stoat

A blizzard strikes the UK, depositing the once-in-5-years 4" of snow, and chaos breaks loose. In this case, chaos means the school is shut. Daniel had fun in the snow all day and ended up happily exhausted, having built an igloo with friends. Miranda had a brief bit of early snow before deciding…

I encountered [[J Scott Armstrong]] via his wiki entry, and the blogosphere, when he proposed a $20,000 bet with Gore (though since each side was supposed to put up $10,000 this seems like puffery from the start). JA pointed out the obvious reasons why the bet is trickery. On Armstrong's part, this…

Nowadays I seem to rely on wikipedia for my news stories. Not necessarily for the truth, but that something has occurred. So this little thread at global warming piqued my interest (note, BTW, how the poor dear septics don't even bother trying to edit the page any more, having been crushed so often…

Make of it what you will. A flea and a fly in a flue Were trapped so what could they do? "Let us flee" said the fly "Let us fly" said the flea So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

You know the old T-shirt slogan: "Help the police. Beat yourself up". Anyway, Nurture have the traditional Inuit-imperilled-by-climate-change stuff, only its a bit more interesting because they link to a paper that actually tries to quantify the effects. Or it would be interesting, if not hidden…

Courtesy of A+S's Inaug party (great idea - thanks again), we watched the Inaug live on BBC, though I had to leave before the post-match analysis. I enjoyed it - it was a good show. His speech was well delivered, rousing even, if not great. It was interesting, very listenable, and said some good…

Poll one wasn't condusive to the right headlines and the journal adopted a policy of "that EOS should not accept summaries of opinion polls". Opinion poll two produced unambiguously the right answer, was published in EOS, and is splashed about.

I've been re-reading Neuromancer whilst putting my daughter to bed. Fear not, she gets stuff like The Tales of Beedle the Bard instead. Of the two, N is far and away the better book (wiki tells me that the novel appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923…

First outing this year, on a day that fitted the description of english weather "all four seasons in a day". Happily that included summer, since I was down to shorts and a tee-shirt in the sunshine portion. We couldn't scrounge up eight people so went out in the IV of doom, which isn't nearly as…

While browing the Dictionary of Philosophy, on my way towards Hobbes, I stopped at Hegel, and noticed a comment about his "orbits of the planets", something to the effect that the view that he proved, from first principles, that there are seven planets, is an error of translation. Odd, I thought:…

Asks climatematters@columbia. But they ask it in a way that suggests they think the trend is going to be steep. So I offered them the standard bet. We'll see. Meanwhile, anyone interested in whether 2009 is likely to be a record can get some action over at ipredict (thanks Gareth). I've bought some…

Every now and again, its nice to be reminded that no matter how irritating the overenthusiasm of the greenies can be on occaision, the real wackos are on the septic side. If you can't cope with the long words at [[Global Warming]] then you can always look at the pretty pictures. Or maybe you like…

Nurture notes some controversy over LOHAFEX. We're taken aback by this flagrant disregard of international law, says someone I've never heard of. Well, my reading of COP 9 Decision IX/16, Section C (Ocean Fertilization), paragraph 4 is that it says it requests Parties and urges other Governments,…

Israel disqualifies Arab parties .

So says The Grauniad. It seems eerily familiar to me, and the The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming almost seems like a parody. Torygraph tags along. Oh yes, here we were and here. The new study says The results showed the amount of CO2 absorbed during 1999 to 2007 was half the…

Ahem. So previously there was a lot of hype and confusion and not much paper. Now that has changed, with Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100AD by Aslak Grinsted, John C. Moore & Svetlana Jevrejeva. Which says: We use a physically plausible 4 parameter…

How overfed are we? refers, in which I express some doubt about the problems of food production. But Battisti and Naylor (Science 9 January 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5911, pp. 240 - 244; DOI: 10.1126/science.1164363) Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat re-raise…

Is wander around blowing up schools. Fairly obvious really, but some people will never learn. Bozos. [Pulled from the comments (thanks): its fun to watch: -W]

Since I seem to be stating my position perhaps its time to clarify my position on CO2 taxes. I hear Obama is waiting to hear what I have to say on this burning issue :-) When I said that heavy, extremely painful carbon taxes weren't going to happen, some people seem to have misinterpreted it to…

To look at, anyway. [ps: for anyone who watched while I put this together: apologies!]

Its all rather manky here: cold, thin snow semi-melted by rain and refrozen. Urgh. Which brings up the obvious question: if I could suddenly make the world, or at least this little bit of it, 2 degrees warmer all year round, would I be better or worse off? I'm just thinking of direct response, mind…

So says the Independent. The substance seems to be Just over half - 54 per cent - of the 80 international specialists in climate science who took part in our survey agreed that the situation is now so dire that we need a backup plan that involves the artificial manipulation of the global climate to…

JF comments on Malthus, which is my excuse for raising a question I've wondered about for a bit (without being sufficiently interested to actually read M, so for all I know I'm perpetuating common misreadings): M assumes exponential population growth (for which there is some basis) and linear food…

Merry Christmas to all my readers, and even more to my writers. Here is a festive image, tastefully coloured in by me. And now for the quiz. In the spirit of "5 advances in climate science" I ask for the 5 best mistakes in sci-fi novels of the past year. To get the ball rolling with a low bar (and…

Nurture offers us ...how far our understanding of climate change has come in the past twelve months. But its a bit thin, especially for just a pick of the top five; there are of course others we could have mentioned. 5. is "skeptics are still out there" - which has nothing to do with the science. 4…

Hansen again. He seems to have got bored with saying climate sensitivity is 6 oC, and now agrees with JA that its 3 oC. Hurrah. Less excitingly, his estimate for all-ice-sheet melt on 2-3 x CO2 is now "it would take some time", which has the virtue of vagueness. But far more excitingly, he is now…

http://climate.columbia.edu/blog/ defines "abrupt climate change" as: A large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems.…

Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night. From If programming languages were religions..., via mt's shared list.…

I have a twitter feed, http://twitter.com/wmconnolley. Quite what its for, I'm not sure. Maybe it will turn out to be useful. Maybe I can embed it into my blog or something. Did I mention that I have a pointless facebook page? Oh look, facebook has a twitter app. It doesn't tell me what it does,…

I've already used Clowns to the left of me.... And then I run across an opinion article in today's Guardian: "Let's Get Real on the Environment." by David Appell nicely counterbalanced by Yes. We Can.. Oh dear oh dear. To begin with the obligatory snarking, anyone with young children in the UK will…