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Bishop Hill
Copyright © 2006-2013, Bishop Hill All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (26)
enjoy a break. for your readers, some videos to pass the time....
Examiner: New special from founder of the Weather Channel tackles manmade climate change theory
Now a meteorologist for KUSI in San Diego, Coleman has continued his assault with a series of television specials, the latest of which aired last night.
The latest hour long special titled “Global Warming: Meltdown” walks through the arguments on both sides of the issue. From recent revelations of errors within the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reports to discussions of faulty climate computer models, Coleman lays out the doubts about man’s influence on the climate reassuring viewers that, “Mankind is not destroying our planet.”...
http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2010m2d19-New-special-from-founder-of-the-Weather-Channel-tackles-manmade-climate-change-theory
19 Feb: UK Register: Eco computer game cost taxpayers £47 per play
The true cost of astroturf
The payouts represent a tip of the iceberg (no pun intended, honest) of state funding for climate evangelism, which runs into billions of pounds. These FOIA requests only cover DEFRA, and so exclude cross-department initiatives such as the expensive, umbrella Act on CO2 initiative. And of course it excludes the really big money, such as the £200m a year to the Carbon Trust, a similar amount to the the Energy Savings Trust, and smaller quangos.
Also not included are state-dependent institutions who are sympathetic to the cause, such as the £50m a year Royal Society, the Met Office, or the British Council, for example. It's merely one initiative, called the Climate Change Fund.
The fund was designed to promote "behaviour change", the even creepier-sounding "attitude modification" and the old standby, "raise awareness". ..
Some of the recipients border on self-parody:
"Reasons to be Cheerful, the Carbon Coach, Cheerful Ltd. CarbonSense, Comic Company and National Energy Foundation have come together as Think Purple to help make CO2 visible. The project has produced purple resources for schools, organisations, and the general public which they hope will help transform how they see CO2 and how they use energy," we learn.
But few of the messages were cheery. In an incredible film called Carbon Weevil, humanity "infects" Mother Earth (a she, natch) as a destructive insect: VIDEO LINK...
There are more examples in this video....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/19/eco_astroturf/
Well, make the content link-friendly,
Thank you.
Pat
Thanks for the links to the KUSI Coleman specials.
This might be suitable for weekend reading:
http://on-climate.com/
The website for the Second International Conference on Climate Change at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in early July 2010.
Let's all move to South Africa, where they seem to have some sense -- say nice things about climate change, and promise to do nothing about it.
...
"South Africa's proposed targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, if they are adopted, will not place an extra burden on the country's business sector, Environment Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said on Monday.
"[I want] to allay the fear of business... This is not an extra burden on business," she told MPs in the National Assembly during debate on last week's state of the nation address.
Sonjica repeated that South Africa had committed itself to "potential mitigation actions" leading to a 34% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions - relative to a "business as usual" scenario - by 2020, and 42% by 2025.
But she stressed this would not be at the expense of the country's economic development.
"We can't take an extreme view of environmental conservation at the expense of development," she said.
The adoption of such mitigation targets was conditional on the establishment of a legally-binding international regime.
"The extent to which this action will be implemented depends on the provision of financial resources, the transfer of technology and capacity-building support by developed countries."
The construction, by utility Eskom, of new coal-fired power stations, and the carbon dioxide they will emit, had been taken into account in the 34% target, Sonjica said.
"There is no need to panic," she said. Should the targets be adopted, greenhouse gas emissions in South Africa are forecast to continue rising for the next 15 years, peaking in 2025. At this point they are expected to level off, but will only start dropping a decade later, around 2035.
I found a big fan of your hockey stick "obsession?"!
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/02/poem-for-unknown-blogger.html
Pat
Part 8 of the Coleman clips about the Argos Drifting Buoys data intrigued me re the pronunciation of buoy as booee not boi. At first I thought I'd 'misheard'. How do Americans pronounce buoyant?
I'm not knocking the Americanisation just curious. Their expression of swirling wind as blowing 'every which way' is so descriptive.
I found Coleman's repeated pronunciation of "measured" as may-sured odd. It makes one think he was not brought up in an English-speaking environment, perhaps?
Interesting news from the American National Academy about the effect of Climategate on public perception of science.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8525879.stm
And even reported fairly prominently on teh BBC website. Not something that would have happened just three short months ago!
P Gosselin
That poem 'For the UnKnown Blogger' is very Cohenesque.
E O'C: Scots folk living and working on and around the sea will also refer to "bouies". I suspect Canadians will do so too, given their accent; though any Canuck looking in can correct me if necessary.
Jeff Wood
You're probably right 'aboot' the Canadians.
"Scots folk living and working on and around the sea will also refer to "bouies"."
I used to, and I didn't.
'sallright for some, doin' nothin' all weekend. 'sallright for Bishop bloody Hill. Wot abaht my poor boy? 'e's a Professor, 'e is, not some bloody Lecturer or bleedin' Reader. An' a proper Professor, 'e is, not like those bloody Yankee ones, ten a penny they are. Bloody piano teacher's called a Professor in Yankland. An' 'e's sufferin' while Bishop bloody Hill 'as a bloody weekend off. It's not right.
dearieme hereby registers his objection to Prof Jones's Mum flying a false flag. It won't bloody do.
