This is just a Delphi Poll on an idea.
I’m supposed to be “looking for a job” as a manager of some sort in I.T. ( I’ve mostly done Director of I.T., and contract Project Management the last dozen+ years, and before that, manager of data centers and systems programmers for another 7+). After I came off my last contract, doing P.M. work in Disaster Recovery in Florida, I headed back to California. Along the way I decided to ‘take some time off’. Mostly as there were a couple of years of “stuff to catch up” in California.
Time passes, and I’ve found my motivation to do “climate stuff” larger than my motivation to go job hunting. But the accumulated money from prior contracts runs out after a while. I don’t really have a choice but to look for “a new gig”. That means “letting go” of some ideas about the whole Climate Change world.
What ideas? Well, I’ve downloaded a bunch of data. The intent being to knock together a database for easy comparisons and also make a new dataset that specifically avoids averaging temperatures (wherever possible) and homogenizing. One that says history is a FIXED number, and does not ‘rewrite the past’. To do that in any reasonable time takes more than 1 hour a week, or even 1 hour a day. When working full time, I’ve got about 1 hour / day to devote the this blog and about an hour or two a week to devote to “personal projects”. So things like “make my own version of the GCMs with insolation / tidal drivers replacing CO2” and “make that PureTemp temperature dataset” largely go on hold.
Which brings me to the “bright idea”:
Is it reasonable to make a public funding campaign to fund me to do that work? Would it be a waste of time, or a golden opportunity?
In Climate Science terms, we’re talking “chump change”. I’d be thrilled with about $100,000 for the lot. I could likely ‘scrape by’ with about $40k/year. That just disappears in the massive Government Funding Machine volumes, but there isn’t such money available to the skeptics side of things. Which circles back to that question.
Is it a “pipe dream” to consider a public funding campaign for a $100,000 stake to set up an independent and ‘clean’ temperature series, based on the available public data of daily and monthly average “unadjusted” data? With the project then moving on to an ongoing effort to make a GCM without the CO2 bias and adding back in solar / lunar influences. That last part is of unknown size of work, so can’t be guaranteed to fit in any given budget. I’ve looked at the GCMs code base and it’s not that hard to work with, but it is huge and not the kind of thing you can rewrite in a month or three.
In Conclusion
I’m not looking for ‘fan boy’ praise and “go get’em tiger” motivationals. I’m looking for more realistic estimation of what can be done via such a crowd funding effort among skeptics and maybe some advice on just which kind of campaign would work best and which sites might cater to this kind of thing. I’m not sure there is such a site, really. This isn’t a “product” to be sold, nor a personal suffering appeal, nor a charity, nor a … and “what is it” is not exactly clear. QA of Government Funded R&D? Counter point to Political Spin? Fair & balanced R&D?
Where is the crowd funding site dedicated to “Honest search for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”?
I know I’d like to do it. I know it needs to be done. But between those two there is a gulf of money.
For a while I’d held off on the idea thinking the needed source data was not available, but it looks to me like the available daily data covers most of what is needed, and a reasonable job can be done with the monthly MIN and MAX averages. While not ideal, a monthly average of just MIN or just MAX is likely close enough to non-averaged daily slope over the years, to be usable for a real trend discovery.
So please “kick it around”. I’ve been kicking it around for a couple of months, but I don’t have that luxury anymore. I need to either “do something” or get off the pot and go get a Real Job ™ in a company doing something that makes money, but maybe doesn’t do much to change the world… or cash in some IRA money and file for Social Security early.
That’s my 3 way split at this “hinge point” in life. So what does the Delphi Poll think?
1) Crowd fund a move into formal Climate Data R&D.
2) Back to the millstones?
3) Pack it in and “live cheap” posting as the cranky old retired guy?
(Hey, you kids, get away from that thermometer and off the lawn!! 8-)
And just how realistic is your choice?
Ideas welcome. As comments or in email.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Well, I dropped out at age 51 in 1995. Worked on a project to reduce costs and found “all the jobs are vacant, and we will announce a new structure shortly.” One of us did not comprehend the program and it had to be me, so I took the generous severance and left and never looked back.
The 401-K has been invested in equities. How much did I lose in the Crash of ??whatever? None, as I didn’t sell and the market came back. So being a cranky old guy works, at least for me.
Have a simultaneous go at wage slave and temp guru crowd funded. Absent a heart string story the crowd funding may not work, unless Heartland or others want the data. My suspicion is you really want the cranky old man with partial funding. Carry on.
Thanks for this posting, E.M. Smith.
I am also an idealist looking for “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and believe that is personally attainable through a merger of science and spirituality.
Crowd funding may not work if post-WWII science is “Stalin’s science,” [1] designed to hide the “conscious and intelligent Mind” that Max Planck envisioned guiding the force that holds spinning sub-atomic particles (e-, p+) together as atoms [2].
I will posts to ResearchGate links for references 1 & 2.
