Bishop Hill The modern climatologist
Apr 9, 2010 Climate: other What a poetic bunch my readers are. This (IMHO) is the pick of the comments on the Milibandias thread although the whole lot are well worth a read. This is by Geoff Chambers, with apologies to WS Gilbert.
I am the very model of a modern climatologist
I’m partly statistician, partly palaeo-phrenologist
I’ve temperature readings from thermometers coniferous
my data are the same (or not, well, maybe) as Keith Briffa has
I bought them from a bloke who brought them hotfoot from Siberia
and mixed them with some algae from the mud in Lake Superior.
When counting different isotopes I’m really in my element
and sucking up to journalists from Guardian Environment
I know what makes the treerings from Siberia to the Rockies tick
And I can make spaghetti and transform it to a hockeystick.
My data’s got dark matter that would shatter a cosmologist
I am the very model of a modern climatologist
Reader Comments (33)
With apologies to Greg Lake, and to the tune of his, "I Believed in Father Christmas":
They said that the world was warming,
They said we were going to fry,
They gave us the direst warnings,
Repent for the end is nigh
And I believed in global warming
I fell for a big fat lie
But listen up folks
It’s only a hoax
A joke and a pig in a poke
They priced up our carbon footprints
They filled us with guilt and sin
Indulgences sold to order
To offset the mess we’re in
And I believed in....
Aloft with their sacred powers
The priests read the runes of old
The kings from their iv’ry towers
Went off on a quest for gold
Don’t believe in global warming
Don’t fall for a big fat lie
Listen up folks
It’s only a hoax
A joke and a pig in a poke
Just about right LOL. With some extra Word formating can be used as a job description.
Also see http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/08/bull-dogs-have-little-dogs/
Bravo! But correct "statistian" so it scans!
Truly brilliant!
It fascinates me that wit, humour and satire like this are conspicuously absent from warmist sites like Real Climate.
When future psychologists pick over the bones of the AGW mass delusion - maybe they'll conclude that scepticism goes with a sense of humour.
Haha! Absolutely superb!
While we’re on the subject of ruining our operatic heritage, you could do worse than try Maurizio Morabito’s rendition of Gershwin at
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/the-cru-hacking-song-with-apologies-to-george-and-ira-gershwin/
You could do worse, but please don’t try. Someone should maybe take their revenge on Puccini.
Beautiful! Perfect for a Friday night, gotta have a beer!
Re Steve McIntyre, nice bulldog poem, but did you forget about this:
Make a stick, make a stick, Michael Mann,
Choose the proxies as only you can,
Flip them and smooth them and take the PC
Then do a RegEM
For IPCC.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/04/15/more-upside-down-mann/
Hm. Maybe someone should do a Climate Verse Anthology. Could be fun for our grandchildren and make future historians scratch their heads.
Have a nice weekend!
Feedback:
Mike and Phil
Are over the hill
They’re both of them in hot water
When they got caught
Their data was short
(And Keith’s was even shorter)
There’s more of this (and worse) in the comments at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/17/asa-climate-change-ads
Very credible and catchy Gilbert & Sullivan sing-alike, Geoff - bravo!
Too good to muck about with, so just a straight quote:
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert:
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
Sonnet 14
William Shakespeare
First line.
Land of Soaps and Corrie...
?
'Philip Jones et al.' To the tune of 'Phil the Fluter's Ball' ( pace Percy French and Brendan O'Dowda) [Originally posted on Climateaudit, but zambonied due to "piling on"]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnsV4CvBBhQ
Have you heard of Philip Jones? He was the head of C-R-U.
He liked his climate science with a hockey stick or two;
So he just sent out a notice to BP and Shell and all
As to how he'd like their moneys in denominations small.
And when writing grants, he was careful to to suggest to Mann
That if warming in the past was inconvenient to the cause,
The more he smoothed and statistically adjusted then
The greater would the clamor be for carbon trading laws.