People in the States pronounce "buoy" as "boo-eee", "boy" and even "bwoy" (which is actually the way I tend to pronounce it, apparently). Some Americans pronounce "often" as "off-ten" but others like myself pronounce it without the "t" as "off-in". I say "newk-lee-erh", but I don't make the mistake of presuming people who say "nuke-u-ler" are ignorant or stupid. As in the UK, accent and pronunciation are markers of region and social class.... I actually haven't heard Coleman speak, but from the descriptions on this thread, I'd say he's from the South and probably west of the Mississippi.... in which case, like Dub-yuh and Sarah Palin, he probably also pronounces it "nuke-u-ler".
There is a Pravda piece on the Met Office in the Guardian:
Guardian Propaganda Piece
They really do think people are stupid.
What really annoys Varley is the suggestion that because of the seasonal forecasts there were "some aspersions about the quality of our climate science" – the "If they can't tell what it's going to be like this winter, how do they know what it will be like in 2050?" argument, which ignores the fact that long-term temperature trends and knowledge about the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are much more reliable than multifaceted local weather systems.
See the the science is settled. Ok, so a simple question: has the data for the last 30 years predicted the last 15 years of no appreciable warming?
So climate is "much more reliable"? From an organisation that deals with chaotic systems on daily basis? So the climate is not a long period chaotic system but the weather is? So for a 4 billion year old planet, 6 months is a chaotic system, and 30 years is not? Yeah right.
"The fact is, the things we are trying to do are very difficult. Our reputation around the world is second to none, and yet in the UK we are all too often a target for criticism. That is so painful to us."
Perhaps because the UK is your actual market where you are held accountable and who pays your wages? The rest is just climate science which will take 20 30 years to see if your models are correct.
Anyone who believes that dis-crepancies in climate models are down to some arcane global conspiracy should, for example, meet Stuart Goldstraw, observations manager at the Met Office, and have him explain with diehard enthusiasm the extraordinary lengths he explores in order to eliminate error from global weather statistics.
"Comrade Goldstraw is a model Climatist and has exceed his productivity targets. He has therefore been awarded the Lenin Star first class".
Temperature, which can be influenced by all sorts of local factors – from urban creep to flaking paint on instrument boxes – is often even harder to ascertain.
So there are poor stations, and there is UHI? Interesting, not least because...
Climate with a capital C is our big challenge," Goldstraw concedes. For comparative purposes the climatologist is looking for accuracy to at least 0.1 of a degree, and any error in the way data is collected totally undermines that.
How is it possible to create a higher degree of accuracy than the accuracy of the input data? Even a 15 year old student is taught that. 0.1 degree from data that is not to that accuracy?
Pravda would be proud.
Better get in a comment before His Grace posts again.
Yes, I agree that one should not be judgemental about pronunciation or accents. English is not my first language and I am in the process of learning a third language. That explains my interest in pronunciation and vowel sound differences. Horrible will be the day when we all speak with exactly the same pronunciation. Vive la difference!
EOC. I think both booee and boy are acceptable the former being the old fashioned way of pronouncing it in the UK. I think there's something onomatapaeic about booee.
Reading his grace's book, would recommend everyone to get it, I followed the hockeystick saga pretty much from the beginning but AWM has done a fantastic job explaining it for the layman to understand in simple terms.
marchesarosa
From Wikipedia (in reference to "St. Louis and vicinity"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology
I've heard folks from western PA say it that way too. Of course, in that case, I may agree with you about that "not brought up in an English-speaking environment" part. :)
With regard to nuc-u-ler, I enjoy pointing out to the Bush/Palin haters that Jimmy Carter said it that way too. Great way to kill the yuk-yuks.
dearieme:
I can talk about accents and regionalisms, but I can't DO them. Nice job. Reminds me of an acquaintance I had back in the Far East in the 80's, an ex-para guy. Great story teller with accents of all types.
By the way, the reason Yank perfessers are a dime a dozen is because the Universities have become very cost-conscious and hire "adjuncts" like myself to work for a pittance. The problem is, I LIKE what I do and am willing to do it because, by God, I get to be called "professor". Many of our schools, also, pay mostly lip service to the liberal arts: the funding is more in career certification these days. America's young people haven't figured it out yet, but they are being groomed to be a technically proficient proletariat. When they do figure it out, there will be hell to pay.
***Breaking news from Wellington College and the I2 debate***
Just got back, was.. different. Most suprising was the result. Motion was:
The prophets of global warming are guilty of scaremongering
On the way in, votes were
For 127
Against 175
Dont know 29
After the debate
For 126
Against 217
Dont know 5
Which suprised me. Stott and Davis were good, Lynas was a salesman and Aaronovitch was annoying. Will write my notes up tomorrow and post them somewhere relevant looking here.
Robert
There is the same 'career certification' emphasis in Australia. The education philosophy in Australia is to produce the workforce.
The Australian federal government department that is responsible for education is called, wait for it - The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
Little wonder there is such a decline here in the study of the Arts, especially history and literature at primary and secondary level education.
Hello, hello, hello, what have we here?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall
Crumlenag
So nice for a Russian troll to visit. Just when am I supposed to go insane because of the heat?
zeroxtrpo
Welcome, if you read some of the old posts you may want to consider using a Ze as the start of your name ;)
Our resident tame Troll is Zeds*******