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We need a Big News break for a day or so. Part V coming soon. Discussion is animated. — Jo Financial speculation on currency sees Greenpeace lose €3.8m
[BlueandGreen] Campaign group Greenpeace lost €3.8m (£3m, or $5.5m AUD) after an employee took a gamble on the currency market in 2013, it has been revealed.
The employee responsible for losing the money took a gamble on the euro remaining weak against other currencies. However, the euro strengthened later in the year, resulting in the losses.
Greenpeace, save whales, trees, and help financial houses too. Who knew?
That $5m you were thinking of donating? Don’t bother, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyhow:
No Greenpeace campaign would suffer as a result of the loss, which would be absorbed by reducing expenses such as infrastructure over the next two to three years.
I don’t think this is quite the message Greenpeace meant to send.
Big-Green has truly become the Big-Business they pretend to oppose. Greenpeace has a total annual budget of around €300 million. It’s so big, it has to trade currencies, make property investments, and deal with “infrastructure”.
h/t Tim Blair See also the Sydney Morning Herald and The […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? (You are here) | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
Implacably, the discovery of a notch suggests a delay of anything from 10 to 20 years but most likely 11 years. (Don’t miss the delay post — two very big important concepts out in two posts). The big mystery is what could cause such a long delay in the correlation of solar radiation with temperatures on Earth?
David and I spent months wondering “what on Earth” could drive it. There were many possibilities though none of them seemed to be able to respond with the right timing: A resonant slop in ocean circulation could absorb extra energy, but it was difficult to see how the timing would be so tight with solar peaks. Likewise changes in ice or land cover. Then there are lunar cycles of 9 – 18 years, potentially generating atmospheric standing waves, but they were not synchronous with the sun.
Given that marine life can produce […]
Look just because some people want to talk about something other than the new solar theory….
8.2 out of 10 based on 19 ratings
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay (you are here) | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
UPDATE: July 21 Thanks to Bernie Hutchins, David found a problem with the code, which means the notch no longer guarantees a delay. The delay still likely exists (see the other evidence in the references below) but this post, particularly figure 2 needs correction and updating. – Jo
Strap yourself in. The Notch in the Earth’s response to incoming solar energy means that every 11 years (roughly) the solar energy peaks, and at the same time the climate’s response to the extra energy changes. What on Earth is going on?
The thing about notch filters that is hard for anyone who isn’t an electrical engineer to understand is that it appears to start working before “the event” it is filtering out. This is obvious in the step response graph. That’s Figure 2 – which shows what happens where there is a […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter (you are here) | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
This is the first of many posts. It is primarily about the entirely new discovery of a notch filter, which electrical engineers will immediately recognize, but few others will know. Notch filters are used in electronics to filter out a hum or noise. You will have some at home, but everyone seems to have missed the largest notch filter running on the planet.
This post is also about the broad outline of the new solar model. It’s a O-D (zero-dimensional) model. Its strength lies in its simplicity — it’s a top down approach. That solves a lot of problems the larger ambitious GCMs create — they are a bottom up approach, and effectively drown in the noise and uncertainty. This model does not even attempt to predict regional or seasonal effects at this stage. First things first — we need to […]
More action coming very soon, in the meantime, a space for all the things that are not the solar model…
(UPDATE: It’s posted!)
8.5 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
Behind the scenes a major advance has been quietly churning. It is something I have barely even hinted at. (Oh how I wanted to!)You may have noticed my other half Dr David Evans has been quiet — it’s not because he’s moved out of the climate debate, instead a strange combination of factors has pulled him full time into climate research. Things have been very busy here. He’s discovered something extraordinary, and like all real science, it’s been a roller-coaster where the theory appeared to collapse, and we nearly gave up, but then a new insight would turn out to be more valuable than the version that went before. Other times it all seemed so obvious in hindsight we wondered why no one had done this before. But the answer is that there is a very unusual combination of factors at work — how many people have Ivy League experience in Fourier maths, and electrical circuits and have worked as a professional modeler, software developer, and have an interest in the finer details and theory of the climate debate? Who of the people with this background would also be prepared to spend months working unpaid to investigate a non-CO2 climate […]
Remember how Curtin University, in Perth Australia, put up a sacred Nobel Wall? We had so much fun with it. The mural deified a climate saint — Prof Richard Warrick — one of the numberless thousands who helped the IPCC win a peace prize for generating no peace. It appears the University was embarrassed about people pointing out that the mural implied Prof Warrick had earned a Nobel Peace Prize while the Nobel committee said he hadn’t.
Curtin University not only changed the web pages, but the mural has been removed. I would have thought they might just change the wording, but the whole climate theme is gone. Possibly the University felt some pain being mocked for the religious overtones.
Call this a small win. Thanks to AndrewWA who alerted me in comments. It shows sometimes it is worth sending polite letters, getting those embarassing photographs and writing those blogs. This mural below has been replaced with another mural entirely (see below).
The former mural on Curtin Universities wall.
As for the web pages, the official Curtin page was corrected. The bio page has evaporated? (I can’t see it at all, can you?)
