Tag Archives: Great Green Con

Arctic Basin Big Wave Surfing Contest Equipment Evaluation 3

Surf, , , , , ,

It’s been a long wait for the first ever Great White Con Arctic Basin Big Wave (Fantasy?) Surfing Contest to remove the ‘F’ from the overlong acronym. However currently the omens are bad for the sea ice in the Arctic Basin, which is sadly good for the GWCABBWSC. As we announced yesterday, there is already plenty of open water in the Chukchi Sea north of the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska:

Sentinel 3's view of the Bering Strait on February 28th 2019
Sentinel 3’s view of the Bering Strait on February 28th 2019

All of which means that today we are extremely unhappy to be able to announce that the waiting period for the Great White Con Arctic Basin Big Wave Surfing Contest 2019 began on March 1st.

Earlier this week I posed a little conundrum over on Twitter. Here it is:

Nobody has called the Great White Con Ivory Towers hotline with the correct answer as yet, so today we can also reveal that the third in our series of Arctic Basin equipment evaluations took place last Wednesday on the outskirts of Newquay in North Cornwall. Here’s a slightly less obscure clue for the pub quiz fanatics amongst you:

As you can see from my neoprene encased image on Twitter, I was perhaps slightly over dressed for the weather conditions last week. I was wearing a C-Skins thermal rash vest with integrated hood inside my ancient Gul 5/4/3 winter wetsuit plus Tiki 6 mm socks and 2 mm webbed gloves. Even my fingers were more than warm enough on the day, although it’s fair to say that conditions weren’t typical for late summer in the Arctic Basin! What’s more they weren’t even typical for Newquay, since the weather on Wednesday was the tail end of a “heat wave” involving the highest February temperatures in England since the Met Office’s records began:

What with one thing and another warming wise we’re confidently(ish) anticipating that the Great White Con big wave surf team will be searching the shores of the Arctic Basin on their electric powered jetskis for potential big wave spots by early September 2019. Unfortunately the opposing “Great Green Con” team haven’t worked out how to drive a jetski yet, but hopefully we can resolve that minor problem before the Arctic refreeze begins once again?

Regular readers who also follow the surfing news may recall that Great White Con team leader Andrew Cotton broke his back during his award winning wipeout at Nazaré in Portugal back in November 2017?

I spoke to Cotty yesterday and he assured me that his back was already healed sufficiently to take on the biggest waves the Arctic might care to offer over the coming months. However the same doesn’t yet apply to his more recent knee injury:

He expects to be fully fit by the end of the Northern Hemisphere summer, but failing that Cotty’s team partner Garrett McNamara has also successfully returned from injury recently, and hasn’t yet hurt anything else!

By the end of the long contest waiting period we will also have selected the lucky winner of our 2019 “New Einstein” competition who will be able to enjoy being fitted with one of our custom polar bear suits before partnering with “Great Green Con” team leader David Rose. Here’s our artist’s impression of a forthcoming GGC team equipment evaluation session on the next big swell to hit Nazaré:

With apologies to Pedro Miranda, Andrew Cotton and polar bears worldwide.

Watch this space!

The Science of the David Rose “Climate of Hate” Self-Interview

Temperature, , , , , , , , , ,

Much like yesterday I was idly browsing my Twitter feed this morning whilst simultaneously consuming my habitual Sunday coffee + BLT when news reached me that David Rose had published yet another article in the Mail on Sunday that purports to investigate “climate science”:


 

Here it is:

“Climate of Hate: His children are urged to kill him, he’s compared to Adolf Hitler and labelled a ‘denier’ – even though he’s Jewish. Disturbing article reveals what happens if you dare to doubt the Green prophets of doom”

Perhaps due to all our sterling work here at the Great White Con extracting the Michael, it doesn’t seem to fall under the Mail’s “Great Green Con” banner anymore. The general drift is the same though, apart from that lurid title of course!

I think current ‘renewable’ sources such as wind and ‘biomass’ are ruinously expensive and totally futile. They will never be able to achieve their stated goal of slowing the rate of warming and are not worth the billions being paid by UK consumers to subsidise them.

Skipping over all the (merely rhetorical?) self-pity, let’s move on to the climate science, such as it is!

