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NASA's Earth Science Datasets and Others May be Disappearing From Public Access
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Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:55AM
I don't have a problem with duplicating information. I wonder why they think this is a Trump thing. The Tired article is fuzzy on timing but notes the first of the login portals appeared in August. If they were actually worried about Trump they would have sucked down everything in Nov 16. Of course they wouldn't have had to do anything of the sort because insiders would hand them direct copies.
It is the "sceptics" who traditionally run into problems getting access to original and complete datasets, source code for the models, etc. in efforts to reproduce the published results and them examine them in detail looking for errors. I'd bet this is a case of the guilty trying to vanish any contradictory evidence. Will be poetic if some Berkley "information wants to be free" diehards save it.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:14AM
What I don't understand is the lack of duplication in the first place.
Some of this data has major bearing on government policy, yet the data sets are often, apparently, sitting on one, probably under-funder government (or worse, government-funded-by-time-limited-grant) department or research group.
One data store. "We can rely on our department's back up processes".
Sad. Delusional.
*every* government (wholly or partially) funded research should be required to release (and store) all primary collected data, as well as copy the complete data set onto a government site. Both should be publically available, for free, for ever.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:14AM
One data store. "We can rely on our department's back up processes".
Sad. Delusional.
I'm mot sure if I should call this cut-up sentences "twitteresque" or mention how it reminds me of a haiku :-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @09:34AM
With one MRI scanner you can generate gigabytes of raw data in seconds. This is normally processed down to a few kb of images and the raw data tossed. You do not want to force everyone to archive the raw data for all federal-funded studies despite how useful it may seem.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:12PM
for ever
Like most people I went thru a phase of "Wouldn't it be fun to play around with GNU R and NASA data?" Well, maybe like most people here.
Ignoring the whole climate thing, lets say you want Voyager space probe magnetometer data to see if a FFT of geomagnetic data shows a peak at the sun's rotation rate or how far away from Jupiter/IO can I detect them in the data or WTF. Or I'm gonna do photogrammetry of pix from the surface of the moon to do some trig and calculus to determine the diameter of pebbles in the pictures as the rovers drive around so I could determine "something" about weathering on mars.
It turns out that over the last quarter century that stuff has been on QUITE a few systems, maintained by many different people and groups in different formats etc etc. Its more of a PITA than you'd think.
Something kinda mind blowing is its a PITA to obtain government data, but I've had no problem at all obtaining private organization data from AAVSO. The government people are like "F you I applied to work customer service for the DMV but now I'm stuck helping you weirdos, so did I mention F you, well if not, just to be sure, F you" but the AAVSO people are like "I luvs you if it were biologically possible we will have many babys together" Well maybe slightly exaggerated but there is truth that the AAVSO private citizen people were very professional and helpful and their policies were sensible and the government people I worked with... not as much. Now that I think about it, its kinda the same with genealogical research, I swear the public library librarians toke up at break time, but the folks at ancestry.com seem to not be high as a kite, maybe because they're all Mormons I donno. Anyway the point of this rant is if you want to preserve data, climate or otherwise, don't leave it in the hands of .gov or space hippies, give it all to a sane and stable private service company like perhaps archive.org. Don't even think about torrenting it or hosting it yourselfs or keeping tapes in a safe deposit box or whatever dumb ideas, give it all to a professional service company.
(Score: 1) by Magneto on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:27PM
A lot of it is duplicated but the duplicating is done on an ad hoc basis. I have colleagues in atmospheric chemistry in the UK that have copies of a lot of the data being removed but those copies were made purely for their research. While I'm sure they would happily share the data if requested no one outside their research group and collaborators will know what they have.
I think the idea here is not only to duplicate the data but to deliberately make it accessible to anyone who looks.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:39PM
Well, one could start a central place offshore to backup all of that data.
But the problem is checking that raw data "saved" by a backup from a random researcher has not been tampered with.
