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“How citizen science is tracking changes in shorelines around the world” is a report in the Guardian by David Hambling. He writes,
The shoreline changes with the weather. Tracking these changes over time is a labour-intensive task, and an army of citizen scientists with camera phones is a great asset.
The CoastSnap project started in Australia in 2017 and has spread to beaches worldwide. You may have spotted the setup while out walking along the coast: a cradle to rest your phone on while taking a picture and a sign explaining where to send the snap.
Large waves and high tides remove sand from a beach, while gentler conditions deposit sand and build the beach up again. Sandbars migrate in and out, and change shape with the waves and tides. Some shifts are temporary, some permanent. CoastSnap enables researchers to follow these changes day by day.
This project sounds as if it could be a very useful contribution to science.
The sentence above took me about three seconds to type. Then I reached my limit of pretending that I had not immediately thought about whether the results might prove embarrassing to all those in the Guardian who had made dramatic predictions of the sea level rising due to global warming. As regular readers know, I am a “lukewarmer”. I think man-made global warming almost certainly is happening, but that it is a problem that can be mitigated, not a catastrophe, and that many of the things governments are doing – for which read “the things governments are forcing ordinary people to do” – in order to combat global warming are catastrophes.
Nineteen years ago, in 2007, Anthony Watts of the climate blog “Watts Up With That”, which takes a sceptical line on man-made climate change, posted this:
“My summer project – a national weather station audit”
I remember a talk in the spring where Jim Price of CSU had to interrupt (at the behest of a couple of folks that felt a comment about the sun’s role in climate change studies was being ignored was “biased”) the Chico observatory series, Cosmic Hike to give us all a tongue lashing on why Global Warming is “good science”. I asked him a question in front of everybody about how well biases in measurements at weather stations had been accounted for (Jim’s on the IPCC committee) and he said that they had been “carefully accounted for and considered”. I didn’t believe him then, even less now.
Ok back to my summer project. Thanks to Quammen’s inspiration, I got busy putting together a website called www.surfacestations.org for the purpose of doing a nationwide, and hopefully a worldwide audit on the viability of the weather stations used in climate research.
To seed the effort, I’ve been driving around Northern California photographing and logging weather stations, and blogger Russ Steele from Grass Valley has been helping do surveys too. You’ve seen some of them in my blog posts titled: How not to measure temperature.
Some, like Marysville, are just unbelievably badly biased, and to be blunt, the data they produce is simply useless. Yet, they are part of our “official” climate temperature record, and the data is in fact used in the computer models.
So Monday, I go live with the www.surfacestations.org website showcasing some of the US Historical Climate Record sites which is the major framework that global warming science is built upon.
The reaction was immediate and visceral in the science blogosphere. I’d hit a nerve. Some posters called for my “removal”, not knowing that I’m not funded by grants, nor employed by a government agency. I’m funding all this myself, out of my own pocket. I had to chuckle. Some called me an amateur, others said I would taint the outcome, some just ranted (I think maybe Tasker joined in). Many questioned why such an effort was needed at all. The reaction to taking photographs of weather stations to document their conditions raised a stink I never could have predicted. Why? How can something so simple raise so many hackles? Aren’t many climate scientists saying “case closed” and “no more debate”? How could a few pictures threaten this established science?
I must admit that my attention has wandered away from the global warming issue in the years since then. I know that a lot of volunteers did go around taking photos of weather stations, and that a report was produced, and, I think, an updated report a few years later. I couldn’t quickly find links to these reports on Wattsupwiththat.com, but that’s not what this post is about. My point is that the sweet, optimistic sentence that I could hardly wait to get past typing so I could get to the controversial stuff is actually true. The CoastSnap project is potentially a very useful contribution to science. And so was the Surface Stations project. And it’s a damn shame that both of them are seen as belonging to a side.
Could a good use of AI be to somehow statistically verify the results of these and similar “citizen science” projects, so that people from all sides could trust the announced results?
