June 2014 Open Thread

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Fail words me.

words usually fail you, BBD, so nothing new there

By elmer fudd (not verified) on 09 Jun 2014 #permalink

German temp records (up to 36.7° on Monday, national record first third of June) paid of by a derecho killing six.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 10 Jun 2014 #permalink

The camels knew better...

I happened to be looking today for the origin of Hilaire Belloc's famous lines:
For whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they do not.

(as it happens, they come from a long satirical poem about colonialism called The Modern Traveller), when I stumbled upon some extempore verse used in a debate on capitalism, which seems to fit the times:

Our civilization
Is built upon coal.
Let us chant in rotation
Our civilization
That lump of damnation
Without any soul,
Our civilization
Is built upon coal.

In a very few years
It will float upon oil.
Then give three hearty cheers,
In a very few years
We shall mop up our tears
And have done with our toil.
In a very few years
It will float upon oil.

In the course of the debate, Belloc opined that the (then) current tension between socialism and capitalism could not last. He forecast three possible outcomes (in some combination): the restoration of a sane, if complicated, society driven by human freedom; the creation of nothing but a desert; the creation of a mass of contented slaves, controlled by a few rich men.

"Take your choice", he said.

So we did, and we went with option three, with a good splash of option two. :-(

Unlikely. The money's gone, after all...

May 2014 #1 with a margin, of course. This was really time, previous record already totally ancient (2010 and 2012).

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 18 Jun 2014 #permalink

#11, science blog.

TOGTFO.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 18 Jun 2014 #permalink

So #11, how does this change the dire projections of climate change or impinge on the reputation of Greenpeace?

A person acting in good faith was blind-sided by the speculators engaged in making 'funny money profits'.

But playing at 'craps' with other peoples money and without authority is bound to cause trouble so corrective action was taken.

This says more about our crazy trading systems than climate science. How typical of you to crow over such happenings but what else should we expect from the likes of you, for such could just as easily have come from Duffer or Rednoise.

#11: Nice one Stu2, that's firmly established your reputation. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

By turboblocke (not verified) on 18 Jun 2014 #permalink

How the Bush Cheney' Whitehouse ensured that the US public were misinformed on the state of climate science is recounted in, amongst other places, 'Censoring Science' by Mark Bowen.

There are individuals named in this book who should face a full enquiry - under oath, starting with Cheney.

For a flavour Rick Piltz delt with some of it here in 2008: NASA internal investigation of climate science political interference let higher-ups off the hook.

Follow the Climate Science Censorship link near the bottom of the page.

In there is an article 'Progress Report lists “The 43 Who Helped Make Bush the Worst Ever”'

Unfortunately the list of the 43 worst Bush appointees within goes off into the weeds so I have now include a link which works.

These people should be remembered.

For some reason that escapes me, my husband keeps up with his online access to that abomination. All I can see it doing is adding to the already ample household supply of language that "would make a sailor blush."

He's been dancing around this morning alternately bleating and blaring about the follow-ups to the Wednesday onslaught. I'm beginning to suspect that a prime requirement for continued employment at that place is a complete lack of any ability to recognise a hole. Thus the need to work out when to stop digging is entirely bypassed.

Just when you think that the atrocious behaviour of oil companies cannot sink any lower it has been disclosed that Maxus Energy has dishonestly taken blood from members of an indigenous tribe in Ecuador and and sold it for a profit.

By Ian Forrester (not verified) on 19 Jun 2014 #permalink

# 14 cRR

TOGTFO

I'm pleased to say I had to look that one up.

#23, useful, isn't it : )

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 20 Jun 2014 #permalink

Climate deniers and delayer organization show how unethical they are:

Brill’s bills still unpaid, but Barry’s off to Vegas, from Hot Topic

The attempt by a small group of climate cranks to bring a legal case against the New Zealand temperature record will leave the taxpayer to pick up a bill likely to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars...

visit this page to see who slithers around in this undergrowth - tilt to David Bellamy who is one such.

In a word, despicable.

Christopher Booker takes another crazy punt in the Torygraph:

The scandal of fiddled global warming data, using Steven Goddard as a foil to take another pop at a hockey stick!

