

Global warming? Check for yourself - KazimirMajorinc
http://unbalanced-parentheses.nfshost.com/newlisptacklesglobalwarming

======
ugh
Data from any one weather station can neither prove nor disprove – well – I
would guess pretty much anything climate related.

The author doesn’t claim any such thing and the article is actually a quite
nice read. The headline here stretches the hyperbole of the original headline
quite a bit too much, though.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed.

I liked the article. He used an emotionally-charged topic as a hook, didn't
take sides, and instead taught me something about a cool language.

Great HN post.

------
motters
After reading about the climatology controversies, and not knowing who to
believe, I did my own investigation of the climate data using the GHCN data,
which was the most comprehensive publicly available set I could find.

<http://code.google.com/p/tempgraph/>

This is written in C++, and you can plot the data in numerous different ways,
including individual weather stations if you wish.

~~~
KazimirMajorinc
Very interesting work.

------
jbooth
High "average maximum temperature" -- what kind of statistic is that? Why
should he use that instead of the average temperature? Randomly picking a
1-day outlier from each year is useless.

Meanwhile, from the adults who use crazy concepts like "sattelite data" and
"arithmetic mean":
<http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE61O02C20100225>

Last month was the hottest january on record.

EDIT: Not to take anything away from the guy -- cool code, cool app. But to
those who are trumpeting this -- maybe you should take a look at that "hottest
january on record" article and take a look at the methods that were used to
arrive at that conclusion.

~~~
jbooth
Funny.. a bunch of people upvote what is clearly labelled by its own author as
amateur and naive number extracting, then downvote a link to rigorous
statistical analysis saying that last month was the hottest on record.

It's not about the methods, it's about the conclusions? If they agree with me,
the methods are ok, if they don't, they're a biased scientist conspiracy?

What the hell.. if someone was linking to an amateur analysis saying that log
n was more expensive than n^2, would we be getting all of this philosophy
about how everyone's perspective is valuable?

~~~
jazzdev
I think the voting indicates:

    
    
      data, code => cool => upvote
    
      statement by some organization with no data, no analysis => boring => downvote

~~~
CWuestefeld
And given the recent breaches of trust amongst the climatologists, this is
exactly what is appropriate.

Building up open and transparent datasets and models that anyone can work with
(or lacking the domain expertise and technical skill, at least be comfortable
that _somebody_ can watch over the scientists' shoulders) is exactly what's
needed.

Another article that trumpets talking points without mentioning all of the
caveats is NOT needed. And the fact that it yet again implies a need for
action, while entirely ignoring any assessment the _costs_ of those effects,
together with a weighing against the costs of remediation, puts the Reuters
article squarely into the fearmongering side of the equation, 180 degrees off
of rational debate.

~~~
Tichy
"And given the recent breaches of trust amongst the climatologists"

Or maybe you have fallen for the propaganda of the denialists? Anyway, I think
usually the actual scientific papers come with data references (otherwise they
are indeed useless), but there is also a place for articles that normal people
can understand. Not everybody wants or can code up their own verification
program for every scientific article they come across.

~~~
vixen99
Denialist? You sound like a member of the Spanish Inquisition. Are we talking
science (where constant questioning is [or is that just silly me?] was always
supposed to be intrinsic to the investigative process) or religion? The
latter, it seems, as far as you're concerned.