Nixon incurred a generation’s outrage and mockery for insisting to interviewer David Frost that, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Trump, within the first month of his second term, asserted on social media that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” a formulation frequently attributed to Napoleon. When asked the previous month by The New York Times whether there were any constraints on his power, he said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” These statements are much closer to reality than they were during his first term, thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court decision, Trump v. United States, granting presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecutions for the exercise of “core constitutional powers,” plus lesser forms of immunity for “official acts.”
– Matt Welch gives the POTUS a kicking.
“What comes next: A fairer approach to primary assessment” is a paper by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a progressive think tank.
Here’s the IPPR’s own summary of its report:
We set out four recommendations for immediate implementation from the 2027/28 academic year.
Recommendation 1: The Department for Education should establish an independent ‘statutory accessibility and bias audit’ for all key stage 2 assessments.
Recommendation 2: The Department for Education should remove the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) test.
Recommendation 3: The Department for Education should change how results are published and reported by:
– ending the publication of school-level key stage 2 results, which would also end the publication of school-level league tables
– using rolling averages (for instance, three- or five-year averages) of attainment data from the department and from Ofsted for internal monitoring and inspection.
Recommendation 4: The Department for Education should introduce a competency framework for pupil results in place of scaled scores.
However, reform must go further to build a truly equitable system that properly supports disadvantaged pupils. Therefore, we also set out a further recommendation to act as the foundation of a longer-term, more significant reform to primary school assessment.
Recommendation 5: The Department for Education should introduce a random sampling approach to assessment across years 3–6.
Emphasis added.
In a post last August called ‘Fake polling as a “short term social experiment”’, I discussed how a company called Median Strategies deliberately released fake polling data that put progressive Francesca Hong ahead in the primary to find the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin. In that post I said, “Polls are frequently wrong, they are sometimes skewed by the political biases of the people who set the questions and interpret the answers, but they are not generally made up.”
I stand by that “not generally”, but I, um, might have to downgrade my estimate of the notgenerallyness. There’s been another one. Via a tweet from Geiger Capital:
“WEDGEWOOD POLLING, an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, makes this public statement.
Why We Did This
Having previously worked in the polling and research sector, we watched as the public’s trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low-quality methodology. We wanted to test a simple hypothesis:
How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?
The short answer: Far too easy.”
UPDATE: The plot thickens. G. Elliot Morris of the polling aggregation site Fifty Plus One tweets, ‘We were investigating Wedgewood for faking their data and emailed them for comment this morning, ahead of publishing the findings tomorrow. They are trying to cover up their fraud with the “we were doing a social experiment” excuse.’
Fifty Plus One’s statement begins:
On Tuesday, Oct. 20, FiftyPlusOne reached out to Wedgewood Polls, a self-professed polling firm, with a request for comment on an investigation we had conducted into their alleged survey research. They did not respond to our request, but instead posted a public statement on social media admitting that they had been fabricating data. They also reached out directly in social media DMs minutes before publishing their memo with an official comment: “Fuck you,” plus the name of an individual not affiliated with FiftyPlusOne.
Their statement alleges that FiftyPlusOne, the New York Times, and other poll aggregators did not conduct appropriate vetting of their firm prior to aggregating their polls; this is false. We reached out to them to ask who they were and confirm the methodology statement on their website. We were given two names, Jack Sims and Andrew Prater. We were able to independently confirm that Sims had previous experience in the polling industry and reviewed their methodology statement in detail. It is not atypical for a pollster to leave an existing firm, form their own, and self-fund some surveys to build reputation; we had no reason at the time to believe this case was any different. Wedgewood operated as if it were a legitimate polling firm, including collecting money from donors to conduct crowd-funded polls, and sharing raw survey data (which we now have confirmed was fraudulent) with FiftyPlusOne on Oct. 15, 2026.
Below is the article that we intended to publish tomorrow, Oct. 21, 2026. We had given Wedgewood until midnight to respond to our questions. We have lightly edited the piece to acknowledge Wedgewood Polls’ admission of guilt.
“Pro-Palestine environmental activist accused of ramming Australian MP”, reports the Telegraph:
The man accused of repeatedly ramming a car into an Australian MP has been identified as a pro-Palestine and anti-logging activist who was known to police.
