1905 was a great year for physics, in this year a 24 year old patent examiner in Bern Switzerland published 4 fundamental papers in physics in 4 disparate areas of the field. The topics included special relativity, the relationship between energy and matter, brownian motion and the subject of this post, the photo electric effect.
The photo electric effect paper by Einstein was probably the most practical paper next to the brownian motion paper in that it provided an answer to a long standing problem in electromagnetic theory at the time that had stood as an embarrassment to particle physics. This embarrasment was a legacy of the work of James Clerk Maxwell and his fundamental equations of electromagnetism, by using a continuous wave analog to describe the energy of propagating fields Maxwell was able to do the astonishing, he explained the riddle that was the relationship between electricity and magnetism in clear mathematical terms and he was able to show how light must be itself an electromagnetic wave by showing that all such waves are limited by the speed of light "c" or roughly 186,000 miles per second. The use of continuous waves to describe particles however led to serious difficulties when attempting to calculate the energy radiating from theoretical systems known as 'black bodies". Black body radiation could easily be approximated by taking an ingot of steel with a hole bored inside, according to Maxwell's electromagnetic theory this hole should be generating an infinite set of frequencies of light, but if there are infinite frequencies being generated then there must be infinite energy and experimentation clearly showed that such bodies had limited fixed energy release patterns so something was wrong.
Near the end of the 19th century a brilliant physicist Max Planck theorized the possibility that the infinite energy black body problem could be solved IF the energy of light eminating from the material was discrete in some way or "quantized". However he was unable to form a mechanism to describe the smooth transition from a continuous field and quanta of light or photons as they came to be called. At least this was the case until Einstein's arrival, Einstein took the job at Bern to work on his ideas in physics (but also because he had trouble finding a teaching position!)...his main aim was to answer the question he claimed plagued him from the time he was 17 and asked what it would be like to ride a beam of light, what would he see? He answered the question also in 1905 in his special relativity paper which I'll talk about in another post. Along the way he apparently amused himself by solving a couple of other huge problems in physics at the time, one of which was the black body problem. To be clear Einstein wasn't directly trying to solve the black body problem, he was trying to explain why it was that a metal surface shined with light would have an induced current. Somehow the energy of the light was being absorbed by the metal material and forming a current flow. Einstein's solution involved using Planck's idea of quanta and tying it to the constant that Planck discovered (symbolically represented as h in physics) that would govern energy release in particle form devised the famous equation E = hv which in semiconductor physics circles is more important than F= ma or E = mc^2 , the reason is that this equation enabled theoretical results using a slight modification to Maxwell's wave formulation to match experimental results in the black body problem. If Energy could only be released in packets of "hv" in size the infinite energy problem would go away, this would be so if the material of the black body and all material that radiate is restricted to "hv" units of radiative absorption. This victory on the part of Einstein could be said to be his most fruitful in a practical sense as it spawned more real technology than any of his other work, including Special and General Relativity.
So surfaces emit energy in "hv" units of energy, so what?
The significance of Einstein's equation toward the current flow problem and the black body problem enabled a great embarrassment of EM theory to be over come but beside that what has come from the realization? A first practical utilization of the awareness that light could induce current flow came when Shockley and Bardeen invented the transistor in 1947, the transistor was realized by mating two different materials called semiconductors at a junction, one material was an electron donator , with free electrons ready to give ...the other material was an electron receiver, with free "holes" (or open valence shells) for accepting electrons...when mated in the double junction fashion used by Shockley and Bardeen it was hoped that a "bias" or current applied between two junctions could modulate a much larger current...effectively amplifying the smaller current. This success ushered in the age of semiconductor electronics that accelerated in the 50's with the transistor radio and other devices and took off in the 60's and 70's. However a side effect of mating electron rich and electron poor junctions was what happened as electrons jumped the gap of what is called the "depletion region" between the two materials, in accordance with Einstein's relation for quantized photons on surfaces when current flowed through the junctions photons (in the infrared range) would be produced. Thus the reverse of the photoelectric effect was possible, flowing current through materials in just the right manner could liberate photons of a specific frequency 'v'...in transistor design this is actually bad thing as it is energy that leaves the circuit and does not aid in the amplification of the bias signal which is the desired result...a way to use this reverse photo electric effect was realized shortly after Einstein's paper was written in 1907, the light produced was infra red...it took almost 60 years to produce visible light LED's and another 15 years to reduce costs for them to be included into practical devices. If you've seen an 8 segment display from old calculators you were looking at a bunch of early LED's. Today, LED lighting is every where and has diversified from the early red LED's to colors across the visible spectrum including combined options to create white light. Many cities have begun replacing their old bulb based street lights by packages of highly efficient and color pure LED lights, these packages are significantly more power efficient and thus will save cities millions in energy costs , they are also environmentally friendly as energy not used means less carbon emissions. The LED based street lights are also noticeably more color pure and brighter from much further distances potentially allowing for a reduction in accidents. As a replacement for incandescent and flourescent bulbs LED lighting promises incredibly energy efficient and color pure light options without the environmental potential hazards associated with older technologies. In the most recent iterations of the technology rather than use semiconductors to produce the light, researchers are using bio molecules that change shape and release visible light photons, these new LED's called O (organic) LED's for their use of these biomolecules are poised to revolutize display technologies from hand held phones to large screen TV's. OLED's can be even more efficient than regular LED's can be embedded in flexible or transparent membranes or surfaces and can produce color ranges not possible with CRT (cathode ray tube) or plasma or LCD based technologies.
So a direct result of Einstein's explanation of the photo electric effect in the reverse case is clear and ever present but what of the original mode of light driving current in a metal? This aspect of the paper was explored in the mid 60's by engineers in Bell Labs who were on a quest to find a display technology for what was believed to be the pending big business of video phones. The investigation of a grid of photo diodes used to capture light in wells and induce individual currents which can then be used to infer the luminous intensity of the impinged light, sufficiently large arrays of these diodes could then be used as a sensor array for optical uses and the CCD or charge coupled device was born. The technology changed hands and advanced as the array densities improved and the methods for reading and processing the signals generated in the thousands and then millions of wells were refined, soon the CCD was being used in high end video cameras to capture light using a trichromatic process and then synthesize a full color image. It wasn't until the mid 90's that the technology really took off in production as the unique nature of the circuitry for CCD's that made them expensive became less of an issue. CCD's were used by Kodak to replace chemical film and the digital camera revolution was born, Japanese companies picked up on the power of the sensor technology and devoted large amounts of R&D to create more advanced sensors , Nikon, Canon , Sony and others joined the fray and led to the growth of the digital photography market that has occurred in the last15 years. A parallel development for the last 10 years has been the ability to retool existing MOS (metal oxide silicon) based production plants to produce sensors , these C(complementary) MOS sensors have recently matched and exceeded the former advantages of CCD's for most applications but at the much reduced production cost allowing such sensors to be placed in cell phones, web cams and home surveillance cameras in amazing numbers. As a recognition of his explanation of light quanta and the work that fell out of it (I covered only the practical devices the ideas (quantization) has even wider ranging influence on quantum mechanics itself but I won't go into that hear) Einstein won the Nobel prize in Physics (the only one he ever won amazingly) in 1923.