Chain of custody is critical, when powerful interests are attacking the credibility of any entity analyzing data with doesn't greenlight their eternal growth.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday February 17 2017, @03:38AM
Even if it's adequately backed up, a serious attempt to destroy the data would very likely be competent enouggh to destroy the backups too. So it's important to have a copy under independent custody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:59AM
US Census TIGER datasets and shape files. At the very least, you can get them simply to use them for real geocoding and querying, app development, etc. maybe even biggish data querying and analysis, given some of the socioeconomic data in the datasets..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:01AM
... or looking at how some US state and local legislative districts have been manipulated over the last few years
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:52AM
Those datasets are amazing. But be careful using them. They have 'holes' and anomalies in them. You do not know about them until you use them. For example the state boundaries may cross at points or have gaps of up to 1-2 feet between them. ZIP code is mostly correct. City outlines are usually out of date by a few years. Consider them a 'good start' for data sets like that. But just watch out for gotchas in the data.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday February 16 2017, @12:23AM
Yep--until this year, my entire street didn't exist, due to the fact that we all had PO boxes: Since the postal service didn't deliver to the street, it wasn't in the USPS database, and everybody, including banks, credit reporting agencies, UPS and FedEx use the USPS database to verify their addresses.
When my address came up, it defaulted to the nearest street with the same name, a couple of townships over, which in turn would cause new UPS drivers to attempt to deliver my packages to the middle of a field.
Its funny now that it has been fixed--though I am waiting another year before I try to repair the havok it wreaked on my credit rating--my "official" address changed at least once a quarter, due to my frequent attempts to correct it at various institutions before they reverted it again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:01AM
I have noticed a lot of climate data has been freely available relative to other research fields. They are definitely above average in that.
However, I was trying to get climate data/code awhile back and kept coming across login/password obstacles (besides high level stuff without even uncertainty estimates, etc). I hope it gets made more freely available. What took so long?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:03AM
Also, how much of this is data products rather than the data. If we have the data and code we can recreate all these data products. That is the key stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:36AM
Keep the raw sensor data, along with sensor specifications and calibration data. Junk anything derived from that, since keeping it around would imply endorsement of the picking and choosing of data points and worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:47AM
I'd say keep both in an ideal world, but make the raw data + code a priority
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Demena on Wednesday February 15 2017, @12:03PM
Not possible in many cases. Raw datasets can be huge. It is simply prohibitively expensive to store. This will always be the case.
If I have a thermocouple I can sample it at many different rates. But I will pick _a_ rate. At that rate I will send signals back. Your first level of filtration is the device itself.
Depending on what I need the data for, I may only be interested in the maxima and the minima for the day and only sed on or store those figures. Filtration by use.
I may have no interest in the data at all unless it exceeds 451 Fahrenheit. Until that occurs, nothing is passed on.
'Raw' data depends on the eye of the beholder. True raw data inevitably voluminous.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rts008 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:17AM
This was no real surprise to many, as per previous news of scientists backing up data.
What's news, and a surprise to some, is that the scientists were not paranoids, and were correct.
In view of Trump's cabinet picks, the writing's been on the wall for me, for some time now.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:14AM
They're well aware of what happened in Canada under the Harper Conservatives. Wholesale destruction of scientific data, as in quite a libraries shredded and dumped. Mostly fishery data as mining is important in Canada and if there is no data on historical mercury concentrations in Lake Foo, can't prove that mining company Bar increased it.
There was overlap with climate change as some research centers were closed but generally they used the copyright club to lock up climate change research. Hilarity ensued when the data was co-produced with Americans as Americans consider government funded research to be public domain.
Crown copyright, which is really government copyright is weird. It can be infinite as in the cases of the King James Bible and Peter Pan in the UK but is usually ignored with most government data available for minimum charges. Had many a nice map mailed to me for about a dollar apiece. It is a weak point when a government wants to do the opposite of their promise to be open and transparent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:23AM
Yes, all of these, especially from the Magellan and Pioneer missions:
http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/data_and_services/atmospheres_data/catalog.htm [nmsu.edu]
The LRO Diviner mission too
http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/lro/diviner.htm [wustl.edu]
Back it all up.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:30AM
Depending on the size of the raw data, it might be effective to torrent it, especially since the goal is to ensure availability and integrity. Torrents are good at both even in the face of active opposition. That's why big business and the politicians they own have such a hardon for crushing any and all distributed, decentralized services. For authenticity, well, hopefully they think ahead and sign with OpenPGP or similar.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:37AM
Hmm.
