stoat

This is something I wonder about off-an-on; with Happy Birthday, Charles! The Phytophactor has now put clearly the "doom" version: There was a time in this country when policy was debated, but then politicians found out it was easier to deny the science rather than debate policy, and now the people…

Subtitle: Rupert Neate is a tosser, since I don't seem to have done one of my "is a tosser" series recently. Having assailed the nutters yesterday, I feel inclined to have a go at the handwringing going on at the Grauniad; I really do despair sometimes. As Timmy puts it "Fund to buy grain buys…

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Observatory of the RAS thinks solar irradiance is in for a "bicentennial decrease". And has been kind enough to predict it. Unfortunately it won't be obvious until about, what, 2016, that he is hopelessly wrong. But it beats most of the nutters who just…

We're having a cold snap. About -2 oC, and very still. Possible snow later. Punt touts are still out though. Ducks don't care. I've never known what this means. Refs * Flickr

CH has resigned as a minister (he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, often just reported as "energy secretary") after he was charged with asking his then-wife to take some speeding points for him; or, more formally, for "perverting the course of justice". And I think the reaction…

There is a remark somewhere in Popper - but of course I forget where, and since I'm only struggling to remember this as an intro or lead-in I may even have made it up - to the effect that deep inquiry into the meaning of words is largely fruitless. And this is in the context of his attack on Plato…

A problem from the British Go Journal issue 158. I don't play Go any more, but I still like it. This problem is particularly pleasant. It is symmetrical, so there are only 6 possibilities. Black to play and live. SGF visualised with GoRilla.

Well, this is an interesting take on SOPA (h/t Paul, and the atheist FAQ is worth reading too): Hollywood appears to have peaked... [But] The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down...…

The Mystery of Equation 8 refers, and offers me my title. For a while now, there has been some weird septic stuff floating around about how the planet is warmer-than-it-would-be-without-an-atmosphere not because of the greenhouse effect or anything like that, but because of gravity. Nikolov and…

Browsing the crackpottery that is Unified Theory of Climate: Reply to Comments at WUWT ("Dr" Roy Spencer shreds it, if you care, which you shouldn't) I noticed fig 4, Antarctic temperatures, which is ripped off from wiki, and I drew that figure. Eurgh.

And, since I've been cwuel to the septics, I suppose I ought to have a go at the greenies, for balance: A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight. -- Proverbs 11:1 So (h/t KZ) the Grauniad says: Open letter to Sir Mervyn King says overexposure to high-carbon…

There is an absolutely classic WUWT piece of stupidity up from Joe Bastardi (h/t QS, who has been annoying me with ZOD nonsense recently). Sometimes, it is nice to find a small simple easily understood issue which demonstrates how clueless the septics are. And the quote is: Nor am I going to…

Well, it has finally happened - I've decided to make a place to keep all the comments I don't publish because they are noise, stupid, or whatever. And I'll take the opportunity to add here all the ones I feel obliged to partially censor, for whatever reason (other than simple gross personal attacks…

"Learn more" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more: SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. We are already seeing big media calling us names. In many jurisdictions around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation that prioritizes…

Tweaking the wackos refers. "James Pagett" wrote The Wonderful World of Wikipedia at WUWT complaining about the [[Soon-Baliunas controversy]] page. But despite the author knowing enough about wikipedia to have gotten himself topic-banned by arbcomm (which the post, oddly, doesn't have room to…

There is a post of Top Science Scandals of 2011 at The Scientist (h/t: FE). It all seemed a bit life-sciency, but then that's what the mag is about, so fair enough. Not much climate there, but number 5 is Wegman's shameless plagiarism (not forgetting, of course, that Wegman's real problem is that…

On the Limits of Expert Credibility:Theory and an Application to Climate Change (h/t FE) is an interesting paper. I'm not sure I believe it, but it is interesting (particularly so after reading Krugman on why people don't understand [[Comparative advantage]]; h/t Timmy). The "Conclusions" section…

Oh no: another post consisting of nothing but a video: and links to old posts and songs.

And probably my all-time favourite, though this version isn't quite right:

There is a fascinating article from Bronte Captial about the Euro Fix. The story so far, if you've forgotten: the ECB can't be a lender-of-last-resort to governments, because it isn't allowed to (from memory, the Krauts say No). But in a transparent fix, it is allowed to lend to banks, if those…

We've finally got round to having solar PV panels installed. As you can see form the picture above. The price of solar has been coming down, but still it isn't economically viable without subsidy for us. However, the subsidy makes it clearly economically beneficial (to us) so combined with a guess…

I don't think I've troubled you with a picture of me for a while, so here is one I particularly like, taken with Miriam's Galaxy S2 (rush out and buy one now, its got our GPS in it, which is apparently far better than the competition). If you look closely at my right thigh (and who would not wish…

Pony - something that the customer wants, and which might even make sense, but isn't going to get done within your timescales. Might get done later. Unicorn - Like a pony, but doesn't actually make sense, so will never be done. Zombiecorn - Like a unicorn, but it won't die, no matter how often you…

Bit of a weird one this, and I'm not sure it is all pieced together. I saw this via KZ, and of course was interested in what science R had got wrong, but KZ's Werner Krauss isn't interested in the science (explicitly so, see the comments). And it points me to RP Jr, whom he says "sums it up…

(this post is mostly for my own future reference: so I can see what I thought now, without the distorting lens of memory. but you might care too) So, we've vetoed the grand European dream, and they will go off without us. The papers, of course, personalise it, because they are rubbish and believe…

More politics, sorry. Still, if you want science, RC and J+J are blogging AGU. But CIP is delighted with Obama's speech on the economy. I'm less so; the comment there from Wolfgang (He always gave great speeches... this was one reason he won in 2008. The problem is that great speeches are not…

I've said this before - in Carbon Tax Now - but you could be excused for missing it, because that was mostly about carbon taxes, oddly enough. So I'll be more explicit, here, and argue for solving GHG emissions as a matter of economics, to be handled by taxation, rather than as a matter of…

That is (left to right) Miranda, Daniel and me. Daniel wouldn't let me take him giving Miranda a piggyback. Just up the hill from the Barton rifle range, looking out over Cambridge (not in shot). It has been a long warm autumn. The tomato is still yielding small fruits, the cape gooseberry ditto,…

Prompted by David Hone ("bonkers", says NB :-). But it says something that I've been thinking for a bit, and haven't seen anyone else say: Arguably, we are in a time where underlying global energy demand exceeds supply. This isn't to say they are out of balance as that is not possible, but it…

A beautiful BBC video: You have to stand back in awe at the resources they pour into taking photographs. Scientists can never afford that kind of money. BTW: this did weird things when I first wrote it, but don't blame me. I think scienceblogs or youtube are doing something weird with the…