Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Arctic Scientist Victoria Herrmann is complaining Donald Trump’s website reengineering has removed links to work she cited. My question – why didn’t she make her own copies?
I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations
Victoria Herrmann
These politically motivated data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average
As an Arctic researcher, I’m used to gaps in data. Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards. In truth, some of the maps we use today haven’t been updated since the second world war. Navigating uncharted waters can prove difficult, but it comes with the territory of working in such a remote part of the world.
Over the past two months though, I’ve been navigating a different type of uncharted territory: the deleting of what little data we have by the Trump administration.
At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.
I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.
…
These back-to-back data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. Just this week, it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to its lowest level in recorded history. The impacts of a warming, ice-free Arctic are already clear: a decline in habitat for polar bears and other Arctic animals; increases in coastal erosion that force Alaskans to abandon their homes; and the opening up of shipping routes with unpredictable conditions and hazardous icebergs.
In a remote region where data is already scarce, we need publicly available government guidance and records now more than ever before. It is hard enough for modern Arctic researchers to perform experiments and collect data to fill the gaps left by historic scientific expeditions. While working in one of the most physically demanding environments on the planet, we don’t have time to fill new data gaps created by political malice.
So please, President Trump, stop deleting my citations.
In my opinion this pathetic complaint is an attempt to deflect blame for Victoria’s own carelessness.
Poor data archiving by climate scientists is an ongoing scandal.
If a citation is an essential supporting document for her work, Victoria should have made her own copy of that citation.
There is no excuse these days for not having your own copy of important data. Modern data storage is cheap. A flash drive which can fit on your keychain, which holds two terabytes of data, can be purchased for less than a hundred dollars.
A single terabyte is an enormous amount of data. A terabyte is enough data storage to hold 200 separate electronic copies of the the entire electronic version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (2013).
A two terabyte flash drive could probably hold every paper Victoria has ever written, along with the entire tree of referenced citations, everything the referenced citations cited, and all the supporting data – and still have plenty of free space for the family photo album.
The US government does not have an obligation to permanently host copies of people’s work. If citations have been permanently lost, the slipshod archiving habits of climate scientists are to blame, not the housecleaning activities of US government agencies.
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Is there anything Pres. DJT cannot be blamed for? I bet someone will blame the recent cyclone that struck norther Queensland blame DJT for that because he is revoking Obama’s climate executive orders.
What cyclone? From all my wife and I could gather it was a a strong , at most a cat 2. we stand corrected if not , it could have been a 3. The MSM was talking about 226 kms / hr winds but nothing ever got over 145 kms.
The SMH (Yeah, I know, I don’t trust them to present unbiased news either) was reporting 270+ gusts, couple is islands up that way with significant damage etc. But I have only Aussie MSM to rely on, so could be completely wrong.
If it was so important to her, SHE should have backed it up, period. Whining about it only makes her look like a fool.
The NSIDC gives measurements of area with more than 15 percent ice. Here’s a scenario: If a million sq km has 16 percent ice, it’s “ice-covered” and next week it has 14 percent ice it’s “ice-free”, when 20,000 sq km of ice has actually disappeared.
Another scenario: a million sq km has 20 percent ice – it’s “ice covered”. Then the wind picks up and pushes all that ice against a shore. Now you have 200,000 sq km with 100 percent ice and 800,000 sq km has suddenly become “ice-free” Disaster – blame human activities! But the actual amount of ice is unchanged.
OK, these are fake examples, but they do illustrate the perils of using such a bizarre parameter.
The Canadian Ice Service has a nice website and shows maps with ice cover in 10 percent increments. It only covers Canadian waters – but they use the same satellites – why can’t these jokers at NSIDC do the same? That would be much more meaningful data to record and publish. Could it be that 15 percent threshold was chosen because the data can be tweaked to show the trends they want to show?
Of course, the Canadian Ice Service has been around a long time and (as its name implies) is a service to the marine transportation industry. Exports of grain through Churchill, and the shipping services that supply all those coastal communities on the islands and the mainland, they all need to know when it’s safe to put to sea. So it’s real data because lives and livelihoods depend on it. It’s not there just to document climate change and the evils of carbon. Not that Canada has a lot to brag about, but at least this one seems to be beyond corruption.
