Friday funnies! Cartoon notes from Josh

Josh writes: Here are the cartoon notes of a riveting talk given by Dr Christopher Essex last Wednesday,11th Feb, in the House of Lords, UK Parliament. Chris is Chairman, Permanent Monitoring Panel on Climate, World Federation of Scientists, and Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is also co-author, with Ross McKitrick, of the book Taken by Storm.

Click the image for a larger version.SixImpossibleThings_scr

The talk was very entertaining but sadly due to technical problems there were no accompanying slides for me to check my notes against so I may well need to update and amend them. Happily a version of the talk and slides will be posted online by the GWPF in the near future and I will post an update with the links when they are available.

Cartoons by Josh

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February 13, 2015 9:41 am

Since it’s Friday Funnies, here’s a cartoon: The Art of Forecasting
http://www.maxphoton.com/art-of-forecasting/

dp
February 13, 2015 9:42 am

Greater than 95% certainty you got it right, Josh. Well done.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  dp
February 13, 2015 10:45 am

97% of us agree.

Reply to  Alan Robertson
February 13, 2015 2:59 pm

97.1% we be better 😉

RoHa
Reply to  Alan Robertson
February 13, 2015 3:55 pm

I’m only 38% sure of that.

garymount
Reply to  Alan Robertson
February 13, 2015 5:23 pm

I’m only 62% unsure of that.

Kevin Kilty
February 13, 2015 9:45 am

The Q&A helped immensely. Thanks. I feel better.

William Astley
February 13, 2015 9:49 am

The warmists are now appealing to the scientific term ‘luck’ as the reason why their fudged general circulation models’ prediction did not come true (i.e. The 18 year plateau of no warming, the signature of greenhouse gas warming – warming of the tropical troposphere at 8km – did not occur, and the number of extreme weather events have not increased. Curious there is now record sea in the Antarctic and the Arctic sea ice is recovering. If the planet abruptly cools is that good luck or bad luck?.)
http://www.livescience.com/39619-major-hurricane-landfall-drought.html

….But surprisingly, not a single major hurricane, defined as a Category 3 storm or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale —with minimum wind gusts of at least 111 mph (178 km/h) — has directly hit the United States in nearly eight years. That’s twice as long as any major hurricane landfall “drought” since 1915, and by far the longest on record since data began being collected prior to 1900. As of today (Sept. 12), it’s been 2,880 days since Hurricane Wilma, the last major hurricane to strike the United States, made landfall on Oct. 24, 2005. ….
Luck
Luck probably plays the biggest role in the lack of major hurricane hits, said Chris Landsea, the science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center (NHC). As noted, it’s not like the last eight years have been quiet. Seven hurricanes, for example, have made landfall in the United States, according to government records. A pair of these, hurricanes Gustav and Ike in September 2008, were Category 2 storms, and the latter nearly became a major hurricane, Landsea told LiveScience.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/30/excuse-64-for-the-pause-in-global-warming-its-pure-luck/

….A recent study by German-based scientists argue that luck, not systematic modelling errors, is why climate models failed to predict 15 years of flat global surface temperatures and more than 18 years of no warming in the lower atmosphere.

Mohatdebos
Reply to  William Astley
February 13, 2015 12:28 pm

Please don’t call Chris Landsea a warmist. He was the first one to challenge the assertion that the number and intensity of hurricanes would increase because of global warming.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  William Astley
February 13, 2015 12:47 pm

The second paper has been completely debunked by Nic Lewis over at Climate Audit. Should never have gotten published. Absurd conclusion restated in the abstract from faulty statistics using circular reasoning. You cannot regress something on itself. Ever. And the paper did.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Rud Istvan
February 13, 2015 3:43 pm

So you’re saying that not only are these people not doing science correctly (i.e., they’re torturing data and manipulating statistics to make it look like proper science) but their abuse of statistics is also faulty?

