Posts by Steven Goddard

Re: Jeff

There are lots of different ways to represent data. Images are often one of the best, because they not only contain all of the essential location and magnitude data, but they can also be processed real-time by the human brain in a neural network vastly more powerful than any supercomputer.

Your devotion to NSIDC calculations is admirable, but they are not the only possible interpretation of the data. If you want to convince me to use the NSIDC numbers, then explain to us why the CT maps show a much larger extent difference vs. 2007. I'm looking for a technical explanation - your apparent love of government data sets is not a compelling argument.

Re: Douglas Lowe

The NSIDC definition for "extent" is the area of ice >= 15% concentration. Thus 100% is treated identically to 15%. All of the pixels used in this analysis match the NSIDC definition.

As of Sunday, August 17 - the UIUC maps show 2008 about 25% larger extent than their 2007 map. Looking at the trend, it appears that this season will end with about 15-20% greater extent than last year. The NSIDC graph and the CT maps appear to be converging somewhat over the last week.

Re: Jeff

Can you give more precise links to where you got the 14% data? I'd like to try them out.

I used images from the CT website to get the 30%.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/

They normally match the NSIDC extent images very closely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6q2KKwUgy8

The CT images showed >40% delta vs. 2007 yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K-MnbOGfLE

Melt over the last week

I added a new video that shows melt over the last week - which appears to have nearly stopped. Some portions of the Arctic have already begun to re-freeze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jii_33xW4Vg

Here is a live blow-by-blow of some Australian sailors attempting to navigate through the ice in the supposedly ice-free Northwest Passage.

http://awberrimilla.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Anthony Watt's crew for that link.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Interesting how some here are having difficulty seeing the obvious.

Sea ice extent (as defined by NSIDC) is a measurement of area, not volume. Counting pixels is a standard technique for doing digital numerical integration of map areas.

The maps and graphs should correspond 1:1, but they don't. Looking at NASA satellite imagery, the maps appear to be accurate - the logical conclusion being that the problem lies with the graphs.

As far as The Independent story went, I quoted exactly what the article said at the time. They later removed the text in question, as author Steve Connor wrote up on "realclimate." When a newspaper changes the text of an online article, they really should put a note there. (The BBC had some serious problems with that earlier this year when they kept modifying the text of an article which originally implied that global warming had stopped.)

Regardless, you can see the same text in many other articles, including the National Geographic article quoted in this piece.

When experts make comments about the North Pole being "ice free," it has the desired effect - thousands of newspapers quote it. Qualifying it with 50/50 odds is implausible deniability. If they don't have confidence in their predictions, they shouldn't say anything to the press.

Re Chip Mefford

After writing my last article, I made the mistake of discussing it on "realclimate." It was a mistake because Gavin censored and selectively edited a number of my responses - eventually blocking them completely. They were all polite, on topic and directly answering the questions asked of me.

"realclimate" does not offer a level playing field, and I won't make the same mistake again.

My methodology is quite simple and standard, and uses published maps from NSIDC. Either the maps or wrong, or the graphs are wrong. Which one is it? The maps appear to accurately represent satellite photos from NASA, so my conclusion is that the fault lies with the graphs.

Update as of August 15

Arctic ice extent (as measured from the UIUC maps) is now 45% larger than the same date in 2007. NSIDC is showing the delta at about 15%.

You can see the increase here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K-MnbOGfLE

Re JP

Arctic ice area is much greater than last year

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=08&fy=2007&sm=07&sd=08&sy=2008

More to Doug Bostrom

Doug - I found your postings on Real Climate, and again I ask you to ask questions here before making wild accusations on other sites. There are simple answers to your questions

I posted a response to you on RC - don't know if it will ever get printed but here it is.

--------------------------------

# Steven Goddard Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

8 July 2008 at 22:34

Response to Doug Bostrom -

First, it is scurrilous to reprint a private E-mail on a public forum without the author’s consent or knowledge. Then to call the other person a “liar” behind their back is quite remarkable behaviour. I have attempted to deal with you in a civil fashion, and you have violated all decorum.

Besides Doug, you are wrong on all points.

The first paragraph of the article in the Independent read on June 27 at 15:25 GMT when I took a zotero snapshot - “Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. ”

They have since changed the text, possibly as a result of my pointing out their inaccuracy. My piece contained the text from the Independent article exactly as it read at the time. A similar article with the same text appeared on Sky News at the same time, which has been removed completely. I have a zotero snapshot of that article as well. Instead of calling me a liar on RC, how about asking me first on The Register Forum where I would expect to see the question? There was a simple explanation - apparently Steve Connor chose to correct his story.

