Stonehenge, pyramids + Glastonbury – but can anyone tell me the probability of seeing the sun?

Posted on 23 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I’ve written three articles suggesting how ancient monument could have been used to calibrate a calendar:

But some key data is missing: how often can we see the sun?

Campbell–Stokes recorder measures sunshine

Campbell–Stokes recorder measures sunshine

Midday sun

There are two separate figures I need. The first is one to work out the probability of seeing an observation when the sun is high in the sky during the middle of the day. The reason this is important, is that if solar observations are being of “the equinox”, then unless it is almost certain the sun can be seen each and every day, then you would build an instrument that could calibrate a calendar with the sun’s position on several days. And the number of sun calibration alignments would increase as the probability of getting a good observation decreased. Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Decline and Fall of the British University

Posted on 21 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I found this at: Here The email given has bounced so I publishing it without permission.
The goal of widening access to education is a noble one and very much in line with the motivations of the post-war British governments. One way of implementing it would have been to investigate why so few students went to university, and, having constructed a careful social analysis, to have increased the percentage of entrants by improving the educational qualities of the average school leaver. Of course thats the hard and genuine route and it takes a generation. An easier way is to water down the educational system to a lower standard and then peg the university income to the number of students accepted while reducing the funding per head. In that way universities are given the happy choice of losing money and enforcing redundancies or watering down their requirements. No prizes for guessing which route the government took and how the universities responded. Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, UK | Comments Off on The Decline and Fall of the British University

Power resilience

Posted on 20 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Hearing this morning of the major fire at the Didcot B Power Station, and learning that due to several other problems on the UK grid, we are already likely to have problems if there is a cold spell in January, I thought it was time to stop trying to change the mind of our deluded politicians who never listen to anyone but themselves and instead it’s now time to prepare.
So, I would welcome feedback on the following – particularly comments in [square brackets]:-

 Warning – Now is the time to prepare for Electricity Power cuts

Likelihood

The evidence strongly suggests that a large part of Scotland has already experienced a wind related power outage. So the growing level of wind is likely to be the key factor triggering a large power outage. So, the most likely time will be when wind is a problem to the network. This occurs in two scenarios:

  1. High pressure/low wind: When the wind is not blowing and it is cold, dark and everyone is trying to cook the demand may at some point exceed available supply- so about 6pm typically on a Saturday during high pressure (sunny, frosty).
  2. Low Pressure/high wind: From my analysis of the previous wind power outage. This is most likely to occur when the wind is scheduled to be strong and conventional power stations are shut down to cope with the excess electricity from wind. As these conventional power stations stabilise the grid, the grid becomes progressively less stable. Then even a modest problem or a sudden mismatch of wind supply and power demand could cascade through the grid causing it to effectively crash. Last time this occurred at 8:40pm on a windy night as the power demand dropped forcing more and more of the “base-load” to come from unstable wind leading to instability.

This means Scotland has a “reasonable” chance [I guess 50:50] of at least one major conurbation facing an evening without power typically in January – March.
However, there are now suggestions that: Winter 2014 set to be ‘coldest for century’ Britain faces ARCTIC FREEZE in just weeks if these are true, then I would suggest that there is a strong chance of [75% ?] of at least one major conurbation facing an evening without power, perhaps [50%] of most of Scotland being without power and perhaps [50%] of remoter areas being without power for several days and perhaps [33%] chance of some major conurbations being without power for more than 24hours.

Therefore all of us face the potential of being without power for days.

Enhanced risk

Continue reading →

Posted in bbc, Politics, Scotland, Wind | 1 Comment

Why do academics get involved with policy?

Posted on 8 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I was reading an article and came across this:

Sid Richardson College senior Maddie Camp said she thinks it is important to examine skeptics’ viewpoints to make progress on climate policy.

Why is this academic getting involved with policy at all?

You are either an impartial scientist- in which case you cannot also be advocating particular policies. Or you are advocating particular policies and so are not a scientist.

“Because climate change is really a policy issue, skeptics bottleneck the whole process of beginning to address climate change, so it makes sense to understand that barrier and think about how we can move past it,” Camp said.

Yet again, another academic (and I’m not even bothering to check as they all are) who wants to have their cake and eat it. They want to be seen as “impartial” and dispassionate at the same time as passionately advocating a particular point of view.

Or to use other analogies:

  • They want to stand in the election AND count the result
  • To play football AND be the referee
  • To be in the play AND write the critique.

etc.

Posted in Academia, Politics, UK | Comments Off on Why do academics get involved with policy?

A view inside the public sector academic mind

Posted on 8 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Lord of the Rings - industry is seen as a facet of "mordor"

Lord of the Rings – industry is seen as a facet of “mordor”


For all Tolkein’s good points, he like so many of his generation of public-sector academics shared a hatred of industry. And this is easy to see in his portrayal of “Mordor” above. Compare that to the typical portrayal of the Industry in the Blackcountry. Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, UK | 8 Comments

The dog's been sick – but no heat!

