Tumblin’ dice

BPSDB

I recently made an earlier attempt at exploring probability in relation to climate.

Michael Tobis (citing Andy Revkin) points to a very nice and more succinct analogy by Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales:

The “loading the dice” analogy is becoming popular but it misses something very important: climate change also allows unprecedented (in human history) things to happen. It is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13.
What happens then?
Since we have never had to cope with 13’s, this could prove far worse than simply loading the dice toward more 11’s and 12’s. I’m not sure whether or not what is happening in Russia or Pakistan is a “13” yet, but 13’s will eventually arrive (and so will 14’s, if carbon emissions continue to rise).

Michael thinks that we have just seen our first thirteen (or possibly our second if you count Australia’s experience in 2009).
He goes on to say

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Lily the Pink

BPSDB

On the left – the official UK government coat of arms.

On the right – the logo used by Christopher Monckton on his presentations.

By far the best comment that I’ve seen on the two images was one by Vagueofgodalming over at Deltoid:

Nice to see the two logos side by side: one can see that in Monckton’s version the chains are unhinged and there is empty space beneath the crown.

You are probably already aware of this, but since threatening John Abraham Christopher Monckton has also attacked Scott Mandia.

Mandia has published Monckton’s letter here.

I guess that Monckton must like the limelight, because he’s certainly attracting it.

Tamino does (yet another) demolition job on Monckton’s statistical skills at Mo’ Better Monckey Business

Moth Incarnate posts a couple of good cartoons here and (with some insight that I had overlooked) here.

Real Climate host a guest article by Barry Bickmore of Brigham Young University entitled “Monckton makes it up”.

Most recently, The Guardian points out that the House of Lords are getting stroppy with him for his continued claims to be a member. They write:

Last month Michael Pownall, clerk of the parliaments, wrote to Lord Monckton, a hereditary peer, stressing that he should not refer to himself as a member of the House of Lords, nor should he use any emblem representing the portcullis.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, Monckton replied this week to Pownall stating that he considered the House of Lords Act 1999, which “purported” to exclude all but 92 of the 650 hereditary peers from the Lords, to be “defective”.

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Dunce’s corner

BPSDB

I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while now.

Every now and them we get comments that are completely off topic, and barely understandable. I’ve decided that rather than just deleting them I’ll save them for posterity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First up is “Tommy” commenting on the 9th August 2010 on this post

Damn those Chinese Communists and their blatant trashing for our beautiful planet. How incredible that all communist countries are given a pass of their universal disregard of environmental destruction. When the doors opened on the former Soviet Union the truth came out…. what will we find when China is more open? It’s too bad Obama is just a Bush of a differnet color.

 

 

IMAGE CREDITS:

[1] – Postcard World

 

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Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

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