McPhee & Koza)
Like Melanie Mitchell’s An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, this is a theoretical treatment – you won’t learn how to implement genetic programming here. Rather, it is a tour of several aspects of theory that one should learn to better understand the literature. Even better, this book, written by some of the top genetic programming researchers, is available for free download (a low-cost printed paperback is also available). One thing that does attract some confusion: this is a book about genetic programming, not genetic algorithms.
Essentials of Metaheuristics (Sean Luke)
Unlike the introductory evolutionary computation books in this category, Essentials of Metaheuristics is a very pragmatic – full of pseudocode samples and the sort of information that you’d actually want to implement genetic algorithms, genetic programming and other forms of metaheuristic searches. Also available for free download, and a print version is coming (for now, the online version continues to be updated – I started with version 0.1 and it’s now up to version 0.6).
Science
Wonderful Life (Stephen Jay Gould)
Wonderful Life comes in as a close second to Fermat’s Last Theorem as my favourite read this year. Stephen Jay Gould takes us on an enchanting and ever-fascinating tour on the fauna of the Burgess shale. This book rather dramatically changed my understanding of evolution – a must read.
The Greatest Show on Earth (Richard Dawkins)
Full review.
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Natalie Angier)
While some reviewers expressed distaste for the rather verbose language of the book, I didn’t find it troubling – it’s certainly there, but I didn’t find it detracted from the book. The Canon is a well-written and interesting introduction, and perhaps can help ameliorate some of the “it’s-too-hard” attitudes that some people have towards learning science. That said, when I was reading it on the bus, a nearby passenger asked me what I was reading and, on seeing the cover, remarked that such a book was much too complex for her. I can only hope my response helped convince her otherwise!
Six Easy Pieces (Richard Feynman)
A light and enlightening glimpse into physics.
The Weather Makers (Tim Flannery)
Good, but left me wanting more (though that, I think, is also a plus).
Science & Society
Climate Cover-Up (Hoggan & Littlemore)
Climate Cover-Up is a damning look into the political motivations of global warming denialists. A must read!
Unscientic America (Mooney & Kirshenbaum)
Full review.
The Double Helix (James Watson
Well-written, but I couldn’t help feel that large parts of the narrative seemed rather (ahem) absent.
Fiction
The Bromeliad Trilogy: Truckers, Diggers, and Wings (Terry Pratchett)
A wonderfully imaginative and humorous series of books, The Bromeliad Trilogy follows a group of Nomes as they come to understand their place in the universe – which, it turns out, is much larger than The Store in which they’d lived all of their lives.
2010 Reading List
Here are a few books which are right up at the top of my queue for 2010:
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter)
- The Code Book (Simon Singh)
- The Unfinished Game (Keith Devlin)
- Perfect Rigor (Masha Gessen)
- Flatland (Edwin Abbott)
- Complexity: A Guided Tour (Melanie Mitchell)
- The Annotated Turing (Charles Petzold)
- Remarkable Creatures (Sean B. Carroll)
- Bad Science (Ben Goldacre)
- Death From the Skies! (Phil Plait)
- The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett)
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Photo #1 – Laughing Kookaburra
January 5th, 2010 by Joel
Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), photographed on Moreton Island.
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Review: Unscientific America
January 5th, 2010 by Joel
Unscientific America is not a bad book. It’s certainly well-meaning, considering an important topic, and with a sometimes thoughtful discussion. The unfortunate part, however, is that large chunks of the book aren’t as well thought out as others – many of the examples given really do not support the thesis.
The oddities start out, of course, with the case for why Pluto matters. I mean, if an evil cabal of astrophysicists had gathered and plotted all the evil schemes they could think of to get the American public interested in hydrostatic equilibria and Kuiper belt objects, they couldn’t really have done any better than how things turned out. Mooney & Kirshenbaum (hereafter M&K) ask whether the scientists involved considered the public outcry. However, in The Pluto Files
My concerns go somewhat deeper, though:
People were aghast. Not only did they recoil at having to unlearn what they had learned as children, and perhaps the chief thing they remembered about astronomy.
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous!
