The Tilo Reber Thread

the examiner has picked up the story1 AGW is doomed!

Shorter Tilo:
There's a wolf, a wolf....here, it's really here......come and have a look......this time it's really here,honest.....please.....

Reber:

cores taken after 1979 simply don't agree with modern surface temp warming. The surface temp records stand alone at the high end with no tree proxy data to support them.

i.e. we shouldn't use thermometers to use surface temperature, we should use proxies. Also, today is 1979.

BTW, you have yet to retract your lying bullshitting:

But those cooling cycles of the past also had a reason

BTW2, some advice you should have learned as a child: "Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!"

Tilo`s smug posts here tell me a lot about the psychology behind denial.

Note that the rags Tilo shows are picking up this story are exactly what I would expect from the right wing corporate media. So far the sources are pretty obscure, even bearing in mind the fact that most of the media is totally subservient to elite interests. Note the scare stories being promulgated now across the board about the "threat" posed by Iran, echoing the same garbage we heard about Iraqs WMD six years ago. This paves the way for public acceptance of aggression and war, after which, when it is shown that the war was based on serial lies, the media shrug their collective shoulders and collectively plead their innocence.

If truth be told, the MSM is a major cog in the machinery of industrial killing. And a vital cog in the machinery of denial.

And of course they are part and parcel of a system aimed at promoting the status quo with respect to climate change. They talk about it but rarely will you see articles in the MSM saying what ought to be done about the problem. Moreover, its almost impossible to find articles in the MSM showing how the fossil fuel lobby is involved in supporting many of the denialists. Why? It is pretty obvious. Papers are either owned by big media conglomerates or corporations or else depend on corporate advertising to survive. Hence why the MSM takes an almost psychopathic view to AGW. Page one talks about the problem, whilst pages 2 through 10 are devoted to full page ads telling us to buy SUVs, to take cheap flights, to spend, spend spend and spend some more. The same media harp on forever about the need for "economic growth" without having a foggy idea of what they mean by the term, or of its implications on the environment. David Edwards and David Cromwell at Medialens have talked about the "pathology of normalcy" in many of their bulletins and in their excellent books.

Like most of the so-called sceptics (also a trick used by the creationists), Tilo and his entertaining clowns focus on one small piece of evidence in support of AGW: the hockey stick. The discussion of AGW pre-dates the hockey stick by many years, in fact. But the hockey stick has become the symbolic totem for the septical mob, who think that if they bring down this edifice then nobody will trust all of the other longstanding evidence strongly suggesting a human fingerprint is all over the current warming episode. The creationists have been doing the same thing for years - chip, chip, chip away at certain areas of evolutionary theory, ignoring the vast amounts of other data in support of it, and when they find a few flaws to claim that evolutionary theory itself as a whole is discredited.

I have written and spoken at length at universities before about the broad, anti-environmental, and anti-scientific agenda of the sceptics. These people wear their hearts on their sleeves. Though they claim to be arguing in favor of rigid science, the fact is that they hate climate science. It is just that is something they have to venture in in order to push their pre-determined view of the world.

And then Tilo has the gall, the audacity to talk about transparent science, as if the vast majority of sceptics knew what this was. Given that there is a veritable industry of denial that is mangling and distorting science to promote a pre-determined worldview and political agenda, it takes remarkable hubris for Tilo Reber, of all people, to talk about transparency in science. How many published articles do you have in the literature, Tilo? What the hell do you know about accountability?

we shouldn't use thermometers to use surface temperature, we should use proxies

Try, we shouldn't use thermometers to measure surface temperature, we should use proxies.

So, according to Tilo, next time I want to know the temperature, I should cut down a tree?

Dang, that's just so inconvenient.

Another beautiful rant from Jeff Harvey. Thank you Jeff.

"Tilo and his entertaining clowns focus on one small piece of evidence in support of AGW: the hockey stick."

Read the rest of the thread and you will see that you have made an ignorant assertion. When Yamal dies down I intend to have a discussion on the CO2 theory. Stay tuned. In regards to the hockey stick being small, it's probably the most dramatic item in Gore's movie. And the IPCC depends on it to support their asserion of "unprecedented" warming.

"Moreover, its almost impossible to find articles in the MSM showing how the fossil fuel lobby is involved in supporting many of the denialists."

I don't get a penny from anyone. So what is my motivation?

"the fact is that they hate climate science. It is just that is something they have to venture in in order to push their pre-determined view of the world."

And what do you suppose is our pre-determined view of the world that climate science is preventing. Note that the best way to push your predetermined view on the world is to tell the world that there is an iminent crisis ready to engulf them and only by following you will they be saved. Sounds very much like the alarmist side doesn't it?

"Given that there is a veritable industry of denial that is mangling and distorting science to promote a pre-determined worldview and political agenda, it takes remarkable hubris for Tilo Reber, of all people, to talk about transparency in science."

Actually the growth industry is the AGW industry. They have spent about 80 billion researching and pushing the AGW cause. The opposition hasn't spent one fiftieth of that. And regarding who is trying to promote a pre-determined world view and political agenda, here are some quotes for you:

âNobody is interested in solutions if they donât think thereâs a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.â â Al Gore

âWhat weâve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.â
â Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

âClimate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the worldâ
âNo matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral environmental benefitsâ (to global warming policies)
âChristine Stewart (former canadian environmental minister)

âTo capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honestâ
â Stephan Schneider 1989 (lead the 2007 UN IPCC report)

Michael:
"So, according to Tilo, next time I want to know the temperature, I should cut down a tree?"