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Rud Istvan
February 13, 2015 7:55 pm

Yup. Not me. Nic first, SteveMc second. I am just saying they are right.

mike
February 13, 2015 10:31 am

Josh can sure provide a good laugh! But let us not forget that the “climate wars” are a serious business, even as we might indulge in a little levity to relieve the combat stress. Which reminds me of Sun Tzu’s sage counsel: if we know ourselves and also know those appalling, trough-seeking, lefty Lynsenkoists, on the other side of the conflict , then we’ll win every engagement.
So it’s in that spirit that I’ve worked up a little guide to the “order of battle” of the respective sides:
“The Good Guys”–Lovers of liberty and ethical science, who have a real life, who can get dates, whose life-work is one of honest labor, who are not personal hygiene “deniers”, and who talk over important family issues with their wives in a mature, adult, life-affirming and loving manner rather than running off to whine to “mummy”.
“The Hive-Bozos”–mynopausal, testoserone-shy, low-sperm-count, priveleged-white-dork lumpen-wankers, utterly terrorized by the PC-“gotcha!” lash–generously wielded by the hive’s back-stabbing, shrill-and-cranky, empowered man-haters–and found, in their natural habitat, in more or less segregated cluster-fracks of two, distinct sub-types: companion-nerds (HotWhopper’s little pets) and agitated-weenie, posturing-bore, Gruber-inspired geek-balls (the ATTP crowd).

Reply to  mike
February 13, 2015 12:35 pm

This is the type of comment that has me disregarding the poster’s opinion out-of-hand. The only point seems to be insulting those with opposing viewpoints. The battle will be won by swaying the middle in your direction and that requires using logic, not insults. The “ethical science” part was the only one worth reading.

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  Brian
February 13, 2015 12:56 pm

Except they aren’t “opposing viewpoints”. They are emotion-laden beliefs based on propaganda and lies. I’d say he has them pegged pretty well.

mike
Reply to  Brian
February 13, 2015 2:47 pm

As I see it, Brian, you prefer to engage the hive’s agit-prop and flim-flam from a lofty, nicey-nicey perch, emphasizing old-school, ol’ fart sweet-reason and in-your-face rectitude, and in a manner that trails clouds of quaint, quixotic, and (please forgive me) mildly school-marmish glory. And, as far as I’m concerned, there’s a place for your approach, in takin’ the fight to the hive, for what my opinion might be worth.
Moi, on the other hand, as a “denier”, “headless-chicken”, “flat-earther”, “Republican-brain”, “Merchant of Doubt”, “knuckle-dragger”, “lonely-old white-guy”, “tin-foil hat-fancier”, “right-wing nut-job”, “conspiracy-theory ideation-magnet”, “polar-bear slayer”, and all around, coolie-trash vulgarian-nobody, I prefer to fight the hive-bozos’ stigma-booger fire with counter-battery fire, in kind–and, in that regard, I mean, like, I take a genuine pleasure, in puttin’ (or, at least, trying to put) the hive-creeps’ little, pee-pee dicks in the dirt, big-time, with crass, combative, colorful drollery. And I think there’s a place for my approach, too, when it comes to takin’ the fight to the Gaia-freaks, Brian–again, for what my opinion might be worth.
In other words, different strokes for different folks, is how I look at it, Brian.

Chip Javert
Reply to  Brian
February 13, 2015 5:16 pm

Brian
Your comment “…The battle will be won by swaying the middle in your direction and that requires using logic, not insults….” is hogwash.
The “battle” will be won by real world climate activity. Mother Nature could care less about “logic” (or, for that matter, insults).

Mark
Reply to  Brian
February 13, 2015 6:36 pm

Unfortunately there is no way of swaying the middle ground with logic. People just don’t work that way. The True Believers have gotten so much power because they use emotional arguments, not logic.

