* Posts by Robinson

264 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jul 2007

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Mystic Met Office abandons long range forecasts

Robinson
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Blame the press?

Don't be silly darling. The Met Office are the ones sending out the press releases "bigging up" their predictions and (usually) adding a paragraph about Global Warming along with it. They've been cheer-leading this scam for ten years or more.

Apple turns the flamethrower on Android

Robinson
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Yea whatever...

I love my iPhone, but some of this is just rubbish! For example, the:

"system in which a software module called an event consumer can indicate an interest in receiving notifications about a specific set of events, and it provides an architecture for efficiently providing notifications to the [event] consumer"

... is utter crap. I've just been doing a technical write-up of this exact same thing for a product we have. It's called THE OBSERVER PATTERN.

Exploit code for potent IE zero-day bug goes wild

Robinson
Jobs Horns

Pointing out the obvious.

Guys/gals, can I point out the obvious? Exploits are found in IE because IE is the most popular browser out there. Do you seriously think FF, Chrome or Opera don't have similar and possibly worse security holes in them? Look at the percentages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Firefox use is increasing, but it's still better to try and exploit IE than anything else, especially as it's more common in corporate environments.

Ten years of .NET - Did Microsoft deliver?

Robinson

Wrong?

I have chosen .NET, because it's got a rich set of libraries, fantastic language features and an excellent development environment. It can be used on the majority of PC's in business (and at home). It's a pain having to ship the run-times "just in case" the user doesn't have them installed, but this isn't an issue with 7.

The best thing about .NET is the rapidity with which I can build and deploy applications. I'm not talking about internet development here, I'm talking about LOB applications.

Soot warming 'maybe bigger than greenhouse gases' - NASA

Robinson
FAIL

Patronise much?

How about you stop patronising me and making assumptions about my background. I have a science degree (1st class honours); I've studied this subject for five years or more and I work for a company specialising in the construction of scientific instruments for measuring...... temperature (infrared). Your shilling follows a familiar pattern: (1) identify possible interaction, (2) extrapolate into implausible chain of inference, (3) propose costly solution, (4) Invest in costly solution, (5) be discovered publishing fraudulent papers and gaming the review process, go to (1).

With respect to fresh water Glacial Retreat: SO WHAT? If the temperature is increasing due to natural variation, one might expect, by concocting an implausible chain of inference, that glaciers also advance and retreat on a timetable totally unrelated to your SUV. That being the case, I can't imagine what could possibly allow you to draw the conclusion that we are responsible. Whatever next? A tax on tectonic plate movement? New geo-engineering project to slingshot the moon away to stop tidal surges?

Idiot.

Here's a great movie showing how unprecedented current warming is:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif

Amazing!

Robinson

Oh please.

It's interesting to me that the Greenists/Warmongerers are now switching away from CO2 and starting to concoct a second catastrophe scenario. Note that all of these things are related to industrialisation; you never hear them talking about natural variation! They're anti-technocracy, anti-capitalist and anti-progress. They are truly the descendants of the Luddites. Organs such as The Register should really stop pandering to their idiotic propaganda.

'Doctor Dark Energy': The Ultimate LHC eccentric?

Robinson

What's going on here?

I'm reading some of the comments with incredulity; are they all taking the *iss?

Facebook goes live with privacy revamp

Robinson

Yes yes....

I have a MyFace profile but I didn't add any friends or family to it (and don't intend to). I just use it to spy on other people.

Murdoch admits delays on paywall scheme

Robinson
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Fail

I read The Times, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail online (apologies for the latter, I just like to keep my eye-in on the concerns of the average angry Englishman). They're all free of course. If they implement a pay-wall, I will no longer read them, period. Or course neither will the majority of other people, which probably means hard-copy sales will rise a little (I wouldn't bother buying a newspaper, except perhaps on a Sunday) and web revenue would drop like a stone (advertising revenue, because not many people are going to pay to read it).

Given that I can get free news from the BBC online (ok, it isn't free; I pay a licence fee!), or from CNN, or any other organisation, Murdoch must be murdering his revenue projections with some kind of magic formula. It's going to fail of course. The pay-walls will go up and then they will all come down again.

Windows 7 - The Reg reader review redux

Robinson

Problems?

I've been running the RC on my home built PC since it was released (and the beta before it). I don't see any of the problems you talk about here. I love 7, compared to both XP and Vista. I won't be upgrading to the full version for a few months though. I don't fancy reinstalling all of the apps I've got on it at the moment (upgrade installs are always going to be FAIL imho. Fresh installs ftw).