I've never seen so many people try so hard to sound like idiots. Someone has to be really stupid to interpret my remark that the proxies and the surface temps don't agree as suggesting we should use proxies to read temperature.

Chris:
"Also, today is 1979."

Seems that you've completely lost your mind Chris.

Tilo,

You write, with usual comic flair, the same gibberish that has been said time, and time, and time again. The bottom line is that in my opinion many - perhaps most? - of the prominent sceptics in the denial lobby do not give a rat`s ass about the science of climate change any more than they care about the empirical evidence for the loss of biodiversity or the destruction of tropical forests. For the most part, they come from the same side of the political tracks: the right, the far libertarian right to be more precise. They despise government regulation, viewing regulations as an impediment to freedom. Eliminating government in the pursuit of freedom. I have met many of these people and their wen sites dominate the contrarian ranks.

When I talk about funding, I was not referring to a minion like you Tilo. You most probably have your own political beliefs that tie-in very closely with the beliefs of those who promote unlimited free markets, corporate expansion and the rest. You have no stature in science as far as I can tell, so you are not worth bothering about. I refer to those who are are have been affiliated with libertarian think tanks, astroturf lobby groups and PR firms. Many of the best-known sceptics for some reason do not mind being associated with or funded by fossil fuel companies or to be described as "experts" on the pages of various think tank web pages. These organizations DO have an axe to grind politically, because they are receiving large sums of corporate money and thus their job is to disseminate amongst the general public perspectives that are sympathetic to corporate interests. Given that commercial and political elites fear and loathe real democracy, because it puts power into the hands of ordinary people, they engage in the most mendacious propaganda campaigns in order to gain public support. The huge swell in the number of generally right wing free market promoting think tanks over the past 30 years has illustrated this trend.

Commercial elites see the growing evidence of AGW as a threat to the way they do business, so they have recruited a relatively small number of scientists, many of whom share their views, to act as third parties, thus vaguely concealing their real political agendas. They have learned from the classic PR work of Bernays, that in order to curry support they need to enlist third parties to speak on their behalf, much as the tobacco lobby has done. If the CEO of a large tobacco company publicly stated that smoking and second-hand smoke was harmless, he would be ridiculed. But if he can put those words into someone else`s mouth, preferably a medical doctor or even an actor wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope, people are more likely to believe it. The AGW denial lobby, which in spite of your vacuous comment is a multi-billion dollar industry, has learned from the tobacco lobby, which perhaps explains why so many tobacco lobbyists have ended up in the AGW-denial camp. Many of these people are called "adjunct scholars" or "experts" on the pages of think tanks when they are nothing more than corporate lobbyists.

The AGW-denial industry depends on dupes like you, those who have little scientific acumen but share their core beliefs, to act as their small army of "foot soldiers" by independently setting up web sites in which they can write any amount of gobbledegook knowing that many people have a very poor understanding of climate science. They are well aware that the general public want to know the truth about AGW but also to expunge any guilt they have living in clearly unsustainable societies in which our lifestyles are driving environmental destruction. Let us face it; people do not want to change they live, especially those with concentrated wealth and power. Pretty well every indicator of every natural system on Earth is in decline, and economists know damned well that we are headed in the wrong direction but they just look away and do not want to spend too much time thinking about it. I find it staggering that a small group of sceptics somehow think it is beyond human power to affect global climate patterns in a time when humans are a global force. We know that we are co-opting 40% or more of net primary production. We know that we are co-opting 50% or more of freshwater flows. We know that we have simplified a wide array of natural systems altering local climate patterns (for sure). Me know that we have affected cycles of carbon, nitrogen and other nutrients over vast spatial scales. We know that we are extinguishing genetic diversity at a faster rate than any time in 65 million years. We know that we are depleting groundwater supplies. We also know that we are interfering with a range of critical ecosystems services. None of this is in doubt. Yet it just seems bizarre, to say the least, that there are a small band of die-hards out there who think that it is beyond the human capability to force climate, when in so many other respects we are a global force.

Jeff, when are you going to start your own blog? It's a shame that gems like #506 are buried deep in comments threads, a particular shame that one has to trawl through so much tripe to find them.

Tilo Reber said:

Bishop Hill has created a short history for the layman about the Briffa Yamal fraud. This is much easier to understand than McIntyre's post, as McIntyre's post assumes that the reader has arrived with a lot of prior history in hand.

to which Mark replies:

Why not use his real name:
Christopher Monckton.

which draws, from Reber, the response:

I don't care if his real name is Satan. Unless you can demonstrate that something that he said in his post is false, I regard this as just another personal attack...

Is it just me, or is there something odd about taking umbrage at another identifying someone's real name?

How can revealing Bishop Hill as actually being Monckton be a personal attack â unless of course Monckton's reputation leaves more than a little to be desired?

