Peter Gleick Discovers That Heartland Operated on a Shoestring

I happened to look at the information on the Pacific Institute Web Site and I realized the Heartland Institute Budget for global warming projects was actually much less than Peter Gleick's budget.

http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/10%20Audit.pdf

Check page2 and the total revenue was 2.3 million in 2010.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/

Global warming projects 2010: $964,000 and 2011: $629,000.

Mr. Gleick must have sorely disappointed to find out he was being harassed by paupers.

Comparing GISS, HADCRU, RSS and UAH Temperature Records

Another update including data through November 2011. The indexes are getting closer together. They range from 0.0137 to 0.0158 degrees per year or 1.37 to 1.57 degrees per century. Another interesting thing is the UAH 12 month moving average shows almost exactly the same temperature for 2010 as 1998.

Comparing GISS, HADCRU, RSS and UAH Temperature Records

This is just an update from my post of January 2010 with the source data updated to March 2011 and adding the RSS temperature data to the other three indexes. All four indexes are presented in the form of a 12 month moving average with a linear trend fit through all four datasets. The data is downloaded from http://www.woodfortrees.org/ and imported in Excel and formatted in a way, that in my opinion, more readable. I suggest opening the graph above in a seperate tab to study it in more detail.

A remarkable thing is how closely all four temperature indexes resemble each other when presented this way. The reason I find this remarkable is that these indexes are derived from two independent set of data. HADCRU and GISS use readings from ground based sensors, while the RSS and UAH indexes use satellite data. The resemblance argues strongly for the validity of the data. The satellite data begins in 1979, which is why I use that as the starting year of the graph.

Also note that the slope of the linear fit for all four temperature indexes are similar. They are all within 0.003 degrees centigrade per year of each other. If you project all 4 slopes out for 100 years then the result is 1.37 to 1.65 degrees hotter than now. Of course, a linear projection in this case is almost certainly wrong, but a temperature increase of between 1 and 2 degree centigrade seems reasonable. Standard climate models assume the temperature increase with increases in carbon dioxide is logarithmic rather than linear, so a 1 degree temperature range includes a wide variety of different emission scenarios.

I guess there is such a thing as bad publicity

I was reading an article in the New York Times on December 1st where an online vendor was bragging about how all the bad online publicity was improving his page rank on Google and actually getting him more business.

Google Acts to Demote Distasteful Web Sellers

Today I read where he was arrested by federal agents.

U.S. Arrests Online Seller Who Scared Customers

A friend was complaining to me this morning about the awful experience he had with a mover. I typed their name into Google maps and the first comment was "They SUCK". Other comments were, "Crooks", "Horrible Company", "They are awful", "Cheaters", "They are Thieves". I told him it was his own fault for using someone without checking on them (empathy isn't one of my strong points). When he checked later at the BBB, it turned out they had an F rating. Now days any business that does much business will have some online reviews.

I have a problem when one of my friends wants to go out to shop for electronics. What am I supposed to figure out by looking at it? I want to check out both the user and professional reviews and shop around for price. By the time I go to the store, I already know what I want and I called ahead to verify it was in stock. Of course, a lot of user reviews are written by idiots and you actually need to read them. A lot of them are written about the product missing some feature that they would have known if they had read the spec sheet before buying it. But other often mention something about it that turns out to be very important to me also. A good trick is to check amazon.com even if you don't plan to buy from them. They usually have a lot of user reviews.

Buying cell phones without researching them drives me up the wall. How can you check reception in the store? They always put their stores in places with great coverage. If a phone can't make and receive calls reliably what does it matter what else it does? It is a good idea to see what phonescoop.com and cnet.com say about a phone before you buy it.

Dumb Criminal Day in the Orlando Sentinel.

I expect a certain number of dumb criminal stories in the Orlando Sentinel, but today, they have outdone themselves. I've included a screen shot to prove all the stories were in my Sentinel iGoogle feed today. Here they are in ordering of ascending dumbness.

Search continues for handcuffed man who escaped from police car

The reason this is on my list is because he was under arrest for shoplifting a pair of sunglasses from Altamonte Mall, so he just converted a misdemeanor into a felony. I may have to give the police an honorable mention on this one, since he seems to have masterminded his escape by complaining he couldn't breathe and getting them to roll the window down part way.

