New paper just out casts serious doubt on the ability of Michael Mann's proxy reconstructions in determining historical temperatures.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201 ... -wicket-of-mann-et-al-99/

This is great independent confirmation/vindication of Steve McIntyre's work. For example, the paper states:

Quote :

In other words, our model performs better when using highly autocorrelated noise rather than proxies to ”predict” temperature. The real proxies are less predictive than our ”fake” data...


...We are not the first to observe this effect. It was shown, in McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a,c), that random sequences with complex local dependence
structures can predict temperatures. Their approach has been
roundly dismissed in the climate science literature:

It will be very hard from now on for the Climate Science/Paleo community to ignore these findings. Some people are already noticing a recent and uncharacteristic downplaying of the importance of the hockey stick by high profile climatologists (for instance, Gavin Schmidt has just bizarrely claimed that the question of medieval temperatures was an uninteresting one, scientifically).

Maybe this means that we'll start seeing a few less climate related headlines in the media with the word 'unprecedented' in them. God I sure hope so.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun 15 Aug 2010, 17:59.

Much better video here.. (you can see it's really running at a great frame rate and the textures are much clearer)

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/30824

Quote from matijapkc :

I'm in... Before the lock.

Did I start a controversial thread? Or are you waiting for an inflammatory rant on the superiority of LFS's aero modelling over Doom's arcadey bullet physics?

Quote :

Impressive. I wonder if the shadows (most of the ones) that are one the walls are in the texture or actually rendered? Damn, doensnt even matter. Some game developers cant even get far on the PC graphics. Lol

It looks like everything is pretty much baked into the game (edit: character shadowing looks calculated though). Still, it looks good. And it's running on a phone...

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Fri 13 Aug 2010, 16:53.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keu4GiTGQ6M

You can say what you want about the actual games, but the man himself is a genius.

The trailer was gorgeous.

I'm in no way interested in another Bioshock game.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

It's just a shame that the amount that we got taught was not a lot, and that pretty much every kid in my class apart from a hand full, thought R.E was stupid and pointless.

I remember that I didn't really know what to make of RE when it was being taught to us. Back then I had an older friend who I looked up to for moral guidance, who for some reason had kept all of his RE magazines from his own classes. When I looked through them I saw he had drawn arrows through the heads of all the photographs. I thought it was hilarious.

I got pretty good at drawing arrows through peoples heads in RE.

Quote from JJ72 :

Um...define god.

Entity that exists in forms beyond our comprehension - that I believe. But one creator and ruler of the universe over everything else i.e. the Christan definition of god - no.

If anything I think it will be a society or organization than one entity.

I would tend to go with something like this. As far as things existing beyond our comprehension... we prove that to ourselves all the time through 'mundane' processes like scientific discoveries, human invention etc. I bet if you could show a television set to someone living in prehistory, they would sign you up as a god on the spot.

We can't find God(s), because we can't comprehend what what one would be like. Add to that the fact that human history hasn't shown any signs that we've neared any kind of limits to knowledge/experience. That's a good enough recipe for agnosticism for me.

Keep watching the skis!

<ahem> skies...

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 18:26.

Lando's not a system he's a man.

(I put agnostic)

Here's a band from 1982 that has only just now gotten around to having an album released.

They're called Interference- and it's really a great find for people interested in the early 80's New York post punk scene. They've remained virtually unknown until now. One of the members is Anne DeMarinis, who was in the original Sonic Youth lineup.

Pitchfork review here

A track from the new Swans album to be released soon.

Quote :

I think, since Climategate, Judith has come to realise that much of the data she's worked with historically may not have the solid foundation she'd believed it had. Many climatologists work in very focused and specific fields of expertise, and don't have much awareness of the bigger picture. It was definitely news to Judith Curry, when Climategate hit, that there might be any foundation to the accusations that the sceptics had been making.

I see that a lot of climatologists simply accept the temperature data at face value, and in a debate where 10ths of degrees matter- I found this hard to understand. I think that's when I started to get a clue about this stuff personally, when Anthony's surface stations project was really starting to get underway. It seemed that, if he wasn't being ignored, he was being treated with hostility and hastily dismissed as a crackpot by the warmist blogs. As someone just looking in, I found this lack of curiosity from the warmist side telling. They simply didn't want to know, and attacked Anthony for displaying simple scientific curiosity. He was the one who was actually going out there and checking the quality of the surface stations. Even as a non scientist, I could see that what Anthony was doing was science, and what the warmist blogs were offering in contrast was simply a willful ignorance about the potential quality issues relating to the temp data, I could only guess because the data was already telling them what they wanted to hear.

Quote from SamH :

I first saw the term "citizen scientist", there, used by Judith Curry. I don't know the original source of the term, but it may be Judith.

