83AD Calgacus speaks to the Union for the Freedom of all Britain

Posted on 14 September 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I’ve been very surprised that no one seems to mentioned this really important speech by the first Briton of Scotland to have their words recorded almost 2000 years ago.
So, I thought I would introduce it to you and have reproduced the first section in full below. In it, Calgacus, a Caledonian (who probably lived somewhere near Inverness) is addressing his troops before the Battle of Mons Graupius fought against the Roman aggressor (or perhaps as we might now call them “EU”).
To set the scene. It is 83 or 84AD. For just over a century, the Romans had been steadily moving north, first through Gaul (France) and then through Britain enslaving whole populations. Not long before this battle, the Romans had brutally treated Boudica raping her daughters causing the Icenii revolt. And this Roman brutality was not reserved only for Britain. Like their treatment of the Icenii, in Palestine, the Romans had brutally killed or enslaved the whole population when they had risen up against them.
Now this horror had come to Northern Britain, driving before them a stream of refugees from the Roman empire who could recount these horrors in graphic details. Finally, they had reached Caledonia: literally “the last of the free”. And this was the last battle for British freedom, a huge battle and with some 50,000 combatants it is still arguably the largest battle on Scottish soil.
The Caledonian heartland was probably the fertile wheat growing plains of the Moray Firth. At first the Caledonians union had ventured out to confront the Romans, winning many victories and almost wiping out the Ninth Legion at a site near Brechin. But as the line of 1st century marching camps heading toward Elgin shows, the tables had been turned and now three Roman legions had pursed them back to their heartland.
From the speech we know this site was somewhere in view of the sea.  So, we can imagine the Caledonians, on a hill defending their territory (like Quarrelwood Hill beside Elgin which at the time was the only Road into Caledonia). Here some 30,000 people had formed a Union to stand up to the Roman army. Now with this union was in what was possibly its last fight, with the Roman army at their front a few miles across the level plain and the Roman fleet at their back on the sea behind them.
And this is what Calgacus said:
“Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.”
For more info on Mons Graupius see mons-graupius.co.uk

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Original sin – how it caused global warming

Posted on 12 September 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Looking at the latest global temperature on Roy Spencer’s graph, I was struck how half the graph is warmer than the rest. Zealots usually pick on this and ask “why have 9 out of the last 10 elections days been warmer than they were”, or some other meaningless statistic.
To which the obvious answer is this “because they were”. In the same way that today it is raining – can you explain why, today of all days it is raining? No! So, why expect me to explain why we just happen to have had one of the warmer decades – or why in the 1690s it was particularly cold in Scotland. Things do just happen.
Which reminded me of a quite insane belief in modern western thought that “everything has a cause”. This is not scientific (how could you possibly run an experiment to prove this), it isn’t even really a philosophical idea, instead it is more akin to a religious belief.
And I think it stems from the Christian idea of “original sin”. That is to say, all evil comes from sin, therefore anything wrong is “caused” by human actions.
Turn it around, and get people to believe something is “wrong” like the last decade of warmer temperatures, and people are led to believe there is a “cause” to this evil – which as it is evil, must be human sin. Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, History, science | 1 Comment

Mann versus reality

Posted on 11 September 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

After reading the WUWT, I wanted to summarise the my thoughts on Mann’s chances of wining the court case and how I think he’s either lost hold of reality and/or is surrounded by fair weather friends who don’t have his interests at heart.
However, what’s the point? He’s an idiot, an idiot who clearly doesn’t listen to good advice, so what can anything I write do but add to the din that he’s an idiot?
Now there’s yet another article about Mann at Judith Curry‘s – it’s like watching a slow car crash! The only person who’s going to get hurt (as all his fair weather friends turn on him) will be Michael. So, here’s my thoughts from this morning:
Just reading another article of yet another porky from Mann at WUWT and even if I hadn’t carefully checked the work on his hockey stick and convinced myself it was based on using a “trick” to get the data to create a hockey stick, I would by now know that Mann hasn’t a hope of winning.
Mann’s problem is this. His whole case is this:

“I’m a scientists so you can trust me … therefore to suggest I’ve been unscientific is libel”.