Who was president in August?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:00AM
Trump, of course. He has always been the President.
Thinking otherwise is crimethink and crimethink IS death.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday February 15 2017, @09:36AM
Starting in August, access to Goddard Earth Science Data required a login.
Who was president in August?
What's your point? The Goddard site specifies that one now requires a login to access the data but it is still free of charge. It says nothing about prohibiting anyone particular from accessing the data and provides detailed instructions on how to register and how to proceed with various methods of downloading data. The problem, apparently, is that the data on climate change has started disappearing since Trump became president.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:06AM
The point is the article implies requiring a login confirms people's fears that trump is burning all the datas.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:02PM
Incorrect. the fact that data has started disappearing confirms people's fears that Trump is burning all the data. The login requirement raised peoples eyebrows at the time.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:07PM
That answer wasn't in the article. The articles talk about people's fears about the possibility of future data burning and one data set being put behind a login page before Trump (which, remember, is what the top of this thread was about). There's casual mention about some 404s on websites, which I totally wouldn't expect when "these systems were written piecemeal over the course of 30 years" with "no coherent philosophy to providing data on these websites".
Backing up and archiving the data is good, but just because some people fear Trump is going to grab science by the data, that doesn't mean we need to blame him for things that happened before he was in charge. It just distracts from the things he's actually doing.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:56PM
I call fake news. The whole thing is stinky.
Just like journalism, nobody goes into climate research unless they got an axe to grind. The politics make psychology or womens studies look diverse.
We're lead to believe all those folks who are practically antifa in all but name, Cathedral members, whatever you want to call them, on Nov 9th 2016 flipped a switch and went from radical smash the state hippies to fascist "just following the Fuhrers orders" automatons who unthinkingly rm -Rf / all the enviro stuff.
Sure. Just like on Nov 9th the Dept of Education brought back the Jim Crow laws making it illegal to teach black children to read and write. And starting on Nov 9th the state dept and CIA rolled out a non-interventionist foreign policy. And starting Nov 9th the Fed voted to shut itself down. Uh huh. The space hippies deleting all their satellite data fits right in. Did you know FEMA is building camps for registered democrat voters? And Obama is a Kenyan Muslim (as if it would matter anyway other than triggering the hell out of progs, which I suppose makes it worthwhile in itself) ? Oh wait that last couple might be actual fake news. Or maybe the whole thing is fake news?
I mean, come on. I specialize in two things, shitty standard issue SN automobile analogies and shitty hard sci fi book/movie plots. This one is so bad that not even Hollywood could produce this stinker. We're supposed to believe the space hippies all dropped anti-acid on the 9th of Nov and started 1984 style history rewriting with nary a peep, and all thats saving the planet from the deletionists (wait, aren't deletionists good when they're on wikipedia?) is a rag tag group of antifa protesters and activists stealing copies of the data for a more progressive future.
Some unwashed hippie antifa types watched Rogue One late last year a couple times too much and now think if they just upload the death star plans to the rebel antifa alliance botnet that'll somehow result in the destruction of God Emperor Trump's death star resulting in a temporary rebel victory plus or the help of The Force or The Pozzz or WTF.
I mean.... I've come up with some bad unrealistic stupid plots, but this particular fake news is like 451C of global warming worse than the worst thing I never posted because it was too ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:25PM
Is this referring to Farenheit 451 or 466 - 15 (Venus - Earth surface temps)?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:17PM
So, just so I get this straight, anybody who disagrees with you, and knows what the heck they're talking about, is by definition disagreeing with you because of politics. That seems like some rather "creative" logic. I mean, imagine applying this to another field and political ideology:
"Doctors are conservatives, so the reason why homeopathic remedies have never been shown to actually work is because they have a political axe to grind. Anybody who attempts to show that either (a) doctors are not conservative, or (b) homeopathic remedies don't actually work is part of or duped by the grand anti-homeopathy conspiracy. Ergo, you can't prove that homeopathy doesn't work."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:14PM
People put politics first quite often.