Also, you are misrepresenting Hansen’s paper.

In Hansen Nazarenko 2004, Hansen wrote that “Our estimate for the mean soot effect on spectrally integrated albedos in the Arctic … is about one quarter of observed global warming.”

i.e. Dr. Hansen said that one-fourth of all global warming (over the entire planet) is due to Arctic soot. The same paper shows the forcing of soot as 2XC02 at 4.05 W/m2 Figure 1 shows Arctic warming of as much as 2-3C due to soot. My statement was completely correct - By any reasonable interpretation Hansen did imply that most of the warming in the Arctic is due to soot.

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf

Also as mentioned in my article, a more recent paper from the University of California says that up to 94% of Arctic warming is due to soot.

http://www.physorg.com/news100354399.html

Unlike your incorrect characterization, my article (”Are the ic caps melting”) was about both poles - not just the Arctic. Antarctic ice is completely relevant.

According to both UIUC and NSIDC, Arctic ice is greater than this date last year. I predicted in the article that the North Pole will not be ice free this summer. Check back in six weeks to see if I am wrong.

As mentioned in my article, Mark Serreze at NSIDC said in 2000 “There’s nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. There’s been open water at the pole before” During the summer of 2000 there was “a large body of ice-free water about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide near the pole”

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E3DD1E31F93AA1575BC0A9669C8B63

Doug Bostrom - instead of calling me a “liar,” how about engaging in civil conversation as I have attempted to do with you? Hint - you could start with an apology.

Re: Doug and Mark

If you had read the article a little more carefully before you posted today, you would have seen that it includes the text "The author is not affiliated directly or indirectly with any energy industry, nor does he have any current affiliation with any university."

I do have an advanced engineering degree and extensive professional experience in several areas of science and engineering. I am not a climate scientist. Most of my work is independent and all is unrelated to the topics I write about for The Register.

Mark, are you saying that you don't work in any capacity for the Met Office? You made it clear only that you are not a climate scientist.

We all need to take an approach to life which minimizes our impact on the planet. I take my commitment seriously, and my personal energy usage is quite small - probably 70-80% less than most Europeans and Americans. Likewise, it is equally important to that our decisions are based on accurate information. That is the only way we will ever make good decisions about environmental priorities - based on facts. "Environmental priorities" sounds like a good topic for an article.

Both of you, if you have specific objections to text in the articles, please articulate them in detail. I'd be happy to discuss and if necessary correct anything specific which is shown to be in error. Personal attacks have no place here, nor do idle speculations about things you know absolutely nothing about.

Re: John Philips

There weren't any accurate records of Antarctic sea ice prior to satellites. We are on track to break the record again for most sea ice this year.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

According to NASA, most of Antarctica is cooling while CO2 increases.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg

According to Dr. Hansen and others, most of Arctic warming is due to soot - not CO2.

Northern hemisphere sea ice area is nearly 1,000,000 km2 greater than last year.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg

Excellent discussion about the Arctic climate

http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm

Warming trend

There isn't any question that most of the world has warmed since 1978. Some of that is undoubtedly due to human influences. My points would be that-

1. Warming is probably less than IPCC estimates - much less than the early IPCC estimates.

2. It may be somewhat cyclical.

Re: IPCC projections

One could easily make the argument that IPCC projections have not been proven to be "conservative." The actual temperature data over the last 20 years appears to have fallen well below even the most conservative IPCC scenario.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1988/plot/rss/from:1988

The last ten years are very interesting too. Global temperatures have dropped nearly a full degree since 1998.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998

Re: Angmagssalik

You could make the argument that there has been a general upwards trends in the Arctic graphs going back to about 1900, but I don't think there is enough data. 1900 was a local minima, and one reasonable interpretation is that that we may be looking at less than 270 degrees of the sine wave - i.e the full cycle may be 150 years long. So the question remains, is it a horizontal cyclical pattern or does the whole trend tilt upwards?

It is also worth considering that the earth has been warming for the last 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age, and particular in the last 300 years since the end of the Little Ice Age. During the 17th Century it was not uncommon for the Thames to freeze solid. 15,000 years ago, Chicago was buried under thousands of feet of ice.

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

"During the coldest times of the LIA, England's growing season was shortened by one to two months compared to present day values."

Arctic ice stations

Indeed, one station does not make a trend. So let's look at the larger group.

