Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Several years ago I spoke with a National Science Foundation program
officer about a possible grant. She bluntly told me that my proposal
would not be considered if it did not include a climate change
angle. I never announce or hint at results before beginning a
project. My science has only one agenda: collect and publish the
best possible data irrespective of what the data shows. 
  

    

Thank you, Emily, for pointing out that Heritage is not a credible source.

As for Roy Spencer, well, I don't want to derail the conversation (again)
when the discussion of Mr. Mims' book is so interesting. But I do recommend
reading this entry at realclimate.org that picks apart Spencer's Heritage
piece specifically. His work does not hold up under expert scrutiny.

<https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/01/spencers-
shenanigans/>

 The piece comes from Gavin Schmidt, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies. Smart guy.
  

    
The Heritage Foundation was in the news yesterday for flying the American
flag upside down outside their office in protest of the Trump conviction.
Lest you think they're a credible institution.
  

    
Only a few days remain for this discussion of my new memoir,
Maverick Scientist. So, I will next close my response to climate
change, which is not a key part of the memoir, and evolution, which
initiated the Scientific American affair, with two posts and then
return to the memoir as suggested by Emily. First climate change:

Water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas. I stand by my 34 years
of highly stable column water vapor measurements (1990 to
yesterday), the longest since the Smithsonian APO measured the same
parameter from 1926 to 1957 at Table Mountain, California. They and
I found no trend in the data. The Smithsonian data and my first 30
years were subjected to strict peer review and published in
prominent journals of science.

Modelers, the IPCC, and some InkWell folk need to better understand
the role of water vapor in the climate system. For example, water
vapor produces clouds that regulate the passage of sunlight through
the atmosphere. This alone is why the IPCC should give significant
attention to the distribution of column water vapor around the
planet and the absence of long term trends reported in the scholarly
literature.

I close with Lesson One: Climate Change: (1) Real Measurements vs
(2) Historical Observations

(1)     REAL MEASUREMENTS

I calibrated my many atmospheric instruments at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa
Observatory (MLO) from 1992 to 2018. The 2022 eruption of Mauna Loa
blocked the access road, and I have been unable to return. 

During my 235 days and nights at MLO, I often sat before Charle
Keeling’s ancient CO2 monitor and watched as its chart recorder
scribbled on an old chart recorder the concentration of CO2 in the
air sucked inside the original MLO building through a tube mounted
atop the 120-feet tall sampling tower. The Keeling record of
increasing CO2 became a key factor in the study of climate warming.
His measurements began in 1958, and I provide a detailed history of
them in Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory: 50 Years of Monitoring the
Atmosphere (University of Hawaii, 2012, 463 pp), a scholarly,
peer-reviewed work that includes previously unpublished information
about Keeling from his letters (with his son’s permission) and
interviews with MLO technicians. (NOAA funded my work on this major
book.)

Shortly before the dedication of the first MLO building in 1956, two
astronomers and their wives became the first scientists to make
observations from MLO. Their primary goal was to measure the water
vapor over Mars. MLO was an ideal location, due to the very dry air
at 11,200 feet. Shortly after Keeling’s measurements of CO2 were
begun at MLO in 1958, a Foskett total water vapor instrument was
installed near the original MLO building. This instrument was moved
to various locations, and its descendants were mounted on the solar
platform atop the new NDSC building  in 1997. After some 40 years,
the Foskett instrument was replaced by a modern water vapor
instrument of very similar design. These instruments accurately
determine total column water vapor from the surface to the
stratosphere from the ratio of sunlight at a wavelength of light not
absorbed by water vapor (typically near 880 nm) to a nearby
wavelength strongly absorbed by water vapor (940 nm). (My personal
water vapor instruments follow this approach.) A 1985  analysis of
total water vapor from 1978 to 1983 by Ellsworth Dutton showed no
trend in water vapor over MLO.  

