CRU emails No. 7 - blogs rule!

Blogs have impact. Pity it's Real Climate they are talking about.

From: "Folland, Chris"

To: "Phil Jones"

Subject: RE: FW: Temperatures in 2009

Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 17:01:37 -0000

Phil

Thanks. Bad news today. Nature Geosciences wont publish this because the Real Climate Blog mentions (more vaguely) the basic content of what we have written. That is indeed the reason Nature Geosciences have given. It seems blogs can now prevent publication! I have suggested to Jeff we try GRL but only after raising this issue with them.

Chris

Prof. Chris Folland

Research Fellow, Seasonal to Decadal Forecasting (from 2 June 2008)

CRU emails No 6. Fly as I say, not as I do

The hard life of a researcher is laid bare in this missive about a holiday in Tuscany:

From: Jenny Duckmanton

To: Mick Kelly

Subject: Re: Tiempo final invoice

Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:22:28 +0100

Cc: "Duckmanton, Jenny" , "Kuylenstierna, Johan"

Ciao Mick

Just back from Tuscany and still ploughing through accumulated emails. Where the UEA invoice is concerned, I just opened an invoice from UEA for SEK 71,074.09 and would be most obliged if you could let me know if this is the correct amount, so I can get it paid?

Please give my regards to Sarah and let her know that Tuscany is still as beautiful as ever, but a bit more expensive than before but still cheaper than the UK. We also went to spend a few days in Umbria where some friends of ours had rented a lovely villa with magnificent views, gardens, pool, etc.

Best regards

Jenny

Everyone deserves to have a nice holiday every once in a while, but haven't this mob been telling us not to fly (think the awful polar bears video)? And isn't water so precious that we can't have pools anymore? And aren't McMansions dreadful - so what is the idea with staying in a villa?

Not only do this lot jet around the world going from conference to conference to tell the rest of us not to fly; they also jet around the world when on holiday.

Next time one of these knobs tells us that flying is bad etc etc, I am going to shout something nasty and rude.

CRU emails No 5. - marshalling the media

Here is an opening into how the IPCC and its supporters marshal their weight in order to hammer the media with their message.

This email chain is all about an SSI alert from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote

Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 18:00:59 -0400

From: "SSI Mailbox"

******************* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ********************

ISSUE: Today - April 19, 2002, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary voted for Dr. Rajendra Pachauri as the sole chair of the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri, an economist and engineer, will replace Dr. Robert Watson, an atmospheric chemist, as chair of the IPCC. This outcome was actively sought by the Bush Administration at the behest of the most conservative elements of the fossil fuel industry. This development threatens to undermine the scientific credibility and integrity of the IPCC and may weaken the job this extraordinary body has done to bring the world's attention to one of the most pressing environmental problems.

ACTION: Monitor your local paper and respond to news stories with a letter-to-the-editor.

MAIN MESSAGE: Given the Bush Administration's consistent opposition to climate change mitigation, it is especially imperative at this time that the scientific community and Dr. Pachauri work together to ensure that the IPCC remains a strong and credible scientific process.

DEADLINE: As soon as possible after the story runs in your paper -- preferably the same day but no later than a day or two after.

********************************************* THE ISSUE ***

And there is a whole lot more in there to wade through.

I am not surprised by this - this simply shows how modern lobbying groups work in all fields of endeavour. However, to the average man in the street, it might come as a surprise to find that all those "unrelated" letters to the editor in his local paper did not all originate in the fertile imaginations of multiple authors. Instead, they were mainly driven by a centralised body that actively pushed members to write letters on the issue of global warming, thus keeping it at the forefront of the media agenda.

*** SUPPORTING MESSAGES ***

-- [Be sure to include a description of your scientific expertise, your involvement with the IPCC process, or the importance of the climate issue to your community.]

-- For the past 10 years, the IPCC's science has been the foundation for sound policymaking on the climate issue. The IPCC's unique intergovernmental approach to scientific consensus has worked amazingly well but is now threatened.

