Posts by Thought About IT

ITU says IT industry must become 'resilient' in face of climate change

No problems here

At least we'll still be able to read about the disasters on El Reg, as Lewis will be fending them off by standing at the door asserting they can't be happening, because AGW is a scam.

Most Americans doubt Big Bang, not too sure about evolution, climate change – survey

Re: The takeaway . . .

"The question then becomes - why do so many people who have not critically analysed the data with a trained and experienced eye decide that those who have are wrong?"

There's a good research paper on this here, by Stephan Lewandowsky et al from the University of Western Australia. It was originally published in Frontiers of Psychology, but they withdrew it when some of the anti-AGW propagandists cited in it threatened to sue. The University stands by the research and now hosts the paper online.

In summary: "much of science denial takes place in an epistemically closed system that is immune to falsifying evidence and counterarguments".

Melting permafrost switches to nasty, high-gear methane release

Re: 1980-2010 was warmer than 1970-2000

Squander Two, my point is that references to "CAGW" are generally made by those in denial of the basic physics of AGW. I'm pleased to see that you agree that the planet is warming due to our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Re: 1980-2010 was warmer than 1970-2000

· CO2 is a greenhouse gas the effect of which increases with its concentration in the atmosphere.

· The concentration of CO2 has increased from about 315ppm to 400ppm in the past 50 years.

· This has resulted in less heat being returned to space, ergo the planet is warming up.

I regard this stuff as very basic physics. What about you, Squander Two?

You missed ocean acidity increasing as it absorbs CO2. Not good for coral reefs or shellfish from krill upwards.

Re: Get your facts sorted!

"Ah, Sceptical Science, the noted purveyor of the green dream, so everything they say is true, I think not."

Ivan 4, why do you think not?

Re: Blue sky thinking

Tricky, when it's slowly bubbling up out of a vast area.

Re: Get your facts sorted!

Both statements are true: the rate of increase of atmospheric temperatures has declined while the excess heat retained by the greenhouse effect has gone into the oceans and latent heat to melt ice.

New IPCC report: 8 ways climate change will throw world into peril

"the average global temperature has not risen in seventeen years"

You can't have been paying attention when you were briefed with which memes to concentrate on in the build-up to the release of this IPCC report. Even ignoring the fact that the heat is not just going into the atmosphere, globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.

Re: It's the words: stupid.

"If these guys (or any of the other climate change bods) wants our attention - or even more: for someone, somewhere to actually DO something, they need much more than wishy-washy risks and dangers. They need numbers, dates, times and places. Who will die - specifically - their names please, when and what will the photos look like on the news reports. Who will have to pay. Which wars will break out and how much civil unrest will there be - and in which towns - and did they for for our party."

Therein lies the success of the propagandists denying AGW. They keep upping their demands for proof as the proof gets every more undeniable. I doubt they'd concede, even if they were having to paddle through floods to their charitable foundations and think tanks.

Google, Microsoft tackle climate change as IBM seeks cancer cure

Unsettling for some

Judging by the comments here and elsewhere, it's clearly unsettling for those with a certain agenda that major corporations are publicly accepting that global warming is a serious concern and are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. The CEO of Apple even told investors complaining about their policy of building and using renewable sources of energy that it was the right thing to do, and they should sell their stock-holding if they didn't like it. It would be far more sensible to get out of fossil fuels, because those corporations are going to have to leave much of their products in the ground.

Previously stable Greenland glaciers now rushing to the sea

Re: sooo.....

Just a thought, but we could try reducing greenhouse gas emissions to see if that helps.

CIA hacked Senate PCs to delete torture reports. And Senator Feinstein is outraged

Schadenfreude

Surely, if Feinstein's got nothing to hide, she's got nothing to fear.

Pine trees' scent 'could prevent climate change really being a problem'

Re: The Sun is the source.

As Senator Moynihan put it, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts". The argument that the sun is the source has been debunked so many times that it's like trying to kill a zombie.

Agenda

I must have missed the day when Lewis wrote about known positive feedback mechanisms that really could make climate change a big problem.

Microsoft courts mobe-makers, tweaks Windows 8 for WIMPs

The odd one out?

I actually prefer my Nokia 925 to my previous Samsung with Android. The latest release of Windows Phone allows apps to be closed just like in Windows for PCs, but not much else has changed since I got it.

'Polar vortex' or not, last month among the warmest Januaries recorded

Re: Doing the Warmist shuffle

Science isn't decided by the number of votes you get for posting your opinion on a blog. However, if you're talking about consequent political action, astroturfing is clearly part of the battle for public opinion.

