Looks like a lot more than simply rude. The following snip from a post by Willis appears to cover it:
Fair enough, yeah, it was more than simply rude. All I can say in his defense is that it was uncharacteristic. And the resident cheerleader “Joshua” didn’t exactly help.
Wijnand Schoutem:
At September 22, 2013 at 8:02 am you say:
“You sound silly. Renewable energy is not climate. We need wind / sun / bio-fuel and whatever it takes to become less dependent on oil, since these days we export to much euro’s and dollars to the middle east and the price keeps going up.”
I don’t know where you obtained the idea that wind, solar and bio-fuels can have any meaningful effect on our crude oil dependency, but it is wrong. If you would bother to do some research (rather than blindly listen to and believe in those from the Green Movement), you would find that crude oil in this country is used overwhelmingly for refinement into surface and air transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel), petrochemicals, and materials like plastics. The last I checked, only about 1% of our crude oil supplies was used to generate electricity. We could generate all the wind, solar and bio-fuel electricity we want (which I don’t support for a variety of reasons), but it would have very nearly a zero effect on our crude oil dependency. For more information, check out the website http://www.eia.gov.
Replacing our fossil fuel power plants is one thing. It can be done with third and fourth generation nuclear plants (check out the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor). I fully support that, although it will take a great deal of time and money to do. I don’t anticipate seeing it happen in my lifetime, if ever. Wind, solar and bio-fuels will never get that job done.
However, replacing our dependency on crude oil is another story entirely. Hydrogen fuel cells have a variety of problems to overcome (if they ever do) before they replace the internal combustion engine. I for one won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Electric cars have bombed in the car market time and again due to numerous shortcomings which are unacceptable to car buyers.
I find it disturbing the way members of the Green Movement keep wrongly associating wind, solar and other so-called “green energies” with reductions in crude oil dependency. The facts as I understand them don’t support such a notion. I wish they would get over it.
Latitude
September 22, 2013 9:09 am
Electric cars have bombed in the car market time and again due to numerous shortcomings which are unacceptable to car buyers.
====
spontaneous combustion would be one of those
Richard111
September 22, 2013 9:12 am
Question from a baffled layman. How does a transparent gas cool down after it has been warmed by conduction from the surface? Nitrogen, oxygen and argon, 99.99% of the atmosphere qualify as transparent gases. Everyone says warmed air rises and cools. Does it really? Where did the energy go?
One other thing…. Bio-fuels as a transportation fuel alternative to refined crude oil products is largely dependent on production costs among other things. I find it highly unlikely that we will ever be able to produce enough biomass in this country at a cost-competitive price to make a large, serious dent in our crude oil dependency. If it were possible to do so, I’m sure we would be seeing a lot more of it by now.
I could be wrong about that, but that is my two cents worth on the subject.
Jeff Alberts
September 22, 2013 9:14 am
PaulH says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:16 am
You know that old saying, “Nature abhors a vacuum”? Well, with my latest attempt at trim carpentry I can add a few more items:
– Nature abhors 90 degree angles (corners).
– Nature abhors straight lines.
– Nature abhors flat surfaces (walls, floors).
There may be others, but my skills and patience are limited. I guess that helps to explain why carpentry is a venerated skilled trade. 🙂
I know you were making a joke, but I often hear folks say “there are no straight lines in nature”. This is patently false. You can find straight lines all over the place. The problem is they’re not as long as we would like to consider them “straight lines”. Crystalline formations often contain many straight lines, and flat surfaces. Example: http://urielweb.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/crystal-blue_1.jpg
The problem is our perception, and wanting to speak in absolutes.
GlynnMhor
September 22, 2013 9:18 am
JA, I remember prior not only to Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ but prior to the whole AGW fear mongery that the MWP was known as the ‘Mediaeval Climatic Optimum’.
But calling a warm period an ‘Optimum’ would have run counter to the meme the paradigm wanted to impose that warm == bad.
