I wonder why ...

... sinks are recessed but urinals are not?

UKIP and Climate Change

Viscount Monckton, better known as Christopher Monckton, the journalist and author has today joined the UK Independence Party. Read the whole story here.

Temperature

For a very easy to read discussion of the range of temperatures measured at one point on the earth's surface please read this.

Tata Redcar

I was going to paraphrase an excellent blog from EU referendum but I cannot do it justice. Go and read it in situ.

A uniform climate

Go to google, switch to images, type 'weather presenter' in to the search field and then press Search Images. What do you notice about the results?

Reflecting on Sunlight

There are some beautiful pictures, here, of the solar power plant in Sanlucar la Mayor, Spain. Reading the captions, I found myself wondering whether the amount of electricity to control the plant and move the mirrors so that they tracked the sun was less than the amount the power plant produced. I figured that nobody would be stupid enough to design and build a power plant that consumed more energy than it produced. When I arrived at the tenth and final image, the caption informed me that "Andalusia is one of the sunniest, driest spots in Europe, with an average of 1,500 hours of sunshine a year". 1,500 hours is an awful lot isn't it? The problem is, do you know how many hours there are in a year? It is 8,760. That means, assuming that this plant is capable of working all the time the sun shines, that the electricity is produced for just 17.1% of the time. Assuming the electricity is only needed during daylight hours, it still only produces electricity for 34.2% of the time. What bloomin' use is that? Can you imagine anyone in the Dragon's Den having a good reception when they revealed that the device they are attempting to market only works during daylight hours and then for only the one third of those hours when the sun chose to shine? When they say that it will provide the electricity for 180,000 homes, equivalent to the needs of the city of Seville, they don't say that they only do it for an average of four hours of every day. I wouldn't want my freezer to be relying on their electricity.

Not surprisingly, the plant was built with the help of 5 million Euro from the EU's 5th Framework Programme (no, I hadn't heard of it either). The EU seems keen on projects like this as illustrated by the EU Energy Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs', comment that "These new technologies give Europe a new option to combat climate change and increase energy security while strengthening the competitiveness of the European industrial sector and creating jobs and growth,". Creating jobs and growth with four hours of electricity a day? I despair.

If Footprint > Ration Then £100.00, ching, thank you

Can you think of one positive comment to make about this? It has left me speechless (write-less?)

Today's the Day

I couldn't let this pass without comment, today in 1752 was September 14th however yesterday in 1752 was September 2nd. It was the day that the British Empire skipped eleven days in order to change to the Gregorian calendar.
It is called the Gregorian calendar after Pope Gregory XIII who described the new calendar in a Papal Bull issued on February 24th 1582. Spain, Portugal, Italy and France, amongst others, all adopted the new calendar before the end of the year. As you can see it took 170 years before Britain decided to adopt the calendar that we still use today.
Lady Day is on 25th March and was, prior to 1752, the first day of the New Year. This meant that, for example, 24th March 1700 was followed by 25th March 1701. This was the day that debts were settled and, in particular, the tax year finished. It was decided that the loss of eleven days in September 1752 would unfairly shorten the tax year so it was moved back to the 5th April which remains to this day as the end of our tax year.

I Don't Understand Polar Bears

I am having problems understanding this article in today's Daily Telegraph.
This graph shows the extent of the sea ice in the Arctic. As you can see it goes up in the winter and down in the summer. This year seems pretty consistent with the previous years this century.
This graph shows the daily mean temperature north of the 80th northern parallel, as a function of the day of year. The blue line is at what we call 0 Celsius. AS you can see there are only about 80 days of the year when the temperature gets above freezing.
This chart shows the status of the populations in 2005 and is the most recent I can find. Of the nineteen sub-populations five are declining, five are stable, two are increasing and there is insufficient data on the remaining seven.
What conclusion would you draw?

