Thursday 25 August 2011

Black Knight to be Micheal Mann's next test


Climatologist Dr Micheal Mann remains undefeated despite a number of tests of his scientific integrity. The most recent of which, an investigation conducted by the National Science Foundation, concluded this week that "his work “clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field…. Dr. Mann’s work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding.“"

However climate deniers are not happy. They remain adamant that the real test of Dr Micheal Mann's scientific integrity still remains. "What we do is point to the next investigation", explained the blog scientist Inferno of DenialDepot. "All those previous investigations are all very well at the time we hype them up, but until we get the result we want the real test is always going to be the next one that hasn't happened yet."

The next hurdle climate deniers have lined up for Micheal Mann is an investigation of his private email correspondence by American Tradition Institute lawyers. If he should survive that, then according to Inferno the next test has to be the Black Knight; "The black knight has only lost once so we are quite confident that Micheal Mann doesn't stand a chance", says Inferno.

But is that confidence misplaced? After-all Dr Micheal Mann has now emerged victorious through a number of daunting challenges, including an investigation by his own university and the Bridge of Death.

"Whitewashes", explained Inferno. "Don't get me started on the whole bridge of death fiasco. Basically it's a bridge that runs across the Gorge of Eternal Peril. The bridge-keeper asks three questions and if you get one wrong you are thrown in the Gorge. We'd planned it fine but then the gate-keeper asked Micheal Mann the wrong questions."

And if Micheal Mann should survive the ATI lawyers and the Black Knight? "Well", explained Inferno, "we'll get to see if he can cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring"

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Satellite Temperature For July - looks like a really big wave before a large downturn



I did not expect the upturn of the past few months. It doesn’t make sense to me. The La Nina has relaxed, but there is no El Nino. The sun is more active, but still is quieter than usual. There have been some decent volcanic eruptions. I see no reason for the upturn to be so steep, and am not inclined to see CO2 as the cause...
Commenter 'Caleb' at WUWT

I am also not inclined to see CO2 as the cause. I prefer for it not to make sense than to accept it could be CO2. 'Celeb' does however offer a way of "interpreting" this inconvenient turn of events as evidence of cooling:

When you are walking down a very foggy beach, how do you know a really big wave is coming, when you can’t see it? Is it not because the water draws back farther than usual? This upturn may just be the “water-drawing -back” before the “big wave” of a large downturn.

So no matter if global temperature heads up or down it's always defying those so-called scientists. This is the kind of outside-the-box denial that Denial Depot is all about.

Monday 20 June 2011

CO2: Volcanoes or Man? - It's your choice, not theirs


Blog Science offers the public empowerment. No longer must we suffer years of "education" and be forced to bow down before peer appointed so-called "experts" as they cast down facts upon our heads.

No, those are the old ways. Thanks to the Internet and Blog Science you can now become a science expert in a day and start generating your own science from scratch. You have the potential to be a world famous blog scientist, we all do. You might choose to become a blog chemist, a blog psychic or perhaps a blog geologist. All you need is a blog and a time to write down whatever your brain is thinking on the subject.

And if you don't want to become an expert, Blog Science allows you to become a Blog Science commenter. You can even put this as BSc on your CV. Blog Science commenter is an important role that allows you cheer from the sidelines while boosting the impact rating of the Blog.

Furthermore as a commenter, Blog Science offers you a wide catalog of ideas about the world and lets you choose which one you want to believe. That means you can choose whatever ideas fit in best with your political or religious beliefs. If you want we can also provide you with justifications for your choices if you are later challenged by practitioners of the old ways.

For example I really want to believe human CO2 emissions are too small to matter, and I will find a way to justify that belief.

A warmist blog, tauntingly calling itself "Open Mind", has just attacked Dr Ian Plimer, the 2nd most famous climate scientist in all of Australia*. Dr Ian Plimer's crime? He has chosen to believe volcanoes emit more CO2 than man, as is his right. He has also given generously this gift to the public.

The warmists hate this kind of thing. They want everyone to follow the old ways. They want "geological societies" and "textbooks" to fix so-called "facts" in stone which must not be disobeyed by mere laypeople. They hate it when Blog Scientists offer their ideas in the press or on tour.

In a comment over at Open Mind, William Connolley, the stoat in a boat, thinks he has found a great argument against Plimer:
"That volcanoes aren’t a major source can fairly trivially be shown by just looking at the CO2 record. If Pinatubo was a major source, there would be a sharp jump up when it erupted. But there isn’t."

The words "can fairly trivially be shown" are a red flag. In Blog Science nothing is known with any degree of certainty because everything can be challenged.

For example I would say the reason there is no sharp spike in CO2 when Pinatubo erupted is because scientists have been measuring CO2 on the wrong volcano. They have been measuring CO2 levels on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. This argument may or may not make sense, but it's confusing enough that it doesn't matter. In Blog Science justifying one's beliefs is as easy as making it sound like you have.

