Something’s coming, something good

Three polls issued today make it very clear that the upcoming November elections are going to be a very different animal than any election anyone has seen in decades.

First, Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds that in the West Virginia race for the Senate seat formerly held by Robert Byrd, long shot Republican John Raese is leading shoe-in Democrat Joe Manchin by 3 points.

Second, Rasmussen finds that not only is Republican Joe Miller leading his opponents in the Alaska Senate race by 15%, the Democrat candidate, Scott McAdams, can only garner 25%. Meanwhile, Lisa Murkowski, who lost to Miller in a primary upset, is doing almost as bad as an independent write-in candidate, with 27%.

Third, a Quinnipiac poll shows Republican Tom Corbett destroying Democrat Dan Onorato by a 54-39 margin in the race for Pennsylvania governor.

Not only do these numbers show a willingness of the public to consider new and unknown candidates and reject incumbents, they also show a surprising hostility to Democrat candidates in regions that have always been considered Democrat strongholds. In West Virginia, the accepted wisdom was that the Democrat Manchin would be nominated and then annointed. Not so. In Alaska, not only did Miller upset the incumbent Murkowski in the Republican primary, voters apparently have little interest in seeing her return to office, or give her Democrat rival the job either. And in Pennsylvania, a swing state that has in recent years been swinging increasingly Democratic, the numbers show instead a complete reversal of that trend and a total rejection of the Democrat candidate.

Yes, November 2nd is going to be an interesting day indeed.

Update: Another poll released today from PPP and commissioned by the leftwing website, Daily Kos, continues these astonishing trends. In the Wisconsin Senate race, Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold now trails Republican Ron Johnson by 11% points. And in Wisconsin governor’s race, the same poll found the Republican leading by 9%.

The United States, as seen from the Moon

On August 9, 2010 the camera on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took some routine calibration images and captured the Earth from lunar orbit, showing the western hemisphere with relatively little cloud cover. The picture below is a tiny piece from that global image, cropped to show the United States. The details are pretty remarkable, considering the distance. You can explore the full global image in detail here.

The U.S. from the Moon

Something is recycling the methane on Mars

Research results posted today [pdf] at the European Planetary Science Congress show that the methane in Mars’s atmosphere is seasonally variable and far more short-lived than predicted, disappearing in less than a year. Some process, therefore, must be both using it and replenishing it. On Earth, that’s almost always done by some form of life process. Key quote by one of the scientists, from the press release:

“Only small amounts of methane are present in the martian atmosphere, coming from very localised sources. We’ve looked at changes in concentrations of the gas and found that there are seasonal and also annual variations. The source of the methane could be geological activity or it could be biological ­ we can’t tell at this point.”

The image below shows the three regions (in yellow) where the methane is concentrated.

Mars methane locations

My Friday night travels

On Friday I drove up to Westfield, New Jersey, to give a public lecture to Amateur Astronomers, Inc. at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey. On this, my second visit to this amateur astronomy club, my lecture topic was the story behind the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, the subject of my first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.

I visit a lot of astronomy clubs, giving talks on space and its history, so it is not a light complement when I say that this particular club is one of the most active, organized, and enthusiastic astronomy clubs I have ever seen. This is not to say that other clubs are not active, organized, or enthusiastic, only that it seems to me that the members of Amateur Astronomers are particularly so.

This fact only makes the decision by Union County College to throw the club and its observatory off campus seem incredibly stupid. Fortunately, the club has managed to negotiate a two year postponement of their eviction. What will happen after that, however, remains unknown.

A look at the Washington Post’s take on the space war

The Washington Post today includes an excellent article outlining quite succinctly the mess that’s resulted from the space war between the House, the Senate, and the administration over NASA’s manned program. Key quote:

In an effort to restore a NASA consensus and fund future human space travel, negotiators from the House and Senate have been meeting frequently in recent weeks. Participants say, however, that the sides are dug in and that stalemate is a real possibility.

As I have been saying for months, don’t expect anything good to come from Congress, even if they come up with a compromise. Obama and NASA under Bolden did a very bad job selling their ideas to Congress, and Congress returned the favor by rejecting those ideas and instead coming up with two different plans, both of which serve their own parochial interests rather than the nation’s. The result is a micromanaged mishmosh that won’t get anything done, while wasting huges sums of cash that the federal government does not have.

