Plimer does the Gish gallop

Looks like it was Pilmer night on the ABC. First, he was on Counterpoint, ABC’s anti-Science show, as you would expect from his previous appearance, everything he said, no matter how outrageous was uncritically accepted. This time he blamed the Antarctic ozone hole on CFCs coming from Erebus. (Not so)

But his performance on Lateline was astonishing. Rather than let himself get pinned down into to defending the claims in his book, he continually shifted ground. When Tony Jones, questioned about his claim that temperatures had been cooling since 1998, Plimer said that this was not an important point, despite repeating the claim dozens of time in his book. When Jones pressed him on his claim that the Hadley centre had shown that warming had stopped in 1998, Plimer suddenly claimed that the Hadley centre data was unreliable and that corrected NASA data showed that temperatures in 1930s were warmer than today. When Jones said that wasn’t true for global temperatures and the correction only affected US temperatures, Plimer was off again, saying that Jones was ignoring history and climatologists were cherry picking the last ten years.

Plimer has learned well from Duane Gish.

Comments

#1 DJ
April 27, 2009

And to top it off the ever reliable Australian has this nonsense http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25395523-16741,00.html .
#2 Jimmy Nightingale
April 27, 2009

Re DJ #1

The Australian’s opinion columns are appalling. I’d expect to see that rubbish on Mahorasy’s blog or WUWT.

I guess at least they included this bit:

“In the meantime, The Australian accepts the IPCC finding that the evidence of climate change calls for global intervention.”

Unless it is going to cost money of course….
#3 Nick
April 27, 2009

That ‘Counterpoint’ piece is one of the most disturbingly incompetent things I’ve ever heard. The zombie/interviewer seemed to be reading from a list of prompts supplied by Plimer.Complaints to the program site,the ABC and Media Watch are in order.
#4 Bill O'Slatter
April 27, 2009

The Counterpoint appearance of Plimer was parodic. i.e. own goal. Duffy as ever , was stupid. I think there is an argument for the basic thesis of Counterpoint but the execution of it has been woeful. Duffy is so stupid that he should only be allowed out under license.
#5 Lank
April 27, 2009

But Tim, on Lateline Karoly agrees with Plimer that there has been a drop in temperatures since 1998 “Temperatures have dropped a very small amount since 1998, both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554128.htm

Are you saying that Karoly is wrong? or that Plimer is correct?
#6 Arie Brand
April 27, 2009

Yes Plimer’s performance was pathetic. He was visibly uncomfortable under Tony Jones’ persistent questioning and kept repeating that the climate was part of a dynamic system and was therefore continuously changing. This truism is, as we know, the GREAT CONTRIBUTION of geologists to the debate.

My main impression was that this man is not sure of his ground at all and is more or less aware that he has delivered a packet of goods that cannot really see the light of day.
#7 Arie Brand
April 27, 2009

Lank, Tony’s point was that even though the temperature of the top year 1998 was not matched in subsequent years, yet many of these were still above average (second warmest on record, fifth warmest on record etc) so that there was no ground for saying that the CLIMATE was cooling. There was no ground for speaking here of climate anyway in the light of Plimer’s own repeated insistence that we should distinguish between climate and weather.

But he tried to have his cake and eat it by suggesting that the Hadley Center was wrong so that his original suggestion about that cooling was valid anyway.
#8 Busterguy
April 27, 2009

In the Counterpoint interview, Duffy noted that Al Gore and Peter Garret had both talked of the possibility of a six-metre sea level rise over the next century and asked Plimer to describe the behaviour of sea levels over the last 6,000 years.

After a quick sneer at Al Gore, a politician “talking about science – really!”(who endorsed Plimer’s book again?), Plimer said: “. . . 6,000 years ago sea level was about two metres higher than now and it was considerably warmer than now – we were at the peak of the interglacial. Sea level goes up, sea level goes down . . . so to blandly state that the melting of ice increases sea levels is ignoring all of the other factors on a dynamic planet.”

Funny that. He had no doubts about a clear relationship between melting ice and sea levels in his previous book, A Short History of planet Earth (ABC Books, 2001 ISBN 07333-1004-4).

On pp216-17 of that book Plimer confidently predicts that: “Sea level will continue to rise in an erratic stepwise pattern, as it has for the last 18,000 years, until the next icehouse. In the West Antarctic the recession rates of fast flowing rivers of ice indicate a rapid erosion of the slow-moving inland ice sheet driven by the same factors that drove the 120-metre sea level rise over the last 14,700 years. . ..