What a stupid ***t! Booker must be a slow learner.

Cue another round from Duffer or Rednoise.

Why do I do it!!

I looked at that Scandal! Shock! Horror! piece, which was pretty much what we've all come to expect from Booker. Did I leave it there? No I did not. I read the comments. Good sense prevailed when I resisted the invitation to "Load more comments."

It seems there is a vast horde of fools and witless clowns I've never had the misfortune to meet. I'll think twice before I click on any of those links in future - because I really can't resist "just a peek" to see what's in the comments. .

Booker: slow {Goddard!! how old is his schtick?!} and stupid and credulous, and aggressively so....part of a recent outbreak of utterly desperate bullshit commentary from the incumbent court jesters of the neo-lib miracle.
Booker, Maurice Newman, David Murray...all demented and unpleasant.

I see it as one of the last bursts of pus from an idelogical boil well and truly lanced by reality.

Okaaaaay.

Who else was left agape - or with a silly grin - when Al Gore showed up today with Clive Palmer of all people. Though it might need someone like Gore to sort out what on earth Clive thinks he's doing with the nocarbontax-yesETS-cashmustgotoconsumers-keepallclimateinstitutions mashup.

Bemusement here Adelady.

By Billy the Mountain (not verified) on 25 Jun 2014 #permalink

Australia getting dirtier?

Australia carbon tax moves closer to repeal after vote in lower house

Yes I realise that the UK has a high historical carbon footprint but in the 2000 Australia had a higher per capita carbon footprint as shown in the illustration in David JC McKay's 'Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air' page 13 (the printed edition is recommended).

Note the high footprint of Qatar UAE, which makes me wonder what Dubai's early 21st Century footprint is, another carbuncle on the face of the Earth. I wonder what they will do with Dubai when Greenland and Antarctic Ice loss accelerates further and rising sea levels taken even those who have a handle on this by surprise?

Jim Hansen has already drawn attention to the problem of already rising and warming water stressing the ice shelves off West Antarctica such that glacier 'corks' are starting to 'pop'.

As the sea rises so ice shelves become lifted at the seaward end causing stresses on the grounding lines where warming currents are at work. Grounding lines that are moving back inland and likely to reach zones where the bedrock suddenly drops allowing further weakening at the pivot point and rapid fracture.

As West Antarctic ice moves out to sea, the glacier flow then gaps in the Trans-Antarctic range would become open for East Antarctic ice to move through to add to any loss from East Antarctica in the opposite direction, as a sub-glacial topographical map will show. Iso-static rebound will be too slow to seal off East Antarctic given the likely rapidity of warming and seaward ice flow.

GeoMapApp is a useful tool.

I notice that Monckton of Brenchley has paid us a visit in another, long dead thread, about as long as his arguments have been dead but now he is raising them as zombies through his 'The Lord Monckton of Brenchley Foundation'

I have had a look at the charter of this supposedly educational charitable trust and straight off I would like Monckton to explain why it is he uses RSS data to create a chart when there are more encompassing alternatives.

Of course, the trend slope depends upon the start and end dates so congratulations for winning a cherry there why this is so has been neatly explained here:

Much to the dismay of Christopher Monckton and his illiterati fans at WUWT, it's still not cooling, as much recent information from the real world also demonstrates, species migration and loss, shifting hydrological patterns and other hammer blow weather events where the climate change dice have been loaded by global warning particularly in heat build up in the oceans and melting ice at both ends of the earth.

Antarctica is losing mass as Monckton should well know if he has been keeping up.

So, another 'charitable education foundation' of dubious educational value much like the old GWPF.

I know it’s not ethically sound to taze a corpse...

... and yet deniers still try to explain away the warming by attacking the record. You're one trick ponies, as williwatts drags out his tired old surface station photos for another ride on the flogged to death horse.

"is-steve-goddard-right/"

Here's a fool proof tip Olap.
The answer to such rhetorical questions is invariably 'no'.
If Curry had extracted something from arch-idiot Goddard's bumblings she wouldn't have asked a question, she'd have answered it.
But that's not what doubt merchants are in the business of.

