* Posts by indulis

44 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2011

Reg man has the cure for IBM storage: Just swallow 10 firms

indulis

Re: IBM Cures

Dan,

The server based controllers running GPFS Native RAID software in the IBM ESS and GSS storage units are typically getting in the order of 4-7 GBytes/sec per server controller, including lots of advanced functions (disk hospital, declustered RAID, as well as a parallel filesystem layer), so I'd argue with your assertion that array based controllers are better. Scale out with ESS or GSS Elastic Storage (GPFS) based units isn't a problem, look up MIRA at Argonne. 240 GBytes/sec second from a single filesystem with multiple GSS subsystems hooked up together. If our competitors can't use the same systems to get to these performance levels, and can't use the same technology to also support commercial uses (e.g. DB2, Oracle, SAP, MQ, SAS, TSM) uses in a scalable... then please don't make the assumption that IBM is in the same boat!

[Disclosure: I work for IBM, many years in commercial & technical, big systems]

Is your data growing too big to handle?

indulis

Interesting statement "statistically, your exposure remains approximately the same regardless of whether you are using 10 drives for a 10-hour rebuild or 100 drives for a 1-hour rebuild."

Any data to back this up? So you'd contend that the likelihood of a drive failure is directly proportional to its throughput rather than its age?

Apple is granted a patent on the rectangle. No, really

indulis
Devil

Patent complainers 50% likely to have caused the problems with patents

I'll bet half (or more) of the people commenting about how the patent office is stupid, then vote for governments that promise to cut taxes and reduce regulation and the public service.

So, you are getting what you voted for. For years the patent offices have not had the manpower to investigate each patent before accepting it, due to reductions in resources, and the increasing number of applications. Instead, the only mechanism left to them is to pass on the responsibility for evaluating patents to the court system. They check the paperwork is filled out, and let the "free market" fight it out.

So, stop voting for conservative "we will reign in the crazy spending" politicians, and you might instead get a government that can "reign in the crazy patents" by spending to support the patent office.

Instead of leaving the industry to "self-regulate" via the court battles. While we all suffer from the "collateral damage" it is doing to innovation and putting up the prices of equipment (that $1B for Apple has to come from someone somewhere buying Samsung products!).

EARTH was a BAKING LIFELESS DESERT for 5 MILLION years

indulis

Re: Well done

"Which implies an environment where you can *dump* heat to IE << 37 c. Which suggests that *if* the *minimum* global temperature hits 40 c we're *all* stuffed."

Actually it is worse than that. The human body creates heat output. We rely on sweating in a dry climate to dump that heat out. In a humid climate sweat doesn't work as evaporation slows.stops. This is why heat seems worse in a humid climate, why 33C in Singapore is awful hot, but 33C in the Australian desert is a nice day out.

Corollary- as the planet heats, and air is better at carrying moisture as well, the tropics may become uninhabitable with only a few degrees C rise. From Wikipedia (with references)

"Humans may also experience lethal hyperthermia when the wet bulb temperature is sustained above 35 °C (95 °F) for six hours"

"In Darwin [tropical Australia] the number of days over 35°C is expected to increase from 11 per year currently experienced to up to 69 by 2030 and up to 308 by 2070 without global action to reduce emissions. Coupled with the extremely high humidity that Darwin experiences during the wet season, higher temperatures are expected to adversely affect levels of human comfort."

So, we are building a planet where it will be impossible to survive in the tropics without air conditioning.

indulis

Re: Snowball and a Desert

"I can imagine an alternative reality where the earth is cooling down and there are tax breaks on producing as much CO2 as possible to keep the planet warm"

Yes that is great, imagination. Laudable. But it isn't science. Right now the science says that any cooling that may happen is thousands of years in the future. So in the meantime between now and then we are making the planet inhospitable, edging ourselves closer to "uninhabitable by our current civilisation". Maybe a race of evolved cockroaches will thank you for your continued CO2 emissions.

Ice core shows Antarctic Peninsula warming is nothing unusual

indulis
Mushroom

There is no such thing as "natural" or "random" variation

Unless you are playing around with quantum effects at the atomic level or smaller, "natural" variations aren't random. They are subject to cause and effect. The bulk property of a system such as the earth isn't subject to "randomness"- the 1 atom bomb per minute of energy increase in the oceans since 1950 isn't some "natural" variation or "randomness".

Anyone putting forward the glib statement "the current warming could just be natural variation" is anti-science in the worst way. Not only does this statement imply that observations of climate are unknowable by science (i.e. no point in trying to understand and model cause and effect), but it also attempts to demolish the work of the people who are doing their best to understand the processes at work.

The "natural variations" crowd are like believers in "intelligent design" (creationists). They too explain changes based on unknowable forces at work, which cannot be analysed and understood by man.

