Saturday, January 20, 2018

Questionable "Scientific" Papers - 16

Fanatically, a group of business investors became scientists and, in one fell scoop, solved the global warming induced climate change problems.

At least they say they have in an unscientific paper: "The Climate-Change Doomsday Just Got Canceled".

Yep, to solve this previously grave problem (The Uninhabitable Earth), it took non-scientist. money-grubber. editor types to misinterpret / ignore a scientific paper published in the journal Nature (The Paper).

Never mind that the "doomsday canceled" paper does not say what these "indoor geeks" (in their pathetic editorial placed in the politics section of their rag) said it says.

Even the URL ("www . investors . com / politics / editorials / climate-change-doomsday-temperature-increase-co2") indicates that they have no science section (or scientific reality) inside their duh-bubble rag (Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity, 2).

Perhaps they are sycophants with a hunger to join one of Trump's climate denial groups (it is obvious that they qualify for that cuck group), or even want some military contracts now that the Denier in Chief has made the military a sh*thole of denialism too (Trump Military Now Denies Climate Change).

Or perhaps they are just as stupid as they appear to be (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion, 2, 3; Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming; Oceans Melting Greenland).

The previous post in this series is here.

See "you in the camps", and see what this very aware Ret. Army Colonel says:



Ret. Navy Adm. Tilley about a decade ago:



Friday, January 19, 2018

First Shots Fired In The Currency Wars - 3

Fig 1  Trends In Sync
Since 2009 this series, in addition to discussing the history of the "petrodollar," has also considered the future of the U.S. version of the petrodollar (First Shots Fired In The Currency Wars - 2).

It is not surprising that the world's petrodollar, historically, has been the U.S. Dollar ... primarily or in significant part because of the reputation of the U.S.A. in the world community.

A Gallup poll, then, is an indicator that the petrodollar situation is in flux:
"One year into Donald Trump's presidency, the image of U.S. leadership is weaker worldwide than it was under his two predecessors. Median approval
Fig. 2 Trends in Sync
of U.S. leadership across 134 countries and areas stands at a new low of 30%, according to a new Gallup report.

The most recent approval rating, based on Gallup World Poll surveys conducted between March and November last year, is down 18 percentage points from the 48% approval rating in the last year of President Barack Obama's administration, and is four points lower than the previous low of 34% in the last year of President George W. Bush's administration."
(World's Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low). As goes the reputation so goes the dollar's reputation, and vice versa:
"Just days after China's (denied) threat to slow/stop buying US Treasuries, and just days before the launch of China's petro-yuan futures contract, Germany's central bank confirmed it would include China's Renminbi in its reserves."
(As Petro-Yuan Looms, Bundesbank Adds Renminbi To Currency Reserves). "Make America great again" means something else it would seem.

Incidentally, three petrodollar adversaries ranked top notch in that Gallop Poll, indicating that Trumpism is not working:
"Germany has replaced the U.S. as the top-rated global power in the world. The U.S. is now on nearly even footing with China (31%) and barely more popular than Russia (27%) ..."
(ibid, Gallup Poll). These are sad times for the U.S.A. (whether the 62 some odd million voters who made it so know it or not).

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



Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The World According To Measurements - 10

Fig. 1a
Fig. 1b
Fig. 1c
Fig. 2a
Fig. 2b
Fig. 2c
Fig. 3a
Fig. 3b
Fig. 3c
I. In The Beginning

What do you do?  (when you have been using a toolkit forever, then log on to the site one day to find the following):
"The SeaWater library of EOS-80 seawater properties is obsolete; it has been superseded by the Gibbs SeaWater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox of the International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater - 2010, (TEOS-10)"
(EOS-80, emphasis added). My solution was to change to using TEOS-10 for my thermal expansion and related oceanography oriented calculations (The World According To Measurements - 7).

Progress happens (such as: The World According To Measurements, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Sometimes I wonder, though, if others noticed the improvement.

That is because peer-reviewed papers relevant to the subject of thermal expansion of the ocean don't seem to mention the issue or either one of those toolkits (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27).

Anyway, it is a struggle to use a vast database, as these logs show:
a Dredd Blog processing log:

1000_vc1 = 134,806,808
1000_vc2 = 133,628,647
(268,435,455)

3000_vc1 = 82,398,521
3000_vc2 = 80,352,621
(162,751,142)

5000_vc1 = 83,301,108
5000_vc2 = 82,227,068
(165,528,176)

7000_vc1 = 134,492,236
7000_vc2 = 133,943,219
(268,435,455)

new_vc1 = 67,156,207
new_vc2 = 67,061,513
(134,217,720)
==============
(999,367,948 total)
That is the "~billion records" I speak of every now and then.

Regular readers will know that the 1000, 3000, 5000, 7000, and "new" are WOD indicators for hemispheric quadrants: NE (1000), NW (7000), SE (3000), SW (5000).

The "new" indicates subsequent additional measurements for those quadrants about each quarter (WOD selection map, WOD updates).

The "vc1" and "vc2" indicate temperature measurements (vc1) and salinity measurements (vc2).

II. A Problem

One of several problems that are associated with the change to TEOS-10 is that the functions in the toolkit, such as gsw_alpha(SA, CT, P), require a pair or set of coherent measurements.

By coherent I mean taken at the same location, depth, and time.

Which led to the problem of organizing those ~billion measurement that way.

As it turned out, there were many measurements that did not meet that requirement.

There are "orphan" temperature and salinity measurements at various depths that can't properly be used in toolkit functions that require a group of values.

So ...

III. A Solution

The solution is to weed out the outliers and make a coherent group of measurements that will allow the proper use of the TEOS-10 toolkit.

The numbers themselves show that the CTD and PFL dataset counts are not one temperature measurement for each salinity measurement.

So, my software separates them into coherent groups while processing the WOD format into a CSV file format.

I have been perfecting that software for awhile now, and am very close to "no more problems" with that part of it.

IV. Recent Graphs

Recently we noticed that the salinity graphs revealed some radical departures from the norm of abstract maximum and minimum boundaries.

That is not unusual in a mean average situation, because there will be "the lowest" and "the highest" which will be moderated by averaging.

But as I fine tuned the pairing, some of the aberrations (but not all) subsided.

V. Today's Graphs

Today's graphs show that the salinity pair matching has improved, and I really don't expect it to change from here on out.

I am not talking about new data each quarter, I am talking about the fixed CTD and PFL datasets (1000, 3000, 5000, and 7000 quadrants).

In other words, I think the software is "there."

VI. Conclusion

I did not include the S. Hemisphere ... cause I want to listen to some Santana when he was a youngster (after Mark Hanson's hot Santana session addition, I was forced to add the S. Hemisphere graphs: Fig. 3a - Fig. 3c).

Join the jam if you like Carlos:



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