Posts by Dodgy Geezer

US climate-change skeptics losing support

Re: Behind the curve again

...That was reported, and the Met office immediately put out a statement contradicting it....

Odd, that. I read the statement. And it didn't contradict the Mail's piece.

The Mail said that warming had stopped for the last 16 years and that temperatures were flat. The Met Office said that temperatures were indeed flat, but this might be normal. Oddly, that contradicted all the earlier work on this subject (look up Tamino) which indicated that a 5 year flat stretch might happen, but a 15 year one should prompt re-examination of the hypothesis.

Then they added that the last 10 years held some of the highest temperatures in their data. Which was nothing to do with the original Mail piece, but was included to try to draw attention away from the problem of the halted warming...

Re: Considering the Lewandowsky scandal ...

... I can tell from the title that I'd get a nice, un-biased, non-predetermined, balanced viewpoint from there!..

You don't have to read it. But if you won't, you can hardly complain that we don't give you references. It's packed full of them...

There is little point providing references for and going over all the fraudulent misrepresentation which is Global Warming continually. But it's worth pointing out new instances as they come to our attention. I see that TallBloke has recently done a little bit of work on how Antarctic Warming data has been manufactured here:

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/roger-andrews-how-nasa-giss-manufactures-warming-in-the-antarctic/

You will find that the real Antarctic temperatures are remarkably flat. But the data only goes back to 1955. So GISS took the data from only the peninsular (which did show warming) and used that to project warming back to 1945. Then they took earlier data from the South Orkneys (at 60South - not in the Antarctic at all!) and used that to project warming back to 1905.

This is how you get Global Warming. It's standard practice in the well-paid business of manufacturing scary data...

Re: Considering the Lewandowsky scandal ...

Evening Dodgy Geezer (nee Elderly Geezer?)

And good evening to you. Or rather, good morning! You have my title slightly confused - I was born 'Young Scallywag', and achieved the title of 'Geezer' through the passage of time - 'Dodgy' from my own exertions...

...I wish to read them...

No you don't. I can't believe that, for example, you have not followed the publication of the Lewandowsky survey or have any difficulty in obtaining information on why it is considered to have breached all reasonable norms of applying surveys - there's enough written about the accusations on his own blog!

Life is too short for me to undertake to re-educate all the warmists in the world. Google must be your friend here. Perhaps you can find out which is "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change"? If you want to read something about the hockey-stick you might like to start with this - I'm sure it's available from a library near you:

http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Illusion-Climategate-Independent/dp/1906768358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&tag=wattsupwithth-20&s=books&qid=1268345567&sr=8-1

What a lot of hype over nothing...

This survey - it's a public opinion survey. It purports to measure how people feel AT A PARTICULAR TIME.

So let us look at the time when it was commissioned. I see the OP states:

"Americans' belief in the reality of global warming has increased by 13 percentage points over the past two and a half years, from 57 percent in January 2010 to 70 percent in September 2012."

Aha! I recall that the Americans had a particularly hot summer this year, and there were a lot of frenzied pieces in the press about how Global Warming had arrived at last. So what the survey says is that if you ask a random selection of the uneducated public about whether Global Warming is happening in the middle of a heatwave, you will get 13% more saying 'Yes' than if you ask them in the middle of winter.

You know, I could have guessed that without paying for a survey. And so, I suspect, could the climate activists. Which is probably why they timed the surveys the way they did.

The reason warmists are stooping to cheap tricks like this is that they can no longer engage by publishing scientific papers. More and more modern research is now showing the early scaremongering assertions to be hopelessly exaggerated, and often plain wrong. So they are left pushing political and public relations propaganda. And not too well either. You might have thought they should have saved their money. Ah, silly me - of course, it's not THEIR money, is it? It's probably tax funded, so it's OUR money they're spending...

Re: Considering the Lewandowsky scandal ...

Why do you keep asking for 'refs'? Can't you read the original papers?

Or do you prefer not to read them so that you can still pretend to yourself that they are true? Kind of like the way the Team kept wasting McKintyre's time with variations of their hockey-stick paper so that they could still pretend to themselves that the stats were valid...?

Re: Considering the Lewandowsky scandal ...

"...I'm sure the Reg has covered Lewandowsky and his fraudulent "Skeptic Survey", so anything from "Climate Change Communication" academics is suspect...."

