Take a dumb argument and make it dumber

We Canuckians know as second nature: when it's really cold, it doesn't snow. Warm winter = more snow, cold winter = less snow.

Yeah I posted a few replies to this - however scientific argument does not get you very far on Tim's blog. Swearing works wonders.

Y'know, you're right. There is nothing that strikes more fear into my heart that the words, "slightly warmer." The thought of things getting ever so slightly warmer over centuries, or perhaps millenia, terrifies me. Good God ... if this goes on, generation now people may be ... warmer than we are now. How will we bear it???

I just tried posting my offer to bet denialists over global warming at Blair's site. We'll see if much happens - I highly doubt they'll put up, but sometimes they shut up, slightly.

OK, this is pretty complex, but try to hang in there.

What Tim Blair is doing is known as "joking". Please look it up.

The butt of the joke is people like you. Suggest you avoid looking that up.

Yes, his argument was dumb. What he could have said about the Montreal protests is that is was seemingly but not really ironic that they were protesting global warming while it was cold outside.

And since my wife is Canadian, I'm in Canuckland right now on vacation. It is cold. There must be no such thing as global warming.

am - well if Tim is in fact a comedian then that would explain a lot.

Otherwise tell him not to give up the day job.

According to AM,

"What Tim Blair is doing is known as "joking". Please look it up.... The butt of the joke is people like you."

Really? If it were anyone else making these comments that suggestion might hold water. But Blair has a long history of making far stupider statements than these, and then trying to sue anyone who publicly attempts to correct him. I've been to a lot of comedy shows in my life. Not once did the feature act spew profanity and threaten to sue me because I didn't get his jokes.

If Blair is joking, he has a funny way of showing it. On the other hand, if he's an antisocial narcissist who believes that profanity makes up for scientifically illiteracy, his behavior makes complete sense.

I say he's serious.

Let's see...Tim Blair puts items on his blog which he finds humorous (usually, though sometimes they're not so humorous. It's his blog), and then he points out the irony in these items in a rather dry - and to my way of thinking, very funny - manner. Then the commentors make comments. Clearly, Blair's blog is conservative, therefore it's full of dark, un-pc, RWDB humor which may slip under a leftist radar, though I have some moonbat friends who find it funny though it pisses them off. Evil, it is (sorry, I am in the middle of watching Revenge Of The Sith which has left me with the temporary - it is temporary, right? - compulsion to switch the order of the object and the verb). Therefore we have a number of people having a lark at the expense of dead-serious leftists. I think that about covers how it works.

Oh, and sometimes the commentors leave pretty good arguments, too, but they won't be considered that on a leftist blog. Makes perfect sense to me, there is a rather strong polarity operating here. Ender knows that some of the people over at Blair's site make good arguments because he has run into several of them, and sometimes, I admit, they are made rather forcefully. He has lost most of them, (though he was agreed with on an issue which now escapes me, so it wasn't a complete rout). Even I have made arguments based upon what I understand to be happening with regard to issues of the day, so you can imagine that I lose most of those. Ender knows who I am. Ask him how I treated him on Tim's site.

ekw - yeah I know who you are. I found that I could not shift peoples entrenched views even with correct and accurate science. And yes I did lose - if you can call it that.

The problem is that while I might lose an arguments on a blog, people like Tim Blair and his sycophants that can post 56 comments with such depths of scientific thought like "Yeah" and "Go Tim" and "get those evil lefty moonbats" they are helping to prevent real action on combating Global Warming. If what I posted is correct and you are wrong then we all lose and Tims blog will seem like such a trivial thing. People like me that are interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will have to find a way to engage people that think the way you do. Clearly I failed in my approach.

Anyway I will be watching Billy Connolly for my humour not Tim Blair.

