Drudge and the denialists

Yesterday, I wrote:

I wonder how many of the folks accusing NIWA of cooking their data will correct their posts?

Of course, the answer was none of them. Instead, Drudge decided that my post was supporting the trumped out charges against NIWA and linked it. As a result, the comments were overrun by nutty denialists. I added a link to the Copenhagen Diagnosis to the top of my post and it would seem that this to Drudge what sunlight is to vampires, because he deleted the link. In the meantime someone blindly following Drudge put a link on Digg that presented my post as saying the opposite of what it did.

And over at WUWT one Gene Nemtz decided that the IPCC or someone was magically redirecting links:

It appears there is something going on with links going to ClimateGate stories. Some are being redirected to sites that say something like this:

You are being lied to--man is causing climate to change

A Drudge link to the NZ temp story actually ended up [at my post]

Below the fold for your amusement, a selection of the nutty comments from Drudgoids:

It's not science, it's the religion of the left... Science has never had one thing to do with it. It is simply about destroying the very concept of God and replacing it with MASSIVE government! All hail his royal FUCKTARD COWARD, Barack Obama!

Folks, this climate deal is very easy. Show us the raw data over time from the same sites over many years using equipment that does not require adjustments of any kind. Simple. We do not trust people or equipment that needs judgments of opinion when it comes to altering our lifestyles significantly and costing us Trillions of Dollars, not to mention the anxiety added.

Sounds like a bunch of you morons are a little upset that the biggest scam in the history of the world is out of the bag and into the light where it will die the death it deserves. Can't wait to see Al Gore in jail oh happy happy day.

Is this computer scientist on the AGW dole, modeling grants say, or just a true believer? Because what kind of scientist hears "ADJUSTMENTS" and their BS detectors do not flutter. Enjoy your carbon trading scam, Zealanders.

ROFLMAO, Kool-Aid for everyone. Sorry idiot, we don't bow down to your religion, and the curtain has been pulled from your hoax. What part of FALSIFYING DATA TO MAKE NON-EXISTANT TRENDS LOOK LIKE WARMING don't you understand. You and your ilk can continue bowing down to Lord Obama, or whatever other liberal idol you want, but THE WORLD NOW KNOWS IT WAS A COMPLETE HOAX, AND YOUR RELIGION IS DEAD. TRYING TO CHANGE THAT FACT BY CONTINUING TO MASSAGE THE EMAILS IS NOT GOING TO HELP YOU. WE SEE WHAT THEY SAY, AND THEY SIMPLY SUPPORT THE FACTS WE ALREADY KNEW. YOUR GOOSE IS COOKED.

Tim L - Please seek mental help. AGW is hoax and you continue to push this hoax on a public that is aware of it. You and your colleagues look like idiots. Please STOP. Give it 5 or 10 years and a new great cause will come along.

Al Gore, q low grade moron has made over 100 million dollars off promoting his global warming scam. Gore has taken 500 million more from the US taxpayers in preparation for the Cap and Trade SCAM. I REST MY CASE. SCAM. SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM.SCAM

Lovely SCAM! Wonderful SCAM!

More like this

Well that's a bit of comic relief.

It's absolutely astounding how irrational and fanatical the global warming denial cult it.

Drudge probably thought the "New Zealand Climate Science Coalition" sounded like a real scientific organization (instead of a group of denialist political hacks), so when he saw that name along with the word "lying" he jumped on it. Tabloid types like Drudge often don't get past the headline.

The scam is over. Come out from your mothers basements and join the real world you arrogant Pseudo science freaks. It is over. Experience reality.

By peppanicky (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Startling, but hilarious!

I love Drudge's own goal, I love the confused response by the ditto heads. They do seem to be reaching some kind of crescendo about it all, don't they? Maybe their pinheads will finally pop and we can get back to everyday life.

Testimony of Richard C. Levin
President, Yale University
Committee on the Environment and Public Works
April 3, 2008

"The Panel concluded that, in the absence of corrective measures, global temperatures are likely to rise between 1 and 6 degrees centigrade by the
end of this century, with the best estimates ranging between 2 and 4 degrees."

Actually Richard, your a bit high but very close, but I think it will be about 1.95 degrees (2.6 * 0.75);

The human contribution to global warming:

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor

yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)

densall=densall+yearlyadj

It gives me confidence that the denialists will end up shooting themselves in the foot collective over 'climategate'.

Tim, as well as the spam sketch can you perhaps post the upper-class-twit of the year sketch from Monty Python.

Bloody vikings denialists!

Andrew, which file are you quoting? The only one I can find that contains the words "fudge factor" is briffa_sep98_d.pro, which doesn't refer to densall at all.

That said, with briffa_sep98_d.pro, the code doesn't stop at defining the adjustment. It goes on:

;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow

;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20

;

filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow

oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21

That's the only point in the program where the adjustment is actually used, as opposed to being updated.

If you're familiar with IDL, the semicolon delineates a comment. Note that the adjusted value is commented out and thus nonfunctional - common practice for debugging (change the comments and you readily compare the adjusted to nonadjusted data, for instance).

What's needed here is someone showing that maladjusted data was used in the literature.

Correction: It also shows up in briffa_sep98_e.pro, which I missed on my initial search.

My point still holds, though: Show me where this corrupted the actual literature, if anywhere, rather than in context-free snippets of code that may or may not have been actually used (several of these files appear to be in-progress test programs, for instance).

OMG!

Melissa was not a Poe!

>It's not science, it's the religion of the left... Science has never had one thing to do with it. It is simply about destroying the very concept of God and replacing it with MASSIVE government! All hail his royal FUCKTARD COWARD, Barack Obama!

Well, at least one quote was not Poe!

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

I think that much of yesterday's troll deluge could have been avoided if, in order to comment, they were first required to solve a simple problem in arithmetic or identify a basic grammatical error in a sample sentence.

Honestly, I'm mildly surprised that many were capable of navigating the interons at all. (Just think - what we got might have been the smart end of Drudge's readership, namely, the ones who could puzzle out the intricacies of a blog comment form).

And Janet Akerman@11: I had her pegged as a Poe too.

My fave was this snippet... "I realize it is one of the tenants of your socialist/communist libtard religion..." A lovely mix of illiteracy, Mrs Malaprop, and spittle.

Tim,

You,and many of your commenters, just don't seem to understand. The cat is well and truly 'out of the bag', indeed, the 'bird has flown'.

I note that Mike Hulme, an erstwhile colleague of Jones at CRU and later the Tyndall Centre, has joined the fray at Andrew Revkin's site.

Sorry to use another cliche or two, but the stone has been turned and people will not like what it has revealed. Rather than continuing BAU you need to be building bridges.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Whatever you say, one thing stands out to me from the NIWA story: the upward trend in temperature is wholly dependent on *what kind* of correction you apply to the actual temp measurements.

The data don't prove warming, it's the treatment you give to the data that brings out a warming trend.

OK... that's not shocking. But:

Objective fact - the treatment is inevitably subjective.
Subjective comment - the treatment is not exactly openly documented for review by others.

Given the importance of the outcomes, should we not see much, much more openness about this fact on data treatment?

I am not surprised that sceptics are radicalising. The dogmatic stonewalling of major facts like the one above would have that effect on many free-thinking individuals.

It will sure have that effect on me, if this hysterical stonewalling continues.

Only one minor fault with your otherwise impeccable argument Oscar; the data do show warming.
But thank you for your concern.

It's snowing today. Aaaagh! Global warming has stopped!!!!111! The ice age is coming!!!!!111111111!!
It's snowing... in Calgary... in November... Oh, wait...

By Holly Stick (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Dave Andrews said:

Rather than continuing BAU you need to be building bridges.

If we continue BAU we will be building bridges all right, lots of them to replace those washed out by the ever increasing frequency of floods. See Cumbria for pictures of the bridges that will now have to be built. Just imagine that a hundred times over in 30 to 50 years.

It will cost a pretty penny. Dave, don't you think it would be better to spend a little now rather than huge amounts in the future? Of course, I forgot that you are selfish and arrogant so you don't care what the cost of BAU will be to future generations.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Ah yes Holly, but it is warm snow :-)

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

The problem we had before was that people ignorant of the science of climate change but read the skeptic sites would think "The hockey stick is broken therefore AGW is wrong".

Now we have in addition "the CRU emails show AGW is a fraud therefore AGW is wrong"

Before the fact that the Hockey stick was not broken did not affect the climate ignorant from trumpeting this mantra. In exactly the same way facts will not change the mantra of the CRU emails. You cannot counter a political argument with science.

The skeptics are politicians not scientists. They now have something new to deceive the ignorant. My suggestion is to not engage. They have no science so why are we arguing with them about the science.

I did this with the Hockey Stick. Arguing with them only encourages them - I think it is better to let them have their own little denial world while the real scientists talk in the peer reviewed literature like the did before. As none of the skeptics can participate in the conversation, unless of course the start doing science, then they will be left shouting in a vacuum.

