stoat

The belated conclusion to the exciting saga of this year's Cambridge town bumps. As you'll recall, yesterday we fell to Press, and today (well, Friday the 25th, I'll date-change the post but this is actually written in August) we went down again, to St Neots, for a net minus one on the week. That'…

No happy ending for us tonight alas. We had a good start, and not one but two whistles on Tabs into Grassy, and all of that was the plan, but we lacked the oomph to close down the last half length plus the overlap. Which was the bit that wasn't under our control. We also got a rather wide line…

I should write up day 2 before day 3, else I'll be coloured. There's a riggercam video, again, but it will look pretty similar to yesterday unless you care, so instead here's some footage from Grassy. This has the benefit of showing the handbrake - I'll come to that. So, we're now at 8, which…

More nonscience, I'm afraid. When we left off the never-ending story last year we'd just bumped Press, and were rather regretting not getting a shot at Champs. Roll forwards a year, and its Tuesday again. We have six of our old crew back, losing Mr W and Dr H, and replacing them with old-hand-…

A break from The Deep. In New watch, old watch, still the same I described the truely fascinating tale of me buying a replacement Garmin Forerunner 110. A few weeks ago I was faced with the replacement having the strap broken in a second place, and the glass having cracked when I incautiously…

We didn't win the Timed Race, alas. But we rowed well enough. In other news: * ATTP bemoans the poor quality of "skeptic" out there. As usual, wise comments from PP who amongst other ideas proposes that Another possibility is that the idea is to learn from the discussion. * If you'd like a fine…

Far away from the hurly-burly, things are very peaceful. Sourced from Phil Plait's 10 best Cassini pix.

Turning aside from the moment from the strange world of Monkers we come to something that at least touches on science: to what extent did the atmospheric nuclear tests of the 50's and 60's affect the climate? It turns out that the answer is "hardly at all" and that the question isn't interesting;…

Here's a nice pic: Its from http://surfacetemperatures.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/global-land-surface-databank-version.html (but I cut it a bit to make it prettier). The colour bar is number of years. Refs * Understanding the effects of changes in the temperature scale standards through time

The battle of the graphs provides a learning opportunity says "American Elephants", and indeed it does, though possibly not in the way they're thinking. I haven't been able to clearly identify the source of this image (which is the reason for this post: I'll show you how far back I've managed to…

One of the more stupid debating tricks of the "skeptics" is to oscillate between Ha ha, you believe in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming which is obviously not happening so you're very silly, and when told that CAGW is a strawman that they've invented they switch to if it isn't…

As recent events demonstrate all too clearly, the Iraqi government is rubbish. Though from what I read The West had a heavy hand in installing Nouri al-Maliki so I'm by no means complaining that their troubles are all home-grown; more despairing at our ability to prop up corrupt incompetents who…

Also known as the worst movie ever made. What I'm going to discuss doesn't come even close to "the worst blog post ever made", but, well, you'll see. So: the backstory. I've been commenting on some of JoNova's stuff. Its not the big time, but unlike WUWT, or BishopHill, or a variety of minor blogs…

Via Sou sourced to NASA, who have named Gavin Schmidt as the new director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Congratulations to him. Refs * Right said Fred * More congrats, from 2011.

Tamino (Open Mind) is a pretty good blog, but I hadn't realised until recently just how scary the denialists find it. As a case in point, I commented at NoTricksZone, who had said: the GLOBAL WARMING STOP has been extended yet another month, now at 17 years and 9 months... Earth to Warmworld. Earth…

A round-up of reactions to Obama's announcement. Work gets the FT, so I saw Obama proposes biggest ever US push for carbon cuts in print on the front page, and I think Obama will be happy with that, and with what the FT have written: Under the plan, each US state is given a different target for…

There's another comment by Andy Lacis at Climate Etc., and just like the original its deeply under-appreciated by the residents. Indeed it would have been unappreciated by me because I don't read her posts much less wade into the comments unless someone draws my attention. Before we go onto AL's…

This is a copy (do I say, "reblogged"?) of a comment made by Andrew Lacis1 at Climate Etc (cite) just recently. As DA replied, its a breath of fresh air, but probably won't fare well there. So I'll give it more prominence (ha!) here. There's also a followup: Lacis: What is it that determines the…

Words carefully chosen, as you'll discover. The back story: Lennart Bengtsson has a paper rejected by ERL0 because, amongst other failings, the "overall innovation of the manuscript is very low". In a huff, he joins the GWPF1, which is much trumpeted by the Dork Side. His colleagues point out this…

I was - I still am - going to write a post about my recent adventures in "skeptic" land, but I've got distracted by Atmospheric Layers, The Biosphere, The Boundary Layer, Microclimate and Inadequate IPCC Models which is comically incompetent. To a degree that I found hard to believe. There's an…

But its topical! We have the bizarre and deeply stupid ruling from the EU re the "right to vanish". But wikipedia has a quasi "right to vanish" too. People use it to sweep their embarrassing past under the carpet. Which brings me to: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Thegoodlocust. Ho ho. Update: (…

It is May, when an old man's thoughts turn to bees. There's been a certain amount of swarm-catching but nothing too exciting. I thought I'd write down where I'm up to, for future reference and perhaps as some light relief from the silliness. Lesson number one, of course, is that if your hive has a…

So says the Onion, Germany's finest news source. This has so many shades of "Chinese academy endorses NIPCC report". The back story: Lennart Bengtsson, sounding somewhere between very naive and emeritus, joins the GWPF, talking the usual nonsense (I believe most serious scientists are sceptics)…

My opinion on the Global Climate Model clique feedback loop was requested by not one but two people, and how could I resist? The text starts well, by assuring readers of the most important point, which is you don’t know enough to intelligently comment on the code itself which is true, certainly…

Richard Tol and the 97% consensus – again! Need I say more? OTOH, he isn't a bozo. [Update: still sane, still a bit of a twat; heading downhill.] Refs * Richard Tol is being oppressed! * Big City Lib on the GWPF (P3) and BCL himself * The necessity of TOBS - Moyhu * Flurry Of Scientists, Recent…

It's good to see australiansforcoal.com.au (h/t: MH) because it means they're worried. If it didn't exist, it would mean they didn't feel under threat, much in the same way that the dork side fear wiki. Its also nice that they carefully avoid mentioning climate, or global warming, because again it…

I don't have anything particularly sensible to say about the Ukraine for the moment, but I like this cartoon (I had thought I was intending to print my wise words every three weeks or so, but I see my previous posts were months apart and ago. Time flies). The Russian bear under the tablecloth is…

The denialists don't like wiki, because it reflects the current understanding of global warming. And so they need to construct elaborate fantasies about why it doesn't say what they want it to say. Of course, just like everyone else, whether they whinge about it or not, they use it, because its…

Over at WUWT, AW wondered Is it time for an “official” climate skeptics organization, one that produces a policy statement, issues press releases, and provides educational guidance? To me, that looked like a fairly crude attempt to monetise WUWT and provide some kind of career path for himself.…

My previous post Policy? trailed off in the comments in a variety of odd directions, as long comment threads are wont to. So I'll offer you this quote: For there are some people on the left who keep insisting that economic growth is incompatible with reduced emissions, and that therefore we have…