Over the years, only a few papers have described the total water
vapor measured over MLO.  Various instruments and a GPS receiver 
have supplemented the updated Foskett device. But I am unaware of
any publication describing the water vapor trend at MLO since 1958.
While writing the MLO history book, I discussed this highly
significant, long-term missing record of column water vapor with Dr.
Dutton, who then had many other responsibilities. My impression was
that NOAA was not funding a long-term water vapor study since (1)
prior brief studies showed no trend and (2) measurements of CO2 and
other human influenced greenhouse gases were considered more
important than water vapor and therefore received considerable
funding. I cover this topic in some detail in the MLO book (see pp.
438-441).

(2) HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS: 
Of the many examples, here is one that’s especially relevant in view
of what is described as “unprecedented warming” in the arctic: 

MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW
November, 1922. [p. 589] 

THE CHANGING ARCTIC.
By GEORGE NICOLAS  IFFT.

[Under date of October 10 1922, the American consul at Bergen,
Norway,
Submitted the following report to the State Department, Wsshfngion,
D. C.]

The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from
fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas
about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to
a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-
of high temperatures in that part of the earth's surface.

In August, 1922, the Norwegian Department of Commerce
sent an expedition to Spitzbergen and Bear Island
geology at the University of Christiania. Its purpose
was to survey and chart the lands adjacent to the
Norwegian mines on those islands, take soundings of the
adjacent waters, and make other oceanographic investigations.
…
The oceanographic observations have, however, been
even more interesting. Ice conditions were exceptional.
In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The
expedition all but established a record, sailing as far
north as 89 degrees 29' in ice-free water. This is the farthest
north ever reached with modern oceanographic apparatus.

The character of the waters of the great polar basin has
heretofore been practically unknown….
 
…it is of interest to note the unusually warm summer in Arctic
Norway
and the observations of Capt. Martin Ingebrigtsen, who
has sailed the eastern Arctic for 54 years past. He says
that he first noted warmer conditions in 1915, that since
that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that to-day
the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same
re ion of 1868 to 1917.

Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable. 
Where formerly great masses of ice were found,
there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and
stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended 
far into the sea they have entirely disappeared….
  

    
Yes. Warming has been going on since the industrial revolution initialted
burning large amounts of coal.
  

    <scribbled by gnolan Sat 1 Jun 24 12:24>
  

    
I have been a bit bemused by the resurrection of anti-evolution
arguments here. Evolution is about as clear example of settled
science as one can find. 

Rather than recapitulate the field and paleontology arguments,
compelling as they are, its important to note the overwhelming
evidence from molecular biology. Relationships between species and
through eras are increasingly and clearly defined by molecular
biological sciences. The mechanisms of genetic mutation are clearly
evident, rooted in chance, and clearly fit the model of natural
selection. 

There are some soft arguments related to "creation science" that I
see rooted in adaptionism. In a lecture I attended by Stephen J
Gould he saw this and the role of humans as the crown of creation as
an attempt to arrest the Darwinian revolution. I am going to cite a
good quote or two from
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00799.x> , 
ADAPTIONISM—30 YEARS AFTER GOULD AND LEWONTIN

"In 1979, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin (Gould and
Lewontin 1979), published their highly influential paper on
adaptionism entitled “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian
Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” In this paper,
Gould and Lewontin warned against confusing function with
adaptation. Functional observations may not always have adaptive
explanations—existence of form does not prove purpose. If one
observes the spandrels (spaces that exist between arches) of the San
Marco church in Venice—the mosaic designs are, in the words of Gould
and Lewontin, “so elaborate, harmonious, and purposeful that we are
tempted to view it as the starting point of any analysis, as the
cause in some sense of the surrounding architecture.” There is in
evolutionary biology a similar “failure to distinguish current
utility from reasons for origin,” they argued. Functional
observations (e.g., short front legs of a tyrannosaurus) are often
followed by adaptive stories (the use of the front legs to titillate
female partners) even if such stories are purely speculative and
cannot be tested."...."Evolutionary biologists are today, arguably,
much more reluctant to invent adaptive stories without direct
evidence for natural selection acting on the traits in question. We
still regularly encounter very naïve adaptive stories, particularly
about human behavior, but rarely in journals such as Evolution or
other related journals with high standards of peer review, and
rarely from researchers with a background in evolutionary biology."