Brad Keyes says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:59 am
Fair enough, yeah, it was more than simply rude. All I can say in his defense is that it was uncharacteristic. And the resident cheerleader “Joshua” didn’t exactly help.
=========
or it is characteristic and only Willis spotted the deception. Didn’t Willis also say that he first thought Joshua was dmk38? If you are already double posting to your own blog via an alias, why stop at one?
GlynnMhor says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:18 am
JA, I remember prior not only to Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ but prior to the whole AGW fear mongery that the MWP was known as the ‘Mediaeval Climatic Optimum’.
==============
Here is a bit of irony: Medieval Climatic Optimum
Michael E Mann http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/medclimopt.pdf
H.R.
September 22, 2013 9:24 am
Peter Crawford says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:09 am “As a megalomaniac with a secret base within Holyhead Mountain (henchmen, helicopters, geezers with steel teeth, I got all that) …[jealousy inducing details omitted for brevity’s sake]…
… Do any other WUWT readers have any tips on how to get a really good infestation going?”
I can’t believe you didn’t think to set your e-e-e-evil Global Climate Control Machine (Pat. Pend. and stolen from G. Bush) to “Sharknado” and aim it at your pool. Sheesh! It’s a no brainer for the average megalomaniac.
With apollogies to Robert Frost;
Whose woods these are I used to know
His house collapsed from all this snow
He cannot see me stopping here
To watch his turbines turn real slow
My little horse must think it queer
To see dead birds so far and near
He gives his harness bell a shake
Even he knows they’re a big mistake
The woods WERE lovely, dark and deep
But now they only make me weep
This is a lesson for all to keep
.Al Gore really is a creep
Jeff Alberts
September 22, 2013 9:29 am
I can’t believe you didn’t think to set your e-e-e-evil Global Climate Control Machine (Pat. Pend. and stolen from G. Bush) to “Sharknado” and aim it at your pool. Sheesh! It’s a no brainer for the average megalomaniac.
And I’ll bet he told the hero all about his plan for world domination, right after leaving said hero completely unattended in some Rube Goldbergian death contraption with which nothing could possibly go wrong.
oMan
September 22, 2013 9:33 am
Judith Curry’s op-ed in The Australian is getting a buzz. I liked her argument. She has done some serious thinking on cognitive bias, how humans address uncertainty, etc. The IPCC adopting politicized processes to turn their “science” into action –or is it the politicians adopting the IPCC to legitimate their agenda?– is not the best way, and she properly questions it.
I’m continuing this discussion here instead of going OT in another thread.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 21, 2013 at 12:17 pm
From Jeff Alberts on September 21, 2013 at 11:57 am:
I don’t know of a power chair that uses batteries as small as 12ah (I repair them for a living). There might be some out there, but I’ll wager they’re extremely rare. Smaller scooters do use 12ah batteries, but PWCs use group U-1 (~35ah) and higher.
Don’t they group smaller ones in parallel? With the right electronics, or mere electrical circuits, you can increase reliability by disconnecting faulty ones. Three of those get the U-1 range, if one goes out then you still have about 2/3 range. Makes the difference between getting back from the store or not.
And I’ve seen designs that have at least two battery boxes. Multiple smaller batteries can be placed in various nooks for a more compact design.
For the planned solar-powered weather station and webcam (wi-fi or cellular?), 12Ah should be enough for several cloudy days.
All of the power wheelchairs and scooters I’ve ever seen (except one) use two 12v batteries connected in series to get 24v while maintaining the ah rating of the batteries. The one exception used three smaller batteries (12ah I believe) in series for a 36 volt system. Sometimes the batteries are in one compartment, others have them in individual boxes, but they’re always in series. Disconnect one and the system won’t work.
Certainly a different application than a solar battery array.
PaulH says:
– Nature abhors 90 degree angles (corners).
– Nature abhors straight lines.
– Nature abhors flat surfaces (walls, floors).
In a similar vein, C Northcote Parkinson said “Work expands to fill the time available”.
