e-petition
No MP Salary Increase

Responsible department: Office of the Leader of the House of Commons

At a time when the country is in deep financial crisis, the ordinary working people of this country are still losing their jobs, have been, still are suffering wage freezes while living costs are spiralling, and the government cutting or capping benefit payments, is it right for MP’s to get ANY pay rise, let alone a 32% increase they have been reported as wanting.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER”

SAY NO TO ANY PAYRISE FOR MP’S.

They’re having a laugh. At your expense. Let them know we won’t tolerate this from our PUBLIC SERVANTS.

Please sign this petition

The full IPCC Special Report on Extremes is out today, and I have just gone through the sections in Chapter 4 that deal with disasters and climate change. Kudos to the IPCC — they have gotten the issue just about right, where “right” means that the report accurately reflects the academic literature on this topic. Over time good science will win out over the rest — sometimes it just takes a little while.

A few quotable quotes from the report (from Chapter 4):
“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
“The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
“The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”
The report even takes care of tying up a loose end that has allowed some commentators to avoid the scientific literature:
“Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.”
With this post I am creating a handy bullshit button on this subject (pictured above). Anytime that you read claims that invoke disasters loss trends as an indication of human-caused climate change, including the currently popular “billion dollar disasters” meme, you can simply call “bullshit” and point to the IPCC SREX report.

You may find yourself having to use the bullshit button in locations that are supposed to be credible, such as Nature Climate Change and the New York Times. This might may feel uncomfortable at first, because such venues are generally credible, but is absolutely necessary to help certain corners of science and the media to regain their credibility. The siren song of linking disasters to human-caused climate change exerts a strong pull for activists in all settings, but might be countered by the widespread and judicious use of the disaster and climate change bullshit button.

On Wednesday the Institute of Economic Affairs released a new report authored by Christopher Snowdon titled ‘Euro Puppets: The European Commission’s remaking of civil society’.

This report exposes the vast scale to which the European Commission uses taxpayers money to fund charities, think tanks and other lobby groups which campaign not only for closer European integration but a vast array of regulations and spending programs.

The groups the Commission decides to fund skew heavily to the left and a significant proportion of these groups would fail to exist if it were not for the taxpayer money the European Commission so freely hands out to its favoured groups.

One example of this given in the report is the group Women In Europe for a Common Future received a grant of €1,219,213 in 2011 and a further €135,247 from national governments. These grants made up a staggering 93% of the groups total funding whilst only 0.2% of funding came from private donations.

The programme Europe for Citizens has had a budget of €229 million designated for the years 2014-20. The stated aims of this programme include:

Giving citizens the opportunity to interact and participate in constructing an ever closer Europe, united in and enriched through its cultural diversity;
Forging a European identity, based on recognised common values, history and culture;
Enhancing mutual understanding between European citizens respecting and celebrating cultural diversity, while contributing to intercultural dialogue.

However Snowdon finds that the Commission goes far beyond promoting the European Union. The green 10 represent Europe’s largest environmental lobby groups. These groups campaign tirelessly for heavier regulation of European industry and subsidies to unprofitable renewable energy sources impoverishing European citizens with no significant impact in world carbon emmisions. These organisations campaign for as much as 25% of the entire EU budget to spent on climate change projects.

All but one of these groups receives significant amounts of funding from the European Commission

Read the rest here

Coutesy NASA – click for BIG image

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA’s first telescope dispatched to hunt for Earth-like planets that may support life elsewhere in the universe has lost use of its positioning system, threatening its mission, officials said on Wednesday.

Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope revolutionized the study of so-called exoplanets, with discovery of 130 worlds orbiting distant stars and 2,700 potential planets still awaiting confirmation.

The telescope was designed to gaze at about 100,000 distant sun-like stars, searching for planets passing by, or transiting, relative to its line of sight. Detecting slight dips in the amount of light from a planet crossing the face of its parent star requires extremely precise pointing.

The telescope, the cornerstone of a $650 million mission, lost that ability on Tuesday when a second steadying spinning wheel stopped working.

The telescope needs at least three of its four wheels operating to hunt for planets. It lost use of its first wheel last year.