-- It is disturbing that the Bush Administration sought and received advice from the fossil fuel industry on the leadership of an important scientific body such as the IPCC. A politicized IPCC threatens the integrity and credibility of the scientific process.

-- There are fears that it will now be easier for the US to distance itself from the IPCC process. You may point out that the US already rejected the Kyoto protocol last year.

-- It is vital that the scientific process for the next Assessment Report (due out in another five years) not be compromised so that the IPCC continues to produce sound science on climate change.

-- The credibility of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) findings were strongly affirmed by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which published its supportive report in response to President Bush's request for an independent assessment on the state of climate science.

Note how they say that even if their local paper didn't run a story on this issue, they should still write in and say that it is important to their subscribers! Great way to put pressure on the editor to run with the global warming agenda.

*** SUPPORTING MESSAGES ***

-- [Be sure to include a description of your scientific expertise, your involvement with the IPCC process, or the importance of the climate issue to your community.]

-- For the past 10 years, the IPCC's science has been the foundation for sound policymaking on the climate issue. The IPCC's unique intergovernmental approach to scientific consensus has worked amazingly well but is now threatened.

-- It is disturbing that the Bush Administration sought and received advice from the fossil fuel industry on the leadership of an important scientific body such as the IPCC. A politicized IPCC threatens the integrity and credibility of the scientific process.

-- There are fears that it will now be easier for the US to distance itself from the IPCC process. You may point out that the US already rejected the Kyoto protocol last year.

-- It is vital that the scientific process for the next Assessment Report (due out in another five years) not be compromised so that the IPCC continues to produce sound science on climate change.

-- The credibility of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) findings were strongly affirmed by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which published its supportive report in response to President Bush's request for an independent assessment on the state of climate science.

*** SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION ***

-- Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri is an Indian engineer and economist. Pachauri, formerly one of the five vice chairs of the IPCC, is highly regarded but will be the first non- atmospheric chemist as chair of the IPCC.

-- For more information on the ExxonMobil memo urging the Bush Administration to remove Dr. Watson from his position as IPCC Chair, please see http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf

-- For information on the Saudi/Pearlman connection, see the summary by Jeremy Leggett, author of "The Carbon War", at http://www.carbonwar.com/ccchrono.html >.

I love how this group is saying that the IPCC needs to remain non-political, when this is the most blatantly political action that you can take! The hypocrisy of it is breath-taking. Note the dirt-digging as well on the Bush nominee.

CRU emails No. 4 - the disappointment of the BBC going off-message

From an email chain titled BBC U-turn on climate change.

Michael Mann wrote:

extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. its particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black's beat at BBC (and he does a great job). from what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office.

We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what's up here?

mike

On Oct 12, 2009, at 2:32 AM, Stephen H Schneider wrote:

Hi all. Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and sampling errors to this new "IPCC Lead Author" from the BBC? As we enter an El Nino year and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary--presumed--vacation worth a few tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be another dramatic upward spike like 1992-2000. I heard someone--Mike Schlesinger maybe??--was willing to bet alot of money on it happening in next 5 years?? Meanwhile the past 10 years of global mean temperature trend stasis still saw what, 9 of the warmest in reconstructed 1000 year record and Greenland and the sea ice of the North in big retreat?? Some of you observational folks probably do need to straighten this out as my student suggests below. Such "fun", Cheers, Steve

Stephen H. Schneider

Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies,

Professor, Department of Biology and

Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: "Narasimha D. Rao" >

To: "Stephen H Schneider" >

Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:25:53 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific

Subject: BBC U-turn on climate

Steve,

You may be aware of this already. Paul Hudson, BBCs reporter on climate change, on Friday wrote that theres been no warming since 1998, and that pacific oscillations will force cooling for the next 20-30 years. It is not outrageously biased in presentation as are other skeptics views.

[5]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

[6]http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100013173/the-bbcs-amazing-u-turn-on

-climate-change/

BBC has significant influence on public opinion outside the US.

