Posts by Dodgy Geezer 1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
...If I believe the UK is a parliamentary democracy, that is not a value but a factual belief....
If I believe that London is the capital of the UK, that is a factual belief. If I believe the UK is a parliamentary democracy, that is not a value or a factual belief, but a delusion.
There, fixed that for you...
... then the investigation will find nothing, the planes will be cleared to fly again, and then crashes will start occurring, probably over water.
After a heroic recovery of the remains of a Dreamliner from 7 miles down in the Pacific, they will recreate the accident and discover something completely new about battery technology. But by then Airbus will have taken over their markets....
Instead of arguing about whether a specific point on a graph is going up or down, why doesn't each side of the argument specify what data would cause their own theory to be DISPROVEN (a la Popper)? And then examine the data in the light of that assertion?
It seems to me that, if you believe in a strong and accelerating climate change due to increased CO2 concentrations, and if CO2 concentrations increase while the temperature doesn't, you have only two conclusions:
1 - the theory is completely wrong
2 - the theory partly right, but the effect is so weak that it is easily swamped by natural variation.
Of course, you could also argue that the data is incorrectly collected or processed in some way. But it would be a more interesting discussion than this continual argument about differing slopes on a variable graph...
... are the earlier temperature readings. GISS has been 'correcting' them down by about 0.2 deg over the last century, making any long-term temperature set pretty unreliable - even before the siting issues and arguments about 'apples and oranges' proxy interpretation.
It's a shame, but long-term temperature records are now political statistics. Satellite data is the only dataset you can reasonably rely on...
For a long time now I have noted the close symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and the US politicians, military and State Departments.
Americans seem to actually BELIEVE films. So the military actually try to create, for instance, beam weapons BECAUSE these are the kind of weapons featured in Space Opera. As Hollywood creates new genres of Bad Guy movies, public opinion swings against the countries thus depicted, and the politicians oblige by labeling them as an 'Axis of Evil'. Film stars even become presidents!
It is completely in character for the public to clamour for an orbiting 'Death Star'. And you can be sure that the military will be looking to their budget proposals to see if this can be included. There will be no consideration given to whether there is a use for such a weapon - once it has been made I am sure a suitable target can be picked......
Who would give them vast amounts of money for collapsing a multi-billion pound industry?
Honestly, I can't think of anyone who might. They wouldn't get any awards either - all the awards committees have already signed up to AL Gore and the like. All they would get is no grant.
Perhaps that explains why there is a shortage of such people...
..A twenty year period without statistically significant warming doesn't falsify the theory that manmade industrial emissions are the key driver in climate change...
Odd that it doesn't. I believe it was Keith Trenberth who originally said that 10 years without a rise would raise serious questions, back in 2002?
By 2008, when we had about 10 years, I think the Met Office announced that 10 years was possible, but 15 years would be outside the statistical range of possibilities.
Now we have around 15 years. I wonder who is saying that even 20 years won't necessarily disprove it? And, if there is no way that it can be disproved, is it really science any more?
...They have changed their forecast in the light of further research. Seems reasonable...
Not exactly.
They have pushed out a new lower forecast BUT STILL KEPT THE OLD ONE.
This way, whatever the temperature does, they can claim to have predicted it. That doesn't sound reasonable - it sounds like heads I win, tails you lose...
...The blog provides a point by point rebuttal of the Mail story, headlined "The crazy climate change obsession that's made the Met Office a menace".,,,
Unfortunately, if you read the rebuttal, you will find that it doesn't rebut anything. The main response the Met Office rebuttal puts out is that: "Our 5-day forecasts are better". Which is, of course, nothing to do with the underlying issue - that the Met Office is predicting LONG-TERM weather changes based on a flawed activist-driven theory, has got them all wrong and is now lying in an attempt to cover this up.
So long as a company was bought up by another bigger one, the problem is not so bad. Amerang own the Keil Kraft name in the UK and were happy to provide permission for me to publish, and the vast Hobbico Inc of the US have also been most helpful.
It's the small one-man operations (which were probably never even considered in commercial copyright terms) which have really been hit by this. As usual, it was a 'big business and government' move with no consideration of the little guys.
Incidentally, Amerang are going to bring out a selection of the old Keil Kraft aeroplane kits this year, if anyone wants to return to their childhood...
"...If no-one knows (or can prove) who owns them then that presumably makes them "orphans"..."
