In a statement to Polifact today, NCDC made the following statement:
“… our algorithm is working as designed”
One wonders though, about these sorts of things that have been found wrong in their data file for USHCN, which is represented to the public as “high quality”.
Here are few other things that worked as designed:
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940):
Early NASA Rockets (1950’s-60’s):
The Titanic (1912): On 14 April, the RMS Titanic, described by its builders as practically unsinkable, sinks after hitting an iceberg.
The de Havilland Comet (1952): Twenty-one of these commercial airliners were built.The Comet was involved in 26 hull-loss accidents, including 13 fatal crashes which resulted in 426 fatalities. After the conclusive evidence revealed in the inquiry that metal fatigue concentrated at the corners of the aircraft’s windows had caused the crashes, all aircraft were redesigned with rounded windows.
Mariner 1 (1962): The first US spacecraft dispatched to Venus drifts badly off course because of an error in its guidance system. The error is a small one — a wrong punctuation character (a hyphen) in a single line of code — but the course deviation is large. Mariner 1 ends up in the Atlantic Ocean after being destroyed by a range safety officer. It has been called “The most expensive hyphen in history”
The Mars Climate Orbiter (1998)
![marsClimateOrbiter[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/marsclimateorbiter1.jpg?quality=83)
The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the surface of the planet, because its orbit was too low.
The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software produced results in an “English system” unit, while a second system that used those results expected them to be in metric units. Software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings calculated results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation used these results to correct the predicted position of the spacecraft for the effects of thruster firings. This software expected its inputs to be in newton-seconds.
The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed.
The NCDC Climate at a Glance plotter for the public (2014):
While being told that “all is well” and and that “our algorithm is working as designed”, it is easy to discover that if one tries to plot the temperature data for any city in the United States like Dallas Texas for example you get plots for high temperature, low temperature, and average temperature that are identical:
Try it yourself:
Go here:
Change settings to go to a statewide time series, pick a city, and what it does is and it gives you data where the min temp, avg temp and max temp that are the same. It is unknown if it is even the right data for the city.
h/t to WUWT readers Wyo_skeptic, Gary T., and Dr. Roy Spencer
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Steve Keohane says:
July 2, 2014 at 8:52 am
ntesdorf says:July 1, 2014 at 10:09 pm
You nailed my response with ‘SNAFU’, but then that is SOP for the gov’t.
____________________
SNAFU carries a sort of incompetence implication, which is not the proper concept. What we are witnessing goes far beyond incompetence. This is malfeasance by design. Our US Gov’t. bureaucracy is corrupt from top to bottom and follows an agenda of increasing its own power over the people. This is no longer a left or right issue.
more soylent green!:
re your post at July 2, 2014 at 9:21 am.
I considered what the statement means in this post on the other thread.
Richard
rogerknights
July 1, 2014 at 11:46 pm
says:
‘“Our algorithms are working as designed.”
GM could say the same of its ignition switches.
…’
Notice the flood of GM recalls that are coming as we speak? And the fact that the federal government sold the last of its shares of GM stock in Dec. 2013? Coincidence? Possibly.
I rode on a Comet once. They were incredibly noisy. A family friend was killed on the way to Mauritius. Good riddance.
Ditto global warming alarmism eco-loons and all that that entails. My what a wonderful world this would be!
Next, the huge gap between rich and poor, an international tribunal to permanently fix the borders of all countries and an effective ban on the invasion of privacy by a State, anywhere,
Haba na haba ujaza kibaba. (Little by little you get what you want).
DirkH:
I am writing to acknowledge that I read your post addressed to me.
I do not have to – and see no reason to think I will have to – explain elementary political philosophy to you. And I have no intention of attempting to overcome your prejudices which prevent you from understanding such things.
Importantly, at July 2, 2014 at 12:18 am in this post I made (and explained) an on-topic suggestion on who, how and where to inform if the problems with ‘the algorithm’ are to be addressed. Your response is off-topic nonsense.
Richard
” A family friend was killed on the way to Mauritius. Good riddance.”
That’s an awful thing to say.
DirkH:
I erroneously wrote my acknowledgement of your post addressed to me on the other thread. Sorry.
Richard
Martin A says:
July 2, 2014 at 9:43 am
” A family friend was killed on the way to Mauritius. Good riddance.”
That’s an awful thing to say.
i think he was referring to the Comet.
I think Rhoda R has the right question.
Besides the goal of the algorithm working as required to do the job, a method is detailed requirements. The process of making them should explore subtleties, should look at the data from interfacing modules in and out. That does require communication with other people, which a young engineer who was part of the panic team to fix Obama’s medical software botch said was a big part of the cause of the botch – the team found many small things wrong.
davidmhoffer says:
July 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm
“Aw, you left out the Hubble Telescope…every single component and sub-assembly worked exactly as designed…”
That’s not quite true. If I remember correctly, Kodak made a primary mirror that was perfect in every way. That one still sits in a warehouse somewhere. The government instead used a mirror made by a company not known for having any sort of expertise for precision large optics. Whether it was for affirmative action, gifting taxpayer’s money to a crony, or some other reason, it was definitely another case of the government screwing something up in a very expensive way. Like they always do. I’m sure glad they’re taking care of my health care needs.
