The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 5

"I am not an American Company"

In the previous post I wrote:

"Well, we covered The Don, The Banners, and Sgt. Dog in the previous posts of this series (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan, 2, 3).

So, today let's cover the Mighty Quinn, a General of Bullshitistan if there ever was one."

(The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 4). So, in today's episode let's cover T-Rex, the guy from the tradition "I am not an American company." (The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads).

Recently T-Rex forgot to put on his camouflage package, and therefore went alt-pro shape-shifter out in alt-right public view:

"Secretary of State [T-Rex] is skipping a NATO meeting, but he is planning to travel to Russia next month. His travel schedule is raising alarms in Europe." - NPR
...
"[T-Rex's] decision to miss his first NATO meeting but visit Russia a week later plunged his department into damage control, frustrated allies and left analysts scratching their heads at an administration that once again is rubbing Europe the wrong way and raising questions about its commitment to its Western allies." - CNN
...
"America’s newly-installed secretary of state [T-Rex] is to skip his first Nato meeting, it has been announced, and will instead greet the president of China and then travel to Russia." - Telegraph

The media's consternation is misplaced due primarily to a dearth of knowledge of the history of Oil-Qaeda, so let's just briefly go through it from recent on back into the more distant past:

"Speaking from the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, Russian President Vladmir Putin lauded ExxonMobil, calling the company Russia’s 'old and reliable [dirty oil] partner.'"

(Deepwater Horizon Keeps On Killing & Drilling - 3). That took place several years ago in 2014.

Going back further, Oil-Qaeda all along has been in sufficient control of "America's lifeblood" ("Oil is the lifeblood of America's economy" - ibid) via surreptitious State Department machinations:

John D. Rockefeller, in his 1909 Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, recalled, "One of our greatest helpers has been the State Department. Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls have aided to push our way into new markets in the utmost corners of the world." But he left out a key explanation for the government's interest. Standard Oil was the biggest U.S. company, putting a hundred ships to sea, buying and selling oil in Latin America, Germany, and the Far East. It also operated a global intelligence system. "By 1885," according to one historian, "seventy percent of the Standard's business was overseas and it had its own network of agents through the world, and its own espionage service, to forestall the initiatives of rival companies or governments."

(The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads). Is it any wonder, then, that T-Rex would come out of the closet, come from behind the curtain, and show us how things have always been over at the State Department?

Their secular religion (Oilah Akbar! Oilah Akbar!, 2, 3, 4, Hateful Oilboarding For Oilah Akbar, Oilah Akbar in Afghanistan, You Rejected Your Only Savior For Oilah) has shaped and shifted world events since your grandmother and grandfather tried to figure it out long ago:

Long before politicians mewled helplessly about the power of “Big Oil”, carbon-based fuels were shaping our very political, legal, intellectual, and physical structures.
...
For instance, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a pivotal moment in America’s strategic outlook. America, a global hegemon whose empire was weakening, seized the second largest oil deposits in the world as a way of preventing its economic and political decline.
...
The last declining global hegemon, Great Britain, also engaged in a brutal and highly controversial British occupation of Iraq, in the 1920s, pressed aggressively by the well-known British conservative, Winston Churchill.
...
From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
...
Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
...
Britain was well supplied with coal [but not oil]. It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
...
Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.

Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil.

(The Universal Smedley - 2, cf The Fleets and Terrorism Follow The Oil - 2). There is little wonder that sometimes T-Rex will forget to play-pretend (which shocks the media).

He recently did so by accidentally pointing out the Russia thingy, thereby revealing that the media are lost in space, and causing a "YAH" psychological reaction a la You Are Here.

T-Rex is in Jurassic Park baby, acting out the final scene (the Anthropocene).

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

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T-Rex to Lady Liberty:

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The Layered Approach To Big Water - 7

Layer Eight

I. Background

Regular readers know that I use only in situ measurements from the World Ocean Database (WOD) that have been placed into the "CTD" and "PFL" datasets, and that I use both 'O' (random depth) and 'S' (standard depth) categories therein.

Recently I mentioned changing my conversion settings to only use individual measurements in the WOD that have been given a zero errors setting (out of 0-9) by the WOD handlers (A New Way of Analyzing The Depths - 4).