I've stumbled across this rather bizarre post and discussion with delight. Ender, I say you are a sardonic humorist, masquerading for comedic purposes as a bearded sandal-wearing mung-bean-eating academic, probably at Latrobe, who worships at the shrine of global warming. You give it away by saying you like Billy Connolly humour, so that means that your real language is punctuated by fuc* and cun* and willy*, but for blogging purposes you don the guise of global lukewarming hairshirt humourlessness. Am I right? Fantastic effort.

Global Warmer - your powers of deduction are amazing - you are exactly right.

ekw, Blair was trying to make a joke about how the global warming conference made it colder because he thought all the snow meant that it had been extra cold. Except that as any Canadian will tell you, you get less snow when it's really cold. So, you know, the joke didn't actually work.

As for the "arguments" by commentors at Blair's blog, I'm afraid that "La la I can't hear you" is not a real good argument.

8 Scott Church - "But Blair has a long history of making far stupider statements than these, and then trying to sue anyone who publicly attempts to correct him."

Can you elaborate on this, please?

Nice ripost, ekw! Sadly, it went right over their heads. Sad, when such is wasted on those who don't appreciate true art.

Or reality. Life must really be bad when facts go zing! over your head on a constant basis.

Scott Church — Tim Blair threatens to sue people? Name names, please, and link to the appropriate posts and/or comments.

Otherwise you're full of it.

The irony of record snowfalls on a warmer than average day relating to a conference on climate change would seem to operate in the direction of reinforcing the need for such a conference and follow-up action, rather than in the sense of making such a conference appear silly.

"The thought of things getting ever so slightly warmer over centuries, or perhaps millenia, terrifies me. Good God if this goes on, generation now people may be warmer than we are now. How will we bear it???"

Oh, I get it, you're pointing out the irony in a rather dry manner, full of dark, un-pc, RWDB humor.

Actually, I don't get it. This and the topical Blair bloggery has nothing to do with irony, it's basically the print equivalent of repeating what your opponent said in a silly voice. An offshoot of what I've come to realize is a general tendency of the right towards bullying. And less funny than the budding humorist tends to believe. There's a reason why somebody had to invent the phrase "compassionate conservative", but nobody had to invent "compassionate liberal".

but nobody had to invent "compassionate liberal".

no, but they are working here on inventing the tough on crime, pro-gun liberal.

Hey Tim, isn't bouncing my links a form of "La la I can't hear you", as is your refusal to acknowledge and address my comments?

JF Beck: No and no.

Wll, t's gd t s yr hrng hs mprvd - ddn't hv t sk sx tms bfr y nswrd. nd y'v bvsly bn wrkng n yr scl sklls - n trll jb, yt.

s fr yr bncng my lnks, t's pthtc bt wrks n my fvr. Kp t p.

I'm not sure if this is the place to raise a serious comment, but here goes...

Every time I hear the "If the world is warming, why is it so cold today?" argument, I am reminded that "global warming" is not the best name for the phenomenon. What is happening is more like "global energization" (and you can see why that's not a euphonious alternative). The trapped radiant energy does eventually go into an overall increase in the average temperature. But more immediately, it goes into driving the global weather system. Sort of like stoking the fire under a steam engine. And that means that the weather system can develop more energetic extremes - colder colds as well as hotter hots and stronger winds. (It may seem unlikely, but you could build a steam-powered air conditioner. Weird, but feasible.)

Of course, the term "global warming" sets the popular perception. Either we have to do a better job of education people about the science, or we have to find a better term. Preferably both.

Off topic, but here's a new Lancet commentary in today's Washington Post for your collection:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR20051…

Apparently, war comes in bunches, so the study's all wrong.

Hi,

Scott Church evidently never met Lenny Bruce, Richard Prior or Jackie Mason on a bad day....

Lee Rickard, your point is an ongoing issue at Roger Pielke Sr.'s blog. He is seriously for the kind of measure you are talking about and knows a lot about them. In my mind it is not exactly that this is wrong, but a) try explaining the measure to a member of the US or any other congress and b) atmospheric surface temperature is a measure of energy content.

