Tag Archives: Twitter

Shock News! Alice F. Convicted in WUWT Show Trial!!

Satire, , , , , ,

Regular readers will be aware that Snow White and I have long been banished from the hallowed halls of Watts Up With That. What is one to do, then, when Anthony Watts publishes these scurrilous allegations about one’s character by the pseudonymous “Sunsettommy” under an article by David Middleton on a topic under much discussion here?

Your ice obsession is destroying you and Jim Hunt,who was exposed as a dishonest person over his absurd cherry picking of a small area while Tony was covering the ENTIRE Arctic region. Tony just today exposed Hunts dishonesty, by showing that his small Canadian region is actually thicker than last year.

The two of you are gaining a stellar reputation as wild eyed warmist morons,who will lie or distort the topic presented, Tony has effectively destroyed your low Arctic ice baloney, to the point that you now get derision there, since your replies are free of any science information,meaning you have no effective counterpoint to offer,just brainless opinions, nothing more.

With the usual channels of communication solidly blocked our very good friend Alice F. helpfully leapt into the breach:

SST – It seems as though you’ve been unable to confirm Aphan’s conjecture with evidence of an accurate prediction [from Tony Heller]? Meanwhile your aforementioned “Mr. Hunt” posted this “data based presentation” earlier:

SMOSvOSI-20170315

“You don’t even need to be familiar with the satellite products to understand that the sea ice edge to the north of the Barents Sea doesn’t currently consist of multi-year ice.”

Any comment?

Much witty banter about Arctic sea ice maps and metrics ensued! Here is one of the more inventive comments, from the pseudonymous “2hotel9”:

Every time leftarded c*nts like you get caught being leftarded c*nts all you do is cry. Wahwahwahwahwahwahwah. Too f*cking funny.

That sort of thing apparently does not violate any of the carefully crafted house rules at WUWT, whereas this comment of Alice’s does:

WUWT-AliceUnmasked

Unabashed by her love letter being so swiftly trampled underfoot on the WUWT cutting room floor Alice valiantly pursued the matter with Anthony on Twitter, where in his habitual fashion he gleefully unfrocked her in public view of the whole of cyberspace:

 

[Edit – March 29th]

Anthony Watts has finally [snip]ped the four letter words uttered by “2hotel9”.

However there’s still no sign of him allowing yours truly a right of reply to SST’s libellous attacks upon my unblemished (outside the cryodenialosphere) character:

Watch this space!

Alternative Facts About the Arctic in 2017

Thickness, , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday I found myself in conversation with Nigel and “Steve” on Twitter about NOAA’s recent report on Arctic temperatures and the seemingly unrelated topic of Russian icebreakers. Apparently Nigel has been perusing “Steve’s” recent railing against NOAA’s “Red Hot Arctic” in 2016 on his “Deplorable Client Science” blog. Here’s how my conversation with Nigel went:

 

It appears that Nigel believes that an image like this:

JohannMahmastal

is far more relevant than an image like this:

SMOS-20170201

when it comes to determining the thickness of “the ice up in the north of Russia”!

Then of course there was my “conversation” with “Steve” after he butted in on my “debate” with Nigel. It went like this:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826924807124025345

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826926389152583682

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826930170439274501

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826937934171480064

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826940688734494721

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/826944199840903169

Followed the next morning by:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/827120539764457472

Just like Nigel, “Steve” still hasn’t got around to commenting on my map of Arctic sea thickness or explaining the significance of 2 Russian icebreakers NOT stuck in the East Siberian Sea.

[Edit – February 3rd 2017]

Some more pertinent facts, courtesy of CryoSat-2:

Cryosat_ESS_20170131

I’ve just submitted this article to a brand new learned journal. The Journal of Alternative Facts:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/827458574515318784

According to their article guidelines self references are highly desirable, so I figured I should add some.

