Friday, February 02, 2018

In which the pond does climate science with the Speccie mob ...


Good old Batman, good old Pope, and fancy Comrade Bill doing a duckman impression ...

Well there's more Pope here, but it presented the pond with a problem.

With the reptiles busy taking down Comrade Bill and celebrating the Donald, where to find essence of loonery?

Sure the second eleven are out on the field doing their best. There's Simon Benson urging we follow the Donald, and Gra Gra 'Gold Coast' Richo worrying about ICAC - what's wrong with hookers anyway? - and Bagaric doing another 'hang 'em from the rafters' routine, and Barners "delivering for all Australians" ...


Yes, and there'll be a high speed, high quality NBN connecting the nation, using copper and HFC and a bunch of boxes ...

The pond decided the best thing to do for a TGIF lunch was to take a walk amongst the Speccie mob.

Sure, Rowan Dean now moonlights with the Terrorists, and was out and about yesterday, but as any social anthropologist knows, it's better to mingle with the critters in their lair ...

Imagine the pond's disappointment to discover there was no new Flinty.

There was Bettina Arndt, doing what she does best, though the pond had long ago resolved never to go where an Arndt might have went ...

But how pleasing to see that Mark Latham has found a new home for Islamic-bashing (fundamental Xians included? Of course not).

And poor old Neil Brown was in the grip of one of his routine brown-outs ...


Brownie started with the dire implications of SSM and went through seven stages, lathering himself up at each stage, until by the end he was shouting at clouds in a frenzy of spittle, fear and loathing.

The pond, spoiler alert, couldn't be bothered tracking the assorted seven alarums of the dear old thing, but instead cut to the chase, and took a gander at the last two stages, wherein it seems that the demons were tearing at Brownie's eyes ...


Yes, it wasn't about love, it was about denying Brownie's god-given right to make poofter jokes. Damn you, modern new inquisitors, damn you all ...

Sadly, at the time the pond dropped in, it seemed that no-one wanted to join in the conversation ...


Oh come on, there must be someone who wants to shout at clouds with Brownie, or at least at SSM and the way it's ruined everything ... though strangely when the pond was out and about yesterday in Newtown, no one seemed to have much of a care, what with the greyhounds saved on parade and young things with tatts and beards intact, or perhaps in a 50's frock, no matter if the colours clashed with the beards ...

Well that's what happens when you read hysterical old farts full of fear and loathing, but strangely Brownie made the pond feel a little peck-ish and more-ish, and not just for the Black Star's infamous watermelon cake ...

Luckily there was a world famous climate scientist to hand, and even though it was a few days old, and already mouldy like an orange left out in the Sydney humidity, the pond thought it worth disinterring, because it's developed quite a taste for the climate science of the urbane film buff Urban ...


Now the pond hadn't realised quite how easy it easy to be one of the world's top climate scientists, scribbling for the Speccie mob.

This is how it's done. You just keep reading the blog for climate denialists, land on the thoughts of a climate science denialist you like, and then quote huge chunks.

Why it's as easy as sitting down and watching an old movie or three ...


Now please allow the pond to put this sort of incisive climate science in perspective. 

It's important not to just quote huge chunks, it's important and ethical to offer a few words framing the discussion, perhaps explaining at great length and detail how things might be put into the proper perspective:


As any student would know, if the teacher suspects that you've been relying too much on one source, you might get marked down.

So remember to vary your sources ... and with a bit of luck, everyone will agree, and that's the very best way to confirm everything ...


And there you have it. The actual socio-economic agenda of 'change the planet.'

The pond wasn't still quite sure who was running this socio-economic agenda.

Was it the hoaxing Chinese? Was it the United Nations, still covertly beavering away, and using climate science to establish world government by Xmas? Was it the Jews? Was it George Soros?

Whoever it was, they'd clearly done a wonderful job corrupting, subverting and deluding a mass of people who foolishly imagined they were scientists, when all that was needed was to watch a lot of movies, become a movie buff, and then move on to climate science, so that, as with the fluoride conspiracy shockingly revealed in Dr. Strangelove, the shocking climate science conspiracy might be revealed to the Speccie mob as "false cover" ...

Sadly, it seems no one wanted to join in the discussion, or the hysteria ...


Still, it reminded the pond of just how dismally the lizards of Oz had been failing in recent times.

When was the last time they devoted a big spread to Ian Plimer? Back in October, it seems ...


But look, there's the Graudian gloating about volcano claims here, way back in 2009 ...