1. “Stalin’s science” http://www.researchgate.net/publication/281017812
2. “Solar energy”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280133563
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/281017812
Yes indeed, I have for a while landed in setting up this research-crowdfunding site – try it users. and donors: bakerstcrowdfunding.com, so that it’s actually ready to go. It wants to cater to quality through marrying investigative both journalism and science, review-board-wise, through use of ‘investigative review’ (replacing some academics for journalists); funny, the term is used in law but not in science and journalism. It works with journalists already, and therefore has installed also an anonymous-donors feature. See its q&a-page for details.
Yes indeed, I have since a while landed in setting up this research-crowdfunding site – try it users. and donors: bakerstcrowdfunding.com, so that it’s actually ready to go. It wants to cater to quality through marrying investigative both journalism and science, review-board-wise, through use of ‘investigative review’ (replacing some academics for journalists); funny, the term is used in law but not in science and journalism. It works with journalists already, and therefore has installed also an anonymous-donors feature. See its q&a-page for details.
“Where is the crowd funding site dedicated to “Honest search for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”? ”
You nailed it, that’s the crowd funding that’s needed.
It’s been said that people are suckers for the truth, so this is what they’re waiting for.
E.M
“Anyone thinking I’m overstating that, read the Koran and Sharia rulings. No, you can not take the word of your Muslim Friend for it. The Koran specifically says it is just fine to lie cheat and deceive the Infidel to advance Islam… so “On No One’s Word”; just read it for yourself. ”
So, seeing as we are dealing with another religion in CAGW you adapt that above and phrase your project submission to get something useful back out of their trough?
And most of us would see that you are staying with your principles even if a bit of stealth is needed.
“
E.M., you have done amazing work on this blog showing — proving by direct “digital” observation — the actual data on how the climate fraud has been perpetrated, e.g., dropping stations at higher elevations and smearing the low elevation readings over a large area as one example.
Now with all the government data altered for the biggest fraud of all human history (oh, well, then there are the claims of the communists and the realities of the Soviet Union, etc., so maybe we are not quite there — yet.), we certainly do need funded centers of science and collection of data for scientific investigation that has integrity. Yes, free minds, free people. This will not be easy, with the U.S., now Australia and Canada, the Papacy, Great Britain, the EU taken over for the “Climate Conference” — where does it stop. Also the media is no longer the media, but paid shills for the Chamber of Commerce (Wall Street/Global Party) who appears to be at the core the Uniparty efforts. Is there any “loyal opposition” within the Republicans to oppose the socialism of the Democratic Party? The Republicans in power have been viciously, and systematically, opposing any opposition to the Dems within the Republican Party. Must be financial prospects blinking dollars (or whatever denomination rules at the moment) before this crew’s eyes.
Anyway, a long introduction to my experience with my favorite blogs — quality does not bring in income for most of them. I understand you are not talking about a “blog” but about a crowd sourcing entity, a new “institution”. I support you whole heartedly. Had I a few million behind me, I would more than gladly fund you the $100,00 per year you need. You are more than worth it to me and those I send your research to.
Solution? I don’t know, but I would suggest going to those centers of opposition to the reigning Globalist Party (Dems and GOPe). That means Donald Trump and supporters like Carl Ichan (sp) and others and putting your proposal before them. Where else will they get accurate data for the science behind a “Make America Great Again” movement — free minds, free people, limited government, accurate historical and daily data.
Of course, this suggestion is after you try whatever you might know about to enlist financial support. I am wholeheartedly in favor. Perhaps there are a few sci/engineer-readers who have developed successful companies who have the funding to make this work. Go for it.
Again, Steven, I am your admirer and share your desire for truth.
A merger of the physical and spiritual insights will be required to overcome the combined, worldwide selfishness that has isolated mankind from Truth, Reality, God. See, for example,
http://thesciencegeek.org/2015/10/24/dark-skies/comment-page-1/
EM – I don’t think there’s enough of a general appetite (at least not backed by hard ca$h) to know the real details of the various distortions of the climate data that’s presented to us. Yes, we’re interested, but maybe it’s not urgent enough to raise the $100k you estimate.
A Global Climate Model should be able to take the total available data for any year or point in time and track the measured data from that point on. Although such a program should all be based on first-principles worked upwards, I think all the ones in use have fudge-factors that are adjusted to get a better fit with measured data. Without a reason for those fudge-factors you can’t feel secure that the calculations will match reality when projected into the future.
Such a GCM would of necessity need to include a description of the Sun cycles, with variations of intensity and spectral power distribution. Do we yet have enough good data to predict that? It would also need to take account of the true orbit of the Earth and thus the distance from the Sun and the level of radiation received. Are there also variations from the gravitational attraction of the other planets, giving rise to increased volcanicity? A few good volcanoes can ruin your whole day….
At the moment, I’ve noticed that weather-forecasters can’t really be that certain of how much cloud will be generated day to day, and thus how much heat will be reflected into space rather than let through to warm the ground and the air that we actually measure as regards “daily temperatures”. I haven’t even seen a retrospective look at what was predicted and what actually happened – I presume they must be doing that to try to improve the models but I’ve seen nothing published. Given that the Met Office run at least half a dozen different models based on their input data and take somewhat of an average of the predictions to tell us what’s going to happen, and have often been spectacularly wrong, it seems even the current models leave a lot to be desired as to predictive accuracy. At times the Met Office say something like “our models don’t agree with each other as to what will occur, so we’re uncertain of the next few days”.
