climate science
stoat | April 4, 2015
Lovely. Mostly because it looks like a painting, but is actually a picture. My source is wiki commons via Did the Anthropocene Begin in 1950 or 50,000 Years Ago? by David Biello in SA; the original is Jialiang Gao, www.peace-on-earth.org.
While I'm here there's VV's Irrigation and paint as reasons for a cooling bias.
I read Safeguarding research integrity in China by Jane Qiu, which wonders why research misconduct is particularly acute in China. Because of lack of rule of law and tolerance of corruption, I'd say.
And that Victor chap is back in Nature. I didn't bother read it this time; it…
stoat | March 29, 2015To the British Museum, via the Vets Head, of which more anon.
Pen on oil, various hands, circa 2014. Or, if you prefer a more stringent test of your cultural levels, try to identify the provenance of this:
The main theme for today's visit was Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art which was interesting, and confirms for me that the older I get and the more I know about other, particularly antient, cultures, the more I realise how little I understand what they can possibly have been thinking. Eventually, when I'm really old, I'll realise I've never understood anyone else at all.
For…
stoat | March 20, 2015 More wiki-fun. Or is this Google Truth in action? (Yeah, I know, the pic isn't quite right but its good).
Which is more accurate?
Willard Anthony Watts (born 1958)[1] is an American blogger who runs the climate change denialism website Watts Up With That?.[2] A former meteorologist,[3][4] he is president of IntelliWeather Inc.[5] and directs the Surface Stations Project, a volunteer initiative to document the set up and maintenance of weather stations across the United States.[6] (link)
or
Willard Anthony Watts (born 1958)[1] is an American meteorologist[2][3] (AMS seal holder,…
stoat | March 16, 2015 In which I teach Timmy about economics1. What can I lose? Its a guaranteed crowd-pleaser; everyone reading here hates neolibs anyway :-).
So: Timmy recommends as "An excellent piece" Art People: Learn Economics, I Beseech You by Franklin Einspruch. And, well, its all more or less the obvious if you've been following Timmy or similar, but said quite nicely especially the headings (The Opposite of Greed is Fear is definitely cute). But then! Quelle horreur:
Socialism means no toilet paper.
Especially when its actually:
If you take one lesson from this essay, make it this: Socialism means no…
stoat | March 16, 2015 I was at a meeting today, with a mixed group of engineers and managers, trying to work out when thing X would be complete. So the questions were of the form "is feature Y production quality on branch Z?". Sometimes the engineers got to answer the question, sometimes management. The engineers response was "yes" or, when appropriate "no"; or sometimes rather more nuanced when the feature's status required it.
The managers response when asked a question whose answer amounted to "no" was a long sequence of words that generally appeared to be intended as an excuse for "no". But since it took the…
stoat | March 13, 2015Oh dear, I've already had a Currygate. Never mind, the internet has the memory of a goldfish, I'll get away with it.
The story so far: Leaked Email Reveals Who's Who List of Climate Denialists. No great surprises on the list; I personally wouldn't call Curry a "denialist" though I would definitely say things she won't like; I announced her "departure for the dark side" in 2010. Anyway, the obvious question is, does this make wiki? And it has, but the obvious suspects don't like that:
If you're wondering, the disputed text renders as
In March 2015, Judith Curry's name was among numerous…
stoat | March 13, 2015RT has a nice post on On the Incident Solar Radiation in CMIP5 Models by Linjiong Zhou, Minghua Zhang, Qing Bao and, Yimin Liu.
For the authors, this is a dream paper: you notice something no-one else has, and you get a practically free paper out of it, without having to do any real work or real thought. Just because they had the wit, or the luck, to look more closely at some of the output. In a sensible world the paper would be about two lines and one figure long; but it has to be dressed up in more words for scientific publishing.
RT has a nice explanation of the problem, but I like their…
oracknows | March 10, 2015The human mind is amazing in its ability to compartmentalize. Many are the times when I've come across people who seem reasonable in every other way but who cling tightly to one form of pseudoscience or another. On the other hand, as I've noticed time and time again, people whose minds have a proclivity for pseudoscience tend not to limit themselves to just one form of pseudoscience. Indeed, my surgical and skeptical bud Mark Hoofnagle coined a term for this latter phenomenon, namely "crank magnetism." It's basically a pithy term to describe how people who are into one form of pseudoscience…
stoat | March 7, 2015Even more amusing - but oddly, rather related - to the last tee hee is the news that the denialosphere is panicking over Google Truth (h/t NS and, apparently, almost everyone else). I'm not sure why they are bothering - its only a research project.
Amusing panics are available from JoNova or AW (via Sou). From Sou, I discover that you can check your page rank. I'm a 6; woo. Scienceblogs as a whole gets 8. RC gets 7. Humble Sou is a 5. WUWT gets a humiliating 3; JN an even more humiliating N/A.
stoat | March 4, 2015 ...says carbonbrief. In turn, I think that's based on IPCC PRESS RELEASE / 27 February 2015 / IPCC takes decisions on future work. The very second bullet point of that is:
Request the Secretariat and Technical Support Units to command a respectful workplace, emphasizing policies and practices that promote diversity, fairness, collaboration and inclusiveness.
