climate science
stoat | February 6, 2016 The Economist, about Ted Cruz, in an article about his presidential hopes:
Conversely his appeal to moderates is limited. He has had little to say to or about the poor, beyond his perpetual gratitude that, when his father was washing dishes for 50 cents an hour, no one was sent by the government to help him. His flagship economic policy is a regressive flat-rate income tax of 10%. Black Americans, anyone concerned about climate change (which he denies) and non-Christians should look elsewhere. Ditto homosexuals: “This shall not stand,” Mr Cruz declares of gay marriage. That grandiloquent but…
stoat | February 6, 2016 Pattern Recognition in Physics (or, if you prefer, Pattern Recognition in Physics) appears to have finally shuffled off this mortal coil; h/t DM. As late as January 2016 its arid mummified cadaver was propped up at http://www.pattern-recognition-in-physics.com/. But it would appear that either the vast expense of maintaining a domain, or perhaps the sheer embarrassment of the grinning corpse staring back as a reminder of their own mortality has caused whoever owns the thing to pull the plug. Or perhaps it was so unloved that they just forgot to renew the domain. Here's an archive.is of it…
stoat | February 5, 2016Except, of course, it is actually the same recycled nutters under yet another name. Thanks to BB for the link, but the original source is the Smoggies. Not to be confused with the Moggies. The new name is "Independent Committee on Geoethics"; not to be confused with the apparently respectable but to me unknowe International Association for Promoting Geoethics.
Wittily, their flyer for their events could have been faked up by Russel Seitz but appears to be genuine:
Their laughable membership includes Charles Darwin - yes, the Darwin - which brings Robert Carter to mind, in an odd sort of way…
stoat | February 1, 2016Brian said I'd guess 100 or so draft posts sitting around, forlornly. I have precisely 89 draft posts, and I thought it might be fun to look back at them.
* 2016/01/30: On getting out more, part 2 (you know who you are)
* 2016/01/25: A leading climate sceptic businessman has protested that he was misinformed
* 2016/01/17: Songs (inspired by the Torygraph's list of 100 best albums, but I realised it was of no interest to anyone else)
* 2016/01/02: Temporal finitism
* 2015/12/11: Yet another post about economics or ethics or something
* 2015/08/11: Greek bond yields
* 2015/08/11: The Bishops…
stoat | February 1, 2016 On of the things I used to hate when I was in the game was the stupid boilerplate you were supposed to pad articles with. Since I also discover that RR has 3k posts and I only have 1k733 I thought I'd try to close the gap by a short whinge. Here's an example from Fifteen years of ocean observations with the global Argo array, Riser et al., Nature Climate Change 6, 145–153 (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate2872
More than 90% of the heat energy accumulation in the climate system between 1971 and the present has been in the ocean. Thus, the ocean plays a crucial role in determining the climate of the…
stoat | January 29, 2016
Sorry, but I couldn't resist. One for cognoscenti. Who can resist "the master butcher of Leigh on Sea"? Don't google that, it makes it too easy. And I see welcome homage to Pump: Young Lust and especially F.I.N.E.:
'Cause I'm
Alright
Your momma says I'm
Alright
Your daddy says I'm
Alright
and my old lady says I'm
Alright
And one for... well, almost everyone:
Refs
* AlphaGo v Fan Hui - Match Referee's View and the report itself.
stoat | January 27, 2016 "Cainozoic" is a somewhat archaic word for Cenozic. But the paper in question is from 1976, so it is allowed to be somewhat behind the times. It is, as you'll immeadiately recognise, Robert Carter's most cited paper, with 154 citations according to Web of Science, or 193 according to Google scholar, but that is often a touch unchoosy about who it associates with. That's a shade under 4 citations per year since published. My best paper for citations is Recent Rapid Regional Climate Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula at 644, but I'm not lead author. My best as lead is An Antarctic assessment…
stoat | January 19, 2016 Actually A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it, but I'm allowed to paraphrase in titles. And anyway he said it in German, naturally. Today brings us news of another such advancement in science, with the reported death of Robert Carter.
As far as I can recall, he was a minor figure in the Great Climate Wars; at least, I don't seem to have been very interested in him. He gets those usual suspects Robert M. Carter, C. R. de Freitas…
stoat | January 16, 2016 A successor to Where Are They Now, 2014.
First and foremost, and although not quite in 2015 I shall ignore that, was David Bowie.
2015 was the year I finally kicked the habit of reading denialist blogs - well, nearly - which was a good idea, but it does mean I'm not as in touch as I used to be, since I now get it second hand from Sou mostly.
The only new thing I can think of that died in 2015 was The Pause. A somewhat shameful episode in climate history, as I said in my review of the year. Other than that, we're onto the probably-still-dead things from 2014.
Pattern Recognition in Physics…
stoat | January 11, 2016Lay me place and bake me Pie
I'm starving for me Gravy
Leave my shoes, and door unlocked
I might just slip away
Sighing, the swirl through the streets
Like the crust of the sun
The Bewlay Brothers
In our Wings that Bark
Flashing teeth of Brass
Standing tall in the dark
Oh, And we were Gone
Hanging out with your Dwarf Men
We were so turned on
By your lack of conclusions
Something I grew up with; far better than the more recent work as so often, alas. I wouldn't know how to interpret the lyric of this song other than suggesting that there are layers of ghosts within it.
