So long, and thanks for all the fish : Stoat

Profile

My family and me. More...

Make sure you're familiar with the Comment Policy

Search

Other Information

Co-moderator of globalchange mailing list

Subscribe to globalchange

Email:

Browse at groups.google.com

I've been using Google Reader recently, following the lamented death of Planet Fleck, and I suppose I have to admit its better. Here are some "shared items" if, for some reason, you want to read what I read.

« Oh no, not again | Main | Silly Singer »

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Category: climate people
Posted on: December 1, 2007 4:06 PM, by William M. Connolley

My leaving card, lightly modified for me from the BAS christmas e-card.

This post on RC explains all. Comment here or there at your pleasure.

Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/57122

Comments

You forgot to actually put a URL in the link to RC. ;)

[Rats. Fixed -W]

Posted by: Benjamin Franz | December 1, 2007 5:11 PM

And is your first task to write a better e-card recycling system? ;o)

Best Wishes.

(That's one less professional CPDN detractor, now what can I do about James? ;o) )

Posted by: crandles | December 1, 2007 5:45 PM

That should have been "So long and thanks for all the fish".

Good luck!

Posted by: James Annan | December 1, 2007 5:55 PM

Congrats on your new career, and welcome to the field of amateur climate blogging! I hope you won't make the rest of us amateurs look bad by comparison.

I encourage you to take the opportunity to broaden Stoat to also include whatever non-climate issues interest you, like you've done on a few occasions before.

[I may well. I *must* tell the Seed folk my news, too -W]

Will you keep up your wikipedia combat against ignorance?

[Until they run me out of town on a rail -W]

Posted by: Brian Schmidt | December 1, 2007 11:28 PM

Stoat tends to be my first stop on my regular round of climate blog reading. I hope your change of career won't stop you blogging altogether. Good luck with the new job.

Posted by: SCM | December 2, 2007 12:18 AM

I don't understand. People keep telling me that climate change research is where all the money is. Could I have been misled?

[Indeed. As far as I can tell, salaries are fairly uniform across science (at a given place, assuming you're not at the individual professor level), no one field does much better. Some fields may be better funded, but that doesn't increase your salary, just your comfort level -W]

Good luck in your new profession, and make sure to keep posting!

Also, I just posted a revised version of my talk on the skeptics' claim that a "New Ice Age was predicted by Scientists in the '70s." I used your site and Wikipedia as a basis, but I also did some sleuthing of my own. I'm hoping for suggestions that anyone might have.

It requires Quicktime 7.
http://cce.000webhost.org/part07/

[I'll have a look/listen a bit later -W]

Posted by: cce | December 2, 2007 1:26 AM

I suppose, knowing you were going to have to fork out a small fortune on losing sea ice bets, you had no choice but to take a better paying job.

Good luck to you and yours.

[Thanks. There is another small seaice bet coming up soon -W]

Posted by: Gareth | December 2, 2007 2:13 AM

So now you are free to write what you *really* think without having to worry about your professional reputation? This blog could become a lot more interesting :-)

[You mean it isn't interesting now :-(? I'm sorry to say I've already been saying what I think, with only a small amount held back -W]

Posted by: Thomas | December 2, 2007 5:05 AM

Best of luck with the new job, William. I share a previous commenter's sentiment, in that I hope you'll continue to blog about climate.

Posted by: Nathan Rive | December 2, 2007 6:02 AM

William, if you didn't exist someone would have to invent you. Dropping in on this site has been, and I hope, continues to be v useful for me.

I expect you'll have more time for Green Party activities now ;-) If you happen to be on the big climate demo this Saturday the 8th (in London) do look out for the GP flyer.

"Six degrees do not bear thinking about."

Best wishes.

Douglas Coker
Enfield Green Party

Posted by: Douglas Coker | December 2, 2007 6:09 AM

Yep, please keep up stoating.

Posted by: Peter McGrath | December 2, 2007 7:27 AM

Yeah, keep your stoaty end up (er). You're a valuable voice on the good guys side.

Posted by: SteveF | December 2, 2007 8:12 AM

Hi William, your enthusiasm has always been appreciated but unlike others, I also understand your decision here and I think it is a great news for yourself and great news for science as well. In software industry, you can easily underestimate the latent heat of ice by three orders of magnitude and no one will care. Good luck, also with licking the Green Party ar*es. ;-)

Posted by: Luboš Motl | December 2, 2007 11:00 AM

Please don't tell me that your excellent web page debunking the canard of the same scientists who predict warming today were predicting cooling in the 1970's! I have used this page to confront the usual suspects when they claim such things.

[The page continues. I must update it sometime. In the meantime the wiki and realclimate pages also exist on the same subject. Coming soon: a real journal paper on the myth -W]

Posted by: Mark Schaffer | December 2, 2007 1:50 PM

Good luck, William! ;-)

Posted by: Alexander Ač | December 2, 2007 4:13 PM

William, did your doctor say that you have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber, and that you are therefore excused from saving the planet?

If not, I hope you will continue to contribute. In any case, as long as you still know where your towel is you will clearly be a man to be reckoned with.

"That's right!" shouted Luboš, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Mata ne.

Posted by: TokyoTom | December 3, 2007 5:06 AM

Thus endeth the "this from your lot" and "can't you ask them" type comments. ;)

However, I do hope the main change on here is merely the addition of a category called "software engineering", and perhaps "the idiocy of the IT sector"....actual life permitting of course.

Posted by: Adam | December 3, 2007 5:30 AM

cce,

New Ice Age was predicted by Scientists in the '70s

I've always wonder about this skeptic claim whenever I read the following quote from the introduction (section 6.1) of Chapter 6 of the WG1 AR4 report:

Palaeoclimate science has made significant advances since the 1970s, when a primary focus was on the origin of the ice ages, the possibility of an imminent future ice age, and the first explorations of the so-called Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period.

I was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but to me this suggests that the IPCC authors themselves are operating under this myth or that it is not so much a myth as we are led to believe. It does clearly say that the coming of an imminent ice age was a "primary focus" of (paleo)climate research.

Puzzled.

[Its an unfortunate choice of language. You may be the first person to have noticed it :-) -W]

Posted by: zwirko | December 3, 2007 8:10 AM

The "possibility of an imminent future ice age" was "a primary focus" during the '70s. Another "primary focus" was the possibility of Anthropogenic Global Warming due to rising GHG. Much of the science of the '70s revolved around whether cooling or warming influences would dominate.

My talk covers all of this. William's site covers it in more detail.
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

Posted by: cce | December 3, 2007 12:15 PM

"Imminent" to a geologist or a paleo-type may mean 10k years; in vernacular use it may imply just a few years.

Goodbye and good luck to you, William, and thanks for the education and entertainment!

Posted by: ian | December 3, 2007 3:24 PM

"... man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

Adios, y gracias por todo el pescado.

Posted by: Munin | December 3, 2007 3:28 PM

Best of luck, Wm. I changed careers mid-stream and have never looked back. Go git 'em.

Best,

Posted by: Dano | December 5, 2007 7:39 AM

Good luck in your new career! I hope you can keep blogging on climate and other things.

Posted by: CapitalistImperialistPig | December 5, 2007 11:45 PM