The BBC has killed comedy says Monty Python’s John Cleese and Eric Idle

If you throw enough of other-peoples-money at something you too can neutralize top talent and produce mediocrity.

Where are the young Cleese’s and Idle’s now?

They [John Cleese and Eric Idle] say the British broadcaster would not be brave enough to take a risk on them these days.

Cleese says the BBC has completely “screwed up comedy” because it has become a bureaucracy and “bureaucrats shouldn’t be in charge of comedy”.

IDLE: “Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can’t understand it, they can’t read it, they can’t spot it.”

CLEESE: “But they think they can because they spend their whole time talking to other executives about what’s working. It’s like a martian trying to understand sex.”

Cleese on political correctness:

“Political correctness is a bit like granny or your maiden aunt arriving at a party when you’re all having a good time,” John Cleese said.

“She comes in and they all start buttoning up and becoming self conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves you can have fun again.

“Well a lot of humour is just about enjoying life, […]

NIWA’s psychic ability to predict something they say is statistically impossible

Welcome to another episode of “What was that climate guru thinking?”.

Accoding to NIWA (New Zealand’s Weather Alchemists), they have the most impossibly difficult job on the planet. (No! In the Galaxy.)

Watch the maths and communications whizzes whip up excuses for the failure of NIWA’s seasonal “forecasting”:

“Trying to communicate how hard it is to predict the weather a few months into the future, Niwa has turned to a mind blowing analogy to provide some idea of the complexity involved.

‘If you could imagine correctly predicting the outcome of every person on Earth tossing a coin 1000 times, you’d still be nowhere near the degree of complexity required to forecast seasons,’ the crown research institute says in a recent article.

Mind blowing indeed. Predicting seasons used to be a case of “Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.”

But seriously… on the one hand predicting the outcome of seven trillion coin tosses is a snap — at least to the first 7 or 8 significant figures. It’s much easier than predicting one toss. On the other, if we assume they are talking about trying to predict the exact outcome of every single toss the odds are more like […]

Innovative work: Predicting rainfall with neural nets – Jennifer Marohasy

Predicting seasonal rainfall months ahead has surely got to be the Holy Grail of weather forecasting. Imagine the billions of dollars, the man-hours, and the anguish-prevented if we can do it. What if neural nets can be trained, validated, and used to help farmers, investors, and “Oi” — even Dam Managers?

Jennifer Marohasy and John Abbott were inspired to try a whole new approach to rainfall predictions after John’s car met a sad end in the infamous Brisbane flood. After five years work they’re keen to share the results, and their predictions. Check out those graphs below. The last one has a 3000 year range.

Read about how difficult it was for them to get useful data from the BOM, and how the BOM does not do proper benchmarking of their success rates. How serious are they? As usual, it’s those outside the stagnant pond of government approved science that are testing new ground. The government talks about innovation. Independent researchers do it.

***Jennifer Marohasy is speaking in Deniliquin NSW on Friday (tomorrow 6pm — details at the bottom)***.

 

She will be sharing the results of their research on using neural nets. How about this graph? That […]

Most Canadians are skeptics, and CBC accidentally says so, then “edits” story

Oops! CBC (the Canadian version of the BBC and ABC) have been caught out editing a story to make it more politically correct. CBC’s political bias is accidentally on display. The original message revealed a sacred truth that must not be spoken. How would most Canadians feel about being forced to pay money to change the weather if they knew most other Canadians also thought it was a waste of billions? As far as I can tell, the updated version was a complete rewrite of the first half of the article. There appear to be a lot of changes.

The unsurprising news is that 56% of Canadians are skeptics — which is very similar to all other surveys which show that 62% of Brits are 62% skeptical. As are 54% of Australians. Fully third of the US are so skeptical they think it’s a total hoax.

The survey:

Is Earth getting warmer mostly because of human activities? 56% say NO.

Amazingly 39% of Canadians said the next question that they don’t think humans are even partially responsible.

Earth is getting warmer partly or mostly because of human activities. 39% say NO.

So CBC initially wrote a […]

UK politics shows signs of life? Maybe big win for small gov coming…

News today: Nice. Boris Johnson decided to back BREXIT — the campaign to get the UK out of the EU. A bit of a bombshell apparently after weeks of speculation, and a very nice win for UKIP, Farage and silly people who think that in a democracy you are supposed to be able to vote for those who make the decisions.

It will make all the difference says Delingpole:

Last week, when lots of other armchair experts didn’t, I correctly predicted that both men [Michael Gove and Boris Johnson] would inevitably vote out.