Has it dawned on you that use of the word is a kind of own goal? "Hey folks,
we believe in the true religion and must rout those non-believers!"

~~~
Tichy
Well I was responding to "breaches of trust", which seems like propaganda
given that all that can be pointed to is some minor errors that are bound to
happen in a large scale undertaking. I don't think calling those "breaches of
trust" is very scientific. Maybe the one about the Himalya glaciers could be
called like that, but I don't think it was the actual scientists being sloppy
in that case.

I was only using the word "denialist" to shorten the sentence - what would
have been an appropriate word, then?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_all that can be pointed to is some minor errors that are bound to happen in a
large scale undertaking_

Ahem. Conspiring to thwart freedom of information laws is something that is
bound to happen in large scale undertakings? Either you're propagandizing
yourself, or you're someone that I really don't want working for my company.

The glacier thing was characterized as a "typographical error", which itself
is clearly intended to minimize the ethical breach. A "typographical error" is
one related to the typography -- maybe transposing digits, or accidently
chopping off the bottom of a page or something. It clearly does not apply to
errors of _judgment_ , including non-reviewed sources as if they're factual.

None of this refutes AGW, which is actually my point. It makes us all wary.
And the cure for that is openness and transparency. A battle of _ad hominem_
attacks doesn't do anything for either side of the debate. But in the long
run, building a case that we can all trust because we watched it being erected
is to the benefit of all -- tree huggers and denialists alike.

~~~
Tichy
"Conspiring to thwart freedom of information laws"

When did that happen? If you are referring to the leaked emails, I don't think
the case is so clear. Unless you want to believe it to be so.

The glaciers: don't remember the exact details, but wasn't it some relatively
informal publication where the boss of the organization slipped something in
without verifying with his scientists? Sounds more like sloppiness - although
they should have uncovered the error sooner. But who knows, they might have
had other things on their mind. I don't know how many scientists actually
think about Himalayan glaciers on a daily basis (do you?). Except for the ones
living in the Himalayan, one of was asked over the phone and apparently
misinterpreted.

In any case, I don't think that error was made in an actual scientific paper,
it was more part of general propaganda and politics. Not that I like it at
all, but I don't see how it discredits the science as a whole.

In fact, I personally think dwelling on minor details and trying to blow them
up to be elephants is a major indicator of revisionism.

------
crocowhile
Data are out there and you _can_ do little stuff with it if you want and if
_you have a precise question in mind_.

This is what I did some time ago: [http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smoke-
hardly-any-gun-do-...](http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smoke-hardly-any-
gun-do-climatologists-falsify-data/)

A recurring argument among denialist is that data are someone tricked to show
things that aren't true. Some of those claims can actually be tested, but one
needs to know what they are talking about.

------
aphyr
Maybe you didn't finish the article: he's performing an incorrect analysis _on
purpose_!

"I've made a number of small mistakes and inappropriate design decisions in
this post (some deliberate, or at least, some I'm aware of, others are
accidental). But, given the published and freely downloadable weather data,
the code listed here, and - of course - the excellent free and open source
newLISP language, it should be possible for anyone to retrace my steps, find
my mistakes, and present a more credible or compelling view of the same
dataset."

~~~
Step
Little disappointed so many commenters seemed to miss that. I thought that
paragraph was the entire lesson, with the preceding material there so this
point would sink in.

Since I'm interested in information design (especially right now) I was quite
disappointed with the graph he ultimately produced. I'm hoping someone with a
bit more time than me takes up his challenge and goes back to correct some of
his mistakes (in both analysis and storytelling). I'd rather like to do it
myself but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.

Ultimately, a compelling story about how we as humans require stories for
understanding, and how important it is to verify the stories that we choose to
believe.

~~~
itistoday
I cheated and just asked him. :-D

If you're interested, his response is here:

[http://newlispfanclub.alh.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=...](http://newlispfanclub.alh.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3508&p=17814)

~~~
Step
Ha! Well, that explains things rather neatly then. If he was really building
only up to that final paragraph, it would have been shaped differently.
Instead it seems that was just one conclusion he drew out of a project started
for different reasons. Thanks for sharing this.

------
dmnd
Offtopic: that syntax highlighting upon mouseover is a great idea. Does the
fact that I haven't seen this before mean I need to get a new editor?

~~~
KazimirMajorinc
Yes, it's fun. PLT Scheme editor supports similar "block style" parentheses
highlighting, and it is useful for reading large data sets or machine
generated code.