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

Robinson

Eh?

So let me get this straight. With 5% of the market, Apple is "preempting" Microsoft? Apple are a bit player in the PC market, period. 95% of people don't give a flying **** what Apple do!

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

Robinson
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Oh really?

"I just happen to have finished an Earth Sciences degree with the OU"

This is precisely the reason your opinion cannot be trusted, based as it is on an argument from authority, with the (erroneous) assumption that I haven't done my research, or for some reason am incapable of understanding the science.

Notwithstanding the fact that your pre-existing interest in Environmental Sciences points towards some kind of initial bias towards AGW (as it is "the paradigm"), you singularly failed to point out where the analysis was wrong. The paper as discussed above is no different in terms of factual accuracy and unfounded speculation than any one of the dozens of "pro-AGW" papers published every month. I don't see you popping your head up on message forms to decry standards in these cases, so why has this one jump started you into action? Perhaps because it contradicts your world view? What a shock!

That global temperature rise is more likely to be beneficial to mankind and that increasing CO2 is more likely to benefit the biosphere than destroy it, is one of the more interesting contradictions in the AGW debate. Increasing temperature and increasing CO2 are almost always associated with increasing biodiversity. That this is demonstrably so and that in any case the AGW emperor has no clothes (so far at least) is a damning indictment of the current state of the Scientific process. There is, of course, something of a hole in our knowledge of these processes (to say the least). In my view it’s far to soon to start talking contingency with certainty. At least, as the multi-decadal oscillation starts to wind down (as it is now), you will find temperatures begin to fall. That, alone, should be enough to convince you some pause for thought is needed, before we destroy our industrial base and tax our economies out of existence.

Robinson
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What?

"I accept the overwhelming evidence for AGW"

What you mean is you accept the arguments from authority from the IPCC and a handful of "keyholder" scientists who tell you there's lots of evidence for AGW.

What you should say is, "Like eminent mathematician Professor Wegman, I'm concerned that the statistical methods and peer review methods used by Climate Scientists may not adequately reflect the facts. I'm concerned that many of the papers purporting to show an AGW signal use obviously cherry-picked data that does not stand up to scrutiny. I'm also concerned that the models used by the IPCC to predict future rises in temperature are demonstrably wrong. I'm concerned by the steady avalanche of utterly idiotic `scientific' papers published every month with the sole purpose of upping the level of hysteria in order to secure further governmental institutional funding. Finally, I'm very concerned by the almost blanket media coverage given to this hypothesis when there are at least a dozen more pressing problems mankind has to solve than an almost imperceptible increase in atmospheric temperature more than likely caused by the interaction between the Sun and the Oceans".

You should conclude that you’re happy for this website to continue to question the IPCC line.

Robinson
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There is an IT angle

There is an I.T. angle Devon, because all of this Green Bollocks is essentially a war on Technocracy (as laid down in Konrad Lorenz's books). These people won't be happy until we're all living in mud huts. Well, not all of us obviously, because most of us would have died from cold, disease and starvation, except Al Gore, who will find a way to "offset" the heating system in his mansion.

Robinson
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Spin?

"Trying to spin this as another of the register's 'oh look, global warming is all a scam' stories is getting wearisome. You used to be accurate and amusing, but I think I'm getting close to taking you out of my favourites list."

Forget the fact that "global warming" is natural (as is "global cooling") and that you might as well be doing something more useful or possible, such as stopping tectonic plate movement - and consider the simple fact that life has flourished on Earth through all different kinds of temperature and does so today. Remember that heat = rain and rain = forest- hence the term, "rain forest". Now remember that many more creatures suffer when it's cold than when it's hot (Humans especially). Once you've added up all of those little facts, try to have a coherent opinion on whatever the fuck it is our idiotic governments are doing taking a ball-hammer to our economic competitiveness over a tiny amount of a minor trace gas that happens to be a plant fertiliser.

When you're done, if you like, offer to pay more taxes if it makes you feel better, but don't force your idiotic anti-technocratic political ideas down my throat, because I get the distinct impression you and all of the other "believers" are living in cloud cuckoo land. Don't even get me started on the Science - perhaps the most unbelievably cretinous part of this story. When the dust settles and temperatures are falling (as they are predicted to do), I bet you'll be the first to put on his central heating!

