My lovely wife pointed this out to me tonight while I was writing the post on the DMSP/SSMI sea ice sensor issue. It spoke to me, not only because it was hilarious, but because I immediately saw a comparison in it to how I feel (as well as many others) about the “rush” to save the planet. We keep hearing these pronouncements that we only have “X number of years left” to act, that we’ll reach “tipping points”, or “points of no return” if we don’t pass the Copenhagen Treaty.
But while the warmers are driving in the fast lane to Copenhagen, us annoying old skeptics (which is how many warmers view us) keep plodding along with facts (they are stubborn things you know) with occasional whacks to the climate science fast track like McIntyre’s recent revelations about the majority of the hockey stick being based on a few tree cores in Yamal and the use of Wikipedia graphs in United Nations official climate reports.
But warmers don’t like it when we do this, they simply want us to “get out of the way”:
BTW that’s not Joe Romm driving.
Funny video! What a [snip ~ E]! Was he laughing too?
The video is a gem but that’s not how air bags really work.
Ahhh I can’t help chuckling about that video!
Yes a real air bag would have knocked him back and broke his glasses.
A few years ago I saw a girl lose control of her car on an icy road, she slid of the side into a chain link fence at about 5 mph, but the front suspension hit a bowling ball sized rock just as she hit the fence and triggered her air bag. Her arm was across the steering wheel due to her attempts to steer into the skid and the air bag slapped her across the nose with her own forearm and broke her wrist on her face. She was pretty loopy when I got to the car like she had taken a punch from a mugger.
With out the air bag it would have been a minor incident with a few scratches on the paint work and a lesson learned about driving in the snow, instead it was an expensive accident with several hundred dollars to replace a triggered air bag, a tow charge to recover her vehicle and an ambulance ride to check her out for a concussion and treat her broken wrist.
Larry
Frederick: you’re such a skeptic.
I absolutly loved that video and called for my wife to see this one.
But yes, air bags do not work that way!
Hillarious!
Might be the skateboarders and/or cameraman who were doing the laughing, they did all turn to watch.
Another scam
Laugh out loud…
The BBC are still reporting that “the arctic could be ice free and open to shipping during the summer in less than ten years according to [experts]”.
Note the use of the word experts instead of scientists? Now I wonder why that change was made? What is an ‘expert’ and whats the difference between an expert and a scientist I wonder?
Can someone help me with an abusive AGW poster at ti.org/antiplanner ? His user name is “Dan”. The help would be most appreciated.
Maybe the lil old lady was carrying a cement block in her goody bag. It was something heavy, that’s for sure.
Hilarious in any case….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
It really looks like that the left hand of the BBC does not know what its right hand is doing. Maybe confusing the people is their new strategy.
I remember seeing that on Thomas Beckers’ expense report…
LOL but I am skeptical too (just as I am skeptical to AGW)… can the airbag be triggered by such a small impact?
Frank (21:14:17) :
Dan is rather interesting, but is not saying anything too troubling. Honest questions should receive honest answers.
I tried to reply, but could not figure out how to register on your blog. Perhaps I am rather stupid, but it was not obvious.
Frederick Michael (19:56:14) : “The video is a gem but that’s not how air bags really work.”
I saw this video a year ago and it seemed phony–the camera and the kids seemed to be just going through the motions during the first sequence, and they turned a little too fast from my point of view.
Airbags normally give off quite a bit of white powder when they deploy, or so I’m told.
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
Perhaps the discovery that those making the models (that the BBC is reporting on) are not scientists at all. Just computer programmers. Better to call them “Experts” than to risk having another batch of egg on face.
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
The BBC are still reporting that “the arctic could be ice free and open to shipping during the summer in less than ten years according to [experts]“.
Presume you are talking about this: It is total BS, well-covered earlier on wattsup.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8307272.stm
The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years’ time, a top polar specialist has said.
“It’s like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge.
Professor Wadhams has been studying the Arctic ice since the 1960s.
He was speaking in central London at the launch of the findings of the Catlin Arctic Survey.
The expedition trekked across 435km of ice earlier this year.
Led by explorer Pen Hadow, the team’s measurements found that the ice-floes were on average 1.8m thick – typical of so-called “first year” ice formed during the past winter and most vulnerable to melting.
My father used to complain about the dangerous drivers in Switzerland; his plan was to carry around some big heavy piece of metal, perhaps a 5cm nut, and throw it in the air when they nearly ran him over so it would scratch their paint.
On the other hand, one of his colleagues sued a pedestrian for damage to his car when he ran the poor guy over.