Stephen Skinner says:
“I think this is stretching the imagination to link Obamacare with Nazism…”
Obamacare and a very large percentage of our economy most certainly are run along National Socialist lines. You could just as easily say Fascist and maybe be a little less provocative. However, a fascist economy is characterized by nominally private companies/corporations being “guided” (coerced) by the government. Think Oskar Schindler and you’ll be pretty close. To pretend that health care under the ACA resembles the free market in any way is completely disingenuous.
I’ve heard it said that the upside of Fascism is that the people in charge know how to make the trains run on time. This aspect is what appealed to FDR when he fantasized he could remake the American economy in his own image. The downside, of course, is that they don’t know how to make the trains go where they’re needed.
If your point was that the comparison invoked the Holocaust, genocide, etc., then sure, that’s unfair and mean. But I didn’t take it that way.
Pay no attention to those algorithms behind the curtain. The great and powerful Oz has spoken.
Dan in Nevada says:
July 2, 2014 at 10:32 am
Stephen Skinner says:
“If your point was that the comparison invoked the Holocaust, genocide, etc., then sure, that’s unfair and mean. But I didn’t take it that way.”
OK. But running the trains on time or healthcare for that matter are not what jumps out at me when I hear the term Nazism.
1) “Our algorithm is working as designed,” is a truism, not a defense. How could it do otherwise? The proper response is “So what?”
2) I recall from my aerodynamics classes that the Tacoma Narrows bridge was actually not built as designed. The roadbed width changed and the designed trusswork girders were replaced by I-beam plate girders. Because the transverse wind could not permeate through the plate girders, it shed von Karman vortices. The changed roadbed width caused the torsional resonance of the bridge to match the vortex-shedding frequency. It was a forced oscillator at its resonance condition.
The algorithm is not the point.
The several USHCN samples analyzed so far show that older temperatures have been altered so that the figures are lower than the originals. For the same sites, more recent temperatures have been altered to become higher than the originals. The result is a spurious warming trend of 1-2F, the same magnitude as the claimed warming from rising CO2. How is this acceptable public accountability? More like “creative accounting.”
I was a Spacecraft Navigation Engineer employed by JPL from 1965 through 1979. I want everyone to know tht I was not employed there when either of the two JPL screw-ups mentioned occured, but I did subsequently learn interesting details about them.
I had worked in the successful 1965 Mariner 4 Mars flyby Navigation Team and was the Navigation Team Leader for the successful Mariner 5 1967 Venus flyby,
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mariner-5/
The clueless 1998 Mars Climate Orbiter Navigation Team Leader who ignored his team’s Red Flag warnings was a Phd holder who was obviously not the right person to be in charge of dealing with real-world problems.
It should be noted, however, that all the information supplied to the JPL Mariner Climate Orbiter Team that had used unlabeled English force units was produced by software from the prime spacecraft contractor (Lockheed Martin Astronautics) in violation of the NASA contract, which specified that only metric system units were to be provided to JPL:
http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~gtan/bug/localCopies/marsOrbiter
During Clinton’s and Obama’s administrations, I’ve been acutely aware of the malaise of cluelessness (or political deception?) that has become rampant in Government-controlled “Climate Science.”
If the max/min/avg temps aren’t changing, why all the fuss about “Climate Change”? 😎
We are learning from this that USHCN only supports the notion of global warming if you assume that older thermometers ran hot and today’s thermometers run cold. Otherwise the warming does not appear in the original records; they have to be processed, like tree proxies. Not only is the heat hiding in the oceans, even thermometers are hiding some!
Given that answer (working as designed), can we finally dispense with the notion that all this is caused by simple incompetence? I think this answer pretty much proves actual malice.
Many, many years ago, I attended an International Conference on Software Engineering. I can still remember one of the presentations where it was claimed that up to 90% of software faults are due to specification problems, not coding. This was in the context of mission-critical software, such as used in banks, aircraft, and nuclear reactors.
If the problem is one of specification, then ‘the code is working as specified’ (a paraphrase of what’s been stated in the press release) does not mean that code is working correctly.
Do the specifications really intend that temperature estimates should be supplied for stations that have been shutdown? If so, isn’t that a flaw in the specifications?
Who has the specifications so they can be checked to see if they are valid? Only after that has been done should the software be checked to see if it meets the specifications.
As an aside, another point from the conference was that a lot of errors in coding from specifications arise from the use of ambiguous terms. For that reason some sectors have a dictionary with precise definitions and specifications are only allowed to use terms from that dictionary. This reduces the chance of misunderstanding (as occurred in Mars Climate Orbiter case mentioned in the post).
Anthony
This is my no.1 goto site for all information, news and such like related to meteorology and related topics. I trust that on balance the quality of posts will be high with an emphasis on trying to find out whats going on with all the research and articles AGW related etc.
