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Friday, September 9, 2016

Kochenstein Kochaine

Kochenstein

"Kochaine"
(with apologies to J.J. Cale)

If you want to die out, you've got to pump it out, kochaine
If you want to fall down, get buried in the ground, kochaine
She tells lies, He tells lies, that dirty kochaine

If you got bad news, you want to thank them fools, kochaine
When your day is done and you got to run, kochaine
She tells lies, He tells lies, that dirty kochaine

If your world is gone and you want to know why, kochaine
Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back, kochaine
She tells lies, He tells lies, that dirty kochaine 






Previous post is here.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports - 8

Bankruptcy: World's Seventh Largest Shipper
This series has focused on an area of global economy that is habitually overlooked.

At least it is overlooked in terms of global economic security (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

The context of this series has been not only the dangers from sea level rise and fall, but also the dangers from economic pressures associated with that sea level change (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 44).

The posts focus especially on the economic and logistic problems comprising a sea of changes (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Ice-sheet-gravity measuring satellites have also been telling us that the Earth's great ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerated rate (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 52).

Which axiomatically means we see now and in the future an accelerated rate of sea level change (The Question Is: How Much Acceleration Is Involved In SLR?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

In the face of this reality, far too many casually assume that because seaports look so strong, so "robust," they are virtually impregnable.

But that is, after all, only an assumption, because the seaport world is made up of weak portions that can be more vulnerable than the infrastructure:
Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd vessels have been seized at Chinese ports in the wake of the South Korean firm's collapse, further roiling the industry as freight rates jump and manufacturers scramble for alternatives.

Seeking to contain the fallout, a South Korean court said it would soon begin proceedings to rehabilitate the carrier - which would allow Hanjin to take legal action in other countries to keep its ships and other assets from being seized.

Rival Hyundai Merchant Marine will also deploy at least 13 of its ships to two routes exclusively serviced by Hanjin, while the South Korean government also plans to reach out to overseas carriers for help.

The court's move to rehabilitate the world's seventh-largest container shipper is seen as mainly procedural, and an eventual liquidation of assets is likely, analysts and industry officials said.
(Reuters). The powers that be did not listen to the uproar from the people when President Bush II, a.k.a. the Decider, decided to let foreign interests in on American seaport ownership:
Hanjin Shipping, the world’s seventh-largest container carrier, owns a majority stake in Total Terminals International, which operates Long Beach's largest terminal.
...
Hanjin’s bankruptcy filing last week stems from a challenging environment for all shipping companies, which are dealing with overcapacity brought on by a slowdown in global trade that coincided with a massive ship-building boom.
...
Ports and terminals around the world — including Long Beach — have denied access to Hanjin ships and refused to move their cargo because of concerns that the South Korean shipping giant won’t be able to pay its bills.

Hanjin Shipping accounted for about 4% of container cargo imported to the Port of Los Angeles and 12% of container cargo to the Port of Long Beach during the first six months of the year, according to Datamyne, which tracks import-export transactions in the Americas.
(LA Times). The realm of international trade is as rife with cracks as the Larsen C ice shelf (A widening 80 mile crack is threatening one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves).

Which of course brings up the laws of when:
"The First Law of 'When': the more critical an issue is to the future of our civilization, the difficulty of determining when that critical issue will take effect tends to increase exponentially.

The Second Law of 'When': the greater the amount of time it takes for that critical issue to play out completely tends to exponentially diminish Civilization's grasp of that critical issue.

The Third Law of 'When': the more destructive the impact which that critical issue would have on civilization tends to exponentially increase the time when that critical event will be understood to have begun to take place."
(Quotes Page). There is a good article that puts the laws of when into gripping prose (When Will New York Sink?).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

"... it's just a question of when ..."





Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Questionable "Scientific" Papers - 10

Fig. 1
As a follow-up to the previous post in this series, I wanted to share some facts about the data I use to generate graphs that regular readers peruse.

I want you to know that a lot of work goes into it, but sometimes it may not show.

Database management, such as the World Ocean Database (WOD) and the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) are as much a part of modern science as looking through a microscope is.

Especially in the sense that they make the data available to us for our close scrutiny, to help us discern the junk from the science.

Looking back on Labor Day, I wanted you to have a better understanding of why I criticize those who want to take the work out of science, by taking the data gathering and sharing out of it.

In today's post, I will also show some appreciation for the scientists who painstakingly gather data for us.