There are some variations like “Stuff expands to fill the closets available”. And another invented by me (and possibly others too so I can’t claim to be the first):
Data expands to fill the disk drives available.
milodonharlani
September 22, 2013 9:43 am
ferd berple says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:23 am
In 1965, Lamb called the MWP an “epoch”. Both “period” & “epoch” are geological chronological terms, so neither is ideal. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031018265900040
Before the MWP became a “Climatic Optimum”, there was the long, previous Holocene Climatic Optimum. Only recently has the MWP become a “Climatic Anomaly”.
or it is characteristic and only Willis spotted the deception.
Yep, a legitimate question which I guess you’d need to determine for yourself. One thing I can say to a moral certainty is that “Joshua” is not Kahan’s alter ego. (Compare their written styles.)
As for why I still think there is good in Kahan: recall that he published the first paper that disproved the “Science Comprehension Thesis” by showing that skeptics are slightly *more*, not *less*, scientifically-literate than alarmists. And that he published this result despite its contradicting his own working hypothesis. I think we all know what Lewandowsky would’ve done with such data.
Bill Church
September 22, 2013 9:48 am
Richard111 says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:12 am
Question from a baffled layman. How does a transparent gas cool down after it has been warmed by conduction from the surface? Nitrogen, oxygen and argon, 99.99% of the atmosphere qualify as transparent gases. Everyone says warmed air rises and cools. Does it really? Where did the energy go?
I understand that it does not go anywhere. As a parcel of warmed air rises, it expands and thus cools (the dry adiabat). When it reaches its dew point, water vapour starts to condense to water droplets and clouds form releasing the latent heat of condensation. This gives the parcel more energy to continue rising and expanding – the wet adiabat. Adiabatic means roughly no energy in and no energy out.
Convective clouds depend on the relationship between the environmental lapse rate (generally the actual decrease in air temperature with altitude) and the dry and wet adiabat. See also “lifted index” and “CAPE”.
rogerknights
September 22, 2013 9:56 am
Wijnand Schoutem says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:02 am
You sound silly. Renewable energy is not climate. We need wind / sun / bio-fuel and whatever it takes to become less dependent on oil, . . . .
Whatever it takes = shale gas & oil + some form of cleaner nuclear + cold fusion research money.
This quote from Christopher Hitchens (No One Left to Lie to) has some relevance to climate science.
Hanna Arendt once wrote that the great success of Stalinism among the intellectuals could be attributed to one annihilating tactic. Stalinism replaced all debate about the merits of any argument, or a position, or even a person, with an inquiry about motive.
DirkH
September 22, 2013 10:10 am
Wijnand Schoutem says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:02 am
“You sound silly. Renewable energy is not climate. We need wind / sun / bio-fuel and whatever it takes to become less dependend on oil, since these days we export to much euro’s and dollars to the middle east and the price keeps going up.”
Notice that this commenter talks to no one even though his comment is made to look like an answer to someone. I think he’s a renewable energy lobbyist spambot.
ferd:
Fair enough, yeah, it was more than simply rude. All I can say in his defense is that it was uncharacteristic. And the resident cheerleader “Joshua” didn’t exactly help.
Wijnand Schoutem:
At September 22, 2013 at 8:02 am you say:
“You sound silly. Renewable energy is not climate. We need wind / sun / bio-fuel and whatever it takes to become less dependent on oil, since these days we export to much euro’s and dollars to the middle east and the price keeps going up.”
I don’t know where you obtained the idea that wind, solar and bio-fuels can have any meaningful effect on our crude oil dependency, but it is wrong. If you would bother to do some research (rather than blindly listen to and believe in those from the Green Movement), you would find that crude oil in this country is used overwhelmingly for refinement into surface and air transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel), petrochemicals, and materials like plastics. The last I checked, only about 1% of our crude oil supplies was used to generate electricity. We could generate all the wind, solar and bio-fuel electricity we want (which I don’t support for a variety of reasons), but it would have very nearly a zero effect on our crude oil dependency. For more information, check out the website http://www.eia.gov.