Last Monday… a Met Office press release stated: ‘2014 one of the warmest years on record globally’.

The previous week, almost every broadcaster and newspaper in the world had screamed that 2014 was emphatically The Hottest Year Ever. They did so because NASA told them so. Its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the custodian of one of the main American temperature datasets, had announced: ‘The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880.’ If you’d bothered to click on the sixth of a series of internet links listed at the end of the press release, you could have found deep within it the startling fact that GISS was only ’38 per confident’ that 2014 really did set a record.

In other words, it was 62 per cent confident that it wasn’t. Another detail was that the ‘record’ was set by just two hundredths of a degree. The margin of error was five times bigger. These boring details were ignored. The ‘2014 was a record’ claim went to the very top. President Obama cited it in his State of the Union address. Like the news outlets, it’s unlikely he will issue a correction or clarification any time soon.

Al Gore repeatedly suggested that the Arctic would likely be ice-free in summer by 2014. In fact Arctic ice has recovered in the past two years, and while the long term trend is down, it looks likely to last several more decades.

Unfortunately that is misleading and/or inaccurate, apart from the bit about the long term trend in Arctic sea ice. Hence I’ve just popped yet another Dear John (and Poppy) virtual letter to Mr. Rose’s managing editor (+PA) at the Mail on Sunday, and I’ll have yet another long chat with IPSO tomorrow:

Us:

Dear John/Poppy,

Would you believe that David Rose is at it again? Not only is he “interviewing” himself in your esteemed organ today, he is misrepresenting the underlying science yet again.

I really must insist that whoever owns the desk on which the buck currently stops for the following article starts communicating with me yesterday if not sooner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2934540/What-happens-dare-doubt-Green-prophets-doom.html

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt
 

Them:

I am away from the office until Tuesday, February 10. I will be checking emails occasionally but if your message is urgent, please contact my assistant Poppy Swann.

Ultimately followed by:

Dear Jim

If you have a complaint about last Sunday’s article, you should set out exactly what it is. If you disagree with any opinions expressed you are welcome to write a letter that we will consider for publication.

You mention that you have sent us a number of inquiries recently. The only other, to my knowledge is that you wanted to know the source of some data that David Rose mentioned in an article some months ago. David Rose told me it came from the official website. Perhaps my colleague Poppy Hall can find it for you since David is probably unwilling to help after your insult.

Best regards

John

 

Us:

Dear Poppy (and John)

Please would you ask David to let me know where exactly, and on which “official website”, he obtained the DMI extent numbers he quoted in his article last Summer?

FYI John, at Poppy’s suggestion I have also emailed the editorial team @MailOnline. They have yet to even acknowledge receipt of my email of January 26th.

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

A Few Players Short of a Great Green Con Surf Team

Satire, , , , , , , , , ,

Shock News! Over in the denialosphere at the (un)Real Science blog I’ve been challenged to yet another Arctic sea ice bet. This one now seems to be signed and sealed, but will probably have to wait a few years before it is delivered:

Them:

Have you come up with the terms of our bet yet? I have yet to find one single alarmist willing to bet their house on an ice free Arctic at any time over the next 20 years, I may have to extend to 30 years, though the amount of cigarettes I smoke, I doubt I will be around that long.

Us:

Having personally discussed the matter with Rear Admiral Jon White:

http://econnexus.org/the-economist-being-economical-with-the-truth-about-climate-change/

and having since publicly stated that I’m more pessimistic than him, how about $1000 in favour of ShelterBox on CT area < 1 mio square kilometers by the summer of 2022 at the latest?

Them:

$1000 on CT area being less than 1 million square kilometres at some point between now and 2022 sounds fine to me, we have a bet. Remember, this is where to send your $1000

http://www.chas.org.uk/how_we_help_families/our_hospices/rachel_house

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to find someone, anyone, willing to don a polar bear suit and then stand up on a surf board. I have yet to find one single “skeptic” willing to accept my challenge to become part of the “Great Green Con” Arctic surf team.  First in line for an invitation was “Steve Goddard” (AKA Tony Heller):

Them:

Within a week, a cyclone will be spreading Arctic sea ice, and extent will flat line or increase.

