William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
September 15, 2008
clearclimatecode.org is a project of Nick Barnes, who occasionally comments here. Its an attempt to re-write the byzantine GISS historical record processing software into something that won't disgrace the 21st century, namely Python (boo hiss, but mt will be happy).
So the bugfixes are nice and…
September 15, 2008
People have been posting comments about the sea ice again. We're close to the min, though maybe not there yet, but from http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm, which I think is the best pic available, it looks good for the good guys.
The original in this series is Betting on sea…
September 14, 2008
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Oops.
Update: now we know why they keeled over.
Update: Incidentally,…
September 11, 2008
Oh dear. Yet another victim of the std.nonsense global cooling error. "Thanks" to ABM for pointing this out. If you can bear watching piles of twaddle, get in quick before the BBC watch-again feature expires.
But if you're unfamiliar with the issue, don't watch sh*t* on the Beeb, read wiki or RC.
I…
September 11, 2008
My post on Nieremberg has generated lots of interesting comments. I still don't have the report, so for now I'll focus on on issue that came up: who commissioned the N report?
Oreskes says: In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president... Reagan commissioned a third report about global warming from…
September 10, 2008
More than a year ago, I thought Citizendium was cr*p. And it still is: see its GW article. The top bit is a fairly sane cp of wiki; the bottom half is a fairly insane mix of septic tripe. If you know what you're doing, you can separate out the two. But as a resource for those who don't already know…
September 10, 2008
Posted to an internal newsgroup:
Customer: Hi there, I sent you two sample units last week so you could investigate our problem. Can you give us an update on your progress?
CSR: We accelerated your units up to 99.9% of the speed of the light and smashed them into each other, by looking at the bits…
September 9, 2008
BBC R4 had an interview this morning with two prof-types, prior to the LHC startup, and in a nod to the science they were asked for an analogy about how the Higgs particle (wot I don't believe in) produces mass. So they said (apparently this is a familiar idea): its like a cocktail party; if…
September 9, 2008
[This is my 600th post!]
Oreskes says:
So Reagan commissioned a third report [this appears to be false: see below -W] about global warming from Bill Nierenberg, who had made his name working on the Manhattan Project developing America's atom bomb. He went on to run the Scripps Institution of…
September 8, 2008
I seem to spend a lot of time disagreeing with Hansen, so I shall record my agreement with his if you look at their actions, emissions are continuing to increase. All of these countries and the United States are planning to build more coal-fired power plants. And if you build more coal-fired power…
September 6, 2008
These were part of my reading matter for the summer. They contrast somewhat; the former is by Paul Graham and is a collection of essay about the software world; the latter is a classic novel by Stendhal. But they do link together, vaguely, in this sense:
One of PG's themes is money, or wealth as he…
September 6, 2008
This starts from Pielke Jr commenteing at RC that the 1990 IPCC grossly overestimated sea level rise to date, and pointing to his post here as proof. Its nonsense, of course.
[Aside: Chinese Cut Back Coal-to-liquids from John Fleck is interesting.]
Pielke does the familiar rub-out-all-the-…
September 5, 2008
England is famous for its rubbish weather, but this summer has been unusually poor. As it happened that didn't affect us much and we had a great summer: we got a few days sun on the beach to start us off; managed to climb Snowdon and not get rained on by the summit cloud much; spend a week off in…
September 5, 2008
The story so far... IPCC sez sea-level rise (SLR) by 2100 (0.18 to 0.6 m), but this excluded dynamic effects on the grounds that present understanding of the relevant processes is too limited for reliable model estimates. It even said so fairly explicitly in the SPM table heading (Model-based range…
September 4, 2008
The Castle in fact. With ASA. Misc:
Ran is Japanese King Lear, except the children are male, because it wouldn't be plausible for Japanese females to be in that position. But its not especially plausible for English females either. Why aren't the children in Lear male? Only possible answer we could…
September 2, 2008
Just one of an avalanche of tedious blogosphere reactions to google chrome. This afternoon I was reading the comic book (at work, I confess, but I wasn't alone) and now I've downloaded it and this is written in it.