By Stephen Gloor … (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Stephen Gloor: Does this give you any ideas?

The proper title is Christopher Robin, the Discount Mountebank of Benchwarmer, FTHL*, OGâ 

"Why settle for peer review if it's not from peers?â¢"

*Frequent trespasser, House of Lords.

â Order of the Garter Snake

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

The clanging in the denialsphere seems to have got much much louder since 2005.

None of the people who should be fighting for climate scientists are doing so. So it is only the scientists themselves - and they look aggressive as a result.

I did this with the Hockey Stick. Arguing with them only encourages them - I think it is better to let them have their own little denial world while the real scientists talk in the peer reviewed literature like the did before. As none of the skeptics can participate in the conversation, unless of course the start doing science, then they will be left shouting in a vacuum.

You're right. But only insomuch as these people do not have the ear of curious leaders and opinion makers who are willing to be swayed away from certainty.

By George Darroch (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Dave Andrews :;"..you need to be building bridges." No,Dave ,you need to learn how to use them. For instance,what was Mike Hulme suggesting as he mused about science communication?

The people obsessing over that FORTRAN code are making a hell of a lot of assumptions based on things other than what the code actually does. I don't code in FORTRAN, but from what I can see that's just an array of scalars used for an interpolation function that isn't defined in the snippet. Has anyone with a knowledge of FORTRAN actually attempted to run the code to verify any of these claims or is all just the usual gas and noise from denalists?

The people obsessing over that FORTRAN code

It's not FORTRAN, it's IDL.

Someone was poking at their program investigating how that would change the output.

For instance, "if X were true causing the measured data to be wrong by Y amount, how would affect the analysis?"

I suspect that several scientists in several countries in the world have done something similar with data they're working with in the time it has taken me to type this post.

Since methods portions of published papers describe, well, methods if the denialists had evidence that such playing around with the dataset had led to fraudulent analyses being published ... they'd be able to show us in at least one such paper, right?

They can't - so they point to the "smoking gun" of some lines of code computing something that IS THROWN AWAY AND NOT USED.

"It's not FORTRAN, it's IDL."

I've been looking at an IDL reference to make sense of the code, I'm mostly trying to figure out what the return values of the INTERPOL and FINDGEN functions are and how they're used. Regardless, it seems that the whole portion code is commented out by ";"'s.

I'm still waiting for someone out there to actually run the code to see what it does, and furthermore see if anything like it was actually published in the literature. If not, then the whole argument is useless.

Tim,

Surely your nutty quotes weren't all genuine? None of those were spoofs from Deltoid regulars?

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

> one Gene Nemtz decided that the IPCC or
> someone was magically redirecting links

That would be the World Wide Warming conspiracy.
Anything you type in a web browser has to go through their filter.

"http" stands for "help to take part"

The colon slash slash --- well, you know about that.

I'm still waiting for someone out there to actually run the code to see what it does, and furthermore see if anything like it was actually published in the literature. If not, then the whole argument is useless.

CRU says the fudging was never used for anything published in the literature.

Now, if Eric Raymond or others can prove that CRU is lying about this, or can show that the adjusted data was presented as being unadjusted, or any one of several other scenarios, then there'd be a firm basis for claiming scientific fraud.

But they're not even trying. They're saying that the very existence of these lines of code proves that all of climate science is a massive fraud.

Ah, Hank has explained it. So I assume https stands for "help take part secretly" ...

Why do conservatives, fundies, and denialists hate smart people?

Their anti-intellectualism smacks vaguely of the Nazis' anti-intellectualism.

By Katharine (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

You global cooling deniers need to stop drinking the âwarm aidâ and stop worshiping at the altar of Al âIâm not fat anymoreâ Gore.

'Truth is the enemy of the state,' said Hitler's propaganda minister. The ABC will have a lot to answer for when the conservatives regain the treasury benches.

Objective fact - the treatment is inevitably subjective.

I'm missing the part where normalizing the values between the earlier and later locations of stations that move is "subjective."

Subjective comment - the treatment is not exactly openly documented for review by others.

Maybe that's because until the last few years, nobody made a political football of the data. It was a technical footnote among professionals who accepted each others' professionalism.

Local example: the official reporting station for Phoenix was, up until recently, at Sky Harbor Airport. Back in the 1930s, that was out in a lettuce field. By the turn of the century, it was in the midst of square kilometers of concrete and asphalt runways and parking lots, surrounded by the center of the fifth largest city in the United States. It was routinely reporting temperatures several degrees hotter than anything else in the metropolitan area -- so the official reporting station was moved.

Sky Harbor still records temperatures (they need it for things like flap settings) -- which means that we have a very good set of parallel measurements. For historical purposes it's easy to compare the "before" and "after" values, and with a little work it's not too hard to separate the urban heat island effects from the underlying climatic shifts.

HTH. HAND.

By D. C. Sessions (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Well Tim,
You have gone and done it. Those emails are crazier than the ones I get. I do have a couple that can stand on the same stage, but I hereby pronounce you the recipient of the nuttiest of the nutters in the email arena!

Dan

>*CRU says the fudging was never used for anything published in the literature.*

>*Now, if Eric Raymond or others can prove that CRU is lying about this, or can show that the adjusted data was presented as being unadjusted, or any one of several other scenarios, then there'd be a firm basis for claiming scientific fraud.*

>*But they're not even trying. They're saying that the very existence of these lines of code proves that all of climate science is a massive fraud.*

dhogaza, following the lead of Myron Ebell, 'acadder' has [taken up the cause](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/new_zealand_climate_science_co…) and will shortly produce evidence that that CRU data was fraud.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

That is all too funny. Do these people expect to be taken seriously? How can you sound that stupid and still operate a keyboard?

JennieL has a great idea...have people solve a simple logic problem before they can post. That'll cut down some of the infestation. E.g. finish the conclusion

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is...

:)

By Daniel J. Andrews (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Socrates is all man?

;)

A

@40, @41: All men are Socrates.

Ohhh, my achin' head.

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

I've previously joked that there actually is profound debate about climate change within the scientific community - debate about whether the deniers are selfish, sociopathic stooges for the denial industry or idiotic, right-wing, mouth-breathing flat-earthers.

Unfortunately I can't use that joke any more, it appears to have been settled.

>*I've previously joked that there actually is profound debate about climate change within the scientific community - debate about whether the deniers are selfish, sociopathic stooges for the denial industry or idiotic, right-wing, mouth-breathing flat-earthers.

>*Unfortunately I can't use that joke any more, it appears to have been settled.

Aah, but Stu, who's winding up the crazies?

Absence of evidence and all that...

You could turn it into a Chicken-egg joke perhaps?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Katherine wrote:

Their anti-intellectualism smacks vaguely of the Nazis' anti-intellectualism

I think they're more like the Taliban.

So, crates are more tall.

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Unfortunately the neo-McCathyism experienced by scientist (and sampled here yesterday) is the predictable consequence of classic divide and conquer demagoguery.

Galvanise a vulnerable populous (disaffected, faux-news watching types [who should be angry at being ripped of], and divert that anger by playing them off against another target.

The oldest trick in the book, rule by dividing "your people" into manageable competing groups.

Would be an interesting exercise to count the groups that have been vilified for a similar ends throughout history.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo:

The ABC will have a lot to answer for when the conservatives regain the treasury benches.

Yeah, in the 20+ years it will take them to do it. I'm sure the ABC staff are shaking in their boots.

BTW, to whom it may concern, oh please, please, please make Tony Abbott leader of the Liberal Party. I can barely contain the anticipation of overwhelming laughter.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Chris,

And lets not forget the other main point, el gordo is full of rage that ABC don't give Bolt a platform to spruke his BS on science.

Why would ABC not do this, cos who is Bolt to represent anything on science. Bolt misleads his readers with crap such as sea-level is not rising. It's an outrage that he is so over represented in the media.

If ABC want to report what Flannary says, I'm sure they can interview Flannery. They don't need cherry pick bit of BS, that's not news, it is simply out of context quote mined BS, which is why el gordo want more of it. It all they have.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 27 Nov 2009 #permalink

Read this for a laugh :-
On an obscure UK political website, (British Democracy Forum, Energy & Environment thread), that I post on, in favour of AGW, I recently posted the link to video lectures:-

A series of video lectures to help you all to understand REAL science:-

"Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast" by David Archer

These are the replies I received :- (I have reduced the fontsize to save space & italicised for reply emphasis)

.................