Us:

I’m following that cyclone with much interest too Tony! What’s your Arctic surf forecast?

https://greatWhiteCon.info/2014/08/the-arctic-surf-forecast-for-late-august-2014/

Do you fancy joining the GGC team?

Them:

[Abject silence]

Meanwhile over on Twitter Matt Ridley has been having a “debate” with Bob Ward about Bob’s latest article in the New Statesman:

Us:

 

Them:

[Abject silence]

Whilst we wait for a “skeptic” willing to stop doing a chicken impression and start impersonating a polar bear to reveal themself, how is the surf in the Chukchi Sea coming along?  There are already some signs of a building swell to be seen. The US icebreaker USCGC Healy is currently bobbing about on a modest swell off Barrow:

Healy-20140822-1801_595

Whilst onshore a modest wave can currently be seen breaking on Barrow beach:

ABCam_20140822_1137

Here’s what that swell looks like on the WaveWatch III nowcast:

alaska.hs.h000h-20140822Meanwhile the cyclone brewing in the Arctic is now forecast to have a central pressure below 990 mb next week, by GFS at least:

gfsnh-0-114-20140822

We’ll keep you posted!

The Arctic Surf Forecast For Late August 2014

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Regular readers adept at reading between lines may already have concluded that here in the Great White Con Ivory Towers we have been surreptitiously organising the world’s first ever Arctic Basin Big Wave Fantasy Surfing Contest (or GWCABBWFSC for short). Today we are proud to announce that the long waiting period may now be almost over!

Here is the long range Arctic weather forecast from GFS 192 hours from now (courtesy of MeteoCiel):

gfsnh-0-192-20140819

and here is the ECMWF equivalent:

ECH1-192-20140819

There looks to be a certain amount of agreement there, so now let’s take a look at ECMWF for T+240h:

ECH1-240-20140819

If the forecast pans out (a very big IF this far out!) there’s an Arctic storm brewing with the isobars packed tight over all the open water in the Laptev Sea, pushing the potential swell through the East Siberian Sea and on into the Beaufort Sea before it crashes against the northernmost shores of North America.

We fondly imagine a Great White Con team containing the likes of Andrew Cotton:

Garrett McNamara:

and Maya Gabeira:

taking on the biggest waves ever recorded on camera off Alaska’s North Slope, each clad in their respective sponsors’ thickest, finest neoprene.

The opposing “Great Green Con” team will be composed of volunteers from amongst the serried ranks of fiddlers with the facts on Fleet Street such as Andrew Neil, David Rose and Christopher Booker, all clad in matching Polar Bear suits to keep the cold Arctic waters at bay:

SurfBearTo coin a phrase oft used in this particular portion of the blogosphere:

We’ll keep you posted!

Mail Online Moderation Policy

Satire, ,

Over recent months I have made a wide variety of comments on some of David Rose’s articles published on The Mail Online. Around half of them never saw the light of day.

Here is some recent correspondence about this controversial issue:

Them:

Thank you for your email, and my apologies for the delay in the reply. I have looked into your account to see why your comments are not being published. Out of the 12 comments that you have submitted six have been published. The other comments were not published because they contain a URL to an external website/ blog, which breaks our house rules.

Rule 9: No linking or copyright infringement – You must not insert links to websites (URLs) or submit content which would be an infringement of copyright.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/house_rules.html

I hope that this answers your question on the publication of your comments. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me directly and I will be able to help you.

Regards

Me:

Thanks for your admittedly belated reply.

Please explain to me how linking to an article I myself wrote is in any way an infringement of anyone’s copyright.

Please also explain to me how a comment of mine that contained no links somehow never managed to make it out of your moderation queue.

http://econnexus.org/the-strange-tale-of-the-mail-and-the-snow-dragon/

Thanks in advance.

Them:

Thanks for your email. The house rules state that you must not insert any links, of any sort. The reason that your other comment was rejected was because it was directing our readers to your website, albeit by not adding the link, but still advertising your website by trying to get round our filters.

I hope this answers your questions.

Regards

Me:

Thanks for that additional information, but it doesn’t answer all my questions. In fact it raises some more.

“The house rules state that you must not insert any links, of any sort”

In that case I suggest you clarify your house rules. Your rule 9 currently states that:

“You must not insert links to websites (URLs) or submit content which would be an infringement of copyright.”