Attacking the robustness of GAT reconstructions is so last decade. The contrarians need to evolve. The more recent tactic of pretending that TCR is at the lower bound of the estimated range foundered when it was pointed out that this made little or no effective difference to the policy implications. It's worth adding that the more ambitious estimates for low TCR would imply values for ECS that render paleoclimate variability virtually inexplicable.

And of course, the insinuation that GAT reconstructions are flawed and yet defended by their curators has a strong whiff of conspiracist ideation (nefarious intent).

Don't forget that deniers were never the sharpest, and that the Swedish contingent come from several floors below the bargain basement.

Olaus should try to keep up with the latest denio-pseudo-science - everyone moved on from Tony Heller's mathturbation and are now hyperventilating about David Evans' bogus Force X, which permeates the pipes in the ground below the several floors below the bargain basement.

Talk about tying yourself in knots - I'd say Evans is two blog posts away from discovering phlogiston.

Please explain, Olaus...

Thanks for popping by to re-establish what a credulous, undiscriminating fool you really are, Oily, but it's scarcely necessary to trouble yourself; all the non-Kool-Aid-drinkers know this already.

Perhaps you'd care to explain the content of Mr. Nova's 'Force-X' theory, to us instead? (Perhaps I'll teach the cat to play the grand piano?...)

Now, this is much more interesting.

The corpse seems to be twitching a bit after that last shot Olaus.
Give it another one to see if it shows any signs of life.

Nah, you're still braindead.

The corpse seems to be twitching a bit after that last shot Olaus.

No, wrong as usual RedNoise breathing at Deltoid had nothing to do with OilyPrat.

You best go back to reading Booker fantasies.

Ooopsy do! Drat!

The corpse seems to be twitching a bit after that last shot Olaus.

No, wrong as usual RedNoise breathing at Deltoid had nothing to do with OilyPrat.

You best go back to reading Booker fantasies.

Lionel, who said anything about breathing? Tazing a corpse won't make it breath, just twitch a bit. :-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 30 Jun 2014 #permalink

Oily Prat your #49 demonstrates that you cannot parse English and see context.

To set things straight, you're the morons having yet another futile assault on the corpse of the temperature record.

Just like all the previous attempts, this one will fail (thus defining your insanity yet again) and two weeks from now you'll have forgotten all about it..

This is because you've got nothing, and that nothing spreads very thinly.

Congratulations shrek. You win the prize for getting the blog comments over 50. Its only taken a month.
Bye the way, what was the temperature in Luling yesterday?
Don't blink it might change. Oh it has.

Rednoise the fact that posts have only just pushed past 50 here says more about the lack of stale buns available for your lot to throw.

Recently, however, the likes of Nova-Evans, Booker and Monkey-Tunes have tried to revive some old stales by licking the mould off some and pushing them out into public again. Unfortunately this demonstrates is the further decrepitude of their brains and the extent of their inflated egos, ergo ergot has further addled their brains.

But of course it really is expecting too much for Oily-Prat or a RedNoise to appreciate that.

Lionel, I don't think Redarse has twigged that Deltoid's raison d'être - the war on science - has been so successful that other than the usual twaddle from the usual suspects (with the latest bit of pseudo-science from Dave Rocketscienttist being just the latest 'it's the sun!!!' mewlings) there are few rational people left on the planet who do not understand the human caused greenhouse effect.

A quiet Deltoid equates to less output from the denial cult.

We're having the warmest year ever down here in the low country and the phenology of many plants is totally out of sync. Some are 6-8 weeks ahead of their normal cycles. If this persists its going to hammer food webs. Trust Rednose to wade in here with his crapola,.

And, as Chek said, less posts on Deltoid equates to less climate change denying idiocy.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jun 2014 #permalink

Correcting this post, "Deltoid’s raison d’être – the war on science " should of course read: "Deltoid’s raison d’être – countering the war on science"

Redarse confirms his misunderstanding of weather which has fuckall to do with climate @ # 52.
Thanks for dropping by moron, and for voluntarily dropping 50 IQ points to do so.

