Posts by Some Beggar

'Missing heat': Is global warmth vanishing into space?

@Ralph 5

Choice? It's not even slightly controversial. Here is Augustine on the age of the universe:

"They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed."

That final phrase is entirely unequivocal: at the time of writing, the universe was less than 6000 years old. Augustine was a young earth creationist like practically every other scholar for almost the entire history of christianity.

I suspect you've simply argued yourself into a corner and don't have the balls to say "oops I was wrong". But feel free to keep banging away or blame it all on persecution by a retired biologist. He's worse than Goebbels, you know.

@AC 23.59

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

And furthermore: ahahahahahahahahaha.

@Ralph 5

John Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine and Hyppolytus were all young earth creationists, they just aged the universe very slightly differently from their peers. Young earth creationism is categorically NOT a straw man. It was the core tradition of Christianity from its Jewish roots up until the modern era. You have still not given any examples to contradict my original statement:

"The Judeao-Christian tradition for at least two thousand years has been quite clear that the earth was young. Only a small minority of Christian writers argued that Genesis was allegorical until very recently."

And why do you keep mentioning Dawkins? What does a retired biologist have to do with this? I realise he's the bee in the bonnet of many insecure theists, but nobody else has mentioned him or anything he's written, so why bring him up?

@Bob.Hitchen

"Sure you would but they ignore the effects that don't suit them."

"Can I have a fiver for everything AGW fundies ignore."

OK. Let me repeat my statement yet again with what ought to be an unnecessary clarification:

I will pay you a crisp fiver for every single well-cited paper that you can find that assumes solar irradiance is constant or which ignores any known significant effects.

Google scholar is an excellent search engine. If climate science is so corrupt then it should take you no time at all to find some examples. Ten minutes and you could pay for a night on the town.

"However nobody is taxing me (Energy or otherwise) to support the big bang multiverses and the like."

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Science and Technology Facilities Council (what used to be PPARC etc) is funded in large part from direct taxes. Some of your taxes will also indirectly fund international research like CERN.

@Chris007

"If I am proved wrong I'll be the first to hold my hands up"

You just were and you just didn't. I call bluff.

@Bob.Hitchen

Let me repeat what I just said.

"I will pay you a crisp fiver for every single well-cited paper that you can find that assumes solar irradiance is constant."

@AC 09.27

"Anyone familiar with his attempts to suppress Velikovsky's books will know that this is true."

Sagan made no attempt to suppress anything. He was a vocal critic of Velikovsky. But then almost every scientist on the planet was a critic of Velikovsky, because Velikovsky's cosmological theories were utterly risible. But Sagan actually spoke out _against_ any suppression of Velikovsky's work. He believed that cranks should be allowed to publish their rantings so that they could be exposed to critique (and ridicule) by serious scientists.

And, of course, one in a million "cranks" turns out to have a point. Although Velikovsky definitely doesn't fall into that tiny camp.

@Bob.Hitchen

Nobody is saying that. It's a demonstrably ridiculous straw man argument.

Solar energy reaching the earth varies over the course of a year depending on where we are in our elliptical orbit. It also varies depending on where we are in our 26k year precession. The amount of energy reaching any particular latitude then varies depending on the axial tilt of the planet which also varies slowly over time. There is also a much less significant variation in the output of the sun itself depending where it is in its sort-of cycle. The amount of this periodically varying energy which reaches the surface depends on the make up of the atmosphere.

All of these periodic factors are taken into account in every measurement and model of the climate. To imply that climate scientists have missed this variation is just utter bollocks. Pop over to google scholar. I will pay you a crisp fiver for every single well-cited paper that you can find that assumes solar irradiance is constant.

@Ralph 5

"I can give *many* similar examples,"

Really? If you can give "many" examples then why have you only given a single example? And an example from well outside the core Christian tradition at that. You seem to have forgotten that the gnostics were considered heretics and eradicated by the catholics almost a thousand years ago. What sort of counter-example is that?

The core christian tradition was always a literal interpretation of Genesis. To argue otherwise is revisionist piffle.

"The earth is round and orbits in space.......scientists in 20th century"

By "scientists in 20th Century" you presumably mean "Greeks in the 6th Century BC".

@chris007

Here you go:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

You're welcome.

Oh ... and you only need three dots in an ellipsis.

Dear Chris Cosgrove.

Nobody is "universally respected", but there are certainly several thousand perfectly respectable and professional scientists working in the field.

Would you care to suggest any criteria by which we could elimate these thousands of researchers? A bit of conspiracy theory or a "no true scotsman" argument seems to be popular.

@cirby

"the nail in the coffin"

I don't know the burial traditions around your part of the world, but around here we typically wait until somebody is dead, or at the very least poorly, before we start nailing up the coffin. AGW is supported by the vast majority of relevant scientists. That makes it very much alive. Even if this research turns out not to be purest quackery, it would barely register as a minor sniffle against the health of the scientific consensus.

@Ralph 5

"Are you aware that concept was dreamed up by a certain Bishop Ussher in the 17th century?"

