I've observed a lot of "tu quoque" infrastructure being constructed recently: crafting situations with the apparent intent of eliciting general statements-of-condemnation against action BIG-X, for later wielding against those who'd engaged in action small-x. (Or alternatively, the Xs are the same but the contexts are different, in a way that matters; or alternatively, the original x was a set-up - bait - in the first place.)
Another way of putting it - think about the condemnations you've made, and consider if someone could take your "I abhor" general statement and apply it to molehills as well as mountains.
Is anyone else perceiving this effort going on? (I'm 99% sure it's happening, but don't know if it's just aimed at one target.)
I dunno, Bernard J, I mean, like, I'm not really into all that zen koan business and all, but my vote is for one-half of an infected umlaut. Left half.
Ugh, I note that the J thread is still appearing to the left on the "Recent Comments" list. Can someone who is still wandering around that especially seedy corner of Knockturn Alley let the trolls in there know of a challenge that I have for them. To wit...
"Jonas N", "Olaus Petri", "Ingvar Engelbrecht", "Pehr Bjornbom" and "GSW" are all quite firm in their pronouncement that "catastrophic" global warming will not occur as a consequence of human emissions of CO2 sourced from fossil carbon. Fine. I would like them to agree to this proposition:
that by the end of the first year in the future in which the Arctic is declared effectively ice free, or in which the minimum Arctic sea ice extent is recorded as being less than 250,000 square kilometres, each of the five mentioned personages ("Jonas N", "Olaus Petri", "Ingvar Engelbrecht", "Pehr Bjornbom" and "GSW") pay me one full year's worth of their respective salaries, based on their preceding financial year's tax records.
They will do so in recognition and acknowledgement that such a minimum/absent summer-ice event is the first arbitrarily explicit occurrence of a climate change impact that can reasonably be classified as being "catastrophic" in a practical, ecological and anthropological sense.
There is no need to make this a reciprocated agreement, and they should not do so, because the five said personages are all absolutely firm in their convictions that they are entirely correct, and that the majority of professional climatologists and physicists are wrong. Thus, they should be happy to put their money where their mouths are, and back up their claims with monetary substance where they do not support them with science.
It matters not whether one or more of the "Jonas N", "Olaus Petri", "Ingvar Engelbrecht", "Pehr Bjornbom" and "GSW" personages are sock puppets; each will be treated as a separate and liable individual.
Whether or not they accept the terms of this challenge, none of the above-named personages will engage, in any manner whatsoever, in alterations to this proposition or in tit-for-tat counter propositions: this proposition is simply a one-off formulated to demonstrate the strength of their convictions that "catastrophic" climate change will not occur.
Once this post is linked to on the Jonas thread, with notice to attention of "Jonas N", "Olaus Petri", "Ingvar Engelbrecht", "Pehr Bjornbom" and "GSW", I will take any further posting anywhere on Deltoid by any and each of these personages - where such posts do not explicitly and absolutely refuse these terms on the basis that the personages consider that human-caused warming may in fact result in an ice-free Arctic - to indicate that each posting personage accepts these terms without alteration, and that they give explicit permission for me to obtain from Tim Lambert, once the ice-extent event described above has occurred, their email and ISP addresses in order that I may track each of these people so that I can conclude the agreements and disperse the monies to climate change mitigation actions and to any and all other causes and recipients as I see fit to benefit.
As the proposer of this challenge I reserve the right to alter as I see fit, with notice and with due and sufficient opportunity for response as I alone choose to define such notice and opportunity, the terms of this challenge.
And a final note. I will not be posting further on the Jonas thread. Any correspondence, such as I choose to engage with, will occur on my side through the contemporary Open thread.
I dunno, Bernard J, I mean, like, I'm not really into all that zen koan business and all, but my vote is for one-half of an infected umlaut. Left half. That umlaut sounds sinister. I'd recommend penicillin. heyyy thank good admin blog akmerkez...
I am so glad our host has offered us another 'Open Thread' because I have been waiting eagerly to give you all an example of absolutely top class scientific behaviour - no, no, please don't thank me, just the usual 'readies' in a plain envelope. These are the words of the scientist in charge of those naughty little nutrinos who shot down the tunnel at CERN apparently faster than the speed of light:
"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News.
"When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"
Good job he's not a climate scientist, he wouldn't last long!
I don't want to step on Dave Duff's comment since I think he's getting something really good going with his comment no. 9, above. Unfortunately, I can only comment on open threads and did want to add a little something to the Jonas thread. So, sorry, Dave, gotta post here.
For the Jonas thread:
I see Jonas, Olaus, GSW that you're best by a flash-mob of Deltoid's attack-chihuahuas. Like you, I was initially astonished by the pack-attack's ankle-nipping, leg-humping, and nervous-energy yapping. But, if you haven't found out already, you'll soon discover that the lil' nippers are a harmless, albeit annoying bunch. All just dog-breath and bow-wows.
Incidentally, the characteristics of the greenshirt, attack-chihuahua breed include: always attack in packs, can dish it out but can't take it, are sore-losers, are obedience-trained by their masters, are prone to making "messes" when over-excited, produce really gross hair-balls due to their excessive and compulsive fur-licking, and draw their parasite nourishment exclusively from the taxpayer tit.
I hope this helps put things in perspective for you.
The guys at CERN were faced with a "Career Ending" result. I think they just made the best they could out of it. Nothing too brave about how they handled it I'm afraid - other than the fact they did strike a blow for Openness and Transparency, which I think is the point you are making.
I have no idea what their motivation was but it struck me as somewhat similar to dear old Albert's in that when he produced a theory which was, to say the least, 'gobsmacking', he published along with all the maths that supported it. The lads (and lasses?) at CERN having stumbled on something revolutionary did what proper scientists should do - they published and invited criticism. How unlike our own dear University of East Anglia, and sundry similar outfits in America, where the first thing you need to know is how to delete e-mails!
Good job he's not a climate scientist, he wouldn't last long!
Climate science isn't proposing anything that overturns the laws of physics.
The CERN group is.
Some of us understand the difference between orthodoxy and tossing relativity into the toilet. Orthodoxy is easy to defend. Overturning relativity ... not so much.