Reply to  Brian
February 14, 2015 9:19 am

I’m not talking about the propagandists, I’m talking about the unswayed and the slightly leaning.
The radicals on both sides will never be swayed, therefore the middle ground is where the fight for the return to ethical science will be won or lost. The warmists have the propaganda machine on their side and insults will only give that machine something to point at, in order to mis-characterize our position.
Think about how you were first convinced and use that to convince others because calling people “white-dork lumpen-wankers”, while colorful, in not a good way to change that persons mind about the ongoing debasement of science.
It has been my experience that most people respond well to a well spoken, logical argument and retreat into themselves, while remaining unconvinced, when confronted with vitriol.
We need to show the world that “The Good Guys” really are the good guys and that means having some respect for their intelligence and proving our case with facts.
To Mark: Those who are easily swayed by emotional arguments are a lost cause. The other side is “saving the world”, while we have only facts on our side. The good news is that the highly emotional type person is generally viewed with mistrust among the centerists.

Hari Seldon
Reply to  mike
February 14, 2015 2:52 pm

Mike, I’m sorry, but this comment just got progressively worse the longer it went. Were I someone skeptical of the increasingly dire predictions of modern climate science but unaware of what actual skeptics have to say, and I saw your comment, I would be convinced that skeptics have no solid arguments to offer. And sure, not every comment has to be a full explanation of how historical temperature records are being manipulated or how global sea ice coverage has remained more or less constant for years, but stooping to the level of the people who call us ‘deniers’ can do nothing but harm. We have the facts on our side, and Mother Nature to boot – we don’t need to result to XBox Live type insults.

Chip Javert
February 13, 2015 10:48 am

Loved Josh’s “Conservation of Energy….EEK….Gremlins” cartoon (roughly center of the drawing).
With all due respect (and I mean that to be considerable) to Josh, it’s a dark day for science when cartoons are more technically accurate than an entire field of alleged scientific study.

Casey
February 13, 2015 10:56 am

Science reporting
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20090830.gif
Now apply that to the ACC liars.

RWturner
Reply to  Casey
February 13, 2015 1:59 pm

Now that’s funny.

February 13, 2015 11:31 am

OT, but interesting. There were 2 quakes, a 4.9 and 5.3, that struck the Mid Atlantic ridge some 30 minutes ago. Then those were followed several minutes later by a 6.9. That is a strong quake for that area.

Reply to  goldminor
February 13, 2015 1:24 pm

Goldminor,
I’ve input your figures into my climate calculator and the model shows a daily average earthquake of 5.7, which is significant, but hardly worrisome, especially if you average that against all of the days where there were no quakes. Of course the size of any individual earthquake isn’t important, it’s the trend of earthquakes over centuries that really matters.
(end sarc)

Reply to  Hoyt Clagwell
February 14, 2015 2:53 pm

That is the first time in 4 years of watching ,that there has been a quake of that size in that region. It was later upgraded to a 7.1 mag. Does it mean anything of importance? Unknown.

Billy Liar
Reply to  goldminor
February 13, 2015 4:21 pm

It appears to have been re-classified as a 7.1 earthquake – that is pretty big.

Mark
Reply to  Billy Liar
February 13, 2015 6:39 pm

And the previous earthquakes have been homogenised down to 4.5, so you can see a really large growth trend in earthquake severity.

Will Nelson
February 13, 2015 12:22 pm

Josh,
Hopefully the slides soon to be posted will be as good as yours.

Rud Istvan
February 13, 2015 12:43 pm

Looks like the talk got to the heart of one reason the climate models all fail, grid scale computational inability to model tropical convection cells. The compensating parameterization made essentially an all GHG attribution now falsified by natural variation and the pause.

RWturner
February 13, 2015 1:42 pm

OT but I just read that the Antarctic Chieftain is stuck in 9′ thick sea ice 900 miles northeast of McCurdo Station. How in the hell is there 9′ thick sea ice that far off the coast during the Antarctic sea ice minimum?