Ah, of course...! Now I understand why Tilo was so annoyed to have Monckton equated with Bishop Hill... But if it's a personal attack to reveal Bishop Hill as being Monckton, then why would anything that Bishop Hill/Monckton says be worthy of consideration?

Tilo, I think that you're engaging in a little cognitive dissonance of your own...

Reber:

Chris: "Also, today is 1979."
Seems that you've completely lost your mind Chris.

With gems like:

Moberg shows the MWP as being warmer than today

based on data that only goes up to 1979, I think we all know who's lost their mind out of me and Reber, and it isn't me.

BTW, someone who says:

Chris: "BUT I ALSO BELIEVE THE COOLING CYCLES ARE NOT ENOUGH TO OPPOSE CO2 WARMING OVER 11 YEARS."

Of course they are enough. I have told you that a dozen time. But those cooling cycles of the past also had a reason - whereas the reasons for having an 11 year flat cycle are not there

and then proceeds to say that the only reason there was a cooling cycle from July 1958 to June 1968 was because of measurement errors has lost his mind long ago.

Hey Tilo!

Your ass just got handed to you on a plate.

Now, how about going back to that little log cabin of yours to dream up new conspiracahhhhhhhhh theories? :-) Even I get tired of laughing at your stupidity.

Chris:
"based on data that only goes up to 1979, I think we all know who's lost their mind out of me and Reber, and it isn't me."

Oh, it's definitely you Chris. Look at post #485 where I said:

"You can complain that his records only go to 1979 if you like, but cores taken after 1979 simply don't agree with modern surface temp warming. The surface temp records stand alone at the high end with no tree proxy data to support them. So comparing those surface temp records to the MWP proxy data is simply idiotic."

So it really doesn't matter if the data only goes to 1979. More recent data has simply not followed surface temperature record. That is one of the reasons that people like Mann have been searching for excuses to not update their records to the present. This means that if you could update Moberg, it's no indication that his endpoint would go above the MWP. And notice that where is was in 79 was more than .2C lower than it's MWP high point.

And of course 485 shows that I knew Moberg ended in 79 and I knew what your reaction would be. That makes your remark doubly stupid.

Bernard J:

"Is it just me, or is there something odd about taking umbrage at another identifying someone's real name?"

No, it's definitely you Bernard. Anyone who can interpret what I said within the context of where I said it as taking umbrage over the exposure of an identity is definity in la la land. It's very obvious that what I was taking umbrage at was the usual alarmist approach of attacking the messenger when unable to attack the message. My whole point was that the material stands on it's own. If Satan says that 2 + 2 = 4, it's still true, regardless of the fact that Satan said it. Mark's entire post was geared to discredit the messenge by discrediting the messager. But Monkton did a good job of giving the history of the dispute, and so what his name was or what Mark thought of him was irrelevant.

Shorter Tilo,

I'm back to argue black is white again.

[Moberg's reconstruction]( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/1000_Year_Temperatur…) show that the MWP was lower than today. So I would like to assert that they show the opposite.

You are mistaken if you think I am wrong to claim that *â Moberg shows the MWP as being warmer than todayâ*

In fact if you challenge me on this, you have definitely lost your mind. I will prove this point by arguing black is white for infinitum. My speciality is being correct in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. I maintain black is white.

Former Sceptic:
"Your ass just got handed to you on a plate."

I was there today Former. And I would hardly regard the screaming of a bunch of alarmist monkeys as getting my ass handed to me on a plate.

Of course as long as Gavin protects his little monkeys through censorship of the opposition, you can believe that you handed everyone their ass.

For example, to Gavin's assertion that everyone was getting all of the data that they needed I wrote [this post:](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SsUMIzGbPXI/AAAAAAAAAFI/3o4j7swEo…)

Double click the image.

Knowing how Gavin likes to censor dissent I took a screen shot. Of course he censored my post just as expected. You need only look at the ignorant ramblings of one of Gavin's monkeys directly above my submission to see the caliber of discussion that Gavin did accept.

Then if you look at the rest of my attempted post you will see how Briffa's cherry picking is actually done - courtesy of Briffa himself.

There were other ironies that I didn't put in, like Briffa complaining about McIntyre not explaining his selection reasons when Briffa never explained his own selection reasons.

McIntyre plotted all of Briffa's trees that Briffa used for the last part of his reconstruction. And it becomes obvious that almost the whole Hockey blade effect comes from a single tree. I also tried to provide Gavin with a link to those plots and again, Gavin censored it. [Here is the link:](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/briffa_single_tree_y…)

There are numerous other issues of course - like the presentation of the various hockey sticks from other proxies. Some of those proxies used the discredited North American bristlecone series. For the non tree ring proxies, there are even more out there that either don't have a hockey blade or that have an MWP that is warmer than the 20th century. So the selection of hockey sticks in the main article was also cherry picked. Of course the problems with tree ring proxies have been well discussed. Other proxies also have numerous problems that have been less commonly discussed.

Tilo, apparently with a straight face, writes, "usual alarmist approach of attacking the messenger when unable to attack the message"

You clearly don`t have a clue, do you? I suggest you read many of the most prominent books by the contrarians and see what choice words they use to describe environmentalists and scientists whose research they don`t like. It goes way, way beyond any of the nasty things I have heard to describe the motley lot that you support. Try "Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns", with contributions for many notable denialists, and check out what they say about the environmental community.

