Discussion > Christopher Essex at House of Lords 11th Feb
I first came across Christopher Essex through this video from 2011, although I did not see it until 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvhipLNeda4
I am reading the book he co-wrote with Ross McKitrick, 'Taken By Storm' and I find it to be an excellent contribution. Lots and lots of insights, as well as some amusing asides of an academic kind, poking fun at this and that. You can also see lots of examples of his lively sense of humour in the above video.
In December 2013, his presentation video was promoted on the No Tricks Zone: http://www.thegwpf.org/professor-christopher-essex-joins-gwpf-academic-advisory-council/ Lots of quotes from the video are given there.
In June 2014, he became a member of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council: http://www.thegwpf.org/professor-christopher-essex-joins-gwpf-academic-advisory-council/
Their post introduces him as follows:
Christopher Essex is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Applied Mathematics at The University of Western Ontario. He is the co-author, with Ross McKitrick, of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (revised edition 2007). He co-discovered the entropy production paradox, computed the first accurate entropy production rate for the Earth, the first accurate temperature for laser radiation, and pioneered the concept of computational over-stabilization, which has implications for climate models. He is the chairman of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Climate of the World Federation of Scientists.
I won't be able to get to the meeting, but I sure hope many others do, and that we might hope for reports here from some in due course. My opinion is that his work deserves much wider attention than I presume (from my own poor knowledge of it!) it has been getting.
John Shade
Err, what event?
Paul Matthews
Good question!
John Shade
The meeting is to be. I contacted the GWPF, and have learned that the tickets were first offered to GWPF members. There may yet be some left. Try http://www.thegwpf.org/contact-2/.
John Shade
Oops, sorry about that. I got a notification in my Gmail Inbox and assumed it was widely known. Thanks John for clarifying. Among my other sins I recommended Taken by Storm to David Miliband on the old Newsnight Blog back in May 2008. Not sure he ever took me up on that! Hope to see someone I recognise there. Chris Essex especially :)
Richard Drake
I got the invite - pint or coffee before hand Richard?
Barry Woods
Please do not investigate the squeaking behind the skirting board.
Radical Rodent
Barry: That would be great. Arrange by email night before?
Richard Drake
Go on, tell us what happened!
John Shade
Well, Barry went to something else that night but we had a fine chat about this and that by text and phone. And I was glad to see Josh and we had a very nice dinner afterwards, at which I learned all manner of things, some of which I am under non-disclosure about.
But you may not have meant just the logistics. Essex is a key thinker in the world of climate and computability. It was extremely good to hear him first hand. I was delighted the HoL couldn't get their big screen to connect to his MacBook so we benefited from much more off-the-cuff remarks. The problems with the GCMs run very deep but they are very useful tools if you don't push them into roles for which they are unsuited. And that's where I'm going to have to leave it. There will be video soon from the GWPF.
Richard Drake
Thanks Richard! Very intriguing - Barry, Josh, Essex all. I will definitely be looking out for that promised video.
John Shade
What you guys need is a lend of The Tardis, 'cause it usually takes months for you lot to get these GWPF and similar Houses of Commonses videos up there. No wonder Al Gore and Barking Obamstick gey through to the masses, and with videos of 100,000 views and even on the TeeVee news shows. They can somehow upload those vids LIVE and have recordings of the show available in just a few hours later. Just like your good olde BBC iPlayer.
So why the £"$%&** can you not do that !
You have a YouTube Account GWPF ?
https://www.youtube.com/user/GWPF
So go to the Live Broadcast section
and just transmit the damn thing live,
and make a video at the same time !
see this Google answer
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2474026?hl=en-GB
see also this YouTube page
https://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/en-GB/live.html
Detailed Long Demo Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7iEtY3CXk
Hey it aint that hard - even a Sky TeeVee Executive can do it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYlQJbsVs48
Do your Videos YouTube Live
AND Record the feed locally (in case)
Then You wont need a lend of my Tardis !
( visitors usually get lost in the innards anyway )
Wake up to the 21st Century guys, instant videos are the thing,
and edited prima donna masterpieces months later are démodé.
Dr. Who
There are many technology conferences I go to, or am interested in, where the video is not posted immediately. You should be making good money from your knowledge DW.
Richard Drake
Eight minutes after I wrote that someone posted this on the London Ruby User Group mailing list, in answer to a question about Ruby memory management:
Don't forget there are huge differences between different Ruby VMs, with JRuby being the one who better manages the GC. I always find Charles Nutter's talks very informative in that regard. The last one I saw from him was at Fosdem two weeks ago. The video should be up in the next few weeks.
Shortened forms for virtual machines and garbage collector there. Despite all that high-tech the videos are expected to be available three weeks or more after the conference in question. Perhaps best to go easy on the GWPF after all?
Richard Drake
OK Doctor Who, so you seem to have given them a kick up the backside,
because they, have indeed now posted their video on YouTube, Hurrah.
Maybe they will eventually find out how to do the live broadcast at the
YouTube Live place. Obviously they couldn't transmit the live event after
it had occurred, but a recording was put up much quicker, than has been
the case in the past. Well done GWPF, but can do better still.
@ Richard Drake - There's none so inept sometimes, as the hi-tech folks ;-)
Believing in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and Climate Models
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19q1i-wAUpY
GWPF England 2015
* However DDP published a video of the Same Name, over THREE YEARS Ago,
and though that Lecture in Albuquerque, July 2011, we hope that the Essex
lecture given in England may be updated, and this isn't just some old rehashing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvhipLNeda4
DDP Albuquerque 2011
Is there any significant difference between these lectures?
The Master
TM: Cobbler's children and all that? Don't think so, think DW was speaking out of his posterior. But that's nothing new in the criticisms we've all seen of the GWPF on BH.
The Foundation probably felt they were between a rock and a hard place over this Christopher Essex presentation. It wasn't their fault that the House of Lords couldn't get the big screen to work with his Mac but it left them in a difficult position on what was best for their website and YouTube. They obviously opted for getting Chris to do it all over again with an audience of just the cameraman. I haven't looked through the result to work out how it differs from earlier versions on YouTube. I'm very glad I had the chance to hear the guy verbatim and made pretty extensive notes on my own MacBook.
Richard Drake
Is anyone else going to this GWPF-hosted event? It'd be great to meet up with the like-minded before and after, especially those interested in the limits of software modelling. I'll check this thread from time to time :)