Conficker smites Oxford Brookes network

Robinson

That was me...

"And to those who recall Wheatley as a bit run down, it has lost the tower block, has a fansastic new tech block, has had some re-development work and is a fantastic higher education institution."

Glad to hear it. As I said, it's been well over a decade since I last visited (during a summer ball if I remember!).

Robinson

I can't believe it.

I don't believe the Wheatly halls are still going. When I was there in the mid 90's the tower block was on the verge of being knocked down; it was such a mess. I also worked for a while in the IT department (summer job) for a bit. The staff there (apart from one or two people) were generally clueless and lazy. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! Speaking of peanuts, yes, the extra money came in very handy. I didn't have wealthy parents and was living on a student loan/grant (grants still existed back then for a few years while I was studying). I could get merrily tipsy in the SU and maintain my Golden Virginia habit on a tenner. Happy days ;).

Google hits Android dev with cease-and-desist letter

Robinson
Jobs Halo

Well...

You can see their point. He's basically taking over the OS. Sure, they should support all of these popular features but they want to control the platform, don't they? It's theirs after all! If he wants, I guess he can do something from the groud up rather than extending their work.

Dawkins' website forum hacked to send spam

Robinson
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Yes

I received some of the said spam. The link to the forums was also hijacked to send users to the spammer's website too!

Tesla speeds to $1m profit

Robinson
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Hydrogen is the future

"Hydrogen is almost useless as a source of power. There is no distribution system for hydrogen. Storage in the car is a still unsolved problem as is manufacturing."

Don't be ridiculous. Hydrogen is a fantastic power source. All you have to do to make it viable is to combine it with Carbon (of which we have plenty) to make a Hydrocarbon. These so called Hydrocarbons can then be easily transported around at room temperature and we can even build a hydrocarbon pump network, such as at the many Ginster's Pasties shops dotted throughout the land. Luckily the exhaust from such a Hydrocarbon Engine also helps fertilise plants (carbon is a plant food) and may even help to prevent, in some small way, the return of the next Ice Age.

All in all I think Hydrocarbons are the future. They are a triple win!

Debian rejects open-source .NET threat claim

Robinson
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Cross Platform

Unless Mono provides an implementation of WPF, it's going to be left far behind in terms of support for future paradigms in User Interface development in any case. I don't see how it can possibly keep up with Microsoft's release cycle and still be a relevant choice for developers over, say, Qt. I'm not sure why Linux developers would use it at all when there are other more suitable cross-platform choices one could make.

UK climate change funding cut by 25%

Robinson

Yeeessss

Anonymous Coward is right when he says, "Climate change will affect 99.99% of the people on this planet". It will, because we're going to roll back the industrial age and all because of the pacific decadal and multi-decadal oscillation; something we have zero control over. History will look back on our politicians and a large swathe of our scientific establishment with incredulity. I forsee 1,000 psychology and philosophy papers circa 2075 demoaning the idiocy of the climate change movement.

Top British boffin: Time to ditch the climate consensus

Robinson
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Wow!

"If we accept that, say, 2 billion people, will be killed by the direct effects of AGW in the next 150 years (figures plucked from the air, but not out of question),"

If you accept that as being "not out of the question", it's only because you've become a credulous and stupified individual unable to separate fiction from reality. Let's say, as a much more reasonable alternative, that putting the breaks on development, particularly in the 3rd world and elsewhere, will kill an order of magnitude more people, through poverty and disease, than any almost imperceptible increasing in atmosphere surface temperature.

Robinson
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Relevance?

Would it even be relevant if it were peer reviewed? Wegman showed that Climate Science peer review is essentially a corrupt little cabal, with scientists reviewing and citing each other's papers in a virtuous circle of back slapping and grant money. There is no independent view given in the review process that would give it any integrity.

Windows 7 Release Candidate coming 5 May

Robinson
Gates Halo

Anon...

Anon, you've obviously got some old SHITE running inside your PC. I had no trouble with the beta of Windows 7. It isn't Microsoft who write the drivers for the various bits of complete bollocks that comprise your computer system, so don't blame the OS. Buy a Mac then see how many pants SCSI cards you get to choose from in the shop window.

Doughnut balloon-chute spaceships to reach Mars, Neptune

Robinson
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How?

How do you deploy an inflatable ballute from a craft entering an atmosphere at 20km/s? How do you keep the ballute attached to the craft? How do you Stop the ballute deflating if it's hit by a micro-meterorite? Hmmmmmmm. Nice try fellas.