James Hansen and Michael Mann have been called every nasty thing one can think of by many in the denial camp. Check up on smears used to describe Paul Ehrlich, Edward O. Wilson, Steve Schneider and other prominent scientists who are loathed by the far right and the same picture emerges. In the Lomborg debate certain people, blog sites and even think tanks called me some pretty horrific names (and still do).

This argument is, of course, a red herring. When it comes to the science, the sceptics hardly have any in the peer-reviewed literature. So they paste it all over web sites where there is usually no peer-review process. This has its advantages and its disadvantages. One of the advantages is that it is free and open-access. One of the disadvantages is that every crackpot theory in science ends up there. When it comes to the "message", the denialists don`t have much of one where it counts - in the scientific journals. So Tilo`s remark has little substance.

Moreover, Tilo, it turns out my last post does sum you up to a tee. I checked out your two blog sites, and, surprise, surprise! One of them (Mystic Minutiae) spouts out all kinds of libertarian gibberish. Mark Steyn, Tim Blair and the National Review are on the blogroll. Exactly the political perspective that I would have predicted.

By the way, Tilo: how many scientific papers do you have published in scientific journals? I mean journals of the Web of Science data base? Please tell.

"I suggest you read many of the most prominent books by the contrarians and see what choice words they use to describe environmentalists and scientists whose research they dont like."

So your argument is that Mark's approach of attacking the messenger is valid because the other side does it. Very intelligent.

"Exactly the political perspective that I would have predicted."

Just as the gibberish that you spout is the kind of political perspective that I would expect from your idiotic rants.

"By the way, Tilo: how many scientific papers do you have published in scientific journals? I mean journals of the Web of Science data base? Please tell."

As many as the guy who runs Deltoid. As many as Al Gore. Don't you morons ever get tired of telling people that only climate scientists can have opinions when the majority of you are not climate scientists and you are out there spouting your nonsense every day.

Reber:

if you could update Moberg

means:

Moberg shows the MWP as being warmer than today

Another name for Reber is Alice in Wonderland.

Reber's law of "there's a 'reason' when I say there is and no reason when I say there isn't":

But those cooling cycles of the past also had a reason - whereas the reasons for having an 11 year flat cycle are not there

And that "reason" is:

Possibly a change in the way that the temperature of sea water was measured

Jeff asks:
>>*"By the way, Tilo: how many scientific papers do you have published in scientific journals? I mean journals of the Web of Science data base? Please tell."

Tilo replys:
>*As many as the guy who runs Deltoid. As many as Al Gore. Don't you morons ever get tired of telling people that only climate scientists can have opinions when the majority of you are not climate scientists and you are out there spouting your nonsense every day.*

[Peer-review](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/) is ...the process by which people are forced to match their rhetoric to their actual results.

That is why Tilo record is zip!

Not much space in peer reviewed publications for people who want to argue black is white.

In other words, you have published zilch.

Thanks for the confirmation.

Again, you promulgate more red herrings. Gore didn`t do the research but merely reported on the findings of thousands of independent researchers around the world. Same goes for Tim Lambert and most others who comment on Tim`s blog (with a few notable exceptions).

No, I do not justify insults, but please don`t call the kettle black. Contrarians are masters at the art of smearing. They have perfected the art through greenwashing with the help of PR firms that specialize in this kind of thing.

As for your politics, which seem to be far to the right, I believe that this reflects your perspective on climate change science. This is my view - please tell me if you disagree. Few sceptics I have seen that have been motivated to set up web logs or the like attacking AGW are in the political middle or left. Coincidence? Hardly. This is an ideological battle being fought with science as its camouflage.

As far as rants go, you are pretty good yourself. But again, you are creating another red herring. Your aim is to deligitimize your opponents arguments, no matter how accurate they are, by accusing them of rants or polemics. If truth be told, this is something that the contrarians are pretty good at - it enables them to dismiss arguments that are empirically sound. And it reveals your hypocrisy further in describing those attacking the message or the messenger.

OK, if you allegedly want to stick to science let me ask you this: do you think there are any environmental problems serious enough to warrant action globally and/or regionally? if so, elaborate. If not, do the same.

"By the way, Tilo: how many scientific papers do you have published in scientific journals? I mean journals of the Web of Science data base? Please tell."

Reber:

Don't you morons ever get tired of telling people that only climate scientists can have opinions when the majority of you are not climate scientists and you are out there spouting your nonsense every day.

You just don't get it, do you? We're not the ones turning climate scientist's peer-reviewed work into bullshit. That's your activity. You can have bullshit opinions if you want. But the difference between your bullshit and reviewed climate science is that you talk bullshit and the climate scientists don't.

I can't remember who it was, but someone made a very relevant comment that relates to the whole McIntyre and deniol-o-sphere ranting.

To paraphrase: I'd rather be harshly criticised by someone who understands my work/field, than praised by someone who is ignorant of it.

Explains why McIntyre publishes on a blog that caters to the braying donkeys like Tilo.

Tilo Reber:

Heard this song before?

Oh he's getting a tattoo yeah/He's getting ink done/
He asked for a thirteen but they drew a thirty-one/
Friends say he's trying too hard/and he's not quite hip/
But in his own mind..he's the...he's the dopest trip!

