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illconsidered | July 13, 2014Only In It For The Gold: Neither Optimist nor Pessimist, Just Activist.
"We must stop treating the natural world as something to exploit, and start realizing that it is our home. If we do that, we can thrive."
illconsidered | June 27, 2014Consensus, Criticism, Communication | Planet3.0.
This is a well written and comprehensive discussion of the "97% consensus" message, have a look!
illconsidered | April 11, 2014Another good video from Peter Sinclair on his YaleClimateForum YouTube channel:
Maureen Raymo is an expert in paleo-climates. This is probably the most informative climate science specialty when it comes to anticipating the final outcome of our global experiment in climate disruption. The rapidity of the current change is outside the realm of anything previously observed which makes it very difficult to model accurately, but the end state is not.
Predicting how we get to this end state and what humanity will experience along the way is a far greater challenge, as is predicting how our…
illconsidered | March 21, 2014I am a longtime fan of ThingsBreak though his/her posts are a bit of a rarity these days. The latest post is a very good one on the recent debut of Nate Silver's 538 blog. I have read a few now and "Nate Silver falls off" is the one to choose if you only only choose one.
I don't have anything to add, ThingsBreak says it all and says it well.
illconsidered | January 30, 2014The good Lord Monckton, self parody at its absolute finest:
This charming and lively man, with a soul and a wit that are eternal youth personified, is the latest victim of the vicious hate campaign sedulously waged by the canting profiteers of doom against anyone who dares to speak out against the now-discredited notion that the West should be shut down at once so as to Save The Planet from global-warming Thermageddon.
Bowing to extreme pressure from a handful of mad scientists (mad, that is, at the loss of income and prestige that the inexorable collapse of the Great Lie entails), the…
illconsidered | December 10, 2013Okay, sorry about that title...it is an actual quote from a History Channel documentary on, well, the universe. I nearly spat out my cool beverage with laughter when I heard it the first time and have really wanted to share it since then. I have yet to finish watching that series on the huge DVD disk set I bought because, despite the fascinating topic and the decent information content, they tried so hard to be dramatic in every aspect it just became tedious. Every topic seemed to turn into some new graphic simulation of Planet Earth being devoured, exploded, ice-balled, drowned, bombarded…
illconsidered | November 12, 2013This is just a quick post to suggest an answer to the question posed by Greg Laden here: should we have a category 6 and above for hurricanes. My answer is no.
I say this in agreement with many of the points expressed in Greg's post, mainly that category 5 basically means total destruction and for all practical purposes what is the difference between flattened like a dirt road or flattened like a paved one? But in acknowledgment of the other arguments and points of view, I would suggest further categories into the higher wind speeds in the form of Category 5A, 5B, 5C etc. It seems to me…
illconsidered | November 20, 2012Dave Roberts notes the connection between the two right wing reality bubbles of climate change denial and Romney landslide predictions.
But as we saw on Election Day, sometimes reality can come along and snap the spell of wishful thinking. It happened the week before Election Day too. That’s when a super-charged storm slammed into the east coast, leaving hundreds of thousands without homes or power. Sandy brought a heavy dose of reality and served as a kind of exclamation point on a year filled with droughts, wildfires, and floods — the hottest year ever recorded.
According to climatologists…
illconsidered | November 18, 2012I don't myself visit Watts' blog unless someone points to something particularly funny or egregious, and the comment threads are so long and monotonous it is even rarer that I go there.
That said, I am always grateful to others who have occasion to do that hard work and who come back out to highlight particularly mind-blowing examples of...of... of whatever it is that adequately describes what passes for dialogue over there. So, many thanks to Holly Stick over at Rabett Run who points us to the Gray Monk at WUWT who writes:
Actually the question is whether or not CO2 is the ‘evil game…
illconsidered | November 8, 2012Via Thngsbreak, we have the charming Lord Monckton back at it with all out Birtherism:
The diligent, unpaid heroes who have been investigating the dodgy document for more than a year on behalf of the people of Maricopa County, Ariz., have found a long list of irregularities in Mr. Obama’s identification documents.
I have used the investigators’ list to draw up a schedule of probabilities – one for each individual irregularity. The probability that the “birth certificate” and other Obama identity documents are genuine is just 1 in 75 sextillion.
Funny, that was just about the same odds I gave…
illconsidered | November 6, 2012Climate Crocks has a new video out about Sandy and the unusual weather patterns that allowed its formation.