I recall studies that the psychology field has gone from roughly 50/50 D/R liberal/conservative half a century ago to virtually 100% liberal now. Womens studies was never really ideologically balanced, but I suspect there are few womens studies grad students who campaigned for Trump.
You'll never get quite 100% results for errors but its very 3rd world dictator's election type results. Like you can argue if Saddam got 97% of the vote or 98%, similar results in the Soviet Union elections when I was a kid, until the very last few years, huh, imagine that, the party candidate got 99% in the election, etc.
I would be surprised if you could find a study of political leaning for climate researchers showing less than say 95% D party line support.
From talking to my buddy and his wife doctors have leanings but they're not as single minded as my examples of psych and womens studies. A better analogy would be to use social workers as your subject. Huh imagine that 100% of social workers are left wing supporters of blah blah therefore you're claiming its a hidden conspiracy that they all voted for Hillary. Well, no, not a conspiracy, thats kinda what political extremists DO, its kinda like their whole purpose...
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:21PM
A good friend of mine does work with those types of data sets. Granted, he does more stuff with astronomy than he does with terrestrial climate data, but he does work with that too. He works directly with NASA for a lot of stuff on (I believe) a university grant. I think he's technically a state employee as such, not a government one, though I'm unsure of those technicalities.
He and I were talking about this the other day when another friend sent us bits and pieces similar to the article here. He's skeptical of all of it given that he got a self-imposed gag order (almost immediately after Trump started reacting poorly to the NPS being funny) saying basically "be sure to be careful what you talk about in any perceived official capacity".
At any rate, he's skeptical about any data actually destroyed or going to be destroyed, because he thinks that if it were, that would be something they would be immediately reacting to, as it's the point of his team's project. So removed from the public view? Yeah, I can see that. Actually Memory Holed? I dunno about that. Is that still a bad guy thing to do? Sure.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:04PM
saying basically "be sure to be careful what you talk about in any perceived official capacity".
That's another fascinating aspect of the Anti-Trump reaction as that has been BAU at private companies since... the dawn of private companies I think. Even before social media most corporate employee handbooks have something about "direct all media inquiries of any form to the P.R. department"
I believe that's part of the whole Trump-ian 5 dimensional chess meme in that shrieking about censorship is probably very motivational for the people who are already dyed in the wool democrats, but to the 90 million or so employees in the nation of varying ratios of D/R voting, they look really bad, which is good for Trump.
Likewise shrieking analogies between removal of data and Hitler burning books by Jewish authors I've seen on TV fake news, is, again, really motivating for people who already hate Trump and would never vote for anyone to the right of Lenin, but that looks awful to the more balanced majority of the population, again good for Trump.
The thing I don't understand about the left wing desire to cry wolf, is the don't understand its not working so they double down, combined with crying wolf means after maybe a hundred more fake news like this, people are going to ignore if he actually does build camps or start giving one way helicopter rides. I mean, OK, you're cheering up your base, which would be good if that didn't result in looking even worse in riots. Or OK its blowing off left wing steam as part of the grieving process as progressivism is tossed into the dustbin of history where it belongs, OK, next step is just race riots and fomenting communist revolution or ?
I mean, one side clearly has a plan and goals and a worldview model that fits reality better than the predecessor model, and the only response so far is "our lower classes will riot until put down by force and our higher classes will make stuff up until uniformly ignored by everyone" and they think that will actually work? Or is that just how movements die, kind of leaderless flailing around in failure, the last dying gasps of liberalism and progressivism is fake news about climate censorship? Maybe its all they got left.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:19PM
That last part was something that I just had a conversation with the girlfriend about. The left is auguring themselves into the ground with all of the protests, and I honestly don't understand what their end game is. It's a little tinfoil-hatty, but it almost seems like their goal is to turn the government into something resembling Nazis by violently protesting everything until that starts getting cracked down on, and then squealing about how right they were as if it was something that was going to happen all along.
