4 ms·

You can use GPS and bedrock levels on the southern coast of Greenland to measure temperature if you want to, but I prefer to use a thermometer.

scarmig 15y ago
I believe you're not understanding what the author did. He did not attempt a recent history temperature reconstruction of the Greenland ice sheet via GPS measurements of bedrock rise. Going by the news article, the result was simply that the bedrock rose in response to a compressing force being removed, with zones experiencing heavy ice loss experiencing a commensurate rise in bedrock.
- HilbertSpace 15y ago
  It's clear enough what the scientists tried to do with GPS, the southern boundary of Greenland, and the level of the bedrock of the boundary of Greenland. There are amazing images of all of Greenland showing that nearly all of the Greenland bedrock is a big, deep bowl with most of the bowl actually significantly below sea level. The usual claim is that the ice on Greenland has been so heavy that it has pushed down the bedrock. 'Ats a 'lotsa icea'. However, of course, given that ice is much less dense than rock, there are some issues, but let's set those aside. Yes there are claims that the last ice age pushed down the bedrock over most of Canada and that the bedrock is still slowly rebounding. The problem is the article (the one of this thread, not the article, I have not seen, given at the conference). The problem with the article of this thread is that it, the article, maybe JUST the ARTICLE, maybe not the scientific work, is just as I wrote succinctly, "BS". The problems with the article are just at the level of middle school data analysis. The simplest criticism of the article is its use of "as high as" to try to characterize something about all of the bedrock of the boundary of southern Greenland. The main cause of the problems with the article and the main source of the use of "as high as" is the author's approach via the usual of the newsies, drama. He's looking for drama. He's following the usual way, concentrate on extremes. I said this: "Newsies go for drama; for that they like to emphasize the extreme cases, and that is what this author is doing." For "as high as", I wrote: "Moreover, the 'as high as' really means that there could have been just one location with 20 mm with all the other locations less." In most objective terms, the article is BS because it never really said anything at all meaningful about the level of the bedrock on Greenland; it said nothing, nichts, nil, nada. Just read the article and read what I wrote; the article said NOTHING. Look, let me put it to you this way: In the eighth grade there are two classes, A and B. Class A is on one side of the building and class B on the other side. Someone does an analysis of the heights of the students and finds that some of the students in class A are as much as 2 inches taller than they were last year and, since last year, grew by more than 1 inch more than some of the students in class B. What can we conclude from this, that students in class A grew more than those in class B? Heck no. Actually, its quite possible that the same statement would also be true with A and B interchanged. What the article reported about the bedrock level is no better than this total BS about classes A and B. In particular, the author never said anything to let us draw his conclusion that the bedrock in southern Greenland rose unusually quickly in year 2010. Again, again, yet again, once again, the article reported the data on the bedrock levels so badly that it said nothing, nothing at all, nichts, nil, nada, about bedrock level changes. NOTHING. To see this, just read the F'g article or my post. Again, over again, to explain clearly, once again, the problem was that the author went for drama instead of meaningful data analysis. DRAMA. He wanted drama. He wanted to grab people by the heart and the gut. It was emotion, all emotion, in this case totally meaningless emotion, and not reason, not even one gram of reason. Again, the problem is at the level of middle school. What might the article have done? How about: "In year 2005, some high quality GPS receivers were placed at 30 locations scattered around the boundary of Greenland. At each location, the altitude of the receiver at that location was noted in September of year 2005. The following table shows the change in altitude (in mm) for each of the locations in September from the previous September for each of years 2006, 2007, ..., 2010. In the next table we show for each year 2006, 2007, ..., 2010 the change averaged across the 20 locations in the southern 2/3rds of Greenland. What we observe from this data is that, for the stations in the southern 2/3rds of Greenland, on average the increase in bedrock altitude was unusually high from September 2009 to September 2010. A conjecture is that the cause of the unusually high increase is greater ice loss from higher temperatures from September, 2009 to September 2010." But what is in the article is NOTHING like that, not similar, not the same, not nearly the same, etc. Again, maybe there was some good data collection, but what the article wrote about the data is BS. Why the drama? First, the media just wants to keep following their old business model of emphasizing drama. Second, in particular, because a big theme in the media is to ride a wave, mostly generated by and heavily reinforced by, the media, to have a 'story', a continuing 'story', a 'story' really easy to write about, a very dramatic story, about 'global warming' and, now, 'climate change'. They just sling the BS out there, whether there is good science or bad science, they just sling the BS the same. Because they want a dramatic 'story'. And it's all emotionalism with "as high as" and never rationalism. It's BS, and in total it's DANGEROUS. I never mentioned AGW. As I said, I call BS. At C|NET there are claims that the global warming articles and readers posts supporting them are both paid for by organizations that want to convince the public that 'climate change' is a big problem and must be stopped. 'Get it' now?
  - goblin89 15y ago