Quite a trip isn't it? In just over 100 years, Einstein's diversion has flowered into a multi-billion dollar industry for creating light and for capturing it, think about that the next time you are stopped at a traffic light or are taking a snapshot with your camera phone. Take a moment to say thanks to Einstein.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_electric_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_pixel_sensor
27 November, 2009
22 November, 2009
Ever lives... the continuum
I recently answered the question of my life purpose in an FB comment response, excerpted in its entirety below.
The "purpose" of life is what you make it of course, a relative thing, I don't use "purpose" in some grand metaphysical sense disconnected from people that is often solely the stance of those with a religious bent...no, I feel personally fulfilled that I am the guide of my life, what ever I chose to do it is me that is the conductor of the great symphony that attends the short time I have on this rock. (longer if we succeed in eradicating the disease of aging in the next 20 years as we are on schedule to do!)
I am contended to know that our consciousness is a blip on the continuum that through our work over centuries passed on from one to the next we are able to extend temporally, opening a wider stage over which to do our life dance. Ultimately, we are in the infinite expanse of existence an infinitesimal blip of many such blips that came infinitely before and will come infinitely after, I can't think of anything more beautiful than that continuum. If I could call anything God it would be the continuum of spaces and times created by the march of energy about nothing (Since energy itself is all a function of time after all, it can be created and destroyed so long as the dance continues forever!) As an undergraduate engineering student I imagined the universe in this way, a transitory blip of "up" over the down "soon" to come, and now with the discovery of dark energy and it's amazing alignment with the quantum scale zero point energy, it seems my ideas were aligned with a deep truth of reality...that all of the energy that makes up our universe comes from the nothing of the void and that we ourselves owe existence to a dance of the void over a longer universal time scale...which itself is still a blip on the continuum. The beauty of that symmetry at all scales is what has me convinced of its truth, still full of mystery but without hocus pocus, still full of wonder but without paradox. Complex but astoundingly simple.
To me, that is fucking awesome!
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo&feature=player_embedded#
The "purpose" of life is what you make it of course, a relative thing, I don't use "purpose" in some grand metaphysical sense disconnected from people that is often solely the stance of those with a religious bent...no, I feel personally fulfilled that I am the guide of my life, what ever I chose to do it is me that is the conductor of the great symphony that attends the short time I have on this rock. (longer if we succeed in eradicating the disease of aging in the next 20 years as we are on schedule to do!)
I am contended to know that our consciousness is a blip on the continuum that through our work over centuries passed on from one to the next we are able to extend temporally, opening a wider stage over which to do our life dance. Ultimately, we are in the infinite expanse of existence an infinitesimal blip of many such blips that came infinitely before and will come infinitely after, I can't think of anything more beautiful than that continuum. If I could call anything God it would be the continuum of spaces and times created by the march of energy about nothing (Since energy itself is all a function of time after all, it can be created and destroyed so long as the dance continues forever!) As an undergraduate engineering student I imagined the universe in this way, a transitory blip of "up" over the down "soon" to come, and now with the discovery of dark energy and it's amazing alignment with the quantum scale zero point energy, it seems my ideas were aligned with a deep truth of reality...that all of the energy that makes up our universe comes from the nothing of the void and that we ourselves owe existence to a dance of the void over a longer universal time scale...which itself is still a blip on the continuum. The beauty of that symmetry at all scales is what has me convinced of its truth, still full of mystery but without hocus pocus, still full of wonder but without paradox. Complex but astoundingly simple.
To me, that is fucking awesome!
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo&feature=player_embedded#
21 November, 2009
Email will never go obsolete.
As definitive as a post title as one can get, what follows is an analysis of why I am convinced that email , the electronic message delivery system that has been in use on the internet for over 30 years is here to stay...even in the face of more real time oriented communication technologies.
How it works:
In order to fully understand why email is here to stay we need to take a look at the history and the internals of the communication medium. The purpose of email as stated in the RFC (request for comment) document that specifies the technology and the protocols. RFC 821 written in 1982 states:
When you open a new yahoo email account, you don't have to worry about being able to send mail to your colleagues in your company mail system (so long as that system is connected to the wider web via DNS and smtp) , you don't have to worry about sending or receiving mail from your family on their various cell phone or broadband server provider email addresses. The existing network of public DNS servers and their associated SMTP routing hosts ensure that messages arrive at the destination reliably.
How it has grown:
The SMTP based email system has changed since it's description in 1982, back then SMTP only allowed simple text messages without any graphics or html (the language that web pages are written in that browsers an interpret) SMTP predates the www (world wide web) by 9 years so it was designed for much simpler messaging requirements. Today , smtp messages can contain video and audio and html and can contain foreign characters outside of the characters used in the roman set known in the pc world as ASCII text. The addition of MIME types to describe these more complex data types and send them as messages without reducing the robust nature of the service is a testament to how reliable it really is as a message delivery platform.
The new guard:
The emergence of the real time web has provided new options for message delivery. IM a messaging system for real time communication that is nearly 20 years old has now moved from stand alone installed clients running on computers to web based clients that can be accessed using a browser on a computer, laptop or smart phone. IM enables real time communication but because it is real time it is subject to the hiccups that email was designed to route around since delivery time was never meant to be guaranteed with SMTP. So IM servers a perpetually different niche for communication purposes than email. Another new technology is the micro-blogging methods used by companies like Twitter, the short form 140 character tweets enable bits of data to go out to whoever wishes to subscribe to a senders message stream by "following" them. This enables message delivery without requiring formal registration to an SMTP server (only sign up to the twitter service) but allows participants to gather large collections of followers to which they can send /receive messages en mass in a way that is anonymous (you don't necessarily know who your message is going to, with email you explicitly must state your list of recipients)
What is different:
The main difference between the email system and these other forms of messaging stands out quite clearly when one tries to send an IM to some one who isn't on the same IM network, or tries to send a short form message to some one who isn't on Twitter. These later forms of messaging are locked in the silos of the companies that provide the services, there is no equivalent of a global DNS network that ensures routing of messages across IM or "short form" networks. A simulation of this functionality as been arrived at by converting the messages into an open communication form called XML that allows different networks to capture and convert messages between networks but this doesn't guarantee the richness of the respective systems is conveyed in the message stream (for example connecting two users on IM from MSN messenger to AOL Instant Messenger via XML may allow the message and formatting to transit but may fail on transfer of a file through that message exchange) unlike SMTP where the protocol of communication is agreed upon by all makers of email servers , IM servers enable additional functionality that may not cross over to other IM networks. This prevents IM from attaining the level of reliability that email enjoys. Also, IM doesn't enable a method to route messages meant for other IM services or networks through an intermediate system or systems as email does this significantly reduces the scope and robustness of IM services and lock in the service usefulness to a particular IM implementation.
