I think it’s my Chinese Year of the Gremlin. Yesterday some node belonging to our giant service provider broke near us. We have had no net access for two days. My new big beautiful monster sits mute. After another hour on the help line, they said the phrase no one in the modern era likes to hear (especially on a Friday): that’s “four working days”. But with some creativity and determination I now have that tiny mouseless lap-top working in an odd corner with a wireless-thingy-modem balanced on a tissue box on a windowsill. Still, it’s better than the dumbphone.
Hope your techno stars are lining up and the electrons are behaving in your house.
Kev’s on the downturn at last.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/latest/a/-/newshome/17600496/poll-finds-support-for-kevin-dropping/?cmp=twitter
50
ALPBC The Drum where Rudd should be most popular:
Should Labor install Kevin Rudd as PM to lead them to the next election?
No 56%
Yes 40%
Not sure 5%
5498 votes counted
30
The likelihood is that the sisters at the ABC are more likely to vote for a radical feminist ideologue like Gillard than the plainly stark raving bonkers diplomat/philosopher/former PM. Thus that poll may not give a good indication of how many in the general population are enamored with the mad one.
31
Pom gremlins also extant. If the phone rings the broadband drops.
Still it is a good excuse to leave the phone disconnected!
00
As you say, it is better than a dumb phone. It is a lot better than the times when most of the population was struggling to grow food by working sun up to sun down. They worked behind a pair of oxen pulling a plow, a wagon, or other primitively mechanical things. At other times it was nothing but back breaking, hand blistering, manual labor.
I will accept a short “the server is down” over going back to those “good old days.” In the 1950s, I spent a quite a bit of time working on my dad’s farm so I know of what I speak. I drove a tractor rather than used a pair of oxen but did a significant amount of back breaking, hand blistering, manual labor as well. I don’t really want to go back to those times. They weren’t the worst of times but they were far from the “good old days.”
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But, but…. this is what the Green movement wants to take us back to (or at least the specified one billion of us who evade the eugenics).
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Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
20
Dickens – a man who didn’t believe in punctuation and arguably the most overrated author in the history of the English language.
18
Try reading Joyce.
30
Try reading Plato’s “The Republic”..
10
Cohers,
James Joyce’s “The Dubliners”- The last lines of “The Dead”, the last short story in the collection, containing some of the most beautifully written lines in the language, IMO. If that was all he’d ever written he could still have have died a happy man.
10
.
Sorry, but it reads like something out of a Mills and Boons novel to me.
10
To each his own, I suppose MV. Part of life’s rich pageant I expect.
Perhaps I’m just showing my Irish parochialism, but give me a pint of Guinness, put Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” on the turntable, and I could curl up in the corner of the pub with a dog-eared copy of “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, “The Dubliners” or “Playboy of the Western World” any day and I’d be set.
10
Winston and MV, Joyce was a contemporary of Lawrence and also shared his proclivity for highly erotic and graphic descriptions of his relationship with his wife.
Mills and Boon these guys definitely were not!
10
Yes, you are right.
Which is probably why Mills and Boon outsell Joyce and Lawrence ten thousand to one (at least), in the “highly erotic and graphic descriptions” category.
Irish writers suffer the Russian Disease. Why say something in a sentence when you can pad it out to three chapters.
Give me Guy de Maupassant any day of the week.
20
“Try reading Joyce.”
——————————————————————————–
Apologies in advance;
A good many years ago I took a soft-back copy of “Ulysses” on a remote, long trek (>21 days) in the high Karakorum. Weight in the rucksack was at a premium, so there was no room for toilet paper. I occasionally had to force myself to read another section before the necessaries. Being on sub starvation-level rations, I never got further than page 56 (all uses combined).
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Nevil Shute was always my favourite.
I mean the following were a pretty good read as a kid.
* Trustee from the Toolroom.
* A Town like Alice
* Requiem for a Wren
* Slide Rule
Maybe because of his Aussie connection?
(Oh, and maybe Rolf Bolderwood I think, “Robbery under Arms”)
20
Come on, what have you read? Most people’s impressions of Dickens are through films or TV series.
The earlier works are the most enjoyable like Pickwick Papers IMHO.
His characterisations and dialogue are brilliantly funny, if you avoid the nauseatingly mushy passages, and his satire savage especially when dealing with the pomposity, hypocrisy and corruption of do-gooders, lawyers etc.
10
Yes, I passed several law exams based on my reading of Dickens.
10
Lawyers and the law are a particular target of Dickens, maybe because of his childhood experiences and early employment.
One of his most repulsive characters is an architect, Seth Pecksniff, a supreme hypocrite; he is like “a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there”.
Pecksniff calls himself an architect but makes his living taking in pupils at exorbitant fees: “of his architectural doings, nothing was clearly known, except that he had never designed or built anything; but it was generally understood that his knowledge of the science was almost awful in its profundity”.
Dickens wrote at a time when the meaning of “awful” was still ambiguous, the “almost” adds to the savage humour.
Later in the novel (Martin Chuzzlewit) one of the pupils wins a design competition, Pecksniff steals it and takes the credit, something which is not unknown today.
10
I agree; I only became a lawyer because I couldn’t beat them.
But seriously Jane Austen is number 1 in my ‘book’.
00
Try this quiz and see if you can tell whether a passage was written by Charles Dickens or Edward Bulwer-Lytton [often ridiculed as the worst author in he English language]. NB Fewer than 50% of English lit majors guess correctly.
http://www.reverent.org/bulwer-dickens.html
10
Oh dear, I got 67%.
This is a classic [from number 6}:
10
Ah, Lionell, nice picture you paint here:
Reminds me of this wonderful old song from the legendary actor, Walter Brennan.
Sunday Music – Old Rivers
Tony.
10
Jo I find this amazing. It doesn’t surprise me that some warmist has sabotaged your net connection.
What does amaze me is that with the huge backing all skeptics enjoy from the fossil fuel industry, they didn’t have half a dozen techs with a massive supply of parts helicoptering in from all over the country to get you back on the air, quick time.
May be that support is not what we are led to believe.
40
I take your point.
Unfortunately this appears to have been a coordinated attack aimed, not only at this site, but also at the extensive and geographically diverse network of sophisticated facilities that supports it. We have it on good authority that Jo’s coffee machine has also been taken out.
Such is the scale of the this operation, we can only surmise that it was mounted by one of the clandestine Government agencies, or perhaps several acting in concert.
20
Tut tut Rereke…. Lew is rubbing his hands together with glee!
20
Good.
[snip some satire is easier to “misinterpret”]
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Spontaneous human combustion…. wish it were true.
00
Lew always says that any challenge to the sacred climate “science” is either a conspiracy, or because blinded by their “false” political beliefs. He either refuses, or is totally incapable of understanding that other points of view are possible. He is a true believer in the ultimate truth of CAGW, and holds the climatologists as the enlightened priesthood.
We all have our beliefs, and the skeptics who populate the comments threads are a pretty varied bunch. None of us like our fundamental beliefs to be challenged – we are human after all. But in life I find that those with the shallowest and most insecure beliefs will most quickly revert to diminishing others in their own eyes. The shear lack of confidence of the alarmists is to:-
1. Say skeptics are paid to lie.
2. Say skeptics are so blinded by “evil” dogmas that they are incapable of seeing the truth.
3. Encourage discrimination in people’s minds to discourage people from reading alternative views. That means people are afraid to ask the honest, enquiring questions about anomalies or gaps in knowledge – those questions that have lead to many fundamental breakthroughs in many areas of knowledge in the past – will not be asked.
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I suspect the blue tie people
30
Our government running a coordinated attack? One that actually results in achieving the objective?
Rere, check that dosage figure.
30
Surely you could have worked a rant about the NBN into that discourse? let me guess – you favour the Coalition’s plan?
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The NBN has nothing much to do with our area. The seat isn’t marginal. ;- )
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I think its laughable how they are trying like crazy to get things happening in more and more marginal seats prior to the election…. yet it all not going so well, is it?
20
Aren’t all Labor seats marginal or worse at the moment. A recent poll indicated even Smith in Perth is in trouble. Maybe my vote will count this time 🙂
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Our seat used to be a Labor seat. In 2007 it was extremely marginal. Now it is neither.
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Ahhhh… the Quiz.
Let me tell you Quiz. I am currently in a Third World country. We have no “NBN”, yet I am on an optical fibre connection in a working class area in a regional town, with the option of up to 100MB if I want it.
Why is that?…… COMPETITION. We have two major carriers here. Yes, only two. Perhaps Australia could learn something from this?
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Yes!
My company operates out of a suburban house – it is quiet, and has loads of parking and much less rush-hour travel required.
When we set up, the change of ownership triggered a phone call from Saturn pointing out that we had a high speed cable running on the power polls outside, and did we want to subscribe to Sky TV, for whom they were the agents.
“No”, we said. “But can we have the same bandwidth for a broadband connection, for the same connection fee?”
After some technical to-ing and fro-ing, we got a special modem installed, and now have 100MBit average, with no capacity limit.
Mind you, we can’t get Sky Sports, so I now have to walk down to the pub when I want to watch the New Zealand Cricket Team loose to just about everybody else 🙁
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And the NFN plan is to get rid of all the hybrid cable…. smart, huh?
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*** “NBN plan”
10
.
You mean this fiasco was PLANNED!!!
Good grief.
10
“Good grief.”
After a long time pondering who was hiding inside that vault,I have finally discovered your true identity.
Hellow Charlie Brown.
10
Ah! Charlie Brown.
A duckie and a horsey
Always trust your first observations, and don’t look for something that you imagine you might see there.
Tony.
10
.
Oh wonderful.
A lifetime of striving to make the world a better place for my fellow Man, and people think I’m a cartoon character of a dumb kid with a smart dog.
.
If I WAS a cartoon character, it would be Wile E Coyote.
Great plans, horrendous execution.
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You even bother to walk all the way down to the pub to watch cricket? Dear god..
10
.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Olaf.
I thought I was alone in the universe.
On the very rare occasions when I am so bored I might even contemplate actually watching cricket,
I let my computer revert to the screensaver,
take off my glasses so everything becomes blurry,
and contemplate why lint gathers in my navel, but not in my nostrils.
.
I find it just as entertaining, without the mindless commentary.
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Mindless commentary? How can forget such classics as:
I find watching cricket a great way to induce a relaxing afernoon nap. Preferably tests… short forms are far too exciting.
OK, I admit I couldn’t keep a straight face with that last line.
20
Heh. I prefer alcohol to make things blurry. Some years ago while flipping channels I happened upon a test and the brainless commenter said “what an athlete” during a slomo of a batsman running. That’s when I fell over laughing. It’s like calling everyone on Neighbours and Home And Away “actors”.
30
You people are so cynical! Do you not see that cricket is a tried and true Commonwealth training programme?
Having 10 people stand around while 2 people do all the work is excellent preparation for a job in government departments.
50
Yes the planned government monopoly NBN Co was not a well considered venture, and paying $12 Billion to Telstra and $3 Billion to Optus for their networks to achieve it too.
20
.
Yeah, you really have to marvel at the “planning” behind it all.
.
Once upon a time, rightly or wrongly, the grubmint had a monopoly on telecommunications.
Then a LABOR Prime Minister (Paul Keating) got the brilliant idea to sell it off to pay some debts.
But his own party wouldn’t let him.