From Feb 2014: “Warrick’s bio pages […]
Caleb Rossiter
No dissent over any point allowed. There shall be no other God than Carbon Reduction and the holy climate models!
The religious climate cult followers have shunned a long term member for the sin of saying the unthinkable. Caleb Rossiter, masters in Mathematics, was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies for 23 years until last month when he wrote these heinous lines in the Wall St Journal:
“I started to suspect that the climate-change data were dubious a decade ago while teaching statistics. Computer models used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine the cause of the six-tenths of one degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperature from 1980 to 2000 could not statistically separate fossil-fueled and natural trends.”
Furthermore, he out-greened the greens by actually caring about life expectancy of Africans.
His Wall Street Journal OpEd continued: “The left wants to stop industrialization—even if the hypothesis of catastrophic, man-made global warming is false.” He added: “Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life expectancy.”
“Each American accounts for 20 times the emissions of each African. We are not rationing our electricity. Why should Africa, which needs electricity […]
In an interview with Ezra Levant on Sun News Canada, Marc Morano (Climate Depot) says: ‘I am jealous of the leadership of Canada & Australia. It is so sad being in America’ – ‘The rest of the world is abandoning carbon pricing as the U.S. is jumping right in’
It’s like two junior partners of the Anglosphere are rejecting the senior partner” — Ezra Levant
Watch Here.
Marc Morano talks about the nations winding back their carbon schemes and “laughing at us”. “Germany is going to more coal. Spain is abandoning green jobs, Europe is showing a lot of sense in this”.
8.8 out of 10 based on 83 ratings […]
Apparently, on May 31, Australia’s targets for emissions cuts tripled overnight.Who knew? Answer: Christine Milne and Julia Gillard.
Australia was aiming for a 5% cut by 2020, but it’s now become a cut of 18% by 2020. The Clean Energy Act of 2011 set that savage goal as a default target that popped into existence if the current government had not jumped through some arbitrary hoop — in this case by setting an emissions cap.
Most likely this is a non-event — presumably the current government can wipe out the carbon legislation after July 1, which depends on Clive Palmer, a coal magnate. (UPDATE: Last night Palmer said he’ll repeal the carbon tax). But even so, I wonder if there is a sting in the cost? Are there contracts that are tied to the target, so that compensation for removing it automatically tripled as well?
And if the tripling of the target is meaningless, why would anyone advertise their deception in sneaking it in?
Could it be Milne and Gillard see themselves as Gods come to save us (damn those stupid voters!). Milne seems positively pleased she was able to trick Australians. The voters may have voted to remove the […]
UPDATED, Ken has now finished the full tally of comparisons and the adjustments to minima increase trends by 47% . (Headline changed from 60% to 50% to reflect the shift.) See the new details of the last few stations at KensKingdom.
Billions of dollars, climate models, predictions, and hundreds of press releases depend on the BOM records of Australian temperatures. There were so many inconsistencies, inexplicable adjustments and errors that we put in a Senate request for the ANAO to audit the records. In response, to dodge the audit, the BOM dumped its HQ (“high quality”) dataset entirely, and established a new “best practise” ACORN dataset.
Independent volunteer auditors have been going through the ACORN records — thanks especially to Ken Stewart who is publishing his findings on his site as he works through the set. He’s analyzed 84 out of 104 sites, and finds that ACORN is just as bad as the HQ set. At Kenskingdom he shows that so far, the adjustments used to create the official Australian temperature record increase the warming trend by13% for maxima and a whopping 66% for minima. (Note the caveats in the conclusions below.)
The raw Australian data suggest the […]
The Australian PM wants Britain to join an anti-carbon pricing alliance with Canada, NZ and India
Tony Abbott, Australian PM, has been shaking hands with Stephen Harper, Canadian PM, saying “it’s like a family”. They are both skeptical of schemes that aim to change the weather through fake markets which don’t do much to reduce emissions, but do enrich financial houses, lawyers and bureaucrats. Harper has applauded Abbott before, now Abbott is returning the favor.
The message is aimed at David Cameron, British PM, who has been quite the friend of the greens — leaving a legacy of “collectivist, bat killing, bird chomping, property-rights-destroying wind farms”, as James Delingpole would say. But Cameron got savaged by the UKIP skeptics in the recent elections. Signing up with Obama won’t solve that headache.
Obama, meanwhile, is trying to swing momentum back to costly climate action with his aim to bypass congress and use an executive order to enforce a 30% cut in US emissions by 2030. He’s on his own. Even the Chinese are watering down expectations (see below). New Zealand abandoned Kyoto II and tied themselves to the lowest value carbon credits there are.
Sydney Morning Herald has the video
All […]
Who would have thought? Antarctic volcanoes are hot after all. Having a volcano under an icesheet makes a difference, and some of the sea level rise blamed on CO2 is more likely to be because 1,000 °C lava is not far from sub-zero ice. Right now, according to scientist Dustin Schroeder and co, it is as if the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctic is sitting on a “stovetop burner”.[1]
Only last week I wondered if West Antarctic volcanoes had something to do with the Antarctic warming and pointed out this strange coincidence below where almost all the warming seems to occur over the volcanic area which is part of the hot “Pacific rim of fire”. I also wondered why some parts of the media don’t seem to mention the volcanoes. Wait and see if this story gets picked up. So far, Fox, and Business Insider have it.