Additionally, IM was not made to compete with email on this front but to compliment it as stated earlier, for delivery of messages that are not time critical the more robust email system will always have a niche. The newest messaging idea is the short form messaging of twitter, however similar to IM it also is a specific protocol implementation that from implementation to implementation have different functions, currently it doesn't even have that problem as twitter is the only major provider of a network for short form messaging, again addressing a communication use case that is distinct from email.
Email satisfies a niche of communication that doesn't require delivery time but does require delivery. It is integrated into the backbone of the internet itself and predates the www, this integration gives it great robustness to failures in networks. The ability to route messages to other email servers through the main servers gives it a supreme advantage over IM and short form messaging by giving it a global scope. The additions to the service to enable delivery of rich messages containing html and audio or video media allow it in fact to serve as a more static version of the more real time messaging systems of IM and short form messaging making it the only option for such functions when it is infeasible or impossible to use the other protocols to perform the functions. As the internet advances the need for a queued non real time messaging system like email will not go away, in fact it will become more useful as a system for storing notifications and events that must be received at some time and that can be used as a global back up to similar functionality provided by independent IM and short form messaging networks.
Links:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc821.html (The first RFC for SMTP the heart of email)
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1939.html (pop3 the latest post office protocol for retrieving local mail from a mail server)
http://www.lemis.com/email/email-rfc.html (a list of email related RFC's)
How it works:
In order to fully understand why email is here to stay we need to take a look at the history and the internals of the communication medium. The purpose of email as stated in the RFC (request for comment) document that specifies the technology and the protocols. RFC 821 written in 1982 states:
The objective of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is to transferSeveral things are important about this statement, first note "simple" is in the name, when designed it was more important that messages were delivered (at some time) than that they arrived on a specific schedule. In many ways this makes it an electronic analog of real mail systems which more or less don't guarantee arrival time (unless you pay for that of course). The next and possibly most important aspect of this description that gives email the widespread use it enjoys today is "independent of the particular transmission subsystem" this means that different networks can mediate email. In the early 80's there were many transmission subsystems in use, ethernet was not the only connection method to network computers and a communication system that spanned the systems of the time was required, email had to work across all those systems in a agnostic manner. The solution was realized by using the tying the communication protocol to the transfer protocols that sat on top of the various types of networks in use, TCP (transfer control protocol)/IP (internet protocol) and its suite of ports or "sockets". SMTP was given the port 23 for exclusive use into machines for the purpose of mediate mail messages. The dual service of routing received messages to users was called POP (post office protocol) and was originally separate from SMTP, today most mail servers host both the message transfer function SMTP and the local mail delivery function POP. The important point of these protocols is that they are low level protocols, meaning they are part of the actual communication protocols of the internet itself as such any computer on the internet can enable applications to perform the respective functions by opening those ports and connecting to other computers. Now, having an SMTP server on a network allows that network to receive and forward messages but only by being aware of other SMTP servers on other networks, this forms a hiearchy of servers that create the global email system. Networks opt into this global system by registering a particular SMTP server on an internal network with an outside facing DNS (Domain Name Server) computer. DNS is the global address book of the entire internet, it is a hierarchical set of yellow pages for all the computers on the web that allows any data to move from a source computer in one network to a destination computer in another network. The data could be an smtp message, it could be video or audio, it could be video or audio embedded in an smtp message, DNS doesn't care...it's only purpose is to route the messages from source to destination. The DNS system is managed by ICANN (Internet Company for Assigned Names and Numbers) which leases out domain names to governments, educational institutions , corporations and individuals, because DNS is a public global service it is extremely robust to outages, data is routed around nodes that fail to respond to a forward request..without DNS computers would otherwise have to know the specific IP address of the destination computer to send data to it, by offloading that computation to a resident set of DNS servers that keep a list or index of names to numbers (IP's) this very simple but often repeated function is pushed to the network in a sense. It is this great power that the email system piggy backs on and that ensures that email as global reach.
mail reliably and efficiently.
SMTP is independent of the particular transmission subsystem and
requires only a reliable ordered data stream channel.
When you open a new yahoo email account, you don't have to worry about being able to send mail to your colleagues in your company mail system (so long as that system is connected to the wider web via DNS and smtp) , you don't have to worry about sending or receiving mail from your family on their various cell phone or broadband server provider email addresses. The existing network of public DNS servers and their associated SMTP routing hosts ensure that messages arrive at the destination reliably.
How it has grown:
The SMTP based email system has changed since it's description in 1982, back then SMTP only allowed simple text messages without any graphics or html (the language that web pages are written in that browsers an interpret) SMTP predates the www (world wide web) by 9 years so it was designed for much simpler messaging requirements. Today , smtp messages can contain video and audio and html and can contain foreign characters outside of the characters used in the roman set known in the pc world as ASCII text. The addition of MIME types to describe these more complex data types and send them as messages without reducing the robust nature of the service is a testament to how reliable it really is as a message delivery platform.
The new guard:
The emergence of the real time web has provided new options for message delivery. IM a messaging system for real time communication that is nearly 20 years old has now moved from stand alone installed clients running on computers to web based clients that can be accessed using a browser on a computer, laptop or smart phone. IM enables real time communication but because it is real time it is subject to the hiccups that email was designed to route around since delivery time was never meant to be guaranteed with SMTP. So IM servers a perpetually different niche for communication purposes than email. Another new technology is the micro-blogging methods used by companies like Twitter, the short form 140 character tweets enable bits of data to go out to whoever wishes to subscribe to a senders message stream by "following" them. This enables message delivery without requiring formal registration to an SMTP server (only sign up to the twitter service) but allows participants to gather large collections of followers to which they can send /receive messages en mass in a way that is anonymous (you don't necessarily know who your message is going to, with email you explicitly must state your list of recipients)
What is different:
The main difference between the email system and these other forms of messaging stands out quite clearly when one tries to send an IM to some one who isn't on the same IM network, or tries to send a short form message to some one who isn't on Twitter. These later forms of messaging are locked in the silos of the companies that provide the services, there is no equivalent of a global DNS network that ensures routing of messages across IM or "short form" networks. A simulation of this functionality as been arrived at by converting the messages into an open communication form called XML that allows different networks to capture and convert messages between networks but this doesn't guarantee the richness of the respective systems is conveyed in the message stream (for example connecting two users on IM from MSN messenger to AOL Instant Messenger via XML may allow the message and formatting to transit but may fail on transfer of a file through that message exchange) unlike SMTP where the protocol of communication is agreed upon by all makers of email servers , IM servers enable additional functionality that may not cross over to other IM networks. This prevents IM from attaining the level of reliability that email enjoys. Also, IM doesn't enable a method to route messages meant for other IM services or networks through an intermediate system or systems as email does this significantly reduces the scope and robustness of IM services and lock in the service usefulness to a particular IM implementation.