The climate changes observed in the past have been investigated, and while the warming is not unprecedented, the rate of warming is unprecedented. And the known causes for previous warming periods (with subsequent uncomfortable sea rises, climate changes, and mass extinctions) aren't happening now. Which only leaves CO2 or magic (call it "randomness" if you like).

If you believe there is some fuzzy hand-waving, "natural variation" magic at work which somehow accumulates huge quantities of energy in the planet's climate system, you have no business thinking you are an analytical and rational person who believes in science.

New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

indulis
WTF?

Noone harmed? Pull the other one! Try 2500 deaths.

Pure bunkum in the first sentence. Lewis, if you believe it is all safe in Japan, I am willing to organise your ticket there, so you can camp out (or live in one of the nearby abandoned villages) near to the broken nuclear power plant. Let's see how far your "nukes are safe" stand goes when it is your health involved.

Here is the alternative view from someone not spruking for the nuclear industry.

"The March 2011 nuclear disaster may cause as many as 2500 cases of cancer, mostly in Japan, Stanford University scientists said. They incorporated emission estimates into three-dimensional global atmospheric modelling to predict the effects of radiation exposure, which was detected as far away as the US and Europe.

''Cancer cases may have been at least 10 times greater if the radiation had not mostly fallen in the sea...There was a lot of luck involved,'' said Professor Jacobson. ''The only reason this wasn't a lot worse was because 81 per cent of all the emissions were deposited over the ocean.''

But what do scientists know, hey? If someone didn't take a photo of the plant's cooling tower falling on someone to crush them to death, then a link to a particular death isn't provable. So it didn't happen. But statistics say otherwise. And health statistics from a reputable scientist have a lot more cred than you Lewis- based on your history of ignoring facts, science, and expert analysis!

http://www.smh.com.au/world/japan-nuclear-fallout-may-cause-1300-cancer-deaths-20120718-22akp.html

The rest of the Reg article could say anything at all, the first sentence from Lewis Page meant it was all tarred with the same BS brush. The Reg should stick to reviewing laptops and printers. Its forays into science are woefully, blatantly biased and inaccurate.

Pure makes rugged radio Move

indulis

Where is the Wifi music access/streaming?

My phone using Wifi at home has access to my music, and most radio stations are accessible via the web. I'd look at this if it did all my phone did AND DAB+, and had GREAT audio quality. So it would be a useful outdoors or bathroom audio device. Until a portable DAB+ radio has Wifi, it is not a "keeper" for me.

Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change

indulis
FAIL

Lewis "cross my palm with silver" Page, 100% certain fortune teller

You have to love the off the cuff, everything will be fine, unknown inventions will fix all our problems (because they did in the past) predictions from Lewis. How great to be gifted with second sight.

His prediction that "If agriculture doesn't increase in efficiency there's big trouble ahead ... There's no reason to think this will happen, however - agriculture has been improving its game for a long time" is a good indication of a general lack of thought and logic in his articles.

No-one can predict what improvements in agriculture may or may not happen. Especially with climate uncertainty (whether caused by CO2 or not things are getting weird).

It is a monumentally bad idea to rest the world's trust in the logical fallacy that "things will continue as before, and continue to improve as they have to date". Tell that to the inhabitants of Japan (no tsunami yesterday, today should be fine). Tell that to the people with antibiotic-resistant TB (we've easily invented new effective antibiotics before so we can again). Tell that to the engineers at Intel (we have managed to boost clock speeds every year from 1990 to 2005, we can keep going!).

No sense, no logic. The usual Lewis Page dribble.

Supercomputers need standard shot glass to measure out juice

indulis

The point is not to get rid of waste heat

The point is to use it to use the heat somewhere where the alternative would have been to use electricity or fuel to produce heat anyway. For example, by preheating water going into a district (or large building) water heating system. If you can use the heat produced by a supercomputer to "offset" the power use by another part of your building, then you are legitimately saving that energy, and can subtract it from the amount of power your data centre eats.

Study fingers humans for ocean heat rise

indulis
WTF?

Martian alert! Please don tinfoil hats immediately!

"The sun's output is always excluded by climate alarmists, who conveniently ignore the fact that Mars experienced global warming at the same time as Earth did."

So you would prefer to trust the Martian Weather Service rather than lots data of earth-based and satellite observation stations that all show the Earth receiving LESS solar radiation at the same time as global temperatures are rising? You'd prefer to infer that there are definitely NO other causes which could be leading to a warming on Mars than solar radiation, and therefore deduce that the myriad of solar observations on/around the Earth are wrong? From that one fact?

Actually the sun's output is always INCLUDED by climate realists, as it shows an increasing gap between reality (suns incident radiation on the earth is decreasing while global temperatures rise) and deluded denier fiction (** insert pretty much any AGW denier bunkum here, including the Mars myth ***).

indulis
WTF?