Furthermore as has been pointed out craploads of times, scientists shouldn't be measuring CO2 inside the craters of volcanoes full stop! Yet still those so-called "scientist" elites march up the volcano each day in their lab coats with their equipment under their arms and and dip their co2ometers into the crater. With each passing year they dip the co2ometers a little deeper down so each year it looks like the CO2 level is rising!

Of course what I have just said there may not be right - it probably isn't because it's just a story I made up - but it will sound like you know what you are talking about if you can go into details such as what Keeling ate for breakfast each morning. The use of imaginative stories to smear so-called "scientists" is encouraged in Blog Science. It adds entertainment as well as smear.

What's interesting about Blog Science is the freedom it gives you. The old ways demanded adherence to a thing called "consistency". Blog Science does not unnecessarily restrict you in such a way.

For example, it might tomorrow become expedient for me to accept rising CO2 is due to man. I might want, for example, to cite the merits of increasing levels of plant food to ward off the coming ice age. Or perhaps I just want to accuse warmists of using a strawman ("Of course I accept man is causing CO2 levels to rise. No-one denies that! What a strawman! The cause of CO2 rise is not the issue. What skeptics are questioning is whether CO2 rise has a warming effect!"). This doesn't mean I have to stop believing volcanoes emit more CO2 than man.

And that's the memo.

*High Admiral Lord Monckton, Child of the Mother of all Parliaments and Guardian of the Pink Portcullis, is the 1st most famous Climate Scientist in Australia of course.

Sunday 19 June 2011

Shock News: Dr Anthony Watts Turns Alarmist. Describes Human Interference in Climate as "Batshit Crazy", "a Powder-Keg" of "Unintended Consequences"


Professor Anthony Watts has betrayed the denialist cause this week by raising undue alarmist fears concerning man-made climate change. Talking on the subject of human modification of the climate on his blog, Professor Watt's announced:

"it’s batshit crazy and a powder-keg for priming a global explosion of the law of unintended consequences."
(link)

Please someone tell Professor Watts to calm down! We all know the burden of proof is on scientists to prove harm. The only evidence presented that human alteration of the radiative properties of the climate will cause any problems is climate models (aka computer games) and speculation. I am sure Professor Watts would be the first to recognize that these aren't sufficient grounds to argue that we must take action to prevent such human interference.

Professor Watts use of the word "powder-keg" is deeply alarmist and implies that the atmosphere may explode. This is ridiculous, I do not appreciate his chicken-littlism on this subject by appealing to "unintended consequences" either. If unintended consequences were cause to avert an action we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning!

Professor Watt's seems like a strong man. He can probably lift weights and I bet he always uses his real name online. So why is he seemingly so scared by a little atmospheric fiddling by man? Watts up with that?

It may be that he simply slipped up, and in his zeal to attack an IPCC proposal he forgot the number #1 rule of climate denial which is to maintain denial of the risks of human influence on climate at all times. If that's the case I wonder if he's fit to be running the world's #1 blog. He must be approaching retirement age anyway. Maybe it's time for my blog to take over the reigns. I can't remember ever accidentally admitting there was a risk from human influence on climate.

I have to stop typing now, but hopefully Judith Curry can pick the "should Dr Watts retire" ball up and string it along for a few more weeks.

Saturday 11 June 2011

Environmentalists Blamed for AZ Wildfires


A raging wildfire that could become the largest in Arizona history is rekindling the blame game surrounding ponderosa pine forests that have become dangerously overgrown after a century of fire suppression.

Some critics put the responsibility on environmentalists for lawsuits that have cut back on logging.

Others blame overzealous firefighters for altering the natural cycle of lightning-sparked fires that once cleared the forest floor.

Either way, forests across the West that once had 50 trees per acre (half-hectare) now have hundreds, sometimes thousands, and much of the landscape is choked with tinder-dry brush.

The density of the growth has fueled immense conflagrations in recent years like the 525-square-mile blaze now burning in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest northeast of Phoenix.

"I think what is happening proves the debate," said state Sen. Sylvia Allen, a Republican from rural Snowflake.

In the past, a 30-square-mile fire was considered huge. "And it used to be the loggers got right on it. Never in the past have you had these huge fires."

Today, it's not uncommon for fires to exceed 150 square miles.


http://nation.foxnews.com/arizona-wildfire/2011/06/10/environmentalists-blamed-az-wildfires

-------------------------------------------------------------

This story is nonsense of course. You can't attribute a single wildfire to man.

Wildfires have occurred throughout history in natural cycles before man existed.

It is arrogant to claim man can cause wildfires when nature is so much bigger than man.

I personally blame the wildfires on the increase in CO2 plant food which has made these trees grow too big and dry.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Staggering Drop In Global Temperature

WOW that's the biggest drop in global temperature EVER

Note: Pay attention to the green line in the graph, NOT the red line. The red line will deceive you into thinking the world is warming. It's only there for purposes of illustration later. Please ignore it until then.

The current temperature anomaly for March 2011 has just come in at -0.1C. That's MINUS 0.1C which is below the freezing point of water, so how can the arctic be melting?

The total temperature drop highlighted by the green line is almost as great as the entire warming that occurred since 1900! So much for global warming then! If this continues we will enter an ice age next year!