Sure the reptiles have got Lloydie, sure the reptiles still love dinkum coal (oi, oi, oi), sure they hate renewable energy and greenies with a passion, sure Barners this day started off slagging greenies and renewable energy and all that stuff, sure every so often Bjørn Lomborg drops in to help kick the can down the road, but the glory days of Oz climate science denalism seems behind them.

Can the pond make a humble suggestion? Why not make everyone in the Arts section of the rag write a piece each week about the wretched state of climate science, and the splendid state of the world's weather. You know, get the novel reviewer on the job, and the movie reviewer too ...

All they'll need to do is reproduce a few chunks from a blog and the job is done.

And where's Lord Monckton when he's needed? Remember the first carefree reptile rapture and excitement, when Dame Slap herself, inspired by the self-anointed Lord, confirmed that the UN was keen to establish a world government by way of melting ice caps?

Never mind, Shorten tests weather on Adani but can he be Batman's climate crusader?

What's that? We should have been reading the Silver Surfer in 1990?


Not to worry, Batman's on the job, and with a smidge of luck, the climate science wars might start again, and meanwhile there's more batty Rowe here ...



11 comments:

  1. Urban gets an F because he doesn't know the difference between CO² and CO₂.Oh, and inability to use a search engine on "Dansgaard-Oeschger" lowers his performance even further.

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    1. People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you.”

      A quote from somebody who just recently gave a SOTU prompter-read.

      Urban, and that appalling idiot Plimer, people are just believing the prompter. As though they simply can't grasp that a CO₂ increase isn't the only cause of terrestrial temperature increase.

      Hey, guys, when the warming is due to the usual Milankovich Cycle, then yes, CO₂ increase follows temperature increase: that has been known for quite a while now. But it doesn't change the fact that an independent increase in atmospheric CO₂ is another cause of temperature increase - and somewhat faster than the Cycle.

      But then, I guess you don't have to show a climate science degree, or even an analytic thinking diploma, to be admitted to a movie theatre.

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    2. Um, what is the difference, Joe?

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    3. Hi Anony, the use of CO2 with a normal font sized ‘2’, though technically incorrect, seems to be acceptable these days in that it is widely used and understood to indicate carbon dioxide. However, in correct chemical notation it should be written with the 2 as a subscript after the element symbol.

      In chemical notation a superscript after an element’s symbol refers to the ionised form of that element and must have a + or – after the number to indicate whether that ion has excess protons (+), or electrons (-). The carbon and oxygen atoms in a molecule of carbon dioxide gas share electrons and are electrically stable. That is, there is no excess of positive or negative charge, and therefore no ionisation. As such there is no need for a superscript in the formula.

      However Salmon uses the superscript notation throughout his article and Urban robotically copies this for his own inane piece. Salmon’s expertise is in taking CT scans of animals and he has a Master of Science degree from University of St Andrew’s yet he thinks carbon dioxide is written with a superscript 2.

      I agree with Joe. Considering Salmon is mouthing off as an expert on meteorology and climate science he should get an F for writing carbon dioxide with a superscript 2. My science teacher would have caned me!

      PS – I can’t get subscripts or superscripts to work in this comment box for some reason.

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    4. Neither can I, Kez, but Joe somehow managed to get a subscript in, so I just copy-pasted from his comment to get a subscript into mine.

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    5. I wrote it in my word processor and pasted it in.

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    6. Thanks Kez; I haven't seen the 2 superscript for bivalent atoms before, but assume that's what it meant.

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    7. I kinda guessed that, Joe, and presumably the word processor internally uses a subscript code that the browser doesn't reject. A nuisance to have to invoke Word just to do a quick comment, though.

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  2. Oh the cuteness: https://twitter.com/mirandadevine/status/958828232568000512

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  3. As you point out DP, Urban’s article is a conga-line of confusionista suckholes. He references Salmon who references Judith Curry who references every other anti the-screaming-bloody obvious commentator known to humankind.

    From what I can glean Philip S Salmon may be a physics professor specialising in gases but he is no meteorologist or climate scientist. He, like Trump (who he likes to retweet), typically equates weather with climate. Using ‘climate’ to describe weather and vice versa is a common denialist ploy to further their agenda of disinformation.

    There are many good analogies for the difference between weather and climate, such as 'weather is what you see out your window today whereas climate is why you choose a certain holiday destination tomorrow', and 'weather is mood while climate is personality'. Of course obfuscators such as university educated Salmon know full well that these two words describe two very different conditions. But of course their goal is to perpetuate confusion, as gloriously exemplified by this sensationalist tweet on his twitter page -

    https://twitter.com/salmon_phil
    Mars and the North Pole are warmer than Winnipeg

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    1. Oops! It turns out I gleaned the wrong Phil Salmon. See my answer to Anony above regarding Philip L Salmon.

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