JohnB

Just a really strange thought. Since the downwelling radiation from the atmospheric greenhouse effect operates 24/7 and is roughly equal to the incoming solar radiation, why aren't we working on photovoltaics that make use of the infra red part of the spectrum? I'm not kidding. There's about 340 W/M-2 available 24/7 for conversion rather than 320 W/M-2 available for, say, 8 hours per day. Converting the downwelling IR strikes me as a better option. Or is there a technical reason why IR can't be converted?

The reason for the vote is philosophical. By denying the individual the fruits of his/her labour you are denying incentive. The lack of individual property ownership limits the individuals ability to work towards goals that are valuable to him or her.

Like imatfaal said, this will vary from nation to nation, but if pressed I would say that the main differences are that liberals/progressives are more idealistic while conservatives are more pragmatic. In the Australian experience the ideas for our social reforms come from the progressives, but it generally took the conservatives to actually make them work. Conservatives are generally more tolerant than progressives as well. Progressives preach tolerance but always attempt to silence opposition. Calls that people should not be "allowed" to speak tend to come from the left and not the right. Another difference is how the populace is viewed. To a conservative "individuals make up society", but to a progressive "society is made up of the people". An individual is easily identified as there is only one of them, a people are much harder to identify as the definition can be whatever you want it to be. Examining this from Incendia rather than rebutting it. I think it depends on how you view "restrictions". Is one all encompassing rule more or less restrictive than 1,000 special rules? Conservatives do tend to prefer integration because it has one rule "If you want to live here, then you follow our cultural rules." Pretty much a national version of how people behave when visiting someones home. In essence it's an attitude that people come to the recieving nation because that nations culture and lifestyle is better than the one they ran away from. So why try to make the new home more like the place you ran from? However multiculturalism doesn't work that way, it has many, many rules. People who believe in multiculturalism don't really, or more to the point they do provided the expression of culture is limited to wearing colourful clothing and having quaint "Cultural Festivals". Any other part of the "culture" is accepted or rejected on a case by case basis. While progressives will defend multiculturalism and feel quite superior to conservatives for doing so, in truth the only parts they really allow are those that don't offend their delicate sensibilities. So which is more restrictive? A blanket "These are the rules" or a "We will encourage you to keep your original culture. Except this bit, and that bit, and that bit, and you really can't do this bit......" and so on.

Am I the only one who gave up on SG-Universe? I tried, I really did, but it got nonsensical. Why in Gods name would the Alliance think that an aging and decrepit starship that cannot be controlled (and even if it could would take millions of years to get back home) and is a definite one way trip is even worth highjacking? Add to that we know that in each episode the brilliant scientist (with a serious God complex and other psychological imbalances) will discover something and keep it to himself thereby risking everybody. We know that the computer nerd will somehow save the day. And most of all, we know that the politicians daughter, in spite of previous experience and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, will not believe that she is a complete clueless moron and will disobey instructions and get herself into a life threatening situation that she must be saved from. Seriously, a lot of time, effort and manpower would be saved if she were simply locked in a room with a single guard outside who has "Shoot to kill" orders if she tries to leave. Certainly a lot easier than having large chunks of the crew tied up trying to find and save her later.

Oui. I have to agree with the rest. The existence of a law that says the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals in the nation cannot negotiate bulk discounts is ludicrous. TBH I would put it as so far from the "National Interest" as to be almost treasonous. While Americans are admirably individualistic there is the downside that if a lobby can get something associated with the word "socialist" then there will be a large percentage of the population immediately against whatever it is, regardless of truth. In this respect you are easily fooled and mislead. I've argued here before and will say it again. Partisanship is killing you. Any statement by either a Republican or Democrat will immediately polarise at least 60% of the people, 30% accepting the statement as ineffable truth and 30% believing it an outright lie. Party loyalty is one thing, outright political blindness is quite another. A good example of this is how the climate debate divided politically in America. When "An Inconvenient Truth" came out a section of the population accepted it immediately as "truth", not because of facts or arguments or science, but because Al Gore said so. "Al Gore is a Democrat and is therefore honest and pure and wouldn't lie to people so it must be true". Another section of the populace immediately went the other way for no better reason than "Al Gore is a Democrat and they are all lying b*stards who could stand in the shade of a corkscrew, so it must be false". Both of these groups are wrong and show how partisanship makes decent sized segments of the American population easily controllable. Concerning lobbyists. I think a major difference is that in the US it appears that lobbyists drive government policies, whereas down here they seek to modify them. Down here the partys publish their policies and the lobbyists then try to get modifications to get the best deal for their industry, but in the US there is a dearth of actual policies coming from the parties. Compare these Health policy pages; Republicans: http://www.gop.com/index.php/issues/issues/ You might have to flip through to find their one paragraph "policy" statement. Democrats: http://www.democrats.org/issues/health_care Much better, aside from the complaints about the GOP, but is mainly about what they've done or tried to do and very little about what they intend to do or how it will work. Now the three major players in Australia; Labor; http://www.alp.org.au/agenda/health-reform/ Sets out intentions, targets and spending as well as links to more detailed policies in specialised areas. Liberal/National: http://www.liberal.org.au/Issues/Health.aspx A general page with links to detailed .pdfs giving targets, intentions and funding. Greens: http://greens.org.au/policies/care-for-people/health A detailed page listing all the targets and intentions. (There is no mention of how to fund things as the greens have all the economic abilities of a house brick. They may not know how to pay for it, but at least you know what they want.) From my POV neither party in the US actually has a policy on anything. It's all wishy washy, airy fairy, if then maybe, pie in sky dreaming rubbish. There are no targets, no statements of intent, no way at all to hold the political party to its word, no way at all to decide whether a party is or is not achieving its policy goals. Is it any wonder that the lobbyists are providing policy? It sure isn't coming from the parties. And the American people are letting both parties get away with it.

