generic stupidity
stoat | May 11, 2011Time for some more insult-throwing. And Morgan Griffith is a deserving recipient of just about any insult you might care to throw. As the youtube video is so correctly titled: Climate Zombie Morgan Griffith: Vikings, Mars, And Global Cooling (uploaded by climatebrad, which leads off to the Wonkroom). And indeed, there he is, brain entirely dead, reading out a list of "questions" he has been supplied by some lobbyist, all of which have been answered long ago.
The bit I like is at about 2:00 in, where he says that when he was taught in high school, his text book told him that increasing GHG's…
stoat | March 16, 2011How about this for misleading tripe from the Grauniad:
Yup, according to them the reactor has killed 4277 people. Or at least, that is what it looks like. Of course, you could also argue that they are trying to claim that the reactors have made the Nikkei go up 5.68%, but no-one would believe that.
Incidentally, the NYT has some good disaster porn.
[Updates: for a non-panic-stricken view of Tokyo, JEB is worth reading. For some quiet discussion of nuclear power, Brian has the good taste to ref me, and to remind us of some discussions from 2005. Meanwhile, the Japanese appear to be reduced to…
stoat | March 16, 2011If you believe in a good, kind, etc God then [[problem of evil]] is to explain away the various obvious features of the world at variance with this belief. People always succeed in doing so, because they want to. A good trick with any form of human badness is to invoke Free Will: obviously God doesn't want you to be naughty, but he couldn't very well stop you, could he? But things like death-dealing earthquakes and the accompanying tsunamis are a bit more of a puzzler. However, in a rather daring and novel piece of theology I heard at Thought for the Day, 15 March 2011 the Revd Dr David…
stoat | March 3, 2011Neither of which has anything to do with climate change. They are:
* Foster parent ban: 'extreme distress' of 'anti-gay' Christians' over ruling courtesy of the Torygraph; and
* ECJ gender ruling hits insurance costs
God hates fags
I was going to rant about the first one but I won't (err, other than my mildly provocative headline). Instead, I'll ask you to compare the Torygraph and the Beeb to the actual judgement, which helpfully contains a summary of the case.
From which I quote a bit of background: The claimants are members of the Pentecostalist Church and believe that sexual relations…
stoat | February 16, 2011 Via Baron von Monckhofen an interesting video, though I think it has been doing the rounds for a while now.
[Update: While I'm on the silly people, there is a nice takedown of the Jonny Ball nonsense by Deltoid. Which features the familiar elements: ridiculous claims which fall apart under the flimsiest examination, but which are nonetheless repeated by the std.septics.
And for something more sensible: Bart goes where I tend not to and discusses biodiversity.
Oh dear. But my blog-reading has now got as far as Tamino, who provides a wonderful example of US political stupidity (see-also the…
stoat | February 5, 2011I gave up watching the Curry train-wreck a while ago, but someone pushed this gem my way, and I can't resist:
When I make a public statement about what a scientist does or does not know, I make a point of actually reading what that scientist has to say on the subject, rather than what other people say about that scientist on blogs [1]
Curry doesn't even really read her own papers let alone have a clue about anyone else's.
Link dump: Safecracking for the computer scientist will repay your time, if such things interest you.
Refs
* Judy Curry continues her crazy aunt act - Eli in October 2010…
stoat | February 3, 2011 I suppose I could have made him a tosser, but I decided the the traditional rhyming slang was better.
Fred Pearce seems to have made a bit of a career out of being rubbish recently, but has now stooped to just making things up (or, just possibly, that good old journo standby, being so clueless as to what you're talking about that your paraphrases are so inaccurate as to descend into lies).
Anyway, Pearce's current lies [Update: as DC notes, the Newt updated its page on 2011/02/07, but without apology. Whether that means Pearce accepts his error or has been bludgeoned by the Editors, we don'…
stoat | January 30, 2011#4 in the series. Normally reserved for non-scientists, but WK wins a dishonourable mention. He is part of the stable of kooks that von S gathers round him at klimazwiebel, though as far as I can tell von S has carefully avoided becoming kooky himself.
You'd better go and read what Krauss has to say for himself before you come back to my rantings.
The strongest impression I get is that, as an anthropologist, he really has little interest in the science of climate change. Its all meat to the grinder as far as he is concerned, and reality is of no real importance. Hear him slavering:
For me as…
stoat | November 10, 2010See the Grauniad for the proof. But ZOMG now I've proved him right so I must be wrong. <pfft!> - that is me disappearing in a pile of logical smoke.
More seriously: yes, vast numbers of blogs are full of junk, and probably rude aggressive junk (though I don't know this from personal experience, since I don't bother read those). Most (measured by volume) of journalism is junk too - it is just that in general it is fairly polite, well-written junk. At least in the UK the most obviously trash stuff gets conveniently dumped in the Sun, Mirror, Mail and so on. But there is plenty of rubbish…
stoat | November 2, 2010Thank heavens, James Annan wrote this so I don't have to.