“It certainly is not good news for the mission, which has been performing so well and had so much promise for doing even better,” deputy project manager Charles Sobeck, with NASA’s Ames Research Center, told reporters during a hastily arranged conference call on Wednesday.

The telescope is orbiting about 40 million miles (64 million km) from Earth, too far for a robotic or astronaut-led repair mission, added John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

“We’re not ready to call the mission over, but by any measure this has been a spectacularly successful mission,” Grunsfeld said.

In addition to trying to get the failed wheel working, engineers and scientists will be looking for alternative ways of operating the telescope.

They also will assess if Kepler could be used for other types of astronomical observations which do not require such precise pointing.

The goal of the mission is to find Earth-sized planets located the proper distance from their parent stars so they would have the right temperatures for liquid surface water. Water is believed to be necessary for life.

Though the telescope currently isn’t collecting any data, scientists have years of archived observations still to analyze.

Read the rest here:

FAIRBANKS – The ice went out at 3:41 p.m. in Nenana on Monday and there was only one winning ticket holder in what was the latest breakup on record in the 97-year-old Nenana Ice Classic.

The official winning time was 2:41 p.m. Alaska Standard Time because the contest uses standard, not daylight, time to determine the winner(s).

– KTVA

The date and time was 2013, May, 20th, 2:41 PM AST, day 139.612

The existing record 1964, May 20th, 11:21 AM AST, day 140.487, 1964 was a leap year.

This is a repost of an existing article with updates.

When I checked on the numeric data for the Nenana Classic I discovered NSIDC haven’t updated since 2003, NOAA don’t seem to provide in a simple format.

Ice Classic web site home page

Reference image

Whole articles are done quickly, not strictly, so lighten up if you want to complain about end corrected filters.  Writing this before anyone…

I’ve added the later data to the old version, wrote a script and created a new version.

A tricky problem is the usage of 12:xx PM, meaningless. See this from NPL
I’ve assumed eg. 12:30 PM is 12:30 hrs

CSV in a .zip here (all of 2k) Updated to include 2013

Official data here, 2012 is missing.

[update] Gerhard Kramm at WUWT posts about the equinox suggesting 2013 is later in the year.

link here

Please discuss. Nothing like yet another confounding factor!

Post by Tim Channon

More and more, we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings, councils, or boards to “help determine” public policy in one field or another. They are supposedly being included to get ”input” from the public to help officials make final decisions on taxes, education, community growth or whatever the particular subject matter might be.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, surface appearances are often deceiving.

You, Mr. or Mrs. Citizen, decide to take part in one of these meetings.

Generally, you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting. Supposedly, the job of the facilitator is to be a neutral, non-directing helper to see that the meeting flows smoothly.

Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting.

The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the Delphi Technique. This Delphi Technique was developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Department of Defense back in the 1950s. It was originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war.

However, it was soon recognized that the steps of Delphi could be very valuable in manipulating ANY meeting toward a predetermined end.

How does the process take place? The techniques are well developed and well defined.

First, the person who will be leading the meeting, the facilitator or Change Agent must be a likable person with whom those participating in the meeting can agree or sympathize.

It is, therefore, the job of the facilitator to find a way to cause a split in the audience, to establish one or a few of the people as “bad guys” while the facilitator is perceived as the “good guy.”

Facilitators are trained to recognize potential opponents and how to make such people appear aggressive, foolish, extremist, etc. Once this is done, the facilitator establishes himself or herself as the “friend” of the rest of the audience.

The stage is now set for the rest of the agenda to take place.

At this point, the audience is generally broken up into “discussion—or ‘breakout’—groups” of seven or eight people each. Each of these groups is to be led by a subordinate facilitator.

Within each group, discussion takes place of issues, already decided upon by the leadership of the meeting. Here, too, the facilitator manipulates the discussion in the desired direction, isolating and demeaning opposing viewpoints.

Generally, participants are asked to write down their ideas and disagreements with the papers to be turned in and “compiled” for general discussion after the general meeting is reconvened.

This is the weak link in the chain, which you are not supposed to recognize. Who compiles the various notes into the final agenda for discussion? Ahhhh! Well, it is those who are running the meeting.

