William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
February 4, 2015
[Prev: September 10th: Neue Regensburger to Franz Senn]
September the 11th. After yesterday (was it really only yesterday? I am slow at writing this down) when I failed and we then went across to the Franz Senn I have another chance at the Ruderhofspitze. My exact route is somewhat unplanned -…
January 31, 2015
The Austrian Alpine Club (Sektion Brittania) runs an annual photo competition. I've finally got round to entering some of my summer pix; see here. Here's my favourite that I didn't enter; this was part of Stubai: Wilder Freiger by the Lubeckerweg.
January 26, 2015
I can thoroughly recommend the reviews. But this post, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is not about common problems with perforce but about ScienceBlogs. Or National Geographic blogs, I'm never quite sure what "we" are nowadays.
But nonetheless I was surprised by Sb Has 19 Active Blogs (of…
January 24, 2015
Or so says Gavin in How Climate Change Denial Still Gets Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals via Retraction Watch. Dountless Monkers will welcome yet another chance to bluster and threaten to sue1. The paper has been "harshly criticized by physicists" (who knew ATTP was plural, eh?) and "climate…
January 20, 2015
Shamelessly stolen from ATTP's “More than half” is the same as “> 50%”!, but I think this captures brilliantly a typical argument with the "skeptics":
TPP has a link to the interesting story of Alfred Russel Wallace's bet with the flat-earthers that the Earth was, in fact, not flat. Somehow,…
January 17, 2015
Its been a bit quiet around here. Don't fear: a whole variety of things have wound me up recently, not least my colleagues inability to use perforce competently1. But none of them quite rose to the level of bothering to post. I was going to write something gratuitously offensive about the Charlie…
January 7, 2015
None of the following are warranted in any way. I'm just clearing out some old emails and didn't want to completely throw them away. This may be only of interest to me, and possibly not even me.
* Spock warns of coming ice age
* Slowing down as an early warning signal for abrupt climate change -…
January 4, 2015
In my Where are they now? review of 2014, I unforgiveably forgot the sensation of the year, Force X from outer space. Its worth reviewing, because (a) its not quite dead yet (or perhaps more accurately its proprietors haven't yet given up hope of revivifying it) and (b) the original played out for…
January 3, 2015
This got mentioned in early 2014 at Planet3.0. To be fair to mt, he wasn't really pushing the video itself, just using it to illustrate his point (which I think is uncertainty-is-not-your-friend; I agree with that), though he did call it "excellent". But since, as I said in the comments there I don…
January 2, 2015
Oh good grief I hear you cry, not more science. Yes. Sorry. And its even about sea ice, but the Antarctic kind. This is in the trail of Holland and Kwok and so on.
Observations reveal an increase of Antarctic sea ice over the past three decades, yet global climate models tend to simulate a sea ice…
January 2, 2015
As an experiment, I thought I'd try posting some science instead of nonsense or mountains. From Nurture (Peter van der Sleen et al., Nature Geoscience 8, 24–28 (2015) doi:10.1038/ngeo2313):
The biomass of undisturbed tropical forests has likely increased in the past few decades1, 2, probably as a…
December 30, 2014
Prev: September 9th: Dresdener to Neue Regensburger
Next: September 10th: Neue Regensburger to Franz Senn
Another in the line of mountain climbing posts; I need to get them all out before next year. This one contains few decent photos because I failed due at least in part due to cloud; but its…
December 30, 2014
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
Over the year a number of things…
December 28, 2014
Aunty has a story about how Nato has formally ended its 13-year combat mission in Afghanistan. I got to watch it on TV, and noticed that the ceremony looked odd - like it was being held in a gym. And indeed the Beeb article sez Sunday's ceremony was low-key - held inside a gymnasium at the alliance…
December 28, 2014
VV has the main story but this little pic tells the tale...
...that "Stoat" is in bigger letters than just about anyone else other than RealClimate (well, duh) and ATTP (gnashes teeth).