The NASA GISS station selector shows approximately twenty-three stations north of 60 degrees latitude, with unbroken contiguous records going back to (at least) the mid 1920s.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Eighteen of the stations show a similar pattern - warm in the 1930s and 1940s, cooling until the 1980s and recent warming back towards 1930s temperatures. These are Jan Mayen, Angmagssalik, Akureyri, Godthab Nuuk, Nar'Jan-Mar, Kanin Nos, Arhangel'Sk, Tromo/Skatto, Sodankyla, Haparanda, Bodo Vi, Vardo, Murmansk, Salehard, Nar'Jan-Mar, Kanin Nos, Turuhansk. Hanty-Mansijs and Nar'Jan-Mar

Four stations show a steady warming trend since the 1920s - Fort Smith, Verhojansk Mys, Uelen, and Verhojansk

Four stations appear possibly broken, with a large one year step up or down in temperature - Nome, Kotzebue, Ral, Ostrov Dikson, and Jakutsk

I may have missed a few because there is no simple way to scan the NASA database.

Re : Angmagssalik

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431043600000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

The graph of Angmagssalik clearly isn't linear. If you look at only 60 degrees of a sine wave, you can easily convince yourself that it is a line. However, if you look at the full 360 degrees it becomes obvious that what you are looking at is a wave. Extrapolating one small section linearly will invariably give you the wrong answer.

That is a key point of the article. By failing to mention what was going on in the Arctic prior to 1970, some key people in this debate are committing a serious sin of omission. It is well known that climate is normally cyclical - that is why over millions of years average temperatures are constrained within a fairly limited range.

Answers to a few good questions

I notice with interest that many commentators see this article as an attempt to disprove global warming. If you relieve yourself of any preconceived notions and read the article objectively, you will see that I have not addressed that issue at all. Rather, it is an analysis of inconsistencies. Dr Hansen would be much more convincing if he would address the many legitimate questions that have been raised about his published data and high profile press statements. There are lots of engineers and scientists out there who are used to doing this type of analysis and share my concerns.

I am not associated with the energy industry in any way, directly, indirectly or financially. I am an independent scientist/engineer who has taken the time to analyze the data - and I see red flags popping up all over the place.

A couple of good links to the 1970s ice age scare

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

The best indicator though are the GISS Arctic graphs which show dramatic cooling during that time.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431043600000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Jared - thanks for the additional information about Amundsen. I will look into that.

RE: Anonymous Coward

NASA map showing that most of Antarctica is cooling.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg

2007 saw the most sea ice ever measured in Antarctica.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg

Re: Mike

You seem to be having difficulty interpreting Einstein's words, yet he is extremely clear. Perhaps some further quotes will help.

"There are people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."

Albert Einstein

"God is clever, but not dishonest." Albert Einstein

"When the solution is simple, God is answering" Albert Einstein

"God does not play dice with the universe." Albert Einstein

"What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos" Albert Einstein

"The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres.

" Albert Einstein

North Korea must be the most moral country on earth

Now that we understand that "religion is the root of all evil," we are enlightened to realize that the genocide of 90 million people by atheists Stalin and Mao, were acts of kindness and intelligence. Kim Jung Il is no doubt a moral giant

Some quotes from a man of above slightly average intelligence - Albert Einstein

"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."

"The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

North Korea - the land of innovation

This theory proves that North Korea is the smartest country in the world. Millions of poor, starving, uneducated atheists. Cuba can't be far behind. The average income in Cuba is $20 per month.

On the other hand, 50% of the worlds' Nobel Prizes come out of the US - the land of ignorant, right-wing, Christian fundamentalists.

Re; John Philips

Hi John,

The subset is the UAH global temperatures. If it was the SH temperatures, it would be second coolest out of thirty, not "near the median."

The divergence graph shows a steady increase 1998, whatever the baselines may be. The point is that the delta should be fixed, regardless of the baselines.

The US has the vast majority of, and the best USHCN stations. There is no reason to believe that US temperatures behave in a tremendously different fashion from the rest of the world. According to NASA, the US has warmed in lockstep with the rest of the world.

I don't disagree with your point that climate alarmism is largely a media invention, regardless of which direction it is headed.

Re; John Philips

Thirty years is of course the length of the UAH record.

If you actually read the entire sentence, you will see that it mentions both the southern hemisphere and the globe.

"UAH and RSS satellite data showed March as the second coldest on record in the southern hemisphere, and just barely above average for the whole planet."