Mr Portentology, Jeff Harvey, lays out the proof of an accelerating globlal warming. Experienced first hand, no less! :-D

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 01 Jul 2014 #permalink

#57

So you claim constant TOBS adjustments to raw temperature data is weather'
That's an interesting take on things.
Anybody dropping 50 IQ points could still manage double anything you could register.

Oops the claimed temperature for Luling on 29th June has changed again.

#56
No need for a correction, the first version was correct.

Chek has it: "A quiet Deltoid equates to less output from the denial cult".
A month to reach 50 posts equals the denialati failing.

Since Olaus seems to be reduced to a sort of preset regurgitation of past rubbish (like - but less entertaining than - a radio station doing a "hits and memories" week), perhaps Rednose can take the running and explain the Rocketeer's Force X.

What about it, Duffer? Isn't that the force the Spider Queen used in episode 97 of Flash Gordon?

I'm going to pop in an announce that I was wrong(ish): I'd predicted Abbott would be less popular than Gillard within 18 months, but it only took 9...

Best quote yet re Force X: "It would be better if there was a known mechanism of course..." You literally couldn't make it up.

And now for something slightly different (must be in the air),

WARNING
shield your irony meters
do not have food or drink in your mouth
do not have destructive tools at hand

A poster girl for Renoise with 'GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX'.

Inhofe must be retiring or maybe he has had a sex-change.

Didn’t that bimbo appear in 'The Shinning'?

Lenoil, you can certainly pick them. Hot, hot, hot. :-)

And Nick Stokes, defending apparent computer generated crap overwriting instrumental measurements, has a hard time with this argument on less sympathetic blogs.
Whoops, its changed again.

Look up what lul means in dutch. The deniers couldn't have picked a more appropriate name to describe what they are ( doing).

By turboblocke (not verified) on 01 Jul 2014 #permalink

And Nick Stokes, defending apparent computer generated crap overwriting instrumental measurements, has a hard time on on less sympathetic fruit loop blogs where ignorance prevails.

There fixed for you Redgas, (gas aka hot air).

Agreed TB, USHCN temperature adjustments do seem to be a load of c#ck.
No more time to gas lenoil. Must go.
Try to broaden your reading material. These quirky, low traffic sites you keep mentioning give a very jaundiced viewpoint.

Lawks.

Coming from the state that gave Australia Bernardi and Pyne, I'm not in a good position to throw stones at other people's representatives. But that woman is desperately daft.

No more time to gas lenoil. Must go.

What's up Redgas, Uzi out of ammo - again?

Rednose: that's a comprehension fail on your part.

By turboblocke (not verified) on 01 Jul 2014 #permalink

The always funny thing is the sheer incompatibility between the loony denier sects.

There's Redarse trying on the old clown costume of "the temperature record isn't reliable".
While elsewhere, the rise in global temperature is due to some unknown solar forcing.
Perhaps Olap and/or Redarse can tell us - in their own words and .. um thoughts (or whatever passes for their cranial/brainial activity) - what's wrong with this picture. Somehow I don't think they can, or will.

Wow, this blog is dead. Bummer, used to be fun.

"Mr Portentology"

Olaus, the correct title is Professor, you uneducated Swedish schmuck.... a title you'll never have in a million years... and yes, ecological systems are all out of whack here this year.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

Ok, let's settle for "distinguished Professor" in Portentology. OK?

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

Sorry Olaus, since you are in illiterate twerp, nothing short of you buggering off permanently will do...

As I said, things are seriously out of sync this year in my part of the world. I work with wild black mustard plants that normally flower in mid-July to August; this year they were flowering in early June. Many other plants are showing dramatic phenological shifts this year as well. We only had half a dozen frosts the entire winter period followed by a very warm spring and early summer. Also, Oak processionary caterpillars, which have expanded their range northwards as a direct response to warming, are more abundant this year then ever in the Netherlands. They were first reported in the south of the country in 1991, and now they are almost everywhere. There are reports of many insects increasing their ranges northwards.

Olaus is such an idiot that he sticks with his climate change denying moronic mob. Hardly a qualified scientist among them.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

I wouldn't worry Jeff.

