Hello, we are team of scholars and professionals in China, focusing on the important contemporary issues of the world including climate change. We have followed and appreciated the work done by the climate auditors including you, McIntyre, McKtrick and other contributors. Your work are very important in presenting the facts to the world.
China has been largely a mere recipient of AGW propoganda in the past decades, and the man-made climate change hypothesis was unscrutinized during most of the time. The auditors’ work, almost as whole, is unknown to the public. With China’s ever increasing importance in the world as well as its responsibility, it is desirable to introduce the honest voice and perspective to this country, and help people understand what has been really going on in the past decade.
As you are the key person in climategate e-mails fact revealing, we would like to introduce your book of “Climategate: The CRUtape Letter (Volume 1)” into China, translate it, and publish it. Your indefatigable efforts in providing and clarifying the facts and information, including making the CRU emails with consistent time-order, and maintaining an independent global surface temperature database (we believe there would be another success and breakthrough on this front), are deserved to be much more influential beyond the narrow confines of blogospheres, especially in such an important country as China.
We have rich experience in publishing industry and media, and we have helped to produce some nonfiction bestsellers and ignite constructive debates in the public. At the same time, we keep close working relationships with some outstanding scholars in China (with backgrounds in geoscience, statistics, economics and other social sciences). Recently we are planning some review on the work from the auditor blogs, making a wave of information exchange and cooperation between China and these independent climate observers. We wish your work and other important books could be a part of the agenda. If it becomes another popular book from our hands, further move could be planned (for example future volumes of your series).
This is our current thinking and proposal. Looking forward to your reply.
Dear Mr. Mosher, I am a “Hollywood Producer”, who like Nat Hentoff, is now a confirmed pro-life advocate. I am writing a screenplay about the proposed extermination of the baby boomers. In the screenplay I have a debate between those who advocate zero population growth and those who seek to make seniors more productive (rather than eliminate the “useless eaters” as eugenicists put it) so they can help pay their own way, and help save Social Security. I want to use the reference you made in your article ‘The Billionaire Boys Club’. You cited the millenia edition of the New York Times, published Jan 1, 2000, “listed “overpopulation” among the “Myths of the Twentieth Century.””. I have researched those terms on the NYT website archives and find no match. Could you give me more detail so I can pull this up? Author? Title of Article? It would be tremendous to use it in my screenplay debate. It would be even more ominous if the NYT has removed the article from the archives! all the best – Fletch
I’ve used a fake handle. I could do with an email chat about something where you might be well placed to figure out what to do about a ghcn “problem”. Tallbloke suggested Curry but I am disinclined to go anywhere near.
Steven, This morning I read your reply to Rex @December 25, 2011 at 10:21 pm on the WUWT Merry Christmas open thread. There was no surprise as I have read similar there and on other web sites over the years(some made by you). I believe I understand what you are bringing across and as the numbers work out there really are no questions. My interest regarding our continually changing climate is very practical.An averaged global temp trend provides me with nothing that I find useful. There was a recent discussion on Die Klimazwiebel regarding a paper that put forth the idea that climate studies should provide useful information that would aid in crop planting for a farmer. At Die Klimazwiebel an Ethiopian farmer was used as an example. Although I found the discussion fruitless this is precisely what I believe climate studies should be focused on.
Since about 2004 when I first was bitten by this fascinating topic of Climate Change I have been searching for relevant studies not based on gridded data but on “Growing Zones”. Hard data and not speculation based on models regarding fluctuations of growing zones is what seems to me the important issue along side of hydrology studies(I devoutly read Pielke Sr. hoping to one day find what I am searching).
Steven, I am certain that you are not Santa Claus but on this day after Christmas I would be very grateful should you point me in the direction of the studies that I am searching.
As others also do, I use an Internet handle. There are reasons for this. However, each and every time I post at a web site I provide my email address with my full name so every proprietor of every web site knows who I am and how to contact me.
Thank you for your time Steven, reanalysis data was a new one for me however after a cursory look I do not think it gets me to where I want to be(I could very well be mistaken). As I now live in Sweden, I think my best shot may begin with whatever the equivalent of the USDA is here in Sweden. What I would like to demonstrate, if it is the case on a commercial basis, planting times have changed, growing seasons have varied in duration and growing zones have moved in latitude, There is an active climate science blogosphere here in Sweden and several Swedish climate scientists that are patient and responsive to inquiries. I fear that I may have blocked off the next five to ten years of my spare time… If I find low hanging fruit I will let you know but I think I need a longer crook at this point!
New book: “Our Explosive Sun – A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life”
For those interested in the Sun and the Sun-Earth connection (+ Northern lights) my new popular science book has been released.
“Our Explosive Sun – A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life”.
Our Explosive Sun includes 143 color illustrations and photos of the Sun, several of which were made especially for the book and have never been published before. Additional material, available via Springer Extras, includes a large number of animations and video material. A PowerPoint presentation of the book is a useful resource for teachers.”
Steven, the “The New USDA Plant Zone Maps: Planting the Seeds of Faulty Logic” as posted at ICECAP a few weeks ago touches on where I was thinking. Manifestation of climate change will be seen in agricultural output. Parsing this seems almost impossible to me at this point in time. There are constant improvements in agricultural technology and the records seem far a few between. In my initial contacts with farmers in Sweden climate change seems to be a very distant concern. On the surface this seems to be a non-issue but I have this nagging feeling that this should really be looked at in depth. Time is on my side, all I need to do is clear some plates from the table. Thank you so much for your patients and your great links to resources.
The current economic crisis signals the weakness of ageing populations
– not exhaustion of resources and physical limits of the planet.
A death wish has crept into the politics and behavior of the Western societies. Long in coming, it is not as brazen as “Viva la muerte!” the paradox shouted by fascist hooligans who disrupted an appeal for peace at the University of Salamanca, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Fascists also chanted “Muera la inteligencia!”, in admission of the state of their minds at the most august cultural center of Spain.
A death wish is unnatural because it runs against the instinct of preservation of species, a primordial urge that drives all living creatures. Existence is a central theme of religious beliefs that exalt the work of men and women in bringing to life and raising the next generation. In the 1970s, the liberalization of the Western economies unleashed market forces that encouraged women to look for jobs, at a time when contraception and legalized abortion gave them control over birth. With the erosion of traditional values among secularized urban dwellers, the average Western couple started to have fewer than 2 children; in 1999 the number had fallen to 1.3.
This is a far cry from the structure of European populations in 1900. Nurtured by the Industrial Revolution, European Union countries then represented 14% of world population, even while they sent a great flow of settlers to occupy the New World. The population of the UE is now 6% and tends to 4% of world total; Europeans are under threat of extinction by their life styles. They may have fewer mouths to feed, but also fewer and weaker arms to produce and create.
The median age of Greeks, Italians and Spaniards will rise above 50 years in 2050 – this means that one in three persons in these countries will be 65 years old or older. A 75% tax burden will have to be placed on the incomes of economically active adults, mainly to defray entitlements of the aged. The existing free health care, pensions and subsidies will ultimately end, be it for lack of people.
Greece, Italy and Spain are now at the center of a Euro zone crisis because the Viva la Muerte culture is closing a full circle. Worse is coming to the Chinese, with their one child per couple policy. After the years of heady economic expansion are gone, the Chinese will face the same exhaustion dictated by the human life span, now faced by Europeans. The Japanese government estimates a one third reduction of population by 2060, when 40% of citizens will be of retirement age. If the trend continues until the end of this century, Japan will become a land inhabited by robots.