Sorry guys, I'm still not getting it with unequal subsidies. I think we agree that a well established industry that pays $280 billion doesn't need the $4 billion in breaks, that to me is a given. However oil etc which provide virtually all of your transport power, more than half of electricity production and Thor only knows how many jobs gets $4 billion while the renewables that are lucky to make 1% of energy get how much? (Solyndra got $500 million) It strikes me that when compared to actual production, the renewables get far more than the established companies. To me it's like saying that if the US gov gave California $10 billion and Montana $5 billion then Montana is missing out, when percapita Montana would be getting more than 30 times as much. From my POV and looking at what is contributed to the grid, renewables are getting a lot more money than the established energy companies. And the question has to be asked "What is the point? Is it worth it?". Short of some magical development that increases energy production from renewables, they simply won't play a major part in supplying power to the grid. Using the 2006 figures from Wiki Solar, Wind and Geothermal between them supplied 1.1% of energy in the US compared to coals 49.1%, so coal used 1,460 power plants to provide 44 times as much power as 31 Solar Plants, 215 Geothermal and 341 Wind power stations. This means that to replace just coal using existing technology (and assuming the same mix of generators) will require 1,383 Solar Plants, 9,597 Geothermal stations and 15,221 Wind power stations, nearly 25,000 power stations. Now we have to add in siting factors. Coal stations can be placed pretty much anywhere that you can get coal and water to but Solar needs to be placed where the sunshine is good, Geothermal where the geology is right and Wind where the wind blows well, severely limiting where these plants can be placed. How much of your National Park area are you willing to sacrifice? My guess is none, if the choice is a wind farm or National Park the park will win every time. (It would with me too. If somebody wanted to bulldoze part of a National Park for a wind farm or a mine, I'd be against it.) So the technology limits the amount of power per station and geography and local conditions limit where the stations can be placed. Let's look at a more modest proposition, say 10% renewables. Can you actually find the space to place 300 Solar plants, 950 Geothermal stations and 3,400 Wind power stations without sacrificing National Parks and wilderness areas? I doubt it. (but it would be interesting to find out) Off the top of my head I would expect that it would need a good 500% increase in power generation per acre of land used to make renewables viable for baseload grid power, otherwise the numbers just don't add up. So I ask again "Is it worth it?". Rather than renewables might the money not be better spent on next gen nukes or fusion research? It might seem that I'm arguing for coal, but I'm not, I'm looking at the limitations of different power generation methods. Some are very wasteful in terms of infrastructure, including coal. Consider the Wiki page again. Why on Earth have 649 coal fired plants with individual outputs of less than 100 MW? (465 of them less than 50MW) The rail and road requirements to fuel that many stations is enormous and wasteful. Choose carefully and expand some of them to 1000 MW (or build some new 1000 MW ones) and for each one expanded or built you can bulldoze 19 small stations. (Expand 23 of the small ones to 1000 MW and you can bulldoze all the rest.) This to me makes both economic and ecological sense. The idea being to produce power as cheaply as possible while chewing up the minimum of available land, it's a trade off. I look at it this way. To the north of me is Tarong, covering about 144 square kilometres, including the mine that feeds it, it's an area about 12 km x 12 km and produces 1,400 MW of baseload power. Further to the north near Townsville is our largest wind farm at Windy Hill. Windy Hill covers 2 and a bit square km to produce 12 MW of power. Now if Windy Hill was expanded to the size of Tarong it would only produce 1/2 the power and none of it would be baseload. So yes, I would rather have a single power station stuck in the middle of nowhere producing sh*tloads of baseload than to clear fell hundreds of square kms of National Park and State forest for wind farms. And I have no interest in "offshore" wind. "Offshore" here means the Great Barrier Reef and there is no way I will support wind farms or oil rigs out there. I'll be underwater planting dynamite with the more radical greenies on this one.

