Travel today. So by request, here is a Weekend Open Thread on Thatcher, who did much to kick off the CO2 global warming saga but later on became a sceptic and regretted her actions. My favorite quote (supposedly attributed to her) from Thatcher is about consensus:
“consensus is an absence of leadership”
So true.
Along the same lines, it is such a shame that the left treats her service so poorly by making an artificial push in song popularity, a false consensus if you will, to make “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead” #1 in Britain so that the BBC will have to play it on BBC Radio1. Such cheap shots speak to the integrity of their political convictions. Fortunately, the BBC decided that they had a shred of integrity left and chose not to play the clip in full. Still, it is a cheap shot.
Plus, discuss anything else within the limits of blog policy.
New Topic: We educated people have a lousy grasp of evolution. Including this marine biologist quoted below.
For the set-up: all of us educated intellectuals believe evolution, and look askance at the dumb religious people. That is a “given.” No need to question that assumption.
Next, we know evolution is true. This is accepted on faith, and the details are to be worked out. Mostly through tautology: the blacktip shark has a black tip because evolution is true, and evolution produces what we see, and we see a blacktip shark, therefore the black tip is evolutionarily advantageous, therefore the presense of a black tip on a shark demonstrates, yet again, evolution.
Next: evolution happens as variations in a species contribute to differential reproductive success: those sharks who happen to have black tips somehow survived and reproduced better than the less-back-tipped members of the species. Eventually, the black tip became its own species, with its own DNA, and definitely not just a variant, as a Chihuaha is to a Mastiff.
Then, how does this quote make sense?–
[“In a sense, it is catching evolution in action,” he told me. ]
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/australias-hybrid-shark-reveals-evolution-action-904726
They discovered inetrbreeding between supposedly differnt species of sharks (of course, attributed to AGW). Thy declare that species evolve by inter-mingling with other species. I have not heard this before as a tenet of evolution – the part of evolution that accounts for where the species came from.
What type of evolutionary process is this called?
In other news: why is this story not getting wide coverage? Arkansas oil line spill…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/11/us-exxon-spill-mayflower-insight-idUSBRE93A0PI20130411
I think oil and coal are OK sources of energy, but this has to be managed i a decent way. Companies cannot simply conduct business and make money without having the govt look over their shoulder to make sure things are done in a relatively safe way, and when bad things happen, the companies – not the taxpayer – should foot the bill.
In simple terms, this is one of the principles I believe the demoratic party used to have, and could one day have, if we coud only get the marxists to just go form their own party and get out of ours.
To avoid cronyism as happens in regulation, I believe govt should be open – astoundingly open – including a system where citizen brigades get trained to understand industry surveillance, and carry it out themselves in a manner approved by citizens, govt officials and industry – at the onset before the first shovel.
Just like I can get access to court documents, I should be able, wthin reaon, to observe and audit the buildig and functionig of a chemicla plant, nukelar reactor, etc – a watchdog looking over the shoulder of the govt regulators, so they cannot be bought off as we now know hppened in many cases including the big BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
I’m not a Brit, but from what I’ve read I think what makes UKIP so “extreme” is that they have the gall to think that England should actually be run for the English people and not so much asians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and whoever else happens to show up on the odd doorstep. Radical thoughts indeed.
@ur momisugly DirkH. In order to answer your question I realised I hadn’t looked at their manifesto in a few years, so have just done so. I think they will find that there is only so much money to go round and that good intentions in many areas may prove harder to attain in practise.
They do seem to be the only party with firm attitudes towards overcrowding (immigration) and exploitation of the UK’s benefit system by those who would not have benefited from such largesse in their own countries.
I am strongly opposed to their anti EU standpoint and believe it should be made to work, in practise we cannot run away from it as we do half our trade with the EU.
I don’t see enough in their manifesto about energy, I would like to see something about fracking and nuclear power. Like it or not, a successful economy is founded on energy.
On balance, I withdraw my outdated notion that they are unelectable.
