Beautiful stuff. Thankyou Mr Mandelbrot.

Pretty inspiring...

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugat ... ild_driven_education.html

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/8 ... -near-vertical-dam?ref=nf

Crap.. Not again??

http://www.theage.com.au/world ... apped-20101016-16o4k.html

I just caught up with the resolution of this story in today's paper. What a great result.

Amazing. There has to be more to this skepticgate thing than the stuff that Steve M's commented on so far, otherwise this Mashey character has been simply wasting his life...

Quote :

lol, that wasn't Liv Tyler, it was Kate from lost.

OMG you're right! Haha. Well, that explains things then!

Quote from SamH :

Willis Eschenbach, one of my favourite, most incisive writers on climate issues

Willis is great. Always a pleasure. In Australian politics the Democrat party has a slogan... 'Keeping the Bastards Honest'. That's Willis.

PS, did you see the post at WUWT on the geo-engineering approach to cooling the globe that proposes creating bubbles in sea water to act as tiny mirrors?

Quote :

In an effort to curb global warming, scientists have proposed everything from launching sunlight-blocking dust into the stratosphere to boosting the number of carbon-sucking algae in the oceans. Now, a Harvard University physicist has come up with a new way to cool parts of the planet: pump vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. “Since water covers most of the earth, don’t dim the sun,” says the scientist, Russell Seitz, speaking from an international meeting on geoengineering research here. “Brighten the water.” Natural bubbles already brighten turbulent seas and provide a luster known as “undershine” below the ocean’s surface. But these bubbles only lightly brighten the planet, contributing less than one-tenth of 1% of Earth’s reflectivity, or albedo. What Seitz imagines is pumping even smaller bubbles, about one-five-hundredth of a millimeter in diameter, into the sea. Such “microbubbles” are essentially “mirrors made of air,” says Seitz, and they might be created off boats by using devices that mix water supercharged with compressed air into swirling jets of water.

Of course, Willis had a very straight forward answer for all this...

Quote :

Having worked as a commercial fisherman and done sailboat deliveries, I know that the ocean is … well … huge beyond belief. So, let’s do some back of the envelope calculations …
Boat going 10 m/sec = 20 knots.
Spreads bubbles in a swath 10 metres wide.
We’ll say we have one hundred bubble boats.
That’s 10,000 square metres bubbleized per second.
Area of the world’s oceans is 360,000,000,000,000 square metres.
Time to bubbleize say half of the oceans is 17,892,270,924 seconds, or
298,204,515 minutes, or
4,970,075 hours, or
207,086 days, or only
5,874 years.
So a fleet of only a hundred thousand boats could get the job done in five point nine years. Of course, the bubbles will all disperse in say a month (probably more like a week or even a day, but I’m a generous man), so we’ll need 140 times that many boats to maintain the bubbles.
So all we need is 14 million boats. And a thousand windmills. Oh, and the fuel for the boats. Let’s see, a boat going 20 knots might burn five gallons of fuel per hour, 14 million boats, that’s 70 million gallons of fuel an hour at a cost of three bucks a gallon, that’s a constant running cost of $210,000,000 per hour forever, or
$5 billion dollars per day, or
$1.8 trillion dollars per year in perpetuity.
Ooops, forgot the crew’s wages, say four crewpersons per boat, that’s a work force of 52 million men and women. Say they’re each getting $40k per year because of the long hours and the time away from home. That’s another $2 trillion dollars per year. And not counting the cost of the boats. And not counting the maintenance on the boats and the machinery.


Now we just need the grant money …

Haha.


PS, Zeug. Yep, you called it. I'm not in the habit of sending PM's, I just find it easier to post directly on the forum. I'll try and cut back on too much idle chatter.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:32.

Probably not The Hurt Locker. Thought it was pretty crap TBH.

What? You'd rather diffuse bombs in a war-torn hellhole than hang out with Liv Tyler? This movie was highly unrealistic...

Quote :

I'm not sure where Keith is trying to position himself.

I'm too busy to take this up on Keith's blog and deal with replys, but what do you make of this comment of Keiths just now..

Quote :

Here’s a clever way to put things:
“It seems that Climategate has met its karmic match: Skepticgate.”

This doesn't strike me as particularly 'clever'.

Quote from SamH :

I mostly find myself agreeing with Tom Fuller on the climate players and their activities.

Yep. I was going to write as a PS how much I've been enjoying Tom's posts of late.

Quote :

Tim Lambert.. no prizes for guessing how I feel about him

Heh. For some strange reason I haven't run into him much at all, apart from recently. He did leave one hilarious comment under one of Keith's articles, the 'Keith Kloor Action Figure' one. He gets a certain amount of respect from me simply by that one post!

Quote :

I suspect Anthony's taken it more to heart. I do respect Anthony an immense amount, but a good friend is the one that is willing to tell you when you stink.

Yeah, I dunno. He seems let down by people posting at Keiths. I don't know how much that feeling ties directly to your post. It didn't read to me that you were targeting anyone in particular, and it was a good point. I wish more people would heed your words, Sam! (edit: I guess there's not point in denying it, Anthony has had a few slips in quality lately. There's not much you can really do when he goes and runs an article on 'the bias of liberal media'. Ouch.).

Quote :

drop the coin meme and get back to what he does well, which is to be far more topical and much less ad hominem.

Exactomondo.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:31.