Replacing our fossil fuel power plants is one thing. It can be done with third and fourth generation nuclear plants (check out the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor). I fully support that, although it will take a great deal of time and money to do. I don’t anticipate seeing it happen in my lifetime, if ever. Wind, solar and bio-fuels will never get that job done.
However, replacing our dependency on crude oil is another story entirely. Hydrogen fuel cells have a variety of problems to overcome (if they ever do) before they replace the internal combustion engine. I for one won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Electric cars have bombed in the car market time and again due to numerous shortcomings which are unacceptable to car buyers.
I find it disturbing the way members of the Green Movement keep wrongly associating wind, solar and other so-called “green energies” with reductions in crude oil dependency. The facts as I understand them don’t support such a notion. I wish they would get over it.
Electric cars have bombed in the car market time and again due to numerous shortcomings which are unacceptable to car buyers.
====
spontaneous combustion would be one of those
Question from a baffled layman. How does a transparent gas cool down after it has been warmed by conduction from the surface? Nitrogen, oxygen and argon, 99.99% of the atmosphere qualify as transparent gases. Everyone says warmed air rises and cools. Does it really? Where did the energy go?
One other thing…. Bio-fuels as a transportation fuel alternative to refined crude oil products is largely dependent on production costs among other things. I find it highly unlikely that we will ever be able to produce enough biomass in this country at a cost-competitive price to make a large, serious dent in our crude oil dependency. If it were possible to do so, I’m sure we would be seeing a lot more of it by now.
I could be wrong about that, but that is my two cents worth on the subject.
I know you were making a joke, but I often hear folks say “there are no straight lines in nature”. This is patently false. You can find straight lines all over the place. The problem is they’re not as long as we would like to consider them “straight lines”. Crystalline formations often contain many straight lines, and flat surfaces. Example: http://urielweb.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/crystal-blue_1.jpg
The problem is our perception, and wanting to speak in absolutes.
JA, I remember prior not only to Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ but prior to the whole AGW fear mongery that the MWP was known as the ‘Mediaeval Climatic Optimum’.
But calling a warm period an ‘Optimum’ would have run counter to the meme the paradigm wanted to impose that warm == bad.
Brad Keyes says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:59 am
Fair enough, yeah, it was more than simply rude. All I can say in his defense is that it was uncharacteristic. And the resident cheerleader “Joshua” didn’t exactly help.
=========
or it is characteristic and only Willis spotted the deception. Didn’t Willis also say that he first thought Joshua was dmk38? If you are already double posting to your own blog via an alias, why stop at one?
GlynnMhor says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:18 am
JA, I remember prior not only to Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ but prior to the whole AGW fear mongery that the MWP was known as the ‘Mediaeval Climatic Optimum’.
==============
Here is a bit of irony:
Medieval Climatic Optimum
Michael E Mann
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/medclimopt.pdf
Peter Crawford says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:09 am
“As a megalomaniac with a secret base within Holyhead Mountain (henchmen, helicopters, geezers with steel teeth, I got all that) …[jealousy inducing details omitted for brevity’s sake]…
… Do any other WUWT readers have any tips on how to get a really good infestation going?”
I can’t believe you didn’t think to set your e-e-e-evil Global Climate Control Machine (Pat. Pend. and stolen from G. Bush) to “Sharknado” and aim it at your pool. Sheesh! It’s a no brainer for the average megalomaniac.
With apollogies to Robert Frost;
Whose woods these are I used to know
His house collapsed from all this snow
He cannot see me stopping here
To watch his turbines turn real slow
My little horse must think it queer
To see dead birds so far and near
He gives his harness bell a shake
Even he knows they’re a big mistake
The woods WERE lovely, dark and deep
But now they only make me weep
This is a lesson for all to keep
.Al Gore really is a creep
And I’ll bet he told the hero all about his plan for world domination, right after leaving said hero completely unattended in some Rube Goldbergian death contraption with which nothing could possibly go wrong.
