William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
September 7, 2012
...inquires a commenter in the Obama and Romney on GW post. Well, its a reasonable question. This would be Owen Paterson who the FT calls a "known climate change sceptic", although it isn't clear to me quite why. The Graun doesn't like OP. The first piece of evidence is Paterson is on the record as…
September 7, 2012
From The Top American Science Questions: 2012. Which starts with:
"Whenever the people are well-informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government."
Well, that's you yanks totally f*ck*d then, ha ha. Not that we're any better off. still, at least we manage to believe…
September 6, 2012
There's an interesting case of this recently. The prime examplar appears to be this edit which removes
For many years Spencer, along with [[John R. Christy]], has maintained an atmospheric temperature record derived from satellite microwave sounding unit measurements, commonly called the [[UAH…
September 5, 2012
If you've seen the latest septic drivel (the clearest example of the need for open peer review that I've seen for a while) then you may find Comment on “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature” worth a read, as well as the rest of the blog.
September 3, 2012
And you thought the GW deniers were wacko. Well, yes, they are. But not as wacko as some of the physics nuts, and I'm not even talking about the string theorists. I mean the people who know that Einstein was wrong, and possibly part of a vast conspiracy. I'm sure everyone has their favourite, but…
September 1, 2012
At last, playing to the crowd: an attack on Paul Ryan. Via CIP comes the news that Ryan has been lying about his marathon times: he claimed sub-three, but never ran sub-four. The folk at runners world weren't impressed. I too find it implausible that anyone could possibly get their PB that wrong if…
September 1, 2012
Inquires Timmy. But its a stupid question. Indeed, a curiously illiberal anti-business not-really-thought-through question. The premiss is the usual one: the degrees aren't useful, they are a hangover from the old days, they aren't value-for-money, and they don't teach people what business wants…
September 1, 2012
Just over a month ago, RP Sr wrote a ludicrous post [WebCite] about the "game-changing" Watts Et al 2012 (I've just realised quite how illiterate that is, too: Et shouldn't be capitalised, and "al" is spelt "al.". McNider Et Al even gets the Al capitalised). I was less impressed; indeed,…
August 31, 2012
Wosis then? Is it the sea ice? Ah, no. Someone else wants in on the limelight: "Parts of Arctic Siberia are releasing ten times more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, a University of Manchester scientist and an international team of researchers have found."
Its the usual stuff:…
August 30, 2012
mt quotes Ray Pierrehumbert: "The most explicit statement of Ryan’s climate change views appears in this 2009 op-ed, and since he still features it on his official website, we can take it as an indication of his beliefs..." writing in Slate. Some of what Ryan writes is indeed std.denialist_lies:…
August 28, 2012
Plenty of other people are talking about seaice, so I don't need to. Monthly means are more interesting the dailies, and since August is unlikely to beat September, we're unlikely to see a record monthly mean for a month yet. The bets are summarised here and in this, to which the former refers.
I…
August 27, 2012
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun:
The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure's helmet was entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its polished…
August 17, 2012
Yes really, complete with miss-spelling of "enlightenment". Don't stop reading just because its about Hobbes, though :-). Its really about the LaRouche nutters, I think (the connection is via the Schiller Institute). My source is Brian Lantz, from the Spring 1996 issue of FIDELIO Magazine, found in…
August 16, 2012
People want to talk about sea ice, clearly. I still have nothing interesting to say about it, so instead, lets start off at KK's, who parrots the odd assertion that there are "Plenty of stories in media with just one scientist, and no counter view at all". Which in turn is some septic whinging…
August 13, 2012
WUWT is still on my google reader list, even though I got banned from commenting for pointing out AW's wiki-fantasies. So I get to see the rather plaintive When will it start cooling?, in which David Archibald, Solar Nut, wonders why his brilliant predictions don't seem to match reality. But, I…
August 10, 2012
Says the FT:
The UN has called for an immediate suspension of government-mandated US ethanol production, adding to pressure on Barack Obama to address the food-versus-fuel debate in the run-up to presidential elections. Most US ethanol is made from corn. The dispute over ethanol promotion pits…
August 7, 2012
Via HT I find Kerry Emanuel saying:
I think debate is good but we should be debating points that are actually debatable
and who could disagree with that? But the problem is who gets to say what is debatable. You and I know, of course. But the wackoes don't [What is the Plural of "wacko"? Is it -…
August 1, 2012
The mighty DeutschlandAchter.