Mmmm... I wonder where that has come from? Most of the rest is meh. The encouraging the Third World stuff is dodgy; that's what got us the Himalayan stuff in the first place. The two bits that matter are Continue to produce assessment…
stoat | March 3, 2015ZOMG:
I can't see anything ever beating that. Source: Indy.
Refs
* Squee of the Day: Mom Weasel Goes Back For Smallest Baby Left Behind - thanks JF.
stoat | February 28, 2015Alas, I missed Caius retaking the Men's headship on Thursday, mostly because I didn't think it would happen (they were nowhere on Wednesday) but partly because I was bag-carrying for King's, who rewarded me with an exciting bump on (LoL)Catz and ensuing chaos; and on Christ's on Friday. But I did see Christ's take the Women's headship from Emma, somewhat to my surprise, though Kate says they listen to her. Anyway, here it is:
(it doesn't happen till 4:40, do feel free to skip ahead).
stoat | February 26, 2015 Or so says Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat in the colonies. In which case, he's an idiot1. He's a politicain. He should be used to, he should expect, daily to be talked to, to be lobbied, by people with strong political motivations, some or many of which will be hidden from him. He should not be relying on the motives of those presenting information to him to be pure-as-the-driven-snow, he should be relying on his own ability to evaluate what's said. Or if he's too stupid to do that himself, get some staffers to do it for him. Or in the case of climate science, just read…
stoat | February 25, 2015 We interrupt your regular diet of Willie Soon for a brief break (the S+B controversy, 2003 is seeing active work).
IPCC agrees on Acting Chair after R.K. Pachauri steps down said the IPCC press on the 25th. That PR is not merely coy but completely silent as to the reasons why he stepped down; coy but uninformative is the letter he sent to Bankymoon on the 24th which shyly refers to "the current circumstances" without specifying them, and announces that he has "taken the decision to step down", which is what you say when you're forced to resign but don't have the courage to say "resign" (note…
stoat | February 24, 2015My title comes from a lying "letter of recommendation" for Soon, which says in part:
...Willie is scrupulous in attending to the basic scientific veracity of everything that he presents in public about scientific matters. He is careful not only in that regard, but also in the attention he pays to drawing reasonable and balanced conclusions, and in rigorously eschewing the unfortunate ad hominem arguments that too often characterize public “debate” about human-caused climate change.
The entire thing is a tissue of lies, but that one is particularly galling. My picture demonstrates that its a…
stoat | February 24, 2015 Or at least, that follows clearly from the latest nonsense from Wattie-land. Greenpeace enlists Justin Gillis &John Schwartz of the NY Times in Journalistic Terrorist Attack on Willie Soon – Miss Target, Hit Smithsonian Instead. If the NYT is "terrorist" then so am I. Of course, the Smithsonian is investigating Soon, so perhaps they're terrorists too?
Worse for Soon, I found this in my facebook feed, from God. I'm not suggesting that God (who is currently a black lesbian regretting that she created periods) is likely to smite Soon, but this kind of publicity in the general-o-sphere, as…
stoat | February 23, 2015Something of a classic, from Richard Telford. He's discussing Soon's Heartland presentation. Here's a screenshot:
Soon is trying to point out the importance of the value of the solar insolation, which he believes needs to be heavily fiddled to make the GCMs come out right. To prove this, he's chosen a paper about an aquaplanet experiment. Aquaplanets themselves are a perfectly respectable thing to do: they offer you a heavily simplified "planet" with no irritating land-sea constrast, or orography, to get in the way of your dynamics (it also simplifies the variability, so you get regular…
stoat | February 22, 2015Or so says Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. And yet we discover that Soon's research was (partially) funded by Southern Company Services, with whom Soon had and agreement, signed by Smithsonian’s William J. Ford, contract and grant specialist; and Bryan Baldwin, Southern’s manager of environmental assessment.:
As further consideration to SCS [Southern Company Services], Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS
The assertion of no…
stoat | February 21, 2015 This astonishing claim is apparently made by Willie Soon, according to the NYT. The claim is implausible, to say the least. As is much of his GW related research.
I'm not alone in that opinion, oddly enough. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless. Mmmmm, the science yes (it may be a null-set joke; Gavin is subtle) but the papers clearly aren't pointless, these "deliverables" act to advance certain rather obvious agendas.
And now I come to look,…
stoat | February 17, 2015 There are many others, of course. RMG has one just now on the Chandler wobble; there's Alfred Russel Wallace and the flat-earthers and the history of the word Scientist itself.
All of these have "mottoes", if you like; but I distrust them. There's a sci-fi novel from ages back, the only bit of which I remember is the protagonist taking the standardised psychometric proverb test: what does "a rolling stone gathers no moss" mean? He, free-wheeling, said "frequent change frees one from care" whereas his staid society wished him to say "frequent change prevents the accumulation of valuable…