"But Blair has a long history of making far stupider statements than these, and then trying to sue anyone who publicly attempts to correct him."

Ugh! I chose my words quite badly here--it seems I was in a bigger hurry than I thought when I wrote them :(. What I meant to say (and in a calmer state of mind) was that Blair has a long history of being abusive toward those who point out his scientific errors, including threatening to pursue lawsuits at times. The one specific example I have was when he threatened Tim with some sort of legal action for having written about some of his errors at an earlier post here. I still have to find which post it was that discussed this incident. Tim, can you refresh my memory?

So yes, this is very different than a "long history" of lawsuits, and thanks to all for the correction. The larger point remains however. Blair does in fact have a long history of gross scientific errors and of being abusive toward those who attempted to correct them, and many of those errors are no worse than the ones in the article being discussed here. Perhaps he was joking (I do see the humorous intent now), but he was using sarcasm to make what he believes to be a serious criticism of global warming--one that no freshman chemistry or physics student would be foolish enough to make. His time would be better spent reading about the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship in an introductory thermodynamics textbook instead of abusing the scientists who actually understand it.

Y'know, you're right. There is nothing that strikes more fear into my heart that the words, "slightly warmer." The thought of things getting ever so slightly warmer over centuries, or perhaps millenia, terrifies me. Good God if this goes on, generation now people may be warmer than we are now. How will we bear it???

David, prehaps you might enlighten us with your predictions of global warming? Surley you have some physically derived numbers by which you rebutt the publised science which reveals an expected warming rate this century approaching 50 times faster than occured at the end of the last ice age (that pretty darn quick)?

BTW if the current warming rate were to continue for a millenia winters would be generally about 5C warmer than summers are now... even the most ardent denialist will be struggling to deny the warming by then (pressuming they haven't already cooked).

Oh, so Mr Blair was joking, was he? Using irony? As in saying something he doesn't believe while pretending he does? OK, so when he says it's comical for people to protest about global warming on cold days because - snigger - they "ignore" the cold weather that clearly shows global warming is a myth, he actually means the opposite of that?

That's hilarious!

Yeah, irony. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"no, but they are working here on inventing the tough on crime, pro-gun liberal."

Indeed yes. Both sides have their built in biases so that any step towards the middle needs to be celebrated as a break through.

"War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR20051…

Good Lord, it's the long-dead "Gunshot wounds are not subject to epidemiological study because they are not a disease" argument come back from the grave!

Typically if someone says my frog's got no nose we laugh at them rather than with them.

"War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets"

So does a pervert in a porno theatre and so does epdemic disease. It never bloody ends, does it?

"War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets"

So try new War Pockets, the snack treat that soldiers eat!

Montreal last Friday was quite nice. I woke up to find my front steps so covered with snow, it was just a slope down with no steps. This was not only a record snowfall, it was the first major snow of the season this year. The official amount was 41cm but it's almost 60cm in my wind-protected backyard. During a couple of hours in the morning, it was coming down at 10cm an hour. It was barely below freezing for that storm and I enjoyed a nice cross-country skiing trip into work in the morning. But is has been an incredibly warm fall and early winter so far in Montreal. The last two years, the first major snow is on the ground in late October. Last year, there was several inches of snow on the ground by Halloween and the ground remained covered until mid-April. This year, it was uncovered until early December and it's been quite warm. No ice rains storms and only a couple of snowfalls. As a skier, it's not been a good start to the season. The biggest PITA is that Montreal was the hardest hit by the storm and the ski hills to the north, east, and south had 1/2 the amount or less.

Ha ha. How sad and humorless you must be Lambert. You take an obvious parody oh-so-seriously and go apeshit over it, and when this is pointed out to you, you engage in more oh-so-serious analysis as to why the joke "doesn't work".

But of course after falling flat on your face you'd say it isn't funny, wouldn't you.

Oh dear. rofl, do try to keep up. See comment 28.

"Was it unusually cold that day in Montreal? Well, no. December 3 was slightly warmer than the average December day in Montreal."