I’m very glad they did since I think it will make all the difference to the #Brexit campaign. Put it this way, had Gove and Johnson not come out for Brexit, the “Leave” camp would never have stood a chance of persuading wavering middle-ground voters to take the plunge. With Boris’s charisma and popularity and Gove’s intellectual heft to back it Brexit now stands a serious chance of becoming reality.

Apparently Johnson wants the top job (Camerons) and he may have noticed how well the Republican candidates are doing in the US by not “aiming for the centre”. The likely successor for Cameron […]

unWeekend Unshreaded

Anything left to shread…?

(Sorry, the weekend unthreaded went AWOL).

 

If C.S.I.R.O. employed now twice their quota, It wouldn’t change the climate one iota.

Mark Steyn on tour must have a lot to say, Deserving of support in every way.

Now global warmists want us to believe, That warming caused by man makes cats conceive.

It seems that phytoplankton in the sea, Can regulate Earth’s temperature for free.

Those schoolteachers who dare break climate ranks, Know more than warmists and deserve our thanks.

A Minister at home may face disgrace, Then claim to save the planet,to save face.

With warmist short-term forecasts all askew, They run for cover with the long-term view.

The plant food CO2 is brought to book, As warmists let real toxins off the hook.

That heatwaves long ago were much the same, Must mean that man today is not to blame.

An independent climate-change review, Is good for science and long overdue.

— Ruairi

9.1 out of 10 based on 47 ratings

No Benny! Science is in a crisis, we need a review. If Greens cared about the planet, they’d demand one.

Benny Peiser lays out the situation in the UK and Europe in a long interview on GWPF. It’s interesting, and I agree (more on that below), except for the point when he says it’s too soon to do a review of the science. Dear Benny, in the politest possible way — that’s barking. The review of the science is not too soon, it’s too late — it should have been done 10 years ago, before we spent billions, and the Greens ought to be calling for one right now.

…[sceptics are treated like] a neo-Nazi or a racist, it’s as bad as that in certain circles.

Think about it: the future of the planet (galaxy etc.) depends on convincing people to cut carbon emissions, and skeptics are everywhere and growing in number. Is there any better way to quell the dissent? The end-of-the-world memes are failing and the only way to clear the decks is the old fashioned way — air it, have it out, do the battle, and may the best team win. Obviously, since climate scientists are the experts and 97% of them agree, it will be a lay down misère — all the misguided nuclear physicists, surgeons, […]

Let’s play BOM Bingo, and turn every heatwave into a media scare-fest

Despite the headlines, there was no paranormal extreme in Perth last week — just a game called heatwave bingo

Perth set a sort of record last week for four days in February above 40C. The BOM and media paraparazzi glorified the latest heatwave, chasing it like it was a celebrity Kendall-Jenner-type-event when it was not that different to the heatwaves we’ve had before. Before it came, there were headlines about how it was coming, there were minute-by-minute graphs of degrees C, stories of people cooking cupcakes in hot cars, and there were projections about hypothetical bigger, longer heatwaves that might come, maybe one day, someday: look out for “Temperatures into the fifties”!

Chris Gillham points out that this record was made at the Perth Metro station. Few seemed to mention that 9km away, at Perth Airport similar kinds of heatwaves were pretty common and things had been hotter and lasted longer in years gone by. This year the four day average at the airport was 42C but in 1956 there were 5 days at an average scorching 43.7. In 1933 there was a six day heatwave of 42C average in Perth city. And there were other heatwaves a lot like […]

5.5 million dying from air pollution, shame no one cares

A bike used to transport coal for domestic use in China.

The death tally: Real pollution kills 5 million people annually, CO2 saves 500 million with extra crops.

The problem: The poor lack cheap clean electricity.

The groupthink solution: Restrict coal consumption, reduce “emissions” (and make electricity more more expensive).

What do countries with low air pollution do? They burn coal. (75% of Australian electricity comes from coal.)

What do people who care about the poor do: A) Copy success, or B) Start a carbon market?

Some people are conflating issues here.

New research shows that more than 5.5 million people die prematurely every year due to household and outdoor air pollution. More than half of deaths occur in two of the world’s fastest growing economies, China and India.

