My Wonder List
There are things that puzzle GG and this is a partial list that will be updated from time to time.
Read More…Mountains that Remade America
For those who come hoping to see material related to the Grumpy Geophysicist’s trade book on the Sierra Nevada, The Mountains that Remade America, here are a few quick pointers. The paperback version came out in February 2020.
War on Science: Reprieve?
So this past week saw passage of a mini-bus bill that covered (among a lot of other stuff) NSF, NOAA, and NASA. And the short of it is that the monetary amounts are only a little short of the previous budgets and where the money is going is more tightly specified. While the President hasn’t signed the bill yet, the overwhelming vote (and seemingly veto-proof margins) in the House and Senate would suggest that he will sign the bill. So, cheers all around in a return to valuing science?
GG is cautious.
Read More…Sinking ratings
So the New York Times is warning us that Harvard is no longer the top-rated source of science in the world and the rest of US institutions are falling behind. They point to the Leiden rankings as being an appropriate measure.
GG has dived into the ranking mess a few times, in part because it is important to potential graduate students (so some of that analysis is on GG’s page for prospective students), and this has come up from time to time in this blog too). The trend that NYT noticed has been ongoing for quite awhile. Basically, China is swamping everybody with the production of scientific research. This is of course producing a panicked reaction in some quarters. Just what is going on?
Read More…War on Science: 2025 casualty report
It has not even been a full calendar year, but the damage reports keep rolling in. With so much going on, it is easy to lose track. So Katherine Wu at The Atlantic has taken the time to remind us of the scope and magnitude of the losses of 2025. While this isn’t a laundry list (the Silencing Science tracker kind of does that, if that is what you are looking for), it does take a bit of a step back to consider the magnitude of what has happened. Among the casualties are numerous collaborations, a retreat from ambitious research, interruption or destruction of long-term datasets, and damage to the pipeline of future scientists. Much of this damage is irretrievable. And so fighting to prevent even more damage, such as proposed elimination of the NCAR center in Boulder, is needed to try and keep as much alive through this time as possible.
Settled Science
Sitting in the basement with a head cold allows GG some time to wonder about science at a bit more removed distance, and such reflections are kind of encouraged as the year changes over. In the public sphere, science gets representing in many ways. “It is a process, not a collection of facts” shows up a fair bit. From the scientists’ side, it means that interpretations can change with new evidence, and there is a process of sorts for refining and improving our understanding of the universe, which can result in some “facts” changing. GG suspects a different interpretation from outside science is there, which is anything can be true. At the extreme, this produces a lot of “whataboutism” and “self-education” where people can do this science process stuff with the observations they trust more.
Now Richard Feynman years ago offered that “science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.” Arguably science is failing in a lot of corners these days as confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance seems to permit a lot of fooling yourself. Jon Stewart once summarized questioning by a Congressman at a committee hearing as “I do not believe the scientists because it is their profession, not their hobby.” If the people actually working on the science produce results you don’t like, well, they must be dishonest as opposed to the noble hobbyists. Anyways, that kind of delusion isn’t really where GG wants to go today.
Let’s consider a more mainstream concern: So if science isn’t a collection of facts, just what does it mean to say “the science is settled”? Does this really happen? How might it work?
Read More…War on Science: Boulder Special
Update: So the protest on 12/20 went pretty well…for something arranged a couple days in advance, Boulder Indivisible had probably a dozen people dedicated to keeping the crowd safe and the bike path clear (it is a rather awkward location for a rally). Several politicians were there: Sen. Hickenlooper, State AG Weiser, Rep. Neguse along with several other local officials spoke at some point (it was pretty hard to hear them, though). Neguse, when asked if we should be calling his office to improve support, said that his office would make a phone tree for constituents to consult to convince members of the appropriations committees to defend NCAR. GG tried counting attendees and got about 1000 (maybe a hair less). A few photos at the bottom.
As we here in Boulder all were struggling to adjust to 100 mph winds and associated checkerboard power outages while some in our community were sharing their science at the American Geophysical Union conference in New Orleans, a different blast of wind came from DC. The budget director, Russell Vought, said “and there shall be no more NCAR”. Well, his actual words were “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” USA Today broke this story, noting that “The administration plans to identify and eliminate what it calls ‘green new scam research activities’ during an upcoming review of the center.”