Antarctic glacier 'melted just as fast Long before human carbon emissions'

Phew!

"Our findings reveal that Pine Island Glacier has experienced rapid thinning at least once in the past, and that, once set in motion, rapid ice sheet changes in this region can persist for centuries."

Good to have Lewis, with his deep understanding of climate science, reassure us that we haven't triggered an irreversible change that will result in sea levels rising by metres from all that melting ice.

The UNTOLD SUCCESS of Microsoft: Yes, it's Windows 7

Lenovo experience

A couple of Lenovo PCs I bought recently to replace XP came with Windows 7 installed and Windows 8 on DVDs. Having tried Windows 8.1 with ClassicShell and seeing it was similar enough to using Windows 7, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the Lenovos. The process of installing Win 8 from Lenovo's DVDs, then using Windows Update to go to Win 8.1 took about 3 hours for each PC! However, the users, who've been on XP for years, have said they much prefer the new environment, so I'm glad I did it.

Why IBM's server sell-off is a lightbulb moment

Re: Chinese security risk

I'm still trying to understand why Edward Snowden was employed by Dell while he was working for the NSA, according to the Guardian ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/01/edward-snowden-intelligence-leak-nsa-contractor-extract ). This raises questions as to how closely Dell is working with the NSA.

Chinese security risk

"The question may arise as to whether government clients may push back on having Chinese Lenovo kits in their data centres due to "national security" concerns."

That thought crossed my mind, before purchasing some Lenovo PCs and ThinkPads, but I dismissed it with the thought that if any back doors were discovered in their hardware they would be toast, so are unlikely to risk it.

'Climate change' event dishes up sous vide supercomputers

What the hell would you like us to do about it?

Well, the sensible approach would be to accept that what the overwhelming majority of climatologists are saying is right, then have a political debate about how to tackle it. The stupid approach is to deny the science because its implications are financially, politically and socially inconvenient.

The argument that it will cost less to adapt to climate change than to try to prevent it is also looking increasingly unsupportable.

Snowden leak journo leaks next leak: NSA, GCHQ dying to snoop on your gadgets mid-flight

Re: Clinging to Orthodoxy

You'd have to come from Mars not to realise that clinging to orthodoxy is the essence of the problem that Snowden has unearthed. The intelligensia of East Germany didn't defeat the Stasi, because they could never create a mass movement from people who spied on each other. It might turn individual dissenters into terrorists (which would be twisted to legitimise the surveillance), but how on earth could opposition to an overbearing state grow under such intense monitoring?

Want access to mobe users' location, camera, phone ID? EXPLAIN YOURSELVES - ICO

Whenever I have a choice of apps to install, I choose the one that requires access to the fewest features of my phone, even if it's not the best. Why should a compass or torch app need access to my contacts?

Internet Explorer 11 for Win7 bods: Soz, no HTML5 fun for you

JavaScript performance

Well, one thing in its favour is that its score when running Google's Octane JavaScript benchmark is 8,200 compared with 4,500 for IE 10. However, I'll stick with FF for lots of reasons, including its score of 10,300.

Alleged Peeping Tom claims First Amendment right to upskirt

Look at these appallingly salacious pictures!

"For example, say a woman is breast feeding in public and someone who is morally opposed to this ... takes a picture."

Does Michelle Menken work for the Dail Wail?

Microsoft buys all electricity from Texas wind farm

Re: Nice PR, but...

You're making an argument for never starting to change anything - which is either ridiculous, or disingenuous.

Blighty's laziness over IPv6 will cost us on the INTERNETS - study

Re: I guess the issue is.....

Orange in France also charges a (high) monthly fee for a static address.

'Modern warming trend can't be found' in new climate study

Re: That should be, "hasn't happened THERE".

Thanks for the heads-up about that interview . Dr. Campbell makes a powerful, if obvious point, which is unfortunately irrelevant. No amount of scientific proof will convince politicians to take action while the AGW denial propaganda continues to make it a vote loser. As the stock market valuation of fossil fuel companies is based on their known reserves, and the science implies that most of those reserves must be left in the ground, the propaganda isn't going to let up any time soon. We're easy prey to it because, like Dr. Campbell, we don't want it to be true.

US Republican enviro-vets: 'Climate change is real. Deal with it'

Re: Whatever.

"Climate changes. That's a fact. We do not know why."

Rule #1 for astroturfers: get in first and sow the seeds of doubt. Check!

Google scientists rebel over company's support for 'climate-hoax' Senator

Re: Good for them

I read that at an AGW denier blog as well, so it must be true.

