stoat

* xkcd: All 786 known planets to scale. * I liked Brian's take on the USSC ruling on Obama's healthcare stuff. And also the little-heard-from-anymore RP. * Planet3.0 on Greenland albedo; if you prefer it with added "tipping point" hype then try Climate Central. My initial though was "oh its warmer…

The Economist has a Special Report on "The melting north" (hopefully that works for you, I have a subscription so I'm not sure if its behind their paywall or not). And what it says - A heat map of the world, colour-coded for temperature change, shows the Arctic in sizzling maroon. Since 1951 it has…

Well, sort of. Via Timmy I find Will Hutton bemoaning the failure of yet another GW-type summit, Rio-20. We all knew it was going to fail: had I thought there was any question about it, I would have offered to bet heavily on its failure (in fact, so little do I care that I haven't even looked to…

Did you miss me? I've been to the Stubai, again. There will be a travelogue over there. Refs * A short walk in the Stubai: day 2: Aperer Turm

The peace of Sunday afternoon was disturbed when a friends children called to say, very politely, that err there was a swarm of bees in their garden and might they be mine? Possibly, I said, though you can't pin it on me guv, but I'll come and look anyway. If you're not used to looking at swarms…

* On global solar power growth and its prospects - "Many existing markets – in particular China, the USA and Japan, but also India – have addressed only a very small part of their enormous potential for PV development. Moreover, several countries from large sunbelt regions like Africa, the Middle…

Well, with a headline like that you know I'm talking about denialist nonsense, and yes its WUWT again. What they are foaming at the mouth about is Jarvis Cocker: the iceman cometh but not the article, rather a factoid at the end: Of the Arctic sea ice, 75% has been lost over the past 30 years.…

Or, Timmy in the Torygraph. Its a bit broken I'm afraid, though it manages to get some obvious things right. But before I start on the actual matter, we need to sweep away some of the dross. It starts Perhaps we can sit down and discuss this climate change thing like the adults we are? Put the…

From An Answer to Bishop Bramhall's Book, called " The Catching of the Leviathan" by Hobbes. Elegantly put, and I expect to use it elsewhere. Refs * Oil sands and atmospheric CO2

With great excitement, WUWT has discovered some old news: The CIA documents the global cooling research of the 1970’s. But, being WUWT, it gets it wrong. Because the CIA didn't document the research of the time. The document they are citing isn't competent. Nor is any of this new; see A study of…

Congratulations to SpaceX, who have connected their Dragon to the ISS. [That's a screen-grab, BTW, not a clickable video. Go to msnbc for video.] That isn't what I find so strange, though it is potentially the start of a big exciting Newe Worlde. What was so strange, so bizarre, was the mixture…

So I don't have to bother saying them myself. * SpaceX Dragon on its way to the ISS! (and watch more of it - though I'd skip the first ~40 mins of talk if I were you). Note: I'm a bit behind the times here; see the next post. * The Magistrate's blog - more down to earth: pointing out the stupidity…

Someone's PR folk mailed me CARE and climate change Into Unknown Territory: The limits to adaptation and reality of loss and damage from climate impacts, and the report itself. You know what its like: the first big pic is a poor person with a baby in a dry landscape with a dead cow skeleton; the…

So, we've transitioned to the new platform. Jolly good. However, the last couple of posts (Facebook, and von S) didn't make it across; I've fixed that up, from backup and cache. I believe that, in theory, comments have come across (except on those two posts). If you think you can see some of…

Many thanks to commentor Bam who alerted me to A comment by Alex Harvey: CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA by Hans von Storch CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA complete with big shouty letters. [This is a copy from back-up of a post that was on the old mt site, and didn't get…

I'm not the first to say the obvious, but the FT appears to have misunderstood the world: Some investors accused Facebook of taking advantage of enormous demand to sell at an inflated price it says, commenting on the way FB's shareprice dropped from $38-ish to $34-ish. To which the answer is... WTF…

I finally decided to write this after reading Oregon County Decides to Go Native by DA. My thesis is: we're too confident of our ability to survive changes, and are too inclined to make risky changes, or fail to invest is safety. This might surprise some of you who misread Economics and Climatology…

From BigCityLib comes this gem from Bast: Joe Bast's Response to Scholars Feeling Pressure After Attacks on Heartland. Since this is denial-world, everything is appropriately topsy-turvey. The "attacks" he is talking about are not plural but singular, and is the disastrous billboard campaign, which…

See here - all the Science Blogs type blogs are transitioning platform. This has been semi-secret or something, who knows, anyway clearly it isn't quite so secret anymore. I don't know any deadlines or suchlike, but it can't possibly make the comment system any worse. Refs * That value of English…

No, not physically, alas. Though I did go to Oxford. This post is about people getting too stuck in their own comfort ghetto. Not me, obviously - plenty of people are attacking me :-). This is thrown up by comments at my Economics and Climatology? post, though I've been thinking this for a while.…

Reading P3 and mt I got stuck at ...economics makes grandiose claims to be the science of collective behavior, or even the science of collective happiness. Yet it dismisses any philosophically interesting aspects of these questions in favor of counting dollar-denominated transactions. Nevertheless…

Interesting article from The Economist science section about establishing the presence of shy animals in rainforests by examining leech blood. A highlight comes from one of my relatives: They also found genetic material from the... small-toothed ferret-badger, which is (apparently) impossible to…

Interesting picture, stolen from Early Warning. In case it isn't obvious its the price of coal (mostly stable) and gas (much more spiky, but currently below coal) per Mbtu. Refs * The Future of Natural Gas - Rutt Bridges at Climate, Etc.

It has rained quite a bit recently. I did go down from the bridge and give them a hand in, you realise. In other news... * Adventures in Vim! * Pointless resentment - one for all the people who would rather criticise than help * Swan reveals bone-breaking technique - about Mr Asbo if you hadn't…

Or, A child's garden of wikipedia, part 2. I've been banned from WUWT, after exposing too many of his errors. Although naturally AW doesn't phrase it quite like that. Also, he didn't much like me not showing the adoration that he gets from his fanbois either. Indeed, presumably in an effort to…

Or so argues KK. I have some sympathy for him. Discuss :-) Update: so, read the comments, they are interesting (to me at least). No-one has any sympathy for my sympathy. Refs * Brian's view of the same post.

What is it about GW that brings out such levels of stupidity in so many people? Lets start with the easy bit. There's a paper Impacts of wind farms on land surface temperature by Zhou et al.. It isn't very exciting, but it made into Nature Climate Change, probably because of the inevitable…

I haven't had a tosser for a while, but I think its time for a new one. The evidence is all at Open Mind, that increasingly valuable resource who has done such a good job of shredding so many thoughtless folk. And RP Sr's 7-fold updated post neatly puts him into that category. But what wins RP the…

A tedious detail in the fall-out from the latest Lovelock nonsense. If you're not following, our favourite electron-capturing emeritus has recanted, or perhaps not, who knows. Klimazwiebel has a thread in which, clearly over-awed by his early reputation, they delicately tip-toe around the fact that…