Nothing speaks to carefully considered policy decisions like “climate alarmism,” “left-wing climate lunacy” and “green new scam.” Honestly, can this crew get even more juvenile?
This is enough of a big deal that Science and Ars Technica picked it up rather quickly, and GG expects there are some serious discussions going on in New Orleans as the AGU meeting peters out. Impacts here in Boulder are substantial. A lot of the details are shared in Boulder’s Daily Camera.
This is getting personal. GG can see the iconic NCAR building out the window as he types (you can see it in nearly all the news coverage of this). It is one of the very few buildings Boulder allowed to access city utilities while being that high on the mountainside; that special treatment should tell you something about how Boulder views atmospheric science. It is also a favorite hiking trailhead that has a weather trail where stations guide you to observe the weather. And so it might get some love this weekend when Indivisible Boulder has a protest on Saturday at 11-1 (though that will be on Broadway in front of more prosaic buildings housing NCAR).
Read More…War on Science: Red State Edition
Science has an interesting article describing all the additional angst scientists in (some) GOP-controlled states are facing. And one of the most striking elements is the large number of scientists not willing to use their full name despite, you know, this freedom of speech things we keep hearing about. The second most striking thing is this: “Nearly every person interviewed for this story knew someone who had moved to escape the new state policies.” Think on that. While there was a lot of speculation when Trump was first elected that a bunch of people would move to Canada, that never happened. So note the tense here: “had moved”. Not “are planning to move” or “considering moving” but had moved. So damage to the scientific enterprise is not only the national damage courtesy of the Trump administration, but by the piling on of empowered state legislatures and governors who smell political benefits by cracking down on perceived “woke” policies that most residents of their state find undesirable in theory.
Why say “in theory?”
Read More…Climate less crisis-y?
We are about 50 years into knowing full well that our use of petrochemicals as fuel to burn is causing real changes in the world. This has been a slow-motion crisis: it isn’t even as immediate as the ozone hole might have been had we not taken action to limit chlorofluorocarbons. But the potential for damage is rather high: between shorter term problems like floods and droughts and longer term issues like ocean acidification and sea level rise, there is a lot of room for bad things to happen. In a way you really need some different language for something that could destabilize countries and expand diseases over timescales like decades (keep in mind the U.S. military has several times identified climate change as a major threat to the US).
So when well-known climate scientist, er, retired computer geek Bill Gates weighs in to dial climate risks waaay back, writing that “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future,” well, time to relax, right? Well, maybe not, according to a new review of the state of the climate that is a successor to a 2020 report that was signed on to by over 16,000 scientists. So just what is going on?
How to mess up a gravity profile
GG has often criticized gravity profiles drawn from gridded datasets. Recently when asked about that, he decided it was worth showing in a simple way just exactly how bad things can get.
So start with this hypothetical distribution of gravity points on a profile:
In this case, there is a 2 km high mountain on the left side that is too rugged for getting gravity points other than a couple on the summits. So in the process of incorporating this into a gridded dataset, imagine that a linear interpolation is used. We then get this:
Now somebody comes along who wants to model this anomaly…
To fit the gravity, two bodies are introduced. A basin fill that is largely required by the gradient on the right, and some other anomaly on the slope of the range. This is assuming that the user of the gridded data is using the proper topography. If they assume things are flat, you get this:
(Not using measurements at the elevations where collected can produce sizable errors…here not so bad).
Well, this is all well and good until you consider the original model that produced the data:
Yes, just the basin fill was producing the anomaly (blue stars). Reliance on the gridded data would be a mistake. Now there clearly is uncertainty in the area where no gravity measurements were taken…and that is the point. If you show where data exists, you can surmise there is missing information.
Does this happen a lot? Well…probably more than many might admit (GG has seen it in a submitted paper long ago). A lot of things are easier with a gridded dataset, so these are widely used (it is hard, for instance, to filter gravity maps without a uniform grid). But too often, they are accepted as “data” rather than some kind of intermediate analysis. This has been an issue in the Basin and Range where historically the absence of good elevation control, large terrain corrections, and difficult access have limited gravity stations in the mountains. As widespread collection of new public gravity data seems absent or rare, a lot of datasets still have issues like these present.