First reply from Gimlet

Anthropegenic Global Warming (AGW) and the climate change myth is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetuated onto the general public, created by environmental extremists and supported by governments who wish to enact their political, social, and economic agendas. The main argument used by these alarmists is that CO2 emissions will cause catastrophic global warming. There is absolutely no science that substantiates such claims, period.
The following quote sums it up in a nutshell:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.â
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
It couldn't have been stated better. Let's now review the history and the facts:
Global warming is something that has been happening for a long time. The temperature of the Earth has been increasing more or less continuously since the time of the cave man.
Approximately 18,000 years ago the Earth began a gradual process of warming up after more than 100,000 years of Ice Ages. Much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice. By about 15,000 years ago the Earth had warmed sufficiently to halt the advance of glaciers, and sea levels worldwide began to rise. By 8,000 years ago the land bridge across the Bering Strait was drowned, cutting off the migration of men and animals to North America. Since the end of the Ice Age, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet! Forests have returned where once there was only ice.
From a geological perspective, global warming is the normal state of our accustomed natural world. Technically, we are in an "interglacial phase," or between ice ages. The question is not really if an ice age will return, but when.

..............

Second from g hall

anothe one of Clippo's realclimate BLOGGERS and as we all know Clippo does not believe Bloggers unless thay are mugs like him
BTW I note realclimate are now making their excuses for the stuff revealed from the publication of the emails cracked from the UEA - more cr@p

...............

Thirdly from Keyser Soze

Why can't clippo understand that tens of millions of us in this country just don't believe the CC/MMGW information that has and is constantly being presented?
Why can't he understand this?

...............

Fourthly from g hall again

Quote:
Originally Posted by Keyser Soze
Why can't he understand this?[endquote]

I suggest a poll

gullibility

stupidity

financial interest

er that's it

............

Fifth, from Keyser Soze again:-

It looks like he qualifies on all three of those then.
I feel sorry for him now.
We're all to blame I suppose, but I did try to get you all to call an ambulance for him about two years or so ago and you lot said he was just a bit dizzy and hallucinating because he had just found out that he had been had by the MMGW crims and he was worried about losing his pension from the Co-op Dairy job he had had for 45 years or more. He actually thinks he's a scientist nowadays. Aaaaaw the poor little sucker.
OK, the parties over for you sonnyboy, back in your box clippo.

..............

My last reply:-

I gave you some rope and you all just hanged yourselves
added in edit:-
especially for any dozey geyser(s) here, you my find this link interesting:-
Climate Activism Soars Planetwide Ahead of Copenhagen Climate Talks | SolveClimate.com
from which:-
[quote] In the span of three months, nearly 10 million people have signed on to TckTckTck to tell leaders they're concerned about the future and ready for global climate action. [/quite]
where can I find the signatures of your 'millions' of people?

.............

See what ludicrous intelligence, (if any), we are up against.

D.C. Sessions

"I'm missing the part where normalizing the values between the earlier and later locations of stations that move is "subjective.""

Right, however when the adjustments are of the same order of magnitude as the trend you can see why it looks like a plausible argument - i.e. any error in adjustments will affect the trend and it is not clear to most people how much (it's not clear to me, anyhow). So people go away thinking the adjustments *are* the trend.

Some kind of idiot's guide as to why this is not so would be useful. For example in the case of a station move, it should be possible to analyse the data after the move as presumably the trend is also present in that (and therefore cannot be an artifact of the adjustments).

I would have a crack at this but stats is not my strong suit.

Another point that is not clear to me is what do you do in the case where you don't have any parallel measurements to work out the appropriate adjustment?

Janet Ackerman wrote:

Bolt misleads his readers with crap such as sea-level is not rising. It's an outrage that he is so over represented in the media.

Affirmative action for conservatives.

51 Clippo,

I think you're wasting your time [there](http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/environment-energy/).

That lot are beyond rational discussion. They are:-

Disgustingly arrogant.

Shamefully ignorant.

Depressingly stupid.

Scarily fanatical.

Pathologically dishonest.

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

I streamed the Lateline interview with Tony Abbot the other day (sorry non Australian posters). Tony Jones asked Abbot if he had read any of the science on climate change. Abbot replied, abashed, that he hadn't and then offered the excuse that he didn't have time to read it and thats what he had policy people for. He then came back swinging saying that there are some good scientists being ignored on AGW.

So he is well qualified to dismiss the science

There was even a denialist at anncoulter.com who linked to Tim's post as support climate scientists are cooking the books.
I thanked him for joining the forces of reason. :-)

They don't read or think much do they?

>Bolt misleads his readers with crap such as sea-level is not rising.

I intend to take a photo of a place near where I live where on a high tide the water laps into the street a bit.

I just need to look at the tidal tables to arrange for the correct time.

I'm mostly trying to figure out what the return values of the INTERPOL and FINDGEN functions are and how they're used. Regardless, it seems that the whole portion code is commented out by ";"'s.

INTERPOL is an interpolation function. You give it a discrete set of 20 data points, and then you say, interpolate these and produce 100 data points - just to give an example. (The interpolation used in the code is linear.)

FINDGEN creates an array, initialized with its corresponding indexes. For example, the line that reads

yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]

creates an array of the form [1400,1904,1909,1914,...], 20 elements total.

An yes, the artificial adjustment is commented out in that source file.

I'm still waiting for someone out there to actually run the code to see what it does,

Does anyone know where to get a copy of IDL 5.x? Either way, I'm not sure all the necessary files are there, and it's not clear how to produce them (there are a number of options.)

I think some perspective is important. Coders only add comments in code when they want to remind themselves of something, or when they want to communicate something non-obvious to their fellow developers. If you add all-caps comments ending in "!!" such as "VERY ARTIFICIAL" you're cautioning your team-mates about something, namely that the code is rudimentary and that it likely needs to be removed or replaced with something else in the future.

If you were trying to obfuscate wrongdoing, you'd never do that. That explanation makes no sense to begin with.

Coders only add comments in code when they want to remind themselves of something, or when they want to communicate something non-obvious to their fellow developers. If you add all-caps comments ending in "!!" such as "VERY ARTIFICIAL" you're cautioning your team-mates about something, namely that the code is rudimentary and that it likely needs to be removed or replaced with something else in the future.

Very true - and I speak as a person doing research in computer science.

I've done some modelling-type things, and I have had a few occasions where I put super-artificial hacks into the code, because I knew from external knowledge that certain parts of the dataset I'm working on are - if only examined with the information the code has - wrong, and I know from first principles how to work out something to patch those errors for that specific dataset.

Back towards the matter at hand - I remember reading that the temperature measurements for the 1940s are believed to have been erroneously high; something about ocean measurements being primarily in the wake of warships. If that's so, and the dataset they're using is some kind of unadjusted measurements, you would expect a patch to lower those temperatures and otherwise apply that adjustment.

Also, to anyone who tries to claim the code is a mess and that that's a problem: If messy code invalidated research, the entire field of computer science would be a lie. Research code is TERRIBLE, absolutely full of special-cases and warts and hacks and tricks and bugs, and it always will be. There's absolutely no need to put in the extra time required to make it clean and correct and maintainable, because it won't be maintained by anyone but the original creator who knows all the warts, and if it requires careful massaging of input to make it work that's okay, because the code is written once and then run once, and it's run by someone who knows it in and out and it doesn't need to be robust. But all that ugliness doesn't matter anyway! What matters is that different people writing code for the same research question get the same results, and it's almost certain that any errors will not get replicated.

By Michael Ralston (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Well I'm glad someone else has the same opinion M Ralston.
I worked in the commercial software sector (actually designed a system for Sydney Light Railway many years ago, almost forgot about that, that was a long time ago!).

Although I haven't worked on research software I'm well aware that the needs are different. From my experience the vast majority of code in commercial real time software is to cater for the unexpected, faults and errors. A tiny part of the code actually does anything positive.

It would be ridiculous to expect the same levels of testing and fault checking etc in research software. It would be hugely expensive for a start.

Janet Akerman says:

Why would ABC not do this, cos who is Bolt to represent anything on science. Bolt misleads his readers with crap such as sea-level is not rising. It's an outrage that he is so over represented in the media.

And, just to prove the point, Bolt was again on The Insiders on the ABC, this morning. How can one MSM-hack have such clout? Oh, that's right, the ABC board is to a person - and I pick my words very carefully here - to the far-right of Genghis Khan.

I want my eight cents a day back!

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Michael Ralston and
Paul UK:

I largely agree too. The idiot-proofing required for absolutely every contigency with commercial software is generally a much higher bar than that required for research-purpose software. However, some distinctions exist within research software. Clearly, if a scientist is writing software for their own research, they probably won't bother with traps where the scientist will easily spot an error for what it is anyway. On the other hand, inputs that are negative when they are expected to be positive is something that must be caught in commercial software - no ifs or buts about it.

For a scientist who has control over the inputs, it really depends on whether they think it is worth extra time and effort to check in the code, versus checking at an earlier stage of their data pipeline. Commercial code, on the other hand must check - even redundantly, in standard business cases - at every point of the data pipeline where an explicit interface exists, whether human-software or software-software module type of interface. For real-time or embedded code, redundant checks might be omitted for speed and/or memory constraints to be met: in my experience, the testing process is extremely unforgiving on such software for just this reason.

