There are a whole series of diseases from simple allergies to some form of arthritis where the normal behaviour of the body’s immune system somehow stops just attacking foreign invaders and instead starts attacking the body’s own tissues as if it were a foreign matter. I see much similarity in the way academics now attack commerce, industry and their antithesis “practitioners” and “sceptics”.
Why do academics love battery cars?
I was thinking this morning, that much of the problem of academia stems from the way it has become divorced from the reality of real life. That e.g. researchers will spend years investigating battery technology for some supposed Utopian future without hydro-carbons … when it has long been known that batteries are an inefficient way to store energy.
In case it is not obvious, this is because batteries like hydro-carbon fuels are just ways to store chemical energy. The big difference is that the “other side” of the process in hydrocarbons is the freely available air … whereas the “other side” of a battery has to be in the battery on “the other” plate. The result is that a petrol tank is 100% full of energy giving chemicals. In contrast even if the battery were 100% full of chemicals … they would only have 50% of the energy because they carry both sides of the reaction whereas the other side for hydro-carbons is air.
But it is much worse, in a battery, the chemical store is a thin coat on a 2D plate which must have all the additional complexity, bulk and weight of the electrical plates to hold that chemical store and transfer the energy. Batteries are far from an ideal way to carry energy and you’d have to be a nutty professor to think they are.
So, why don’t academics research how to convert Carbons & water into hydro-carbons? The answer is simple – that was worked out a long time ago and therefore there is no grant money to promote the proven and useful technology which requires absolutely no change to our cars
The real alien conspiracy
Continue reading →

Clause 13 of the “follow any messiah which offers them money text“:

 
And it doesn’t make much more sense with the spaces:

I hear the talks are on a knife edge … well they need a 90 degree change of thinking to stick that knife in and finish it off.

With the talks dragging on into Saturday afternoon without agreement, green campaigners warned the process could collapse.

Oxfam’s Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, who was part of a walkout during the week, said that this was now a real possibility.
(source: BBC)

I have never more wanted the BBC to be impartial on climate, because the comedy potential of these latest talks is just astounding. It would be a cross between blackadder, The thick of it, Dad’s army and that one on the olympic games organisers.
I would certainly have a character who spends the whole conference just losing their way and never arriving anywhere. The Aussies in T-shirts would be drinking beer and belching in the early hours. The British in their suits would be sweating as the Polish host turns up the heating.
Backstabbing and intrigue would be everywhere, developing countries would be like one of those crowds in Monty Python Life of Brian – following any Masiah who offered them money. And the official jargonese and press releases would be totally opaque to everyone including those writing them. Continue reading →

Reuters) – Several major environmental groups, including Greenpeace and WWF, have walked out of U.N. climate talks in Warsaw in protest at what they see as a lack of progress towards an international deal to curb rising global greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is one of the most ‘captured’ summits ever – by corporates and coal industry with the support of the Polish government,” said Dipti Bhatnagar at Friends of the Earth International.
“We are walking (out) to send a strong message due to the total inaction at the talks, due to lack of ambition and finance, at a time when we need the most action.”
It was the first time green groups had staged such a coordinated walk-out at U.N. climate talks.
Reuters
 

David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green crap’ blamed for driving up energy bills and making business uncompetitive, it is claimed. The Prime Minister, who once pledged to lead the ‘greenest government ever’, has publicly promised to ‘roll back’ green taxes, which add more than £110 a year to average fuel bills. But a senior Tory source said Mr Cameron’s message in private is far blunter. The source said: ‘He’s telling everyone, “We’ve got to get rid of all this green crap.” He’s absolutely focused on it.’ -–Daily Mail, 21 November 2013
Lets go back to November 3rd 2013

I hate to say “I told you so” but I did. I even wrote a whole section at the end of a report detailing it: Case Analysis: The effect of the End of Kyoto on Scotland and several posts including this one: Thoughts on what end for Global Warming?

Just as I predicted, the UK government are beginning to manoeuvre against the SNP to raise wind as a top political issue coming up to the referendum vote next year. The reason is simple: the SNP economic case for independence was based on North Sea oil but it faltered when oil started running out. Renewables were seen not only as an economic but a political fix. Independence was still viable when oil ran out because renewables would take their place.
(Game, set & match for Scottish Independence: Scottish Sceptic

I feel like some shepherd boy standing on a hill who’s has been flinging pebbles and shouting at the massed ranks of SNP supporter and green activist “I’ve won”. And there they were, laughing at me because they thought I was mad, because I said I could hear the massed ranks of boots behind me.

Well who’s looking stupid now?

Sceptics and the convinced clearly can’t agree even on very simple things like what to call Prof Salby. So if we can’t agree what we know, can we at least agree on what we don’t. The honest answer is no, because this will end up in another  “you/we don’t/do know – war, which I know will be like counting broken pencils – pointless.
So, can we agree on …. mmmm …. not sure how to put this as even this question could be fractious. I did wonder whether I could devise an HTML a button — and depending on whether you are a sceptic or other, you would get the appropriate question:

• Sceptics the question is: what could be done better?
• Academics the question is: where should we put funding?

But life is too short, … and eventually I think an appropriately neutral question** might be phrased thus:

“where should we put effort in climate science”?

**but I’ve lost confidence I can say anything without getting attacked so — maybe I should just issue a blanket apology right now?

My centigrade’s worth:
I’ll start by suggesting that a lot more funding should go into short-term regional forecasting aimed at predicting floods, famines and the progress of tropical diseases. This is a perfectly achievable aim with the potential to save millions of lives.
The next obvious one is that we need a lot more effort to understand the relationship between solar activity and climate.
And the last is that I’m fed up arguing about temperature records. Let’s stop these stupid arguments by spending say $1000 million on the most reliable network of surface sensors & ocean sensors for meteorology that us engineers can produce. And the reason it will cost so much, is not because I want some backpay, but because I’m not having any of this nonsense of debating how much the surrounding buildings & vegetation have influenced the readings. Most of the money will be to pay to flatten a one kilometer square with the sensor in the middle fenced in and filled with sheep to keep the grass down.
Obviously this might have problems in places and some of the sheep will need woolly hats in Antarctica – but I’m sure if we do enough research we will be able to genetically modify sheep to grow their own woolly hats.