Imre S. proves to be a very bad, but very funny, man.

Before and after pictures of flooded Brisbane: a fairly mild indicator of the devastation across Queensland.

Evidence of medieval warm period in Antarctica.

According to Greenland ice core data, only 9,099 years of the last 10,500 were warmer than 2010. (There is a reason “the Little Ice Age ( Read more... )

A World Cup soccer illustration of the difference between rules and norms.

Arguing that line length shows a hidden symbolism in Plato’s texts.

Rumsfield and Keynes on probability and prediction.

About problems with models. Arguing that we cannot know that all models are false

Reviewing four books on evilAbout former Supreme Court Justice ( Read more... )

Clarke and Dawe explain Europe’s debt problems (for non-Oz readers, you will laugh lots).

A nice list of economic fallacies of the left and the right.

Nice post on macro models.

When a pig gets killed, nothing is wasted.

Worrying that cities are deteriorating as avenues of upward social mobility.

Rwanda is having a coffee success story. An aid ( Read more... )

Great animation of the slow rise and startling recent decline of surface temperature stations. About the difficulties of checking surface temperature reliability. Though satellite and surface temperature appear to be in broad agreement.

Looking at historical measurements of CO2 going back as far as (pdf) 1812. Difficulties in measuring (pdf) ( Read more... )

Climate modeling may be about to change dramatically. The paper.

Paper arguing that cloud cover compensates for the increased power of the Sun.

Retired NASA atmospheric physicist uses matched-station data to identify significant urban heat effect (pdf) in US surface temperature data.

Graphing Greenland ice core data over the last 65 million ( Read more... )

Calculating warming trends in central England since 1659. There is nothing exceptional about recent trends.

As the glaciers retreat in Alaska, the land is rising.

The CIA (actually, from the article, mostly the NSA if it is satellite data) is sharing data with climate scientistsThe Climategate/CRUTape letters reveal that the Oz temperature data ( Read more... )

Useful piece on ice ages: we are currently in a cooling period in terms of very long term trends.

A blog which examines tropical ocean oscillation data (it is fairly technical).

The biosphere is getting bigger.

Study finds that increased oxygen levels are connected to global coolings.

Study finds human actions have reversed long-term cooling ( Read more... )

I am deeply sceptical about the fiscal stimuli that are being bandied around. Reading Scott Sumner’s friendly and informative (though inherently difficult because monetary economics is an inherently difficult subject) monetary economics blog has increased my scepticism ( Read more... )

About why economists failed to predict the current crisis, particularly the over/mis-use of computer models (a pervasive problem). Not being able to pick bubbles seems part of the problem. Blaming the Fed but being wary of regulating in haste.

About (maybe) learning from the mistakes of the 1930s. A 2004 study which thinks it identified them. The ( Read more... )

About Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and the deification of the Earth.

About the moral implications of recreating Neanderthals by cloning.

About computer models and cognitive failure.

About the social context of literacy and not seeing every difference in average test results as bias.

About the falsity of definitions of wilderness that exclude ( Read more... )