I feel tired thinking about this. (edit: that would be hilarious though)


PS, I'm a little disappointed in Keith atm, and his handling of Watts on this story. I have to say it feels very much as though Keith's looking to forge a place for himself in some brave new unclaimed middleground here, as a shining beacon of balance and reason- but it all feels very artificial to me. He's simply waiting for Anthony to trip up, there's no leeway or goodwill there at all. Disappointing because I could have seen them in cooperation rather than as enemies, but I can see that this is the way Keith wants it. He needs to be enemies with Anthony, as with Romm- but his reasoning is bogus. I'm not simply going to disagree with Romm for being Romm, or Anthony for being Anthony. Attack the argument, not the person- as we often say. Your post on CAS about tribalism not being a badge of honour, I totally agree with. Keith seems to not want to recognise that WUWT has always had an open door policy towards other sides of the argument, it is hardly Anthony's fault that there have been very few takers willing to argue things away from the comforts of a home crowd. That's just the way it's been. Hopefully Keith can help set this stage now, but Anthony really got there first, imo. It was simply an unused service.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:29.

Quote :

My personal favorite was probably Turkey = "sexy homophobic men"

If you like moustaches, and homophobia I guess. (edit: ok I see now, Turkey according to gay men)

PS, Turkish men are actually really quite cuddly with each other; being an Aussie around Turkish men you can feel pretty uncomfortable, but it's just the culture. It's all very touchy feely.

Not gay though.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sat, 9 Oct 2010 15:45.

Cool stuff.

I've also got a game plan in the works, but no time to get into it. It's a blocky pixel art type platformer along the lines of Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV, but done in a very particular oriental rug kind of style. I'm actually thinking of getting in touch with Terry sometime to see if he might be interested in working on this, because all I have really at the moment is the art style, and a bit of mucking around in Gamemaker with movement, etc. All style, no substance

Good luck!

Skepticgate?!

http://content.usatoday.com/co ... agiarism-investigation-/1

Quote from Intrepid :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2 ... 7/solar_as_big_as_people/

Quote :

For now the long-term implications of the SORCE data are unknown. All that can be said with any certainty is that through 2004-2007, the Sun warmed the planet much more powerfully than had been thought.


"We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun's activity," says Haigh.

That's about the crux of it atm, imo. Three years of data is really nothing. There's a long way to go on this. Interesting though.

NIWA appears to be washing their hands

http://www.climateconversation ... was-statement-of-defence/

Quote :

NIWA has formally stated that, in their opinion, they are not required to use the best available information nor to apply the best scientific practices and techniques available at any given time. They don’t think that forms any part of their statutory obligation to pursue “excellence”.

Also,

http://www.suite101.com/conten ... dal-a294157#ixzz11g0Cjj2e
and Bishop Hill

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Thu, 7 Oct 2010 17:28.

Quote from Taavi(EST) :

First time developing a film. Scanned negatives from a half a century old Zenit.

Hey Taavi, if you're into old cameras/lenses, check out this stuff by my friend, Timur Civan. He's using a 100 year old lens and getting some really amazing shots with it...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab ... ld-lens-on-canon-5d-mkii/

Glenn Branca - Bad Smells (from the buildup to 5:16 on to the break, one of my fav' moments in rock )

Hi Sam. Thanks for that- and I'm thinking on it.

My basic motive here is that I'm prepared to accept reasonableness when it is shown. There was no way that this was going to resolved the way things were headed, so I simply offered the peace pipe. What Tim does next, if anything- will be instructive. I don't know him apart from what I've seen recently, so I'm quite prepared to give him the benefit of doubt, but I heavily suspect that you are right here.

I don't understand how people like Tim cannot see that this is hurting 'their cause'. Lazar was correct the point out that environmentalists are just getting pissed off by being treated in this way, I was certainly not the only one.

PS- people obviously plainly see that Tim misread my posts. He hasn't apologised for that, but perhaps the space is now set where he can. Let's find out!

"The ones who have approved this are so deep in their cause that they have lost touch"

Hi Phil. Yeah, it's pretty out there. I've said on other blogs that the only way that something like this could have actually happened is through an extreme case of groupthink.

Yet on reflection this also seems to be a wrong reading. Franny Armstrong the producer- said to the media recently that there was only '4 years to stabilise the climate system' or words to that effect. Thinking on this, one might really excuse Franny from any allegations of groupthink whatsoever, as I've actually never heard anybody say that before. This may be original thinking here.


PS, here are some threads on this film which I have been involved with over the past days. Some interesting discussion in there.

http://diggingintheclay.wordpr ... 10-they-just-dont-get-it/

http://diggingintheclay.wordpr ... plosions-and-an-own-goal/

Also Sam and I have been chatting it up (of course) over at Keith Kloor's over a few different threads.

http://www.collide-a-scape.com ... eres-a-war/#comment-19270

Finally, I think the best kind of foil or pairing for this video is a short one by a Doctor Bronowski, from the BBS series, Ascent Of Man. It ties in very fittingly with the messages on display in the 10:10 film. This guy is great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Umbn6ZBuE


edit: Entering the Parody Zone:

Quote :

The Early 21st Century Classics in Ideological Environmentalism Humor.

Episode #2 – From old Eugenie, Franny, Daniel, Lizzie and the whole 10:10 team

Welcome everyone, sorry our first episode blew up on us, but onward and upward.

Today, we are excited to present how we promote brownies in a way that actually reduces the carbon footprint of the planet. Yummy and good for the planet.

Step one – buy 2 lbs of powdered cocoa unsweetened, the quality is irrelevant since we are just going to bury it in the ground. There, doesn’t that make us feel good already? Ohhhhhhh, tingley.

Step two – About the milk and butter for the brownies, take your crossbow out to your neighbor’s dairy farm (don’t use guns, the ammunition is sooooo carbon rich) and shoot a dairy cow. Yep, you got it. Just bury it in the ground. Tingley, tingley feeling.

Step three – well, you can see the general process . . . . repeat with the normal brownie ingredients in any old recipe...

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Tue, 5 Oct 2010 23:38.