The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 13

Gambler In Chief

I. Introduction

Gambling is in the air.

Secretary of State T. Rex was fired for criticizing Russia.

The Whut? House lied about that, saying that the firing was for other reasons.

FBI official McCabe was fired just before retiring because of what he described as an ongoing assault by The Bullshitter in Chief on the Russia Criminal Conspiracy case (cf. The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 11).

And a U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame member publicly stated:

"Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin."

(General McCaffrey Criticism, emphasis added; cf About General McCaffrey). That reality has occurred to most everyone (outside the despotic minority) except for the majority in congress.

For example, a former CIA Director wrote:

"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you."

(Ex-CIA Boss John Brennan Tears Into Donald Trump, emphasis added). The Don can't call that weak, so he is getting feedback for what he is himself causing.

II. A Diversion From The Stormy Thingy

I heard one former U.S. Attorney say that these events are a diversion to take the media attention off the Stormy Daniels Scandal.

That scandal has now been admitted to from The Don's side in the sense that they counter sued Stormy and want to now make a federal case out of it:

"President Donald Trump has jumped into the lawsuit filed against him by an adult film actress seeking to void a “hush agreement” about their relationship,

NoClue Ella de Dump

while his longtime attorney is claiming that they have the right to sue her for at least $20 million.

The latest twist comes after the White House initially claimed Trump had nothing to do with Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen’s payment of $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford ― better known by her stage name, Stormy Daniels ― just days before the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen filed papers Friday to move Clifford’s lawsuit from state court in California to a federal court there. Trump, through Beverly Hills lawyer Charles Harder, filed papers indicating that he agrees with Cohen that the matter belongs in federal court."

(Trump’s Legal Team Says It Can Sue Stormy Daniels For $20 Million). Whether a diversion or not, the firing of McCabe is seriously distasteful to those who see it as a mean, vindictive act against the Mueller probe.

What makes the diversion observation valid IMO is that new factors entered the picture yesterday when Stormy's lawyer pointed out that she had been threatened with physical harm if she talked (Stormy Daniels was threatened with physical harm, lawyer claims).

III. Conclusion

The Kremlin must have something quite substantial that causes The Don to gamble so much with obstruction of justice and criminal conspiracy charges hanging around.

What is for certain is that we are watching to see if what Director Brennan said to The Don ("America will triumph over you") will come true.

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

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Gambling storms ...

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Ocean Bottom Pressure Data

Oceans of the World

Today I am going to discuss some of the problems with Ocean Bottom Pressure (OBP) records.

What I did in preparation for this post was to generate data from the World Ocean Database (WOD) zones for each ocean area (see graphic to the left).

I used all PSMSL tide gauge stations in each ocean area, as well as all bottom pressure records from the same ocean areas.

Equatorial Indian

The tide gauge stations are found along the coasts of these ocean areas, while the OBP stations tend to be out to sea in deep waters.

I also included satellite based readings beginning in 1993.

Equatorial Pacific

The satellite dataset is the same for all graphs because it is the global mean average.

The tide gauge graphed lines are different in each graph because they are composed of tide gauge records from each individual ocean area.

The same goes for the OBP dataset, which is also from the different/individual ocean areas.

North Atlantic

You can see the OBP problem at once by comparing the sea level change shown by the tide gauges along the coast line, the global mean averages shown by the satellite data, and the two OBP panes.

North Indian

The OBP graph lines are all over the place and generally incoherent in terms of consistent accuracy (Estimating high frequency ocean bottom pressure variability).

This illustrates the major problems that arise in attempting to set up an OBP station that can watch the highest (a.k.a. deepest) sea level areas out in the deep ocean.

One paper indicates that we need a new and robust design for OBP stations:

"Long-term vertical seafloor displacements and geostrophic changes in the water column height could be easily monitored if pressure meters were less susceptible to drift. Currently, these signals, which have typical amplitudes

North Pacific

from decimeters to less than 1 mm/yr, cannot be differentiated from instrumental drift. In this paper, we introduce and outline a new constructional concept for an ocean bottom pressure meter that aims for unequivocal detection and monitoring of long-term trends. The concept is based on a differential pressure sensor that measures the pressure difference between the environment and a reference pressure within a sealed volume. This sealed volume conserves the instantaneous pressure at the moment of its closure at the monitoring location in a temperature-compensated manner. Furthermore, the approach enables easy in situ calibration of the differential pressure gauge by simply opening the reference pressure chamber to the environment and checking the zero point offset."

(A new concept for an ocean bottom pressure meter capable of precision long-term monitoring in marine geodesy and oceanography). That is reason for hope.

South Pacific

The OBP stations do not establish the fact of sea level rise and fall, so we can determine the issues with what we have without them.

However, they are ultra critical when it comes to tsunami warnings and several related matters.

What they can offer, in terms of sea level change, is a monitoring system in the areas where sea level is highest.

That would be out in the areas that are generally far from civilization, far from the coastlines.

Southern

In that regard I am going to continue the search for the good datasets from good ocean area candidates.

That is, those in critical areas which are of long lasting quality and able to endure the great pressures down there in the deeper waters.