Indeed. In the interests of balance surely Rik Myslewski should point out that Global Warming surveys from the true believers are by now a by-word for lying and deceitfulness. Remember how the '97% of scientists believe..." figure was achieved?

Two things stand out. One is that the Global Warming supporters have comprehensively lost the scientific battle - unsurprisingly, since their warming scares do not match measured data, even with corrupt massaging of the figures.

The second is more interesting. In the 'climate scientists trusted' graph I note that the 'climate scientists' get first place in the 'strongly trusted' section. But they only get third place in the 'somewhat trusted' section. I wonder why this is? Could it be that the survey was biased towards the 'true believers' (who would all go for 'strongly'? The low figure fo 'TV weather reporters' (an obvious allusion to Anthony Watts) seems to bear this out. If we bothered to look in detail at the survey protocols I suspect we'll find that it's just another propaganda puff piece...

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Re: Hoard

"......

- a Schaub Lorenz Music Centre.

..."

Only one? Amongst my other music hardware I have 3 Sony HMK-80 Music centres. What will you do if one of the parts dies and your spare has a similar failure?

I'm 62 years old, you know...

...and I've spent all my life in computing.

I have a garage, loft and 22ft garden shed full of old computing equipment. The older stuff is all ICL mainframe stuff - 1900s and 2900s. An old electronic punch card system. Early CP/M machines, Amigas, Beebs and a full run of IBMs and clones. Wiring nests measured in cubic yards. I have some 8086 laptops (one with a 10Mb hard drive!), as well as several early text processors. Large numbers of Winchersters. Not too many 8" floppies, but a lot of 5.25" and hundreds of 3.5".

Looking at ebay, I thought that everyone had this.

Icon not necessarily for Windows, but more for the age....

Last month ties for WARMEST September on RECORD

Re: Five Grand? - aside aside...

..As an aside: Every climate scientist would love to be able to write a peer reviewed paper which conclusively proves that climate change is not happening, because this is career defining stuff. If you manage to prove that all of your chosen area of science was wrong about something ..

I know at least one climate scientist who wouldn't love to show it wasn't happening.

Phil Jones is on record as saying "Why should I make my data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Doesn't sound as if he would be happy to see climate change disproven. If it were, he and Michael Mann would certainly be having difficulty with their next grant cheque....

Appropriate Adjustments..

"...we'll trust the NCDC to have made the appropriate adjustments..".

Indeed we will. But not, i suspect, in the manner Rik Myslewski is expecting.

Since he seems to have difficulty doing the basic research about land-based temperature readings (hint - they're crap - only use satellite ones) maybe we should help him do his job. Here is some example reading matter culled in less than 30 secs:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/15/ghcns-dodgy-adjustments-in-iceland/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/13/warming-in-the-ushcn-is-mainly-an-artifact-of-adjustments/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/11/another-giss-miss-warming-in-the-arctic-the-adjustments-are-key/

Ukraine navy to deploy DOLPHINS WITH GUNS ON THEIR HEADS

Re: Heavy petting...

...I've just stuck a nuke up my cat's arse. Now all I have to do is get Cameron/Clegg/Millipede (delete according to choice) to pet it...

Actually, all of those would be fine. Together, if possible. Why not send the cat down to the cellars under Parliament when it's sitting and do even better? Nov 5 is coming up....

(Actually, blowing up Parliament nowadays would probably not be too effective - most MPs don't bother to attend any more...)

Re: Pistol.

...I should hope not. While the things would probably fire underwater, the back pressure caused by having the barrel full of water on firing could cause some exceedingly unpleasant results....

Not actually an issue. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502KryEguA0

Fukushima operator feared shutdown if risks revealed

Re: Reprocessing? Really?

...Really? Suppose it was policitically acceptable somehow, then what makes the economics of reprocessing go away too? If you know how to make the economics of reprocessing go away, some people in Sellafield are waiting for a phone call from you....

I'll see your sarky comment on reprocessing economics, and raise you a sarky comment on renewable energy economics...

Re: During the meanwhile ...

@Tim Parker

"..from the Cornwall Council August this year - The HPA have recently introduced a new target level for radon of 100 Bq m-3..."

Umm.