How do you know that the ideas on your notes were included in the final result? You Don’t! You may realize that your idea was not included and come to the conclusion that you were probably in the minority. Recognize that every other citizen member of this meeting has written his or her likes or dislikes on a similar sheet of paper and they, too, have no idea whether their ideas were “compiled” into the final result! You don’t even know if anyone’s ideas are part of the final “conclusions” presented to the reassembled group as the “consensus” of public opinion.

Rarely does anyone challenge the process, since each concludes that he or she was in the minority and different from all the others.

So, now, those who organized the meeting in the first place are able to tell the participants and the rest of the community that the conclusions, reached at the meeting, are the result of public participation.

Actually, the desired conclusions had been established, in the back room, long before the meeting ever took place. There are variations in the technique to fit special situations but, in general, the procedure outlined above takes place.

The natural question to ask here is: If the outcome was preordained before the meeting took place, why have the meeting? Herein lies the genius of this Delphi Technique.

It is imperative that the general public believe that this program is theirs! They thought it up! They took part in its development! Their input was recognized!

If people believe that the program is theirs, they will support it.

If they get the slightest hint that the program is being imposed upon them, they will resist.

This very effective technique is being used, over and over and over, to change our form of government from the representative republic, intended by the Founding Fathers, into a “participatory democracy.” Now, citizens chosen at large are manipulated into accepting preset outcomes while they believe that the input they provided produced the outcomes which are now theirs! The reality is that the final outcome was already determined long before any public meetings took place, determined by individuals unknown to the public. Can you say “Conspiracy?”

These “Change Agents” or “Facilitators” can be beaten! They may be beaten using their own methods against them.

Because it is so important, I will repeat the suggestions I gave in the last previous column. One: Never, never lose your temper! Lose your temper and lose the battle, it is that simple! Smile, if it kills you to do so. Be courteous at all times. Speak in a normal tone of voice.

Two: Stay focused! Always write your question or statement down in advance to help you remember the exact manner in which your question or statement was made.

These agents are trained to twist things to make anyone not acceding to their agenda look silly or aggressive. Smile, wait till the change agent gets done speaking and then bring them back to your question. If they distort what you said, simply remind those in the group that what he or she is saying is not what you asked or said and then repeat, verbatim, from your notes the original objection.

Three: Be persistent! Wait through any harangues and then repeat the original question. (Go back and reread the previous column.)

Four: (I wish to thank a reader of the previous column for some EXCELLENT suggestions.) Don’t go alone! Get as many friends or relatives who think as you do, to go along with you to the meeting. Have each person ”armed” with questions or statements which all generally support your central viewpoint. Don’t sit together as a group! Spread out through the audience so that your group does not seem to be a group.

When the facilitator or change agent avoids answering your question and insists that he must move on so everyone may have a chance to speak, your own agents in the audience can then ask questions, worded differently, but still with the same meaning as yours. They can bring the discussion back to your original point.

They could even point out, in a friendly manner, that the agent did not really answer your question. The more the agent avoids your question, and the more your friends bring that to the attention of the group, the more the audience will shift in your favor.

To quote my informant: “Turn the technique back on them and isolate the change agent as the kook. I’ve done it and seen steam come out of the ears of those power brokers in the wings who are trying to shove something down the citizen’s throats. And it’s so much fun to watch the moderator squirm and lose his cool, all while trying to keep a smile on his face.”

Now that you understand how meetings are manipulated, let’s show them up for the charlatans which they are.

Published in the September 23, 2002, issue of Ether Zone.

http://etherzone.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?Terms=Albert+V.+Burns

Copyright © 1997-2002 Ether Zone. Republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.

CNN reported quoting local witnesses reported that when the violent tornado that is ‘struck the Town of Moore, near Oklahoma City destroyed two schools, one in 75 children were present, but that’ it sarbbero repaired in an underground shelter. Thirty were already ‘rescued. This is the school of Moore Plaza Towers, a suburb of the city ‘. Emergency services are working to rescue the survivors.

[Tim adds]  This seems to have been a monster in an area used to tornadoes, the details will trickle out over the coming days.