But was it warmer than the average December 3? That is the correct question.

Here's the answer. The average daily mean in Montreal on December 3 is -3°C. Source:

http://www.weather.com/activities/other/other/weather/climo-dly.html?lo…ven=Yahoo&cmcat=www.yahoo.com&cmpla=climopage&cmite=CityPage

The daily mean in Montreal on the day of the protest was -4.9°C. Source:

http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html?…

Tim was right, you are wrong. So do the right thing and apologize.

-4.9 instead of the average -3? Holy crap, that's 63% colder than average!

Lou, was it unusually cold that day in Montreal? Think you can answer that question?

"But was it warmer than the average December 3? That is the correct question."

Ah, you have been deluded again by the powerful and wealthy AGW cabal. Remember,
"In the absence of physical guidance, any rule for averaging temperature is as good as any other. The folks who do the averaging happen to use the arithmetic mean over the field with specific sets of weights, rather than, say, the geometric mean or any other. But this is mere convention.
"This matters not only because you will change your definition of "global average temperature" if you use a different averaging rule, but you can also change the meaning of "warming" and "cooling" themselves. This is no trivial matter, since "warming"—or not—is nearly the entire global warming question." http://www.takenbystorm.info/TBSbriefing.pdf
So in fact, that -4.9 degree day might have been warmer than the -3 degree average Dec. 3.

"December 3 was slightly warmer than the average December day in Montreal."

But it wasn't slightly warmer than the average December 3 in Montreal. In fact it was colder than the average December 3 in Montreal. Tim Blair was right, Tim Lambert was wrong.

Still waiting for your retraction. But I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

Dear Lou, still waiting for you to answer my question.

Since Tim Blair did not say that Dec 3 was warmer than the average Dec 3 in Montreal, you cannot say that he was right to say that. And since I didn't say that Dec 3 was colder than the average Dec 3 in Montreal you can't say that I was wrong to say that. Hope that clears things up for you.

And umm, it's nice that you consider yourself to be one of Tim Blair's groupies but I have some bad news for you---I'm informed that Blair is straight.

Lou,

"But was it warmer than the average December 3? That is the correct question....."
But it wasn't slightly warmer than the average December 3 in Montreal. In fact it was colder than the average December 3 in Montreal. Tim Blair was right, Tim Lambert was wrong. Still waiting for your retraction."

Are you kidding? This is exactly the sort of statement that would get a math or physics student flunked with malice on a junior high school quiz. The ultimate point of discussion here is global warming--is it happening or not, and do temperature comparisons in Montreal or anywhere else support or refute it. Global warming (or cooling) has to do with trends, not comparisons of isolated points such as one specific day of the year (why is it that something this basic has to be reiterated so often to conservative columnists and bloggers?). Trends are determined from a running time series over the period of interest. You prepare a sequential temperature record, smoothed with some sort of running average (Montreal daily, weekly, or monthly averages for instance), and then you evaluate the underlying general direction of change--usually with something like a least-squares method. If average temperatures in Montreal had somehow doubled annually since 1990 for every month of the year except December, your average Dec. 3 method would still conclude that no warming had happened there even though the place would be uninhabitable.

It's difficult to imagine what a more innumerate argument would look like. This, and the chronic abusiveness of Blair and his supporters, are the main reason why they're not taken seriously outside of Far-Right circles.

Scott, you've kind of hit on the point Tim B. was making in his original post. Many in the AGW camp (dumb journalists and the like) jump on any single instance of the weather being warmer than the average to claim that global warming is happening. However, they look a bit odd making those claims when suddenly things look like they are colder. Whether it is really colder or not is not the point.
Sure, if you have to explain it, it's not funny anymore. Check out the Cox and Forkum cartoon in the same vein as Tim's post. http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000726.html

Who ever said that the left had no sense of humour? This thread is much funnier than Blair's original post.

(Sincerely) have a happy Christmas everyone.