You might remember being told to focus on a similar drop and minus numbers in 2008. You might even remember how important that event was a sign of things to come. The eminent Joe Bastardi at the time described the 2007-2008 drop as "straight out of the book of climate. The pattern is so much like the 1949-1950 La Nina, which was signaling the start of the reversal of the warming of the earth’s climate in the 1930s, ‘40s and early 50s. Only someone choosing to ignore it, or not wanting to see it, would not be cognizant of it."

I couldn't find the book of climate at the library to confirm his claim, but it certainly rings true with what I want to believe. Besides when heavy weights like Piers Corbyn and David Archibald are predicting the world will cool in coming decades, who can argue?

Anyway needless to say Bastardi was right. Temperature just kept falling after 2008 and now it's falling all over again! There was a briefly mild kind of slight flattish temperature bump in 2010, but that was just noise caused by an El Nino and entirely predictable. The current temperature drop however coincides with a La Nina and the last thing climate scientists expected to happen during a La Nina was for global temperature to fall! The cause of the drop is probably because the oceans have turned upside down due to something we experts call the PDO oscillation, which basically means an ice age is coming.

The Side Bar: Trends and Noise

The side bar is a feature I use to stroke my ego teach my readers the "dos" and "donts" of science. Previous side bars have explained precisely why exponentials should not be used and why data should never be plotted

In this side bar I want to explain why the use of noise is preferable to longterm trends for predicting the future.

The use of trends and noise is one of the main sources of statistical disagreement between deniers and alarmists. We of course consult professional statisticians whereas climate scientists don't. In their typical deceptive style warmists insist you should focus on irrelevant long term trends in data rather than short term 'noise'. For example in the graph above a long term trend is depicted by the red arrow, whereas they would insist the green line was just noise. Deniers like me point out that noise is more important than trends, after-all the green line is steeper than the red line and also going in the right direction.

But perhaps the fairest way to arbitrate a scientific disagreement and build some bridges towards reconciliation at the same time is to check what God thinks. In this case God thinks the warmists are wrong, for if God didn't want our attention to be drawn to short term noises why did he build ears on the sides of our heads?

Religious based facts aside, I can prove noise is the most important part of the data. If we ignored the noise in the temperature record and just focused on the longterm trend we would, of all preposterous things, be forced to conclude the world was warming.

Sunday 3 April 2011

The IPCC Forecast Is Simply Wrong

If you have paid attention to the recent congressional hearing on Climate-Gate you will no doubt have heard that forecasting guru Dr. J. Scott Armstrong has proven the IPCC models are outperformed by a simple model

Armstrong argues:
Those involved in the global warming alarm have violated the “simple methods” principle.
He recommends that:
"To help ensure objectivity, government funding should not be provided for climate-change forecasting. As we have noted, simple methods are appropriate for forecasting for climate change. Large budgets are therefore not necessary."
If you doubt Dr Armstrong is a forecasting guru check the testimony:
Dr Armstrong ... is the author of Long-range Forecasting, the creator of forecastingprinciples.com, and editor of Principles of Forecasting (Kluwer 2001), an evidence-based summary of knowledge on forecasting methods. He is a founder of the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, and the International Symposium on Forecasting. He has spent 50 years doing research and consulting on forecasting
So yes he's very much involved in forecasting.
We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts based on the assumption that there would be no interventions. This test found that the errors for IPCC model long-term forecasts (91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based “no change” model. Based on our analyses, we concluded that the global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement.
This is music to my ears, and the ears to other deniers the Internet wide. At last we have scientific sounding justification for our claims that the experts know less than simple folk. We can figure it out ourselves. Oh they might have fancy equations and computers but what really counts is wild ass guesses from those willing to think out of their armchairs.

The conclusion I like to draw is that simple models always work better than more complex models. Sounds right to me. And of course Armstrong is right, he was after-all the first man on the moon.

Glowing recommendations abound. Noone quite understands what Armstrong did, but we share absolute conviction that he's justified our basic dogma:
"I have not heard any testimony but am under the impression Scott Armstrong knows a great deal about complex modeling and has rejected it as failed (at least long term modeling)" - blog comment
An Analysis of Armstrong's validation test of the IPCC forecasting model

But unlike other denier blogs lets go a bit further and actually try to understand what Armstrong did to demonstrate a simple model beats the IPCC models at making longterm forecasts. This is a technical blog afterall.

The validation test Armstrong performed is detailed in his 2009 paper, Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making, co-authored by Willie Soon and published in the International Journal of Forecasting (wait where have I heard of that before?).

What Armstrong did was to use discredited global temperature data published by the university at the center of Climate Gate. But in this case we can trust the data because it leads to a conclusion we want to believe.

Hadcrut3, the temperature data used to test IPCC model and simple benchmark model forecasts.

Armstrong made a simple benchmark model that forecasts temperature. It is very simple, it just predicts that future temperature will be identical to today's. So his simple benchmark model's 100 year forecast starting from 1851 predicts that the 1951 temperature anomaly will be the same as the 1851 temperature anomaly.

