Month: April 2007

Climate Change Scientists, Critical Thinkers?

It seems logical to me and probably most people that scientists are going to be some of the most critical thinkers. And this is also their claim, but I am a little confused when it comes to discussions about climate change why so much critical thinking *seems* to be missing. I’ll explain what I mean.

I first have to admit that my knowledge of the science behind climate change is limited. I’m no expert. There are some interesting climate related things happening in the world so I can go along with the idea that maybe something is up, however, when it comes to proving that the changes are *all* due to the affect humans have on the planet, I become a big skeptic. I’m just not much into believing every alarmist and his impassioned story just because it plays to fears of global devastation (who doesn’t love a good Armageddon story).

Ok, so here’s what I mean when I say that the critical thinking seems to be missing. I’ve read parts of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change. What is so striking to me is what terminology is used to express the certainty from this group that climate change is caused by humans (anthropogenic). Here’s what the report says in the footnote on page 4 of the Working Group Summary for Policy Makers (PDF), just so we’re clear on terminology:

In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result: Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence, Extremely likely > 95%, Very likely > 90%, Likely > 66%, More likely than not > 50%, Unlikely < 33%, Very unlikely < 10%, Extremely unlikely < 5%. (See Box TS.1.1 for more details).

Now maybe I’m just the dummy here and everybody else gets it, but I don’t understand how one can have such a high level of certainty when their assessment is based simply on using expert judgment.

In a court case someone who has knowledge in a particular field will be called an “expert witness” and their testimony will often be accepted as fact because of their knowledge and experience in that field. Ok, so I suppose we should apply the same thing here. We should simply accept that the people who have decided these things are experts and their judgment should be considered fact. There’s only one problem with that. The field we’re talking about is so new and unknown we would be foolish not to question the validity of anyone’s *expert* testimony on either side of the debate.

For those of you who are upset at this point because you feel I just don’t get it, please enlighten me. I don’t want a pointless debate. I want to learn and understand. On what basis do we blindly accept the testimony of these experts? Not only that, how is it that they can simply arrive at such a specific percentage of certainty? From what I’m told there are computer models out there that can demonstrate this certainty, but if that is true, then why don’t we see statements in the report that say “90% certainty based upon computer modeling and calculations”. Why do we just get, in essence, “90% certainty based upon some smart dude’s expert judgment”?

Does that sound like critical thinking to anyone? If you tell me to just blindly accept what these people say as truth, I’m going to have a hard time considering your position valid. It sounds like blind faith to me and as everyone knows, scientists cannot accept blind faith. They need critical evidence. Don’t they? Otherwise, isn’t this just a religious debate? If I said to an atheist, “I’m 90% sure that God exists because I’ve known him all my life”, he wouldn’t accept my testimony even though I’ve *demonstrated* that I’m an expert on God (e.g. I’ve known him all my life).

And while we’re talking about evidence, can someone explain to me how computer models are able to determine which molecules or particles in the atmosphere come from fossil fuels and which ones come from natural sources created by the earth itself? I understand that trends since 1750 suggest that it’s warmer now than it was then, but we don’t have much in the way of climate data prior to that date. Isn’t it possible that warming occurred at another time earlier in the earth’s history that was clearly not due to the industrial revolution?

Wouldn’t a stronger case be made if we could go up into the atmosphere and take measurements and be able to conclusively say “well, these particles over here are from Acme Manufacturing while these were caused by those gases coming from that volcano over there and there’s clearly more coming from Acme”? Do we have this kind of technology? If we do, then great. Let’s see the data from those tests.

Call me crazy, but I think the jury is still out on the actual certainty of whether climate change is anthropogenic. If you show me some evidence to the contrary aside from, “the expert is pretty sure–90% sure even”, then I’ll be glad to hear it. Meanwhile, lets stop with the fear mongering over something for which nobody seems to have absolute unquestionable evidence. Shouldn’t we require at least a scientifically *provable* (as opposed to arguable) level of certainty before we go requiring countries to reduce emissions to some arbitrary standard that may or may not make a difference even if the problem is caused by us?

Digg Encourages Dishonest Reporting

If you are what appears to be Digg’s main demographic, then you are a geek, male (largely redundant considering the first descriptor), politically liberal, atheist (or at least agnostic or non-religious) and apparently you have no qualms about lying.

