How large a conspiracy?

Did you know that the observed decline in Arctic sea ice cover is all just a fake?  I didn't, but encountered folks who thought so.  Since I'm one of the people who would have to be involved in the conspiracy or at least being duped by the masterminds, I'll take a minute to ponder the matter and how someone who does not personally know many of the people involved could go about deciding whether there was indeed such a conspiracy.

One of the tools I find useful in considering issues is to follow a common mathematician's approach -- called the reductio ad absurdum.  That means reduction to absurdity.  What you do is assume the thing at hand to be true, and then pursue it logically to see where you go -- whether it leads you to absurdity.  This is also the starting point for a proof by contradiction.  Again, assume the thing to be true and see if it leads logically to a conclusion that contradicts what you know to be true.

So let's assume that there is indeed a fake involved in the decline in Arctic sea ice.  The people involved were a little particular -- the passive microwave sea ice record.

Some questions to pursue, then:

• How long would the conspiracy have to have lasted?
• How much data would have to be faked?
• Who all would have to be involved in the fakery?
• Are there other sources of data to confirm or refute the passive microwave observations?

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Happy Anniversary ...

 ... to me and my wife.  Part of the recent hiatus is due to me taking some time off to celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary with my wife.  I've marked this as a 'being a scientist' post since being a spouse is another thing that scientists do.  I enjoy that, and others of my roles -- being a son, father, uncle, brother.  Science is another, of course, and I enjoy that too, and is the point of the blog.  But a secondary point is that scientists are people.

We took the time, among other things, to think about what we have done in the 5 years so far -- good ideas we've carried out, storms we've weathered, and so forth.  And to think about what kinds of things we might like to try in the next 5.  There's a bit of science there -- experiments.  We try things, and some we like and keep doing, and some we don't, and quit.  Probably none of these experiments are publishable, but that's not the point.  We learn what we're trying to learn.  And have a lot of fun along the way!

Hiatus to end shortly

A heads up, warning, or promise of good things to come.  Depends on your viewpoint.  Still, my hiatus from blogging will be ending shortly, probably this weekend.  Many things to come, including the longer write up of my September sea ice guesses (3 of them this time, and I'll constructed a combined guess), getting back to some things from the 'what is a day' and 'where is north' posts, and some things from the articles I'm finishing in the next few days for journal publication.  That includes sea ice drift, evolutionary computing (two papers), and a topic to be named later.

Hiatus

Granted there's something odd about writing two posts the day you are mentioning that you're on blog hiatus.  Still, a bit of updating here in promise of things to come.

I haven't been napping the entire time that I've been silent here.  Quite the opposite, really.  One part being the running that I just posted.  Another, and more interesting to the usual content of this blog is that I've been doing some science at home.  Even some at work as well.  The thing is, it takes enough concentration and concerted effort to do something novel at home, after a full day at work, that I don't get over to the blog.

The good news is that, knock wood, I'll be submitting an interesting paper that I've been working on at home for professional publication shortly.  There are at least 3 stories involved in it.  Unlike most scientific work I've done or been involved with, this piece has a well-defined starting point and history.  The three will be the origin of the idea, carrying out the research at home, and what happened in/with the submission process.  Note that I'm talking about submitting the paper; whether it gets published there or elsewhere, and what happens afterwards, will be a different story still.

A couple of interesting-to-here notes are also getting started at work.  We'll see what happens with them.  In both cases, the 'what is climate?' question is major. 

Setting Goals in Running

One of the things I've been doing while on hiatus (which will, barring a couple of exceptions, continue for a while yet) is getting back to my running.  (Yes, yet again I am getting back to running.)

Now that, knock wood, I am in reasonable health, it's time to be improving on that by getting active.  Running is my prime way of getting active.  Even though there's no logical or physical requirement, if I'm not running some, I also don't do other good things like lift some weights, do some rehabilitation exercises, do some core strengthening, and so on.  So it's more important for me to run than if I were otherwise more virtuous.

At the end of April, my youngest son gave me an excuse that will help me with my goal setting process.  Some people do fine with 'just do it'.  Many people, and I'm one, do better with having a goal.  My major goal is to complete that half marathon race next year the same day as my son.  I'd say with him, but with little training he ran a time that I'll probably need a couple years of steady training to reach!  So that's a nice goal itself, but how to get from here -- almost no running or other aerobic exercise in the previous 6 months -- to there -- running 13.1 miles (21.1 km) straight through?

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