William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
January 31, 2007
DeSmog Leaks Advance Copy of Think Tank's IPCC Attack it says, and it is so. Presumptuously it calls itself the Independent SPM, but I think Septics SPM is more appropriate. Wot they have done is to draw up their own fantasy list of conclusions they would like the AR4 to make, based on the April…
January 28, 2007
More exciting leaks from the AR4, and a tale of two newspapers. Which, I'm sad to say, results in a resounding victory for the US.
The rubbish story is Experts split over climate danger to Antarctica; Scientists challenge 'cautious' UN report; Robin McKie, science editor from the Observer. Its a…
January 28, 2007
My saner readers, I'm sure, aren't in the habit of reading Lubos; and indeed neither am I; so we have Ken Brook to thank for drawing Peer-reviewed global cooling to my attention. Its long on words but, oddly enough, rather short on actual quotes from papers doing things like predicting cooling. The…
January 26, 2007
No not me, sadly :-(
RP has a nice article on and exceprting a piece by Richard Benedick on Climate Policy. One bit that struck me:
These UN mega-conferences have by now developed a predictable pattern. Considerable time is occupied by tedious problems of coordinating positions and tactics, both…
January 25, 2007
I used to play Go at university and after, but rather dropped out when I had children. Recently I've started playing online again, though its a somewhat inhuman way of playing. One of the themes of those times was that computers were rubbish at Go, in contrast their chess performance (one of the…
January 25, 2007
There is a r4 prog on Running the rule over Stern's numbers tonigh (8 pm). Apparently I get my 5 mins of fame at some point during it, we shall have to see.
Update:
Well, I was indeed there, for rather longer than I expected. I particularly liked the bit where I say "the A2 scenario, this, err red…
January 24, 2007
Having been rather negative about bio-fuels, I'll be positive and mention The ethanol program in Brazil. And the abstract is: The number of automobiles in the world has been growing fast and today requires one quarter of the global petroleum consumption. This problem requires adequate solutions,…
January 23, 2007
Not quite up to Albuquerque levels, but may well be the once-in-a-year event for Cambridge. We woke up to... a white blanket enveloping everything, or so it looked at first sight. On second sight it was a bit thinner and the grass was showing through. Still, it was enough for Daniel to get up and…
January 23, 2007
Eli (normally a sensible chap) says: I think a lot of this revolves around the dichotomy between the rise to be observed by date x, the rise committed to (in the sense of there is no way of stopping it) by date y, and the ultimate rise z. There are three different shells and you have to be careful…
January 23, 2007
In the Grauniad this time: "Global warming: the final verdict" (oh good, we can stop work and do something else!).
One for Roger: A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like…
January 18, 2007
This is a recipe for peanut butter cookies. It was my sons homework last weekend. It worked out very well so I shall put it here so I don't lose it.
You need: 75g butter; 50g peanut butter (we used smooth); 100g castor sugar; 100g soft brown sugar; 1 egg; 150g flour; 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Turn oven to…
January 17, 2007
I'm getting a bit annoyed with people pushing over-inflated estimates of SRL in the near future. Richard Alley apparently said There is no consensus on how much Greenland's ice will melt in the near future, Dr. Alley said, and no computer model that can accurately predict the future of the ice…
January 16, 2007
There is a Science Blogging Anthology and an old post of mine on RC - the global cooling myth is in it.
Apparently the book was produced in 3 weeks, such is the modern scheme, and is available via "lulu" print-on-demand services.
January 15, 2007
In my review of AIT I deliberately obscured any science message by talking about carbon offsetting :-). But I did say: Pretty animations of 5m sea level rise flooding Manhattan and whatever. No mention of timescale. Its very dubious showing this stuff without saying "and this won't happen in 100…
January 15, 2007
Volume 7, Number 4 (October-December 2006) of World Economics has a "dual review" of the science and economics of Stern. You need a subscription (or a friend...) to read wot those usual suspects Robert M. Carter, C. R. de Freitas, Indur M. Goklany, David Holland & Richard S. Lindzen wrote, and…
January 12, 2007
The question is... are carbon offsets OK? Can you throw away your guilt/sins about a jet-setting lifestyle by spending a few extra dollars on carbon offsetting? The answer is, I don't know (refernces: my review of AIT (which was intended to be ab out science but got a bit sidetracked) and BS's…
January 11, 2007
A reader writes in bafflement:
William, I just can't tell, through what seems to be all the increasing cynicism (you also seem to be going a tad CAish), what you position wrt anthro climate change (how much, why, and what we should do) and the other changes wrought by us is anymore. On a slightly…
January 10, 2007
At the third or fourth chance, the convenience of having this thing screened at BAS in the (extended) lunch break was too much to miss, and I've seen it. Its a documentary (I suppose) but a partisan one (maybe they all are...). Nothing really gets any caveats, unlike all my posts (for which see Ms…
January 8, 2007
I've previously noted that although the UK govts *action* on climate change is fairly feeble, the rhetoric has been good. For example, Blur said: This is the most important report on the future published by the Government in our time in office... What is more, unless we act now, not some time…
January 8, 2007
Stern (presumably to inflate his damage estimates (or am I being unfair? After all, climate change will continue beyond 2100...) runs scenarios out to 2200 (see fig 6.5).
But if you look at those pics, the lines are suspiciously straight from 2100 to 2200. So they are interpolated. But from what?…
January 3, 2007
Via Miriam, I see that Bad Science (Ben Goldacre's column in the Grauniad) is now a book (pre-publication); so is Tim Worstall's though he may not be so happy with the "31 used & new available from £0.01"!
More amusingly (again via M) is Hairy Pooter 7, which although not yet published already…
January 3, 2007
I've just used Peoplesoft to do my forward job plan for the year. Around BAS, PS is notorious for being unintuitive and annoying in the way it forces you to do things, and I feel the same. But the odd thing is that, when I got home, I realised it hadn't taken me long at all to actually do - rather…
January 3, 2007
James Annan makes two good points in a comment, which I'll reproduce here:
Actually, it looks like Stern chose a rather optimistic cost of stabilisation, 1/3 of the cost that JQ estimated, although of course JQ does his best to backtrack and excuse Stern on that score.
I wonder how things look if…
January 2, 2007
Not my headline, but from The Independent", seeking to keep to its reputation as most environmentally overhyped paper. A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain's…
December 21, 2006
Today is the solstice, hurrah, days get longer from now on. And we've just come through our first hard frosts of the winter into Fog. So here is a joke, told to me by Daniel from his friend Adam:
One night, a butcher, a baker and a candlemaker are together in a locked room with barred windows and…
December 21, 2006
... as said by the wise CIP in the comments. Although I wasn't quite sure how to interpret it. BTW, this is yet more Stern stuff - sorry.
So the first thing to say is... I'm not really happy expressing all this in terms of GDP. We could all be a lot happier on lower incomes if... well, if I was…
December 19, 2006
OK, I'm desperately trying to understand Stern, and failing. Things just don't seem to connect together properly. Possibly if I actually read the entire thing carefully... but who has the time. So, if anyone can explain to me:
Stern sez: Using the results from formal economic models, the Review…
December 19, 2006
NERC has a bold new initiative... the NERC Climate Change Challenge. As they say Scientific evidence demonstrates clearly that human activity is changing the planet's climate. But there are still sceptics who dispute the data and its interpretation. If you don't believe the science, please tell us…
December 18, 2006
RP Sr has yet another post The Relevance of Nonlinear Effects In the Climate System pushing the usual stuff: Thus if we accept that small perturbations can result in significant changes in the climate system through nonlinear interactions, then all of the human- and natural climate forcings need to…