15% is a standard international measure used to compare ice coverage from year to year.
Are you sure the Canadian Ice Service only uses satellites? I believe they also collect local data from Canadian waters (they do not cover the entire arctic)
You may note that extent often masks very poor ice conditions, when fragmented ice is blown over a wide area of ocean.
The current extent figures are (as for most of the winter) the lowest in the 38 year satellite record. but there are large areas of fragmented spread out ice included in that extent total…
You need also to look at the concentration maps and the volume/mass reports (which also show record lows)
Here’s a link:
and two more on extent:
and here’s the volume/mass at start of March:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/03/piomas-march-2017.html
So what if it’s the standard? Standards can’t be criticized if they are inadequate?
I would say that they are extreme examples, rather than fake ones. Both scenarios could, and probably do happen on a regular basis. Just smaller numbers.
So she is an Arctic resesearcher, she says, who has heard that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe is. And her treasured works on the Arctic are gone — “The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes.” For shame that she is so attached to them. I consider these works worthless because they totally ignore my published work on the Arctic. As she also does by complaining that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, a fact explained in my paper. Knowing that this is an anomaly the very least she could have done is to start her thinking about its cause. But thinking apparently does not seem to be a skill that climate scientists indulge in. It should interest her also that for two thousand years the Arctic showed no warming whatsoever, just slow, linear cooling. Then, suddenly, at the turn of the twentieth century, a warm spell appeared out of nowhere. It did not last because warming came back in thirty years and has been with us since 1970. Arctic watchers noticed this and started recording Arctic temperature history late in the seventies.Of courese they missed the early history and have no idea what happened before. The cause of the waqrming can not possdibly be carbon dioxcide because there is no way to swing the water masses of tyhe North Atlantic as suddenly as the warming happened. It bis highly probable that what happened was a change in the Noth AStlantic current system that rearranged thepath of the Gulf Stream to deliver its warm water more directly into the Arctic Ocean. I predicted that and in 2010 Spielhagen et al. went on an Arctic cruise to check it out. They measured directly tthe North Atlantic water temperature that enters the Atcrtic ocean and found that it was higher than recorded at any other time in history. This warm water is obviouly brought north by the Gulf Stream. It begins in the Gulf of Mexico, rounds Fl;orida, heads north through the Florida Strait, continues north parallel to the East Coast, and eventually crosses the ocen to enter the North Sea, as Ben Franklin knew. Its warmth keeps Northern Europe’s temperature higher than its latitude would suggest. As to the cause of therearrangement event at the start of the twentieth century, we have no clue but we can speculate that it could be related to the activity of the bottom currents that flow south in in the deep part of vthe Atlantic Ocean. For further information and references read my paper in: E&E(22)(8):1069-1083(2011).
Typos corrected:
So she is an Arctic researcher, she says, who has heard that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe is. And her treasured works on the Arctic are gone — “The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes.” For shame that she is so attached to them. I consider these works worthless because they totally ignore my published work on the Arctic. As she also does by complaining that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, a fact explained in my paper. Knowing that this is an anomaly the very least she could have done is to start thinking about its cause. But thinking apparently does not seem to be a skill that climate scientists indulge in. It should interest her also that for two thousand years the Arctic showed no warming whatsoever, just slow, linear cooling. Then, suddenly, at the turn of the twentieth century, a warm spell appeared out of nowhere. It was followed by a short cold spell which did not last because warming came back in thirty years, and has been with us since 1970. Arctic watchers noticed this and started recording Arctic temperature history late in the seventies. Of course, they missed the early history and have no idea what happened before. The cause of the warming cannot possibly be carbon dioxide because there is no way to swing the water masses of the North Atlantic as suddenly as the warming happened. It is highly probable that what happened was a change in the North Atlantic current system that rearranged the path of the Gulf Stream to deliver its warm water more directly into the Arctic Ocean. I predicted that and in 2010. Spielhagen et al. went on an Arctic cruise to check it out. They measured directly the North Atlantic water temperature that enters the Arctic Ocean and found that it was higher than recorded at any other time in history. This warm water is obviously brought north by the Gulf Stream. It begins in the Gulf of Mexico, rounds Florida, heads north through the Florida Strait, continues north parallel to the East Coast, and eventually crosses the ocean to enter the North Sea, as Ben Franklin knew. Its warmth keeps Northern Europe’s temperature higher than its latitude would suggest. As to the cause of the rearrangement event at the start of the twentieth century, we have no clue but we can speculate that it could be related to the activity of the bottom currents that flow south in in the deep part of the Atlantic Ocean. For further information and references read my paper in: E&E(22)(8):1069-1083(2011).