Additionally, IM was not made to compete with email on this front but to compliment it as stated earlier, for delivery of messages that are not time critical the more robust email system will always have a niche. The newest messaging idea is the short form messaging of twitter, however similar to IM it also is a specific protocol implementation that from implementation to implementation have different functions, currently it doesn't even have that problem as twitter is the only major provider of a network for short form messaging, again addressing a communication use case that is distinct from email.
Email satisfies a niche of communication that doesn't require delivery time but does require delivery. It is integrated into the backbone of the internet itself and predates the www, this integration gives it great robustness to failures in networks. The ability to route messages to other email servers through the main servers gives it a supreme advantage over IM and short form messaging by giving it a global scope. The additions to the service to enable delivery of rich messages containing html and audio or video media allow it in fact to serve as a more static version of the more real time messaging systems of IM and short form messaging making it the only option for such functions when it is infeasible or impossible to use the other protocols to perform the functions. As the internet advances the need for a queued non real time messaging system like email will not go away, in fact it will become more useful as a system for storing notifications and events that must be received at some time and that can be used as a global back up to similar functionality provided by independent IM and short form messaging networks.
Links:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc821.html (The first RFC for SMTP the heart of email)
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1939.html (pop3 the latest post office protocol for retrieving local mail from a mail server)
http://www.lemis.com/email/email-rfc.html (a list of email related RFC's)
01 November, 2009
Taking global warming heat to use it..
A recent article in the Times online describes the idea put forward by by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission that simply painting roof and road way surfaces could reduce carbon emissions this got me to thinking of another possibility that I've entertained in the past. Instead of reflecting the light into space we could try to harness it.
Existing research on building more efficient solar cells is moving forward all over the world and if we can create significantly efficient panel designs we could succeed in solving the heat absorption problem and acquire energy (to avoid needing to burn fossil fuels) all in one solution. It is true that trapping the energy for use could definitely kill two birds with one stone but it would be orders of magnitude more expensive than just painting or coloring surfaces. The advantage would be the power generation of the panels which depending on efficiency could pay themselves off in a short time. Let us say solar cells are used to absorb the radiative energy and turn it into electricity. A first issue that must be addressed is that traditional solar cells are designed for optimal photo conducting of visible frequencies of light, much of the most damaging radiation from the sun however is in the infra red regime (A and B) ...so the formula for any created solar panels would have to be custom designed to absorb those frequencies or there will be no benefit on reducing their effects. Recent developments in nanotube fabrication can help here, by creating a complex surface of nanotubes of various lengths corresponding to the wavelengths of sun light that we want to absorb and thus allowing all the frequencies to be absorbed and converted to usable electricity.
However, even after capture the real problem is what Rachel mentioned, storage. It is something that I and many other engineers have tried to devote some mind time to and have some ideas on the drawing board but it is a very hard problem, what is needed is a very efficient way to store electricity. Large capacitors work but require massive surface area, magnets work but create powerful magnetic fields, chemical batteries , fuel cells are all horribly inefficient more research on trying to finally understand and create room temperature super conductors would solve this problem over night allowing near limitless storage of current in such materials for on demand utilization.
Other novel solutions can be employed where by we use our rapidly advancing knowledge of biotechnology to solve the problem. Recent attempts to try and break down oil using bacteria has found success, another team was able to create bacteria that does the opposite process ..create oil as a waste product(see link below), it may be possible to create a species of bacteria or fungus that converts sunlight to alcohol. So it would require mating the genes for photosynthesis with the sugar processing genes of existing fungus (yeast) allowing the yeast to convert light into alcohol. This sounds like science fiction but there are many plant / animal hybrid organisms created for scientific purposes (tracers and such or plants with animal genes) this would be a practical way of creating clean fuel (alcohol) without requiring sugar as a food source (diverting from tightened supplies of plants that produce it) and it would avoid the carbon tax of oil. It would not address the light reflection problem but could be developed in conjunction with the mentioned technologies to bridge the gap and reduce carbon emmissions significantly from current levels while extracting energy and fuel in the process. At the accelerating rate at which the Earth is warming we have short precious time to develop efficient solutions, let us hope they can be achieved before it is too late.
Links:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517063708.htm (oil eating bacteria)
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2008/06/19/nanotube-solar-cells-improve-efficiency-10-times/ (carbon nanotubes for more efficient solar cells)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece (oil excreting bacteria)
http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_creating_synthetic_life.html
Existing research on building more efficient solar cells is moving forward all over the world and if we can create significantly efficient panel designs we could succeed in solving the heat absorption problem and acquire energy (to avoid needing to burn fossil fuels) all in one solution. It is true that trapping the energy for use could definitely kill two birds with one stone but it would be orders of magnitude more expensive than just painting or coloring surfaces. The advantage would be the power generation of the panels which depending on efficiency could pay themselves off in a short time. Let us say solar cells are used to absorb the radiative energy and turn it into electricity. A first issue that must be addressed is that traditional solar cells are designed for optimal photo conducting of visible frequencies of light, much of the most damaging radiation from the sun however is in the infra red regime (A and B) ...so the formula for any created solar panels would have to be custom designed to absorb those frequencies or there will be no benefit on reducing their effects. Recent developments in nanotube fabrication can help here, by creating a complex surface of nanotubes of various lengths corresponding to the wavelengths of sun light that we want to absorb and thus allowing all the frequencies to be absorbed and converted to usable electricity.
However, even after capture the real problem is what Rachel mentioned, storage. It is something that I and many other engineers have tried to devote some mind time to and have some ideas on the drawing board but it is a very hard problem, what is needed is a very efficient way to store electricity. Large capacitors work but require massive surface area, magnets work but create powerful magnetic fields, chemical batteries , fuel cells are all horribly inefficient more research on trying to finally understand and create room temperature super conductors would solve this problem over night allowing near limitless storage of current in such materials for on demand utilization.
