Josh Jul 13, 2015 Climate: Ward Josh 
There's been a minor kerfuffle of bruised feathers on Twitter today about the speedy way our host debunked the latest paper from the LSE. It does seem that blogs are increasingly agile in spotting duff science - something I am fairly sure is a good thing and should be universally approved of.
Josh Jul 11, 2015 Christopher Booker Climate: MetOffice Josh 
It is good to see Christopher Booker writing about the 'hottest day of the year' in the Telegraph again. Paul Homewood's excellent posts, on which his article is based, are well worth reading.
The story starts here, with more here, and Booker's first article, followed by more doubts, some Met Office spin, then a belated response, comment moderation, and finally more Met Office spin. It's quite a saga.
Anyone would think they are trying to hype every possible weather event they can. I wonder why?
Josh Jul 8, 2015 Christopher Booker Josh ;)
Last Sunday Christopher Booker wrote a brilliant article "Why are greens so keen to destroy the world's wildlife?" He says:
When Professor David MacKay stepped down as chief scientific adviser
to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he
produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking
site to that of wind farms.
Over 25 years, he calculated, a single "shalegas pad" covering five
acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year),
would produce as much energy as 87 giant windturbines, covering 5.6
square miles and visible up to 20 miles away.
Which made me think: where would you rather live, in a county full of giant turbines littering the countryside, killing eagles and bats and producing unreliable electricity, or one with a small discreet gas tap somewhere?
Josh A very PC prayer for our times by Dominic Lawson. And a cartoon by Josh.
Josh Jun 23, 2015 Josh 
Hilarious transcript as per post below. I'm not sure a cartoon could ever be quite as entertaining so I went for more of a portrait.
Josh Jun 11, 2015 Climate: IPCC Josh Paris ;)
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Last night some of us attended the Walker Institute Annual Lecture given by Sir David King and which was titled "The Paris Climate Summit - hopes and expectations". I must thank the Walker Institute for the opportunity to be there and for the excellent refreshments afterwards.
The lecture itself was something of a gruelling series of alarmist doom and gloom factoids followed by an upbeat assessment of what will actually happen at the Paris summit - and the answer is... well, you can read for yourself and, if you were there, please do add your own recollections.
Josh
Here is the link to listen to the event and download Sir David King’s slides H/t Robin Guenier in the comments.
Josh
;)
There is lots of news about science ending The Pause - so I am guessing they will call it a lull next and then shortly after that we will be told the one thing we cannot call it is... a lull.
As an extra bonus distraction why not think up what D.E.N.I.A.L. might stand for?
[Typo fixed, many thanks Leo!]
Josh
H/t Paul Homewood on an interesting story in the LA Times about the subsidies Elon Musk receives. Well worth a read - if you dont mind the niff.
Josh 
Today is Alan Rusbridger's last day as Editor of the Guardian and I am sure we all wish him well whatever he decides to do next.
The cartoon 'celebrates' his championing of divestment from fossil fuels, which we know is a bit of a dark development with 'abhorrent' consequences - so I think we can coin a new term "Divestocide".
Josh May 15, 2015 Josh Richard Betts 
Roddy Cambell says:
The decent mass of scientific society, in a quiet but significant majority, getting on with it in a civilised and peaceful fashion in the library/laboratory/Antarctica/satellites/rain forest/literature, no shouting please, debating what works and what is right. The righteous Union of Concerned Climate Hawks with their megaphones, degrowth manifestos, 100-denier underwear, dinner inspections, LSE platforms and disinvestment petitions. Who wouldn't be a bit shy?
Many thanks to Roddy for the idea of Shy Scientists being like Shy Tories - they won't offer their thoughts when there are so many vocal alarmists ready to shout them down.
The background to the cartoon is the Lew paper which Richard Betts critiques here and which is being discussed over at Lew's blog here.
PS If you feel like donating then please do. I am trying to set aside time to put some of the cartoons into a book. Any support would be greatly appreciated!
Josh May 11, 2015 Josh Politicians 
One of the main things we learned from the recent UK General Election was that the forecasters got it catastrophically wrong - catastrophic in that the pollsters reputations are now in shreds. The collective narrative was that it had to be a hung parliament, nothing else was possible - even Nate Silver agreed so it had to be true.
Yet how wrong they were.
Not everyone was wrong - Dan Hodges got it about right, as did Janet Daley, and I am sure there were others.
It is horriblly like that other consensus - the one that always has to be 97% and which we all know is also catastrophically wrong.
H/t to Paul Matthews whose excellent blog post has the reference to voters hiding in the deep ocean.
Josh ;)
It is extraordinary to think that Bjorn Lomborg first published The Sceptical Environmentalist in 1998 - that's as long as The Pause!
However there has been no pause in some people ignoring his message as we have, rather depressingly, read on this very blog over the weekend.
It is really simple: the money we spend on Climate Change mitigation can be better spent on health, education and cheap energy. Why is this hard to understand? Do they think climate science is done in a moral vacuum? Can they not see that divesting from fossil fuels hurts the poor the most?
Incredible.
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Josh Apr 30, 2015 Josh ;)
Apparently there is a General Election on. Good luck everyone!
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Update: Hilarious!