Carbon capture would create fizzy underground oceans

Robinson
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This wonderful molecule.

This wonderful, much misunderstood molecule is now under attack from all sides. The fact that people are seriously discussing removing it from the atmosphere is in my view the height of unbelievably stupidity and goes to show that, as pointed out in a recent scientific paper, Rationality is thrown out of the window when normally sane people are confronted by so-called "experts".

The cretinous Climate Change movement, burning technocracy, industrialisation and modernity as it continues to destroy any remaining trust in the Scientific Method, has based its entire argument on a demonstrably false premise. That it is false is now quite obvious to anyone with an enquiring mind.

When our descendents look back on this period, they will wonder about us with bemused amazement; that is if our descendents survive the other, orders-of-magnitude more pressing problems Humanity is facing.

What would you pay for 400,000 new green jobs?

Robinson

Sun God

I don't understand what is meant by a "Climate Change Policy", unless it involves mitigating the effects of Climate Change. The Egyptians worshipped a Sun God (as have many other civilisations), is this what they mean by Climate Change Policy? It seems to me that given man-made CO2 has little to zero effect on Climate, it's folly to worship it with trillions of dollars.

Can we have a Rational Thinking policy instead?

Google designer quits over performance obsession

Robinson
Paris Hilton

Did I miss something?

This guy quit because google want him to provide performance data to back up the design choices he makes. Is this WRONG? No, of course it isn't. There are too many idiot designers out there who think they know best, when actually their red text on a green background is a pig. Performance data in user interface design is extremely useful. I only wish the company I work for had the time and resources to test such things with users.

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Robinson
Paris Hilton

Pragmatism.

"Wake up people, fossil fuels are a finite resource sooner or later they are going to run out. Surely it makes sense to :

a) Use what we have as efficiently as possible

b) Work as hard as possible on sustainable alternatives now, rather than waiting for the oil to run out and then panicking because we have nothing else.

The side benefit of this that CO2 emissions will go down, so if that is causing global warming, then great, we've saved the planet. If it isn't, we haven't lost anything because we had to switch over sooner or later anyway."

You're right Tim, but there are two problems with your argument. The first is that economically, you may be slowing "progress" by not utilising fossil fuels but going for some more expensive technology instead (while working out more efficient forms at the same time, which also costs money).

The second problem is that regardless of the merits of the case, you're effectively saying the ends justify the means, even if public trust in science and the scientific method is destroyed in the process. This is more dangerous to humanity than a 1 degree rise in temperature, in my humble opinion.

Robinson
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Not so.

"You (and Dr Theon) are also ignoring dozens of other phenomena that point to global warming: loss of glaciers, loss of sea-ice from the Arctic and Antarctic, increasing frequency of and damage from severe storm events, changes in sea-level, and so on. And you are ignoring the ice records from Lake Vostok, Domes C and F, and others, which clearly show a very strong link between CO2 levels and global temperatures."

On almost every point here you are quite simply wrong. Sea-ice loss is problematic for you because sea ice is actually growing. Increasing damage from severe storms is also problematic, because it has been shown that severe storms are decreasing (and indeed recent research has pointed towards increasing temperatures actually decreasing storm frequency and severity, not increasing it). Changes in sea level are problematic as well, because the oceans have risen approximately 400ft since the end of the last ice age and one may expect fluctuations on time-scales as yet to be established (we haven't been measuring them long enough) or a few cm or inches per decade either way. With respect to Glaciers, of the 100,000 or so Glaciers on the planet, fewer than 1% of them are actually studied. Of those 1%, many of them are likely to be in accessible locations (or at least responsive to land use changes, not CO2).

The Vostok cores show a very clear relationship between CO2 and global temperatures, yes. I grant you that. The only problem for your argument is they show unequivocally that CO2 rises lag temperature rises by around 800 years!

Robinson
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How's that?

"Follow the money. Because the people who have a lot of it thanks to oil and coal are the sort who don't really give a damn about nature and will be quite happy in their manmade solitude sitting at their terminals managing their stock portfolios. If they actually cared, they would use their immense wealth to fast track in a Manhatten Project like manner the development of practical alternative energy production and distribution methods. Google 'Better Place' for a good example."