And because most lay people would find his science difficult to judge, a jury would likely accept he was a scientist and that the science was right if Mann could find even a few “scientists” to vouch for him. How can they judge the science? So even though Stern can bring in a lot of expects to show Mann’s science isn’t; in practice the jury will tend to ignore what it can’t just and instead look at who supports him.
However, that was a case based “I’m a trustworthy scientist”. But now Mann has been caught lying on his own court submissions numerous times. Lying to a court is something that is easy for the jury to understand and so something they will fix on and use to judge Mann.
So the argument;

“trust me I’m a scientist”

then becomes

“he isn’t trustworthy … so can’t be a scientist”

and Stern wins the case.
That may be an oversimplification – it may not even go to a jury – but judges are just as human. And in essence, once a jury or judge starts thinking of one side as “economical with the truth”, they are on the slippery slope and will inevitably lose unless they have an exceptionally strong case (and Michael does not).
However, I was also struck by Judith Curry’s comments on the case. And from what she has said, it is clear Mann has been saying very much the same kinds of things about all kinds of other people many who a jury would clearly call “scientists”. Unless I’m very mistaken, there’s no chance of those like Judith being caught lying in the way Mann has. So, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If he libels others and expects to get away with it, he cannot himself ask a court to find others have libelled him.
So, in essence, when you boil this case down to the simple facts that would impress upon a jury it is this:
“A person shown to lie even on his own submission to the court, is complaining that someone has treated him in the way he treats other people of undoubtedly better character”.
He hasn’t a chance of winning. So why on earth is Mann so willingly submitting himself to a process which appears to have only one possible outcome? I can only imagine he is surrounded by sycophants and zealots who are so detached from the views of ordinary people outside that they really believe that “being right” (as they must see it) is a justification for all their ills.
In other words, you have a social group who all believes what Mann is doing is “right”, so they cannot entertain the idea that anyone “just” could see it any other way.
So, the big question is this: at what point will Mann realise that all these sycophants around him are delusional and in my view don’t care at all about him personally and therefore when he loses the case, as he surely will, they will turn against him?
And this is the point, I just hope his arrogance at his celebrity status hasn’t so corrupted him that he has driven away all his real friends.

Posted in Academia, Climate, Fails | 21 Comments

The pause deniers – still trying to read the entrails

Posted on 10 September 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

I’ve been away from climate doing more important things. However, I still occasionally look in to see what’s going on.
And I can’t say the pause deniers look any better for being away. They are just incredible. In the face of concrete evidence that there is no warming, they continue with their insane rantings about “there’s hidden warming”.
And looking back, I remember one of the earliest conversations I had was when I said something like “you know, there’s been no warming in the last five years”. To a scientist that’s a fact – it’s a statement of what you get if you do a linear regression.
But to the pause deniers it was and always will be a heresy.
At times over the last – well it must be nearly a decade, I thought being a sceptic was a curse. We could understand how the data could never support any of the rubbish – but we just couldn’t get others to understand.
Now, I can see how it is a gift – we are gifted the ability to ignore the irrelevant connections and socially imposed “it must be’s” and we see what it is. That other people don’t see it our way – yes, it’s annoying, but I’d much rather be a sceptic than one of the old hags and soothsayers over at “AndThenThere” trying to devine the entrails of warming out of nothingness.

Posted in Climate, Fails | Comments Off on The pause deniers – still trying to read the entrails

Presentation at Liverpool University

Posted on 25 August 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Pooh and Piglet find tracks of the hefferlump and decide to follow them.

Pooh and Piglet find tracks of the heffalump and decide to follow them.