Here is the problem I think. We have the tax and private health insurance companies. People view it as an "all or nothing" proposition when it isn't. The tax is used to cover everybody for the basics. You get surgery and stay in a ward. You are treated by the roster doctor or surgeon, that sort of thing and you stay in the "Public" or government hospitals. Private cover gets you a private room in a private hospital (or a private room in a public hospital) and the doctor or surgeon of your choice. And please don't make the mistake of thinking that public or government hospitals are worse than private ones. All doctors and nurses meet the same standards of training as do the hospitals themselves. Doctors and surgeons divide their time (I don't the details of how) between the private and public hospitals so it's not like the idiots work the public system. As has been pointed out before in threads on health, the US federal government is already spending 3 times as much per capita than other nations for healthcare. The problem is not lack of money, the problem is the system itself and until people get past this knee jerk reaction to governments and taxes and actually look at the system and the issues involved then you will continue to spend far too much money for a p*ss poor system.

I see that the new editor is remarkably speedy. Kevin Trenberths commentary published in Remote Sensing was Dr Trenberth is also rather quick as reference 25 of the commentary is; Data accessed, commentary written, submitted and accepted all in the one day. This is of course perfectly normal and is common in other sciences isn't it? And yes, I do realise that a commentary can be virtually finished and just waiting for the final data to complete it, but this all seems rather fast.

And will it be better spent than the $500 million that went to Solyndra? While I'm not opposed to subsidies per se, I think that there is a lot of lax thinking going on with energy, a lot of woolly, hopeful expectation. Subsidies are being argued for on the basis of "Let's go solar and when we have a lot of them the price will come down" and this may well be true, it could also be very untrue. The goal is wrong. To my mind the goal of any subsidies for alternatives should be the supply of energy at cheaper than the current coal prices. Cheap and abundant energy is what our civilisation requires. Policies to increase the price of coal power or to artificially reduce the price of alternatives go against that goal because both actually increase the price to the consumer. I certainly agree that the $4 billion should be removed from the oil companies. However when it comes to spending it I think it would be better to put it into R & D to improve the technology that can then be leased to the power companies rather than paying people to install inefficient current tech things.

Thanks iNow. I'm still not sure I see the argument though. According to the NYT article; Proportionally $4 billion in tax breaks or whatever is small fish compared to $280 billion, I don't see how this can be construed as giving oil some sort of unfair advantage. Is oil paying $284 billion rather than $280 really going to make that much of a difference? Similarly from the Forbes article; As they are already paying far more in taxes than most companies, how are they getting any sort of advantage? As a general philosophical point I see no problem with giving an industry $4 billion in tax breaks if they generate a further $250 billion+ in taxes, whereas I find it just silly to give alternative energy say $200 million in subsidies to generate $100 million in taxes. Tax breaks are an investment in the economy and those that can contribute most to the economy are more worthwhile investing in. However I'd do it as a level thing with all tax breaks open to all companies, that is a level playing field. At the same time I find it silly to think that an industry paying $280 billion in taxes is really in need of the $4 billion in tax breaks. What I do find interesting is that your Federal Excise taxes are extremely low. According to the IRS, Federal petrol taxes generated some $20 billion in 2000. (The figures are a bit dated) where in Australia last year the same tax was worth about $16 billion in excise. It seems very odd that a nation of 300 million can barely generate more excise income than a nation of 20 million. I think that ours is way too high and yours is way too low. As of 2000 your tax was 18 odd cents per gallon where ours in 2006 was 38 cents per litre. Your Federal government should be getting a lot more in fuel excise than it does. (How's that for weird, a right winger saying taxes should go up. )

