From the truth is waaaayyy stranger than fiction department, we all remember this parody graph of global warming:
As many know, this week at the AMS convention is Seattle, a lot of new papers are being presented. One, from James Hansen is the subject of this story in the Seattle Times.
Note: not THAT James Hansen, but somebody with the same name. I’m sure he gets mistaken for the famous climate modeler James Hansen all the time.
As 3,500 meteorologists meet, one man’s forecast: Chance of pirates
By Sandi Doughton Seattle Times science reporter
Of the 3,500 scientists attending the American Meteorological Society meeting in Seattle this week, only one had a good reason to say: “Arrrrgh.”
While his colleagues swapped probabilistic equations, James Hansen came to talk about pirates.
Hansen rolled out some math of his own Monday as he explained his work to estimate the likelihood of attacks off the Horn of Africa and other hot spots, using weather data and an understanding of pirate behavior.
“Usually, I’m doing theoretical stuff down in the weeds,” said Hansen, a Seattle-area native and applied mathematician at the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, Calif. “This is the only project where I can actually show pictures of the impact,” he said, projecting images of Somali boatmen armed with missile-launchers and automatic weapons.
Though news coverage of pirate attacks has waned, the problem has worsened, Hansen said. Last year, there were nearly 450 attacks, with 53 ships captured and 1,181 crew members taken hostage. The estimated economic impact of the raids is $10 billion a year.
Even knowing the general location of pirate bases and their favored target areas, it’s challenging for Navy and other patrol vessels to be in the right place at the right time, Hansen said.
“The Indian Ocean is really big.”
…
The project combines data on wind, waves and currents with intelligence gathered by informants, surveillance and other means on pirate habits: how far their small skiffs can travel; their assault tactics; the timing of forays.
Running the model yields maps that show the highest-risk areas. Adding real-time information on ship traffic can identify possible pirate targets.
“It’s sort of like tornado warnings,” Hansen said. Everyone may know the probability of tornadoes spikes during the spring in Oklahoma. But what residents want to know is whether a twister is likely headed their way today.
Full story here
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Arrghcasting is the new modeling challenge. On the plus side, this may actually be something useful.
h/t to WUWT reader Cris Streetzel
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And here was me thinking that pirates are pirates because they are scumbags who can’t be bothered to earn an honest living as fishermen.
My bad…
Being a weather forecaster in Somalia or Yemen must be a rather boring occupation – “tomorrow will be hot and sunny …”. Adding a bit about the risks of pirate attacks to the end of weather forecasts might spice things up a bit.
I wonder if the correlation could be used the other way? Could data on pirate activities in previous centuries be used to work out what the climate was like then?
Shiver my timbers, I think I have discovered a new proxy!
Pirate numbers climb when it is realized that the chances of getting caught become lower. It is about time that we started to shoot back.
This is a coincidence to me. While searching yesterday for odd things linked to global warming I found one link on number watch but it was a dead link. I found quite a few bizzare things but failed on pirates. Here is what I found:
Climate change could be causing cougar attacks
Global Warming Claimed to Increase Asteroid Risk
Expert warns climate change will lead to ‘barbarisation’
Songbirds in the US are getting smaller
Global Warming to Shrink Brains?
…as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.
Global Warming: now it hits brothels
[Ted] Turner: Global Warming Will Cause Mass Cannibalism
Climate change is having far-reaching ramifications, even on circumcision rates in Africa
[Australia] …global warming could in fact be driving down overnight winter temperatures.
climate change could spark criminal activities
[Dafur] …global warming may be primarily to blame
Global warming could change Earth’s tilt
Climate change may increase deaths from HIV/AIDS
It’s cold out there – blame global warming.
Climate change ‘could be a fashion disaster’
Women more likely to cheat on vacation
[Uganda] Climate Change Increases Early Marriages
Climate change takes a mental toll
Maybe they’re talking about the Gasparilla Day pirate raid in Tampa this Saturday?
“Climate change may increase deaths from HIV/AIDS”
Does that mean climate change will cause more sex????
We now have a random sample (of two) taken from the universe of all men so named.
They are obviously prone to producing very valuable scientific papers.
/sarc off
I have with great difficulty refrained from commenting on the output of my statistical analysis.
Yo ho ho & a bottle of rum, me hearties!!!
I suppose you are going to tell me the really sad thing is that this is real?
Not as goofy as Wet Office AGW predictions:-“some areas will expereice warmer weather, other areas will experience cooler weather, some aresas will become wetter, some areas will become drier” ! take a pin & stick it in the map boys, that’s real science for you.
IIRC, the Pastafarians claim that the decrease in the number of pirates causes global warming, which is where that graph came from.
As news stories over the last few years tell us, there’s been an upsurge in the numbers of pirates., and “T]he fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Hmmmm……
Seems like someone needs to learn the definitions of correlation, accidental coincidence and causation. How many BBC headlines have we seen with accidental coincidences which show up as correlations being reported as causations.
The sure way to know when this is happening is when an article title contains words such as “May”, “Might”, “Could” etc. Rather than “Did”, “Does”, “Will” etc.
