Sunday
Oct172010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Light blogging
Oct 17, 2010 Blogs I'm off to the big smoke tomorrow. I'm giving a talk at the Institute of Energy and attending Vaclav Klaus's lecture on Tuesday.
Be good while I'm away.
Reader Comments (136)
@ Rick B.
"Nature Climate Change will dedicate its coverage to one of the greatest challenges for science and society."
It would also make a good topic for the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry IMHO
Re the Nature effort, surely climate science is, strictly, an updated form of geomancy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomancy
Geomancy is the art of divination by looking at signs in the earth - so predicting the temperature in 2100 by looking at ice in Greenland would qualify.
Geomancers are also expected to generate their own pseudo-random data, methods for which include counting the eyes on potatoes. Presumably the rings in bristlecone pine trees would be good proxies for potato eyes.
Arguably climate scientists also look for news of the future in portents in the sky, but I'm not sure if that was a ever a discipline in itself or just a meta-indicator of credulousness.
It is really remarkable, when you think about it, how stubborn some of these nutty beliefs are. Astrology, the tarot, palmistry, and geomancy are all still alive and well, and you can study the latter at UEA.
Can anyone think, offhand, of a nutty cult of yesteryear that had a priesthood and a lexicon of psychobabble but that has also died out? All the obvious candidates seem to be going strong, unless one starts including the wilder shores of defunct religions. There can't be too many practising Manichaeans still around, for example, although in spirit a number of them can be found at RealClimate. One tends to expect religion to morph over time in this way, of course.
@ Justice4
"Can anyone think, offhand, of a nutty cult of yesteryear that had a priesthood and a lexicon of psychobabble but that has also died out?"
How about;
Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis had mixed support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s
Re Mac
Only if it covers how to mine wood. Tempted to go along to that myself though.
Re: Justice4Rinka
Church of the SubGenius. Hasn't died out, just slacking. Founded by the world's greatest salesman, Bob. Dedicated to.
The Church Of The SubGenius is an order of Scoffers and Blasphemers, dedicated to Total Slack, delving into Mockery Science, Sadofuturistics, Megaphysics, Scatalography, Schizophreniatrics, Morealism, Sarcastrophy, Cynisacreligion, Apocolyptionomy, ESPectorationalism, Hypno-Pediatrics, Subliminalism, Satyriology, Disto-Utopianity, Sardonicology, Fascetiouism, Ridiculophagy, and Miscellatheistic Theology.
Popular in the late '60s, just as Climatology was getting started. I keep expecting the Rev Stang to pop up some day and say he was just kidding about climate change.
Posted on the Commons Select Committee webpages-
Quote
18 October 2010 .
The Science and Technology Committee will hold an oral evidence session following-up to the previous committee’s report on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Wednesday 27 October 2010
Venue: Thatcher Room, House of Commons
Witnesses:
At 9.20 am:
• Sir Muir Russell, Head of the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review
• Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia
• Professor Trevor Davies, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, University of East Anglia
Unquote
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/101018-uea-ev-session/
Pharos.
The Three Wise CRU Monkeys - "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"
Oxburgh was the 4th Wise CRU monkey - "do no evil"
Of course all of them followed the other maxim - "ask no evil"
1. "Phil, did you delete any emails?"
2. "Phil, why did you use inappropriate statistical methods?"
3. "Phil, why did you avoid FoI requests?"
4. "Phil, how came you ended up picking the papers for the Oxburgh review?"
PS What are the chances that the Science and Technology Committee will ask any pertinent follow-up questions?
No chance at all!
Dominic - today's Daily Politics show should be watched on the BBC i-player for the novelty of seeing a critical lead-in film and then hostile questioning by both Neil and Anand towards Bob Watson. I didn't think I would see a segment about climate change like that on the BBC. Watson looked taken aback.
Atomic Hairdryer,
I wish I could even pronounce some of those words.
Peter Walsh
Could I direct y'all to the GWPF site to read the item on:
Spain's Solar Deals Face Bankruptcy As Subsidies Founder
Peter Walsh
No gloating please, you gotta feel sooooo sorrrry for the investors now that the rug is being pulled out from under them.