Producing an archive of the published data on climate, and the changes that have been made to the history at each new issue, is a fairly large task but has defined limits. Looks like a reasonable thing to do. Making a whole new climate model, on the other hand, looks to be an undefined project and you won’t know that you’ve included enough of the actual causes in there to give a reasonable prediction. The only simulation big enough would be another Earth, after all, and even there you run into divergences through randomness (those damned butterflies). The specification thus needs to say what level of inaccuracy you’re willing to accept. Could an unpredictable event (such as a lot of oil-wells burning in the Middle East) upset the predictions? If not, why not?
As I see it, writing a new GCM could occupy the rest of your life, and getting a machine big enough to run it (even as arrays of Pis) will not be cheap. Maybe too big a bite and it needs a bigger organisation to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. It may be worth defining the approach needed, and whether to hack some finite-element programs or spice to make the backbone of the solver.
Go the old fart route. That will make you happy. Its what you want and who you are.
This puts your project on one of three basis.
1) A forever hobby. I build airplanes, from plans. That’s a forever hobby. Maybe it flies someday. Your work is, however, important to others so a better endgame is desired.
2) Ordinary small business. What is the economic value of the final work product. Can It be copyrighted? Can results be sold/leased/published for royalties? Sell idea to classic investor.
3) Sponsored project with a tip jar. Model: WUWT Surface stations project. Ship out one raw set at a time to volunteers, get polished dataset per your spec back. Probably enough 10$ tickets to pay for the hardware and bandwidth. If the value is there you may well gain enough momentum to transition to better funding. Conservative orgs give grants too — your captured data set is a resource demonstrating sincerity. The Heritage Foundation or other Conservative foundation might help point you to donors. Science dept. Hillsdale College? (with available student labor)?
Donna L funded her book, Jo Nova supports her site and has enough left over for the odd chocolate by reputation. My gut feeling, this allows you to retain pretty absolute control, and without control it won’t be fun. You can probably find a fool like me to share the admin load if you prefer to keep pecking at the science.
What you are talking about is a business model.
It is easy to see why the contrary business model based on scaring the public with fraudulent data works so well. It taps into the apparently bottomless well of taxpayer dollars.
So ask yourself “Who might support a business model based on truth and honesty?”.
I will pledge $100 per year but can you find enough people like me to sustain you? In the end you may need to attract some corporate support on the lines of this site:
Alex Epstein was an undergraduate at Duke university when I first met him. He impressed me then and now he seems to have created a business model to sustain himself and a small staff. If you don’t already know him, I would be happy to introduce you to Alex. He should benefit from “Clean Data” so he might decide to chip in and failing that he may have some helpful suggestions for people you should approach for funding.
@Simon Derricutt.
If fixing the GCMs was a practical proposition it would have been done by now given that ample funding has been provided for decades.
Then you mention another kind of GCM:
“It may be worth defining the approach needed, and whether to hack some finite-element programs or spice to make the backbone of the solver.”
The computing resources for this approach are modest as one can use efficient differential equation solvers (SPICE, FEAs etc) to calculate the effect of the physical parameters that define conductive-radiative-convective-evaporative heat transfer. For airless bodies conduction and radiation dominate while conduction can usually be ignored for bodies with significant atmospheres.
IMHO Robinson & Catling have done excellent work with the motivation of predicting which exo-planets are worth visiting:
Click to access Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf
Click to access Catling.pdf
My personal computing resources consist of a HP2000 laptop and I lack Chiefio’s talent with software yet I have been able to reproduce Vasavada’s (NASA) model of the Moon and extend it to other airless bodies:
My model can be applied to predict the effect of rotation rate on the average temperature of airless bodies. I have submitted my analysis to Tallbloke in the expectation that he will publish a comparison between my model and several other models including some from “Respectable Climate Scientists”. The good news is that in off line correspondence our models are converging!
Inspired by Robinson & Catling I am applying FEA to bodies with atmospheres in the hope of adding cloud layers. I am starting with Venus as it has 100% cloud cover which simplifies the model. The model handles arbitrary gas compositions from first principles.
I’ll go with #2. Sorry about that but Rule #1 is to take care of yourself –
[Robert Ringer, Looking Out for #1, 1977]
The elites are not interested and “climate” is just the current excuse being used to control others.
See: http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2015/10/19/the-preposterous-green-institute-and-the-ipcc/
This is a recent post by Donna Laframboise. It explains the situation. Regardless of climate studies, they have an agenda. Warm, cold, in-between, change – they do not care.
The academic and government researchers will eventually get around to climate studies using more people and money than anything you or others might do.
Again, EM Smith, many of us share your commitment to providing “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
That is society’s greatest need now. Two recommendations:
1. If you put out a tip jar, I recommend also providing a mailing address to which other “old farts” can mail donations. Steven Goddard aka Tony Heller and a few other skeptics have tip jars that balk when I to use them.
