People send me stuff. I get so many books and manuscripts to review that I could heat my home if I had a wood burning stove. While I was away, one arrived in the mail from Japan. Despite claims that Climategate is going away or was inconsequential, as evidenced below, it continues to gain interest worldwide.
Of course, I can’t read a thing in it.
The sender, Tadashi Watanabe wrote this curious note in the margin:
I’ve never thought of the Japanese language to be “freak”, just unreadable to me. (Note: in comments it has been pointed out that he may have written “fresh”, which makes more sense. I looked at it several times, but the last letters looked like a small a and small k. They still do. But let’s go with “fresh”.)
Fortunately the book has some familiar pictures, actually, a lot of them.
I feel honored that WUWT gets notice in Japan and I thank Mr. Tadashi Watanabe for the kindness of sending me this book. I also offer congratulations to Steve Mosher and Thomas Fuller for breaking the language barrier.
If you haven’t got your copy yet, click on the image on the right sidebar to order THE CRUTAPE LETTERS from Amazon.
Oh, and a note of acknowledgment to WUWT regular “bulldust” who coined the phrase “Climategate” right here on WUWT (Bulldust coined the phrase at 3:52PM PST Nov 19th) just hours after we broke the story. It was great to meet you in Perth.
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Domo arigato
YOSH!!!!
Keep up your onerous work!
Japanese is not a freak language, but it is one that’s all Greek to me.
BTW a “wood burning stove” it is a very important piece of hardware: It allows, at the same time, to burn all GWrs. pamphlets, while increasing life giving CO2.
freak, as in odd or different?
Has “the Mosh” become wealthy enough to move out of CTM’s apartment, yet? Congratulations on a book that’s going around the world!
Is that “Enjoy a fresh language “, not “Enjoy a freak language”.
REPLY: Could be, I looked at it several times, and the last letter looked like a small k to me. “Fresh” works, and is more likely what he wrote. – A
I believe he is paying you a high compliment, Japanese tend to be blunt.
I searched the online dictionaries, and went back to my time doing some business in Japan, 5 years ago.
It took a moment to figure it out. The use of the term “onerous” refers to the “mentally taxing” challenge of following all the information on WUWT. There is a little bit of “literalism” at work here, and the writer does not understand the “connotation” that this is an “undesirable” task.
Thus it IS a compliment!
Max
Doctor Tadashi Watanabe (if one and the same) is a very accomplished engineer.
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0611/0901.html
Good to see how the Climagate relevations are spreading into non English speaking countries. Once the genie is out it is impossible to get it back into the bottle. In a sense I feel that we US/Europeans have to rely on probably mostly Asian countries to break the AGW “spell” that have beset our politicians. That some climate researchers “follow the money” as their No. 1 concern is only possible because the politicians are prepared to hand them our money to prove AGW over and over again. If the science is really that settled then they should surely close the money box for further research.
I was actually stunned to read this from the Guardian article
“But greater openness and engagement with their critics will not ensure that climate scientists have an easier time in future, warns Hulme. Back in the lab, a new generation of more sophisticated computer models is failing to reduce the uncertainties in predicting future climate, he says – rather, the reverse. “This is not what the public and politicians expect, so handling and explaining this will be difficult.” and this from no other than Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. When is this message going to sink into Obama, Cameron, Merkel and all the other AGW believers? Is Professor Hulme also referring to the Hadley centre’s £30 million wonder?
Keep it up. They are getting angry and circling the wagons. Climate gate interferes with social engineering.
One day the EPA will have to demonstrate endangerment. Till now they lean on very bad articles to claim they expect danger somewhere.
“relevations” should be “revelations” in the above message. Sorry about that.
It is unfortunate still not having it in spanish though temperatures below normal are making their best to fight against global warming campaings.
Unfortunately very few Japanese actually write English. Many can read it and many more can speak it. Add a Japanese to English dictionary/thesaurus and well……..
Enjoy & great language
It isn’t hard to read to a teacher used to deciphering student scribbles. His handwriting is actually quite good compared to a lot of what I see.
Nope I still live with Charles
This is good news sensei Watts.
Mmm, that looks a lot more like ‘freak’ to me. And I know all about freak – I’m an environmentalist! *rimshot*
Congratulations from me as well, this book has also reached Norway! I am reading it these days (in English), it is a fascinating and frightening story. I have also read “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by A.W. Montford. These books should be taught in schools, instead of the AGW nonsense our kids are offered.
They are important supplements to WUWT and Climate Audit, and will sooner or later help put an end to the AGW scare.
The is great news. The Japanese have a higher regard for truth and honesty than what we have been seeing lately in the USA. I do not think the dishonesty shown in the e-mails will go down well with the Japanese.
If I recall correctly written Japanese, Chinese and Korean are close enough that the book may cover more than one country. I hope so.
This is Engrish. That is, English done by a Japanese not familiar with the nuances of our language. ‘Onerrous’ probably meant ‘magnificently difficult’ and ‘freak’ was probably meant to be ‘unusually different’. You can rest assured only the highest praise was meant.
More Engrish at engrish.com.
It’s Japlish, and darned fine examples, too!
onerous ≈ difficult/challenging
freak ≈ different
No disrespect to Mr. Watanabe, whose English is a million billion times better than my Japanese!
It reminds of a story of a reliability test of English -German translator software:
English phrase, translated to German, and then back to English to see if it would hold up. It started out, “The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak”, but morphed into, “The wine is good but the meat is rotten”.
I was a bit more taken aback by the description of your writings as being “onerous”.