Utter codswallop. The Jewish calendar is based on a creation date of 3761BCE and has been for nearly two thousand years. The Judeao-Christian tradition for at least two thousand years has been quite clear that the earth was young. Only a small minority of Christian writers argued that Genesis was allegorical until very recently. And in the protestant community the culture of Biblical literalism never died out - something between a quarter and a half of Americans still believe it.

"Warmists poured scorn on the veteran sceptic."

Let me fix that for you.

"Scientists poured scorn on the evangelical creationist."

(http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/)

You're welcome.

Pure Sirocco 550 music combo

Double meh.

I can't really see any excuse for not offering a wide (and even user-expandable) range of codec support for anything above the most basic unit. If the speakers aren't up to much either then this is essentially just a tidy little wireless gateway to your music collection and you ought to be able to store that in whatever format tickles your aural fancy.

And a line-in socket on the front of little units like this offends me to the depths of my soul. I have no idea why. What's wrong with putting it on the back? If you're going to be plugging a variety of things in and out all the time then leave a cable plugged in.

Is it just me?

It's just me, isn't it?

Who needs a million NFC tags?

@K Adams

I'm not really sure how any of those links are supposed to answer my original question. I'm aware that wireless technology is insecure at a fairly fundamental level. But I was asking what specific threat you think exists in NFC payment systems that warrants wrapping them up in tin foil.

A pickpocket posing as a cash register simply isn't a realistic threat.

Nobody is suggesting that a bus company is a handset manufacturer.

Are they?

Probably.

Unless the Oyster People have done some whacky proprietary stuff on top of the RFID.

Sadly, we live in a world of exponentially diverging standards, so there's a good chance that your Oyster card and your Barclay's paypass card and your Starbucks Instant Hot Milkshake Loyalty card will be sufficiently different that they'll never all be replaced by your smartphone.

@ac 11.11

You still haven't explained _how_ the guy behind you is going to lift money from your NFC card.

Unless there's a practical method to electronically pick your pockets then why are you worrying about it?

NFC payment cards are already on buses.

Oyster cards in London, for example.

"obfuscate traceability"

This is genuinely the most hilarious thing I have read on the internet this week.

You're not Jason Bourne. Really.

"I don't tend to carry that much cash around with me on a normal day"

So don't carry an NFC payment card either.

(c)Trivial Solutions to Trivial Paranoia Ltd.

@K. Adams

Can you explain what you think the risk is to your identity and your cash with these near field technologies?

The last report I saw on RFID passports suggested that the technical hurdles meant it remained far less of a risk than physical theft of passports. And NFC payment cards are more secure (shorter range and higher security) than passport RFID. They're also not vulnerable to sniffing since the information that is passed between payer and payee isn't particularly useful. An electronic pickpocket would effectively need to be a walking virtual cash register with an account set up with the payment scheme in order to skim off your cash.

I'm not suggesting there is no risk at all. I just wonder why you think it is such a risk that you should start dressing your belongings in tin foil hats.

Cambridge Audio Azur 751BD 3D Blu-ray player

@JDX

And it might disappoint you to learn that there are quite a lot of rich people who are also savvy enough to understand that precisely 87.64% of audiophilia is medicine show homeopathic hogwash. There's no obligation to waste money on unnecessary audiobling just because one's coin is weighing heavy in the purse. And there's nothing wrong with scoffing at unnecessary audiobling whether one can afford it or not.

(Of course, you probably won't notice that 0.64% unless you are using palladium-coated wifis to connect to the interweb.)

Sci/tech MPs want peer review, not pal review

Lord Oxburgh was on the payroll of the University of East Anglia?

Hahaha. Priceless.

re: debunked

"we saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit"

"careful examination of the e-mails and their full context shows that the petitioners' claims are exaggerated and are not a material or reliable basis to question the validity and credibility of the body of [climate] science"

Seems fairly unequivocal. To continue to bang on about it and to imply that this current report has any relationship to it is disingenuous to the point of being ridiculous.

Change the record.

This report has nothing at all to do with the debunked accusations of dishonesty at UEA. It came out of the very real fraud committed by Andrew Wakefield. Why are you still wittering on about climategate?

Oi, Android, get gaming sorted out NOW

"when I go for a seat in the smallest room in the house"

Eat more fibre. Christ. It's one thing wishing your life away moving shiny pixels around, but wishing it away sitting in the stench of your own slow-moving bowels is a whole new level of grim tragedy.

Triceratops horn find supports meteor extinction theory

"Food for thought?"

Only if your brain is on a starvation diet.

Dinner Spinner

@Gene Cash

Why? Did she hold your hand to stop you getting lost in Asda?

Not that I have anything against this sort of mollycoddling app.

It is probably cheaper than providing all you life failures with a wetnurse.

re: "Or..."

Cookbooks don't hold my sweating hand as I wander baffled and terrified around the scary scary supermarket.

Would it not be simpler to just move back in with your mother?

Anybody who needs this app clearly isn't ready to inhabit the big bad world of adulthood.

