Some in this city believe they’re the “envy” of the rest of Canada.
City bureaucrats will fan out across Toronto this summer to analyze the angle of the sun at different times of the day, measure the amount of direct or reflected sunlight and assess the “quantity and usability” of shade in parks, playgrounds and pools.
The “shade audits” are part of a pilot project authorized by city council this week that could soon result in Toronto regulating shade.
Via The Corner;
19 July 2008
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Carie, Rannoch, PH17 2QJ, UK
monckton@mail.com
Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D.,
President, American Physical Society,
Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160,
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305.
By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Dr. Bienenstock,
Physics and Society
The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer’s requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity – a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Itsconclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Societydisagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than
the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific
grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night contemporary music show, here are Dieter Meier and Boris Blank as Yello, featuring Dame Shirley Bassey, performing The Rhythm Divine (1987, 3:31), a contemporary version of her 1964 James Bond Goldfinger classic. Dame Shirley is the only singer to have performed more than one, and indeed three, Bond themes.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Finally, a reason to watch golf!
Update – QOTW comes from Bruce, in the comments;
“The “Improve Your Golf Game with Chris Evert” video should be available in 5-4-3-2….”
The Onion skewers Time Magazine;
According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with.
“The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at,” New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. “It’s all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, ‘What’s your favorite ice cream, really?'”
Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel.
I don’t know about that – the field is pretty deep.
(h/t Michelle)
One factory relocation at a time;
They sat silently through two lectures, but then they couldn’t control their anger any longer. The civil servants from the Environment Ministry, the Environment Agency and the German Emissions Trading Authority made it sound easy for industry to take up carbon trading. It was just too much for the managers to tolerate.
“If that’s the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine,” a cement factory manager shouted into the lecture hall. “Then there won’t be any trading here, nothing will be produced here anymore — the lights will simply go out here.”
[…]
“In Germany the raw-material chemical industry, companies from the iron and steel sector, lime producers, aluminium producers and refineries might be affected,” Franzjosef Schafhausen, the Environment Ministry’s undersecretary, said at the Bonn conference. Felix Matthes, coordinator for energy and climate protection at the Institute for Applied Ecology, added: “The CO2 price signal prompts shifts in production and investment. Yet it doesn’t lead to lower overall emissions, as the production and investment at the company’s new sites will not be subject to CO2 pricing, either now or in the near future.”
The problems with carbon trading schemes could all be resolved, of course, by putting sociology professors in charge of management;
“This principle worked in other countries, so when people say it’s risky, it’s not like we’re inventing it from nowhere. We’re not changing Canada in a kind of laboratory.”
Update – for those who are disappointed that progress in Iraq isn’t being reported by our mainstream press, be patient. I predict only a few more weeks shall pass before photos like this are gracing the CBC National, while Peter Mansbridge gravely reports that the “Bush-led invasion of Iraq brings fears of spiraling rates of obesity and heart disease…”
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Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night old-time radio crime-detective show, here is Jack Webb (before his Dragnet years) as Jeff Regan, performing The Lawyer and the Lady episode of International Detective Bureau Investigator (1948, 29:26, streaming MP3).
It is interesting, perhaps, to compare Mr. Webb’s performance in that early work to, say, this 1950 Big Girl episode of Dragnet we previously featured on SDA LNR (29:10, streaming MP3), and then later to, say, this 1954 television version of The Big Pair, part 2, part 3 (26:55), and then to Jack’s performance in this 1968 Carson’s Clanging Copper Clappers Caper Comedy (2:49).
One thing you can for sure say about Jack, he
nailed that Sergeant Joe Friday shtick, already.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
The Politic has good advice and it’s long overdue;
…you’re not in the opposition anymore, time to drop the childish taunting (and poor design) and act like the government.
Here’s some more.
There exists a persistent misconception inside political/media circles that the political interweb is the domain of “tech savvy twenty-somethings”. The Conservative’s website has, in all likelihood, been influenced by this ridiculous assumption and that means it’s time to fire some of the high-priced help. If your web people haven’t even a remedial understanding of their audience demographic, they have no business being involved in your communications strategy.