2. To do God’s work, you must “stay out of the ego cage.”
For example, I posted the following on another site, but I will direct readers here to read the references because the blog site owner wants to restrict the site to errors in global climate.
(We must vacate control to be of maximum service to others.)
TODAY IS THE UN’S SEVENTH BIRTHDAY!
For seventy years, after the UN was established on 24 Oct 1945, governments have paid greedy scientists worldwide to obscure the beautiful, bountiful, benevolent and simple, but well-functioning, Universe (Truth, Reality and God) revealed by measurements [1] and direct personal observations [2] from the public.
That is the cause of today’s social unrest, mistrust of government, chaos and violence.
Limits on the worldwide web of deception are a topic of much discussion [3], but no personal comprehension.
References:
1. “Stalin’s science” or “Solar energy”
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/281017812 or
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280133563
2. “Dark skies”
http://thesciencegeek.org/2015/10/24/dark-skies/
3. “The truth about the law”
@John F. Hultquist:
That Donna link is just astounding. Here I thought I was past being astounded…
I hold that to be, on the face of it, evidence that the UN is an immoral and illegal body doing nefarious things. I’d thought it might be before, but that makes it pretty darned clear they want themselves, and their hatchet-men, exempt from mere law…
@All:
I’m reading the comments on this thread by refraining from comment so I don’t bias any future “votes” that might come in.
ResearchGate will either help get the truth to the public, or it will identify advocates of such radical thinking for elimination.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_convincing_evidence_of_AGW#view=562a28396307d981cd8b45c4
Today would have been my father’s 109th birthday, I am now over 79 years of age, and I intend to “die with my boots on,” doing whatever I can to help society get reliable information. I can’t imagine a better way to live!
It’s a huge relief to hear someone at least express reservations about min/max. For me it’s always been the mastodon in the phone booth when experts are discussing past temps.
I know it makes life hard, but I’d suggest that a whole new way needs to be found. In so many places where people have liked to live and use thermometers (ie places of adequate precip), temp is too often a record of how much cloud came, stayed or went at what was potentially the warmest or coolest part of day.
I know that where I live (midcoast NSW) wet years like 2010-11 will give lots of high minima and low maxima. Years like 1993-4 will give the opposite effect. How do you compare cloudless 1902 in Eastern Oz to super-soaker 1950? What to do about these distortions? I have no idea. Maybe we can do nothing. The record of min/max readings is what it is, and nothing more, perhaps?
There is nothing more corrupt than a Republic that has two sets of laws. One set for the power elite and another set for you and me.
That link provided by John Hultquist shows that South Korea has made a serious mistake with GGGI. Let’s hope they have not compounded it by extending the corruption to other QUANGOs (Quasi Autonomous National Government Organizations) or to their political class as we have done in the USA.
People who have control of taxpayer funds should be held to a higher standard than the general public. The penalties for elected officials who steal public money should be more severe than for ordinary larceny.
Countries such as Mexico essentially give their legislators “Carte Blanche” to steal public money by making it very difficult to prosecute elected officials.
At the other extreme, the Republic of China (Taiwan) used to impose severe penalties for elected officials who stole public funds. Taiwan has a government based on the US model with Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches. In the USA we used to be able to rely on a “Free Press” to jump on corruption but that safeguard of our democracy has weakened since World War II.
In Taiwan they did not have a “Free Press” so they wisely added a forth branch of government called the “Ministry of Audit” that has access to all transactions in the other three branches of government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Yuan
I worked In Taiwan from 1982 to 1984 and witnessed the MOA contribution to keeping government honest. Sadly, politicians did not enjoy oversight so the “Control Yuan” is not what it used to be when the death penalty could be imposed for stealing taxpayer money..
>John Silver says:
>24 October 2015 at 9:14 am
>“Where is the crowd funding site dedicated to “Honest search for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”? ”
>You nailed it, that’s the crowd funding that’s needed.
>It’s been said that people are suckers for the truth, so this is what they’re waiting for.
In the comment above that one I linked to this candidate bakerstcrowdfunding.com – see its about-page too
On a side note, it can’t be marketed on the word Truth though, a wording not that commonplace in science ringing also of ‘truth movements’: chemtrails, Obama-birth something, 9/11 conspiracy and what have you, what it’s not part of of course (even though the law connotation is fine).
@EMSmith; This funding problem certainly needs to be addressed. Your efforts have been impressive. However, the gathering and making the weather data available and useful to others does seem to me to be not something that would pay much. Providing RasPi SD chips and specialized OS might earn Beer money and pay for toys. Still not a living.
A Non-profit 501c? NGO? needs to be set up to raise money and fund this educational effort.
It would seem to me that there must be someone among your fans here that could be of assistance…pg
Now that the “Beer Can” computer system is coming together, with it’s needed software and security the next step is archival storage that can be accessed on demand.
But first! a Foundation that can support the people and equipment needed is necessary. Even a hand full of wise old men that can create miracles out of next to nothing, need some support, and a “young” man such as yourself needs some income to keep a smile on his woman’s face ;-)…pg
@Chiefio,
How much overlap would your “Climate Data R&D” have with “Wood for Trees”?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/
Do you regard WFT as honest or has it been corrupted in some way?