Unknown unknowns = faith (not science)

"But what about unknown unknowns? Surely there is a billion of those, due to human ignorance and arrogance. E.g. Sun radiation, moon cycles (i.e. 19 solar years), astoriods etc etc and they are just solar, what about earth tectonic plate movement etc?"

Until the cause is a known- or at least hypothesised with some good data and analysis to back it up- it is faith not science. All of the other factors which you mention have *already* been used by climate scientists, working with paleo-geologists, astronomers, oceanologists etc in order to understand and remove the natural cycles in the climate from the observed temperature rises. What is left is the change caused by CO2. Or alternatively by "magic pixies" or "the hand of god" or "natural variability" if you want a faith based answer that has no connection to facts or observations or science. I'd advise listening to the Richard Alley A23A lecture which will in 1 hour give you a great grounding in how the earth's cycles and climate interact, mediated by CO2 and other factors.

An example of a short term natural cycle is the El Nino/La Nina phenomenon, can mask the underlying trend in surface temperatures for more than a decade (see "going down the up escalator" in your favourite search engine).

indulis
FAIL

Re: memory

"As someone who was around in the 70's, I can remember scientists claiming it was getting so cold that we were heading for another ice age."

Memory is a good title for your post because it shows that remembered "facts" are often untrue!

Actually what you remember is the popular press latching onto a "sound bite" (or whatever the 70s used to call those), and spruking it, while ignoring the science. Newsweek.

What the actual science said was that the climate was showing warming trends from CO2 (yes already then!) but that the cooling from polluting the atmosphere with "aerosols" (i.e. dust, smog etc) was causing a masking cooling effect, and if we kept ramping up the "cooling pollution" then the climate could cool. This is also happening today- the "cooling factor" of smog etc from China is masking some of the warming rise from CO2. That's what makes climate science complex, the number of different factors at work, sometimes one against the other, some cyclical (naturally), some man-made.

Anyway, the "in the 70s climate scientists all said we would be in an ice age by now" is provably false. "A survey of peer reviewed scientific papers from 1965 to 1979 show that few papers predicted global cooling (7 in total). Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming (Peterson 2008). The large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than 1970s scientists predicting cooling, the opposite is the case."

Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate

indulis

Re: The Reg's interpretation is getting intermixed with the original intent....

"We really don't know how-much Mankind's CO2 generation feeds the whole process. It isn't zero, but there are some VERY LARGE components that are not associated with anthropological causes."

If you want one-dimensional analysis try the bunkum like "the climate stopped cooling ten years ago" which ignores La Nina etc (search for "Going Down the Up Escalator" ), and many other oft-repeated simplistic and invalid "proofs".

Instead of the "VERY LARGE" components you claim, the best science that is available says that NONE of the components which can make the climate warm account for the large changes that we see, in a very short amount of time i.e. the changes we are seeing are happening too fast for it to be ice age changes or orbital changes

As for your other statements- more/better satellites in orbit around the Earth measuring solar radiation hitting the earth say the sun is getting cooler- Mars climate changes are for other reasons, no evidence at ALL that solar incidence has gone up on Mars or other planets. Methane in the oceans is currently trapped and not venting, no USGS study says it is causing climate change. This is, not yet, but if we warm the oceans enough and melt some more icecaps by continuing with CO2 releases we just might be able to make the trapped methane release (that's positive feedback folks and not in a positive=good sense, see Arctic Climate Emergency).

The whole IPCC report (please read!) is about a summary using multi-dimensional analysis, multiple lines of evidence, and the work which has been done across many different science disciplines to tease apart the different factors affecting climate now.

indulis
Facepalm

Re: Pots calling kettles black?

There are undoubtedly lots of people with their noses firmly in the trough of public funds, and they most certainly do not wish this to attract too much attention. Resorting to an ad hominem is usually a fair indicator that something is getting too close for comfort.

Anyone else see the irony in this comment? This looks like the world's biggest ad hominem covering all climate scientists, other scientists whose research outcomes support AGW, and the institutions they belong to, the publications, the peer reviewers.

Himalayan glaciers actually gaining ice, space scans show

indulis
Alert

At least the IPCC ADMITS when it has a problem

Has the Reg ever admitted when its articles have been wrong re AGW? Even provably wrong? Has *any* denier ever admitted they were wrong? The myths about ocean cooling, and global cooling continue to be spread even though they are definitively provable wrong. The scientific process used by the scientists whose data and conclusions are summarised by the IPCC report ensures that errors are discovered and corrected.

As soon as the glacier prediction was shown to be wrong a retraction/correction was issued by the IPCC. Any record of any denier thinktank doing something similar when faced with overwhelming evidence? No, I didn't think so.