For now I will continue to not vote, but stronger statements about energy from UKIP could then leave me in a small quandary as to whether I should consider voting for them, I think I would have to seek more detailed information about their stance on the EU though before I could actually consider voting for them. In my opinion leaving the EU is not an economically sensible action, indeed I think the UK should join the Euro, but I also think we should require that some absurdly managed countries leave the Euro.
Sadly, Tom Fuller is not going to be posting with us much longer. However, he has graced us with what is perhaps one of the best blog posts yet made regarding AGW hype:
http://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/506/
J Martin: “It is likely that some of her economic principles were nonetheless a necessary long term evil.”
“Evil” is a strong word so can you please be specific?
Chris Edwards says:
“It says a lot for her integrity that she was taken in by the global warming scam, looked at it (thats where having a leader who is not a trained liar, sorry lawyer is beneficial) and saw through it and had the honesty to say so!”
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She only became interested in CAGW because it was a useful stick with which to beat the miners, she urged other world leaders to take drastic action on flimsy to no evidence and if she ever had the “honesty to say” that she changed her mind she said it pretty damn (and uncharacteristically) quietly. I doubt that a single person who doesn’t haunt sites like this has the first clue that she changed her mind or was even involved in the first place!
Hey, but maybe she wouldn’t have been paid enough to make a speech debunking CAGW after she left office.
Anyway it displays the same kind of “integrity” which loudly proclaimed her anti-EEC (EU) stance but still signed the Single European Act, I suppose.
J.Martin 8:31
“……set up the Beneficial Dictator party…..”
Hey, that’s my idea! I’m starting the Davist party. Our slogan will be “One for all and all for Dave!”
regarding the Arkansas spill, thelastdemocrat wrote:
“I think oil and coal are OK sources of energy, but this has to be managed i a decent way.”
It is managed in a very decent way. That doesn’t mean accidents never happen, just like managing traffic in a decent way doesn’t guarantees that there will never by any traffic accident anywhere. It means that when an accident *does* happen it is quickly and efficiently cleaned up and all who have suffered harm are compensated and made whole again, insofar as that is possible.
“Companies cannot simply conduct business and make money without having the govt look over their shoulder to make sure things are done in a relatively safe way,”
Govm’t DOES look over their shoulder in every possible way, at both the State and Federal level. And the pipeline business is run in as safe a way as the engineers doing know how. Do you have any idea who much money is lost by having to shut down this line for even just a few does? To think that pipeline companies sacrifice safety for profit is a very tired old canard that betrays a complete lack of knowledge about the industry. When you are building a pipeline, the most profitable path is ALWAYS the most safety conscious path, because accidents are so damned expensive!
But that doesn’t mean accidents don’t happen, especially on a 60 year old pipeline like this one, where corrosion can occur underneath existing buildings in areas you can’t get to.
“and when bad things happen, the companies – not the taxpayer – should foot the bill.”
Did you even read the article you referred to? That’s exactly what’s happening – Exxon is paying the full cost and compensating everyone involved.
This is why I kept voting for Maggie and why I would still vote for her even if it was only a bronze bust of her standing for election in my constituency.
“The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.” (May 1983)
WWS-
Good posting on Chevron and Stratus Consulting. Stratus has been a go to provider of “expert” testimony in many important environmental cases. The Chevron case shows that they are simply well paid advocates with Phd’s posing as scientists.
As to the “mixed result” and “pain caused” crappola being held against Thatcher please show me a government policy that is all upside. I think we put paid to that argument with the home ownership society policy leading straight to a massive financial collapse here in the USA. GB was already in pain when she came to power. Her policies provided a chance for renewal. Of course if you suffer the delusion that there is an iron rice bowl somewhere you’ll never agree.
From here UKIP looks like the rightwing of the Conservative Party. The GOP greybeards should take note.
Seeing how this is a “Weekend Open Thread”, might a bit of advice be solicited for a serious, but low-priced, number-crunching ‘computing’ platform?