The Psychiatrists are at it again:
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/press/pressreleases2010/1010campaign.aspx
For further information, please contact Liz Fox (no relation).
RETEPHSLAW:
Unfortunately our politicians don't learn and are following the Spanish with feed-in tarriffs. Cornwall, the sunniest part of England will be covered in solar panels (also the wettest). If they struggle in Spain with tarriffs ten times the price of electricity, what chance in Cornwall? Sheer madness; it'll end in tears, but we will all have paid for the madness before the politicians learn. Let's hope with a review of the feed-in tarriffs, we don't follow the Spanish too closely.
Justice4Rinka
Australians in time of drought used to bring on the rain by wrapping their foreskins in the grease of wild dogs and the skin of the carpet snake and burying them in the earth. Nowadays they vote Labour.
Dreadnought:
Professor Dinesh Bhugra, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists which represents 13,000 psychiatrists in the UK, highlighted the indisputable benefits of a low-carbon lifestyle to mental health. “Research shows a low-carbon lifestyle can improve mental health – which is why the RCPsych is proud to be playing its part in the 10:10 campaign,” he said. “People who engage in active, low-carbon activities, such as walking or cycling more often, are not only cutting emissions but keeping their bodies and minds healthy. For mild depression, physical activity can be as good as antidepressants or psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy."
2 billion people around the globe lead low carbon lifestyles - it is known as poverty. As the good Prof should know the link between poverty and poor mental health is well establised.
Professor Bhugra added: “Working together to tackle climate change could even help prevent harm to people’s mental health at an international level. Climate change as a result of global warming is likely to trigger increased flooding and greater risk of natural disasters across the world. As we have seen with the recent floods in Pakistan, these sorts of disasters can lead to destitution and poverty, which are associated with mental illness."
The good Prof makes my point about poverty and mental health, but fails to understand that there is no signal of human caused climate change in the disaster record, and that includes the floods in Pakistan.
Professor Dinesh Bhugra would do more good if he stopped talking rubbish about climate change and instead made efforts to improve people's mental health by help lifting them out of poverty - in all it's forms.
John Lish:
Just watched it, thanks; it starts at about 22min 30sec. It looks like Bob Watson had tried to cut his throat, but had even failed at that. What a numpty he is. He always says the same lies thinking that if he repeats them often enough we will believe him. That is the second time I have seen him on the Politics Show with Nigel Lawson and it looks like there will be another go soon. Andrew Neil obviously doesn't like Watson or doesn't believe the cr*p. I think that Watson can be put alongside Ward and Patchy as another bad PR person for the warmists.
On the subjject of Watson, I wrote to Caroline Spelman at DEFRA asking her to get rid of Watson as Chief Scientific Advisor as he is an embarassment to science. I got the standard reply to my letter from DECC telling me the usual garbage, so I sent the file to my MP to get him to pursue it from his end. I am mightily p*****d off at getting the same garbage from DECC no matter what I write ot to whom I write. In fact I am getting mightily p*****d off with the whole system; it is full of self-serving b******s. Time for a revolution.
Right I'll go and calm down now.
It would seem that Professor Dinesh Bhugra and RCoP have in the past gotten themeselves into trouble by not properly checking the medical credentials of doctors.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jun/29/mentalhealth.health3
Not a one for detail Professor Dinesh Bhugra.
Never mind if he flies less and takes fewer taxis he will have done his bit for patients.
Thanks Mac for that. My mental health would be mightily improved if they got rid of all the idiots in the world. Now I must go and reduce my BP.
@Dominic,
Thank you for the tip on the Bob Watson interview. Andrew Neil gave him a rough ride on models and did it at an Auntie venue and in the presence of a 'sceptic' Lawson who successfully dismissed him as an advocate, not scientist. Astonishing!
@RETEP,
The issue is big inside Spain too. Madrid university has already proved that green jobs drive out real jobs by more that 2:1, and now the electricity bills are rocketing. A recent scam uncovered was to provide electricity to the grid pretending it came from PV panels - uncovered because they were doing it at night!
It looks like Piers Corbyn has been baiting the MO and BBC again...