The NZ pair (gold) congratulating the UK pair (bronze). The UK were completely out of their lane over the finish line.
Or, if you're interested in my original subject:
It am all de news: Olympics badminton: Four pairs charged with not trying.
My take on this is…
July 30, 2012
I've started reading it (I was going to read BEST, but the little b*gg*rs have it behind a permission-wall at the moment. So much for openness. Update: because their site is screwed; its really here), and got to:
As documented in surveys presented in Watts, (2009)
OK, well, obviously, its "Watts (…
July 30, 2012
Woo, this is great. Watts is now reporting that McI says that the BEST papers got turned down by a reviewer (ahem, well, McK, not even McI) at JGR. Since its McK, that doesn't necessarily say anything about the paper's quality. But it does directly contradict what BEST themselves are saying,…
July 29, 2012
So, a few days ago, WUWT said "WUWT publishing suspended – major announcement coming". And not just any old event, oh no:
To give you an idea as to the magnitude of this event, I’m suspending my vacation plans. I weighed the issue, and decided (much to my dismay) this was more important. I can go…
July 28, 2012
When BEST first came out I said it was boring, because it just said what everyone knew already "Summary: the global temperature record is just what we thought it was". There was some soap opera thrown in for fun, but that didn't affect the science.
But now (New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis…
July 24, 2012
Scott Mandia accuses Chronicle of Higher Ed to Its Bloggers: Feel Free to Disparage Climate Science but not Black Studies. This is in reference to Mann suing the National Review for libel (see, e.g. DA or BA). The Chron piece seems piss-poor, as does their lying evasion about no-editorial-control…
July 23, 2012
Well, bumps is over for another year, so some kind of normal service can resume.
WUWT was pushing "Investigation of methods for hydroclimatic data homogenization" by Steirou and Koutsoyiannis. Why? Because it appeared to show problems with station data homogenisation. There was some comedy before…
July 18, 2012
Is a question Open Mind asks re yet more Wattism. And so I looked and found the absurd Another paper refutes the Mann made hockey stick – MWP was ≈1°C warmer than current temperatures. To support his headline, AW highlights:
the conclusion that the early MCA was warmer than the late 20th century by…
July 13, 2012
Continuing with your alas-all-too-regular diet of not-science here. But there is so little real going on. Anyway, Eli is pushing Machiavelli, and a while ago PK asked "How would Hobbes organize society to avert climate change?". I had no answer, so I ignored the question, but now return to it.…
July 11, 2012
Its been very wet this summer, over here, in contrast to over there. A normal Cambridge summer features cracks in the ground and the grass fading; this summer all is a riot of green. I cut back the overenthusiastic hedge halfway down the lawn a week or two back, which has lead to the emergence of…
July 10, 2012
The question, which is the better man, is determinable only in the estate of government and policy, though it be mistaken for a question of nature, not only by ignorant men, that think one man's blood better than another's by nature; but also by him, whose opinions are at this day, and in these…
July 6, 2012
There has been an awful lot of fluff written about the LIBOR fixing stuff in the past week or so. Which is why I looked forward to my friday afternoon at home reading the Economist - in a brief patch of sunshine even - and getting a more considered opinion, and perhaps even some facts. They seem…
July 6, 2012
The Economist, celebrating the Higgs:
Without the Higgs there would be no mass. And without mass, there would be no stars, no planets and no atoms.
But that's wrong. No stars and no planets, because they are gravitationally bound. But atoms aren't. Unless they mean in the very indirect sense that…