Judith Curry’s op-ed in The Australian is getting a buzz. I liked her argument. She has done some serious thinking on cognitive bias, how humans address uncertainty, etc. The IPCC adopting politicized processes to turn their “science” into action –or is it the politicians adopting the IPCC to legitimate their agenda?– is not the best way, and she properly questions it.
Regarding Brad Keyes@7:59, here’s the post with Willis Eschenbach’s comments:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/8/11/what-climate-skeptics-have-in-common-with-believers-a-stubbo.html#comments
I’m continuing this discussion here instead of going OT in another thread.
All of the power wheelchairs and scooters I’ve ever seen (except one) use two 12v batteries connected in series to get 24v while maintaining the ah rating of the batteries. The one exception used three smaller batteries (12ah I believe) in series for a 36 volt system. Sometimes the batteries are in one compartment, others have them in individual boxes, but they’re always in series. Disconnect one and the system won’t work.
Certainly a different application than a solar battery array.
PaulH says:
– Nature abhors 90 degree angles (corners).
– Nature abhors straight lines.
– Nature abhors flat surfaces (walls, floors).
In a similar vein, C Northcote Parkinson said “Work expands to fill the time available”.
There are some variations like “Stuff expands to fill the closets available”. And another invented by me (and possibly others too so I can’t claim to be the first):
Data expands to fill the disk drives available.
ferd berple says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:23 am
In 1965, Lamb called the MWP an “epoch”. Both “period” & “epoch” are geological chronological terms, so neither is ideal.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031018265900040
Before the MWP became a “Climatic Optimum”, there was the long, previous Holocene Climatic Optimum. Only recently has the MWP become a “Climatic Anomaly”.
I’ve been running some numbers to see how much GISS has been diverging from the satellites in the last decade.
It’s quite startling.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/giss-rss-diverge-and-guess-which-way/
ferd:
Yep, a legitimate question which I guess you’d need to determine for yourself. One thing I can say to a moral certainty is that “Joshua” is not Kahan’s alter ego. (Compare their written styles.)
As for why I still think there is good in Kahan: recall that he published the first paper that disproved the “Science Comprehension Thesis” by showing that skeptics are slightly *more*, not *less*, scientifically-literate than alarmists. And that he published this result despite its contradicting his own working hypothesis. I think we all know what Lewandowsky would’ve done with such data.
Richard111 says:
September 22, 2013 at 9:12 am
Question from a baffled layman. How does a transparent gas cool down after it has been warmed by conduction from the surface? Nitrogen, oxygen and argon, 99.99% of the atmosphere qualify as transparent gases. Everyone says warmed air rises and cools. Does it really? Where did the energy go?
I understand that it does not go anywhere. As a parcel of warmed air rises, it expands and thus cools (the dry adiabat). When it reaches its dew point, water vapour starts to condense to water droplets and clouds form releasing the latent heat of condensation. This gives the parcel more energy to continue rising and expanding – the wet adiabat. Adiabatic means roughly no energy in and no energy out.
Convective clouds depend on the relationship between the environmental lapse rate (generally the actual decrease in air temperature with altitude) and the dry and wet adiabat. See also “lifted index” and “CAPE”.
Whatever it takes = shale gas & oil + some form of cleaner nuclear + cold fusion research money.
“Quirks”? OK. But how many quirks can a climate model quirk if a climatologist could model quirks? Or something stupid like that?
“Energy will hide out in the ocean for a while before it pops out into the atmosphere,” Oppenheimer said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/ipcc-climate-report_n_3957766.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D378257
IPCC Climate Report Struggles With Temperature Quirks
john piccirilli—lovely stuff!
This quote from Christopher Hitchens (No One Left to Lie to) has some relevance to climate science.
Wijnand Schoutem says:
September 22, 2013 at 8:02 am
“You sound silly. Renewable energy is not climate. We need wind / sun / bio-fuel and whatever it takes to become less dependend on oil, since these days we export to much euro’s and dollars to the middle east and the price keeps going up.”
Notice that this commenter talks to no one even though his comment is made to look like an answer to someone. I think he’s a renewable energy lobbyist spambot.