The CERN group is smart enough to understand that odds are extremely high that there's an error somewhere in their experimental results, as they made clear at the conference where they presented their results, inviting others to pitch in and help find out what's wrong ... or to substantiate that there's no known error.
Nothing in climate science requires such scrutiny. The basic physics has been around since Tyndall.
Not much of that around back at your own HQ when enquiries are made into Montford's shadowy financial backers at GWPF. It appears openness and transparency is only for others, not for them. Weapons-grade hypocrisy, as usual.
And it's always interesting to see your little conversations with your fellow trolls to see for example how the excitable view science as something to stuff into their own spin machine. Be sure to let us all know when CERN confirms what your vivid imaginations told you.
bill, I can see you've misunderstood the situation. In particular, my comment no. 10 and GSW's comment no. 12 referred to the Jonas thread. In that regard, the "ankle-nipping" to which GSW alludes is chek's prissy comment no. 1052 on the Jonas thread (which preceded GSW's comment no. 12). And chek's comment was indeed just the "beginning", as GSW so presciently anticipated, since shortly thereafter, two unusually energetic comments were received (Jonas nos. 1053/1054) from Jeff Harvey--Deltoid's alpha leg-humper.
A bit complicated, I know, but the root of the complication is that I am forbidden to comment directly on the Jonas thread, hence all the cross-referencing.
Finally, I'm surprised you could detect the faint, attention-seeking "signal" in GSW's comment amidst the general, weener-dork, exhibitionists-on-parade "noise" of this blog. And so very nice of you to provide the sought-for attention--you're one of the "good" Deltoids, bill.
Err...wee mike, remember what happened last time you stopped taking your medications and released your inner Grunt here at deltoid? You need to ease up on the testosterone supplements, or actually finish that course on anger management and surviving paedophilia, or whatever it is that prevents you from actually interacting reasonably with people whom you suspect are brighter and more successful than you are. That you side with the simpering scandinavians (and the petit-fascist "physicist" who signs himself GSW "; )") is boringly predictable. You never could play well with others, could you?
I do believe it was li'll mike here who was - in his own words - the "one sick f*ck" who accused the UN or IPCC or both of choosing certain cities he'd somehow classified as 'paedophile friendly' (maybe he gets some 'special interest' brochures?) as their preferred choice of venue.
Just by way of friendly, casual, unevidenced slander of the worst kind, you understand.
I do believe it was li'll mike here who was - in his own words - the "one sick f*ck" who accused the UN or IPCC or both of choosing certain cities he'd classified as 'paedophile friendly' or somesuch (maybe he gets some 'special interest' brochures?) as their preferred choice of venue.
Just by way of friendly, casual, unevidenced slander of the worst kind, you understand.
>Early on, you tried proclaiming that I never read any scientific literature (what an utterly moronic claim to make, even more so after the opposite was obvious). And when even simpler details what it said in the literature were discussed (by others) you totally bailed. You had absolutely nothing to contribute to the topic. Only your stupid rants of 'defending your colleagues'
>[My emboldened emphases]
and then:
>You use a lot of words, like:
>idiot, moron, stupid, lunatic ..
>and none of these words have any tangible meaning here.
>[And again, my emboldened emphases]
It seems that consistency of logical argument isn't one of the troll's finer points...
For those without the background, mike, like all the denialist trolls here, refused to condemn threats of violence (death) and sexual assault on the children of scientists investigating the role of humans in climate change.
Mike "forgets" that he wouldn't condemn these people and now wants to pretend that he was the one asking for condemnation.
> Myself and others were then tasked by certain Deltoids to provide this blog with public condemnations of child-rape (which we readily provided).
Pop along to the thread and see for yourself.
Mike ought to have managed to give you a link to where he and other denialist trolls were readily providing their condemnation.
Before we get started, wow,--I don't think you answered the question previously posed. Let me try again:
Do you condemn pedophilia? Yes or No.
Wow, before I get started on my factual reply, I want you to know that I recognize the drill--you launch a fib-booger that takes you no more than a few seconds to flick and then I must spend an hour or so exposing your lack of goober-ethics. But, I'll play the game this time.
In it's most succinct formulation, you say:
"mike, do you condemn those who make threats of murder and rape against children? You never have before [October 3, 2011]."
OK, Wow, let's see if I can find some of those condemnations prior to October 3, 2011, you maintain don't exist:
"I condemn child-rape without qualification to include the rape of climate scientist's families" (comment 200, Deltoid's "Australian Climate Scientists Get Death Threats" post June 6, 2011) Comments 201 and 203 offer further condemnation of child-rape.
The remaining quotes are from Deltoid's "Another Day Another Death Threat" post June 21, 2001:
Expressing my concern over reports that the Australian police were not aggressively pursuing death threats directed at Australian climate scientists, I said:
"For the record, I certainly want police forces, everywhere, to take action to protect those who have been subjected to threats of rape and murder of themselves and their family." Comment 19
A Deltoid named frank, challenged me: "Your condemnation of rape has been anything but unqualified." Comment 34.
I then responded to frank's no. 34 as follows: "frank, I am more than happy to advise you that I condemn child-rape morning, noon, and night; 24/7; without qualification; IPCC or no IPCC; and in any clime or place." Comment 38
frank then described my comment no 38 condemnation of child-rape with one word--"Good." comment 47
Finally, I asked you, wow, and another Deltoid, john: "If you can find any wiggle-room in my condemnation [at comment 38], John and wow, please let me know, because I want to make it water-tight." Comment 45
Subsequently, I never heard squat from either John or wow.
Wow, we've dealt with one another from time to time for a while now. And during that time I've come know you as a puke-bucket weasel lacking character and moral compass (actually we both know that about you). So let me anticipate a little "trick" you've got up that sleeve of yours with the snot-stains on the cuff.
In particular, the comments quoted above did not exactly "condemn those who make threats of murder and rape against children." And perhaps that's the little joke and I fell for it. However, in the world of reasonable and fair-minded men and women a forceful commendation of child-rape and a declaration that police should protect those in receipt of death-threats and rape-threats both to themselves and families allows a reasonable inference that I condemn the act, the threat of the same, and the perpetrator of the act and/or threat. But that kind of reasonable inference only works among reasonable men and women of good-faith so I'm not urging it on you, wow. Have your little laugh, if that's your game.