I'm not sure that the two can be separated. Reduced to basics health insurance is paying a small amount each year so that when you need to you can make a large claim and pay the medical bills. Health care or any "Universal" government system is exactly the same but on a larger scale. Instead of "premiums" you pay a "tax", but the basics are the same. As a simple example I've just had the rest of my thyroid out. This meant a 3 day stay at a top hospital and two operations. (It would have only been one but I suffered breathing problems the first night and they decided to go back in and check that everything was okay. It was.) As a private patient with private insurance I would have had choice of surgeons and a private room rather than a ward. At the end of the stay I would have been presented the bill and given it to my insurance company for payment because that is what I pay my premiums for. However I went in under our "Universal" system as a public patient. I got a top line surgeon. (Like us non medical plebs could actually work out before the fact who is or is not a good surgeon anyway.) I finished up in my own room. On the way out I had to pay for my medications Thyroxcine and aspirin, a total cost of some $44. Aside from that there is no cost because I've been paying the premiums in my taxes. I really cannot understand the antipathy of many people to "taxes". Call it a premium or call it a tax it is the same thing, a price you pay for a service. Pay $500 per year to an insurance company or $500 per year in tax you get exactly the same product, your bills paid when you go to hospital. For example; I don't get this. Pay your current insurer, pay some new insurer or pay neither but pay more tax. The result is exactly the same from the POV of cost to the consumer. Quibbling about semantics around a health issue is counterproductive. The whole point of health insurance is to pay a small amount on a regular basis so that you recieve "free" (as in no extra cost to you) health care when you need it. Why should it matter a tinkers damn whether you pay it as a "premium" to an insurer or as a "tax" to the government? The difference is ideologically and not factually based.

How is oil subsidised? I keep seeing this claim around the traps but can't seem to get an answer as to what these subsidies actually are. (Aside from silly claims that the existence of a road network is somehow an oil company subsidy)

This isn't about AGW, but is about how we describe climate. When discussing the difference between climate and weather we usually look at the longer term trends, typically 30 years. I've been considering this and wondering if this is really such a good idea. I'm lousy with graphs so I hope I can paint a good enough word picture to illustrate my thoughts. Imagine a world where the climate (Global Average Temperature) changed in a monotonic fashion, but still cycled. For 30 years it goes up by .01 degrees per year and for the next 30 it went down by .01 degrees per year. Same amount, no deviation, year in and year out. This would give a distinct sawtooth pattern up and down of a change of .1 degrees/decade. With me? But what happens when we look at the 30 year periods? At the first peak we would be fine and show the warming at the correct rate of .1 degrees per decade, but now the temps are going to go down for 30 years. Using the 30 year "climate" timeframe the trend would not level off until we are 15 years into the cooling period, indeed we wouldn't show a cooling trend until the 16th year of cooling. This trend would gradually increase until we reach the bottom of the cycle when it would then show the correct rate of .1 degrees/decade. The reverse problem is now in force. The 30 year trend will continue to be negative until year 15 of the warming cycle and wouldn't actually show warming until year 16. The only time the "climate trend" would be correct is at the very top or very bottom of the cycle. Put bluntly, using a 30 year trend in this case would have zero predictive power. It would tell you that the trend is positive when it is in fact negative and has been so for 14 years and vice versa. Let's make things a bit more complicated and add a level period at the top and bottom of each cycle. So temps warm for 30 years, are stable for 10 years, cool for 30 years, are stable for 10 years and so on. Again this is an ideal condition and there are no variations at all. Now when we hit the top of the warming we will show the correct rate of .1 degrees/decade. The 30 year trend will continue to show as "warming" all the way through the stable period and for 10 years into the cooling period. (Although the rate of warming will be decreasing) At 10 years into the cooling period we would show "no trend" and from there would see an increasing cooling trend for the next 20 years until we hit the bottom of the cycle and the situation reverses again. We would be 10 years into the warming period before the trend levelled off and wouldn't show warming until year 11. Again we see the 30 year trend has virtually zero predictive power and will tell us it is warming when it is in fact stable or cooling and tell us it is cooling when it is actually warming. Since this is the case in a hypothetical system with 100% predictability I have to wonder if using a 30 year trend is such a good idea in a chaotic system like a real planeary climate. Would we be better off if we considered both 30 year and 10 year intervals? Consider these two statements, both of which are true for the Earths system over the last 30 years. Which is the better, more accurate description of the situation? 1. The Earths climate has warmed over the last 30 years. 2. The Earths climate has in general warmed over the last 30 years, however the last 10 show no real trend. Going back to our hypothetical world with the sawtooth pattern 10 years after a peak, the statements would be; 1. The world has warmed in the last 30 years. 2. The world has in general warmed in the last 30 years but has been cooling for the last 10. Given that the 30 year period was originally pretty much picked out of the air as a fair time period to use for "climate", I'm wondering if we should be too wedded to it. Note that I'm not saying we should dump the 30 year frame, simply that we might be better off using both a 30 year and a 10 year frame. Thoughts?