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
The BBC are still reporting that “the arctic could be ice free and open to shipping during the summer in less than ten years according to [experts]“.
Note the use of the word experts instead of scientists? Now I wonder why that change was made? What is an ‘expert’ and whats the difference between an expert and a scientist I wonder?
I heard an ‘expert’ on the radio this morning. It was Hadow. He was “shocked” at what he found during his expedition.
I think this video might help shed some light on the urgency with which some scientists pursue their work:
Gotta figure out where that next research grant is coming from…
Thanks. I needed that laugh.
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
The BBC are still reporting that “the arctic could be ice free and open to shipping during the summer in less than ten years according to [experts]“.
Presume you are talking about this: It is total BS, well-covered earlier on wattsup.
See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/17/catlin-artic-ice-survey-an-annie-hall-moment/
Heh flashbacks to when I was run over in Tucson IRL… luckily the guy had fat tyres (sorry, tires) on his ute (truck). The tread marks on my stomach were quite the talking point for a few months … I used to call myself speedbump, but that’s another story for another day 😀
So, back OT – if I am interpreting this youtube vid correctly… we have big, bad industrial yuppie man puffing CO2 out of his big car ignoring the warnings and mother earth (who is looking a bit worse for wear – presumably all the pollution she is dealing with). Mother Earth reaches her tipping point and the environment smacks yuppie in the face. Is that about right?
Let’s hope it wasn’t an old style air bag releasing NOx fumes… oh noes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbag
Explanation of the “white dust” lubricant there too.
Never mess with little old ladies ~and that bag hit with quite a punch!
BTW, perhaps there is a sea change at BBC. Regarding experts ~ these are usually those individuals who have mastered old knowledge and old ways of doing things. Aka old fossils. Out of touch with a new paradigm or new knowledge.
Further to my earlier post about the BBC report given high prominence in radio/tv/web media.
The BBC are reporting that Peter Wadhams(?) using the ice thickness ‘data’ brought back by the Catlin expedition led by Penn Haddow shows that the arctic could become ice free in summer.
There is a major problem with using the Catlin data which was taken by manual drilling alone as their radar sledge ‘broke down’ (hmmm?). The manual drilling method is extremely hard and the expedition was subject to restricted food rations well below that needed to perform that hard physical work coupled with terrible weather conditions.
The Catlin expedition also tracked south where the ice was thinner and because of the local conditions and lack of supplies they could not have drilled more that two holes per day, in fact we have no proof that they drilled the holes they claimed as there was no independent evidence of it.
A few dozen selected drill holes taken manually nowhere near the ice mass centre and contradicted directly by a German airbourne expedition which found thicker ice highlights how unreliable this ‘study’ by Wadhams actually is.
It seems ridiculous to me that a failed expedition cut short and using a tiny number of boreholes using extremely doubtful measuring techniques that cannot be verified by independent sources could be used as a data source for scientific study and get anywhere near a media outlet let alone given the highest prominence.
This whole shabby effort is nothing less than a scandal and is sadly commonplace nowadays within the insular and cosy relationship between the media and the pro AGW lobby.
X = An unknown Quantity.
Spert = A drip of water under pressure.
Dose that make experts unknown drips? : )
Further to Cassandra King above
They just keep going on. Two sets of measurements Hadow’s and two years ago by a British Navy sub.
Aarrghh he’s called it the “Alamo, the last stand of summer ice”.
So despite the warmists claims that 10 years of data is not enough, we are forecasting 10 years ahead from two sets of duff data points.
Oh dear
Paul
Cassandra King
An expert, according to British Law, is the person in the room who knows the most about a subject.
Another definition; an “ex” is a “has been” and a Xpert (pronounced spurt) is a “drip under pressure”.
Enjoy!
Probably expert burger-flippers and coffee makers.
“But warmers don’t like it when we do this, they simply want us to “get out of the way”:”
I also suspect that they think that we are becoming troublesome and won’t get out of they way. I would also think that they would have a general profile of who we are and that profile would include a high percentage of retired scientists who have the knowledge and can speak without fear and in that they would be right on target. So this ageist pigeon-holing can make sceptics an easier target to dismiss (on the basis of mental infirmity, using old data, lacking collective power, conservative attitudes).
The idea is to be diffuse and diverse as a group and to keep hammering away with the facts.
Have you seen this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8307272.stm
It is about the renowned Pen Hadow and his highly scientific Arctic expedition.
Here’s a surprise view …
Climate change activist stopped from travelling to Copenhagen
Missed his bus, what a shame!