I have tried that - I am following the EU Memorandum of Agreement on Orphan works. The problem with that is that the 'orphans' concept might work for an object of completely unknown provenance, but if there is a known creator then by definition all assets must be passed on as inheritance. So, if a 'Bill Smith' designs a plan and then dies, you MUST assume that the copyright is passed on to his heirs and assignees. That's what the MOA says. The fact that the heirs and assignees never knew this and have no obvious way of proving it is irrelevant.
The only way you can actually come to any conclusion on this is to undertake major research work (which I do, as an unpaid hobby) and then pass the results through a court for a decision. Which would be prohibitively expensive.
The fundamental problem is that copyright has now been extended from its original term of a small number of years to two lifetimes. One lifetime is probably not that damaging to historians, because we are still close enough to, say, Patrick Moore, for people to be able to assess his contribution to TV astronomy quite well. The minute you go to two lifetimes you are effectively preventing the free distribution of documentation by anyone who was alive during the time you are interested in.
From one lifetime ago there is still a rich set of documentation. Many readers here will have mementos of their grandparents - medals, stories, paperwork of some kind. Putting that under copyright means that it cannot be easily aggregated into databases which would preserve the information. It has to wait until a second generation dies. And by then it is much more likely that old papers will be thrown out in the rubbish rather than preserved - if, indeed, the paper has lasted that long...
Everyone needs a hobby! One of mine is making wooden model boats. A little while ago, I became interested in documenting models of old kits from the 1960s, a period of great technical change in the hobby, and hence historically interesting.
These kits were made by small companies - often one-man set-ups. When they went closed down the company assets (which included the plans copyrights) would usually not have been sold - they obviously had no commercial value! So they will have devolved to the company owner's heirs. Because of the huge increase in copyright length, I have been having to obtain the rights to get these forgotten parts of our history published on a web site.
What actually happens is that the people I contact do not realise that they may have inherited these rights. When I explain to them that I believe that they may have them, the first thing they think about is whether they have value, and whether they can sell them. Then, the next thing that they realise is that they can do nothing without consulting a lawyer, because they need to prove ownership. And inheritance and IP lawyers do not come cheap. So they refuse to go any further.
They are not going to spend any money on determining the status of some long-lost great-grandfather's document, which I believe to be of only historical value. They are not going to give me permission to publish, because I might be a scam artist come to trick them out of a fortune. So the data cannot be published or distributed, and will soon be forgotten completely.
Thank you, Mr Disney....
...they would have:
1 - mentioned that the released data was only from the first stations to report (which they did)
2 - noted that these first stations are the automatic ones (which usually means airports, etc) (which they didn't)
3 - noted that these are usually the warmest stations (which they didn't)
so, 4 - noted that the claimed average temperature will almost certainly drop to a lower non-record level when all the data is in...
It's a shame that science is now reduced to political point-scoring...
DDT never caused the eggshell damage they said it did, and we have killed several millions of humans by stopping using it, while spending large amounts of money on alternative less effective pesticides who's major advantage is that they are still under patent...
Chlorofluorocarbons don't seem to have caused a hole in the ozone layer - that hole seems to be natural. That ban has cost us many billions in making alternative, less effective chemicals, and enabled DuPont to maintain a patent on refrigerant compound which they were about to lose. It has also deprived us of a major fire suppressant...
Acid rain turned out to be a non-problem. Interestingly, the biologists were brought on board by telling the 'leaf specialists' that acid rain damaged roots, while the root specialists were told that acid rain damaged leaves.... In all a few billion was passed to environmental activists, which could have been used in much better ways
Global Warming has been the grand-daddy of activist scams - with prospective costs in the trillions and major disruption to world energy infrastructure in order to stop a predicted minor warming of the planet which turns out to only exist in the fudged mathematics of incorrect computer models.
Can someone spot a trend here...?
.. involves the writer Philip Roth. He wrote a story (as writers do...) which some reviewers misinterpreted. The Wiki picked these misinterpretations up and published them.
Philip Roth sent them an e-mail pointing out that what the wiki was saying was not true. The wiki refused to change it - because it had cites for the error, but only an email (from the original writer!) for the correct version. Eventually Roth had to write a magazine article pointing out the error - and the wiki took that as an adequate cite.
The story is here: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/alih/201209/2090/
...The entire Green ideology is doing more damage to science from a public education point of view than the creationists and UFO-ologists could ever hope to do.,,
On the contrary. They are contributing massively towards the Public Understanding of Science - as evidenced by your piece...
I defy anyone to enumerate that many different energy sources or storage techniques.
I think it also includes wind scenarios. So we have:
15 wind farms and a dam when the wind is blowing at 5 mph from 120deg.
