stoat

Just for once, a vaguely work-related post, but without any work. What is wrong with this (its in C, of course): switch (stoat) { bool goat = TRUE; case weasel: goat = FALSE /* Fallthrough */ case ferret: mustelid(goat); break; ... } where you…

I'm going to intermittently keep track of the comments I make on other blogs. I'll spare you the totally trivial ones, but I don't guarantee this to be especially interesting. One point of doing this will be to track the ones that "disappear" on various sites (no names for now) that I've found don'…

I've just tried to turn on registration, to deal with spam. It is probably doomed. Please try to leave a comment on this post letting me know how it worked. If it just totally f*cks up, then email me (wmconnolley (at) gmail.com). If just-post fails, try previewing first. OK, it is totally f*ck*d.…

Those with long memories will note that this is a re-post of this from my old blog. I've hoicked it over here because I read Stratospheric Cooling, April 18, 2010, by scienceofdoom who says "Why Is the Stratosphere Expected to Cool from Increases in "Greenhouse" Gases? This is a difficult one to…

I speak personally, I should add, not of the world in general. I can't find my spring post - maybe I didn't do one - but I recall only taking about 4-5 frames off, which is pretty poor by spring standards - I normally expect a couple of supers. Two days ago (I mention this because I put in the…

One issue about the infamous Spencer and Braswell (incidentally, who is Braswell? Everyone is ignoring him, is he a nonentity? ) is, of course, who were the referees? The suspicion voiced in various places is that Spencer managed to wangle skeptics in as his referees; indeed, Wagner in his…

This couldn't be more damming: the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing... should therefore not have been published... I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result,…

There is a Wikileaks fiasco going about. Der Spiegel has what looks like a plausible story. If you read the Wikileaks version after that, the latter looks rather incomplete and self-serving. The Grauniad also says "not us guv" which isn't quite true: if they hadn't been dumb enough to publish the…

The story so far: some nut attacks Rahmstorf, comparing him to Aryan physics in a letter to the German TV channel ZDF. The usual fools get confused, the usual fools propagate the nonsense. But this time there is a happy ending, as the lawyers step in and stamp it out (lawyers good? Well maybe not…

Every now and again I remember to look at this year's sea ice, and it is as depressing as looking at the share prices :-( 2011 is already #3, and will almost inevitably make #2, though probably not #1. Refs * Betting on sea ice: $10,000 * This year's sea ice * Around Bee Rescue, Honey and Rancor…

This is my site, and one of the facilities I provide is a signal to noise ratio. You want unmoderated discussion? Go and drown in usenet, which I abandoned years ago. In other words, I reserve the right to trim or delete junk [*]. Naturally, since they are your words, you will not see them as junk…

Clearly, everyone wants to have a long discussion about GW etc etc, and maybe I haven't provided a venue for this for a while. But I've now found an excuse, prompted by (or perhaps more accurately, simply ripping off) mt, who has looked at The Truth About Greenhouse Gases by William Happer. mt says…

Steve [*] Schneier (security expert and tee-shirt provider to the cognoscenti) has a post in which he pokes at the massive costs of counter-terrorism, apparently out of all proportion to the threat. However, he has a bizarrely wrong calculation: I quote: The death toll of all these is... sixteen…

This post is more an appeal for info than anything useful in itself. But I'll probably update it if I get anything. Fukushima refers. My question, in the context of the area around Fukushima that is contaminated by radioactivity, is how much is actually contaminated, in the sense of now having…

Time to be nice about something. I was quite cynical in February, but to my surprise we did do something useful, the rebels were brave enough to overcome their lack of organistaion, and after much chaos and death it has worked; the "rebels" are now the government, Gaddafi is a fugitive from…

The Fukushima stuff was all very exciting, and doubtless still is if you live nearby (James?). But it does seem to lead to high levels of drivel from the more soppy-hand-wringing Guardianista types: We had a pretty good warning earlier this year, when the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan…

Where are we? There is an interesting story to it. Note that you can trivially find the answer by clicking on the pic for its name, so don't do that if you want to play the game. [Update: your questions answered at Holiday in Spain: Chemin de la Mature] Refs * Where am I now?

Note the double question mark. That is because I'm quoting Can we Grow the Economy Any More? I'll let you go off and read that post now, if you like. Done so? Good. Now for my ignorant rant: What strikes me particularly is point 6, or a variant thereof: effectively, that we're too fat, as a…

ABSTRACT: Despite the existence of a clear scientiï¬c consensus about global warming, opinion surveys ï¬nd confusion among the American public, regarding both scientiï¬c issues and the strength of the scientiï¬c consensus. Evidence increasingly points to misinformation as a contributing factor.…

In not-very-exciting news just in National Science Foundation vindicates Michael Mann. Or you can read Romm's version. [Well, who would have guessed it? This non-news really riles the denialists and the trolls. To be open, I knew it was troll-bait but couldn't resist. And perhaps it is useful to…

I've said before (and correctly sourced the original observation to JA) that atmospheric methane is way below its IPCC scenarios (which of course leads to a lower forcing). There is a recent thing in Nature that may explain this: Atmospheric methane (CH4) increased through much of the twentieth…

RP Jr is doing weird stuff - well, he's doing what he's done before: misunderstanding the science, in a very fundamental way, and then arguing tendentiously in a desperate attempt to throw enough confusion in the air to hide his original error. JA has the details. Come on RP: just say sorry and…

Shamelessly stolen from mt. [Yes, I've been on holiday, but I'm back now. Prepare to be bored by my holiday snaps!] Refs * Vilnius mayor crushes car parked in cycle lane

Well, the riots. And whilst Harry Hutton, as usual, talks a great deal of sense, the sense of surprise remains. The beak makes some good early points; initial reports were very vague; but it now looks like only the police fired. Which really doesn't help. Part of the recent phone hacking stuff has…

BTW, if you want a laugh, go to http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/. When you've stopped laughing (or despairing, if you thought her saveable) at her puffing twaddle, scroll down a fraction and read "Moderation note: this is a technical thread, comments will be moderated for…

"Dr" Roy Spencer has finally and conclusively demolished all arguments opposing his position that... well, whatever his position is. Read All About It. But that isn't the interesting bit, obviously. The interesting bit is that the black helicopters are coming for him and his tin-foil hat: Given…

Misc stuff. I think I'll press "publish" now to distract you. Oh look, there's a badger... Early Warning with some interesting speculation and pointers re the possible US default. The "only someone batshit crazy would do that; oh f*ck, these teabaggers *are* batshit crazy" is fun. But I like the…

My morning blog-reading threw up Well, no Mr. Chakrabortty, no wherein Timmy is characteristically blunt about the failings of politicians. You don't have to agree, this is only the lead-in to my own view. The problem with Timmy's analysis is that no, most politicians aren't idiots, they are quite…

We interrupt your diet of rowing (briefly) to point out that David Appell has found Watts to be rather less than open to inconvenient information - despite Watts having asked for that very information. This is nothing new or interesting, of course. Trolls, please form an orderly queue. Refs * The…

[This post written in arrears and given an in-arrears date, so few people will see it. But I care.] So, day 4. Champs 1 again ahead of us, and we sort-of resolved to go for it rather harder this time, but in a slightly vague way. We mostly decided that we would aim to get them by the Plough; and if…