[Chorus]
With the trick and the stick and the graphs from all the GCMs,
Helping all the bankers get the loot from all their CDMs,
Up down, GHCN,
And tree rings from Yamal,
Oh hadn't we the peer review with Philip Jones et al.
There was Briffa with his bristlecones and hiding the decline,
There was Santer spreading stuff around and claiming it was fine,
There was dendroclimatology with proxies upside-down;
"The science is all settled," said the witless Gordon Brown.
Steve McIntyre knew their statistics were not suitable;
The editors of Nature hoped that no one cared to ask,
Where were the data and the methods and materials?
"Begorra, Michael Mann," they said, "you're not up to the task?!"
[Chorus]
With the trick and the stick and the graphs from all the GCMs,
Helping all the bankers get the loot from all their CDMs...
A daft wee thought! But I've started so I'll finish. Given an Hypothesis that Humour Humbles Hubris and that Sceptics have the best tunes, can we no gird our loins, take deep breaths and make plans to hit the Number One Xmas LP for 2010, on the Bishop Boogie label!
Amongst the diocese there is clearly talent, patchy for sure, but the passion is undeniable!
We are many and they are few. They are rich and we are poor. But our laughter is louder, heartier and lasts forever!
They don't like it up 'em Bish!
The Rime of the Ancient Climateer (Abridged)
It is an ancient climateer
And he stoppeth one of three
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
He holds him with his clammy hand,
'There was a rise,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
'It was no trick', quoth he.
God save thee ancient climateer
From the fiends, that plaugue thy mind
Why look'st thou so? 'With my eraser
I removed the graph's decline.'
Forgot to add, I second dreadnought's excellent suggestion that Geoff Chambers do a version of 'And Now I am the Ruler of the IPCCee!'
Thucydides, are you suggesting that there are similarities between the august Mr. Pachauri and a hopeless incompetent in Gilbert & Sullivan who rose from obscurity to a top job in the queen's navy? Hmmmm, now, what would be the Indian Railways equivalent of "And I polished up the knocker on the big front door"?
'Twas Dreadnought who suggested it first. I'm not sure about the knockers, but I was under the impression that Mr. Pachauri was a graduate of NC State, so, from my admittedly limited experience of the sort of thing that takes place at that institution, I would surmise he might have helped polish off some keggers.
CO² – Joy Of Man’s Desiring
They look so innocent in my glass, rising to join their kin,
Like a string of pearls pulled through the beer, bubbles of man-made sin
They’ll bleach the reef
And start bushfires
Kill the bears
Bring down empires
Drown the islands
Melt the poles
Destroy mankind
…Or so I’m told
Catastrophic beer bubbles in my glass, plotting Hell on earth
Well, I’ll do my bit, rim to lip, and sequester them in my girth
Yeah, another one, thanks
hahaha.
My beer bubleth over.
Someone owes me a keyboard and a pint.
Thanks everyone for the kind words. Sorry Dreadnought and Thucydides, but splicing IPCC onto the end of “ruler of the Queen’s Navee” is beyond my metrical (or palaeo-dendrothermometrical) abilities.
Anyone can do this. All you need is to know your Gilbert and Sullivan by heart. Acquaintance with Chinese rap music is also handy. I recommend Jay Chou’s “A Herbalist’s Manual” at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eloZidACH4A&feature=related
All part of the post-normal science campaign to open up the discussion on climate science. The bigger the story, the greater the means necessary to cover it (up).
To the tune of 'Spanish Ladies':
Farewell and adieu to the white cliffs of Dover,
And God help the sailors who get in our way,
For we have made plans for the coasts of old England,
And, like it our lump it, we will get our way.
They’ll whirl and they’ll whine, like true British turbines,
They’ll whirl and they’ll whine across the salt seas,
And when we have finished with the Channel of Old England,
From Scilly to Ushant is thirty-five leagues.
The first ones we’re planting are south of the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight.
We’ll fill up the Channel, past Fairlight and Dungeness,
And then put some more by the South Foreland Light.
They’ll whirl etc.