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s The Pluto Files is not a defense of Pluto’s status as a non-planet. It is an argument against the general idea of teaching the solar system as My-Very-Excellent-Mother-Just-Served-Us-Nine-Pizzas or My-Very-Excellent-Mother-Just-Served-Us-Nachos or My-Very-Exciting-Magic-Carpet-Just-Sailed-Under-Nine-Palace-Elephants or whatever. Learning mnemonics might well equip you to be a very modern major general or win “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” but hasn’t actually taught you anything about the solar system. Rather, isn’t it better to teach about the different families of solar system objects – the rocky inner planets, asteroids, gas giants, and the icy Kuiper belt objects? How do they differ? How are they similar? Why is the asteroid belt rocky whilst the Kuiper belt is icy?
Could the fact that many people (including, to be perfectly frank, me) learnt in school that science was a sort of stamp collecting be part of the reason for the disconnect between science and the public?
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird…
So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
-Richard Feynman
Later, M&K look at the science wars – the discourse between science and postmodernism and the Sokal affair, arguing that the science wars were an unnecessary distraction whilst the right-wing anti-science forces grew. Now, granted, I wasn’t paying much attention to either science or postmodernism when I was 7, but is it really the case that if only Alan Sokal hadn’t been worrying about postmodernism he’d have been able to confront the religious right, or delay media conglomeration? The idea that engaging postmodernism was an irrelevant sideshow because the humanities have very little impact on modern culture anyway was odd, to say the least, in a book that often refers highly to C.P. Snow. They also take issue with the “academic landgrabs” of, say, E.O. Wilson’s book Consilience, or certain aspects of evolutionary psychology – and, whether or not these are good points, they’re rather off the topic at hand. Apparently, if you’re a scientist, doing anything in the public sphere other than communicating science and combating The Republican War on Science is forbidden.
One of the major arguments for the chapter concerning the problems for scientific communication on the internet is the victory of climate change denialist blog “Watts Up With That” in the Weblog awards. Maybe this is just one aspect of the blagohedron which I’ve been neglecting, but I’m simply not sure how much influence those awards actually have – Wikipedia suggests that they’re covered by mainstream media organisations, but I can’t say I’ve seen them having any great web presence outside voting season. The methodology is odd too – each person can vote each day. I actually visited Watts Up With That during the period, and it was pretty much coated with banners urging visitors to vote for it in the awards throughout. The most you could really say is that Anthony Watts was somewhat more successful at getting his visitors to troll some internet poll than PZ Myers.
If you want another popularity contest with a flawed methodology, why not use try Google Trends Google Trends?
Now, it is certainly true that the blogosphere is not going to produce something like Cosmos. Pharyngula is not Cosmos, nor is Astronomy Cast. But you know what? They’re not meant to be Cosmos, either. And that’s OK. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has managed to attract a large audience (not least by being, as M&K describe it, an atheistic clearinghouse), who are then willing to read and able to understand some very detailed articles on developmental biology.
Meanwhile, Dr. Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain’s Astronomy Cast manages to give their audience a far more detailed and interactive journey through the universe than Cosmos could, and are equipping amateur astronomers to explore and understand the universe. I’m willing to bet that if you did a survey, you’d find that a larger percentage of Astronomy Cast listeners went out and bought a telescope (and continued to use it!) after listening to Astronomy Cast than did Cosmos viewers, admittedly on a (much) smaller scale. Despite the lack of the mass media scope of an international TV series, they are nonetheless creating and equipping a community of amateur scientists and science enthusiasts who can then go out and make good science a priority from the grassroots level. And that’s no bad thing.
These are really just a few examples – and, in a 132 page book, these sorts of extended distractions from your central thesis really do take away your ability to actually address these issues. I couldn’t help but feel, at times, that M&K went into this project with a bunch of grudges – Pluto, PZ Myers, the science wars, and others – and that the divide between science and the public was an excuse for writing a book to air all of their pet grudges. It’s a distraction (as are the endnotes, which are half the length of the book and yet they’re not even indicated in the main text).
There were parts of the book that I did like – the discussion of the changes in the media in the last few decades was probably my favourite. There are insightful points scattered in, and the writing is excellent throughout. Despite my criticisms, I think it’s probably worth a read, so long as you’re interested in the topic.
Posted in Accomodationism, Reviews, Science | Comments (1)