The current misanthropic mood has intellectual roots in a London lecture more than two centuries ago, when Benjamin Franklin spoke about the American population, then growing at a rate of 3% a year. The number captured the mind of a Cambridge youth, Thomas Malthus, a divinity student and also a mathematician. With compound interest arithmetic he reckoned that population would double every 23.5 years; the number of people in successive periods would be proportional to the series: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128…. After two generations, four would contend for the food available to one person. Exponential growth would stop long before this because Malthus assumed that the land available for food production is fixed and that crop yields would not improve. He concluded that universal famine would be the lot of future generations. Nature would restore the balance in a catastrophic way, with war, hunger and disease, unless public policy contained the trend to overcrowding.
Malthus’ book, Essay on the Principle of Population attracted attention in the first decades of the 19th century, but interest fell when its forecasts failed. In the Europe and North America, the Industrial Revolution brought increasing prosperity to support unprecedented growth of the population. The Essay has thought that ignores the vastness of the planet and the role of technology in the improvement of agricultural productivity and in shipping and preserving foodstuffs.
Discredited by facts, Malthusian thought remained dormant until the 1960s. At that time, the enormous advances in medical science, the advent of antibiotics and control of disease with better sanitation, had combined to bring a world-wide drop of death rates, while birth rates were remained at the traditional levels, practiced to compensate for the early deaths of previous times. The uncommon growth of world population in middle of 20th century prompted the publication alarmist books of Malthusian persuasion.
Population Bomb, of Paul Erlich, foresaw hundreds of millions of deaths by hunger in Asia, and even the increase of mortality rates due to poor nutrition, in the 1980s, in the United States. The pessimistic perspective was amplified by another influential book, Limits to Growth, of which 12 million copies were distributed. Its message is that a limited planet cannot support unlimited growth. The book introduced the concept of a fixed stock of non renewable resources depleted at an alarming rate, in an analogy with the Malthus concept of limited food availability.
HIGH SEAS…
The pessimists have three tenets they accept with an act of faith:
• We are running out of space. World population already is excessive for a limited planet, and grows at exponential rates, tending to disastrous overpopulation.
We are running out of resources. Non-renewable resources of the planet are being depleted to support unneeded consumption, at rates that render further economic growth unsustainable.
• We are running against time, as tipping points of irreversible climate change are reached. Carbon dioxide emissions by human activity cause global warming that will render the planet uninhabitable.
Many adopt the three tenets uncritically, but belief has no role in dealing with measurable physical things. When matters are quantified, the difference between true and false stands out.
SPACE IS AMPLE
Is excessive population a serious world problem? It may seem so to the dweller of a congested metropolis, living in discomfort, but is not something that can be generalized for the planet. The sum of the urban areas of the U.S. is equivalent to 2% of the area of the country, and 6% in densely populated countries such as England or Holland. And there is an abundance of green in urban areas. It is arguable that 7 billion people would live a comfortable urban life on 250 thousand square kilometers, the area of the State of Wyoming; that is less than 0.2% of a total terrestrial area of 148 million squared kilometers. Given 99.8% of free space, the idea of an overcrowded planet is exaggerated.
Exponential growth ceased long ago. Demographic forecasts are uncertain, but most accepted ones of the UN foresee stability of world population, to be reached in the 21st century. According some, world population will start to decline at the end of the 21st century. An aging population is the current worry. With so much space available, it cannot be held that the world population is excessive or has possibility of becoming so.
RESOURCES ARE ADEQUATE
Mining companies are aware of how little is known about the content of the terrestrial crust and discard the notion of that it has a limited, measured and known stock, of minerals. The pessimists say that, ultimately, a limited planet cannot allow limitless growth, and hold this as axiomatic. It can also be counter argued that, ultimately, there are no non-renewable resources, in a universe ruled by the Law of Conservation of Mass. Stated by Lavoisier in the 18th century it holds that “nothing it is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.” Human consumption never deducted one gram from the mass of the planet and, theoretically, all used materials can be recycled. Its feasibility depends on the availability of low cost energy. When fusion energy becomes operational, it will be available in unlimited quantities.
The potential source of energy is deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in water in a ratio of 0.03%. One cubic kilometer of sea water contains more energy than would be gotten with the combustion of all known reserves of oil in the world. Since the oceans contain 1400 million cubic kilometers of water it is safe to say that energy will last longer than the human species. Potable water need not be a limitation, as is sometimes said; new nanotube membranes promise to reduce the cost of energy for desalination to one tenth of its current cost. It would become viable to use desalinated water on coastal areas of the continents, an area on which much of the world population is settled.
It may be argued that such technologies are not yet available, but no historical precedent supports the notion of that human ingenuity is gone and that technology will remain frozen forever at current levels.
There is no scarcity of resources signaled by price increases. Since middle of the 19th century, a periodical, The Economist, has kept consistent and comparable records of the prices of commodities in real values; these have fallen for 150 years, thanks to technological progress. The decline has been benign. The cost of feeding of a human being was eight times higher in 1850 than it is today. In 1950, less than half of a world population of 2 billion had an adequate diet of more than 2000 calories per day, today, 80% has it, for a world population that tripled.
…DESTINATION UNKNOWN
UNCERTAINTIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
There is no consensus regarding future climate change. It can be said that there is acceptance of Malthusian ideas by European governments worried over a global warming they attribute to carbon dioxide generated by industrial activity. They make forecasts for world climate decades ahead, with a certainty that reminds one of the precision of astronomical calculations. However, climate has a chaotic behavior, in the mathematical sense, and is therefore subject to high degree of uncertainty, that will not be diminished by advances in scientific knowledge. There is no climate science with forecasting power comparable to the one of astronomy and such power will never come into being. Until recent times, no university offered a B.Sc. in climate science. Climate studies resort to numerous different fields such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, botany, zoology, paleontology, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics etc… fields with variable degrees of uncertainty.
In studies where the science is uncertain, different hypotheses contend to establish relationships of cause and effect. If a hypothesis is hijacked by a commercial interest in support of its claims, the debate slides from the academic plane to the political plane, on which the gimmicks of propaganda and public relations are to be expected.
The debate becomes polarized between political factions, each side with its own agenda. In climate matters, one side appeals to the authority of researchers in support of an anti-industrial agenda, admitted as painful, but necessary. The other side points to the lack of scientific basis for such a policy, qualified as suicidal. The clash of interests has transformed global warming into a journalistic and political phenomenon, not a physical one. Unfortunately, there are base motives in a campaign to vilify an Industrial Revolution that has, over two centuries, redeemed a large part of mankind from extreme misery. However, much of humanity still does not have access to electricity and suffers from all the ills of it. They only can be overcome by economic growth stimulated by increasing supply of cheap energy.
In this issue it is fit to ask the question: Qui bono? Who gains? In its modern version, it recommends following the money trail to an interest behind a cause. Suspect is the haste with which restrictive measures are proposed to reduce fuel use, with the pretext that tipping points for disastrous climatic change are being reached. Politicians are in a hurry to use this unverifiable hypothesis to support special interests. These include: governments that need huge revenues and an excuse to tax fuels; manufacturers benefited by regulation in favor of one form of energy generation and against competitors; empire building bureaucrats who want ample controls. To the list of beneficiaries of the global warming cause one must add the big international banks whose irresponsibility unleashed boom followed by bust.
