William M. Connolley
stoat
Posts by this author
August 31, 2015
I previously promised to read Hansen et al., and I finally have - well, at least skimmed. It hasn't really changed my opinions.
global CO2 emissions continue to increase... the threat posed by ice sheet instability and sea level rise
This is in accord with what I've said before, that the most…
August 28, 2015
I'm back. Did you miss me? Don't all say "no" at once.
A piece from the Torygraph about the unfolding disaster that is Jeremy Corbyn's run for head of the Labour party; they can barely contain their glee, of course, but I did like the idea of someone forcasting communist weather; Boris, perhaps.…
August 19, 2015
Steve Easterbrook recently asked "Who first coined the term “Greenhouse Effect”?" which reminded me of my translation, off on my private website (which is currently the top google hit for "Fourier 1827: MEMOIRE sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires", woot). Anyway, I…
August 15, 2015
Yet another "academic" article about wikipedia (Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale; Adam M. Wilson, Gene E. Likens):
Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most frequently accessed encyclopedic references, despite the ease with which content can be changed and…
August 14, 2015
The Greeks certainly yielded, but that's not what I'm talking about. No, this is about bond yields, specifically the inverted yield curve that Greek bonds show at the moment. And its jolly interesting (no, really, don't go... oh).
I should begin by saying I don't know what I'm talking about. I…
August 13, 2015
Fun in comet land. The great silences of space give one pause for thought in the face of the chatter and noise of Earth. Speaking of which, Paul Mason (who he?) says:
By neoliberalism I mean the global capitalist system shaped around a core of neoliberal practices and institutions, themselves…
August 7, 2015
I was pointed at What’s the point of BBC guidelines when it comes to climate change? in the Graun by Richard Black (director, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and former BBC science and environment correspondent (errm, I mean that's who RB is. It wasn't him that pointed me at that piece)). And…
August 3, 2015
Last year we went to the the Peloponnese for our summer holidays. This year... we did again.
My only excuse for this post is for the bits vaguely related to the pol /econ stuff I've posted. There wasn't much of that visible. Had I not known, I wouldn't have suspected a country in crisis. We took…
August 2, 2015
One of my favourite journal-club comments, from back in the days when I did science, about a previous Hansen paper that failed to find favour. I'm hoping to actually read the Hansen Noveau, and hopeful that it isn't just old wine in new bottles, but first a brief comment about comment policy. Blogs…
July 18, 2015
I'm not sure where this comes from (David Hone reminded me of it) but the UCS has The Climate Deception Dossiers which breathlessly tells us Internal fossil fuel industry memos reveal decades of disinformation—a deliberate campaign to deceive the public that continues even today. This is news? Its…
July 17, 2015
I want to write about some new stuff, but in the course of it I need to rehearse what I've said about Exxon over the years. So I'll do it here, for reference. Some of it is so far in the past it predates blogging.
sci.env: 1997
1997? Were there really such years?
Exxon Chairman puts Climate Change…
July 11, 2015
From the wildlife photographer of the year awards, 2014. Herfried Marek, Austria: Golden birch. I was browsing the book in Waterstones today, and came across this, and was struck. It is brilliant. Shades of Rice terraces in Yunnan in the way that what's actually a photograph looks like a painting.…
July 10, 2015
I feel like writing about the Greek crisis. I discover that I wrote about the last one, so I've nicked my witty headline from then.
The situation as it is now, or at least my reading of it: the Greeks have caved in. After lots of posturing, the reality of two weeks of banks shut and no other way…
June 28, 2015
Mark Lynas, one of the EcoMod crowd, has noticed what I pointed out - that Da Fadder is not on their side, indeed opposed. Whether the Bishop of Rome has noticed that the EcoMods disagree with him is another matter.
ML roughly parallels what I said, but gets carried away with the goodness of his…
June 28, 2015
No, not Eli but The Economist. You'll be unsurprised to learn that they have a somewhat different perspective, closer to mine, or perhaps vice versa.