Many evolutionary biologists regard adaptationism with scorn. But
more importantly virtually no biologists call evolution into
question.
  

    
In my previous post, I closed out my comments on climate change,
which is only briefly mentioned in Maverick Scientist in connection
with my finding of no trend for 34 years in total column water
vapor, the principle greenhouse gas. (Recall that the first 30 years
were subjected to intense review before being published in a leading
journal.) Here I will also close my comments on Darwinian evolution.
It's certainly a legitimate topic, for two chapters in Maverick
Scientist are devoted to the Scientific American affair that
followed the editor's concern that I do not accept Darwinian
evolution and abortion. But no commenter has provided an evolutinary
explanation beyond speculation for the countless molecular motors I
cited that are controlling the exact motions of my fingers as these
words are typed. I especially asked for the evolution of the amazing
kinesin molecule. Response so far: crickets.  

Instead, several InkWell folk seem absolutely convinced that Charles
Darwin was absolutely correct, in spite of his admitted doubts about
the fossil record's ongoing absence of transitional forms that
supposedly preceded the Cambrian-era fossils described in his The
Origin of Species. (Have any InkWellers read this boring but
historic book? I have.) Yet during my career doing science,
electronics and programming, I have met many engineers and
scientists who do not believe they share a common ancestry with
apes. After my finding of an error in the Total Ozone Mapping
Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard NASA's ozone satellite (Nimbus 7), the
journal Nature peer reviewed and published my results. To its
credit, NASA did not ridicule my finding. Instead, they promptly
acknolwedged the error. (You can see this for yourself and hear a
NASA scientist interview by watching the online video Rolex made
about the award they provided for my ozone research.) NASA then flew
me to the Goddard Space Flight Center to give a talk about my
finding, which they called Doing Earth Science on a Shoestring
Budget. 

When I learned that the GSFC ozone staff had invited me to accompany
them to lunch before the symposium talk, I was elated, for this
would provide an opportnity to ask them ozone-related questions. But
that never happened. Instead, those ozone scientists asked me a
string of questions about the Scientific American affair and why I
doubted Darwinian evolution. I have no idea what they believe about
the fossil record and the origin of life, but they certainly were
not Darwin boosters. They were polite, friendly, and thanked me for
accepting their invitation.

After NASA's ozone satellite failed in 1995, they badly needed ozone
and total water vapor measurements during SCAR-B, a major scientific
study of air quality in Brazil during the peak of the burning
season. So, they retained my services. They hired me again in 1996
to measure ozone, water vapor, and optical depth through thick smoke
from 7 major forest fires in Western States. When Brazil blocked
NASA studies of biomass smoke in 1997, they hired me to go instead.
My measurements of ozone, smoke and water vapor were the only such
meaurements made during that burning season. When NASA learned about
my altitude profile measurements of aerosols and water vapor
following the historic eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga
Tonga on 15 Jan 2022, they hired me to develop better twilight
photometers and continue my measurements until 29 Feb 2024. This
research has resulted in the detailed discovery of an ultra-simple
method to measure the height of the tropopause, the subject of a
paper now in review. 

While in a remote rain forest near Alta Floresta, Brazil, I measured
ultra-thick smoke, ozone and water vapor. I also watched a monkey as
it swung on a vine to a banana tree, plucked a yellow fruit, and
climbed a nearby tree with only one arm and his legs while staring
at me. While I greatly admired his choice of lunch, his dexterity,
and his curiosity, it never occurred to me that we somehow share a
common ancestor. That of course, is my perogative, just as it is
fine with me if a few InkWellers believe they share a relationship
with that monkey I enjoyed watching.

