William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
May 14, 2011
The Younger Dryas was a cooling event about 12 kyr ago - see the wikipedia article, which still has the pic I drew in it. It is an example of rapid climate change, and was probably caused by THC shutdown caused by meltwater from the Laurentide icesheet, though exactly how is unclear.
However, some…
May 13, 2011
All I wanted was "the internet is for porn".
It isn't original I'm afraid.
May 12, 2011
From http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf. The email that pointed me at it said "Sincere apologies -- I am very sorry that I did not have time to write a shorter paper" and I think he is correct to apologise. It also says "Climate sensitivity section…
May 11, 2011
If you haven't already, go look at coalcares.org. Then read on.
Yes, its a fake (grist via greenfyre). I feel for it, in the sense that I took one look at the sight, thought "f*ck*ng hell that's ridiculous" and looked no more. But, yes, I'm certainly capable of believing that the coal industry…
May 11, 2011
Time for some more insult-throwing. And Morgan Griffith is a deserving recipient of just about any insult you might care to throw. As the youtube video is so correctly titled: Climate Zombie Morgan Griffith: Vikings, Mars, And Global Cooling (uploaded by climatebrad, which leads off to the Wonkroom…
May 10, 2011
Or perhaps part 3. I've lost track. Sea ice - and now for something just a tiny bit different refers, as does the earlier This year's sea ice. Yes, it looks like being part 3.
The above is the IJIS sea ice. Nothing very exciting at the moment (NSIDC have some nice pix. April 2011 was bang-on trend…
May 5, 2011
However, I'm inclined to think that he isn't a tosser, just naive (as someone said, I don't think Tim understands the policy world very well). He looks a bit naive in his picture, doesn't he? And that is a sure-fire way to tell. But maybe that is me being naive. Well, let me tell you and you can…
May 4, 2011
For UK folks only, on the off chance that anyone reading this is swayable. Do you need any more than my recommendation (which is, FWIW, that AV is marginally better than what we have now, and voting no-I-want-PR is silly)? Then how about JEB? Or the cats-n-dogs version?
And just to pad out the…
April 29, 2011
Still no new science (is there any? Jules and James didn't find much to post about at EGU), but Tamino posted on AF, which prompted me to look up some of my earlier posts. Tamino shows the CO2 growth rate from 1960, and they look upwards, which was rather less obvious when I drew them from 1990 on…
April 22, 2011
To the lakes with the children for a little relaxation out of the flow of normal time, or so it seems from up there. My aunt lives in Torpenhow, a village so small it only just about has a wikipedia article. Its to the north west of the park, beyond Bassenthwaite and Skiddaw, looking out towards…
April 15, 2011
An unusually forthright statement by our Glorious Leaders:
it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power. The International Criminal Court is rightly investigating the crimes committed against civilians and the grievous violations of international law. It is unthinkable that…
April 11, 2011
[Another in a series of posts designed to disguise my failure to come up with a daily sea ice bet. But I'll get there.]
The backstory: a while ago, last September, some friends mentioned that they were training for the Brighton Marathon and would I like to run the Grunty Fen half marathon in two…
April 5, 2011
But he isn't a tosser. I'm sure he'll be glad to know that.
Which Mullah do I mean? I mean Richard Muller (who has one of the worst-looking websites in the known universe, beaten only in my personal experience by TimeCube and (of course) Lubos). Muller is running the Berkeley Earth Surface…
March 31, 2011
I haven't bored you with rowing stuff for a while, you lucky people. But you have to see:
because doing 25 ergs is very very boring. I'll be back next year.
Update: by "popular" demand, here is my list of times. Nothing spectaculr I'm afraid, or even (over such a short period) any real sign of…
March 31, 2011
[Update: see comments. We're having some dispute about whether to bet on the monthly averages (the scientifically respectable thing to do) or daily min (the wildly exciting popular choice). I need to bother work out the numbers. Until then, you'll have to be patient (2011/3/31; I've adjusted the…
March 27, 2011
A weekend in the Peaks for family purposes, and to our great surprise just around the corner was a rather nice cliff. It is very tucked away and rather takes you by surprise. Here's the google maps link. If you scroll out a bit you'll see "Wheeldon Trees Farm holiday cottages" where we stayed, and…
March 24, 2011
To a debate on the Alternative Vote, organised by Cambridge Labour party. I talked about AV a bit before when I was unenthusiastic. I'm still unenthusiastic (which is part of the Tories cunning trick I think) but certainly in favour.
