Monthly Archives: December 2009

Searching for the ‘smoking gun’ in the climate change code

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Since the now notorious CRU email distraction hack, it seems EVERYONE has become an expert in not only climate change but now code. Apparently ‘Armed and Dangerous‘ quote mined the code for ‘suspicious’ words like artificial, and stumbled across the following code in on of Briffa’s reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere temperatures.

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

…and reaches the following conclusion…

All you apologists weakly protesting that this is research business as usual and there are plausible explanations for everything in the emails? Sackcloth and ashes time for you. This isn’t just a smoking gun, it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot (Read more),

I’m not sure exactly how they managed to track this one given the person writing the code managed to spell ‘artificial’ incorrectly (searching for fudge, maybe?). Sorry to be an apologist here, but Tim Lambert over at Deltoid does a great job of showing exactly why its pretty pointless to analyse and critique code when you have no idea how the code functions. In summary, it’s neither false or deceptive. Still looking for that smoking gun?

But hey, code-mining is fun. Anyone here run a Linux system? Try this command:

find . -name *.[hcS] -not -regex ‘./.git.*’ | xargs cat | grep ”hack” | wc -l

Except replace the part in red with, oh, anything you like. If you want to see which files contain the word you are grepping for, use this:

egrep -H -A2 -ir “(hack)” *

Some of the comments in the Linux kernal are pretty revealing. You know, when you quote-mine for profanity:

arch/mips/pci/ops-bridge.c:      * IOC3 is fucked beyond believe …  Don’t even give the
arch/mips/pci/ops-bridge.c-      * generic PCI code a chance to look at it for real …
arch/mips/pci/ops-bridge.c-      */
–
arch/parisc/kernel/sys_parisc.c:/* Fucking broken ABI */
arch/parisc/kernel/sys_parisc.c-
arch/parisc/kernel/sys_parisc.c-#ifdef CONFIG_64BIT
–
drivers/mtd/mtd_blkdevs.c:        registered, to prevent the link/init ordering from fucking
drivers/mtd/mtd_blkdevs.c-         us over. */
drivers/mtd/mtd_blkdevs.c-      if (!blktrans_notifier.list.next)
––

lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
lib/vsprintf.c- */
lib/vsprintf.c-
–

net/ipv4/netfilter/nf_nat_snmp_basic.c: * (And this is the fucking ‘basic’ method).
net/ipv4/netfilter/nf_nat_snmp_basic.c- */
net/ipv4/netfilter/nf_nat_snmp_basic.c-static int snmp_parse_mangle(unsigned char *msg,

Conclusions? Quote mining code is a waste of time unless you know what you are looking at.

Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) gazetted in resource-poor areas of the seascape

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IndoReef500x333

Theres a new paper out by Edgar et al in Ecological Applications that tracks the ecosystem effects of 14 MPA’s, and exploited companion sites, in southern Australia and Tanzania over a 16 year period.

The effects of the MPAs are interesting: biomass of large predators is on a steep increasing trend, while prey-species such as grazing molluscs and urchins are on a downward slope. I wonder what this will lead in terms of macroalgal abundances?

Another interesting finding is that

recently declared MPAs across Australia have been systematically located in areas with few fishery resources. Stakeholders with fishing interests presumably lobbied successfully against the “locking up” of exploitable fish stocks in SZs

I’ve stumbled upon many ecologists who tend to think that MPA’s are almost always designated in pristine areas, thus confounding interpretations of whether they are effective, i.e “the protected sites are healthy, not because they’re protected, but because they were healthy in the first place”. Those with more insights into how local resource users think and work will probably disagree on this, and usually claim the contrary, i.e. “people are pretty darn good at maneuvering the MPA-creation process so as not to include their best fishing grounds”. This study provides compelling evidence of the latter:

The abstract summarizes things nicely:

Tasmanian reef communities within ‘‘no-take’’ marine protected areas (MPAs) exhibited direct and indirect ecological changes that increasingly manifested over 16 years, eventually transforming into communities not otherwise present in the regional seascape. Data from 14 temperate and subtropical Australian MPAs further demonstrated that ecological changes continue to develop in MPAs over at least two decades, probably much longer. The continent-scale study additionally showed recently established MPAs to be consistently located at sites with low resource value relative to adjacent fished reference areas. This outcome was presumably generated by sociopolitical pressures and planning processes that aim to systematically avoid locations with valuable resources, potentially compromising biodiversity conservation goals. Locations that were formerly highly fished are needed within MPA networks if the networks are to achieve conservation aims associated with (1) safeguarding all regional habitat types, (2) protecting threatened habitats and species, and (3) providing appropriate reference benchmarks for assessing impacts of fishing. Because of long time lags, the ubiquity of fishing impacts, and the relatively recent establishment of MPAs, the full impact of fishing on coastal reefs has yet to be empirically assessed.

Apparently in Australia the science is far from settled

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It’s been quite a day here in Australia for politics. As John Quiggin put it, “Turnbull defeated, Hockey discredited, Abbott doomed“. In a nutshell: the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (our ‘climate change hero‘) proposed an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in the Senate, which needed the help of the opposition to pass the bill with a majority vote. Last week, Malcolm Turnbull (leader of the opposition party) agreed on a deal to pass a modified version of the ETS, providing the go ahead for the Rudd’s legislation.

Why is this important? Whilst the Labour party see this as an essential step to curbing CO2 emissions and seek to pass the bill before Copenhagen next week, the opposition Liberal party (who are still busy debating as to whether climate change even exists) see this as a ‘$120bn energy tax‘. Since last week, turmoil in the Liberal Party (directly over the ETS scheme) prompted a leadership challenge, and Malcolm Turnbull was toppled in favour of Tony Abbott – a self-proclaimed climate change skeptic who will lead the Liberal party to renege the deal done with the Labour party over the ETS.

He said he was humbled but exhilarated by the win.  “We are gearing up for the fight of our lives,” he said at his first press conference as leader, adding that he was not frightened to fight an election against Kevin Rudd on climate change.

Tony Abbot rather famously once said:

“The argument on climate change is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. 80% of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”

So wait: according to the Liberal party, the science is crap, but we still need an ETS? Don’t worry, apparently that’s just hyperbole and no longer his considered opinion. Thankfully, others in the Liberal party view this more honestly:

One unnamed moderate Liberal MP, quoted by AAP, put it less tactfully, saying the party had “f…ed ourselves over”.

So what happens next? Watch carefully. The possibility of members of the opposition rebelling and crossing the floor to vote with the government isn’t out of the question). However, if the Senate fails to pass the ETS before Copenhagen (which is looking increasingly likely), Rudd has the option of dissolving the senate and call a double dissolution election – taking the matter to the polls (and according to opinion polls, would clean sweep). Or, with the Austral summer holidays and the festive season coming up, there could be no easy resolution until the new year.