This closes my comments on climate and evolution for now. I will be
glad to respond to any and all comments and questions about the
remainder of Maverick Scientist. For example, would you like to know
about the commercialization of my ozone and water vapor instruments?
Can we discuss measurements of the amazingly historic Hunga Tonga
eruption? Would you like to know more about Mims Family Science, a
chapter in Maverick Scientist? Would you like to know how I do
science with drones? Are you interested in how a non-degreed amateur
scientist can be published in the top scientific journals? (Just
make a discovery.) Why did I study government and history in college
and not science? Why did the National Enquirer hire me to bug Howard
Hughes with a laser? I'm open to these and all other topics in
Maverick Scientist.   
  

    
First post: A history of online public messaging

<https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-
messaging/>

Part 1: The Jurassic era---Early personal computers grow the scene
(1978--1996)

When Intel invented the microprocessor in 1971, it believed the
device would primarily be useful for calculators and other embedded
uses, like traffic lights. But when Ed Roberts released the Altair
8800 in 1975, it unleashed a torrent of pent-up demand for personal
computers that has never abated.

In 1978, Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen took a jury-rigged clone
of an Altair computer, connected it to a modem, and wrote the
software that would change the world. CBBS, which stood for Chicago
Bulletin Board System, was a server that anyone in the world could
call up on their own computer, using their own modem, through
regular phone lines.

-- - - -

So you were actually against MITS working on a calculator? ...So Ed
ended up owning it, and almost failing due to competition. But those
skills led to the Altair.

[ My first PC's were Trash-80 and Apple // .. borrowed from my kids'
school, and influenced my getting an early /// - which I still have.
]
  

    
The "an evolutinary explanation beyond speculation for the countless
molecular motors I cited that are controlling the exact motions of
my fingers..." is precisely the adaptionist trap. Again the
biological science employ the more subtle science of molecular
biology to reinforce the fossil record etc. evidence for evolutyion.
Engineers and the like are not who I turn to for informed opinion on
whether we are ape descended.
  

    
Alan @ #109 writes: So you were actually against MITS working on a
calculator? ...So Ed ended up owning it, and almost failing due to
competition. But those skills led to the Altair.

Stan Cagle and I were against developing a calculator kit, but
that's not why I sold my shares to Ed. My goal was to become a
full-time writer, and that had occurred with my first books and many
articles.  Ed and I remained friends, and I wrote the instruction
manuals on how to build the MITS 816 and MITS 1440 calculators. I
also wrote the first operators manual for the Altair. As for
calculators, they drove MITS to near bankruptcy because of the heavy
competition. The Altair saved the company, for Ed sold 5,000 of
them. Ed also hired Paul Allen and, later, Bill Gates. They started
Micro Soft (later called Microsoft) in a space they rented next to
MITS. Interesting how my rocket light flasher initiated this chain
of events.
  

    
> rocket light flasher?  

I don't have the book .PDF at hand ..  that was to detect the spin
rate on your ram-jet controller (and night-time missile attack!?)
  

    
Just guessing that the ability to move fingers conferred evolutionary
advantage. I could be wrong!
  

    
I think that apes and man alike are complicated bio-chemical
machines infiltrated and re-invented by our true ancestors, the
prokaryotes.
  

    
Imagine a narrative where prokaryotes believe in a great primordial
"Soup," the origin of all life, from which the first prokaryotic
ancestors emerged. These ancestors, blessed by the divine "Light"
(the sun), learned to harness energy and proliferate. The guiding
principles of their belief system could be:

Energy is Life: Revering sources of energy, particularly sunlight,
as sacred.

Unity in Diversity: Celebrating the diversity of life forms and
their interconnectedness.

Resilience through Adaptation: Emphasizing the importance of
adapting to change and overcoming challenges.

Cycle of Life: Honoring the continuous cycle of life through
reproduction and genetic exchange.

