Digging for the truth

I have long thought that it is going to be nearly impossible to get to the truth - if anything can be defined as the 'truth' - of the AGW debate. Partly this is because of the problems of modelling the future in a system as complex and little understood as Earth's, and partly because our actions and other effects can combine to make those models redundant.  For this reason, it will always be a best-guess estimate.

However it is interesting to see how both sides (*) are fighting each other. The AGW-proponents do themselves a disservice by lumping all critics into a 'global warming denier' grouping, where the spectrum of sceptic views are far more varied than that. Likewise, some sceptics tend to extrapolate from small problems rather than look at the big picture.

First, I would like to make a big proviso: the events in this blog post are recent and events are moving fast; I have had to look at many different sources to produce it, some of which are contradictory. I have tried to be as even-handed as possible, but that is not always possible. The links I have added should allow you to do your own research and form your own opinions.

'Climategate', the release of rather embarrassing emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was well covered in the media. At best they showed the researchers at the CRU as being obstructive and more interested in the politics of climate change than getting to the truth, which they seem to have predetermined. As part of that crisis, allegations of hacking led to an expensive criminal inquiry by the police. This was despite it being distinctly possible that the documents came from a publicly-accessible server (i.e. they had essentially been published). As far as I am aware, no charges have been bought with regards to the 'hacking'.

Last week some documents were released from an American anti-global warming group called the Heartland Institute (HI). The documents made some claims that some AGW proponents jumped on, claiming shadowy organisations funded the HI (**). However, pretty soon some people, notably at Watts up with That and elsewhere, noticed that the document that showed the HI at it worst was stylistically different from the others. There is also some doubt about the contents of some of the other documents, although HI have only claimed one is an out-and-out forgery.

The HI soon said that one of the documents had been faked; strangely enough this was the one that others had noted as being different. Further research by sceptics showed that aspects of the faked document were stylistically similar to those produced by Peter Gleick, the head of the American Geophysical Union's Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Strangely, Gleick stood down from that position shortly afterwards.

A few days later Gleick admitted that he had got the confidential documents by deception: the accusation is that he impersonated a member of HI's board to get them. Instead of then doing an analysis under his own name, he then leaked them to a pro-AGW website. Although he denies it, he is also accused of faking the most damaging document.

The AGU do a great deal of good work; coincidentally I read several of their excellent blogs on geology and geography; I respect them far more than I do the CRU. However it is staggering that a scientist working for such an august and well-respected body can use deception to steal documents, then publish them. AGUs reaction has, so far, been good.

When the CRU emails were leaked the pro-AGW groups used (unproved) accusations of hacking to divert attention from the embarrassing contents. The HI scandal (and it s a scandal) involves impersonation and likely fakery. Potentially worse, allegedly some of the documents contained personal information about HI's employees.

Richard Black on the BBC has behaved disgustingly. When the CRU emails were released he refused to discuss the contents; in contrast he jumped on the HI's leak with gusto. Even his latest blog entry (on the BBC website) tries to paint over what Gleick did; instead he concentrates his fire on the HI. Black is purposefully missing the real story: one of deception and forgery, and instead attacks the victim. Well done, BBC.

It does not have to be this way. Judith Curry is an unusual scientist - she takes a rather different line to most, and gets shot at from both sides. She believes in AGW, but dislikes the way her fellow proponents are treating the science. Her blog post on this topic is far better, and compares Gleick's actions with his previous words as head of Scientific Ethics. BBC: get rid of Black and hire someone like Curry instead.

The truth matters. All Gleick and his supporters have done is make the truth harder to discern.

(*) Both sides is actually a misnomer - there are many different aspects and opinions in the debate.

(**) I find this interest in the funding of the HI funny - they have a small budget of $5 million a year, a tiny fraction of what pro-AGW organisations spend each year.

The elegance of FM stereo

FM radio is going to die. Slowly, inevitably, it is going to be overtaken by digital radio that squeezes many more stations into the same frequencies. Which is a shame, as FM exhibits what is, for me, an elegant engineering solution to a problem.

Originally FM was mono-only. That is, the stations broadcast just one signal that was fed to all speakers on the radio. In the 1950s it was realised you could broadcast stereo signals easily on FM. However this required sending two signals; one for the left-hand speaker and one for the right. An obvious approach would be for the left-hand signal to be broadcast on the mono frequency, and the right-hand on a frequency broadcast a short distance away.