Refs
* Fat Bottomed…
stoat | January 6, 2016
From The Indie: Government ministers meet flooded locals 20 minutes late and on the wrong side of a collapsed bridge, via facebook:
Seemingly determined to prove their incompetence to already derisive Cumbrians, a delegation featuring members of two government departments had to make a 20-mile round journey after allegedly finding themselves stranded on the wrong side of the collapsed bridge. Floods Minister Rory Stewart, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin and an extensive entourage had been due to meet residents of the villages of Soulby and Pooley Bridge to discuss efforts to rebuild…
stoat | January 4, 2016o I've decided to try the "ZOMG" prefix for these things, instead of postfixing a mark of interrogation. Perhaps it makes things clearer. Anyway, the latest breathless nonsense is ExxonMobil and Sierra Club Agreed on Climate Policy—and Kept It Secret from Bloomberg (h/t JS). Why is it nonsense? Firstly, they're pretending this is news. It isn't news: this is essentially a re-tread of How two ExxonMobil and Sierra Club lawyers agreed on a carbon tax which is a much better article and more than a year old. Notice that it doesn't make any foolish claims about secrets. Secondly, Exxon's support…
stoat | December 31, 2015A follow up to the brilliantly successful the year in stoats: 2014. There can be no doubt about the picture of the year:
If you're looking for a review of the climate-type events of the year then something like ATTP's will be of use. This is one post per month from me, chosen without specific criteria. There was more science than I expected in the past year, but the march of politics continues inexorably.
* Jan: Greg Craven’s viral climate ‘decision grid’ video
* Feb: Stories from the history of science: the discovery of the stratosphere; although the knockabout comedy with Willie Soon was…
stoat | December 29, 2015 More of the good ol' "Ice Age Is Coming" drivel, but this time in Squarehead. Normally I expect them to be more sensible than us. This via Twitter via Eli via NoTruthZone; headlined there as Now It’s Global Cooling! German Weekly Warns Scientists See “Mini Ice Age Coming In Just A Few Years”. At least in the google translated version there's no clear source, though it does feature [Sami] Solanki, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. I don't think he's a nutter. What they quote from him is fairly sane: the solar activity is so complex that no one is able to make…
stoat | December 25, 2015
Also from the Nanoblock Meercats, the Great White, and the Interesting and Fun Puzzle:
stoat | December 22, 2015InsideClimateNews (who I've been unimpressed with before) via Brian at Eli's tell us that Exxon may claim to favour a carbon tax, but aren't exactly enthusiastic about it. Because someone else was saying it, my natural initial reaction was to disagree; but having poked their sources a bit, it looks fairly solid. But not particularly original (see? When you can't complain by disagreeing with people you can complain that you said it already, instead). I said, in October,
Since 2009, the company has supported a revenue-neutral carbon tax is nice; but I think their “support” has been weak. It is…
stoat | December 20, 2015 Tim Ball has a quasi-incoherent piece over at WUWT (I know, I know, but it was a grey Sunday afternoon) explaining why the nutters lost the dogma hearing. I'm a bit surprised that he's prepared to admit they lost, but I was more amused by his excuses; and perhaps the piece is more an excuse to write about himself than anything else. Anyway, as he puts it:
In a debate between a scientist and anyone else the scientist inevitably loses because it becomes about emotions, especially the exploitation of fear
He's forgotten that a moment earlier he wrote:
Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party in…
stoat | December 19, 2015 User:William M. Connolley/The science is settled is a copy that I made of a wiki article that got deleted. I think I'd stick now largely with what I said then, 8th February 2007: Keep: its not the worlds greatest page, but its useful. Lee Vonces vote is a good example of the reason for keeping it: the page as it stands is substantially correct, but if it wasn't there the opposite misinformation would accumulate. Unfortunately, since the article was deleted, it's history isn't conveniently available. You may take it for granted that it was something of a war-in-progress when removed, but a…
stoat | December 16, 2015A scientific critique of the two-degree climate change target (Reto Knutti,Joeri Rogelj, Jan Sedláček & Erich M. Fischer; Nature Geoscience (2015) doi:10.1038/ngeo2595): sounds like a good idea, and vair topical. Since its short, I'll nick the abstract in full:
The world's governments agreed to limit global mean temperature change to below 2 °C compared with pre-industrial levels in the years following the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. This 2 °C warming target is perceived by the public as a universally accepted goal, identified by scientists as a safe limit that avoids dangerous…
stoat | December 15, 2015 The Graun said In the aftermath of the Paris agreement, shares in coal firms plunged rapidly. Peabody, the world’s largest coal firm, saw stock values drop 12.6%, while Consol Energy holdings was down by 3.3%. That's interesting; one of the things I wondered about the Paris pow-wow was how the markets might take it. But this being economics in the Graun it needs checking; the linked article Paris climate pact sinks coal stocks, lifts renewable energy seems to fit, but we should look closer. See my image.
This is a stock in long-term decline, possibly because of the impacts of GW, but not…