To an ignorant superstitious cretin like Olap, seismologists monitoring earthquake activity would be searching for 'portents', epidemiologists would be on the lookout for 'portents' as would economic forecasters, social planners responsible for future schools and hospitals and let's not forget the military's interest in predicting future events..

Hell even the rev counter in your car is probably a portent meter to that moron.

It's a particular kind of arrogant, over-ripe, self-regarding stupid the Swede troll constituency imagines is 'clever', because they haven't the intellectual horsepower to actually think it through.

I know Jeff, you have seen the portents first hand.

The first Global warmingmaggots were heard of in the 80s and they managed to spread globally in an unprecedented pace. But today their habitat is thretened, and real scientists believe them to be instinct in 5 to 10 years. :-(

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

real scientists

The mark of the quack adoring numbskull.

...believe them to be instinct in 5 to 10 years.

Is that what your extinct tells you?
Blockhead.

To be 'instinct'?

Talk about ritual self-humiliation.

You know, Putrid, you really make yourself look more of a jackass with every post you write. You've clearly never been near a science lab or lecture in your miserable life and your grasp of the English language is abominable. Yet you try and use allegedly witty quips here in spite of this.

Please learn some basic English grammar before attempting to impart wit again here, Olaus. And while you are at it read a few articles published in the scientific journals. Its also clear from your posts that you never read the primary literature.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

Chek, its fun knocking Olaus around the ring time and time again. He's as stupid as a sack of nails yet believes he's witty and smart. What I have learned from Deltoid is that, among the general public, the climate change deniers for the most part are a bunch of complete idiots. There's not a single one who has ever posted into Deltoid who is remotely qualified to discuss anything to do with science. Olaus is simply par for the course.

His misuse of the word 'instinct' (the clot actually meant 'extinct') is simply one of many examples where he shoots himself in the foot.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2014 #permalink

I forgot to bookmark it, but on another blog (I think), someone did link to paper which discussed the pathology of trolling behaviour. I only read part of the abstract but I remember that it did mention that there is a sociopathic element to it. This rings true when you see the similarity between that activity and taggers who vandalize and deface buildings just for the heck of it, or to gain attention.

I think they're people of below average intelligence who feel insignificant and feel the need to leave their mark to get noticed.

In the case of O'louse the Petrified Cretin, who's been trolling for years without saying anything of any value and who thinks that repeating the word "portentology" displays great wit, he's not very bright, that's for sure, but the bloke must also have psychological issues.

I've often wondered why there's such a preponderance of morons in the denier camp, and I don't mean that as just a throw-away insult, but litterally people who cannot grasp the most basic logic. The answer I've come up with is that, leaving aside those who are able to deceive themselves and others due to extreme cognitive dissonance stemming from ideological motivation, the dimmest ones are easily brainwashed and converted by the very simplistic slogans and reasoning that the denial media, the Watts and co., throw at them. They're easy to digest and feeding them the idea that it's a hoax panders to their natural tendency to distrust authority, i.e., governments, and climate scientists who are doing the bidding of governments. The memes they regurgitate are very simple _ there's no complexity, no subtlety, it's very black and white: the climate has gone up and down in the past; there's been a 17 year pause, which falsifies the theory _ wrong but it doesn't matter to the denier _ it's easily digested... doesn't require further analysis, as demonstrated by our cretinous O'louse's refusal to answer a few simple questions on the "faux pause"; there's only a tiny amount of CO2, so how can it warm anything _ again, specious but easy to accept for simple minds.

Running through all the denier memes, one thing they have in common is their simplicity; anything which requires more than one sentence to explain and therefore harder to understand is rejected in favour of the simple ideas. In a sense, you can see it as a natural process _ dim minds taking the path of least effort.

God points Jp, also reinforced by the weak grasp of absolute basics which disables them from arguing their meme.

And then there's the tribal loyalty underlying the shallow understanding of it all which prevents the faulty (or fiddled, for the paranoiacs) temperature record spouters coming to blows with the Force Xers the latest variation of the 'It's the Sun' crowd. If they could only comprehend what their slack jaws were repeating, by rights they'd be kicking the shit out of each other.

But today their habitat is thretened, and real scientists believe them to be instinct in 5 to 10 years.