However by this stage there were many mono FM radios in homes, and this approach would have made these useless as they would only get the left-hand signal (try listening to only one speaker of a stereo system to hear the problem).

To solve this, they came up with a simply cunning solution.

They broadcast a sum signal (left + right) on the main (mono) frequency and, a short frequency hop away, a difference (left - right). From these, both the left-hand and right-hand signals can be retrieved using simple analogue circuitry, and the mono signal maintains the qualities of the combined stereo channels.

Say at any one period the left-hand signal is at 5, and the right-hand at 7 (they are really sine waves, but the maths works well enough for discrete digital values).
This means 12 (5+7) is broadcast on the sum frequency, and -2 (5-7) on the difference.

To obtain the original left and right stereo values, you simply:
1) To get the left-hand signal, you add the difference and sum values, i.e. 10, then divide by 2 to get 5
2) To get the right-hand signal, you subtract the difference from the sum, i.e. 14, then divide by 2 to get 7

Of course there are other complexities, but the basic approach is simple: what is even better, it was easy to perform in 1950s-era electronics.

It is an utterly elegant solution. It also explains why, if you have poor signal quality, the radio degrades to mono, which is broadcast on the main frequency.

Digital radio has many interesting engineering and mathematical tricks, (for instance the magnificent Fast Fourier Transforms), but nothing beat the simple elegance of the FM stereo solution.

As usual Wikipedia has much more information and this page goes into more detail than almost anyone will want...

Impressive friends

Aeons ago, whilst at university in London, I had a friend who was studying aeronautical engineering. For the purposes of this post, I shall call him 'Gopher' (*).

Gopher was a great bloke. Imagine Ace Rimmer in a flying jacket. I used to go to Club E1 and other places with Gopher - he was a great bloke (**). One night we got talking to a couple of girls in the student union bar.

"What do you do?" they asked Gopher
"Well, I fly light aircraft, gliders, and race cars."
They turn to me: "And what do you do?"
"I'm on a geological engineering course, and I work freelance as a programmer."
They turn back to Gopher. "So, how often do you fly?"

I did not get a look-in all night.

One of my oldest friends, another aeronautical engineer, is getting married in May. He is an Iron man triathlete, a marathon runner, and, to add insult to injury, a literal rocket scientist. I am seriously in awe of this guy. And he is marrying a beautiful lady.

I have spent most of my life surrounded by people who are incredibly active and sporty. I spent quite a time at school with a leg in casts;during sports periods I was given the only jobs I could do: timing people on the cross-country runs or recording the completed swimming lengths. In comparison to these lovely people I am a laggard, a positive couch potato. And now my wife has taken up running, and is doing rather well.

My walking is a small attempt to at least partially replicate the highs that these people routinely achieve.

Walking is boring: you tell someone that you have walked 1,000 miles and their eyes glaze over; walking is boring, literally pedestrian. Running is interesting. Flying is sexy. Motor racing is doubly sexy. Iron man triathletes are Gods. Walkers are... well, boring.

I have lost contact with Gopher; I last talked to him ten years ago. A Google search has yielded no results. But I hope that he is still racing, doing amazing things.

I raise my glass of Laphroaig to him, wherever he is. (***)


(*) Why 'Gopher'? The answer: he goes for this, goes for that, goes for anything in a skirt!

(**) One day we were sitting outside the Atrium of the university, talking about this newfangled thing called the Internet. We chatted about the possibility of an on-line encyclopaedia that contained all the world's information at different levels of complexity. You could select a topic and see basic information, then drill fractally down into near-infinite detail. We realised that two men could not possibly assemble that much information, and it would have to be a collaborative effort. We envisaged a combination of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Dynabook that would render paper libraries redundant. Microsoft Encarta was launched later that same year, and seven years later Nupedia was launched, which spawned Wikipedia. That is the difference between the entrepreneur and the dreamer. We dreamed, they did.

(***) Technically it should really be a glass of Glenmorangie. I have happy memories of drinking the best part of half a bottle of that lovely liquid with him in that famous pedestrian bridge over Aspen Way in Poplar.

Education, education, education

The Times Education Supplement recently published an article which has spread rather rapidly over the web. It is well worth a read:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6176707

We were both shocked by the article. Talk about a lack of ambition for the pupils under his care.