While this is a purely imaginative exercise, it highlights how human
concepts of religion and culture can be creatively applied to even
the simplest forms of life in a fictional or speculative context.

(Thx to g4o)
  

    
I'm embarrassed to admit that I have not yet read "Maverick
Scientist" (which confusingly is listed as "Make - Maverick
Scientist" in online bookstores.)

But I just realized that the Radio Shack Getting Started in
Electronics Handbook that I've hung onto all these years is one of
yours! 
  

    

Alan @ #112 writes

 > rocket light flasher?  
I don't have the book .PDF at hand ..  that was to detect the spin
rate on your ram-jet controller (and night-time missile attack!?)

Maverick Scientist is available in print or a Kindle from Amazon.
The book provides full details of the rocket light flasher, provided
in part by Prof. Michael Covingtons research. Briefly, I was
inspired by my blind great-grandfather to design a travel aid for
the blind. He was able to navigate and even count utility poles with
the help of his cane (which I inherited). During my senior year at
Texas A&M, I expanded my personal science projects to design and
build a handheld aid for the blind that used a then state-of-the-art
IR LED donated by Texas Instruments and pulsed by a $1.99 code
practice oscillator board from a radio supply store. Bursts of IR
from the travel aid were reflected from objects, detected by a
silicon solar cell in the device, and amplified by a hearing aid
amplifier. The device detected objects up to 10-12 feet away. It
earned an Industrial Research 100 Award and was publicized by the
media. Meanwhile, I had developed a new method of rocket control
that required night launches to photograph course changes of the
flame trail caused by the guidance mechanism. I needed a way to
recover the rockets at night, so I modified the LED drive circuit in
the travel aid for the blind to pulse a tiny incandescent lamp. This
light flasher project became my first article in Model Rocketry
magazine, for which they paid me $93.50. That's when I told my wife
Minnie I would become a full-time writer after leaving the Air
Force. When my co-worker at the Air Force Weapons Lab saw the
magazine article, he agreed we should form a company to sell them to
hobbyists. That's when we founded MITS--which eventually led to the
founding of Microsoft. Full details about all this are in Maverick
Scientist, which I very much hope you will read.  
  

    
Betsy @ #116 writes about Getting Started in Electronics. This
128-page book about basic electronics sold 1.3 million copies before
Radio Shack closed. It has since sold many more and been pirated
globally.

The book was my first hand-lettered and illustrated book in 0.7 mm
pencil rather than India ink. It was planned and printed (by hand)
in 56 days. This included rebuilding each of 100 circuits at the end
four times each to eliminate errors.

Getting Started in Electronics is still in print, widely available,
and used in many schools. The newer versions are comb bound.
  

    
When I brought up Faraday, I was looking for people who were
untrained in a field, but made significant contributions to it.

Another one just popped up - ironically, in Scientific American (a
new month, a few free reads):

How the Guinness Brewery Invented the Most Important Statistical
Method in Science

<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-guinness-brewery-invented-t
he-most-important-statistical-method-in/>

...
But the most influential innovation to come out of the brewery by
far has nothing to do with beer. It was the birthplace of the
t-test, one of the most important statistical techniques in all of
science. When scientists declare their findings "statistically
significant," they very often use a t-test to make that
determination. How does this work, and why did it originate in beer
brewing, of all places?
...
Gosset solved many problems at the brewery with his new technique.
The self-taught statistician published his t-test under the
pseudonym "Student" because Guinness didn't want to tip off
competitors to its research. Although Gosset pioneered industrial
quality control and contributed loads of other ideas to quantitative
research, most textbooks still call his great achievement the
"Student's t-test." History may have neglected his name, but he
could be proud that the t-test is one of the most widely used
statistical tools in science to this day. 
..
  

    
Forrest ... did you run into Bob Pease, and analog engineer who
wrote a column "Pease Pudding" in Electronic Design?

