Following my previous post highlighting the emergence of humorous articles regarding Global warming The Global Warming comedy show I realised this marked an important change, but in order to explain it, I needed to publish my Social Boundary Theory of Humour.
To put it simply, the Social Boundary Theory of Humour says that we find things funny because they are at the boundary of acceptability, AND that we use humour to communicate and “discuss” these boundary. (Which rather explains why I no longer find the BBC funny!)
However, the implication of that, is that people will tend to use humour when they are unsure of the social boundary and are searching for the “social norm” or the limit of social acceptability. (We don’t e.g. ask is it OK to say “cunt” – people instead make a joke and judge the acceptability of ideas and words from the response – which is significantly different in different social groups).
In other words, the recent emergence of articles in a humorous tone, is highly indicative of a view that the social boundaries on reporting climate are perceived to have changed. So those journalists treating the subject humorously are in effect asking the question “is this the new social boundary?”.
Thus, based on the Social Boundary Theory of Humour I can conclude:

1. There has been a perceived change in what is acceptable within society regarding this subject (the moral stigma of being a sceptic has dissipated).
2. That more than likely once other commentators see the subject being treated humorously, that they too will begin using humour so that they too can explore and discover the new “socially acceptable boundary”.
3. And basically: that the Global Warming propaganda machine is failing, the fear of “crossing the boundary” to the sceptic side has disappeared and that we sceptics face the real risk of becoming socially acceptable.

Social Boundary Theory of Humour

Socially acceptable behaviour is contained within a set of unseen boundaries which are not formally taught. As young children, we learn by praise and punishment what behaviour is acceptable in the same way that we learn by the same means what places we can go, what items we can touch and what behaviours are acceptable.
However, it is a well known phenomenon that some areas are taboo from discussion. So, many parents find it difficult to talk to children about sex, or perhaps in this age, many children don’t want to hear parents talking about something they already know.
So where does this knowledge come from? As children seem to learn the socially acceptable boundaries even though they are not being formally taught or communicated.
I would like to propose a very simple hypothesis: that the main purpose of humour is to explore and demarc the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour & thought. They are in effect ritualistic forays, toward and even beyond the bounds of acceptability, which are tolerated because these ritualised “attacks” enable society to discuss and communicate these taboo subjects.
Thus humour is in effect the formation of the question: “if someone did this – would it be acceptable”. Those “jokes” that do not push the bounds are not funny. Those jokes that go too far are deemed “unacceptable”. But in between there is a spectrum of acceptability and the response from the audience endorses and re-enforces or forms the social boundary. It is thus hypothesised that the the tone of the response from the audience, in some way communicates to everyone if or how far the boundary has been crossed. (i.e. laughter versus groans?)
In addition, by attacking other groups, humour is used to signpost the boundaries of the group: to create and maintain a group identity by denigrating “outsiders” and suggesting the insiders are superior, intellectually, socially and/or morally.
Many other theories of humour have been proposed as below. However none explain the purpose of humour or the reason why this form of behaviour would have evolved. However, it does fit in with these other theories as follows: Continue reading →

There’s a new phenomenon developing, presumably from a press sick to death with the Climate Extremists propaganda and/or gullibly copy and pasting their dumb press releases. And it’s this: headlines which just look comic! So, can you tell whether the following are intended to be serious just by their titles?

• Opinion: On global warming, will they come after hamburgers next?
• See How Global Warming Could Sink Parliament
• Global warming affecting Belgian beer
• Climate change hampers sex drive too
• Tis the season for all that global warming folly

Perhaps their expensive market “research” shows them that people like comedy, so in their gullible minds the climate extremists now reckon that if they make global warming comic people will like it?

After one particularly irritating letter from my children’s school in which contrary to human rights and without even so much as asking if they may, they wrote to say they were taking over the role of parenting of my child, I wrote this letter back to them using much of the original phrases/words in in the same dismissive style of their original (and yes, it wasn’t even addressed personally):

PS. The teachers are actually very good.

(I found this today on my PC, evidently written a good few years ago).
There are well known phases to a project like this “tackling global warming”
1. Politics
Politically active people (within society or a company) seeking to manufacture a power base for themselves pick up on issues from well-intentioned individuals which they then push for their own self advancement, seeking to create the biggest possible project consuming the most resources possible for their own personal gain. The result, totally unrealistic goals which have little to do with the original issue.
2. Enthusiasm
After securing funding from the gullible people who control funding, a new project starts, many enthusiastic consultants, researchers, etc. are hired, because they will tell the managers how fantastic the project is and how much they can achieve.
3. Realism
As the initial enthusiasm turns out to be over-hyped, as goals are beginning to look more difficult, as early work fail to make the anticipated progress, those most responsible for the unrealistic goals see the writing on the wall (from all their other failed projects) and find another issue to push leaving an increasingly disillusioned group having to deal with the fallout.
4. Pistoffeness
The early progress grinds to a halt. The promises of how much will be achieved turn into grate with the reality of how much has been achieved and initial enthusiasm disappears.
5. Search for the guilty
Everyone, including even the extremely gullible, now realises the initial aims are unachievable. Now those involved, spend almost as much effort trying to pin the blame for its failure on others as working on the project and everyone is trying not to be the first to be sacked.
6. The clearout
With the key driver long gone, the blame now falls on the poor project leader (chosen for their enthusiasm not ability to deliver) And when they go, so goes all their expensive hyperbolic consultants and managers. The project goals are severely cut down to match reality, and the now cut-down and functional project team (led by engineering types) at last has some prospect of achieving the more realistic objectives (often bearing no resemblance to the original objectives, but only stated to be the same “project” so as to save face.
7. The Enquiry
Almost without exception, those who pushed the original unrealistic goals (e.g. politicians) have sloping shoulders and they know the best way to avoid taking the blame themselves is to lead the charge to pin the blame on others.
In the mud-slinging that ensues, the functional managers finally making progress usually haven’t a chance against the slick political types (who are really to blame). Dirty laundry is exposed.
8. The “it will never happen again”
Those most responsible now vow to never let the fiasco recur. They pin the blame on the last few good managers on the project, awarding them hugely inflated redundancy packages to keep quiet, so allowing the real culprits to remain in their high offices, who now cynically use the “example” of this failed and the appalling behaviour of the good managers to justify their next massively expensive project, with over hyped goals, etc.