Here is your demographic. Start talking to them instead of non-existent college kids.
But hey – but what do I know about web based communication? I’m just a commercial artist, living in backwoods Saskatchewan.
… when President Bush announced his new strategy for Iraq, very few people predicted that General Petraeus and our military would prevent what appeared to be a certain civil war, or guessed that our Marines and GIs in Anbar would find tribal sheiks who would displace Al Qaeda from their fiefdom in western Iraq. Now provincial elections for this year and federal ones for 2009 are on schedule. Today the Iraqi military, which two years ago was corrupt and infiltrated with terrorists, wins battles in Basra against Shiite criminal gangs affiliated with Moqtada al Sadr. There is a joke going around Basra that the Iraqi military is willing to offer training to the British forces who abandoned that fight in 2006.
The Iraqi government has met all but two of the political benchmarks Democrats trumpeted as proof of defeat six months ago. The casualty statistics for Iraq are now in the range of the first months of the war. Michael Yon, one of the best war reporters of his generation, on Tuesday put it thus: “A fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it’s time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.”
Related – “Leading any way the wind blows”
Via Don Surber;
A mood of fear and pessimism is starting to descend on Europe. It now seems the region could head into recession even before the United States.
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
(h/t to about a dozen of you)
*Note: Using the same inclusiveness as the IPCC bureaucrats when citing the number of authors they represent who allegedly support their AGW “consensus”.
Important Update – Christopher Monckton is demanding answers and an apology of the American Physical Society.
is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
The stunning comments from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama that the United States needs a “civilian national security force” that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar United States Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force have mysteriously disappeared from published transcripts of the speech.
In the comments, Obama confirmed the U.S. “cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.”
So the trip to Germany is just a fact-finding tour!
There’s more. Or to be technically accurate, there isn’t.
His state legislative office records may have been thrown out, he told us.
He’s never released a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm’s clients, numbering several hundred each year. His campaign will only confirm representation when the media comes to them with a specific case.
He won’t release his application to the state bar. He’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to Tony Rezko.
He’s never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Thursday night wild-card show, we are featuring the song Malagueña. Actually, there are four songs commonly known by that name.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
A genetic variation which evolved to protect people of African descent against malaria has now been shown to increase their susceptibility to HIV infection by up to 40 per cent, according to new research. Conversely, the same variation also appears to prolong survival of those infected with HIV by approximately two years.
The discovery marks the first genetic risk factor for HIV found only in people of African descent, and sheds light on the differences in genetic makeup that play a crucial role in susceptibility to HIV and AIDS.
[…]
“In sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of people do not express DARC on their red blood cells and previous research has shown that this variation seems to have evolved to protect against a particular form of malaria. However, this protective effect actually leaves those with the variation more susceptible to HIV.”
Related: Aha!
Mr. Stelmach and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall scuttled any hope of a unified cap-and-trade program, making it clear they consider the policy a thinly disguised attempt to share in the billions generated by western oil and gas.
“There’s only one inter-regional transfer of wealth in this country and it’s called equalization,” Mr. Stelmach said. “There won’t be another one from the province of Alberta. And that’s as straight an answer as I can give.”
Well, we’ll see. Hopefully, someone has Peter “The Great Capitulator” Loughheed locked up somewhere far from Stelmach’s ear.
Meanwhile, there’s a half-decent game of “spot the weasel words” in the story itself – for example:
Mr. Wall and Mr. Stelmach cast aspersions on the viability of cap-and-trade … Saskatchewan is home to a CCS project that claims to have saved 10 million tons of CO2 …
… and what the hell are “green credentials”?
Mr. McGuinty has dialed down his expectations — saying beforehand that a consensus is unlikely — while at the same time shoring up his green credentials…
And bonus points if you can spot the scare quotes!
Meaning “fight” is a metaphor for something else? Or, that they don’t really mean it?
(And remember: Ontario has a manufacturing “industry”, the West has oil “riches”.)
Gawd, I love Ottawa “journalism”.
