Posts by Steve Curtis

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  • Southerly: What on earth is a Grätzel…,

    I wonder why you focus on 'Energy' but fail mention 'Power'.

    A babbling brook, a rooftop baking under the sun, a gentle breeze, waves crashing on the shore . All sources of energy but until its harnessed into power its useless to us !

    My electricity company calls a low usage customer one who uses less than 8000 kWhr per year.
    That is about 20kWhr per day, and at the flick of a switch any time.

    Power has to relentless, reliable and preferably come via existing methods of delivery

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Unusual Democracy,

    Check out the Cincinnati Ohio 'Enquirer' story on Nov 10 2004 about the Warren County actions in locking away the ballot boxes for counting

    LEBANON - Warren County officials, facing scrutiny of their decision to lock down the administration building on election night, say they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10.

    The information, which Commissioner Pat South said was previously deemed confidential, is coming out a week after the public was barred from viewing the Warren County vote count. The Ohio Secretary of State's office doesn't know of any other county in the state to impose such a restriction.

    County officials initially said they feared that having reporters and photographers present could interfere with the ballot counting. They subsequently cited homeland security concerns.

    Now, they say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a "10" on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.

    http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/10/loc_warrenvote10.html

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Southerly: Public Address Science…,

    AS I remember it, the Williams company built a small turbo fan engine to be used once for cruise missiles. They have now partnered with RollsRoyce to produce a scaled up version which is providing the propulsion for the hundreds of 'micro jets' ,- 4 passenger business jets- coming to the market each year .
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_International

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: No Friends of Science,

    Wait a couple of years and it will start retreating again.

    That Franz Joseph must be a part of the reactionary deniers.
    Climate Change Denial seems to be a shoe that fits quite a few.
    Since there is no shortage of pundits who wear it when it suits.
    Denial for the Little Ice Age , or the Medieval Warm period .
    Remind me again of the normal state of the earth since the continents have been in their current postions. The interglacial periods have been the "exception" to the normal climate of severe ice ages.

    Mann and his hockey stick seem to have dissapeared this time. No choice really , since the shoddy data collection forced him to lock up his sources from prying eyes.
    This is what Mann said:__ "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium.__

    Dr Wegman,chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and his experts had this to say
    Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable."
    When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

    Mann , was of course like Salinger, a lead author of the IPCC.

    None of the science from the current IPCC has turned up yet.
    Not going to make the mistake of letting the pscho babble that passes for predictions actually come under intense scrutiny like Mann and his hockey stick .

    The NY Times was able to compare the wording of the latest IPCC summaries only a week apart. Yes thats right a week is a long time in climate change
    In Northern Europe, climate change is likely to bring benefits in the form of reduced exposure to cold periods, increased crop yields, increased forest and Atlantic waters productivity, and augmented hydropower potential

    This is finally how it appeared, more dire of course:
    "In Northern Europe, climate change is initially projected to bring mixed effects, including some benefits such as reduced demand for heating, increased crop yields and increased forest growth. However, as climate change continues, its negative impacts (including more frequent winter floods, endangered ecosystems and increasing ground instability) are likely to outweigh its benefits."

    Salinger is not saying what he wrote a week back for Australia and New Zealand is more or less dire.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: No Friends of Science,

    The only climate change deniers are those who do believe all the catastrophe AND still drive in cars or fly in planes.

    And if all the science is so great why has the Australian National Tidal Data centre at Flinders University handed their data over to the Bureau of Metrology who now hide ( the lack of any real sea level rise around Australia) the data behind password protection and approved researchers.
    Same with the Hadley centre in England who give the Annual ( in Nov) World Average temperature. Try and check what is warming and what is cooling and you are out luck.
    Of Course Hadley had to rename themselves the 'near surface' temperature centre since the 70% of the planet that is ocean has the water temperature measured not the air temperature.
    Naturally the Antarctic getting colder is ignored , since they measure the stratosphere when it suits them. Or the Antarctic peninsular ( 5% of the land mass).