-Offspring - "Pretty Fly (for a white guy)"

That's you. Do keep on thinking you've shown the RC folks up with your ramblings - it really made my day when you repeatedly receiveth the smacketh-down on your candy ass by Gavin. Your ignorant persistence is really hilarious :)

And I would hardly regard the screaming of a bunch of alarmist monkeys as getting my ass handed to me on a plate.

Touched a simian raw nerve with yourself, didn't we? What you call "censorship" is another man's acceptable edit for relevance. Besides, if you had bothered to read other responses in that post railing about data availability you would realize that such "demands" miss the point about replicating results. But please, do stay on your pet hobbyhorse and keep bitching - it beats watching Letterman and Leno.

You have a queer definition of censorship. Censorship is what happens at Watt's the Fcuk is Up when Roger Pielke Sr's BFF gets confronted with science. But hey, given that you can't even see how foolish you've been, I'm not surprised you don't get that.

Lastly - when are you gonna accept Gavin's challenge in post #65 in RC, you fly white guy?

Jeff #519: "Few sceptics I have seen that have been motivated to set up web logs or the like attacking AGW are in the political middle or left. Coincidence? Hardly. This is an ideological battle being fought with science as its camouflage."

Well, there's Alexander Cockburn, whose overall political stance is, if anything, somewhat to the left of Chomsky, but who has enthusiastically aligned himself with the worst of the denialists when it comes to AGW.

But he seems to be an outlier.

extreme left of what can be is about as far left as you can
possibly be while stil who has taken up a strong anti-AGW position - in

"Gore didnt do the research but merely reported on the findings of thousands of independent researchers around the world"

And I report the findings of people like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Svensmark, McIntyre and others. I'm underwhelmed by journal publications since the major journals have made up their minds and have decided to censor those with whom they disagree.

But I'd like to take a look at a typical case of main stream, journal published science. In 2006 NASA lead solar physicist David Hathaway predicted that solar cycle 24 was coming and that it was going to be one of the biggest solar cycles in the 400 year history of solar cycles. In support of his theory were University of Colorado solar phycisists that predicted an even larger solar cycle than Hathaway and claimed that their model for prediction was 98% accurate. Well, solar cycle 24 has finally arrived, about a year and a half after Hathaway said it would, and it can hardly get off the floor. Hathaway has had to drop his prediction drastically. It looks like his high point will be 2 years late. And from the way that the cycle is starting up, it looks more like solar cycle 24 will be one of the smaller ones in history. Of course the physicist at CU were equally wrong. Somehow their 98% accuracy model barfed. The problem that these solar scientists have is that their predictions were only made two to three years into the future. So it didn't take us long to see what fools they were. The only differnce between those people and the people predicting huge temperature gains over the next century is time.

"If truth be told, this is something that the contrarians are pretty good at - it enables them to dismiss arguments that are empirically sound."

In your case, your weren't making arguments, you were just stating your opinions.

"OK, if you allegedly want to stick to science let me ask you this: do you think there are any environmental problems serious enough to warrant action globally and/or regionally?"

I think that we have to continue to limit hunting and fishing. I think that we have to protect the atmosphere against toxic chemicals. Of course I don't include CO2 in that. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to life. I also think that we should start building more nuclear plants and that we should slowly phase out coal plants. But for the most part I think that the environmentalists are off the deep end. For example, they told us that the Alaskan pipe line was going to wipe out the Caribou herds. Instead the heards that they were suppose to wipe out increased their populations greatly. The polar bear scares are also propaganda. We had iceless summers in the Arctic 6000 years ago and the polar bears obviously made it. The alarmists have targeted the plight of the furthest south population of polar bears in Hudson bay. But last season's flyover count showed one of the biggest populations ever. And other populations of polar bears are increasing as well. Yes, your are right, AGW is largely political. But that is because the left is trying to create an artificial scare that will allow them to push their policies further left than ever. The right is not trying to impose anything new. They are simply playing defense.

But given all the politics I still believe that AGW is hugely overblown and that there is no chance of the distaters that it predicts. I think that the feedback to CO2 is most likely negative leaving us with a climate sensitivity of .3C to .6C per CO2 doubling. I think that Svensmarks theory is correct and that cosmic radiation that forms ions, that forms aerosols, that forms clouds is the main driver for climate on the earth. I completely believe that his theory will be proven when they test at CERN next year. The correlation between solar activity and temperature is excellent. It's not due to TSI, but it is due to cosmic radiation.

>*I completely believe that his theory will be proven when they test at CERN next year.*

"*I compleatly believe".. Now he sounds like Girma!

A faith based hope!

And the rest of the gish gallop of distrotions and misrepresentations show why Tilo record is zip.

>Peer-review is ...the process by which people are forced to match their rhetoric to their actual results. (Gavin)

"We're not the ones turning climate scientist's peer-reviewed work into bullshit."

Yeah, I'm the one that made sure that Briffa only had a single hockey stick tree to base his entire hockey stick Yamal reconstruction on. I stole into his computer and changed his files just to make his work look like bullshit. But he almost foiled me by not letting anyone see his files.

Contrary to the claims made in this thread, Moberg's temperature reconstructions are sensitive to the warming in the instrumental record.