So, in summary, one or two bricks may have been knocked out of the huge strong wall proving AGW, but the overall integrity has not been compromised. The side opposing the evidence of AGW has a small pile of half-baked bricks and rubble that no-one in their right mind would use to build a global policy on.

Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record

indulis

Reg readers think 1m2 of gold leaf more valuable than gold ingot

An analogy to the argument that climate deniers raise about the ice. It is not the surface area that is important- a large crust of ice can develop rapidly (and melt rapidly). Any discussion of ice that just focuses on ice surface area as an indicator of climate is shallow and clearly just intended as a headline grabber instead of a serious look at the science and reality of climate change. Every year the depth and volume of ice is decreasing, a sure indicator of long term changes in the climate of the planet.

I defy anyone with any critical faculties to look at this animation of long-term arctic ice and then say that the planet is cooling

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003900/a003915/index.html

As long term ice (perennial ice) declines, it shows that the climate has heated up since that ice was laid down. Basic logic. But apparently incomprehensible to the author of the article (and the editors of the Reg who keep putting out half-baked "science" articles- perhaps they should stick to reviewing laptops).

Anyone who thinks surface area is a good indicator, I am happy to swap a couple of square metres of gold leaf for your gold jewelry.

Apple demands US ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus

indulis
Devil

How to easily build a patent portfolio

To build a great patent portfolio, just look for established ideas, or patents, then just add "on a mobile device" to it.

Many of the patents for mobile devices seem to be just stuff that is either designed into the underlying technology (patent for multitouch user interface = patent for being able to turn steering wheel to the left), or just an implementation of stuff that is commonplace in other devices.

Patent courts don't seem to understand that doing the same thing on a mobile device that is done on a desktop computer is not novel, nor should it be patentable- for example if something is done using a network protocol it does not matter if it is done wireless, via GSM, via a phone, or via carrier pigeon (IETF RFC1149 and RFC2549).

The design copyrights are similarly ludicrous. Most cars look similar because they use similar components and have to do the same thing. Phones look similar for the same reason. Most TVs look amazingly similar as well. Sharks and porpoises evolved and look similar because they occupy similar ecological niches. So do manufactured devices. To force a company to deliberately mangle a design and add frippery and geegaws because "it is too similar in look" is ridiculous.

More up-front scrutiny before a patent or copyright is issued could save courts and citizens from the cost and pain of squabbling corporations trying to keep competitors frozen out of a market.

Lets remember that the whole point of copyrights and patents was NOT to provide a guaranteed never ending profit stream for the owner, it was to promote the advancement of art and science for society (ah, I fondly remember when we had a society not just an economy).Read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" (free e-book) for a look at the world where a woman gets sued for having a commercial song playing in the background of her YouTube video of a baby dancing. This is the same litigousness that we see int he Apple/Samsung playground bullying.

Samsung hauls Apple into court over emoticon patent :-(

indulis
FAIL

How did Samsung "copy" the iPad?

"I know it's the pant season so - OH YES THEY DID - by blatantly copying the iPhone / iPad."

How did Samsung copy the iPad? By using a rectangular screen with a minimal border? By trying to minimise the number of buttons? Did they copy the software? Copy the operating system? Did they commit a crime by using industry-supplied components which were also used by Apple in a similar way?

By that logic, every car is a "blatant copy". Every plane is a "blatant copy". Every TV set is a "blatant copy". Every laptop is a "blatant copy".

The iPad is a well engineered "bloated phone" or "bloated colour Palm". It rests on its own history of non-infringing-copying/improving that we should all support. Including Apple.

Ahem- Xerox Parc-mouse-GUI-ahem. Ahem-space-odyssey-astronaut-pad-ahem. (look that up for a laugh- original? Apple? Ha! Oh, look it up without the "ahems".)

Steve Job's stupid rants against other mobile phones/pads don't make it reality.

We need to get rid of the IP-lockdown which is going to get worse and worse, and go back to a patent system where the logic of granting the patent is up front, not somethign that has to be (expensively) proved in court later.

Hydro fuel-cell truck built by RMIT

indulis
Alert

Hydrongen isn't a fuel, it is a battery

Until someone finds some hydrogen mines, or pipes some in from space, hydrogen is a way to store energy made from other fuels, or collected from renewable generation like solar and wind.

To get hydrogen you have to put energy in. That energy comes from somewhere.

So, it is really a race in battery technology between hydrogen fuel cells and the alternative battery technologies.

And if you make your hydrogen from electricity generated by a coal fired power plant, guess what- it ain't green folks!

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

indulis
Facepalm

There are a LOT of deniers who have used "bad weather stations as proof"

Climate change deniers have used, and continue to use, the "poorly sited" temperature stations as proof of a conspiracy (e.g. David Evans, Lord Monckton). So has Watts, it has been a foundation stone for "proving" that warming is not real (hence his continued protests- did you actually read this article?).