So a LIBERAL Prime Minister sold it off to pay some debts.
.
Now we have both LIBERAL and LABOR fighting over the best way to recreate the monopoly, to replace the one they sold off.
Which of course means buying out the one they sold off.
.
I guess it all makes sense.
To someone.
Somewhere.
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And here in OZ, my sister, who lives in Willunga, SA, has one of the first NBN connections on the mainland. She has now ben without a telephone connection for 11 weeks, with no end in sight. Bloody marvellous, eh? Telstra offered her free diversion to her mobile, but there’s no mobile reception at her house. Kinda makes me proud to be a taxpayer.
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Don’t worry Inquirer… Even under the coalition’s NBN plan, you will still be able to download your wrist exercise movies.
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[SNIP]
[Myrrh, This is your final warning – any future comments from you that look even remotely like this one, or are just as large as this one, will be deleted out of hand, unless Jo says otherwise -Fly]
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Mobile modems are a God send when things go egg shaped with a regular connection. Great when I travel to the big smoke also. A 3G (yes, we have this, with 4G firing up also) mobile modem was a standard throw in with my internet plan.
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I replaced my 3G wireless broadband with 4G a few months ago. However 3G has worked well for me city and country areas, and in five states of Australia.
10
Use a 5metre USB extension lead plug it into your new monster plug your dongle into the other end of the lead and hang it up where your signal is strongest.thi is how I,m wired up no landline for me it works a treat. If this comment shows up its proof of my claim. Or link through your router to your laptop to share the Internet connection. Come on science girl make your life easier regards neil
20
5m was no good. I’ve driven miles and got a 20m extension. It’s that bad. Then fought for two hours with a networking bug.
Finally it is solved, but 400 emails to read and other commitments await.
you’d never know I live in a modern capital city eh?
30
Jo,
Taoist philosophy teaches us that if we are constantly banging into brick walls, we are probably trying to go in the wrong direction.
Just maybe the universe is trying to tell you, in its own inscrutable way, that 400 unread emails is not the end of the world and just maybe you could do with four days at a more sublime pace.
.
Have a glass (or three) of a good red, and dwell upon it.
Works for me.
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Glad it’s all sorted .atleast you have backup now should it ever happen again. 400 emails ! In such a short amount of time .i can only marvel at your dedication jo.thanks for such a wonderful site I visit everyday don’t know what I would do without it cheers neil
20
Must be something in the air. About 9 days ago my PC began overheating and with the CPU cooler being irreparable and replacement being pointless on a 5 year old motherboard I decided to read that machine its last rites and send it to the PC graveyard in my wardrobe.
Have been surviving since then on an old Samsung 10″ nettop.
Which means its toy shopping time. 😀
10
With CAGW there will be an increased incidence of CPU heat stress and deaths…
On a serious note, fourth gen (Haswell) Intel chips are coming out. Better performance and battery life than 3rd gen. They are priced about the same as 3rd gen as well:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7047/the-haswell-ultrabook-review-core-i74500u-tested
20
Those standby targets are quite impressive and just looking at how thin these new laptops are you can see the other reason why cutting power use is so important: a laptop that is as thin as a USB socket is tall has no room for a decent cooling fan!
The things I want my computer to do (3D gaming) cannot be done within the confines of a laptop. Battery life of portables (laptops/tablets) is the only reason for caring about CPU energy efficiency, so it is not presently a concern for me.
Not sure if I will need a laptop for business, but if I do it seems Haswell cores will be the new de facto standard by then anyway. Actually I’d have to get a job first… or make my own job. (I have a business idea there but like so many business ideas it needs some basic market research first.)
<RANT TYPE="3D Hardware">My next PC is spec’d for gaming on a 3D monitor. Most difficult decision is the video card. For best value for money right now (I’ve run the numbers) it is… 1st: AMD HD 7970, 2nd: nVIDIA GTX 690, and 3rd: nVidia GTX 780.
Unfortunately the 7970 does not perform as fast as I’ll need it to for 3D and from what I’ve read the nVidia “3D Vision 2” system gives a better 3D experience than the ATI HD3D scheme. That’s a shame because from a software design perspective AMD are doing it the right way whereas nVidia are stovepiped.
That leaves the nVidia 690 as the obvious choice, but this is where taking a single metric as the indicator of quality can overlook other significant aspects. The 690 is in fact two 680 chips networked together on the one card, and each chip has direct access to only half the card’s RAM. This shows up in the frame render time measurements as a fairly noisy “jitter”. This is probably not noticeable under most circumstances in 2D, but for stereoscopic rendering it’s more important to get a pair of frames delivered quickly without ever skipping a frame. The single chip solution of the 780 avoids this frame time jitter and has direct access to 3GB of RAM.
The 780 is in fact a crippled TITAN chip, with some of the rendering cores deactivated at the factory. Normally I have an ideological objection to buying crippleware, but the value for money argument is just too good here.
Plus the GTX 690 is more than $1000 and I wince at the thought of spending so much on a video card, especially when you are never going to see a side-by-side comparison so you won’t know what you’re missing anyway. 🙂
</RANT>The only spec relevant for my business use is having 8GB of RAM for running two virtual machines at a time, one as a software development environment and the other as a test server. VMs are wonderful from a configuration management point of view.
Now, was there anything else you didn’t want to know? 😀
10
.
Paganitzu plays just fine on my el-cheapo, year-old budget Acer laptop ($300.00 on special).
What more could any gamer want?
10
Falcon 4 that runs on 64 bit please 🙂
10
Just downloaded the shareware episode. Installed the DosBox emulator. Installed Paganitzu into it and ran it.
Yowsers that’s bringing back EGA memories best forgotten. When run full screen on my 27″ monitor I was getting to know each pixel personally by name!
And I have discovered an ancient inscription which reads “take me down to Paganitzu city where the grass `aint green and the girls `aint pretty!”
Bleep bloop. Ehh, I’ll pass.
What more could a gamer want? Well a much more immersive first-person perspective for a start.
But yeah, these people who want more than 16 colour palettes are just soft! Sheer lug-shreh!
10
Thankfully the MMORPGs, or mumoorouggers as Mr Zero Punctuation likes to call them, are less demanding on video cards. Barring a corneal transplant 3D is wasted on me, due to keratoconus in one eye. I am rebuilding my desktop now and going with the relatively cheap 770. Looking forward to Win8, a SSD and nice sized monitor. The old klunker needs rebuiding.
Shame there’s no MMOs worth playing ATM. Maybe I can sneak into Elder Scrolls beta testing soon 🙂
00
Mumoorpuggers… why didn’t spellcheck get that… silly tablet.
00
You have all of Steam’s back catalogue to choose from.
Am not usually a fan of RPGs myself but the STALKER series had a few RPG-like elements in it such as inventory limits, resource collection, buying/selling gear, and oodles of side missions (with plenty of FPS monster shootouts along the way obviously).
The graphics went quite well on an nvidia 9800 GTX.
00
Meh they lack the MMO aspect. I checked their MMO listings and the free ones are double meh. I guess Steam is oriented to single player and FPS types.
00
It’s not “oriented” towards single player and FPS games, you just decided you didn’t like what’s on offer. There’s a raft of MMO games listed there, you just said so.
Your problem now isn’t Steam’s variety, it’s the fact that MMOs require a shedload of people to have all decided to keep playing that game so you have real people to play with now. Trends in a fickle population are the problem. Plenty of MMOs are still running but if you’re sick of Skyrim/EVE/Everquest then you are looking for The Next Big Game which may not exist yet.
Besides, Steam is a publisher and most developers are beholden to whichever publisher funds their startup. Steam is not an option for most of the big titles.
All those games have discussion forums where you might get an indicator of how many people are playing. check The Secret World as an example.
00
~IRANIAN ~”ELECTIONS”
Most people have forgotten that before becoming president of Iran, before being one of the US embassy hostage takers, Achmedinnajacket had a brief career as a film actor. His high point came in “Guns of Navarone”. Ive just been watching it. He appears as a spying Greek laundry boy caught listening at a door and being up by Anthony Quinn. His pants-a-cacking is quite convincing.
~Keen movie biffs no doubt know the scene whilst others no doubt can look it up.
10
But he has had his two turns at the wheel, and will now be replaced by one of five nearly identical clerics.
10
I’ve often wondered whether or not they do in fact have cloning down to a fine art….
10
Hes not a cleric. Whats up Rareke, not on your usual form. The clerics are a higher council. the politicians are approved by the clerics for election to the govt which sits under them. Much like a monarch and its parliament, except only those they approve of are allowed to stand. The third pillar of govt seems to be the IRGC. ~Wh`ich is a`l`s`o` `u`n`der the clerics but seperate from the govt and regular armed forces.
Ive probably poxed up all that. Cant say I g`ive a monkeys. They are all a bunch of mediaeval savages however you dice it.
20
I did not say that Ahmadi-Nejad was a cleric, only that he was likely to be replaced by one of five clerics.
Most (but not all) of the candidates are clerics, or were previously clerics. Hassan Rowhani is a solely a cleric. Saaeed Jalili is a cleric and is Iran’s principle nuclear negotiator. Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf is currently the mayor of Tehran, but was a cleric before he became mayor, and probably remains one. There are two others, but I don’t actually know their names because they have not been on the radar.
The President of Iran, including Ahmadi-Nejad, does not set policy. That power lies with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei (who is a theocratic dictator). The President is there to simply implement the policies that the Ayatollahs have laid out.
The Ayatollahs decided who would run for the position of President, and would therefore presumably be happy with whomever wins the election, because it will make no difference to the policy, only the means used to implement it.
Many western observers fail to recognise this arrangement when trying to figure out what Iran is doing.
Which is odd, because if you mentally replace the Ayatollahs, with the Trade Union bosses, there are quite a few similarities within some western democracies.
20
For those who are interested, word on the wire is that Rowhani has a significant lead in the Iranian Presidency.
I include that news here, because I have been told that there is a sizable Iranian refugee community in Australia. Many will still have relatives there, and the Australian and New Zealand media are abysmal at looking outside their collective borders.
10
True…I misinterpreted your “…nearly identical clerics” as meaning nearly identical with him (ie, that by implication he was a cleric).
If more people had seen the movie Equilibrium maybe the word cleric would have been spun into absurdity as it has for me…every time I see it I get an image of Christian Bale doing ridiculous things with pistols in a white suit.
Ridiculous but highly entertaining I should add.
10
Ahmadinejad was born in 1957. He would have been four when the Guns of Navarone was made. 😉
20
There’s just no stopping some prolific child stars.
From Alistair MacLeans imagination to Armageddon
10
…are you being serious?
00
Found a link to this CFact video on IceageNow.
A UN delegate that obviously has no idea the the planet has not warmed for 17 years explains the weather in Bonn Germany.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hcz0NwtU7Q
The comment from Vinsense2009 below says it all.
40
I was just forwarded this mind bending piece of gutter-press:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-22903242
So, in the ‘Lucky Country’ of ‘The Free’, one may be sacked for ‘disrespectful’ questioning? Were one to (hypothetically and most respectfully of course) raise one or two ‘inconvenient’ questions around the assumption of C/AGW and the post-1998 euphemistic truism, climate change, is one treading the same grounds of ‘disrespect’?
And yet Australian politicians are free to treat the voting public with utter contempt and disrespect…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCwoj35d3M
70
.