Once researchers start working in teams though, what worked for a single researcher or researcher and one colleague, starts to unravel fairly quickly when more colleagues are involved. I'm certain many research teams would have had at least one experience like the following:

"Did you use the version I emailed you with the kludge for X, or the old version I gave you (yesterday!)? Ans: My email server was down yesterday, so I borrowed last month's copy from Ralph...".

We all know where that kind of conversation ends up going, and it is pretty ugly.

Once a team of more than two is involved, some form of software version control is generally required - it isn't onerous or particularly difficult. If the team is responsible for public release of data, then some level of software configuration management should really be in place and funded properly.

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

ToddPT:

There was even a denialist at anncoulter.com who linked to Tim's post as support climate scientists are cooking the books. I thanked him for joining the forces of reason. :-)
They don't read or think much do they?

They don't need to read or think because they know they're right.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

I suppose that Bolt gets into that program time and again for the sake of "balance" - that holy MSM cow to which we owe so much denialist stuff that never should have seen the light of day.

This morning he gave me a good laugh when he said on that "Insiders" program that Joe Hockey didn't have the "intellectual discipline" to understand climate change. He, Bolt, had talked to him to no avail.

Another good experience this morning was to see Ian Plimer being knocked back at least four times by the moderator on Monbiot's Guardian blog (presumably not Monbiot himself)when he tried to comment. Seeing what some other people were saying there P.'s comments must have been pretty outrageous.

By Arie Brand (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Just in case you hear the rumour, perish the though, that data sources are hidden away in secret-squirrel-like treasure troves, note that Gavin Schmidt and the team are assembling a directory of links to myriad data sources. Most of them have existed for quite some time, as in years. They have called the page - you guessed it - RealClimate Data Sources.

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

drmabu7 is lost in more ways than one. He is a creationist who thinks he is posting at Pharyngula.

Creationists are mostly shamefully ignorant, depressingly stupid and scarily fanatical. Some of them are disgustingly arrogant and pathologically dishonest. When pressed just about all of them will reveal themselves to be AGW deniers.

The denialist-in-chief of these creationists used to be James Inhofe, who himself is a leading member of the Family, dedicated to turning America into a theocracy. The new face of the creationists and denialists is Sarah Palin.

Now that Andrew Bolt is calling Penny Wong a 'denier' I feel obliged to disassociate myself from the Denialati. Effective immediately!

Welcome, el gordo. Please state your reasons for now accepting the science of climate change. If you have any difficulties with your new understanding, such as how the greenhouse effect works, how it differs from photosynthesis, or what type of human activities are contributing most to global warming, don't hesitate to ask.

This morning he gave me a good laugh when he said on that "Insiders" program that Joe Hockey didn't have the "intellectual discipline" to understand climate change. He, Bolt, had talked to him to no avail.

LOL!

What's scary is that Bolt probably believes this - that he is intellectually disciplined and a fearless seeker after truth. Dunning-Kruger Effect doesn't even begin to explain it.

Oh, and btw, drmabu7 is "David Mabus," aka Dennis Markuze, a very disturbed individual obsessed with James Randi. He's been banned multiple times at Pharyngula, but tends to reappear under new nyms, and when he can't get through, spams random scienceblogs threads instead. Best to just ignore it.

At clippo 51. Gimlet (or was it Giblet?) is likely right when he said, "The question is not really if an ice age will return, but when. "

Orbital variations will probably take us (or the earth anyway) into the next ice age in, ohhhh, a few thousand years or more. A wee bit late to do any good right now.

By Daniel J. Andrews (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Climategate was first coined at WUWT by a character named 'bulldust' on 19 November at 3.52 am.

'Hmmm how long before this is dubbed ClimateGate?'

Ian Plimer being knocked back at least four times by the moderator on Monbiot's Guardian blog

Are you sure that was really Plimer?

I've heard that unscrupulous people have been known to comment under fake names.

By Gary Ruppert (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Um, "deltoid" ... with all that's going on, is this really the best post you have to offer? FFS... get serious.

el gordo:

Hockey doesn't have the intellectual discipline,

You forgot to point out "unlike Bolt".

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Um, "deltoid" ... with all that's going on, is this really the best post you have to offer? FFS... get serious.

FFS Hushashi, is this the best you can do?

Slow news day CON.

Andrew Bolt is part of the intelligentsia. My guess he will run for the Senate at the next election and be an outstanding politician.

Keep in mind he is from the left, but has moved with me to the right over this CC scam.

It is my melancholy duty to inform you that we are right and you are wrong about global warming.

el gordo:
>Hockey doesn't have the intellectual discipline, so it will have to be the mad monk. I didn't realise there were so many Catholics on the conservative front bench.

Read as: Abbott ("The Mad Monk) is know by deniers to have the correct intellectual discipline, after being forced to admit (on the ABC -damn them) to have not read any IPCC summaries.

Deniers love opinionated ignorance.

Others ask, why do deniers love opinionated ignorance on an issue that has such critical consequent risk?

el gordo?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Re truesceptic # and Daniel J Andrews #, thanks for comments on my earlier post. This was just one very small example of hundreds of posts from such nutters â and I know they post elsewhere and are definitely members of the UK Libertarian party etc.

The point I was making is that their GW warming comments are comic and I posted it to give you all a relaxing chuckle. (and this is why I visit Deltoid daily â for a laugh from the best denialist debunking site around imo).
For the last year or Iâve only posted there mainly to wind them up but yes, I am now getting out âa pity in some ways, because there are others there who are genuine doubters i.e. doubt because they donât have all the information. One of my tactics has been to try to give them facts but targeted at their perceived level.

I donât doubt they have used wind-up tactics on me â as, for example, el gordo must be doing here (smile)

@Oscar #15: The information you claim is not available is in fact available as NIWA claims; it is part of the most basic bookkeeping done by meteorological institutes for over 100 years now. I doubt it would help you any though; you have to know what you're doing to make any meaningful conclusions from the data. Your claim that the post-processing of the data (assuming that's what you mean by 'treatment') is subjective is incorrect. There is nothing subjective about the treatment of the temperature data between the station near sea level and the station at a higher altitude. If you are not even aware of this basic fact, how can you possibly interpret the data?

By MadScientist (not verified) on 28 Nov 2009 #permalink

Akerman

Abbott is a political opportunist who will keep the seat warm until Cory or Barnaby pick up a lower house seat and replace him.

The msm say he is the intellectual heart of the party, which of course is nonsense. He knows next to nothing about the CC debate and also believes in God.

Phooey...

el gordo,

Others ask, why do deniers love opinionated ignorance on an issue that has such critical consequent risk?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

At least the denialists are going to do something useful for a change (here at least) - making the political home of denialism and delay in Oz (AKA the Liberal Party) unelectable.

The deniers don't seem to have twigged that in the sphere of public opinion, scientists are rated highly on trustworthiness, while prominent deniers tend to come from professions that are found at the other end of the trust spectrum - journalists and politicians.

81 Clippo,

I didn't read just what you posted here. I read a few threads over there. In particular, I was amused by Baron von Lotsov's obsession with [Piers Corbyn](http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/environment-energy/68087-piers-corbyn-s…). He is utterly devoid of critical faculties, isn't he?

I should also mention that there *are* some sane people there other than you, Besoeker and ron, for example. :)

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink
Hockey doesn't have the intellectual discipline,
You forgot to point out "unlike Bolt".

el gordo:

Andrew Bolt is part of the intelligentsia.

My pleasure for reminding you.

It is my melancholy duty to inform you that we are right and you are wrong about global warming.

Sure.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

66 Arie Brand:
>Another good experience this morning was to see Ian Plimer being knocked back at least four times by the moderator on Monbiot's Guardian blog (presumably not Monbiot himself)when he tried to comment. Seeing what some other people were saying there P.'s comments must have been pretty outrageous.

I think it might be because someone was impersonating Plimer?

You stupid drongos could never tell, could you?

Off to crack a few tubes to celebrate my book earning 1,000,000 AUD. :)

By Ian Plimer (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Daniel J Andrews (#40): "All men are mortal Socrates is a man Therefore, Socrates is..."

... made of wood?

;-)

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Dr Jason Wilson says 'the best way to take a troll down is not to react.'

Is this el barto's way of admitting that he is a troll?

I don't react to anti-trolls like Akerman.

:)

I wonder why not?

***

el gordo, there's a easy way to do Troll-dackers out of a job.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Really elgordo,

[Is this](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/drudge_and_the_denialists.php#c…) not a valid question?

The next question that arises is, why is this questions so difficult for el gordo to articulate an answer?

I have named some of el gordo previous practice as 'smear-and-run', where he spams the thread with stuff he is either not willing or able to defend/substantiate.