I find the first couple of paragraphs staggering:

It is 4pm. My weary colleagues and I are slowly unwinding in the maths office, when there is a knock on the door.
"Could I have a quick word with Jonny, please?" says Michael in a bright, nervous voice. I don't sigh, but inwardly I think, "Is that my 'quick' or yours?"

The Michael in question is a pupil, and Jonny his maths teacher. Michael is concerned that he will not get an A-grade, and Jonny thinks he is worrying unnecessarily. Perhaps a justifiable concern; but what follows is, in my opinion, utterly unprofessional. Instead of encouraging the pupil he chooses to so exactly the opposite, and gives a spiel *against excellence* that would dishearten and discourage many bright children.

The idea that a teacher reacts this way to an inquisitive pupil is flabbergasting. Then again, it was at 16.00, and no-one works past that hour, do they?

I think that the author has a kernel of an idea that he articulates particularly badly - that children are being put under too much pressure. Yet his article goes much further and shows a worrying lack of concern for the pupil.

I can only hope that few teachers think like the author. And I am amazed that the Times Education Supplement published it - it reflects so badly on the teacher in question and the profession.

The risks of technology

A couple of weeks ago the US announced that they had lost contact with one of their exceptionally high-tech and modern RQ-170 Sentinel drones. Later the Iranians said that an electronic warfare unit had captured the drone.

The Iranians later showed detailed video of what appears to be an RQ-170. It seemed remarkably intact - although the underside and undercarriage could not be seen, the top seemed nowhere near as damaged as would be expected from a shoot-down or even a crash landing. However the video and pictures are far clearer than would be expected if they were trying to fake the images.

Naturally, some people have been in denial about this. One theory has it that the Iranians had a mock-up ready made, and when the US lost contact with their drone the Iranians used the mock-up to pretend they had captured it. Whilst it is likely that nations may construct mock-ups of aggressor craft - for identification training if nothing else - it would be an embarrassing strategy if the real wreckage was discovered.

Another is that a rogue Iranian agent in the US military had deliberately crashed the plane within Iran. This seems rather unrealistic.

Today it is alleged that the Iranians forced the craft to land. The control protocols for the aircraft are certainly encrypted (although embarrassingly some of the data such as the video may not be) and I doubted that they had actually taken control of it. However today's claim does make sense, at least to an armchair (in)expert such as myself.

The drones are controlled from stations that can be anywhere in the world; for instance Britain's Predator and Reaper drones are flown from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada (*). Control signals are encrypted and sent over to the drones, presumably by satellite. If the radio signal is lost then the drones are programmed to fly automatically to a friendly base for landing, using GPS for positional information (**).

The Iranians are claiming that they jammed the 'proper' control signals coming from the US. This is important; they are not claiming to have hacked and decrypted the control signals, just to have blocked them. Without the signals, the drones would have automatically flown back to a base. This is where the Iranians got clever. It is possible to block and alter ('spoof') GPS signals; this is believed to be what is going on when GPS and SatNav users are warned that their devices will not work. The Iranians are claimed to have spoofed the drone's GPS signals so that it thought it was flying back to a friendly base.

Damage possibly occurred to the drone's underside on landing as the strip in Iran had a slightly different altitude to the base the drone believed it was landing at.

This claim is more plausible than the other alternatives. No real 'hacking' in the traditional senses was needed; instead gaping holes in the security logic were exploited. As much as I dislike the Iranian regime, the engineers must be congratulated for a very clever coup. My only question is why they have shown their hand so early; it gives the west time to understand the problems and close the exploits.

Unfortunately this will have serious implications. The obvious one - that the Americans have lost some of their top-secret military technology - might not be the most important. It it alleged that, although new, the RQ-170 does not use cutting-edge technology as they expected to lose one over enemy territory eventually, either through accident or combat. Far worse is the fact that American (and indeed western) commanders will have large doubts about the chances of their drones reaching a target in battle. And that may mean more manned aircraft are needed, and more friendly lives put at risk.

I am less bothered about the Iranian's claims that they will be able to reverse-engineer the aircraft. Although they have very capable engineers - they have allegedly been keeping some F14's in the air despite US sanctions and lack of spares - it would be a major task and money better spent on more useful platforms. It would be much more likely they would learn important lessons about how the drones work and how they can be combated. The Russians or Chinese would be in a much better position to take advantage of the aircraft.

(*) There is a valid debate to be had about how much we really control these drones. We have purchased them; would the US allow us to use them in a campaign that was against US interests? I am amazed that we have not paid to have the control stations here in the UK for a truly independent system.