    (I didn't downvote you.) Don't you think that journalism can't be objective at all? You can simply list the facts, and even then the BS is in which facts you select to mention (as there's normally too much facts), and in which order, and which words you choose, etc. So there's lots of space for manipulation in mass media, and you can assume it takes place in many cases, but I think it's unproductive to make a big issue out of it. I personally doubt that this article's author or SD's editor intended to manipulate people.
    - HilbertSpace 15y ago
      The old media has their business model. It's old and self-perpetuating. They just keep following their old model. Yes, in places the Internet is bringing some changes. The model is based on that sure-fire method of getting and holding the attention of an audience discovered by the ancient Greeks and used so heavily in all of English literature -- formula fiction. One special case, from early English literature, is a morality play where there is the trilogy, transgression, retribution, and redemption. The transgression is from human sin and, thus, immoral. The retribution is from an angry god. The morality plays were big in early English literture -- scare the heck out of the yahoos and get donations to the church. The two 'Rings', Wagner's and Tolkien's, along with that take-off on Wagner's 'Ring' 'Star Wars' were morality plays with the trilogy. A big part of formula fiction is a protagonist the audience identifies with, has a problem, struggles with the problem, solves the problem, and gets the girl. A large fraction of movies, especially US westerns, are like this. Altogether it's about 'drama', that is, 'art' as in 'communication, intrepretation of human experience, emotion'. There the goal is to create a case of vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment. So, it's all about emotion and entertainment. 'Writers' are trained in and basically use the tools of such 'drama'. Even people who try to 'write' about science. The article of this thread is an example -- its intention and techniques are just drama. But according to the standards of information safety and efficacy of the 20th century from applied math, physical science, engineering, and medical science, drama does not qualify as solid information. The freedom in technical writing you outlined is fine but is light years away from the drama of the article. The article was just not about the science; instead the article was just drama. For the science it made a mess, a total mess. Someone who wants to have an emotional experience about warming, ice melting, the land rising, likely the sea levels rising, etc. might enjoy the article. If the drama stays as just light entertainment, fine. If sometimes drama is used to underline the intense emotions of human suffering, fine. But passing out drama instead of solid information about science is just sick-o; doing this for important subjects is self-destructive sick-o. In the case of GW, CC, AGW, CO2, ..., the drama stands to be so irrational the results will be massive human suffering with 'drama' all its own. So this drama stuff for serious scientific subjects is a serious threat. So I called BS. But some mods HATE what I wrote. What I wrote is fine, every word of it, just fine, fully justified, very thoroughly explained, and right on target, with nothing wrong at all. Sill some mods just HATE it. They won't respond and, instead, just downvote. If PG isn't doing this, then he needs to correct those who do. These mods are making HN be brain-dead. This isn't the first time: HN has a secret list of wacko PC criteria.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
HilbertSpace 15y ago
Downvoters, read the f'g article and then listen up: The main interest of the article was not the rise in the level of the bedrock of Greenland but evidence from bedrock for an increase in temperature in Greenland with that increase to reinforce claims of 'global warming' and to illustrate, via bedrock, the 'severe' consequences of 'global warming'. The interest of the article was temperature, not bedrock. 'Get it' now? I know this understanding takes some reading comprehension at maybe the college freshman level, but even a middle school student can strain and 'get it'. So, what I said is an entirely appropriate response to the article and, really, also to the study: It's better to measure temperature with a thermometer. And since that simple statement is true, it illustrates just how silly the article, and the study, were. Look, the GW crowd is all 'hot' on temperature but to measure it they want to use wildly indirect means such as swimming polar bears, ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, absence of ice at some point on the shore of Alaska, parts of the Antarctic ice shelf falling into the sea, glaciers in Patagonia, chunks of ice falling from glaciers into the sea, hurricanes and cyclones, any unusual weather conditions, and now bedrock levels in Greenland. What is in common with the interest in all such phenomena is the connection with temperature. So, they want to get at temperature. But they don't want to measure temperature directly and report it in degrees F or C. Instead they want to hint, imply, suggest, with highly indirect means that there is GW. But be not fooled: They are working to be able to talk about temperature, GW, CC, and soon enough AGW. If they have some good data on temperature, then they should report it. So far about the best such long term data is in the US National Academy of Sciences study at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html If you object to my posts, then be responsible enough to say WHY. This downvoting my posts without responding is getting to be a HN scandal. PG, you need to correct this mess.

scarmig 15y ago

I believe you're not understanding what the author did. He did not attempt a recent history temperature reconstruction of the Greenland ice sheet via GPS measurements of bedrock rise. Going by the news article, the result was simply that the bedrock rose in response to a compressing force being removed, with zones experiencing heavy ice loss experiencing a commensurate rise in bedrock.