Hank, GSW: concur. This thread has gone stupid! Starting to remind me of 10:10 conspiracies with "warmists" blowing up children! But as time goes by, it becomes pretty much all they have left to play with....
Snide innuendos of pedophilia (comments 19 & 23)directed at me survive the cull. My comment in the same vein did not. But it's not my blog and not my moderation policy. On the other hand, I also noticed, John, that the thread went "stupid" or maybe even STOOPID! when I asked a few Deltoids to condemn pedophilia--just as I had been asked on this blog to condemn child rape (see my commment 31, above). I don't get it. And I'm also not getting any answers to my simple questions. Curious.
And as far as your comment that conspiracies "...become pretty much all they have to play with..." Well, the whole pedophile business was first brought up on this thread, not by "they" or "me", but by rhwombat. And he's one of your guys, if you care to claim him.
Let's get to the heart of the matter, mike. It wasn't only that you were demanding condemnation of child prostitution in general, but demanding condemnation of the IPCC for holding conferences in cities and countries that had highly publicized problems with child sex-trafficking.
This was your lame attempt to make a false equivalence argument to the reported fact of climate change deniers making specific direct and explicit, violent and sexually abusive threats to a woman and her children, for no other reason than she was giving a public lecture on the risks of climate change.
We then showed evidence of both wholesale and retail, economic, familial and institutional sexual abuse of children in far flung places including Utah, which you had suggested might be a more wholesome venue for such conferences.
I would further suggest that condemnation of child abuse should be extended to ordinary labor exploitation of children, since in many ways forcing children to work in fields, orchards and sweatshops for less than poverty wages and in dangerous and unhealthy conditions is, in many aspects, even more harmful than the sex trade, and is even more widespread, including in the [United States.](http://www.iearn.org.au/clp/archive/write64.htm)
Do you affirm such condemnation, understanding that by failing to affirm you are, by your own logic, admitting to being, yourself, guilty of such abuse?
Additionally, mike, in order for you to maintain logical consistency relative to what you would ask of others:
Do you condemn specifically the United States and the State of Utah; and anyone who does legitimate economic, cultural, social or scientific business within the geographical borders of these regions or, in general, any and all other regions of the world where these abhorrent practices are taking place; anyone and everyone who buys produce in a super market or socks in a Walmart at low everyday prices, or any and all other businesses, economic, social, cultural, or scientific institutions, persons or other entities that economically, culturally or socially benefit, directly or indirectly, from any and all of these abhorrent practices?
Furthermore:
Do you personally vow to abstain from any and all economic, cultural, social or scientific interactions with and actively boycott any and all businesses, economic, social, cultural, or scientific institutions, persons or other entities that economically, culturally, socially or scientifically benefit, directly or indirectly, from any and all of these abhorrent practices?
I'm certainly not going to wade through all your preposterous, tedious, leaden, lackluster, cant-laden BS.
But let me ask you some simple questions, LB:
Do you condemn pedophilia? Yes or No
Do you condemn child sex tourism? Yes or No
Do you think it appropriate for the IPCC to hold its annual meetings in venues notorious for their child sex industry and favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists? Yes or No.
But you can't answer these questions can you, LB? Let's make a deal you. You answer the questions and I'll do my best to tackle your little-Ms.-smarty-panties last comment.
And if you, LB, or anyone else doesn't like my take on pedophilia then they just might want to avoid bringing the matter up in the first place--I never bring it up in the first place.
Your feeble whining victimhood in comment 33 notwithstanding, you still make unsubstantiated allegations about the IPCC.
You probably don't understand how ridiculous you appear claiming that South Africa - a country five times larger than the UK with a history probably longer than whatever snotspit US state you hail from - can only possibly be a child sex tourist magnet? And that a regional capital like Cancun probably has a lot more going for it than your own ignorance and reading material allows you to perceive?
And claiming your reference as 'Google' is as stupid and ill-informed as that other inept denier Peter Wood at NAS.
Tell you what brainbox - just google
child sex tourist +mike if you want to even begin comprehending your own depths of inadequacy. As John Mason points out at #32, you people really have little left but attempted smears.
Chek - that's all they had left before the CRU email hack - and their silly nonsensical spin on those emails says it all in terms of what their grasp of science was in the first place. They had zero science in the first place so dirty tricks had to be devised.
They are flailing around, like an agricultural muck-spreader which actually does something practically useful - it recycles shit to return it down to the soil. In this case, it differs: they recycle shit into the fair blue sky in the hope that bits of it might just stick when they land, the main thing being that in the post-2009 world, we have woken up to their bullshit and their utter selfishness.
Chek - that's all they had left before the CRU email hack - and their silly nonsensical spin on those emails says it all in terms of what their grasp of science was in the first place. They had zero science in the first place so dirty tricks had to be devised.
They are flailing around, like an agricultural muck-spreader which actually does something practically useful - it recycles shit to return it down to the soil. In this case, it differs: they recycle shit into the fair blue sky in the hope that bits of it might just stick when they land, the main thing being that in the post-2009 world, we have woken up to their bullshit and their utter selfishness.
Let's see now, there are now four comments on this thread that direct snide innuendos of pedophilia at me (Comments 19, 22, 23, and 34). My one comment of that sort, I merely note in passing, was deleted. It vaguely seems to me ironic that the authors of the four surviving "pedo-innuendo" comments on this blog have all refused to condemn pedophilia. And piling vague irony upon vague irony, the same four pedo-innuendo comments are all directed at one of the rare commenters on this blog (me) that has condemned pedophilia. And, oh by the way, I'm not a pedophile either. The curiosities of Deltoid-land.
I think you're right, GSW. Time to disengage (with the right to change my mind). Though I don't really think I'm dealing with a gang of angry perverts. Rather, I'm sure it's nothing more than the rutting-season heebie-jeebies on display here in Deltoid-land.