Reply to  RWturner
February 13, 2015 2:49 pm

There are some 4 million square kilometers of sea ice in Antarctica eight now. A 45% positive anomaly. It’s a fat minimum!

philincalifornia
Reply to  Andres Valencia
February 13, 2015 3:00 pm

It’s OK though. I just Googled it and, as long as they too have internet access, they can Google nearby hotels and restaurants:
[IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/2u8dkl5.png[/IMG]

philincalifornia
Reply to  Andres Valencia
February 13, 2015 3:01 pm

OK then, try the link:
http://i57.tinypic.com/1z1z8g3.png

ozspeaksup
Reply to  RWturner
February 14, 2015 4:45 am

yeah…especially when the guardian uk greenlight swears its all melting still?? 🙂

John Whitman
February 13, 2015 2:49 pm

“SHUTUP!”
Josh, you forgot their . . . “or else!”
John

Steve Thayer
February 13, 2015 2:51 pm

Great comic. My favorite is “All the physics are in the model except the physics that aren’t in the model”. And what they leave out is the physics that would make the model predictions actually match measured data. Who ever heard of anybody giving any credence to a math model that can’t be correlated to measured data? Its not like there is no measured data to correlate to, why don’t they correlate to the data? Only in the field of climate science would a group recommend actions based on predictions about the future from math models that can not even replicate measurements of the past.

John Stover
February 13, 2015 4:24 pm

I always enjoy appreciating the results of climate models using double precision arithmetic operations against estimated data. Sort of like monitoring Soviet-era tractor production figures or, come to think of it, reading UEA Climatic study predictions.

Alx
Reply to  John Stover
February 13, 2015 5:24 pm

In real life applications it does not make any sense. Sports games are not determined in tenths of a point.
However individual teams scoring averages are reported in tenths. For sports, average scoring to tenths makes sense for studying the strengths and weaknesses of various teams.
There are a couple of problems with global temperature; one we do not have concrete numbers to start with (game data is precise and reliable, there is no need to derive or infill or adjust), second, margin of errors are larger than the changes reported, third what precision is meaningful in global temperature is fanciful at best. Two hundredths of a degree change annually is meaningful only if extrapolated out to a hundred years or more, and anyone thinking forecasting more than a hundred years out is reasonable is a couple of crackers short.
Any number of technological advances could change how we live on the Earth, political stability could lead to prosperity or instability could lead to WW3, and finally humanity does influence climate, but so does every living and non-living thing in our solar system, humanity has no control over the climate. Or did I miss the geo-engineering paper that claims we could have stopped the last ice age and can stop the next one?
Meanwhile wouldn’t it have been cool if political scientists in 1860 could have forecast WW1, WW2 and America becoming the world leading military and economic super power. Lets get a model that does that while w’re dreaming.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Alx
February 13, 2015 8:22 pm

“There are a couple of problems with global temperature”
Well, there’s a bigger problem than that, according to Dr. Essex, There is no global temperature. Therefore anything based on the concept is just plain wrong.

David Ball
February 13, 2015 5:12 pm

Another off topic item; The Sun News Network has been taken off the air. A sad day for the alternate view. I return you to your regularly schedule program. Enjoy your “right to chose”, while it still exists.

Reply to  David Ball
February 13, 2015 8:40 pm

For us in Canada it is a black day, next they will start on destroying the Harper government before our next election in November.

David Ball
Reply to  asybot
February 15, 2015 6:43 am

Harper doesn’t have the MSM on his side in Canada. The issues are being misrepresented. Twisted.
I fear for Canada if the “Obama wannabe” Justin Trudeau gets in power here.

Mark F
February 13, 2015 5:35 pm

David Ball – Yes, the cablecos folded to pressure from the cabal of mainstream media owners – made it almost impossible for Sun to compete with CTV, CBC and Global news channels – it wasn’t a level playing field. I’m sure they’ll keep trying to squelch Fox News Channel, although ratings and ads seem to be healthy.

Urederra
February 13, 2015 5:45 pm

I love the one that says “I have averaged out all my mistakes so I must be averagely right”

Keith Minto
February 13, 2015 6:23 pm

Funny, I clicked the image and got a smaller version.

Reply to  Keith Minto
February 13, 2015 7:02 pm

Nah it worked perfectly for me..nice image though

lee
Reply to  Keith Minto
February 13, 2015 7:29 pm

I got that, then clicked again for a larger version.

