## Dune quote for Bernard J.

Over at Shaping Tomorrow’s World Bernard J. was looking for a scene out of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. It’s from the dinner given by the Duke for the nobility of Arakis, just after the chapter where the Duke and Paul witness the loss of a harvester to a sandworm and shortly before the Harkonnen invasion.

The banker picked up his water flagon, gestured with it at Bewt. “None of us here can surpass Master Lingar Bewt in flowery phrases. One might almost assume he aspired to Great House status. Come, Master Bewt, lead us in a toast. Perhaps you’ve a dollop of wisdom for the boy who must be treated like a man.”

Jessica clenched her right hand into a fist beneath the table. She saw a handsignal pass from Halleck to Idaho, saw the house troopers along the walls move into positions of maximum guard.

Bewt cast a venomous glare at the banker.

Paul glanced at Halleck, took in the defensive positions of his guards, looked at the banker until the man lowered the water flagon. He said: “Once, on Caladan, I saw the body of a drowned fisherman recovered. He–”

“Drowned?” It was the stillsuit manufacturer’s daughter.

Paul hesitated, then: “Yes. Immersed in water until dead. Drowned.”

“What an interesting way to die,” she murmured.

Paul’s smile became brittle. He returned his attention to the banker. “The interesting thing about this man was the wounds on his shoulders–made by another fisherman’s claw-boots. This fisherman was one of several in a boat–a craft for traveling on water–that foundered . . . sank beneath the water. Another fisherman helping recover the body said he’d seen marks like this man’s wounds several times. They meant another drowning fisherman had tried to stand on this poor fellow’s shoulders in the attempt to reach up to the surface–to reach air.”

“Why is this interesting?” the banker asked.

“Because of an observation made by my father at the time. He said the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable– except when you see it happen in the drawing room.” Paul hesitated just long enough for the banker to see the point coming, then: “And, I should add, except when you see it at the dinner table.”

A sudden stillness enfolded the room.

That was rash, Jessica thought. This banker might have enough rank to call my son out. She saw that Idaho was poised for instant action. The House troopers were alert. Gurney Halleck had his eyes on the men opposite him.

“Ho-ho-ho-o-o-o!” It was the smuggler, Tuek, head thrown back laughing with complete abandon.

Nervous smiles appeared around the table.

Bewt was grinning.

The banker had pushed his chair back, was glaring at Paul.

Kynes said: “One baits an Atreides at his own risk.”

“Is it Atreides custom to insult their guests?” the banker demanded.

Before Paul could answer, Jessica leaned forward, said: “Sir!” And she thought: We must learn this Harkonnen creature’s game. Is he here to try for Paul? Does he have help?

“My son displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit?” Jessica asked. “What a fascinating revelation.” She slid a hand down to her leg to the crysknife she had fastened in a calf-sheath.

The banker turned his glare on Jessica. Eyes shifted away from Paul and she saw him ease himself back from the table, freeing himself for action. He had focused on the code word: garment. “Prepare for violence. ”

Kynes directed a speculative look at Jessica, gave a subtle hand signal to Tuek.

The smuggler lurched to his feet, lifted his flagon. “I’ll give you a toast,” he said. “To young Paul Atreides, still a lad by his looks, but a man by his actions.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

## FUND 3.5 species model

Eli has a post up on Richard Tol’s FUND model, examining its treatment of species extinction in section 5.6 Ecosystems. The model is meant to run from 1950 to the year 3000 in time steps of 1 year.

The number of species at time step t is given in equation E.2:
$B_{t}=max\{\frac{B_{0}}{100};B_{t-1}(1-\rho - \gamma \frac{\Delta T^{2}}{\tau^{2}})\}$
where $\rho=0.003$ and $\gamma=0.001$ are “expert guesses”, $\tau=0.025^{\circ} C$ is a scaling parameter and $\Delta T$ is the temperature change with regard to the previous year.

A brief examination of the formula lets one guess, that the exponential decay given by the $\rho$ parameter will dominate the evolution of species numbers, but let’s have a look. I have assumed a simplistic temperature model: temperature change after 2000 follows an arcus tangens function with an initial slope of 2°C/century and levels off at various $T_{max}$. Here’s the result.

As expected, the exponential decay dominates the behaviour of all curves, $T_{max}$ has rather little influence. By the year 3000 the model rates the number of species at 4% to 5% of todays level. I expect this result to be robust with regard to changes in the temperature model.

## Monckton’s patents, 2010 edition

As I had expected, Lord Monckton has filed patents for Therapeutic Treatments again (IPO search query). To be precise, at the time of my previous post on the subject Lord Monckton already had his application lodged.

• 2010: Application GB1014917.7

Date Lodged: 08.09.2010
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
***** END *****

• 2010: Application GB1014918.5

Date Lodged: 08.09.2010
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
***** END *****

• 2009: Application GB0915801.5

Date Lodged: 09.09.2009
Title: THERAPUTIC TREATMENT
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 3rd September 2010
***** END *****

• 2009: Application GB0915802.3

Date Lodged: 09.09.2009
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 3rd September 2010
***** END *****

• 2008: Application GB0816300.8

Date Lodged: 05.09.2008
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 2nd September 2009
***** END *****

• 2008: Application GB0816301.6

Date Lodged: 05.09.2008
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 2nd September 2009
***** END *****

## Monckton’s current IPO patent status

Currently all patent applications that have been filed in the name of Christopher Monckton have been terminated. I won’t be surprised, if two new applications are being filed within the next few weeks.
IPO search query
Application GB0816300.8

Date Lodged: 05.09.2008
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 2nd September 2009
***** END *****

Application GB0816301.6

Date Lodged: 05.09.2008
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 2nd September 2009
***** END *****

Application GB0915801.5

Date Lodged: 09.09.2009
Title: THERAPUTIC TREATMENT
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 3rd September 2010
***** END *****

Application GB0915802.3

Date Lodged: 09.09.2009
Title: THERAPEUTIC TREATMENTS
Applicant(s): Monckton, Christopher
Application terminated on 3rd September 2010
***** END *****

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

## IPCC A2 CO2 scenario à la Monckton

Lord Monckton has written a guest post at WUWT. In this post he is showing graphs, which are meant to show atmospheric CO2 concentrations of the IPCC’s A2 scenario (AR4, fig. 10.26, p. 803) compared to NOAA’s global trend data.