So el gordo, lets see something a little different today, a little less run, and a little more accountability.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Nada. Troll is asleep?

That's enough discount viscount jokes, CapitalClimate!

The pythonic truth of the matter is that the tribal proclivities of the UEA cult date from the great nerd herd migrations of the late second millennium .

Debarred by acclamation from deb debracation, and debagged and driven from Oxbridge into the East Anglian fens by the Pitt-Bullingdon Hunt, the non-U CRU climatwits committed themselves to hyperbole by establishing the Centre at an average elevation intermediate between the Maldives and Dogger Bank.

Hence their very wet correspondence and ill concealed admiration for the mehods of CEI & The Spanish Inquisition.

By Sarah Michael Palin (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Nice hard core shot of your soft core larch core Ian. if only trees with rings had evolved a few epochs earlier , Taranto & Morano could switch to denouncing the Great Materialist Snowball Earth Hoax

By Sarah Michael Palin (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Why do deniers like Penny Wong (so immersed in the propaganda) exhibit 'opinionated ignorance' on an issue of such critical importance, to all of us, for generations to come?

She is the Minister responsible.

El gordo,

You think Wong is denying the overwhelimg evidence of climate science?

Or you think that Wong hasn't bothered to read even the summaries of science?

What is your evidence for either?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

Minister Wong is a worthy politician and I hope this global warming hoax doesn't ruin her career.

el gordo (104), absolutely right, the Rudd govt CPRS as proposed (and espoused by Wong) is perfectly woeful as a vehicle for actually reducing Autralia's GHG emissions. 5%?? Is that what all the fuss is about?

Glad to have you with us.

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 29 Nov 2009 #permalink

The Senate vote on the CPRS will be the oddest sight, with the Greens and Nats holding hands.

Could this be the long awaited agrarian revolution?

I have new respect for Keith Briffa for standing up to his colleagues and telling them there was a MWP.

I spent some time yesterday over at Christopher Booker's Daily Telegraph (mad right-wing UK newspaper). Out of over 400 posts only about 3 showed any sense. All the rest were shouting that AGW was a tax-raising scam, a socialist plot. It was all extremely depressing, although I did enjoy pointing out that none of them clearly had any expertise in climate science yet were arrogant enough to think that they knew enough to debate with scientists (Dunning-Kruger writ large). However, if this is how most people think, then we've got a fight on our hands. In a perverse way, I hope that 2009 or 2010 breaks the 98 record.

By san quintin (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Re trolls and not reacting.

This can be a problem if the forum (not this blog) is on a site that is supposed to have a specific view, but one of the moderators is opposed to it. eg. a moderator trolls the forum!

Yes, believe me, it does happen.

I think the owners of the forum think they are being nice and fare.

110 san quintin,

These denydiots can't wait to tell the world for the 1,000th time how warmofascist econazis are taking over the world so they naturally congregate at blogs like Booker (Telegraph) and Phillips (Mail). You will also find them at Monbiot (Guardian) but of course the moderation is a little different there.

I don't think they're representative of anyone other than wingnut gobshites.

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

A person I know went to the Spectator/Plimer non debate here in London. I asked this person what he thought of it (knowing he holds conservative views on various things). The reply was that the audience convinced him that global warming must be true as it was full of nutters going on about AGW being a government plot to control people and wrest more tax (and Nick Minchin wasn't even there to prompt).

I asked him what Plimer had to say and this guy told me that the geological history stuff that Plimer talked about was really interesting. Fair enough. I asked him if Plimer mentioned volcanoes spewing out more CO2 than human activities. Suprised, he said yes. I told him that was an old trick of Plimer's and it just wasn't true. My aquaintance was a bit taken aback at that and I think it just confirmed for him the conclusion he had reached.

Over at Rabett Run, Eli decided to start calling the denialists starlings, and Ed Darell pointed out that it really was a good description of them. They are not just noisy, but noisy in gangs. Starlings drive songbirds out of their nests, harass the songbird young, steal their food, and generally pose a barbarian-style blight upon the bird world.

and more. An altogether apt description

Starlings are also very smart in an annoying, clever kind of way ...

Here's the old "chess with pigeons" description of what it's like to debate a creationist, revised and updated for the AGW "debate":

Debating global-warming with an AGW "skeptic" is basically playing chess with a starling.

He'll knock over the pieces, crap all over the board, and then fly back to his flock to claim victory.

By caerbannog (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Re: 81 & *82

Yes Truesceptic, BVL is devoid of critical faculties but I can assure you heâs a pussycat to some of the others. I do know Besoeker and Ron well and Iâve always admired their critical support.

Yes also I have quoted those much admired, by me, sites such as Greenfyre, Tamino , RealClimate, here, logicalscience and many other science blogs as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists etc. etc. etc. but they usually ignore this and respond with papers from Energy & Environment, or the Cato institute and so on.

See what I mean â with lack of intelligence like that what can you do. But I have found that they canât stand proper Peer-review â winds them up really quickly.

& Re: 110

by san quintin,
Booker is unbelieveable â but like Plimer has a 2nd book to sell. I am a regular reader of the Telegraph and I have noticed a slight thawing of itâs attitude to CC â especially since Geoffrey Lean joined them but like all newspaper and much media, they know that controversy sells. Iâve written hundreds of times to the DT about CC and other topics but they only published a letter once. Recently, they published another article by Lord Lawson of Blaby against CC (the old story that itâll cost too much etc.) â but heâs got directorships in some energy companies and is indirectly related to an ex editor of the DT and the infamous Monckton. What can you do when such a family of nutters have it all sewn up. How Lawson produced a daughter like Nigella beats me.

To add to my criticism of the Telegraph, today they have published on letter about CC - another idiot raising the NIWA study, (the original purpose of this thread) and claiming they fiddled the data.

No peer-review in the DT editorial team.

I noticed the queen of Australia rabbiting on about how we should become more environmentally aware and reduce our consumption of energy. Which is a bit rich considering how many castles she has to heat.

Rumor has it that the royal family are going to quit Britain and live on their ship in the Med, around the Greek islands, to reduce their carbon footprint.

According to this morning's paper, Malcolm lite has more supporters amongst Labor voters than the traditional conservative base.

The world has turned upside down.

I believe the Copenhagen Treaty Summit should be cancelled! How in God's name can this be considered a legal agreement when a "Huge Amount" of the basis for the "Climate Change Data" has been found to be "Fraudulently Sabotaged" and absolutely "Inaccurate"? This is signing a contract or agreement Document that has "No Legal Foundation" of Realistic conditions or elements due to "Inaccurate and Manipulated Data" as described and therefore, anything stated on this "Copenhagen Treaty Document" should be considered "Null and Void"! Why create a Pandora's Box, subject to "Lawsuits and Misgivings" due to total inaccuracy of "Scientific Measurements"? Which "Now" is proving to be the case! This Treaty has no Legal ground to stand on and is and will be a "False Document" from day one!

Any International lawyers Canadian or American, that want to help keep our Sovereignty and Freedom should Pres. Obama or PM Harper sign this treaty?

Find out what Governments are doing behind your back, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

M Btok writes:

>*a "Huge Amount" of the basis for the "Climate Change Data" has been found to be "Fraudulently Sabotaged" and absolutely "Inaccurate"?*

Wow, if only assertion could replace evidence then M Btok would have quite a case!

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo @ 119

Rumor has it that the royal family are going to quit Britain and live on their ship in the Med, around the Greek islands, to reduce their carbon footprint.

Well, I'm no monarchist, but you've either got your wires crossed, or made it up.
The British Royal family have no Royal Yacht!

On 11 December 1997 Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned at Portsmouth Naval Base.

From http://www.royalyachtbritannia.co.uk

By ScaredAmoeba (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Re: M Btok @ 120

Is this parody stupid or the genuine article?

If genuine, this person should be provided with a lifetime prescription of psychoactive drugs, a strait-jacket and free full-board and lodging of the padded type with no internal door handle.

By ScaredAmoeba (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Possibly even more bizarre than all the insanitary posts from the anti-science trolls on Deltoid in the last week put together is the news that the Coalition has just voted Tony "People Skills" Abbott (aka the Mad Monk) as its leader, beating the incumbent (Turnbull) by one vote.

God's honest truth. Read and weep:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/01/2758221.htm

The Coalition - from irrelevance to insanity in one leap. Barkingly, howlingly, rabidly insane.

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Speaking [of denialist](http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/01/2758221.htm),

We now get a science vs denial election campaign.

We now will hear repeated continuously how internalising the costs of carbon will wreck our economy. And how we must not lead but follow poor nations, with average incomes a fith and one tenth our ours. And how we must contiue undercut any efforts to internalise this in business practices.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Possibly even more bizarre than all the insanitary posts from the anti-science trolls on Deltoid in the last week put together is the news that the Coalition has just voted Tony "People Skills" Abbott (aka the Mad Monk) as its leader, beating the incumbent (Turnbull) by one vote.