Arctic icecap reaches 2010 minimum

It appears that the Arctic icecap has reached its 2010 minimum. Though the icecap extent in the spring was the largest since 2002 (see image below), the melt was fast and the minimum appears to be the third lowest since 1979.

Icecap extent

Does this mean the icecap is melting and will disappear shortly, as some politicians like to believe? Hardly. Though the data suggests a long term decline in ice extent, recent trends also show evidence that the icecap might be recovering. What will actually happen is still anyone’s guess.

The Space War, in a nutshell

Bumped, with update below

This Christian Science Monitor article gives a nice summary of the present state of war between the President, the House, and the Senate over NASA’s future.

All in all, things do not look good. With so much disagreement, whatever Congress and the President eventually agree to is going to be a mess, accomplishing little while spending gobs of money that the federal government simply no longer has. The result will almost certainly be a failed NASA program, an inability of the United States government to get astronauts into orbit, and an enormous waste of resources.

The one shining light in all this is that we still have a unrelenting need to get into space, not merely to supply the International Space Station but to also compete with other nations. It is my belief that this need — and the potential profits to be made from it — is going to compel private companies to build their own rockets and capsules for getting humans and cargo into space. And I think they will do it whether or not the federal government can get its act together.

Thus, though the U.S. might find itself a bystander in the space race for the next decade or so, in the end we will have a vibrant, competing aerospace industry, capable of dominating the exploration of the solar system for generations to come.

So buck up, space cadets. The near term future might be grim, but the long term possibilities remain endless.

Update: This announcement today from Boeing and Space Adventures illustrates my above point perfectly. For decades Boeing has been a lazy company, living off the government dole while doing little to capture market share in the competitive market. Now that the dole of government is possibly going away, however, the company at last appears to be coming alive. Instead of waiting for a deal with NASA, Boeing has been going ahead with its CST-100 manned capsule, figuring it can make money anyway by selling this product to both private and government customers.

Our Debt Is More Than All the Money in the World

There is a lobbying push among a lot of space activists to get the House NASA authorization bill changed so that more money is spent for commercial space. Unfortunately for these activists, reality is about to strike (almost certainly on November 2). Also see this story: Our debt is more than all the money in the world.

With a new Congress almost certainly dominated by individuals who want to shrink the size of government, I doubt anyone in the space industry is going to get much of what they want in the coming years.

Philadelphia police steal citizens’ guns

Two stories from the so-called “city of brotherly love”:

First, a woman whose son was murdered decided she needed to protect herself. She legally obtained a concealed carry permit and purchased a gun, only to have the police come to her home, arrest her, and confiscate it. Key quote:

“I thought they were coming to my door to tell me they had my son’s murderer,” [the woman] said. “But they were coming to take me and my gun, and now I’m defenseless.”

In the second story, it appears that Philadelphia police are making a policy to arrest security guards and confiscate their guns, even though the guns were lawfully obtained and legally permitted. At least nine different security guards have experienced this form of Philadelphia thuggery. Key quote from Lieutenant Fran Healy, special adviser to the police commissioner:

“Officers’ safety comes first, and not infringing on people’s rights comes second.”

By the way, Philadelphia is the same city that now wants to charge a $300 business license for anyone writing a blog, regardless of whether they are running a business or hobby, and thus effectively stifling free speech.

As imagined by SF authors: the Celestial Spiral

This amazing Hubble image, showing a strange spiral to the left of the bright star, is not of a galaxy. Instead, it is a binary star system where the material from one star is being sucked away from it by the other, thus producing the spiral pattern.

celestial spiral

What is most fascinating about this discovery is that this kind of phenomenon has been predicted for decades, by both astronomers and science fiction writers. Consider for example this quote from Larry Niven from his short story, The Soft Weapon, where he describes what he thinks the binary star Beta Lyrae might look like:

There was smoke across the sky, a trail of red smoke wound in a tight spiral coil. At the center of the coil was the source of the fire: a double star. One member was violet-white, a flame to brand holes in a human retina, its force held in check by the polarized window. The companion was small and yellow. They seemed to burn inches apart, so close that their masses had pulled them both into flattened eggs, so close that a red belt of lesser flame looped around them to link their bulging equators togehter. The belt was hydrogen, still mating in fusion fire, pulled loose from the stellar surfaces by two gravitional wells in conflict.