Because forecasting single annual anomalies is exactly the kind of thing the IPCC does.

Armstrong first tested his benchmark model against IPCC forecasts made in 1992. Unfortunately this way he could only test a 17 year forecast made by the IPCC and he noted that policymakers were more interested in long-term forecasts (eg more like 100 years ahead, not 17):
"Policymakers are concerned with long-term climate forecasting, and the ex ante analysis we have described was limited to a small sample of short-horizon projections. To address this limitation, we calculated rolling projections from 1851 to illustrate a proper validation procedure."

What he really wanted to be able to do was to test something like a 100 year IPCC forecast made in 1851 against the forecast made by his benchmark model. But just how could he obtain 100 year IPCC forecasts made in 1851 when the IPCC didn't even exist in 1851? Armstrong found a simple solution:

Dangerous manmade global warming became an issue of public concern after NASA scientist James Hansen testified on the subject to the US Congress on June 23, 1988 (McKibben, 2007), after a 13-year period from 1975 over which global temperature estimates were up more than they were down. The IPCC (2007) authors explained, however, that “Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750” (p. 2). There have even been claims that human activity has been causing global warming for at least 5000 years (Bergquist, 2008).

It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose, for the purposes of our validation illustration, that scientists in 1850 had noticed that the increasing industrialization of the world was resulting in an exponential growth in “greenhouse gases”, and projected that this would lead to global warming of 0.03 C per year.

Yes that's right, the IPCC didn't exist in 1851, but we can always imagine what they would have said if they had existed in 1851. After-all it isn't like the 0.03C per year warming rate is based on a complicated model. The IPCC models are simple right? 0.03C/year, wherever that comes from, is clearly based on nothing more than the notion that temperature will go up. 0.3C per decade is just a kind of universal warming rate that any IPCC scientist will eventually fixate on, even if that IPCC scientist exists in 1851.

The alternative to making it up would have been to take GCM hindcasts and compare them to HadCRUT. But that's quite involved. The idea here is to take the simpler route. It's simpler just to make shit up. That's one of the principles of forecasting in fact - make shit up.

So now lets compare the simple benchmark forecast with the IPCC forecast. At 0.03C warming per year the 1851 IPCC would have predicted the hadcrut 1951 temperature anomaly to be +2.7C, compared to the actual anomaly of -0.17C. Armstrong's simple benchmark model performs much better, predicting a 1951 temperature anomaly of -0.3C.


The absolute mean error in this case for Armstrong's model is 0.13C error. For the IPCC model it's a massive 2.87C error. The 1851 IPCC loses.

So when you next hear that simple models perform better at forecasting than complex IPCC climate models, now you know the technical details behind that fact. Thank god someone with the competence of Armstrong was brought in to testify before congress on such an important issue.

Thursday 31 March 2011

A word of caution to the BEST project team



An Open Letter To Professor Richard Muller and Team relating to the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature project

Tips and Advice: Learning from past mistakes

Dear Professor Muller and Team,

If you want your Berkley Earth Surface Temperature project to succeed and become the center of attention you need to learn from the vast number of mistakes Hansen and Jones have made with their temperature records. To aid this task I created a point by point list for you.

1) Any errors, however inconsequential, will be taken Very Seriously and accusations of fraud will be made.

2) If you adjust the raw data we will accuse you of fraudulently fiddling the figures whilst cooking the books.

3) If you don't adjust the raw data we will accuse you of fraudulently failing to account for station biases and UHI.

4) Homogenization is what Enron did.

5) If you rely on CLIMAT messages for the monthly updates this will cause a sharp station count drop after the first month. If that happens we will accuse you of fraudulently deleting stations to produce warming.

6) If you ever modify your algorithm and rerun it over the data so that some past monthly values change, we will accuse you of fraudulently rewriting written history.

7) By all means publish all your source code, but we will still accuse you of hiding the methodology for your adjustments.

8) If you publish results to your website and errors are found, we will accuse you of a Very Serious Error irregardless of severity (see point #1) and bemoan the press release you made about your results even though you won't remember making any press release about your results.

9) With regard to point #8 above, at extra cost and time to yourself you must employ someone to thoroughly check each monthly update before is is published online, even if this delays publication of the results till the end of the month. You might be surprised at this because no-one actually relies on such freshly published data anyway and aren't the many eyes of blog audit better than a single pair of eyes? Well that's irrelevant. See points #1 and #8

10) If you don't publish results promptly at the start of the month on the public website, but instead say publish the results to a private site for checks to be performed before release, we will accuse you of engaging in unscientific-like secrecy and massaging the data behind closed doors.

11) You can never adjust enough for UHI unless your record shows cooling.

12) You better not be using stations at airports. You'll find out why if you do.

13) You don't need to adjust for Time of Observation bias. That's the upwards one isn't it? Well we couldn't give a shit about that.

14) If any region/station shows a warming trend that doesn't match the raw data, and we can't understand why, we will accuse you of fraud and dismiss the entire record. Don't expect us to have to read anything to understand results.