“No discussion on climate change or sea level rise is possible without considering the major player in the game: the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Glaciologists identified in ice cores a massive collapse into the sea of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet some 7700 to 6600 years ago. Geologists working on coral reefs in Florida have identified a rapid sea level rise at the same time. This is called the coherence criterion in science. Independent evidence from one field of science supports independent evidence from another. This degree of coherence raises the confidence level of the scientific conclusions.

“The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already raised sea level and it has another six metres to rise before the collapse is complete. Collapse was probably started by the massive post-glacial sea level rise and that resulting from the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a consequence of natural processes which commenced 7000 years ago. The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctic has been thinning 1.6 metres per year due to ice dynamics and not atmospheric temperature changes. There is nothing humans can do to stop this process.

“It would not be surprising if sea level rose a few metres over the next century causing untold suffering in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, Holland, north Germany and many non-coralline islands. . . . Low-lying parts of England, where many atomic reactors are sited, will be inundated. Human-induced global warming may have a small subsidiary effect on this process but it is not a major factor. Sea level rise and fall is a geological fact of life, especially during the current period of very rapidly fluctuating climate.

“If there is a 6-metre sea level rise from the complete melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, sea levels will be restored to the position they were 123,000 years ago and disrupt coastal populations.” He goes on to predict the next Ice Age “possibly in only 300 to 400 years but certainly before 2800″, with attendant pandemics, famine, cities being vacated, massive migration, warfare over competition for resources, and surviving humans returning to subsistence agriculture.

He even jokes tastelessly about that prospect: “A future glaciation may drive Homo sapiens to speciate into Homo macdonaldsensis, a shorter, more robust, hairy, bulbous effeminate species with a larger cranium and a less specialised diet, and Homo micturans, a shorter gracile to emaciated-looking species prone to injury, liver problems, gout, diabetes and poor diet.”

Oh dear.

Seems Plimer is highly problematic every which way: as a salesman for his own ideas, as a saviour for the denialists and as a serious critic of the science.
#9 Lank
April 27, 2009

Arie… “the temperature of the top year 1998 was not matched in subsequent years”…. this means temperatures over the last 10 years have cooled or are you missing something? Karoly agrees with Plimer that “there has been a drop in temperatures since 1998″. Why so, if atmospheric CO2 is rising? Could the IPCC models be wrong or just misleading?
#10 Mark Byrne
April 27, 2009

Lank, think of it this way, with your denifiton of global cooling, how many times has global warming stopped in the last 30 years?

The misunderstanding comes from assuming that the models predict ever increasing warming year on year. They don’t that would require exponential warming. The models predict a warming trend overlayn by natural cycles and noise.
#11 Lank
April 27, 2009

Mark Byrne. Temperatures have cooled over the last decade while CO2 has increased over the last decade. We are told by many climate scientists that thier models show that increasing atmospheric CO2 drives temperatures up but over the last decade this has not happened, they have gone down.

It seems reasonable to assume that the models that they have used are less than accurate.
#12 Arie Brand
April 27, 2009

“Karoly agrees with Plimer that “there has been a drop in temperatures since 1998″.”

So did Tony, Lank. Did you see last night’s Lateline? The Hadley Center’s measurements bear this out. This was not the point at issue. That Plimer suddenly started to throw doubt on these Hadley Center measurements was because he wanted to argue that the temperatures over the last ten years showed a cooling trend in the CLIMATE.
#13 Charles
April 27, 2009

Lank, Mark explained it correctly and succinctly. The models are not so simplistic as to suggest that temps and CO2 rise in lockstep, as if other variables (such as natural cycles; ENSO for example) had no influence. Can you show me where any of the models show that warming will increase each and every year?
#14 dhogaza
April 28, 2009

Arie… “the temperature of the top year 1998 was not matched in subsequent years”…. this means temperatures over the last 10 years have cooled or are you missing something?

No, because this year is 2009. Actually temperatures from 1999-2008 (the last complete ten years) have RISEN.

You need to update your calendar, and to say, “While it is true that over the last 10 years, temperatures have risen, over the last 11.5 years they’ve cooled!”

The “last ten years have cooled” argument is SO LAST YEAR.