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No34.pdf
Phillip Bratby,
Your politicians are in the GENIUS class compared to our idiots, believe me.
Simpleseekeraftertruth,
Yep that has happened in a few places where high powered lights were used to shine on solar panels in basements. I think this was mentioned a year or so ago here. Phillip, can you remember when please?
Peter
RETEPHSLAW:
I can't remember when or where it was, but I think it came from Germany where the tariffs were such that money could be made by buying electricity at the domestic price and using it to either shine a light on a solar panel or blowing a fan at a turbine and exporting the electricity generated at the tariff rate. Then someone suggested why not cut out the technology bit and just re-export the electricity. and claim the tariff.
Right hand side of the blog- go to Search, put in "Solar Panels" and you will get two or three posts, which are what you are looking for, I think
Thanks messenger. It's at http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/8/the-insanity-of-greenery.html#comments
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters. (h/t cfact.eu)
http://heatball.de/
Shhhh guys, the Bish may be back tomorrow, so best behaviour from now on. You never know who may be watching.
Gudnight, sleep tight, don't make the Bishop bite.
Peter Walsh
Come on Peter, our behaviour has been exemplary. No trolls to disturb the serenity and friendly discourse.
Here are my raw notes about Pres. Klaus' lecture tonight in London
Peter/Phillip
Hmmm. Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'renewable energy'. Buy old & sell as new. The question has to be: how widespread is this? The only way to ensure that it cannot happen is to have the feed-in tariff at a level that the inefficiencies of conversion overcome or equal the difference between it and the retail rate. It could be that Spain is heading that way now that economic realities are kicking in.
Phillip, I know that and I know that you know that and the trolls have been great too.
It has been fun the past couple of days with some serious bits and pieces along the way.
We can be left to look after the Bishop's palace and preserve his Bishopric. He left the place in safe hands.
Peter
@Maurizio Morabito,
Thank you. An interesting read before bed and with a note of optimism. Goodnight.
RETEPHSLAW - Shhhh guys, the Bish may be back tomorrow, so best behaviour from now on.
Awww, shouldn't we have been having a party while he was away? You know the sort of thing, invite 25000 on facebook, get drunk and wake up in a shopping trolley wearing a traffic cone... Actually the sleeptight thing sounds better.
Maurizio Morabito - thank you for those notes. Excellent points were made, and the overall impression I got from your notes is of a confident, civilised, challenge to the establishment re climate science. That's better than Horlicks for a good night's sleep.
Thanks Maurizio
Also, Drudge is linking to Reuters with a piece about Klaus's lecture :
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE69I2EC.htm
Tip of the hat to HaroldW
Thanks Maurizio. Sounds like it was an event to have been at. I hope it is picked up by the MSM, but I am not holding my breath.
I like your last bit. I keep saying that the only power source with a lower energy density than wind, is solar at night; and we discussed earlier wind turbines driven by fans.
There is a very brief summary of the Vaclav Klaus talk at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE69I2EC.htm
Sorry, I did not see Pharos' link to the same piece. I got there via Climate Realists.
Can anyone think, offhand, of a nutty cult of yesteryear that had a priesthood and a lexicon of psychobabble but that has also died out?
Eugenics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
Maybe calling the EU the EU was not such a good idea !!! Don't see much difference at times.
A paragraph from this article...
EU proposes new Europe-wide VAT
It said: "Possible candidates for new own resources could be a share of a financial transaction or financial activities tax, auctioning of greenhouse gas emission allowances, an EU charge related to air transport, a separate EU VAT rate, a share of an EU energy tax or of an EU corporate income tax."
Green taxes to fund the EU central budget... CAGW ain't going to go away any time soon.
Big Oil? Big EU...
Klaus's lecture has been covered by this Fox News site: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/10/19/climate-change-threat-czech-president-vaclav-klaus/
Report includes:
'He denounced scientific institutions such as the UK's Royal Society which published a layman's guide to the science of climate change in September in the hope of clarifying confusion around the issue.
"I am not impressed by heavily biased British scientific institutions," he said.'
Neither am I. I guess the financier Grantham wasn't either, in a decidedly different way, so he created a couple of his own in London.