15) You must provide all input datasets on your website. It's no good referencing NOAAs site and saying they "own" the GHCN data for example. I don't want their GHCN raw temperatures file, I want the one on your hard drive which you used for the analysis, even if you claim they are the same. If you don't do this we will accuse you of hiding the data and preventing us checking your results.

16) You are to blame for any station data your team uses. If we find out that a station you use is next to an AC Unit, we will conclude you personally planted the thermometer there to deliberately get warming.

17) We will treat your record as if no alternative exists. As if your record is the make or break of Something Really Important (see point #1) and we just can't check the results in any other way.

18) Always wear a lab coat while running your algorithm. I don't really know about the practicalities of how science is practiced in real life, but you sure as hell better meet the expectations I have gleaned off TV. Especially when this is science that is so important (see point #17).

20) A Stationary Audit should be completed prior to and after all work.

21) Your work is important (see point #17) so it bears special scrutiny - that's why our role as auditors is so important.

22) We don't need any scrutiny because our role isn't important.

23) In the unlikely event that I haven't wasted enough of your time forcing you to comply with the above rules, I also demand to see all emails you have sent or will send during the period 1950 to 2050 that contain any of these keywords

Any accusations of fraud and wrong-doing aimed at your team will be initially posted on blogs and in the media but will be eventually compiled by our think-tanks into glossy brochures. We don't check our own claims much.

You of course have nothing to lose and a lot to gain in this endeavor!

Good Luck,
The Auditors

Update: Additional advice from commenters:

Joel
24. In the event that you comply with all of the above, we will point out that a mere hundred-odd years of data is irrelevant next to the 4.5 billion year history of Earth. So why do you even bother?

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Memo to republicans: don't bother voting in 2012. Your vote only increases the chance of your party winning by 0.0001%

EPA CO2 regulations would reduce global temps by only 0.0037C. Unless all the other countries cut emissions too it's pointless.

This is also the reason why I never vote.

Think about it - it takes me an hour to get to the nearest polling station and another hour to get back again, costing me both time and fuel. Considering that money and effort makes a contribution to the tea party of just 0.0001% of the vote, what's the point?

Republicans will also be wise enough not to bother voting for the same reason. Democrats are of course too stupid to understand statistics and they'll flock to the polls thinking their 0.0001% will make any difference.

Monday 21 March 2011

Climate legislation: I can't find anything good to say about it

Climate legislation threatens to increase energy prices just as the poorest in society are dealing with the crawl out of a recession. Carbon legislation will disproportionately hit the poor in society and the money will just end up in the pocket of rich bankers.

At the same time climate legislation is not really about the climate at all. The true motive is socialist wealth redistribution - a transfer of money from rich to poor. I am very much against giving money to the poor.

Couldn't we instead spend the zillions pegged for wind turbines and carbon taxes on real problems, such as tackling world poverty, ie giving money to the poor?

The harder I try, the more excuses I find.

Jurrassic Park is a triumph for dino theme parks: Build more dinosaur theme parks now!

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!
Quake + tsunami = 1 minor radiation dose so far

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/fukushiima_analysis/



Industrial espionage + life finding a way = only 5 dead so far

Analysis Ingen's dinosaur theme park, Jurassic Park, has performed magnificently in the face of a disaster hugely greater than it was designed to withstand, remaining entirely safe throughout and sustaining only minor damage. The unfolding Jurassic Park story has enormously strengthened the case for advanced nations – including Japan – to build more Dinosaur based Amusement Parks, in the knowledge that no imaginable disaster can result in serious problems.

Let's recap on what's happened so far. The tropical storm which hit on Friday was terrifically powerful, shaking the entire island. Taking advantage of this weather, head computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, irresponsibly deactivated the park's security system in a failed effort to steal dinosaur eggs.

If dinosaur theme parks were merely as safe as they are advertised to be, there should have been a major failure right then. As the dinosaurs were no longer held in pens by electric fences a runaway dinosaur swarm could have ensued involving thousands of dinosaurs – probably resulting in the worst thing that can happen to a properly designed dinosaur theme park: everyone gets eaten. In this case the only thing to do is evacuate the island and wait: no actual disaster will take place, but the park is a total writeoff and cleansing the park of dinosaurs will be difficult and take a long time. Eventual cleanup will be protracted and expensive.

In fact, though the security breach was far beyond design limits, the staff were able to reboot the park's computer system: triumph number one. Door locks slammed shut, blocking out the dinosaurs.

However, the dinosaurs were still on the loose at this point: carnivorous reptiles that can sometimes try to eat humans. They have short lives however and cannot breed, so their numbers decay to insignificant levels within days of a shutdown, but for that time the pens will still release a few dinosaurs – and this is still a lot of dangerous reptiles. If they are not dealt with, they can eventually break through the fences, though the resulting mess will not be nearly as bad as a dinosaur swarm.

Thus, even with the computer systems rebooted, the park still needs to be left for some days until the "residual" dinosaurs die away and so power and water need to be supplied for this purpose. Backup door locks came on at all the park buildings without trouble, despite the way-beyond-spec hit from the security breach: triumph number two.