This study is the first step of removing the foundation stones of the denier house of cards, one by one. It just adds to the weight existing science which had been done before.

As far as the "climate has always changed", I think there are quite a few scientists who realise this, and whole fields of science that have investigated the reasons why the climate has changed in the past.. The factors are well understood. None are significant now. CO2 as the cause matches the observations well. There is no other known factor which could explain the observations. For a good summary, the PDF at skepticalscience . com has a summary of the various CO2 "fingerprints at the scene of the crime".

So the unscientific deniers are left with saying "it is some unknown factor"- climate changing superheated pixies are as good a scientific explanation as an "unknown factor". "Unknown factor" is an expression of faith, not science.

indulis
FAIL

CO2 may be plant food, but no water, or roots covered in sea water outweigh this

Not the old "CO2 is plant food" drivel. The changed weather patterns due to climate change are likely to make many current farmlands unviable, due to lack of water, sea level rise, and increased peak summer temperatures. That's the best science available at the moment. If you have better information then show a reference, or publish your information. Anything else is just propagating the old PR spin and media releases from vested interests (the "CO2 is plant food" spin was invented by the coal industry in the USA).

The changes to plants which are subjected to high levels of CO2 been shown to REDUCE the amount of protein in the plant (ie you get more plant but it is less nutritious). And for some species of plant the amount of cyanide in the plant increases at the same time. Search for "Associate Professor Roslyn Gleadow CO2 Poison", you will see the results of some actual science, not the industry propaganda/spin that "CO2 is plant food".

indulis
FAIL

Limited data? Huh?

Ahh- the retreat into the gaps, just like creationism.

"I am more likely to trust satellite observations"- well it is not up to you, Mr/Mrs armchair expert. In fact, satellite observations of temperature are fraught with problems due to the aging of instruments in space, and as Roy Spencer at UAH found out (their early analysis said the earth was not warming due to poor data analysis, and not correcting for satellite drift). The process of getting from radiance data in various bands to actual temperature uses (shock horror) computer models.

Try Wikipedia, it will point you to actual data and references. Satellite_temperature_measurements should get you there.

You will also see that Spencer, Christy et al were dragged kicking and screaming over the course of many years to finally admit that their "earth is cooling" hypothesis was wrong both due to errors in analysis as well as missing the effect of satellite drift (which changes how big an area the sensor can "see" hence how much energy it thinks is there, making a drop in altitude lead to false assumptions of cooling).

"NOAA-11 played a significant role in a 2005 study by Mears et al. identifying an error in the diurnal correction that leads to the 40% jump in Spencer and Christy's trend"

So the facts are that the correctly analysed satellite observations closely match ground based observations:

# RSS v3.3 finds a trend of +0.148 °C/decade

# UAH v5.4 finds a trend of +0.140°C/decade

"The UAH TLT dataset was a source of controversy in the 1990's as, at that time, it showed little increase in global mean temperature, at odds with surface measurements. Since then a number of errors in the way the atmospheric temperatures were derived from the raw radiance data have been discovered and corrections made by Christy et al. at UAH."

How's that for actual references and data? Which group is the most scientific? The ones quoting discredited and out of date data? Or the one using the latest and best data.

If you are too lazy to read Wikipedia and follow the references, or too lazy to read the IPCC report and read up on the science referenced there, then you can fall always back on conspiracy theories about "follow the money" etc. The mark of a true un-scientist.

eBay backs Flash new boy for storage

indulis
FAIL

Disk still here

Silly comment about disk being dead. Disk has sustained write price/performance, capacity. Try creating a full storage system with a flash+tape solution and see how far you get with your $. Like most technologies it has its pluses and minuses. Silly shoot-from-the-hip comments don't have much credence.

CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

indulis
Megaphone

The Reg gags the facts, tells readers to accept another conspiracy instead

Anyone interested in some evidence that even massive amounts of cosmic rays don't have a significant effect on climate should look at Richard Alley's 2009 lecture to the AGU. A good chance to get educated about cosmic rays and how CO2 has saved the planet due to its properties to cause a 3C rise per doubling of concentration (the earth would not have come out of "snowball earth" if this was not true). Another line of evidence that supports the other lines of evidence from other studies. He also talks about the times in the past where the earth was bombarded by high concentrations of cosmic rays, yet they seemed to have little influence on climate.

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml

From skepticalscience.com

"In order for GCRs to successfully seed clouds, they must achieve the following three steps.

