Scottish Sceptic

Dear Jo,
it is important you get this.
But first, I was delighted to hear about the baby. So, I will try to keep this short knowing you will be busy with the most important of things and are unlikely to get around to doing anything about it soon.
The drop in solar activity was going to become the next climate scare. I said I thought it was important to ensure that at least one politician was not caught up in the public scare that is likely to develop. You listened.
Today as I came down for breakfast my wife told me there was something I had to see on the BBC website. She said: “it’s really scary”, “it was no surprise, because it’s just what you’ve been saying”. And it was top news:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510
I’ve also highlighted the likely connection to the 1690s famines – at the height of the Maunder minimum. The book the “Ill years” suggests that up to a quarter of Scotland’s population died. I cannot imagine this would not become a topic of discussion in the referendum debate. This may make this all the more of a scare in Scotland.
As such, I believe we will see a repeat of the global warming scare, in that a known problem of manageable proportions, become blown out of all proportion through lack of knowledge and media speculation fuelled by the desire of academics to obtain funding for research.
Mike

There’s an excellent piece by by Gerald Warner in today’s Scotsman.

CLIMATE change is real and it is happening very fast. The climate of opinion, that is, regarding the rapidly imploding fantasies of the global warming alarmists.

This would be unusually vehement – albeit honest – in any country, but in Scotland where global warming was almost the state religion and sceptics were viewed as morally equivalent to paedophiles and deserving their place in concentration camps etc., this is a remarkable turn around.

After a decade in which sane commentators have been angered and frustrated by the purblind adherence to the warmist superstition by followers of the Al Gore cult – prominent among them our own esteemed First Minister and President for Life Designate – the whole climate change scam has finally degenerated into a joke, provoking widespread derision.

And it will be particularly unwelcome news in the Scottish Government where the SNP are even now trying to portray themselves as “competent” to govern Scotland ahead of the referendum on Scottish independence this year.  The truth is that the Scottish government were gullible, corrupt and incompetent. The SNP ignored numerous warnings this was hocus pocus non-science dreamed up by a small group of academics. They told MSPs lies about the economic case to get the legislation through. And this Nationalist party ended up taking money from the poor in Scotland to help the rich in England.
How could anyone trust the SNP? The Scottish parliament was only really given one bit of extra power over the previous Scottish office. And that was to promote … I was going to say wind … the in truth it was to promote global warming. To promote global warming so that the Scots politicians desperate to do something with this new power would rush to turn Scotland into an industrial wind park  – for whose benefit? Tto save the English countryside from being similarly dispoiled.
Yes! The SNP of all people were hell bent on destroying Scotland to help English politicians achieve the EU imposed “green” targets by ensuring that Scotland had far more than its fair share of renewables. In 2010 it was 18% in Scotland and about 10% – since when the SNP have forced the poor in Scotland to pay even more to benefit the rich in England who sit in their London clubs raking in the wind grants.
You could hardly make it up.

Congratulations Jo

Baby Andrew (on the right)

I’m a little late, but its still the best news I’ve heard all day.

This is an excellent article which is well worth reading in full.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m already addicted to uClimate.com. But it is certainly bringing up surprises. The first was that WUWT is not the top blog – at least in terms of posts with Stephen Goddard producing some 269 articles and Climate Depot some 184 compared to WUWT’s 97. Obviously there’s no comparison in terms of quality but even so it was a surprise.
But the real eye opener has come from the new addition which records clicks on articles. It is so new, that it is not publicly available (sorry I’m still trialling the software). But what do you suppose the top article is? Was it …

• Judith Curry: Is global warming causing the polar vortex?
• The GWPF: Wind Farms ‘Will Be Paid Billions To Switch Off’
• Judith Curry: The Fundamental Uncertainties of Climate Change
• Climate Denial Crock of the Week: How Cheap Are EV Batteries?
• Bishop Hill: Met Office finally becomes sceptics?

Yes, they are all in the top few, but no they are not top. Instead, if the number of clicks are to be believed, what is the most important issue flexible the combined intellect of sceptics? It’s this:

Warren Meyer: Windows 8 Even Worse Than I Thought

Up to this point, after some initial bad impressions trying Windows 8 briefly, I have avoided it like the plague.  However, my son needed a new laptop and the only ones that really met our requirements only came in Windows 8 flavors, so we bought one. What an awful mess.  The system boots up into …

2014-01-08 06:08   1 Comment … and the worst thing is that I too hate Windows 8.