The next effort I will engage in is an attempt to round up all the active OBP stations in one subject area, and fully implement the story they tell.

South Atlantic

That may require additional focus and observation, because one malfunction can spoil things requiring a rejection of the data during the entire time span that the station is producing bad data.

Hopefully, the new instrument design mentioned in the paper I cited above will be active and in place shortly.

In the mean time I will continue to flag aberrant portions of the datasets I already have, and to clean them up.

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There is 'out' and there are 'laws'. Lyrics to both here:

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Sea Level Change Update

Fig. 1

In today's post we take a look at the Permanent Service For Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) update of March 5, 2018.

But first I wanted to mention that I canceled yesterday's planned post about single stations of the ocean bottom pressure (OBP) type.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

The reason is the data set is either not complete or is too corrupt to be used without extensive filtering as I mentioned in previous postings (The Ghost-Water Constant - 10, Databases Galore - 21).

That will take more time.

Associated with that is the fact that the OBP has promise, but it is nothing more than fine tuning of the Satellite Record.

The whole exercise is to bring the accuracy of sea level in the deep ocean to within a centimeter of accuracy (On The More Robust Sea Level Computation Techniques - 9).

In practical terms, which would be relevant and important to Sea Port Authorities for example, the OBP factor is not paramount.

The PSMSL tide gauge station records are quite substantial in terms of providing them with a glance of the past and an indication of their future experience in sea levels (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Fig. 4

Nevertheless, I would like to complete the construction of the OBP dataset in terms of both quality and quantity.

Today's graphs show the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, a combination of both hemispheres, and satellite mean average sea level change (SLC).

The hemispheric views cover the years beginning in the late 1800's up until recent years.

The satellite record begins in 1993 and continues to the same year that the tide gauge stations do.

I should note that the golden 23 show a higher sea level finale than the hemispheric and satellite finales do.

The reason for that is the use of sea level fall (SLF) areas in the two hemispheres and their averages.

As a final comment, I will note that the major factor is that this latest data from PSMSL indicates an increase in sea level.

That sea level rise in the golden 23 ended up at 203 mm and change.

For a very good view of the ups and downs of SLC check out the NASA site (Sea Level Change).

Databases Galore - 21

Layer 3

As it turns out, the ocean bottom pressure (OBP) database world is not as coherent and robust as some of the others are.

For example, there are inexplicable value changes that really can't be anything other than failure of the device or parts of it.

The bottom pressure equipment at first only lasted a few days in the really deep waters.

Layer 4

Layer 5

The pressures are incredible down there and so it took a while to master the engineering.

Layer 6

Layer 7

The data quantity is fairly large, so I am having to take way more time on it than I have in some other cases.

Layer 8

Layer 9

I generated some graphs using data at the layer level (latitude oriented layers) as with some of the WOD data (e.g. The Layered Approach To Big Water).

Layer 10

Layer 11

Today I am going to generate some individual station graphs, which is the end game for this particular research.

Layer 12

Layer 13

That is because, if you remember, the scientists that inspired this particular endeavor had indicated that under the proper circumstances a single OBP station could keep watch on the ghost water height out in the deep oceans.

So, the ultimate goal is to find the single location, or small group of them, with which to watch the rising sea levels around the globe.

I have been using collections so far because I need to learn all the ins and outs of this dataset, and how to best apply it.

The graphs today are print outs of condensations of millions of in situ measurements that are averaged by year after some analysis is done.

Basically they are observations of changes in and variations of mixtures of pressure and 'height' (a.k.a. 'depth').

Thus, they have no single unit of measurement such as meters, millimeters, millibars and the like.

The numbers are mixtures of units, so they are related only by comparisons to each other.

At the station level I will use millibars, meters, and millimeters as the particular case may call for.

I have found that those who are producing and sharing the in situ data are not yet using the TEOS-10 toolkit as the official institutions in Oceanography had hoped.

I am using that toolkit because it is quite robust and efficient.

It saves time and adds professional accuracy to many efforts.

For example, one note in the file headers indicate that they calculate 'height' a.k.a. 'depth' by using '670.0' as a constant for determining sea level change (SLC).

They divide the pressure (P) in millibars by '670.0' to ascertain the 'depth' (positive number) or 'height' (negative number)  in millimeters.

The better, easier, and more accurate way is to use  the TEOS-10 toolkit function "Z = gsw_z_from_p (P, latitude)", because the gravitational impact on P changes with latitude.

One size fits all will not be as accurate in the long run.

So, I will continue to check out the data and develop ways and means of detecting where it obviously contains data generated by a damaged gauge.

One case in point is a situation where a gauge, overnight, indicated that the ocean level

Bottom Pressure

above it raised some 80 meters in about a 24 hour period.

Those situations are to be expected at depths of thousands of meters because the pressures are otherworldly (but see this: A New Concept).

The example in the photo to the right shows a pipe that was crushed by bottom pressure.

Tomorrow I plan to detail some single stations in a search for "the golden OBP gauges" a la the golden twenty three tide gauge stations (Golden 23 Zones Revisited).

Doing this work is exhausting but once the system is designed and working fully it will be a valuable asset to the Dredd Blog system.

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