[A plot]( http://i38.tinypic.com/99jmns.jpg) of Moberg's figures and Hadley CRT show that Moberg's reconstruction are, if anything, overly sensitive to warming in the 1940s.

Tilo writes:

>*"Yeah, I'm the one that made sure that Briffa only had a single hockey stick tree to base his entire hockey stick Yamal reconstruction on."*

No Tilo, you just spout junk in the hope of conveying the impression that the hockey stick is base on one tree.

Crediblity: Tilo is zip!

I can see why Tilo has this own thread - stupid this virulent needs quarantining.

*But that is because the left is trying to create an artificial scare that will allow them to push their policies further left than ever. The right is not trying to impose anything new. They are simply playing defense*

Oh brother. I do not know how to seriously address this kind of fatuous remark (and those about caribou and polar bears) without being accused of one of my customary rants.

First of all, this is gumbified politics. The idea that the left - of which there is hardly any representation in the US, given the fact that both main parties are property parties on the right and have appalling foreign policy agendas - has some sneaky green agenda is beyond comprehension. Politics in much of the developed world is utterly beholden to powerful, vested interests. There are no real alternatives to largely plutocratic political systems because these have been hijacked by those with concentrated wealth. The Labor Party in the UK is so right wing by now that its hard to see where they stand with the Conservatives. That the media is left is one of the biggest long-standing myths of our time. Most of it is either owned by huge multinational corporations or depends on corporate advertising for its survival.

Those in power know where their bread is buttered, that is for sure. But the one thing commercial elites fear the most is regulation that will limit their ability to maximize short-term profit. These people do not think more than 1 or 2 years ahead. Their priority is the next fiscal quarter or perhaps year, and their job is to maximize shareholder`s returns. This means eviscerating public constraints in the pursuit of private profit. The idea that the right is fighting some heroic battle against a green tidal wave is bullshit.

Then Tilo turns to ecology - if one can call a discussion that we still need to hunt and fish and that caribou and polar bears are doing just fine can be called ecology. I had expected that he would not know much about this area but his argument was about as deep as a dried puddle.

First of all, we have no idea what the short-medium term holds for these two species alone, let alone the hundreds of thousands of species and millions of genetically distinct populations that Homo sapiens has already committed to extinction over the past century. The fact is that per capita fitness measures of polar bears, such as body mass and fat stores, are in decline, even as populations remain stable. In other words, the bears are being pushed towards a threshold beyond which they will experience reduced realized fitness returns. The trouble with pseudo-scientific denialists is that they know virtually nothing about non-linear processes. They all think like cause-and-effect relationships follow linear trajectories. Nature does not work that way. The bears are clearly under stress, but their demographics have been able to withstand it thus far because they have not been pushed beyond an ecophysiologically critical point. But the signs are not encouraging. Numbers of extant individuals tells us nothing about inter- and intrapopulational quality. As pack ice declines, bears will become more physiologically stressed. Its no use suggesting that the Arctic was largely free in the past because during those times the planet was not dominated by a rapacious bipedal primate which had dramatically altered the surface of the planet, as well as the chemical environment. Organisms towards the terminal end of the food chain accumulate chemical toxins that have long half-lives. Polar bears are no exception. Levels of pesticides have been found in tissues of bears that are exceptionally high. This induces one form of stress, whereas others include changes in other aspects of the physical, chemical and biotic environment in which the bears live. Moreover, those who know little about ecology and claim that the bears are fine have never heard of the extinction debt. This is a process by which historical changes in the environment do not instantaneously manifest themselves on the demographics of an individual species. Instead, there is a temporal lag that may occur over many decades or even centuries. It is likely that activities carried out two hundred years ago in Eastern North America are still rippling through ecological communities. This could explain the continued decline of the red-cockaded woodpecker or the loggerhed shrike, as well as the deleterious effects of brood parasites such as the brown-headed cowbird or meso-predators such as raccoons, red foxes and domestic cats on native American songbird populations which have moved to the end of the food chain as top level predators (e.g. gray wolves, mountain lions) were extirpated in the 19th century.

Lastly, climate change is the offspring of human actions, but many other processes are synergized with its effects. The threats posed by invasive species, habitat loss, eutrophication and loss of wetlands, overharvesting, and other forms of pollution all threaten biodiversity and ecosystems across the biosphere. All of these stresses have been heavily researched and all are beyond any reasonable doubt. However, many of those who deny the human fingerprint on warming also rail against the idea that these other problems exist. This reveals their agenda which is wholly political: business-as-usual is the ONLY business. Maintain the status quo. As I have said, as far as I see it climate change denialists dominate the political right (yes, with a few exceptions like Alexander Cockburn) and their agenda is not to find the scientific truth, but to promote political agendas that are based on the accumulation of private profit. Science has nothing to do with it.

> Tilo, apparently with a straight face, writes, "usual alarmist approach of attacking the messenger when unable to attack the message"

Even stranger (well, not really: we know tito is batshit insane), how does he deal with the refutation of AGW science?

By attacking the messenger and ignoring the message.

Mark Byrne:
"A plot of Moberg's figures and Hadley CRT show that Moberg's reconstruction are, if anything, overly sensitive to warming in the 1940s."