An article from the Guardian on the effect of spending cuts on the "environmental intiatives"...
Guardian take on climate spending cuts
The journalist is not very good (from previous articles) but one thing that struck me was this...
7. Climate change diplomacy (Foreign and Commonwealth Office - FCO)
Wait and see. This little-known arm of the FCO has done some great work in promoting the UK's approach the tackling global warming. How the 100-strong diplomat corp fares...
100 diplomats on Climate Change Diplomacy?
Big Oil? Big Government...
This looks encouraging:
link
The Klaus Vaclav talk is now fully covered at the GWPF
http://thegwpf.org/news/1726-president-vaclav-klaus-inaugural-annual-gwpf-lecture.html
I note that there will be more BBC bias on display this evening at 9pm, when the alarmist extarordinaire Tom Heap on Costing the Earth will be telling us the disastrous effects that climate change will have on wine production in the Mosel Valley.
Too right, if we have serious global cooling.
Do you need a degree or post-grad qualifications to be a lead author for the IPCC?
That is a question posed by Donna Laframboise.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/lead-author-lacked-a-masters-degree/
It seems not!
It would appear that the 'settled science' was formed in parts by those in the arts.
Do sceptics armed with scientific, statistical, technical, economic, political skills now require a literary critique in order to debate climate change?
Could the IPPC reports be none other, as the bard would put it, "a kind of excellent dumb discourse".
Beneath all the bluster on robust and settled science, a reminder of the frank admittance from one of the most highly respected scientists in the elite inner circle of our academic establishment, that
'the Sun's properties, such as its luminosity, are related to its magnetic field, though the connections are as yet not well understood' and 'we do not yet know quantitatively how such changes will influence the global environment.
NATURE Vol. 399, 3 June 1999. Pages 437-439
A Doubling of the Sun's Coronal Magnetic Field during the Last 100 Years
M. Lockwood, R. Stamper, and M.N. Wild
World Data Centre C-1 for STP, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, England, UK
The solar wind, because it is an extended ionized gas of very high electrical conductivity, drags some magnetic flux out of the Sun, thereby filling the heliosphere with the weak interplanetary magnetic field 7, 24. Magnetic reconnection - the merging of oppositely-directed magnetic fields such that they become connected to each other - between the interplanetary field and the Earth's magnetic field, allows energy from the solar wind to enter the near-Earth environment. The Sun's properties, such as its luminosity, are related to its magnetic field, though the connections are as yet not well understood 15, 16. Moreover, changes in the heliospheric magnetic field have been linked with changes in total cloud cover over the Earth, which may influence global climate change 17. Here we report that the measurements of the near-Earth interplanetary magnetic field reveal that the total magnetic field leaving the sun has risen by a factor 1.4 since 1964. Using surrogate interplanetary measurements, we find that the rise since 1901 is by a factor of 2.3. This change may be related to chaotic changes in the dynamo that generates the solar magnetic field. We do not yet know quantitatively how such changes will influence the global environment.
A report on the Klaus lecture has gone out on Reuters here: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE69I2EC.htm
Complete with the journalist's insertion, no doubt wanting a quiet life for herself, of:
'Many analysts and scientists believe this year could be one of the warmest on record worldwide and the world's nations are trying to curb their greenhouse gas emissions based on scientific predictions of rising sea levels and temperatures.
In the first four months of 2010, land and ocean temperatures were 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13.3 C) and 1.24 F (0.69 C) above the 20th century average, the warmest on record in U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.'
Will that be enough to keep the hyenas away? It can't be easy being a reporter of climate topics. A huge amount of genuflection seems required, for any piece other than ones based on press releases from the true believers.
Jo Nova has some observations on science journalism here: http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/what-the-heck-are-science-journalists-for/
Here is a poser - do we need the Bish to blog?
We lords temporal seem to be doing alright without 'the' lord spiritual.
Just a thought.
The "greenest government ever" has just announced via Cameron's speech that it intends to put lots and lots of our money into offshore wind turbines and carbon (dioxide) capture. How wonderful (sarc)
Messenger
And it will be selling Government cash cows like the Dartford crossing to do so.