(This should clue you in to the fact that 10 years is too short a time for the trend to be statistically significant, which is why decades ago statistical evaluations led to the determination that 30-year trends are the minimum necessary)
#15 Mark Byrne
April 28, 2009

Tim, Brillian find for “Duane Gish”.

The wiki entery for Gish Gallope reads like a descrition of Plimer’s lateline interview. That is an amazing gem!
#16 Bill O'Slatter
April 28, 2009

From the outrage expressed on Shotties Bolt’s blog it looks like Tony Jones’s demolition of Plimer was successful.
#17 Bernard J.
April 28, 2009

For those who missed the broadcasts, or who live outside of Australia, Plimer’s interviews on [Lateline](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm) and on
[Counterpoint](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2009/2550682.htm) are now downloadable.
#18 Joe
April 28, 2009

It’s amusing that Plimer’s book is published by Connor Court Publishing, “A PUBLISHER DEDICATED TO CULTURE, JUSTICE AND RELIGION”. No mention of science anywhere. Cardinal Pell is one of their most popular authors.
#19 Lank
April 28, 2009

dhogaza…yes the trend is certainly clear. However much you squirm, slip and slide trying to justify your alarmism you cannot get away from what is actually happening.

Take a look at the SPPI’s ‘Monthly CO2 Report for March 2009’ which clearly records all global-temperature datasets as showing trends of global cooling for seven full years at an average rate of 2 degrees centigrade per century. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/7YRTEMPSSPPI.jpg
#20 Andrew Murphie
April 28, 2009

It’s true enough that Pilmer was Gishing like crazy. However, from a media pov, I found two things concerning. First, if you forget about arguments, facts and subtleties (something skeptics are happy to do), Pilmer scored a lot of points—tone of voice, catchy phrases, nifty (if contradictory) turnarounds, simple (if simplistic explanations) etc. Early in the interview I began to wonder how much media training he’d done for this moment. The other scientists, good scientists that they were, were all precise, qualifying etc, as good scientists should be, but this does not, unfortunately, make for the best media impact. It’s ironic considering all the accusations of grandstanding thrown at decent scientists. Second, Tony Williams, despite his briefing paper, still didn’t get the issues terribly well, and there was no scientist in the studio to deal with it. It looked to me in the end that Pilmer was given a series of free kicks and plenty of air.

This is a big problem.
#21 Tim Lambert
April 28, 2009

So Lank, are you saying that Plimer’s claim that it has cooled since 1998 is wrong?
#22 Gaz
April 28, 2009

Lank: “seven full years”.

Deep time.
#23 james
April 28, 2009

Tim, why ask Lank when we have Karoly:

“Temperatures have dropped a very small amount since 1998, both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”.
#24 Mark Byrne
April 28, 2009

Andrew Murphy is correct. Plimer is succesfull if he only [creates doubt](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=2&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all).
#25 Mark Byrne
April 28, 2009

James, can you quote the rest of Karoly’s sound bite?
#26 glaxon
April 28, 2009

“But Tim, on Lateline Karoly agrees with Plimer that there has been a drop in temperatures since 1998″

Sheesh. 1998 was a bum-burner of a year. The hottest ever. Thank heavens we haven’t had a repeat of it.

If anything shows the intellectual dishonesty of the denialists it’s this ‘argument’.
#27 Mark Byrne
April 28, 2009

[Here is how](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-the-climate-warming-or-cooling.html) Karoly can say more in his sound bite than James and Lank have quoted.
#28 Paul
April 28, 2009

>Mark Byrne: Lank, think of it this way, with your denifiton of global cooling, how many times has global warming stopped in the last 30 years?

Like that one, i’ll have to use it myself, but extend it by more decades.
#29 Paul
April 28, 2009

Has Plimer said anything about Salingers sacking?

How does Plimer relate his freedom to appear on Australian media, to Salingers censorship?
#30 Stu
April 28, 2009

Notice how he claims that the IPCC is only interested in the atmosphere (which is a shown to be a flat out lie if you take a look at an IPCC report), and that they don’t include people from a broad range of science, and then shortly afterwards criticises Barry Brook for being a biologist rather than a climate scientist.
#31 Barton Paul Levenson
April 28, 2009

Lank posts:

“the temperature of the top year 1998 was not matched in subsequent years”…. this means temperatures over the last 10 years have cooled or are you missing something?