Fair shake of the sauce bottle Manfred.
She’s our Prime Pickled Mussel and must be given respect.
Anybody who disagrees is a middle-aged, white male capitalist misogynist in a blue tie, hell-bent on keeping all women chained to the kitchen sink, barefoot and pregnant.
60
A squirt of sauce here, a squirt of sauce there, what’s a squirt of sauce between friends? She should be delighted that people want to squirt sauce at Her Delicacy. It sure beats hurling sandwiches.
That said, could one
stand upget off one’s knees now, eh, I mean without being considered disrespectful?20
That’d be Peter Slipper.
20
Get yourself a prepaid wireless connection to use when it goes down and laugh at them.
10
Better, I talked them into giving us two 4G ones, but we only get signal from a corner of the house and that is not either office. How long can a USB cable be?
10
If you get it in the corner of the house put a wireless router there and beam that into you house.
30
BTW – you can get aerials that boost the signal.
20
Yep , Jo just needs to type whatever brand Her
is plus 3G/4G antenna into her preferred search engine and something should show up
10
But first, find your search engine … ?
10
Yep. I use a Smartphone in the loft to pick up a 3G signal and act as a Personal WiFi Hotspot, which I then pick up by WiFi (by ‘Tethering’) from my laptop in the living room.
But a WiFi/MiFi 3G/4G Router is smarter, to do the same thing for less.
You can buy them at Harvey Norman but ask the 4G network provider as they’re usually cheaper when tied to a particular network, and on a PAYG deal if for occasional use (unless they’re not charging).
10
As general “Rule” No more than 5 meters is recommended due to signal degradation beyond that
10
3 metre length are OK, but you loose signal strength in a 5 metre one.
You can buy a 5 metre Active cable, which has a booster half way.
10
Dick Smith has boosted USB cable that is 5 or 10 meters long I forget which. They do join together in series and work fine. If you need more reception, cut a hole in the bottom of a wok and build a woktanna if you are able in that regard. Never used this but does OK apparently.
00
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk192/truckpuller/085.jpg
The poster claims the cut up coffee can gave better than 20dB gain. A claim I’m skeptical of, but yeah it will get you something, and in a marginal situation might be the difference between working and unusable.
http://mobilebroadbandblog.co.uk/2009/12/the-craziest-way-to-boost-your-mobile-broadband-signal/
There’s another good one and he is claiming 30dB gain from a saucepan (check the axis on the graph). I say “ballcock” to that claim, probably he got 3dB and the axis is just out by a factor of 10. Requires no metalworking ability.
10
Tel it looks like the claim is an increase of 30KB/S not dB. It is possibly due to reflection from something in the roof cavity unique to that location.
I suggest that because it is only four days you have a break and be happy.
However if the USB is at maximum length then using one of those flexible foil aircon duct tubes as a waveguide could bring the signal in from a line of sight location all the way to the dongle. Just point the duct at the tower and put the dongle at the other end moving it in and out to find a sweet spot (tube walls must be good conductor).
10
Most 4G modems can take an external antenna, check for a small rubbery plug that covers the antenna jack, often difficult to see because they are so small. The fat cable comes down from your roof, then plugs to a thin cable (colloquially known as a “pig tail”) which has a tiny connector on the end that neatly clicks into your modem (be very gentle with this end of the connection).
Unfortunately, the type of antenna connector can be inconsistent, and you need to get an antenna tuned to the frequency that you are operating at (often the modem will tell you the frequency, if you can figure out how to ask it). The other problem is if you are between two towers, you can only point the antenna at one or the other, then the modem sometimes tries to move to the other one (but I think that problem is mostly fixed with 4G, anyhow it resets back when it fails to hand over).
http://www.accessantennas.com.au/perth-discount/mobile-phone-3g-4g-uhf/24-dbi-yagi-directional-mobile-phone-antenna-to-suit-telstra-nextg-3g-and-4g-operates-on-8501800mhz1/
That’s the basic idea, not that I particularly recommend that shop or anything.
Generally they sell the antenna, and each bit of cable, as separate items, so the prices add up a bit.
Pointing those things can be difficult, but with practice you get the hang of it. Basically a brute force approach (just keep pointing it every direction until something works) is always guaranteed to work if you spend enough time, but someone with a bit of knack can do it faster. Also, if you are pointing it yourself be sure to remember that microwaves have a “right way up” so if they are vertical microwaves and you have the antenna in a horizontal position then you get nothing in every direction. From the photograph they seem to be vertical, but don’t expect that to apply in all situations.
The shop will know someone who you can pay to install it if you are allergic to ladders or something. Generally the mountings are the same as a TV antenna so you probably have an existing pole you can use.
50
Tel, thank you. Perhaps I should phone you when I get stuck on these matters. You are way ahead of me. I have got something patchy working with a 20m extension USB cable from Jaycar. Definitely temporary. I sure hope Telstra fix things fast.
10
To be fair, now I look closely a couple of guys above mentioned the same thing (in less detail).
00
Glad to hear the temporary solution is in place.
If you want to go all-out on reliability, there are products that can do automatic failover from ADSL to 3G/4G wireless.
A Netgear example, it’s a DSL modem you plug your USB 4G modem into, and is about $95.
http://www.netgear.com.au/home/products/mobile-broadband/dsl-3g-mobile-broadband/DGN2200M.aspx
Just check your 4G USB modem/dongle is listed here:
http://www.netgear.com/3gsupport/dgn2200m/apac/Australia.aspx
TP-Link have one which is half the price but it requires a separate ADSL modem to be purchased (any one will do) which plugs into an Ethernet socket.
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=218&model=TL-MR3420
Either solution could replace your current DSL modem/router. The hassle is that you may not have a phone line outlet in the same corner of the house that is optimal for the 3G/4G signal reception. Also you may not want Ethernet cables running from the corner to every PC in the house.
Put the new ADSL/4G router in that corner. That cuts the amount of cable to run down to just one phone cable extension from the nearest phone wall socket to the corner of the house where the new ADSL/4G router will be. If you don’t mind putting Wifi adapters on all PCs then you can retire the old router and use the new DSL/4G router’s wifi for all networking.
If you want some devices to have wired networking then one solution is a directional wifi bridge from the ADSL/4G modem to the current router, then wired devices can plug into that as normal.
Yeah, if you want connection reliability AND reduced cabling clutter it gets complicated. 🙂
00
While I was in Germany a couple of years ago, I had several occasions to use my mobile phone as a wireless access point to get a workable Internet connection to my laptop. Signal penetrated two solid walls. Unfortunately, 3G throughput often dropped below what was, in olden times, considered to be a poor dial up speed… Sometimes 9600 bps.
Web page designers develop content on networks almost a million times faster. Not that the content ends up being a million times more valuable.
10
Hopefully the same length as a piece of string mate.I live 100 mtrs from a Telstra Tower with my ssid “get rid of gillard” cheers
10
Normally conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny continue to write articles full of advice to the ALP as to how they can save themselves — lawd knows why.
20
I thought it was because the ALP are full of followers who often just follow what is suggested to them. They tend to be rather suggestible.
Personally, I think another change of PM would be a quite appropriate ending move for this rabble. Let someone else have a go, after all, they’re probably not going to get another chance for over a decade.
20
I’m not so sure about that, people have short memories.
And given the very unpopular decisions a (presumably) future LNP government must make, a bumper majority in the lower and eventually a healthy one in the upper house will be essential.
20
I’m looking forward to seeing the next 5 years worth of imploding ALP rent seekers duking it out.
It’s gonna be awesome!
30
Been on wireless for years now, I will never go back to fixed line internet, cancelled about 4 years ago. I use 3G and 4G, and never have a problem with any of my 6 computers. The 4G is about as fast as I ever need.
30
Careful saying ever and never … Mr Gates had some classics.
00
The wind lawsuits heat up in Canada:
http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/06/14/eric-gillespie-ezra-levant-nexterror-bullies/
and…
http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/06/12/national-review-big-wind-slapps-critic/
The Goliath of the wind-energy business is suing David. The defendant is Esther Wrightman, an activist and mother of two from the tiny town of Kerwood, Ontario, which sits roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto.
Wrightman, 32, has angered the Florida-based NextEra Energy (market capitalization: $32 billion) by starting a couple of bare-bones websites, ontariowindresistance.org and mlwindaction.org, as well as a YouTube channel, which she uses to lampoon the company. In its lawsuit, filed on May 1, NextEra claims that Wrightman has misused its logo and libeled the company by calling it “NexTerror” and “NextError.” And while the company doesn’t specify the amount of damages it seeks from Wrightman, it says that it will donate any proceeds from the litigation to United Way.
NextEra owns some 10,000 megawatts of wind-generation capacity, or about one-sixth of all U.S. capacity. And the company is aggressively developing six new wind projects in Canada, one of which, the Adelaide Wind Energy Centre, aims to put 38 turbines just north of Wrightman’s home. (You can see her property and the surrounding land by going here.)
NextEra’s filing against Wrightman is a textbook case of a SLAPP suit, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. And it’s a particularly loathsome one as NextEra filed it in Ontario, the epicenter of the backlash against the encroaching sprawl of the 150-meter-high, noise-producing, bird-and-bat-killing, subsidy-dependent wind-energy sector. Read article
Some of us are buying popcorn futures as the war heats up…
Cheers!
20
Interesting article here
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/global-warming-ends-whimper-dc-141467
As background the NBR is the main business paper in NZ. The author of the article, Rodney Hide, is an ex MP and ex leader of the ACT Party ( a right wing party , currently struggling to survive). Dr Russel Norman is an Aussie who is co-leader of the NZ Green Party –their rules say they must have a male and female as co-leaders of the party.
Hide writes short, weekly columns in a couple of papers. He is generally provocative but thought provoking.
It will be interesring to follow the comments to this piece.
10
Given riveting beige of NZ Realpolitik from my reading, if Mr Hide is “right wing” that might place the likes of Dr Norman and Mr Shearer somewhere “left” of Marx. Just a thought.
20
I don’t agree that it is “beige”, Manfred.
It is just more subtle than Aussie politics appears to be (although not as devious as UK politics).
I think it the difference is that Australia is still highly unionised.
Muldoon broke the power of the Unions in New Zealand, and Thatcher did the same in the UK. By doing so, they both decreased the political clout of, what were, essentially, unelected extortion racketeers with a monopoly.
The New Zealand Labor party, under Kirk, Rolling, and Clark, were rather academic in their approach. But now, with the departure of Clarke, Labour is moving back towards its Union roots. The interesting thing though, is that the rhetoric coming from “TheNewZealandLabourParty” sounds like a parody of times past. The average New Zealand voter is now much more savvy, and the world has moved on.
But here I am on an Australian blog, so I must admit that the rest of the Commonwealth is no longer in step with Australia.
20
Isn’t my post getting through because I’m critising your friends?
Or is it being censored before you get a chance to see it?