Last Friday, I finally gave my presentation to Liverpool University. Not on climate as you might expect, but on the famous battle of Mons Graupius between the Caledonians and Romans which as the evidence of 1st century dating of the line of camps in Northern Scotland tells us was in Moray (near Inverness).
Note, I’m not saying “may be” in Moray, but “was” in Moray**, because I’ve now rechecked all the available evidence for the line of marching camps heading north and far from being later (as is commonly suggested) the evidence only supports the campaign of Agricola (c83AD) and not the later campaign by Severus.
SurfaceGeology+3km+tracksThis means that the line of “dots” (red) for the Roman camps, can only have been from the Agricola campaign of which the Battle of Mons Graupius was the climax. And this battle is very likely to have taken place on the “flat” geology shown in black. This more or less validates the “turned” interpretation the Ptolemy map which gives the Northern Heartland of the Caledonians in the Moray Firth (the top left of the map).
This means that given all the evidence from Tacitus’ description of being in sight of the sea, on a plain etc. (i.e. in black areas to left), the only place that fits is somewhere on the coast around Elgin or onward to Inverness with Quarrelwood Hill (now Quarrywood Hill) just east of Elgin being by far the most likely site. Continue reading →

Posted in General, Scotland | Comments Off on Presentation at Liverpool University

Israel a pariah State

Posted on 3 August 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

If any other country had stolen the land on which it exists, had then incarcerated the previous inhabitants in a huge prison and then killed thousands of them for daring to resist their detention, the world would rightly have reacted. The US would have sent in war planes to stop the illegal and criminal occupation of foreign territory, etc., etc.
But when Israel does to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews, then the response from the US is:

That’s OK! Go ahead! Anihiliate the population at your will. The US supports the genercide!

Just in the most recent holocaust, the Jewish Nazis have killed 1000s and injured nearly 10,000 for what? The death of a few Israelis who the valiant palestinians try with lawful means UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW to remove from occupied land.
And what is the Palestinian crime? To have built tunnels, firstly to break the illegal blockade of Gaza and secondly, to enforce its right under international law to have their land restored to them by the illegal occupiers.
Because, as far as I can see, Israel is an illegal state, and not only just illegal, but a racist, apartheid state. It has no right to exist except that of a bullyboy thug who has taken over land and now uses the law of jungle to say “I hold it so it is mine”.
The simple fact is that the “Jewish” right to a state in that area ceased around 70AD when the Romans terminated it. One can argue about that historical event, but one cannot argue that the Jewish state ended. Almost every other country has changed hands (INCLUDING ENGLAND) in that 2000 year period. Those who have a right to that land, are the Jewish, Greek, and Romans who stayed in palestine and no doubt largely make up the present palestinian population. In contrast, those with no rights are the European Jews who probably share no more DNA with the Jews of 2000 years ago than I do.
So, I am just dumbfounded that anyone ever gave this claim to a “Jewish state” any credence.
Worse, I think the injustice of supporting the Nazi-style regime in Israel which considers the deaths of 100s of palestinians to be less important than one single illegal occupier is perhaps the single most important reason for most recent terrorism and unrest from and in the middle east.

Posted in General, Politics | 7 Comments

Home to an earful on climate.

Posted on 1 August 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

On my return from a holiday in Brittany, Paris, and canoeing down the Wye, I was catching up with an old friend when I experienced the strangest phenomenon:

someone going on at length to tell me how absurd the idea of global warming was.

Apparently, whilst I had been away the so called “science” and technology committee had produced another quintessential British whitewash of the IPCC …. but according to my friend “the only scientists on the committee disagree”. And as a physicist he was quite irate upset that the politicians were ignoring the lack of warming, the failed predictions, the money, politics. Continue reading →

Posted in bbc, Climate | Comments Off on Home to an earful on climate.

Global warming trends

Posted on 24 July 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Every so often I go and have a look at the global warming search term trends to see how things are going. This time I’ve collected them together.

The general overview of searches

Below is an overview of the trend since 2004 till present on the search terms “global warming”, “Greenhouse gas”, “”climate change”, “climategate” and for comparison “antarctic”.

Trends of various search terms on Google


First, taking the term “Antarctic”, we see that there is a general trend for search volumes to decrease with time, although as we are not told what exactly this figure means, it is likely it means that the relative importance of the term “Antarctic” has declined.
So, the rise in “Global warming” is just phenomenal from 2004 till 2007 when it clearly peaked. Whilst if we look closely we can also see that “greenhouse gas” and “climate change” had a temporary peak in 2007, their relative decline since 2007 is smaller.