 

[Edit – February 4th 2017]

Nigel still refuses to provide any more “evidence” about the Russian icebreakers allegedly “stuck in ice”, whilst “Steve” continues to ignore me:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/827807996331843584

The Journal of Alternative Facts article guidelines insist on peer review by politicians, so I’ve invited a few local, national and international politicians to comment on my draft paper:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/827823720609746944

 

[Edit – References]

White, S. (2016a) – The 11th Key Science Moment of 2016

White, S. (2016b) – Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

White, S. (2015) – Why It’s So Hard to Convince Pseudo-Skeptics

Please feel free to add your peer reviews in the space provided for that purpose below.

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

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“Post-truth” is the the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016. The definition reads as follows:

post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

and according to Oxford Dictionaries:

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.

Our old friend David Rose has been remarkably quiet on the topic of Arctic sea ice recently. Presumably the objective facts from the Arctic are impossible to spin to his satisfaction even for a man of David’s talents? However that didn’t stop him from penning an article for The Mail on Sunday at the end of November on the topic of the recent “record highs in global temperatures“:

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end. The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Niño – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.

MoS2 Template Master

The Mail article helpfully included this one year old video from the World Meteorological Organization, explaining the basics of the El Niño phenomenon:

According to the commentary:

This phenomenon affects weather conditions across the equatorial Pacific, with potential knock on effects in other parts of the world.

We’ll get on to the “potential knock on effects” in the Arctic eventually, but let’s start with a snippet of Mr. Rose’s “post-truth politics”:

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Last year, Dr Schmidt said 2015 would have been a record hot year even without El Nino. ‘The reason why this is such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth,’ he said. This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.

Other experts have also disputed Dr Schmidt’s claims. Professor Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said yesterday: ‘I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.’ The slowdown in warming was, she added, real, and all the evidence suggested that since 1998, the rate of global warming has been much slower than predicted by computer models – about 1C per century.

David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back. ‘According to the satellites, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino. The data clearly shows El Nino for what it was – a short-term weather event,’ he said.

In case you’re wondering where the politics is in all of this, you need look no further than here:

The Twitter account of the United States’ House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology quotes a Breitbart article by another old friend of ours, James Delingpole, which quotes David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday:

The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare. Thanks [sic] what’s now recognised as an unusually strong El Nino, global temperatures were driven to sufficiently high levels to revive the alarmist narrative – after an unhelpful pause period of nearly 20 years – that the world had got hotter than ever before.

In case you’re also wondering about the objective facts of the matter David Rose quotes with approval “the authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record” in his latest article in the Mail on Sunday this very morning:

New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.

The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.

The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.

There were claims – now exploded by the Met Office data shown here – that our report was ‘misleading’ and ‘cherry-picked’.

Yet bizarrely, the fiercest criticism was reserved for claims we never made – that there isn’t a long-term warming trend, mainly caused by human emissions.

This just wasn’t in our report – which presumably, critics hadn’t even read.

We’ve explained all this to David before, yet bizzarely we obviously need to do so again. Here’s the Mail’s version of the latest HADCRUT 4 data from the Met Office:

hadcrut-mail-20161211

and here’s ours:

hadcrut-wft-20161211

Can you spot any “cumulative effects of man-made global warming”?

Messrs Smith, Rose, Delingpole, Whitehouse et al. may well be unaware of the fact that the satellite temperature data they’re so fond of cherry picking doesn’t include data from the lower troposphere between 80 degrees North and the North Pole. Just in case they fancy spinning the latest objective facts from the Arctic in the near future, here’s the long term autumnal temperature trend:

80n-son-20161211

and here’s the long term November Arctic sea ice extent trend:

monthly_ice_11_nh

Gross Deception About DMI’s “Missing Graph”

Satire, , , , , , ,

For reasons that will take too long to explain just at the moment I answered a question asked by Ron Clutz over at Paul Homewood’s “Not A Lot Of People Know That” blog. Having done that I had a quick look round and discovered that unlike most of his “skeptical” friends Paul is writing almost as many posts per day about sea ice as I am! Needless to say he’s raking over the coals of his “Gross Deception” article from last year.