(No it is because your comments are waaaaay to long!!! You have been asked numerous times to post smaller comments or break up the super long ones into smaller ones and yet you don’t because you are a long comment fanatic who are getting the moderators very unhappy having to waste their time trying to be reasonable with you about it.Jo herself asked you to make your comments smaller a few times too and STILL you don’t comply.Thus they stay here in moderation until they end up in the trash bin) CTS
[SNIIIIIIIIP]
00
smile:
14 June: UK Daily Mail: Are first class passengers to blame for global warming? Flying up front multiplies your carbon footprint by more than nine times compared to economy class
The paper (PDF), published in May, explains that those who enjoy first class service have a carbon footprint that is over nine times larger than the humble passenger crunched up in coach class…
The research does point out that is doesn’t calculate for the relative weight of passengers between classes, but that’s a more controversial issue…
The research was carried out by The World Bank, which is attempting to reduce its own carbon emissions, according to Quartz.com…
The Washington Post stated that employees at World Bank HQ in Washington made around 189,000 trips in 2009, which clocked up 447 million miles…
Quartz reported that by stopping luxury travel for virtually all employees by 2012 the World Bank has reduced its carbon footprint by around 20,000 tons.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341988/Are-class-passengers-blame-global-warming-Flying-multiplies-carbon-footprint-times-compared-economy-class.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
10
The good news for us peasants is that the Economy Class passengers down the back are more likely to survive the average plane crash than those in First Class.
00
had to get up early today, only to hear this UNBELIEVABLY ONE-SIDED, DISINFO PROGRAM ON ABC.
no transcript up, but u need to hear the rubbish that is spouted, not just by the Presenter & Guests, but by the callers who are either part of some Solar push, or otherwise compromised. no way are they just random calls from the public:
14 June: ABC Life Matters: Presenter -Natasha Mitchell: Power to the People
As the cost of energy increases nationally we look at ways to reduce your energy bills and the move to renewables. What are you doing at your place?
Guests:
Tanya Ha -Writer and environmentalist
Giles Parkinson – Editor Renew Economy
James Grugeon – Energy Saving Social Club
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/power-to-the-people/4752372
10
14 June: Bloomberg: Stefan Nicola & Alessandro Vitelli: Forest Carbon Won’t Be Tradable Commodity, Climate Expert Says
Emissions reductions created through forest protection never will become a tradable commodity, and private investors are beginning to realize that, a consultant for the Third World Network said.
Forest carbon can’t be measured as accurately as CO2 discharges from industrial projects, Kate Dooley, who advises the environmental group on climate change issues, said today in Bonn. Under the United Nations’ Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program, or REDD, developing nations protect and manage their forests in exchange for funding from developed states to support their efforts.
“If you think that REDD can be established as a carbon market, if you think that forest carbon can be measured to the level of accuracy to satisfy investors to invest in it as a carbon market, I think that there’s a lot of disappointment in that,” she said in an interview at the UN talks in the German city. “Governments will drive this and the private-sector interest in forest carbon is really falling away.” …
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/forest-carbon-won-t-be-tradable-commodity-climate-expert-says.html
00
Jo,
Due to economics being looped worldwide together…which country will be the domino to start the fall???
10
If any of you Aussies are thinking of moving to New Zealand if the ALP wins the next election (or if it doesn’t), here is a reference for you on what rights you will have in New Zealand as compared to Kiwis moving over here.
Seriously, it’s worth a read – many Aussies I know are shocked at how australia is welshing on the unique Australian/New Zealand relationship.
10
Don’t you have leaky boats in Long White Cloudland? All you do is fill ’em up to the gunwales, toss your papers into the sea and set sail for Christmas Island. They’ll give you rights that us Aussies don’t get.
10
Hi Greebo,
Actually, Kiwis moving to australia after 2001 have less rights and support than refugees or even 457 visa holders.
One could actually say that kiwis are propping up Australias bludgers – moreso than anyone else in australia.
10
I preferred the old days where a Passport was unnecessary for travel between the two nations. We’re pretty closely related, after all, cricket and rugby aside. Even the AFL reckons you’re more important than Tasmania!
30
I Agree – the sooner NZ becomes a state of australia the better I reckon.
*** Gettin ready to be flamed from all sides ****
10
Problem: how would immigration identify and Australian or New Zealander from a foreigner from another country?
10
Just make the entry criteria into both countries similar enough.
Problem solved.
00
No illegal immigrant could get past that, could they?
10
Hey Dennis,
I don’t think anything is going to be foolproof, but if you ask me (and many expat kiwis agree, there should be a multiple year period where kiwis aren’t eligible for citizenship/welfare assistance etc.
I probably speak for a lot of kiwis over here when i say I don’t want any of NZs freeloaders skipping the ditch. It’s one of the reasons I left the country.
But seriously, when a kiwi has been over here, working and paying taxes for 5, 10, 20 years without having a safety net, then maybe they should have a clearer pathway to citizenship?
The big problem now is the expat kiwis kids over here – some of them only know australia as a home, but when they get to 18, there is no support for university, or just simply getting on their feet.
30
Practically anywhere is more important than Tasmania.
.
There’s a rumour Colin Barnett is trying to get Tasmania declared a charity. At least that way Western Australia businesses could claim 32% of their GST as a tax deductible donation.
Personally, I think we should excise it from Australia, and declare it the northernmost tip of Antarctica. That way it would become the UN’s problem.
.
Still, gotta love the latest polls from down there.
Federally, a 17.6% swing against Labor, and a 6.3% swing against the Greens.
Just maybe the Taswegians are waking up to the fact that the rest of OZ has grown tired of supporting the sheltered workshop the place has become.
70
I visit Tasmania regularly, love that state, but it is an economic basket case, it is way past time that the voters woke up to what they have lost
10
Tasmania may be a basket case, but I want you to look closely at this chart and the wholesale price for electricity in that State.
Look closely at the difference between the RRP (calculated across the full 24 hours) and the Peak RRP. (7AM till 10PM)
No really large fluctuations, and check out Sth Aust with its reliance on wind power if you want huge price fluctuations.
Cheapest power in Australia.
Nearly all Hydro. No CO2 tax on that.
AEMO Average price Tables
Tony.
20
So long as they don’t wear blue ties.
30
Thanks for that, I thought that Closer Economics Relationship gave equal rights to citizens from both sides. I do however remember when Australian PM Fraser complained to New Zealand PM Muldoon that New Zealanders were travelling to Australia to access the welfare system here, and he asked Muldoon how he believed Australia would benefit. The reply was the the movement of Kiwis to Oz would raise the IQ level of both countries.
I also remember Mr Muldoon returning from Wellington on a flight to Auckland the day after the Parliament had passed anti-discrimination laws, a crew member asked if he would like a drink and he ordered coffee, she asked “black or white” and he answered “brown”.
30
ps: admission, my father and grandmother were born in NZ.
30
Well, that makes you a cuzzie – youse got whanau bro
51
That bit about what Muldoon said, is just cruel and probably statistically insignificant in the scale of things, but very well put all the same.
40
I dunno, most Australians don’t get the joke … 🙂
30
I will have to remember that one when anyone says Scottish Independence, if voted for in next year’s referendum, will cause emigration South of the Border.
01
UPDATE!
From the “Weather is NOW Climate” department –
.
When the Australian Climate Commission, (the useful idiots junk-science Oz department of the UN-IPCC) in cahoots with the BoM & the CSIRO, retreated and moved their goal posts after repeated failed predictions …
“A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.
Now it has become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission’s latest report.”
Britian’s Met Office is now preparing to move their goal posts as well …
All weather events will now be taken as evidence of global climate change!
Met Office brainstorms UK bad weather
.
Further …
Will dana1981, from Skeptical Science, write an open letter to the Met explaining Weather IS NOT Climate?
He failed to write one to the Climate Commission.
30
I note with interest that the Met Office, with all their expensive technology, is unable to give reasonably good forecast for this weekend. Yet they insist that when using this same technology they can predict, with remarkable accuracy, decades into the future.
IMO Until they can give valid, accurate, and verifiable forecasts for every day for 1 month ahead they should be called to task for wasting tax-payers money.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/forecasting-challenges-this-weekend/
30
They seem to be able to give reliable forecasts for Darwin. “Hot and dusty”. Same every day, and rarely wrong.
00
This is a short speech by Glenn Beck alerting us to the freedom of speech rights our Socialist Government recently tried to censor.
“If they tell you to ‘shut up and sit down’ – it’s trouble.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/06/many-times-i-could-have-said-it-differently-glenn-beck-reflects-on-free-speech-and-healing-america/
10
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say It’s all right…
Little warmers, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.
Little warmers, it feels like years since it’s been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say It’s all right…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes….)
20
Jo – Is my post not getting through because I’m critising your friends?
[No. I’ve had no access to the internet, bar a dumbphone, for three days, due to a network fault at Telstra and your comment was too intimidatingly long, and not a topic I am that interested in. I have 400 emails to read and now that I finally can read it, I’m just not feeling like reading a long long comment which is unlikely to be rewarding. Sorry. Slayers have wasted a lot of my time in the last three years. And this is the problem isn’t it? Maybe you are onto something, but the goodwill is burnt out, it’s all used up. Until the slayers admit the second law argument is a mistake of semantics and we can move on, I fear useful points the slayers have will not be considered. Now you toss suggestions I’m censoring you, did you think I ought to personally phone you up when my internet access is blocked, or do you think just maybe you could assume I’ve treated you well so far, and you could wait to find out if there was an innocent problem? …… Wow!! 2500 words! I’ve just scrolled, this comment is obscenely long, and you have posted it five times? Are you kidding? The mods have politely asked you to shorten it and you just repost and get angry? Did not you not see the mod requests at the bottom of your comments? NEVER post another comment here more than 200 words. EVER. – Jo]
[SNIP – Jo]
00
Surely Joanne like all skeptical climate change blog sites you just call your ‘Big Oil’ paymasters and they will organize a fully operational internet connection in a trice.
Isn’t that the way it works?
10
manalive says:
“Normally conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny continue to write articles full of advice to the ALP as to how they can save themselves — lawd knows why.”
i want to know why no Murdoch media or TV etc has mentioned the following since it appeared in Fairfax media 13 June? this article was not on Fairfax’s homepages when i looked for it. in fact, the article was very hard to find, even tho i knew of its existence & tried key words in searches. comments were closed after 11 comments and, in a poll below the article, which was closed the same day as publication, 86% of 2138 voted AGAINST “Should Australian authorities be allowed to access your internet and phone activity without a warrant?”
13 June: SMH: Philip Dorling: Australia gets ‘deluge’ of US secret data, prompting a new data facility
Privately labelled by one Defence official as ”the new black vault”, the data centre is one of the few visible manifestations of Australia’s deep involvement in mass surveillance and intelligence collection operations such as the US National Security Agency’s PRISM program revealed last week by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden…
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/australia-gets-deluge-of-us-secret-data-prompting-a-new-data-facility-20130612-2o4kf.html
this total surveillance system was in place long before the Rudd & Gillard govts, so it does not surprise me that NO-ONE in the Coalition -or from the Greens/Independents – has brought up the matter, or asked questions of the Govt since publication. given fibre optic is what is is tapped into, this would fit with the opinion of friends, formerly in the military, who have told me the massively expensive NBN is more for the military than for the public.
and that is why i am voting INFORMALLY.
10
Pat:
don’t vote informal. Vote for an independent (Yes, I know the danger) or one of the minor parties not represented in Parliament.
The major parties want the money from primary votes and hate seeing it go elsewhere. The more they miss out on, the more they may change their rhetoric.