<http://plt-scheme.org/screenshots/french-profiler.jpg>

------
waxman
This graph actually carries a lot of intellectual weight for 2 reasons:

1) it is an apparently unbiased inquiry, which means a lot. The allegations
against leading climate change scientists, whether they are valid or not,
highlight an inescapable reality about the world of academic geologists (no
matter how "inconvenient" of a truth it is): like many scientists, these
people need to raise large amounts of funding for relatively boring projects
(i.e. ice samples anyone?). But if they tie in their research to a hot (no
pun), visible issue (as rendered by the media and politicians, regardless of
its scientific merit), then BAM! It's a lot easier to get funding. Hence,
climate scientists have a huge incentive to paint global warming as massive,
urgent big problem, whether or not it actually is. Seeing data crunched by an
amateur, who has the skills to process it, but not the incentives to skew it,
means a lot.

2) Even though it only shows weather data from a single region, "global
warming" would presumably be a global phenomenon that one could detect from
basically any location (and if this is not the case, then the press needs to
revise its doomsday scenarios about global warming necessarily flooding New
York City and Shanghai, because if it's only occurring in some places, then we
shouldn't use data gathered in Canada to predict catastrophe in East Asia.)

I'm not claiming to know the scientific truth about this issue one way or the
other, but I do know that there are a lot of forces at play here besides
science (funding incentives, politics, news media sensationalism, green energy
business interests, etc.), and I think a return to the data is a great place
to start unraveling this issue that is far more complex than Al Gore or his
opposite Dick Cheney would have you believe.

~~~
ajross
Item 2 is just wrong. Even something as (comparatively) well understood as an
El Niño event causes wilding differing effects from region to region. Every
time a scientist goes on TV to explain this stuff, they have to explain this
very point: local measurements don't cut it, you have to look at and correlate
very complicated global data sets. Apparently you didn't listen becuase of...

Item 1, which seems to me to be a completely unsubstantiated ad hominem. You
could use that same argument to reject _any_ science you don't want to hear.

~~~
waxman
You're incorrectly using the term "ad hominem." An ad hominem argument is when
you try to invalidate an idea with an irrelevant personal attack. The
problematic incentives facing climate change scientists are certainly relevant
to their research. I'm not saying we should dismiss their data necessarily,
but I am calling into question their motivations. Would we be skeptical of
public health research on smoking funded by a tobacco company? I hope so. But
just because they would have strong incentives to produce a particular outcome
doesn't mean their science is wrong, but it could very well be biased. Same
here.

------
abstractbill
_Armagh itself is a smallish town in Northern Ireland, less than 1000 miles
south of the Arctic Circle although bathed in the warm currents of the Gulf
stream._

I wonder how stable the Gulf stream is over time.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Very stable, until it isn't:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/gulf_stream.shtml>

------
agentq
While the graph is nice and this was a great visualization example in newLisp,
drawing conclusions from the graph alone is not really possible without some
amount of statistical analysis (e.g., de-meaning or accounting for seasonality
somehow).

And to the author's credit, the observations made are not conclusions in
themselves.

------
Maro
This type of analysis and visualization is best done in Mathematica, which
incidentally also supports both functional (a la Lisp) and declarative (a la
Prolog) programming. It costs money, but it's the right tool for the job.

------
jrockway
Nice chart. Looks like there is global warming once a year or so! Conspiracy!

------
ahi
I am not sure what the point of this is, but it's an interesting demo of
newLisp... but just use R next time.

------
oz
This is Hacker News.

~~~
eru
What did you want to say?

~~~
diego_moita
HN is an open prairie where conspiracy theories roam wild, free and careless.

People here don't respect science and think they're smarter than they really
are.

~~~
oz
Honestly, I wasn't thinking about the 'truth' of the claims, I'm FAR from
qualified to judge. But rather his _approach_ is something that would be
interesting to hackers. Was I wrong?

~~~
eru
No, but it seems your comment added nothing to the discussion. (And it was
short enough to be misunderstood.)

~~~
oz
Touche. Mea Culpa.

------
diego_moita
What's the point of this?

All it shows is that someone without scientific training is incapable of
drawing conclusions from data out of context; they can't "check for yourself".
I tought the only people that don't know this are journalists, bloggers and
politicians.