Re: Another one sided article

You're right AC, I meant to put "sceptic" in quotes.

Re: Another one sided article

Another sceptic who's copying and pasting from the WUWT crib sheet.

Good for them

Saying that Inhofe's "position is part of a deliberate strategy to promote dysfunction and paralysis" is a polite description of a politician who's a paid lobbyist for the US oil and coal industries.

Bugs in beta weather model used to trash climate science

Re: If it's "not ready for prime time" ...

Why comment on it? Well, as is obvious, El Reg has an agenda* on this, so it cherry picks research that fits that agenda.

(* Spread doubt about the science, because its implications are curtains to neo-liberalism.)

Apple dodged all UK corporation tax in 2012

Re: Why don't they just close the loopholes?

@AC: "what does the corporation get for paying the tx ? Health Care, nope, corporations don't use the NHS, Education, nope, and so on."

So who paid to educate their workforce and to provide the infrastructure to enable them to get to work? Multinational corporations using these tax avoidance schemes are parasites.

Washout 2012 summer, melty Greenland 'nothing to do with Arctic ice or warm oceans'

Re: Still pursuing his agenda

"The extremists on the other side who know its MMCC co2 theory and we all gonna fry get to make policy"

Err, no. The lobbyists for the fossil fuel industries get to make policy, no matter how often their claims are disproved as bull

Still pursuing his agenda

Interesting juxtaposition of headline and subheader:

'nothing to do with Arctic ice or warm oceans'

Could have been 'natural variability'

Lewis can always be relied upon to pick the most optimistic scenario.

Last time CO2 was this high, the world was underwater? No actually

Re: So, that's all right then!

One in four London properties, collectively worth around £250bn, are at risk of flooding, according to official assessments of the dangers now facing homes in England and Wales. Ten of the top 25 most at-risk local authority areas across England and Wales are now London boroughs, and that's before sea level rises by 1 metre.

So, that's all right then!

Anything less than 35 metres will be not be a problem - according to Lewis. Anything over 1 metre will flood most coastal cities, including London and New York.

Secret UN 'ZOD' climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details

Re: Business as usual

"Remain impossible? hell where have you been the last ten years?"

Observing from the sidelines, where it is obvious that the biggest culprit has blocked every proposal to legislate to reduce GHG emissions. Until the US leads the way, the rest of the world is reduced to making token gestures. However, the effectiveness of corporate lobbing of Congress means they're not going to move until public opinion forces them, hence all the propaganda to spread doubt and uncertainty about the science.

Business as usual

"Fine go ahead with it, but please climate skeptics don't blame the scientists when the media start producing headlines based on incorrect statements in unfinalized drafts."

That's the whole point of the exercise: accentuate the uncertainty and doubt, so that it remains politically impossible to take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

More and more likely that double CO2 means <2°C: New study

Re: All the news that fits the agenda

My point was that it's always possible to cherry pick the science you report on, to further an agenda. Here's a video (so you should be able to understand it), which doesn't cherry pick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U

You may not be so confident that there is no urgency to reduce emissions fast after watching that. Alternatively, here's the reason why it's vital to keep pumping out the CO2:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/carbon-problems-financial-crisis-hutton

All the news that fits the agenda

That's all right then. Nothing to see here, move along now. It's OK to keep emitting green house gases, because they may not cause temperatures to rise at rates predicted by other studies.

BIGGEST DDoS ATTACK IN HISTORY hammers Spamhaus

Spamhous must really be hurting those parasites

Blimey! Spamhous must really be hurting those parasites. Good on em!

The UK Energy Crisis in 3 simple awareness-raising pictures

Re: Is the author a gas trader?

Probably not, but he does have an obvious agenda. In pursuit of that agenda, a wave of propaganda was unleashed after the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to make it politically impossible to constrain greenhouse gas emissions. That's been so successful that we now have the predicted extremes of weather that leave us short of energy.

Review: Renault Zoe electric car

Re: Not sure this makes sense

Straw man arguments don't make sense either, but are typically used to promote an agenda.

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

Compare costs with Sky

For the huge range of activities the BBC undertakes, I'm happy enough paying the license fee. It's a bargain compared with Sky, where you have to pay to watch adverts!

Global warming fingered as Superstorm Sandy supersizer

Facts

Facts, facts, facts. Don't bore me with facts. Facts are just a minor inconvenience to AGW deniers. All they have to do is sow doubts about them and they make it politically impossible to take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. After all, it wouldn't do to leave all those valuable fossil fuels unexploited.