Dave's Archives

AI-generated (stable diffusion) ge of "cyclon writing with a pen".

The sporadic blog of David J A Cooper. I write sci-fi, teach software engineering, and occasionally say related (or not related) things.

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  • Climate reporting – compare and contrast

    There’s a subtle difference here that I can’t quite put my finger on. An article in The Register (by Lewis Page): Agricultural brainboxes at Stanford University say that global warming isn’t likely to seriously affect poor people in developing nations, who make up so much of the human race. Under some scenarios, poor farmers “could…

  • Come in

    Here’s a sign I noticed while cycling: Perhaps there’s hope for us yet.

  • Open source science

    Slashdot notes an article from the Guardian: “If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too“. The author is, Darrel Ince, is a Professor of Computing at The Open University. You might recognise something of the mayhem that is the climate change debate in the title. Both the public release of scientific…

  • Optus pestus

    Optus’s website is a work of malevolent genius. It attacks one’s psyche on every level, from the stupefyingly inane animals to the incomprehensible maze of links to the bizarre concoctions that are the descriptions of the Optus service itself. It is the latter that most effectively tests my composure. The concept of “pre-paid” is theoretically…

  • Peer review

    I’ve stumbled across yet another “ClimateGate” article (by way of James Delingpole), this one going right for the jugular of science: peer review. The author is journalist Patrick Courrielche, who I hadn’t come across until now. Courrielche argues that peer review is kaput and is being replaced by what he calls “peer-to-peer review”, an idea…

  • Please reboot the aircraft

    I was hearing vague snippets of the disaster that was the Virgin Blue computer system, but my JetStar flight had its own problems. Everyone was seated (that is, except for the restless and very, very sensitive toddler standing on the opposite window seat, who burst into tears whenever mum dared suggest he sit down and…

  • The Mad Monk’s modelling mockery

    Tony Abbott has tried his hand at modelling the economic costs of carbon emissions reduction. The results are a little disturbing. Unless Abbott was being deliberately, deceptively simplistic in order to appeal to the burn-the-elitists demographic of Australian society, he truly doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about: He says given a 5 per…

  • Admit me to the conspiracy

    Deltoid takes a look at a piece of code taken from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) that apparently has the denialists salivating. Buried therein is the following comment: “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL [sic] correction for decline!!” Are you convinced yet of the global leftist socialist global warming alarmist conspiracy?! I certainly am. I’d also like…

  • Climate: ‘mission accomplished’

    I read with ever growing fascination the comments that continue to flood into climate-related blogs. Deltoid has collected a few truly astounding ones. I’ve also discovered the UK’s very own James Delingpole, who’s a riot. As mentioned in my [intlink id=”949″ type=”post”]previous post[/intlink], there seem to be a veritable army of those convinced that the…

  • Climate conspiratology

    Climate denialism has taken a turn for the worse. I say this with great trepidation, of course, because it was never an especially pretty sight to begin with. A substantial number of private emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia have been retrieved and published online without permission*. One…