Hey, Deltoids, I'll make you an offer. You don't mention pedophilia and I won't. I've said pretty much all I have to say. So if you want to crank up the Victrola again, be prepared for another spin of the same old song.
>Do you think it appropriate for the IPCC to hold its annual meetings in venues notorious for their child sex industry and favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists? Yes or No.
No. At least I see no reason to think it especially inappropriate. Though climate change and the child sex industry aren't directly related, it isn't too difficult a stretch to imagine that the presence of a global institutional conference dedicated to the effort to improve the condition of the world's physical state, could ostensibly inspire local residents to improve local physical and social conditions that might alleviate child poverty and thence affect the sex trade. For a personal example; I regularly visit neighborhoods notorious for gang violence and prostitution, juvenile and otherwise, for the purpose of counseling drug abusers. Is that inappropriate?
Yeah yeah OK. I think we can stop the tit-for-tat exchanges over paedophilia. Mike knows he was the one who first brought it up way, way back with the IPCC comment for whatever bizarre reason, and I'm sure he can happily survive with it on his conscience.
We can just get on with it, and get mike, David Duff, GSW, etc, to espouse:
a) their alternative theories on what is causing the observed warming of the planet if it's not CO2 (the theory will of course vary quite dramatically depending on which sceptic you follow), or
b) if it isn't warming at all (which again depends on which sceptic you follow), they can explain the errors they've found in all the temperature datasets and why exactly the datasets should actually show a cooling trend, or
c) how if it's both warming and due to CO2, which scientific processes show that it's only natural CO2 and nothing to do with us (again, depends on which sceptic you follow), or
d) if it's warming, and due to CO2, and it's our fault, what evidence they have which shows that it's actually nothing to be concerned about and it'll all be quite inconsequential or even a great benefit for humankind (which yet again, depends entirely which sceptic you follow)
Looking forward to learning some new science here..........Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
So, Mike, by your silence on the matter am I to take it that you do not condemn the buggery of climatology and of physics by deniers of human-caused global warming?
And mike, pay attention. This is a blog dedicated to Tim Lambert's interest in "areas of science with political implications such as global warming, the relationship between guns and crime and the use of DDT against malaria." I'm sure that Tim isn't interested in your fetish area - your focus on it is simply intended to garner support for a strawman argument, but you won't go to the meat of the focus of Deltoid...
LB, I'm trying to get out of this "stupid" (John Mason's term) thread. But I owe you and as you say, the "ball is in [my] court."
Thanks, LB, for the response. The first two answers speak for themselves and are the answers I would, of course, expect from you. The last response is a reasonable one and, indeed, actually makes the case, it seems to me, that the IPCC should, under the conditions you propose, seek out locales where kids are most exploited. Hopefully, the IPCC will unveil (if they haven't already) their plan to accomplish the sort of beneficial community-impact goals you've laid out for them.
And, yes, it is altogether appropriate for you, IHMO, to help needy individuals through personal contact, while noting a probable personal risk to you in doing so (please be careful) and that you receive little or no compensation for your humanitarian good works (I believe you said your work with the needy is pro-bono). Indeed, let me thank you for your warm-heart and the care you so generously extend to your fellow man--my respects, admiration, and gratitude. I think I once told you that if all lefties were like you, LB, I'd probably still be one myself. And I mean it.
@ 34
LB, I've worked up two long responses to your comment no. 34 and have deleted both. Once I penetrated the cheap debating tricks; lapidary five-year-plan prose; and gotcha-snark of your comment I found myself confronting an old heard-breaker. How to make the world a better place and world's stubborn resistance to betterment. I wish I had the answers, but I don't--just a few notions:
*Lefty dystopias don't work and are, most often, rapacious killing machines.
*Crony capitalism is not the answer either, despite its sometimes spiffy exterior.
*Kids have no business growing up in brothels or doing any other work that is comparably bad. We should just do without the "fruits" of such labor. But I know you're right that some measure of onerous child labor is probably a necessary evil in a nation's earliest stage of industrial development, at least.
Beyond that I can't do any better, LB. Truly, I wish I could do better by your post.
I keep trying to get out of here but you make it hard. Let me say, BJ, that I'm sure Tim Lambert can speak for himself. Further, I have every confidence that Tim Lambert will not hesitate to criticize, modify, or eliminate my contributions to this blog as he sees fit without any of your self-appointed, busy-body assistance. And, for sure, if Tim Lambert needed a mouth-piece he would not choose you because no one in their right mind would choose a pompous ass, blowhard like you for such a responsible duty.
And twice you've brought up that "buggery" remark of
yours. It's a stupid comment Bernard J. Just a stupid comment.
Anyways.....I was, just for a good bellicose laugh, recently reading up on AGW-sceptic Ken Ring's view that CO2 sinks down to ground level by virtue of its density, and therefore cannot possibly cause global warming.
I was actually thinking of compiling a list of the all time funniest AGW sceptic "theories" which dispute AGW, but I wonder whether people wouldn't get far through it before being overwhelmed by fits of giggling. Because honestly, some of it is quite funny (and a little scary that they thought of it in the first place, yet still consider themselves educated people).
This is the fundamental issue sceptical groups have - a lot of their stuff is so inanely stupid that they have a real serious image and reputation problem within the scientific world. If they want to correct this, then they need to actually come up with something which vaguely makes sense and reign in the countless complete nutters out there who are on their side.
"DR. WEGMAN. Again, it is the connection between carbon dioxide and temperature increase. Now, Mr. Inslee pointed out that he thinks there is a physical explanation based on a blanket of carbon dioxide in the reflection. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I am not an atmospheric scientist to know that but presumably if the atmospheric--if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the Earth, it is not reflecting a lot of infrared back."
This goes to the heart of many sceptical arguments: sheer stupidity and complete detachment from reality. Yet simultaneously they demand to be taken seriously on this blog and many others.
They're going to be continually disappointed, irritated, and bitter towards the entire scientific world if they keep coming up with stuff like this.
I just saw someone at Huffington Post offer [the Wikipedia List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream…) in support of his claim that "the science isn't settled". Very convincing of that, eh? Still, a handy reference of "notable" deniers.
