Bugmenot Bugs Me

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When I’m cruising for nuke news for my NukeBeat blog, I am frequently annoyed at news web site registration. Here’s what I do: I register if I really want to read the story, or else (more frequently) I just blow it off.

Why don’t I simply use BugMeNot? Because it’s a violation for me of a pretty simple and quite effective principle of effective and sustainable human interaction. They’ve got something I want, and they ask for something in return. If I don’t want to give, I’ve no reasonable expectation that I should get. Why has this simple ethical principle, which is so usefully expected and honored in our face-to-face interactions, been so freely abandoned by such a large segment of the ‘Net community?

Look, a little sheepish BugMeNotting is no huge deal. This isn’t like genocide or something. But I’m frankly amazed at the brazen argument the BugMeNotters make (laid out in arrogant detail in a comment thread over at Poynter and in their own FAQ) – registration is bad – “waste of time,” “annoying as hell,” “breach of privacy.” But rather than just walk away from the deal, they argue this justifies cheating.

That’s a bad basis for sustainable human interaction.

Sox in Four. Please.

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I had the same conversation with a couple of different friends recently, baseball fans whose teams were long gone from the fall competition:

Me: “Have you decided who to root for in The Series?”

Them: “Sox. For Jim.”

They said it with a tone that suggested the choice was obvious, and needed no further explanation.

Our friend Jim is one of the best baseball fans I know, with a reverance for a good changeup and a great pick at second base. He’s also from the south side of Chicago, a White Sox fan deep in his childhood, in his genes, from the days (do these days still exist?) when The Ballgame on the radio was the soundtrack of summer. This matters to him in ways that most of us could never understand.

When the Sox made the series, he began calling around, hunting for tickets. There were none to be had in Chicago for anything less than a second mortgage on the house. But he called me yesterday afternoon to tell me he’d scored a pair for tonight’s game 4 in Houston.

I harbor no illusions about the baseball gods. They are not as one Almighty, choosing sides, that we might pray they choose Jim’s. They’re more like the Greek gods, squabbling and divisive. To watch a World Series is to watch their struggle play out.

Tonight, I will pray to those among the baseball gods who have seen Jim’s worthiness lo these many years, who understand what it means to see him sitting field level, 13 rows back down the right field line.

When he told me where the seats are, he said, “Foul ball territory. I’ll have to keep my head in the game.” I’ve never known him to do anything else. Baseball gods, I beseech thee, in the name of thy loyal servant Jim.

Phenology

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I saw my first sandill cranes of the season yesterday afternoon, poking around in a recently cut field of alfalfa in Albuquerque’s south valley. Johnny_Mango saw his first last week. And one of my correspondents saw his first cranes over the valley Oct. 12, and thinks this is about 3-4 weeks earlier than usual based on his two decades living here.

So here’s your word of the day: phenology. It’s the study of biological phenomena that happen in response to seasonality and climate, like when flowers flower and when birds migrate.

I was first exposed to the word last summer in the excellent climate blog of Roger Pielke Sr.. He was talking about a workshop in Tucson organized by the ubiquitous Julio Betancourt, who’s trying to set up a National Phenological Network. This sort of data is incredibly relevant to understanding the effects of climate change writ large, but Julio and others say we haven’t been very systematic about collecting it.

If I have time today, I’ll call down to the Bosque del Apache and see if I can find out whether the cranes really are early this year. I bet they’ve got the data to back up our anecdotes.

More Hockey Sticks

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I’ve largely stayed out of the “hockey stick wars” lately (by this I’m referring to climate science, not the resumption of NHL play). But some new stuff published in GRL (by von Storch and Huybers ) rather seems to undercut the criticisms that have been raised by McIntyre and McKitrick of the old Mann et al. hockey stick paleoclimate reconstructions.


paleoclimate reconstruction showing warm 20th century

The statistical questions raised by MM are somewhat arcane for the general blog-reading audience. In the first case, MM argued that the methodology used by Mann et al. essentially produces “hockey sticks” artificially out of random noise. Von Storch (who one of the M’s loves to quote approvingly, and who is one of the deans of climate statistics) disputes this assertion. Huybers argues that MM’s criticism of the Mann et al. choice of statistical significance tests is wrong. Suffice it to say, for purposes of the policy discussion in which MM have been invoked, that the responses by von Storch and Huybers suggest that the MM statistical criticisms of the hockey stick reconstruction are not as bone-headedly obvious as Michael Crichton wants to believe.

Holidays Will Never Be The Same

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Our neighbor Doris came by this morning with the bad news. Someone stole her Halloween decorations. She will put out her holiday displays no more.

This is a tragedy of neighborhood proportions. Every Halloween and Christmas, Doris, who is somewhere well beyond 80, puts out lovely displays. She has a perfect touch – modest but charming, never overwhelming, a gift to us all.

As evils go, this is a modest affair. And it’s worth remembering that the overwhelming majority of people in our community have never stolen Doris’s decorations. Most people are not bad. But that makes me no less sad at the prospect that we may never thrill to Doris’s holiday magic again.

In Defense of Juliet Eilperin

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Climate scientist Roger Pielke Sr. took the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin to task a few days ago for an Oct. 13 story suggesting “that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record.”

Pielke’s contention is that, while surface temperature data may support the claim, the surface thermometer record “is not … the most appropriate metric to evaluate global warming.” And from a climatological view, of course, he is absolutely correct. Various layers of the atmosphere behave quite differently, and a complete picture requires looking at all of them, which, as Pielke notes, paint a much more complex picture of warming than a simple “warmest ever” headline.

Pielke also gives an important nod to regional anomalies, which he rightly argues “are what we should be focusing on in terms of long-term climate trends, rather than surface globally-averaged temperature trends.”

But this is a newspaper story for a national audience, where you really get to say one clear thing that has to communicate with people everywhere. If it were for a regional audience (like, say, mine) it could focus on a regional anomaly. But whoever is going to be reading this is living on the planet’s surface, so that’s the temperature number that’s going to matter to them.

Records

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I’m fascinated by climate and weather extremes, so this from this morning’s NHC discussion of hurricane Wilma caught my eye. (The old record was Gilbert in 1988 at 888 mb. Wilma’s unofficially at 881 – 884. This like golf – lower pressure equals more powerful hurricane.):

AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE PLANE MEASURED 168 KNOTS AT 700 MB AND ESTIMATED A MINIMUM PRESSURE OF 884 MB EXTRAPOLATED FROM 700MB. UNOFFICIALLY…THE METEOROLOGIST ON BOARD THE PLANE RELAYED AN EXTRAPOLATED 881 MB PRESSURE AND MEASURED 884 MB WITH A DROPSONDE. THIS IS ALL IN ASSOCIATION WITH A VERY SMALL EYE THAT HAS BEEN OSCILLATING BETWEEN 2 AND 4 N MI DURING EYE PENETRATIONS. THIS IS PROBABLY THE LOWEST MINIMUM PRESSURE EVER OBSERVED IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN AND IS FOLLOWED BY THE 888 MB MINIMUM PRESSURE ASSOCIATED WITH HURRICANE GILBERT IN 1988. HOWEVER…ONE MUST BE VERY CAREFUL BEFORE IT IS DECLARED A RECORD MINIMUM PRESSURE UNTIL A FULL AND DETAILED CALIBRATION OF THE INSTRUMENTS AND CALCULATIONS IS
PERFORMED. SO PLEASE DO NOT JUMP INTO CONCLUSIONS YET…BE PATIENT.