Power plants, industrial manufacturing, vehicle exhaust and burning coal and wood all release small particles into the air that are dangerous to a person’s health. New research, presented today at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), found that despite efforts to limit future emissions, the number of premature deaths linked to air pollution will climb over the […]

Peak Exaggeration? Solar, wind may save life in the Universe for 4 billion years: “top” climate scientist

This is the moment of Peak Exaggeration

Raymond Pierrehumbert, the man himself and author of the “gold standard” textbook in climate science, thinks so big he’s run out of universe. It’s not just the black tailed antechinus we are threatening with our climate meddling — it’s all Sentient life in the Galaxy. Perhaps we’ll become extinct, because we didn’t build enough industrial wind towers or coat the Earth in the blessed Arc of solar panels.

Thanks to Andy Revkin for publishing The Climate Challenge and Human Destiny with a straight face.

Pierrehumbert:

…There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.

But we have to make it through the next two hundred years first, and this will be a crucial time for humanity. This is where Destiny Studies and our paper on the Anthropocene come together. The question of why we should care about the way we set the climate of the Anthropocene is far better answered in terms of our vision for the destiny of our species than it is in terms of the broken calculus of economics and discounting.

For all we know, we may be the only sentience in […]

Yes Minister – A Tsar is Born

Bloody Brilliant. :- ) Enjoy.

Jo H.t Jim Simpson who says: For those on a ‘short fuse’ Click here for the executive summary (of just 2.35 minutes), or for those with a little more time to spare, engage your laughing gear (again), sit back with a beer or two or three or more and let this 27 minute full version of ‘A Tsar is Born’ wash over y’all! [That’s the one above – Jo]

9.1 out of 10 based on 48 ratings

Unfreded Weekend

A tribute to the Fred’s out there….

8 out of 10 based on 30 ratings

New Science 22: Solar TSI leads Earth’s temperature with an 11 year delay

We’re launching headlong back into the New Science series with a major post

Lots of things will fall into place — as befits a potential paradigm step forward. For decades, people have been looking to see if the Sun controlled our climate but the message was perplexingly muddy. In the long run, solar activity appears linked to surface temperatures on Earth. (Solar activity was at a record high during the second half of the 20th century when temperatures were also high.) But when we look closely, firstly the solar peaks don’t exactly coincide with the surface temperature peaks, and secondly, the extra energy supplied during the solar peaks is far too small to do much warming. So how could changes in surface temperature be due to the Sun?

A few researchers noted an esoteric correlation of long solar cycles with lower temperatures in the next solar cycle, but mostly those papers were left on the shelf, ignored. Dr David Evans’ notch-delay solar delay theory can explain this odd pattern.

To unravel the connections David took a new approach which cleared out the dead-end complexity of the current climate research. Instead of trying to predict everything from a bottom […]

The outrage! One third of US teachers bring climate denial to the classroom

They warn that the results may floor you. Strap yourself in. The National Centre for Science Education (NCSE) surveyed 1500 teachers across the US, and were shocked that a third bring dangerous climate material in to the class.

“At least one in three teachers bring climate change denial into the classroom, claiming that many scientists believe climate change is not caused by humans” says NCSE programs and policy director Josh Rosenau.

Frankly I am amazed. After twenty years of repeating the consensus message how is it that so many teachers are still unable to recite the permitted phrasing? (And especially in a survey where everyone knows what the right answer is!).

Put on your helmet. As many as half of US teachers actually allow students to discuss the controversy. Unthinkable!

Worse, half of the surveyed teachers have allowed students to discuss the supposed ‘controversy’ over climate change without guiding students to the scientifically supported conclusion.” Scarier still: three out of five teachers were unaware of, or actively misinformed about, the near total scientific consensus on climate change.

Sorry, did I say controversy? I meant “controversy” (any resemblance this debate may have to a real debate is […]

Phytoplankton suck CO2 out of sky, dump to ocean floor

A new nature paper shows how little we know about the oceans and the whole carbon cycle. A paper (with 64 names!) suggests that phytoplankton might be sucking out extra CO2 from the sky and dumping it in Davy Jones’ Locker at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Who needs a global carbon market? Apparently plankton are doing it for free. And all those windmills just got a bit more pointless.

Lots of living things absorb carbon, but phytoplankton seem to be more important than the others. The best predictors of sinking carbon were viruses of certain cyanobacteria. Few of the “thousands of phytoplankton species have been studied in this way”.

Jo

PS: This fits with Tom Quirks paper on the 9Gt massive carbon bubble of 1990 and previous research that shows plankton sucks up twice as much carbon as we thought it did. We’re going to be hearing more about phytoplankton.

The ocean’s power to rein in carbon and protect the environment is vast but not well-understood.