Actually, that's not the story. The funny bit is the "yellow ghetto" featuring the anti-science folks: WUWT, BH…
December 26, 2014
I see I'm keeping up my habit of posts that are near-incomprehensible even to me after only a few months; its just like writing Perl. Anyway, here's my pick of the year, whilst we're in that grey quiet phase between Christmas and the New Year.
Jan: Science (and the related Peer review)
Feb: The…
December 24, 2014
I was going to do something for a Christmas post, but find I can't do much better than this image (which is via TPP via BA) and (lightly edited) TPP's words:
Think about how many stars are in such a galaxy. Then think about all those other little lights in the background that are also galaxies,…
December 23, 2014
I've been reading History of programming languages---II which is a book of a 1993 conference. There's lots of interesting stuff, if you like that kind of thing, but I'm particularly struck by the section on Ada. There's fun like the distinction between general-purpose and "embedded" computing,…
December 22, 2014
Every now and again its nice to be reminded that the Dork Side really are a bunch of swivel-eyed loons. So I'm thankful, so to speak, to Eli (and, now I look, Sou) for pointing me at Settled science? The IPCC’s premature consensus is demonstrated by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. I didn't bother…
December 16, 2014
Following up on my brilliantly prescient Foundation and Empire from April, the current economic situation in Russia is worth commenting on. The Russian rouble [is] in free-fall despite [a] shock 17% rate rise says Auntie (and she really does, doesn't she, which is silly: rates rose to 17%, not by…
December 13, 2014
Some in the US have now admitted that others in the US tortured some other people: see for example [[Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture]]. But on the whole, the people in charge at the time aren't admitting it, and the CIA can't even bring itself to use the T-word. Bystander…
December 6, 2014
One disadvantage of working for my current employers is that pretty well everything I do is technically commercially sekrit, no matter how dull it might be. But this little fragment isn't, and its fun. Perhaps it would make a good interview question.
What does the following C fragment compile into…
November 30, 2014
There's a thread on twitter, started by "@JacquelynGill" noting "The Day After Tomorrow", "@ClimateOfGavin" replying that "it was that movie and lame sci community response that prompted me to start blogging", and continuing "Spring 2004 was pre-RC, Scienceblogs, etc. Deltoid was around, Stoat, @…
November 28, 2014
So there I was happily making cow pies in a muddy field when some Arthur King comes along and I'm reminded once again of the violence inherent in the system.
[Update: and part 2, 2015/02.]
Which I think is about how seriously you should take Watt's attempt to Godwin himself with the assistance of…
November 24, 2014
Someone pointed me at Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers in El Rego, which is Lewis "you know you can't trust me" Page's take on What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change by Ross Koningstein & David Fork. Who they? Dunno, but you can read what they say about…
November 17, 2014
Mostly misc. I start with this erg screenshot, which I hasten to add is not mine, though that will be obvious to the cognoscenti immeadiately, or indeed to anyone who has sweated out 2k and got not even close to 6:06.8 - I can't even quite manage 7:10 for 2k, let alone for three times as long.…
November 12, 2014
Time for some politics - it always provides cheap hits. I'll start with this cartoon, which I found on facebook, promoted by various of the Good. But, its rubbish; its Wrong Thinking. Its a response to the US mid-term elections - or at least, I think that's why its being reposted - and the message…
November 11, 2014
Next: September 8th: Sulzenau to Dresdener.
From the Wilder Pfaff and Zuckerhutl I went back to the Nurnberger, had a look at the (Aperer) Feuerstein and then went to the Sulzenau for a rest day. That concluded my first week.
Miriam (who has suddenly appeared in this tale, but I won't mention her…
November 10, 2014
For some time I've been concious of how lucky I am to live in Cambridge with its wealth of cultural opportunities, and dissatisfied with my own poor response: so often, its easier to follow routine. So last saturday, in the market square, amongst the poster for "Spem in Alium" and others I found…
November 7, 2014
Between Migdol and the Sea is the book, by Carl Drews, of the paper Dynamics of Wind Setdown at Suez and the Eastern Nile Delta, by Carl Drews and Weiqing Han. Just so you don't get confused, its subtitled "Crossing the Red Sea with Faith and Science". Those with long memories will recall the…