“I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies. …”
“… we need publicly available government guidance”
What kind of scientist needs government guidance to do research? The policies aren’t there because they’re being revised.
Victoria Herrmann in her “next big thing:” surgeon
“The policies aren’t there because they’re being revised.”
No, they aren’t there because they were the previous government’s policies. The new government doesn’t need to link to non-policies. That would be crazy, like promoting non-data like the warmists do.
Mike McMillan March 29, 2017 at 8:12 pm
“I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies. …”
“… we need publicly available government guidance”
What kind of scientist needs government guidance to do research? The policies aren’t there because they’re being revised.
——————————————————————————————————————————-
Apparently her need for “government guidance” only applies if the government guidance agrees with her own beliefs.
Code words for tax-payer funds.
The shorter Victoria: It’s OK if our dog eats the homework but not if your dog eats our PR.
Who did what?
It sounds like Hillary took a detour through a building with her soapy dish rag and wiped a couple of hard drives.
Sorry. I have no idea what happened. Well, a “snowflake” melted. but that’s not news.
It’s called “Link Rot”. You cannot rely on a URL remaining good indefinitely, entire sites undergo reorganization, or disappear entirely. So, yes, if your references are important, by all means copy the page(s) cited. For under $100, I bought a 2 terabyte USB exterior hard drive. And like the man says, flash drives are cheap, multi-gigabyte drives can be bought in packs, nowadays.
If you need to reference multiple thumb-drives at the same time, USB expanders are cheap. I have a laptop at home that only has a couple of USB ports, so I bought a 5 port expander for about $15 5 years ago.
Screeching from a hard-done-by harridan, creating yet more noise.
And she cooks her own goose by talking of Arctic Water. Exactly lady, you said it – water.
Where are the million year old ice cores from the North Pole as there are from the South Pole.
The Arctic Ocean is a sea of slush, constantly on the borderline of melting & freezing.
That Is How It Is. Live with it.
and one of these days, this sort of commotion about miniscule trivia will distract from something Really Important and The Human Race will be run over by a truck while crossing the street.
Period. End. Fin.
This illustration identifies the high-latitude Arctic as a significant CO2 sink
The purple areas are the most efficient sinks, while red ones are sources of CO2 in the world oceans.
And why the Arctic Ocean would be ‘gobbling’ all that CO2 ?
Well, the Arctic is going GREEN !
http://www.pcnen.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Arktik.jpg
“The meter decline in sea ice thickness in the Arctic in the past 30 years has dramatically changed the ecology in that area. All of a sudden, our entire idea about how this ecosystem works is different. The foundation of the Arctic food web is now growing at a different time and in places that are less accessible to animals that need oxygen.”
said Chris Horvat, first author of the paper
It happens in Sweden also, without Trump.
Swedish state radio had at short report on Arctic Ice maximum with a short notice: “This winter has been 20 degrees warmer than usual and stayed around 0 degrees C instead of minus 20 degrees C”
It took them a week to check the real facts-now the have adjusted the text. But it shows what happens in Sweden. We are being brainwashed buy our state owned media!
Trump has noticed this-thanks!
I note the significant fact that she isn’t actually complaining about her data being deleted. Just policy. When policy can, and does, change with every incoming president, what is she whinging about? Those aren’t policies anymore since Trump came to power on Jan 20, 2017.
From the article: “Just this week, it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to its lowest level in recorded history.”
Arctic sea ice was lower in 1972 than it is today. I guess the author doesn’t look at anything earlier than 1979. That’s what comprises “in recorded history” for her, it appears.
PolitiFact says it was in fact the Obama administration who removed (and archived) all whitehouse.gov climate change content. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/jan/23/george-takei/george-takei-says-white-house-removed-pages-about-/
It’s not a conspiracy but routine administration. The same thing happened when Obama took office but I guess Bush supporters didn’t have so much “conspiracy ideation”. Maybe something for Dr. Lewandowsky to research.