~~~
fnid2
I was thinking about this particular type of ad hominem argument the other day
and decided I loathe it. Imagine if people told Plato he couldn't write about
philosophy because he didn't go to harvard and get a degree in philosophy. Or
tell galileo that he was wrong because he didn't have a degree in astronomy.

Valid scientific investigations don't require scientific training. This
person, who wrote some code and plotted some numbers on a graph may know more
about math and programming and data visualization than many of those running
weather stations, so it isn't productive to say this person has nothing to
contribute because he's someone without scientific training.

You don't even know that statement is true. Regardless of its truth, the
numbers, the code, and the result should speak for themselves. It doesn't
matter whether the investigator is trained in science or not.

As a "trained" computer engineer, I am personally capable of taking a raw data
set and plotting their numbers on a chart and drawing conclusions from them.

Of course there are additional steps one could take with this data to help the
human mind comprehend it. I'll tell you one thing for sure, the chart looks
nothing like this scary one
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_R...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.svg)

Why? If _you_ have scientific training, refute the facts, write another set of
code, analyze the data and see what you get. Is it different? Can you
replicate the results?

Or can you just say this person doesn't have any scientific training and write
him off? Personally I think it's awesome that someone is taking the initiative
to test a hypothesis. Really, there is nothing _more_ scientific than that. It
takes work and I commend this person.

~~~
diego_moita
> Imagine if people told Plato he couldn't write about philosophy because he
> didn't go to harvard and get a degree in philosophy. Or tell galileo that he
> was wrong because he didn't have a degree in astronomy.

Very interestingly, your examples only add to my point. Plato didn't had a
degree in philosophy because philosophy was just being "invented"; Socrates
(his master, btw) had just brought rigor to the sophists blabering. And
Galileo didn't get a degree in astronomy mostly because it didn't exist by
then. He did however get one in mathematics and tought astronomy in a
university before he made his observations to support Copernicus' model. You
see, both men where very far from amateurs giving opinions in a complex field.

> Valid scientific investigations don't require scientific training.

Bulshit. Most of times it does. Particularly in complex matters. That's why
the peer review process matters. Numbers don't "speak for themselves"; that's
why we talk about "lies, damned lies and statistics".

As a pratical exercise, I'd suggest you, as a "trained computer engineer", to
let your projects to be designed and implemented by a non-trained computer
engineer. You'd know what I mean.

~~~
azgolfer
Seems to me an a guy who couldn't get hired as a physicist had a rather large
effect on physics in 1905. The hiring process is a form of 'peer review'.

~~~
vena
I really don't think you should take your understanding of Einstein's early
career from Yahoo Serious movies.

~~~
azgolfer
from Wikipedia "After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years
searching for a teaching post,"

~~~
vena
Which is about 1/10th of what your post is implying. You might want to read
something deeper than a wikipedia summary.

~~~
azgolfer
Peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient for science.

~~~
vena
And Einstein would possibly have agreed with that to some extent, as evidenced
by his reply in 1936 to the rejection of the only paper of his ever even
subject to peer review, even then a new concept in fields unrelated to
medicine. This has literally nothing to do with his inability to find work
after he graduated university or the hiring process of science institutions in
general. This emotional argument doesn't just not reflect Einstein on any
level deeper than a Wikipedia summary of a bio, but lacks any historical
perspective as well.

Einstein's 1905 works, specifically the Annus Mirabilis papers, lacked the
formal review process we understand today, but were certainly reviewed by the
two Nobel prize-winning physicists who selected them for publication in their
journal. The formal review panel concept simply did not exist at the time
outside of the medical fields, but that is not to say there was no stringent
editorial control or gatekeeping in physics journals, and certainly not in
Annalen der Physik. If anything, Einstein was subject to a far less fair and
inclusive process.

