Eli and Ms. Rabett have been quite worried about Ethon. The poor creature absorbed three hard blows in a short time, banishment from the Wikipedia (we remain suspicious about a certain carnaevor's role), Roger Pielke Jr., going on sabbatical and Roger Sr. transferring to the de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est category on the Rabett Run blogroll. Last we saw Ethon in the Fall, he was quite bedraggled and lacking in appetite. We were thus quite happy to greet a sleek and well livered bird who came by after Thanksgiving.
Turns out Roger Jr. is back and pecking away, Roger Sr.'s blog has risen but he doesn't want to hear about anything he doesn't want to hear about so the humor is gone, and Ethon, well the Wikipedia has added an A to his name, but admits that the bird's mission in life, may have been his mission in myth.
Ethon reported that had spent turkey week at the Best of All Possible Worlds Resort attending the Happy Face Conference hosted by Ted Nordhaus, which featured invited talks by the Walmart Deep Discounting Professor of Economics, Richard Tol, and Bjorn Lomborg who lectured the audience on things he agreed he knew nothing about, and, of course, to be very civil, the audience agreed with him. Newt Gingrich gave the keynote. Still, as it must at these things, the disruptive name of Nicholas Stern came up and Eli thought, like 1066, it would be a good thing to contrast the every so pessimistic predictions of Stern
with the sunny information contained in the IPCC WGII report. Fortunately this can be done in pictures.
Or as Nordhaus would sing
Could you convert the latter BMP to a PNG. (You can do it with xnview.com, every blogger needs picture resize tools and this is a good one, and free.)
ReplyDeleteIt shrinks in file size a lot and all browsers can display it.
Also the text is very hard to read currently as the picture is downscaled too much in the HTML. (even when the browser needs to load the full size pic.)
One should practically never use that HTML scale feature, but scale the picture directly.
(This message can be deleted after reading as it's not interesting to the audience)
I'll do it tonight when I get home. Thanks for the tips
ReplyDeleteThe primary problem is that the aspect ratio is not preserved (eg, with the Projected Impacts of Climate Change).
ReplyDeleteThis distorts everything, but is particularly bad for letters.
So, if you are going to scale the image in the html, you at least want to preserve aspect ratio.
but I agree with flavius. It is best to scale the image file itself. That way, the image loads faster and is not distorted.
Finally, some photohsops have a "despeckle" filter that removes random dots (which sometimes result from oversharpening the image -- eg, doing unsharp mask too many times)
Hopefully that is an improvement. Not trivial
ReplyDeleteEli,
ReplyDeleteGet your facts straight.
I am not, never have Walmart Professor. I used to be the Michael Otto Professor. That chair was indeed sponsored by a retailer, but through his MO Foundation for Environmental Protection.
I have never met Ted Nordhaus, let alone a conference hosted by him.
Dear Richard,
ReplyDelete:)
Wow, Richard
ReplyDeleteIf you had not cleared that up, we (the poor ignorant readers) would never have known you were not Walmart Professor.*
Eli uses such a convincing tone.
--T
* Does that mean you get free stuff? If so, I'd like to be Walmart Professor. How do you apply?
Glad to see a climate guy having a little fun mixing a bit of mythology into science, especially now since several cosmologists are having way too much fun conflating science and faith.
ReplyDeleteAnd IMHO, this cosmic-punch-bowl spiked with faith oughta be taken away from cosmology before its members become intoxicated with creationism in the guise of ID. It's bad enough that creationists have infiltrated a few earthbound sciences, but for them to also infiltrate the celestial sciences would be even worse!
So, I find it reassuring to know that creationists are staying clear of climate science. Maybe it's the case that creationists damn well know there's no way in hell an IDer was behind the shaping of Earth's climate--specifically its carbon cycle!
Just hope this climatic battle between skeptics and alarmists doesn't turn into Arthur C. Clarke's tale about the scientists vs the creationists.
ReplyDeleteRecall, in his "The Hammer of God," the scientific community planned a mission to destroy an asteroid bound for Earth, while a religious sect was aiming to sabotage the mission because it was undermining "god's will."
Thankfully though, there's a big difference at play here. "Nordhaus and the like" think it's best not to correct the invisible hand (of the market), whereas creationists believe it's wrong to disrupt the invisible hand (of God).
Eli,
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed that the Pielke Jr. blog is....gone!? I think that Pielke starts sweating and gets a bad case of the shakes if he's not quoted at least once a week in the press.
Mus musculus anonymouse
Hey Rabett, world as we know it coming to an end - and we have it in colour. Arrows all going red, world just going to burn up. The faith warmers love this sort of stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut Rabett, 2007 follows 2006 as Atlantic hurricanes dud( count the ACE index not the pretend storm counts), arctic ice extent recovery doing very well up to December(and against the rabett theory that low summer coverage will mean low following winter coverage), 2007 not warmest year in a millyun years, super cold Europe and northern USA/Canada with snow everywhere. Happy skiers not doing a lot of burning.
China and India to give the world the finger at Bali and Rabett and fellow faithwarmers will continue to buy Chinese computers and buy Indian owned steel products.
Rabett and co still think they should be taken seriously? Hahahaha!
Ah rabett, you go and burn with the rest of the red arrows, I'll dive my car, switch on my lights and lead a very happy life. And I'll buy Chinese too.
JohnS
John,
ReplyDeleteI take it that you don't have a house on the Yucatan peninsula, but thanks for making the strongest possible argument for stringent emission regulations.
Hey Rabett, you're right, I live nowhere near the Yucatan. Neither do you are all the little faith warmers here. Yucatan suddenly becomes flavour of the month- I'm sure it has been thrashed by hurricanes through the decades/centuries/ milleniums, but who gave a rats bum then.
ReplyDeleteA tropical storm dumps a whole lot of rain on the Caribbean, hundreds die in floods and landslides, truly unfortunate, but Rabett, are you and your friends going to turn off your lights to stop storms like that.
The season was a dud, you can play it any way you wish, it remains a dud
Rabett, China and India now control your A in AGW. You tell them to stop building the coal power stations, stop building their cars, tell 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians they cannot have what you and your little mates here have. Two billion dusky fingers in unison return to you is one mighty message.
Again you will be taken seriously when you stop buying Chinese computers or anything else you have in your home or in your work space, stop buying any bit of product with steel in it which as likely or not has come from a Indian owned steel mill. Turn off your lights and go freeze in the dark. You say AGW is real, so play it for real Rabett. Stop dodging the bullit that you say is coming.
Stringent emmisions control- tell the 2 billion fingers that is what is required. The laughter will be deafening.
JohnS
John S "you will be taken seriously when you stop buying Chinese computers"
ReplyDeleteHey, maybe that's why my keyboard has all those funny squiggly lines on it.
"Stop dodging the bullit that you say is coming."
You mean the bullshit?
We've all been dodging bullshit from you since you first started posting here and Dog knows, it sometimes flies fast and furious.