Very well could be Sam. If I recall correctly, Judith ruffled a few feathers in her early dealings with the sceptics on Steve's blog by calling them 'deniers'. I think it was fairly innocent, but it did highlight at the time for some the cultural/class divide between scientists and sceptics and how there was this almost unconscious 'holier than thou' attitude leaking through from various parts of the established climate science world. Judith has smartened up her language a lot since then and has thus gained an enormous amount of respect from sceptics and the more disinterested observers.

I'd agree that the term 'reformer' has a nice ring to it, even with the faint religious overtones...

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 04:35.

PS, regarding the 'experts' thing. You will see that both Mike Hulme and Judith Curry have now been demoted from expert to denier by the political crowds. This was in my comment to the Guardian (looking over it again I wonder if it doesn't actually read so well.. it was very late when I wrote it).

This is hilarious because in atleast Mike's case, I'm sure that people are as alarmed as they are mainly in part attributable to him (he was the head of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Studies and an enormously important figure, right there at the beginning of the whole climate change issue).

The notion of an expert here seems to be very much connected to a persons opinion rather than to the depth of that persons knowledge, expertise and experience. I see time and time again people with meagre credentials being portrayed in the media as 'climate change experts', which I can only attribute to that persons ability to re-enforce the main AGW narrative (the ice is melting, the polar bears are dying, it's all our fault, etc). It happens all the time.

So.. I can 'lol' pretty hard at some of these 'experts'. It doesn't mean that the real experts are incompetent but you gotta realise how experts are chosen in this debate, because it certainly isn't cut and dry and there's a ton of politics and media manipulation going on, as I'm sure you know.

Quote :

Originally Posted by Framaris
So now if the so said scientific community aggravate the facts to fight those big machines (corporate and government) and make us realize that we can’t go on living like this…so be it!

"Ask not what we can do f ... hange can do for us" - Mike Hulme

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 22:57.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

lolin' pretty hard at "citizen scientists"

That's just individuals practicing the good old scientific method.

A recent post on another blog sums it up pretty well...

Quote :

Scientific Method in its basics is actually extremely simple, it is not something remote that only The Elect can practice. In its most basic form it means looking at the evidence, carefully and thoroughly, for yourself, rather than taking someone else’s word for things. It also means watching yourself carefully enough to ensure that your assessment is not clouded by your own emotions or prejudices.

It's true that last year every single expert who gave their prediction on summer Arctic ice minimum, guessed way too low. The extent turned out to be much higher (less melt) than any of these guys expert opinions. Not one of them went the other way to suggest that there would be less melt than there actually was. Not one.

Other people (non experts), looking at the same data, somehow came to more accurate conclusions. Were these people more or less informed than the experts. Well... they had the same data to go on. Were they less biased and less willing to fly with the conventional AGW narrative of an 'Arctic death spiral', as Mark Serreze, head of the NCISD likes to promote? Probably.

The limited amount of satellite data for the Arctic and the limited amount of understanding about the processes and patterns involved suggests that no-one knows with any certainty what might happen up there. When no-one knows what's going on, does an expert opinion really count any more than a well informed lay opinion? The experts tend to want to draw straight scary lines for short term trends and whip people into a panic (30 years of sat data for the Artctic and any record in that data becomes the first ever, the worst ever, unprecedented melt!!! etc), but where was the last time you ever saw a straight line in any natural process? How relevant and meaningful is 30 years of data which exists inside a 60 year natural cycle? Adopting the scientific method allows one to formulate that comment- it's just looking at things a little more dispassionately and rationally, and that's it.

So, whether it's Mark Serreze yelling 'we're all gonna die!', or Jeremy Clarkson poo pooing climate change... these opinions aren't really interesting to anyone choosing to adopt the scientific method and taking the time out to look at things for themselves. They mightn't get to any hard conclusions, but they will be able to atleast see through some of these hard conclusions being presented by experts and influential personalities, because they've checked. They're open to discovery.

Citizen science is really just science itself. It excludes nobody who keeps to the standards and rigour of the scientific method.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 22:53.

Latest Climategate article in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi ... ents=true#end-of-comments



My comment:

Quote :

Reading these article comments, what came up for me is how easy it is for some people to turn people such as Judith Curry and Mike Hulme into denialist weirdos (ie, don’t listen to a thing these people say). Anyone who has been following this stuff knows the important part Hulme played in the ‘alarmist’ cause. And Judith Curry has only recently been involved in a dialogue with sceptics. These scientists will soon end up on the sceptics ‘blacklist’ if they aren’t already.


This is a big problem- seems that as soon as someone has plucked up enough courage to publicly state their uncertainties they immediately start to take on this aura of suspicion… I guess then these character memes get amplified in political blogs to the point where the person has now become untrustable, they’ve become a denialist. Perhaps Mike Hulme would find this new label for him somewhat amusing, given his history.