It doesn’t mean anything of the sort (and by the way, 2005 was hotter than 1998). You define the temperature trend by regressing the temperatures on elapsed time. You have to use all the points, not just the ones that look good to you. The trend is still up, not down or flat.
#32 Barton Paul Levenson
April 28, 2009

Lank posts:

Take a look at the SPPI’s ‘Monthly CO2 Report for March 2009’ which clearly records all global-temperature datasets as showing trends of global cooling for seven full years at an average rate of 2 degrees centigrade per century.

It’s not a “trend” unless it’s statistically significant, Lank. The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as mean regional or global weather over a period of 30 years or more. Thirty years, not seven.
#33 sod
April 28, 2009

did he at about 11 minutes into the interview really say, that the film Casablanca is NOT about love? but about something completely different? about what, for heavens sake?

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/

this must be one of the most stupid things ever said!

denialists just are wrong on everything….
#34 Bernard J.
April 28, 2009

I would like to reiterate Andrew Murphie’s thought’s about Plimer’s answers on Lateline.

I also thought that he’d been prepped for the sort of questions that would likely come his way – although he hadn’t brushed up on the US temperatures versus the world temperatures issue. Oopsie…

His practising was particularly obvious in the way he diverted the conversation to, amongst other things, patronising references to his chapter titles, and (Jones walked into this one) his statement that he didn’t even “know what a climate sceptic [was]“.

His disparagement of Barry Brooks as a “biologist” was more than patronising, especially as Plimer is ‘only’ a geologist (as a geologist, how many controlled experiments and complex statistical analyses has he ever performed, btw?), although according to Plimer climatology is an invention of geologists… I rather think that meteorologists and physicists might have something to say about that!

The implication of any such preparation is grievous though. If Plimer was arming himself with distractions, irrelevancies, and and snappy but inaccurate counters, he must at some level have been aware that he was peddling untruths.

To me this indicates a deliberate campaign to deceive, and to profit from such deception.

I once had respect for Plimer as a lecturer. To see the person he is today is sad indeed.
#35 Peter Manins
April 28, 2009

Plimer has said for a long time that Mt Erebus emits CFCs.
A couple of years ago, as a practicing atmospheric scientist, I pointed out to Plimer that the CFC experts in CSIRO had comprehensively established that Erebus does no such thing. Plimer ignored me and continues to ignore the evidence. This to me demonstrates that Plimer is all about “belief” and is not interested in “science”.
#36 P. Lewis
April 28, 2009

To me this indicates a deliberate campaign to deceive, and to profit from such deception.

Hmmm! How does this square with the University of Adelaide’s Mission and Values I wonder? These state:

1. The pursuit of excellence in all that we do
The achievement of the vision will require that the whole University community remains committed to the highest intellectual and ethical standards in teaching and learning, research and research training, and the conduct of all our professional activities.

…

3. The rights and responsibilities of freedom of inquiry and expression
Dispassionate, rigorous and honest intellectual inquiry is at the core of academic traditions, and should be reflected throughout our research, scholarship, education and management.

…

How do his university employers view this travesty of science that is Plimer’s latest book?

It’s seems to me that the university’s Mission and Values are being forgotten.

Are his employers complicit in this travesty until they comment?

How do they feel about their Mission and Values being sidestepped?

This book is not an “honest intellectual inquiry”, is it?
#37 Robert Grumbine
April 28, 2009

I spent some more time on illustrating why it is we want 20-30 years to determine a climate trend over at my blog.

You can also see where 1998 falls with respect to the correlation between CO2 and temperature (which is shockingly high — R^2 of about 0.8) at does CO2 correlate with temperature. In brief, 1998 was extremely anomalous, as was noted at the time both by, c.f. James Hansen and Pat Michaels. The years since have been quite close to the general trend line.

Of course weather still happens, and, with a standard deviation of about 0.1 C, it’s no difficulty for chance to produce short runs that are counter to the general trend.

Thanks, Tim, for the longer survey of Plimer’s points.
#38 Dave
April 28, 2009

Lank:

Quiz for you. You’ve been set your first high-school statistics homework, which involves plotting a linear trend over a noisy series of ten datapoints. Do you:

a) Use a linear regression that best accomodates all of the available data, or

b) Take a ruler and draw a straight line from the first point to the last one?
#39 Duae Quartunciae
April 28, 2009

I have a spreadsheet that I use to calculate trends in all kinds of data; HadCRUT3v dataset included.