Therefore please correct the error in this article relating to the De-Havillland Comet.
“The de Havilland Comet (1952): Twenty-one of these commercial airliners were built.The Comet was involved in 26 hull-loss accidents, including 13 fatal crashes which resulted in 426 fatalities”
This has been lifted directly from Wikipedia without any editing and implies that the design caused 13 fatal crashes and 426 fatalities. There were 5 crashes related to the design of the wing and fuselage, 4 of which were fatal and resulted in 110 fatalities. The plane was withdrawn from service and the design fixed. Once returned to service there were nine further 3 fatal accidents but they include flying into the ground, a bomb, unstable approaches/take offs, a faulty instrument, and took place during the remainder of that planes career, Much the same as any other plane. It first flow in 1949 and the last flight was 1996.
REPLY:If you can provide a reference, and I’ll happily do so. – Anthony
From a system analysts view point, all algorithms work as designed and are so constructed, right or wrong. Is that not the problem? The design and not the algorithm since all algorithms work as designed?
What a meaningless response from NCDC!
Stephen Skinner says:
July 2, 2014 at 2:00 pm
REPLY:If you can provide a reference, and I’ll happily do so. – Anthony
Within the same wikipedia article on the comet is a section ‘Early Hull Losses’ which describes the first issues with the wing if over rotating on take off (involving 2 planes) and 1 plane breaking up in a thunderstorm. The subsequent sections describe a further 2 losses due to structural failure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet).
This is as reliable as any as it is much the same as the various books on the subject and I can’t show you those. There is also this site (http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/lab/8803/fcometcr.htm#local), which itemises all hull losses for this type which is actually 27 for its entire life.
Anyway I don’t want to detract from the main point of this article which is the poor quality and lack of attention to detail exhibited by the NCDC.
“””””…..Dan in Nevada says:
July 2, 2014 at 10:16 am
davidmhoffer says:
July 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm
“Aw, you left out the Hubble Telescope…every single component and sub-assembly worked exactly as designed…”
That’s not quite true. If I remember correctly, Kodak made a primary mirror that was perfect in every way. That one still sits in a warehouse somewhere. The government instead used a mirror made by a company not known for having any sort of expertise for precision large optics. Whether it was for affirmative action, gifting taxpayer’s money to a crony, or some other reason, it was definitely another case of the government screwing something up in a very expensive way. …..”””””
Well that’s not quite true either.
Dan is quite correct; Kodak did make a spare mirror, which is believed to be essentially perfect. The original, and still in use Hubble mirror, is also essentially perfect; but it was made “perfectly” to the wrong prescription. I forget exactly how that came about, but the story is known. Also, I believe the current Hubble mirror, was made by Perkin Elmer, and it would be a gross error to characterize PE as “a company not known for having any sort of expertise for precision large optics.”
Few companies know as much about that as Perkin Elmer does. I actually own an example of a PE precision large optics system. It is an eight or maybe ten element Double Gauss aerial camera lens. 36 inch (915 mm) focal length, and F/4 speed, and took 24 x 24 inch pictures on Infra-red roll film. So the effective aperture is 9 inches diameter, but the front and rear elements are 12 inches clear aperture. The rear element is connected to its neighbor by a corrugated metal bellows filled with Argon. That allows focusing from quite close, out to 65,000 feet. I have just the lens and its adjustable Iris; but the shutter was removed.
They removed the shutter for safety, since it is in effect a nine inch diameter guillotine, and would cut your arm off if you fired the shutter, with your arm in it.
The piece I have weighs 300 pounds. It came out of a recon version of the B-47 SAC bomber.
I was going to make a large field star camera, out of it, by regrinding the surface that had the dichroic IR pass filter on it, and change its curve to make it a photo-visual lens, rather than IR.
I once set it up on the backs of a couple of dining room chairs, outside, and laid underneath it holding an eyepiece, to gaze at the stars. Did I already mention it weighs 300 pounds.
Without knowing the incorrect prescription to which Perkin Elmer accurately built the Hubble prime mirror, it would have been impossible to design and make the corrector optics, that were installed by astronauts, to restore Hubble to almost its original.design resolution capability.
The De Havilland Comet, was an aircraft way ahead of its time. If it first flew in 1949, you can guess when it was designed. There weren’t too many military planes at the time, like the B-29, and B-36 and some German WW-II planes JU-86B I think comes to mind, that were pressurized, and of aluminum stressed skin design, and Comet flew higher than those. Aluminum metal fatigue was somewhat unknown, when comet was designed. Few if any military aircraft, saw the total number of pressurized flight cycles, that eventually revealed the metal fatigue problem.
De Havilland was the unfortunate trail blazer for commercial aviation.
And subsequent to the string of mysterious crashes, a Comet was pressurized to destruction in a water tank. (same way that DOT tests scuba air tanks these days.)
Principal beneficiary of the Comet disasters was a company called Boeing Aircraft, who moved into the commercial vacuum left by the Comet’s demise.