15 wind farms and a dam when the wind is blowing at 5 mph from 125deg.
15 wind farms and a dam when the wind is blowing at 5 mph from 130deg.
15 wind farms and a dam when the wind is blowing at 5 mph from 135deg.
15 wind farms and a dam when the wind is blowing at 5 mph from 140deg.
You get the picture...
Um.. Do you mean 'which has had the most money spent on it?'
That would obviously be Nuclear, because money has been being spent on that since about 1944, while money only started being spent on Solar and Wind in the last few years.
Or do you mean 'which provides the cheapest energy per pound put in?'. That would be Nuclear again, without a doubt.
Or do you mean something else? You should note that, all other things being equal, the most successful, practical and useful method of generating energy will tend to attract most investment...
..hen you can start picking apart the basic assumptions (the one you mentioned "renewables will drop greatly in price" wasn't even in the article text, so I don't know if you're just making that up or not)
"While the idea of a large, geographically diverse renewable-energy grid might seem heinously expensive, the paper's authors contend that if current estimates are correct that by 2030 wind and solar capital costs will be about half of what they are today.."
That seems clear enough to me. And it's in the text.
..In either case you can't criticise a model just for being a model.....
It may have escaped your attention, but I was criticising the model because it was unrealistic. We have actual data about the performance of 'renewable-energy' systems, from Denmark, Germany, Spain.. All these show that initially there is no difficulty adding these systems, but, as the proportion of renewables mounts, a whole set of problems arises - typically due to dispatchability.
If you pick a lot of different inputs and demand scenarios, you can probably find some that can match, which is what they appear to have done. But this does not show that renewables can work in reality, and presenting this as proof when we actually have real data which shows the opposite is ludicrous...
" Each of those 28 beeeelion combos were tested against four years of actual hourly weather data, along with electricity-demand data .... Big enough sample for ya?"
And they found how many were able to handle the job? One? That could equally generate the following heading:
'Billion to one chance of renewables powering a country'... which is about right....
Separately, I notice that the whole process was a model, with assumptions like 'renewables will drop greatly in price'. Let me run a billion variations of a model while allowing me to input assumptions, and I'll 'prove' to you that I can power a country from unicorn droppings, all the way from North Korea...
...Had the satellite been deployed successfully, however, any nighttime photos it took would have revealed what more advanced countries have long known: that North Korea remains a backward, poverty-stricken nation, where such basic technologies as electric lighting are reserved for an elite few...
Or, alternatively, that North Korea is a guiding beacon in the environmental community, and does not waste any energy or emit any light pollution...
Which is where we'll be in 20 years if the greens have their way...
(My first thought was drawing and quartering, but on reflection that may be perceived to be a bit over the top.)
No, to my mind that sounds perfectly acceptable. Breaking on the Wheel, and the Rack are also good methods, as is impalement. And of course those who set them up should suffer the same penalty..
Leaving aside those passengers who die from various natural causes (and I suppose the odd murder) during the flight, I would say that 100% of all casualties are caused in the last 5 seconds or less.
(5 seconds, because I'm not too sure how long it takes a plane to disintegrate after striking the ground)
That surprises me.
The draft is now shown to contain:
1 - An acceptance that previously unrecognised and unquantified solar effects have had a warming impact
2 - A graph showing that the model predictions are all excessive, and that real temperatures are far below them.
3 - A statement that there has been no change in water vapour levels (which are required to change for the AGW hypothesis to be true).
If it is published in this state, the AGW hypothesis cannot survive. It it's not published in this state, inquiring minds will want to know why...
..The leaked AR5 says pretty much the same thing, except with more citations since AR4 to support it...
My reading suggests a subtle difference. AR4 said that this has been suggested, but it there's no proof, so it's 'controversial' - eg, ignore it.
The draft of AR5 now says "something like this MUST be happening". The precise words are
"...The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. .."
This is a major change. The first 4 ARs always said that the ONLY explanation for temperature changes had to be CO2, because there was no other mechanism operating. The minute that another mechanism is accepted as existing, a major plank supporting the suppression of CO2 goes out of the window....
... is that the Yanks have finally developed their own in-house electronics.
They slapped the ban on when the Europeans developed an in-plane phone system and allowed it in European aircraft several years ago. Fairly standard practice in US aviation. If it's not invented here, ban it until we have a home-grown product....
I believe that I have solved the question of our Playmonaut's name...
Phlebas the Playmonaut, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you....
..claim to speak with some experience in dodgyness?