I get the trend, with 95% confidence bounds, over the last 30 years, and over the last 10 years. I also find the mean and standard distribution for trends over all possible sequences of 120 consecutive months within the last 30 years, to quantify the natural variation seen over that time.

30 year trend = 0.157 C/decade, +/- 0.015 (95% conf)

10 year trend = 0.067 C/decade, +/- 0.068 (95% conf)

variation in 10 year trend over last 30 years.

2σ range is -0.033 .. 0.393 mean is 0.180 C/decade

The last ten years is a warming trend. It is a bit slower than the mean for a ten year window randomly chosen over the last thirty years — about one standard deviation below average.

Plimer is a nut.
#40 N.C.
April 28, 2009

Dave: Not even that; what Lank is doing is the equivalent of connecting two random points to get the slope he thinks is the right answer. At least your (b) is incompetence instead of willful misleading.
#41 bugs
April 28, 2009

My standard test for a denier, if they refer to Beck, G&T or Miskoclzi. Plimer is a denier.
#42 cohenite
April 28, 2009

#13; of course the models predict a montonic increase of temperature with increases in ACO2;

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg

The idea that this perpetual increase would be masked by natural variation started with Keenlyside and gained some recent impetus from Easterling and Wehner;

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf

This paper has major problems but the idea of masking doesn’t mean the temperature response doesn’t keep on plodding upwards even though temperature will be declining; in fact, taken to its extreme, with the concurrent AGW idea that AGW will produce extreme weather events, both heating and cooling, the masking effect could produce cooling much more pronounced than if there was no heating so in actuality the heating produces greater cooling than it would if there was no AGW. A slight problem with the post 2000 masking supposedly taking place is that when the AGW effect is isolated through removal of the natural variables there is no AGW warming effect at all;

http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ipcc-falsifies-gavin.gif

On these occasions the heating is being so well masked that it actually disappears.
#43 Chris O'Neill
April 28, 2009

The wiki entery for Gish Gallope reads like a descrition of Plimer’s lateline interview. That is an amazing gem!

Plimer’s interview was a variation on the Gish (which we could call the Plimer variation) in which he was asked a series of questions which he rarely answered (or sometimes gave a wrong answer) and to which he responded with a non-sequitur that usually rambled on-and-on. e.g. Tony Jones asked something like:

In fact what NASA changed was its record for the warmest years in the USA?

To which Plimer responded that there is a substantial difference between the satellite record and the surface-measured record of the last 30 years!

This type of answering went on for question after question but I think my favorite was when Jones asked: if the 6 hottest years on record (according to Hadley) were actually 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004 and 2006 then isn’t it reasonable to suggest that global temperatures have remained on a remarkably high plateau rather than cooling as you’re suggesting?

Plimer replied:

No, in the 1930s it was much hotter!
#44 Chris O'Neill
April 28, 2009

Robert:

I spent some more time on illustrating why it is we want 20-30 years to determine a climate trend over at my blog.

Might I suggest that if we can’t determine a climate in less than 30 years then there is no way we can determine a climate CHANGE in less than 30 years.
#45 Sympneology
April 28, 2009

Lank provided a link to a graph designed by the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), so I checked his source:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute
or
http://tinyurl.com/42yeos
#46 dhogaza
April 28, 2009

of course the models predict a montonic increase of temperature with increases in ACO2

Cohenite, another lying S-O-S.
#47 John Mashey
April 28, 2009

re: #45
SPPI is well-known here, given the Monckton connection.
#48 John Mashey
April 28, 2009

re: #37
I really recommend those posts at More Grumbine Science.
#49 John Mashey
April 28, 2009

Also, I recommend a truly excellent series of videos, greenman3610′s Climate Crock of the week. It is beautifully produced, with great visualizations.

Regarding statistical illiteracy, cherry-picking the temperature record, etc, see the 6-minute latest:
Party like it’s 1998.

If you have friends who are confused,but willing to learn, this series is excellent.,
#50 DJ
April 28, 2009

>13; of course the models predict a montonic increase of >temperature with increases in ACO2;
>
>http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg

The models do not predict monotonic warming. That graph is an average of lots of models which smooths out variations. That icecap graph preys on the ignorance of the faith based sceptics.
#51 dhogaza
April 28, 2009

The models do not predict monotonic warming. That graph is an average of lots of models which smooths out variations

Exactly, but cohenite knows that, thus just calling him a lying S-O-S is easier.
#52 Mark Byrne
April 28, 2009

Andrew Bolt is denoucing Tony Jones for only being able to expose one error in his interview of Plimer.