Deputies at Sonny's arrest man after they smell pot smoke

Volusia County deputies arrested a man because they could smell the pot over the barbeque.

Man, 64, accused of having sex with dog named Christie Brinkley

This man was arrested because when a staffer at the veterinarian was asking him about his his dog's health, he replied that she doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as she used to when they have sex.

And the winner is:

Porn actors accused of killing Florida tattoo artist with sledgehammer

The reason this one wins is because among the evidence submitted were transcripts of the text messages they sent discussing how they were going to commit the crime.

Distracted Driving

I was reading the news today about a local man who, while reaching for his cell phone, managed to sideswipe three other cars, including a Florida Highway Patrol Cruiser, a Windermere police car and one other car, sending three people to the hospital. All he needed was a FBI agent to score a trifecta.

This brings up the issue of distracted driving. As people spend more time in their cars commuting to and from their jobs, for many people the car is actually the normal place to make phone calls. I have friends, who if they didn't call me from their cars, I would never hear from at all.

Some studies have shown that making cell phone calls while you're driving actually impairs your attention as much as being legally intoxicated. The trouble is that the legislative response to this problem has been to require using hands-free cell phones. Other studies have shown that this is useless because the problem is caused by the driver being distracted by the phone call, not the fact that one hand is holding the phone. When people are engaged in a conversation, most of their brain is occupied processing the verbal information. The eyes still see, but the brain doesn't process the information.

The fact of the matter is, that if there was a ban on using cell phones while driving that the worst offenders probably would be our state representatives. As I see it, the problem isn't with the talking while driving, but with the driving. Driving is an enormously boring activity that screams for distractions. Before cell phones, people would be listening to the radio, eating breakfast, doing their makeup or shaving or even reading the newspaper while driving.

As far as I'm concerned, the only long-term solution to the problem is Robocars. Go check out Brad Templeton's blog on Robocars linked below. The main problems with Robocars is legal not technical. A Robocar can be 10 times safer than a car with a human driver, but that 10% is a rich target environment for liability lawyers. Our current legal environment requires perfect safety or nothing can be done. Liability lawyers almost destroyed the civil aviation industry in this country, before Congress passed special legislation to protect them. This means Robocars will appear in other countries before ours. We are hamstrung by our lawyers.

Driver distracted by cell phone plows into FHP trooper, Windermere officer, other car

Robocars

http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/

How Well Did the Tsunami Warning System Work

I was curious to see how well the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center worked in the aftermath of the Chilean eathquake yesterday. As you might recall the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami killed 230,000 people. Many of whom would not have died if the Indian Ocean had an effective tsunami warning system.

I went to the website site of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in to check what time the bulletins went out after the tsunami. The Chilean earthquake happened at 6:34 UTC. The first tsunami warning went out from the warning center at 6:46 UTC. That means they will issue a warning 12 minutes after the initial earthquake. Actually issuing the warning 12 minutes after the earthquake seems like a pretty good response to me. Here is a link to their initial warning.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1&id=pacific.2010.02.27.064454

As the day progressed the warning area was expanded, until four hours later when it actually when it was expanded to a Pacific wide warning.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1&id=pacific.2010.02.27.104329

I was curious when I noticed that the Pacific wide alert went out at 12:45 AM Honolulu time. I talked to friends of mine in Hawaii and emergency sirens didn't go off till 6 AM that morning. I did some investigation and apparently there was nothing sinister involved. The Hawaii civil defense people were on the job, but didn't see any reason to get people out of bed when the tsunami wouldn't be hitting Hawaii until 11 AM.

Tsunami response flaws draw review

It seems kind of silly for anyone to worry about an earthquake that happened 6600 miles away but 61 people were killed in Hilo, Hawaii by the tsunami from the 1960 Chilean earthquake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was actually created as a response to a 1946 tsunami that hit Hilo killing 160 people.

Another interesting aspect to the Chilean earthquake is that the earthquake was hundreds of times more powerful than the earthquake that happened earlier this year in Haiti with the death toll was hundreds of times less . There are actually several news articles analyzing this.

Chile's quake 500 times more powerful than Haiti's

Infrastructure helps to stem casualties