Which reads to me like “You must not insert links to websites which would be an infringement of copyright.” Maybe an extra comma would be sufficient?

“The reason that your other comment was rejected was because it was directing our readers to your website, albeit by not adding the link, but still advertising your website by trying to get round our filters.”

Your rule 7 states that:

“You must not use our Site for the promotion of any products or services or for any other commercial purpose”

As the URL suggests, econnexus.org is not for profit and has no commercial purpose. It does indirectly “advertise” the likes of charities such as ShelterBox however. Your house rules don’t forbid people from searching the web for further information on the topic(s) of an article do they? I can therefore see no reason why my comment on David Rose’s “Great Green Con #1” was in violation of your house rules. As I explained in my associated blog post, I was in fact endeavouring to find a way to bring to the attention of your readers the content of this URL

http://portal.inter-map.com/#mapID=49&groupID=297&z=1.0&up=-310610.7&left=2001105.4

which seemed to me to be perfectly fair comment on David Rose’s article. It’s not possible to post images in comments on The Mail Online either is it? How do you suggest I go about putting such relevant information in front of your readers in future, short of building my own authoritative web site full of relevant images on a controversial topic and then contacting the Press Complaints Commission about it?

GreatWhiteCon.info is also not for profit, and carries no advertising of any sort, direct or indirect. Since it seems a direct link is forbidden by your ambiguously worded house rules, how about the phrase “Great White Con dot info” in a comment on The Mail Online for example? For your information the following comment of mine on there doesn’t seem to have fallen foul of your eagle eyed moderators yet, and has even received a certain amount of approbation from your loyal readership:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html?offset=0&max=100#comment-37694863

Can I take it that using that form of words is acceptable to The Mail? I would appreciate a prompt response, since based on past performance I anticipate that you will be closing the comments section below David Rose’s most recent “economical” article in the near future.

Best wishes

Them:

Thanks for your email. I have no suggestions as to how you can get our readers to your site. I can advise you also that your comment:

“Whatever the David and Judy show may proclaim today, the facts of the matter are that the increase in Arctic sea ice extent compared to “this time last year” was just HALF of what David Rose said in The Mail on Sunday this time last week. For more information please visit:

Great White Con dot Info”

Was rejected and is not live on our site, so no, in answer to your question, it is not possible to try and get around advertising by writing a link out in words.

There isn’t really much more that I can add to what I have already said. I do hope that if nothing else, I have been able to give you some clarity on why your comments have been rejected.

Regards

Me:

I’m still confused I’m afraid. Just to try and clarify matters, something along the lines of:

“For more info try googling: david rose economical with the truth”

is OK with the Mail’s moderators, but:

“For more information please visit: Great White Con dot Info”

is not, even though GreatWhiteCon.info is an authority about the topic under discussion, and is in no way commercial? Have I got that straight now?

Best wishes

Them:

I would allow neither of those comments.

Regards

Me:

But why not? As far as I can see neither of them contradict the letter of your house rules, and both conform to both the letter and spirit of your rule 1, which states:

“We welcome your opinions. We want our readers to see and understand different points of view. Try to contribute to the thread, rather than just stating if you agree or disagree…. Please explain why you hold your opinion.”

Best wishes

Them:

What you are asking our readers to do is to go to your  website which essentially calls our journalist a “liar”. If you want readership for your website I can only suggest thinking up other ways of getting it.

Regards

Me:

You totally fail to understand the point I am attempting to make. After less than a week GreatWhiteCon.info already has a considerable readership. Check out the comments.

The point is that none of them (or certainly very few) found out about it via the Mail Online, despite your rule 1.

Best wishes

Them:

I have received no further reply. I can only assume that comments must now be closed on this topic.

Hello, Good Evening and Welcome!

Satire, , , , ,

David Frost died last week . So it goes.

According to the BBC:

Politicians regularly complained to BBC management that they were being ridiculed by David Frost and his team. But the programme gained a massive following and soon achieved cult status.

We hope to achieve something similar!

By way of brief introduction, the name of our humble organ is an ironic play on the title of David Rose’s series of “Great Green Con” articles in The Mail on Sunday.