I don't think you're correct here. The modus operandi is for sceptics to remain in the closet while their institutions are hoovering up millions of dollars in research grants because of the scare; as soon as they retire, they're able to say exactly what they thought in the first place (this isn't the first time either).

The money is most definately with the Environmentalists these days. Do you think the oil industry spends as much on lobbying against AGW as the Environmentalists do lobbying in favour of it? Think about it. The warming alarmists get over $2,000,000,000 per year to continue with their "research". Do the sceptics get any of that? Not likely. You can't be a sceptic and get paid because by promoting a sceptical viewpoint you're effectively telling the government there's nothing to worry about and if there's nothing to worry about, nobody needs to pay you or your institution. At the very highest levels then, the government is effectively paying for policy based evidence making (fabrication).

Now you can argue a point on fossil fuels (the two I'm most interested in are (a) particulates causing asthma in children and (b) sending a trillion dollars overseas to some pretty distasteful regimes in return for oil and gas) and I suspect some politicians may be taking advantage of the AGW scare to advance their agendas in this respect, but don't insult my intelligence with bad science, just tell me we need to cut down because we shouldn't be sending all of our cash overseas.

This whole issue is bad for Humanity, because it hurts public trust in Science. shot.

Ubuntu's Shuttleworth praises Windows 7, welcomes fight

Robinson
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BIOS?

"I gave the Windows 7 beta a try as well. It decided it was a good idea to install itself on my slave disk instead of the master, and - without any asking or warning - changing the start-up sequence in the BIOS of the machine.

Result? That peace of sh*te is not coming anywhere any of my computers again!"

You did something wrong, not the OS. The OS cannot change the BIOS startup sequence - it runs on top of the BIOS. I installed it on a slave drive and didn't experience any problems at all.

Microsoft preps IE 8 for the web-challenged

Robinson
Paris Hilton

Hug and Break

Oh dear. Once again Microsoft's policy of `embrace and extend' ("hug and break") has come around to bite them on the behind. The solution for most users is not to use IE at all.

Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universe

Robinson

Haha.

"This will permit the whole of physics and perhaps therefore all knowledge to be rendered invalid, and allow many shouty, arm-waving, incomprehensible arguments to take place in front of blackboards."

Haha, brilliant. My paragraph of the month. Bravo!

Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men'

Robinson
Jobs Horns

Hansens predictions

Here's a great article comparing Hansen's predictions of 20 years ago against what actually happened.

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/06/gret-moments-in.html

I think that just says it all.

Robinson
Stop

Vendicar Decarian

Judging by Vendicar's responses, he's probably Hansen in disguise. Here's a list of subject headings from Hansens web site (below). Just in case you're wondering, he does use the word Creation in the first title!

Notwithstanding his obvious "kookery", he seems to have a political agenda, having convinced himself a long time ago that catastophic warming was happening and then disregarding (err, sorry, I mean "adjusting") the data ever since to fit the hypothesis. I have little confidence in him as a scientist given his obvious bias, as evidenced by the appalling debacle over his "hockey stick" that wasn't.

--Re-Energize Iowa: An Opportunity to Lead the Nation in Stewardship of the Earth and Creation

--How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?

--Global Warming: The Threat to the Planet

--Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate (370 kB PDF).

--"Political Interference with Science: Global Warming", Part II"

--Special interests are the one big obstacle Global Warming: Connecting the Dots from Causes to Solutions

--Communicating Dangers and Opportunities in Global Warming

--The Threat to the Planet: How Can We Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate

--Change? Swiftboating, Stealth Budgeting, and Unitary Executives.

--The Threat to the Planet: Actions Required to Avert Dangerous Climate Change

--The Case for Action by the State of California to Mitigate Climate Change

--Global Warming: Is There Still Time to Avoid Disastrous Human-Made Climate Change?

--Statement of Political Inclinations

--Can We Still Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate Change? A Presentation at the New School's Social Research Conference

--Is There Still Time to Avoid "Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference" with Global Climate? A Tribute to Charles David Keeling

--On the Road to Climate Stability: The Parable of the Secretary

--Global Temperatures in 2005

--Michael Crichton's "Scientific Method"

--Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference: A Discussion of Humanity's Faustian Climate Bargain and the Payments Coming Due

--Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb

Robinson
Stop

A philosophical point

"Although I will require a certain amount of terraforming for the Moon to be habitable. And a palace.. sorry I mean observatory constructed so I can laugh evilly.. sorry monitor the experiment."