1. GCRs must induce aerosol formation

2. These newly-formed aerosols must grow sufficiently (through the condensation of gases in the atmosphere) to form cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN)

3. The CCN must lead to increased cloud formation."

The CERN CLOUD experiment addresses point 1, but does NOT include any modelling of what happens to any nascent clouds. So you can understand CERN saying to avoid talking about 2 and 3 as a reminder to scientists that are not in the field of modelling climate systems and feedbacks, and that the hunger for headline fodder by AGW skeptics means that ANY comment in any way related to climate will be used as proof that cosmic rays cause climate change. Well, we can see the proof that even before they speak by the headlines in The Register.

"And since 1990, galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth has increased - "the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures" (Lockwood 2007). In fact, cosmic ray on flux recently reached record levels. According to Richard Mewaldt of Caltech, "In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years." "

So while cosmic rays have been going up we've been warming up, not cooling down. And with no discernible increase in clouds near the equator and the poles where cosmic rays should have the most impact.

From http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming-advanced.htm

... for some actual science and common sense, rather than speculation about YACT (yet another conspiracy theory, which seems to be all The Reg's "science" writers are capable of doing, apart from claiming that leaking nuclear plants are safe).

Hey, and where is the report in The Reg about the fact that AGW skeptic Dr Richard Muller (partly paid by AGW skeptics and Tea Party founders/funders the Koch brothers) reanalysed the data and disproved the "badly sited temperature stations are part of a conspiracy to show global warming" theory. But hey, why expect BALANCED coverage here, especially if it does not fit in with the presumption that more CO2 is fine. Even if it is real science. Even if it was done by a self confessed AGW skeptic. It also

Where are the headlines, Reg? "Climate skeptic proves no conspiracy- temperature stations OK, confirms rise in US temperatures!"

http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/Muller%20Testimony%20rev2.pdf

Chinese coal blamed for global warming er... cooling

indulis
FAIL

It in the oceans

Energy in the oceans showing increased temperature = energy gain, paper abstract

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml

and graph from the paper (for easy access)

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm

At the end of the day, if sea level rise models are right or wrong this is minor (until and if we get massive ice melting, when that factor will overwhelm other inputs/outputs). The ocean temperature shows where the energy is going.

...and nobody who is actually working in the field of climate science, or in the teams who analyse global temperatures thinks they are "flat" or "falling". +0.7C (since 1960) indicates they are rising, and continue to rise.

Oh sure you can cherry pick some dates or one instrument, ignoring data that doesn't fit the "lets just keep on using up coal/oil/gas as fast as we possibly can" ideology, and pretend temperature is flat. And you can probably get some nice funding or lots of exposure in The Register and other places where global use-it-up-faster enthusiasts wait for crumbs of hope from economists, lords, and other notable scientists.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

Here is how to create your own fake dataset if you want to get published in a friendly journal. Its easy, just pick a convenient start date (a hot year is good) and go from there. Extrapolate away!

http://jhubert.livejournal.com/181274.html

And some information from actual scientists with expertise and the time to do the job properly on sea level rise.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/current/sl_ib_global.jpg

indulis
FAIL

So how come the temperature rises when the solar activity is stable?

That's called denial

indulis
FAIL

Yeah the whole scientific process is rubbish isn't it

"What a ponzi scheme - I wish I dreamed it up."

Yes the whole process of science is flawed/rubbish/conspiracy etc. Which is why you are living in a society with massive benefits due in a large part to the scientific process.

Science means the PROCESS by which humanity establishes what is/is not likely to be the truth based on available evidence. This means peer review, and consensus until the evidence to the contrary becomes significant.

On science's side:

- medicine

- technology

- understanding of the very large (e.g. universe)

- understanding of the very small

On your side:

- creationism

- climate change denial

- naturopathy

- crystal healing

- "HIV does not cause AIDS"

- "vaccines are deadly"

Sure, science has "got it wrong" sometimes but the process eventually allows real data and findings to overcome lack of data and older hypotheses. Get rid of the process and you're left with... well just superstition and rubbish.

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

indulis

The AGW denier "logic" is in effect

Thanks for pointing this out- the AGW deniers can now simultaneously claim that the sun is causing the observed warming, and at the same time that because it is cooling we are in for a new ice age.

All in line with the "sow doubt" strategy which worked so well for tobacco, acid rain, ozone, etc and well documented (with actual references) in the book "Merchants of Doubt".

The aim is not to clarify, and help settle the science, it is to keep everything in chaos and doubt.

I'd love to hear a denier explain how the Sun can be both hotter and colder at the same time!

indulis

The scientists are not looking to do further research

For an overwhelming majority of climate scientists, the science is settled. The only people calling for more research (and more money spent) to prove that CO2 is causing the warming are the deniers.

So how does this tie in with the claim that "those money grubbing scientists are just wanting things to not be settled so they can line their pockets"? Yeah, lots of scientists can be seen on weekends at the country club parking their Ferraris. Right.