These comments are interesting and I think, on topic, they are from a group of Australian Scientists despairing at the ‘lack of progress on CC’ even to the point of saying that criticism of CC was “deeply unethical”.
I think that they were looking to the Government for leadership and feel disappointed. If CC leadership is lacking due to the unwillingness of the proponents to debate this issue( ‘the issue is settled’), then Copenhagen could fragment.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/events/2009/10/taking-the-temperature-of-climate-scientists-part-2.html
Speaking of videos, the Catlin Expedition has held a press conference.
“The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years’ time, a top polar specialist has said.
“It’s like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8308170.stm
More of the same …
How a six-month sentence could stop activists in their tracks
A useful idiot round-up, maybe.
What comes next I wonder?
Maybe it wasn’t an Air Bag. Maybe it was…
… The Enchanted Larch of Yamal.
40
hotrod (20:08:10) :
Ahhh I can’t help chuckling about that video!
The video is a gem but that’s not how air bags really work.
Yes a real air bag would have knocked him back and broke his glasses.
~~~
Don’t forget the burns.
The Caitlin Survey.
How to grab victory from defeat!
You knew it was inevitable that it would happen, with a compliant media and an environmentally motivated “scientist,” you can manipulate the results in any way that you wish. Had I been Hadlow, I would have retired from public life in disgrace at the utter failure and the shame he has brought to our country and to the long list of brave and truly pioneering explorers.
I should heve read the whole thread first, hey.
With regard to that BBC link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8307272.stm I think we should all set our PC diaries for that date and hunt Professor Peter Wadhams down to tell him what we think of his expertise. The BBC is pathetic, but merely publishing what the Prof says (which is what Shukman would say in his and the Beeb’s defence. ‘Experts’ will come out with complete tosh and the BBC will gladly report it – as long as it’s at the Warmist’s end of the climate spectrum.
I have emailed Shukman and his co-conspirator Black many times. They evidently just ignore me now. In 10 years time they will have written a novel (which is what many BBC journos do) and they will say in their defence, “I was just following BBC orders, and that stuff doesn’t matter any more as the world is cooling now, and anyway, have you heard about my new novel?”.
Oh really? I’ll see your 10 years and raise you 10. The Times is reporting that it’ll be ice free in 20 years time. Actually, that’s quite some improvement. About two years ago they reported that it would be ice free in 5 years time!
Quote from today’s Daily Telegraph at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6326446/Arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-a-decade-according-to-Pen-Hadow.html
“Pen Hadow took more than 1,500 measurements of sea ice Photo: GETTY
The explorer trekked more than 269 miles towards the North Pole this winter in temperatures below -40 degrees C to measure the depth of the ice.
The average thickness of ice floes was 1.8 metres, suggesting the ice sheet is now largely made up of first year ice rather than “multiyear” ice that will have built up over time.”
Question: How many measurements is that per day?
An expert is somebody who knows a great deal about very little
I had a thought that somebody had recently published/highlighted the US NSIDC data suggesting quite the opposite regarding the amount of first year ice, & that in fact 2nd year + ice had been observed. Of course this scientist from Cambridge didn’t actually go there with the hapless Hadow three, so is relying on their gathered data. Now, were these not the hapless three dropped on first year ice, that was apparently well known as first year ice by many (except them), & were shocked to discover this first year ice was where it was. Smart people!
Now, many years ago, (& I have mentioned this before) when the BBC was the BBC, as opposed to the Marxist Socialist Greenie State mouthpiece it is now, they had a marvellous series of programmes on engineering. Hoorah! One of them featured the ring pull for drink cans & how it needed just the right amount of pressure to be effective & the engineering challenges it presented. Another was on the Bra, & how it had to support the female breast firmly yet delicately under all sorts of daily activities, & the engineeerrriiinnnngggg chhhaaallennngeesssss itttisi presentnensnnenentd, sorry about that I lost my train of thought for a moment. Another was on the air-bag, & how that had to be engineered to be perfect, & only function at the right impact force, not heavy braking, nor heavy acceleration, hand-brake turns etc, & not be subjected to extraneous forces that could accidently set it off. So no, I agree it doesn’t work that way! I recall there were scare stories about air-bags over here eminating from the colonies about them going off accidentally, which turned out to be false, certainly by the time air-bags were provided in the UK. Most engineering that we see today & take for granted, had teething troubles but we lived through it. Clever mankind.
BTW, an announcement on BBC Radio 2 this morning at around 06:50hrs from one of the tabloids, was that some stories about celebs were deliberately put about to show up how poor the journos were at checking facts when the stories were dished out to them. Sounds familiar.