Hey, look, maybe we can once and for all end all debate on the "global warming" issue.

What we need is an authoritative survey conducted over, say, 1,038 households worldwide by a peer-reviewed journal of high esteem, with the question: "Was your household warmer or cooler in 2005?".

The results can be extrapolated in a linear fashion, and a worldwide conclusive result can be achieved and published.

Simple, really.

Tim L - I joined this late .
You are not seriously suggesting that Tim B was seriously suggesting that protesting against AGW and a single cold day were cause and effect?
I thought his point was fairly straightforward?
We are forever hearing form the press about precisely the phenomenon you decry all the time - that a single day/week/month/year is definitive proof of climate change.
I thought it was a good illustration.

"threatened Tim with some sort of legal action for having written about some of his errors at an earlier post here"

The only time I remember it nearly coming to that was when Tim.L mirrored Tim.B's site. If that's it. Why hasn't Tim.L corrected that.

Oh I forgot. no integrity.

How stupid Lambert. Why not keep up and look at comment 18: it's not irony, but repeating what your opponents say in a silly voice.

Yet EVEN if it were intended as irony, you still fall hopelessly flat on your face:

"Oh, so Mr Blair was joking, was he? Using irony? As in saying something he doesn't believe while pretending he does? OK, so when he says it's comical for people to protest about global warming on cold days because - snigger - they "ignore" the cold weather that clearly shows global warming is a myth, he actually means the opposite of that?"

Irony is not defined as "saying something he doesn't believe while pretending that he does".

One usage of the term involves: "An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for between what might be expected and what actually occurs". incongruity."

Oh no. See, no mention of "saying something he doesn't believe" here. Now, if jokes were interpreted charitably as they often are, one would quite quickly see the humour or apparent humour of it and let it go - as in: "it might be expected that global warmongerers would turn out on warm days rather than cold omg lolz irony". And that's it.

It's comical and a bit sad at the same time really. Twisting and turning to justify yourself. First it was, 'it isn't funny', now you desperately latch onto 'no irony was intended unless he actually meant that global warming exists', failing to parse a simple English definition that shows otherwise, and falling flat on your face again.

Another more vacillation from you?

LOL.

Needless to say, it should read: "An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs".

And another = any.

Don't get your panties in a bunch girls.

Well I'll be...Lou Minatti! The guy that thinks the Democratic Party is a hate group!
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.christianity/msg/2475f9eb27…;

Here is a link to the whole thread so one can see how well Lou defended that particular line of thought!

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.christianity/browse_thread/…;

So much for Lou Minatti!

Hey everyone look here, Lambert has credibility issues: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/12/16/more-iraq-punditry/#comments

Give it up, Tim. You're hosed!

There are some great examples on this thread of the pathological assymetry between the way that the Left and Right understand each other. Usually people arrive at strongly-held political views through some sort of conversion journey; people on the Right frequently got there after becoming disillusioned with the Left, while people on the Left normally got attached to it during some emotionally tumultuous period of their life such as university, when it was the first political position they were ever introduced to. This is why members of the Right usually understand the Left and are capable of satirising it - they used to be on the Left. And it's why the Left have no idea of the content of the content of Right-wing thought, and tend to associate it subliminally with the nasty children who taunted them during their period of pre-political naivety.

Case in point is Ender's

"Tim Blair and his sycophants that can post 56 comments with such depths of scientific thought like "Yeah" and "Go Tim" and "get those evil lefty moonbats" they are helping to prevent real action on combating Global Warming."

This a classic example of a Lefty trying to parody the Right using Left-wing language. You'll never find anyone Blair's site using the phrase "evil lefty moonbats", Ender is paying himself a massive compliment here. "Evil" implies the actual capacity to do evil, and while you can definitely find evil lefties in the form of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il, "evil" implies a level of political effectiveness well beyond that of the westerners, especially Australians, whom we affectionately term "moonbats". It's the Left that routinely accuses the Right of being "evil". The Right thinks that the Left is stupid.