Layer Seven

Subsequent to that change, I have now also added filters that only allow individual measurements of the Temperature ('varcode 1') and Salinity ('varcode 2') measurements.

Further, I have put quality restrictions of my own on the qualities of those measurements.

Layer Six

This involves only using Salinity readings from 0.5 to 38, and Temperature readings from -2.5 C to 35.5 C, since those are the general low (polar) and high (Persion Gulf) valid ocean water temperatures (Temperature of Ocean Water).

Layer Five

Some of the values in the WOD are out of that range, so they are flagged and filtered now so that I don't use them.

Layer Four

Nevertheless, over so many posts, a few may still get through the software system, so keep an eye out as I do.

Layer Three

II. The "Layer" Approach

In this series I have intended to follow latitude oriented layers from the Equator north into the Northern Hemisphere, and south into the Southern Hemisphere (see last graph showing the area in red outline).

Layer Two

The intent is to graph areas of generally equal temperature and salinity ranges, seeing as how the layers tend to be equidistant from the Equator and from the poles.

Layer One

Today's posts feature Layer Zero through Layer Eight, which covers the Northern Hemisphere.

The day of year format "DOY" is used on all graphs.

Layer Zero

This format tends to show a generally decreasing temperature levels as we move from the Equator toward the Arctic, which is to be expected.

III. Other Formats To Come

The month and year formats for these zones will be presented in graphs in soon-to-come posts.

They will be covering the same nine layers.

They will be  in formats that use the exact same temperature and salinity data.

Nevertheless, they will be able to present a different, but revealing picture.

I have been pleased with how much it helps to present the exact same data in three ways as I said before.

IV. Why Am I Doing This?

I have written that one of the reasons is to revisit the hypothesis that "thermal expansion is the main cause of sea level rise" in the 19th and 20th centuries.

World Ocean Database Zones (layers L0-L8)

That came from the IPCC some time back, and IMO it is not a correct hypothesis, because, as you can see the temperature levels of the oceans do not show the trend that sea level graphs show.

The bathtub model as it applies to sea level change is a non-starter (The Bathtub Model Doesn't Hold Water, 2, 3, 4).

The ocean layers, if the thermal expansion hypothesis had not been falsified in these multiple series of posts (Series Posts, SEA LEVEL), would show stable upward trend lines.

Instead, they show stable trend lines indicating IMO that the ninety some odd percent of heat being trapped by green house gases is going into the oceans and is then being relatively evenly distributed.

V. Exceptions To The Rule

The polar regions are out of form in that department, because they are unequally impacted (see e.g. Polar Sea Ice Trend At Both Poles, 2, 3, 4).

They are warming several times faster than the lower latitudes are (Live Science).

The graphs get a bit rugged at the poles (compare Layer Zero  to Layer Eight).

VI. Conclusion

The great ice sheets contain sufficient ice to raise sea level hundreds of feet, and they are now and have been the main source of sea level change (Humble Oil-Qaeda).

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

Polar Sea Ice Trend At Both Poles - 4

Fig. 1 Antarctica 2016

At the Arctic circle sea-ice area the season of maximum sea-ice extent looks like it is over for this year.

At the south pole, as usual, the opposite is true.

With one difference.

Both poles are setting all time records for the lowest (minimum) sea-ice extent since records began to be taken and recorded.

This record setting trend began last year, and all things considered, seems to be a trend (the new abnormal).

Fig. 2 Antarctica 2017

The story at the north polar region is that the lowest winter sea-ice extent (lowest maximum) is history now.

Not only that, there is the potential to set the record for the lowest summer and fall sea ice extent.

Everyone will be watching for, in a few months, the lowest summer / fall minimum ever.

Regular readers will remember that I am also watching the OMG project closely (OMG: Oceans Melting Greenland).

I want to see what impact the sea-ice extent's ongoing extinction might have on the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Antarctica Ice Sheet.

Fig. 3 Arctic Sea-ice 2016

The graphs in Fig. 1 and Fig. 3 are Dredd Blog graphs for 2016 sea-ice extent, while Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 are recent graphs up to and including March 21, 2017.

The NSIDC graph at Fig. 5 is another way of "saying" the same thing regarding the Arctic sea-ice extent.