Many things are dodgy, but the most dodgy of all are those things which are wrong, but which everyone accepts as true because of the social pressures to do so. This leads us into the dangerous position of saying that, because I disagree with David Irving's politics or his books, then nothing he says can ever be true.
Humanity has a long record of manias, where normal people apparently go out of their minds due to social pressure. We used to burn witches - we are teetering on the brink of burning those accused of pedophilia at the moment. The only way to retain sanity is to examine any accusation or statement on its own merits, and work hard at thrusting any preconceived notions out of our minds.
But that won't happen in my lifetime...
For all its flaws, Wikipedia is often the quickest way to get a rough answer to a query and a list of links to more reputable sources....
It's almost ALWAYS the quickest way to get a quite detailed answer to a query - which, in part, is the danger.
What should be stressed is that MUCH of the data on the wiki is fairly accurate and balanced. But in areas where there is any controversy, the wiki entry will almost certainly be representing one side alone. Occasionally you will find an entry changing as a war occurs, but usually one side is vanquished and is erased.
The problem is that people generally want to know about controversial issues. These are the ones where the wiki will be used, which is why activists spend so much time fighting for their point of view on it.
And do read the references thoroughly. Look at the wiki entry for 'background radiation'. You will find a comment:
"...Epidemiological studies are underway to identify health effects associated with the high radiation levels in Ramsar. It is much too early to draw statistically significant conclusions,[20] but so far radiation hormesis has not been observed, and data from Ramsar does not provide justification to relax existing regulatory dose limits.[21].."
but if you read the paper referenced (^ Ghiassi-nejad, M; Mortazavi, SM; Cameron, JR; Niroomand-rad, A; Karam, PA (2002 Jan). "Very high background radiation areas of Ramsar, Iran: preliminary biological studies". Health physics 82 (1): 87–93.), you will find that it says (and I paraphrase)
" We did not look for evidence of radiation hormesis. The data from Ramsar indicates that existing regulatory does limits should be relaxed, but more evidence should be gathered before making such a major step. "
which is not the same thing as the wiki claims it says at all. Activists are skilled at putting partial sets of views down....
As animals get smaller, they are working at a lower Reynolds Number. At very small sizes, inertia starts to become meaningless, and your movements are dominated by things like air viscosity. So a small animal won't notice gravity to anything like the extent that we do - it's unsurprising that there was no great change in its feeding behaviour...
...Yet I’ve come to the conclusion that this discontent has less to do with this process troubling an innate honesty. It is more about an increasing feeling of contempt for the 'I agree and understand' approach that, time and again, undermines personal integrity to perpetuate what amounts to a meaningless relationship....
I'm glad people are starting to notice this. These changes in perception and relationships are not easily definable, but they ARE very important. They set the whole tone for how a society works.
In many ways a person from the 1950s would be appalled if they were shown how today's society works. For a start, the assumption in the 1950s was that an MP was honourable. Look at Critchel Down, or the Profumo affair to see what happened if they were shown to have 'slipped'. But politicians (of all parties) since Blair have successfully provided 'leadership' which has resulted in:
- A widespread contempt for the law
- The assumption that bare-faced lies are acceptable
- Operational processes which renders certain sections of the community (mainly the police and politicians) above the law
... The engine design is an enabling technology not that dissimilar to the original Jet engine (which the Brits also had a hand in).
- If you want to fly fast you need thin air. You can't do it down low. Too much heat from air friction.
- But if you want to fly where there's little or no air, you're going to have to bring your oxidiser with you. Which doubles the fuel weight
- Oh, and if you want to fly fast you need to carry a lot of fuel anyway.
This is why the Yanks were trying to build a hypersonic ramjet - it might go fast in thin air and still gulp enough air down to not have to carry oxidiser. But it doesn't look as if it'll be very practical, since it needs rocket launching.
A SABRE engine in a military vehicle could take off in jet mode from the good ol' US homeland, breathing air, then climb to a near vacuum and go hypersonic in rocket mode. Then, when it got to the target area it would descend, switch to jet, manoeveure and bomb the target. It would then return the way it had come.
I imagine that the US military are drooling as the possibilities become apparent....
What the article says is true, I have no doubt. But the bit that is missing is the expected rise in population.
Given the figures, you probably couldn't market the platinum today. But, according to Julian Simon, the human race is getting larger and richer ALL the time. This is what funds technological advance.
Today, few people would buy expensive platinum jewelery. In 50 years time, a substantial proportion of the middle class would be using it to hang on Christmas trees. At some point during this process, asteroid mining will become viable...
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