Needed is a computer containing on the order of 64 GB of RAM installed and budgeting is only allowing about US $650 to be spent … willing to compromise on ‘speed’ and number of ‘cores’ so something (slow?) in the area of a 2 GHz clock are acceptable … don’t need a whole lot of disk space at present and graphics is not a concern either. Just gobs and gobs of RAM.
The goal is to get away from continual memory ‘swapping’ that takes place on the present PC (a 3 GHz “Core2 Duo” Dell Optiplex 755 with 8 GB of RAM running Win 7 x64 Pro SP1) … the last run took over 3 days on account of the amount of time used in disk (virtual memory) I/O where the CPU utilization shows really _low_ during those periods when disk swapping takes place. The ‘peak’ memory used on the last run was something over 40 GB (on a Dell 755 with only 8 GB memory installed).
Some of the platforms meeting the criteria above (on eBay) look to be Dell PowerEdge 2950 (and C1100) series servers, but I have no idea (or experience) how these perform executing a single user program (vs acting as a “server” with appropriate server software) under a copy of, say, Win 7 Pro x64.
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Recently it’s been pointed out in comments that climate sensitivity is a function of forcing and temperature and nothing else, and it’s been argued that the source of the forcing doesn’t matter with respect to feedbacks. If this is indeed so, it seems to me to be a matter of straightforward arithmetic to establish a low climate sensitivity. I’m perfectly aware that this can’t possibly be a new argument btw, but being a relative newbie I haven’t heard it before. What’s the counter argument to this? Why is this argument not persuasive, or what have I done wrong?
Premise: Every year we observe changes in global temperature as the Earth moves between perihelion and aphelion in its orbit of the Sun. Given the known distances between the Earth and the Sun at perihelion and aphelion and the global temperature changes, we may therefore compute climate sensitivity and apply our result to a doubling of CO2, assuming as given that a doubling of CO2 increases forcing by 3.7 W/m2.
Data:
Earth distance from Sun at aphelion – approx 152,000,000 km (numerous sources)
Earth distance from Sun at perihelion – approx 147,000,000 km (numerous sources)
Radius of Sun – approx 695,000 km (numerous sources)
Radiation intensity on surface of sun – approx 63,300,000 W/m^2 (numerous sources)
From (http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Final-BW-Print-Version-TIS_html_5f0398df.png) :
Global temperature at aphelion – approx 15.8C
Global temperature at perihelion – approx 12.0C
Methods and arithmetic:
Formulas:
Solar radiation intensity = [(R^2)Sun / (D^2)] * HSun
Sensitivity = delta T / delta F.
Area of a sphere = 4 pi R^2
Area of a circle = pi R^2
Calculations:
At aphelion we compute a forcing of :
At perihelion we compute a forcing of:
Note that:
We adjust for surface of a sphere instead of a disk, dividing deltaF by 4:
and end up with a sensitivity of
This gives us, for a forcing increase of 3.7 W/m^2 per doubling of CO2,
Results:
climate sensitivity = .165 (C * m^2 / W)
increase in C per doubling of CO2 = 0.6C
So what’s wrong with this argument?
Here’s a question that I’ve been wondering about. Does the earth’s interior conduct heat to the surface at a uniform rate through time? It seems likely that it would, but I haven’t heard anyone discuss this. Does anyone know of anyone studying this, links to it or other sources?
I am an American but I lived in the north of England 1985-87 in a small town, Knaresborough, and enjoyed the experience greatly. However, it was hard times for many of the locals as the coal pits, factories, and shipyards were closing and unemployment was very high. Every Friday night the 10 O’Colck news totted up the week’s joblosses with a big odometer type display marking each closure. What surprised me was the complete unwillingness of people to relocate even a few miles to where jobs were more plentiful. Didn’t want leave their friends and their local they said.
Arthur Scargill, head of the National Union of Mineworkers, was a big hero to the locals. I suggested that based on the wackiness of their economic policies the Mineworkers could merge with the National Union of Teachers and become the NUM-NUTs.