This is obviously emotive stuff – large escaping flesh eating reptiles – even if they are harmless to anyone off the island (the workers inside are in protected control rooms or wearing protective gear - hard hats, the goggles that DO work, etc).

So the situation is being managed and the buildings are being kept secure by rebooting the park's computer.

Health effects have been pretty much zero. At times there have been heightened attacks on staff inside the buildings by short lived dinosaurs due to the pen releases – sometimes enough that an unprotected person next to a dinosaur might have sustained a year's normal dose of dinosaur teeth in an hour. This is not particularly terrifying, really – but it is being reported under scaremongering headlines. Another thing the weekend reporters have missed was the fact that all but tiny traces of the dinosaurs were disappearing before they could even reach the buildings; there is essentially no health hazard to people living outside the island. Precautionary evacuations and tests were just that: precautionary.

In fact only one person so far has sustained any measurable injury above normal: a plant worker, according to staff, has lost an arm in the maintenance compound. Once that member of staff is located they will be informed their arm has been found. Other workers have been chased by velociraptors, T-Rexes, etc, but quite frankly being a dinosaur theme park worker at Jurassic Park has been pretty safe compared to the number of automobile deaths each year.

So to sum up: the park is well on it's way to shutdown. At no time have their operators come even close to running out of options. The safety systems did not come even close to failing, despite being tested far beyond what they had been designed to take. One person has sustained a small dose of being swallowed by a T-Rex which need cause him no concern.

The whole sequence of events is a ringing endorsement for dinosaur amusement park safety. If this – basically nothing – is what happens when year-old systems are pushed five times and then some beyond their design limits, new dinosaur theme parks much safer yet would be able to resist an asteroid strike without problems.

But you wouldn't know that from looking at the mainstream media. Ignorant fools are suggesting on every hand that Jurrassic Park's problems actually mean fresh obstacles in the way of dinosaur theme parks here in the UK, Europe and the US.

That can only be true if an unbelievable level of public ignorance of the real facts, born of truly dreadful news reporting over the weekend, is allowed to persist.

Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be Trusted



Lessons From Japan

If there is one thing the media reaction to Fukushima shows, it is that Greens don't know whether they support Nuclear Power or whether they oppose it. This troubles me because how am I supposed to know what position to take on Nuclear Power if I don't know which position is very not the IPCC? If only Al Gore would announce to the IPCC what the official Green policy is on nuclear power.

Some environmentalists are opposed to nuclear power on so-called "safety" grounds, while others are pro-nuclear power because apparently nuclear power plants don't emit CO2, which is a terrible fact. You'd have thought in the 21st century someone would have developed a way to get the best of both worlds. A coal powered nuclear power station perhaps.

Don't get me wrong, I fully support radiation, I just don't trust nuclear power. I don't have a bad word to say about radiation. My job is to deny any negative industrial or commercial effect that alarms others. Radiation, climate change, DDT, etc, i've been funded to deny the lot. Like all industrial byproducts, I say radiation is entirely natural and it turns out radiation is good for your health.

Greens are always blathering on about "emissions". Yap yap yap. "Hey inferno those radiation emissions are too high". Whatever, I call it life. Radiation levels on Earth were much higher in the past. Who gets to decide that current levels of radiation are optimal for man? If anything the Earth is probably starved of radiation.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Saturday 26 February 2011

The Global Warming Non Problem

Thanks to Fox News for alerting me to this one. You know that man-made global warming scare so-called "scientists" have been banging on about? Well latest is that the scientists have discovered a very simple fix

Don't forget to read the comments. The Fox News demographic are particularly clued into issues and we can learn a lot from them about climate change and how Muslims are apparently related to all this. Some favorites:

wontshutup tells it as it is: First... the term "Global Warming", is idiocy. Climate change is very real though, it has been going on since the beginning of time. As time goes on, the climate changes. (Example: The "Ice Age"/end of "Ice Age".). The only thing that won't change, is climate change. Now, nuclear fall out, nuclear winter, etc.... Ummmm?...(continues)...

hardbone manages to link everything together: Even exploring this madman's nightmare tells me that the socialist from NASA have gone over the bend into madness. First where is that ignoramus Gore and second did trying to integrate the Islamo Fascist into NASA fail? This is scarier then sh*t.

cwheeler introduces a new system of punctuation. He is also worried the antarctic polar bear population might disappear, and yes of course something about muslims again:hummmm????? 100 nukes, above ground,,, I see one safe (maybe) place for that,,, antartica,,,, no wait, we cant do that,, pengins polar bears, walrus's, seals...,,,, better make it ny, frisco, baltimore, boston, vermont, maine , new hamp, ,,,,, darn,,, those are libs,,,, I guess its the middle of the u.s. then. and cant be wi,,, they got all the mus/ims up there

Thursday 3 February 2011

Why Leprechauns Can't Explain The Recent Warming

Tamino challenges Roy Spencer to rule out leprechauns as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record. Doesn't he realize you can't prove a negative?