Quoting a council ruling derived from HPA advice doesn't really cut it for me. I see a lot of HSE-type advice produced from bodies responsible for safety of various kinds which, on deeper investigation, prove to be founded on statistical misrepresentation. This seems to be a trend - possibly influenced by the Climate Change fiasco.

In this case I went looking for the HPA research which would justify your comments about Cornwall's elevated risk, and couldn't find it. They just say:

"The Target Level has been introduced because research published since 1990 has given scientists a greater understanding of the risks to health of exposure to radon below 200 Bq m-3 and because HPA now has considerably more experience of the effectiveness of remediation measures."

So perhaps they seem to be tightening the targets because they can, as much as because it is advisable? I went looking for radon research since 1990, and found the Wiki quoting the BEIR VI report, entitled 'Health Effects of Exposure to Radon'.

"According to the UNSCEAR modeling, based on these miner's studies, the excess relative risk from long-term residential exposure to radon at 100 Bq/m3 is considered to be about 0.16 (after correction for uncertainties in exposure assessment), with about a threefold factor of uncertainty higher or lower than that value. In other words, the absence of ill effects (or even positive hormesis effects) at 100 Bq/m3 are compatible with the known data."

So my (limited) research (purely checking abstracts) suggests that, at low levels, the statistical noise overwhelms any signal. This means that a positive figure indicating a small risk can easily be picked while staying within the error bands. Which is politically expedient...

Doesn't mean there isn't a problem with radiation at low levels. Does mean, as you say, that the issue is not black and white. And, in my view, it does mean that much current research in any activist-influenced area of science should be looked at very carefully....

Re: Still fingering the tsunami @sunnyskies

"...To re-iterate the point, when your coal fired power station explodes you don't have to abandon hundreds of square miles for decades...."

The law says you don't have to, but I wonder whether the levels of radiation might actually be quite similar?

There's an article here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste containing the following quote:

"In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

Sky support dubs Germany 'Hitler's country'

Re: Unprofessional but meh

...To this day I am still amazed by the brilliant PR machine that the Germans employed post WWII. It wasn't the Germans that did all those nasty things during WWII, oh no, it was the Nazis, or better yet the SS or the Gestapo. The Germans were just as much victims as anyone, apparently, victims of the evil Nazis...

Ummm... I hate to enlighten you about this, but that PR trick was dreamed up and implemented by the Allies.

At the end of WW1 we stuffed the Germans. 20 years later they went for a rematch. So at the end of WW2 the one lesson we had learned was - 'don't stuff the country'. But the French still wanted someone to blame. So we made up the story that it was all the bad Nazis fault and ran a program of de-nazification. The idea was to treat the Germans well so that they didn't look for 'best of three'.

In fact, the main thing that stopped the Germans starting up again was having their country split in two and half occupied by Russia. I note that it has been about 20 years since German reunification, and with the Euro collapse it looks as if they are well on their way to a third attempt at European Hegemony...

ICO tries to justify hefty NHS data breach fines

A lesson in pointless spending...

"The fine needs to outweigh the cost of stopping the breach occurring in the first place. Correctly retrieving and archiving patient records from an abandoned hospital would be expensive, other trusts can't be allowed to consider its worth risking not dealing with the problem in the first place."

NOBODY seems to have grasped the essential issue here.

Private companies have income and costs. Income minus costs and fines equal profit. The people running the company share the profit. So they have a fundamental interest in not having high costs or fines.

Public servants are paid a fixed sum by government from taxpayers. The only way they get a bigger sum is if they are 'more senior' - in other words, in charge of a bigger organisation. So they all have a fundamental interest in increasing the size of their organisation. There are several ways to do this, but one obvious way is to use more people to do the same job - in other words NOT to be efficient.

One way not to be efficient is to make mistakes and then argue for more people and budget to correct them. Fines are irrelevant so long at the people continue to be paid at the same rate. In fact, fines are rather good, since they will simply be EXTRA money paid into the system from taxpayers - meaning more money for civil servants...

US trounces UK in climate scepticism jibber-jabber

Re: Personally...

Yes - I also remember that scare in the 1970s. It was quite clearly a push by scientific/environmental activists - much the same as the warming scare of today, though not half as successful - mainly because the climate started warming a year or so after it got into its swing.