Looked at your plot Mark. ROFL.

And you especially like the 1940's. More ROFL.

Jeff:
"The Labor Party in the UK is so right wing by now that its hard to see where they stand with the Conservatives. That the media is left is one of the biggest long-standing myths of our time."

Sorry to hear that you are disappointed comrade.

"Most of it is either owned by huge multinational corporations or depends on corporate advertising for its survival."

Uuuhhh, it's the old "big coorporations are evil, unlimited government is good" scare. Let me go check to see if Microsoft and Exxon are hiding under my bed trying to steal my money.

"These people do not think more than 1 or 2 years ahead."

Maybe we need a nice Stalin type 5 year plan.

"The fact is that per capita fitness measures of polar bears, such as body mass and fat stores, are in decline, even as populations remain stable."

One study, one or two populations, and even that is disputed by the local people that have been watching these bears all of their lives.

"Its no use suggesting that the Arctic was largely free in the past because during those times the planet was not dominated by a rapacious bipedal primate which had dramatically altered the surface of the planet,"

Maybe a nice government run forced sterilization program is called for comrade. We could start with all who disagree with us.

> One study, one or two populations, and even that is disputed by the local people that have been watching these bears all of their lives.

And so with this you dismiss over a century and a half of science because it says that our CO2 emissions are causing a climate problem.

Ross McKitrick has written an [excellent summation](http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2056988&p=1) of the Yamal scandal for the Financial Post. One interesting fact that he gives, of which I was previously unaware, is that Briffa and Schweingruber collected and produced a tree ring proxy from the polar Urals that showed a large MWP and an unspectacular 20th century. Of course such a result didn't suit their agenda and so they set it aside without publishing it.

Mark:
"And so with this you dismiss over a century and a half of science because it says that our CO2 emissions are causing a climate problem."

Half a century of science? I don't think that they spent more that a few month on that report. And of course they wanted more research money. Get aboard that alarmist gravy train. Have you ever noticed that every alarmist report points to something but is still inconclusive and requires more research.

When I first saw the correlation charts between solar activity and temperature I thought, "That's it! It has to be the sun." At first I thought that is must be due to an increase of radiative enery coming from the sun as solar activity increased. But after looking into it I had to give up the idea because the variation in TSI was simply too small, and could therefore account for only a small fraction of the observed temperature change. Still, it was hard to let go of that nice correlation. Then along came Henrik Svensmark and his theory of cosmic radiation. At first the theory seemed a little bit wild, but as time went by it picked up substance. Svensmark ran cloud chamber test and other supporting correlations were found.

A rough outline of how the theory works goes like this.

Solar activity modulates the size of the solar magnetic field that the sun creates around our solar system. When solar activity is weak, the magnetic field is also weakened.

The universe is full of cosmic rays - supposedly caused by exploding stars. The suns magnetic field serves to partially shield our solar system from most of these cosmic rays. But when the magnetic field weakens, more cosmic rays strike the earth. This part of the correlation is already understood and accepted science.

Svensmark believes that these cosmic rays produce ionization in our atmosphere. The ionization causes the production of H2O aerosols. The existence of these aerosoles then allows for the formation of the water droplets that make up clouds. The clouds produce an albedo which cools the earth.

For most of the twentieth century the level of solar activity has been increasing, only falling for the last 15 years or so. There is a small lag effect due to the buffering of the oceans, but basically, temperature follow solar activity very well. Additionally, the leveling off of temperature for the last decade corresponds well to the lower level of solar activity. The CO2 correlation, on the other hand, is weakened by a divergence of CO2 and temperature.

Additional evidence for Svensmark's theory comes from the ice ages. The galaxie has four main spirals that we can call arms. As our solar system moves through the galaxie, we pass through these arms from time to time. Cosmic ray activity picks up when we are within these arms. The interval and pattern of our ice ages shows that they correlate extremely well with the periods when we are passing through these arms. In other words, we get more cosmic radiation during the passage, the earth gets cooler, we have an ice age.

Here are 5 ten minute youtube clips that give a very fine history of Svensmark's theory.

[Part 1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1qGOUIRac0)

[Part 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTqBrML4nsc&feature=related)

[Part 3](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3m8FJNm9Ro&feature=related)

[Part 4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y87vLJrh2AY&feature=related)

[Part 5](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pRmbBsdhNE&feature=related)

While Svensmark and his team have already run several successful tests, and published their results, the definitve tests will be run next year at CERN.

Tilo, ever the hypocrite, and unable to challenge a thing I said in my last post, descends to ignorant posturing and mockery. As I had expected. But given that Tilo`s response to my presvious posting was blithely ignorant (his worldview of ecology is hunting, fishing, polar bears and caribou, something I would expect from a grade school student) it is no surprise to me that his riposte had no substance at all but was some far right waffle.

Again, nothing new there. Let us be honest Tilo: like most of the other denialists, many of whom are as scientifically illiterate as you and are affiliated with right wing think tanks, you are (ab)using science as a means of projecting your political worldview. A view which is also painfully simple. "The right are just trying to fend off the green hordes who want to force socialism onto us ordinary citizens". You are a pitiful bunch.