I wounder how many errors Bolt expects Jones should have forced Plimer to acknowledge in that brief time?

The answer (for Jones) should be a function of 1)time, 2)the number of major errors/misrepresentions, 3)Plimers preparedness to change the topic.
#53 Chris O'Neill
April 29, 2009

I wounder how many errors Bolt expects Jones should have forced Plimer to acknowledge in that brief time?

The answer (for Jones) should be a function of 1)time, 2)the number of major errors/misrepresentions, 3)Plimers preparedness to change the topic.

and 4) the amount of time Plimer wasted in his rambling non-sequiturs.
#54 Lars Karlsson
April 29, 2009

As the Science and Public Policy Institute has been referred to, and as it is the playground of The Right Honourable The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, this is the perfect moment to mention
Monckton’s speech at the Heartland conference.

A little teaser:
“WHERE are they all today, those bed-wetting moaning Minnies of the Apocalyptic Traffic-Light Tendency – those Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds?”
#55 Nick
April 29, 2009

Yes,Lars,the new team of writers on the Monckton Hour aren’t a patch on last season’s.
#56 Ezzthetic
April 29, 2009

Andrew Bolt is denouncing Tony Jones for only being able to expose one error in his interview of Plimer.

I really wish more people who are scientifically literate would post on Bolt’s site. The main reason he gets away with murder is that few who post are in a position to oppose him.

Anyone who does know what they’re talking about is guaranteed to get beaten up by the standard jeersquad.
#57 Lea
April 29, 2009

Scientifically literate people are generally moderated from Bolt’s site. They don’t do logic very well,either. A few long-standing opposing voices are allowed, to maintain the illusion of some diversity of view and more importantly, provide the live feed for the enraged baboons.
#58 DavidK
April 29, 2009

Ezzthetic #56. I really wish more people who are scientifically literate would post on Bolt’s site. The main reason he gets away with murder is that few who post are in a position to oppose him.

I’ve tried on a number of occasions. Bolt (or his moderators) have banned my IP/url. You tell me how I can explain the science in a reasoned and rational way that opposes his ‘opinion’ when the excuse is I am not contributing to the “debate”.
#59 Barton Paul Levenson
April 29, 2009

Robert,

Great minds think alike. I did a similar essay at:

http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Correlation.html
#60 Bernard J.
April 29, 2009

I really wish more people who are scientifically literate would post on Bolt’s site. The main reason he gets away with murder is that few who post are in a position to oppose him.

I’ve given up trying to post at Bolt’s. Even when I am as polite as anyone could expect, my posts disappear into the æther.

Someone there doesn’t like, or want, reasoned science.
#61 MarkG
April 29, 2009

Both the Bolt and Marohasy blogs are a waste of time to participate in if you wish to promote science or logic. The invective and very childish behaviour of a few of the commentators there (implicitly, if not actively condoned) result in a very high signal-to-noise ratio. Good luck getting through, I certainly have respect for those who try.

The political process that forms the underlying background to all our discussion is by it’s very nature compromised. I’m quite pessimistic about it to be honest. Physics on the other hand doesn’t really care whether the Bolts, Marohasys and Plimers of this world choose to damage their long term credibility in this way. And because the physics is also inexorable this damage is inevitable. Science values only what is right and does not really remember kindly people who were recalcitrantly wrong. And people who are right about the science however are forgiven almost every personal failure, it’s just how it is. So don’t get too uptight about it all.
#62 WotWot
April 29, 2009

Don’t waste your time on Bolta Boy’s blog. It is totally rigged, always has been. There is no genuine dissent and debate allowed. None. It is a sham.
#63 cohenite
April 30, 2009

So DavidK and the rest of the lads just want a free impartial debate, eh? That’s not what Monckton got at the recent US hearings when big Al overruled his invite; Gore and Hansen want deniars jailed and Hansen is not enamoured of the democratic process either for allowing dissent in the ranks or as he says corruption by the boardroom; back home Robert Manne wants us all to take a bex, have a good lie down and let the scientists have their way with us;

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25380219-17803,00.html

This is exactly what Clive wanted when he spat the dummy at On Line some time ago. Actually, it’s healthy trend, this demarcation of experts, either for or against AGW; in law experts can theoretically decide a case but the potential arrogation of judge and jury by experts has been somewhat neutralised by the fact that both sides can bring to bear their experts; after a while experts get a rep for being either a plaintiffs’ or defendants’ man; as a result the expert dance is routinised and the guilt and judgement process goes back to the proper dispensers, the public. This is one reason why I have come out against AGW; it has been acompanied by determined efforts to censor and restrict debate and opinion.