20
In NSW a state independent has resigned, promptly, after it was revealed that he faces the Independent Commission Against Corruption for allegations of being involved with a former Labor government senior who has been at ICAC himself recently, and that the Labor senior provided funding to the independent who may have passed funds on to other so called independents. Vote independent and you risk voting for a person who is a party member in disguise.
30
Oakeshott, Wilkie… definitely on the payroll…. would be interesting to see just how much has passed under the table.
00
The technology might have changed, but the mentality has not. In 1993 I found out that I had the distinct Queensland Honour of having been assigned a Police “Special Branch File Number” – 30 years after it was awarded. My crime at the time (early 1960’s) was that I was simply a Uni student and the son of a Labor politician. No more , no less. (For locals my honour came under the stewardship of Frank Nicklin, not Joh Bjelke-Petersen, which I found quite surprising). Unfortunately before I could get the number tattooed on my arm the new Goss Labor government claimed to have destroyed the files. But I still have my doubts. Right wing or left wing they all find their subjects revolting.
10
Police Special Branch NSW was also closed down and files destroyed by the Carr Labor state government. I can confirm that Special Branch files were for record purposes and you might have been listed as a known associate of a person filed as a person of interest, not necessarily guilty of an offence. Intelligence services work this way, files may never need to be opened but were kept just in case. Police apparently lack the intelligence services provided that were criminal surveillance data. I remember when a very senior NSW Police Special Branch officer was sitting inside the ground of Sydney University in a Morris Mini Minor in the 1960s and a group of students carried him in his car back to the street outside as a protest. We are on all kinds of government records.
20
Thanks Dennis. Your insight rings very true. In fact at the time I was a very good mate of a future Queensland Premier (who was also best man at my wedding). He became Premier by rolling Bjelke-Petersen. His father was the State President of the National Party – the Special Branch must have thought I was contaminating him when they established my File. (Incidentally he only lasted one year and 298 days as Premier. I don’t think it was because of my contamination, rather he was too straight and honest to lead a government).
10
I used to buy radio isotopes from what was called the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. For a reason I will not discuss I was visited by intelligence officers at my place of work, they confirmed that I was on file. My question is: Why were state Labor governments so anxious to get rid of old files? What were they worried about? What did they want to remove or hide? Fast forward to 2007-2013 and look at where Australia has been taken. Then apply your imagination.
00
Pat,
Don’t just vote informal,
vote4Themm
20
Themm Nunnov will face stiff competition from the Wikileaks Party in one seat.
That still leaves 149 seats where Themm Nunnov will garner some votes. Enough to make a point.
00
.
Sorry Andrew, but I must be a bit behind the times.
I thought the Wikilieaks Party were campaigning only for the Senate.
Are they going for a House of Reps seat now, as well?
Themm would appreciate more details.
00
Err, okay. Didn’t know they were going for only the Senate.
Assange was talking about running in the election and I thought he was talking about the upcoming Sep 13 election. I assumed this election is for both houses.
Maybe I misunderstood.
Actually just checked, in the interview at 13:15 and 14:15 he says he is running for the Senate, and at 17:15 he says he would in theory be taking his seat in the Senate in July next year.
So yes Wikileaks will have only Senate candidates in September but I guess you’re saying Themm is a “candidate” for the Reps only, so there is no competition between the two.
10
.
Thanks for that clarification Andrew, I wasn’t sure myself.
I have vague recollections of Assange announcing his run for the Senate, but I also seem to remember an interview with a supporter suggesting they may also run rep candidates.
.
Not that I think it matters all that much. People who for vote for Themm will be making a statement about the whole political process itself, rather than any particular politicians or issues.
Trawling around the net, everywhere from “The Drum” to the “Catallaxy Files”, the single-most common comment is “I’m sick of the lot of them – why can’t we have a ‘None of the Above’ box”.
Themm Nunnov is simply providing what a lot of the punters are asking for.
10
Then it is easy to predict what the first explanation will be on Why Vote For Themm : “Because you already know you want to!”
Is the other reason the 7% target for establishing a Review Committee?
00
Blue ties smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blue ties do I see
Bluebirds singin’ a song
Nothin’ but blue ties from now on
30
Maybe september 14 could be referred to as the blue tie revolution?
Even Rudds in on the act
ROFL
40
Willie Nelson
00
The most compelling argument against AGW is the true one, namely that which proves no greenhouse effect is controlling surface temperatures.
I have spent thousands of hours looking into what must really be happening in the universe regarding temperatures above and below planetary surfaces. I have found, beyond any reasonable doubt that I could have, that …
(1) The answer to the dilemma lies in understanding that the Second Law of Thermodynamics (in its modern form – not the simplified “hot to cold” Clausius statement) is talking about a process in which thermodynamic equilibrium “evolves spontaneously” and so too does an autonomous temperature gradient (at the macro level) in a vertical plane in a planet’s atmosphere, crust and mantle.
(2) The absorption of new thermal energy disturbs the thermodynamic equilibrium (which results in the temperature gradient) and the new energy spreads out by convection in all available directions away from the new source of energy, but flowing over the sloping temperature plane. So some energy can actually move from cooler to warmer regions provided that the process stops when a new thermodynamic equilibrium evolves. Thus heat from the Sun “creeps” up the temperature gradient in the atmosphere, and then further up the steeper temperature gradient in the outer crust, and even further through the mantle until, whether you choose to believe it or not, it actually supports the core temperature, preventing the core from cooling off, even on planets like Uranus where no energy is created in the core.
By the time you have studied information about several planets in the detail and to the extent that I have, you may realise that this has to be what happens on all planets, including Earth. It is not radiative forcing associated with any greenhouse effect which is the primary determinant of planetary temperatures – it is the gravity effect which holds down thermal energy absorbed over the life of the planet. Instantaneous radiative energy balance is not doing it, and never could.
41
Tell me something Doug – When you sit in front of a bar heater, is that heat you feel on your bare shins convection?
(MOD please delete the one above)
02
Tell me something Backslider – When you sit in front of a bar heater, is that heat you feel on you NOT bare shins radiation?
Mr D Cotton would not the vector sum of gravity at the core cancel to near zero so that there would be effectivly less gravity as you go down from the surface? Less gravity but greater density. The greater density would mean that the energy absorbed via the magnetic moment of neutrinoes passing by (and the occasional impact)would be greater but the effect of gravity would be less as you go down toward the core.
00
Siliggy,
You missed a couple things…slower rotation at that circumference and massive pressure differences.
00
Joe yeah one thing at a time. You are correct but that does not solve all the problems Mr D Cotton presents.
btw. My energy absorbtion from neutrinoes and other radiation theory demands a growing planet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U
It also could explain the Allais effect.
http://www.eclipse-chasers.com/tseAllias.html
It could also shed some light on abiotic oil and changes in half life decay rates in sync with solar flares and delete the need for dark energy and dark matter.
Mr D Cotton now that I realise your theory is not quite the same as that of a Slayer I appologise for mixing you up with them but still think random noise means radiation from colder to absorbtion in warmer can occur without defying Boltzmann or Planck. While your theory must not contradict the thermodynamic laws it must not contradict the laws of electromagnetic radiation either. Remember that the cosmic background radiation can be received and absorbed by an antenna that is warmer than the radiation source.
00
The laws of electromagnetic radiation are seriously misunderstood (at best) or deliberately strained to the point of violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics at worst – that is, in most climatology literature written, I suppose, by climatologists who have done a year or so of physics in their undergraduate years and think they understand photons, and that, provided we don’t “defy Boltzmann or Planck” it’s OK to slip in a blatant violation of the Second Law.
Spontaneous radiation never does and never can transfer any heat whatsoever from a cooler source to a warmer target.
That’s the Law – obey it or suffer the consequences of deriving false “results” and complete misunderstandings of what actually controls all planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures. If you understand my paper on all this, then you will know the answer to that.
21
Really? Do you know how refrigeration works then?
11
You also ignore the effect of weons, themons, and thingons. The trivector reactions between these, can prove to be significantly disruptive to the angular velocity of many imaginary particles.
30
And before I get flamed over that statement, I was actually quoting a scientist at an official meeting. The other scientists around the table all nodded sagely, and then moved on.
They all got the humour, but not admitting it was part of the joke.
20
Thanks Rereke.
Yup that could solve the problem in 28.1.1.2.1
It is not hard to imagine that the multivector angular velocities of any small incoming particles would be refracted. So what ever the Clingons named it may be disrupted in it’s angular velocity as it imparts energy via a magnetic interaction. This could mean less passing near the core if they are steered out earlier than that.
10
I don’t “ignore” anything of significant relevance to the key issue pertaining to what determines planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures.
00
Yes Siliggy.
Have you ever considered the fact that the temperature just 9Km below the surface in a German borehole was measured as 270C? Try applying that rate of increase all the way to the core and you would get absurdly high temperatures.
It is a known fact that the temperature gradient decreases rapidly in Earth’s hot mantle to less than 1C/Km. The gradient is based on the quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat. The specific heat increases rapidly with increasing temperature, so nothing is surprising.
Now, it doesn’t matter what energy (or lack thereof in Uranus) is generated in a planet’s core. The gravity effect allows the right amount of additional energy to flow towards the core. Or, if too much is generated, it regulates the outward flow, just as in Earth’s atmosphere.
I know it sounds strange and counter-intuitive, and I warned readers of that in the Abstract here. You should not expect to understand “heat creep” until you study Sections 4 to 9 with an open mind.
00
OK will do and then get back to you but it may take a while.
I have no smart ass answer for this one but do wonder how it was found.
00
You’ll find reasonable estimates of temperatures in the innermost and outermost regions of the mantle, and the distance between these regions – if you do some searching on the internet. I don’t have time to write a treatise on it all here.
10
Don’t be ridiculous. You guys are off with the fairies.
01
Backslider
How is thinking that heat is being first radiated and then convected or conducted “off with the fairies”?
00
I can assure you that the heat that I feel on my shins is from the radiator, not my shins…. otherwise, why in the World would I need a radiator to warm my legs?
00
Yes bare shins but what about the warmth you feel from the radiator on the not bare bits? You have misunderstood the question as weelll as what Doug typed.
00
BS slings his usual BS without proof. There is absolutely no proof that Earth’s core is still cooling off, because energy from the Sun is supporting its temperature. Without the gravity effect, it could easily have cooled at least to 0C within 200 years or so.
10
And so you resort to ad hominem, because you find yourself legless.
There is absolutely no proof of:
00
I am rolling on the floor laughing my head off…. better stop before I cack myself.
I think its time for you to retire Doug… your brain is fried.
00
Probably a more important question is: Why do you want to throw in such an inane comment when the question has to do with radiation vs convection? … for Mr Cotton radiation is something that is almost non existent… all his theories rely on denying it.
As for fairies…
Don’t you think that this is the biggest load of piffle you have ever read (or at least this week)? If you don’t, then I want some of whatever you are smoking.
00
Backslider give us an alternative. Why does the core not cool off? 80milliWatts per M^2 (At the surface)of radioactive decay seems too small.
10
And friction?…..
00
Ummm… the core IS cooling off…. since the earth was born…. and it will take a very very long time, by which time it won’t at all matter.
00
The radiation shown in radiation diagrams exists, and I have never disputed that. I studied all this in detail the year before last and had a paper published in March 2012 entitled “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” which you can easily find on some websites.