Do you think this merits an op-ed response in the BBC from a scientist?

Narasimha

-------------------------------

PhD Candidate,

Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER)

Stanford University

http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1053&filename=1255530325.txt

Ah, the disappointment is palpable that the BBC, which has significant influence in the UK, has allowed one of its troops to go off-message. Interesting to note that they think that it is not "outrageously biased" like other sceptics. Just shows how open minded some of these scientists can be to ideas different to their own.

Note also that this reporter should have been in the bag as he used to work at the Met Office, implying that the Met Office is hopelessly biased towards global warming (something we have always suspected, but it has now been backed up by an insider's opinion).

So in the bag is the Met Office that Michael Mann thinks nothing of calling a contact there to put out a press release to counter this off-message message. As soon as someone sounds an off note, the whole cabal gang up and fire on the unfortunate messenger from all directions.

CRU emails No.3 - regional climate models are crap

Maybe "crap" is too strong a word (and it is my word, not that of the IPCC). But here is an assessment from a J Shulka, a big-wig at the IPCC:

1. While it is true that a vast majority of the public and the policymakers have accepted the reality of human influence on climate change (in fact many of us were arguing for stronger language with a higher level of confidence at the last meetings of the LAs), how confident are we about the projected regional climate changes?

I would like to submit that the current climate models have such large errors in simulating the statistics of regional (climate) that we are not ready to provide policymakers a robust scientific basis for "action" at regional scale. I am not referring to mitigation, I am strictly referring to science based adaptation.

For example, we can not advise the policymakers about re-building the city of New Orleans - or more generally about the habitability of the Gulf-Coast - using climate models which have serious deficiencies in simulating the strength, frequency and tracks of hurricanes.

Remember that next time someone comes out and states that their computer model predicts that Coogee is going to be umpteen feet underwater real soon now.

CRU emails No.2: applying pressure to change results

Boy, searching the email database for "CSIRO" has been interesting. If you like trawling through long and boring emails that is.

Back in 1999, it appears that the WWF - World Wildlife Fund - wanted to use some research that the CRU had done. I don't know if they paid for it or not.

My first read of this can be summarised as follows:

1. Barrie Pittock (ex-CSIRO) is right in with the IPCC, being retired and working part time for it. He was involved in writing all 4 IPCC reports.
2. Barrie has a son working for the WWF
3. Barrie is involved with a WWF staffer, who is on a CSIRO advisory committee
4. Mike Hulme and CRU produces a paper on how rainfall patterns will change in response to climate change, and the WWF shows interest in using the results
5. However, the results are not disastrous enough for the WWF - the confidence levels used does not show enough catastrophic floods and droughts to make an impact with the public and politicians
6. Barrie leans on Mike to change the confidence levels so that the WWF will have some juicy disasters to promote in an upcoming pamphlet
7. Barrie wanted Mike to change his report because if released as is, the media might have asked awkward questions, as it was not sufficiently alarmist
8. The main impact of the change was that "this has the effect of showing precip. changes for the majority of Australia even in the B1 scenario" - presumably, before the change in the confidence level, the majority of Australia did not show changes in rainfall levels.
9. The report is released to the media via the WWF. The media accepts it at face value, and the public are told that rainfall levels across most of Australia are going to change dramatically, leading to bigger droughts and floods - but this is not what the original report said at all.

-------------------

This string of emails between Mike Hulme (Professor at CRU) and Barrie Pittock (ex-CSIRO) show that Mike was convinced to "sex up" (my words) his report for the WWF because it was not scary enough.

Barrie is the author of the well known book "Turning up the heat". It appears Barrie wrote another book back in 1985 called the Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War. I guess that gives you an idea of where he is coming from.