The Scottish highlands was amongst the first to suffer a widespread wind related power outage (obviously denied by our idiot politicians but the change of events clearly indicated wind was the culprit). Then just this week we hear that England nearly suffered the same, and now it also appears to have occurred in Australia:

STT could be forgiven for being just a little smug after events unfolded last Sunday night (1 November 2015) in Australia’s “Wind Farm Capital”, South Australia.
As our post – Wind Power Disaster Unfolds: SA Facing Total Blackouts, Rocketing Power Prices & Thousands More Chopped from the Grid – was being put together for an airing on Monday, unbeknownst to STT – a bit after 10pm on Sunday – 110,000 South Australian homes and businesses were plunged into darkness.
STT’s SA operatives were quick off the mark, informing us of their unscheduled trip to the Dark Ages – with emails and comments on that post.
Without warning, traffic lights were dimmed to dangerous pointlessness; street lights were out, leaving less surefooted and vulnerable pedestrians creeping home nervously in the dark; hotel, cinema and restaurant owners had to show customers the door; service stations were unable to pump fuel for their motoring customers; and TV viewers missed the critical dénouements of favourite crime ‘whodunnit’, NCIS and batty-blockbuster, The Dark Knight Rises.
On a more serious note, those in charge of hospitals, like the Lyell-McEwin, had to cross their fingers in the anxious seconds before diesel generators fired up to produce the power needed to keep life support patients ticking along and other critical infrastructure up and running.
Likewise with supermarkets relying on their own diesel generators to keep perishables and frozen food from perishing. However, those small businesses with no access to backup power generation (Delis and the like) and, therefore, no refrigeration, had to otherwise try to stop valuable frozen goods from melting, along with their profits.
While NCIS fans missed out on the who-got-cuffed-climax, the ‘whodunnit’ of real interest to STT was played out in what passes for media in South Australia. Here’s some of it.
Widespread power blackout hits Adelaide
The Advertiser
2 November 2015
Power fault ‘could happen again’
Read More: Stop These Things

Hopefully no one so far has died, but it is only a matter of time before people do start dying directly as a result of this “insane obsession with global warming“

Note: this was originally posted on another blog specific to Scotland.

The rate of change of power on the grid on the 16th April around 8:30pm. Change of frequency is shown dotted red.

‘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?

Continue reading →

A common theme in the replies from #CliamteExtremists is that “if you are suggesting NOAA was doing something wrong you are a conspiracy theorist because why would the people do that?”
This however, always comes from people who have no qualification (and whilst they are mostly anonymous) I doubt they actually have any experience of big organisation and how a lot of well intentioned people can work together to do evil.

Alder Hey organs scandal

The Classic example occurred at Alder Hey. For the Doctors involved, they weren’t doing anything wrong. Young children were dying, their organs could save lives (or to be cynical perhaps be sold to help meet the Doctors salaries). But either way, the public were benefiting and because the parents didn’t know what organs had been stuffed back in the corpse after autopsy, they were none the wiser.
But when it finally emerged this was happening it caused a massive outrage. Because whilst the Doctors didn’t see anything wrong in what they were doing, the parents affected did. And the cause (like NOAA) was a group of people who arrogantly believed that they were right and no one else had a right to tell them what to do. Continue reading →

Climate change agitators love to say the science is settled in their favor, that researchers have irrefutably proved industrial carbon emissions are causing global temperatures to rise to such an extent that irreversible environmental damage already is under way. Considering their conviction, you’d think the research and work product of climate alarmists would be an open book.
You’d be wrong.
…
In fact, scientists employed by taxpayers enjoy no such privilege. More likely, they’re stalling because their “frank discourse” includes interactions that, at a minimum, will highlight bias and political influence.
If we’re going to be regulated into recession for a problem that might not even exist, the public certainly has a right to know whether the numbers might be rigged to benefit a hyperpolitical agenda. NOAA’s records don’t belong to the government. They belong to the public. Let’s see what we’re paying for.
Source Las Vega Review Journal

The full title should be: First time I’ve listened to Climate Academics thinking they know more than me and that they aren’t lying through their teeth to push an eco-political agenda. In other words, climate science warts and all, not eco-fascist clap trap.
Having read many climate articles I’ve formed my own views on what is most important in the climate. For example I knew that CO2 was both an emitter and absorber of IR, that most of the IR effect of CO2 occurred in the very lowest part of the atmosphere. From that I worked out that the real question was what was happening at the top of the atmosphere where IR did have a chance to escape and so a small amount of CO2 could affect radiation, and not the bottom where even massive changes to can’t increase IR blocking when it is already blocked.
Likewise, it’s pretty obvious that clouds form a vital negative feedback component effectively stabilising the planet (during inter-glacials). And that CO2 is a plant food is obvious to anyone who knows anything about biology. So,it’s great to see all this once “mainstream” science, which has now been repressed by Climate Extremists in one video:
https://youtu.be/LV2uld7feqY