In 1985, banking was a staid activity that accounted for 16% of the profits of all companies in the U.S. In 2008, 40% of total profits were earned by banks, a clear measurement of the size of the speculative bubble. The subsequent banking crisis was precipitated by toxic mortgages packaged and sold by banks as “derivatives”, which did much damage to the legitimate economy of the world. Greater mischief was on the way. The banks had hoped to put into circulation huge and unlimited issues of a fictitious asset, the Carbon Credit securities. The Chicago Climate Exchange, a phantom entity parallel to the Chicago Commodities Exchange, went broke and closed; the European Union Emission Trading Scheme is heading the same way amid a wave of fraud. The worse of gambling with carbon credits was stopped by the banking crisis.
The cluster of interests that support the manmade global warming cause is questioned. Against the expectation raised by computer climate models, measurement has evidenced the stability or decline of global temperature since 1995. It had risen in the two previous decades, provoking a scare about unchecked global warming. This shows that there are natural forces shaping the climate, of greater magnitude than the effect of the carbon dioxide, whatever its origin. These include the cyclical oscillations in oceanic currents and their temperatures, the activity of solar spots and the effect, on cosmic rays, of variable magnetic activity of the sun. These natural cycles still are little understood and of unknown weight in comparison with the effect of manmade carbon dioxide. Moreover, mankind can do nothing for or against natural forces of this magnitude. Sensible public measures are welcome to mitigate the effect of the climatic changes, when they occur and whatever the cause.
Politically motivated climate researchers had minimized uncertainties, in a field rife with them, to give their forecasts an appearance of solidity, backed by unanimous opinion, with the refrain: The debate is over; the science is settled. The unethical conduct of researchers was disclosed in the scandal labeled Climategate. It cast doubt on the impartiality and trustworthiness of UN-IPCC studies by people clearly engaged in promoting their political agendas.
An allegation of consensus of scientists does not make sense. In science, matters are never settled; there is always room for additional layers of knowledge provided by successful challenges to conventional wisdom. In the scientific mind there is no place for Magister Dixit, the master spoke, a reference to philosophers as final authorities. An argument from authority deserves rejoinder with the motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in Verba, according to which science rejects the word of authority above verifiable experimental evidence and logical reasoning,
Carbon dioxide is not toxic or a pollutant. Photosynthesis makes the gas a nutrient of plants that support the food chain of all living beings on the planet.
It is just to apply to the issue a principle of Roman law, In dubio pro reu, Justice must benefit the defendant where doubt exists, in this in case, the defendant is the maligned industrial economy.
THE CAUSE
The forecasts of UN-IPCC are speculations that reflect the assumptions fed to the computer models in support of the cause of the sponsors. These computer simulations are too uncertain to furnish rational grounds for public policies to inhibit economic activity “to save the planet”.
In support of such policies, stories of imminent disaster are told in the strident tones typical of the propaganda of totalitarian regimes to deceive masses. Their tactics were described by H. L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The propaganda machine quickly attributes to global warming anything that happens on the planet, such as: influenza pandemics; an earthquake in the Himalayas, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, the 2004 tsunami on the Indian Ocean; tribal wars in Africa; heat wave in Paris; plague of snails on the tiny Isle of Wight. In Australia: forest fires, sand storms in the dry season and floods in the rainy season. In North America: the last severe winters, the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. Evo Morales blames Americans for summer floods in Bolivia. Hugo Chaves thinks that with global warming capitalism killed an advanced civilization in Mars. Fidel Castro says that earthquakes are induced by the current boom in gas and oil production of U.S. With friends like these, do environmental causes need enemies?
In the opinion of the Professor Aaron Wildavsky, global warming is the mother of all environmental activists:
“Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.”
This was the youthful fantasy of now elderly hippies, bound to extinction by their barren life style.
When they are gone, Viva la vida! could become the motto of a hopeful world to be reached with a return to ancient truths that uphold the sanctity of life.
Hi Steve. I mentioned this on lucia’s blog but I’m not sure it has been noticed. Would you mind quickly scanning this link to see if the style is familiar to you:
Hi Steven, rather than clutter up Professor Judith Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread with discussions about you suspect understanding of atmospheric physics I thought it fairer to bring our exchanges on the subject over to your own blog.
For the benefit of those here who are unaware of the background to our discussions let me summarise. On 8th Feb. you stated incorrectly that ” .. in particular we know that C02 is opaque to IR ..” and used CACC campaigner Dr. Iain Stewart’s rigged demonstration in support of that unequivocal statement (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-166940).
Instead of trying to worm your way out of this situation why don’t you simply hold your hands up and acknowledged that you were wrong on 8th Feb. It seems to me that you had no idea that the demo. had been deliberately rigged to give viewers of the BBC’s Earth: the Climate Wars Episode 1 the mistaken impression to that CO2 is opaque to IR. There is no shame in that as I’m sure that plenty others were fooled too. I gave you the example of that group of “educators” who also fell for it and are pushing it as a part of their CACC propaganda to school children in your vicinity. As I said QUOTE: “ .. ClimateChangeEducation.org is an organization of volunteers dedicated to education on climate change and global warming solutions — since 1999. We are science museum docents, teachers, students, scientists, university staff, parents and artists. Most of us are in California (U.S.), but we have volunteers all over the world .. ” (http://climatechangeeducation.org/about/who_we_are/index.html). On their homepage they include Dr. Stewart’s demo. as one of the “ .. the scientifically strong, vetted, authentic hands-on science demos .. ” (http://climatechangeeducation.org/) and link to it, just like you did. I speculate that that is where you became aware of it .. UNQUOTE (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191990).
Here’s what the designer of Dr. Stewart’s demonstration, Dr. Jonathan Hare, had to say. “..The thermal imaging camera .. was sensitive from ca. 1 to 5 µm, quite a large part of the IR spectrum. A lit candle or match produces lots of energy through the IR to the visible. .. You would think .. that when you .. introduce CO2 the bright flame would ‘disappear’ due to the IR absorption. However .. the candle doesn’t disappear! .. the CO2 absorptions observable by the IR camera are .. only in a relatively small part of the spectrum. The only way to get the demonstration to work is to have a ‘CO2 filter’ .. This only lets through IR at around 4 µm .. The filter blocks out much of the IR energy so that the CO2 absorption is not so swamped anymore and this allows us to now observe our vanishing candle effect .. ” (http://www.creative-science.org.uk/hollywood15.html).
BTW, Dr. Stewart’s admission that he was going to campaign in support of CACC was made in March 2008, only a few months after CACC propagandists Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/). Perhaps he thought it prudent to jump on the CACC bandwagon (although he does seem to have been keeping his head down since Climategate.
As usual, if anything that I have said here is considered to be unfair or a misrepresentation of the facts then please let me know and I will consider whether or not a retraction or apology is warranted. The last thing that I wish to do is misinterpret the evidence that has been made available to me and present a misleading picture to others.
Pete, If you put too many links in your comments wordpress will hold them up as they look like spam.
My site is otherwise unmoderated. I do, as I explained to you in mail, reserve the right to remove comments
from cyber stalkers and sociopaths. But as you see from other comments here I let all sorts of kooks post
here, even you. Please feel free to continue your rants here. I am sure some will find them enjoyable.