As a general principle I would agree. However this is advertising research. Advertising has an adage, "Sex sells". It has this because of a long history of advertising campaigns that shows it to be true. They don't put pretty girls into car ads for nothing, they put them in because experience shows that those ads sell more cars. So in this case, the news is redundant. It's not "conventional wisdom", it's impirical knowledge from experience.

Reported today in the Herald Sun is a groundbreaking report entitled "What Men Really Want From Women". Somehow I don't think that this is news to the male 50% of the population. This has to be right up there with the survey that found "sad people are more likely to be depressed than happy people".

While this thread was inspired by recent events in climate science, this isn't about climate. As part of his response to Drs Spencer & Braswell, Dr Dessler made and placed a video on youtube. By covering the salient points in a 4 minute video I view this as a "Video Abstract" and frankly think it's a fantastic idea. Hype and overhype is bad in climate science, (and maybe in others as well?) and this would serve to reduce it. A clear 5 minute presentation covering the main points and claims made in a paper, any paper, would prevent any sort of misinformation as to what is or is not claimed. It also prevents media from taking the researcher out of context as his actual stated claims are now public record. For the full story you would obviously still need to read the full paper, bu a video abstract would be great for finding out quickly what the researcher thinks their work shows. Like I said, I think it's a great idea and will help bring science to the "youtube" generation as well as giving interested parties a better grasp of the paper than a "mere" abstract can give. I can see it being helpful in many fields and not just climate. What do others think of it? (The concept, not the actual video)

Yet the only person I've seen having a go at Remote Sensing is Dr Trenberth, so who is creating that "impression"?

Dr Rocket, I have. (Or at least the bits I could understand) One of the difficulties for those of us without the PhD in maths is that quite often what we are presented are two sets of equations that apparently represent two differing versions of reality and have no objective way to tell which is correct. I think those that know me would agree that I have a good grasp of the climate science world, however I make no claim as to being knowledgable enough or qualified to comment on the worth of an actual paper based on the maths involved. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't know what an r2 value or correllation coefficient was, let alone its meaning and significance. (I now know enough to understand whether the value is "good" or "bad", but don't ask me to calculate either. ) The above doesn't mean I know nothing. I can read and evaluate conclusions and compare those conclusions to other published papers. I have a Mk 1 eyeball that can look at the graphs and see what is there. For example I can look at figure 3 in the paper and see that projections of the 6 climate models are nowhere near the observations. However I'm constantly aware that I'm not knowledgable enough to work out whether figure 3 is correct or not. I have to take it "on faith" that a researcher is acting in good faith and that his figures reflect what he claims the data says. This applies to both sceptic and consensus papers. At the time I made my post I hadn't seen your edit. If you would care to respond in more detail as to why the paper is worthless in your view, or to start a thread in the climate science sub forum, then believe me I would read it avidly. This is in no way a trap. There are things I know and a hell of a lot more that I don't know and more to the point, I know I don't know. I would probably ask questions, but that is how I find out things I don't know. Cap'n, I'm afraid I have to disagree. Dr Wagners statement is incorrect in a number of ways. First and foremost, sea ice extent and changes to flora and fauna occur due to changes in climate but are not an indicator as to attribution of cause and I'm frankly surprised that someone who is supposed to know his stuff even brings it up. Secondly, and regardless of the hype, yes you can compare a single data set to the model predictions and make a valid finding, it is possible. The models predict that there will be a radiative imbalnce at the TOA, and that this imbalance will have a certain value. This is definitive and can be checked, and it can only be checked against a single data set, the satellite data. Other data sets are irrelevent to the question. The question is whether or not more energy is coming into the system known as "Earth" than is leaving it. On this basis, what happens inside the box called "Earth" is irrelevent to the question. Surface temps don't matter and neither do Arctic Ice extent. Arctic Ice will effect the outgoing radiation due to albedo but so what? Albedo may explain why there is a difference but is not appropriate for determining whether or not there is a difference. Only one dataset can measure this, the satellite data. Thirdly, and I find this very concerning, he is elevating theory to the level of observation. This tendency was noted during one of the climategate inquiries and was of concern then. Theory and models can certainly guide what one might expect, but nature tells you what is. Obs must always trump theory, or you are going to allow any pseudoscientific claptrap in. If you allow theory to ever even come close to trumping obs, you are practicing religion and not science. You are in effect telling the creationists that their theory should be considered on an equal footing with all the observations confirming evolution. Others might want to open the gats to the creationists and expanding earth theorists, but I do not. If a theory or model makes specific predictions about specific things and those predictions do not match the observations, then the theory and model are at best faulty and at worst wrong. It is up to the modeller and theorist to have their models and theories match reality, and never the other way round. And without buying into the hype surrounding this paper, or any others that are supposedly the final "nail in the coffin", (I really don't know which expression I hate more, that one or the old "It's worse than we thought") the simple fact is that it is the satellites that will tell us what is going on, and it is on their data that GHG theory will stand or fall. If more energy comes in than goes out, then the world will warm, if more leaves than comes in, it will cool. (At least as a first approximation) GHG theory tells us that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere, "trapping" energy, then less will leave and the world will warm. Based on this radiative imbalance the models then tell us by how much and how fast. Theory and models also predict how large the discrepancy should be. Should more energy leave the system than is predicted, then the models are faulty and will predict that temps will rise more and faster than they will in reality. Conversely if less leaves the system than is predicted then the models are reading "cool" and temps will rise more and faster than predicted. It's all about radiative imbalance.