If you want to move the experiment to the moon, I have no objection, as long as you go with it. But more to the point, where in this hypothetical "experiment" are we at the moment? Did the experiment begin with the first use of fossil fuels? Or perhaps it began when man first gave up his nomadic lifestyle and started cultivating crops, irrigating land, clearing forests and making beer?

Perhaps in your experiment you'd like to even things up a little. Say, remove all technology and create an experiment where most adult humans die in their mid 20's, usually from their dentition or some other infection (or if female, during the act of childbirth). I say adult humans, because of course in this experiment a large number of children die before they become adults. If you are really ambitious, you could start before the approximately 100 octillion (10^29) cynobacteria appeared, generating 1/5 of the oxygen we currently breath and inhaling a lot of the CO2 in the carbon cycle.

Of course, to make your experiment truly unique, you could also create a few other moons, as controls you understand, where there are no effects from the Sun, or Cosmic Rays, or combinations of the latter. You might also try an experiment without an ocean, or with a different atmospheric composition; perhaps a planet with less or more water, or maybe a planet where plate tectonics has long ceased (or perhaps where it is more vigorous than on Earth).

The possibilities for your experiment are endless, as the possible unintended consequences of any of our technologies are also endless. If you really want to live in balance with nature, you have to throw away almost every miniscule technological advance man has ever made, unless you are certain that it won't have an affect on the environment. Of course if it's useful for survival, it will by definition have an effect on the environment, because there will be more of you using it and you'll require more resources to survive, because all technology uses a resource of one kind or another.

Now in all seriousness, if you want to view Human Progress as an experiment, that's all good. But don't assume that you or your ancestors would ever have existed if it weren't for technology. Don't impose your value system on the rest of us, if that value system pegs the "ideal world temperature" at the value for 1979, or 1989, or 1939, because you have no logical, experimental or theoretical basis for assuming any one temperature is "better" than any other.

Finally, look at the "evidence" yourself. I don't mean read the summary for policymakers, I mean actually download the raw data and chart it yourself. See what happens when you start a linear regression of global surface temperature at 1906 instead of 1900. Does it make a difference to your conclusions?

Robinson
Go

Actually....

"mprisoning people for deliberately and maliciously spreading misinformation"

Good, then lets start with Hansen himself and then we can follow up with the people who write the IPCC summary for policy makers.

Robinson
Stop

Idiotic

There isn't a shred of evidence for man-made global warming. What we have are a lot of very dodgy models predicting doom and gloom (which, I might add, all failed to predict the current static/cooling period) and a lot of very dodgy surface station temperatures, which have been "adjusted" by people like Hansen, almost always in ways that magically show a huge amount of warming. Scientists can't even agree on the validity of the various Proxies they use to reconstruct past temperatures (see the Wegman Report, climateaudit.com and wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com for further references).

Meanwhile, the media continues to pump out the most ridiculous hyperbole ("if it bleeds, it leads") about the coming catastophe. People like Al Gore feed this giant propaganda machine with ridiculous films and presentations that not only misrepresent the actual science but make claims that are basically untrue (yes, lies).

All the while the politicians, blinded by the non-science, are busy playing with the law of unintended consequences (bio-fuels) that will have no effect whatsoever on the temperature of the planet, but that may result in mass starvation in many countries of the world.

"Global Warming" wouldn't even be in the top ten items on any agenda for solving mankinds problems. Why does it get so much airspace, so much money and so much political traction? This whole debate is completely idiotic.

Painting by numbers: NASA's peculiar thermometer

Robinson

But it doesn't.

"Why focus so much on the US? It only contributes approx 2% to the global mean."

It should, but it does not, because there are more temperature stations in the US than any other country (by a considerable number).

Social networking site bans oldies over sex offender fears

Robinson
Paris Hilton

Arse

Thanks for this absurd story. I for one think that it must be a hoax, because, you know, no person, group, corporation or company could possibly be so unbelievably stupid. We are the species that invented the fusion reactor, particle accelerators, the space shuttle, super-conductors, CT scanners et al. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I'm 37 and not a sex offender. Surprised?

Map paints gloomy picture of world's oceans

Robinson

Fishing quotas

At last, an environmental story that is real and doesn't involve Global Warming (they would like to think that it does, but that is just added in to sell it to the media). We are massively over-fishing and some fishing methods are appallingly destructive to marine environments. Does any government give a flying.... ? Not really, no.