And yes C02 is opaque to IR, not transparent. If you want to discuss the exact details please feel free
to post all the google links you can find. But don’t expect me to read to or respond to everything you
want to post. I’m working on several projects. If you’d like to help with some coding I’m sure I can
give you something you will like.
Hi Steven, thanks for the advice about the spam detector. I’ll distort the URL in future. As for the offer to do some programming, that aspect of using computers never really appealed to me. I never found programming particularly interesting unless it was directly related to my design of a computer-based control or telecommunications system. I’d do it if I had to in order to get the system working but much preferred passing that boring stuff on to a programmer.
There was one system back in the late 60s, designed for custody transfer of refined petroleum product pipeline, where I couldn’t do that because I had designed the computer (discrete component RTL NOR logic blocks) and its machine code. It would have taken too long to train a programmer (contract time-scale pressures).
An outline of the design of the special purpose computer and its instruction code is given in the Appendix of my first peer-reviewed paper (http: // ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5267710&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5266378%2F5267709%2F05267710.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5267710).
Drop by when you’ve got something to show thats post 1970. A generic algorithm to create hardware designs is a very cool project. You should look into it. Of course you realize that chips today ( and yesterday ) are the result of somebody doing software ( VHDL or Verilog) that get’s turned into netlists which is passed over to boring hardware.
Hello, First let me thank you for your tutorial on MODIS. I have been doing all my work manually; now I am trying to automate the process with R MODIS. I have tried various examples from the package-some work or other do not. I can send a report to you or the package maintainer. But I thought you might be able to help me with my particular problem in using “runGdal”?
These are statements:
rasterObject <- raster(xmn=26.5, xmx=28.50957, ymn=57.49043, ymx=59.5)
peipsi <- getTile(extent=rasterObject)
runGdal(product="MOD11_L2", extent="peipsi", begin="2004001", end="2004004", SDSstring="LST_Night_1km")
Error in map.poly(database, regions, exact, xlim, ylim, boundary, interior, :
no recognized region names
Do you know how I can specify "extent" properly? A second question-is there a way to automate the file format with runGdal? Say from HDF to GeoTiff? Thanks. I appreciate any help.
John Lewis
Professor
McGill University
#####################################
.MODIS_Opts.R
# This file contains user default values for the R package 'MODIS'.
# version 0.6-25
#########################
# 1.) Path and archive structure defaults. (USE FOR SEPARATOR EIGHTER SINGLE FORWARD "/" OR DOUBLE BACKWARD SLASHES "\\"):
# set path. All data will be stored below this directory. If it doesn't exist it is created. Should work also with a remote path like a network directory!
localArcPath <- 'C:/Users/jlewis/Documents/MODIS_ARC' # If you already have downloaded some files, don't forget to call the function 'orgStruc()' after changing here!!
# set path, default output location for GDAL, FWTools/OSGeo4W, SSOAP, MRT processing results. If it doesn't exist it is created.
outDirPath <- 'C:/Users/jlewis/Documents/MODIS_ARC/PROCESSED'
dlmethod <- 'auto' # Method passed to ?download.file, "auto" is always a good choice
stubbornness <- 'high' # How stubborn shoud MODIS re-try to connect to ftp? See ?getHdf
resamplingType <- 'NN' # There are several layers that require "near" (i.e. VI_Quality, Day of the year,…)!
outProj <- 'GEOGRAPHIC'
pixelSize <- 'asIn'
#########################
# 4.) Windows specific section (could also be used in Linux if you want to point to an specific GDAL installation not in the default path):
# Set path to "OSGeo4W" (recommanded) or "FWTools" _bin_ directory or any HDF4 supporting GDAL instllation (location of "gdalinfo"); (USE FOR SEPARATOR EIGHTER SINGLE FORWARD "/" OR DOUBLE BACKWARD SLASHES "\\")
# Or run: "MODIS:::checkTools()" for autodetection.
# Example :
# gdalPath <- "C:/OSGeo4W/bin"
Hey, im a high student at the beacon school and as my final portfolio based asginment (pba) for my modern india history class, i am writing a research paper on the overpopulation in india. It is mandatory for me to have an interview and i knew you would be the perfect person. I dont have much time left to conduct this interview so it would be great if you would allow me to call or via web chat no later than tommorrow night. Hopeully you are available ! Thank you
I have a new candidate for FOIA that I discovered while reading some old threads searching for a post of mine. Wondering if you considered this person already.
I host an Internet radio broadcast twice a week in the UK with a global audience with a large global audience.
I recently interviewed Kevin Galalae who has appeared on the ‘alternative media’ circuit claiming to have exposed the depopulation agenda whilst at the same time espousing eugenics and claiming that depopulation is essential.
He did not have things all his own way and was confronted on the issue.
I would be very interested in having you on my show to give the facts on why we are NOT overpopulated as the facts are more obvious than most people would think in my opinion.
If you would be interested please contact me at the email address attached.
I live in San Diego. I have a high-end weather station and over the past two years have noticed quite a discrepancy between my station’s cold temperatures and the National Weather Service’s reported temperatures for my area. Since I am only 1 mile from that station, I was concerned my weather station was wrong. I have since calibrated it and added several other different types of temperature measurements to see if there is a problem. There isn’t. Here is what I have observed: at low temperatures, the NWS is 7 to 12 degrees higher. Typically they are 10 degrees higher. However, by around 10 AM and through the evening, my station and the NWS agree within 1 degree. What is going on? I know for example, that when we are reading 33 degrees F, there is frost on cars parked on the street and the golf courses nearby have at least a 2-hr frost delay. Since the NWS, which I can see from my house (we are at the same elevation, but separated by a small valley) is reporting 43 degrees, how can there be such a heavy frost? It makes me doubt the NWS weather data.
Steven Mosher's Blog 
Steven,
Great to see you have a full-time blog of your own.
Dear Steven Mosher,
Hello, we are team of scholars and professionals in China, focusing on the important contemporary issues of the world including climate change. We have followed and appreciated the work done by the climate auditors including you, McIntyre, McKtrick and other contributors. Your work are very important in presenting the facts to the world.
China has been largely a mere recipient of AGW propoganda in the past decades, and the man-made climate change hypothesis was unscrutinized during most of the time. The auditors’ work, almost as whole, is unknown to the public. With China’s ever increasing importance in the world as well as its responsibility, it is desirable to introduce the honest voice and perspective to this country, and help people understand what has been really going on in the past decade.
As you are the key person in climategate e-mails fact revealing, we would like to introduce your book of “Climategate: The CRUtape Letter (Volume 1)” into China, translate it, and publish it. Your indefatigable efforts in providing and clarifying the facts and information, including making the CRU emails with consistent time-order, and maintaining an independent global surface temperature database (we believe there would be another success and breakthrough on this front), are deserved to be much more influential beyond the narrow confines of blogospheres, especially in such an important country as China.
We have rich experience in publishing industry and media, and we have helped to produce some nonfiction bestsellers and ignite constructive debates in the public. At the same time, we keep close working relationships with some outstanding scholars in China (with backgrounds in geoscience, statistics, economics and other social sciences). Recently we are planning some review on the work from the auditor blogs, making a wave of information exchange and cooperation between China and these independent climate observers. We wish your work and other important books could be a part of the agenda. If it becomes another popular book from our hands, further move could be planned (for example future volumes of your series).