Other novel solutions can be employed where by we use our rapidly advancing knowledge of biotechnology to solve the problem. Recent attempts to try and break down oil using bacteria has found success, another team was able to create bacteria that does the opposite process ..create oil as a waste product(see link below), it may be possible to create a species of bacteria or fungus that converts sunlight to alcohol. So it would require mating the genes for photosynthesis with the sugar processing genes of existing fungus (yeast) allowing the yeast to convert light into alcohol. This sounds like science fiction but there are many plant / animal hybrid organisms created for scientific purposes (tracers and such or plants with animal genes) this would be a practical way of creating clean fuel (alcohol) without requiring sugar as a food source (diverting from tightened supplies of plants that produce it) and it would avoid the carbon tax of oil. It would not address the light reflection problem but could be developed in conjunction with the mentioned technologies to bridge the gap and reduce carbon emmissions significantly from current levels while extracting energy and fuel in the process. At the accelerating rate at which the Earth is warming we have short precious time to develop efficient solutions, let us hope they can be achieved before it is too late.
Links:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517063708.htm (oil eating bacteria)
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2008/06/19/nanotube-solar-cells-improve-efficiency-10-times/ (carbon nanotubes for more efficient solar cells)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece (oil excreting bacteria)
http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_is_on_the_verge_of_creating_synthetic_life.html
24 October, 2009
Failing to understand how science works.
I often get involved in discussion with people that center around various interpretations of scientific studies or papers in the soft sciences (climate science, biology...etc) that veer from objective analysis of the study or paper data being presented to assertions (on the part of those I am conversing with) that the underlying edifice of science is some how engaged in some conspiracy. I've often found it quite perplexing how people can draw that conclusion given the rigorous nature of scientific investigations and the pains to which scientists go to before drawing conclusions on acquired data. Sure , examples of failure to do this exist (Fleishman and Pons any one?) but they are exceedingly rare and if they do get to a peer review stage , are rightly cremated for the mistakes made. Yesterday, I engaged such a discussion with regard to one of the media darling "controversy" subjects , Anthropogenic Global Warming. Earlier this week, yet another massive study on climate data points to a massive change in the sampled data points in the last few centuries that can not be explained by anything but the rise in human industrial and population growth during the same period. To those who study science, weather or not conclusions drawn by researchers is accepted as valid is not made on the back of a single study, it is draw out from a consideration of dozens to hundreds of such studies. I have been fortunate enough, through my interest in the areas of climate science , biology, geology, ocean science and geology to have personally read hundreds of such papers or studies. The preponderance and wide sweep of the conclusions as they regards AGW is indisputable to me precisely because of this wide base of samples across seemingly disparate areas of scientific investigation. I am aware of the probabilities against such an alignment occurring between thousands of scientists working on different data sets, using different analysis methods but yet still drawing a consensus. However, had I not the base of sampled papers to draw from I might very well draw a different conclusion, but only if I were not also aware of the importance of additional sources of information on the phenomena under investigation. It is this last realization that many lay people , journalist cum climate scientists and ignorant people (those taking a position based on their political leaning and then looking for data to support it) never come to. In a recent discussion on a friends Facebook feed article to the following study:
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/10567
I won't comment on the contents of the link which cites a new study that is devastating enough to the anti AGW crowd on its own. I will however post the exchange that occurred between myself and some anti AGW leaning laymen to highlight the issues mentioned above that scientists face when having to discuss or explain or teach science to those who think that reading a blog post or a few articles is enough to simulate the training of degree holding researchers.
First comment:
Eight Comment:
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/10567
I won't comment on the contents of the link which cites a new study that is devastating enough to the anti AGW crowd on its own. I will however post the exchange that occurred between myself and some anti AGW leaning laymen to highlight the issues mentioned above that scientists face when having to discuss or explain or teach science to those who think that reading a blog post or a few articles is enough to simulate the training of degree holding researchers.
First comment:
Eight Comment:
David Saintloth
"First off, is it or is it not true that only a small sample was taken from the much larger data set? "
This question, no disrespect underscores the misunderstandings of science that I alluded to earlier. The sample data that forms all studies that are termed "Yamal" studies can and have been used to assert various conclusions about climate change.
Straight from the real climate article:... Read More
"They used a subset of the 224 trees they found to be long enough and sensitive enough (based on the interannual variability) supplemented by 17 living tree cores to create a “Yamal” climate record.
A preliminary set of this data had also been used by Keith Briffa in 2000 (pdf) (processed using a different algorithm than used by H&S for consistency with two other northern high latitude series), to create another “Yamal” record that was designed to improve the representation of long-term climate variability.
Since long climate records with annual resolution are few and far between, it is unsurprising that they get used in climate reconstructions. Different reconstructions have used different methods and have made different selections of source data depending on what was being attempted. The best studies tend to test the robustness of their conclusions by dropping various subsets of data or by excluding whole classes of data (such as tree-rings) in order to see what difference they make so you won’t generally find that too much rides on any one proxy record (despite what you might read elsewhere). "
Same data set , different samples , different studies using different algorithms BUT conclusions aligned with AGW. (Excluding countless others since on different data sets)
****So your question when answered in the affirmative (as it must) doesn't reveal anything nefarious about what the results of analysis of those samples indicate.****
The data is pristine, and all empirical data sets are filtered in some ways in order to enable analysis, some filter methods (for example, using cores from young trees in the set exclusively as opposed to centennials) are imprecise in illuminating a true trend but as long as those analysis caveats are stated in the papers there is no problem..this is where the laypeople jump the ship.
"but that those studies should be open and their original data made available, unlike the Yamal data, where it wasn't."
Again, this misses the plot. The *core data* is available to any one to use and create samples from and draw conclusions from THOSE results (the study not the cores!)..it is THAT study method that IS public, but if I as a researcher have created a particularly elegant algorithm for teasing out facts from acquired data there is no need for me to expose my proprietary advantage in analysis if YOU can go to the same core data , pick your OWN samples independently, use your own algorithm and get the SAME results with in a small error sample. It is precisely this independent observation process that solidifies the veracity of the conclusions. Again, note how this says nothing of all the other myriad sample sets beyond dendrochronology (let alone dendrochronological from different areas of the globe) that have again yielded vast consensus from the majority of experts in those areas based on common (ice cores, geological) data sets. This is why scientists are loath to get involved in these discussions as they highlight vast ignorance on the part of those that are asking what **they think** are deep and probing questions.
This question, no disrespect underscores the misunderstandings of science that I alluded to earlier. The sample data that forms all studies that are termed "Yamal" studies can and have been used to assert various conclusions about climate change.