Their mother has heart problems. At least 97 working cardiologists / heart surgeons tell them she'd better have an operation. One cardiac surgeon who has lost almost every patient in last decade says NO OPERATION, NO PROBLEM and is joined by a retired brain surgeon and a petroleum geophysicist who publishes in a dog astrology journal, i.e., JSE.
Their mother has heart problems. At least 97 working cardiologists / heart surgeons tell them she'd better have an operation. One cardiac surgeon who has lost almost every patient in last decade says NO OPERATION, NO PROBLEM and is joined by a retired brain surgeon and a petroleum geophysicist who publishes in a dog astrology journal, i.e., JSE.
John, the Wikipedia page has several better arguments than that against denialism right on it, which is why it is so ludicrous for denialists to cite it, and why your argument will have no effect on their closed minds.
I'm still here observing ! How's 'the climate debate going for ya'all now gentle persons ? :-)
I wonder if I've 'won the internet yet'. I wonder indeed ! :-)
In their new paper (full text paywalled) "[Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy](http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649)" Muller, Mendelsohn and Nordhaus give the USA some of the hard analytical grounds it would need to justify a raising of its carbon tax - if only it had one.
M,M &N use standard economic data from a variety of impeccable sources to quantify the dollar cost of some of the negative externalities of activities ranging from electricity generation to stone quarrying, while leaving in the too-hard basket the externality of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions. Even so they find the value of coal-fired electricity to the economy is more than outweighed by its cost.
Without even specifically addressing it this analysis also illuminates the way in which, in the context of anthropogenic climate change, an emissions offsets scheme that doesn't prevent the burning of a fossil fuel does not actually address the non-CO2e costs. The canonical example of an offset that fails in this regard might be tree planting or forest conservation wherein only the CO2e emissions costs are addressed. Of course it hardly need be said that tree planting and conservation are nonetheless desirable for any number of good reasons - just not as justification for burning fossil fuels.
Anyway, according to MM&N the USA could simultaneously improve economic, environmental and health outcomes by weaning itself from fossil fuels, and might do so without even needing to defend climate science from attack by lobbyists, ideologues, and useful idiots. Good result.
I am pleased to see that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW have each agreed to accept [my challenge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…) and forfeit to me, by the end of the first year during which the Arctic sea ice either dips to a minimum extent below 250,000 square kilometres or where it disappears entirely (whichever comes first), the equivalent of their respective salaries for the preceding financial year.
Receiving these sums for my discretionary dispersement to mitigation actions will, to a small extent, assauge my distress when that catastrophic climate change landmark is reached.
I am sure that each of the aforementioned personages fully intends to honour their contract.
*the equivalent of their respective salaries for the preceding financial year*
Bernard, given the nonsense they collectively spew over on the Jonas thread, my bet is that the total sum of their salaries isn't very much... on the other hand, perhaps stupidity is a pre-requisite for a big salary somehwere...
Spyder,
Interesting link. Its nice to see grad students running a blog in which they reflect the strong evidence for AGW yet provide their views in an open, transparent way. I was a bit disheartened, however, by some of the trolls who responded.
A hearty congratulations goes to Australian astrophysicist Brian Schmidt for sharing the Nobel Prize for Physics last night.
Of course, Brian has zero credibility in the eyes of AGW sceptics because he is notable for being of the opinion that global warming is a real and very serious planetary problem which humans are causing and must deal with.
So I'm guessing the sceptics will continue to be puzzled as to why so many proponents on the AGW side seem to be recognised as the sharpest minds on the planet and so many of their own sceptical crowd miss out. All part of the scientific conspiracy I suppose.
I think you may be mixing up two different "Brian Schmidt", the Nobel laureate is 'properly' a little more cautious on the issue than the "Brian Schmidt" you are confusing him with.
[Professor Brian P.Schmidt the Nobel Laureate says](http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-debate-diminished-standing-of-sci…) âScience is never absolute, thatâs the problem. You have different levels of assurity. I have won the Nobel Prize with my team today for discovering the accelerating universe. We are pretty certain thatâs correct but you are never absolutely certain. The carbon debate is centred around the science, is the science right? Well there are uncertainties in the science,â said Professor Schmidt.
âI think the evidence is quite strong that change is happening,â he said. âThe science behind climate change predicts there should be a little change right now but in future, the prediction is it will be much more.
Are there no limits to what depths this konspiracy will sink to, GSW?
Apologies mike, there are two Brian Schmidts that I am aware of.
Brian 1) Self styled Environmental Advocate and Blogger. Recently moved to Eli's I believe? Notable for challenging high Profile sceptics (Lindzen etc) to a series of wagers on temperature increases over the next 10-15-20 years.
Brian 2) Astrophysicist, Nobel laureate.
It is probably true to say that Brian 1) (Environmental Advocate) has zero credibility in the eyes of sceptics, but to make the same assertion about Brian 2) (Astrophysicist), I'm pretty sure is not true.
So it just occurred to me that maybe you had muddled them up at some point?
But I have read that Dr. Giaever is lost his marbles or such. Since we are to, given your criteria, accept the opinions of people based on their awards, in this case the Nobel, why are people so quick to simply dismiss one, but not the other.
Young(er) and toes the party line? Must be right. Old(Emeritus) and disagrees. Must be a kook?
Please keep in mind I am not opining on the subject of AGW, just the apparent conflict in the logic.
I looked for Ivar Giaever on Google scolar. He hasn't done any science in almost 40 years.
Brian Schmidt on the other hand, is still publishing.
Linus Paling also won a nobel prize, but then he left science and joined woo,
(No Linus, vitamin C doesn't cure Aids/cancer/ED) and became fit only for mocking.
Ivar Giaever has gone the Paling route
Hamza, I think others have answered it adequately. There is quite a big difference between the modern, up to date, currently publishing physicists winning Nobel prizes, and someone who won a Nobel 50 (or whatever) years ago and hasn't published a paper or done any significant research ever since.
So you don't actually think that keeping up with discoveries and developments in science might be somehow linked to the scientific excellence that is rewarded by a Nobel, and that corresponding views in fairly modern fields such as planetary warming and climate might also be vaguely linked to this?