Yesterday he published another article on the topic of Arctic sea ice, entitled “DMI’s Missing Graph“, in which he claims:

For the last few months, there has been a widening divergence between the two Arctic sea ice extent graphs produced by DMI…

Now there may be good reasons for this difference, and it must be pointed out that DMI has never stated that there is any problem with the 30% version, or reason to doubt it…

But the real problem is that DMI has now withdrawn their 30% graph, offering this explanation:

“I have removed the old sea ice extent graphics and the new graphics (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.php) is now our one and only official sea ice extent.

When I introduced the new graphics I also announced that the old graphics would be removed after some time – and now is the time, sorry.

I spend too much time explaining the differences and it was quite confusing for many – so, I decided to remove the old graphics. However, all the data are available here http://osisaf.met.no/p/ if you would like do the plotting your selves.”

The real problem would instead seem to be that Paul Homewood cannot read, and DMI have in fact been offering a good reason to anyone with eyes to see for many months. We explained all this only the other day, but nonetheless here is an example of the DMI’s 15% threshold extent graph from earlier this year, carefully preserved for posterity in a secure archive deep in the ice shelf underneath the Great White Con Ivory Towers:

DMI-15-2016-01-04

For those poor souls amongst us currently afflicted by acute snow blindness it says in bright red lettering, amongst other things:

The plot above replaces an earlier sea ice extent plot… The old plot can still be viewed here for a while.

For the moment at least the last word on the matter must come from the Danish Meteorological Institute, who report via the @PolarPortal on Twitter that:

[Edit – February 21st 2016 at 21:30 UTC]

The gross deception increases! Not a lot of people know that all my comments on Paul Homewood’s blog are now hidden from view, on the pretext that I’m a troll. Paul really must be blind if he thinks Snow White resembles a troll in any way shape or form. Here’s what some trolls actually look like:

KBT-Climate-Trolls

The thread about DMI’s deprecated graph has degenerated into a free for all about MASIE, when there’s already a thread over there for the discussion of that thorny topic. More on MASIE in due course, but let’s try and stick with DMI extent here. Unlike Paul Homewood and Ron Clutz, who no doubt welcome the distraction!

Them:

Jaime – With regard to the apparent ‘conundrum’ regarding the significant increase in 30% SIE and the lack of increase 15% SIE. It seems to me – and correct me if my logic is faulty – that the ‘at least 30% concentration’ increase tells us that the area of more consolidated ice has increased relative to previous years. The ‘at least 15% concentration’ lack of increase (or decrease) tells us that the less consolidated ice edge area has not increased significantly compared to previous years and may even be declining.

 

Us:

What “at least 30% concentration increase” would that be then Jaime?

[This is currently visible – mod]

 

Them:

Pethefin – “at least 30 % concentration” = minimum 30 % concentration = ice coverage with concentration equal to or higher than 30 %. Anyone with the slightest ability to think for themselves would be able to figure it out. Trolls however…

 

Us:

2016-02-21_1522-NALOPKT
[This is currently invisible – mod]

 

Them:

Jaime – Jim, that increase shown in comparison with earlier years by the discontinued DMI graph shown above, starting in September and culminating with the large difference notable right up to mid February.

 

Us:

2016-02-21_1735-NALOPKT
[This is currently invisible too – mod]

I’m sure you get the general idea by now. All of which means that not a lot of people know that if you were to follow the sound advice that DMI gave Paul Homewood and “do the plotting yourself” using the open source software and support made freely available on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum you would discover that (surprise, surprise!) 30% threshold Arctic sea ice extent on February 20th 2016 was significantly less than on the same date in 2015.