So you’ve been warned. Gravity can be a great tool for a number of reasons, but you want to know what is really observed.
War on Science: Prisoner’s dilemma?
10/4: Another view from The Atlantic…
What dropped into 9 university leaders’ mailboxes was a document that, under different circumstances, would be canned as spam as this document is basically an ultimatum: turn over control of your campus to us, or else. The “or else” is losing access to all federal programs: student loans, federal contracts, research funding, tax benefits, and immigration visas. Not to mention admissions policies will be set by the feds. Aside from that are a number of contradictory demands and some additional threats. Unfortunately the origin of the document is the federal government.
This document is so self-contradictory and extreme that it resembles the original demands made on Harvard. That of course led to a lawsuit. Will this one do the same?
Clearly none of this is in legislation from Congress; just as obvious is this Congress will do nothing about this. Will courts intervene? Probably not until universities turn this offer down and are punished. We’ve already seen that that path produces real pain even if the schools are in the right–the government appeals as slowly as possible as the courts seem to feel that holding back on these programs is OK pending some trial somewhere. While Ivies have the resources to fight, most of the rest of universities don’t have the bankroll to continue operations while fighting this. Which, of course, is what the administration is counting on.
There are precisely two outcomes: Every university says no, or we see the end of American research universities. It is that stark. Lurking in the demands is that every unit be politically balanced (where the definition of “balance” has nothing to do with ability) and that conservative voices are protected. You get the feeling that wrongspeak will be punished. Study showing climate change is real? That is offensive to conservative speech–you shall not get funding, you shall not get published, but you will get punished. All research will be approved by the Dear Leader and his lackeys. Loyalty tests are clearly in the possibilities from this contract.
So why a Prisoner’s dilemma? Once somebody says yes to this, it becomes a lot harder to say no. Because now there is somebody willing to take advantage of federal research funds (rare as those will become) at the expense of control over admissions and faculty recruitment and speech on campus, etc. That school being the poster child for this will no doubt get showered with the money taken illegally from other research schools. So funds that are allocated by Congress will be spent. That these terms are draconian will lose a real bite if there are schools that say, sure, let’s do this. The first to say yes get rewarded. Only if everybody says no is there real pushback to this.
While it feels like screaming into the void, letting Congress people know this cannot stand, letting university presidents know that “yes” is not acceptable.
Let’s go dark…
GG seems to have found all the really depressing stuff lately, so you know, let’s indulge. How does the world end? What are the odds?
- 85%. Planet is burned into a cinder and demolished as the Sun expands a few billion years from now.
- 14%. Planet get roasted but survives Sun’s expansion to spin endlessly around a dead star until the energy death of the universe or a black hole wanders by
- 1%. Planet gets hit by a rogue extrasolar planet and is smashed to smithereens
- 0.0001% Planet eaten by the Doomsday Machine
- 0.000001% Planet demolished for Vogon hyperspace bypass
Now I hear you say, well, that is pretty far off (unless there are Vogons, hyperspace bypasses, and such). This is a geological view of things; humanity is pretty incapable of destroying the planet and might be incapable of destroying the biosphere. So what is so dark?
Well, let’s ponder how humanity will exit stage left, a more personal end, with some timescale and odds…
- 30% within next decade. The creation of true artificial intelligence destroys everything.
- 20% within next 50 years. Nuclear war.
- 20% within next 150 years. Environmental collapse.
- 15% within next 10,000 years. Evolve to a new species.
- 5% global plague
- 5% right-handed amino acid-based life (“mirror life”) consumes everything.
- 5% within next 1000 years. Hand off Earth to our robotic progeny.
- 0.1% population collapse to zero
- 0.01% within next 100 years. Enable ape takeover of Earth.
- 0.00001% ever. Zombie apocalypse.
We’re leaving out various religious ends-of-times as these seem to have frequent recalibrations. Our top three candidates are entirely self-inflicted. As such, these odds can be changed dramatically. So why so dark?
Read More…
The Grumpy Geophysicist 
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