HilbertSpace 15y ago
It's clear enough what the scientists tried to do with GPS, the southern boundary of Greenland, and the level of the bedrock of the boundary of Greenland. There are amazing images of all of Greenland showing that nearly all of the Greenland bedrock is a big, deep bowl with most of the bowl actually significantly below sea level. The usual claim is that the ice on Greenland has been so heavy that it has pushed down the bedrock. 'Ats a 'lotsa icea'. However, of course, given that ice is much less dense than rock, there are some issues, but let's set those aside. Yes there are claims that the last ice age pushed down the bedrock over most of Canada and that the bedrock is still slowly rebounding. The problem is the article (the one of this thread, not the article, I have not seen, given at the conference). The problem with the article of this thread is that it, the article, maybe JUST the ARTICLE, maybe not the scientific work, is just as I wrote succinctly, "BS". The problems with the article are just at the level of middle school data analysis. The simplest criticism of the article is its use of "as high as" to try to characterize something about all of the bedrock of the boundary of southern Greenland. The main cause of the problems with the article and the main source of the use of "as high as" is the author's approach via the usual of the newsies, drama. He's looking for drama. He's following the usual way, concentrate on extremes. I said this: "Newsies go for drama; for that they like to emphasize the extreme cases, and that is what this author is doing." For "as high as", I wrote: "Moreover, the 'as high as' really means that there could have been just one location with 20 mm with all the other locations less." In most objective terms, the article is BS because it never really said anything at all meaningful about the level of the bedrock on Greenland; it said nothing, nichts, nil, nada. Just read the article and read what I wrote; the article said NOTHING. Look, let me put it to you this way: In the eighth grade there are two classes, A and B. Class A is on one side of the building and class B on the other side. Someone does an analysis of the heights of the students and finds that some of the students in class A are as much as 2 inches taller than they were last year and, since last year, grew by more than 1 inch more than some of the students in class B. What can we conclude from this, that students in class A grew more than those in class B? Heck no. Actually, its quite possible that the same statement would also be true with A and B interchanged. What the article reported about the bedrock level is no better than this total BS about classes A and B. In particular, the author never said anything to let us draw his conclusion that the bedrock in southern Greenland rose unusually quickly in year 2010. Again, again, yet again, once again, the article reported the data on the bedrock levels so badly that it said nothing, nothing at all, nichts, nil, nada, about bedrock level changes. NOTHING. To see this, just read the F'g article or my post. Again, over again, to explain clearly, once again, the problem was that the author went for drama instead of meaningful data analysis. DRAMA. He wanted drama. He wanted to grab people by the heart and the gut. It was emotion, all emotion, in this case totally meaningless emotion, and not reason, not even one gram of reason. Again, the problem is at the level of middle school. What might the article have done? How about: "In year 2005, some high quality GPS receivers were placed at 30 locations scattered around the boundary of Greenland. At each location, the altitude of the receiver at that location was noted in September of year 2005. The following table shows the change in altitude (in mm) for each of the locations in September from the previous September for each of years 2006, 2007, ..., 2010. In the next table we show for each year 2006, 2007, ..., 2010 the change averaged across the 20 locations in the southern 2/3rds of Greenland. What we observe from this data is that, for the stations in the southern 2/3rds of Greenland, on average the increase in bedrock altitude was unusually high from September 2009 to September 2010. A conjecture is that the cause of the unusually high increase is greater ice loss from higher temperatures from September, 2009 to September 2010." But what is in the article is NOTHING like that, not similar, not the same, not nearly the same, etc. Again, maybe there was some good data collection, but what the article wrote about the data is BS. Why the drama? First, the media just wants to keep following their old business model of emphasizing drama. Second, in particular, because a big theme in the media is to ride a wave, mostly generated by and heavily reinforced by, the media, to have a 'story', a continuing 'story', a 'story' really easy to write about, a very dramatic story, about 'global warming' and, now, 'climate change'. They just sling the BS out there, whether there is good science or bad science, they just sling the BS the same. Because they want a dramatic 'story'. And it's all emotionalism with "as high as" and never rationalism. It's BS, and in total it's DANGEROUS. I never mentioned AGW. As I said, I call BS. At C|NET there are claims that the global warming articles and readers posts supporting them are both paid for by organizations that want to convince the public that 'climate change' is a big problem and must be stopped. 'Get it' now?
- goblin89 15y ago
  (I didn't downvote you.) Don't you think that journalism can't be objective at all? You can simply list the facts, and even then the BS is in which facts you select to mention (as there's normally too much facts), and in which order, and which words you choose, etc. So there's lots of space for manipulation in mass media, and you can assume it takes place in many cases, but I think it's unproductive to make a big issue out of it. I personally doubt that this article's author or SD's editor intended to manipulate people.
  - HilbertSpace 15y ago
    The old media has their business model. It's old and self-perpetuating. They just keep following their old model. Yes, in places the Internet is bringing some changes. The model is based on that sure-fire method of getting and holding the attention of an audience discovered by the ancient Greeks and used so heavily in all of English literature -- formula fiction. One special case, from early English literature, is a morality play where there is the trilogy, transgression, retribution, and redemption. The transgression is from human sin and, thus, immoral. The retribution is from an angry god. The morality plays were big in early English literture -- scare the heck out of the yahoos and get donations to the church. The two 'Rings', Wagner's and Tolkien's, along with that take-off on Wagner's 'Ring' 'Star Wars' were morality plays with the trilogy. A big part of formula fiction is a protagonist the audience identifies with, has a problem, struggles with the problem, solves the problem, and gets the girl. A large fraction of movies, especially US westerns, are like this. Altogether it's about 'drama', that is, 'art' as in 'communication, intrepretation of human experience, emotion'. There the goal is to create a case of vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment. So, it's all about emotion and entertainment. 'Writers' are trained in and basically use the tools of such 'drama'. Even people who try to 'write' about science. The article of this thread is an example -- its intention and techniques are just drama. But according to the standards of information safety and efficacy of the 20th century from applied math, physical science, engineering, and medical science, drama does not qualify as solid information. The freedom in technical writing you outlined is fine but is light years away from the drama of the article. The article was just not about the science; instead the article was just drama. For the science it made a mess, a total mess. Someone who wants to have an emotional experience about warming, ice melting, the land rising, likely the sea levels rising, etc. might enjoy the article. If the drama stays as just light entertainment, fine. If sometimes drama is used to underline the intense emotions of human suffering, fine. But passing out drama instead of solid information about science is just sick-o; doing this for important subjects is self-destructive sick-o. In the case of GW, CC, AGW, CO2, ..., the drama stands to be so irrational the results will be massive human suffering with 'drama' all its own. So this drama stuff for serious scientific subjects is a serious threat. So I called BS. But some mods HATE what I wrote. What I wrote is fine, every word of it, just fine, fully justified, very thoroughly explained, and right on target, with nothing wrong at all. Sill some mods just HATE it. They won't respond and, instead, just downvote. If PG isn't doing this, then he needs to correct those who do. These mods are making HN be brain-dead. This isn't the first time: HN has a secret list of wacko PC criteria.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