GSW, no actually they don't "have" to be a kook just because they're old and they disagree. It's just that when you examine some of the other opinions that members of that category (not all of them though, to be fair) have publicly expressed in their retirement, you do actually find a few kooks among them, Paling being an excellent quoted example.
> Since we are to, given your criteria, accept the opinions of people based on their awards, ...
What an odd interpretation of Mike! He appears to me to be making an entirely orthogonal statement - that "skeptics" impute **non**-credibility to people regardless of their awards but instead based on *their opinions about certain scientific matters*.
> ...why are people so quick to simply dismiss one, but not the other.
Perhaps because Schmidt can point to the overwhelming weight of evidence supporting his position, whereas Giaever fails to even note the basic logical and scientific errors in his own "I resign from APS" e-mail, let alone provide any plausible reason why one should believe that the weight of evidence supports his "conclusions".
Lotharsson I have long given up on the concept that I can successfully draw their own attention to the gratuitous lack of reasoning which torments AGW sceptics' minds. ;)
But still I try........
It's frustrating not being able to get a single consistent argument from them though. It's like they're reading from a script:
Try out newest argument "A". If "A" is not working, proceed to argument "B". If "B" doesn't get you anywhere, fallback to our old faithful argument "C". If "C" is not winning it for you, try argument "D", which totally contradicts "C", but we think it's not a bad one anyway. If you're still not succeeding with "D", say that Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite who earns millions on the talk circuit. If Al Gore doesn't win the debate for you, we recommend invoking the Nazi persecution of the Jews and comparing it to what is happening to sceptical scientists (WARNING - do not be drawn into what the sceptical scientists are actually saying, otherwise you'll need to start right back at "A").
Dear Bernie, don't be such a peeping Tom and gossip hag. Please join in and share the fruits of your important climate discoveries in the proper thread. I almost missed this earth shattering conclusion of yours. We can't have that can we?
Tim: would it be possible to limit the infestation of all the Scandinavian denialist trolls, including the Oily Rock (and their insufferably twee fanboi GSW;)), to Jonas' oubliette?
Illustrious Scientist Professor Bob Carter also says:
Facts that Schmidt avers are irrelevant include:
That carbon dioxide is not toxic, nor a pollutant, but rather a colorless, odourless and tasteless gas essential for life on earth;
Yep. Carter talks about "relevance", and almost in the same paragraph talks about a gas being colourless, odourless, and tasteless as if that is relevant to its ability to have detrimental effects on a system. Radon should, by Carter's logic, be completely benign.
Carter talks about something being "essential for life", as if that same something can't ever be harmful in other ways. Like "essential" trace elements in the body which are harmful - possibly even fatal - if they nudge above a certain tiny concentration, or drop below another certain tiny concentration.
Methinks Carter has been whiffing too much colourless, odourless, and tasteless (and therefore clearly harmless) carbon monoxide and is fading off into a sleepy fairy world devoid of simple sense and reasoning. And the most amazing thing is that he peddles these same lines all the time! It is definitive proof that on the odd occasion you can have a PhD in science, and be an irrational nut at the same time.
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo members are concerned with creating the misleading arguments, not combating them
contrary to Carter's claim, none of the "misleading arguments... stem from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"
contrary to Carter's claim, the proposed price on carbon has not been shown to be an "environmentally ineffectual and expensive new tax on carbon dioxide emissions in Australia"
Carter uses the erroneous "to whit", when the proper term is "to wit"
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo supporters are an "ideological group," [sic]
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo supporters are not "sceptical of the science", they are deniers of science
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo supporters do "draw from a deep history of denial and distortion," [sic]
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo supporters do use "straw man arguments," [sic]
contrary to Carter's claim, Galileo supporters are "a part of the global climate-denier movement." [sic]
contrary to Carter's claim, the Galileo Movement does use the same approach as "the tobacco industry," [sic] by making "pervasive, stubborn" arguments "independent of the facts of the situation" and by "abusing the science." [sic]
Carter doesn't appear to understand that quoted phrases are ended with quotation marks before being punctuated with commas or with full-stops.
Carter doesn't appear to understand that Douglas Fischer is reporting on science, and not conducting science...
Carter's claim that "Gavin Schmidt... clearly does not take such [sceptical] precautions in his speculations on the dangerous global warming hypothesis" is not only incorrect, it is dangerously close to libel
contrary to Carter's claim, carbon dioxide is toxic in sufficient concentration
contrary to Carter's claim, carbon dioxide is a pollutant in sufficient concentration
contrary to Carter's claim, carbon dioxide is not so much a plant fertiliser as a plant substrate - the difference is not merely semantic, and Carter's ignorance of the difference is revealing...
changes in global temperature do not always precede changes in carbon dioxide - such precession is very much context-specific
that "the increase in carbon dioxide seen since 1750 has resulted from the accrual of about half of all human emissions" is not supposition, it is demonstrable scientific conclusion
contrary to Carter's claim, carbon dioxide emissions have already been shown beyond reasonable scientific doubt to cause "measurable [global] warming"
contrary to Carter's erroneous claim, the Earth has not been cooling for 10 years
contrary to Carter's claim, "tens of thousands of independent scientists, cognisant with the above facts, have [not] cumulatively signed statements similar to... one currently posted by the International Climate Science Coalition" - most of the signatories are in fact not qualified to contradict the science, and/or are not scientists at all, and/or are not even alive or exist as real people
contrary to Carter's claim, a strong consensus is exhibited amongst scientists worldwide that human-caused global warming is a significant planetary threat
contrary to Carter's claim, alternative views by "independent" scientists are expressed politically
contrary to Carter's claim, alternative views by "independent" scientists do not address the science of the issue, and instead provide the political propaganda that has become the hallmark of deniers of the conclusions of the IPCC.
contrary to Carter's claim, $100 billion has not been spent on research to "identify empirical evidence for dangerous warming caused by human emissions"
contrary to Carter's claim, climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide is almost certainly greater than 1 degree celcius
contrary to Carter's claim, both the ocean and the atmosphere are presently continuing to warm, in response to continuing increases in carbon dioxide
contrary to Carter's claim, modern climate variation is not "adequately explained by natural causes that include solar variation, climatic oscillations and multi-decadal rhythms and phase locks"
Carter's claim that "thousands of other recent research papers... contain abundant empirical evidence consistent with the null hypothesis that historic and modern climate variations are of natural origin" is erroneous, and unsupported
"very few papers present unequivocal empirical evidence for measurable human-caused warming", because very few papers are intended to "present unequivocal empirical evidence for measurable human-caused warming"
Carter's claim that "a recent study claims to have identified a human influence can only detect (human-caused warming) since 1942 and at a maximum, unthreatening and expected-to-decrease rate of +0.66 degree per century" is contradicted by the overwhelming majority of the professional literature, and the authors of Carter's reference - Loehle Scafetta - have themselves been credibly contradicted.