This is our current thinking and proposal. Looking forward to your reply.
Lian JIAN from BEIJING, CHINA.
Dear Mr. Mosher, I am a “Hollywood Producer”, who like Nat Hentoff, is now a confirmed pro-life advocate. I am writing a screenplay about the proposed extermination of the baby boomers. In the screenplay I have a debate between those who advocate zero population growth and those who seek to make seniors more productive (rather than eliminate the “useless eaters” as eugenicists put it) so they can help pay their own way, and help save Social Security. I want to use the reference you made in your article ‘The Billionaire Boys Club’. You cited the millenia edition of the New York Times, published Jan 1, 2000, “listed “overpopulation” among the “Myths of the Twentieth Century.””. I have researched those terms on the NYT website archives and find no match. Could you give me more detail so I can pull this up? Author? Title of Article? It would be tremendous to use it in my screenplay debate. It would be even more ominous if the NYT has removed the article from the archives! all the best – Fletch
I’ve used a fake handle. I could do with an email chat about something where you might be well placed to figure out what to do about a ghcn “problem”. Tallbloke suggested Curry but I am disinclined to go anywhere near.
Steven, This morning I read your reply to Rex @December 25, 2011 at 10:21 pm on the WUWT Merry Christmas open thread. There was no surprise as I have read similar there and on other web sites over the years(some made by you). I believe I understand what you are bringing across and as the numbers work out there really are no questions. My interest regarding our continually changing climate is very practical.An averaged global temp trend provides me with nothing that I find useful. There was a recent discussion on Die Klimazwiebel regarding a paper that put forth the idea that climate studies should provide useful information that would aid in crop planting for a farmer. At Die Klimazwiebel an Ethiopian farmer was used as an example. Although I found the discussion fruitless this is precisely what I believe climate studies should be focused on.
Since about 2004 when I first was bitten by this fascinating topic of Climate Change I have been searching for relevant studies not based on gridded data but on “Growing Zones”. Hard data and not speculation based on models regarding fluctuations of growing zones is what seems to me the important issue along side of hydrology studies(I devoutly read Pielke Sr. hoping to one day find what I am searching).
Steven, I am certain that you are not Santa Claus but on this day after Christmas I would be very grateful should you point me in the direction of the studies that I am searching.
As others also do, I use an Internet handle. There are reasons for this. However, each and every time I post at a web site I provide my email address with my full name so every proprietor of every web site knows who I am and how to contact me.
If you define what you mean by growing zone I may be able to help
I would think there must be some fluctuation in growing days or at the very least fluctuation in the growing zones regarding planting times. -Paul
well, I think the best thing to do there would be to use reanalysis data, you can probably get it at a nice resolution and over a period of time.
reanalysis data is derived from a model that is driven by real data.
You might also start with something local. Most agricultural states have dedicated
climate monitoring systems. Californias is nice CIMIS.
Thank you for your time Steven, reanalysis data was a new one for me however after a cursory look I do not think it gets me to where I want to be(I could very well be mistaken). As I now live in Sweden, I think my best shot may begin with whatever the equivalent of the USDA is here in Sweden. What I would like to demonstrate, if it is the case on a commercial basis, planting times have changed, growing seasons have varied in duration and growing zones have moved in latitude, There is an active climate science blogosphere here in Sweden and several Swedish climate scientists that are patient and responsive to inquiries. I fear that I may have blocked off the next five to ten years of my spare time… If I find low hanging fruit I will let you know but I think I need a longer crook at this point!
New book: “Our Explosive Sun – A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life”
For those interested in the Sun and the Sun-Earth connection (+ Northern lights) my new popular science book has been released.
“Our Explosive Sun – A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life”.
Our Explosive Sun includes 143 color illustrations and photos of the Sun, several of which were made especially for the book and have never been published before. Additional material, available via Springer Extras, includes a large number of animations and video material. A PowerPoint presentation of the book is a useful resource for teachers.”
More info, electronic version and sample pages:
http://www.springer.com/astronomy/extraterrestrial+physics%2C+space+sciences/book/978-1-4614-0570-2?changeHeader
Steven, the “The New USDA Plant Zone Maps: Planting the Seeds of Faulty Logic” as posted at ICECAP a few weeks ago touches on where I was thinking. Manifestation of climate change will be seen in agricultural output. Parsing this seems almost impossible to me at this point in time. There are constant improvements in agricultural technology and the records seem far a few between. In my initial contacts with farmers in Sweden climate change seems to be a very distant concern. On the surface this seems to be a non-issue but I have this nagging feeling that this should really be looked at in depth. Time is on my side, all I need to do is clear some plates from the table. Thank you so much for your patients and your great links to resources.
WHITHER BOUND?
a.n.ditchfield
The current economic crisis signals the weakness of ageing populations
– not exhaustion of resources and physical limits of the planet.
A death wish has crept into the politics and behavior of the Western societies. Long in coming, it is not as brazen as “Viva la muerte!” the paradox shouted by fascist hooligans who disrupted an appeal for peace at the University of Salamanca, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Fascists also chanted “Muera la inteligencia!”, in admission of the state of their minds at the most august cultural center of Spain.
A death wish is unnatural because it runs against the instinct of preservation of species, a primordial urge that drives all living creatures. Existence is a central theme of religious beliefs that exalt the work of men and women in bringing to life and raising the next generation. In the 1970s, the liberalization of the Western economies unleashed market forces that encouraged women to look for jobs, at a time when contraception and legalized abortion gave them control over birth. With the erosion of traditional values among secularized urban dwellers, the average Western couple started to have fewer than 2 children; in 1999 the number had fallen to 1.3.
This is a far cry from the structure of European populations in 1900. Nurtured by the Industrial Revolution, European Union countries then represented 14% of world population, even while they sent a great flow of settlers to occupy the New World. The population of the UE is now 6% and tends to 4% of world total; Europeans are under threat of extinction by their life styles. They may have fewer mouths to feed, but also fewer and weaker arms to produce and create.
The median age of Greeks, Italians and Spaniards will rise above 50 years in 2050 – this means that one in three persons in these countries will be 65 years old or older. A 75% tax burden will have to be placed on the incomes of economically active adults, mainly to defray entitlements of the aged. The existing free health care, pensions and subsidies will ultimately end, be it for lack of people.
Greece, Italy and Spain are now at the center of a Euro zone crisis because the Viva la Muerte culture is closing a full circle. Worse is coming to the Chinese, with their one child per couple policy. After the years of heady economic expansion are gone, the Chinese will face the same exhaustion dictated by the human life span, now faced by Europeans. The Japanese government estimates a one third reduction of population by 2060, when 40% of citizens will be of retirement age. If the trend continues until the end of this century, Japan will become a land inhabited by robots.
The current misanthropic mood has intellectual roots in a London lecture more than two centuries ago, when Benjamin Franklin spoke about the American population, then growing at a rate of 3% a year. The number captured the mind of a Cambridge youth, Thomas Malthus, a divinity student and also a mathematician. With compound interest arithmetic he reckoned that population would double every 23.5 years; the number of people in successive periods would be proportional to the series: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128…. After two generations, four would contend for the food available to one person. Exponential growth would stop long before this because Malthus assumed that the land available for food production is fixed and that crop yields would not improve. He concluded that universal famine would be the lot of future generations. Nature would restore the balance in a catastrophic way, with war, hunger and disease, unless public policy contained the trend to overcrowding.