Certainly this is true. Fraudulent papers get retracted, bad papers get rebutted, retracted or ignored but there is still a decided lack of resigning editors, wouldn't you say? It would appear that the journal works in the usual way. To quote Dr Spencer in relation to this matter; So presumably S&B gave a list of reviewers and three were chosen from that list that were, to quote the editor; If we are going to reject reviewers on the basis of possible undefined bias, it is going to get very messy very quickly. I add that in some areas the word "appropriate" means "will do as they are told" and that is the last thing we need. Some more interesting facts have come to light as well. Dr Wagner, the resigning editor, writes his resignation in a way that makes one think he was a bit "naive" about the climate debate and the players involved. This is rather odd since he was on the scientific committee of a symposium sponsored by the ESA on "Environment and Climate". similarly on 3rd of April this year he was the welcoming speaker at a workshop entitled "WACMOS feedback to science community and water cycle roadmap in a changing climate". Theme 2 of the workshop was "Clouds". (The whole day was pretty much on using satellites for climate data) The workshop was at the University of Vienna where Dr Wagner is based and works in the field of climate modelling, although he is involved in soil moisture rather than climate per se. Those of a suspicious mind might make something of the close connections between projects by Dr Wagner and the "Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment" (GEWEX) who last year got a new chairman, one "Kevin E. Trenberth" and the personal apology that went along with the resignation. For an interesting juxtaposition I quote from Dr Wagners announcement of his position as Editor in Chief at Remote Sensing; Yet in his resignation Dr Wagner complains; While I will certainly grant him on the over hyping of the paper, he is upset that the paper recieved high publicity? He goes on to say; So the editor of a journal is resigning because his journal published a paper that generated enough interest for it to be downloaded 56,000 times in the first month. I simply can't imagine an editor saying "Wow, circulation is way up, I'd better resign". At this point I have two questions for any publishing scientists reading this; 1. Would you be pleased or upset that a paper you wrote generated enough interest from outside your field that 56,000 people actively went looking for it, downloaded it, read it and tried to understand it? 2. Would you expect a personal letter of apology and the resignation of an editor who published a paper that "sorts, kinda" disagreed with something you wrote in a blog post? Addendum: The Physorg article is factually incorrect on the information available at this stage. There has been no mention that an "internal review revealed that a paper published in his journal by climatic scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell had not been properly reviewed before publishing." In fact Dr Wagners resignation specifically states that there was no fault in the review process.

Malwarebytes definitely. I also use Ad Aware and C Cleaner. Anti virus is AVG free and AFAIK I have not had any sort of infection in years. I get alerts and the horrible bit of code dies.