And you have the audacity to talk about an alarmist "gravy train", with the billions of dollars floating around the corporate denial fund. Let me tell you this, pal: if you want to become rich you don`t become a scientist. None of my grants have one iota to do with climate change, or even human environmental destruction. But many of in the denial camp appear to be doing quite well for themselves, in spite of their shoddy scientific and publication records. If you want to become a celebrity, its clear whose ranks you join: the denialist ranks. A sure means of bypassing the usually long road to academic prominence without having to do very much. Check up on the publication records of some of the well known contrarians and you will find some have only 10 papers or less. So do not give me this gravy train bullshit. A person who writes this kbnows absolutely nix about science or the way that it works.

I could take the rest of your lousy post apart but you know what, Reber? You are not worth the time of day. As I said, methinks you are a minion.

Ross McKitrick? The Financial Post?

Oh, the irony, the irony.....

> Tilo: The correlation between solar activity and temperature is excellent. It's not due to TSI, but it is due to cosmic radiation.

Tee-hee!

What an idiot. You folks are giving this loon far too much attention.

Tilo Reber @467
>*âSorry, Janet you got it wrong again. If you want to compare MWP Moberg to 20th century surface temp, then you would have to calibrate 20th century Moberg to the surface temp. In that case, you would have a much higher MWP for Moberg. As you can see, if you take Mobergs end point and compare it to the same time on the surface temp record, the surface temp record is much higherâ¦â*

Tilo was called on this when the data he refers to was [presented here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/05/the_tilo_reber_thread.php#comme…) refuting Tilo's nonsense.

Tilo's response:
>"Looked at your plot Mark. ROFL."

Well what else could Tilo do? His speciality is arguing black is white in the face of contrary evidence.

Shorter Tilo:
>I reject the evidence and substitute my on prejudice!

Keep it up Tilo, we're all ROFL ;)

Tilo's cred: now less than zip!

What an idiot. You folks are giving this loon far too much attention.

These are two of the reasons why he was given his own thread ...

>*Uuuhhh, it's the old "big coorporations are evil, unlimited government is good" scare. Let me go check to see if Microsoft and Exxon are hiding under my bed trying to steal my money.*

Why is it that; 'the big corporations are greedy, rapacious, and powerful', doesn't sound as stupid as the; 'greedy, rapacious, powerful scientists'?

Tilo Reber.

I thought for a moment that you couldn't be so ecologically retarded, but then I realised that it was not you with whom Jeff and I once had a sensible few exchanges with, but [Lance](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/06/the_denial_industrial_complex.p…).

I have said it once before, but in contrast to most other posters on Deltoid I found Lance to be a half-reasonable Denialist to speak with.

You, on the other hand, are typical of the Denialati.

Tell us, how much of the high trophic-level carnivore primary literature have you read and assessed? How much of the high trophic-level carnivore primary literature have you determined contradicts the vulnerability evidenced in species such as polar bears? What structured surveys of indigenous peoples have you assessed that indicates most indigenies believe that polar bears - or any other top predator for that matter - are succeeding beyond their pre-human-impact equilibria?

Just under two years ago I had the extreme privilege of speading four days in with one of the pre-eminent North American carnivore biologists. She accompanied me on fieldtrips for my two jobs (both involved with carnivores, one endangered), and during the many hours travelling between traps, or microchipping, bleeding, biopsying, weighing, measuring and scoring animals, we spoke of her work.

Much of it involves bears, including polar bears, and through our long exchanges over the minutæ of carnivore autecology it became very apparent to me that, just as the scores of papers I've accumulated indicate, polar bears are at extreme risk from the effects of warming. It is beyond the scope of one thread on this blog to detail why, but f you wish to rebutt a whole field of research, go and study the foundation principles first, and read the relevant body of primary literature, and then come back and tell Jeff and I exactly why it is crap.

If you can't do that, just accept that you're an ideological parrot who is merely squarking the drivel espoused, with no objective credibility nor grounding in fact, by your ideological compadres.

Such compadrazgo is not in any way, shape or form a basis for refutation of a whole field of ecology.

Anticipiation of the Tilo Reber School of ecology:

1) Notice polar bears are endangered;

2) Curb hunting of polar bears in 1970s

3) Watch numbers begin to recover

4) From 1990s dismiss impact of global warming on polar bears, because the higher cub mortality has not yet reduced population to the lowest levels during hunting regimes.

5) QED Polar Bears are not threatened in the minds of those like Tilo.

Reber #369:

"What caused -0.10 deg C per decade of the trend from July 1958 to June 1968?" Possibly a change in the way that the temperature of sea water was measured. http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-on-that-sst-change.html

Steve McIntyre's graph on that web page shows McIntyre's prefered correction to HadCrut3 at the time. That correction reduces the warming trend over the period 1946-1996 which includes July 1958 to June 1968. i.e. he takes the cooling trend between July 1958 and June 1968 in HadCrut3 and makes it into an even stronger cooling trend. So a change in the way that the temperature of sea water was measured did not cause that cooling trend at all. With that change removed the cooling trend in Hadcrut3 is even stronger. i.e. no explanation for the July 1958 to June 1968 cooling trend whatsoever.

I've tried to explain this to Reber just with my own words before but we'll see if his ideologically-motivated cognitive failure prevents him from understanding McIntyre's graph.