Oh yes - this is pretty funny.
I'm very much hoping to be voting in a DD at the earliest possible opportunity...

Brings to mind the Taoist "We'll See..." [story](http://goto.bilkent.edu.tr/gunes/ZEN/zenstories.htm)

>We'll See...

>There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

>"Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

>"We'll see," the farmer replied.

>The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

>"How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

>"We'll see," replied the old man.

>The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

>"We'll see," answered the farmer.

>The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

>"We'll see" said the farmer.

Another election where the "centre ground" is weather to do anything at all on climate. Would the farmer celebrate this manufactured centre?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Great. Here in Oz we now have a party that wants Intelligent Design taught in public schools, and who believes that climate science is a crock, let alone AGW.
Led by a man whose religious base tried to keep Galileo from speaking from evidence, not dogma. Led by a man that is against stem cell research, against the woman's right to choose, against welfare for single mothers (but provided middleclass well-fare for double income mothers), and for locking up boat-arrival refugees indefinitely (7 years is the record so far).

I'm looking forward to the coming political fight, it will be a real doozy.

By Donald Oats (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet Akerman @127:

Well obviously the farmer would deny that celebration was ever appropriate, but would also deny that despair was ever appropriate... ;-)

However, I take your point - and I really like the parable.

It's probably unwise to celebrate the election of People Skills on the assumption that we'll now get the best case scenario - a DD election with an increased government majority and a strengthened ETS. I hope this is what happens, but there are too many factors at play, not least of which is the government's lack of resolve on this issue. Personally I'm vacillating between extreme apprehension and morbid fatalism.

Nevertheless, on the assumption that the howlingly insane are still a minority amongst the general voting population, there is some amusement to be gained in seeing the opposition state so decisively that this is the only constituency they intend to represent.

Also, if they're not a minority, then we're all doomed and there's nothing else to do but laugh...

ScaredAmoeba

The moral in all this is not to believe rumors.

Jenniel

...'if they're not a minority'. They are at the moment, but their numbers will swell as we get closer to the election.

Donald,

In short we've now got a party who are running right to the base that would be refelected by the crazies who were the topic of this thread.

Have you noticed the ideolgical armour put up by the hard right to justify doing nothing on climate change? "Were the party of lower taxes and small government".

So in their philosophy, that singular means/policy must be preserved above all else? They aiming for a tactic instead of a stated goal. What about complexity, nuance, and dynamic evolution of structures of power? Nothing stands still except their solution! And their sacred tactic can always be justified if they they put it ahead of any stated goal.

Why are they articuling their goal on climate change? Cos they are about fig leaves. I think we've got to hammer them to state their goal. They are trying to have it both ways, and get by on dog whistle politics.

If they are forced to articulate their goal on climate, each of their actions can held to accout and compared to their stated goal.

[Notably, I believe their last governent (1996-2007) taxed more and spent more than any government before them. So not only is their solution stangnant, but its just PR.]

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Should read: *Why **aren't** they articuling their goal on climate change?*

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo:

Minister Wong is a worthy politician and I hope this global warming hoax doesn't ruin her career.

Like it ruined Malcolm Turnbull's. Good one gordo, ahahahahahahahahahahahaahah.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

' The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt.' Rupert Murdoch May 14, 2007

'The earth deserves the benefit of the doubt.' Joe Hockey Dec. 1, 2009

Yesterday's men.

Green's Senator Milne

>*"The Government has always been keen to frame this as a question of action vs inaction on climate change"*

Now Minchin and the extreme right have made Rudd's task easier. Rudd can be less ambious on climate and still look he is doing something meaningful. Unless....

That is unless the centre-ground can be shifted to between ALP and another party. That's going to require all of the follwing:

1) Moderate libs shifting to ALP and Greens;

2) ALP supports abandoning the unambitous climate policies and some centre-right positions of the ALP;

3) Stepwise expantion and acceleration in the Greens grassroots engagement with local communtites and local issues.

If the momemetum starts to shift at lot of the 'follower' class with start to get interested.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Janet (135), it's made it easier for Rudd in some ways (calling a DD election, or watering down an already pi$$-weak CPRS). OTOH getting any CPRS through (before or after any potential election) will mean he and Wong will have to strike a bargain with the Greens, which I think they will find a lot less palatable than arguing the toss with Turnbull.

PS sorry for the thread hijack but I thought it was important enough to run the risk. Maybe time for another open thread Tim so this stuff doesn't dilute the point of this one?

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Steve, JennieL,

Yes, I'm in a 'half-emtpy' type of mood today.

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Steve Chamberlain:

el gordo (104), absolutely right, the Rudd govt CPRS as proposed (and espoused by Wong) is perfectly woeful as a vehicle for actually reducing Autralia's GHG emissions. 5%??

This 5% reduction occurs AFTER the population increases by 24% by 2020. So per person, the reduction is actually 24% (by coincidence). If you want to sheet home blame for the "woeful" 5%, then blame Australia's immigration and family payments policy.

BTW, if the world wanted to put the brakes on carbon emissions, then one of the last things it would do is to encourage high population growth in places such as Australia with high carbon emissions per person. From a global carbon emissions point of view, high population growth in Australia is a stupid policy.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

el gordo:

'The earth deserves the benefit of the doubt.' Joe Hockey Dec. 1, 2009

Yesterday's men.

Unlike,..... Tony Abbott. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

More comedy gold from el gordo.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 30 Nov 2009 #permalink

Greg Hunt should be given the flick by the pug.

I'm not so sure Tony Abbot's leadership win means a sure outcome for climate science and reason on the Australian scene (non Australian contributors please indulge me).

If his win leads to a double dissolution I think there are two BIG weaknesses for getting Ausralia onto a low carbon path.

The first is that the government has consistently failed to explain how the ETS will lower emissions. The more astute media commentators have been highlighting this for nearly a year now.we all see it as a gift of corporate welfare with no targets attached.

The second is the way the deniers are going around the country addressing the community whenever and whereever they can. Yes they are talking to the faithful but they are exploiting people's concern and feelings/perceptions of lack of control at the way things are unfolding in Australia.

The first will feed the second and don't forget the deniers are not a rabble like the hansonites were. In their fanaticism they are are articulate and driven by the fury of their thwarted ego and ideology. Look at how this has played out in the liberal party with egos like Nick Minchin.

Can anybody tell me whether the message on the science and how to address AGW is being explained in the Australian community at a grassroots level where people's concerns are? Just because AGW appears to have been embedded, however imperfectly, at policy level dones't mean people will vote for it.

We can laugh at Tony Abbot's election but i think it shows that yet again the message of the science may be driven away.

Jeremy, lets all hope the msm can educate the populace before the next election.

Abbott is an inclusive politician who will galvanize all the deniers and sceptics within the coalition to go out on the hustings and tell the people about this 'green tax'.

Those in the party who followed the Turnbull line will have to recant and be reeducated about climate change. So it's all smooth sailing from where I'm standing.

Inferno wrote this gem on deniers: 'When so-called 'experts' in their 'peer reviewed journals' say one thing, we dare the impossible and find imaginative ways to believe something else entirely.'

Jermy C:

Jeremy C:

The first is that the government has consistently failed to explain how the ETS will lower emissions. The more astute media commentators have been highlighting this for nearly a year now.we all see it as a gift of corporate welfare with no targets attached.

It's pretty simple in principle which is all you need to know for how it is supposed to work. The government sells/gives out a finite number of permits and reduces the number of permits as reductions in emissions are required. People with a vested interest are only interested in creating confusion so they'll talk about anything but the basic principle.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 01 Dec 2009 #permalink

el gordo:

Those in the party who followed the Turnbull line will have to recant and be reeducated about climate change.

We have ways of making you recant.

So it's all smooth sailing from where I'm standing.

Comedy platinum.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 01 Dec 2009 #permalink

Chris,

Its that simple message that the government seems to not have got across. All the Australian newspapers report is how much more 'compensation' various industries get or are demanding whether 'trade exposed' or not.

The lobbying is what is getting reported, not the government's reaction or consideration of the lobbying in line with what it is trying to do. Plus confused and vague stories about the cost of domestic power going up for a perceived lack of emissions reduction by the generators. This isn't only the government's fault as the greens' very public criticsm has perhaps blunted the government's message to the avergae Australian punter.

To those that care... From a sinner like me... God loves all of us and though we still sin, he forgives us. That is the way it will be until he takes us home. That, is His Truth. The Bible is Christ. Christ is the Word. Ask and you too will be forgiven. Love to all, Tom

147 Tom,

Umm. Anything about the topic?

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 01 Dec 2009 #permalink

The Australian Senate rejects the Rudd Government's proposed CPRS:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/02/2759595.htm

Quote:
'Senator Fielding said Australians did not want to rush ahead on the legislation and had started to question climate change science.