The gravity did more than that. It sent a loose end of the red belt flailing away, away and out in a burning Maypole spiral that expanded and dimmed as it rose toward interstellar space, until it turned from flame-red to smoke-red, bracketing the sky and painting a spiral path of stars deep red across half the universe.

A question for the baby boomers

If you are a baby boomer who grew up in the 1960s, such as myself, there are some very safe assumptions that anyone can make about your history and political views, both during the 1960s and the decades that followed.

For example, in the 1960s you were almost certainly against the Vietnam War. You were also likely to oppose President Lyndon Johnson and his Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. You cheered Eugene McCarthy’s anti-war campaign for President, and you probably also despised President Nixon and passionately wished that George McGovern had won the 1972 Presidential campaign.

Almost certainly you participated in some anti-war protests somewhere during the 1960s. Some of you were in Chicago for the protests during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, while others were likely to have participated in the numerous university sit-ins that were rampant throughout the country in the late 1960s.

Sadly, many of you at that time would have probably considered the police “pigs” and the military “evil” (even if those insults seem totally unfair, disgusting, and almost unforgivable to you now).

On a personal level, you probably experimented with drugs, had fun with rock ‘n roll, and even more fun with sex. Many of you also probably participated in the hippie culture at events like Woodstock and places like San Francisco and the Lower Eastside of Manhattan.

Above all, you abhorred authority. You were raised to be very independent-minded and » Read more

Danish cartoonist honored

Profile in courage: Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was given an award in Germany yesterday at a freedom of the press conference. Key quote:

“It does not matter if we think his cartoons are tasteful or not, if we think they are necessary and helping or not,” [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel said at the ceremony in the city of Potsdam. The question, she said, was, “Is he allowed to do this? Yes, he is.”

Westergaard’s drawing is below. Though it might offend some, the drawing of a cartoon is never justification for violence. That so many Muslims seem to think their religion justifies such violence, however, tells us a great deal about the nature of that religion.

Mohammad

Opportunity’s journey continues

On August 18, 2010, the Mars rover Opportunity took this panorama image of the Martian terrain. Up close, patches of bedrock can be seen where the sand had blown clear. In the far distance the rim of Endeavour Crater, the rover’s long term destination, pokes up over the horizon.

Endeavour Crater on the horizon

Update: A press notice from JPL today notes that Opportunity has now traveled about half of the 11.8 mile distance to Endeavour Crater. As it took two years to go this far, the journey still has two years to go, assuming the rover survives that long.

The September monthly sunspot graph

The Sun continues to show a reluctance to come out of its solar minimum. Today NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center published its monthly graph, showing the sun’s developing sunspot cycle in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009. As you can see below, actual sunspot activity remains far below what was predicted by the red line.

September 7, 2010 Solar Cycle progression

As I noted when I posted the July and August graphs, the Sun’s ramp up to solar maximum continues to be far slower and weaker than predicted. After two hundred years of watching a vibrant and strong solar cycle, it appears increasingly likely that we are heading towards some quiet time on the Sun.

Natural Bridge, on the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has released another lunar cave image, this time showing a double pit entrance with a natural bridge between them. [Thanks to reader James Fincannon for the tip.]

Natural bridge

From the caption: “The bridge is approximately 7 meters wide on top and perhaps 9 meters on the bottom side, and is a 20 meter walk for an astronaut to cross from one side to the other.”

Engineering in the Columbia River Gorge

Because yesterday’s hike up Eagle Creek to Tunnel Falls (see picture below) was particularly long, 12.5 miles, I took a break from posting when I got home. Today (Monday), however, was a more easy-going day, as we did more ordinary tourist stuff, driving from place to place with only short strolls at each stop.

Tunnel Falls

The most fascinating tourist stop of the day was by far Bonneville Dam. Just as the security guard at the gate let the car in front of us through, her phone rang. When she was finished and came up to our car, she explained that we would have to wait about a half hour before going to the visitor center, as they needed to open the swing bridge so that a barge could go through the locks. At first I thought this was very unfortunate timing. In the end, it turned out to be fortuitous indeed. We parked at the viewing area above the locks and watched five barges, tied tightly together as a unit and pushed upstream by a tug, slide gently into the lock with barely inches on either side. Neither Diane or I could believe how little spare room the tugboat captain had to pilot this massive object. The gigantic downstream doors then closed (while I quipped that music from Star Wars should be playing) and the lock was quickly filled with water, raising the barges/tugboat up almost a hundred feet. The upstream doors than opened and the barge headed out. All told, the whole operation took less than 45 minutes.