Dr Barrie Pittock led the Climate Impact Group in CSIRO until his retirement in 1999. He contributed to or was a lead author of all four major reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Barrie has this as the footer to his emails:

* As from 1 March 1999 I have become a CSIRO Post-Retirement Fellow. This means I do not have administrative responsibilities, and am working part-time, primarily on writing for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The gist of this email exchange in 1999 rests on confidence levels. Barrie is unhappy that Mike has chosen confidence levels that fail to predict the doomsday scenario that the WWF are seeking.

Barrie:

Peter and I did discuss it on Friday. Our main concern (although there are other more detailed ones) is your use of the 95% confidence limits of natural climatic variability as some sort of threshold for change. This is a reasonable thing to do if you are addressing the question of whether climatic change will be detectable at a "scientific level" of confidence, but that is certainly not the question I would expect WWF to want answered, nor is it the one most relevant to giving policy advice. The relevant question is "What is the best estimate of climate change, given the assumption that increasing GH gases will cause change?". The contrast between these questions, the statistical criteria they require, and thus the answers, is what I was driving at in my comment on your paper in Nature. It is a very serious difference with serious consequences for how people will interpret your advice. The results as you present them suggest that many areas will have precipitation changes (particularly) which are small compared to natural variability, and therefore it does not matter. But if the change in mean is some appreciable fraction of natural variability, say, 50%, that is a very serious matter which ought to concern policy makers, because it will have cumulative impacts, especially in regard to large changes in the frequency and magnitude of extremes (floods and droughts). Surely you understand that! - refer to the standard diagrams of the impact on extremes of shifting a normal distribution by one standard deviation.

What you are doing is using a strict Type I error criterion when others (WWF?) might think a Type II error criterion is more suitable (the Precautionary Principle), and reasonable people (like me of course!?) think a criterion in between which measures risk of serious impacts is

what is needed for policymakers.

I would be very concerned if the material comes out under WWF auspices in a way that can be interpreted as saying that "even a greenie group like WWF" thinks large areas of the world will have negligible climate change. But that is where your 95% confidence limit leads.

Mike replies:

The point behind all this is to emphasise that precip. changes are less well-defined than temp. changes *and* that we should be thinking of adaptation to *present* levels of precip. variability, rather than getting hung up on the problems of predicting future precip. levels. This pedagogic thinking is hard to communicate in a short WWF brochure.

Your concern about my message is well taken, however, and I intend to remove any reference to 95% confidence levels, to re-word the text to indicate that we are plotting precip. changes only 'where they are large relative to natural variability', and to reduce my threshold to the 1 sigma level of HadCM2 control variability (e.g. this has the effect of showing precip. changes for the majority of Australia even in the B1 scenario).

But I do not intend to abandon the concept. I think it important - even for Greenie groups - to present sober assessments of magnitudes of change. Thus making it clear that future changes in T are better defined that future changes in P, and also to point out that future emissions (and therefore climate change) may be as low as the B1 scenario (is B1 climate change negligible? I almost think so), whilst also being possibly as high as A2 is I think very important.

The alternative is to think that such a more subtle presentation is too sophisticated for WWF. But I think (hope) not.

My take on this is that Mike bowed to pressure from "the group" (whoever that is) to change his confidence levels in order to create a more enticing graphic for the WWF pamphlet. As he notes, the subtlety of his research is hard to communicate in a short brochure, which is why Green groups simplify complex issues and then shout that simple message as loudly as possible.

Barrie replies, explaining his close connection to the WWF:

I should perhaps explain my delicate position in all this. As a retired CSIRO person I have somewhat more independence than before, and perhaps a reduced sense of vested interest in CSIRO, but I am still closely in touch and supportive of what CAR is doing. Also, I have a son who is now a leading staff member of WWF in Australia and who is naturally well informed on climate change issues. Moreover, Michael Rae, who is their local climate change staffer, is a member of the CSIRO sector advisory committee (along with some industry people as well) and well known to me. So I anticipated questions from WWF Australia, and from the media later when the scenarios are released, regarding the scenarios. I did not want to be in the position of feeling the need to seriously question in public their presentation or interpretation. You have allayed my fears on that score, so that is great.