Sorry John, you are just grasping at straws.

RE: John Philip

Hi John,

Using set theory, it is impossible for a subset of size 30 to be near the median and the full set to be in the top three. Absolute worst case would be in the top 15 for the full set.

As far as your observation of the NASA vs. UAH baseline goes - NASA's choice of a baseline was one of the primary topics of this article, was it not?

Thanks for trying to keep an open mind.

Re anonymous coward and precision:

NASA reports temperatures using four decimal places XX.XX degrees. All numbers and trends in this article are within their reported precision. We are analyzing their reported data, not generating it.

To those who are having difficulty distinguishing between data analysis and climate prediction - you might want to think those comments through before posting them. This article is not about climate prediction. It is about inconsistency and instability within simple data sets.

Re John Phillips

Hi John,

Thanks again for your comments.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit and said "NASA reported March, 2008 to be the third warmest *March* on record." Obviously you can't compare March temperatures vs. July or December.

The 1200 mile radius map doesn't give you any information about the actual data locations, which was the primary point of using the map in this article. On the 250 mile map you can see (more or less) where the actual measurements are taken. What the 1200 mile map shows is GISS' willingness to extrapolate and interpolate across vast distances with no data. 1200 miles is the distance between London and Catania, Sicily. Does it make sense to use data from Sicily when calculating the map color in London? Does the temperature in London or Catania tell you anything about the temperature in Lisbon?

Not surprising that GISS uses 1200 miles as the "standard case," because it masks their increasingly sparse data.

Please reread the article with an open mind.

Re: John Philip

Hi John,

I looked again, and the GISS March data has changed since I downloaded them on April 13. This probably coincides with their addition of a few cold data points in Canada as seen in the most recent version of the map.

On April 13, GISS showed March at +67, which was the third warmest March on record. They have subsequently lowered that to +60 and it is now listed as the fourth warmest March on record after 2002, 2005 and 1990.

It is difficult keeping up with a moving target which gets modified in-situ without revision information or notice. Nevertheless, the difference between March UAH and GISS global is still 0.5 degrees.

Re: John Philip

Hi John,

Excellent question about the NASA data locations. The NASA map was generated by going to http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ selecting "Mean Period: Mar" "Smoothing Radius: 250 km" and clicking "Make Map." You unfortunately can't link directly to their maps.

I just did that again, and noticed that the March map has been changed since the image I captured a couple of weeks ago. It now includes a few data points in the Canadian Arctic and Africa. Still large holes there, but not as bad as before.

I wonder what changed? The new data seems to have appeared since Steve McIntyre did a similar story on it two weeks ago.

Satellite corrections

Mark,

Your assertion that "they (RSS and UAH) wanted a different answer" doesn't have much backing.

Here is the list of publications from RSS staff. Please find one to support your claim. Unlike some prominent people at NASA, RSS is politically neutral.

http://www.remss.com/support/rss_journal_papers_by_year.html

Satellite data corrections

Several people have commented on corrections to satellite data which have brought RSS and UAH in sync.

While that may be an interesting topic, it doesn't have anything to do with this article - which is about adjustments to the NASA ground-based data.

Climate science?

Hi Anonymous Coward,

This article isn't about "climate science." It is an observation of differences in temperature data sets, and differences in historical press accounts about the climate. Most scientists, engineers and school children have adequate training to read the newspaper, read a thermometer, and/or make note that two graphs differ.

What surprises me is that some people still expect no one to notice that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. The differences in the data sets are obvious and blatant, and right in front of your face.

Polar ice melting?

Hi Henry,

This is completely off topic, but since you brought it up - yes, polar sea ice is just starting to melt in the northern hemisphere spring. Simultaneously, polar sea ice is rapidly freezing in the southern hemisphere fall. The total area of earth's polar sea ice is exactly at the 30 year mean - with no indication of any trend since satellite records began in 1979.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

Good comments about the random vs. systematic error

Lots of insightful comments here on that topic.

My point in this piece was that the 2000 adjustments could not have been random, and it is good to see that everyone is in agreement about that.

I'm currently working on some analysis of the actual adjustments which occurred in 2000, and you will be hearing from me shortly about that - possibly in a new article. Bear in mind that the data and methodology is very opaque as Evan Jones has pointed out - but I think I am finding some interesting patterns ......