But I can recall several other examples of it - one of my favourite SF short stories published at the time dealt with the return of the glaciers. And a think-tank (MITRE, I believe) came up with several proposals for mitigating an ice-age - they included flooding Africa to create a giant shallow lake, and diverting the Gulf Stream. I wonder why MITRE bothered to do this if there was not really a scare going on...?

Re: Which type am I?

"..Those who think that saying "I believe" lots and lots of times refutes any amount of evidence, from any side.."

Oh? What do you BELIEVE, then?

Re: Another way to put it

"What about bend-over leaning types who just take whatever higher fuel bills and taxes that Big Gov & Big Green want to impose on them. What do they believe?"

They believe that they should do whatever someone in authority tells them to do.

I had this discussion with my local Liberal councillor. I asked him why he maintained that dangerous warming was occurring when the data clearly showed that there had been no substantial rise for 14 years.

His answer was that his Liberal briefing document said that there was, and he would prefer to believe that rather than me.

Re: They are only less balanced

"Would you be willing to accept the demise of Homo Sapiens..."

I know of no assertion from any credible climate scientist that the species is at risk. The only people who make such assertions are activists trying to encourage adherence amongst followers. Making such an exaggeration loses you any credibility you might have had.

I suppose that there is a slight chance that you might actually believe this. If so, you have my sympathy. You must lead an awfully frightening life...

Which type am I?

Type 1: "those who deny the global warming trend"

I believe that it was cold in 1900, warmed until 1940, got colder until 1970, warmed until 2000 and has been dropping slightly ever since. That the overall trend has been up since 1850, but down since 1100. And that a lot of the ground station data is unreliable. I do not believe that there is an abnormal warming trend, considering the past several thousand years.

Type 2: "those who accept the trend, but either question the anthropogenic contribution saying it is overstated, negligent or non-existent compared to other factors like natural variation, or say it is not known with sufficient certainty what the main causes are"

Since the tropospheric hot-spot has not been found, I believe that the whole 'CO2-driven warming' hypothesis is unproven, and that we have very little understanding of how the forces behind global climate variation actually work in real life.

Type 3: "those who accept human causation, but claim impacts may be benign or beneficial, or that the models are not robust enough, and/or question the need for strong regulatory policies or interventions"

I believe that humans can cause local 'climate change' - Urban Heat Islands, for example. The effect of these will be positive and negative at the same time, depending on what you choose to be beneficial. In theory you could extrapolate these mathematically to claim a low global impact, but I doubt that this is measurable above the noise.

I also believe that it is obvious that current models are 'not robust enough' (or, indeed not accurate at all, since they have completely failed to predict current temperatures). And I also feel that it is obvious that current policy interventions are causing considerable damage to humanity for no net benefit.

Which type am I?

Archaeologists resume Antikythera Mechanism hunt

Re: Aliens done it.

"...It's uncanny how XKCD already has an answer to anything - http://what-if.xkcd.com/14/..."

Actually, I recall the same plot line being used in a 1950s British SF short story. The Mad Nazi Professor (tm) develops a dimensional gate to enable armies/battleships/etc to be rapidly moved to tactically superior positions.

The Hero alters the gate settings to position the first test portal at the bottom of the Atlantic, and the whole research centre is destroyed by the lake that suddenly appears on top of it....

Liquefied-air silos touted as enormo green 'leccy batteries

Re: @Solidsoup

"..if you were to draw a graph of cost per kWh over time for each type of power generation, you would see that the cost of solar is creeping down, whilst gas and coal are increasing as the fuels become more expensive to extract. There will come a point where those lines cross, and solar will be the economic choice..."

I don't know what kind of world you inhabit, but in ours the cost of gas is plummeting. Here are the US FPO figures (dollars per therm) for the last few years:

2009 $1.2835

2010 $0.8420

2011 $0.8126

2012 $0.6919

That's a 46% drop. Coal is also about as cheap as a fuel can get. With modern technology the fuels are getting CHEAPER to extract, as Julian Simon's cornucopia theory predicts.

Being 100% wrong in this assertion rather ruins your argument, doesn't it?

New science: seas will rise due to CO2 ... but not for centuries

Re: Way to go Lewis.......