There are no scientists screaming "catastrophe" (in fact wasn't it a denier review of scientific papers that said that there were no papers which reported "imminent catastophes"?).

Yet again ,the illogic of the denier camp is exposed. The deniers are the ones calling for more research, then say it is the scientists who want more research to get rich. The deniers say it is scientists who are claiming catastrophe, contradicting their own claims that no scientific papers are claiming a catastrophe.

Give the Met Office £10m, says Transport Committee

indulis
FAIL

Alternatively..

Alternatively people who have been looking at weather and climate have some idea of the science behind it, and have analysed the patterns and therefore have the expertise and experience to make the rational decision that AGW is real and significant. As compared to people working outside of their experience and expertise. That is, the original person who posted about "infiltration by the MMGW brigade".

Climate change relates to "years and decades out" forecasting (i.e. climate).

Now, how this relates to "a few months out" and better predictions for this sort of timeframe is hard to understand, outside of the original post just being a knee-jerk post from a climate change denier.

Save the planet: Stop the Greens

indulis

Please justify your "whole lifecycle" claims for windmills

Can you please provide a reference for your claim that "[energy] payback is pretty bloody crap" for windmills? This sounds like the same old "solar cells give back less energy than it takes to produce them" claim that has become an often quoted psuedo-fact (that is actually incorrect).

It'd be interesting to do a "whole of lifecycle" calculation for a current technology nuclear power plant. For both $ and energy.

For some real reading on energy and a rational investigation readers can turn to "Sustainable energy: without the hot air".

indulis

Demand controls required

If your assumption is correct, and you can't predict within minutes that your wind farm will "drop to zero" (highly unlikely, I can foresee some smaller wind gauges placed in a perimeter around a wind farm would solve the problem), then we need to use "smart grid" system to control energy usage- for example, if all non-critical appliances could ramp down (dishwashers, clothes dryers, electric car recharging stations) in times of shortage, it'd give you some buffer to use, with a short (minutes) delay turning them back on again until the secondary power systems were brought back on-line.

indulis

And I love seeing someone take 2nd hand opinions as fact

Glad to see that the author of the article supported your pre-concieved biased view of "the Greens", as "one of the driving forces behind modern society being devolved into some sort of pre-industrialised cottage-industry-based wake-up-with-the-sun-and-go-back-to-bed-when-it-gets-dark pseudo feudal society".

Of course you can rely on someone elses (the article's author) view of "the Greens" as being fully accurate, and that they are all there to make us wear sackcloth and weave our own yoghurt.

Lets not bother with facts shall we? Gross generalisations are so much more fun.

indulis

Planet has also been through sea level rises and supervolcanoes

Don't know about many planet-wide civilisations that rely on fragile infrastructures and "at the limit" food production systems that have survived massive climate changes though!

The "planet has been through climate changes before" is a statement that provides little justification for our civilisation forcing a massive change in an incredibly short time (tens of years instead of thousands, way faster than most ecosystems can move/adapt... even if they had somewhere to move to that we had not mined or turned into farmlands or cities).

Still, what a great experiment!

As the gambler said "let it ride" (just before losing his stake, as he always will if he lets it ride long enough).

STONERS are DESTROYING the PLANET

indulis

The ethanol lobbying is matched by oil/coal lobbying

What a laugh to hear The Reg complain about ethanol production. I don't think there are many "greens" that think this is a great idea, instead we get "green-wash" from the farming lobby, the same way as we get "carbon-wash" from the oil/gas lobby to keep society hooked on their products.

Both groups scared at the idea of decentralised, efficient, energy that doesn't result in ongoing mega-profits for them.

The energy gain figures for ethanol from food-stock are ludicrous- you have to pump in about as much energy to produce corn-based ethanol in the form of oil as you get out.

So this is why you don't hear the oil/gas lobby screaming against ethanol. It is more money for everyone!

Nissan Leaf electric car

indulis

Electric cars- The Reg in a quandary

Electric cars and The Reg- what a quandary!

Should it be lauded because it might help drive up electricity consumption and therefore the Nuclear industry, with its new "clean and green" (albeit glow-in-the-dark green) image?

Or should it be criticised as a useless left-wing tree-hugger vehicle which is actually hurting the planet, because we should be burning lots of petrol to warm the planet to stave off the imminent ice age (in 1000-200 years time!)? Ooh, sorry burning petrol doesn't actually cause warming anyway, does it?

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

indulis

Lewis Page and the pro-nuclear crowd can volunteer for the cleanup!

If there is no danger, then I think Lewis Page can "walk the talk" and go in to start helping with the cleanup, because apparently the evacuations are just fearmongering and there are no serious consequences to being near the vicinity of the plant- the levels used to trigger an evacuation are stupidly low.