But now, an international team of scientists has begun to illuminate how the ocean plucks carbon from the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming, and […]

Climate causes Heated Cats, native extinction. Wait… your light globes?

And so it flows. Climate causes bored dogs, but warmer winters cause, er, heated cats. The randy felines make more kittens, which means more strays, more ferals, and less marsupial mice.

Track the logic. We took long showers which made more CO2, the Earth warmed and so more cats have kittens out of season. The answer then is to take cold showers to change the weather and save the Black-tailed Antechinus. Then again, we could give the cats the cold showers instead…

When Kristina Vesk started working at the Cat Protection Society of NSW in 2006, she rarely saw kittens in winter. Now warmer weather means cats are breeding all year round, increasing the numbers of unwanted kittens and the threat to native wildlife from strays and feral cats.

Hold that thought — there is another theory. Conflict coming:

Vanessa Barrs, a Professor of Feline Medicine at the University of Sydney, said … breeding can be influenced by photoperiod, the number of available daylight hours, and “cats artificially exposed to 12 hours of light indoors … can be induced to breed all year round”, she said.

So that would be all the CFL and LED […]

The amazing, brilliant, one of a kind, Mark Steyn Tours Australia

The Mark Steyn 2016 Tour of Australia kicks off this weekend.

For me it’s unmissable. Mark Steyn is top of my gifted-writers-list, and is the most fearless pundit in the West today. One of the things I most admire is his classy ability to cut down dumb ideas without also cutting down the humans behind them. Steyn genuinely seems to like humanity for all its outrageous flaws. His writing is elegant, cutting — he’s an artisan experimenting with words, punctuation and ideas. His ability to transfer an abstract concept from one brain to thousands is a gift.

Contemplate the impossible challenge of communication — one soul has a pattern of neuronal activity and we want to trigger a similar synaptic pattern to other distant brains. Our only tools are a series of vibrational pulses in air molecules, or a coded spectral pattern in light. It’s a hell of an engineering task. Steyn is a master.

The standouts like Mark Steyn who deal with the front line flak may always seem cool and collected, but it’s a lonely battle on the front line, and they can’t do it without the support of fellow footsoldiers. Be it money, research, or just […]

CSIRO scientist on climate: “We don’t know what the heck is waiting for us”

The hysteria continues. Some public servants might get sacked. It’s unthinkable. But after the fuss, there will still be 5200 odd staff at CSIRO. The big evil here, apparently, is that we are choosing between two different sorts of scientists.

The lame arguments flow (especially in The Guardian). Prof Neville Nicolls says we need $90m-dollars-worth-of-climate-scientists to stop us being minnows at the “big table”. Maybe baby-climate-scientists have aspired to eat with the science guru’s, but I don’t think the average Australian has the same dream.

Tony Haymet was the Policy Director at CSIRO — and he thinks it’s like shutting down Australian cricket team (not one for exaggeration eh?). David Karoly — Shane Warne, what’s the difference? He also said, it’s a “kick in the guts” to farmers, fishermen and the navy, which it would be if only the climate models could predict things like rain, currents, and sea ice. Haymet barrells on — “We’ve only seen the beginning of climate change. We don’t know what the heck is waiting for us”.

Try to rationalise the statements “97% of scientists agree” with “we don’t know what the heck…”

If a certain Labor government hadn’t vaporised those scientist’s future salaries on […]

Untreaded Weekend

Wherever you wander.

7.9 out of 10 based on 25 ratings

Bored dogs, ripped furniture — blame climate change

Things are really getting serious now. There is not only extinction and endless droughts, but there are depressed dogs. Unprecedented depressed dogs. The chain of effect goes like this: electric heaters cause climate change which makes winters wetter in England and owners don’t like mud, so ipso, ergo, garbo, dogs get stuck indoors, go stir crazy and rip furniture.

I presume the answer to this is to sell the car, cancel the heating, and wait for the world to warm cool for your dog to get happy?

Leading pet behaviourists told The Independent that the number of depressed and unsettled dogs they have seen in recent months is unprecedented.

Carolyn Menteith, a dog behaviourist who was named Britain’s Instructor of the Year in 2015, says Global Warming might be causing pets to become depressed:

“I’ve never seen our dogs or horses this bored before in 20 years.

Yes, this is the worst in recorded history, or 20 years, whichever comes first.

Horses that have lived happily outside before are saying ‘I actually can’t cope with this mud and wet anymore’…”.

For me, the unprecedented thing here is the talking horse.

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