Straight from the real climate article:... Read More
"They used a subset of the 224 trees they found to be long enough and sensitive enough (based on the interannual variability) supplemented by 17 living tree cores to create a “Yamal” climate record.
A preliminary set of this data had also been used by Keith Briffa in 2000 (pdf) (processed using a different algorithm than used by H&S for consistency with two other northern high latitude series), to create another “Yamal” record that was designed to improve the representation of long-term climate variability.
Since long climate records with annual resolution are few and far between, it is unsurprising that they get used in climate reconstructions. Different reconstructions have used different methods and have made different selections of source data depending on what was being attempted. The best studies tend to test the robustness of their conclusions by dropping various subsets of data or by excluding whole classes of data (such as tree-rings) in order to see what difference they make so you won’t generally find that too much rides on any one proxy record (despite what you might read elsewhere). "
Same data set , different samples , different studies using different algorithms BUT conclusions aligned with AGW. (Excluding countless others since on different data sets)
****So your question when answered in the affirmative (as it must) doesn't reveal anything nefarious about what the results of analysis of those samples indicate.****
The data is pristine, and all empirical data sets are filtered in some ways in order to enable analysis, some filter methods (for example, using cores from young trees in the set exclusively as opposed to centennials) are imprecise in illuminating a true trend but as long as those analysis caveats are stated in the papers there is no problem..this is where the laypeople jump the ship.
"but that those studies should be open and their original data made available, unlike the Yamal data, where it wasn't."
Again, this misses the plot. The *core data* is available to any one to use and create samples from and draw conclusions from THOSE results (the study not the cores!)..it is THAT study method that IS public, but if I as a researcher have created a particularly elegant algorithm for teasing out facts from acquired data there is no need for me to expose my proprietary advantage in analysis if YOU can go to the same core data , pick your OWN samples independently, use your own algorithm and get the SAME results with in a small error sample. It is precisely this independent observation process that solidifies the veracity of the conclusions. Again, note how this says nothing of all the other myriad sample sets beyond dendrochronology (let alone dendrochronological from different areas of the globe) that have again yielded vast consensus from the majority of experts in those areas based on common (ice cores, geological) data sets. This is why scientists are loath to get involved in these discussions as they highlight vast ignorance on the part of those that are asking what **they think** are deep and probing questions.
04 October, 2009
Numeroom.com compared to Google Wave , how are they different?
In a post from several months back I mentioned the Google "Wave" server technology that had been announced by many of the IT media shops. Google provided many tech. videos on the service on youtube and after watching a few of them I got the gist of the service as being basically an open source collaboration server for a more real time collaboration experience between users on the server. Shortly afterward I was asked by Juliette Powell what the main differences were between the numeroom.com service and google wave were. I explained some of the architectural differences based on what I knew of them at the time in this post which had some great input in the comments for that post but on the business end, numeroom.com collaboration provides a solution for small businesses that makes it more efficient than going with any server based system for several important reasons as indicated in the list below:
So in addition to the architectural changes mentioned in the previous post, these front end considerations highlight the advantage of having a subscription collaboration server service with branding and security have over installing your own Google Wave server and dealing with the required managements hassles that might entail particularly when you are a small to medium sized business trying to run the business as efficiently as possible in tough economic times. I am excited about Google Wave's attempt to address the need for a collaboration server and service that I saw several years ago, it makes me confident that my solution is primed to allow businesses and individuals to conduct their business or social collaboration activities in the hyper efficient ways that will be a hallmark of the years to come.
- No need to host the collaboration server and services yourself. This is a huge win for small to medium sized businesses that are not capable or interested in hosting their own collaboration solutions on site. The additional management headache exceeds the monthly cost of just licensing the service from numeroom.com these businesses will not see any advantage to going with google wave as they would have to host the server on site to keep their business processes and content secure from prying eyes, making a subscription service ideal for their particular needs.
- No need to hire a manager for the server. Google Wave servers have to be managed, though Google touts the ease of use of management the fact that they need to be managed means that some one has to be paid to do it or delegated to do it for any stand alone servers. The numeroom.com service enables easy delegation of functions most critical to the business to enable collaboration, creating users, creating categories and workflows can be delegated to users very easily, the core complexities of the service are managed by Apriority LLC and thus there is no need for the business to hire experts to mediate these aspects of the server they can simply delegate them up to Apriority LLC.
- No need to pay for the costs associated with maintaining or upgrading the server. Any hosting of a server will require costs of a machine to host the service, possible need to ensure redundancy should that machine go down, need to license operating systems to run the server (s) and then hire individuals to manage the service. All these actions can incur costs that many small to medium sized businesses are not interested in dealing with, numeroom.com subscriptions eliminate these hassles by hiding the service away in a secure data center, where service is distributed across a cluster of AgilEntity servers and management is distributed between the physical machines of the hosting provider and the management team of Apriority LLC reducing the over all costs for the subscription service.
So in addition to the architectural changes mentioned in the previous post, these front end considerations highlight the advantage of having a subscription collaboration server service with branding and security have over installing your own Google Wave server and dealing with the required managements hassles that might entail particularly when you are a small to medium sized business trying to run the business as efficiently as possible in tough economic times. I am excited about Google Wave's attempt to address the need for a collaboration server and service that I saw several years ago, it makes me confident that my solution is primed to allow businesses and individuals to conduct their business or social collaboration activities in the hyper efficient ways that will be a hallmark of the years to come.
02 October, 2009
Ardipithecus ramidus: what can we really say definitively about it??
The breaking news today was the announcement by researchers that they have found a new species of hominin that predates "Lucy" the previous oldest known fossil find of the hominin line (which includes human beings). The lead researchers are interpreting the morphology of this new find to indicate that it had "advanced" bipedal capabilities that do not lend credence to the idea that the hominin line and the chimp line share a common ancestor. However, this line of reasoning is not necessarily proven by the "ardi" finds made. I export a section of an answer to this that I posted on a friends Facebook wall to explain :
"The chimp line could have diverged earlier (as molecular data suggests it did) and Ardi is simply an intermediate species along the line from last recent common ancestor with chimps and modern day hominin (of which the only extant species is us)lineage. Strictly speaking chimps are an "offshoot" (or reciprocally ...the hominin line is an offshoot) from the last common ancestor. Molecular data has this occurring some where between 4.5 and 6 mya so evidence of the true origin species could still be in the ground preserved some where OR it simply was never captured. Don't forget that having anything at all preserved is a geological super mega lottery, the molecular data has already told us the general story of what happened...the sparse anthropological data is just filling in the details between the milestones as a bonus at this point. ;) The controversy that anthropologists are making over it would be moot if they could get some dna from the finds. They can then definitively determine if the gene line is ancestral to ours and or chimps. Then there is the possibility that chimps could be a de-evolution of a previously advanced state in the last common ancestor some sort of tree living great ape.