    Had to laugh at the NIWA 'prediction' of the glaciers receding in Westland, while the Franz is currently advancing ! ( no mention that the glacial maximum was reached in about 1830 which was the end of the Little Ice Age)
    Of course any place getting colder is allways due to other 'other' factors.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Some Politics,

    the money comes from reserve contributions from new apartments and infill housing. So is ring fenced for new reserves.
    Usually its impossible to get a decent site at all, so be gratefull

    If Banks was around it would be for pitstops for the V8's.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Shonky scepticism,

    Al Gore doesnt have a Secret Service detail. Even Bill Clinton only gets it till 2010 ( unless Hilary makes it to the White House first)
    http://www.secretservice.gov/protection.shtml
    And as for a larger than average home, so that makes it all right then. Cant have Al measured by the same standard as anybody else. If he really believes in what he is promoting then lets see him walk the walk

    And I repeat Ball only said "That all predictions of future warming are based on computer models that don't work" and they dig around to find inconsequential items that some have called him an Emeritus Professor while he has claimed to be a retired professor.
    Al has made much much more incredulous statements. Again a different standard applies

    Yes what happened to Jewish scientists personally bears no comparison to the minor rejection Ball and others go through.
    But their ideas especially in the area of nuclear physiscs were ignored soley because who they were and were labelled as not credible rather than basing the rejection on valid science

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Shonky scepticism,

    Getting away from the fact that 'Jewish' isnt a racial group ( and Jews can come from a number of ethnic backgrounds)They were a group of people whos science was ignored since they had the wrong label attached to them.

    The tobacco analogy is interesting in that the sort of relative risk (RR)between smoking and lung cancer is something like 30 to 1. This means that smoking will produce not 50% (or RR 0.5 ) more lung cancers than non smokers but 300 times more. The current IPCC summary ( the actual science hasnt been released yet) has moved the relative risk of the current warming to have a human cause from 0.67 to 0.9 - 0.95. Some scientific journals dont publish research that has a RR of below 0.95. For complex variables you would need RR of 3.0 for immediate action

    The famous 'hockey stick' which was a prominent feature of the previous IPCC report said the current warming was the highest for 2000 years . This has now been amended by the statisticians that the current warming is the highest since the 1600's.These are not 'certainities' but probabilities

    Al Gore can keep pumping out CO2 to keep his house warm and cool all year round for a while longer. His statement "I took the intiative in creating the internet" is a load of hot air

    Wunsch seems to be using the Borat defence, in that they made me say those things. He outlines a scenario where models can be tweaked to get the right result so that it will be 'published'. He even says the scientific community is biased towards the 'dramatisable'

    So there is a bias, there's is a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself, toward results which are ugh dramatizable.

    Of course he now says he wouldnt have said these things if he knew what the program was going to be called . Yeah right. For those who examine credentials minutely Wunsch has a PhD and is a professor of Oceangraphy at MIT

    But Wunsch has had a skeptical view of only human caused GW in a previous article for the Royal Society ( but with no cameras around)
    http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4688&tip=1
    Professor Wunsch:

    People ask "is it clear that human activity is directly responsible for climate change?" The context for answering this question must be another question: to what extent can the climate change all by itself? The answer to the alternative question is: "a very great deal."

    We know that it is capable of remarkable changes without human intervention

    .

    Who would have known !!

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Shonky scepticism,

    Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.

    But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

    Al Gore talking to Wolf Blitzer
    http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/

    Im more interested in what Al Gore has been saying about climate change. Even Nasa's Hansen says there are imperfections and technical flaws.

    Again this is what DR Wunsch who seems to now claim he was 'misrepresented' on _Global Warming Swindle_

    Professor Wunsch:
    50:46 - Even within the scientific community you see, it's a problem. If I run a complicated model and I do something to it like ugh melt a lot of ice into the ocean and nothing happens, ugh it's not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model, and I adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation like the heat transport turns off, ugh it will be published. People will say this is very exciting. It will even get picked by the media. So there is a bias, there's is a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself, toward results which are ugh dramatizable. If Earth freezes over, that's a much more interesting story than saying well you know it ugh fluctuates around, sometimes the mass flux goes up by 10%, sometimes it goes down by 20%, but eventually it comes back. Well you know, which would you do a story on? That's what it's about.

    This is what a Global Warming supporter is saying! Seems that Wunsch is worried that all his funding will dry up and his papers wont get published

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

  • Hard News: Shonky scepticism,

    Tim Ball is a retired Professor of Geography who has a Phd from the University of London on a Topic in Climatology.This is a long way from your repeating Richard Graydons baseless acusation that he is not an Emeritus Professor, so is a crank who cant be believed. The libel trial results will be awaited with interest

    Al Gore claimed to invented the interent and has a slide show full of inaccuracies. Lets just turn of his microphone too on the basis his credibity cant be verified. Al then can stick to promoting his private equity fund http://www.generationim.com/(allthough he has no financial credibility either)

    There used to be a time when 'Jewish Science' was discredited by those who looked at who they were rather than what they produced. The same was said about 'Negro music' Lets just give a label to unpopular views,that means what they say doesnt have to be examinedat all
    Remember again, all Tim Ball said is that the Computer Models cant be relied on to predict future warming. Is this such a heresy that it must be supressed at all costs

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report

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