Next time you attempt to say what you think I am saying, I suggest you get your facts right by reading the above-mentioned paper and “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures.”
00
All so called measurements of assumed net energy flow from beneath Earth’s surface are based on temperature differences at different depths in boreholes. These prove nothing, because the differences are due to the gravity effect acting in the crust, and the temperature gradient is totally predictable from the usual -g/Cp quotient. Hence the gradient does not tell us whether heat is flowing up or down that gradient. And what I am saying here will make no sense at all until you understand “heat creep” and the physics explained in Sections 4 to 9 of my current paper in the PROM menu at PSI.
00
I did not attempt to say what I think you are saying. I made comment on what you ARE saying:
Absolute piffle…
00
Absolute nonsense… you need to catch up with some science buddy. Try looking up “geoneutrino”
00
There was a typo in that. I had meant to put “on your NOT bare shins” meaning the second travel of the heat after radiation.
00
Which really has nothing to do with it – we are talking about how the heat arrives to my shins… you know, the space between my shins and the heater?
00
No you just miss his point altogether. Once your clothing is heated mostly by radiation, then the rest of the heat transfer in the small gap between your clothing and your skin is by conduction, diffusion and convection.
00
Show how much you pay attention Doug… try “bare shins”.
I do not miss the point at all…. the point is to deflect.
00
He said “NOT bare shins” – meaning you were wearing long trousers or perhaps a long skirt, seeing that you are anonymous and apparently don’t dare to reveal your name or gender for reasons known best to yourself.
00
Are you not even aware that much energy is transported by convection in the atmosphere? The only issue is, what is the direction of such?
00
I am perfectly aware Doug. The problem is that you appear to be unaware of the effects of radiation.
00
Blah, blah – that’s why I had published a peer-reviewed paper on radiation. You being anon, we don’t know what you have had published do we?
20
Published where Doug?
00
argumentum ad auctoritatem
00
Whatever you may think, the paper explains how radiation from a cooler atmosphere can only slow that portion of surface cooling which is itself by radiation.
However, the gravity effect determines surface temperatures, not radiation – see my comment June 15, 8:50pm below.
Prove me wrong in some published paper of your own, or in an official rebuttal to PSI.
Other than if that happens, I am not wasting more time on you.
00
Then why are you posting here? Posting here means that you have opened up to public comment and criticism.
Isn’t it (not) remarkable that a lay person such as myself can point out obvious flaws in your theories and you must resort to argumentum ad auctoritatem and now a demand that I “officially” rebut your paper.
00
In what way does your theory frame the relationship between the gravity well of a black hole and temperature? As I understand, the temperature of a black hole is a fraction above absolute zero.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971111e.html
00
The specific heat (in the denominator) approaches (or is) infinity, and there’s probably no significant radiation other than that equivalent of the space background “temperature” of about 2.7K I understand.
00
But, furthermore, one would imagine there would be considerable movement of any gas within a black hole. As my paper explains, even mild wind on Earth has far greater velocity than diffusion at the molecular level, and that is why the gravity effect is temporarily over-ridden due to weather conditions, and also due to excessive absorption, such as in the stratosphere.
00
[SNIP. Fail again – Jo]
[This comment is 669 words. Jo has set you a limit of 200 words. Please precis -Fly]
00
Archaeologists using revolutionary airborne laser technology have discovered a lost mediaeval city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1200 years ago.
The city, called Mahendraparvata, includes temples hidden by jungle for centuries that archaeologists believe have never been looted.
Mahendraparvata existed 350 years before Angkor Wat.
Jungle surrenders its lost city
20
‘
Hmm. There might be a lesson there for the forest chomping fans of burning “biomass” (trees) instead of coal, in W. Europe’s biggest power stations.
Biggest English Polluter spends $1Billion to burn wood
40
Yes the deforestation would be due to a lack of atmospheric CO2.
20
Some tidbits:
Labor needs to shut up now
We’re being gamed by illegal immigrants
Australians will never vote for a Prime Victim
00
In all honesty Jo, you seem to have far more technical problems in running this blog than what should be considered normal. Being devotees of a rational fact based world we don’t like conspiracies but sometimes I do wonder. Recent events suggest that the IT world is a murky subterranean one which does concern me. Am I being a bit paranoid?. Thats probably a silly question given the machiavellian world we find ourselves in these days. Does expense prohibit a bit of forensic analysis?. Or am I naive?.
10
Rather much attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by Murphy’s Law.
There are plenty unconscious conspiracies which are played out stealthily through mass ‘education’ , media & popular culture.
Technology OTOH is more partial to the Murphy’s.
30
The probability of failure of any mechanism is geometrically proportional to its complexity.
00
How do you explain electronics working first go and remaining reliable for many years in excess of what this old adage would predict from their extreme complexity?
I reckon the phrase applies to moving parts only. Electronics are designed to have no moving parts, but eventually fail mainly due to “moving parts” – the atoms of conductor atoms and semiconductor dopants actually migrate slowly within the material until they cause logical errors.
(Capacitors are worse but I don’t understand the reason there.)
With all the planned obsolescence occurring in engineering design these days it is hard to put the above theories to the test. No company wants to actually make a product as well as it can anyway.
Then there’s the two most complicated devices ever built: the Internet and the space shuttle.
The space shuttle had only two major failures out of 150+ missions.
As for the Internet, well… these days it seems that when the Internet fails to provide private communications the government and Google just redefine the main purpose of the Internet to be “spying”. :-S
10
Good point. Intel Atom : 50 million transistors, Xeon Phi (not yet available) 5 billion transistors.
As for the maths, if you have a system where failure of any one component causes systemic failure, and the failure of one component is relatively unlikely then for small numbers of components it increases linearly with the number of components. For large numbers of components the it rolls off because probability of system failure cannot possibly be greater than 1.
Thus the banana bends towards diminishing probability of system failure, not towards increasing probability of system failure (i.e. not polynomial increase).
Try, for example (R notation, presuming 1% probability of component failure):
curve( 1 – (( 1 – 1/100 ) ^ x ), from=1, to=200 )
Note the direction of the bend.
10
Quite so. It’s nearly flatlined at 99% by the time you get to 400 components.
Plot on WolframAlpha.
Okay so the old adage is actually correct even for electronics, because there is no part of a CPU that is surplus. Every part has to work for the end result. All they’ve done is squish the probability down by a big factor.
But the exponential form means that a Z80 and an 8088 must have been on the same shaped failure curve, as must a Xeon Phi and an ARM11 be on the same curve, as must all other CPUs at similar dates of original design, just the horizontal scale increased in an irregular step function as industry-wide fab reliability occasionally increased.
So the reason the Internet can work at all is because it doesn’t follow this fully-interdependent graph model. Data links are redundant so nodes are redundant.
Guess it’s the same with the space shuttle. Redundant subsystems improve reliability.
There was only one set of O-rings on Challenger and only one left wing on Columbia though. They couldn’t really get around that.
00
.
What I want to know is how do Sharp electronic products know to the day when their warranty runs out?
20
In December of 1968, I purchased a Transistor radio, a National Panasonic R-247JB. (same model as shown at this link)
It cost me $87, which was a fair whack out of a RAAF trainee electrical tradesman’s wage in those days.
It’s an 8 Transistor 2 Band radio, and transistor radios were the coming thing in ’68. The 2 bands were AM and Short Wave, as this was long before FM radio here in Australia.
It sits beside me on the desk as I type this now. It’s used every day, and is in as good nick today as when I first turned it on 45 years ago.
The only thing I have ever done to it is to replace the batteries when they go flat. It takes three D Cells.
All my life I’ve been a fan of cricket, both as a player and coach until I was in my early 40’s, so this radio is used so I can to listen to the cricket on the radio all Summer, and the News and Current Affairs all year round.
Tony.
40
Isnt it great how some old stuff just seems to go on like forever, while most modern shit just wears out regularly.
On radios I usually find its the potentiometer for the volume control that becomes unbearably jumpy & crackly after a while, that would cause most to bin it.
Part of the problem is just tending to buy cheap consumer stuff now, because we don’t expect anything to last .
20
Jo Nova – please see:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/14/week-in-review-3/#comment-332289
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/12/sociology-of-the-pause/#comment-332193
( Myhrr, I was hoping you might apologize for wasting our time, insulting us, and reposting the same comment x 6, plus ignoring both my and the mods requests and improve your commenting. This comment above is useless, I presume those links go to something that is also impenetrably long (and with spelling mistakes like “fisics”?). So I will post this, but I won’t be reading those links or your comments. If you had been bothered summing them up in 200 words, as I requested, maybe I would have. But right now you are ‘.’ this close to being disinvited to write here. You are timewasting. It is as if the Slayers follow a guide to making sure that no one will read their ideas by being rude, inconsiderate, non-responsive, condescending and of ill-will – Jo)
00
Planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures are not determined by (and cannot be calculated from) radiative energy budgets. In fact there is a huge effect caused by non-radiative processes. But there is no physical relationship that enables you to determine the temperature of a surface from just some information about non-radiative heat transfer. Furthermore, you can tell nothing from radiation either if significant energy is simultaneously being lost by non-radiative processes. At the very least you need information on temperature gaps at boundaries, because cooling processes are slowed as such gaps approach zero.
The whole of the pseudo physics of greenhouse effects and assumed heating of the surface by back radiation (or “radiative forcing”) is trying to utilise the Stefan-Boltzmann equation which only relates to bodies in a vacuum losing all their energy by radiation without any conduction or evaporative cooling. A planet’s surface is not remotely like that.
Just try explaining Venus surface temperatures with an instantaneous radiative energy budget! There is only about 10W/m^2 of direct Solar radiation reaching its surface, that is, less than a tenth of the amount received by Earth’s surface. So why is the Venus surface about 730K and how does it actually increase in temperature by about 5 degrees during the 4-month long Venus day?
Instantaneous radiative energy budgets don’t have built in storage factors – the energy flows are balanced autonomously, but there is a lot of non-radiative heat transfer happening on Venus, and you need to understand why, or you don’t really understand what happens on Earth either.
30
You have added the word instantaneous. Radiative energy budgets do rely on stored and then re-radiated heat. Also they count on the amount of heat in storage increasing until a new balance is attained.
Velickovsky predicted the heat on Venus and showed that man learns nothing from history.
00
Just as well the Coalition and the Judiciary opposed Labor’s Thai deal for refugees.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3781301.htm
00
http://www.rfshop.com.au/
These guys have lots of stuff on antenna
00
Just in case this hasn’t been linked:-
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/global-warming-ends-whimper-dc-141467
00
In the UK, the latest thing is have small-scale diesel generators as backup for when the wind fails to blow. Has made Bishop Hill speechless. I did some digging. These generators are planned to run for just 2.5% of the year. If they do so, the cost per kwh will be 6.5 times (or A$1.00 kwh) that on my latest domestic electricity bill. Even if the 20MW of diesel generators are un-utilised, the stand-by revenue will be A$2.0m to A$3.0m a year.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/06/15/financial-costs-of-fulcrum-powers-green-diesel-plant/
10
More generally, Britain is currently shutting down old coal-fired and nuclear power stations, with nothing to comparable to replace them. We only have the wind turbines, and STOR (Short Term Operating Reserve). The British National Grid pays for nearly 3GW of power to be available at short-term notice. Recent failed bids were running at 6GW. The good news is that in Britain we may not have the lights go out. The bad news is that this is mostly from diesel engines, with costs running at many times the coal-fired power stations.