“Using radar data from satellites in orbit, the researchers were able to figure out where these subglacial streams were too full to be explained by flow from upstream. The swollen streams revealed spots of unusually high melt, Schroeder said. Next, the researchers checked out the subglacial geology in the region and found that […]
Most of the results reported in peer reviewed literature in medicine are mere artefacts of poor methodology, despite being done to more exacting standards than climate studies. There are calls in the medical literature for all data to be made public and for higher P values to be required. (Yes please say skeptics everywhere). Miller and Young recommend that observational studies don’t be taken at all seriously until they are replicated at least once. That would have ruled out the original HockeyStick two times over.
Even the absolute best medical papers are wrong 20% of the time, but mere observational studies (like climate research) failed 80 – 100% of the time. These studies of papers demonstrate why anyone who waves the “Peer Review” red flag is in denial of the evidence — “Peer Review” is not part of the scientific method. It’s a form of argument from authority. A fallacy of reasoning is still a fallacy, no matter how many times it is repeated. Those who claim it is essential or rigorous are not scientists, no matter what their government-given title says.
GEN, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, May 1, 2014, Point of View
Are Medical Articles True on […]
Whatever you do, don’t let those skeptics speak:
Cartoonist accidentally captures intellectual depth of greens
Adrian Raeside ,Victoria Times Colonist on June 4, 2014
Paul McRae was not impressed. Me, meh. It’s another dying publication which just alienated the half sane readers who haven’t already left. Bravo, eh. They whittle away at their base til they will only have teenage low-self-esteem green fans and a few old hippie die-hards left. Not a good business model.
A Letter in the Times Colonist June 5 re: Adrian Raeside cartoon, June 4.
“Does anybody find it ironic that Adrian Raeside’s cartoon gleefully depicting the death of a “climate-change denier” appears on the same page as Naomi Lakritz’s column on the murder of Dr. Mehdi Ali Qamar, motivated by the fact that he was an Ahmadi Muslim, a sect not recognized by the rest of Islam.
Can there be any doubt that climate activism has become the new religion…
Terry Sturgeon
@hockeyschtick
9 out of 10 based on 64 ratings
There’s a fascinating study out this week suggesting that if we fast for three or four days a couple of times a year we can regenerate white blood stem cells. Fasting cuts down the number of white blood cells during the fast, but afterwards they recover, and then some.
This new result comes from both mice and phase I clinical human trials. Probably in paleolithic times, famine or at least hungry days were a part of nearly everyone’s life. Many different philosophies and religions have fasting traditions. Apparently our genes are selected to deal with that, and being short of food makes the immune system do a kind of efficiency sweep. Perhaps access to unnaturally continuous food stops our stem cells from reactivating? Something to think about from Killjoy Jo. 😉 Yes, fasting is not exactly fun, but nor is cancer. For what it’s worth, the hard part of a fast is usually the start.
Obviously, consult your doc, do your own research, etc.
The NZ Herald
Fasting for three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as remarkable.
University of Southern California
Fasting triggers stem cell […]
For odd thoughts
6.9 out of 10 based on 11 ratings
The new Lowy Poll has got some commentators arguing that climate fear is rising in Australia. What the survey actually shows is that 55% of Australian don’t want to spend money fighting climate change. The Lowy poll asked loaded questions, didn’t ask people to rank their concerns, and showed nearly everyone was critically worried about nearly everything. Was there a point?
Predictably, one small uptick is portrayed to pretend the climate religion is gaining momentum again.
The SMH leaps to say the climate of dread is heating up (they wish):
“In a striking shift in public opinion, 45% of Australians now see global warming as a ‘serious and pressing problem’, up 5 points since 2013 and 9 points since 2012. 63% of Australians say the government ‘should take a leadership role on reducing emissions’, while only 28% say ‘it should wait for an international consensus before acting’.” — Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald.
How important is a 5 point shift? The survey was of 1,000 adults in Feb 2014. The margin of error is 3.1%.
Peter Hannam doesn’t mention that the level of concern is 22 points down on the high that was recorded in 2006 when 68% of […]
Did you know you can change the weather by not eating deep sea fish? Me neither. But apparently fish and other marine life in the high seas contain $148 billion dollars worth of carbon dioxide. (The carbon price used, which includes mitigation costs, is apparently almost $100/tonne — a tad higher than the current EU carbon price of 5 Euro. The “price” was derived from a US govt agency, wouldn’t you know, not the free market.)
The high seas catch is worth a mere $16 billion and is only 1% of all fish caught. But it follows that either hungry people will have to pay a bit more for their fish, or fishermen will switch to take more fish from the low seas. Either that, or hungry people can just eat more rice, right? And it’s not like anyone cares about the protein content of poor people’s diets is it? (Look who made a hyperbolic fuss about a potential 5% reduction in the mineral content of rice by 2050.)
Lets think for a minute about how anyone would make a global oceanic ban work? Since people only catch deep sea fish for fun, I suppose we just ask them to […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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