2005-09-22

Rita Skeeter

Sorry, still got HP on my mind. Anyway, I found this from wikipedia rather interesting: not the text of this page (interesting enough, true) but the disclaimer:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is perhaps a non sequitur, but I'm fascinated by the fact that the official forecasts from the U.S. National Hurricane Center are signed. The forecasters responsible sign their names. It's hard to imagine a more stressful job, but I love the culture of accountability that implies.

- John Fleck

William M. Connolley said...

Hmm, I wonder if the sigs are really for public consumption? Anyway Those In Charge could readily find out who did them, even if they were unsigned.

Meanwhile, here is a nice comment from sci.env by mt:


I think the hurricane card is being played too forcefully. It's backfiring in the rightwing press. There is an almost reasonable-sounding editorial leading this month's National Review that makes this sort of hurricane-CO2 connection stuff look bad.

Of course, "consistent with the latest scientific predictions" is perfectly true, but the political process doesn't know what to make of this, and turns it into "blaming global warming for Katrina", which is a rather meaningless proposition. Then, at the urging of the press that loves a fight, the public takes sides on this non-question.

If we have to ask "did global warming drown New Orleans" and allow only a binary answer, the answer is no. It's a very bad question, though.

Meanwhile we march lemmingly onward.

Luboš Motl said...

Re: POWER LAWS

Dear William,

I want to assure you that you can't hide the fact that the article by Fraedrich and Blender - and therefore also your article about the scary power laws that show that the existing global climate models don't work - have been proved incorrect.

The exponents are universally around 0.65 plus minus 0.04, and the climate models disagree with this observed exponent.

Please don't erase these comments again. It is not nice.

The response showing why the FB evaluation is wrong is here, and my article about the issue is here.

For everyone: I apologize if you had to read it twice.

Have a good night
Lubos