Perhaps GWPF would support you in such an open source project, or at least publicize it:
http://www.thegwpf.org/
I still favor the old fart route.
I have a strong bias. No pension, modest savings, but about 3 years ago I told the lady who was my boss to do some unmentionable things when she demanded I travel to an unpleasant work site to fix some of her self inflicted wounds. I liked my profession. I didn’t mind working, and was fit enough to continue. But I hated, and eventually succumbed to abandoning, the mental midgets running the companies I worked for.
This meant compromise.
I’ve run a budget with a “doesn’t matter” amount for impulse spending. This went from $500 to $50 in a hurry.
I do a lot more “trade time for money” things. To my ear, this is a big part of the Pi (s) you are currently ‘baking’.
I am busier than before, giving some of the really fun and interesting things more time. When I realize who much of my well compensated work was utterly wasted by the purchasers, and how easy it has been to generate ‘beer money’ by converting some of my labors of love into cash, I may have waited too long.
You write about investment as someone who has their assets under control. You have the predictive capabilities to avoid disaster and manage income, and have suggested in the past things are working out for you on this score. I was lucky to be saving through a rising tide that lifted all boats while avoiding a couple of crashes.
Security has been enhanced by a ‘no debt’ rule as in no mortgage, no car payment, no credit debt. A worker can certainly compromise on these, a non-worker not so much. You are probably there, or could achieve this upon commitment to retirement.
I was a programmer. I haven’t made a nickel helping seniors with computers, or taking little contracts off the web, or consulting old clients. I’m not doing hobby things either. I found other stuff more fun and interesting.
You have been writing about what you find fun and interesting. Some of it relates to what you did for work, some not. Clearly, your mind is already pretty free.
If there is no need for a lot of effort to maintain yourself, freeing your mind without too much planning might be best. I think every reader here admires the breadth of different directions you take us, and the depth you achieve so quickly.
So if you take the Old Fart route, and free your mind with your data project as a primary interest, with some effort but no timetable, I believe good things will happen. It it ever finishes, great. If you spend more time in the garden with the bunnies and in the kitchen with the produce, that’s good too.
I hope you keep blogging.
This gratuitous advice is worth precisely what you paid for it!
rri
@GallopingCamel:
The WFT folks are more about presenting what others have made. I’ve not used their site much, but my impression is that they do not have their own “temperature series”. So one is left with “all the usual suspects” along with “unadjusted” (aka “raw” that isn’t quite).
What I’m looking at is an approach similar to the dT/dt method I used some while back, but instead of doing first differences (though backward in time) using one of the more fancy methods I’d pointed at in an earlier posting – specifically designed to deal with sparse data. Then add the “twist” of looking for the trend lines separately for both MIN and MAX. Notice that through this one didn’t need to make a daily average, a monthly average, or a MIN / MAX average. (Averages of temperatures not being a temperature…) Now you have a global collecting of trends. Each trend for exactly ONE instrument and for only the MIN or the MAX. (For some, it may be that only monthly averages are available, so there might be a trend of monthly MIN and monthly MAX if the daily data isn’t available). At that point all sorts of interesting analysis can be done. How many are trending which ways? What is the range of trends? Do the different instrumental segments have different trends? Are the MIN and MAX significantly different trends? (The answer to that one is “yes”… MAX is nearly flat while MIN excursions are much smaller over time and rising toward the MAX – in the averages… but do they do it for individual instruments? Or is it an artifact of instrument selection? I.e. dropping volatile stations…)
In the end, you get a new temperature series, but one based on, well, temperatures of instruments, not averages of averages of collections of MIN MAX averages…
I could likely get that done “on the side” of a Real Job, but that “has issues”. For one, depending on how the employment contract reads, they might own it (and be able to quash it). For another, it would likely take me a year to get done and I think it needs to be faster than that.
At any rate, that’s “the vision thing”… and I don’t see that vision at WFT.
For a number of years I have pondered the need for education of young people in the “arts” needed to be a useful citizen, Both, for the good of society and their own welfare. Our modern education system seems to be directed towards brainwashing with useless and sometimes incorrect concepts as well as baby sitting to waste young peoples time until adulthood. I have felt that the education system wasted 80% of my time spent there and I was lucky at that. Many of the everyday facets of knowledge needed are glossed over or ignored. Skills needed to cope with finance, maintenance, health, politics are ignored or given short shift. These are skills I learned in Vocational Agricultural classes as well as in FFA.(Future Farmers of America). At least half of everything I learned in High School that has been of value in 50 years of real life came from those few classes. Today’s youth seen to be woefully unprepared and unskilled in making decisions that will effect their entire life.
In olden times the young were educated by the old ones that had acquired knowledge and wisdom through living long lives and making lots of mistakes, er learning experiences. Today we have young people training younger people in the latest “Wonderful Concepts” that they had just learned a few years before from other enthusiastic young people, kind of like the stupid training the ignorant. Small wonder the foolish uninformed decisions that they seem to make.
