Thursday 26 August 2010

A walk in the park

The academic park one should interject. Your humble correspondent and narrator will be taking a break from this blog for a few days because the pyrrhic kingdom of academia requires his services to intervene in one the most boring areas possible. But alas it will have to be done in order to sooth the mind of this young kinsman.

Pints will be flowing like beavers through a burst dam, and the wine, oh thy wine, will shine like moon shadow as it touches the lips of the sweetest of maids. But only when, when this test of fortitude is over and done with.

Farewell I bid, farewell! And we shall brave the dangers of tomorrow together like the guerilla underdogs we have become. Alas it came to an end; the loudest of vociferations from the smallest of speakers, of the vast beyond - he cried as the hero was wounded and died.

Brainteaser:

In the global historical weather records, for every thermometer reading, there are associated readings of windspeed, wind direction, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, cloud cover, etc.

What use is the arithmetic derivation of a single figure for the yearly global average of local temperatures, without the equivalent for windspeed, rainfall, humidity, cloud cover and air pressure?

Why is the emphasis on temperature only? It appears that the production and use of such a number is for metaphysical as opposed to physical purposes.
“Climate models do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.”
-Freeman Dyson

No comments: