I’m back. Did you miss me? Don’t all say “no” at once.
A piece from the Torygraph about the unfolding disaster that is Jeremy Corbyn’s run for head of the Labour party; they can barely contain their glee, of course, but I did like the idea of someone forcasting communist weather; Boris, perhaps.
The still is, presumably deliberately, unfortunate; its from that video, isn’t it? The text includes
Piers, the eccentric weather forecaster brother of Corbyn… While the Labour leadership candidate may be considered to have a colourful record, his older brother can outdo him by a mile. He claims to be able to predict the weather accurately by up to a year in advance. He also claims that earthquakes can be caused by the sun’s activity and he is a staunch climate change denier.
I’m sure PC is delighted with that. Meanwhile, for those wondering, I’ve been off in the Stubai again, this time in company. Here’s the start of a particularly fine day, looking back to the Mullerhutte and Beckerhaus from the Wilder Pfaff.
Refs
* US Gun Violence: So Bad, All That’s Left Is a Joke – QS
* CIP – still talking to the nutters
* Speaking of nutters, Sou has the remarkable story of Singer self-identifying as one; weird or what. He’s very old now, indeed he has been for a decade, and shouldn’t be let out alone
* ATTP notes the sad end of the Met Office’s Wx contract with the Beeb
* Misusing Galileo to criticise the Galileo gambit; or: there’s a lot of things about Galileo that you don’t know
wmconnolley: scienceblogs.com/stoat archive 
It’s a living
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No.
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But you can make amends with more mountain pix.
[Don’t worry, they’re coming 🙂 -W]
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Predict the weather accurately up to a year in advance?
Remarkable.
Piers must now be very very very very wealthy indeed.
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N (Just attempting to follow instructions) o
[<like> -W]
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He also claims that earthquakes can be caused by the sun’s activity
Wait, what? I can understand people thinking that solar activity might be related to climate. True, that relationship doesn’t hold up when you examine the evidence, but at least it involves a causal mechanism which is plausible enough to pass the laugh test. What causal mechanism is Piers Corbyn advocating between solar activity and seismic activity?
The headline is reminiscent of the classic (possibly apocryphal) dedication “to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”
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What causal mechanism is Piers Corbyn advocating?
Details are secret but perhaps some hints:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120111144919/http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=314&c=5
“We now think that it is not just general solar proton event levels which point towards more earthquakes but that individual solar proton events exacerbate immediate earthquake (and associated volcanism) risk either directly or due to consequent storm activity and related surface pressure changes such as caused by our solar triggered and predicted Tropical Cyclone Atu which is currently centred North of New Zealand and heading closer. See:-
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/sp201117_5day.html#a_topad
There are also additional lunar effects on storm development and earthquakes & volcanism and for solar drivers it appears that the odd-even minima, particularly the later part ie the rising phase of even solar cycles – WHICH IS WHERE WE ARE NOW (early Solar Cycle 24) – are the most dangerous.”
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Thanks for finding that, crandles, but that explanation is clear as mud. He’s making some extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. And if he’s specifically tying it to solar proton events, he’s well into Not Even Wrong territory.
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Eric, see
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50211/abstract
for an immediate ‘rebuttal’ of Corbyn’s claims.
But then there’s:
http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1927-5129.2012.08.01.13
Warning: this is hilariously wrong, so be sure to move anything dangerous out of the way before reading.
I do not accept any liability for personal injury, especially if this occurs when reading the acknowledgments
[“DOI Not Found”? -W]
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cr@p.
Try this:
Click to access JBASV8N1A10-Rivera.pdf
[Woo! -W]
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>”but that explanation is clear as mud.”
And that isn’t what you expected ??????
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Marco:
Heh, a wise disclaimer. From the acknowledgements:
The “journal” proudly declares:
Yes, its publisher is on Jeff Beall’s list. Check out its impact factor 8^D! I wonder who the peers are?
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@Marco: Rivera and Khan seem not to have heard of this concept called conservation of angular momentum. The obliquity of the Earth’s rotation axis does change over time, but that is due to externally applied torques. Earthquakes won’t do it.
Your GRL link leads to a 403 error as well.
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Weird, all those doi problems.
Try through this link:
http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/does-solar-activity-cause-earthquakes/
There’s a link there to the grl paper (“The study was recently published”), and hopefully that one works.
Mal, the International Journal of Basic & Applied Sciences is another journal (also a predatory OA publisher, though).
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Can’t find any mention of Piers Corbyn in that paper. But wired does mention him in
http://www.wired.com/2012/04/the-fraudulent-business-of-earthquake-and-eruption-prediction/
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I was looking forward to an explanation of why communist weather was any different from capitalist weather. I can understand why communist weather reporting would differ — if the forecast was for rain today, well then it rained today!
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I had no idea they were related! How… interesting. Piers has engaged in a long struggle against bourgeois physics. The two of them together can only go from strength to strength.
Do you ever work or just spend your life trekking through mountains? Maybe you can test Bluetooth performance on K2.
[I’ve had the traditional European three weeks off this summer, but due to their distribution it has seemed a rather long summer -W]
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Marco: “Mal, the International Journal of Basic & Applied Sciences is another journal (also a predatory OA publisher, though).”
Ah, OK. I spent about 20 minutes googling, and was reasonably confident in the association. Who does publish “Journal of Basic & Appliced Sciences”?
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“J Basic Applied Sci” is published by Lifescience Global:
http://www.lifescienceglobal.com/index.php
Claims to be Canadian.
However, it is listed as an “independent” journal by the publisher.
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Correction to the DT and your quotation.
Although it does not sound so good It should be ex-communist weather.
Many of the most right wing people, including at least one of Thatcher’s friends, were or are ex-communists. I have not seen any recent evidence, until now, concerning PC’s politics. He has been promoted by right wing contrarians such as Quentin Letts in the Mail , as you discussed earlier , and the Heartland Institute. In return, PC contributed to at least one of the HI’s conferences
As for this new evidence , it may have more to do with his personal relationship with his brother than his politics. I wonder how long he will continue with his forecasting? He has reached an age at which many other people would retire. The new information is coming via the Telegraph misinformation machine which is ,for example, hyping his brothers (JC’s) use of the term ‘friends’ for people who were also negotiating with John Major and Tony Blair.
By the way , Piers Corbyn (PC) plant physiology ‘calculations’ are also nonsense.
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