CERN’s Jasper Kirkby On The Newest Unpublished Results Of CLOUD: “The Results Are Very Interesting”
By P Gosselin on 19. Mai 2013

The Latest On The CLOUD Experiment at CERN
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt

On May 10, 2013, at the online Austrian ORF, there was a rare interview with the CLOUD Experiment director of the European European Organization for Nuclear Research, Jasper Kirkby. Within the scope of the CLOUD project, it is being investigated to what extent solar activity has on cloud formation via the mechanism of cosmic radiation and the impact this could have on the Earth’s climate (see Chapter 6 of our book “Die kalte Sonne“). Here’s an excerpt of the worthwhile interview:

ORF: What is the relationship between solar activity and cosmic radiation?

Kirkby: Cosmic radiation consists of high energy, charged particles. When they reach our solar system, they are deflected away by the magnetic field of the sun. Foremost by the magnetic field of the solar plasma. When the sun is active, less cosmic radiation reaches the Earth. The relationship to the solar cycle: When there are many sunspots, the Earth receives 10 – 30% less cosmic radiation.

Is this relationship sure?

Yes, it is solidly confirmed. We also know that cosmic radiation ionizes every cubic centimeter of the Earth’s atmosphere. Unsure so far is whether or not this also could have a climatic impact. Clouds are extremely important for the Earth’s climate. If I could magically eliminate all clouds from the atmosphere, then 30 watts of additional heat energy would reach every square meter of the Earth.

To put this number into context: The warming of the atmosphere through the impacts of man is currently pegged at 1.5 watts per square meter. Small variations in cloud cover could have large impacts.

What do your experiments show?

At this point in time we cannot say if cosmic radiation impacts the climate. So far up to now we have investigated the production of condensation nuclei for cloud droplets – particularly those that are formed from gas, i.e. gas-to-particle-conversion”. They represent about half of the condensation nuclei in the atmosphere. The remaining nuclei come from soot and dust.

What gases are involved in this process?

We have looked at sulfuric acid and ammonia. The results of the first trials: Cosmic radiation enhances the formation of condensation nuclei from gases by a factor of 10. But that alone is too little to have a significant impact on cloud formation. According to our latest experiments, there has to be another gas or vapor involved that enhances this process. We suspect organic substances.

Which ones?

The results are currently being reviewed by a journal. Unfortunately I can’t tell you more. Only this much: The results are very interesting. Over the course of the year there are going to be some publications on the subject.

Let’s assume that you are able to show that cosmic radiation indeed does contribute a lot to cloud formation. What would that mean?

I think that the experiments are important in two ways. Firstly, they would show that there is a natural source to climate change. And the other point is that it would change our understanding of anthropogenic climate change. We know quite a bit about greenhouse gases. What we know little about are aerosols. These are particles that come from industry floating in the atmosphere. They surely have a cooling effect. However, we have no idea just how great this effect is. It may be small, but it may be very big. Maybe it is even big enough to offset the additional CO2 in the atmosphere.. We don’t know.

Continue reading at ORF.at.”         Google translation of the German here.

EU leaders will decide on the shift in energy policy at a meeting Wednesday. The change reflects requests from businesses in the 27-member zone amid the prolonged economic slump triggered by the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the official said. A draft conclusion of the EU leaders’ meeting obtained by Kyodo News said, “Against the backdrop of high pressure on Europe’s competitiveness and increasing energy demand from major economies, the EU’s energy policy must ensure the uninterrupted supply of households and companies at affordable and competitive prices.”

Read the rest here

Someone known as Robert has put up a web site showing his experimental physics done old style, create the devices yourself. He does glass work too.

“and also for the defibrillation of elephants.” but we won’t go there just now.

I’ve chosen the following item since it starts to approach the bizarre world of wave/particle duality. He has done much more.

Magnesium Photoelectric Cell

When electromagnetic radiation falls on a metal surface, electrons can be released. Electron emission only occurs if the frequency of the radiation is above a value called the threshold frequency. The threshold frequency is dependent upon the type of material.

Wave theory does not explain the photoelectric effect. Instead, it is necessary to consider the radiation as particles called photons. The energy of each photon is related to the frequency by E = hf where E is the energy in joules (J), h is Planck’s constant (6.626×10-34Js) and f is the frequency in Hz. Joules can be converted to electron volts by dividing by 1.6×10-19.

There are many site pages, finding it all might not be so easy.

Magnesium photocell

Site front page

Enjoy.

Post by Tim Channon