"The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) makes the GST look minor," he said.

"How can you vote for the CPRS when so many Australians have questions?"'

By Steve Chamberlain (not verified) on 01 Dec 2009 #permalink

Yes Jeremy C, couldn't agree more ... but I'm also thinking that maybe Wong and her deputy, Combet, are just not the personality types to be selling this thing to the Australian people.

For some reason I can't quite fathom, Wong unfailingly pesents as a humourless and (mostly) emotionless android, while Combet just seems to restrict himself to filling the role of faithful, but menacing, second banana.

They're both undoubtably talented, able, and intelligent individuals but I can't help the feeling that, to date, the most articulate and passionate politicians on this subject have been Turnbull and MacFarlane (and they got thrown out with the Coalition bathwater).

Cheers
Chris

How can anyone look at the graph of the earth's temperatures over the last 100,000 years and not see a cardiogram that virtually guarantees a coming Ice Age with the attendant ruin it will bring? Can you tell me that GW will not help delay this? Can you tell me what my recourse is if you're wrong? Can I reclaim my plans if you are? Can I take it out of your flesh as you desire to take it out of mine? The unanswered questions are legion and the rush for political control is blood-chilling. And its funny how the advocates' self-interest, in grants and political inclinations, all seem to line up so nicely with the theory. Nevermind, I must be paranoid. You're right. Take my freedom and my money and all my future plans in hand and do with them as you please . . . RIGHT!

Correction: The time frame should be 450,000 rather than 100,000

Here is the chart:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tm33tTS2iZc/RizPy2CJfjI/AAAAAAAAADY/A1bBqSYdg…

I propose a test. I will show this chart to my niece and nephew (9 & 11) and ask them what they think will happen next based on what they see. I suspect that they will prove both more aware and correct than y'all.

I'll be back with the results . . .

Why don't you try it? :)

Google Global Tempertures for the last 450,000 years

Just so there is not any confusion; please always remember that "It is not where you are at, it is who(Christ) you are in." Love to all, Tom

"Google Global Tempertures for the last 450,000 years"

No. I would, but I'm scared that if I do my entire worldview will be blown out of the water and shattered into so much...erm...disconnected information by what I see.

Unless it's information of temperatures for the last 450000 years, which is nothing new to anyone.

Tom,

This might help with your prognostication:

By luminous beauty (not verified) on 02 Dec 2009 #permalink

157 luminous,

That's obviously all lies as it was produced by climate scientists! ;)

No response from ThomasS yet...

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 03 Dec 2009 #permalink

158 Vindicated,

The obvious thing to do while the matter is investigated.

British Researcher Leaves Post Temporarily Amid Probe Sparked by Hacked Emails

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 03 Dec 2009 #permalink

I really am amazed by the bigotry that occurs on these comment threads. I really have not seen this kind of hatred for a long time.

People disagree with you, or you disagree with them. So you mock them. You feel proud about it, you pat each other on the back because you managed to make fun of some people than couldn't defend themselves. You call them "fanatics" and a "cult". I mean, can you be more pathetic? These people have legitimate concerns about an issue that will affect a lot of people no matter which way it goes. You just want to brush it all off because you think it's stupid of them to be skeptical. But consider the political weight that this matter carries and you can see that we should examine this throughly. The fact that these emails would have been deleted by the people that wrote them says a lot about the integrity of these scientists.

As far as the quotes you posted- face it- there are radicals on each side of the isle. I could pull up equally stupid quotes made in favor of global warming. Both sides attract uneducated idiots. So how about this: instead of joining the crowd, why don't you look at it neutrally, instead of making assumptions and deciding that because people you disagree with have an opinion on a matter, your opinion must be the polar opposite.

Hawkyns,

"The fact that these emails would have been deleted by the people that wrote them says a lot about the integrity of these scientists."

Huh ?? Those e-mails would have been deleted ?? As far as I recall the stolen mail went back 10 years or so; doesn't sound like much deleting has been going on now does it.

I ask you, AGW has been examined "thoroughly" for at least the last 30 years so when do you think the time to start taking it all seriously would be ?

When will unequivocal warming, receding glaciers, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, earlier flowering plants, species migrating poleward, extended mid-latitude droughts, huge potential future risks to national economies etc, (all linked to rising CO2 levels) bring you out from behind your flaccid "amazement at the bigotry" figleaf and give you some sort of pause to consider that climate change might be a real and increasing threat.

It may be hard for you to grasp this but the IPCC reports distill the considered and professional findings of thousands of climate scientists. They're also accepted as a firm basis for policy-making by every national government **on** **the** **planet**.

Surely we can stop this obsessive fretting over name-calling and start doing something substantial about AGW ... now ?

"Huh ?? Those e-mails would have been deleted ?? As far as I recall the stolen mail went back 10 years or so; doesn't sound like much deleting has been going on now does it."

Somebody hadn't been paying attention.

"Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. Heâs not in at the moment â minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I donât have his new email address."

"I ask you, AGW has been examined "thoroughly" for at least the last 30 years so when do you think the time to start taking it all seriously would be ?"

Again, somebody isn't paying attention- 30 years ago, everyone was panicking about global cooling, and the next ice age.

For your paranoia-induced list of "evidence", I offer this:

Melting ice caps/glaciers- in the northern hemisphere only, as the southern hemisphere experiences record ice coverage.

Recall too, that what glaciers usually do is melt...

Rising sea levels- barely. Try this: put a bunch of ice cubed in a dish with water. Mark the water level and let it melt. The next day, check the water level. There will be no change, as the mass of the ice is already displacing water.

Earlier flowering plants? Fine by me. Recall that "ice is the enemy of life". The tropical rainforests contain the highest biodiversity on earth. Warming would be quite nice to see, considering how rainforests would spread.

Spieces migrating poleward- proof? And not just proof that it's abnormal, but that it's happening?

Extended droughts- ever hear of the dust bowl? That was what, 80 years ago?

As far as financial risks, I abhor even the concept of money. Financial risks to countries sounds great.

Now, this may be hard for you to grasp, but politics influences science. Simply because politicians pay the scientists. If global warming is "in", and you want to survive, you're going to do everything you can to make it look like the politicians are right, because that way you get grant money.

"They're also accepted as a firm basis for policy-making by every national government on the planet."

Apparently not, if not all countries are concerned about global warming. I certainly don't see Saudi Arabia doing much to be "green".

"Surely we can stop this obsessive fretting over name-calling and start doing something substantial about AGW ... now ?"

Or are you just upset because I called you out as the bigot you've shown yourself to be?

My bottom line is that I don't think global warming is man-made. And if I did believe it was, I would do everything I could to bring about more of it. Because that's what will best foster life on this planet.

Again, somebody isn't paying attention- 30 years ago, everyone was panicking about global cooling, and the next ice age.

You're the one who hasn't been paying attention - what the MSM decided to place in a cover story 30 years ago is a very good indication of what journalists find exciting but has very little relation to what a review of the scientific literature published by climatologists 30 years ago reveals. A handful of people were publishing their theories on global cooling, everybody else was publishing studies of how their data showed warming trends.

Jeezus Hawkyns,

I'm shocked !!! So much hatred, so much bigotry, so few facts.

Dredging up that 70's ice-age earth shite is almost the textbook definition of classic denydiot behavior ... oh cr*p, now I've gone and mocked you with a nasty word ... sorry petal ... please don't let my use of denydiot confirm your suspicion that Global Warming must be a great big hoax.

Look, I'm sure somewhere, deep down inside, the more rational part of you realises that your inner hypocrite has taken over and is driving your elemental NEED to swallow hook, line, and sinker, any f*cked-up answer you find on any denier website just as long as it purports to debunk AGW. Don't be too hard on yourself though ... you are being suckered by some of the most devious and dishonest minds **on** **the** **planet**.

So ... as an antidote to the normal bilge you so credulously slurp down, can I suggest for starters you 'neutrally' browse around the wonderful www.skepticalscience.com ? Here's a couple of links to whet your appetite ...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.h…

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

Don't forget to check out the articles on East Antartica losing ice and the Overview of glacier trends while you're there.

BTW: I see from your previous post you've maybe pored over those stolen emails (did you memorize them too?) and gullibly accepted everything the howler monkeys a Drudge, WTFUWT, and McSteve say about them ... so ... how come you're not at all skeptical about STOLEN stuff, posted by hackers, on the internet ??

I'm thinking you'd probably be called (cover your eyes now petal) a 'rube', or (gasp) a 'sucker' back in those balmy dust-bowl years.

@Tigtog: Proof please?

Chris,

You really do manage to be a disgrace to the human race. You stoop to mocking, backstabbing tactics. I thought that usually that was a sign of defeat, a sign of a last grasping hold in most debates. You seem to be forgetting a few key things.

