William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
November 4, 2014
There's a philosophical debate to be had over the meaning of the word scientist, or even the origins of the term, and indeed "what is science?". But that swiftly becomes tedious, so instead take the Viz test: Do your bitches turn tricks on the street or do they smoke cigarettes chained up in…
November 3, 2014
People often say that GW is slow and hard to see. One place you can see it is in the mountains. I don't have many pix that show it well, but here's one pair. We're looking at the Sulzenauferner. The first is from 2014, and is taken from the path up to the Beiljoch (which said col is visible in the…
November 1, 2014
Or so energylivenews says (thanks to J). Their text is:
Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney appears to agree most fossil fuels can’t be used if the world is to avoid climate change. At a World Bank event on Friday, he is quoted as saying: “The vast majority of reserves are unburnable.”…
October 31, 2014
It looks like Tol has joined the <cough> illustrious <cough> ranks of those who publish their review comments:
the commentary could be made substantially more balanced and contemplative – for example, as proof of “truth” the author cites himself and a series of mostly social media…
October 28, 2014
Says the FT (Oct 27, 2014 : The Bank of England has written to insurance companies to assess the risk climate change poses to their solvency and earnings. FT environment correspondent Pilita Clark and City editor Jonathan Guthrie discuss the move and regulators’ concern about global warming). Alas…
October 21, 2014
Its at The Conversation and a retweet near you, no doubt. By Lawrence Torcello, who - doubtless to my loss rather than his discredit - I've never heard of, and Michael E Mann, who needs no introduction. LT is a philosopher, and I guess that's the peg to hang this one off, since we start with stuff…
October 17, 2014
Yay, more fallout. Need I say more? Oh go on then:
This is a complete fabrication.... I dispute the description “abuse”, and suggest “use” as replacement... Prof Wadhams is apparently not content with people commenting on, or indeed even reporting, his work... This is ridiculous... This is an…
October 7, 2014
Ah, there's nothing like pouring oil on troubled waters with a carefully chosen post title, or defusing a potentially unpleasant confrontation with a cheery image.
The backstory: for quite some time now people have been making implausible predictions about the Killer Arctic Death Spiral of Death.…
October 5, 2014
Next: Mullerhutte to Nurnberger
Having got to the Mullerhutte I finally had a chance to climb the Zuckerhutl, which at 3505 m is the high point of the Stubai and something I've wanted to climb for ages. My diary reminds me it was a cold night: the hut is quite high at 3145 m, and I was alone in my…
October 4, 2014
Via sekrit, in the Journal of Science Communication, comes a deeply flawed article, Science blogging: an exploratory study of motives, styles, and audience reactions by Merja Mahrt and Cornelius Puschmann. The flaw, you'll be unsurprised to learn, is that it doesn't mention "stoat". I'm not sure…
October 2, 2014
h/t: TPP
[Update: or aliens. Thanks M.]
Refs
* Captain Kirk vs the internet
October 1, 2014
David G. Victor & Charles F. Kennel have an opinion piece in Nature arguing that it would be a really good idea to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. Or possibly ask the orchestra to play a somewhat different tune. I paraphrase somewhat, you understand.