Truely, you have to hand it to our politicians: whenever you think you are finally inured to their stupidity, they find a further depth to sink to.
PS: no, I did *not* vote for them.
stoat | October 23, 2010My previous post refers. There are lots more things to say; this post doesn't really say any of them but veers off at a tangent. Let me know if you get bored.
The tangent to start with is "no-one from outside understand how wikipedia works". An obvious example of this is Lawrence Solomon (my apologies for mentioning: it is more honour than he deserves; but he is a convenient example), who says:
Connolley did not wield his influence by the quality of his research or the force of his argument but through his administrative position
There are several problems with this statement: the first is…
stoat | October 16, 2010No, not the US in Iraq, but a smaller matter: the recent arbcomm case. The case is now closed, and the the usual idiots are as usual getting it wrong (hint: the bit about admin is totally wrong). But then again, no-one from the outside ever understands wikipedia.
At some point I'll do a long post on this (well, or maybe not. We'll see. The point is, this isn't that post). So for now:
The actual decision is available here, though if you prefer to skip over the goo and dribble you can just read the remedies. Though there is a fair amount of goo there too, so you may prfer to skip to just the…
stoat | August 20, 2010[Originally posted 27/7; updated a few times and now again (see end) so re-publishing with current date to push it to the top]
It looks like it is finally time to announce Judith Curry's departure for the dark side, prompted by her comments at RC. I still think she has good intentions, at heart, but has been "captured by the septic narrative" or somesuch. In some respects this intervention is fairly typical of her previous stuff - which is to say, she mouths off without having done her homework, then tries to back off. But the direction she mouths off in is very revealing.
So, where to start…
stoat | July 22, 2010[Tags: climate-wonk incest. Everyone else please ignore]
We interrupt your diet of boatie-type news [update: sorry, late boatie news: a great bow-cam video of Champs 6 bumping the Hornets (sorry Paul)] for something related to climate: BigCityLib notices that the IOP (remember that bunch of revisionist fools?) has deleted the Energy sub group:
Following the meeting of the Science Board on 17 June 2010, it is with regret that I announce that the Energy Sub-group is to be disbanded, immediately.
Or has it? The website still has them [Update: thanks to J who points out that is the Energy Group,…
stoat | July 2, 2010Things Break says this, but I don't see why I shouldn't say the same. I haven't had much to say about Pearce before - I see I took a side swipe at him a while back. But his recent trash on the McLean paper is the worst sort of dumb journo false balance and he should be ashamed of himself.
[Update: anyone who thinks FP isn't a fool should read his latest trash (thanks to a commenter)]
May as well have a largely irrelevant cartoon (ht: mt):
stoat | June 27, 2010This post is about the ridiculous "hide the decline" video. I watched it when it first came out. It wasn't funny, it was dull. Apparently it has now been pulled from YouTube, but who cares?
But... because the thing is anti-science, the std.anti-science septics on wiki feel inclined to have an article on it. Sigh. There enough real subjects to create articles about without wasting time on vapour. I really ought to point you to the current version, and the current edit war: should this edit be included - viz, is the fact that some guy with a blog thinks the video is funny worth noting? I don't…
stoat | April 21, 2010We interrupt your schedule of cats and rowing for a brief snark at the denialists: courtesy of mt, who clearly ventures where angels fear to tread, we have Newsletter: NZCLIMATE TRUTH NO 244 by Vincent Gray: THE FLAT EARTH... The attached graph is in all of the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, and it is fundamental to all their activities. It assumes that the earth can be considered to be flat, that the sun shines all day and all night with equal intensity, and that the temperature of the earth's surface is constant. This is abysmal stupidity and ignorance at its…
stoat | April 13, 2010Hacked climate science emails: were requests for information vexatious? asks Monbiot, and then proceeds to get the wrong answer (though it isn't as bad as his previous nonsense). "Framing" all this in terms of FOI is silly and wrong. Monbiot loves FOI 'cos he is a journo and it is a one-way street for him: more info, formerly hidden, equals stories. Reality isn't so important to him it would seem.
In terms of science, this is all just wrong. In my experience, and it seems to be true in this case too, the restrictions on revealing info are imposed by govts and their agencies. The UKMO was very…
stoat | March 31, 2010Some while ago - probably about 15 years ago - there was a good Steve Bell carton showing the US airforce dropping "ozone friendly" bombs on the ragheads (or the gooks, or the commies, or whoever the enemy was then). It was quite funny, unlike Obama, who isn't.
stoat | March 31, 2010Or have I used that one before? It seems only too likely. But perhaps not: I don't seem to have had a decent go at him for four years.
Anyway, it makes a change from CRU-investigation navel-gazing (I'll get back to that in a moment). So what has the much-loved but getting-on-a-bit genius of electron capture said now?
It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn't want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They're not like that nowadays. They don't give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced…