I generally post on serious topics on this blog, but this morning two of my friends, John Tweedley and Peter O'Connor emailed me a link to the video below.
A feel good post is a must once in a while.
The event is described in YouTube as follows:
More than 200 dancers were performing their version of "Do Re Mi", in the Central Station of Antwerp. with just 2 rehearsals they created this amazing stunt! Those 4 fantastic minutes started the 23 of march 2009, 08:00 AM. It is a promotion stunt for a Belgian television program, where they are looking for someone to play the leading role, in the musical of "The Sound of Music".
Here is a description of the photo taken from this web page.
This is an image of Earth and the Moon, acquired at 5:20 a.m. MST on 3 October 2007, at a range of 142 million kilometers, which gives the HiRISE image a scale of 142 km/pixel and an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a Moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disks of the Earth and Moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth/Moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.
On the day this image was taken, the Japanese Kayuga (Selene) spacecraft was en route from the Earth to the Moon, and has since returned spectacular images and movies.
On the Earth image we can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features. These clouds are so bright, compared with the Moon, that they are saturated in the HiRISE images. In fact, the RED-filter image was almost completely saturated, the blue-green image had significant saturation, and the brightest clouds were saturated in the IR image. This color image required a fair amount of processing to make a nice-looking release.
The Moon image is unsaturated but brightened relative to Earth for this composite. The lunar images are useful for calibration of the camera.
We can feel awe in many different contexts including: religion, art, genius, science ...
Watching the video I felt wonder and amazement at the talents of the people who produced this science and the beauty (art) of the images. Contemplating the enormity of the universe is the closest that I can get to religious wonder.
On Saturday 8th August we held a birthday party of Joyce. She turned 90 on the 12th August
Here is Joyce with her cake (another magnificent creation by Christine Kleins).
Margaret ...
... gave the following speech :
Lots of important events have occurred on 12th August:
* 1833 Chicago was founded. * 1851 Isaac Singer granted a patent for his sewing machine. * 1877 Thomas Edison invents the Edison Phone, a sound recording device * 1908 First Model T Ford built. * 1914 World War I - Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary; British Empire countries automatically included.
1919 Joyce Winnifred Saunders was born to Winnifred Josephine Saunders and William Saunders.
Mum was born the youngest of five children, with four brothers. I was told that she was naturally a bit spoilt when she was growing up, with four older brothers to look after her.
Her father, my grandfather, told me the story that when she was born, they couldn’t think of a name. He looked up and saw the joists holding up the ceiling and so decided to call her Joyce.
My dad told me a story about taking the love of his life, beautiful, shy, innocent Joyce to the picture theatre for the first time. Half way through the movie she complained to dad that the seat was a bit hard and narrow. He noticed that she hadn’t put the seat down.
Mum
Every day, I try my best to be A mother like the mom you are to me.
Mom, without you, there would be no me. Your love, your attention, your guidance, have made me who I am. You showed me the way to serve, to accomplish, to persevere. Without you, there would be an empty space I could never fill, no matter how I tried. Thank you, mom. I have always loved you and I always will.
Happy 90th Birthday
After which, John proposed a toast.
Forty-three people attended the party.
They included four of her children ...
... some nieces and nephews ...
... some grandchildren and great-grandchildren ...
... and some friends (of Joyce's children or grand-children)
Turn on the sound and click the play button on the video below, this is cool:
If you are interested in the details of the Pentatonic Scale follow this link . The fact that this type of scale is used in a wide variety of cultures may explain the natural, intuitive way the audience reacted in the video. Here is a post about McFerrin's technique for "teaching" the scale to the audience - don't be put off by the name of the site. And the World Science Festival site can be found here .
Enough of the intellectualizing already! McFerrin is most famous for Don't Worry Be Happy which you can see at this link (embedding is disabled, unfortunately) but clearly there is much more to him than just that great song.
Here he is singing Ave Maria at a Jazz Concert.
If you want some more, here is a link to his YouTube channel.
Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models.
Carter made an even stronger point in a press release quoted here:
The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes
You might expect that the authors attempted to correlate ENSO with global temperature, but this is not what they did (because the correlation is very weak). Instead they developed a new temperature time series by by taking the difference between 12-month running averages, 12 months apart. For ease of expression I will call this the differencing method. Tamino made the comment that this process effectively produces "time derivatives of temperature and SOI".
I can't add much to the comments made in the links above, but what struck me was Tamino's comment that the differencing method constituted differentiation. I decided to investigate this point.
My first approach was to play with the numbers in Excel. I entered a linear time series (y = 2x) and differenced it (=B3-B2). The result was 2, ie the derivative of y = 2x. I did the same for y = x2, and got data representing the derivative, 2x and for x3 getting 3x2. This confirmed that the differencing method produced derivatives, but what was the theoretical explanation.
A mathematical way of writing the differencing method used by the authors would be: f(x + 1) - f(x). The number 1 refers to the one year time difference they use for the calculation. I thought back to introductory calculus and remembered that derivatives can be calculated by evaluating the limit as h -> 0 of ( f(x + h) - f(x) ) / h . If you substitute 1 for h (ie the one year time difference) you get the following: ( f(x + 1) - f(x) ) / 1 , which evaluates to f(x + 1) - f(x), which is the differencing method the authors used.
A fun, and quick, introduction to calculus is given in the following video. The relevant formula can be found at the 3 minute 58 second mark. The only difference is that the presenter uses delta x rather than h.
So, what implication does this have for the McLean et al paper? Remember that the authors claim that ENSO might explain " ... recent trends in global temperature ... ". Now the trend in temperatures over the last 30 years has been linear. If you take the derivative of a linear function you will get a constant - ie a number. For example, dy/dx (2x) = 2 - the trend disappears.
So the analysis used by the authors removes the trend, consequently there is now way the final sentence is supported by the analysis of the paper.
What stuns me is the maths used in this post to invalidate the main conclusion of the paper could be understood by a year 11 Maths Methods student within a week of so of starting the study of calculus. This is not high powered maths! One wonders how the authors could have made such a mess.
Horatio Algernon, who writes poetry about climate issues as well as discussing the details in prose wrote the following poetic commentary on McLean et al :
The denialosphere is all abuzz, Noisier than it ever was. A paper by Carter and McClean, (Careening down the passing lane) Claims that temperature's rise and fall, Hugs el Nino, as flies hug the wall, With little room for greenhouse gases, To explain the melting of glacier masses?
But alas, the overconfident tone, Is wishful thinking, so hold the phone. The authors have greatly oversold, The "correlation", truth be told, Between ENSO and the global temp, As pot proponents do with hemp, And most of the recent temperature rise, Is not explained as they surmise.
In fact, the results are nothing new The climate scientists knew this too: ENSO causes "downs and ups", In global temp like brief "hiccups", While over decades, the temperature rises, From greenhouse gases, with few surprises.
UPDATE 1: Tamino has done some more damning analysis here .