For example, Fig. 1 is a screen capture of my query of an SQL database "rawwod" where I store downloaded WOD data.
Fig. 2 Each '4' has '9', and each '9' has '18'

I call it "raw" because no averaging has been done, it is the raw measurements of scientists who study the ocean and then share the results of their work.

Anyway, as you can see, there are a lot of measurements stored in those four tables:
raw1000_v1: 42,538,956
raw3000_v1: 41,307,714
raw5000_v1: 52,364,650
raw7000_v1: 36,979,185
==================
total:            173,190,505
Think of the scientists who, over many years, have been, and still are, taking billions of measurements on the stormy, windy, and undulating high seas.

Fig. 3 Limit 25 rows
That over one hundred seventy three million measurements I am working with is a tiny fraction of the whole (it will double, or more as I download more zones and add the v2 salinity).

BTW, you may be wondering what the "raw1000_v1, raw3000_v1, raw5000_v1, and raw7000_v1" names are about (the 'v1' means WOD variable 1, which is temperature; 'v2' is salinity which I have not gotten to yet, but I have them substantially downloaded and ready for their SQL tables).

Those who have viewed the WOD database will note that there are four basic zone sections (1000, 3000, 5000, and 7000).

From a programing perspective, they are defined by the first digit (1,3,5,7).

Each of those has nine subsections (0 - 8), which again, from a programming perspective, are defined by the second digit (1000, 3100, 5500, and 7800, etc.).

Those in turn have eighteen sub-subsections (1000-1017), which are defined by the last two digits of a zone's number (incidentally the zone number tells us its latitude and longitude boundaries too).

Anyway, as shown in Fig. 2, the zone numbers add up to 648 WOD zones (4 × 9 × 18 = 648).
Fig. 4 2,007,831 rows

A software developer has to deal with the original situation as it is, not how they would do it (I like the WOD numbering system).

In this case, a "tree" structure is the way I chose to handle this problem, because there are gaps.

One can't use a 648 element array because the zone numbers are not sequential.

They proceed as 1000-1017 (gap 1018 - 1099), then proceed as 1100-1117 (more gaps on the way to 1817), then the 3000-3017 series begins, (gap 3018 - 3099) 3100-3117 (gaps ...)  etc. etc. so the tree structure is an efficient way to code a traverse of the WOD zones (see Fig. 2).

Notice Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 to get a glimpse of what the rows of records look like "in the raw."

The SQL query that produced the list in Fig. 3 has an SQL "limit 25" clause in it, so it only produced 25 rows.

Fig. 5 the history table
I "let fly" with Fig. 4 by removing that limit, so it retrieved all rows for that zone.

But, I can't show you all 2,007,831 rows in zone 1112 ... it would fill way too many blog pages.

But you get my drift, there is a lot of data to look at, so I have to tailor results to viable blog post lengths.

Notice the many different depths in meters (next to last column @ Fig. 4) just so you understand that I also had to deal a blow to the volume of data involved.

Fig. 6 Finally, a graph !
I did so by using the "0-200", "200-400", "400-600", "600-800", "800-1000", "1000-3000", and ">3000" depth levels ('>' means greater than).

All the many variant depths and values are isolated to, or are averaged (by year) into seven levels, covering the entire water column from the surface to the bottom.

What this all boils down to is depicted in Fig. 5, which shows the SQL query in the 'history' table (which is what is produced from the '2,007,831 rows' @ Fig. 4) on WOD Zone 1112, after the condensing.

Then, what you typically are shown is the graph at Fig. 6.

In this post I have not mentioned the downloading and slicing of the PI data (my nickname for their file format) because that was covered in the previous post.

Now you know why I was also critical, in the previous post, of the scientist who wanted to estimate these billions of measurements with a "mathematical model":
With recently improved instrumental accuracy, the change in the heat content of the oceans and the corresponding contribution to the change of the sea level can be determined from in situ measurements of temperature variation with depth. Nevertheless, it would be favourable if the same changes could be evaluated from just the sea surface temperatures because the past record could then be reconstructed and future scenarios explored. Using a single column model we show that the average change in the heat content of the oceans and the corresponding contribution to a global change in the sea level can be evaluated from the past sea surface temperatures.
(Ocean Science, 6, 179–184, 2010, emphasis added). And that ill-advised misadventure was advocated without even going to ARGO land where the PFL measurements are made by accurate automated submersibles (ARGO net).

[The WOD "PFL" files are robust:  "Note: WOD includes GTSPP and Argo data, plus more" - Ocean Profile Data]

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.