Petri, the purity of your imbecility is truly hard to comprehend.

I don't think all deniers are thick - what they all have in common is being ideologically purblind reactionaries - but the ones that haunt this place - as seen above - are the living embodiment of Mill's observation that "although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."

When opinions are based not on evidence but "feelings", ideology or just whatever their brains are able to grasp, you're bound to have a wide variety of opinions which, unsurprisingly, at times contradict each other. But even worse than contradicting each other, they often contradict themselves. How many times have you heard a denier claim that they don't dispute the science and yet spend a large part of their time disputing the temperature data.

David Evans, in one of the ABC productions examining different viewpoints among the proponents on both sides, did exactly that within two sentences of opening his mouth: he tells the presenter of the show how he doesn't dispute the science and in the next sentence proceeds to blather on the urban heat island effect, how the data is not reliable etc. I mean, wtf? I know I'm not the most knowledgeable person on this issue, so maybe my reasoning is faulty, but isn't the data is an integral part of the whole issue? It confirms our understanding of greenhouse gas theory and that's why we can predict that temps will go up as more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere. If the temps weren't going up, wouldn't we have a problem with our understanding of the science and then have to explain where the hell all the extra energy is going?
I'd better clarify what I've just said in case some dimwit jumps in to mention the pause. Yes, the temps ARE going up as a long term trend regardless of the faux pause which is influenced by the periodic "burp" of extra heat from a warm ocean.

"I don’t think all deniers are thick".
I agree, bill. That's why I mentioned in the post those who are so strongly ideologically motivated that they deceive themselves... and others. I don't possess the hubris of the typical D-K denier who thinks he's smarter and more knowledgeable than the experts; I have no problem recognizing that a large number of them (the deniers) know a lot more than I do and are more intelligent than me. But that's where dishonesty comes in. You can spot them by their rhetorical gymnastics, resorting to sophistry, arguing fine points which amount to nothing, etc.

Jp, repeating "portentology" isn't a sign of great wit, but a suitable way of describing the unscientificness of climate alarmism. But you knew that already. :-)

And even if the deltoid-body itself is dead, the worms still living out of it squirm when tazed by reality.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 03 Jul 2014 #permalink

It's obvious that ForceX finds its genesis in all that iron in the core of the sun. Stands to reason, right? Just like the earth, the iron core generates a magnetic field, and just like the earth the field direction semi-periodically reverses. However since the sun's iron core is a lot bigger it reverses a LOT more quickly - approximately once every 11 years (and that also explains the other well known ~11 year solar cycles). When it's going through a reversal it affects the earth's magnetic field which changes all sorts of thing including the influence of cosmic rays and solar winds on the earth's surface temperature, messes with the earth's ozone layer allowing more heat to escape, and of course interacts with the well known dipole moment of H2O to change the amount of incoming heat energy retained by the seas - and that's why there's no obvious 11 year cycle in the surface temperature record.

I think we should all keep this to ourselves because we don't want people like OP (don't tell him who that is) carrying it to people like JN and DE, otherwise our cunning plan to institute a worldwide revolution led by enormous socialist running dog banks and energy companies aided and abetted by the UN will surely fail. And besides, that iron is hugely valuable and we don't want a competing slate of investors to beat us in our mission to mine it and bring it back to earth to make us all rich, far richer than even those who foolishly sink their dollars into gold bars (especially since as we all know they can be easily counterfeited).

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2014 #permalink

Jp, I agree: there's certainly a good number of deniers who have a much more comprehensive grasp of, say, physics than I do, but it just doesn't help. I tend to think of them as a species of Bayesians plagued by ridiculous - and immovable - priors.

I've had 2 intellectual heroes in my life, Orwell and Chomsky, both of whom observed that it actually requires a certain level of brains to be really, and dangerously, stupid.

For those wishing to study climate denialists recent threads at Climate Progress are rich in subjects. Of course they are producing the usual moles to whack, sometimes in a Gish Gallop. I have had a few pops at them but it becomes very tedious.