The barges enter the lock

The barges with the lock filled

We then took a tour of the dam’s first power station, with its ten turbines all in a row. Unfortunately, none were operating at the moment. Nonetheless, whenever I see places like this (such as when I visited Hoover Dam back in 2005), I can’t help but be reminded of the scene from the science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, when Walter Pigeon gives us a tour of the Krell underground machine. Unlike the Krell, however, it didn’t take millions of years for us to learn how to build such breath-taking big dams and power stations. We did it less than 150 years after the discovery of electricity!

Bonneville Dam power station

The Columbia River Gorge

We’ve moved on from Mt. St. Helens to the Columbia River Gorge. Below is a shot of Vista House at Crown Point, looking east into the gorge. In the distance you can see Beacon Rock.

The Columbia River Gorge

Today’s hike was short, a six mile loop starting at Multnomah Falls (620 feet total).

Multnomah Falls

The falls and hike are probably among the most popular tourist attractions close to Portland. And since today was Saturday, there were a lot of people around. Nonetheless, the numbers quickly dropped as we worked our way up the trail, dropping to only a handful of people once we climbed past the top of the falls. The hike itself included a lot of waterfalls and babbling streams, but it also weaved its way through some impressive evergreen forests.

forest of trees

I find it sad how few people are willing to do the little extra work necessary to reach these beautiful places. At one point on our way down, we passed a family that was clearly discussing whether to continue. They had already climbed about 80 percent of the way up, but the father and mother were tired and seemed willing to stop. When the son (about 12) asked me how much farther it was to the top and I said it was only about 20 to 30 minutes, he was off like a shot, with the parents forced to follow, albeit reluctantly. My immediate thought was, “Go, kid, go!”

Living underground for months

Though this article outlines succinctly the physical and mental difficulties faced by the 33 trapped Chilean miners, it also tends to overemphasize the worst case scenerios, none of which are likely to happen. I can state from personal experience — having spent numerous weekends underground during cave exploration trips — that though their situation is very unpleasant, I have no doubt these miners will survive. Because they have contact with the surface, and therefore a regular supply of food and information, they will simply demonstrate the limitless range of human endurance, and hold on until rescue arrives.

New exoplanets

Exoplanet news! Scientists today announced the discovery of a host of planets, all orbiting a single star similar to the Sun. Though five are Neptune-sized, a sixth (not yet confirmed) might be the size of Earth. What makes this even more exciting is that the astronomers made the discovery using a ground-based telescope.

But wait, there’s more! Thursday NASA will hold a press conference about a new discovery by Kepler!

The desert below Mt. St. Helens

On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted, the blast throwing the north slope of the mountain out and downward in a terribly hot wave of ash, rock, and magma. All life in its path was destroyed. Forests were ripped to the ground, then buried. The force of the wave tore into Spirit Lake, pushing the water sideways so that it sent its own wave 500 feet up the side of the opposite mountain. The mountain then dumped so much material into the lake that it actually doubled in size, its shores raised 200 feet.

It is now thirty years later. After years of slowly oozing out two large lava domes into its shattered crater, Mt. St. Helens had finally quieted down enough for the National Park Service to permit hikers to once again return. Not only do trails now criss-cross the blast zone below the crater, if you make arrangements in advance you can actually hike up the mountain’s south face and look down into the crater.

Our hike yesterday at Mt. St. Helens consisted of two parts. The first took us down onto the Loowit Trail, the closest the National Park Service permits hikers to get to the volcano’s lava domes. The second part was a short hike down to the shoreline of Spirit Lake.

Two things stood out in both these hikes. First, I was astonished how much of the surrounding landscape remains devastated, barren, and desert-like, decades after the eruption. I come from the East, where you expect a barren field to quickly become overgrown with life. Yet, even in the rainy climate of the northwest the destruction left by the volcano is so profound it is going to take many more decades for the forest to reclaim its former glory.