So Lewis and his All-Nuke Band, off you go! Looking forward to seeing your videos of you proving that you believe in what you say, and that you are not just acting as a paid mouthpiece for the nuclear industry.

Or will you just stay where you are, nice and safe and snug, writing out unproven opinion pieces?

Perhaps you can fly via Chernobyl and go eat some nice local berries and vegetables?

As there have been no fatalities caused by Chernobyl's radiation, it should all be fine! (Lets forget that the science says otherwise, see previous post referencing an actual scientific paper saying millions have dies from Chernobyl's insidious and long-lasting effects)

Antarctic ice breakup makes ocean absorb more CO2

indulis

Just love the speculations completely unconnected to facts

"This powerful, previously unknown "negative feedback" would seem likely to revise forecasts of future global warming significantly downwards."

Wow, the science has been done, The Register has spoken! This observed effect will SIGNIFICANTLY affect future global warming.

Where is the report that says this? Apart from saying that another complex effect needs to be added to an already complex climate model, there is no evidence of long-term effects, either up or down. The effect may be short lived (a few years), or may only help for 20 years, until we exhaust our supply of fertiliser-carrying iceberg trains because we've melted them all.

Who knows? The Register doesn't- it just does its usual "all good news on the climate change front!" by making up science, not just reporting it.

indulis

There have also been major planetary wide die-offs

Over the millions of years, there have been climatic states which have resulted in major die-offs of most of the species on the planet.

The atmospheric signature of man-made CO2 is there, the predicted changes are happening, the way heat is being held in the atmosphere maps exactly to what is expected if CO2 is the cause, the heat absorption of the atmosphere has increased in a way which shows a CO2 signature, CO2 is seen to rise, none of the other known major climate influencing factors are in effect (e.g. olar variations, orbital changes, massive volcanic activity etc).

Of course, if we want to push the planet into one of those hostile climate states, lets just keep on doing what we're doing- at the same time ignoring the fact that oil/gas/coal is a finite resource anyway and we'd have to do something in the future to stop burning it up anyway.

Climate change deniers seem to be protected with Douglas Adam's "SEP" field (somebody else's problem).

indulis

There is no body of science which broadly contradicts CO2 caused climate change

It is actually closer to creationists vs science. With the same tactics being used by climate deniers that are used by creationists/tobacco lobby. Often using the same people that lobbied for the tobacco industry, to deny the science, and to stop changes.

Seeing a small number of talking heads on TV facing each other off does not indicate the state of science. The scientists working in the climate change field overwhelmingly agree that man-made CO2 is the cause of the majority of what we are seeing in climate change. Those are the facts. There are no facts to the contrary, just hopes.

Public perception is swayed by spin doctors and publications and broadcasters with a political agenda to push (e.g. this publication, Fox news).

The IPCC report is a summary of the published science. That's all. So, deny the science all yo like by equating credible scientists- with the weight of research and evidence on their side- with creationist.

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

indulis

The irony of The Register questioning scientific credentials

How ironic- after all its promotion of climate change denier "un-science", most of which is self-published or published without scientific review in economic/oil journals- to see The Register promoting the idea "to distinguish between the reliability ... placed upon the results given in self-published documents and those appearing in scientific journals". Apparently all climate change denier science is science no matter where it is published, but anti-nuclear science will be subject to a different set of criteria.

As the disaster in Japan shows, the real problem is not nuclear technology, but an economic system that rewards companies who "sail close to the wind" when it comes to safety, and a political system bent by industry lobby groups that dismantles regulation in order to feed profits. Finally, the lack of a proper "end to end" way of enforcing costs and ongoing liability on the producers of pollution, so the costs don't land in the public's lap when the company that produced the problem folds. 73B pounds for windscale. That's a lot of solar panels/solar heaters/wind turbines which could have been built instead of "cheap" nuclear power.

You know the catch-cry of big industry "privatise the profits, socialise the losses", "fund research to help us increase our profits because we are poor poor POOR", "fund tax breaks and incentives for us please!", "those other startup industries should live or die without subsidies, all hail THE MARKET", and "run away! run away!".

Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels

indulis
FAIL

The Register should stick to IT

The Register should stick to reporting about IT, something which is within its bounds of competence and an area where misreporting has limited consequences to the environment and the lifeforms which depend on it.

As I write caesium isotopes from Japan's nuclear reactors are reported to have reached the UK- completely destroying Lewis Page's assertions that only short lived isotopes could ever be released, and also destroying his credibility. But like other brands of deniers, he is not called to task for his failed predictions and instead is given more airspace in The Register to continue to spout further "head in the sand" theories about what might or might not happen.

The Register - "Mouthpiece for the Nuclear and Fossil Fuel industries, and any other right wing cause of the day!"