1. You seem to be trying to maneuver around the fact that similar things have happened before. Like it or not, people used to be worried about global cooling. It was warming in the 40s and 50s, and cooling before that, in the 20s and 30s. It appears to be a nice little cycle. You seem unable to grasp that concept, as you have to resort to flaming me instead of trying to counter my point. But is that because you simply can't counter it?

2. I'm sure that you are desparate to convince yourself that I am a total idiot. But please. When I take a stance on an issue, I do not repeat any drivel I see on the internet (you might want to do the same thing). Drudge is a sensationalist tabloid, and FOX is as biased as CNN. I don't trust people as a rule, if they are right-wing or left-wing. I trust people even less when it comes to money, and there is plenty of money wrapped up in "green" business. In my mind, all humans are "Dishonest and Devious"

3. Global warming is good. As I said before, if it's not happening, I don't care, and if it is, I'm happy. There is plenty of uninhabitable land in the far north and south that will be opened up, while the current wildlife can move closer to the poles. Don't worry about the drowning polar bears- they've evolved to have the capability to swim for three days straight, and they have survived thus far. I don't think they're in much danger.

4. I'm not going to trust a website dedicated to one side of an arguement any more than I trust FOX to give me accurate news, or Drudge to give me an accurate view of major news articles.

5. When nothing is done to deny the legitimacy of stolen data, it can be reasonably assumed that it is fairly accurate. I trust Anonymous more than I do Al Gore. Also recall, that it is unsure if they were stolen or leaked.

Now one of the things I used to trust was well-written, peer-reviewed scientific papers. I say used to, because id these emails give any indication, peer review may not be as trustable as it once was. So here's a key excerpt from one I thought interesting:


Between 1900 and 2006, Antarctic CO2 increased 30% per 0.1 °C temperature change (72), and world CO2 increased 30% per 0.5 °C. In addition to ocean out-gassing, CO2 from human use of hydrocarbons is a new source. Neither this new source nor the older natural CO2 sources are causing atmospheric temperature to change.

The hypothesis that the CO2 rise during the interglacials caused the temperature to rise requires an increase of about 6 °C per 30% rise in CO2 as seen in the ice core record. If this hypothesis were correct, Earth temperatures would have risen about 6 °C between 1900 and 2006, rather than the rise of between 0.1 °C and 0.5 °C, which actually occurred. This difference is illustrated in Figure 16.

The 650,000-year ice-core record does not, therefore, agree with the hypothesis of "human-caused global warming," and, in fact, provides empirical evidence that invalidates this hypothesis.

Source: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

But I feel that the bottom line, as I said, is that if AGW is real, so much the better. Warmth is life. That's all there really is to it.

BTW, I love how you treat me like I'm 80 years old, minus the respect that most humans have for elderly people. I'm 18, for the record. It always amuses me when I see teenagers like myself being far more mature than grown men on the internet. At least I assume you're a grown man. If not, I would guess that you're 14? And that's giving you leeway, I know fourteen-year-olds that act far more mature, both online and IRL.

Anther Gish Gallop of bunkem,

Hawkyns starts of by letting us see how self-aware he is:

>*You really do manage to be a disgrace to the human race You stoop to mocking, backstabbing tactics. I thought that usually that was a sign of defeat, a sign of a last grasping hold in most debates.*

Hawkyns continues:

>*Like it or not, people used to be worried about global cooling [â¦]

[Here is]( http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-13…) some background reading for people considering how to apply this meme.

Hawkyn continues:

>*When I take a stance on an issue, I do not repeat any drivel I see on the internet [â¦]*

Which Hawkyns demonstrates by repeating the global cooling meme, that "warming is good for you" meme, and [extracts of the notorious]( http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/05/oregonpetition.php) Oregon Petition.

Then Hawkyns give us:

>*When nothing is done to deny the legitimacy of stolen data, it can be reasonably assumed that it is fairly accurate.*

Accurate for what? An accurate source of cherry picked out of context quotes on which to based any number of speculative fantasies?

By Janet Akerman (not verified) on 06 Dec 2009 #permalink

Hmmm ... you're lurching all over the place Hawkyns, almost schizophrenic in fact. You start as some artless naif, fretting about name calling and bigotry while ignoring the scientific consensus. Next post you charge in, all muscled up and blithering about liking it hot. Now you're back as an error-riddled sanctimonious windbag.

Frankly bucko, as soon as I saw that OISM shite, 'Wanker Alert', started flashing in front of my eyes and any thoughts I might have had of partaking in a bit of sporting banter with you went out the window. Call me immature, even pathetic if you will, but I'd rather chew my own arm off than lose another minute having a non-debate with you.

If it makes you feel better to think you've had a bit of a victory here (notwithstanding tigtog gently kicking your brains out and Janet crushing your balls) ... go right ahead mate, live it up ... chug another stein of your usual bilge.

And, oh yeah ... what a surprise !! I'm eighteen too !!! Who'da thunk it ? :-)

Let's face it global warming (SCAM) is caused by the Sun's radiation patterns and not by man. Volcanoes produce more carbon emissions in one eruption than all of the carbon ever emitted by humans combined.

You people are fruitcakes.

I refuse to be screwed up the ass by a band of leftist marxist eco freaks with f'd up light bulb in one hand and a micro machines shit car in the other. Let people live. I love V8 engines. I love regular TV and regular light bulbs. If my electric bill goes up one penny becuase of this world fascist socialist dictatorship known as "science" and cap and trade, I am going to shove a CFL bulb up someone's ass and turn it on.

You ecofreaks are causing more problems than solving. looks like a worldwide cosnpiracy to allow more UN control of our lives to me. I wish we could leave the UN. They are a pathetic attempt at robbery. Most are criminals, socialists, marxists, and Islamic Terror supporters. i say we leave it now.

Socialism will burn in the fires of hell - where it rightfully belongs.

By Rumpleforeskin (not verified) on 09 Dec 2009 #permalink

Somebody with a fake handle blathered: "If my electric bill goes up one penny becuase [sic] of this world fascist socialist dictatorship known as "science" and cap and trade, I am going to shove a CFL bulb up someone's ass and turn it on."

What will you do when your electric bill goes up because the cost of fossil fuels has risen? I think we can guess. The attempt will certainly fail, but it ought to generate some amusing news headlines.

By Chris Winter (not verified) on 10 Dec 2009 #permalink

Somebdoy with a fake agenda (helping the world -SCAM) blathered :

"What will you do when your electric bill goes up because the cost of fossil fuels has risen? "

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

This can be prevented if the far left radical fascists would let us biuld a new nuclear reactor in every state. Idiots. Next, they need to let us drill more -anywhere there is oil. Screw the EPA and the fascist enviroradicals. Some oil is abiotic and not a fossil fuel. Again - idiots.

By Rumpleforeskin (not verified) on 10 Dec 2009 #permalink

Hawkyns, can you come back and slap Foreskin around ... he's being a dick.

Please give him your "amazed by the bigotry" spiel, or better yet, one of your "You call them 'fanatics' and a 'cult'. I mean, can you be more pathetic?" homilies.

Or do you just direct your wrath towards those who accept the scientific consensus ?

Thanks in advance,
Chris W

Wow,

IMO,

It seems like the deniers and the alarmists are very polarized. I've spent quite a lot of time with the data and buried in the issue and I can't seem to find the support for anthropogenic global warming. I don't know how you alarmists convince yourselves. At best it is a hypothesis with limited data support. Furthermore, it seems more of a debate between socialists and libertarians. Who the heck wants to tax carbon if it is not absolutely needed? It's a government invasion of lifestyle and privacy. Environmentalism is a good thing in moderation, but save the climate...give me a break, it does not need saving at all.

Peace, another loony environmental scientist

I've spent quite a lot of time with the data and buried in the issue and I can't seem to find the support for anthropogenic global warming.

Oh, yes, I'm sure you have ...

/snark

Well Brian, you're wrong.

On the one hand you have a bunch of scientists who have uncovered a seriously dangerous side-effect of our current approach to power generation. They reported it, they kept researching, finding more and more corroboration. Meanwhile actual measured temperatures kept going up. Over 30 years of being nearly ignored by policy makers, some of the scientists have become political, and they are saying that as a result of the science, we (the human race) need to organize ourselves in such a way as to mitigate the danger. If social organization for the common good is socialism, well, that's what the science demands.

On the other hand, you have people who believe that libertarianism must always be best. Because there can be no libertarian answer to AGW, they must deny its existence on ideological grounds.

One of these positions is grounded in reality. The other is fantasy and denial.

169 Rumple,

Nice parody. I hope you also post at Denial Depot. :)

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 12 Dec 2009 #permalink

173 Brian,

Another nice spoof. Thanks. :)

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 12 Dec 2009 #permalink

166 Hawkyns,

Are you some sort of ageist?

FWIW I think it works better if we shift the decimal point: 8.0 works much better that 80 in your case.

By TrueSceptic (not verified) on 12 Dec 2009 #permalink