Irony is not defined as "saying something he doesn't believe while pretending that he does".

Yes, it is. Use a real dictionary.

One usage of the term involves: "An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs".

Bollocks. This is a sloppy rendering of the notion of dramatic irony which refers to the early deliberate prefigurement of later, usually tragic, events in a play or other work of fiction. Now that most stories are enjoyed by people who don't know the plots beforehand, dramatic irony isn't very common, although good examples can be found in classical works like Antigone, Oedipus Rex and Shaun of the Dead. The prefigurement can be paradoxical - in fact, it often is - in that the earlier event may literally prefigure an opposite result to what eventually happens e.g. a character remarks "I wouldn't be caught dead near a bee-hive" and is later devoured alive by giant killer bees. Such prefigurements, usually of the paradoxical kind, might be noticed in the real world. They often involve death, as when General Beauregard at the Battle of Spotsylvania refused advice to pull his head beneath the parapet, remarking "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-". (A prefigurement of only a fraction of a second in that case.) This is generally the sort of thing people mean when they say an event - and it's always an event - is "ironic", and is pretty much the source of confusion with irony in the sense of ironic language. They are two separate things, however.

Even if we were to accept that those claiming TimBo was "only joking" (got any alternative definitions of what that means, rofl?) are confused about the concept of irony, the post still wouldn't be ironic in the other sense. However, if after years of denying global warming TimBo was locked into a space capsule and fired into the sun, that would be ironic. Actually, perhaps that's not the best example, but for some reason it's the one that springs to mind.

I'll note in passing that ironic language should also not be confused with hyperbole, where a person says something they don't entirely mean although they might mean 95% of it.

[irony] Well, this has been entirely non-trivial. [/irony]

people on the Right frequently got there after becoming disillusioned with the Left

Got any stats for that, dude? All the right-wingers I've known have been that way since their youth, but I guess that's just anecdotal. I pretty much figured they'd just never grown out of the "No-one's more important than me" stage. Their attempts at satirising the Left largely consisted of repeating that "land rights for gay whales" joke; perhaps, as Spike Milligan theorised, they thought if you said something often enough it would eventually become funny.

For myself, I don't think righties are evil, although I do think they like to kid themselves they know something about the world. Case in point: your post.

[irony] Also non-trivial. [/irony] Is it funny yet?

Rob W,

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (is the OED good enough for you?):

Irony:

1. A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.
2. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things.

That settles that.

people on the Right frequently got there after becoming disillusioned with the Left

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Coulter, Limbaugh, Lott, DeLay, Rice, Chertoff, Rove... ?

@ 58 Well. Paint me purple and call me a stupidhead.

So, what does "only joking" mean? And why is people protesting about climate change at a major conference - regardless of the weather - an example of "events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected"? Coz it was cold and they were protesting about global warming? That all? - coz, seriously, I thought TimBo's jokes were better than that, at least structurally.

TimBo's joke had a premise, a point he was humourously making - that environmentalists were silly for protesting about global warming on a cold day. Coz, you know - climate change is bad science that ignores all the evidence and here's a classic example. Dumb premise, dumb point, that's all. Amazing that a thread could run so long, on a question so clear. But, hey, the journey was worth it, right?

None of which makes me any less wrong about the meaning of irony, a' course. clutches head falls to knees howls at an indifferent sky

heads off to throttle OED committee

Oh, right, so framing asterisks just make it italic? Way to rub in the wrongness.

Blair might have been expressing the idea that it's funny to protest against global warming on a cold day, regardless of whether it was above or below average or whatever. And indeed it is a little bit funny but only because on a cold day it would seem more logical to welcome warming rather than protest it. Blair doesn't seem to realise that by possibly implying they should be welcoming warming if they believe it is happening, he shows that he has no consideration of the serious consequences of global warming. The funnier he thinks the protest is, the less consideration he has for the seriousness of global warming's consequences.