So far I haven't seen any obvious advantages over firefox (other than the porno-…
September 2, 2008
Stein alerts me to Obama answering the science debate questions, and provides some of his own commentary. T' Intersection reports, but wimps out of any analysis. The answers are here. So, looking only at those bits that interest me:
1. Innovation... What policies will you support to ensure that…
September 1, 2008
Atmoz complains about this version of the WAIS article. As he says, it was full of cr*p.
So why didn't he just fix it? I have now.
Sadly, that article comes into the not-very-prominent article class, which means few people watch it, and no-one competent was writing it. It even features Rappers "…
September 1, 2008
Not Michael, sadly, but Sarah. Just my opinion, briefly: I know nothing about her (just like everyone else) but it seems transparently obvious that she has been chosen ins a hurry to hoover up the Hillary-ites; ie, she is a gimmick (independently of whatever virtues she may possess) not a real…
August 31, 2008
Stop me if someone has done this already (Eli?; OK, Deltoid has something)... I'm still catching up. But US climate report comes under fire caught my eye, as did the link to RP's take.
My first comment would be, isn't this report just a teensy bit pointless, we have the IPCC report. I doubt there…
August 31, 2008
Best climate cartoon for a long time: http://xkcd.com/402/
Attached to some serious science via Nature.
August 30, 2008
The long school holidays draw to a close, and with it the disruptions to my online-ness.
We went to Mallorca, we went to Wales, we went to Torpenhow (the latter set is rather boring because the interesting ones are private. Sorry).
So I have to catch up on a whole pile of online stuff, and rant…
August 23, 2008
I've been on hols again - life is tough when you have kids - and am working my way through the backlog. I find...
Friends of the Earth has a campaign to reduce CO2 emission limits for cars. Apparently:
* In October 2008 the European Parliament is to vote to adopt the European Commission's proposed…
August 13, 2008
Not the Georgians and the Russians, though indications are they they too have pulled back from utter stupidity. No, this is far more important: rowing, and in particular the bumps. Background: those paying close attention on day 4 will have noticed the problem with Robs 1. It seems that the 10…
August 13, 2008
A fine, although minor, example of wikisuicide comes from discourseur. Be sure to check the talk page and contributions if interested in the details.
Oh, and Abd has done the same, but at truely interminable length. Read it and... weep? Laugh? Recoil in astonishment at the mindboggling waste of…
August 11, 2008
Nothing much going on with sea ice at the moment, but people are getting excited about it, so why shouldn't I contribute to the smoke?
[A little concept I just created in the comments but am so pleased with I'm going to put it here: is 2007's Arctic sea ice like 1998's global temperature?]
First up…
August 10, 2008
Not that Georgia of course, I mean the country.
In one of the stupidest political miscalculations since Bush thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq, the Georgian Prez seems to have decided that since everyone was watching the olympics on telly now would be a good time to "invade" South Ossetia (…
July 25, 2008
Our first proper "late" row, since we're now proud mebers of division 2. Time at the start to say hello to Amelie before being rudely interrupted by the 4 minute gun. I was busily trying to plaster up my hand having torn a callus off and... oooohhh, it did hurt a bit. Meanwhile, back at the rowing…
July 24, 2008
A good night last night: we got X-press 4 after about 40 strokes fairly well as expected, and we rowed about as we expected: a fast start then a bit splashy then just beginning to settle when it was time to stop. Which left us sandwich boat into division 2. Only a little tired we spun and had a…
July 23, 2008
Or thereabouts. Might have been 15, might have been 25. Barring disaster we were always going to get robs 6, and they knew it just as well as us. Good turn out on the bank to watch us as well, so all the more satisfying. X-press 4 were 1, so assuming they didn't bump up into M2 (unlikely, since…