The original University concept was that “wise old men” would train young people in the arts needed to grow and benefit themselves as well as civilization. Today the emphases seems to be wasting resources on things of no value and things aimed at destroying civilization to make it better!!
The World Wide Web offers an opportunity to address this deliberate ignorance with a College of knowledge. A nonprofit University of Smithing for Life…pg
This Blog is a very good example of what can be done. 8-) pg
The news media and educational institutions use fear of immigrants, rape, social and economic chaos and extreme weather is used to form consensus opinions so the United Nations can rule the world by worldwide consensus without being identified as TYRANTS!
In the ResearchGate discussion, ‘Is there convincing evidence of AGW?’
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_convincing_evidence_of_AGW
the highly-ranked scientist Dr. Kenneth Towe (Smithsonian Institution) identified the basic disagreement between skeptics and believers of consensus science:
. . . you do not tell us who is the guardian of the “truth” and how the “truth” is defined and established.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius
I haven’t had time to reply yet, but I encourage everyone to consider this issue that divides skeptics from believers of consensus science.
I could throw in $100 US if it would help.
Hopefully paypal still works.
yup it does, small donation to have a beer while you consider the future.
Possibly as you really need 1000 persons to put up $100 or much higher numbers at smaller amounts, you should carefully spell out what you wish to do.
(Which is dig thro the raw (all?) data, to see what we really can know or say.)?
I suspect most of the current science blogs have quite a number of readers who admire your work to date.And I suspect their owners would be quite receptive to a crowd funding effort for what you propose.
Also if you go the quasi retirement route you may be able to stagger you begging over the work period.
Difference between welfare and trade is the product.
There is a real need for an honest party to examine the current information.
You now have a track record of following where the data leads.
Are there enough people who have noticed and care?
I think so.
But we would have to ask to find out.
Personally I support your research as I have noticed, even when you get sidetracked you find things of beauty in the weeds.
Any comments on my first draft reply to Dr. Towe? These are a few of the basic truths that have been identified as facts as humans evolved:
1. We are all on the same journey of life, marching from birth to death, and we didn’t ask to be here.
2. We are powerless over events that are controlled by cause and effect.
3. If we do not accept #2 during life, we will at the point of death.
4. Earth moves in orbit around the Sun; the Sun does not move in orbit around the Earth, as Corpornicus first reported in 1543.
5. Rest mass (m) is potential energy (E) or, as Einstein discovered in 1905,
E = mc^2
6. Truth is more valuable than untruth or, as reported in the Upanishads,
“Truth is victorious, never untruth“
Attending to the practical matter, Galloping Camel and John Robertson are willing to contribute $100 per year and so am I. That only leaves 97 others that you need to do the kind of job you want to do. Perhaps there is someone who can come up with a significant amount on a matching basis. This might stimulate a number of others to contribute as well. Get a succinct plan and I will be glad to forward it to other bloggers who have a significant readership that is sympathetic to skepticism, the scientific method, accurate and truthful data gathering and open sourcing, and that old fashioned personal attribute — integrity.
pyromancer 70,
That makes three of us but we need another 997 to keep our beloved Chiefio in reasonable comfort. Even his subsistence level of $40,000/year requires at least 397 more.
I have a tiny circle of fans and would hope to persuade at least five to chip in if our leader provides a simple list of objectives. I like the MIN and MAX data sets he proposes above as this is not easily available elsewhere. I hope that we will be able to compare the raw data MAX and MIN for each of the gumment data sets as well as the “Adjusted” data sets that Tony Heller finds fault with.
According to Tony Heller, NASA/GISS, NOAA/GHCN and NCAR have shamelessly adjusted the global average data sets to exaggerate the positive average temperature trend. Now we need to look at the MIN and the MAX over GISS v2, v3 and all the other data sets.
Hi Chief,
I read your stuff regularly and it is obvious to all that you are a thinker. I am involved at this time in a scientific endeavour the results of which so far are totally unexplainable by main stream science. It is our wish that our results are made public widely on the net such that it can not be disappeared. My question, would you like the info when it is ready for dissemination? You have my email.
Along the same sentiment, being in pre-launch beta/service development mode, I could suggest trying the bakerstcrowdfunding.com platform for a lower rate.
So far, these Crowd Funding things I have seen are directed to raising a lump sum to launch. This needs a continuing funding setup as it appears to me that this is an open ended effort….pg
Perhaps a small example of what you are talking about would help. Would you be using only continuesly active stations. What about UHI and TOB.
Tony Heller has done a great deal with percentages of T over 80, over 90 etc
.. Do you know what system he has set up to generate his charts?
p.g.sharrow, Baker St. uses the Franklin/Charitable wordpress solution for crowdfunding. As the Q&A now explains, it’s fully possible to submit an ongoing campaign, only the administrator does the actual selection for that. The user just selects the maximum time (730 days), a suitable target sum, and mentions in the description mention that the campaign is ongoing.
E.M. Smith,
You have identified a requirement for us to retain basic constitutional rights:
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
I will gladly commit to $200 per year.