[ I briefly dated his sister! ]

 
  

    
Alan @ #120. Unfortunately, I never met Bob Pease. But we
corresponded at times, and he was very familiar with my Radio Shack
books. If he were around today, I would ask him about an opamp
circuit I am designing for a new twilight photometer. Bob would have
provided the perfect answer.

I would also ask Bob to review Maverick Scientist! 
  

    
Alan @ #119. Thanks for the fascinating explanation of the origin of
the t-test by "Student." This was news to me. I am far better
informed about Michael Faraday, the ultimate amateur scientist.

As for statistics, I make considerable use of Excel's statistical
functions. For example, my ongoing discovery of finding the
tropopause height using twilight photometry has benefitted greatly
from quick Excel xy plots and correlation coefficients. My ongoing
Excel comparisons of tropopause comparisons with those by
radiosondes launched from Corpus Christi 207 km from my site is
yielding a high correlation coefficients. The r^2 of 62 twilight and
balloon comparisons is 0.92. 
  

    
This discussion will be concluding this evening when I will be very
busy making twilight measurements. I will have a few breaks, but in
case they are brief, I would like to express my appreciation to
Emily and all the InkWell participants who have participated in the
discussion of my new memoir, Maverick Scientist. 

Since much of the discussion was about topics covered only briefly
in the memoir, I hope those of you interested in how an amateur like
me can perform serious research and be published in leading journals
of science will peruse the book. I am hopeful it will motivate
others to emulate what I have been able to accomplish. 

As for twilight measurements tonight, if no clouds are present
overhead at the zenith, I will be measuring the intensity of
residual sunlight from a few km to more than 300 km overhead as the
earth's shadow rises higher and higher in the sky after sunset. The
photometer will be set for a gain of 5 billion, and it will measure
twilight at 625 nm (for Chappuis ozone), 910 nm (aerosols), 970 nm
(water vapor), and 1050 nm (aerosols and meteor smoke). After 90
minutes, the instrument will be taken to my office, the 24-bit A/D
converter will be downloaded, and the data will be processed and
visualized as atmospheric profiles on a series of graphs. Much about
this is in Maverick Scientist and a free website online (search Mims
twilight photometer). 

There will likely be some small bulges from 5-7 km from the thick
Mexican biomass smoke now drifting overhead. There will be a small
but distinct blip between 10-14 km caused by nonvisible cirrus
gathered at and below the tropopause. (This is the subject of my
paper now in review at a leading journal.) There may be a
significant bulge or bulges in the overhead atmospheric profile at
20-30 km, the uppermost of which are residual aerosols from the
historic eruption of Hunga Tonga on 15 Jan 2022. (My time series of
the Hunga Tonga aerosols will be developed into a major paper around
3 years after the eruption. There might be a bulge between 80-90 km
caused by smoke from meteors burning up in the mesosphere. On some
evenings cosmic dust is detected well above the mesosphere. Finally,
the data will show water vapor that sometimes extends up to 70-80
km. This will also become a paper, for twilight photometry can
detect water vapor far higher than sounding balloons.

The data can be studied on its own or as a combination of
wavelengths. For example, water vapor is extracted from the ratio or
difference of the 970 nm signal (a significant water vapor
absorption band) and the 1050 nm signal. Chappuis band ozone is
extracted from the ratio of 625 nm near the peak of the visible
ozone absorption band and 1050 nm. 
  

    

Forrest, thank you for being our guest on Inkwell! 

Good luck with your twilight measurements tonight - using a gadget
of your own devising, I assume?

Forrest's memoir, Maverick Scientist, can be purchased in PDF or
Epub format at Ebooks.com:
<https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/211230631/make-maverick-scientist/forrest-m-
mims/>

As well as on Amazon, in Kindle or paperback:
<https://www.amazon.com/Make-Maverick-Scientist-Adventures-Amateur/dp/168045816
7>
  

    
Thanks for the review copy, which I will re-read at leasure.

Waving as you ride off into the sunset.