 

[Edit – February 21st 2016 at 22:30 UTC]

And here’s the coup de grace. Before and after the wielding of the NALOPKT red pencil:

 

Before:

2016-02-21_1811-NALOPKT

 

After:

[SNIP]

Jim

I have already warned you.

You have already posted eight comments on just one article, none of which had the slightest relevance to the original post, not to mention several more.

All you have done is disrupted the comment thread. I am aware that you have attempted to do exactly the same on other blogs. I am not prepared to allow you to do the same here.

If you want an argument, I suggest you decamp to Disqus, or better still go and argue with yourself on that pathetic little blog of yours, which very few people appear to read.

You are on your final chance. If you have any relevant comments to make, they will be welcome. But any more trolling, and you will be banned.

BTW – If you want to slag me off on your own rarely visited site, as you have before, perhaps you might at least have the decency to tell the truth

Paul

2016-02-21_2226-NALOPKT

 

[Edit – February 22nd 2016 at 10:00 UTC]

You will note from the comments below that Lawrence Martin has also now fallen foul of the “Not A Lot Of People Know That” censor red pencil. Next in line looks like it will be Neven Acropolis from the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, who is currently still permitted to valiantly fight the good fight:

Neven:

I’m not interested in why the DMI replaced their 30% SIE graph with a 15% SIE graph, because a switch from 30% to 15% isn’t all that exciting. Perhaps it is for someone who doesn’t understand the difference, but it isn’t for me.

And it’s not like they did it all of a sudden. The graph was replaced months ago, with the announcement that the old graph would be discontinued at some point.

I’m also not interested in why the graph was in error. What’s interesting about that? Why would I want DMI people who have lots of different stuff to do, to spend time and money on something that bears no relevance to anything, except to some guy who thinks it’s a all big conspiracy?

 

Them:

Notice how Neven The Gullible avoids answering or commenting any of these questions.

 

Us:
2016-02-22_0920-NALOPKT[This is also currently invisible – mod] 

 

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

The Great White Con 2016 “New Einstein” Award

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Our regular reader(s) will be already be all too familiar with the 2015 edition of our annual Great White Con 2016 “New Einstein” Award. The jury has now finished its deliberations in a smoke filled igloo just outside the Great White Con Ivory Towers. I am pleased to be able to announce that the first prize of the loan of a polar bear suit kindly donated by the Daily Telegraph plus a battered big board from Cotty’s quiver has been awarded to none other than Gail Combs with her:

Jim, How does it feel to be morally responsible for the deaths of thousands of people a year?

SurfBear

I’m not quite sure how we’ll get the good news to Gail in time for her to take part in the 2016 Great White Con Arctic Basin Big Wave (Fantasy?) Surfing Competition, since she abused us in her capacity as a regular commenter on “Steve Goddard’s” (un)RealScience blog, where imparting such messages is most certainly a non trivial task. Watch this space!

2016-02-13_1230-Goddard

You will no doubt be overjoyed to learn that we already have a couple of several candidates in the running for our 2016 award, the first of which is in similar vein to Gail’s winning 2015 entry. Here they are:

1) Gary P Jackson, who claims in his Twitter profile to be a “Texan, Palinista, Conservative Activist, DragRacer Editor & Publisher”, with:

2) Anthony Watts, who is the proprietor of what he claims is “The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”, has of course already “blocked” the message he doesn’t care to hear:

2016-02-27_0904-WUWTwit

Without offering a single shred of evidence for his baseless assertions Anthony had this to say on the “Climate Etc.” blog of Professor Judith Curry:

You two guys are quite the pieces of work. You both operate under multiple identities. Jim Hunt has three I have been able to identify, Lawrence Martin/Martinez has two.

Both of you post off topic or disrupt threads with the sort of unsubstantiated nonsense you post above, and both demand to have these off topic comments heard and then play the “look Watts is censoring me!” game when your comments don’t meet our site comment policy and/or are abusive in nature.

