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Mirroring US climate data

climatemirror.org

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Re: Mirroring US climate data

#61

Post by tukelully »

tracker1 wrote: post #55
esaym wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the same thing. Do you think you will really convince a climate denier with this data that you copied off of the Internet that, was copied from a gov server, on to another server and then torrented and copied to another server and then downloaded onto you PC... doubt it.

It's worth noting that not everyone who rebuffs some of the proposed actions is a climate denier. There's still some question as to the extent of human involvement. That said, smog is enough for me to be in favor of working towards renewable, less polluting energy sources. In my lifetime I've gone from having allergy-like flare ups once every few years, to now 2-3 times a year, mostly seems to follow the pollution le…

In your first sentence which actions are you referring to?

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#62

Post by tukelully »

tracker1 wrote: post #56
pdonis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When there is a broad consensus across the scientific community about climate change, does it even matter at this point if the data has been changed? It does if the data that was changed is the data that was used to support the consensus. More generally, all data collected by research that is funded by taxpayers should be collected, cryptographically signed and verified, and archived where any taxpayer can see it.…

Usually around IP incentives as part of the grant, in order to further entice applicants. This is taken further by pressure from educational institutions and their researchers to file for patents against said research. I'm not saying it's right, and agree with you. But often there's a lot of entropy with the status quo, and to the seated incumbents in a space.

Does this carry over to federal agencies as well? I know the state of access to journals and papers published by universities is a shitshow but don't know how it is at the government level.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#63

Post by tukelully »

paradite wrote: post #27
danbruc wrote: post #11

Having backups is obviously always a good idea but that aside, how likely is it, that mirroring this data is actually necessary? There are obviously at least some people believing that it is necessary but then there are always people convinced that the most silly things are necessary. I am really unable to tell whether this is more of an overreaction or an urgent necessity, especially as someone not living in the US.…

I'd like to discuss a slightly different issue here. Aren't there already a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles on the issue of climate change? Why is it still necessary to store the presumably raw data? Even my high school geography notes have an abundance of information on the issue of climate change (for and against). So I doubt if this is necessary at all.

A contrived analogy for this might be something like "Why wouldn't you delete the data once you've rendered a graph of it in PNG?". Data is always important. Just as much so as it's original interpretation and constraints.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#64

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

hunterwerlla wrote: post #10

In torrent form: http://climatetorrent.com/ Torrents are a great way of maintaining data integrity and allowing future sharing easily.

Thanks, is this yours? It would be great if the homepage displayed a short description of the different torrents/datasets, their sizes/contents, and the number of seeders for each. That would greatly help me decide which one(s) to prioritize helping out with, as I don't have resources to keep a copy of it all.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#65

Post by verytrivial »

rmc wrote: post #54
jl6 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not just archive it, but sign it, time stamp it, verify it, etc.. I see little to prevent someone using ML to auto-generate archives worth of fake history. Imagine a purported DB dump of Reddit with billions of subtlely fraudulent comments scattered throughout.

Is there any good way to timestamp things like this?

Wow, the "Stamper" by Matthew Richardson is still running! http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper/stampinf.htm This is pretty close to what you need. Getting an email with SHA256's of an archive of scrapes signed would do the trick.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#67

Post by anc84 »

laurent123456 wrote: post #58
trothamel wrote: post #2

Can I be the first to claim that the people running the mirror are changing the data for their own nefarious purposes? Not that I believe this or anything, but come on - you know that accusation is going to go around. It might make sense to use a remote server to timestamp files as they're uploaded, or something like that.

I think that's why they suggest to use Webrecorder, to "create verifiable web archive files".

Run webrecorder yourself, MITM yourself, tamper however you like. Verifiability depends on a trusted authority first.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#68

Post by lorenzhs »

fsttx wrote: post #38

Another useful tactic is to archive news and commentary (left and right) about current political events, both for accountability and perhaps, to prevent the rewriting of history in the era of "alternative facts".

There was a great talk about the datamining possibilities of such an archive at 33c3. English translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYviBstTUwo

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#69

Post by lawless123 »

esaym wrote: post #25
trothamel wrote: post #2

Can I be the first to claim that the people running the mirror are changing the data for their own nefarious purposes? Not that I believe this or anything, but come on - you know that accusation is going to go around. It might make sense to use a remote server to timestamp files as they're uploaded, or something like that.

I would say the same thing. Do you think you will really convince a climate denier with this data that you copied off of the Internet that, was copied from a gov server, on to another server and then torrented and copied to another server and then downloaded onto you PC... doubt it.

>Do you think you will really convince a climate denier with this data

These people where convinced a pizza restaurant was the center of a global pedo ring based on nothing but deliberately misconstrued sentences they claim are code.

They'll believe whatever they want.

Re: Mirroring US climate data

#70

Post by patrickk »

anc84 wrote: post #66
jl6 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hash the content and store the hash in the Bitcoin blockchain.

What does Bitcoin have to do with this? That seems like abuse of its blockchain.

Immutability. But yeah, not ideal use of the Bitcoin blockchain at least.
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