[jules' pics] 4/22/2009 01:13:00 PM

EGU The Exodus
Originally uploaded by julesberry2001

This is what happens when I stand up to speak at a meeting. They call it "The Exodus". Actually it's not just a jules effect but common experience for those who speak directly after an EGU "medal" talk. You may be able to hear me taunting the departing throng, whose cruel response is to laugh. Apparently I should be encouraged that some waited until after my talk before finally fleeing the room.


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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 4/22/2009 01:13:00 PM

EGU

In case anyone hadn't realised, I'm at the EGU. I doubt I'll be liveblogging, partly because there's no time and partly because the internet connection is overwhelmed by the number of attendees. There are brief reports on the Nature Climate Feedback which seem to be capturing the most newsworthy sciency bits. However there is no sign there of the biggest story which may be the apparent lurch towards scepticism in the higher echeons of the EGU council (I blogged earlier, but it now seems a little worse than I thought).

Pictures

Just in case anyone is puzzled as to what is going on, jules set up a photo blog with a nice template (no heading or sidebar clutter) which can be found here, but then we arranged it so her posts also get mirrored here. My version has more viewers but hers is prettier...

[jules' pics] 4/21/2009 01:39:00 PM

Tiger, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

My talk tomorrow directly follows a "medal" talk by a famous person. Expect to be mauled. (The kitten lives at Schonbrun zoo, Vienna)

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 4/21/2009 01:39:00 PM

[jules' pics] 4/21/2009 01:36:00 PM

EGU, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Abandoned the architectural chaos of Japan for the refined historical beauty of Vienna. Or as James described it, "Shinagawa without the cute bits".

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 4/21/2009 01:36:00 PM

[jules' pics] 4/18/2009 10:23:00 PM

nanzenji, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

My own rubbish attempt at capturing the quintessence of Kyoto sakura (cherry blossom). Nanzenji in early April.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 4/18/2009 10:23:00 PM

Who needs a gym membership?

Says the Guardian, suggesting that people should be able to go to their local park for an outdoor workout. That'll catch on...it's not as if people could just jog to the park, then round it, and home again, without the need for expensive equipment that will need maintained. Or alternatively, just ride their bikes to work and forget about all this silly "working out" nonsense altogether :-)

In a related vein:

"Let's have a moment of silence for every American stuck in traffic on their way to a health club to ride a stationary bicycle" - Representative Earl Blumenauer, US Congress

Not forgetting:

I'm shocked, simply shocked...

...that people can pretend to be shocked at the police assaulting members of the public - some protesters, some simple passers-by - at the recent G20 demonstrations in London. Of course the police beat people up! Given the mix of testosterone-filled males, truncheons, and de facto legal immunity, what other outcome could anyone possibly expect? I don't even see that the current crop of videos show anything particularly egregious - of course it's unfortunate that one victim died, but that was obviously a bit of bad luck - even if they did beat him up gratuitously it's not as if they actually shot him for carrying a table leg or being the wrong colour, or deliberately ran him down at high speed with a car. The miners' strike was another glorious example of policing at its finest, and those with long memories will recall the Birmingham Six appearing in court bloodied and bruised after their "interviews". It's always happened, and always will. So why the faux outrage now? I'm genuinely puzzled.

Comment on "Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene transition", by P. Chylek and U. Lohmann

It's now finally published and can be found here.

We did get a comment from C&L which can be found here, which seemed to us like a rather weak attempt at a misdirection. They bring up the point that they used a range of temperatures, rather than a single value - a point that we were well aware of, having already replicated their analysis - but did not address the rather more important issue that the temperature ranges they calculated were based on extreme outliers in the noisy data set (which were not even contemporaneous with the extreme outliers they used for the dust values).

You can judge for yourselves how taxing a task it would have been for the GRL editor to continue to deal with this manuscript in the usual manner rather than deciding (as I mentioned here) that it was all too much like hard work after getting a set of reviews. I can only imagine that the reason the original paper got published in the first place is that none of the original reviewers even considered the possibility that C&L might have done something so startlingly inappropriate in their selection of data points, and did not think the calculation actually needed checking in detail.

Earthquake prediction

In case anyone was wondering whether there was anything to that supposed "prediction" of the recent Italian earthquake, Piers Corbyn's advocacy of the cause should settle the matter...

"The tragic Earthquake death toll in L'Aquila Italy is due to criminal arrogance of authorities who ignored the well-founded warnings of an earthquake-scientist; and this isn't the first time that authorities and governments have ignored well-founded serious warnings based on sound science* " said Piers Corbyn astrophysicist

(blah blah blah repeat ad nauseam)

Although I have no particular expertise, I do suspect there may be something to at least some of the various "precursor" theories. However, the obvious point, as many bloggers have mentioned, is that a "warning" that is vague enough to be a week (or more) wrong and in the wrong place to boot is completely useless, even if such predictions occasionally provide enough of a coincidence to be superficially attractive. I'm not at all surprised to see Piers's enthusiasm for it, as it closely mirrors his own modus operandi.