Thus, the land between the mountain and Spirit Lake more resembles the deserts of the American southwest than the lush, wet forests of the Cascade mountains. At one point I even noted to Diane how the Loowit trail reminded me of the Tonto Plateau trail in the Grand Canyon — a wide shadeless terrain crossing periodic dry gullys.

Loowit Trail looking up at Mt. St. Helens

Still, in what had been a dead zone thirty years ago, small life has reappeared, from chipmunks to a variety of scrubs and grasses. There are even a scattering a small young evergreens, signaling the eventual return of the forest.

At Spirit Lake, farther from the volcano, the landscape showed even more life. Yet, the lake was still half covered with a mat of dead logs, left over from the blast. And the hillsides were littered with the blown-down logs. Though many have rotted away in the ensuing decades, many remain, scattered about like giant toothpicks.

logs on lake

The second thing notable was how much the barren landscape of Mt. St. Helens was dominated by the research work of scientists. Wherever we looked we saw evidence of it. Instruments and sensors could be spotted everywhere. Helicopters transporting scientists flew over repeatedly. We even met a young researcher gathering animal traps, part of the continuing census of life in the blast zone. As she explained to me, they are tracking the changing species as life re-enters and repopulates the dead zone.

researcher with samples

From a human perspective, this research is profound. Though natural disasters such as the Mt. St. Helens eruption are not unusual things in the history of our planet, humans have never had an opportunity to study the aftermath of one in such detail. The knowledge gained will be priceless beyond measure. And that we as a society are willing to dedicate the funds to do this work will speak very well of us to future generations.

ground sensor

sensor

helicopter

Harvard researcher admits to research misconduct

Another scientific scandal, this time in the field of animal and human cognitive research: Harvard scientist Marc Hauser has admitted to eight instances of misconduct. Three key quotes:

The university said in a statement last week that Dr. Hauser or a co-author had been directed to correct three published papers for which the original data could not be found. [emphasis mine]

Harvard itself had faced growing criticism for not releasing more details of the inquiry since The Boston Globe reported on Aug. 10 that the university had found evidence of scientific misconduct in Dr. Hauser’s lab. On Friday, Michael D. Smith, dean of the Harvard faculty of arts and sciences, issued a letter to the faculty confirming the inquiry and saying the eight instances of scientific misconduct involved problems of “data acquisition, data analysis, data retention, and the reporting of research methodologies and results.” No further details were given.

Harvard’s findings against him, if sustained, may cast a shadow over the broad field of scientific research that depended on the particular research technique often used in his experiments.

Gee, this sure sounds a lot like the Phil Jones/East Anglia University climategate scandal, where both the researcher and his university provided cover for each other, thereby leaving a cloud over a vast amount of climate research that depends on Jones’s data.

A cloudy day in Paradise

We were back at Mt. Rainier today, this time doing one short hike and one long one, totaling 8.6 miles. The short hike took us to the Grove of the Patriarchs, a small grove of thousand year old trees. The long hike took us up to 7200 feet elevation on the flanks of Mt. Rainier. Unfortunately, the mountain was shy today, keeping itself hidden behind clouds for most of the day. Near the top of the climb the clouds parted for about 30 seconds, and I was able to get a signal snapshot of it. Otherwise, we spent most of the hike in the mist, which was beautiful in its own way.

Grove of the Patriarchs

Mt. Rainier, in the clouds

Obama’s traffic jam

The charade in Los Angeles on Monday when President Obama arrived for a fundraiser and shut down traffic during rush hour — causing a storm of angry protest — is another very obvious illustration of the great disconnect between today’s ruling class and the general public.

It’s not just that Obama seemed oblivious to the traffic chaos he created. It is that he, as well as most politicians today (from both parties), truly expect large areas of a city to be closed down for their convenience, and don’t seem to give a damn that by doing so they make life miserable for everyone else.

To paraphrase what Glenn Reynolds likes to say, traffic jams are for “the little people.”

Obama’s actions here are far from new and have actually been deeply institutionalized since the 1960s, following Kennedy’s assassination. Originally designed to protect a president from attack, the shutting down of highways quickly became a tool to make the president’s life as easy as possible while demonstrating to all his lordly superiority.