Besides the most absurd thing about his post is that he even for a second entertains the preposterous idea that Leprechauns could have had a warming influence on climate. Everyone knows Leprechauns have had a cooling effect on climate in the last 60 years. In fact Leprechauns are the only cooling supernatural radiative forcing known to blog science.

Radiative Forcing Components. Click Image For Readable Version

How Do Leprechauns Influence Climate?

As far as modern science can ascertain, Leprechauns influence climate by modulating the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs). It seems that an increase in GCRs prompts an increase in clouds. In turn this leads to more rainbows, each of which according to legend prompts a Leprechaun to place an extra pot of gold at it's end. The albedo increase due to all these new shiny pots of gold being left around induces a small cooling effect on the planet.

Sunday 30 January 2011

Mail Bag

I was emailed the following questions by an alarmist (under the cowardly anonymous name 'grhm332'). After checking his IP address to make sure he wasn't posting from a public government funded organization in work hours, I proceeded to check the questions were not a trap - ie were they designed to make me sound like an idiot when I answered them. Satisfied, I decided to respond.

Lets get something straight though - I don't believe in email, not in the sense that I don't believe in the Greenhouse Effect, I just mean I don't like it. I don't like email. Whenever I get an email, I will not respond directly. It's a security issue - the UN would just love to break into my email server and steal my climate emails. Instead I write a response up on a blog and then email the recipient a link to that blog post. Then they can come and comment on that blog post. I like it that way because then I can moderate them. Also it allows others to Peer-To-Peer review our discussion. And my blog visitor count goes up, which is the most important part of Blog Science.

The questions I was asked and my responses:

What Level Of CO2 Would You Consider Dangerous Enough To Act On?

I sense a trap here. The questioner wants me to answer that no level would be dangerous and make me sound like an idiot! Nice try, but it won't fly.

My answer is 2 million ppm - at which point I might start considering there may be a problem. At about 5 million ppm CO2 I think that would definitely be too much life even for skeptics.

How Much Global Warming Would You Consider Dangerous?

Well considering it's been quite cold here lately with lows dropping just below zero, and factoring in my tolerance for Saunas, I would have to say something like 60 degrees C global warming would probably be the danger limit. With one caveat - if 60 degrees C warming was caused by CO2 (even though it couldn't be) that wouldn't be dangerous because vegetables would grow bigger - good effect canceling out bad effect, etc.

Saturday 29 January 2011

North Atlantic Waters Preventing Greenland Ice Melt


Well Whad'Ya know? Despite alarmist cries, it turns out that warming is good after-all and the arctic is doing just fine:

'Hidden Plumbing' Helps Slow Greenland Ice Flow: Hotter Summers May Actually Slow Down Flow of Glaciers

Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research.

A letter published in Nature on 27 January explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to 'adapt' and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans. The findings have important implications for future assessments of global sea level rise.


The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council's National Centre for Earth Observation.

More details here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110126131538.htm

Is this natural warming effect that protects glaciers actually happening though? Another recent study also on ScienceDaily suggests that yes, it is:

Warming North Atlantic Water Tied to Heating Arctic

Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard -- an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway -- has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century.

and furthermore they report that arctic sea ice decline has been caused by the Atlantic, not by CO2:

"We must assume that the accelerated decrease of the Arctic sea ice cover and the warming of the ocean and atmosphere of the Arctic measured in recent decades are in part related to an increased heat transfer from the Atlantic," said Spielhagen.

Well color me surprised. Looks like nature is just fine and can take care of itself after-all. I've always said we have more to fear from Global Cooling. Now we can add melting ice caps to the list of problems a little ice age would cause.

Friday 28 January 2011

How To Run A Skeptic Blog (part 1)

Step 1. Enter the URL http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/climate/ into your browser and hit GO

Step 2. Read each headline in turn - what does it say?

Something is cooling
Doesn't matter what is cooling. It might be an ocean, a country, or even another planet.

For example this article fits:
Water Temperature in the Subtropical Atlantic Falls Due to Wind Action

Copy the image and some of the text from the article into your blog. The text doesn't matter too much, the title is important though. Use your own title, something suitably trite that gets the message across like "What happened to Global Warming?". Add a quick comment to the end of the post, again something pretty mundane that the slower readers can enjoy. Perhaps a passing reference to the hockey stick being the wrong way up or something about hiding a decline. You get the idea.

Your post is ready.

Something that overturns previous understanding
It doesn't even have to be about climate. For example this article fits:
Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years, Fossil Find Suggests
University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

Copy paste that bit into your blog and any other parts that fit the idea that those clumsy scientists keep getting everything wrong:

Heaman and his colleagues believe if their new uranium-lead dating technique bears out on more fossil samples then the KT extinction paradigm and the end of the dinosaurs will have to be revised.

Choose your own title. Again something trite like "So much for Consensus!" or "So much for Science!". End the post with a comment that lightly insults scientists for not understanding anything and praises laypeople for understanding more. Or perhaps even write a one line put down of a specific Climate Scientist you don't like today.

Anything about ice growing, sea level falling or the rate of change slowing down
This article fits:
'Hidden Plumbing' Helps Slow Greenland Ice Flow: Hotter Summers May Actually Slow Down Flow of Glaciers

Copy paste the beginning of the article:
Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research.