I have my sights on one or two in a thread at the moment, should I bother? Of course for it is always worth informing the lurkers. At the moment, as expected it is a few Americans who clearly had a patchy education. I wonder if anybody has surveyed the educational background of these types. I suspect an unusually high proportion of home-schooled or small town educated then on to specialist college such as law, economics or religion.

I worked one semester on Comparative education whilst studying for a degree (in the UK - as a mature) so read US Education, the course being sprinkled with students from the East Coast, New Jersey-New York and West Coast, California, LA which made for lively debate. But there were none from the southern or mid-western states, which was a shame for it is probably from these regions that many who believe the ideology spouted by e.g. Fox and Friend come from. I could be way off base there because there are some notorious thread bombers from e.g. New York - are these the exception?

“portentology” isn’t a sign of great wit, but a suitable way of describing the unscientificness of climate alarmism.

Noticeable that Olap's views are suitably skewed as to ignore the truly unscientific signs'n'portent quacks and denier darlings.
.How many years now are we into McClean's/Corbyn's Great Cooling? Never mind, Jo'n'Dave Rocketscientist's ForceX will be delivering same any time now.
For real. Most definitely. No doubt about it. Not this time.

Olap, its time you went 'instinct'......

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2014 #permalink

You'd almost think he was a poe...

Some long timers might also recognise the name Iain Hall. He is a mildly infamous and quite obsessively dedicated troll with his own blog. Visit at your own risk, and consume no foods or beverages whilst doing so.

I think there have also been complaints at various blogs about him stealing and reposting content without attribution at his blog, and I think he tends to also use a bunch of sockpuppets.

He turned up here on a couple of threads a few years ago but didn't last long. There was that lovely if trivial episode where he castigated someone for misusing an apostrophe and tried to claim that was normally a "leftie" trait. That ... er ... didn't go so well for him, and neither did much else here.

It's really not a good reflection on your trolling abilities, which you are apparently so committed to, when even the Swedish Collective outlasts you by several orders of magnitude.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 04 Jul 2014 #permalink

The thought of Ian Hall attacking somebody over the use of an apostrophe, well it's (Hah!) sick given his lack of precision in this reply at that Guardian article:

Iain_Hall
26 June 2014 5:26am

If they were genuine then an enduing promise form all of them to walk the walk in their own lives might help their credibility but when we have the high priest of the Green religion, Al Gore jetting into the country for a short visit is it any wonder taht they all suffer from being consistently disbelieved..

And of course Al Gore is fat, who knew!

"ForceX from outer space", a good title for a B grade movie.

Lionel, the even more lovely irony back then was that he misused the apostrophe in the very post where he made the apostrophe attack...not to mention in other posts on the same page at the time.

If there wasn't so much evidence he is an actual troll, one might be tempted to think he was a Poe.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 04 Jul 2014 #permalink

Newsflash: Scientists from the GWPF climateball institute, led by lord Bonkton, conclude that it's not possible to have an average global temperature which is not affected by the body heat of 7 billion people. Variations in the readings can also be influenced by how many people are in a "hot" state vs "cold" state _ i.e., "hot" if they've been exercising or are sexually aroused and "cold" if asleep or generally inactive. Furthermore, despite protocols stipulating that scientists taking the readings must hold their breath when in proximity of the thermometers, there's no guarantee that those protocols have been followed. While lord Bonkton accepts that ice everywhere has been melting, he says that it cannot be infered that that is the result of increased temperatures. "There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns", he says. "There are mysterious forces operating in the universe and we are looking for them."

Lionel, thanks (not) for the link. I read some of Iain Hall's stuff and I feel like I've been psychologically assaulted by stupidity. It's going to take me a few hours to recover.

Jp, FWIW I seem to recall that Iain Hall is a big fan of Andrew Bolt. Don't know if that has any explanatory power, or is just an interesting correlation ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 05 Jul 2014 #permalink

"Iain Hall is a big fan of Andrew Bolt."
I'd be surprised if he wasn't.

well, i munged that, but it seems to work!

The link works fine here, Bill.
The article also brought out the expected droves of Lord Fuckwit believers with nothing to say but spew bile, but also some reasonable voices too, which may (I'm not a regular reader) or may not be progress for the Torygraph's readership.