Category Archives: Uncategorized

The insanity of greenery

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“The insanity of greenery“. Anthony Watts likes solar power, but he hates it to be promoted through subsidies. One of his friends reports that a Spanish solar power facility was found to be producing electricity at night, and that the source was diesel generators within the facility.

Thus no efforts to encourage renewable power should ever be made.

This is about businesses doing their capitalist best to exploit subsidies not the benefit of encouraging renewable energy sources, but to Anthony it’s the exact opposite.

Visualizing Changes In The Arctic Summer Minimum Since The 2007 Low

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“Visualizing Changes In The Arctic Summer Minimum Since The 2007 Low“. Guess what Steven Goddard has for us to digest? The summer ice extent minimum in 2009 was higher than the record low summer ice extent minimum 2007!

That’s how minimums work. Good sleuthing, Steven.

Visualizing Changes In Arctic Ice Since the 2007 Record Low

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“Visualizing Changes In Arctic Ice Since the 2007 Record Low“. Steven Goddard says that the Arctic sea ice extent is about one million square km larger now than it was at the 2007 low point, but has no choice but to mutter “weather” as the explanation for it.

Curiously, his graphic is hosted on a blog called Climate Insiders, which appears to be a private denialist coordination point. The Denialist “Team” conspiracy is revealed! Or is it just Steven trying to start his own clubhouse?

Climate Craziness of the Week: British lawyer urges UN to accept ‘ecocide’ as international crime on par with genocide

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“Climate Craziness of the Week: British lawyer urges UN to accept ‘ecocide’ as international crime on par with genocide“. Oooh, Anthony Watts hates a do-gooder. Especially if he can link them to the secret world government, one of the many tentacles of which is known to you and I as “The Club of Rome”. Evil! Evil!

There’s a Guardian article about the proposal that has been submitted to the UN.

What’s wrong with industries being required to compensate for the environmental damage that results from their activities? It’s basic Capitalism that the cost of goods should be based on the cost of production. Otherwise, someone’s stealing from someone else.

Or is the principle that nothing should be allowed to get in the way of a business’ profit? I get it muddled up sometimes.

Response to Dr. Meier’s answer #9 – coin flips in the context of climate modeling

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“Response to Dr. Meier’s answer #9 – coin flips in the context of climate modeling“. Steven Goddard finds fault with Dr. Walt Meier’s example of coin flipping as an analogy for long-term prediction.

We know that weather models are very accurate for about three days, and then quickly break down due to chaos. There is little reason to believe that climate models will do any better through successive iterations.

His proof? Some seasonal weather predictions that weren’t as accurate as he thinks they should be. Nice try. Steven still feels smugly comfortable concluding thus:

I don’t see much theoretical or empirical evidence that climate models produce meaningful information about the climate in 100 years.

Maybe Steven should open his eyes a bit more. Skeptical Science talks about the success of climate models a bit here.

An error in the pole hole assumption

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“An error in the pole hole assumption“. Even Steven Goddard chokes when the lunatic right-wing web site “The American Thinker”, which presumably he finds otherwise agreeable, tries to add to their roster of birther/muslim conspiracy theories by claiming that the decline in the Arctic sea ice extent has (naturally through a “trick”) been deliberately overstated.

Yes, the satellites for reasons of orbital mechanics can’t overfly the real north and south poles. No, that doesn’t mean that there are large stretches of open water concealed from our view at the north pole in the dead of winter.

Classic “Tea Party” mentality, which is so, so close to the denialist mentality.

  1. Choose desired conclusion (government is evil/earth not warming).
  2. Find something that you think might support your desired conclusion.
  3. Cling to it in spite of all contrary evidence and logic.

Cryo-sat launch successful

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“Cryo-sat launch successful“. Anthony Watts posts a press release from the European Space Agency about the launch of CryoSat-2, a satellite that will be monitoring polar sea ice thickness.

Whoosh! Beep... Beep...

Anthony’s readers will now presumably discount all sea ice reports and predictions until this satellite has gathered, say, ten year’s worth of new data…

March UAH Global Temperature Update

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“March UAH Global Temperature Update“. Dr. Roy Spencer checks in again with the latest global satellite temperature values, with a couple of recent denialist examples highlighted. Still going inconveniently up…

Temperatures going up still...

Big Bird meets Big Green

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“Big Bird meets Big Green“. Some YouTube science from Anthony Watts today. A vulture circles too close to a wind turbine in Crete and is struck. Wind turbines aren’t something that birds have an awareness of, but they share an interest in steady winds, especially up-drafts. I’ve also heard that bats may be drawn to them for some reason.

I guess this post demonstrates the soft, cuddly heart that beats inside even the sternest “skeptic”. That mean old wind turbine!