Brendan Nugent, 43, allegedly drove his Toyota Landcruiser into Helen Haines on Monday afternoon, pinning her against a car outside her electorate office in the northern Victorian town of Wangaratta.
Dr Haines, 65, underwent a leg amputation on Tuesday after being critically wounded in the attack. Doctors at The Alfred hospital in Melbourne were working to save her other leg.
[…]
Mr Nugent and Dr Haines, an independent MP in the seat of Indi, were known to each other – and he had previously praised her publicly on social media for her pro-environmental stance.
But his online history charts his shift from environmental campaigner to outspoken critic of Israel. Both he and Dr Haines have regularly publicly condemned the Australian government’s response to the war in Gaza.
One News Australia has a detailed account of the suspect’s posts on social media over several years: “Suspect Brendan Nugent named as police investigate radical activist history in alleged attack of MP Helen Haines”.
By 2024 Nugent’s posting had changed from being overwhelmingly concerned with environmentalism to including posts like this one supporting the Houthi attacks on shipping:
If that link disappears, it consists of the words ‘”Unjustifiable attacks”? They are trying to stop more mass murder of innocent people, mass murder that you are assisting with. You know they are only targeting ships that are supplying the genocide.’ followed by a bizarre AI-generated picture of a turban-wearing giant rising out of the sea cradling a container ship under one arm. A bit Orientalist, I thought. And biceps don’t work that way.
I was surprised that Nugent’s posts under the username “@NotLaoTzu” still appear to be visible on Twitter. Perhaps it was because, as the One News Australia report says, that ‘At 1:12am on Tuesday, Drew Pavlou posted that the car “appears to be owned by Brendan Nugent”, about eight hours before The Australian named him.’ Drew Pavlou describes himself as a “Western civilisation enjoyer” on Twitter. I had come across his name before. He is getting a lot of stick for having released Nugent’s name before the Australian authorities did. I am usually a stickler for due process, but given that Pavlou’s identification of Nugent was correct, and that Nugent was arrested seconds after the crime – he was pulled out of his car and detained by a brave bystander, local barber Ricky Jeffries – I’m really not that worried that an innocent man might be being defamed.
“The funniest thing I’ve ever heard is that the kids are rioting in Paris because of ‘educational inequality’. I was taught in classes of 30 in wooden huts so cold you could see your breath in winter, but it never occurred to me to burn down the town hall. This isn’t a ‘legitimate expression of rage’, it is a pathology, evidence that the whole of Europe – not just France – has a cancer, of which violence and decay are merely the symptoms. Our tumour is bad philosophy. It has been growing for years.”
– Tim Stanley, Daily Telegraph (£)
“Protester wears burqa to deny concealing identity”, reports the BBC:
A protester has appeared in court wearing a burqa to deny a charge of wearing the Islamic religious garment to conceal his identity during a Hampshire protest.
Timothy Miller, 76, of Sherwood Avenue in Hedge End, Southampton, was arrested in relation to the anti-migrant and anti-racism demonstrations in Portsmouth city centre on 12 September.
During the hearing at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, he lifted the veil while holding a black handbag as he confirmed his identity.
The handbag was a nice touch.
When asked how he pleaded, Miller replied: “As I am in every police camera, I am not guilty”.
A pleasing paradox. Agree or disagree with his politics, Mr Miller has given a masterclass in the application of Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, numbers four, five and six:
4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
Dominic Green of the Washington Examiner supplies more detail,
A female police officer confronted Miller about his clothing. “It’s because I’m converting to Islam and I’m gender-fluid,” Miller explained, waving a beefy and boldly exposed hand with feminine grace. “I’m not here to make trouble.”
Once you realise part of Patriot Platform’s operating model is that of a parapolitical soap opera, with feuds, beefs and big characters… it starts to make more sense. And, ofc, this type of politics turns on making a pound note, as Tommy Robinson’s many detractors have shown. And I’m hardly Nick Lowles, but evidence is evidence. There’s an entire ecosystem of influencers, “auditors” and YouTubers making a living peddling ragebait. The police? They’re extras in Danny Tommo’s ongoing structured reality TV show.