Malthus’ book, Essay on the Principle of Population attracted attention in the first decades of the 19th century, but interest fell when its forecasts failed. In the Europe and North America, the Industrial Revolution brought increasing prosperity to support unprecedented growth of the population. The Essay has thought that ignores the vastness of the planet and the role of technology in the improvement of agricultural productivity and in shipping and preserving foodstuffs.
Discredited by facts, Malthusian thought remained dormant until the 1960s. At that time, the enormous advances in medical science, the advent of antibiotics and control of disease with better sanitation, had combined to bring a world-wide drop of death rates, while birth rates were remained at the traditional levels, practiced to compensate for the early deaths of previous times. The uncommon growth of world population in middle of 20th century prompted the publication alarmist books of Malthusian persuasion.
Population Bomb, of Paul Erlich, foresaw hundreds of millions of deaths by hunger in Asia, and even the increase of mortality rates due to poor nutrition, in the 1980s, in the United States. The pessimistic perspective was amplified by another influential book, Limits to Growth, of which 12 million copies were distributed. Its message is that a limited planet cannot support unlimited growth. The book introduced the concept of a fixed stock of non renewable resources depleted at an alarming rate, in an analogy with the Malthus concept of limited food availability.
HIGH SEAS…
The pessimists have three tenets they accept with an act of faith:
• We are running out of space. World population already is excessive for a limited planet, and grows at exponential rates, tending to disastrous overpopulation.
We are running out of resources. Non-renewable resources of the planet are being depleted to support unneeded consumption, at rates that render further economic growth unsustainable.
• We are running against time, as tipping points of irreversible climate change are reached. Carbon dioxide emissions by human activity cause global warming that will render the planet uninhabitable.
Many adopt the three tenets uncritically, but belief has no role in dealing with measurable physical things. When matters are quantified, the difference between true and false stands out.
SPACE IS AMPLE
Is excessive population a serious world problem? It may seem so to the dweller of a congested metropolis, living in discomfort, but is not something that can be generalized for the planet. The sum of the urban areas of the U.S. is equivalent to 2% of the area of the country, and 6% in densely populated countries such as England or Holland. And there is an abundance of green in urban areas. It is arguable that 7 billion people would live a comfortable urban life on 250 thousand square kilometers, the area of the State of Wyoming; that is less than 0.2% of a total terrestrial area of 148 million squared kilometers. Given 99.8% of free space, the idea of an overcrowded planet is exaggerated.
Exponential growth ceased long ago. Demographic forecasts are uncertain, but most accepted ones of the UN foresee stability of world population, to be reached in the 21st century. According some, world population will start to decline at the end of the 21st century. An aging population is the current worry. With so much space available, it cannot be held that the world population is excessive or has possibility of becoming so.
RESOURCES ARE ADEQUATE
Mining companies are aware of how little is known about the content of the terrestrial crust and discard the notion of that it has a limited, measured and known stock, of minerals. The pessimists say that, ultimately, a limited planet cannot allow limitless growth, and hold this as axiomatic. It can also be counter argued that, ultimately, there are no non-renewable resources, in a universe ruled by the Law of Conservation of Mass. Stated by Lavoisier in the 18th century it holds that “nothing it is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.” Human consumption never deducted one gram from the mass of the planet and, theoretically, all used materials can be recycled. Its feasibility depends on the availability of low cost energy. When fusion energy becomes operational, it will be available in unlimited quantities.
The potential source of energy is deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in water in a ratio of 0.03%. One cubic kilometer of sea water contains more energy than would be gotten with the combustion of all known reserves of oil in the world. Since the oceans contain 1400 million cubic kilometers of water it is safe to say that energy will last longer than the human species. Potable water need not be a limitation, as is sometimes said; new nanotube membranes promise to reduce the cost of energy for desalination to one tenth of its current cost. It would become viable to use desalinated water on coastal areas of the continents, an area on which much of the world population is settled.
It may be argued that such technologies are not yet available, but no historical precedent supports the notion of that human ingenuity is gone and that technology will remain frozen forever at current levels.
There is no scarcity of resources signaled by price increases. Since middle of the 19th century, a periodical, The Economist, has kept consistent and comparable records of the prices of commodities in real values; these have fallen for 150 years, thanks to technological progress. The decline has been benign. The cost of feeding of a human being was eight times higher in 1850 than it is today. In 1950, less than half of a world population of 2 billion had an adequate diet of more than 2000 calories per day, today, 80% has it, for a world population that tripled.
…DESTINATION UNKNOWN
UNCERTAINTIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
There is no consensus regarding future climate change. It can be said that there is acceptance of Malthusian ideas by European governments worried over a global warming they attribute to carbon dioxide generated by industrial activity. They make forecasts for world climate decades ahead, with a certainty that reminds one of the precision of astronomical calculations. However, climate has a chaotic behavior, in the mathematical sense, and is therefore subject to high degree of uncertainty, that will not be diminished by advances in scientific knowledge. There is no climate science with forecasting power comparable to the one of astronomy and such power will never come into being. Until recent times, no university offered a B.Sc. in climate science. Climate studies resort to numerous different fields such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, botany, zoology, paleontology, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics etc… fields with variable degrees of uncertainty.
In studies where the science is uncertain, different hypotheses contend to establish relationships of cause and effect. If a hypothesis is hijacked by a commercial interest in support of its claims, the debate slides from the academic plane to the political plane, on which the gimmicks of propaganda and public relations are to be expected.
The debate becomes polarized between political factions, each side with its own agenda. In climate matters, one side appeals to the authority of researchers in support of an anti-industrial agenda, admitted as painful, but necessary. The other side points to the lack of scientific basis for such a policy, qualified as suicidal. The clash of interests has transformed global warming into a journalistic and political phenomenon, not a physical one. Unfortunately, there are base motives in a campaign to vilify an Industrial Revolution that has, over two centuries, redeemed a large part of mankind from extreme misery. However, much of humanity still does not have access to electricity and suffers from all the ills of it. They only can be overcome by economic growth stimulated by increasing supply of cheap energy.
In this issue it is fit to ask the question: Qui bono? Who gains? In its modern version, it recommends following the money trail to an interest behind a cause. Suspect is the haste with which restrictive measures are proposed to reduce fuel use, with the pretext that tipping points for disastrous climatic change are being reached. Politicians are in a hurry to use this unverifiable hypothesis to support special interests. These include: governments that need huge revenues and an excuse to tax fuels; manufacturers benefited by regulation in favor of one form of energy generation and against competitors; empire building bureaucrats who want ample controls. To the list of beneficiaries of the global warming cause one must add the big international banks whose irresponsibility unleashed boom followed by bust.
In 1985, banking was a staid activity that accounted for 16% of the profits of all companies in the U.S. In 2008, 40% of total profits were earned by banks, a clear measurement of the size of the speculative bubble. The subsequent banking crisis was precipitated by toxic mortgages packaged and sold by banks as “derivatives”, which did much damage to the legitimate economy of the world. Greater mischief was on the way. The banks had hoped to put into circulation huge and unlimited issues of a fictitious asset, the Carbon Credit securities. The Chicago Climate Exchange, a phantom entity parallel to the Chicago Commodities Exchange, went broke and closed; the European Union Emission Trading Scheme is heading the same way amid a wave of fraud. The worse of gambling with carbon credits was stopped by the banking crisis.