I don't think that's going to work out for them the way they want it to though. I mean, I'm unhappy about Trump. I'd have been unhappy about Clinton, and probably about as much. I'm not going to burn down my town over it though, because that doesn't engender goodwill toward the cause. That only makes people who were on the fence be able to see you more easily as the enemy. And I think that's what's changed in the last 60 years or so. There's so much information that unless you're really looking at something, and you go back to study it, you don't really know what's going on.
To elaborate: Even with any perceived liberal slant, and even watching the mainstream news, the 5 minute sound byte only gives you enough to see that protesters at $city were attacking people, wearing masks, and have probably smashed in windows and set stuff on fire. Don't watch the news and live there? You see all the smashed windows and cars and might ask someone what happened. You can't really put that damage into a context that makes them seem like the good guys to Joe Average who just wants to get to work and is staring at mayhem and scratching his head. Assholes block your bus to work? Yeah, getting into work late because of strangely dressed "not like you's" is really going to get people thinking and voting your way.
I mean, people lose their shit over their crappacino not making it out to them in (what their idea is of) time, or god forbid, with real cream in it instead of soy. I think it's something to be said about how already tense and living by a thread of tolerance for putting up with anything outside of the norm the modern American is. Not all are that way, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I think that's why stuff like these protests are going to fall flat. The "average American", if I might permit myself the hubris required to presume upon their behalf, just wants to be left alone to focus on not going on a murder spree set off by all the other borderline unbearable bullshit that they have to stare in the face. If they weren't already with you marching in the streets, you're not going to get them to do anything but revile you and maybe even remember it next time there's an election. Well done!
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @09:52PM
attacking people, wearing masks, and have probably smashed in windows and set stuff on fire
Its like gang violence. A Hollywood treatment could find a Shakespearean drama of competition and intrigue in the rise and fall of various gangs. The deal making the back stabbing the suspense the drama edge of your theater seat. Perhaps in half a century it would be like fawning mafia movies where people loved the Godfather movies. They think they'll get he academy award for their part in this drama if only someone would put it up on the movie screen. If only we could make people care.
Meanwhile in reality, same situation just normal people watching TV report of the same story, see 15 seconds of the outline of a dead body on the TV and a pool of blood and some pistol cartridges and think everyone involved is a bunch of dirtbags they want nothing to do with and actively avoid and would cross the street if they saw one coming down the road. but but but the Shakespeare ... sorry nobody cares.
Maybe its some weird desire, they wanna go out as martyrs. America hate our beliefs, well, TV will be our Colosseum, the police or natguard will be the lions tearing us limb from limb. Are you not entertained? Yeah I guess I am a little.
Example two. One word, same problem as above. Che.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday February 15 2017, @08:58PM
Also, to your first point, yeah, no shit. I'm reluctant to state online where I even work, lest someone try to use that as some way to get me fired for something I said elsewhere, in another context. I recall the dongle joke fiasco.
My response to him telling me about the email was, "well, that's how things have always been for me. Does that really seem unusual?" He didn't really have much of a response. Not that he had much to worry about as he's not exactly outspoken or particularly liberal, but I think the thing that freaked him out about it wasn't that it happened as much as that it came down literally inauguration day.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:24AM
Remember, these are the same people who think reporting on false rape accusations as if they were true is good because it "starts a conversation" about the rape epidemic so rampant they only have false rape accusations as examples.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 15 2017, @07:31PM
I think he's technically a state employee as such, not a government one, though I'm unsure of those technicalities.
I worked in state government for 27 years, and sometimes, like in your suggestion, the lines are blurred. My case was similar to the university guy, in that we had to report to the feds (scanning boxes and boxes of paper and Fed-Exing CDs, since the internet is insecure). At one point I was working on the state's part in getting our computers to talk to other states' computers (this was in the early 1990s, I'm retired now).
