William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
July 14, 2017
As sung by British Sea Power. Sou has some nice stuff, as does everyone else.
Although the "news" is that the last thread of ice has broken, it's an enormous berg so it isn't about to float off in a hurry1, and indeed the last tiny neck was probably only a formality.
What does it all mean? Pfft,…
July 8, 2017
No, wait. This isn't yet another tedious post bashing Pruitt's dumb ideas. It's a post bashing mt2, which is far more interesting. I have two3 wildly exciting points to make about mt's post at ATTP.
You people do need a red team
If you stick to science, you generally get it right1. Oddly enough;…
July 4, 2017
I must admit I only wrote this post because I thought the title would be amusing. Was I right? Time will tell. Via a variety of sources some of whom I ignored, I find the great physicst saying President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accord could lead humanity to a…
July 4, 2017
Since I'm able to post, and listening with half an ear to a rather boring meeting, I'll briefly post this. Mostly I think I'll refer you to Moyhu who tells you what you need to know; this is largely for my own reference. The take-home message, errm, apart from "the new trend is higher than the old…
July 4, 2017
Some flaw in the over-eager Sb security, or more likely an intermediate layer, locked me out over the weekend, so my apologies for any delayed approvals and so on. One of which was to a reference to Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States by Solomon Hsiang et al.,…
June 27, 2017
KK tweets My latest @ISSUESinST feature just went online. It covers some sensitive issues in ecology & climate spheres. It's kinda standard fodder, headlined "The Science Police" in order to wind you up, like The Fail, bylined On highly charged issues, such as climate change and endangered…
June 25, 2017
Meh; not to spoil the tension but it is, as you've already guessed, just another dull clone of wiki a-la Conservapedia. I found it via Wired via fb; you certainly won't find it via people referring to it2. Other than me; sorry about that. This one is called "Infogalactic" which seems to hint that…
June 24, 2017
On hot days like these an old man's thoughts turn to the eternal mysteries of sea ice. Someone - it might have been CR - drew my attention to PIOMAS a week or two back; but I can't find whatever was said now, so I'll look for myself. Before looking at the sea ice, I found the temperature anomaly,…
June 20, 2017
2016 saw the dawn of a new era, and unsurprisingly on the men's side it continued; Maggie were very fast. Clare bumped up two (Pembroke; Caius, still looking nice but under powered) but couldn't touch Maggie despite having two attempts. Saturday saw LMBC two cementing their place in div 1 just…
June 16, 2017
Not directly climate, and risks being somewhat tasteless, but I'll have a go anyway. Two things come past: Light Blue Touchpaper (which is a lovely pun) discusses Camouflage or scary monsters: deceiving others about risk and ends with1 it might be time for a more careful cross-disciplinary study…
June 13, 2017
And now for something completely different: a man with a stoat through his head. Nonono, not that. Instead, a thing from the garden:
It is, or so I understand, a truffle. Or rather two. I found them while mowing the front lawn on Sunday. This was somewhat unexpected. And indeed, I might not even…
June 9, 2017
In the pre-election special I said1:
The most likely result is a Tory victory with a (perhaps marginally) increased majority. But that would be dull, so why not speculate? A possible result is a hung parliament with – if my fellow electorate are not too foolish – the possibility of a Tory-LibDem…
June 4, 2017
Scott Adams is suddenly interested in global warming. Why? It isn't a new issue and he doesn't really have anything new to say about it. I think the answer is that he has become a Trump fanboi and is running cover for Trump; or is still over-obsessed by his own perspicacity; or perhaps it is just…
June 1, 2017
In the politics edition I made some amazingly prescient comments that now appear somewhat dated. Not quite definitively wrong4 - next week will seal that - but before the election itself it will be fun to write down what I think to see how it stacks up against what happens.
Less than two months…
May 29, 2017
Well, interesting to me anyway. As to whether it is an error or not, I'll let you judge. Please do attempt to judge. Comments saying "I hate Timmy" are about as much use as "Al Gore is fat".