In Britain diesel for stationary engines do not carry excise duties, and is dyed red to identify illicit use in vehicles. So Britain may be adopting a watermelon energy policy. Green renewables on the surface, but red diesel at the core.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/06/15/watermelon-energy-policy-green-renewables-backed-by-red-diesel/
20
England can always buy electricity from France if they get into a pinch. Australia just has Tasmania to fall back on.
10
From http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/global-warming-ends-whimper-dc-141467
My problem with all MSM outlets, is that they find it impossible to say “that was stupid of us”, “we were wrong”, “we were conned”, “we fell for the scam”.
Science journals find the above hard to do. If they do not do it, then they are no better than a tabloid newspaper.
20
or:
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they
have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
Leo Tolstoy
50
It’s a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma isn’t it?
A problem of collective action.
Lamestream Channel X doesn’t want to say sorry if Yellow Media Y doesn’t do the same because Lamestream Channel X then looks obviously inept by comparison.
Clearly we need a Falsehood Emissions Trading Scheme. A scheme where they can tell falsehoods but it will cost them money. If all competitors tell falsehoods they all lose money.
Oh wait we already have one, it’s called NOT BUYING SUCKFUL NEWSPAPERS.
But free markets are – like – sooo 19th century.
Perhaps they can all have an International Media Sorry Day and move their social bank account out of the red.
00
hmm!
15 June: FirstPost: Reuters: Russia challenges consensus rule at heart of U.N. climate talks
Eighteen years on, the consensus system has run up against a powerful opponent: Russia, with two of its ex-Soviet neighbours, is denouncing it as too vague, and their opposition could thwart progress towards the next deal to fight climate change, due to be agreed in 2015.
Seething after they were overruled in a consensus decision at U.N. talks in Qatar last year, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine blocked one strand of two-week climate talks in Bonn ending on Friday, by insisting on clearer rules for decision-making…
“Our process is very sick,” Russian delegate Oleg Shamanov said…
The two-week delay in Bonn has led to calls for environment ministers and leaders to help stop the process from unravelling…
Even if no change to the process is made, delegates say the spat in Bonn means future chairs will be less hasty in reaching for their hammer to force through measures while objections remain – and that could lead to more complex talks.
“I presume that future…presidents will be much more careful before just trying to gavel things through. Maybe they will give (it) another few hours to try to come to consensus,” said Artur Runge-Metzger, a senior negotiator with the European Commission.
Others said it could lead to a less ambitious deal…
“It will certainly make the negotiations even tougher than they already are and strengthen the hand of those who want to water down the ambition or have as weak an agreement as possible, or even no agreement at all, in 2015,” AOSIS’s Jumeau said.
http://www.firstpost.com/world/russia-challenges-consensus-rule-at-heart-of-u-n-climate-talks-873197.html
U.S. energy CEOs see carbon price irrelevant in shale era
WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Record production of natural gas in the U.S. from shale deposits has made a carbon tax irrelevant for the United States, two major energy CEOs said on Thursday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2416143?&ref=searchlist
EU unveils plans for sifting banned carbon credits
LONDON, June 14 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Europe’s carbon trading registry will be suspended from July 10-11 for a software upgrade that will allow national regulators to check if accounts contain banned foreign carbon credits, the EU Commission said Friday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2417400
00
more “free market” shenanigans! u pretty much have to go to MSM reports in the various regions to get a picture of who the 20 banks are:
Australian: SMA censures ANZ, Macquarie Bank after review forced by Libor scandal
ANZ forced two traders to return their bonuses for “inappropriate” behaviour as part of the bank’s response to an investigation by Singaporean authorities in the wake of the Libor scandal.
ANZ and Macquarie bank were among 20 banks censured by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and ordered to hold extra reserves for “deficiencies in governance risk management , internal controls and surveillance systems”…
The ANZ traders have not been sacked…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/sma-censures-anz-macquarie-bank-after-review-forced-by-libor-scandal/story-e6frg8zx-1226664238773
Independent: Singapore punishes RBS and others for rate manipulation
RBS, ING and UBS were given the harshest penalties. Instead of fines, they will each have to deposit about S$1bn (£509m) at the central bank for one year…
Other banks censured included Barclays and Standard Chartered…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/singapore-punishes-rbs-and-others-for-rate-manipulation-8659900.html
USA Today: Global interest rate-rigging crackdown escalates
A total of 133 traders at 20 global banks based in the U.S. or overseas attempted to manipulate foreign exchange and interest rate benchmarks in Singapore, the city-state’s central bank said Friday as it disclosed the latest escalation of a global crackdown on suspected rate-rigging…
About three-quarters of the traders have resigned or asked to leave their banks. The rest have been or will be subject to disciplinary action, including reassignments, demotions or bonus forfeitures…
The U.S.-headquartered banks sanctioned included Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, the central bank said. Dutch bank ING, Royal Bank of Scotland and Swiss banking giant UBS were required to post the highest reserve level…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/06/14/singapore-financial-benchmark-probe/2424981/
00
hilarious:
16 June: UK Daily Mail: David Rose: Madness of the Met Office Summit meeting to find out why our weather is… normal.
As of lunchtime yesterday, the Met Office wasn’t at all sure how Britain’s weather would turn out today. According to a spokesman, some of its computer models were predicting ‘a rather miserable day for some southern areas’. Others, however, suggested it would be ‘fine and bright’.
‘Sometimes the atmosphere can provide a real challenge for forecasters,’ the spokesman admitted wearily…
This is, of course, the same Met Office that next week is set to host what some have termed an ‘unprecedented’ meeting of climate scientists, an attempt to ‘brainstorm’ whether the ‘extreme weather’ of the past few years has been caused by ‘climate change’…
The cold winter and spring of 2013, the bitter winter of 2010, the floods of 2012 and the disappointing summers of the past seven years – all are up for discussion, together with their supposed origins.
No mention, you may notice, of the droughts and heatwaves we were once told to brace ourselves for as a consequence of what used to be termed global warming.
Then, as an analysis last week demonstrated, the period without a statistically significant increase in global average temperatures has now reached 17 years four months.
Small wonder that the nature of the world’s impending doom has had to be rebranded…
Last week yet another round of UN climate talks broke up without (as usual) an agreement on how to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. They took place in Bonn, which, like Britain, was enduring a chilly spell.
‘Winter has been extended,’ explained a delegate from the Cook Islands. ‘It’s supposed to be really hot, but it’s not, because global warming is happening right now.’…
Centuries ago, when astronomers found it hard to square their observations with the then-orthodox theory that the Earth lay at the centre of the universe, they invented the concept of ‘epicycles’, convoluted wobbles and twists that supposedly accounted for such discrepancies.
Citing some cold British winters and unsettled summers as evidence of climate change has about as much credibility. I suppose we should be thankful that unlike the bogus epicycles, such efforts are not, as yet, being enforced by the Inquisition.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2342434/DAVID-ROSE-Madness-Met-Office-Summit-meeting-weather–normal.html
10
goes well with the David Rose Daily Mail article!
16 June: NewsLtd: Marin Cilic beats Lleyton Hewitt in Queen’s club semi-final
A controversial decision to shift his semi-final with Marin Cilic from centre court after the match had started because of forecast bad weather angered Hewitt…
Hewitt claimed tournament officials were too reliant on too many weather forecasts.
“I just don’t think you can go off a forecast because, as they told me, they had 16 different forecasts going today from 16 different places, and they all had a different forecast,” Hewitt said…
http://www.news.com.au/sport/tennis/marin-cilic-beats-lleyton-hewitt-in-queens-club-semi-final/story-fndkzym4-1226664495523
00
So, who really are the tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists?
00
Have a care Australia, you’re now on dangerous ground and right on the edge of the abyss. Push back now or in not too many years, you’ll one day find yourself standing up in shock after watching something and asking yourself, what the f**k have they done to Australia?
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/an-interesting-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-theatre-blog-tonight/
Pointman
40
Pointman, you say you’re not Australian,
Well I’ve just made you one mate and your welcome here anytime 🙂
30
Thanks Mr Pointman.
10
Pointman,
Your usual keen insight and cool logic are once more on display. But I have to wonder what was to be gained by asking the PM such a personal question. If we want our politicians to stay out of our lives I think it behooves us to stay out of theirs. And that includes reporters, no matter the medium.
Their politics is fair game and so is any reasonable suspicion of anything illegal or politically improper. But who cares who Julia Gillard sleeps with unless it involves suspicion of improper influence? Things being apparently otherwise, anyone who does care really should get a life of his own so he doesn’t need to worry about Gillard’s.
Even from America I don’t like Julia Gillard. So don’t think I’m trying to defend her. I’m defending good journalistic judgment. And this simply wasn’t. It’s trash supermarket tabloid stuff of the lowest order.
00
Readers might be interested to know that the Sunday Telegraph here in the UK has the headline ‘Revealed:true cost of wind farms’ today (June 16th).
The article comments that ‘every job in Britain’s wind farm industry is effectively subsidised to the extent of £100,000 per year’ and that ‘a new analysis of government and industry figures shows that wind turbine owners received £1.2 billion in the form of a consumer subsidy paid by a supplement on electricity bills last year.’
10
Jo,
The question is, how are the electrons behaving in your house? You were off the air again this morning. I couldn’t even ping the server so that’s down pretty hard. Maybe it’s all that wind and solar power. I hear those electrons don’t really know what they’re doing and can’t compete with the conventional ones. Or maybe they’re fighting for dominance and letting their responsibility go in the process? One wonders. 😉
In any case, I hope it’s all back to normal soon.
00
Just when you think the madness couldn’t get any worse, something comes along to prove you wrong.
Some members of the climate change anxiety true believer crowd fear that climate is controlled by peer reviewed papers more than they fear CO2. At least this is what is suggested by the following:
From: Experts Divided On Implications Of Brutal Cold Spell
[Lionell do you realise your linked article is 3.5 years old?] oggi
00
It is not the content of the article that is important, it is the accusation. It indicates that much of the energy behind the fierce attack on we skeptics comes from their fear that we can change climate by simply saying that it isn’t what they say it is. Taken for what it is, it is a Solipsism for which reality does not exist.
This explains their repetitive use of “consensus”, “peer review”, and outputs from simulations as a primary proof rather than actual data and direct demonstrations. It comes from their fundamental “world view” is 180 degrees from the world view most of us hold here.
For them, there is no out there. It all consists of mental buzzing and confusion relying on their significant others mental buzzing and confusion to feel safe.
For us, we know there is an out there and our primary task is to make our mental buzzing and confusion match the out there. We do so because we understand our lives depend upon it.
Communication whit them is rather like describing the color of the sky to a person who has been blind all his life. The difference is, they are self blinded by a stubborn refusal to see what is plainly in front of them.
10
A cold body does not transfer thermal energy by spontaneous radiation to a warmer body. All it can do is slow that portion of the rate of cooling of the warmer body which is itself due to radiation. Back radiation does not slow evaporative cooling of a warmer water body, or slow the rate of conduction into air molecules at the surface-atmosphere boundary. The latter two processes transfer twice as much thermal energy to the atmosphere as does radiation from the surface according to the NASA net energy diagram reproduced in my paper.