@Big_Ted

...Oh and one last thought, what if rainfall increases a bit over coastal glaciers without the temperature being low enougth to freeze it, well then it sits on the surface and melts the ice under it, that then goes under the glacier, then the glacier moves quicker and more breaks off into the sea / ocean quicker, it doesn't need to melt quickly as its there and already adding to sea rise......"

Hmm. This used to be a favourite argument of the warmists, who would take pictures of meltwater for their propaganda. It was debunked three years ago as completely incorrect. Here is a reference:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215173144.htm

If Big_Ted is not capable of following the current state of the science, I don't think his contributions are going to be of much value. But that would be normal for a Global Warming Believer...

New study: 'Fraud behind two-thirds of pulled medical papers'

When we asked about Climate Change...

..they always told us that it was unbelievable that anyone so interested in truth as a scientist could ever put out a fraudulent paper.

Never mind - I'm sure it could never happen in Climate Science...

Bloke jailed for being unable to use BlackBerry Messenger freed

Unfortunately...

"...T(h)is may be a strict liability offence but I think he should appeal to the House of Lords as I would argue that I did not send the text to young girls, I would argue that that the phone did that...."

...there is already extensive case law showing that pedophile issues MUST be interpreted to the detriment of the defendant at every opportunity. For instance, the act of viewing an image on a computer is claimed to include 'creating and storing' it because of the action of video buffers, and talking to another person about pedophile desires is counted as 'publishing' obscene material.

In these and many other instances the overt design aim of the law is to ensure conviction under all circumstances, whenever a person is accused under it. This, and the other laws dealing with 'sexual' crimes which have recently been placed on the statute book, are all designed in this way. The judges were both correct in their interpretation of the law - they are now required to state that black is white if they need to do so in order to ensure a successful conviction. No judge could allow the 'get-out' argument that you have proposed to stand as a precedent.

I do not think that is is widely realised just how broken modern British law is, starting with the agreement to allow double jeopardy. The problem is that you cannot have a proper academic discussion of the rights of people accused of child molestation, terrorism or many other crimes - you are shouted down by the press and politicians. So if you wish to argue against this modern trend you have two options: to shut up and be ignored, or to speak out and be ignored and vilified....

Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

Re: @Payx

"..It's just that I personally prefer to be fed facts in a fairly neutral way and then I make my own mind up. I like opinion pieces to consist of a small side-bar, clearly labelled, which I can avoid..."

Alas, this world was not made for one as simplistic as you..

If I want to support the Climate Change hypothesis I can easily marshal one set of facts to 'prove' my opinions. And if I disbelieve in it I can easily find another set of facts that proves the opposite. Both those sets of facts have been provided to me courtesy of the OPINION of the person who created the paper.

What you are saying in practice is that you would like to be fed facts with which you agree, and not hear anything else.

You will very soon find. if you really want to make up your mind in a 'neutral' way, that you need to read both the facts and opinions you agree with AND the ones you disagree with. Having let both sides make their cases, you are in a position to understand where each are coming from and balance their competing assertions. Since opinions are the things which drive the collection of facts, you really do need to read those so you can see why you are being presented with a particular sub-set of facts.

As someone possibly more to the right of the political spectrum than you, who values the freedom to make up my own mind, I find that it is essential that I listen to both sides of an argument. If I just accept one side's 'facts', then I really have no mind of my own and am just repeating someone else's prejudices...

Re: The Guardian?

The best definition of the difference between Right-wing and Left-wing politics that I know states that there are two fundamental competing political aims involved in running a society - freedom and equality.

These aims compete because, given absolute freedom, a society would soon end up with very unequal balances of wealth, opportunity, etc. But if you want to achieve absolute equality between people you will need to remove most of the freedoms they currently have, to force them to be equal according to some pre-defined set of rules.

In reality, of course, few people advocate an extreme of either position. But a right-wing view would hold that, in general, freedom is more important than equality, while a left-wing view would hold the opposite.

This is why a typical left wing approach to the issue of failing newspapers suggests maintaining 'equality' of income by enforcing a tax, while a typical right wing approach would be to point out their 'freedom' to develop new business models, and let them fail if they were unwilling to do so...

Using this definition, the Guardian is certainly left-wing.

Skydiver sets date for 'supersonic' edge-of-space PLUNGE

'Presumably' is 'not necessarily'...