The question is, why does an Arctic researcher want to mislead the public. The title should be corrected to “I am an Arctic researcher. Barack Obama is deleting my citations.”
“As an Arctic researcher, I’m used to gaps in data.”
“Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards.”
“In truth, some of the maps we use today haven’t been updated since the second world war.”
“In a remote region where data is already scarce”
———————————————————————————————————————————
Her own admission is that data is scarce yet she is positive that “the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average.” and “it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to its lowest level in recorded history.”
Logical conclusion based on data? I would think not.
She must be a real idiot. If you are going to cite work in a “science” paper, you PDF it so it does not change! If “the Donald” wanted to make a fool of her, he would simply have directed the site be changed to contradict her paper! Then her links would work, and make her look like a bigger fool than she is.
I sometimes wonder at the intelligence level of this “consensus”.
She’s really asking Trump to maintain the illusion of how important she thinks she is.
putin admitts:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/putin-tells-arctic-forum-climate-change-real-not-man-made/ri19372
Eric , you need to take the word scientist out (VH Arctic scientist) in your article. Stoat has done an excellent article on her credentials and motivations. As much as he and Anthony do not get along his article on her should be appended as as an addendum for purposes of this conversation. Priceless. If he agreed, which he possibly wouldn’t. Anyway worth a look a his blog on this occasion. I see he is in the list of links WUWT provides for anyone interested.
A couple months back, when the warmists said they were desperately “saving” information from Trump, what they were really doing was desperately hiding information. Deleting links is part of hiding information. They don’t want information all over the place. Information is power and if you are the only one who knows where that information is hidden, it may be more difficult to fire you.
WhIle the warmists are blaming Trump the truth is that they should be blaming each other.
This is excellent (contrived) timing for maximum political effect and headline feed.
As people have already noted, this is a nothing story, which has been hyped by the Guardian in support of their political biases. We’ve already discussed this back on January 20th in Gone in an Instant; The website “whitehouse.gov” reflects the policies, priorities and views of the current administration, which alert readers will be aware changed at noon, January 20 of this year. The former “whitehouse.gov” was retained in toto under the new URL “obamawhitehouse.gov”. It’s like when a state elects a new governor, all the “Welcome to .., Thaddius Q. Porksnout Governor” road signs on entering that state will be changed to reflect the newly elected governor. The same thing happened when Obama took office to succeed Bush, and so on, for however far back “whitehouse.gov” goes (the domain was first registered in May 1997 — towards the end of the Clinton Administration).
If Virginia Herrmann had bothered to do 10 minutes of research before crying foul she would have figured this out.
That having been said, there is a real issue here having nothing to do with politics of changing presidential administrations: the rather fragile nature of citations using hyperlinks. There is not just the risk that the actual content may change between when the citation is first created and when it is subsequently followed, but the URL needed to access it may change also, as is the case here. Both issues need to be addressed by a proper digital content management system. There are some which can generate permanent links to a specific version of a document which may exist in multiple revisions (e.g., plone, but I’m not aware of one which handles the complete swap of the top-level URL.
The content under “whitehouse.gov” must be able to change, even during the same administration, but it should be possible to create a permanent link to anything found there that will always be valid.
Is this the Victoria Herrmann the President and Managing Director of The Arctic Institute?
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/experts/victoria-herrmann/
“The Arctic Institute is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization headquartered in Washington, D.C with a network of researchers across the world.”
I can hardly believe Donald J. Trump is deleting stuff from thearcticinstitute.org. He is authorized to do so for .gov sites, but that’s entirely another matter.
Anyway, it is quite mysterious a President and Managing Director of a nonprofit tax-exempt organization can’t keep backup copies of her work published on government sites at her own backyard.
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TAI-2016-Annual-Report.pdf
I can’t find info on government grants to the Institute, but that must be the real issue, I guess.
What a great democratic era we live in. You don’t have to know anything to do science.
For some people, it seems to be easier that way.
Perhaps the title should be: Naive climate researcher discovers that the internet consists of a bunch of files on someones servers. Who knew!
As people should have learned by now, if you want stuff to stay around despite determined efforts to erase it, email or text it to Anthony Weiner.