Corrected version:
Farewell and adieu to the white cliffs of Dover,
And God help the sailors who get in our way,
For we have made plans for the coasts of old England,
And, like it our lump it, we will have our say.
They’ll whirl and they’ll whine, like true British turbines,
They’ll whirl and they’ll whine across the salt seas,
And when we have finished with the Channel of Old England,
From Scilly to Ushant is thirty-five leagues.
The first ones we’re planting are south of the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight.
We’ll fill up the Channel, past Fairlight and Dungeness,
And then put some more by the South Foreland Light.
They’ll whirl etc.
There are so many possibilities using the musical round of 'Row, row, row your boat'.
Grow, grow, grow your graph with an upward tick,
Mann, Jones and Briffa et al, love a hockey stick.
Redefine, redefine, Climate Peer Review,
Somehow, we’ll keep the sceptics out and stop them publishing.
Hide, hide, hide the decline, with Mike’s nature trick,
Proxy data shows poxy data, so it’s hidden in plain sight.
Row, row, row your boat, with a hockey stick,
Down a melting glacier, Chairman Patchuri.
Bishop Hill, Bishop Hill, wrote a Science book,
The Hockey Stick Illusion is, compulsive reading.
Thanks Geoff. I think there is a future in stand-up climate comedy.
And here's my other contribution to the topic:
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/skeptical-band-aid-or-do-they-know-its-climategatetime/
with immortal lines such as "...And from our world of skeptics we can spread a smile of joy /
Throw your arms around mainstream media at Climategatetime..."
You are all brilliant! A fantastic way to start my day!
OK, Geoff. Instead of "Ruler of the Queen's Navee" How's about "Head of the IPCCee." Hey, it scans.
When I was young in Varanasi,
Diesel Locomotive Works employed me.
They still want help to be corruption-free.
What can I say? I was busy having tea!
I polished off that tea so regularly
That now I am the Head of the IPCC.
Ten years later I got my degree
At the NC State University.
I passed exams for civil engineer.
At Chi Epsilon mixers I drank a lot of beer.
And I chugged so much beer so assiduously
That now I am the Head of the IPCC.
Serving at TERI was such a lark:
Lots of office space and a car to park!
With silk shirts and a thousand dollar suit,
Soon I was Director-General of the institute;
And I served so well at all those dinners, all tax-free,
That now I am the Head of the IPCC.
Thanks Thucydides. Yes, it just about scans, if you apply pentametric smoothing and squint.
Positively my last word - one I slipped past the moderators at Guardian CiF on a Monbiot thread (it’s still there):
On the night train that left Copenhagen
George announced to the sleeping Schlafwagen
(to tremendous applause)
“I’ve just wet my drawers
And bullsh*tted myself, into the bargain”.
Thucydides, great lyrics! Well done!
If we ALL chug beer assiduously, then we ALL can be Head of the IPCC.
A final verse for Thucydides:
Now I fly first class everywhere
And I write soft porn while I’m in the air
I’ve got my own golf course, and cricket pitch
Billions may be poor, but some have to be rich
It’s all part of saving the planet, you see
As I am the Head of the IPCC
As the saying goes: Wo man singt, da lass' dich nieder, boese Menschen haben keine Lieder!
(Where there is singing, it's a good place to be -- evil people don't have songs!)
Bravo, and thanks David S! It's just what it needed!
And thank you Geoff - so, it's called pentametric smoothing? I knew there had to be a name for it...
More verses wot i rote:
I lay my work out neatly like I learned to in philaterly
I studied my degree at Phil Jones higher school of flattery
And now the word is out we hid the data falling latterly
I'll ask Santa to assist me with the old assault and battery
They say I should be sitting now in Penn state penitentiary
This slur will form the basis of the trial of the century
Even though I'm suing members of the help the aged pensionary
I'll reap the acolades of all the channels just you wait-and-see
My peer reviewers love my work and see to it that my arse is kissed
And 'realclimate' posters spread the word to Romm and Littlemore and Grist
We'll make sure it is the sceptics who're the ones who end up shunned and dissed
I am the very model of a modern climatologist