Jon Faine's foolish unproductive Bjorn Lomborg interview

Jon Faine is a master at creating the conversational environment he wants. Bjorn Lomborg has enough to say on the topic -- he easily could have been the sole guest for the whole hour, probably two. Instead a couple of clueless greenies were allowed to dominate and drown out Lomborg for most of the hour.

Bjorn's earlier radio interview with Newcastle ABC was better.  It was only about 10 minutes long but so much more productive than the later Faine interview. He actually had a chance to make his point in a clear and concise way. I couldn't find a link to the audio, the print intro is here.

More warmists lack of grasp of science

Nine months ago warmist "aria" made a comment on a page about polar bears that claims:

"..polar bears are much smaller then they used to be since they have less food because of the global warming,"

Nine months ago is recent enough to be well aware that polar bear numbers have increased in recent years. The slight decrease in floating Arctic ice, that's often portrayed as a sign of Armageddon by warmists, actually enhances polar bear's main prey, seals (more below).
 

I should admit at first I thought she made that up herself, but it's just another wacky claim from warmist scientists to add to the long list of things global warming does.

Hah, comments for IPCC YouTube video pulled after just four days

It was only up for about four days and the comments have already been pulled on this latest IPCC scare video. There were about 60 comments last time I looked, and most were sceptical.

 

 

Several comments, mine included, pointed out the fraud at 2:05 of the video:

 

 

Critique of comments on recent USA Today article by Bjorn Lomborg

This is a critique of comments on the recent USA Today article by Bjorn Lomborg, mostly from warmists critical of him:

Typhoon Haiyan not about climate change: Column

I'm not on FaceBook so I couldn't comment there so I thought I'd critique them here. The comments of others are in red my writing is in black. Bold highlights in comments are mine.

The first two comments come from Lynn Goldfarb.

Data massage of the highest order

This is a rebuttal to:

No Global Warming 'Pause,' Planet Warming Much Faster Than Previously Thought: Report

I thought Al Gore knew a thing or two about massage, but these guys are good. This is how to make a 15 year warming hiatus disappear: massage the data.

Using satellite data to fill in those gaps, the study found that global surface temperatures have been warming 2 1/2 times faster over the past 16 years than previously believed, calling into dispute the widely-reported global warming "pause,"

And this is data massage of the highest order. Kevin Cowtan and Robert G. Way have explained that the missing warming is in places we can't measure it, specifically at the earth's poles where there are no thermometers!

Accelerating global norming

The evidence is in and it's worse than we thought: The world's weather is getting more normal at an accelerated rate.

Hurricanes are getting more normal with time:

New navigation bar at top of page

 

I finally got around to putting a convenient navigation bar at the top of the blog to make it easier to navigate around. While the code I found for the MBW Navgation bar at  mybloggersworld.com was a good start, I'm not totally happy with it. I need to get a bar with multiple heirarchies for the menus, like what's at the top of the Jo Nova webpage. This code only allows me one level of options rather than two or three nested levels, if that makes sense.

 

I've noticed a glitch in the menus at certain levels of magnification in Internet Explorer. You can't scroll down the list titled "Apollo moon hoax" without some of the bottom options disappearing before you get a chance to select it.

 

Wild bush fire-climate links

The current frenzy of linking bush fires in Australia to climate change epitomises climate change hysteria. 
 

Australian Green MP Adam Bandt was quick to hype the link and even accused Abbott of putting on a fire uniform for a stunt, despite Abbott's longstanding service to the volunteer fire brigade.
 

Sky News Australia has also given air time to Tim Flannery's axed Climate Council (which annoys me).  Sky News tends to favour AGW despite conspiracy theories that any media outlet Rupert Murdoch owns is biased against it. (I believe Murdoch owns half of Foxtel, maker of Sky News Australia.)

Trenberth's missing heat still missing

In its latest report the IPCC has said that the oceans have been warming rather than the sky, in an effort to explain away the problem of the lack of atmospheric warming for 15+ years.  This does solve the problem of what Trenberth called the "missing heat" -- the lack of global warming for (now on) 15 years.

While the missing heat problem is potentially solved by claims of ocean warming, the explanation introduces another problem. If something gets warmer, in this case the ocean, it is less likely to absorb heat, not more; therefore making it less likely that heat from a warm atmosphere would be drawn into the ocean, to be hidden in its deep recesses.

The energy is supposed to come from the atmosphere, specifically its greenhouse layer. If the ocean is getting warmer, the heat should be going outward not inward from it; so, it should be heating the atmosphere, not cooling it!

The IPCC ocean heat model is sensibly based on the idea that heat must move from hot to cold, e.g. that there should be no spontaneous take-up of heat by the oceans.

Trajectory to the moon

1950s era comic depicting the general expectation for space travel -- a space age which never came to pass because of deadly space radiation and other problems that have not yet been overcome

In getting from the ground to space the boosting rocket must provide the energy for lifting the mass, overcoming gravity and air resistance and getting up to orbital speed.  It's a big job that takes a big rocket. Apollo's rocket was one of the biggest, the Saturn V:

It's a biggy: the Saturn V

Space reentry vehicles, part 7

Part 7: Pressure

(index)

At subsonic speed, below Mach 0.3, the pressure of the air coming into the hull of an aircraft is roughly 1/2ρv² where ρ is the density of the fluid medium; for air at sea level = 1.225 kg/m³.  The equation for compressible flow given for above Mach 1 speeds goes as the power of 3.5 rather than 2 and rises much more quickly.

Space reentry vehicles, part 6

Part 6: Control

(index)

After atmospheric reentry the heat shields on the bottom of space reentry capsules have a characteristic burn pattern that starts at a point off centre and emanates to the edge. 

Gemini heat shield after reentry

The central point of the burn pattern is the stagnation point where the air isn't moving parallel with respect to the surface but hits it at right angles.  The temperature and pressure is at a maximum at the stagnation point such as the following diagram depicts:

Space reentry vehicles, part 5

Part 5: More on the detached shock wave

(index)

The term detached shock wave originally referred to an undesirable aerodynamic effect that was found in supersonic projectiles such as bullets.  This type of shock wave was of interest because it had a lot more drag and aerodynamic instability than an attached one.

The first aircraft designed to be supersonic, the Bell X-1, was modelled after the shape of a 0.5 calibre Browning machine gun bullet, which was known to be stable in supersonic flight.

Space reentry vehicles, part 4

Part 4: More on ablation

(index) 

In 1907 American chemist Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the world's first plastic.  50 years later it would be chosen as the main ingredient in NASA's reentry capsule heat shields. 

Radio made of Bakelite 

Bakelite was a good choice for spacecraft heat shields because it's a good insulator of heat; it has high strength;  it has an abundance of carbon (a material with a high latent heat); and it has an ability to char rather than melt at high temperature.