This is an interesting story going around the blogosphere at the moment, where some questions are raised about this unusual action. The editor has resigned because a "bad" paper is published. (If that was the standard I would be surprised if there were any editors left for any journals.) Compare this to the MMR vaccine debacle where a spurious paper was published and the result was lost lives, yet nobody resigned. How many editors have resigned due to not merely bad but positively fraudulent papers being accepted? Retraction Watch is a great place to see the various papers that are retracted and quite often the researchers are being fired for misconduct, yet resigning editors seem in rather short supply, so why this one? As to why the paper is "bad", the editor gives two references in his resignation; What are "open discussions"? Blogs? Are they now to be held as the same standard as peer review? The reference 7 is to Trenberth et.al. 2010 published in GRL. Trenberth is a refutation of Lindzen and Choi, not Spencer and Braswell. I'll leave it to others to decide if refutation "to an extent" is sufficient grounds to call a paper "bad". The editor also makes the rather remarkable claim that; This paper by Spencer and Braswell is a direct rebuttal to papers by Andy Dressler in GRL. How a rebuttal can be considered "ignoring the scientific arguments of its opponents" is quite beyond me. I note that Dr. Dressler has a rebuttal paper coming out in GRL next week. Since the Spencer paper was published on 25th of July, 5 weeks must be some sort of speed record for writing, submitting, getting the peer reviews, making any changes needed and getting the paper accepted for Dr Dressler. Also from the resignation; So there would seem to be nothing wrong with the process of peer review here, and the editor says as much, so why resign? Presumably because a "sceptic" paper got published. So how could that happen? Ah, the reviewers were sceptics and therefore biased. But hang on, aren't we constantly told that "97% of climate scientists" are with the consensus? So what would be the odds against drawing 3 top line reviewers that were all sceptics? This doesn't add up. A further and rather more interesting question is why did the editor resign rather than retract the paper? If it's wrong retract it, simple really and happens quite a bit. What we now have is a situation where the paper is supposedly so bad that the editor falls on his sword, but not bad enough to start retraction proceedings. This seems decidedly odd. Another interesting question is why did the editor, aside from resigning, feel it required of him to send a letter of apology to Kevin Trenberth? Roger Pielke has commented on this whole mess. People should note that Dr Pielke is a climate scientist and is not a sceptic per se, although he does think that land use changes have been underestimated. Comment is also at WUWT, but I doubt many would go there, "Verboten" and all that. I know that Judith Curry has become "persona non grata" since she appears to be apostate, but there are so many comments there that a second thread has been started. (At over 1,000 comments, it will take a while to read.) People interested could also do something really strange and go and read what the author of the S&B paper himself has to say. But as those who visit deltoid and RC are aware, Dr Spencer is a christian and therefore obviously deluded, so why bother. Where parts of this has moved from the bizarre to the surreal is also interesting. The S&B papers are basically saying that cloud cover responds to ocean heat (ENSO) and then temperature then responds to the change in cloud cover. I wouldn't have thought this particularly amazing as cloudy days are cooler than cloudless ones. However in a guest post at RC, Dr Trenberth refutes Dr Spencer saying; Which is exactly what Dr Spencer said in the first place. There are a couple of other points I find odd in all this. When the S&B paper first came out there were complaints that a journal called "Remote Sensing" was inappropriate. I can't work that out. Dr Spencer uses satellites to monitor the atmospheric temperatures, so I would have thought that by definition, this would be "remote sensing". More worrying is the comment in the editors resignation; I find it disturbing that he appears to suggest that impirical researchers should get the "cooperation" of modellers before publishing their data and results. The modeller makes and publishes his projections and the impiricist checks those projections against reality. If they don't match then it is up to the modeller to improve the model, cooperation and discussion don't enter into it. At the heart of this debate are two opposing theories represented by Drs Spencer and Trenberth. Dr Trenberth believes that clouds (the big unknown in climate) are driven by temperature (and are therefore a and only a feedback) and claims that this is what the models show. He is however in a pickle because of the "missing heat" problem. (It has apparently gone from the ocean surface to the ocean depths without passing by any of the ARGO bouys.) DR Spencer believes that clouds are both a forcing and a feedback. Temp changes cause cloud cover changes which then cause further surface temp changes and claims that this is what the data shows. If Dr Spencer is right, then the "missing heat" problem goes away because the heat was never there in the first place. (Which would leave Dr Trenberh with a large serving of roast crow) Given the borderline libellous piece by Dr Trenberth in The Daily Climate yesterday, I think he is out to avoid this meal. Those interested can find Dr Pielkes thoughts on this op-ed here.

Interesting thoughts. I doubt a missed aircraft carrier landing simply due to the dust thrown up for the first impact. The lack of distant hills isn't surprising. There are many areas in Australia where the ground is flat clear to the horizon and no, or very few, hills are visible. I assume that this would be the same for the US and other places. The other reason for the lack is that the camera isn't looking across flat ground, it is angled up slightly. Both times it hits the ground the object disappears. If the camera was looking across flat ground this wouldn't happen, so the object must be impacting behind a set of very low hills. (Not much more than undulations in the ground.) Since the object impacts below the crest of the hill on the far side and is hidden from the camera, then the road from where the footage is taken is also below the crest, in a gully. This and heat haze would hide distant hills quite well. Remember that when I say "hills" I really do mean undulations. Think of it like an ocean with swells about 10-15 feet high and the peaks separated by 2 miles or more. Unless you look, you don't even really notice that the land isn't flat. I've seen a lot of really flat countryside and trust me at that distance, on flat land, you would never lose sight of the object. Good one on the black, I didn't notice that. There is a distinct black line under the object after the first bounce. Does anybody know how to check to see if the glow was added later?