The story so far: Timmy says Contrary To AP/Equilar's Research The Top US CEOs Did Not Average $11.5…
May 27, 2017
Another in the long disappearing-up-my-own-arse series. Photogenic teens sue US government refers, of course, but so does U.S. fossil fuel groups pull out of climate change court case (via, and I'm sure you wanted to know this, C on Twitter). To whom I'm indebted for The money quote: "But discord…
May 26, 2017
I like the "Analysis*"; it reminds me of Tesco's "Finest*", where I think they intend the "*" to mean "star" as in quality; but I always read it as "*" as in "footnote: may not actual contain fine quality ingredients". But I digress. In this case, the "*" really is a footnote: Note that scientists…
May 20, 2017
I apologise for breaking into the stream of politics for some science: Temperatures in the Arctic are increasing around three times as fast as the global average, yet the pace of warming has been much slower at Earth’s other pole. A new study, just published in Earth System Dynamics, suggests the…
May 20, 2017
A happy story for once. Isn't that nice? The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable (archive) from those commie pinkos at the FT: ...the disruptive impact of green energy on companies — and entire industries — around the world. After years of hype and false starts, the shift to…
May 19, 2017
A bit weird, this. The Graun reports
No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change... the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming…
May 16, 2017
A minor note; President (Moon Jae-in)’s decision to halt operating aged coal-fired plants shows his strong will to provide a fundamental solution to the current fine dust problem,” said Yoon Young-chan, the chief press secretary. Yoon also said Moon has ordered the senior social affairs secretary…
May 6, 2017
Sorry, I couldn't resist the memory. This is about Out of the lab and into the field? by ATTP, who as usual is far too polite about Out of the lab and into the field by Dan M. Kahan & Katherine Carpenter, Nature Climate Change 7, 309–311 (2017) doi:10.1038/nclimate3283. I convincingly…
May 5, 2017
Via a VV comment at ATTP I discover How a professional climate change denier discovered the lies and decided to fight for really long headlines which is fair enough, but via that I discover the far more interesting Taking Property Rights Seriously: The Case of Climate Change by Jonathan H. Adler1…
May 3, 2017
Economist watch: Farewell to the Arctic is one of the headlines on the front cover of the April 29th edition, and The Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone is one of the leaders. Which is sort-of nice, to see it so prominently and starkly.
THOSE who doubt the power of human beings…
May 2, 2017
I'm in a boring meeting, fortunately over Skype, so have time to bring you Antarctic iceberg crack develops fork from Aunty. Nicely, they've added Wales for scale; I don't think Swansea is to scale though.
The pretty banding is SAR interferometry which is cute stuff, though I don't think the…
April 26, 2017
Perspective: It’s Not a War on Science by Clark A. Miller puts forward the thesis that
What appears to be a war on science by the current Congress and president is, in fact, no such thing. Fundamentally, it is a war on government2. To be more specific, it is a war on a form of government with…
April 24, 2017
I'm not quite sure what to make of this1, but it seems interesting, and the video is lovely.
There are two papers: Antarctic ice shelf potentially stabilized by export of meltwater in surface river by Robin E. Bell et al., Nature 544, 344–348 (20 April 2017) doi:10.1038/nature22048:
Meltwater…
April 22, 2017
I didn't march for science; I was busy running the Head of the Cam (in something of a turn-up for the books, Nines won, in only a tiny fraction over 9 mins, a good time; Jesus were three seconds slower and in a welcome return to form Caius were only a second slower than that; it promises well for…
April 18, 2017
I find myself unable to resist the calls to comment on the surprise calling of an UK election. But while here I'll comment on Trump, too.
Theresa May seeks snap election to take UK through Brexit
Says everyone, including the FT, which adds things like The pound rose on expectations that Mrs May…
March 29, 2017
Rather appropriately, with all the murk swirling around Trump's ties to the Commies, Judith Curry and John Christy are looking for new sources of income suggesting that Congress fund “red teams” to investigate “natural” causes of global warming and challenge the findings of the United Nations’…