Would you accept just one? Or do you need all 31 done?
After all, if Bernard can find merely one to cite proof, Carter has demonstrably shown wrong. Citing the proof for all 31 merely proves how consistently wrong he is.
And since you won't stop believing what Carter says because he, like you, is a climate denier, and you will NEVER turn on "one of your own", there's very little reason to cite all 31.
In which case, just point out one you'd consider incorrect and needing citation.
@48: Impressive. 17 words - all orthogonal to reality, humour or persuasion: wombats are marsupials, my ambition is to confine your blathering to the Jonas hole, and Bernard @46 demonstrates the reason why whiney feral deniers ( like you and "IPA Fellow" Carter) end up as punchlines to jokes about furniture.
Bernard's points 14, 15, and 16 are demonstrably factual. Ergo, Carter's claims otherwise are demonstrably false and in one or two cases, just totally ridiculous.
I only briefly glanced at the list. This is just a small selection of the really easy ones any half intelligent person would know straight off the top of their head. They don't need citations. A high school education in chemistry is more than sufficient. As stated @50, do you need all of them done?
That Carter cites them is disturbing enough. That the anti-AGW crowd profess themselves to be well educated yet blindly supports them is simply astounding and makes me wonder what is seeping into your drinking water.
Sadly, the interview with Bob Carter is full of other drivel. For instance:
*That carbon dioxide is not toxic, nor a pollutant, but rather a colorless, odourless and tasteless gas essential for life on earth*
Response: Excess carbon in plant tissues can have all kinds of deleterious effects that harm food webs: first, it can alter plant stoichiomety in terms of foliar ratios of C:N:P. This in turn can lead to suboptimal amounts of N, a limiting nutrient in the growth of many animals, forcing them to feed compensatorily in order to make up the deficit (this has already been demonstrated in both lab and field studies). A reduction in foliar P would have similar effects of the development and fitness of associated consumers. Second, secondary plant metabolities are N or C-based; a reduction of N as C concentrations increase could make plants more (or less) toxic defending on the specifics of their defense chemistry. Thus, as levels of C are increased in plant tissues, plants with C-based allaleochemistry would likely become more toxic whilst the opposite is true of plants with N-based allelochemistry. Given the rate of atmospheric increase in C is unprecedented in perhaps tens of thousands of years or more, the ability of consumers up the food chain to adapt to rapidly chaing concentrations of plant defense levels is hihgly problematic. There will almost certainly be strong ecological and physiological consequences.
> One troll says "Jeffie" whilst having a tanty. Another troll, similarly spitting his dummy, also says "Jeffie" ten minutes later.
In idle curiosity I clicked one of your links and came across some discussion of what appears to be Jonas' major misunderstandings of "negative feedback"...but I thought that I really have better things to do with my time than gawk at what appears to be yet another train wreck ;-)
Apologies if this is off-topic.
The pattern for the last few decades has been for the "skeptics" to attack the hypothesis that CO2 is causing warming beyond natural variation.
They attack, we defend. It is like a crazy cricket match where the skeptics have an infinite number of balls which they throw from the direction and timing of their choice. The scientists have done well to keep the stumps in the ground, but surely it is time now for the sceptics to go in to defend their wicket?
The skeptics have an hypothesis, namely that CO2 does not cause significant warming. They put a figure to it - Climate Sensitivity (2xCO2) is 0.5*C.
This hypothesis is testable and refutable. It is inadequate to explain various temperature events such as the interglacial warming, volcanoes and the other evidence for CS of ~3*C.
Spencer and Lindzen have been trying very hard to find evidence for low CS, and failing just as hard.
So my question is this: Is it not time for climate scientists to mount a major assault on the "skeptic" hypothesis, showing that it is refutable in classic scientific fashion, so that media and policy makers can understand that there is no real scientific substance to the controversy that the skeptic community generates, since their hypothesis has no validity?
I fully appreciate that refutation will not cause the skeptics to convert. They will continue to believe what they want to believe, just as creationists do. But clear refutation can reasonably be expected to help decent journalists and policy makers who are justifiably confused by the "controversy".
Dunno about anyone else, but I'm still waiting for a sceptic to explain Bob Carter's views on gas properties. C'mon sceptics, help me out here!
Carter states implicitly that a colourless, odourless gas cannot cause environmental harm or pollution. I'm still struggling back through all my memories of chemistry in a fruitless attempt to figure out whether this is actually true, contrary to what I have learned in science, contrary to many practical everyday examples, and contrary to what I think is logical. There must be something I missed on fundamental gas properties - a sort of "if you can't smell it or see it, it's quite benign" chemical principle which my hapless chemistry teacher failed to explain.
Bob Carter must be onto something. We are clearly failing to understand what it is that he's discovered in the chemical world which makes it so, and he's laughing at us for our lack of knowledge.
Anybody? I just want to understand how he arrives at this principle (let's call it the "Carter Noxious Gas Principle"), that's all.
But clear refutation can reasonably be expected to help decent journalists and policy makers who are justifiably confused by the "controversy".
1) MSM journalists are paid shills for one political/economic camp or another. They don't give a tinker's cuss about what's true. Monbiot may be a rare exception. "Decent journalists" exist only on the web, independently.
2) "Policy makers" are the best that money can buy, especially in the US.
Carter states implicitly that a colourless, odourless gas cannot cause environmental harm or pollution.