I'm Sorry

Dr. Alan Turing has long been a person I admired. Not surprising really given that he became an eminent person in the two disciplines I enjoy, namely mathematics and computing. I read Andrew Hodges biography many years ago, in fact my first cat was called Enigma after the title of that book, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence*. I have visited Bletchley Park on numerous occasions. In short I am fairly familiar with Dr. Turing's life.
Today I wake up to hear that the Prime Minister has written an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he apologises for the way Dr. Turing was treated. What nonsense is this?
I fail to see how one can say sorry for something that one has not actually had any part in. In fact Mr. Brown makes it worse by saying "we're sorry" as if he is speaking for me. He is not. I might regret the way that this country treated Dr. Turing but how can I possibly apologise for it?
This politically correct diatribe includes the phrase "his treatment was of course utterly unfair". What definition of unfair is Mr. Brown using? Not one that I can make any sense of. He was tried and found guilty of a crime. The fact that we no longer consider his actions to be criminal doesn't mean that he was treated unfairly.
Mr. Brown's apology is misguided and pointless. It is a waste of time to apologise to a man that is dead, where there are no surviving members of the family and the speaker has had no involvement in the act being apologised for. The words that sum up this folly are vacuous, illogical, misguided and a complete and utter load of bollocks waste of time.


* The version available today appears to have a shorter title, Alan Turing: The Enigma.

A Chilling Vision of the Future

I heartily recommend a read of this from the always considered blog numberwatch.

A Blanket Analogy

I have not, as you might think, been lazy of late but rather I have been uninspired by what I have read in the media and in other blogs. I suspect that it is no coincidence that this is the silly season. However, I did find the discourse at the 'Watts up with That' website titled 'A simple analogy on climate modeling – looking for the red spot' very interesting, I recommend that you have a read.

The Beginning of a Backlash?

The American Physical Society on November 18, 2007, adopted the following policy:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

It is indicative of our times that a learned society, whose founding mission was "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics", has no qualms with adopting a policy that includes the phrase "The evidence is incontrovertible". Any scientist will tell you that nothing is incontrovertible. A number of people thought that this policy was not acceptable and wrote an open letter to the APS urging the council to revise its policy on climate change, see here.

On the 22 July, 2009, the weekly journal Nature published the following letter from six APS members (one can only see the version in Nature if one subscribes)

Petitioning for a revised statement on climate change
By S. Fred Singer, Hal Lewis, Will Happer, Larry Gould, Roger Cohen & Robert H. Austin
We write in response to your issue discussing “the coming climate crunch”, including the Editorial ‘Time to act‘ (Nature 458, 10771078; 2009). We feel it is alarmist.
We are among more than 50 current and former members of the American Physical Society (APS) who have signed an open letter to the APS Council this month, calling for a reconsideration of its November 2007 policy statement on climate change (see open letter at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u; APS statement at http://tinyurl.com/56zqxr). The letter proposes an alternative statement, which the signatories believe to be a more accurate representation of the current scientific evidence. It requests that an objective scientific process be established, devoid of political or financial agendas, to help prevent subversion of the scientific process and the intolerance towards scientific disagreement that pervades the climate issue.
On 1 May 2009, the APS Council decided to review its current statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. We applaud this decision. It is the first such reappraisal by a major scientific professional society that we are aware of, and we hope it will lead to meaningful change that reflects a more balanced view of climate-change issues

That the society is reviewing the statement is wonderful news.

The Royal Society, an institution that is even more venerable than the APS, is a proponent of climate change which has prompted Rupert Wyndham to write a letter to the society's president, Lord Rees. You can read it here. Unfortunately, I don't think we will see a similar review of the Royal Society's stance.

What's in a Phrase?

You may recall that we started with global warming. Then we had anthropogenic global warming which made it all mankind's fault. This became climate change presumably because the earth had inconveniently stopped showing any warming since 2002. What will it be next? Reading 'Climate and Energy Truths: Our Common Future', a report produced by ecoAmerica, I am led to believe, see the bottom of page 6, that it will be the phrase “deteriorating atmosphere". Look out for it being used in the papers or on television. When you spot it then you will know where it came from.

Data Sharing

One aspect of the Scientific Process is data sharing. Following publication, it is expected that a scientist will share the data so that others may reproduce the work. Reproduction is a crucial step in the process of making a theory acceptable. The Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy in the United States has the following to say on data sharing:

After publication, scientists expect that data and other research materials will be shared with qualified colleagues upon request. Indeed, a number of federal agencies, journals, and professional societies have established policies requiring the sharing of research materials. Sometimes these materials are too voluminous, unwieldy, or costly to share freely and quickly. But in those fields in which sharing is possible, a scientist who is unwilling to share research materials with qualified colleagues runs the risk of not being trusted or respected. In a profession where so much depends on interpersonal interactions, the professional isolation that can follow a loss of trust can damage a scientist's work.