I am active on blogs with others who are concerned with this same issue, although not as clearly stated, and I will direct others to the site when you are ready to go public.
I posted the link to this site on ResearchGate’s question about convincing evidence of AGW:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_convincing_evidence_of_AGW
OK, I think I’m ready to comment a bit on the comments ;-)
I’m leaning fairly strongly toward the “go for it”. Worst case is that I’m hunting my White Whale for a while and burn through some retirement faster than expected.
The PayPal does still work, for anyone wishing to bypass the 5% “cream” taken by the funding sites. Sometime tomorrow (when less tired after a day of slaving over a hot computer ;-) I’ll make a ‘first pass’ over funding sites. Some are “collect a sum all or nothing” others are “keep it all whatever you collect” and suited to ‘ongoing’ things. I also need to put together a ‘prospectus’ of sorts.
As an aside: On TOBS, it’s my opinion that if you make a trend of MAX over years and s trend of MIN over years, you can ignore TOBS. I don’t care AT ALL if MAX is offset by a day in that case. All I care about is that over the 10 or 100 years of a record I have a pretty good sample of MAX readings. The trend through them is the trend, whatever it is. Same thing for MIN. Since I’m not doing a daily MIN / MAX average for each day (or month) what difference does TOBS make?
IMHO that only fails if you don’t have enough stations with reported MIN / MAX values. I’m pretty sure there are enough.
Per UHI: I think that’s a “leave it for the end” process. Once you have the trends from real data, then you can ask it what places look like they show UHI. Sort the really rural into one bucket, the airports into another bucket, and the clearly urban into a third. Compare. Look for kinks and step functions (like the start of the jet age at airports, or major urban growth moments for each metroplex). I think the data will talk if asked sweetly…
I’d also sort stations into one batch of ‘long life’ and another of ‘short chunks’ and see how they compare. ( I did that before and found things…) The whole “splicing short chunks” thing is, IMHO, one of the problems from “homogenizing”. It’s just a hidden splice, and splices in data series are a very bad thing. (IMHO that is what cripples B.E.S.T. method). So what I’d look to do is make “trends by decade” for the short chunks. Now you have a sample of 6 for a normal 60 year cycle. How well do trends match inside each decade? If highly divergent, why?… If similar, now you can make an ‘average trend for the decade’. Next you can merge those decadal trends and see if a cycle pops out, or a trend. (Probably doing it by hemisphere, by latitude band, by continent, etc. as I did before with dT/dt as that shows up regional differences and things like polar oscillations where N.H. and S.H. are counter cycle to each other).
There’s a bunch of other ideas, but I think you see the general process. Look at the data in various ways and ask it what it has to say… and do that without up front averages of averages of averages and homogenizing and TOBS and …
Great, I’d be extra interested in funding sites’ take on quality (cf. ‘investigative review’, incl feedback from anywhere),
I’d say definitely go for it. I’d be good for $100 / yr, probably more. I think once you reached a point where you could really apply yourself, we’d be getting a lot more than what you are proposing now, I’m thinking.
Also, the act of actually doing it will give you some very marketable skills in crowdfunding and Big Data. It might be worth your while posting a teaser article on WUWT to gain maximum exposure. You’re well thought of there.
Today Russia’s Putin deftly out-maneuvered:
1. Western political leaders
2. Western Academies of Sciences
3. Western publishers of 97%-Consensus “Science”
4. The United Nations and UN’s Agenda 21 for control of the globe
By publicly admitting AGW is a FRAUD, leaving the above folks and organizations stranded, like rats on a sinking AGW Ship of Fools. The link to Putin’s “hard ball win” over the West was reported on ResearchGate’s discussion of the AGW tale:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_convincing_evidence_of_AGW
Thus, ends the credibility of Western leaders and their puppet “scientists.”
I deeply regret that we were unsuccessful in saving them from this fate.
I think this is a good idea but not necessarily an easy one to keep rolling after a start. On a more general level I think something similar would be needed to decouple research generally from government money. Today here in Finland it seems like no “free” research is done.
What about a research institution where special equipment could be rented/borrowed for a limited time for crowd sourced projects. Your idea is a really good one. I think there is a number of really interesting small scale fusion projects.
Crowd sourced science perhaps bring us back to th old days of science where the researcher did research for the love of art and not as an 8am to 16pm ordinary work. In an earlier age the researcher had to be well off to do “nonproductive” work but I think this could change.
How should a crowd sourced project best be set up? What kind of information/inside view would supporters need to retain an interest and continue to support a project? Realistically a group of a few hundred persons supporting the project with $10 – $20/month is enough to keep a project analyzing existing data rolling. More supporters are needed to fund a project needing real hardware. I have been supporting the education of a child in the third world for many years … it would be no problem to do the same for a valuable crowd sourced project.
Quite a number of years ago I pondered the requirements for a foundation dedicated to fulfilling the needs to make humans a permanent space faring race. An educational foundation was necessary for training, beginning after elementary levels, to avoid waste of time liberal brainwashing as well as training in dogmatic “science” standard accepted theories as if they were FACT.