Down here "Liberal" are from the right and "Labour" are from the left. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZvYPPZpc4I&feature=related Says it all really.......

Just a quick point. People say that the Bible is true until they are put to the test, and then the bits they don't like can suddenly be ignored. Polls that say "X% believe the Bible is true" are worthless. Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95hH1H5qK08 And a question for those who think that "Creationism" should be taught as a science subject. Whos creationism? Only the christian one or can we include the creation stories of the Umupsala people from the banks of the great, green, greasy Limpopo river as well? If you argument is that creationism is an "alternative theory", then surely you would support all alternative theories being taught and not just the one that you personally prefer?

Okay, the Balokistan vid is definitely a copy of the original, but its larger size does show some interesting points. 1. Immediately after the first impact the object is noticably brighter and/or larger, for lack of a better word, it "flashes". This could be due to an actual brightness change or due to a change in orientation that presents a larger cross section to view. (An aircraft has a bigger cross section when viewed from above or below than from the side.) 2. While there doesn't appear to be any zoom used on the camera, the size of the object varies. Before the bounce it gains in size, perhaps indicating that the object is approaching the camera at an angle. After the bounce the object is much larger and doesn't appear to change much in size, moving more directly from right to left. This could indicate a change in trajectory, or it could indicate a change in orientation but I would tend towards change in trajectory. The lack of smoke is also more apparent. The object is glowing white. If that was from being "white hot" there should be smoke. Normal air is dirty with small particles that white hot metals precipitate as smoke and ash. One of the reasons foundries are so dirty is that they literally burn the crud out of the air as soot. Speaking from experience for steel to be that white, the temp would have to be over 1500 degrees C, any airborne particulates that come in contact with such a temperature are cremated instantly. Given this it is reasonable to conclude that although the object was "glowing white", it was not "hot" temperature wise. Note that there is a "trail", but this is more indicitive of a contrail than smoke, the colour is very light. Given the changes in trajectory and the lack of smoke I would think that bolides etc could be ruled out. Natural objects do not change course all by themselves and only glow white due to combustion or heat. For the reasons above both combustion and heat can be provisionally ruled out. So we are left with a glowing, structured object that appears to be powered and controlled. The lack of explosion or smoke tells us that it was either out of combustible fuel or doesn't use combustible fuel. Two things count against the first option; 1. Sanity. You might drive a car until it runs out of juice, but you don't fly aircraft that way. Short of being absolutely lost over the ocean or a catastrophic fuel tank failure that dumps all your fuel before you can land, a pilot always has reserves. A pilot simply won't fly around until almost out of juice and then save the last dregs for a last ditch attempt to lessen the crash. This simply makes no sense. 2. Immediately after the initial impact the object appears to accelerate. This implies that the engines were operating in some fashion and that there was fuel available. However there is a distinct lack of dust being blown around as one would expect from a jet exhaust at ground level. What sort of a craft fits the bill is another question altogether. Externet, I would put the "Memo" linked to as bogus. There is too much in it. Crashed craft, Tesla drives, secret projects, etc, etc. It's written in such a way as to encourage the more "excitable" of the UFO people and conspiracy theorists to jump up and down crying "This is it, we've hit the jackpot!". At the same time it's rediculously vague, referring to the power plant as "atomic". No sh*t sherlock, did people think it was steam? Given that it was supposedly written some 40 years after the project, it should have contained a more detailed reference than the generic "atomic". The bits talking about the power plant remind me of 1950s pulp SF. Note also the performance given for the "S" craft. Why on earth spend heaps of cash developing the F-22 when you had an almost viable airframe with far superior performance 40 years ago? According to Wiki $22 billion was spent on the F-22, as the "S" craft was supposedly "electronic fly by wire" controls (early F-16) then it would have been better and cheaper to develop the "S" craft to a production level than start the F-22 from scratch. According to the memo there were two primary reasons for the projects failure, 1950s avionics weren't up to the task and 1950s shielding was good enough, both of these problems could have been solved with modern avionics and shielding. Simply put, the story outlined doesn't make sense. It must be assumed that those in charge of such projects are rational and the decisions required for the story to play out as written simply aren't rational.