Here they are:

In both graphics the slope of the “IPCC scenario” as depicted by Monckton is way higher than observed at present. However, if one simply overlays the NOAA data on the IPCC plot using identical scaling one ends up with the following:

The NOAA data corresponds very closely to the IPCC A2 scenario. Continue reading

Posted in climate, Monckton | 2 Comments

## Evolution of the “SPPI global temperature index”

I document the changes that the index has undergone in the last one and a half years.

In January 2009 the SPPI started publishing its “SPPI Monthly CO2 Report” (since March/April 2010 they seem to be published as double issues). The editor of the reports is Christopher Monckton. In these reports information can be gleaned about the “SPPI global temperature index”, that seems to be the basis for Monckton’s own charts, where he compares “IPCC projections” to “global temperature”. It turns out, that this “temperature index” is simply the mean of a varying pool of temperature anomalies (both terrestrial and satellite, namely HadCRUt3, NCDC, RSS, and UAH) and zeroed to the minimum value over the time period of the plot it is used in. Its pool has varied considerably since January 2009 and its offset depends on the time period of the graph it is used in.

The varying pool of anomalies

All reports include a graph about the 29-year global warming trend. The caption of this graph spells out, which anomaly datasets were used in the “SPPI global temperature index”. Here is a compilation of evolution of the data source attribution of the graph over time.

January through June 2009:

July through October 2009 (NCDC is dropped from the index, no explanation given):

November 2009 through March 2010:

“Data source: SPPI index, compiled from RSS, and UAH. SPPI no longer uses any terrestrial-temperature datasets, because they have become near-universally discredited as unreliable.”

April and June 2010:

“Data source: SPPI index, compiled from RSS Inc. UAH has not reported data for two months and has been excluded from this graph, but will be relied upon again when data become available. SPPI no longer uses any terrestrial-temperature datasets, because they have become discredited as unreliable.”

How the index is calculated

The first mention of how the index is calculated can be found in a figure caption in the February 2009 issue:

“Using the SPPI global temperature index, which is the mean of two terrestrial and two satellite global mean temperature anomaly datasets,”

Starting in the June 2009 issue the calculation of the index is explained in detail. In the following compilation the changes to previous versions are highlighted.

Our global-temperature graphs show changes in real-world temperature at or near the Earth’s surface. Each temperature graph represents the mean of two surface and two satellite datasets: the monthly surface temperature anomalies from the Hadley Center in the UK and the National Climatic Data Center in the US, and the lower-troposphere anomalies from the satellites of Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., and of the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

On each graph, the anomalies are zeroed to the least element in the dataset. For clarity, the IPCC’s range of predictions is zeroed to the start-point of the least-squares linear-regression trend on the real-world data. Since late 2001, global temperature has been falling fast.

From the July 2009 to October 2009 issue:

Our global-temperature graphs show changes in real-world temperature at or near the Earth’s surface. Each temperature graph represents the mean of one surface and two satellite datasets: the monthly surface temperature anomalies from the Hadley Center in the UK and the National Climatic Data Center in the US, and the lower-troposphere anomalies from the satellites of Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., and of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. We do not use the NCDC/GISS datasets.

On each graph, the anomalies are zeroed to the least element in the dataset. For clarity, the IPCC’s range of predictions is zeroed to the start-point of the least-squares linear-regression trend on the realworld data. Since late 2001, global temperature has been falling fast.

From November 2009 to April 2010 issue:

Our global-temperature graphs show changes in real-world temperature at or near the Earth’s surface. Each temperature graph represents the mean of one surface and two satellite datasets: the monthly surface temperature anomalies from the Hadley Center in the UK, and the lower-troposphere anomalies from the satellites of Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., and of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. We do not use the Hadley/CRU or NCDC/GISS datasets: the Climate-gate scandal has shown these to be mere science fiction.

On each graph, the anomalies are zeroed to the least element in the dataset. For clarity, the IPCC’s range of predictions is zeroed to the start-point of the least-squares linear-regression trend on the real-world data. Since late 2001, global temperature has been falling fast.

June 2010:

Our global-temperature graphs show changes in real-world temperature at or near the Earth’s surface. Each temperature graph represents the mean of two satellite datasets: the monthly lower-troposphere anomalies from the satellites of Remote Sensing Systems, Inc., and of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. We do not use the Hadley/CRU or NCDC/GISS datasets: the Climate-gate scandal has shown these to be unreliable.

On each graph, the anomalies are zeroed to the least element in the dataset. For clarity, the IPCC’s range of predictions is zeroed to the start-point of the least-squares linear-regression trend on the real-world data. Since late 2001, global temperature has been falling fast.

Note that the figure caption as of April 2010 claims that UAH was temporarily dropped from the index, so the index should simply be a shifted version of RSS.

Posted in climate, Monckton | 4 Comments

## Links for Gerlich & Tscheuschner

The article by Gerlich & Tscheuschner was published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B (IJMPB) and gave rise to a comment and a reply.

One of the authors of the comment has opened a forum thread for the discussion.
http://climatephysicsforums.com/topic/3292392/1