Mike emails his assistant and tells her to change the graphics to suit the WWF needs. His comments are:

Given what has happened and your role in producing these plots, you may interested in the exchanges I have had with Barrie Pittock - it illustrates nicely the nuances of presenting climate scenarios in different Fora. Read these three emails in reverse order.

Mike

------------

Update:

And then there is this:

From: Adam Markham

To: m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, n.sheard@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Subject: WWF Australia

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 09:43:09 -0400

Cc: mrae@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Hi Mike,

I'm sure you will get some comments direct from Mike Rae in WWF Australia, but I wanted to pass on the gist of what they've said to me so far.

They are worried that this may present a slightly more conservative approach to the risks than they are hearing from CSIRO. In particular, they would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible. They regard an increased likelihood of even 50% of drought or extreme weather as a significant risk. Drought is also a particularly importnat issue for Australia, as are tropical storms.

I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public splash on this they need something that will get good support from CSIRO scientists (who will certainly be asked to comment by the press). One paper they referred me to, which you probably know well is: "The Question of Significance" by Barrie in Nature Vol 397, 25 Feb 1999, p 657

Let me know what you think. Adam

Like I said earlier - they wanted to sex up the reports to make a bigger public splash. Bugger the actual science. Tailor the story to suit the audience - in this case, Australians.

CRU emails: "It would appear that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature"

I popped into the email database and did a search on CSIRO.

First one that popped up had this in it:

It would appear that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature.

Hang on, I thought the sun had no impact on climate change? Oops, got a result that they didn't like.

Wild, unsubstantiated claims

Back in July, Greenpeace provided the Telegraph with a lovely timelapse photo of some ice calving off a glacier in Greenland. By the look of the movement of the sun, it covers less than 24 hours. I think the expedition that took the images was up that way for some time - why did they only release a short bit of time lapse photography? Could it be that they took photos for a month, and ice only broke off on one particular day? Did they trim their data for maximum impact?

Then we have this info from back in July from New Scientist:

The biggest glacier in the Arctic is on the verge of losing a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan.

The team believes this will happen within weeks. Only yesterday, a 3-square-kilometre chunk broke away. There are now more than 10 cracks in the ice, some 500 metres wide. The researchers expect the ice tongue to break up within the coming weeks.

When this happens, an island of ice the size of Manhattan, spanning 100 km2 holding 5 billion tonnes of ice, will break free and drift out to sea.

I bolded the bit about "within weeks". That story was published on 14 July - week 29 of the year. We are now in week 47. To me, "within weeks" means 3-4 weeks at most. If you wanted to phrase it as a longer stretch of time, you'd say, "withing months". 18 weeks have passed - 4 1/2 months, and what has happened?

I have searched for more recent articles on the Petermann Glacier, and none mention huge chunks of ice breaking off.

None.

The hue and cry raised by Greenpeace back in July has come to..... naught. But newspapers like the Telegraph and "science" magazines like New Scientist have not thought to follow up to see if the wild claims of Greenpeace could be validated.

Just another reason why any statement from Greenpeace should be taken with a pinch of frogshit.

A kick in the balls for global warming

Had an interesting few hours last night perusing the various emails that have come to light from the CRU.

I've been party to a few investigations in my time that involved trawling through thousands and thousands of emails. Those investigations generally involved fraud and misconduct. I have looked at the contents of a lot of mailboxes, and spent way, way too many hours reading emails from some very sad and useless people.

The one common thread though amongst all the mailboxes and mail traffic that I looked at was that almost every mailbox was littered with joke emails. Some were crammed full of them, making me think that the only thing those people did all day at work was to read funny emails. The dead giveaway of course when opening up a suspect mailbox was a folder marked "jokes", which might contain thousands of emails that, frankly, after five minutes, were boring as batshit.

My assumption is that the poor bastards that hacked into the University of East Anglia CRU computer system must have spent weeks afterwards filtering out all the jokes before publishing this rather startling set of emails and documents.