"...he won't be fastest man to plunge through the air: in 1966, an SR-71 "Blackbird" spy plane cracked up at Mach 3, and its pilot, who survived the accident, is presumably the fastest free-faller ever..."

Bill Weaver might be the fastest man traveling through air, or he might not. His aircraft, traveling at Mach 3.18, went out of control and slewed sideways. That will have lost a bit of speed. The aircraft then started to disintegrate under the aerodynamic forces, and broke in half. That will have lost some more speed. At some point the occupants were flung out of the tumbling nose cone and descended on automatic parachutes - one dead, one half conscious. They were not in a state to record the speed at which this took place, and had no working instruments at that point anyway. So they were probably traveling at less than Mach 3, but how much less will never be known...

Space shuttle to slip surly bonds of Earth one last time over California

As opposed to....

"..Any readers puzzled at the British spelling of Endeavour's name may be interested to know that the shuttle was named after the Royal Navy research ship HMS Endeavour, commanded by Captain Cook on his first great voyage of discovery to the Antipodes..."

...the Concorde, which was named after a publicity tiff with the French...

Conflict-of-interest scandal could imperil Wikimedia charity status

Re: Human Nature is what it is

"...When I need a historical overview of key events and timelines Wikipedia is an easy to access source that is sensibly accurate (though I don't imagine anyone using it as an authority if important things are at stake...."

It's not too bad for SOME important things.

What you have to remember is that, because it's openly edited, it's very bad for CONTROVERSIAL things. It's fine when a contributor has no axe to grind. But once they have - watch out!

UK to hold public consultation on social-media troll prosecutions

Ummm.... No

"...Am I still allowed to talk about my buddies hidden desire..."

... you're not. There is already a sort of 'depraved practices' law which defines acceptable sexual practice, as specified by the Home Office.

And the recent finding by judges that even one-to-one conversations count as 'publishing' mean that, if you talk to your buddy about anything not on the HO 'allowed sex' list, you will find yourself on the sexual offenders list, banged up in Broadmoor and provided with free chemical castration by experimental psychiatrists pretty sharpish...

Keep Britain Clean - that's what I say! No punishment is too extreme for these damn preverts...

New monkey species with massive blue arse found in Africa

Re: The challenge for conservation

"..It may be defeatist to assume that most of the interesting animals on this planet are doomed in the near future..."

I don't think it's defeatist. I think it's a myth put about by conservation groups to justify their existence....

New guide: Bake your own Raspberry Pi Lego-crust cluster

Re: Genius..

I can remember when that support would have been made out of Meccano.

And there would have been lots of brass gears....

It's time to burn the schedules and seize control of OUR TVs

Oh, yes?

"...Today's tellies will show us anything - yet viewers are stuck in the 1980s..."

Mine won't. I gave up having a TV a few years ago. It actually gives you time to do things instead....

Eco-nomics: Was Stern 'wrong for the right reasons' ... or just wrong?

Re: Economic predictions

"...The predication that in 2200 everyone will be significantly weathier globally than today must be suspect. Don't forget that it was only a few decades ago that we were told we'd all have so much free time (and be wealthy too) that we would hardly know what to do with it all. Any eceonomic prediction for the next 20 years is highly suspect, and fo rthe next 200 years, clearly pointless..."

Er... but we ARE wealthier than 50 years ago. In fact, humanity has been continually increasing its wealth and living conditions. The poor of 2000 are considerably richer than the poor of 1900, let alone the poor of 1200. At no time in history has this not been true. There are occasional dips, but they never last as long as a decade.

So, on the whole, that seems like a reasonable economic prediction to me...

Re: unreliable evidence

Andrew said: " Bangladesh today is far wealthier than Holland was when it built its dikes,", which, for the purposes of argument, we are taking as 1600.

You said: "...it wasn’t until 1993 that India’s per capita income of $1,399 surpassed what the Dutch had achieved in 1600". It is odd to use percapita income rather than GNP, since GNP is what we need for big infrastructure products, but let's stick with it, and assume that $1,399 per head is the required figure. I assume that all these figures you are using are corrected for inflation, otherwise this whole calculation is rather pointless....

Currently Bangladesh's GDP per capita in 2011 is around $1,693 (the CIA Factbook actually indicates $1727), but this ignores the massive amounts of aid that Bangladesh receives. Add that in, and percapita income goes up to $2127. Which is around 50% more than our required figure, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to say that they are 'far wealthier'.

