Patients with no Patience

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Dunning-Kruger patients

Have very little patience

For NOAA surface stations

And future generations

They're into skepulations

On Iris dilitations 

Cosmic nucleations

And Lordly revelations.

American Pi

(Whose circumference is precisely 6 times its radius, by legislative

mandate)

-- Horatio's rendition of Don McClean's classic (Sorry Don)

A long long time ago
I can still remember
How the mathturbation used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make the public dance
And maybe they'd be con-fused for a while
But February made them sweat
With every heat wave we would get
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I still remember that I cried
When I heard my paper was denied
Something touched me deep inside
The day Denial died


So
[chorus]
Bye, bye Miss American Pi
Played the Monte on my Auntie but my Auntie was sly
Those climate-science blogs were doing maths that don't lie
Bloggin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die


 Did you write the blog of lies
And do you have Koch and Exxon ties
If the SourceWatch tells you so?
Now do you believe in crock and troll?
Can math-wank save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to lie with snow?


Well, I know that you are in denial
Cuz I've watched you bloggin' for a while
You just kicked out the science
Man, I dig that fibbin' and deniance


I was a lonely skeptic bloggin' buck
From a big-car-nation, with a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day Denial died
I started bloggin'


[chorus]
Now, for ten years we've been on our own
And Gore grows fat, with a roiling tone
But, that's not how it used to be
When the Jester blogged for the King and Queen
On a blog once voted "Best We've Seen"
In a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the King was stooping down
The Jester stole his Webby crown
The courtroom was adjourned
BEST's verdict was returned
And while Tony read a post by Mac
James Inhoax started up a PAC
And we were goin' on attack
The day Denial died
We were bloggin'
[chorus]


Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The Joes threw up a neuron melter
"Temps are high ...but falling fast"
It landed foul on the grass
The wankers tried for a journal pass
With the Jester on the sidelines (from The BEST)
Now the half-time air was rank perfume
Cuz NOAA played the marching tune
We all got up to leave
Since we never could believe
The wankers tried to take the field
The science band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day Denial died?
We started bloggin'


[chorus]

Oh, and there we were all in one place
Degeneration lost in hyperspace
With no time left to start again
So come on Mac be nimble, Mac be quick
Mac Flash broke a hockey-stick
Cuz hockey is a Canuck's only friend
And as I watched him on his blog
It seemed that he was just a cog
No Climate Audit brats
Could break that stick with stats
And as the carbon climbed high into the air
And warmed the earth and people there
The bitter truth was all laid bare
The day Denial died
He was bloggin'


[Chorus]

I met a girl who blogged the trends
And I asked her for some means to ends
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the Sacred URL
Where I'd seen the wankers twist and twirl
But Denial wouldn't play
And on the web the skeptics screamed
The Tonys cried, and the Moranos schemed
The skeptics all were croakin'
The denier spell was broken
And the wankers I admire most
The ones who loved to lie and boast
They took their last trend and were toast
The day Denial died
And they were blogging...


Bye, bye Miss American Pi
Played the Monte on my Auntie but my Auntie was sly
Those climate-science blogs were doing maths that don't lie
Bloggin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Click here to listen to Horatio sing "American Pi" (Caution: may be hurtful to sensitive ears

"math-wank", more "commonly" referred to as "mathturbation",  can be defined as "physically meaningless number manipulation" sometimes to quite purposely cloud the issue at hand (in this case, climate change).

And for anyone who doesn't get the pun -- ie, thinks the "e" was inadvertently left off "Pi" in the above title -- Horatio would just paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own value for the irrational number Pi" 

or by extension, to their own unsupported (wacky?) ideas about the physics and chemistry of the earth's climate -- something to which "math wankers" (glorified numerologists) and many American politicians seem to be utterly oblivious (if they are not simply being dishonest, that is).

Perhaps it is their dismal understanding of math and science (particulalry how the latter works), but many Americans seem particularly  bedazzled by "mathturbation" and seem especially keen to take seriously the opinions of the "mathturbators" in particular and non-climate scientists in general on the issue of climate change (eg, "famous" physicists who may be experts in their own field but who know nothing at all about climate science) 

Perhaps it is also something in our psyche:  an abiding belief that we Americans can literally "create reality" and that everything will "work out" if we simply continue business as usual. In one critical sense, this is undoubtedly true: with our emissions, we are "creating" the future climate reality for future generations.

Rough-sawn

Horatio is trying his hand at making "furniture" out of some rough-sawn boards that were part of a "slab wood" delivery that he got last year for firewood -- basically what the lumber mill deemed "unsuitable" as building material.

But as they say, one person's trash is another's treasure.

Soooo, Horatio set aside a few boards he thought might make a nice bench, coffee table, shelf or "bar".

Above are the results (after lots of sanding!)

The grain in the bench is reminiscent of the magnetic "field" lines that you "see" when you sprinkle iron filings around a bar magnet.