Choose your own title. Something like "Scientists Admit Greenland Ice Sheet is Stable" or perhaps "Warming From Rising CO2 To Prevent Glacier Melt" or even "CO2 Taxes Will Melt Glaciers Say Scientists"

Don't post anything else. Your target audience will only read the title, take a cursory glance at the extracts you have chosen (as if they need to check) and then they will scroll down to the comments to write something about Al Gore.

Here is a real world example:
ScienceDaily: Debris on Certain Himalayan Glaciers May Prevent Melting

The Telegraph reported that story, but in true 'interpreting the interpreters' fashion they elected to use their own enhanced title to emphasize skepticism:
Telegraph: Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds

What about articles that don't fit?
Ah you mean articles like the top four articles that appear in the climate section of ScienceDaily today:

Warming North Atlantic Water Tied to Heating Arctic
More Frequent Drought Likely in Eastern Africa
Mass Extinction Linked to Ancient Climate Change, New Details Reveal
Climatic Fluctuations in Last 2,500 Years Linked to Social Upheavals

Yes most ScienceDaily articles don't fit, try to ignore them. They literally go away after a few weeks. That said if your blog is popular you might have to post some of these stories to appear neutral. Try to find an angle on them that works (I'll post an example for the next post) and always describe them in a condescending manner. Present the scientists behind the cooling studies as respected authorities and the scientists behind the warming studies as pure bastards.

Conclusion

Today we learned how to write a skeptical blog post in 3 minutes. Remember running a successful skeptic blog is all about quantity, not quality. That's where blogs like realclimate.org go wrong. They spend too long thinking and not enough time typing. If you only publish a post once every month how will your blog ever get a high visitor count, aka impact rating? The best climate blogs post at least 10 posts a day. That way all your mistakes fade into the past really quick while at the same time sticking in people's minds.

Still don't understand? Well imagine a climate scientist giving a slow boring lecture about how molecules work. Everyone is falling asleep and then suddenly in bursts an exciting character with wild eyes who screams "LIES, ITS ALL LIES!". Who gets your attention? I for one would like to know why he has wild eyes, what truths can he tell me about the PDO and Solar Cycling?

Thursday 27 January 2011

Progress in Conspirology

The field of Conspirology is currently undergoing a rapid transformation. Thanks to the emergence of blogging and more recently the establishment of the Peer-to-Peer review system, researchers are publishing new theories on an almost daily basis. This can all be very confusing to the layperson, so I thought I would write a very quick and rough summary outlining the current state of Conspirology with regards to climate change, some of the recent progress in the field and where I think the field is heading.

Recent Advancements

The main advancement has been the exponential growth of computing power. The sheer amount of computing power available today would have been unimaginable to theorists of the past who had to shout their ideas from street corners to get noticed. In fact a modern calculator has more computing power than the rocket that allegedly put man on the moon. This extra computing power has led to the emergence of blog science. No-one knows how many blogs there are on the Internet (except the NSA who monitor and log all web traffic) but I am going to say the number is 15 million. It's growing all the time. Blogs have been a real help to Conspirology, enabling a new generation of theorists to get involved.

Another advancement has been the recent adoption of the peer-to-peer review system, which emphasizes a suspension of disbelief rather than a more formal evidence based review. Peer-to-peer review has allowed ideas to flourish that would otherwise have not seen the light of day for lack of evidence or common sense.

Current State of the Field

A recent comprehensive review of the field:
http://iji2.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/agw-conspiracy-20090201-1.png

As theorists of Conspirology we can definitely say "Yes there IS a climate change conspiracy happening", but we can't quite attribute the cause. Despite the aforementioned advancements in the field, frustratingly little progress has been made narrowing down the exact cause behind the Man-made Global Warming scam. We seem to be still stuck with all the uncertainties that existed 10 years ago. If anything the more answers we find the more questions we are left with.

To confound matters they keep changing the name. I suspect this is to slow us down. Last year it was Global Warming then it was Climate Change and now it's got something to do with Disruption. The worst part is we aren't even sure who this "they" are. Somehow the name keeps changing but no-one seems to know who is doing it. What we do know is that whoever is changing the name is also sneaking in references to man-made global warming in all the atmospheric physics textbooks.

Is it just part of a natural cycle?

Scientists were predicting an ice age in the 1970s and before that they were predicting warming in the 1920s. So the question has to be what caused all those past conspiracies? If we can't explain the past conspiracies how can we claim to know the cause of the current one?

Is it Communists?

Good point, but Conspirology has progressed quite a bit from it's early days where the answer to any complex issue could just be Communists. These days things are just a bit more subtle. There have been a lot of twists in movies lately and people are just not going to accept simple conspiracies anymore, myself included.

Is it HAAAARP?

No.

Where is Conspirology heading?

Nowhere, and that's good because mark my words if the field was heading for a consensus I would be out of here. Consensus isn't science. What I always say is that the less experts accept an idea, the more likely it is to be true.

What is the truth? My money is on the Climatati. But use the comments to speculate.