The downward turn in the size of the sea-ice there is unmistakable, and it is a sign of even more startling things that are going to come our way.

Fig. 4 Arctic Sea-ice 2017

These events are no surprise to global warming induced climate change researchers.

They forewarned us that this was going to happen as a result of the spread of climate change denying politics and pseudo-science.

Together with the denialists' refusal to heed hard science in favor of soft, dishonest political dementia, the catastrophe is spreading like a cognitive cancer (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

Fig. 5  NSIDC Graph 3/21/17

The longer that societies remain in the current demented status-quo state, the sicker the Earth will become.

In terms of extinction of biological species, including human civilization, they too will slowly melt away (sans a nuclear war which would be the quickest dead end).

History and herstory are the same in this respect:  "In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown." - A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee

The previous post in this series is here.

A New Way of Analyzing The Depths - 4

Fig. 1 Day of Year format, Layer Nine

I rebuilt my World Ocean Database (WOD) SQL database.

I am now using only data with the error flag set to '0', zero, meaning it is an 'acceptable value' with none of the about nine error categories.

In other words the WOD folk have determined that measurement to be free of errors  (see WOD User's Manual, Table 12, p. 39, p. 49 PDF).

The exercise decreased the number of rows in my raw SQL tables of data from 974,560,328 rows down to 924,193,524 rows (50,366,804 fewer rows, or about 5%).

Fig. 2 Month format, Layer Nine

On graphs, it has no significant impact on most measurements, the major impact being at the top depth layer.

On the Layer Nine area of the WOD zones, the mean average temperature of the top depth level (0-200m) of the zero-error data decreased by about 2 deg. C in Layer Nine, while the other depth layers were the same (compare Fig. 1 and Fig. 4 with Fig. 3a and Fig. 3b here).

As we go through the layers (0-18) I expect the same results to hold.

Fig. 3 Year format zero errors, Layer Nine

BTW, this further supports the "thermal expansion is not the major or a major cause of sea level rise" hypothesis (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

Fig. 4 Year format with errors, Layer Nine

The recent paper discussed in a recent post (Questionable "Scientific" Papers - 12) had mentioned that WOD suggests that the better practice is to use only records with the error flag set to zero ("no errors").

So I decided to make the change, since WOD recommends it (see "III. QUALITY CONTROL PROCEDURES" at p. 33, p. 43 PDF in the WOD User's Manual).

The upgrade/update applies to the "Year", "Month", and "Day of Year" graph types.

In conclusion, the time and effort was worth it because striving for accuracy is a number one level priority.

The previous post in this series is here.

Questionable "Scientific" Papers - 12

 

Fig. 1 ARGO Float launch

I. Background

A lot of the history of science is associated with the development and use of technology.

Scientists use technology like industrialists, businesses, government, and everyday citizens do (so as to make some tasks less burdensome).

In today's post, I won't go into the sinister uses of technology, which some of the members of every one of those entities has or have historically failed to avoid.

I want to focus, instead, on one part of the work of scientists in the cases where they have good research intentions.

Such as, scientists who were (even with their good intentions on board) impacted in a negative way by defects in the early stages of a new technology which promised a new way to improve upon their research efforts into ocean heat content (OHC):

"Global warming is driven by Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). The EEI is likely forced to first order by a combination of greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing, which shapes the timing and magnitude of global warming. It is also linked to the internal variations of the climate system and episodic volcanic eruptions; the latter may provide episodic strong radiative forcing to the Earth system. By definition, radiative forcing is the change in the net radiative flux due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as greenhouse gas concentrations. More than 90% of EEI is stored in the ocean, increasing ocean heat content (OHC), while the residual heat is manifest in melting of both land and sea ice, and in warming of the atmosphere and land surface. It is therefore essential to provide estimates of OHC changes over time with high confidence to improve our knowledge of EEI and its variability. How much has Earth really warmed in recent decades? The magnitude and location of the ocean warming have become an area of active research, because of the large historical uncertainty in estimated OHC changes. For instance, tracking Earth’s heat and ocean heat is one of the key topics of the so-called “global warming hiatus” research surge."