They do some half-hearted "analysis" of the South Africa and Israel disinvestment campaigns, but really all they do is point at a couple of graphs…
June 25, 2015
This post was originally about Laudato Si. But it took ages to write, and then James wrote something incomprehensible [Update: CIP explains] which expressed some of the snark I was going to use; so I don't need to do that bit. And then ATTP wrote yet another post about the Ecomodernists.
The bit…
June 14, 2015
Matthew Parris in the Times; an opinion piece. However, the headline is incidental (and rather odd, since the article is mostly directed at Conservatives), what I wanted was the text, irritatingly pay-walled:
This vaguely chimes with recent discussions, especially about the wording of [[Climate…
June 13, 2015
Arrr, the ol' spinnin' post, its seen a thing or two over the years. You could probably reconstruct the headship changes from its various colours. Last painted by Downing, when they went head in Lents in 2014; Caius were too cool to repaint it when they stayed head in Mays of that year, or re-took…
June 9, 2015
Its all over bar the tidying up; see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sockpuppet investigation block/Proposed decision - which, somewhat confusingly, is the real decision. Chase-Me is stripped of all priv: CheckUser, Oversight and (once Arbcomm grew a spine) Sysop too. Oh, and independently,…
June 8, 2015
Which is the odd one out?
(from the Graun).
[Update: and the answer is, the one on the far left, because it isn't odd; as most people answered, with varying degrees of formality.]
[Update, from the comments, CR offers us a rather easier "spot the odd one out":]
June 5, 2015
Never mind yer twitterings or blogospherics or facey bookers, when people come in future years to look back and ask "when did people stop wittering about the pause" they'll see
2015-06-05T12:34:10 Yakushima (talk | contribs) . . (31,755 bytes) (+17) . . (Treating it as a hypothesis rather than…
June 5, 2015
Once again the fearless Graun is out to name-n-shame Shell. Or something. I only noticed because of Dave Hone's post. The Graun whinges:
But the most damaging email is dated 8 May 2014... <stuff I don't much care about> And it ends: “Regarding the gallery update, can I check whether you have…
May 29, 2015
I must admit that I'm surprised, because up till now I've not detected this, or heard of anyone complain of it. Routine censorship, of course, but fakery is a new thing. So:
Potholes In Their Arguments is a post on the recent IMF report. I put in a comment pointing out that it was a bit late to…
May 28, 2015
Hard on the heels of Wegman's farcical attempt to sue Mashey comes Watts's incompetent attempt to meat-puppet wiki. If you want to see my comments at WUWT that didn't survive moderation, you'll need to read stoat spam or just imagine them; I said nothing that wasn't obvious. My favourite, I think…
May 25, 2015
At this time of the year, as I cycle past the rape fields (this isn't a reference to some Balkan horror, just the plant), I take note of the dying of the yellow, for it signifies that the spring recolte is once again due. I measure my life by the passing of such seasons: the winter league; tideway…
May 23, 2015
So gushes Mother Jones, adding the enticing word "exclusive" to the story. But - weirdly enough, for a confection of spying and science reporting, both of which are normally so reliable - this appears to be a bit garbled. Firstly, the "climate research programme" looks to be more like the CIA had…
May 21, 2015
Shamelessly stolen from Brian at Eli's (this is about plagiarism, after all) is the Ed Wegman, Yasmin Said, Milt Johns Sue John Mashey For $2 Million as reported by JM.
Brian's
My one semi-serious comment is that this is the quality of the opposition. We ought to be kicking their butt.
is worth a…
May 18, 2015
Well, ATTP tweeted it, poor trusting soul that he is, having been unwise enough to believe the Graun's headline, which segues into text Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate…
May 13, 2015
Well, here it is:
Why am I showing you this? Mostly because its rather striking, partly because it forms part of the things Piketty got wrong thread, but mostly for the relevance to the "infinite growth on a finite planet" type argument. Many people will tell you that infinite "growth" on a finite…
May 4, 2015
The long slow wiki edit war over exactly what sort of denier AW is continues - RationalWiki is more informative - but the issue of surfacestations.org remains untouched. Is it alive? Dead? Undead? Having browsed around a bit I can't find anyone saying - or, indeed, caring - but being a caring…