As usual interpretation of the finds is muddying the waters of the discovery. Was ardi an immediate ancestor of ours ? maybe. Did modern chimps evolve from ardi's line? maybe or did they predate ardi by connection through an older common ancestor? maybe Does this discovery kill the Savannah hypothesis as the lead researchers are claiming ? nope. the simplest explanation tends to be the best..to go from an elegant ecological change leading to bipedalism to a complex interplay of food for sex makes things more complex, and more complex means more improbable, possible yes..but still more improbable. Now if a specimen is found around the 6 mya sweet spot that looks more like ardi than a chimp then it simply means chimps are a devolution of the ardi body form possibly to adapt strongly to the jungle living that chimps do..meanwhile the homonin line diverged into the savanah forms that eventually led to us. All fun stuff indeed but as usual in some what soft Sciences like anthropology, interpretation of results is what breeds the controversy!!
My guess for why we can't find fossils that represent the chimp root point is the difficulty of preserving bones in the jungle habitat that chimps inhabit...unlike hominins which lived away from trees more and more and were able to have their remains preserved in places where they were not subject to total elimination by the environment."
So the conclusion that ardi is even our ancestor is not definitively proven, it is possible that during this period there were many variant populations of hominins, of which Ardi simply was a line that diverged and then went kaput as the rift valley continued to form and the Savanah habitat emerged as a result. We know that evolution does not occur in the neat "tree" fashion that older descriptions of lineage used to portray, the actual behavior is more like an interconnected web or bush of lineages (see image),
cross breeding in many cases to form short lived intermediate forms , many of which were never to be fossilized so that we can find them millions of years later. So though Ardi does appear to be a primitive ancestor along the line that evolved Lucy it does not mean it is precisely such a species. We can make such links between us and more advanced hominins like Homo Erectus which successfully left Africa and have finds preserved in different habitats and times since the earliest dated remains are found with morphological continuity. A known example of a parallel hominin line is the Neanderthals of Europe, this robust modern species evolved from ancestral populations of Homo Erectus separately to the European climate conditions millions of years after leaving Africa, we know they are not ancestral to homo sapiens but are cousins on a side branch. It could be that Ardi is precisely on an older side branch from the line that led to us but the dearth of finds of OTHER side branches that likely existed at the time makes it more difficult for us to make any definitive ruling. By the time of Erectus there were no other side branches at least according to fossil evidence but the further back the finds go the more likely there was a higher diversity of similar populations particularly at a point of increased geologic change as was provided by the rift valley formation initiation. Unfortunately molecular data can't help provide more information on this stage in history but comparative analysis may reveal some aspect of the diversity or we can hope that more finds are made of older or comparable dated fossils of still yet other species.
So though the find is very exciting it doesn't magic bullet anything, we'd need more samples from possible hominin species that existed at the time to whittle down the relations between chimp and hominin and between the various hominin's and us.
"The chimp line could have diverged earlier (as molecular data suggests it did) and Ardi is simply an intermediate species along the line from last recent common ancestor with chimps and modern day hominin (of which the only extant species is us)lineage. Strictly speaking chimps are an "offshoot" (or reciprocally ...the hominin line is an offshoot) from the last common ancestor. Molecular data has this occurring some where between 4.5 and 6 mya so evidence of the true origin species could still be in the ground preserved some where OR it simply was never captured. Don't forget that having anything at all preserved is a geological super mega lottery, the molecular data has already told us the general story of what happened...the sparse anthropological data is just filling in the details between the milestones as a bonus at this point. ;) The controversy that anthropologists are making over it would be moot if they could get some dna from the finds. They can then definitively determine if the gene line is ancestral to ours and or chimps. Then there is the possibility that chimps could be a de-evolution of a previously advanced state in the last common ancestor some sort of tree living great ape.
As usual interpretation of the finds is muddying the waters of the discovery. Was ardi an immediate ancestor of ours ? maybe. Did modern chimps evolve from ardi's line? maybe or did they predate ardi by connection through an older common ancestor? maybe Does this discovery kill the Savannah hypothesis as the lead researchers are claiming ? nope. the simplest explanation tends to be the best..to go from an elegant ecological change leading to bipedalism to a complex interplay of food for sex makes things more complex, and more complex means more improbable, possible yes..but still more improbable. Now if a specimen is found around the 6 mya sweet spot that looks more like ardi than a chimp then it simply means chimps are a devolution of the ardi body form possibly to adapt strongly to the jungle living that chimps do..meanwhile the homonin line diverged into the savanah forms that eventually led to us. All fun stuff indeed but as usual in some what soft Sciences like anthropology, interpretation of results is what breeds the controversy!!
My guess for why we can't find fossils that represent the chimp root point is the difficulty of preserving bones in the jungle habitat that chimps inhabit...unlike hominins which lived away from trees more and more and were able to have their remains preserved in places where they were not subject to total elimination by the environment."
So the conclusion that ardi is even our ancestor is not definitively proven, it is possible that during this period there were many variant populations of hominins, of which Ardi simply was a line that diverged and then went kaput as the rift valley continued to form and the Savanah habitat emerged as a result. We know that evolution does not occur in the neat "tree" fashion that older descriptions of lineage used to portray, the actual behavior is more like an interconnected web or bush of lineages (see image),
cross breeding in many cases to form short lived intermediate forms , many of which were never to be fossilized so that we can find them millions of years later. So though Ardi does appear to be a primitive ancestor along the line that evolved Lucy it does not mean it is precisely such a species. We can make such links between us and more advanced hominins like Homo Erectus which successfully left Africa and have finds preserved in different habitats and times since the earliest dated remains are found with morphological continuity. A known example of a parallel hominin line is the Neanderthals of Europe, this robust modern species evolved from ancestral populations of Homo Erectus separately to the European climate conditions millions of years after leaving Africa, we know they are not ancestral to homo sapiens but are cousins on a side branch. It could be that Ardi is precisely on an older side branch from the line that led to us but the dearth of finds of OTHER side branches that likely existed at the time makes it more difficult for us to make any definitive ruling. By the time of Erectus there were no other side branches at least according to fossil evidence but the further back the finds go the more likely there was a higher diversity of similar populations particularly at a point of increased geologic change as was provided by the rift valley formation initiation. Unfortunately molecular data can't help provide more information on this stage in history but comparative analysis may reveal some aspect of the diversity or we can hope that more finds are made of older or comparable dated fossils of still yet other species.
So though the find is very exciting it doesn't magic bullet anything, we'd need more samples from possible hominin species that existed at the time to whittle down the relations between chimp and hominin and between the various hominin's and us.