Sometimes the most beautiful stuff is what gets discarded (for firewood, in this case).

Clear as Sea-ice

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Warming isn't warming

Unless, of course, it be

It doesn't make the sea-ice melt

Unless it does, you see?



"Despite my belief in CO2 global warming’s effect, I really don’t believe it has had any scientifically discernible impact on sea ice. Nutin!!” -- Jeff Condon

...despite the fact that the arctic has seen some of the most pronunced warming on the planet in recent decades and that enhanced arctic warming is one of the outcomes "predicted" by models of greenhouse gas-induced warming.


If you are confused by the claims of the climate pseudo-skeptics, join the club. Read this for context (and/or parts 1 and 3 of the same series of posts)

And as you can see from the photo, sea ice is about as clear as mud.


 

Lame Chops

– by Horatio Algeranon

"Chops” may be fine

But good sense is better

To locate the line

Between climate and weather.

Everyone's a climate science expert these days -- or at least thinks they are. 

Unfortunately, outside the scientific journals (eg, on blogs, in magazines, at think tanks, in the tea rooms of British Lords), much (if not most) of what is passed off as technical expertise ("chops") on the issue of climate seems to be simply the "ability" to perform vacuous mathematical manipulation.

Some would call it "numerology", others "mathturbation". But whatever you want to call it, it is usually devoid of the atmospheric science (physics, chemistry) that would tie it to reality -- and all too often, performed incompetetly to boot!

Hence the title "Lame chops".

And what is almost entirely missing from the public discourse on climate change is "good sense". In Horatio's humble opinion, an ounce of good sense is worth a thousand pounds of mathematical emissions.

Mariandayn

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Ayn Rand was a Libertarian
And some might say an Aryan
But certainly not a librarian
Like The Music Man's "Madam Marian"


She may have looked the part
But wasn't near as smart
For Marian read Sartre
A Marxist at the heart.


And Ayn thought Marx was crass
For talking about class
And giving folks a pass
Who couldn't pay for gas.

Yes, yes, Horatio knows it is not pronounced "Sart", but he has a poetic license (and is not afraid to use it) and besides, that's how the unfamiliar will read it.

~@:>

Carbonairianism

"Give me carbon dioxide or give me death"

   -- Dirtrick Henergy

The Climate Skeptic (3)

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Ten steps ahead

In the wrong direction

I'm a Skeptic, that is me

For a well-fed

"Contra" predilection

I'm denying all I see.

Climate hypo-Skepticism

– by Horatio Algeranon

“Ice-melt is vastly over-hyped”

The climate hypo-skeptic piped

“Just a short time ago [in 123,000 BC]

The summer arctic was sea-ice free!”

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center,

"The last time that scientists can say confidently that the Arctic was free of summertime ice was 125,000 years ago, during the height of the last major interglacial period, known as the Eemian. Temperatures in the Arctic were warmer than now and sea level was also 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet) higher than it is today because the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets had partly melted. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, global averaged temperatures today are getting close to the maximum warmth seen during the Eemian. Carbon dioxide levels now are far above the highest levels during the Eemian, indicating there is still warming to come."

Hotel Wattsuforya

-- Horatio Algeranon's rendering of the Eagles' tune

On Al Gore's Superhighway, computer mouse in my hand
One sip of hot coffee, burned my mouth like a brand
Suddenly, on the flat-screen, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night


There it stood, Tony's homepage, I heard the warming death-knell
And I was thinking to myself "this could be Heaven or this could be Hell"
Then my eyes glimpsed a graphic and it showed me the way
There were temperatures on a downward trend, I thought I heard them say
"Welcome to the Hotel Wattsuforya
Such a lovely blog
(Such a lovely blog)
Such a lovely fog
Plenty of denial at the Hotel Wattsuforya
Any kind of smear
(Any kind of smear)
You can find it here"


The posts are definitely twisted, enough to give you the bends
They got a lot of pretty, pretty graphs... showing downward trends
How the graphs are contorted, on that you can bet
No graphs to remember, just a lot to forget.


So I called to the Weatherman, "Please bring me my whine"
He said, "We haven't had that spirit here since the year 2009"
And still those deniers are calling from far away
Wake you up in the middle of the night just to hear them say


"Welcome to the Hotel Wattsuforya
Such a lovely blog
(Such a lovely blog)
Such a lovely fog
They're lying it up at the Hotel Wattsuforya
What a nice surprise
(What a nice surprise)
Bring your climate lies"



Mirrors on the ceiling, recovery of ice
And he said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device"
And in the master's chambers they gather for the feast
Stab warming with their silly knives but they just can't kill the beast


Last thing I remember I was clicking for the door
I had to find the hyperlink back to the place I was before
"Relax," said the message box, "We are programmed to receive
You can click out any time you like but you can never leave"

Horatio has found that if you stand on your head and look in a mirror, WUWT usually (though not always) makes more sense.