Posts by Justin Ert

Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP

Not so bad

Bought the game on the 17Dec... Thrashed it from 26th until last night...

Read about the server problems, and suffered from disconnections and connections over this weekend about half a dozen times. I did panic about whether my connect/disconnects would result in the scare stories I heard on the forums, but fortunately, they were just that - scare stories. Not like Reg to take the climate-doomsday cult position ;) Unsure why they have taken this alarmist angle really. Did wonder whether there were wow or other mmorpgs stooges trolling the release for commercial disincentives.

Climate change linked to extreme weather surge

Re: "Disasters to drive public opinion?"

Complete cobblers I'm afraid, in the gentlist possible way. Firstly, Stefan Rahmstorf is an activist, ipso facto, as he is a member of several political organisations such as this one:

http://www.wbgu.de/en/council-members/

An advocay group for global "sustainable development" no less, that uses the climate change narrative as a tool to lobby government and influence policy. Interestingly, even the wiki have this to say about their activism:

" In the most recent flagship report, the WBGU dealt with the transformation to a low-carbon society..."

But ironically Stefan Rahmstorf is no stranger to perpetrating nasty ad hominem attacks himself, and was quite recently found guilty by a German court and ordered to "stop violating a journalists persoanl rights":

http://notrickszone.com/2011/11/07/german-court-orders-stefan-rahmstorf-to-cease-and-desist-violating-journalists-personal-rights/

Lastly, describing this piece as "uncritical churnalism" is not an ad hominem. Do you know what ad hominem is? Because this is not an example of it.

However, had the journalist who churned and contributed to the information cascade actually researched the Nature Climate Change publication, when it was founded and why, who the primary contributors are... and then perhaps a cursory glance at the recent political activities, advocacy and behaviour of Stefan Rahmstorf himself, they might - whoever they are - have approached the piece from a more enlightened angle.

As I inferred in my original post, I have a higher level of expectation of the Register.

"Disasters to drive public opinion?"

Nature Climate Change, which as we all know is strictly for advocates of carbon price floor economics, and whose target audience is generally, but not exclusively (heaven forbid) sceptiphobic believers.

As Judith Curry says:

"The substantial interest in attributing extreme weather events to global warming seems rooted in the perceived need for some sort of a disaster to drive public opinion and the political process in the direction of taking action on climate change."

Indeed. This coal face between policy advocacy and science is mined by Nature Climate Change and the results are papers from activist scientists that inevitably conclude ambiguously - as the Register has it- "No proof, but it seems likely." Such is the new probabilism that has infected politico-scientific discourse in the wake of the precautionary principle and the IPCC's "likelihood-ometer" metric for possible future climates.

Sadly though, this information cascades, the message gets amplified, just as planned - and often unknowingly - by the type of uncritical churnalism such as this lazy piece. And we even have the caption "...recent weather has been crap" to assist in "driving public opinion" and raising awareness. But where would we be without the cascade? With more exterme weather? Maybe, maybe not.

I would say: Out of character for the Register. Not worth more than two ratings blobs.