HilbertSpace 15y ago

Downvoters, read the f'g article and then listen up: The main interest of the article was not the rise in the level of the bedrock of Greenland but evidence from bedrock for an increase in temperature in Greenland with that increase to reinforce claims of 'global warming' and to illustrate, via bedrock, the 'severe' consequences of 'global warming'. The interest of the article was temperature, not bedrock. 'Get it' now? I know this understanding takes some reading comprehension at maybe the college freshman level, but even a middle school student can strain and 'get it'. So, what I said is an entirely appropriate response to the article and, really, also to the study: It's better to measure temperature with a thermometer. And since that simple statement is true, it illustrates just how silly the article, and the study, were. Look, the GW crowd is all 'hot' on temperature but to measure it they want to use wildly indirect means such as swimming polar bears, ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, absence of ice at some point on the shore of Alaska, parts of the Antarctic ice shelf falling into the sea, glaciers in Patagonia, chunks of ice falling from glaciers into the sea, hurricanes and cyclones, any unusual weather conditions, and now bedrock levels in Greenland. What is in common with the interest in all such phenomena is the connection with temperature. So, they want to get at temperature. But they don't want to measure temperature directly and report it in degrees F or C. Instead they want to hint, imply, suggest, with highly indirect means that there is GW. But be not fooled: They are working to be able to talk about temperature, GW, CC, and soon enough AGW. If they have some good data on temperature, then they should report it. So far about the best such long term data is in the US National Academy of Sciences study at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html If you object to my posts, then be responsible enough to say WHY. This downvoting my posts without responding is getting to be a HN scandal. PG, you need to correct this mess.