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

@John Smith 19

Disingenuous windbaggery. All the reports are available online. Here's a link to the various government reports and responses:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/inquiries/former-inquiries/uea/

"I'd suspect your name is either on some of those emails or that of your SO"

Dreary concern troll tactic number three: accuse the person you are addressing of having some personal involvement that clouds his or her judgement. I have no professional connection with CRU and no personal relationship with anybody involved in the (entirely contrived) controversy. Anybody who continues to bang that drum after the complaints have been repeatedly shown to be fatuous and belligerent is an ignorant and obnoxious bore.

"I believe in AGW, I really do."

I couldn't give a toss. I really couldn't.

@Philip Lewis

Really? Petty namecalling like "CRU=CRUD" is your idea of "talking intelligently"?

Claiming that somebody else's research is not science and accusing an academic institution of manipulation of data despite the fact that three independent inquiries found no such thing ... that's your idea of "talking intelligently"?

Couching what are basically slanderous accusations in woolly terms like "YMMV" and "That's an opinion folks" ... that's "talking intelligently"?

No, pal. That's not intelligent. That's childish, cowardly and (assuming you are the Philip Lewis I think you are) seriously unprofessional.

Bravo. Your intelligence has made me feel slightly sick.

@Philip Lewis

"My opinion ..."

... is essentially worthless.

Three separate independent enquiries spent considerably more effort and came to precisely the opposite conclusion.

And you'll never get those 100 hours of your life back. That's got to sting.

You can thump the "downvote" button on those quotes as angrily as you like

it won't change the fact that the CRU has been examined and vindicated and the last crooked arrow in the denialist quiver has clattered feebly to the floor barely a few feet in front of their lazily strung bow.

Get over it. Find a new angle to frantically frot yourselves over.

"As a scientist myself"

You're not a scientist. If you even have an undergraduate degree in a scientific discipline then the education system in this country is knackered.

"the pathetic shambles that was the East Anglia "University"'s Climate Research Unit."

The CRU still exists:

* "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact" (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee)

* "we saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit" (Lord Oxburgh Science Assessment Panel)

* "their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt" (Sir Muir Russell Independent Climate Change Emails Review)

* "careful examination of the e-mails and their full context shows that the petitioners' claims are exaggerated and are not a material or reliable basis to question the validity and credibility of the body of [climate] science" (US Environmental Protection Agency)

US Marine gets date with Meg Griffin on YouTube

Excellent use of youtube.

Top marks, soldier.

Sunspot decline could mean decades of cold UK winters

@ooFie

What you actually said was:

"when we're [] closer to the sun its warmer and when we're futher away its cold... surely not that hard of a concept to grasp!?"

This is complete nonsense. The earth has a radius of about 6 million metres and an axial tilt of about 23 degrees. We are on average about 150 billion metres away from the sun and our distance varies by about 5 billion metres over the course of a year. Radiation in a vacuum follows an inverse square law.

How can you expect to be taken seriously on the complicated subject of climate change when you don't even understand basic physics or the very simple mechanism behind the seasons?

@ooFi

"we obvisouly need educating here.."

That's the first semi-sensible thing you've said.

The seasons are caused by the axial tilt of the earth: the angle between the plane of our annual orbit around the sun and the axis of our daily rotation of the planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasons#Causes_and_effects

"insert other pathtic insult"

You entered the conversation by calling climate scientists fascists, responded to polite corrections by calling people retards and your latest post calls me a tosspot. You're not very good at the internet. Perhaps you should go outside and play.

@PeterM42

"I don't get PAID to know what I am talking about."

I'd be distressed if anybody paid you to think at all on the basis of that drooling shouty garbage.

@AC 11.56

A whu whu whu?

Where on earth do they teach this? The Bible belt?

@Adrian Esdaile

Are you thinking of India or China?

China's rapid economic growth and its huge external investment (and the fact that it has millenia of experience of being run by hard-arsed autocrats) probably insulates it to a fair degree from global instability caused by climate change.

I'd be more worried about India and its neighbours.

And without wishing to get into a semantic argument, climate change _is_ the issue because what most people mean by climate change is not simple warming or cooling but just "a change to the climate that makes things less safe and comfortable for the human population".

@nyelvmark

That's very kind. Allow me to return the favour by introducing you to something we call "rhetoric".

Burg 5 watch phone

Does it work outside Hoxton?

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Samsung BD-D8900 Blu-ray player and DVR combo

Re: How Long?

The menu gubbins for BDs is written in Java. Most BD players skimp on processing mips and memory. If you have a complicated splash-screen-menu-doohickey and you have BD-live content then they grind to a halt. It's like loading a whizzy web 2.0 site on a craptastic old PC.

There are some players that are quicker (Oppo and the newer Panasonic allegedly).

Boffins build nanowire lasers from nappy-rash cream

"Pardon our provincialism"

Why should we? You work for a techie news site.

Pacific rare-earth discovery: Actually just gigatonnes of dirt

@Tim Worstall

Do you have some citations?

No offence intended, but Google Scholar (PBUH) doesn't bring up any academic papers either with you as a contributer or citing you as an expert. It does bring up quite a few references to you as a blogger, as does a vanilla Google search.

You made a straightforward statement that your inability to make a success of something demonstrates that it can't be done.