Friday follies

Boy's rule: if you have a grade separated bike path that is even different in colour to the pedestrian path; then if you have two pedestrians, at least one of them will walk on the bike path.

Cyclists are requested these days to dismount and push their bikes past the UTS rowing club. This is the first one that I have ever seen do that. Pussy.

Secret message in the number plate?

Stupid, stupid, stupid

The City of Sydney is ripping up the road in Pyrmont and building a fancy bike path where it is not required. This particular stretch of road is one of the heaviest cycling routes in Sydney - bikes outnumber cars through here at least 10:1. In my opinion, this stretch does not need ripping up and modifying as there are so few cars using it, the risk of a bike/car crash are minimal. We have the road to ourselves.

I guess though the City Council put a certain amount of money aside for a bike path, so the engineers and planners had to work out how to spend it. That meant building a bike path where one is not needed, and not building them where they are needed as that would mean fiddling with budgets, arguing with accountants, lots of pointless meetings and mountains of paperwork. Much easier to tear up tarmac than to push paper.

Now, I have just told you that this is perhaps the heaviest cycling route in Sydney. So you'd expect there to be lots and lots and lots of bikes pouring through this stretch morning and evening. This stretch looks like Saigon at peak hour.

Given that there are hundreds of bikes traversing this route, if you were going to block the street and divert traffic, would you plan and make special arrangements for diverting bikes? Especially if you are building a frigging bike path? You'd at least expect signage directed specifically at cyclists, the majority users of this road.

We're talking about local government here. Of course they didn't. Bikes have not been considered at all. It's a clusterfuck from hell. The engineer in charge deserves to be boiled in tar.

If these idiots were working on a runway at the airport, they'd forget to tell the aircraft to land somewhere else.

Greg the Stop sign

Look, a cyclist going through a Stop sign.

Err, maybe not.

Now for some light relief.

Funny cop

Went through my fourth RBT in one week. This lot were all smiles, and politely moved out of the bike lane as I went by. The third bloke in line was a funny bugger - as I approached him, he held out the testing unit and said, "Give us a quick puff as you go by". So I puffed out my cheeks and went "pfff", and that at least gave the whole crew a good laugh.

Bleah

Current temp - 21 degrees.

Humidity - 93%.

I am going to be sweaty by the time I get to work.

What stuffs up your commute?

I currently commute by bike, but over the last few years, I have commuted by train, bus and car at various times. Of the four methods, the bike is most consistent. My commute almost always falls into the 40-45 minute time frame. The only thing that blows it out significantly is flat tyres, and even then, a commute with a flat is rarely more than 50 minutes door to door.

Trains and buses by comparison were all over the place. The length of commute varied from 40 minutes up to two hours. When I ride, I can tell you that I will arrive at work in 45 minutes, +/- 5 minutes. If I go by bus, it is 40 minutes + any number you care to mention.

The following graph is my estimation of commuting times by car. Most days, it would take 45-47 minutes to go door to door. The best time was achieved coming home at 3am one morning - 38 minutes. The worst was 2 hours, and there were a few 90 minute shockers as well.

However, the bulk fell into the time frame of 46 minutes +/- 4 minutes. It was amazing how consistent my commute times were. The main factors which affected how long it took were:

1. Weather (rain, storms)
2. Traffic light phasing (did I get lucky and get every light?)
3. The number of other cars on the road

The really horrible times - those over an hour - were all caused by car crashes that took ages to clear.

The biggest factor by far in how long it took me to drive from A to B was the number of other cars on the road. I think we all know that. Sure, traffic slow down during a downpour, but it is the density of traffic that is the killer when it comes to commute times.

So I can comfortably say that on an average day, if it took me 4 minutes longer than average to drive to work, that delay was mostly caused by other cars. Think of that number - 4 minutes.

Assume you drive to work for 48 weeks of the year. Being delayed by 4 minutes on 25% of your commutes would add up to a total delay for the year of 480 minutes, or 8 hours.