An inexpensive ,Secure, computer system was needed to tie the thing together. Mr. Smith has done a remarkable job, with very little funding, of providing the foundation of the computer system and it’s philosophy of secure operation.
The next thing needed is a financial foundation to raise the funding needed for this endeavor. There are millions of people out there that would contribute small sums on a continuous bases to such an enterprise if the right organization were set up to promote and manage such an effort. The next building block needed for this Foundation is a Not for Profit organization.
Anyone out there that can help with that?…pg
@p.g.sharrow
I could help. I helped alumni of the chemistry department set up a Not for Profit Foundation for Chemical Research, Inc. when I chaired the Chemistry Department at the University of Missouri.
A local bank president volunteered to serve as President of FCR, Inc. for several years. I am now 79 years old and cannot do the grunt work, but know how it was done in the 1980s. Things may be much more difficult now, under increasingly totalitarian control of all funds and assets, but it was remarkably simple in the 1980s.
@oliver, I understand that it is not difficult to do but I am totally ignorant of the organizational needs.
Guess I need a “Dummies Book” ;-) I’m only 69 and getting tired of grunt work.. LoL…pg
@P.G.:
These folks: https://www.incorporate.com/sitemap.html
make all kinds of corporations. I used them to make mine. It took about 2 weeks and cost me about $300 all told. Only mistake I made was that to get a Checking Account for a Delaware Corp I needed to go to a bank IN Delaware… so a $Hundred more and I had a “Foreign Corp Registration” for my Delaware corp in Nevada… and drove up to Reno to open my bank account.
They have a section on Non-Profits here:
https://www.incorporate.com/nonprofit_corporation.html
The major added bit being that you have to fill out some IRS forms claiming what your charitable purpose is, and do some added income filings showing you are not making a profit. Oh, and wait for the IRS to decide you are not conservative, Republican, or against global warming…. 1/2 sarc;/
Organizationally, you mostly have to stand in front of the mirror once a quarter, pronounce that the meeting is in order, vote to dispense with the reading of the prior minutes and vote to approve them, ask for any old business, say no, ask for any new business, say whatever you want to do next, and then vote to approve the meeting be adjourned and the Secretary (that is also you) is to type up the minutes to be put in the corporate records and read at the next meeting… Once a quarter file an income tax return (or the ‘no-it-isn’t-income’ non-profit return) with the IRS. Costs about $1000 / year for the tax guy and such..
It is remarkably easy. They have a ‘deluxe kit’ complete with embossing stamp for the stock certificates and official records and all the paperwork as ‘fill in the blanks’. (Now likely as a computer disk when back then it was physical paper…)
There’s a few other odds and ends. Go to the IRS office and spend 5 minutes filling out a request for TIN (SSN for a company). Go to county records office and file a DBA (Doing Business As) statement for about $35 last time I did it – good for 5? years. Then walk down the street 2 blocks where all the “newspapers of record” you have never heard of are located and pay $25 or so (then) for the mandatory 2 week publishing of your DBA. Take the DBA paperwork and your incorporation papers to the bank (in whatever State you are incorporated or foreign corp registered) and open the checking account.
Side note: California Reg requires more people. Minimum 3 when I looked a it, for the different officers of President, V.P., Secretary. Delaware lets them all be one person (plus has corporation love fest legal environment for things like liability). Nevada is almost as good as Delaware. I was quite happy with Delaware reg, Nevada Foreign Corp reg.
Well, that’s what I remember from 20 years ago ;-)
(This isn’t legal advice. I’m not a lawyer nor an accountant. Pay each of them all the money their respective Guilds demand to not sue me for saying what my history was. I didn’t do anything, honest. I love lawyers, pay yours often…. etc. etc…)
Young civic-minded attorneys may be willing to do help you set up a 501(C)3 charitable foundation pro-bono, if they personally agree with the purpose. As I recall, the attorney that helped set up the Foundation for Chemical Research, Inc. continued to serve on the Board of Directors.
Civic-minded attorneys are building resumes, and serving as a member of the Board of Directors of a charitable foundation looks good on the resume.
Having an attorney serve pro-bono on the Board of Directors is a good way to avoid possible legal problems from any decisions made on spending the funds collected under the IRS guidelines for charitable organizations.
@oliver, E.M.; Good advice, I will tend to it today…pg
Thanks, p.g.sharrow. You may even find a civic-minded CPA willing to serve pro-bono as Treasurer or a bank president willing to serve as President of a charitable foundation.
My platform will actually change name soon to Investigative Review Crowdfunding, in that the name Baker St. will likely collide with others as it goes global. Soon I’ll seek EU seedfunding (H2020) too, to enable to flesh out the critical role of investigative-review boards, as independent platforms, parallel academies, in an era where public-private partnerships have tended to lure too much of substandard journalism inside arms-length: requisites and the potential lying in crowdfunding platforms as intermediaries.
Lars I really sympathise with what you wrote – and your blog! If/when in Copenhagen, come and look into my singer wife’s collection of Baltic and Russian kanteles, violins, and more: agnethechristensen.org :-)