Case in point- here you are making abusive off-topic comments on Dr. Curry’s site.

Plain and simple, if you comment under different identities, post off topic and/or thread disruptive comments you don’t get to participate. Mr. Hunt was warned months ago, yet he still persists in trying to get comments through under other identities such as V2G.

3) Chris Comber, who claims to be a “Mac User, ebay addict, Re-enactor & Designer” and who has of course already “blocked” the message (s)he doesn’t care to hear:

2016-02-13_1230-Comber

Chris is apparently keen on the #Brexit concept, and (s)he blasted out an extended sequence of (comparatively!) mild ad homs culminating in:

4) CatWeazle666, who is an expert emitter of ad hominem attacks on the blog of “Steve Goddard” and it now becomes apparent also on the blog of Roger Helmer MEP, the United Kingdom Independence Party’s spokesman on Energy & Industry. CatWeazle’s entry is a stream of invective which eventually culminated (for the moment at least) in:

2016-02-16_1125-CatWeazle

As you can see, there was no way I was going to take that lying down, and I in all the circumstances I felt compelled to bring the attention of Mr. Helmer and his merry minions to this link:

http://econnexus.org.uk/how-to-upset-a-global-warming-sceptic/

where many moons ago there appeared a well documented account of how “Steve Goddard” really is “the dumbest man on the internet” when it comes to analysing Arctic sea ice. Either that or he does have some idea of what he’s talking about but is nonetheless more than content to pull the wool over the eyes of his very own band of merry minions.

P.S. In response to my request for considered comment concerning 3 million deaths per annum due to outdoor air pollution CatWeazle666’s reply was:

What a sad little troll you are, Jim.

5) Ben Pile, whose Twitter profile tells us that he is a “Researcher, writer, blogger. Sceptical of environmentalism, environmental policy and the fashion for ‘evidence-based policy’. For science, against scientism”. Inevitably Ben is yet another “blocker” of scientific messages he doesn’t care to hear:

2016-03-12_1417-BenBan

Ben evidently has a high opinion of himself, and thinks he knows more about climate science than IPCC lead author Professor Richard Betts:

He concluded his avalanche of ad homs aimed at yours truly with yet another undeleted expletive:

Unfortunately Ben then departed without offering me a series of swift apologies for his barrage of abuse:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/708361665734156288

6) Gator69, who is yet another expert emitter of ad homs on the blog of Tony Heller (AKA “Steve Goddard”).

Over at (un)Real Climate Science I humbly suggested under an article alleging “More Arctic Fraud From Mark Serreze And NSIDC” that it is difficult to prove that Amundsen “could have gone through [the Northwest Passage] in a few weeks”. Gator’s response?

Jim “could have” helped save 21,000 innocent humans yesterday, but he didn’t did he?

Jim thinks that snuffing out 21,000 innocent humans every day for his agenda is ethical and laudable.

“Could have” is an interesting phrase. How do you intend to justify this genocide Jim?

Please feel free to provide feedback to our 2016 jury in the space provided below.

Global Sea Ice Area at Lowest *Ever Level

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Regular readers will recall that we recently announced this “Shock News!” in a comment below our “Arctic Sea Ice Area and Extent Lowest ^Ever” article. Here is the graphic evidence again:

CT-Global-2016-02-08

 

And here is a story about what it takes to convince a “climate change skeptic” about the crysopheric facts of life:

 

There’s more on this sorry tale of woe over at Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog.

This measure doesn’t tell us all that much about the health of either Arctic or Antarctic regions, if only because the seasons move in opposite directions (nevertheless, the Global sea ice trend is down). It’s just an interesting statistical factoid.

However, climate risk deniers often use the Global sea ice metric as an argument that nothing is wrong and AGW is a hoax. In other words, the recent growth in Antarctic sea ice offsets the loss of Arctic sea ice (it doesn’t), even though the poles are literally worlds apart and are pretty much incomparable (except for the sea ice bit).