(**) I would be surprised if they only used GPS for positional information, but it is possible. If so it was a major lack of foresight.

Terraforming Kinder

Kinder Scout has a reputation of being an evil, otherworldly place. Much of this reputation is deserved: navigation is difficult  in the centre of the plateau, especially in poor weather, and the constant climbing up and down the groughs is wearying. Add in the bleak, black landscape and it is easy to see why some walkers avoid it like the plague.

I have written before about my love for the place, yet for various reasons I had not climbed up onto the summit for over four years. For this reason a camping trip to Edale seemed like a good opportunity to see my old friend.

Glorious sunshine bathed the summit, and as I passed Kinder Downfall I was surprised to see a black helicopter flying to and fro with what seemed like a skip hanging underneath. Shortly afterwards a white helicopter repeatedly flew low overhead, dropping white bags of what turned out to be chopped heather over the terrain.

All this activity was part of a scheme to re-vegetate Kinder. Acid rain and other problems have devastated the delicate ecosystem on the plateau, and the lack of vegetation has led to massive erosion (*). In places the peat has been worn down to the underlying bedrock and the presence of walkers and cattle has not helped.

As far as I can work out, the scheme involves tipping lime over the ground to reduce the remaining acidity, then spreading cotton-grass seed over the area. Finally chopped heather is used to act as a binder for the ground (so-called 'brash spreading'); some of the seed will sprout. A new fence has been erected to enclose a large expanse of northwestern Kinder to prevent cattle from damaging the new vegetation.

Some interesting details of the work can be found on the National Trust website.

So far the difference is amazing. The area around The Edge trig pillar has always been a black morass (see this picture); now it is green with sprouting grass. I can only hope that the effort (at what must be massive cost) is worthwhile.

The helicopter dropping off lime 

Bags of heather suspended under a larger chopper

Terraforming The Edge. This was once a black morass.

A green and pleasant land?

(*) Other hills have suffered from a sillier problem: the EU gave grants to landowners to cut channels off the hills to increase the agricultural viability of the land. Unfortunately the increased flow caused massive erosion, and the EU is now giving landowners grants to block off those channels...

Boots

The new and old boots

I have had a boot-related problem. My old and (very) trusted Scarpa Trek 2 boots have finally given up the ghost. After 2,000 miles of glorious life, of tarmac, grass, mud and sand, the leather split and the boots went to the great shoeshop in the sky. Despite the rather large split in the leather, they still kept the water out when I waded into the North Sea at Cullercoats.

I went to see the friendly lads and lasses at Open Air in Cambridge to see if I could get another couple of pairs. It was then the problem occurred: Scarpa have replaced the Trek 2 boots with a new model, the New Trek GTX.

Yes, I walk lop-sided

My first question is why it is necessary to produce a new version of a boot every few years: in the last nine years I have got through about six pairs of the original Trek boots and three of the Trek 2. Are the new Trek boots so much better than the original ones? Indeed, I find it slightly hard to keep track of the different types of the Trek boot I have worn over the last ten years - I think the order is Trek, Trek GTX, Trek 2 and now, finally, the New Trek GTX.

The split

This will not matter for many people, but for me it is important. Because I have metal pins protruding from my ankle bone then I am limited in the number or types of boots I can wear - wellington boots are right out as they flex right where the metal is, causing pain on the bad side of intense. For this reason once I get a pair of boots that work for me then I tend to stick with them, buying a few pairs in advance. The injury also means that I hyper-supinate as I walk, causing the outside edge of the soles to wear out quickly.

So I have bought a pair of the newly-styled boots from Open Air; so far, after about one hundred miles, they seem fine. Unfortunately this does not mean that will continue to be the case, as I had to get rid of a good pair of Saloman boots after about eighty miles when the fabric started flexing in the wrong place.

The size of the split

All my previous Scarpa boots have been excellent; on my coastal walk I could just slip on a brand new pair and walk without having to break them in. On that trip they would only last 900 to 1,000 miles; the toll of walking day after day without cleaning limiting their life somewhat.

So another question: many people talk about pairs of boots lasting well over ten years; I can easily get through a pair in a couple of years. Is it normal for boots to split near the toes in this manner with enough (ab-)use, or is it a problem with the Treks? If it is a common problem, is there any way to prevent it happening?