For all the talk from the warmist side giving response to the flak about ‘the science being settled’ as being a strawman because no real scientist would believe that (we are real scientists after all), some people seem to get very uptight and edgy when any specific uncertainty gets raised by a prominent scientist in a public medium. It’s sad to see such people receiving “the big cutoff” but this is after all climate science.


*shrug

Quote from SamH :

Were you able to get to see Anthony Watts on his speaking tour? I'm imagining not, or you'd have posted for sure!

Heh, no I didn't go and see him while he was here. I already spend too much time at Anthony's site anyway. I guess it would have been nice to meet him in person. Maybe another time.

One thing I've been curious about is the performance of the new i5/i7 range of processors and how they compare to the older Q6600s for example.

So say, if my current Q6600 is running at 3.3ghz, and the newer i5/i7s are also running at 3.3ghz, then what (if any) is the difference?

I think I spent about 5 minutes searching for this answer online a while back, and turned up nothing.

Anyone care to enlighten?

Just saw this on 'What's Up With That?'. It's interesting to me because it's an analysis of temperature trends (raw and adjusted) in Victoria, Australia- my home turf.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201 ... -victorian-warmed-period/

I've been pretty sceptical of some of the statements being made in the name of global warming by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for a few years now (in particular some of the comments and analysis by the BOMs' David Jones, who is head of the climate division and is a well known and prominent 'warmist').

Until now I haven't been able to find any large studies into temperature record adjustments for my area. Finally, a fellow called Ken Stewart has kindly taken it upon himself to shed some light...

http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/


Once again, we see the trend of a strong warming bias in the adjusted data . With people like David Jones running things over at the BOM, this is perhaps all very understandable, yet it is still kind of shocking. At least in this case we still have the raw data to make these kinds of comparisons. You poor UK guys still need to conduct a proper examination of the contents of Phil Jones' dogs' stomach in order to find out what's really going on with your own data.

As far as I know, New Zealands' NIWA still refuses to release information regarding the reasons for their own warming adjustments. I wonder now how the BOM is going to react.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Thu 1 Jul 2010, 19:45.

The 80's was a musical goldmine. I'm still uncovering great bands and sounds from this era. It's funny- the 80's tends to get categorised as a hopelessly daggy period defined by horrible music and fashions- but there's just so much great stuff.

I can't post my fav 80's songs (there's just too many) so I'll just post some 80's flava instead...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8OL7I3hpYA

Just got back from the last night of the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF).

Here's my pick for best animation-

Orgesticulanismus

Lost interest in the current version. I still think it's a great achievement and hope that the devs can get over their hump to create the game that they originally intended, one which is complete by their standards.

Caffeine to keep you punching the clock 9 to 5

Alcohol to numb the brain and body, to help you forget how overworked you are.

Tobacco/nicotine to keep you hooked for a lifetime on a useless product which costs mere cents to produce but which you'll pay anything for because, well.. you're hooked.


These drugs make sense.


Marijuana... for helping you to appreciate the subtle, trippy effects embedded in reggae music.


...Doesn't make much sense.

I actually went out in the city for the first time in ages, last Saturday night. I kept looking around and thinking... it's not the pot heads who are out of control, it's these damn drunks.

Quote from JasonJ :

(hmmm, most of the WR's are from [w] wheel users?) uhmm wat is the argument then?

I was going to suggest this as well. Atleast, when I was using mouse and hot-lapping (have a wheel now) I would look at the mouse times as the benchmark because I thought I would never be able to get close to the wheel times. There are a few combos where mouse seems to dominate- (BL1/XFG) but atleast when I was playing wheels represented the majority of WR's and top ten times.

Quote :

ut the more I think about it, does the ability to swing the wheel that far and that quickly really help?

In hotlapping atleast, I wouldn't think so. In a race, maybe it might help a bit with correcting a bad situation on some occasions, but any proficient wheel driver should be able to handle the same situation just as well as any mouser, imo. I'm not really sure actually. In any case, the main disadvantage of using a wheel (with FF) seems to be fatigue. Also, the fact that it takes up half your desk, and that you have to explain to your non simming friends why you have the thing bolted to your desk in the first place!

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

How's the camera/video camera on it? Supposedly you're able to shoot in 'HD', but how's the quality?

Really nice looking phone btw, mine's about 8 years old. Sometimes I play Snake on it.

Ps,

Quote from morpha :

He didn't say "level the playing field", he basically said "force some realism onto mouse (and keyboard) users". You can step on it all the way in real life, but you can't turn from lock to lock in under a sec

Well, there seems to be two arguments going on. One is about realism, and one is about the supposed advantages of using a mouse. The quote that I was responding to seemed to be more about the using the mouse to an advantage, which I thought was a little unfair as there are things about using a mouse that are pretty shitty when it comes to controlling a racecar, as any mouse user knows.