Consequently, when the Met Office was approached for the raw data which underpins their climate change research it was expected that they would comply. Apart from anything else they are a public body and I, as a taxpayer, am of the opinion that that data is mine. When Steve McIntyre tried to get hold of the information he was told that he couldn't have it. What is curious is that this request was for a copy of the data that had been previously supplied to Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. If it was acceptable to supply him why was it not acceptable to send it to Steve McIntyre? Read the whole story here.

Update:
I notice that there is a petition on the Number 10 website that is asking the Prime Minister 'to Force the Climate Research Unit, or other publicly funded organisations to release the source codes used in their computer models', it can be found here.
26/07/2009 08.22

Making a Pig's Ear of it.

Because I have worn glasses since I was five years old I am very familiar with the eye-sight test. One of the aspects of the test, which hasn’t changed over the years, is the section where you wear an empty frame while the optician inserts lenses of different strengths asking questions like "Is this one clearer, or is this one?" I once suggested that I was giving contradictory answers to which the optician agreed. She added that it was her skill and experience that enabled her to identify the correct lens strength from these contradictory responses. Speaking to other opticians since, I have learnt that this is precisely the reason that the correct lens strength cannot be determined by a machine.

Doctors are similar. They listen to your description of your symptoms and then ask searching questions to determine the probable cause of your illness. The difficulty is that different illnesses have this irritating habit of presenting very similar symptoms and it is the Doctor's skill and experience that enables him to determine the underlying cause of your discomfort.

Yesterday, the swine flu hot line was launched. The hot line is manned by people who are not Doctors. They have a series of questions to ask to determine whether you have swine flu. It is an automatic process that cannot possibly replace a Doctor. There is always the possibility that someone with a different illness could be misdiagnosed. It was predicted here and it has already occurred, see here

Lost in Space

Casting around for a book to read at the weekend I came across a book I must have picked up at a fete but I do not remember buying it. It is called ‘Science, Numbers and I’ and it is written by Isaac Asimov. It is not one of his science fiction books but a collection of, to use Mr. Asimov’s own phrase, ‘speculative essays on the known and the unknown.’
I reached Chapter 5, ‘A Matter of Scale’ where he starts by referring to representations of the Solar system designed to give a feel for the relative distances involved. You know the sort of thing, imagine the sun is a football then the earth will be a pea thirty yards away. Well, he does just that but he starts with the sun as a one foot diameter ball in the middle of Central Park, New York. Then he lists all the planets giving their diameter and distance from the sun so that Earth turns out to be 0.110 inches in diameter and positioned 107 feet away from the sun. All very interesting but I have read all this before. The bit I didn’t know, though, was where the closest star, Proxima Centauri, would be on this scale. Before you read on hazard a guess to how far away this representation of the start will be from our one foot diameter sun. It transpires that it will be 5,500 miles away or, with Central Park as the starting point, in Jerusalem. Isn’t that just amazing?

Free Publlicity

An article in today’s Daily Telegraph catches the eye, ‘Adults forget three things a day, research finds’ it states. Immediately one wonders who sponsored this research in order to get some free publicity. Well, according to the Telegraph it was carried out by National-Lottery.co.uk. Yes, apparently a website, rather than a company, carried out the research thereby handily providing a link as well as the free publicity.
Further down the article there is a list of the top 25 things that we forget including, at number 22, buying a lottery ticket. That was a surprise wasn’t it?
The question is how good can this research be? If we are talking about forgetting could it not be the case that the respondents have forgotten the thing they are most likely to forget?

The Tax Man Cometh

I am in the fortunate position of being a landlord. We have just changed the agents that look after the house. As well as signing a contract with the agents they required a lot of extra details. Information like who supplies the gas and electric, which telephone company is used, what is the number of the gas safety certificate was not a surprise. What was a surprise was the requirement that we supply tax reference and national insurance numbers. When we questioned it, we were told that HMRC demands this information from the agents. We can only presume that this is so that they can confirm independently that what I state on my tax return is correct. If they want to go to that trouble they can do the bloomin' tax return for me. Still, it certainly lends weight to this report.

You don't need to worry though because you are not a landlord. Well, perhaps you do according to this.

Compare and Contrast

First read this and then read this. Which scenario do you think is more likely?