(Cheng et al., Sci. Adv. 2017; 10 March 2017, p.8, emphasis added;  Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015, p. 8, PDF). In that recent paper, one such defect in new technology is discussed as having had a negative impact on scientific research into OHC:

"The [scientific] community has made progress in detecting the systematic errors in expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data and has provided recommendations to correct the associated errors. These recommendations have markedly reduced the impact of XBT biases on multidecadal OHC estimation. Another major uncertainty arises from insufficient data coverage, mainly during the pre-Argo era (before 2005), that has led to spatial sampling errors in global and regional OHC estimation."

(ibid, Cheng et al., p. 1, emphasis added). Those researchers point out that data involved in that new "XBT" technology, which was discovered to have had "bugs," is available from the World Ocean Database:

"In situ temperature data from 1960 to 2015 were from the World Ocean Database (WOD) ..."

(ibid, Cheng et al., p. 8). Evidently they used the "XBT" dataset (ibid, and see Cheng Website).

II. The Dredd Blog Approach

When I was researching various Internet sources for data to use in posts here on Dredd Blog, I came upon the WOD site and decided to use the data available there.

But what data sets?

I decided not to use "XBT," as Cheng et al. evidently did, because of warnings that had been given by WOD:

"Since the XBT system does not measure depth directly, the accuracy of the depth associated with each temperature measurement is dependent on the equation that converts to depth the time elapsed since the probe enters the water. Unfortunately, problems have been found in various depth-time equations used since the introduction of the XBT system ... it can lead to overestimates of as much as 6% when calculating ocean heat content (Willis, 2004)."

(WOD 2013 User's Manual, doc. p. 43, PDF p.53, emphasis added). When I was choosing datasets, I really did not want to solve the mysteries in historical technology struggles, no, I just wanted some mostly unfettered data access.

So I chose the "CTD" and "PFL" datasets at WOD, and rejected the use of the "XBT" dataset.

Both of the datasets I chose have both "O" and "S" data, which I could use together, since I was going to use a broad depth-level approach (surface to bottom in seven levels - 0-200m, 201-400m, 401-600m, 601-800m, 801-1000m, 1001-3000m, and >3000m).

The "PFL" dataset in WOD data is composed mostly from ARGO float measurements (see Fig. 1), which is considered to be of the best quality, and they are consistency available.

The "O" dataset is composed of measurements taken at random depths, while the "S" dataset is composed of measurements taken at depths which the relevant scientific community determined to be standard depths at which researchers would gather their measurements.

I will leave the looking-backwards-to-fix-historical problems to Cheng et al., i.e., those with expertise in that field of work.

The datasets I use have been quality tested by WOD and flagged with a set of flags that indicate a degree of error, from zero (no errors) on up a ways (little, big, and bigger errors).

III. Dataset Size

I have pointed out the vast size (~1 billion rows) of the datasets I laboriously downloaded from WOD, then translated from the "PI language" into arithmetic (Databases Galore - 18).

That, IMO, is sufficient to determine the temperatures of the WOD ocean zones, and to tell us of relevant trends taking place in those zones.

After all, a measurement taken at latitude "x", longitude "y", at depth "z", on day, month, and year "t" is not going to be the same value when measured in the future at those same coordinates (however, all things considered, the trend will be the same).

The oceans are in constant flux, layers mixing with other depth layers, upwelling and spiraling downward, storms churning, currents flowing, gyres gyrating, and all of that, do cause constant (latitude "x", longitude "y", depth "z", day, month, and year "t") changes.

That does not mean we can not derive valuable deductions, so as to form valuable trend hypotheses, from that data measured at that location.

IV. Conclusion

So, I feel that the Cheng et. al. paper's intense nose-to-the-grindstone approach to fixing errors that arose "back when" (during new technology implementation) in order to find "truth values" and establish a "truth field" (ibid, Cheng et al.) or two, is "a bridge too far."

The approach I like to take is to extract the trend in these matters ("Concerning graphs of climate change and sea level change, the truth is in the trend line, not in the facts of the seesaw / sawtooth pattern." - Dredd Blog Quotes Page).

For instance, the trend in the polar sea-ice is not established by the exact measurement, color, and/or temperature taken of a section of ice in the Arctic or Antarctic.

The trend is established by watching all relevant events over a reasonable span of time (Polar Sea Ice Trend At Both Poles - 3).

I think that the same concept applies to ocean heat content and ocean temperatures (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

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