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.
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? ,