The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental (Sic) Panel on Climate Change) has changed it’s balance of probabilities of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) from 90% to 95%.
As an engineer, if any diesel engineer manufacturer tried to sell me a diesel engine that only had a 95% chance of not blowing up in 25 years, I’d put the phone down on him in an instant. I’m not in the business of being killed.
In fact we were sold such a diesel engine in the past due to a previous labour government that bought British at any cost when the country was failing. (No change there it would seem).
The engine in question was the Paxman RPH. These had the dubious quality of deciding, without warning, to disengage the connecting rod and piston from the crankshaft and hurl it out of the crankcase at any unlikely passer bye. It’s even more dangerous when you have an engine room with ten of the blighters in situe. Having had one blow up about two seconds after I’d passed it,I learnt to pass them at speed.
Like the IPCC I’m sure this engine was designed by a committee that was only interested in selling their product to the gullible.
As a callow youth I was promoted to the lofty heights of looking after these instruments of the devil engines, and with youthful enthusiasm looked forward to the challenge. Till I actually had to work on one.
On every other engine I’ve worked on, a simple piston ring change has just entailed removing the cylinder heads, disconnecting the bottom end and removing the piston through the cylinder. Simples.
Not so the Paxman. From the manual: “Place the engine in the turning frame…………” WTF. It boiled down to the fact that they were trying for a market of ships with low head room in their engine room. If they’d visited ships before they had designed this parody of an engine,they would have seen that their are constraints in space in the other two dimensions as well.
This nicely brings me back to the IPCC. They have become fixated on the cause of man made CO2 being the cause of Global warming. As an engineer I consider them a danger to humanity especially as they seem to disregard any other causes, and castigate those who question their theories.
Take one of their latest theories of why the temperature hasn’t risen for the last fifteen years. “It’s all been absorbed by the deep ocean”. Don’t make me larf. Warmer water rises not sinks. Apart from that the Argo buoys that measure ocean temperatures can only measure to a few thousand metres, how do they come by this supposition?
You tell me.
They based all of their scare-mongering on a computer modelling technique. That model, so they said, demonstrated a catastrophic level of global warming, once a tipping point was reached. Their entire case was predicated on the reliability of their model.
ReplyDeletePeople pointed out that their model, run in reverse, failed to match historical climate, such as the medieval warm period, and the little ice age. So the hockey team denied history, and insisted their model was right.
So now, their model has fallen flat on it's face for fifteen years. The real data is way below the lowest limits of the model. They now have no scientific or mathematical basis for that 95% confidence level they are spouting. None.
Monty
One, its not that the IPCC has become "fixated" on humans as the cause of global warming, that in fact is their purpose as stated in their founding documents. They are not charged to examine "climate change," rather they are charged with examining "human induced" climate change.
ReplyDeleteTwo, they may be claiming "95% confidence," but of what. I was struck, reading the SPM out today, that in a footnote, they say:
"No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity [to increases in CO2] can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies."
In other words, as to the central thesis of climate change alarmism, the IPCC can't, at this point, agree on whether more CO2 will increase temperature by a nominal amount, a measurable amount, or a catastrophic amount. In other words, there is nothing approaching a consensus to their 95% confidence level.
There really does need to be an reckoning for these people at some point. Tar and feathers would be far too lenient.
All of the research money available is "to investigate the effects of AGW". If you don't start by believing in their god, you're not allowed to play.
ReplyDeleteSailed on a ship with aforementioned Paxman generator engines. They were in a small engine room of their own with a Stones steam generator in between, the room could only just fit all three. We overhauled the bottom end of one of them and it barred over fine on the evening when we had done the work. Next day it was seized solid couldn't move it. Its the first time I ever saw a 2nd scream in total frustration. They had just been de-rated by about 25% in the hope they would not blow up any more. They were famous for one of them letting go and then bits of the innards would eject themselves into the other engine which was trying to accept double the load and it would go off to, usually taking the Stones boiler with it. There was a door to the deck at one side of the room and a door to the engine room on the other side. Checking them consisted of opening a door running across to the other door and shutting it behind you as quickly as possible. The turbos were not water cooled and at very high loads used to glow almost white hot with sparks coming off them. We used to call the Poxmans.
ReplyDeleteDaedalus.
Stone steamer generator. "Shudders".
ReplyDelete