The cluster of interests that support the manmade global warming cause is questioned. Against the expectation raised by computer climate models, measurement has evidenced the stability or decline of global temperature since 1995. It had risen in the two previous decades, provoking a scare about unchecked global warming. This shows that there are natural forces shaping the climate, of greater magnitude than the effect of the carbon dioxide, whatever its origin. These include the cyclical oscillations in oceanic currents and their temperatures, the activity of solar spots and the effect, on cosmic rays, of variable magnetic activity of the sun. These natural cycles still are little understood and of unknown weight in comparison with the effect of manmade carbon dioxide. Moreover, mankind can do nothing for or against natural forces of this magnitude. Sensible public measures are welcome to mitigate the effect of the climatic changes, when they occur and whatever the cause.
Politically motivated climate researchers had minimized uncertainties, in a field rife with them, to give their forecasts an appearance of solidity, backed by unanimous opinion, with the refrain: The debate is over; the science is settled. The unethical conduct of researchers was disclosed in the scandal labeled Climategate. It cast doubt on the impartiality and trustworthiness of UN-IPCC studies by people clearly engaged in promoting their political agendas.
An allegation of consensus of scientists does not make sense. In science, matters are never settled; there is always room for additional layers of knowledge provided by successful challenges to conventional wisdom. In the scientific mind there is no place for Magister Dixit, the master spoke, a reference to philosophers as final authorities. An argument from authority deserves rejoinder with the motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in Verba, according to which science rejects the word of authority above verifiable experimental evidence and logical reasoning,
Carbon dioxide is not toxic or a pollutant. Photosynthesis makes the gas a nutrient of plants that support the food chain of all living beings on the planet.
It is just to apply to the issue a principle of Roman law, In dubio pro reu, Justice must benefit the defendant where doubt exists, in this in case, the defendant is the maligned industrial economy.
THE CAUSE
The forecasts of UN-IPCC are speculations that reflect the assumptions fed to the computer models in support of the cause of the sponsors. These computer simulations are too uncertain to furnish rational grounds for public policies to inhibit economic activity “to save the planet”.
In support of such policies, stories of imminent disaster are told in the strident tones typical of the propaganda of totalitarian regimes to deceive masses. Their tactics were described by H. L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The propaganda machine quickly attributes to global warming anything that happens on the planet, such as: influenza pandemics; an earthquake in the Himalayas, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, the 2004 tsunami on the Indian Ocean; tribal wars in Africa; heat wave in Paris; plague of snails on the tiny Isle of Wight. In Australia: forest fires, sand storms in the dry season and floods in the rainy season. In North America: the last severe winters, the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. Evo Morales blames Americans for summer floods in Bolivia. Hugo Chaves thinks that with global warming capitalism killed an advanced civilization in Mars. Fidel Castro says that earthquakes are induced by the current boom in gas and oil production of U.S. With friends like these, do environmental causes need enemies?
In the opinion of the Professor Aaron Wildavsky, global warming is the mother of all environmental activists:
“Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.”
This was the youthful fantasy of now elderly hippies, bound to extinction by their barren life style.
When they are gone, Viva la vida! could become the motto of a hopeful world to be reached with a return to ancient truths that uphold the sanctity of life.
Hi Steve. I mentioned this on lucia’s blog but I’m not sure it has been noticed. Would you mind quickly scanning this link to see if the style is familiar to you:
bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/my-game-plan
Cheers!
Just curious…are you the Steve Mosher in Mara Hvistendahl’s book “Unnatural Selection”?
nope. that is probably steven W mosher
Hi Steven, rather than clutter up Professor Judith Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread with discussions about you suspect understanding of atmospheric physics I thought it fairer to bring our exchanges on the subject over to your own blog.
For the benefit of those here who are unaware of the background to our discussions let me summarise. On 8th Feb. you stated incorrectly that ” .. in particular we know that C02 is opaque to IR ..” and used CACC campaigner Dr. Iain Stewart’s rigged demonstration in support of that unequivocal statement (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-166940).
After I pointed out to you how that demo. had been rigged you have started slipping in the word “relative” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191949) alongside “opaque”, pretending that is what you had meant all along. On 13th April you said ” .. Like I said, C02 is Opaque to IR ( relatively ) .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-192041) but had not previously used that word “relative” or its derivatives in those exchanges in the context of CO2. That was after I pointed out to you on 10th April that Dr. Hare had said “ .. its true that the CO2 only absorbs in a relatively small bands across the IR spectrum .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191483). Your only prior reference to “relative”, in your 8th Feb. comment, was “ .. The atmosphere is relatively opaque to LW .. ”.
Instead of trying to worm your way out of this situation why don’t you simply hold your hands up and acknowledged that you were wrong on 8th Feb. It seems to me that you had no idea that the demo. had been deliberately rigged to give viewers of the BBC’s Earth: the Climate Wars Episode 1 the mistaken impression to that CO2 is opaque to IR. There is no shame in that as I’m sure that plenty others were fooled too. I gave you the example of that group of “educators” who also fell for it and are pushing it as a part of their CACC propaganda to school children in your vicinity. As I said QUOTE: “ .. ClimateChangeEducation.org is an organization of volunteers dedicated to education on climate change and global warming solutions — since 1999. We are science museum docents, teachers, students, scientists, university staff, parents and artists. Most of us are in California (U.S.), but we have volunteers all over the world .. ” (http://climatechangeeducation.org/about/who_we_are/index.html). On their homepage they include Dr. Stewart’s demo. as one of the “ .. the scientifically strong, vetted, authentic hands-on science demos .. ” (http://climatechangeeducation.org/) and link to it, just like you did. I speculate that that is where you became aware of it .. UNQUOTE (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191990).
Here’s what the designer of Dr. Stewart’s demonstration, Dr. Jonathan Hare, had to say. “..The thermal imaging camera .. was sensitive from ca. 1 to 5 µm, quite a large part of the IR spectrum. A lit candle or match produces lots of energy through the IR to the visible. .. You would think .. that when you .. introduce CO2 the bright flame would ‘disappear’ due to the IR absorption. However .. the candle doesn’t disappear! .. the CO2 absorptions observable by the IR camera are .. only in a relatively small part of the spectrum. The only way to get the demonstration to work is to have a ‘CO2 filter’ .. This only lets through IR at around 4 µm .. The filter blocks out much of the IR energy so that the CO2 absorption is not so swamped anymore and this allows us to now observe our vanishing candle effect .. ” (http://www.creative-science.org.uk/hollywood15.html).
Dr. Hare is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Member of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/physics/people/peoplelists/person/1140 and http://www.creative-science.org.uk/jph.html). I suppose that you would have fired him too for incompetence for saying such things. After all, you have a – what was that again? – oh yes, a nearly degree in maths and physics (started but not completed?) and a nearly PhD in English (started but not completed?) although you “ .. would hardly say I dropped out ..” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-192036)!.
As I said on 13th April “ .. In my opinion you are an ideal candidate for membership of John O’Sullivan’s PSI blog team. .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191962).
As I said a month ago to Doug Cotton” .. O foolish people .. which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-185562).
BTW, Dr. Stewart’s admission that he was going to campaign in support of CACC was made in March 2008, only a few months after CACC propagandists Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/). Perhaps he thought it prudent to jump on the CACC bandwagon (although he does seem to have been keeping his head down since Climategate.
