Martin Bartos

Independent consultant: previously computer scientist, medical practitioner and elected environmental politician

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@ClaudeDevs @ClaudeDevs I’m seeing a lot of anger which may be misunderstanding (there’s ambiguity in both announcement and blog).

Is ‘agent credit’ a tier based API-like SUPPLEMENT to your subscription tier’s normal monthly interactive chat quota, OR is it an opt-in SUBSTITUTION of it?

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@thebufferstop @ScotRail @thebufferstop Glasgow Central to Carlisle or to Edinburgh via Shotts - should I take it those ScotRail services also don’t count as “intercity” in your classification? I don’t believe those are all Crosscountry or Avanti etc..

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@thebufferstop @ScotRail You’re quite correct. I should’ve realised you were only talking about ScotRail services out of Central (even though you didn’t actually say it..). The fact it’s not a matter for a local transport body to put in place relevant measures doesn’t seem to me sensible.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@Steelmen63 @ScotRail Ah, thanks, interesting point.

Mind you, it really would be good though if we had an integrated transport authority with powers and responsibility to communicate with travelling public to reassure them of what was being done..

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@thebufferstop @ScotRail Building damage is a terrible tragedy unfolding and there is going to be a massive amount of rebuild needed; meanwhile people facing disrupted intercity journeys need some reassurance about ticket validity / alternative services.. all of which doesn’t depend on fire services.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Tbh, I would have intuited it the way you described it Tim but that would have been crudely on human experience of proximate blankets and distant shades being most effective.. seems that’s just not the physics operating in this situation…

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Bots say other way round - high clouds reflect some sunlight, but being cold & thin they mainly block outgoing infrared → net warming. Low clouds are bright & thick, reflecting lots of sunlight; being warm, they trap less heat → net cooling.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Oh agreed, I expect in reality it weights heavily towards absorbing light compared to the alternative, but interesting imho that it might not always - whereas I think ice loss and cloud loss processes will pretty much always go in the wrong direction.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Also of interest in the longer chatbot notes was the point made that increased vegetation changes aren’t all net albedo decreasing where they happen. (Presumably e.g. overgrowth of rocks v. sand)

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Looks pretty much in line with the others now.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Quite. Mind you, I thought some interesting things were surfaced by the extra queries e.g. an estimate for cooling effect of ‘global greening’.. (sadly estimated range is less than 10% of heating effect of global warming)

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson Oh and citations to chatbot threads are also easy, hopefully these include sources

https://t.co/SDZ0vtnwVM

https://t.co/t6XJoi08yk - interestingly this one on its own initiative disputes the equatorial mirror width (I make no comment which is correct)

https://t.co/ZkqSbs0Yxt

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@tim_tyler @A_RES_38_17 @EliotJacobson I got three LLMs to fact check your “chatbot” - all 3 told me that what you posted was, um, wrong. The consensus, with citations, of Claude Opus4.5, ChatGPT5.2 and Grok was it’s essentially cloud cover reduction, greening is a real phenomenon but tiny & inconsistent.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@simonw I wondered if the training corpus is now so delightfully tainted with this test that vision models will default to ‘seeing’ pelicans in any bird-on-a-bike… as a gentle probe I asked the following and got this:

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@scotrail at Glasgow QSt seemed well prepared with lots of staff for long queues …but when I asked if more services had been put on a staff member looked grim and said “later at peak”… hmmm, Oasis fans standing on this train before it even leaves..

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@NasFilippova @jeremyphoward The footnote says non-responders are not shown - so I guess that’s the missing number - and the numbers shown are a reflection of % people contacted, not % responders.

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@doodlestein @simonw FYI, pelican, not penguin - though in fairness (a) the outputs don’t always make that clear, (b) probably spell-correct messed up your post, (c) there’s room for new benchmarks of composite surreal situations with different animals given it’s in training corpus by now…

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

Oh and here’s a compare and contrast - both from the approach to north side of bridge but one of these railings is going to require repair somewhat sooner..

[Martin Bartos @martinbartos]

@MyGlasgowCC @govanbridge probably no need to have all the pedestrian lighting on at the moment given it’s bright sunshine.. (that includes all the lighting that side of Transport Museum)