Fact is that we, old skeptics, are the ones who did not participate directly in the dawning of the New Age, the age of Aquarius, because we were working hard, seriously studying or at war, while the now global warmers/climate changers, were smoking grass, taking LSD, etc., in one word: getting away from reality and responsibility. This is the essence of this silly creed: Finding ways to keep on getting things the easy way…and, at the same time, allucinating they are the ones who will save the world.
Peace and love!
Make love not war! 🙂
Leigh Walker (23:01:40) :
X = An unknown Quantity.
Spert = A drip of water under pressure.
Dose that make experts unknown drips? : )
no
ex= has-been
spert= drip under pressure
As far as I can tell the “it’s worse than we thought” movement is worse than we thought.
Cassandra King (21:10:48) :
[Expert]: “A person with a knowledge as big as a sea having an inch of depth”
Very funny. Staged? So what.
The “ice free Arctic” is also front page on Yahoo.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091015/sc_afp/britaincanadaarcticclimateenvironmentscience
I believe there is a term or phrase for the situation where a journalist receives information, and takes it as fact without corroboration – a ‘so good it must be true’ effect, usually occurring when the information aligns with the journalists personal beliefs.
It seems that this is what is ‘taught’ in journalism these days, that corroboration is not necessary. Those who should know better have simply fallen into lazy ways.
With news reports rampant with experts, the term ‘expert’ should always be quantified (but is not) – that is, the education, breadth and depth of experience should be noted. This serves two purposes: the journalist has demonstrated an ability to judge an expert, allowing the reader to determine the faith they would put in the journalists words, as well as determine the true facts of the story based on the expert testimony.
This just isn’t happening. Local papers are publishing more and more AP (Associated Press) reports. While cross referencing the facts of these stories a significant bias is inherent in almost all of them, particularly rampant with errors of omission. The individual reporters name almost seems inconsequential, and leaves you wondering weather the AP is a propaganda machine and who is the overseer – imagining WWII era teletype pool with a ‘supervisor’ determining which story to approve and disapprove.
Paranoia? Perhaps. But with the economic belts being tightened, individual newspapers have scant funds to hire reporters directly, and freelance isn’t all restaurants and caviar. Thus, it leaves a central agency to pick up the stories from around the world. Many are concerned with the media moguls having a monopoly, but perhaps it is the unknown and unnamed monopolists who have a lot more power.
Real air bag control modules are under the dash and have accelerometers within. They deploy in sudden decceleration. You can’t bump the car and deploy the airbags.
The units we manaufactured at Philips, constantly recorded the metrics on a cars motions, so that in the event of a deployment, there was actual data available. A little like a black box in your car.
Airbags are dangerous in their own right, and the companies that supply the controllers are very careful to CYA. That’s why the info is recorded, to prevent lawsuits from those who might claim that the airbag fired for no reason or failed to fire when it should have. The QC on those product lines is impressive.
People don’t tend to trust the media anyway. The hysterical and scare stories by the media bring more people in search of a balanced or counter opinion, then they find sites like WUWT. That’s good.
(Further to my previous comment)
A prime example: the internet is a powerful tool, and yet the press does not pick up on the power:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091015/sc_afp/britaincanadaarcticclimateenvironmentscience
Depending on your standpoint (opinion) and knowledge of the facts, this is incontravertably biassed. But, of note are the following:
This is an (AFP) associate Free Press (?) piece. The reporters name, Elodie Mazein, almost seems inconsequential.
Veteran polar explorer Hadow and two other Britons went out on the Arctic ice cap for 73 days during the northern spring, taking more than 6,000 measurements and observations of the sea ice.
Okay, a nice smattering of real numbers to legitimize the report. But who is Hadow, and these ‘others’? What are their qualifications? Are thy a group of frat boys out for jolly jaunt? Hah….the power of the internet. Perhaps the names are linked, so we can find out a bit of background on these ‘expeditionists’, to determine their fitness to the task in hand, without the reporter necessarily and tediously recounting their qualifications.
Well, no. No links to them in the article. But this isn’t a technical limitation, since the words ‘Polar Explorer’ are linked (“Great Deals at Yahoo! Low Prices On polar explorers.”) which is useless this context.
This all reinforces the fact that the news isn’t about the news any more. It’s about giving just enough information to get the reader to form an opinion on a matter, usually aligning with the written piece.
