Vemara’s Apple Computer is up and running again after three months of idling. In this time the USB plugs on the keyboard and the mouse had gone rusty and the Wee Beastie was a little reluctant to crank up initially. But with a little coaxing and oodles of tender loving care we seem to have won the day. Boats are not nice places for computers with 22 million transistors crammed onto four square millimetres of silicon. The wonder is that they work at all.
Sandra is busy trying to find a secondary school place for her son who just missed the cut. What a nightmare this whole process is in this country. The Swedes never seem to have the same problems…nor the French or the Germans. One of the best schools in the country must be Highgate Wood Comprehensive…or it was in 1982 when it sent forth into the world a young man by the name of Gary McKinnon. He finally made a name for himself five years ago in the aftermath of 9/11 by carrying out the biggest military hack of all times….from his bedroom in North London.
Instead of congratulating him and giving him an annual salary of half a million pounds to monitor Ministry of Defence computer security the British Government in its stupidity is intent on extraditing the young man to Virginia just because Uncle Sam wants to send him to gaol for 70 years and fine him two million dollars. The very least the Blair-Brown Government should demand is a quid pro quo. You can have him if you shut down Guantanamo Bay.
Between February 2001 and March 2002 young Gary crippled 53 army computers, 26 navy computers, 16 NASA computers, 1 Department of Defence computer and the Earl Naval Weapons Establishment in New Jersey. ‘Security was not compromised,’ claimed a US Government Spokesperson. And pigs can fly. Solo was lookig for UFOs.
One problem with Global Warming Orthodoxy is that it is based on some pretty questionable scientific hypotheses built into its Climate Forecasting Models. Most of the computer models embrace partial hypotheses that rely on Old Science and are backed up by data of very varying reliability. Climate Science is a rapidly evolving field...and one that Climate Politics is unable to keep abreast of. New connections are being made by Good Science all the time.
With this uppermost in my mind I decided to take another of the 100 blog spots on offer from my Berlin-based bloghosts and devote it to Shepherd on Climate. I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon posting everything written in this year’s William Shepherd weblogs onto the new site.
My request on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC website for their report generated an instant e-mail response for downloading the document. I had to promise not to cite, quote or distribute it before I could get the document but duly did so. Not being sure quite how to keep on the right side of The Feds I then consulted my partner at the Cliff’s Edge Signalling Company on what to do with the document. Here is what I wrote.
I have downloaded the 15-page draft IPCC Report on Global Warming and was wondering about making it available on the cesc website for policymakers such as ourselves and our cesc colleagues...behind a password perhaps. Do you have a view on how cesc should deal with this? I ask because despite US Freedom of Information Acts etc. the IPCC website states ‘please do not cite, quote, or distribute the draft report’...see today's weblog for background.
I also included the text of the reply that went like this. Date: Tue, 9 May 2006; To: REB Limited (UK Company Number 04199788); Thank you for your interest in participating in the US Government Review of the Working Group I contribution ('Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis') to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. You will need the following username and password to access the Draft document; username = usreview; password = phys-sci. And the email continues in the best UN/S federalese.
Be advised that you must be a US citizen or resident alien to participate in the US Government Review. Please send properly formatted comments by the 9 May 2006 deadline if you wish to have your input considered for the official US Government submission. Comments submitted as part of the US Government Review should be reserved for that purpose and not also sent to the IPCC Working Group I Technical Support Unit as a discrete set of expert comments. I particularly like the bit about the rights of aliens. But I suppose Venusians have a legitimate interest in making sure Planet Earth doesn’t go the way of their planet after the trouble they took restocking their new planet with life forms.
There is an interesting footnote on page 3 of the IPCC Report which I am not allowed to quote so I will just summarise...provided you promise not to cite or quote me because it may have disappeared by the time the final report emerges next year. Climatic change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. Here we go again. Alastair Campbelling around.