But the state comptroller cut all the checks they paid me with. The state is paying your university friend, but part of that money comes originally from the feds.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 15 2017, @06:50PM
wait, aren't deletionists good when they're on wikipedia?
I believe I'm a victim of Poe's Law here. No, deleting factual data from Wikipedia is NOT good. Want an example? The CrystaLens. I got a cataract in my left eye in 2006, and my surgeon recommended this new implant the FDA had cleared in 2003. Of course, I looked up cataract surgery, and Wikipedia falsley claimed that there were no variable focus cataract implants, which the CrystaLens is; I'll be 65 this year and I no longer wear glasses or contacts, even for reading. I went from coke bottle glasses to better than 20/20.
So I updated the Wikipedia article and linked the CrystaLens web site as a citation. My changes were gone in a week, obviously deleted by the other implant manufacturers. This new lens is a game changer, and the more people hear about it the less money other IOL makers can earn.
I mentioned this at slashdot a few years ago in a thread about Wikipedia, and a Wikipedia admin saw my comment and added the CrystaLens back. It was gone in another week.
The only good deletions are deletions of rank bullshit.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:24PM
You know what would be fun? A book plot. We're all smart here. Lets figure it out.
There's no reason for the government to hide climate data. We all know that 99% of devout democrat life long Cathedral members signal its important and 99% of right and alt right and alt lite people have a mixture of don't care / luv to troll / we're making the best bad choice / none of this matters absolutely or relative to something more important.
So the above paragraph I think makes the point that a gig here, a gig there, aint none of it gonna change anyones minds on neither side. The stated coverup just doesn't matter.
I enjoy two things. Shitty automobile analogies and shitty hard sci fi plots. This isn't a car analogy. And I'm having trouble coming up with a good hard sci fi plot involving hiding climate related data.
Space aliens from the original Andromeda Strain book have landed on a meteor in the ocean and they're changing the water itself into ... Atlantis. Or Gray goo.
The Fukushima reactors are having the following effect on the ocean.
Some naughtiness is happening in the gulf of mexico due to the BP disaster but somehow the ships can't notice the problem up close. maybe the oily sheen looks weird up close but it looks really weird from space.
Um... The RUSSIAN ARE CONTROLLING THE WEATHER that was a thing in the 50s 60s pulp sci fi, using radio waves or something, but maybe they're doing it for real with nanoparticles and until we can counter we're keeping it quiet... or maybe we're the ones controlling the weather and we are making the perfect weather to invade Iran or someplace. Is anywhere on the planet experiencing either really good or really bad weather? I mean maybe terrorists are causing the rain thats going to collapse that dam in California and its obvious when a trained meteorologist traces it all back to the weather coming out of Saudi Arabia or the Israeli embassy in California or who knows.
No one wants to mention it but the death of bees is killing the grasses of Russia leading to topsoil erosion and the general public knew they would ... not give a F. so its probably not that. And the dead grass impacts methane release impacts temps making crazy weather and its just starting to take off. Hmm maybe.
The sun is going nova next year so least total human suffering is to keep it quiet as long as possible, although fluctuations in solar output are starting already leading to weird weather... Naw too many astronomers and astrophysicists would notice, right? Right?
Here is a semi-serious one. The sun has solar activity cycles. As any ham radio operator can explain, this has been the weirdest crappiest one in literally centuries. Something natural and big is going on with the sun geomagnetically and the earth is going to magnetic pole flip or some damn thing in response and the best response so far is to keep a lid on it.
I mean, come on. Help a fellow SN'er out here. If the data is being hidden, AND if we're trapped in a realistic hard sci fi novel, the true coverup in the book plot is ...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday February 17 2017, @02:02PM
Closest thing I know of even vaguely in the sci-fi direction from this is:
Library Wars (an anime series in which military force is being used to defend libraries from government.)
And, of course, there's the ancient by now 1984.