Everyone with a computer can help scientists better understand the universe, or just climate change, according to Phil Done. In the following guest post Phil suggests we all join the The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) community:
"Bored with that aquarium screen saver - worried about the computer being idle and generating greenhouse emissions between blog comments - or do you just want to do something that Ian Mott cannot do on the back of an envelope - BOINC and save the world!
What could make the climate change enthusiast's heart beat faster - help solve the problem faster and make a personal contribution. That little hotspot on Greenland might be yours!
With Climateprediction.net and the BBC Climate Change Experiment you can do just that. You can contribute a small piece of the modelling puzzle.
How does it work?
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a distributed computing infrastructure intended to be useful to fields beyond the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This software platform is open in that it is free and open source software released under the GNU Lesser Public License. Currently BOINC is being developed by a team based at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, the project director of SETI@home - a project which uses this software.
It's supercomputing on the grassroots level - millions of PCs on desktops at home helping to solve some of the world's most computer - intensive scientific problems. And it's an all-volunteer force of PC users, who, with very little effort, can contribute much-needed PC muscle to the scientific and academic communities. There are hundreds of millions of Internet-connected PCs, and they're getting more powerful all the time, so volunteer computing can provide computing power and storage capacity way beyond what can be achieved with supercomputers, clusters, or grids. The volunteer computing approach works best for applications that don't need to move a lot of data between processors, but this limitation will diminish as the Internet gets faster.
Of course if you'd prefer molecular biology and speed up GMO research, fighting human diseases, finding aliens in a celestial haystack, or sorting out gravitational waves there's something for you too.
Of course contrarians have warned not to run BOINC software if:
* You are in an urban heat island,
* You'd rather find out what happens to the climate personally, or
* You are not familiar with the MER/PPP parameter settings.Denialists have also suggested we don't need a SETS project - Search for Earthbound Terrestrial Stupidity - it's already been solved. And perhaps you're blogging so hard that your screen saver never appears anyway.
Is BOINCing a western ideology? Are we losing out in the global BOINC? Do only greenies and left wingers BOINC or is BOINCing bipartisan? Are right wingers born to BOINC?
Also, you need broadband, and laptops are not recommended due to heat buildup. See the relevant FAQs."
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Thanks Phil.
Yea yea - have some more Amsterdam ganga !
Furthermore Phil, I have read Annan's paper on climate sensitivity and the use of Bayesian statistics.
Annan et al start with a simple statement of climate sensitivity which is a guess of a range of temperatures which they assume are true. They admit it as a guess (the temperature range you quote above).
So I take issue with the fundamental assumption that a guess is assumed to be scienticically true.
You seem to think I am taking issue with the ensuing statistics Annan et al develop.
Totally wrong again Phil.
Phil,
I am not tackling Bayesian statistics at all - just taking issue with Annan's assertion that there are no objective facts - the essence of post-modernism.
So you have it gloriously wrong again.
And Thinksy, postmodernism is better described as an intellectual inanity.
I too noticed that Louis is wielding intellectual concepts without appreciating their significance, ie the subject and its roots predate post-modernism. Louis aren't you being typically post-modernist yourself by continually deconstructing consensus theories without offering a viable alternative? Can we assume that your grasp of the other intellectual concepts you bandy around to justify your crackpot views have an equally shallow understanding?
Reminds me of a favourite quote, from Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita': even among a group of intellectuals there may occasionally be found an intelligent man.
So Louis is now taking on Bayesian statistics, after failing to understand averages and anomalies. HAAHAAHAAHAAHAA Woo hoo !
The Reverend would turn in his grave.
1761 is post-modernism ?
(Did you read the paper ? Why do I even ask.)