More on the 2000 mystery data shift

I made a more detailed comparison of the NASA graph http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif

vs. the NASA published data tables http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt

The time stamp of the graph is - Wednesday, August 25, 1999 3:55:56 PM

The left column of the tables represents the 1999 version of the data. Time stamp is Friday, September 14, 2007 11:35:08 AM

The data should be identical between the left column of the table and the graph - but they are not even close. During the period 1979-1998, at least fifteen of the years are higher in the table than in the graph. Three years are lower. The average yearly difference between the tables and the graph is +0.15 degrees.

This is a problem because Dr. Hansen has often used the small magnitude of the "Y2K adjustment" as an argument that Steve McIntyre's error discovery is irrelevant. In fact, there is a large (undocumented?) adjustment to the 1999 data which took place sometime after 1999. The 1999 column of the table does reconcile with the graph from the same year..

If anyone has any more information on this, please let me know.

Remarkable information

Benoit Prezeau - I had a look at the NASA links you provided and was fascinated by this table. I think you have led us to something extremley interesting.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt

Have a look at the year 1998. In the USHCN table it shows the 1999 version at +1.23 and the 2005 version at +1.24.

Yet Dr Hansen's graph from 1999 (referenced in my article as NASA's original data: 1999) shows 1998 at about +0.9. This is difference of 0.24 from the table. They are supposed to represent the same data! Similar discrepancies for almost all the years in the table. 1986 is shown in the table at +0.73, but the graph shows 1986 at about +0.3.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/fig1x.gif

Apparently there was a huge data adjustment made sometime after 1999 which is not clearly documented. Thanks again.

------

The Bulldog claim that NASA has better polar coverage than UAH doesn't appear to be correct. UAH has excellent coverage in the Arctic and Antarctic - as can be seen here :

http://climate.uah.edu/

Compare vs. the very poor coverage of NASA - as seen on their 250 mile plots

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg

If that link doesn't last, go to http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ set the smoothing radius to 250, and hit the "Make Map" button. The 250 mile radius shows the actual locations of their stations. Zero stations in the Canadian Arctic. Zero stations in Southern Africa. Maybe 5% coverage of Antarctica.

Time for Tamino to put that argument to bed.

Adjustment vs. fitting

Thanks again for the feedback everyone.

There is a big difference between adjusting data and fitting data. All of the data presented in this article is directly from the NASA, Hadley, UAH, RSS, and ORNL web sites. The video is a demonstration of a fit - where one version of NASA data is "fitted" to another, in an effort to reverse engineer the "adjustment" which was done at NASA. I did not change any of the data points - just applied a simple rotation to the entire graph as a visual tool.

As far as the coin toss statistics go, I was attempting to avoid a more technical discussion by using an oversimplification. The actual standard deviation of the Gaussian generated by 70 coin tosses is sqrt(70 * 0.5 * 0.5) = 4.18 . The mean is 70 / 2 = 35, and the odds of the coin toss results being as lopsided as 55/15 are approximated as follows -

35 - 15 = 20, which is nearly 5 sigma (standard deviations) away from the mean. The probability of a five sigma event is extremely low. Again, I recommend that some posters take a basic course in statistics before betting on an outlier like that in Vegas - or at least they should watch the movie "21" which was pretty good entertainment, and much less boring than a statistics lecture.

I am not qualified to make judgments about the climate one way or another, but I do think that the community would be better served if the handling of data was done in a universally more transparent fashion, and if the key players spent more time working on the science and less on politics.

Having worked in the past on government contracts, I can personally testify that the idea of a funding "cash cow" can be tempting to a normally struggling government scientist. Government scientists rarely if ever get rich, but they do like to keep their jobs and reputations in tact as long as possible. The mentality is in some ways similar to a trade union - i.e. don't rock the boat (or else.)

Thanks for the feedback

I appreciate the suggestion to have Dr. Hansen explain the changes in the US temperature graph. It would be an excellent follow up.

There is no question that the world has been warming for the last 100, 250, and 15,000 year periods. It is a matter of degree. Much of the discussion over the last few years has been centered around the steep slope upwards from 1980-1998, It appears that the trend from 1998-2015 is in the opposite direction - which has a large impact on the long term slope.

The long-term trend is falling below even the most conservative IPCC estimates. Should we be terrified about a 1C increase over 100 years? I'm not a climate scientist and can't answer that. I am a veteran engineer and geologist, and have noticed some possible irregularities in the NASA data - which was the motivation for this article.

BTW - The poster who thinks that a 55/15 split is as likely as any other combination might want to steer clear of Las Vegas.