Posted on 6 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

When you use the excuse that the dog ate your homework, the last thing you want is for some smart alec to pump the dog’s stomach looking for it or worse, for the stupid mut to spew up all over the teacher!
But that’s what NASA have just done!

“ocean depths have not warmed measurably in the last decade.
The cold waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005, according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years.” (Tallbloke)

Posted in Climate, Fails | Comments Off on The dog's been sick – but no heat!

The limits of Climate Hysteria

Posted on 6 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Answering a post today, I realised that I no longer cared about trying to educate the nutters in academia, not because they don’t need educating, but simply because nothing we sceptics have done has ever been listened to – so why should I, who is not paid, waste my time trying to educate people who have been each paid a small fortune – and who won’t listen anyway?
And then I realised, it no longer matters what these climate academics and other nutters think!
limitsmadnessSo, to explain this (to sceptics – it’s above the nutters), I drew the above graph. In the middle, we have the sceptic viewpoint which is as we all know, just plain common sense. The red line represents the academic view – which amongst other off the wall ideas has embraced global cooling and then global warming. And the black outer line represents is the constrain imposed as one gets more and more data.
The point is that I don’t seriously think academics have changed their views because of their exposure to sceptic common sense. Instead, it appears to me that finally the reality of the data is forcing them to tone down their rhetoric. And yes, we could see another “flip” and the academics go all nuts about another aspect of climate, but fundamentally (as we engineers know) as you get more and more data, the room for their kind of lunacy gets smaller and smaller … until perhaps in 100-200 years there will be almost no room at all for the kind of non-science we get at the moment.

Posted in Climate, science | 7 Comments

Review of the state of Climate "Science"

Posted on 5 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Even after all these years, the academics who work on climate, still have no idea about natural variation. They are still looking to things that are clearly part of natural vartiation and saying “look its now warmer than it has been for a while”. And so, as those of us who understand natural variation pat them on the head try to explain the concept we know they don’t have a clue. All we can do is to hope that the lack of any recent warming will last long enough that they will grow up and begin to understand what they are really dealing with.
Fortunately, we’ve had luck on our side and Father nature has been through enough of a cooling patch to have wiped out any of the expected warming. That hasn’t stopped the nutters, but they’ve been chewing on grizzle trying to convince anyone they are right as long as the pause continues.
To my mind, the only sensible estimate of the effect of doubling CO2 is that of Herman Harde. Because as far as I can see, he’s the only one to have used the latest HITRAN database. And the fact that no one else has published papers, speaks volumes for the kind of fraudsters involved in this area.
BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT IF THE LATEST HITRAN DATABASE HAD SHOWN THAT MORE ACCURATE DATA FOR CO2 LED TO HIGHER WARMING PREDICTIONS, THAT THAT FIGURE WOULD HAVE BEEN STUFFED DOWN OUR THROATS DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY! Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Climate, science | 1 Comment

Scientists and sceptics suspend hostilities? NO!

Posted on 3 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Because scientists and sceptics were never  at war!

We just wanted the academics who were not working to the standards of science to either start working to those standards or stop calling what they did science.

That wasn’t a big ask – but it was too much for many.

And for daring to ask academics to work to the standards of science we were attacked in quite horrific ways – and almost all of it was against us!

And now those academics who stood by and let us be attacked, want us to end hostilities?

What a daft ask!

Posted in Academia, Climate, Sceptics | Comments Off on Scientists and sceptics suspend hostilities? NO!

Renewables cause HIGH INFLATION!!

Posted on 3 October 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

There’s a quite astonishing admission in a civil service report mentioned on Bishop Hill.

I am just reading from the Report, which is an agreed Report. It says, and the Chair has already quoted this, “consumers are thought to be better placed to absorb the impact of high inflation than generators”. Why did you come to the conclusion that “consumers are thought to be better placed to absorb the impact of high inflation than generators”?’ (Chair)

The Policy monkey called Hugo Robson, then tries to evade the question then attacks his own report for using the word “high” inflation and ultimately he does not answer the question.
The answer of course, is that unlike the renewables scamsters who more or less control DECC, the poor consumer is attacked because they are seen by everyone as totally gullible and willing to put up with any nonsense they forced on them. And the other truth, is that (almost) none of these MPs cared one jot about the way their constituents were being treated by these contemptuous scum in the civil service nor the way the renewables scamsters more or less controlled government policy until people like UKIP came along to offer the voters an alternative.
Now, as we  fast approach the UK election, I hope these MPs are realising that renewables are a vote loser and they can no longer pretend to be serious about supporting the average voter when according to their own report the average household has been subject to “high inflation”.

Too little too late!

18 years without warming! So next year, there will be voters too young to have seen any increase in global temperature and these morons in parliament are still doing the renewables scamsters bidding and forcing up energy bill with HIGH INFLATION.

HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!! HIGH INFLATION!!

Posted in Economics, Energy | Comments Off on Renewables cause HIGH INFLATION!!