Good stuff!
All the pundit chatter and the Bloomberg news coming out on the side of reality does give one hope that from the ashes of Battery Point climate change mitigation policy might rise. I do however recall the same attention and promise after the Hurricane Katrina debacle, and well, we all know how far that got us.
Hope springs eternal, but also "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..."
Who thinks Sandy and its warning will stick?
illconsidered | October 30, 2012The reality of weather modification is no conspiracy theory. Or at least, so say the conspiracy theorists....
Hurricane Sandy is being described as the “worst storm in 100 years” and will possibly mutate to super-storm status once it combines with a polar air mass over the eastern United States enabling it to cause widespread damage and chaos, but how convenient is the timing of this “natural” event in regards to the election? Is it possible that the storm is a contrived event designed to throw the election for Obama?
Just askin'....
(h/t mandas)
illconsidered | October 24, 2012So this is an idea shamelessly stolen from Noah Smith, a blogger who writes about economics. He has created an "illustrated bestiary", introduced thusly:
In your journey through the Econ Blogosphere, you will be beset by a great many curious and interesting species of EconoTroll. At first you may be intimidated by their voluminous use of insider jargon, their rough-and-tumble personal attacks, their strenuous insistence that you read the complete works of their movements' founders before participating in any discussion, and above all their sheer persistence and apparent surplus of spare time…
illconsidered | October 23, 2012Just thinking about a previous look at Roy Spencer:
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception.
in the context of this recent post of his that finishes with this similarly fact-free gem:
It’s time for the 99% to start supporting the 1% a little better, because in the end it is the 1% who enables the 99% to maximize their standard of living…
illconsidered | September 26, 2012Inferno is back at it at Denial Depot, and as always it is good for more than a few laughs! I particularily enjoyed this comment he/she added in the thread under the latest post on artic ice:
Although that said, Earth's polar axis of rotation has only been reliably observed during the last 30 years of accurate satellite measurements, which as any credible climate denier will tell is is a mere drop in the ocean of Earth's thousands of years climate history. It's far too short to draw any conclusions from. So we must admit that long ago as 1900 the Earth may have rotated top to bottom instead…
illconsidered | September 21, 2012I am not afraid of admitting my own areas of ignorance. The human body of knowledge is enormous and no one can possess all of it, or even be moderately familiar with all of it. The only shame is in pretending otherwise.
This admission fundamentally shapes my personal approach to the whole Hockeystick/Dendrochronology/Michael Mann brouhaha, which continues to this day despite MBH98 having receded into the rather distant past, in scientific research terms. I have to rely more on networks of trust and take a more removed view of it all and generally park that paper and that famous graph in the…
illconsidered | September 19, 2012Deep Climate has a great run down of Richard Muller's recent public appearances and some details on his ties to the Koch brothers, it is well worth a careful read. And while we're talking about Richard Muller, check out NPR's shameful decision to "balance" Muller's converted-to-mainstream scientific views with the provision of a soap box to Anthony Watts, master of BS (aka Blog Science). Video interview is below, I have not decided if I want to expose myself to that or not....
This was also discussed on P3.
illconsidered | September 13, 2012I hope it can stay lighthearted for Stephan Lewandowsky, it may be fun in the beginning grabbing the tiger by the tail, but some of these climate denial bloggers have made harassment an art form and this tiger may well turn around! I refer to the subject referenced in this post, the survey of climate blog readers that shows conspiracy theories run rampant in folks who deny the reality of AGW.
But at least for now, the fun continues. Apparently Stephan and co-author of the post Klaus Oberauer have determined that crazy denialists like Lord Monckton are really "warmists" in disguise only…
illconsidered | September 13, 2012Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now
Not originally spoken about climate change, but I don't think a better expression of today's reality could be found. Go to Peter Sinclair's piece "9/11, Climate Change and Why Facts Matter" to read a great article and at the same time see who said the above and when.
(Oops,…
illconsidered | September 11, 2012There is a blogstorm raging these days for those of you with inadequate workplace supervision. Check here for the latest post from ground zero.
The synopsis is: scientist releases paper showing strong correlation between belief in conspiracy theories, free market ideology, anti-science attitudes and the rejection of climate science; climate skeptic blogger community sees conspiracy and scientific fraud. (To their credit, I have not yet seen the accusation of "socialist".)
I don't have much to say about it, I am as embarrassed for these folks as I am amused by the irony of it all. I should…