This is subtly different from an opinion column although quite similar, and is most insidious. The age old phrase “don’t believe everything you read” has fallen out of use but is, as yet, more and more important today as it ever was. How many young adults have been taught this? I recall as a youngster asking my parents about things in my naivete (“dad,….is this true?!”) and this was a most suitable answer to ensure a healthy dose of skepticism in everything.
Hadow’s conclusion was not unexpected.When you are expecting Schrödinger’s cat to be dead she’s dead.However in this case she just ran out of the box and is seeing a warm fire….
BTW that’s not Joe Romm driving
He drives an E_Z Go electric golf cart?
We are seeking rubber band driven or wind driven vehicles. Wind energy is far from green.
“I gotta save the planet! MOVE IT YOU OLD SKEPTICS! (honkhonkhonk)”
Hahaha! Yep, that’s about how them planet-savers are!
A while back, I was reading a greenie forum where the subject was IQ. Seems a number of them figured (all on their own, of course) that IQ of yesterday is inferior to IQ of today, thus an old person with an average IQ back in their time is basically retarded today (well, retarded enough to destroy the planet, according to one (presumably) young greenie). If I could remember (uh-oh. Am I OLD then?) the site I would post it, but unfortunately my memory fails.
Anyway, one must wonder what kind of smarty-pants would ride in a car, when Gore knew how to grow wings and fly 🙂
On Experts
“Check out the personnel and be afraid, be very afraid at the number of fresh-faced, just-out-of college “scientists”. This is the new generation, just out of the Nu-Labour education system and fed the Al Gore story, trained at UEA, Oxford, etc by the warmers. They also have brought in youngsters from other countries as well. They are qualified not in climate science, but in global warming mitigation, sociology, engineering, economics, etc.
They remind me of the Midwich Cuckoos.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/people/staff-list-with-pictures?page=3
Amplified from a post by DennisA (11:51:36) : Oct 14th emph added
What I find curious are adverts like this on WUWT.
Invest in Carbon Offsets
Is carbon offsetting the future? In-depth analysis. Read now!
http://www.AstonLloyd.co.uk
The world has suffered through much worse things than what’s happening now, and its still here. I think going “green” with stuff is a good idea, but not to extreme that some are taking it to.
The Rush to Save the Planet will go down the exact same way as the Iran Sanctions Talks: China and Russia will balk, as will the rest of the developing world.
The net result will be years of wasted effort and billions poured down the drain of wishful thinking and false anxieties.
Do a remake of Leanord Nimoy’s In Search of the Coming Ice Age, stick it in Theaters everywhere. Nothing like some good old competition.
By the way…how’s Baffin Island these days?
Now I am confused. In the lead post we have :
“McIntyre’s recent revelations about the majority of the hockey stick being based on a few tree cores in Yamal”
And yet elsewhere we have …
“There are many issues pertaining to the Mann hockey stick, but the Yamal controversy is not one of them.”
Huh? Do McIntyre’s findings about Yamal damage Mann’s Hockey Stick or not? And is the Hockey Stick relevant to what we do about global warming or is it perhaps best characterised as a somewhat tangential issue? Simply, is the Yamal kerfuffle really evidence that AGW is a fraud?
I doubt it’s a fraud. Just exaggerated (as usual). And nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Nothing to panic about or wreck the economy over.
Fun video, but yeah, it’s a “put up job”. Watch it carefully, at about 17 to 18 seconds, right as bag lady gets her back swing going, there is a ‘bang’ and the airbag deployment starts. They missed the timing by about 1/2 second. Probably because the guy in the car on the trigger allowed too much for his ‘lag time’ on the trigger and set it off on the back swing instead of the impact.
And per it not being possible: That depends entirely on the car and age. There was a Japanese car that, when it first came out, was sensitive. You could whack the bumper with a baseball bat and set it off. Gang bangers liked to do that for a while “for kicks”. Mazda? Nissan? I forget… but a specific model and years.
FWIW, the Japanese bags have a softer deployment than the US bags. They are sized for smaller people and so are safer with children. The German bags are also safer, largely due to more money spent on well designed systems (some are even two stage, depending in a weight sensor under the seat). The head breaker models tended to be the US makers. Sized for a 200 lb or so man and as cheap as they could make work acceptably.
Some actual airbag deployments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obvZ3gaHk9E
Note that you don’t necessarily get hit by the air bag and lose your glasses, but the deployment is much quicker than on the blog video. Test airbags are not covered in chalk, so the cameras can see what is going on.
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Investigate basic ideas and concepts, put initial structure on the problem, frame critical research questions. ,
Do I need window light on the sides or just use my strobe umbrella flash? ,