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the media loves the idea of presenting "sides" as that sells papers and gets ratings. People are so used to the idea of "sides" that they expect a "debate" or a panel for every topic but I think every one in the media is performing a disservice, nay crime to humanity by not representing TRUTH. Some journalists think their job is to be the dispassionate presenter of opinion, I think that is flat wrong...journalists should be dispassionate investigators of one thing, TRUTH. They should stand up for it when it is found and not waste time creating "sides" or debates when the data indicates no support. You can't educate people by letting them continue to believe stupid things based on their broken thought processes. Yes, "broken" , most people have no idea how to think, they jump from one conclusion to the next based on anecdotal evidence without realizing the subjective bias of their claims. It is all of our jobs to notice this and call it out for what it is, I find that when I've done this in conversation people get offended, for whatever reason people assume they can discuss any topic seemingly forgetting that not everyone has the same expertise in a given subject. Most people will defer to expertise on certain subjects when confronted with it, but some subjects (like religion and politics) people feel obligated (with their massive amount of ignorance on the associated subjects) to passionately defend anyway. If the media did more of the work of standing up for truth:
"Evolution is a fact, there is no debate...next story..."... Read More
"A public health care option increases choice...next story..."
"Global warming is very real and we caused it..let's fix it."
"Abortions before a given period do not equate to extinguishing a human life..before that point they should be legal...next story..."
"there is no hard evidence for Gods or ghosts...next story..."
ignorance philosophies staunchly defended by people who "think" they know would die much faster and allow our species to advance faster than ever, I can dream...
Second comment:
When it is discovered that the science being done is not science at all, it puts the whole enterprise and the studies based on that data in jeopardy.
Third comment:
No, the most it can do is indicate that *the single study* had faulty methods, it is bad logic and faulty thinking to even assume that other scientists doing work in the field are automatically making weak or invalid conclusions..most studies are published to peer reviewed journals, so any ones that end up with problems as you suggest rarely get to the public (outside of a self pub. on a personal web site). I don't know what dendrochronology study you are talking about by the way, can you provide link to support your assertions?
Also, any scientist that executes a new study based on previous study data without re-acquiring that data is again performing faulty science. Data is fresh only once. The chance that any new results that cite a given study fail to uncover the faults of the previous method are actually rare. This is part of the self correction mechanism that is built into the process, keeping the conclusions fresh by keeping the data fresh...mind you this is true for empirical and theoretical investigations.
[redacted , irrelevant to climate discussion]
Fifth Comment:
http://network.nationalpos
Another is here:... Read More
http://www.theregister.co.
This study was peer reviewed endlessly and in many journals, and ultimately, peer review failed.
This is not the only one with errors. There is another study with NASA sensors overestimating the loss of ice in the Arctic:
http://www.theregister.co.
And yet another with the rise of sea levels being overestimated:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
And then there are other mysteries, such as the missing heat from the oceans:
http://www.npr.org/templat
I don't think it's the issue of taking sides. It's the issue of getting the science right. And once you start getting major studies as sources of fraud, such as the infamous Yamal study/hockey stick graph, what else is fraudulent? It is not automatic proof that everything is fraudulent, but it does require actually getting ALL of the raw data, and for a very long time, the Yamal raw data was hidden. Was it hidden for a reason, perhaps?
Sixth Comment:
You provide a links to a bunch of blogs and news sites as "evidence" ? The very first link is so laughable in its attempt to paint a story I am amazed any one could read that with a straight face without screaming in agony "show me the data to support this counter claim."
In fact looking up the author reveals him not even to be a published climate scientist, so already he's on shaky ground..reading his attempt at trying to understand the papers he's trying to lambaste seals the deal of his agenda at least it did to me. As if to confirm this, one of the first comments lists a link to:... Read More
http://www.realclimate.org
Which is written by real climate scientists, who perform an analysis of McKitrik's assertions and explain why his claims stand on no ground. The summary:
"What is objectionable is the conflation of technical criticism with unsupported, unjustified and unverified accusations of scientific misconduct. Steve McIntyre keeps insisting that he should be treated like a professional. But how professional is it to continue to slander scientists with vague insinuations and spin made-up tales of perfidy out of the whole cloth instead of submitting his work for peer-review?"
This dovetails with what I was telling Peter above, laymen with blogs, journalists who wished they could have been scientists and political opportunists as well as just plain ignorant folks feel they have the right to state their opinion on any subject based on a surface read of a few articles or based on the few popular media articles that seem to "support" their desired position ...but that doesn't reveal truth. If you want to find out the truth you go to climate scientists in their domains of collaboration...and you find they laugh at the bad interpretations of climate data being made. This stuff isn't easy, if it were it wouldn't require undergraduate and graduate studies to attain degrees in...yet online every one thinks they can open their maw and profess why they think x or y is wrong and lacking the scientific thorough drive to check their sources fall into a drain reinforcing their false beliefs. That said, not all studies are perfect, many have faults but again it is bad science to look at one or a few that have been cited as being faulty (in at least the case of this Yamal study , wrongly so) and then wonder if:
"once you start getting major studies as sources of fraud, such as the infamous Yamal study/hockey stick graph, what else is fraudulent? "
that is talk that dances dangerously close to conspiracy theories. Scientists make no assertions about the totality of data uncovered in a space based on faults in a few of those studies. This is actually a big problem with the interface between science education and the wider community of laypersons, as scientists we have two jobs...two discover the truths using the rigorous methods of science and submit those findings for peer review but also, scientists need to explain why their findings are relevant ..because if they don't the bloggers will come in with their arm chair analysis to call their work "faulty" when in fact the consensus among experts in the field is the complete opposite.
The realclimate science link underscores this perfectly with:
"After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip."
It takes time for scientists to argue the misinformed reasoning of those that are not in their fields, I have it lucky as in my work (engineering) it is much more difficult for lay people to come in with half baked ideas on what my research leads to. Assertions can be tested tangibly and found to be true or false, no wiggle room for agenda bating or twisted data filtering to present a view out of ignorance or intention.
Seventh Comment:
Can we at least establish that small thing, without having to attack the messenger, in this case, Mr McKitrick? Is it true or not?
Certainly in the realclimate link you have, they don't actually try to deny that this wasn't done in any of the other studies mentioned. I am left to conclude that leaving out critical parts of the data was indeed true.... Read More
So, if it is true, then my original point stands, regardless of whether the links came from 'blogs' or 'news sites', that there was deliberate fiddling in the study, pointing to the failure of peer review. Notice that I also did not say that this automatically makes every other study false, but that those studies should be open and their original data made available, unlike the Yamal data, where it wasn't.