I wonder if many Americans know that until recently the Labour Party used to open and close their annual conferences by waving red flags and singing the Internationale. There were less communist trappings and rhetoric from the peasants when I previously lived in China. Eye opening for me.
UKIP is the only significant UK party that hasn’t been taken over by the Green Treen movement, and the European Empire. And is therefore capable of free thought. Consequently it is the only party with a sensible energy policy. And the only party that believes that charity begins at home.
andrewmharding says:
April 13, 2013 at 7:44 am
‘and the poor got richer and happier umder her leadership’ so much so that they spent most of the 80s rioting, because of her policies! And when she brought in the ‘poll tax’ that doomed her leadership to the bin!
William Marshall says:
April 13, 2013 at 10:16 am
The poll tax was a good idea and fair, especially compared to the Council Tax that replaced it. A morass of meaningless ever-changing bands that can be used to “punish” people for being too wealthy? No thanks.
Of course I’d rather have neither tax.
And contrary to your claims the UK did not spend the majority of the 80s rioting. Those riots that did occur were a people whipped into a frenzy by labourites who wanted to destroy Thatcher and the right by any means possible. She was bringing real prosperity to this country, highlighting the failure of Labour policies for years beforehand and they couldn’t stand it. Nor could they stand that she was a working class woman who got to the top of the “party of the rich”. They hated her because she revealed everything about them to be a complete scam.
So they doubled down the scam.
And you fell for it. And now I’m stuck with the results of that. Thanks a lot.
In her book “Statecraft” PM Thatcher clearly is critical of the global warming crowd. Did she “regret” her former stance? We don’t know, but we do know that she no longer shared the views of Hansen, et. al. who she knew to be wrong about the climate. Shame she was instrumental in setting up the IPCC and that den of incompetents in East Anglia.
Speaking of the poor from personal experience: I was born in 1930’s built public housing in Germany. It was a cesspool of father-less families (including mine), laziness, drunkeness, and criminality. Being in Germany the stoops were clean. We immigrated to the USA to escape.
The notion that “the poor” should be consulted on economic policy is lunacy. They will take what they can and exploit every opportunity presented by those who don’t know them. Let them riot. The fact that they do is a sign you are doing the right thing.
Climate consensus is 97% of an unidentified uni-think population behaving as if it had a single brain. The speed at which this population syncs up on a notion is proportional to the speed of email. You are more likely to trisect an angle with a hockey stick and a bungie cord than modify these monothoughts (a variant humanoid tribe not yet taxonomically ranked).
Mark Bofill, you write “So what’s wrong with this argument?”
Simple. The number for climate sensitivity has not been measured. What physics, and the scientific method is based on, is forming a hypothesis from observed data, then postulating some number that can be measure which follows from the hypothesis. The warmists have hypothesised that CO2 causes global warming. They claim there is such a thing as the climate sensitivity of CO2, and they ascribe various estimates to this idea; one of which is yours.
However, no-one will ever know what the actual number is until it has been measured, and at the same time an accuracy of measurement is established. At this moment it is impossible to measure climate sensitivity, so your number, like all others, is nothing more that a SWAG (Scientific Wild Arsed Guess). All we know is that climate sensitivity is probably positive, and has some maximum value. Other than that, your guess is as good as anyone else’s. My guess is that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishable from zero.
The answer is to stop exhaling. This may be a bit extreme, so I propose eliminating ever third exhale. Compromise is a good thing, no?
_Jim;
Some of the platforms meeting the criteria above (on eBay) look to be Dell PowerEdge 2950 (and C1100) series servers, but I have no idea (or experience) how these perform executing a single user program
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are asking a very complicated question. If your app is single threaded you will be better off with a higher GHz processor as additional core count won’t help your performance. If your hard drive requirements are small, consider an SSD or a Hybrid (SATA with a SSD cache). This will make a massive difference to performance if the app is disk intensive, which it sounds like it is. More ram is almost always better, but not all apps are written to take advantage of large ram space in the first place, so you don’t always get the performance boost you expect.