I saw this headline today on one of the stories:

Fox News: Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil?

We all know that if you fit the demographic above then to you think the real devil is Faux News (that play on words was pretty funny several Y E A R S ago, by the way) but writing a title that implies Fox News espouses that *they* think Cho may have been possessed by the devil is just simply dishonest.

I understand that the editorial board at Digg is the community itself, blah blah blah, but what gets me is that there are all these people who claim to be of some higher plane of thinking and reason and yet still stoop to posting these stories with dishonest titles to somehow demonize every establishment they disagree with. If you were to follow the link and actually read the story, you would realize that Fox News is making no such claim. They are reporting on someone who has made such a claim. If it were editorial, they would probably demonstrate that they think it’s just as ridiculous as you do.

So why stoop to lying? You are misleading your lemming disciples. Just read the comments for the story and you’ll realize that a great many of the people who commented have no clue what the story actually says. Simply because of the way the title was phrased they just assumed that Fox News thinks that Cho may have been possessed by the devil (cause somebody once told them that Faux News is the real Debil). Don’t you have any conscience about misleading the little followers to believe some farce simply because of the way you posted your story, ‘jimripper’? If you are so enlightened and above the fray in ‘thinking progress’, why stoop to such a level? You may hate Fox News (and who doesn’t? it’s *the* most popular American past time second only to hating the President) but how can you act like you are somehow on a higher plane. You are as bad if not a worse liar than the people you’re pointing your finger at.

To the supposed enlightened ones of Digg, here’s a suggestion, you might be able to convince a few people of your ideas, if only you were honest. I know in your world, the one where morality is relative, telling a *little white lie* is allowable and the end justifies the means on a regular basis, but really. Stop claiming you have some sort of moral superiority *because* you are an atheist or un-religious. You are not honest and you make no apologies for it. Where I come from, we call lying and misleading people WRONG–morally and otherwise. Your dishonesty begets contempt.

I’m not blaming Digg for anything here. Self regulating editorial is a very cool idea and I’m all for it. You just have to take the bad with the good I suppose and until people take it upon themselves to report stories honestly, there will remain plenty of bad along with what makes Digg so good.

Javascript Doppler Radar Object

I was looking around for a way to display a radar map on a website based on a given location. If you go to the NOAA National Weather Service site, you can get the image you need, however, the image they use now is actually a composite image that layers transparent images on top of each other and uses the z-index for each layer. It makes it much less intensive for their system to really only have to render one, maybe two layers. The majority of the layers such as topographic, county lines, highways, etc. are static. Only the radar data and weather warnings need to be rendered.

I figured this was as good as anything so I looked a little closer. What’s really cool is that the images you need can simply be referenced with a full URL to the NWS website–that is, there is no server side coding or or need for XmlHttpRequest (AJAX). You just need a little Javascipt to determine what the image name should be, again, based on location. You can download the Javascript file I wrote that encapsulates this functionality here: NWSRadar.js.

The following is the basic usage. As usual, place this in the head of your HTML:

And then instantiate the object like this:

var radar = new NWSRadar("PUX", 10, 10);

The constructor signature is like this:

function NWSRadar(radarid, left, top, width, height)

The only required parameter is radarid. Because this uses divs, I needed to specify explicitly the location where to place the image on the screen so we are using absolute positioning. This will make is so the width and height parameters work correctly as well. If you want the radar image to be in a table element or some other flow type layout, then you simply specify a div that encloses the script and has its style set to relative positioning.

In case it’s not clear, here’s what each of the constructor parameters represent:

  • radarid: This is the ID for the location that is used by the National Weather Service. Go to the site and find the location you need. For my example above, I used “PUX” which is Pueblo, Colorado. To find the Radar ID you need, go to the NWS website and enter in your city and state in the “Local Forcast by City, St” box in the upper left-hand corner. Then click on the left most image under the heading Radar and Satellite Images. On the ensuing page, you will see in the URL the id field. This is your radarid.
  • left: The absolute position of the left side of the image.
  • top: The absolute position of the top side of the image.
  • width: The width of the image. Defaults to 600px which is the NWS default size.
  • height: The height of the image. Defaults to 550px which is the NWS default size.

Once your object has been instantiated, simply call render() like this:

radar.render();

And here is what it should look like:


And here is a full HTML test page




NWS Weather Radar for Pueblo, CO