“A new expensive piece of research carried out with taxpayers money reveals that Eggs might cause cancer. Here’s our over paid BBC repeater on a jolly to the States talking to the man who is so sure of this result that he chose the word ‘might’ instead of ‘does’. Don’t worry, the flight was offset at taxpayers expense with some dodgy Carbon Credits.”
“Hansen said: “The Indian Ocean is really big.”
Nevah!!
(Is ‘really big’ a new scientific unit?)
Yeah, this is pretty funny, but it’s a bit unfair of some commenters to pick on (this) James Hansen. He doesn’t make any ludicrous claims of correlation between GW and pirate attacks, he’s just demonstrating that integrating short-term (more accurate) weather and non-weather data can bring about useful information that might not otherwise come to light, that could help solve a real and expensive problem. Good on him- if I was a meteorologist this is the kind of work I’d like to do!
@Jimbo –
Apparently you’ve never seen this: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I, personally, view this as a brilliant strategy to demonstrate the lack of credible evidence showing CO2 to be the causative factor in the recent global warming. Pick something ridiculous that has been increasing, (I’ve always thought the number of shoes in my wife’s closet) and make up some complicated model linking your chosen factor with global temperature increase. Act like it’s a legitimate model and laugh at all the suckers who give it credence. Really, it’s not that different than what the current climate modelers are doing.
If I was a ship captain I would post a radar assisted watch with a grenade launcher. When the pirates came calling, they would be toast.
I also think we should use subs to hunt the pirate motherships and torpedo them. After a few Torpedo attacks from an Ohio class sub, the pirates would learn quickly to find other land based work.
Wow. My calender is way wrong. It shows Jan 26, not April 1….
What you fail to mention is that the pirate/global warming chart was produced as a joke by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming ).
The said Church is of course a joke religion (also known as Pastafarianism), made up to protest a Kansas school board decision to teach creationism: the physics graduate who started it all claimed that the world was created by a flying spaghetti monster, and he wanted equal opportunity to have his belief taught in Kansas schools. Why Pastafarianism requires its devotees to dress up as pirates (hence the chart) is not entirely clear but hey, why not?
James Hansen of the ‘Naval Research Laboratory’ Monterey? This one does have some business-paid salary to process pirates and the U.S. Navy. And he is within the realm of naval-climate think.. Regardless, there is no short term fix to ‘piracy on the high sea’ with ROE’s created by a politician that has failed, in this arena, to solve the political problem. A long term political fix would to be to have the daily ‘gig line’ inspection with the nagging finger pointing that may fatigue the pirate into submission, alone with some under the table gold. The last time the United States chose to smack a pirate a lethal blow in-about this lat-lon the’Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli’ was involved. A meek US Navy at that time was of little consequence to project power at that distance from the American shore. ‘The shores of Tripoli’. The food handout end result in Mogadishu in the 90’s had some effect to piracy on the high seas. If the guard dog, junk-yard type, is on his chain, there will be the growth in piracy.
Hansen is indeed correct in this matter.
So I wonder if this “James Hansen” is having a good laugh at everybody, and if so shame on the Seattle Times for falling for it.
While reading period texts of the 15th and 16th century it becaume obvious to me that people at that time tried to explain their world’s problems in the context of comets, meteors, and strange celestial observations. For hundreds of years people tried to explain natural disasters from earthquakes to storms, droughts, and floods, plagues of insects and diseases and widespread epidemics by the appearance of strange things in the heavens. A link between weather and the spread of disease was attempted, and the weather itself was linked to celestial observations as well. So it all went back to comets.
The overall theory was that a comet would appear, which would portend a natural disaster or foul weather, which would spread disease and kill large portions of the population. Or the comet would portend a drought, flood, harsh winter, that would kill the crops and cause widespread famine. They attempted to link it all back to comets….for hundreds of years.
I feel we haven’t progressed very far. The Middle Ages are still alive and well. We still want to link everything to the weather and climate. We don’t link the climate to comets and meteroites anymore but have “progressed” to linking it all to CO2 now.
Will it be hundreds of years before we realize you can’t link earth’s climate to a single factor (like the appearance of comets or CO2) and that it’s far more complex than that?
Let’s see, the Marines were created to fight pirates over 200 years ago, the same peoples from the same regions are pirates today… I can say with 100% confidence, there will continue to be pirates! The number of pirates will correspond with certian economic conditions in that region of the world as well as certain criminal activity. Wow and I didn’t need a computer model…
Forecast: cloudy with a chance of pirates.
While the pirates have attacked a Russian military vessel that looked like a civilian freighter, they avoid attacking obvious military vessels. And this system is still under development. And would probably be prohibited for civilian vessels by the same laws and issues that keep the merchantmen unarmed.
The FCS and Phalanx are purely defensive systems. Stopping piracy requires direct interdiction using search and destroy methods. Nothing a traditional 5″ gun can’t handle quite nicely. The idea of using an Ohio class SSBN is ludicrous. It is far too vital a strategic asset to waste on anti-piracy operations (even the ones converted for SEAL team operations). Heck, the cost of one Mk-48 ADCAP torpedo must be greater than the combined value of any 10 pirate motherships. Plus it would be massive overkill.
Nah, combine Mr. Hansen’s predictive model; good anti-piracy patrols by frigates, destroyers, and cruisers; and good ‘ole naval gunfire.