William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
November 4, 2009
Tiljander and od^4 refer.
Over the past few days, it has become clear to me that the entire issue of "flipping" or "upside-down-ness" of the Tiljander proxy is a red-herring.
Here's why:
Imagine a climate proxy, accurate over the last 2kyr, that shows (for example, let us suppose) a warm period…
November 3, 2009
Its fish in a barrel time, but Corbyn seems to have had his International Conference. It doesn't look very exciting. As RB says: Did the meeting live up to its billing of "refuting, totally, the CO2 theory of warming"? Hardly. Because doing that seriously doesn't mean refuting it to my satisfaction…
November 2, 2009
Yes indeed. Sorry. Weeelll. No I'm not, really.
Anyway, so I was idly browsing my "shared by" in google reader and came across My Rebuttal to Romm which is by Keith Kloor who I know nothing about other than that I read Joe Romm ranting at him at some point. Kloor defends himself - read it if you're…
November 2, 2009
[This one for James, of course.]
I do so love the word "seminal", it brings back my public school days. Anyway, Nurture writes: Oxford climatologist Myles Allen and collaborators, who, in April this year, published two seminal papers in Nature..., which were Warming caused by cumulative carbon…
November 1, 2009
Halloween. I went as the Spirit of the Night though Patrick thought I was Ash Man. It came off, fortunately.
Sunday was wet, so over the new bridge to the Museum of Technology which is a rather odd place, housed in the former sewage pumping works and city rubbish burner, now housing a…
October 29, 2009
It seems like everyone wants to talk about Tiljander. I don't, particularly, but you gotta give the customers what they want, so here is a thread to discuss it if you like. The comment policy still applies, but I'll be laxer. Comments incorrectly paraphrasing others will be harshly dealt with.…
October 27, 2009
Please don't force me to write another of these, I'll run out of "oh dear"s.
The issue is RP Jr venturing into areas of climate science he doesn't understand (see losing the plot for the last one I remember) and dragging Cruel Mistress along behind, though to be fair CM doesn't fully commit herself…
October 27, 2009
There is a slightly weird AP news article by Seth Borenstein which purports to show that In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature…
October 25, 2009
In training for Boston, I did a 1 hour erg cos the ladies were doing them, and sort of enjoyed it. And then we did Boston which was 50 km, but we weren''t really racing. And so I wondered how long an actual marathon (42.195 km) would take. And the answer is 3:20:58.4 (almost. I confess that I set…
October 24, 2009
Not Vicki this time. No, its the one about those naughty left-footers poaching the bums on our seats. Speaking of bums, apparently the apostates say: "The Church of England is, in the view of many of us, ceasing to be the church of Jesus Christ and becoming the church of political correctness, not…
October 23, 2009
Roger is having a spot of trouble: everyone is being nasty to him. Once upon a time the mighty Prometheus bestrode the world like a Colossus and ate big fish for breakfast, but now it seems Roger swims with the minnows and it isn't a nice world down there. Eli shows him no mercy - wabbits are a…
October 23, 2009
By way of a contrast, here is something I like: home-made bread. Also an index of how relaxed I feel. I've come to like the "make lots of rolls and let them rise into each other" style.
October 23, 2009
Hardly an original sentiment I know, but I feel moved to make a token gesture of disgust at the monstrous bloated pile of junk that can't even paste text sanely and appears unable to resize a table in a comprehensible manner.