Using this logic, it would seem that this new record minimum means there is something wrong with sea ice and AGW isn’t a hoax. I wonder how they will spin this one. If they report it to their loyal readers, that is.

So far none of the “climate risk deniers” I’ve pinged on Twitter have brought this “interesting statistical factoid” to the attention of “their loyal readers”.

* Since satellite records began
^ For the day of the year

Arctic Basin Big Wave Surfing Contest Equipment Evaluation 1

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Great White Con fantasy big wave team rider Andrew Cotton was interviewed on BBC Radio Devon last week by none other than Simon Bates! Cotty was on a trip to Hawaii at the time and pointed out to Simon that:

The thing with surf… is it’s the tides, the waves, the wind. The surf tells you when to surf. It’s not around chores or work, you have to have surf that looks good.

As luck would have it all that came together for North Devon surfers at Putsborough Sands on Saturday. Things looked promising to us a couple of days beforehand, and plans were hatched on Twitter for our first equipment evaluation expedition of 2015:

 

We took the heaven sent opportunity to test out our thickest winter wetsuit in the following conditions:

MSW-SST-UK-2015-03-01
 
According to Magic Seaweed sea surface temperatures are currently around 8 °C off the coast of North Devon, and it doesn’t get much colder than that in this neck of the woods, which may have had something to do with at least one “no show” on Saturday. Simon had “volunteered” Richard Green for a “cold and dangerous” surf trip:

but Richard had a good excuse for being unable to make it since he was broadcasting on Radio Devon, and chatting to Pete Waterman amongst other things, that afternoon. We did invite Simon Bates along too, but it seems he had a previous engagement in London:

Prior to setting off for the north coast I got in touch with Trev Lumley, who is the proprietor of the Eyeball Surfcheck web site where we had discovered this enticing looking image on the Putsborough surfcam earlier that morning:

Eyeball-puts-20150228-2

Trev told me he would be elsewhere by the time we arrived at “Spot P”, so I quickly tested out my little quiz for the day on him. He claimed never to have heard of Richard Green, whilst Simon Bates did ring a bell and the name Andrew Cotton was very familiar. When I explained the reason for my call Trev told me that he had actually heard Andrew being interviewed by Simon on BBC Radio Devon a few days previously. When pressed to decide who amongst the three names I had mentioned was most famous Trev told me that as far as he was concerned Cotty was the man, since he had known him since he was a boy. However Trev thought that Simon’s name would probably be more familiar to the average Devonian.

When we eventually arrived at the car park above the beach some heavy showers had already set in. However before plunging into the chilly North Atlantic, I took advantage of a break between the downpours and wandered around the car park at Putsborough with a cameraman in tow to discover the reaction of some of the locals to my Tiki Prodigy 6/5/4 suit, whilst also killing two birds with one stone by doing some research into the nature of fame and celebrity in the 21st century. Here’s my first interview, with a local lifeguard:

As you can see, our first interviewee thought the Tiki Prodigy “Looks warm”, which was comforting in all the circumstances. In addition out of our list of six celebrities Andrew Cotton was overwhelmingly the most famous. DJs Simon Bates and Richard Green, and journalists Andrew Neil, Christopher Booker and David Rose failed to achieve even the merest flicker of recognition.
 
More videos are on the way, but are currently still stuck in the editing suite here in the basement of the Great White Con Ivory Towers. In the meantime here are my own findings after a couple of hours at sea on my yellow sponge performing our first Arctic equipment evaluation test:

