stoat

My scientific swansong is a paper with Tom Peterson and John Fleck about the famous 70's cooling myth. John and I wrote up a post for this on RC as the global cooling mole, and its now been added to wiki so it must be true :-). Someone there has found but not fully ref'd two Science articles from…

Nature sez "Royal Society to fund carbon capture and renewables ventures". Which seemed a bit odd to me - why pick just those? But Nature seems to have misread the RS, who themselves say something rather different: "Criteria for the projects will have an emphasis on non-medical research although…

At the "lookout" in Bracknell. Bracknell gets a bad press, and the center is indeed horrible, but it has nice paths for walkers and quite a decent bit of woodland. Where I saw my first ever mountain-bike unicycle. I didn't see anyone riding it, but they did have a lot of pads. Inside, they had…

Via a wiki edit (which I rather unkindly sabotaged, though I doubt my version lasts for long) I discover the grandly named "Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change''. DeSmog reports that its thick on the ground at the septic extravaganza.…

James scores Piers for Feb (if you don't know who I'm talking about, well lucky you, err I mean wrt P not J, of course :-); but meanwhile, our nasty Free Press has been annoying nice Piers, leading him to say (thanks DM): Media Policy Weather Action forecasts are a commercial product and…

I feel very uncomfortable about the fate of the Brown/Pielke/Annan poll. For the record, I can't remember whether I voted or not or was even asked; but I too would have been a 5. As I said, there were flaws in the poll, but it should have been published anyway. Its the curse of Annan, of course. A…

Who's there? Cows-go. Cow-go who? No, cows go moo! By Miranda and Vivian, aged 6.

Via JEB, a report of what is called a bet on global warming. However, in a fit of holier-than-thouness, both side have decided to give their winnings to charity, and have picked *the same* charity, so its all a bit of a waste of time. They might as well hand the money over now :-) On the CD: Back…

I appear in the Times The Top 50 Eco Blogs. The accolade is somewhat blunted by the heading "FROM DARYL HANNAH AND AL GORE TO THE SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS OF CLIMAGE CHANGE, THE VERY BEST OF THE WEB" but I suppose I'll have to take what I can get, and put aside the shouting. I do rate as #2 amongst…

A vain attempt to shame me into fitness by making my times public. I may update this. 2007/12/04: 7:50 and 7:45 (?). [update] 2008/02. 2570 and 4954.

...said the oily US spokesman on R4 tonight, as it turns out the US has been telling us porkies about torture flights. Though I doubt our govt asked too hard, since it enabled them to make denials when it was all becoming rather embarassing. The UK govt is still insisting that the US lied to us in…

Just a quick post, since I'm at work, to note our appearence in USA today. This is an upcoming BAMS paper, but clearly making USA today is far more important :-) It grew from http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ but Tom and John finally did what I never managed to do, which was to put it into…

A little while ago, I ventured into aircraft CO2, and as good as said that the climate impact of aircraft fuel use should be weighted up by a factor of 2-3 because of various side effects: I thought of water vapour being dumped in the stratosphere. It turns out I'm wrong on that: at the altitudes…

In order to prove my financial acuity, when Northern Rock fell to about 200p and the govt guaranteed its deposits, I bought £250 worth, believing it would bounce back. Its now down to 90p, and the news now is that its to be nationalised. My shares are now worth so little I hardly care, but this…

People love to compare Wikipedia to Open Source but guess what: bad, incorrect code doesn't compile. Bad, incorrect information on the net lives on and non-experts hardly ever notice the mistake [1], via Alice. True enough, though plenty of cr*ppy code will compile [2].

I'm ploughing my way through the Mad Bish's Speech. As Paul notes, its turgid stuff. At least you have to give him credit for getting religion back in the headlines. Round about the end of page 2 I read this implies in turn that the Muslim, even in a predominantly Muslim state, has something of a…

More gumf from the Grauniad. Supposedly based on something in PNAS: anyone seen it? The usual suspects: the Potsdam folk and Tim Lenton and so on. Sadly (?) the online version doesn't have the appalling map that the print edition has, featuring highly implausible timescales for those bits I know…

Is a photo essay I bought years ago and rarely looked at. I was going to get rid of it, but then flicking through I came across this wonderful picture. It looks like some bizarre sci-fi drawing, but is in fact a prototype nuclear-powered jet engine. Read more about it at nuclearfiles.org, which…

Seen in a local Oxfam bookshop. Are you familiar with the Profanisaurus? Mind you, its better than Trinny and Susannah.

A very interesting report by the Wall Street Journal reporting that "Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley say they have concluded that the U.S. government will cap greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants sometime in the next few years. The banks will require utilities…

Gareth inquires if bets are still available for 2008. The answer is yes (although I reserve the right to remove them at a moments notice when things turn against me). At the moment, NH ice seems to be back to "normal", ie about 1Mkm2 down on the long-term mean; see Le blog de ICE for a current pic…

Here is a test: this a definiton of X. What is X? Definition: The fulfillment of what exists potentialy insofar as it exists potentialy is X: namely, what is alterable qua alterable , alteration: of what can be increased and its opposite what can be decreased, increase and decrease: of what can…

A post from Eli about offsetting CO2 emissions from flights raises once again an issue in my mind, which I don't think I've whined about here (do remind me if I have): why is aircraft CO2 special, and requires offsetting, whereas heating your house, driving to work, and all the other things you do…

That was my starting point, anyway. And I'll aim to get back to it soonish. But I got sidetracked by the emission theory of vision, an idea so stupid that only a greek philosopher could possibly have thought it up, much less believed it. I'd really like to understand whether anyone actualy believed…

A nice illustration of the laws of chance here.

Morano can't jump the shark, because in his case it comes pre-jumped. But he does his best here. Nice to see Eli getting so much publicity, he deserves it. But why Morano is reduced to commenting on blogs, surely his golden rat award winning website is platform enough? Oh, and there is KDPs version…

Following in the tracks of DeSmog again. So, the $1.8B carbon capture and storage commercial scale demo has fallen apart [archive] due to excess costs (or possibly other things: here is what they say; there seems to be some dispute over the siting. Since this is probably largely a boondoggle, which…

I must be getting old, I'm starting to seriously think of switching our paper order from the Grauniad to the Times. Which forms a lead in to: this piece which provides two interesting points: In the National Statistics omnibus survey, conducted in August 2006, 39 per cent of people thought that…

Well, he says so himself: This is probably the most provocative hypothesis I have ever (and will ever) advance: The long-term increases in carbon dioxide concentration that have been observed at Mauna Loa since 1958 could be driven more than by the ocean than by mankind's burning of fossil fuels.…

A colleague at work has parents who keep bees, and has instrumented their hives. See here for the top level, and the webcam. As well as being jolly fun, its also quite useful. Looking at the weights of the hives, especially through the year (bottom pic) you can see how they are doing over winter,…