October 21, 2009
The Economist has a couple of articles on energy policy and climate change, both related to Britain's Committee on Climate Change, an untested body. My title comes from the first, which basically says that a carbon tax would be a good idea (I agree). The second sits rather oddly with the first, and…
October 20, 2009
The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years' time, a top polar specialist has said. Don't believe it, but who is saying it? Yes, its the Beeb again, determined to run their reputation into the ground and then hammer it six feet under.…
October 19, 2009
Well not *my* religion because I didn't have one to lose, certainly not since I refused to be Confirmed at about age 13. Though I do like the churches and the stonework a lot; and the old hymns. No, I went to the Cambridge Union Society to hear that Paul Wright talk to the Aetheist Society, pretty…
October 17, 2009
Flipping through a book of Magritte at luchtime after our race (10:08; (see the full results for context; yes I know you don't care this is for my records) which is quite passable for a crew with several near-novices rowing a floating wardrobe (we reckon the K8 was built late-1950's to early-1960'…
October 13, 2009
I liked Freakonomics, so I'm a bit sad to see the (inevitable) sequel being so hopelessly wrong. Probably this is a case of the old rule: whenever you see people write about stuff you know, they get it wrong. Joe Romm has a fairly characteristic attack; and just for a change I'll agree with him;…
October 11, 2009
I have Hank to "thank" for pointing me towards http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.stm, which was presumably written to prove that the BBC is no longer sane or indeed terribly interested in reality.
Rather than that, you're better off with something like RC: A warming pause?.
Why they write…
October 10, 2009
Its the traditional sea ice round up season. This year I have some solid wins (a bit of real money; Luna and Fred and Alastair I think) and a marginal loss (50 Quantloos to The Penguin).
Just to prove how debased I am, here is an excel spreadsheet graph:
My prediction was that the ice would "…
October 7, 2009
Which is, wittily, Yamal backwards. The shape of this is now becoming clearer; I think it is safe to post.
I first ran across this in The Torygraph, which is worthless, but appears to be based on climateaudit.org/?p=7168. RC ripped into this but its a bit snarky (unlike me, obviously) and perhaps…
October 4, 2009
Today I managed to sneak enough time in a warmish day to have a look at the bees. I was going to take the honey off but looking in decided that there was about enough to see them through the winter but not much more - not enough to be worth taking off. Another poor summer for beekeeping. So I…
September 29, 2009
So says Krugman. He means, of course, that the scientists are predicting disaster but no-one is listening. Or rather, that people listen but then find doing anything too inconvenient. Since this happened over fishing I find it not at all odd. But Krugman's basic premise - the sense that we're…
September 28, 2009
We all hate science by press release which is why we all love the good old stodgy UKMO (now rebranded the Met Office, note no dot) who would never write Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes oh no of course not. The Torygraph has much the same thing. Sigh. They seem to…
September 27, 2009
Sarah (whose blog is rather emptier than James' so-called EB) is walking from Cambridge to the Sea to celebreate her age; and she invited company; so I joined her for stretch today from Ely to Littleport. It was a glorious day for it, sunny with just a light wind. It is a funny bit of the river…
September 22, 2009
Off on an email list we've been discussing wildfires and their connection to global warming. I've always been somewhat cynical about the connection, which appears in the popular press [1] to amount to "fires are hot, global warming is, err, warm, so they must be connected". However, I really do…
September 21, 2009
Subtitle: Snow white and the seven dwarves, though it is some time since I've been snowy white (even if I am wearing my SEH MCR 1988 top and my "these are older than you are young lady" rowing shorts) and some of the ladies are bigger than me. Left to right: Anne, Ev, Mels father (support car…
September 16, 2009
Says Nature. Well, good, is my first reaction. It is set at â¬17 (and phased in) whereas â¬40 was apparently the minimum considered worthwhile. Furthermore "the plan is to phase in higher carbon prices over time, but Sarkozy failed to give further details" so we'll have to see. More from the beeb…
September 12, 2009
Everyone else blogs about what they've read (everyone? Well, this is a blog, who cares about accuracy. Bryan does and I'm sure other people do to). And I happen to notice that my queue of books-I've-finished-reading looks quite good just now. Once upon a time (well, since my teens up to only a few…
September 10, 2009
Tim Lambert normally does the Iraq war, for example this. But I was struck by a recent Economist (you know, those left-wing pinkos) article bemoaning Iraq's descent into a police state. Which is a shame, because in the nearly-unmitigated disaster that is our adventure in Iraq, the restoration of…