Tuesday 28 October 2014

Open Letter To Bob (or is it Bob?) Tisdale


Dear Robert/Roberta/Bob/Bobby/whatever,

How are you enjoying your retirement?  Last time I checked in with you the word on the interweb street was that you had chucked in the towel and gone to sit on a deckchair somewhere in the Florida Keys.  Appears you have taken your laptop with you because you are still churning out stuff and nonsense, mostly the latter.

Fowey Rocks lighthouse - is that an urban heat island I see in the distance?
 
So your postcard from Fowey Rocks lighthouse is mostly, let's say, useless.   There are 510x10e14 m2 making the surface of the Earth.  The lighthouse looks as if it has an area equivalent to a tennis court, that's 261m2.  I can't be bothered to calculate that as a percentage of the whole.  I think you might get my point.  The Fowey (pronounced, I hope Foy) Rocks lighthouse is not the globe and any graph you give that shows the area around it has not warmed cannot be extrapolated to the surface of the Earth as a whole.
 
Yet that is what you want the unthinking acolytes at WUWT to do.  Otherwise, why say:
The recent downturn in the data also doesn’t help their cause.

What I love most about your post is that you whinge about Sou at Hotwhopper's so called misdirections while at the same time doing precisely what you accuse her of.  Not that you are grown up enough to avoid the hypocrisy.  Oh, no.  And not without the unethical and downright immoral use of her real name instead of referring to her by her pen name.

For your edification, here are some famous literary pen names.  Can you give their real names?  Without looking.

Anatole France
Anthony Burgess
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand - beloved of libertarians who don't understand what liberty is
Beachcomer
Boz
C S Forester
Daniel Defoe
Dr Suess
Ellis Bell
Ford Maddox Ford
George Elliot
George Orwell
Harold Robbins
Ibn Warraq
John Lange
Joseph Conrad
Lewis Carroll
Martha Careful
Moliere
O Henry
Sidney Sheldon
Voltaire

I bet you didn't know Ayn Rand was a pseudonym.  That might have punctured your love of her (I am making an assumption, correct me if I am wrong).

Anyway, Sou seems to have hit a raw nerve with you since you have now written twice about her, the first time in one of those open letters that you so love.  Remember your one to the TV producers.  That worked wonders, didn't it?  Have you ever considered that you are but a flea on the thick hide of an elephant?  Not ever much of an irritation.

But she has brought out the full allergic reaction in you.  Do you know where your epipen is?  Perhaps you better had, before your lips turn blue with apoplexy. 

Finally, Bobby, I shall quote Blaise Pascal:
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
You still have not learned the lesson of brevity.

Yours faithfully

Catmando

(the pen name of the felid in the iron mask?)

PS  AndThenThere'sPhysics take on the same subject is here.




 

3 comments:

  1. Lovely picture of the lighthouse.

    I've been posting climate stuff as Sou for so long now that I scarcely recognise me when someone calls me something else, like Miss Direction - which does seem to me to be a Miss Nomer :)

    And thanks.

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    Replies
    1. I noticed that Bob Tisdale said that Bob was one of his given names in a comment somewhere. So is Bob the first, second, third or what on the list? I think we should be told.

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  2. Very informative, keep posting such good articles, it really helps to know about things.

    ReplyDelete