Now, how many times was I delayed on my commutes by a cyclist?

The answer - nil.

How many times are the angry letter writers at the Telegraph delayed per year? Once? Twice? How long does each delay last? 5 seconds? 10 seconds?

The thing that gets me is that if these angry idiots at the Telegraph were honest with themselves, they would note that they are delayed every single day by other cars - not bicycles. In this example of mine, a 10 second delay by a bike once a year vs 8 hours of delay by cars per year equates to 0.035% of your annual delay total.

And that is worth getting upset over? These people need to get a life.

Thursday

Worked late last night, so I was late to rise and leave for the big smoke. The sun was well and truly up by the time the rubber hit the road.

Being out so much later than usual, I saw some species of cyclist that are never seen at zero-dark-hundred; teenagers.

Here is a pack of three of them; hunchbacked mutants on their stupid little monkey bikes. They pedal like crazy on these single speed, small wheeled contraptions and never seem to make any useful forward progress. They also gaggle in such a fashion as to block the path for the faster members of the cycling clan - I thought about saying something, but it was more interesting to hang back and observe their style.

They thought they were cool. I thought they were muppets.

A rapidly growing genera - cyclist relaxist. Casual work clothes, casual shoes on the feet, upright, laid back bike that - horror of horrors - has a kick stand. I should mention that in the road bike fraternity, the kick stand went out of use about the same time as Jimmy Carter.

I find the growth of these relaxed cyclists to be comforting - it means the hardened road warriors who paved the way in making cycling acceptable are being followed by a much larger wave who have stuck a toe in the water and decided that they can in fact ride to work without being squished by a bus - unless they live in the northern suburbs. The early adopters are now being followed by what I hope is the early majority.

Here's another relaxed cyclist - the bike frame and the mudguards totally give it away to frame-aficionado's like me. And the thongs on the feet.

The thing is, these relaxed cyclists move at about half the pace of those of us in the lycra crowd. Yesterday, the Telegraph ran a story which was one long whinge from motorists about being held up on the road by "lycra-clad fanatics". If motorists think being held up by a lycra clad loon like me is bad, when I can move at 50km/h on the flat in good conditions (which is the speed limit on most streets around here), wait until all these casual non-lycra cyclists hit the roads and start cruising around at 15-20km/h.

When that happens, angry motorists will look back on the days of lycra cyclists as some sort of golden age of motorist/cyclist harmony.

Idiot of the day

Spotted a driver yakking on his phone as I walked through town this morning.

The cost of a hands free kit couldn't have been the reason why he didn't have one installed.

You see, he was driving a Mercedes C63 - an AMB badged beast that will set you back between $200,000 and $250,000.

Conclusion - rich, but fucked in the head.

Think quick

A short clip - 2 seconds. This shows how little time you have to react when some dill throws their door open in front of you.

This is why I always ride at least a metre out from the line of cars. Some motorists don't like it, because it makes me harder to pass. My response is this - if I could rely on 100% of you to not try and kill me with your doors, I'd hug the cars. But I can't, so in order to protect myself, I have to put a buffer between me and your stupidity.

This driver was a classic. As I went by, I noticed that he had been talking on his phone, and was fiddling with papers on the passenger seat. His head was down, and he was looking at the passenger seat. He flicked the door latch, then kicked the door open with his foot - all the while as he was looking anywhere but behind and to his right.

I really should have stopped and slammed the door on his leg.

From the SMH:

US cannot feed its hungry millions

WASHINGTON: The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the Government has been keeping track.

If that's the case, why are so many yanks so fat, particularly those who are poor, who you would think can least afford food?

Something is fishy here.

Attack of the hubbards

There are days when it all comes together - the legs never tire, the lungs don't give out and you feel like you have energy to burn after cresting the steepest of hills.

It's on days like these that every other cyclist looks like a hubbard. They can't climb hills and they fail to tear it up on the flats. Days like this feel good.

I know I am going to pay for it tomorrow........