Naturally, you should read their…
September 29, 2014
Did I ever tell you how exciting snails are? No, wait, don't go away... Oh well. Now the rest of you have settled down, I'll continue. My pic, incidentally, shows some Sphacterian snails I met in Greece this summer, which exhibited this odd clustering behaviour I've not seen before. But that's…
September 29, 2014
Ah, the (self) pity of it. AW has a long lame series of excuses for why he went all the way to Bristol to hear Michael Mann talk but did not ask, or even try to ask, any questions. Sou takes it to pieces, but you really don't need that. Obviously it wasn't necessary to ask a question in order to…
September 28, 2014
Every autumn I think - too late - that its about time I looked at my bees, took off some honey, and put on the Apistan strips. Ideally this would be done in late August, I think, because the Apistan needs to come off 6 weeks later, and once you get much into October the weather gets unfavourable to…
September 26, 2014
Crandles kindly reminded me that I had three £100 bets with him; they're formalised here (an earlier version at £67 each is here), as:
Crandles offers 3 separate bets on the average of [2012, 2013 and 2014] (to be above/below 4.294, I take the high side), of [2013, 2014 and 2015] (4.119, ditto) and…
September 25, 2014
Over at NoTricksZone they claim they're desperate to bet that (Arctic) sea ice will increase, not decrease, in the "future". However, the cheapskates are only offering $1k, which isn't worth getting out of bed for out to 2022. I offered them $10k, and a closer date, and guess what - they jumped at…
September 24, 2014
Next: Wilder Pfaff and Zuckerhutl
After the Habicht I walked across to the Bremer hut and then the Nurnberger, and my next mountain was the Wilder Freiger. Its not difficult (incidentally, for a nice piece about the same region from the viewpoint of someone more cautious than me, see here) and this…
September 20, 2014
Not perhaps entirely fair - it is a cartoon, after all - but I liked it (nicked from the Times, if you were wondering). I also feel somewhat critical of Salmond: with his shiniest toy taken away he's chosen to walk off and leave others to sort out the mess. Perhaps. Is there a mess to be sorted…
September 18, 2014
Next: Wilder Freiger to the Muller Hutte
I packed some stuff (too much as it turned out) and headed off to the Stubai. First stop is the Innsbrucker Hutte (interior pic, including the lovely huge ceramic stove) and first mountain is the Habicht, which SummitPost doesn't take too seriously, at least…
September 16, 2014
Yes, Stoat, the pundit you've all been waiting for. Well, at least one person asked.
Coming back from hols I misread a headline on my phone (I don't have data roaming so gloriously missed everything while I was away) that suggested that Scotland had voted for independence. "Good for them" I thought…
September 15, 2014
I've been on hols, so allow me to be a little behind the times. The EU is proposing to ban vacuum cleaners of more than 1600 watts. If you follow that link you'll find a fairish discussion of whether this matters or not: its easy enough to argue that no-one needs more than 1600, and that Evil…
September 13, 2014
I've been on holiday in the Stubai. It was great. My apologies for the few comments that got stuck in moderation over the past two weeks, they are all released now. If you think there's anything else do let me know.
Be reassured that I will bore you with more mountaineering photos in the near…
August 27, 2014
I'm delighted to announce that Roy Spencer has joined the select company of such as Lindzen (sea ice; also emeritus), Curry (septic capture) and von S (wikipedia) as a shark jumper. Its all there in full public view.
How Much of Atmospheric CO2 Increase is Natural?... Natural Variations in CO2 are…
August 26, 2014
No no don't go away, there's actually some science in this post, courtesy of the increasingly-heavyweight Nick Stokes. Or, perhaps more fairly, whatever science there is comes from NS. But there's a lot of snark too, as I hope you'd expect. That comes from me. The title isn't quite right; I could…
August 18, 2014
A year ago, the entirety of the intertubes were rocked to their foundations by a post of epochal proportions - me taking the piss out of AW's "paper". And now, I'm rather distressed to see, the anniversary of this anniversary has passed unnoticed by everyone. When your major "paper" is so…
August 14, 2014
Alternatively, "Despair of the Dork Side part 2". But I'd thought I'd stick with the Hamlet theme.
So, no sooner does AW write not one but two barking mad posts about CO2 (see DotDS) than the what-I-had-thought-comparatively-sane Jo Nova complete the trilogy with It’s an Unsettling Climate for…
August 6, 2014
Carlos Frenk, Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University says some sane-but-not-surprising things about peer review. In other respects, the venue this appears in - IAI, the Institute of Art and Ideas - appears to have been taken over by septics, see for example…
August 5, 2014
I can't hold back from taking the piss any longer, although Sou has done it already. WUWT has had not one but two ridiculously stupid articles about the rise in CO2 not being human-caused just recently. You don't even need to read the details to know they are stupid, because that the CO2 rise is…
August 4, 2014
Back in 2013 I didn't take terribly seriously an announced review of the IPCC AR5 by a ctte of the UK parliament. Now they've been rude enough to publish their results without consulting me, and sneaked it out while I was on holiday. Do I regret my snark? I can hardly complain about their…