The two debaters were John Denham MP (in favour) and Gavin…
March 19, 2011
Omar Khayaam, sorry I can't do the bold around "distant" in a title. I gave Hugo the popcorn on friday, but it didn't really apply until today. It looks like the Frogs win the first strike award whilst Gaddafi gets the lying scumbag award. The end result of the Gaddafi-vs-the-West military fight…
March 18, 2011
It is all explained here "in a calm rational scientific manner".
Refs
* Japan nuclear threat: The tsunami is the bigger tragedy By David Spiegelhalter, Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, Cambridge University
* Pakistan miners feared dead - for anyone who thought that coal was safe.
*…
March 17, 2011
ScienceBlogs say they've upgraded their Rackspace package in a hyper-whizzy way, which is supposed to have fixed all the problems with IP blocking.
If you're still having trouble, err, and can't read this message, err... ahem, or perhaps you have a friend, yes that's right, or maybe you can read…
March 16, 2011
How about this for misleading tripe from the Grauniad:
Yup, according to them the reactor has killed 4277 people. Or at least, that is what it looks like. Of course, you could also argue that they are trying to claim that the reactors have made the Nikkei go up 5.68%, but no-one would believe that…
March 16, 2011
If you believe in a good, kind, etc God then [[problem of evil]] is to explain away the various obvious features of the world at variance with this belief. People always succeed in doing so, because they want to. A good trick with any form of human badness is to invoke Free Will: obviously God…
March 15, 2011
Nukes in Japan are going off like badly-racked champagne bottles, and the only thing fiercer than the radiation levels is the press circus (I liked that as a sort of simile-thingy, but actually at the moment the radiation levels aren't desperately fierce). How do you folks without blogs manage to…
March 14, 2011
We're back, hoorah!
[Update: but then last night, we were down again. Clearly whatever problems are going on have not been fully resolved.]
Scienceblogs has been down for the past few days, at least for me and a number of readers; though a small trickle of comments coming in suggests some people…
March 7, 2011
As a respite from all the people whinging about scientists being poor communicators, Eli writes Blaming the Other Guy While Copying from the Guy Who Buys the Drinks in which he points out the obvious: the people doing a crap job of communicating science are the journalists.
To which I'd add: that…
March 5, 2011
And apsmith's Mathematical analysis of Roy Spencer's climate model has the story.
Poor Roy. He has backed himself so far into a corner that he no longer has anyone competent to discuss his ideas with, with the result that he publishes (in a book, because no-one would publish it in a journal) utter…
March 4, 2011
This week is the Lent bumps, and I've been down to watch (except tuesday, when I forgot - since when do the bumps run over 5 days? - and thursday, when it was grey and miserable). Today was a lovely still sunny chill March afternoon, and I was rewarded with some fine bumping action to watch. First…
March 3, 2011
Neither of which has anything to do with climate change. They are:
* Foster parent ban: 'extreme distress' of 'anti-gay' Christians' over ruling courtesy of the Torygraph; and
* ECJ gender ruling hits insurance costs
God hates fags
I was going to rant about the first one but I won't (err, other…
February 28, 2011
Time for another look at sea ice. Here is the familiar IARC-JAXA plot:
And we see: well, it is looking low, and has been consistently all winter. Not record-breakingly, like it was last December, but even so. Interesting.
This year, I'm not planning to run a book, unless anyone offers to make a…
February 27, 2011
Scenes from a ski-ing holiday to Les Deux alpes a few years back. This is La Roche de la Muzelle, which I think is gorgeous. Maybe I'll get to climb it one day. Summitpost says it is PD / II (though not in winter) and the route to it goes over that beautiful roman bridge.
These are the…