As to some of the louts here being refused service at Bolt and JM’s, I just can’t see it; after all you are all such adornments to the recherche exchange of AGW ideas; Bolt, however, has a fine nose for being patronised; maybe that was it; as for JM, I’ll personally vouch for anyone for wants to dip their toes over there
#64 Mark Byrne
April 30, 2009

Did cohenite coach Plimer on how to dodge and dance from one falsehood to the next in order to pretend that their arguments have yet to be debunked?

Cohenite if your don’g go back and address the rebuttals to your arguments, readers will question your credibility.

Perhaps Lord Monckton had as similarly discredited record of spreading baseless assertions? Would genuine sceptics really want their argument presents by someone employing such tactics?
#65 Mark Byrne
April 30, 2009

Did cohenite coach Plimer on how to dodge and dance from one falsehood to the next in order to pretend that their arguments have yet to be debunked?

Cohenite if your don’g go back and address the rebuttals to your arguments, readers will question your credibility.

Perhaps Lord Monckton had as similarly discredited record of spreading baseless assertions? Would genuine sceptics really want their argument presents by someone employing such tactics?
#66 Mark Byrne
April 30, 2009

Did cohenite coach Plimer on how to dodge and dance from one falsehood to the next in order to pretend that their arguments have yet to be debunked?

Cohenite if your don’g go back and address the rebuttals to your arguments, readers will question your credibility.

Perhaps Lord Monckton had as similarly discredited record of spreading baseless assertions? Would genuine sceptics really want their argument presents by someone employing such tactics?
#67 Mark Byrne
April 30, 2009

Did cohenite coach Plimer on how to dodge and dance from one falsehood to the next in order to pretend that their arguments have yet to be debunked?

Cohenite if your don’g go back and address the rebuttals to your arguments, readers will question your credibility.

Perhaps Lord Monckton had as similarly discredited record of spreading baseless assertions? Would genuine sceptics really want their argument presents by someone employing such tactics?
#68 sod
April 30, 2009

the fact that both sides can bring to bear their experts;

and here you got it wrong. there simply are no two sides on the issue of AGW. neither are there “experst2 on “the other side”.

here is my offer: chose by random 10 people who have published on a relevant subject. and let them appear in person or offer them someone to replace them for the hearing.

sorry, but Monckton wouldn t show up under those conditions…
#69 Barton Paul Levenson
April 30, 2009

cohenite, if there has been any censorship, it’s all on the denialist side. It’s the denialists who tried to muzzle James Hansen, who fired Jim Salinger, and who keep rationalists off denier blogs. Denialists haven’t been suppressed; they’ve been chattering about their nonsense 24/7 all over the internet, press, and media. They get their books published, they dominate right-wing talk radio, they hold conferences and congratulate each other nonstop. They’re about as suppressed as rock music in California.
#70 DavidK
April 30, 2009

Dummy spit? Cohenite, a dummy spit is when a small group of ‘hasbeens’ have a pow-wow in NY at the expense of the International Science Congress in Copenhagen. If the Heartland cabal really had something to contribute to climate science they would have strutted their stuff in Denmark. They didn’t. One has to wonder about their veracity when even the likes of Spencer “publishes” a “paper” on a denialist blogsite prior to submission to a real journal. Sounds more like another dummy spit to me.
#71 jodyaberdein
May 1, 2009

Lank is taking a lot of time on that homework isn’t he?
#72 ScaredAmoeba
May 2, 2009

Gish gallop or dance of denial?
As someone who has not read Plimer’s minimum opus, because I don’t believe in rewarding denial. However, I have watched the Plimer torrent of gelatinous denial on video and it strikes me that his recent piece of trash is little more than a giant straw man argument, constructed from smaller straw men. Of course that’s why the preposterous Plimer kept switching from falsehood to falsehood.

The problem with Plimer is that while he spouts garbage as if it were gospel, he’s good at it and a significant number of the public, will swallow his hogwash and learn to distrust science.

Magic crystals, snakeoil – anyone?