Climategate

Something which shows up quite clearly, particularly in “Climate change” and “Greenhouse gas” is Climategate.” However, it is surprising how relatively small the effect was on the search term “Global warming”. Perhaps this is because “global warming” had already seen a massive decline in public interest which far outdwarfed the scandal of Climategate.
Whatever the truth, whilst for those of us involved it may have seemed huge (I created the petition asking for the investigations), the reality is that climategate was just a temporary reprieve in public interest.

Yearly Cycle

Yes, if you have been wondering, there is a pronounced yearly cycle to the “global warming” search term. And “term” may well be right in two of its meanings.

"Global warming" Cyclic trend by year

“Global warming” Cyclic trend by year


Because the scale of searching seems to closely follow the academic year. The Xmas break is clearly seen. Then around June/July as we enter the exam period, the number of searches decrease until it reaches another low at the hottest time of the year, so a time if common sense had anything to do with it we would expect a peak. And then when the young minds return to the classroom to be indoctrinated again, we see a rise.  Or perhaps we should conclude:

Interest in global warming peaks in colder months!

Unfortunately, not all the world has the same winter months. But it isn’t possible using Google trends to select out only northern countries, so instead I’ve selected out the long term trend and plotted below:

US, UK & Canada trends for "Global warming".

US, UK & Canada trends for “Global warming”. (Note dates centred mid year)


Now the trend is even stronger and for example on the UK (red) line we often seen two distinct dips corresponding to the Easter and summer school holidays.

Global warming is climate related!

And of course the irony is that the global warming search cycle is clearly climate related as the following two plots show:

"Global warming" search trend for US, Australia and India showing distinct differences in cycle

“Global warming” search trend for US, Australia and India showing distinct differences in cycle. (Notes date centred mid year)


To understand this, first look at the blue line (US) which shows the typical Northern cycle. Then compare this to India (red). Notice how in 2007/2008, there is a strong yearly trend but this is out of phase with the US. I presume this is because of their monsoon climate. Next look at the orange and see how the lowest dips coincide with the US small “summer dip”.
To show that this is climatic, below I’ve plotted the three big southern hemisphere English speaking countries: Australia, S.Africa and New Zealand.
"Global warming" search trends for southern hemisphere English speaking countries of Australia, S.Africa and New Zealand

“Global warming” search trends for southern hemisphere English speaking countries of Australia, S.Africa and New Zealand. (Note dates centred mid year)


Australia and New Zealand are culturally very similar and geographically relatively close. So, perhaps the strongest evidence is the close similarity between S.Africa and this pair. Again these southern nations have their strongest dip in June/July in contrast to the Northern states dip in December/January.

Interest in global warming peaks in colder months!

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Global warming trends

Analysis of Scottish Power Outage

Posted on 21 July 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

The power outage

outage
In response to the news on bishop hill that MSP Alex Johnstone (Conservative, North East Scotland) was tabling the following question:

‘whether it has undertaken any further investigation into whether an over reliance on wind turbines as a source of electricity played a role in the grid failure on 16 April 2014′. (S4O-03258)

I decided to reveal what I had found in my comments on that blog. However, without the above graph the comments will not make much sense, so I’ve rushed out this post (apologies for the poor quality graph, click for a larger version). But before the graph, let me quickly look at the big picture:

What is the safe level of wind on a grid?

 
Back around 2000 it was well known that more than about 16-19% wind on a grid would be problematic. After the recent scandal of John Swinney misleading the public, I went to see what the current figure is. Eventually I found a paper, that quoted another paper, that quoted another paper, that eventually led back to a paper written about 1990.
In other words, there has been next to no (published) research on the effect of wind on an electricity network and no one really has any idea how serious the effect will be and at what level we will start to see these effects. This in itself is very worrying.
The analogy I would use is of a car driving down the road. As you drive the car faster and faster, the likelihood of a catastrophic accident increases because the effect of any curve (change in the wind) is all the more greater, and the time to respond is therefore all the smaller. Moreover, wind is displacing conventional backup as it is being made uneconomic – so not only is the destabilising effect of wind increasing, but the ability to stabilise the grid from conventional power is decreasing.
Just as one can make the car safer at higher speeds by getting better equipment – brakes, tyres, etc., but fundamentally, speed = more wind, can be partly offset by more and more money spent on protecting the network, but eventually no matter how much is spent too much instability will close down the grid as surely as too much speed will cause any car to go off the road. We just don’t know what that figure is!
But, in researching the background to this power outage, I became aware that the North of Scotland is now regularly having power outages. This is just what we would expect from a system under pressure. TO use the car analogy – we are already seeing the screeching of wheels and the excessive use of brakes.

