From the monthly archives:

December 2009

The only program that I’ve found so far that I wasn’t able to install on Windows 7 was my OmniPage 14 OCR program.

For those who don’t know the term, OCR stands for optical character recognition – in other words, a program that recognizes text in a scanned image and turns it into editable text.

For Christmas, I received a copy of OmniPage 17.  I plan to use it in a long range project that involves old public domain books.

Like any other processing software, an OCR program will to some degree be limited by the quality of the data, or, in this case, images, that is provided as input.

For my first test of the program, I loaded a pdf file of a 440 page book published in 1913.  OmniPage 17 was able to load and process the entire book, unlike previous versions of OmniPage and other OCR software that I have used, though  I’m sure that, at the time, they had also been somewhat limited by the operating systems and computers.

During the processing, OmniPage 17 flags text that it is not “certain” of and provides the user with the opportunity to correct or ignore the text.  The percentage of flagged text is far lower than I expected.

After the book was processed by OmniPage, I saved it and proofed it in Microsoft Word.

The proofing was, by far, the hardest part of the process.  I read the entire book, with much more attention to detail than I would have if I had just been reading it for pleasure, in order to correct any errors that the OCR might have made as well as to italicize words that were in italics in the book.  Again, the number of corrections needed were far fewer than I expected.  I suspect that there were be very few corrections needed when converting modern documents from image to text.

What was the book that I converted, some might wonder?

It’s part of the long term project, so I don’t want to be too specific at this time other than to say that it was a diary of a lady who had been raised in privilege.

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Arizona State Parks to close?

December 23, 2009

Update – January 16, 2010: Arizona State Parks to Close 13 more parks by June

According to the Arizona State Parks Foundation, a special session of the State Legislature has cut funding for the state parks system to the point all parks will close. The cuts are part of a $205 million budget reduction to mitigate an estimated $1.5 billion budget deficit.

In an Urgent Call to Action, the foundation is asking for help.

image

URGENT CALL TO ACTION!
The Arizona State Legislature has acted on House Bill 2001. It eliminates the ability of our Arizona State Parks system to operate. All parks will ultimately close as a result of this action. If you or your children wish to ever visit such extraordinary places like Kartchner Caverns State Park, Tonto Natural Bridge State Park or Tubac Presidio State Historic Park, you must act today. It is our last hope.

Call, email or write (sample letter at right) Governor Jan Brewer and urge her to veto the parks cuts listed in the article below.

Phone: 602-542-4331 or 800-253-0883
Email via Governor’s Contact page at:
www.governor.state.az.us/Contact.asp
Mail: The Honorable Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona,
1700 West Washington, Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Read more at the Arizona State Parks Foundation website.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

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Mesa Top

December 18, 2009

September 15, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

On our last full day in Colorado, we toured the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Drive, visiting most of the archeological exhibits and overlooks.

square_tower_house

Square Tower House cliff dwelling is named for the four-story-high structure standing against the curved back wall of the alcove.  About 60 of the original 80 rooms of Square Tower House remain.

square_tower_house-2

All of the cliff dwellings, including Square Tower House, were part of the final Mesa Verde building phase.  People lived here between AD 1200 and 1300.

lizard_on_the_ruins

Small lizard on a ruin wall

horses

After spending the morning among the ruins, we took a drive in the afternoon.  At one point, we found ourselves on open range, with the road blocked by a herd of horses.  As I very slowly eased the car forward, the horses parted and let us through.

Commentary and images from the road

image and information from September 15, 2009

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

Pithouse – For thousands of years, native peoples were living in the surrounding areas before coming to Mesa Verde.  As with people all over the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloans lived in modest dwellings  — shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls, with entrances through the roofs.

pithouse

In this excavation (above), what appears to be one pithouse is actually two.  The larger one, built first, around AD 700, was destroyed by fire. The smaller one, which looks like an antechamber to a larger room, is actually a second pithouse built soon after the first one burned.  It contains a new feature, a verticle ventilator shaft in one side, which appears in pithouses from then on — innovation!

cermonial_chamber

Above is an Ancestral Puebloan kiva – an undeground religious room.  The small circular hole in the floor is a sipapu, a symbolic entrance into the underworld – the Pueblo place of origin.  This early kiva design was continued in the Mesa Verde villages and cliff dwellings.

fire_signs_at_mesa_verde

Many fires have swept across Mesa Verde over time.  Recent fires have exposed previously undiscovered Puebloan sites.

our_campsite

At our campsite on our final afternoon in
Colorado, 2009.

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Moving on

December 14, 2009

While I’m moving on – or back – to other things, climate issues will continue to be an interest. With 5 of my last 6 posts being on the subject, it’s time to look at other things.  I’ll try to figure out a way to continue to share some of what I learn, though, without this becoming a climate change blog.

image

I’m still happy with Windows 7.  My computer at work uses XP, though, and moving back and forth between Windows 7 and XP makes getting used to Windows 7 a little harder, I think.

Yes, I am still working.  A contract extension has been approved and, assuming the VP signs the funding paperwork, I will be there until about the middle of March.  After that, I plan not to work for at least the rest of 2010.

Regular visitors to Exit 78 may recognize that my theme has changed once again.  I have moved to the Thesis theme, which allows a lot more control over the appearance.  I’ve got the basic structure down pretty good now, but I’ll be tweaking on it, so there may be subtle changes day to day.

I still have a little bit of material to post from our September trip, photo galleries to develop and publish and images from the great depression to share.

Moving on.

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Scaling back a bit

December 9, 2009

Read this first:

I made a decision after my last post on Climategate that I would scale back on my interest in anthropogenic global warming.

Before the emails and documents surfaced, I already knew there were issues with the some of the scientists and their data at East Anglia.  Unfortunately, it’s likely that similar issues related to climate change exist in other places.

I am now very satisfied that my doubt in anthropogenic global warming is justified and don’t feel the need to follow what’s happening with climate change quite so closely.

I’ve already stopped my Google alert on the phrase climate change, which has significantly reduced the amount of  items that I see in my feed reader.

This is my final post on climate change for the foreseeable future and I’m sharing here just a few of the many things I’ve learned before I get back to my regular posting.

I’m not looking to try to change any one’s mind, just share what I’ve learned.  I’ll still be learning as things show up in my feed reader – I just won’t be studying as aggressively .

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Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:

What evidence is there that more CO2 forces temperature up further?

While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.

While, at times,  there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.

Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.

Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models.  The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.

Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise.  Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.

Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming.  The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

Sceptics Handbook

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.

imageThe sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth.  The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008, nearly 20 months ago.  Since 2004 there have been 770 days without sunspots.  A typical solar minimum averages about 485 days.  Solar magnetic activity continues to drop.

A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

World temperature profile with projected cooling if sun is at the beginning of a lull in activity of historical magnitude.

“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information.  The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia.  The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN  ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data  after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged.  The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).

“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century.

American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk

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“They’ve lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, the graphs and projections, are based.”

“Poor Al Gore”

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Climategate fallout

December 1, 2009

Update: Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

Climate politics continue to be interesting.  Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions.  The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.

The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material.  Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.

climategateAt a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.

Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.

The emails are not the only incriminating material.  Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.

Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.

An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.

Al Gore on Saturday Night LiveClaims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show  a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.

In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.

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