Big Climate's strange 'science'

Robinson

Well said

Well said. Consider also that if Climate Scientists were actually trained in statistics most of the current catastophism would never have happened. It is high time climate papers were peer reviewed by people with the correct real-world expertise.

Back to basics for SQL Server 2008

Robinson

Yea, me too.

Apart from geospatial types (which I'm going to be using for a GPS based application), we also have hierarchies (via hierarchyid), alternatives to storing image blobs in the database (FILESTREAM) and a way of passing arrays into stored procedures (table based parameters). These are the 4 main new features of the DB engine and all 4 of them are going to make my life a lot simpler.

Scientists warn on climatic 'tipping points'

Robinson

Typical.....

"El Reg ought to look at a slashdot-like moderation system or full-transparency (as is partially implemented in Digg) so that we can see exactly from what IP ranges / groups of users the lobby groups are coming."

Once again, the poster would like to engage in Ad Hominem, but cannot without knowing who is talking, assuming all against are "lobbying" in some self interested way. That is a completely false accusation. In actual fact, since I think 1998, Greenpeace have spent nearly $2,000,000,000 on lobbying, a large percentage of which has gone on the AGW thesis. This dwarfs by an order of magnitude sums spent by the large petroleum corporations on anti-agw promotion.

The unpalatable fact for the catastrophists is simply this: there are many many intelligent, thoughtful and knowledgeable people out there who *do not* agree with the consensus. I consider myself to be one of them; I don't drive and prefer to wear another layer to turning up my heating in the winter, by the way. I have no horse in this race whatsoever.

Robinson

Stringent?

"We had government scientists with funding in the past. We had scientists investigating AGW for more than a century (before this was a hot button topic), so faddism can't explain THAT. Yet you can't debunk that old investigation."

It isn't exactly Rocket Science. Funding for Climatology, Atmospheric Physics, Oceanography and other disciplines has increased approximately 100-fold since this latest scare began. They tried it in the 70's with the great global cooling catastrophe and now here we go again. Chicken little.....

Robinson

Stringent?

"So far, the majority of evidence tested by the highly stringent Scientific Method suggests that global warming is very real. I find the uneducated layman who is prepared to declare his superior knowlege an interesting if frightenting scientific study in itself -"

You aren't a scientist, at least I'm sure you haven't read the Wegman report on peer review in Climate Science. If you had, you wouldn't be so patronising to us "laymen", many of whom are in fact highly educated independent thinkers. We do not rest our intelligence on the authority of others. You may do so, working in the Ivory tower of science, but don't assume we are all as compliant and thoughtless as you.

The process of peer review is not a guarantee of scientific integrity and neither is it a guarantee of scientific correctness. In climate science, it isn't even stringent. In fact it is lax, "chummy" and totally inadequate. It would help if just for starters, the climate community actually occasionally published their data. Often they do not and when asked to do so by interested parties, call in lawyers to protect it. Moreover, it would also help if these people, schooled as they are in "Climatology", were actually experts on statistics. They are not. Once again, see Wegman and the whole hockey stick debacle (one of many, if you care to investigate for yourself).

Robinson

We're doomed!

I read an article on the BBC website the other day about Sharks. "But what does that have to do with the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis?", I hear you ask. Well, it turns out that the less sharks there are, the more little fishes there are. The more little fishes there are, the less algae there is (because little fishes eat algae) and the less algae there is, the warmer the planet will be. CALL ME A COMPLETE IDIOT, but this catastrophism has now officially gone too far. The BBC article was effectively saying that SHARKS control the climate! If you want to sell your scientific paper to the media, make sure it has a global warming angle. I have one lined up already on the effects on global surface temperature of birds flapping their winds (creating a nice cooling draft). The less birds there are, the warmer the planet will be. Comprende?

Now, in all seriousness, these hypothesis are nothing more than an exercise in curve fitting. That is, you get a load of data points and then fiddle with a load of variables until you can make a line go through all of them. Please check out climate-audit.org for more information on this ridiculous so called "science", or sepp.org for some entertaining archive links. There are more, many more. Scientists are fiddling (with statistics) while Rome (overpopulation) burns. If these very intelligent but unbelievably stupid people could turn their minds to something more useful, like promoting contraception and birth control, the planet would be in a much better state.

I apologise in advance for my rant.

Former beauty queen cuffed for torturing ex

Robinson

Oh really?

Miss Pima County? I don't think I'll be visiting there on my next sex tour......

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