Truth can never be hidden forever.”

I comment:
And in one scene the government goons are fretting about a particular lie they’ve been publicizing for weeks that no one is believing them.

Given the low rank of climate change in polls, before Climategate, there may be hope despite the result of a whole lot of US voters forgetting Martin Luther King’s maxim about “content of character”.

(Canada’s current government is better though trying to sit side-saddle on the fence for avoid getting defeated.)

Paul and Gavin’s offices are in the same building that Seinfeld producer, the esteemed ‘Piss Christ ‘ producer and Christian tolerance seeker, used as Seinfelds home.

It turns out that Larry David’s wife, Laurie David, is the producer/author of the comic phantasy, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. For which Mrs. David won an Academy Award, and for which some members of the Oscar Academy now want revoked.

Tom’s Restaurant would be reachable today only by boat, had the prophecies of Dr. Hansen uttered in 1988 and re-prophesied in 2001; and Mrs. David been based in any reality in this portion of the Multi-verse.

You call this

http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen06_fig2.jpg

a “prediction that failed badly” proves only that you don’t understand what you are talking about.”

Actually, that was the worthless graphic in Hansen’s follow-up article, to which I referred in my last post. Without knowing what the emissions growth rate is that accompanies the land-ocean measurements to 2005, you can’t determine from the figure whether the prediction failed or not. Also, in 2006, the easiset test of whether or not the 1988 model was accurate would have been to dust off the model, input the actual emissions rates, CO2 concentration, volcanic particles, etc. and see how it performed. It was Hansen’s model, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been discarded. The fact that he didn’t use such an obvious method of validation indicates to me that he knew it would fail, so he just put out that overlay hoping that he could fool the journalists into thinking that the proximity of actual temperatures to one of the three scenarios was meaningful.

The green line was the business as usual case (if I recall correctly) that involved some minor reductions in the growth of CO2 emissions (e.g., higher fuel efficiency, wind power, better heat conservation in buildings, etc.). The red line was the worse case.”

You have it wrong. I have a copy of Hansen’s testimony in my desk drawer and he clearly refers to scenario A (the red line) as the “business as usual” scenario. In his 1988 published paper, the only caveat he raised with respect to scenario A was that it must “eventually be on the high side of reality” because resource constraints would have to limit exponential growth of emissions in the distant future. I should add, however, that the 1988 paper also indicated that scenario B was “perhaps” the most plausible, whatever that means (putting “perhaps” in front of “plausible” renders the latter term meaningless – it’s either the most plausible or it’s not).

My feeling is that Michaels was correct to use scenario A in his own testimony to Congress when comparing Hansen’s predictions to reality; since we were in the first decade of the projection, long before resource constraints kick in to limit the exponential growth of CO2 emissions, it was perfectly fair to use scenario A, particularly given the “business as usual” remarks.

When Hansen got testy about being shown wrong, he took his own words out of context and pretended as if the original paper had simply referred to scenario A as being “on the high side of reality” and then, post hoc, characterized it as a “worst case scenario.” But if you go back to the original paper, he never referred to it as such, and in fact pointed out that the CO2 growth rate assumed by scenario A was conservative.

Also, when he tried to defend his projections in a follow-up paper, all he did was compare the observed temperatures to the three scenarios and remark that the observed temperatures followed scenario B pretty closely (although they were just as good of a match to scenario C at that point, though no longer even that by now). At no point did do the preliminary factual work of showing that the actual growth in greenhouse gasses followed scenario B. This seemed to be a pretty obvious logical flaw; if, for example, the world was following emissions scenario A, while temperatures were more in line with what the model expected for scenario B, then the model would be an abject failure. Simply overlaying observed temperatures on the three predictions for the three scenarios, and remarking that the observed temperatures followed the middle curve demonstrated nothing.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss.html

Twenty years ago, he might have said, “well, we don’t understand the ice caps, but we have cause for alarm”. Who would even remember the guy had he done so? Who would now be posting long pages commending his understated prescience?

Max

The performance of the U.S. rifle was comparable to the British Lee-Enfield, and was also produced in a Mk1 automatic version. The Springfield utilised a licensed Mauser action. Derivatives of the Springfield remained in use until the Korean War.”
http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/rifles.htm

“Construction of the new West Side Highway began in April 1996. The first section of the project, between Clarkson Street and Horatio Street, was finished in August 1998. The entire “NY 9A Reconstruction Project” was completed in August 2001.”

Here’s another case. In the June 1981 Atlantic magazine, James Fallows published “M-16: A Bureaucratic Horror Story.” It described how the Army’s ordnance department, feathers ruffled from criticism over having foisted the unworkable (too heavy a caliber) SKS assault rifle on NATO over the protests of the British and others, who wanted a light-caliber round similar to what the Germans and Russians had used effectively in WW II, sabotaged the AR-15 by inserting three requirements over the frenzied protests of its designer, a genius named Stoner at Armalite.

The barrel twist had to be increased to improve accuracy (but this halved lethality); the ammunition had to be changed to a dirty-burning compound from Olin (because it was similar to the powder used in other weapons); and an insertion-assist had to be added to force home recalcitrant rounds (this added zero to effectiveness, but increased cost and weight).

The original weapon, which can be bought from Armalite, is as good as the article says. But the Army still wouldn’t back down from its mistaken specs, even after Congressional hearings exposed the Ordnance dept.’s blunder. “The system” protects its own—and it recognized blood-brothers in the mediocrity and petty gamesmanship of the blunderers.

Fallows’ article isn’t available online yet, Fallows explains in his thread on the Atlantic’s site that articles from that date have to be scanned in and are still in a legal limbo. But you can obtain it by interlibrary loan—they may even make a free copy for you and mail it to you. Check with your library.

It may very well be human, but science is cold and hard.

Future catastrophe and impending calamity, agreed, is as old as the race.

Such prognostications used to be the arm of religion – which increased their power – religions used to be straitjackets but since its hold over men’s minds is less dominant, religions are now seductive dressing gowns. The emotion of future calamity seems to have been transferred to science instead.