None of this has any bearing whatsoever on mean planetary surface temperatures which are supported by the autonomous gravitationally induced temperature gradient which results from the process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in which thermodynamic equilibrium evolves spontaneously.
All the “calculations” of Earth’s surface temperature in the GH models are fudged, because unless you know the temperature gap at the boundary, you cannot determine the rate of non-radiative cooling, and such cooling removes energy which cannot then come into the radiation calculations. Most of the radiation from the surface is merely “pseudo scattered” back radiation which is not cooling the surface at all because its energy did not come from the surface.
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It was a warm cloudy night and I was sitting on my back porch wondering. I was wondering because these nights are always at least ten degrees cooler than a clear night. I was wondering how this fits in with Doug Cotton’s
…. this was truly perplexing.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that clouds have more mass, thus more weight? Yes, this must be it, since weight and mass are so connected to gravity….. this must be causing an anomaly in the gradient.
Then I thought some more and I remembered that Doug had said:
This to me sounded like a contradiction in terms. Yes, indeed it is. He states
No proof that the earth’s core is cooling off? Does Doug believe that the core is molten, or what? Scientists in fact agree that the Earth’s core is solid and in fact growing. If its growing, then the core must be cooling.
I think that what there is absolutely no proof of is:
This supposedly due to
I knew that there was absolutely no proof of this, because he also said
Within 200 years?? Oh my I thought, Doug needs to get some rest…. his thoughts are truly scrambled. Perhaps then he can sit down, do some calculations as to just how long it would really take if all radioactive decay were to suddenly cease….
Yes I thought…. I can rest easy and be sure that there really is such a thing as the GHE. I can feel it tonight.
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* at least ten degrees warmer … perhaps I need a rest also 🙂
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Well backslider, I was wondering how a mere 3W/m^2 of Solar energy reaching Uranus could explain how its atmosphere keeps on getting hotter the further down you go, as energy somehow gets down there from the very top of the atmosphere where it is nearly all radiated back to space – nearly all 3W/m^2 of it. And I worked out how it happens by the non-radiative “heat creep” process explained with valid physics in my paper.
It’s a pity you haven’t been teaching physics for nearly 50 years as I have, or otherwise you might have been able to understand the paper. Your comments above indicate to me that you have absolutely no concept of what it is that I am explaining with valid physics. You are brain-washed by climatology’s version of pseudo physics which is fictitious – got it? – fictitious.
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The word spontaneous here is part of the confusion. Any transfer of energy takes time and therefore can’t be spontaneous.
So for radiation to transfer energy in both directions just remove the word spontaneous. The radiation moves in both directions but more travels from warmer to colder. Electronics is full of examples of radiation traveling from cooler to warmer. Standing waves occur when radiation travels in two directions at the same frequency. The effect of the cooler or weaker signal on the larger or warmer signal can be measured at any point between or at either end. Single sideband radio receivers use the effect a weak signal of nearly the same frequency will have on a stronger local signal to produce the sound frequency. Your mobile phone receives a weak signal at the same time as it sends a strong one from the same antenna. You can hold a warm infra red camera in your hand and see the cooler objects that radiate into it.
Take a look at these photomultiplier tubes that can run at up to 175 degrees C.
http://www.hamamatsu.com/resources/pdf/etd/PMT_handbook_v3aE-Chapter13.pdf
Ever used a Space Blanket?
http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/survival/gear/space-blanket1.htm
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Spontaneous radiation happens autonomously = by itself. The period over which it keeps on happening is irrelevant. What I am saying does not necessarily happen for man-made radiation like laser beams. That’s why I like to be precise and use the word “spontaneous” in the normal dictionary sense of the word, namely “Happening or arising without apparent
external cause; self-generated.” Got it?
No, you have no proof that more radiation travels from warmer to cooler in all cases, because some of the energy can also transfer by non-radiative processes, maybe at a later time. More energy is transferred from the surface to the atmosphere by non-radiative processes than by radiation – see NASA net energy diagram in my latest paper.
And so what? Even if there were more radiation travelling from hot to cold, what has that got to do with heat transfer. Heat only transfers in one direction. Electromagnetic energy in radiation is not the same energy as kinetic energy in molecules. It is not thermal energy. Radiation is not necessarily transferring heat. Got it?
If not, read my peer-reviewed paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” published on several websites in March 2012.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/radiated_energy.pdf
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Got it! Yes I can accept that spontaneous does not need to mean instantaneous.
If radiation is NOT thermal energy then it does not need to obey laws of thermodynamics. Radiation obeys it’s own laws. Radiation is free from and immune to the laws of thermodynamics BECAUSE it is not thermal energy.
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The way an infra red camera works is similar to the way a microbolometer works in that it measures the rate at which its sensor cools when the object whose temperature is cooler is supplying electromagnetic energy which slows the rate of cooling of the warmer sensor. This is standard, well recognised physics, explained in both my papers. Got it? If not, microbolometers are discuss in the Appendix of my March 2012 paper.
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Sounds like a greenhouse gas slowing the rate of cooling of the surface.
Photomultipliers are just one type of light sensitive device. Hammamatsu say
“Light excites the electrons in the photo cathode”
In these tubes you set the dark current not the light current!
http://www.hamamatsu.com/resources/pdf/etd/PMT_handbook_v3aE-Chapter2.pdf
Photo transistors also have a “dark current”. Light causes more current it does not “slow the rate of cooling”.
“The light enters the base region of the phototransistor where it causes hole electron pairs to be generated.”
Note also that the transistor is often deliberately turned off and requires energy to fight this reverse current.
“This mainly occurs in the reverse biased base-collector junction.”
http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/data/semicond/phototransistor/photo_transistor.php
About CCD wiki says “These capacitors are biased above the threshold for inversion when image acquisition begins, allowing the conversion of incoming photons into electron charges at the semiconductor-oxide interface; the CCD is then used to read out these charges. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device
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Don’t worry Siliggy… Doug is deep in the realms of fantasy.
Here is one for you Doug:
I dispute your gravity theory. My theory is that the whole earth is warmed extra by low frequency sound waves, inaudible, but powerful. These sound waves are generated by all of nature…. by the wind and by the waves, by storms and by the falling rain (how poetic!).
These low level sound waves excite molecules, thus generating heat which warms the planet.
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“Missing Heat” found
When gravity acts upon solids, liquids and gases it helps to restore thermodynamic equilibrium. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that a process occurs spontaneously with a propensity towards thermodynamic equilibrium with the greatest accessible entropy.
One day climatologists will realise (as some physicists have since the 19th century) that the thermodynamic equilibrium is an isentropic state in which there must be a temperature gradient, cooler at the top.
This gradient is the only explanation (and sufficient explanation) for all that 33 degrees of warming, and what happens to missing heat, be it is the oceans or the solid crust. There is a propensity for warmer temperatures in the depths of the oceans, but it tends to be eclipsed by the much warmer temperatures in the thermocline. Downward convection of thermal energy is possible in the oceans because of the thermocline. But Solar energy can also “creep” into the crust and actually go up the temperature gradient and even into the mantle.
Fascinating isn’t it? When you apply valid physics you sometimes find it establishes counter-intuitive results – just like relativity. Read more in my paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” which shows why there is no radiative forcing of any significance – or any greenhouse effect.
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No, there is not.
So why is the deep ocean so cold? According to your theories, it should be quite warm.
Falsified yet again…..
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Two thirds of the thermal energy which is transferred from the surface to the atmosphere is transferred by non-radiative processes. (Source: NASA net energy diagram.)
Why then do we suppose that we should be able to calculate surface temperatures just from the radiative flux? The truth is, we can’t and never will be able to, because there is no causal connection.
It is the gravity effect which determines surface temperatures, not any radiative forcing or greenhouse effect.
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Di dah doo dah, di dah doo dah, di dah doo dah, di dah doo dah…. you are now entering the Twilight Zone……
Listen Doug. When I am out under the hot outback sun working on one of my trucks and I leave one of my tools out in the sun and it gets too hot for me to touch, I know for sure that has absolutely nothing to do with gravity. If it did, the tools I left in the shade would be equally hot.
Why is the deep ocean cold Doug?
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Oh come on Backslider that audio theory will soon have you claiming you can hear people who talk quieter than you do without breaking the 2nd law of audio dynamics. However next time you slide out on your back from under the truck to pick up a tool ask yourself how much back radiation the tools in the shade of the truck received from the warm truck. Do the backsliding tool grab at night and the answer is obvious. Doug needs to bear in mind that the presence of the truck above the tool has reduced the gravitational vector imbalance around the tool and at night this should make the tool under the truck cooler. So what happens to the tool temperature when the truck exhaust fumes blow between it and the sun?
I think we are ALL in the twilight zone and it is time to do some proving tests. I have devised one and am refining the idea.
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My most recent research shows that modern music has a profound effect on the Natural Sound Cycle (NSC). It appears that there is a harmonic resonance created that amplifies the NSC, thus causing further warming of the planet. Of particular concern are motor vehicles fitted with huge subwoofers as these cause the whole vehicle to oscillate, thus exacerbating the problem.
Stay tuned for my new paper: “Grunge Is Warming The Planet – move over GHE, its the Tuning Fork Effect”.
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Ah Backslider if you are correct then it is possible that Grunge could be behind the increase of the Schumman reasonance frequency. Could grunge thus be modulating the downward atmospheric heat pumping caused by the Peltier-Seebeck action produced by incoming cosmic particle Voltages discharging through dissimilar elements in the atmosphere as part of the ionospheric Voltage discharge current?
No wonder the surface is hotter! There i was thinking that the increase in the Schumman reasonance could be caused by the planet growing!
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/lightning-waves.html
Watch out if both your theory and Dougs is correct then the reverse of his process would lead to grunge modulating gravity by altering heat. This would then lead to periods of time “spontaneously” ceasing to have occured.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf
How do I turn this sarc thingy off?
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This has definitely already happened… at least to me after downing a few and listening to Grunge….
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Even as of today, Principia Scientific International is still publishing an article “The Anthropogenic Global Warming Controversy” which refers to an article by Claes Johnson in which Claes quite incorrectly describes how thermal energy moves downwards in an atmosphere. I have added four comments pointing out the error, and written to Claes (copy John O’Sullivan) pointing out the error. The last of my comments on the PSI thread sums it up, and it’s worth repeating here …
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that thermodynamic equilibrium will evolve spontaneously. In a gravitational field this thermodynamic equilibrium (with greatest accessible entropy) is isentropic. Hence, disregarding chemical and phase changes, the total of the gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy in any small region (even a few pictograms of the atmosphere) will tend towards homogeneity at all altitudes in calm conditions. This can happen by diffusion (conduction between molecules) without any convection. Because PE varies, so will KE, and thus there will be an autonomous temperature gradient.
Thermal energy flows over a sloping temperature plane in a gravitational field in all accessible directions away from any source of new energy which disturbs thermodynamic equilibrium. That, in effect, is what the Second Law says will happen. This is how the base of the troposphere stays warm and supports the surface temperature.
In summary, PSI (and Claes Johnson) are right in saying what I say in my “Radiated Energy” paper of March 2012 about radiation from a cooler blackbody not transferring thermal energy to a warmer blackbody. But they are wrong in endorsing an article such as today’s, which cites what Claes Johnson has said about non-radiative heat transfers in planetary atmospheres.
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