Of course, in reality, percapita income is the wrong figure if you want to work out how much money a country has to spend on big infrastructure projects. The Dutch population in 1600 was 1.5m, making our estimated 'required wealth figure' for building dikes around $2bn. Bangladesh has a total income, GDP + Aid, of $350bn. 2 vs 350 - I would say that that certainly counts as 'far wealthier'.....

Everyone knew at the time...

...that the Stern Report was a lie. It was just an activist excuse for rich greens to force through the series of subsidies, paid for by taxes, which we have now and which have made them immeasurably richer. When the report was published all the economists either slated it as rubbish, or kept dead quiet (if their grants depended on greenery). The only people who welcomed it were politicians and journalists.

The 'science' behind Global Warming is of a similar level of credibility, but, now that the taxes and the planned collapse of our infrastructure are in place, that's really quite irrelevant. We're stuffed, and when the lights start to go out we'd better learn to bend over and enjoy it...

Auditor: You know what Scotland needs? Proper IT experts

"..Audit Scotland is calling on the Scottish government to consider providing a central resource of specialised ICT expertise and advice for public bodies..."

That would be CCTA, then - the government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, staffed by civil servants, which successfully ushered in the first government computer projects way back in the 1980s.

Oh, wait - the government closed that down around 2000, because all their consultancy was going to be obtained much cheaper through the private sector. And just as independently....

Chickens coming home to roost...

You'll be on a list 3 hrs after you start downloading from pirates - study

Presumably....

... this will be a boost for TOR...?

'Picture of Dorian Gray' borrowed in 1934 is finally returned

Re: does that mean

..but did he write a poem about it...?

Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin

Not the kind of spec that I like to code to...

"...At home, we have to limit our proximity to her to no more than one metre for nine days.."

Surely 'not LESS' ?

Mistakes like these may have unfortunate results. See the Hubble Telescope....

Ten 15in notebooks for under 400 quid

Ten 15in notebooks for under 400 quid?

That would be an average of £40 each, then?

Arctic ice shrinks to ‘smallest in satellite era’ - NASA

A modest query...

"...Discussing the data, Joey Comiso at Goddard says the Arctice temperatures this summer are cooler than when the 2007 record was set..."

Umm.

The variation in Arctic ice is often taken as a proxy for 'Global Warming'. The belief is that increases in CO2 concentration increase the air temperature by various mechanisms.

If Arctic ice is shrinking, but the air temperature is actually cooler, this indicates that whatever is causing the ice extent to shrink, it's not air temperature, and hence CO2 concentration. My understanding is that sea ice, like that in the Arctic, is influenced strongly by warm ocean currents and storm winds packing it into a smaller area.

China could penetrate US with new huge missile

Re: 21st century warfare

ZeroHedge reckons that, if push comes to shove in the current Israel/Iran face-off:

1 - The US will provide aggressive military support to Israel

2 - The Russians will provide defensive military support to Iran

3 - China will flex its financial muscles, and dump US Treasury Bonds - thus collapsing the US economy...

There seems to be a lot of argument...

...here about whether or not the US can effectively down a MIRVed ICBM attack.

Unfortunately, most Reg readers do not have access to the latest intelligence regarding US capabilities in this regard. I wonder who has..Aha, that's right! The Russians and the Chinese.

You would think that, before spending a lot of money on developing an ICBM, the Chinese would have done a study on how effective it would be against US defences, wouldn't you?

Of course, we don't know if the Chinese are REALLY developing a missile, or just saying that they are. But if they are, you can be sure that they will have studied the opposition, and decided that building a missile is a worthwhile spend of their money...

Ice core shows Antarctic Peninsula warming is nothing unusual

A very important point!!!

Was the press release peer-reviewed?

If not, why is anyone listening to it?

Curiosity's laser turns Mars rocks to 'glowing plasma'

We have had to destroy this rock..

...in order to save it....

Go Curiosity!. Make the Solar System safe for American values, and destroy the commie insurgent rocks!

NASA picks the target for Curiosity's first road trip

Re: lazy reporting

Um... if you put a sheep in a vacuum, pretty soon it won't have any speed at all...