Eugene WR Gallun
February 13, 2015 11:55 pm

The beginning of a poem?????
Gavin “Pinocchio” Schmidt of NASA GISS
(The first earth object to leave the solar system and
enter interstellar space was the tip of Gavin’s nose)
His head composed of wood
Of course, he had to lie
He knew that lying would
Reward the very sly
???????????????
Eugene WR Gallun

mike
February 14, 2015 3:10 pm

@ Brian
You know, Brian, your last intrigued me to the point that it triggered, within me, a resolve to test my own, possibly misguided notion (derived from my improbable hero, Saul Alinsky) that ridicule is a pretty-darn good “blade” with which to do battle in the eternal, Manichean struggle between us, the “Good Guy” champions of liberty and ethical science, and the hive’s ever-morphing, neo-Comintern Gaia-hustles and the slithering, pit-spawn Beelze-bubba “Hive-Bozos”, who push them.
And so, Brian, I “googled” around a bit, using combinations of the titles of various climate blogs and your handle–just plain “Brian”. And I spent my time searching the web, Brian, since I really wanted to savor your vitriol-free, fact-based, alpha-brainiac arguments in the context of hot-engagements with the hive’s trough-sucking, brazen-hypocrite, carbon-piggie, sell-out toadies and their goof-off, greenwashed, gravy-train good-deals. I mean, like, I was really, really lookin’ forward to seein’ you in action, Brian, and cheerin’ on your G2-ninja, kick-hive-bot-butt prowess, and learnin’ a thing or two from you, in the process. Can you put yourself in my place, here, Brian?
Well guess what, Brian? My attempts to bring up just-plain-“Brian” on various climate-blogs yielded practically nothing. A few scattered comments–mostly terse, slightly metastasized drive-bys that could, in no way, be characterized as the thoughts of a “Good Guy” on a Socratic roll. So I judged most of those comments, I found, to be the work of some other “Brian”, and not you, Brian. Though I hasten to note that I did latch on to a “Brian”-authored post at “Rabbett Run”, that was of some length, but given its “Hive-Bozo” character and venue, I concluded it must, again, be attributed to another “Brian”.
Indeed, Brian, the only comments I found, by an unadorned “Brian”, that seemed worthy of your high, Cartesian ideals, were those appearing in a comment-thread, here, at WUWT (“Penguins, Polar Bears, and Sea Ice”, November 12, 2014). And please, Brian, allow me to extend my awe-struck compliments–your two comments attached to the above blog-post were a virtuoso take-down of the hives’s endangered-Penguin worry-warts (though I think we can both agree that you were not matched with the most worthy of opponents since hive-specialists, in this obscure study-area, are pretty much all careerist-flunky dead-enders, generally regarded as a “big-joke” by the elite of the hive’s agit-prop organs, especially since the “Turney-of-Antarctica” fiasco of a year or so ago). And that’s it, Brian. That’s all I could find. But maybe I overlooked sumpin’.
And, in isolation, your performance, above, did demonstrate the efficacy of your keep-it-decorous, . atomic-brain approach. But remember, Brian, that’s the only example, I could find of you, undeniably struttin’ your stuff. And since I see the “contest” between us “Good Guys” and the egregious “Hive-Bozos” as a day-in-day-out, Clausewitzian, “TOTAL WAR!!!” slog, let me just say that you’ve got to be a little more productive, guy–gotta show the capacity for non-stop, on-target “firepower”–if you’re to make the case for an exclusive reliance on your admittedly elegant approach, as a climate-war-winning strategy. Or so it seems to moi.
So the way I see it, going forward, Brian, is that I’ll respectfully and attentively defer to your approach, when you show-up, but will fill-in the “embarrassing silences”, that punctuate your infrequent appearances, with my trash-talk Alinskyite-zingers. That, and I think it best to finally conclude that we are just not gonna agree on certain “things”.

garymount
February 19, 2015 5:00 am

The video to this talk is available now. Go to thegwpf.org web site or :