The graph

This graph is a plot of the rate of change of power on the grid from various sources as well as the differently scaled change in phase (red dot). The most dominant feature is the massive change in phase which changed dramatically from 8:35-8:40 and then recovered from 8:40 to 8:45. This is like the heartbeat of the electricity network – it’s the single most important measure telling us if the system is under stress. It was clearly under a huge stress at 8:40, there is no obvious “stress” at 8:30 – 8:35.
The other important evidence on this graph is the way the wind curve (light blue) closes matches the rate of change in phase. The two match each other in their peaks and troughs showing that the main cause of changes in phase of the network was due to wind. In other words, wind power was the dominant feature that evening. To go back to the car analogy, it would be like plotting car speed against road curve. If the car is near its speed limit, each bend will cause the speed to decrease. If however the car is well within its speed for the road, it will hardly change the speed around the bends. The electricity network was clearly near its limit and having problems coping with the amount of wind.
What is perhaps most important is that the outage occurred at a time total demand was decreasing, with the result that Hydro (mid blue) was being turned down. So from 8pm till the massive power phase change at 8:35, hydro was being ramped down until (as seen on a graph of total power not change) very little was being produced.  This is important because hydro is very quick to react and so a good proportion of hydro stabilises the grid. Turn off the hydro – and the grid becomes less stable – or as strongly appears to have happened on this night – we get a catastrophic instability!
These show that the right conditions existed for a catastrophic failure. However it does not give the actual cause. But in examining the supposed “relay fault” which we are told occurred at 8:30, it is very interesting that the main evidence of a power cut (a sudden and dramatic change in phase) occurred 8:35-8:40, at least five minutes after the supposed relay fault at 8:30. This is also backed up by a number of anecdotal accounts of lights going out well after 8:30 at around 8:40.
This strongly suggests that if there was a fault at 8:30pm that the actual event causing the power outage did not occur until at least 8:35 but instead showed at 8:40pm as a massive and sharp change in grid frequency. That suggests another event occurred around 5-10minutes after the supposed “relay fault” and so there is 5-10 minutes which has not so far been explained between the “fault” and the power outage.
This time discrepancy needs to be explained because I cannot see how a fault at 8:30 could lead to a sudden massive change in mains frequency at 8:40 unless there were an additional factor of which the large and dominant affect of wind, and the collapse in hydro output (presumably due to a bad forecast and general otherwise oversupply) that night on the whole system is very likely to be the cause.
In other words, even if there was a “relay fault” (which itself seems doubtful as given in the original letter) this was just coincidental was probably found as a result of having to cope with the massive power surge from wind – and is all in all just a very handy excuse.

Posted in Climate | 1 Comment

Lewandowsky: those believing in global warming are gullible.

Posted on 21 July 2014 by Scottish-Sceptic

Summary

Based on the ethics application, Lewandowsky’s known views on skeptics and comments he made about “the pause” it appears this project was set up with the expectation that it would show that skeptics changed their views depending what they thought the graph showed. It was probably expected that skeptics would demonstrate a bias by changing their estimation of future trend when informed the graph showed global temperature and it might have been expected that many would say it was cooling.
To test this idea, the groups were randomly split into those told the graph was the share price and another told it was global temperature. They were also asked their views on climate and Lewandowsky then compared those within each group to see how their beliefs on climate was related to their average prediction of the future trends.
It turns out the survey showed the complete opposite effect to that we believe was expected. Skeptics in the group told it was temperature and those told it was share prices had almost the same prediction of the future trend. So irrespective of whether it was shares or global temperature skeptics estimate of future trends were very similar. In contrast the expected trend given by global warming believers differed dramatically between those who were led to believe the graph showed share prices and those led to believe it was global temperature.
Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | 5 Comments