– Dominic Adler
The green transition was paid for in roubles, and the people who signed the cheques sat in the chancellery, not on the fringes. When Donald Trump warned the UN General Assembly in 2018 that Germany was making itself dependent on Russian energy, the German delegation was filmed smirking. Merz now tells a British Prime Minister that Russia’s friends sit on the AfD benches. Russia’s most useful friends in Germany wore SPD and CDU rosettes, and they were doing exactly what RT asked.
And look how it turned out. Labour went into the 2024 election promising to ban fracking for good. The Bowland shale stays where it is. Britain buys gas from Norway’s pipelines and from tankers out of Qatar and Texas, at whatever price the world sets that winter. Whether or not Moscow lifted a finger, it got exactly the British energy policy RT spent years asking for, and Burnham’s government is the one delivering it.
So here’s a question for the next time he walks into Number 10 asking what the Russians have been up to. Not the referendum. Ask about the shale.
– Gawain Towler
Tim Stanley is a historian by trade, and the author of Whatever Happened to Tradition? — a book subtitled History, Belonging and the Future of the West.
It was something of a surprise, then, to hear him tell attendees at a Conservative Party conference fringe event last week that “the country has changed”, and that “you are not going to reverse that”. Stanley went further still, declaring himself “pleased to see that the right accepts that change and has changed with it”; in his view, “it would be regressive and immoral to try to reverse what has happened.”
He was, of course, talking about the seismic demographic changes which have taken place in this country over the past few decades, against the express wishes of the British people. Indeed, the changes which have taken place over the past few decades represent the biggest demographic change in these islands since the migration of the Anglo-Saxons a millennium and a half ago.
– George Baker
Which in turn causes me to recall a remark made by Chesterton:
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.
– G.K. Chesterton
“Labour has also taken over as the party of the better off — people with university degrees, middle-class lifestyles and stable employment. In a poll by the British Election Survey last year, the ratio of Labour’s vote share among the richest voters (earning more than £70,000, or $93,000) to the poorest voters (earning less than £30,000) was larger than any other major party. All its talk about the working class and “miner’s lamps” is tribal hooey. If you want to meet real working-class people today (and most of them aren’t interested in politics) you are much better off going to a Reform UK gathering.
Rather than speaking for the marginalized — economically or otherwise — Labour has become the guardian of the status quo. It’s now the party of public-sector professionals, NGO functionaries, tenured academics, local-government employees, teachers, doctors and bat inspectors. Its voters and activists are more likely than those in other parties to enjoy stable incomes (and index-linked pensions), courtesy of the taxpayer. And they are more likely to brandish their university degrees as proof of their moral worth, just as old-fashioned Tories might have wielded their coats of arms.
Gascoyne-Cecil once said that `hostility to radicalism, incessant, implacable hostility, is the essence of Conservatism.’ That could just as easily describe the current Labour Party’s attitude toward any novel ideas that challenge its core base, the public sector.”
– Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg ($)
He’s making the point that Labour is now the main “establishment” party. My main reservation about his thesis, which is pungently expressed, is that the LP only secured 34 per cent of the popular vote in the “loveless landslide” of 2024, so the complacency that might seem to come out of Labour could be less entrenched than in the late 19th Century Tory Party of Lord Salisbury’s time.
Wooldridge makes a few errors in his article, however. This sentence jars: “Hence the recurrence of the same family names in the party’s annals (Peel, Salisbury, Chamberlain), and hence the ruthlessness with which its operatives dispatched ailing prime ministers.” As far as I know, while Robert Peel’s father was an MP, the Peels were not a great dynasty. Apart from that sort of detail, though, it is a good read. What he is describing is how a party once defined by standing up for the “working man” has become very different. To an extent, it resembles how a scrappy Silicon Valley start-up ends up as a clunky behemoth and ends up, eventually, being taken apart by private equity buyout folk, or just goes into slow decline.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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