People send me things. Brightening my email inbox last week was a pithy little email, headed U r a fraud. It didn’t have much to say. Here it is, in its entirety, exactly as it appeared:
Please take down your posts about barry brill or Anonymous may have to
Make some “unauthorized” changes to your shitty website.
I had to laugh. Barry Brill — the man who formed a charitable trust in order to avoid the financial consequences of a failed legal action against the New Zealand temperature record — must have some very strange friends ((Indeed, he does – as shown by his attendance at the recent Heartland-funded climate crank networking event in Las Vegas, where he rubbed shoulders with all the luminaries of the crank pantheon, from Monckton to Don Easterbrook.)). The idea that hacktivists like Anonymous would side with Brill and his climate crank pals against climate reality strikes me as drawing a very long bow — but there are certainly hackers for hire in Russia and China who might be prepared to repeat their efforts against the Climatic Research Unit’s email servers ((aka the so-called Climategate hack.)) in order to take down this little web site. But who would fund that? Not Brill, I’m sure. He’s too busy taking the Heartland shilling, campaigning hard for a worse future for the world, and avoiding payment of court-ordered costs.
Meanwhile, I shall watch my server logs with interest (but I won’t be holding my breath, and certainly won’t be removing any posts about Brill).
It is possible to find out who “anonymous” is. Try Cam Slater. He knows how.
… and Brill is not short for brilliant!
I have posted these views before but the internet is not like real life. I give talks explaining the science of climate change to Rotarians and other groups but they are mostly mature, conservative males. Of all the hundreds of people I have talked to only one or two have been deniers. If 97% of scientists are in agreement about the science then I would say the only 2% of my group would be deniers.
This leads me to believe that the climate sites on the internet are visited every day by a small number of journalists who work for right wing papers and whose job it is to post ten denying letters each.
There are not many climate sites and it would not need many people to completely skew the whole impression of what is happening..
http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog
Did you try replying?
No valid return address… 😉
Oh well, life is too short to worry about stuff like this..
It wasn’t a very convincing H@kz0r message either, probably an amateur
My pick would be Barry Brill’s dodgy brother, the one accused of bringing drugs into NZ on his yacht in the late 70s – early 80s.
A matter of public record, as I recall.
Display “Headers” on the message and you might get a bit closer to where it came from. An amateur might have left some traces…
I have a few technical questions accumulated for which there seems no suitable current topic so here goes:
During the recent group of fine cold days the lawn and roof temperatures at my place (IR measurement) fell each morning a little lower reaching -6°C on the roof with a corresponding increase in frostiness of the grass and ice on the roof such that i could not dare step upon the roof. However, this tuesday morning (07:20) the lawn temp was -5.6 and the roof temp was -9.1 yet there was neither frost nor ice, the roof dry shortly after a prolonged bout of cold but light rain. Air temp + 5.9°C . Temps outside this night are already down to -6.5 at the same part of the lawn. Th IR thermometer checks out against other thermometers (platinum and alcohol where these can be compared so I’m not too concerned about the calibration but do wonder about cold without frost.
Edit in morning: I dropped that IR thiermometer on concrete yesterday morning. I ran more checks and just dont believe it!
About fingerprints. The 10 fingerprints graphic at skeptical science includes two items I’ve failed to get updates on so far. One is shrinking of the thermosphere. It seems the thermosphere collapsed back then to an extent that could not be explained by the usual suspects and it appears to me that the increase in CO2 as a culprit was speculated rather than positively attributed. There is mention of the thermosphere recovering. My question then is whether or not this is a fingerprint of human influence. All the other fingerprints in that graphic I can easily verify..
There is also mention of 30 giga-tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere which I take to be the figure for 2009. Since then I’ve read increasing annual figures 36 Gt for instance but which year I do not recall. A few weeks back I read a mention of “nearly 40 Gt per year”. unreferenced. Yet I have failed to find a hard figure on this for say 2013. Actually there would be two figures – CO2 added to the atmosphere from human sources and the fraction of that retained in the atmosphere. The numbers would seem easy to get hold of but I have failed to do so – anyone?
2nd Edit: I’ve got emissions of 31.6 Gt for 2012 from the IEA and a story of a big emissions bump in 2013 so far.
Isn’t your question just a simple matter of converting ppm to Gt CO2? i.e.
x7.22/.46, where .46 is the amount that goes to atmosphere, the remainder into the oceans and other sinks. So you get the following:
year ppm delta Gt CO2
2013 396.48 2.66 42
2012 393.82 2.19 34
2011 391.63 1.78 28
2010 389.85 2.48 39
2009 387.37 1.78 28
2008 385.59 1.83 29
I saw that but to take 2012
31.6 Gt emissions does not equate to 34 Gt, the IEA not using the ppm calc.
To your frost build up (or the lack of the same):
Frost (ice) build up on your lawn and roof is a function to three parameters: Temperature of the roof (or lawn), temperature of the air above it and moisture content of the air. The moisture carrying capacity of air depends strongly on the temperature. Cold air can carry very little moisture.
When the temperatures are cooling (first of a clear winter nights) this will result in rapid radiative cooling of the roof (or lawn) while the air above still carries the moisture from the time when it was warmer. The moisture will condensate out of the air as the air temps are dropping. This leads to either due falling or (ice forming if the ground is cold enough) or fog or a combination of these.
After a few very cold days the air is now dry (in absolute terms) as the moisture has been effectively removed by the cold temperatures. Of cause during the day the sun will evaporate this again but it might be carried high up by thermal currents and away from the surface.
After a few of these cycles the air over your area may to too dry (despite the cold ground) to produce due or frost over night.
This could be especially pronounced if you live in a valley down wind from a mountain range, where the air is dried by adiabatic processes before it reaches you.
The dry valleys of Antarctica are a fascinating example of very cold but also very dry areas where there is no snow or ice on the ground.
Good explanation Thomas. Dewfall on the night the roof was most iced up (-9.4, 19th July) was 25.5 L over 164 sq m but this morning with IR nominally -5.6 and also a dry roof, dew was 1.14 L Nevertheless a couple of checks today have the IR reading low in a way that suggests both range and zero are affected. Back when I did this for a living and made my own gear I always had zero and range checks and adjustments built in, something I can’t readily do with gear bought over the counter. Some more tests today suggest boiling point works out OK but melting is approx 4°C too low. Hmm … I’ve got a bit of old gear around I made for myself , it’s just not so convenient.
For years I’ve been alert to the possibility of growing food where it’s eaten, within large cities, using aeroponics and LED lighting tuned to the plants being produced, arranged in verticle towers. There were some bold projects announced but research takes more time. Today I was interested to read of some developments in the use of LED lighting growing lettuces and tomatoes in particular. (no mention of aeroponics)
An urban farm in Japan, using an insulated former electronics factory and LED lighting, produces 10,000 heads a day in floor to ceiling growing towers
One of the links in the above article yeilds this quote:
My emphasis.
Warning: the first link in the above linked article results in a no-apparent-exit advert trap. Just remove the tag after .html in the url to be rid of it.