As usual, if anything that I have said here is considered to be unfair or a misrepresentation of the facts then please let me know and I will consider whether or not a retraction or apology is warranted. The last thing that I wish to do is misinterpret the evidence that has been made available to me and present a misleading picture to others.
Best regards, Pete
Pete, If you put too many links in your comments wordpress will hold them up as they look like spam.
My site is otherwise unmoderated. I do, as I explained to you in mail, reserve the right to remove comments
from cyber stalkers and sociopaths. But as you see from other comments here I let all sorts of kooks post
here, even you. Please feel free to continue your rants here. I am sure some will find them enjoyable.
And yes C02 is opaque to IR, not transparent. If you want to discuss the exact details please feel free
to post all the google links you can find. But don’t expect me to read to or respond to everything you
want to post. I’m working on several projects. If you’d like to help with some coding I’m sure I can
give you something you will like.
Hi Steven, thanks for the advice about the spam detector. I’ll distort the URL in future. As for the offer to do some programming, that aspect of using computers never really appealed to me. I never found programming particularly interesting unless it was directly related to my design of a computer-based control or telecommunications system. I’d do it if I had to in order to get the system working but much preferred passing that boring stuff on to a programmer.
There was one system back in the late 60s, designed for custody transfer of refined petroleum product pipeline, where I couldn’t do that because I had designed the computer (discrete component RTL NOR logic blocks) and its machine code. It would have taken too long to train a programmer (contract time-scale pressures).
An outline of the design of the special purpose computer and its instruction code is given in the Appendix of my first peer-reviewed paper (http: // ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5267710&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5266378%2F5267709%2F05267710.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5267710).
Best regards, Pete Ridley
Drop by when you’ve got something to show thats post 1970. A generic algorithm to create hardware designs is a very cool project. You should look into it. Of course you realize that chips today ( and yesterday ) are the result of somebody doing software ( VHDL or Verilog) that get’s turned into netlists which is passed over to boring hardware.
Hi,
Steven, we are looking for an email to send you a press release. Can you get back to me
Mike Haseler
Steven,
Apologies if this information is available elsewhere – is your book on climategate available in e-book formats?
Regards
should be on kindle or lulu
Hello, First let me thank you for your tutorial on MODIS. I have been doing all my work manually; now I am trying to automate the process with R MODIS. I have tried various examples from the package-some work or other do not. I can send a report to you or the package maintainer. But I thought you might be able to help me with my particular problem in using “runGdal”?
These are statements:
rasterObject <- raster(xmn=26.5, xmx=28.50957, ymn=57.49043, ymx=59.5)
peipsi <- getTile(extent=rasterObject)
runGdal(product="MOD11_L2", extent="peipsi", begin="2004001", end="2004004", SDSstring="LST_Night_1km")
Error in map.poly(database, regions, exact, xlim, ylim, boundary, interior, :
no recognized region names
Do you know how I can specify "extent" properly? A second question-is there a way to automate the file format with runGdal? Say from HDF to GeoTiff? Thanks. I appreciate any help.
John Lewis
Professor
McGill University
#####################################
.MODIS_Opts.R
# This file contains user default values for the R package 'MODIS'.
# version 0.6-25
#########################
# 1.) Path and archive structure defaults. (USE FOR SEPARATOR EIGHTER SINGLE FORWARD "/" OR DOUBLE BACKWARD SLASHES "\\"):
# set path. All data will be stored below this directory. If it doesn't exist it is created. Should work also with a remote path like a network directory!
localArcPath <- 'C:/Users/jlewis/Documents/MODIS_ARC' # If you already have downloaded some files, don't forget to call the function 'orgStruc()' after changing here!!
# set path, default output location for GDAL, FWTools/OSGeo4W, SSOAP, MRT processing results. If it doesn't exist it is created.
outDirPath <- 'C:/Users/jlewis/Documents/MODIS_ARC/PROCESSED'
#########################
# 2.) download defaults:
dlmethod <- 'auto' # Method passed to ?download.file, "auto" is always a good choice
stubbornness <- 'high' # How stubborn shoud MODIS re-try to connect to ftp? See ?getHdf
#########################
# 3.) Processing defaults:
resamplingType <- 'NN' # There are several layers that require "near" (i.e. VI_Quality, Day of the year,…)!
outProj <- 'GEOGRAPHIC'
pixelSize <- 'asIn'
#########################
# 4.) Windows specific section (could also be used in Linux if you want to point to an specific GDAL installation not in the default path):
# Set path to "OSGeo4W" (recommanded) or "FWTools" _bin_ directory or any HDF4 supporting GDAL instllation (location of "gdalinfo"); (USE FOR SEPARATOR EIGHTER SINGLE FORWARD "/" OR DOUBLE BACKWARD SLASHES "\\")
# Or run: "MODIS:::checkTools()" for autodetection.
# Example :
# gdalPath <- "C:/OSGeo4W/bin"
gdalPath <- 'C://OSGeo4W/bin/'
John,
I am copying matteo on your question. Currently I am working on the final draft of a paper and wont be able to get to your question for a couple days.
For your question about HDF. Usually I use runMRT() to turn the HDF file into a geotiff and then I import the geotiff using raster.
runGdal should also be able to turn a HDF into a geotiff
Hey, im a high student at the beacon school and as my final portfolio based asginment (pba) for my modern india history class, i am writing a research paper on the overpopulation in india. It is mandatory for me to have an interview and i knew you would be the perfect person. I dont have much time left to conduct this interview so it would be great if you would allow me to call or via web chat no later than tommorrow night. Hopeully you are available ! Thank you
Steven –
I recall you posting about providing audio cues for fighter pilots. This might be of interest to you.
I have a new candidate for FOIA that I discovered while reading some old threads searching for a post of mine. Wondering if you considered this person already.
A certain regular who hasn’t been seen in awhile, made a curious prediction.
Hi Steven,
I host an Internet radio broadcast twice a week in the UK with a global audience with a large global audience.
I recently interviewed Kevin Galalae who has appeared on the ‘alternative media’ circuit claiming to have exposed the depopulation agenda whilst at the same time espousing eugenics and claiming that depopulation is essential.
He did not have things all his own way and was confronted on the issue.
I would be very interested in having you on my show to give the facts on why we are NOT overpopulated as the facts are more obvious than most people would think in my opinion.
If you would be interested please contact me at the email address attached.
The Galalae interview is also on our website.
Cheers,
Neil
I live in San Diego. I have a high-end weather station and over the past two years have noticed quite a discrepancy between my station’s cold temperatures and the National Weather Service’s reported temperatures for my area. Since I am only 1 mile from that station, I was concerned my weather station was wrong. I have since calibrated it and added several other different types of temperature measurements to see if there is a problem. There isn’t. Here is what I have observed: at low temperatures, the NWS is 7 to 12 degrees higher. Typically they are 10 degrees higher. However, by around 10 AM and through the evening, my station and the NWS agree within 1 degree. What is going on? I know for example, that when we are reading 33 degrees F, there is frost on cars parked on the street and the golf courses nearby have at least a 2-hr frost delay. Since the NWS, which I can see from my house (we are at the same elevation, but separated by a small valley) is reporting 43 degrees, how can there be such a heavy frost? It makes me doubt the NWS weather data.
Seve Mosher, I am having trouble finding your email address. I would like to send you a paper on uncertainty in CFD.