Apart from my Prodigy I was also wearing Tiki 5mm socks and 2mm bodyboarding gloves. I suffered none of the “brain freeze” reported by my even more intrepid companion, who entered the water hoodless beside me:

vlcsnap-2015-03-02-18h07m00s170

Because I didn’t want to lose my contact lenses I did very little duck diving. On only one occasion did I experience the thrill of cold water flushing down my back. My fingers started to feel a bit chilly as I was bobbing about out the back after my initial paddle out, but once I got into the swing of things even they were toasty for the duration. Whilst I do wonder if Tiki could be persuaded to produce some thicker gloves with webs between the fingers, my biggest problem proved to be extracting myself from my soggy suit in the pouring rain that had set in by the time I arrived back in the car park as the light was fading. To give you an idea of the problem I faced here is Andrew Cotton explaining the virtues of the chest zip version of the Zepha, which has replaced the Prodigy in Tiki’s range of cold water winter wetsuits:

Watch this space!

Willie Soon Gate at the Mail Online

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I’ve just had a long phone conversation with John Wellington of the Mail on Sunday. He assures me he is fit and well and back in his hot seat there, but that the long standing bone that I’ve been eager to pick with the Mail Online about Victoria Woollaston’s January 21st article entitled “Is climate change really that dangerous? Predictions are ‘very greatly exaggerated’, claims study” is the responsibility of Tal Gottesman. Here’s a brief extract of the article, to give you a little taste:

The paper, ‘Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model’, was written by Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, astrophysicist and geoscientist Willie Soon, Professor of Geography at the University of Delaware David Legates, and statistician Dr Matt Briggs.

It has been peer reviewed and is published in the journal Science Bulletin.

Mathematical equations used for large climate model typically require supercomputers that perform calculations quickly – some make more than 80 million calculations an hour.

and here’s the accompanying “infographic”:

I’ve been trying to get in touch with Vicky and/or her editor for several weeks now, so this is a big step forward! After a series of phone calls and emails that elicited no response “Willie SoonGate” broke earlier this week, so….

Us:

 

which also elicited no response, so following John’s phone call:

Hello Tal,

John was kind enough to telephone me and pass on your email address.

Further to the correspondence copied below you will note that I have had a singular lack of success directing my enquiries on the above topic to the generic MailOnline editorial address.

At the risk of repeating myself repeating myself

How do you suggest we go about starting a conversation?

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

followed by:
 

Them:

Thank you for your email which has been passed to the Managing Editor’s office.

We understand that you would like to submit a complaint on the story below:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2920311/Is-climate-change-really-dangerous-Predictions-greatly-exaggerated-claims-study.html

If you could please outline what the issue is, we will ensure your complaint is investigated immediately.

Yours sincerely

MailOnline

 

Us:

Dear Madam,

Your understanding is (at long last) correct!

My first complaint is that I have received no previous response, not even an acknowledgement, to my emails of January 26th, February 2nd and February 23rd 2015. Can I safely assume that conversation using this email address will be more timely from now on? Do you by any chance possess a telephone number?

Moving on to the article in question, I will prepare a more substantive reply as soon as I have finished addressing similar issues with the Sunday Telegraph and the BBC. In brief the paper by Monckton, Soon, Legates & Briggs described in the article in question is scientific nonsense. As a famous scientist called Albert Einstein allegedly once put it:

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler”

As such the article is scientifically inaccurate and/or misleading, and as I am sure you must be aware allegations have recently been made elsewhere about possible reasons for that. I have been denied any discussion about a reply or “correction” to the article for 5 weeks thus far, and counting. Did you hear back from the IPCC by the way? If so, what did they say and where did you “print” it?

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

 

Shock News! “Real Science” Censorship!

Censorship, , , ,

Earlier on this morning a debate about censorship started over on the so called “Real Science” blog. Unfortunately after a couple of attempts it became clear to me that my participation was not welcome.

Them:

A question about censorship is posed on the "Real Science" blog
A question about censorship is posed on the “Real Science” blog

Meanwhile over on Twitter

Us:

Them:

 

Us:

 

Subsequently, back on “Real Science” (and possibly thanks to Dave’s intervention below)

Convincing evidence of censorship at Steve Goddard's "Real Science" blog

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!