For example, I personally experienced this kingly arrogance back in 1979. I needed to get from my house in Astoria, Queens, to LaGuardia Airport, normally a very short 10 minute drive. But as I pulled into the ramp for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway I found myself being waved to a stop by a policeman. The expressway was being closed so that President Jimmy Carter could use it. I, along with hundreds of others, was forced to sit there for thirty minutes, waiting for his entourage of approximately thirty limousines finally go by. To say that this infuriated me is to put it mildly.

Nor do I think this behavior is reserved to Democrats. I am sure that my readers could easily cite similar events during past Republican administrations.

Nor is it limited to American political leaders. The ruling class of the defunct Soviet Union made it offical policy. There, those in power built many urban roadways with special lanes reserved exclusively for communist party officials. Moreover, when they used those lanes the street lights could be commandeered, turning them all green so that anyone on a cross street had to wait.

In the U.S. we have not yet come that far. Yet, that presidents feel it their right to shut down entire transportation systems for their mere convenience suggests that sadly we don’t have that far to travel.

Unless of course the public, which still has the vote, does something about it.

A day spent in Paradise

Diane and I spent today hiking the shorter trails near the visitor center at Mt. Rainier, in an area called Paradise. Below are two pictures to give you a feel. Tomorrow we start on some longer hikes, getting higher on the mountain. Later in the week we head to Mt. St. Helens.

Diane at the start of the trail

Alpine flowers

Old Media, Old News

The New York Times today published an op-ed outlining the serious dangers we face should the Sun unleash a solar flare or coronal mass ejection of sufficient power to knock out our electrical grids. After describing the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the author then says

We are similarly unready for another potential natural disaster: solar storms, bursts of gas on the sun’s surface that release tremendous energy pulses.

Now this might be interesting, had it been published in 1988. At that time, the electrical grids used in the U.S. and Canada were very much unprepared for a sudden solar storm. Moreover, the Sun at that time was ramping up towards a particularly active solar maximum. The result: On March 13, 1989, the power grid that supplied electricity to Quebec and 200 utility companies in the U.S. came crashing down, overloaded by a power surge caused by a burst of energy sent hurtling towards the Earth, by the Sun.

However, to report this threat today as if it was news is somewhat laughable. Since the 1990 solar maximum, the world’s electrical systems have been very much aware of the problem and have instituted numerous safeguards should the Sun burp at them again. It was for this reason that there were few problems during the next solar maximum in 2001, even though it was almost as powerful as the maximum in 1990.

The real news story concerning the Sun is how inactive it has been, for reasons scientists do not understand. Not only was the recently concluded solar minimum the longest and deepest in almost a hundred years, the subsequent solar activity leading to the next solar maximum has been far weaker than every prediction. At the moment, the Sun appears headed for the weakest solar maximum in two hundred years. And when that last happened, the Earth experienced a period of significantly cold weather, also for reasons that scientist do not yet understand.

It is this story that journalists should be covering.

the solar cycle

More questions raised about Mann’s hockey stick graph

A new research paper, written by statistical scientists and to be published next month in the Annals of Applied Statistics, has found that Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph, showing a steep increase in global temperature in the last two hundred years, is statistically invalid. Key quote:

Research on multi-proxy temperature reconstructions of the earth’s temperature is now entering its second decade. While the literature is large, there has been very little collaboration with university level, professional statisticians (Wegman et al., 2006; Wegman, 2006). Our paper is an effort to apply some modern statistical methods to these problems. While our results agree with the climate scientists findings in some respects, our methods of estimating model uncertainty and accuracy are in sharp disagreement.

[We] conclude unequivocally that the evidence for a ”long-handled” hockey stick (where the shaft of the hockey stick extends to the year 1000 AD) is lacking in the data. The fundamental problem is that there is a limited amount of proxy data which dates back to 1000 AD; what is available is weakly predictive of global annual temperature. Our backcasting methods, which track quite closely the methods applied most recently in Mann (2008) to the same data, are unable to catch the sharp run up in temperatures recorded in the 1990s, even in-sample. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the temperature data going back to 1000 AD is poor, and cannot be reliably used to prove a sudden increase in global temperature in the last two hundred years. More importantly, according to this paper, Michael Mann tried to use statistics to prove his point, without consulting any statisticians.

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