His audience is not scientists, clearly. It's a political statement aimed at the angry lumpenproleteriat, to enrage them further at the manifest injustice of "a great big tax on everything", know alternatively as "a tax on the air we breathe". For these people, it seems intuitively correct that a gas that can be neither seen nor smelled cannot be harmful. It shows that Carter has long ago thrown away any pretence at practising science.
Is it not time for climate scientists to mount a major assault on the "skeptic" hypothesis
It's been done (by doing what climate scientists do, namely science, not mounting assaults). If it hadn't been, then we would be rejecting a hypothesis for insufficient cause.
so that media and policy makers can understand that there is no real scientific substance to the controversy that the skeptic community generates, since their hypothesis has no validity?
You're assuming that media and policy makers are scientific thinkers, but if they were then they would already know this.
But clear refutation can reasonably be expected to help decent journalists and policy makers who are justifiably confused by the "controversy".
How would you convince them that it was a clear refutation when the denialistas exclaim that it isn't? Again, you are assuming scientific thinkers, but they wouldn't be confused if they were.
Two actually, one in Chemistry and one in Peace. And he might well have won a third for discovering the structure of DNA had he not been blocked by the U.S. State Department from traveling to England (because he was suspected of having Communist sympathies -- he had circulated a petition calling for a ban on nuclear arms that was signed by 8000 scientists, a position that the USSR supported at the time) where he could have seen Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images of DNA.
but then he left science
No he didn't, he had a scientific dispute with other scientists (and a lot of people in the medical profession who weren't scientists).
"in more recent years, re-evaluations of Pauling's work have shown that dietary supplementation with antioxidants such as vitamin C can have significant beneficial effects on health. Pauling's ideas about molecular balance and health are increasingly important to a health-conscious public, as well as to a growing number of health professionals."
Pauling. And there's no comparison ... Pauling's claims, right or wrong, were based on his own scientific research, and he was completely aware of the prevailing scientific evidence, quite unlike Giaever.
Since we are to, given your criteria, accept the opinions of people based on their awards, in this case the Nobel
Care to quote his words where he gave such criteria? What he actually said was that, by the criteria of AGW sceptics, Schmidt has zero credibility, despite his Nobel, because he accepts AGW. "it's faulty to reject the views of someone with a Nobel just because they accept AGW" is not equivalent to "it's necessary to accept the views of someone with a Nobel".
just the apparent conflict in the logic
How ironic that you commit such a blatant logical fallacy and then blame it on the other guy.
Please keep in mind I am not opining on the subject of AGW
Take home quotes:
"In line with authoritarian regimes throughout history, many of which had a tendency to write off alternative views as the products of unstable minds, greens refuse to treat scepticism as a legitimate way of thinking."
"Wait: green thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That's a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It's the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society."
According to O'Neill, working to overturn the fossil-fuel dominated energy production paradigm is "conservative" and fighting to keep the world addicted to GHG-emitting energy sources is "radical."
If you know of a full, systematic refutation of the skeptics' hypothesis that CS~3*C, written in language that an intelligent layperson can understand, please give us the URL.
If there has been no such systematic refutation, then it is up to the climate scientist community to produce one - and make sure it is spread widely to all media outlets.
I am not assuming that media and policy makers are scientific thinkers, but if they were then they would already know this. All they need to understand is (a) that the scientific method is to refute hypotheses, and (b) that the low CS hypothesis can be comprehensively refuted.
The key point is that up to now, they have attacked, we have defended. It is now time to turn the tables.
Thanks Brian. This distortion of the climate change debate by O'Neil verges again into the bizarre.
As usual, The Australian doesn't stop with just one opinion piece denigrating climate science. There is also a [letter](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/triumph-of-scepticism/stor…) from Michael Asten titled 'The Triumph of Scepticism' with an interesting twist on the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brian Schmidt and Dan Shechtman:
>There can be no higher-level demonstration than these awards of the value of scepticism in science, and of the role of observation and deduction free of the confines of conventional wisdom.
>I look forward to the day when such elevated scientific method replaces the bitter and personalised arguments over settled science which today characterises earth-scale climate studies.
Aargh, I *really* should avoid going to WUWT, but every now and then morbid curiosity gets the better of me.
Witness Watts [signing up his dog](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/07/friday-funny-the-newest-member-of…) as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists to show that, haha, they don't even check if you're a scientist before you join, the greedy lying leftie scum, pretending to be scientists lolololol.
Except that its a charity. They're asking for a donation. The page explains how they have hundreds of thousands of private citizens in their membership.
Watts links to a Guardian article as some sort of "proof" that UCS is misrepresenting itself as experts - except if you scroll down a *few extra pixels* from the screengrab Watts included in his article you'll see that the UCS organised a *letter signed by 100 scientists*. That being the kind of thing they do, and all.
I knew there had to be more than one opinion article and one letter, it is the Weekend Australian after all. And [here](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/at-last-dams-are-deep-…) it is, the true blue radical sceptic - incidentally old, white and male.
>JOHN Scales refused to believe the doomsayers when they predicted there would never again be enough rain to fill the Dartmouth Dam in northeast Victoria.
>...."I'm not a believer in global warming, despite some people saying it wouldn't ever rain here like it used to because the climate had changed," he said yesterday.
I'm not about to chase your goalposts. Scientists have attacked the "'skeptic' hypothesis, showing that it is refutable in classic scientific fashion". If you want a URL to a discussion satisfying your new criteria, try www.skepticalscience.com . If that's not enough for you, set up your own damn site.
The key point is that up to now, they have attacked, we have defended. It is now time to turn the tables.
The key point is that this is nonsense, if you're talking about science. If you were talking about PR then you would have a point, but that's not what scientists do for a living.
"To claim that we are causing meteorological events that would not have occurred without human influence is just plain wrong"
"Enthusiasm for doing anything about climate change seems to have given way to resignation that we will simply have to adapt."
For those of you unaware of him; Myles Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics department. He is the principal investigator of Climateprediction.net
There's something about many of the rural reporters from all media stables in Australia. They seem especially prone to the "good ol' Farmer Joe is a wise and experienced disbeliever of fancy-pants scientific mumbo-jumbo" line of story telling - it seems to escape both the reporters and the subjects of their stories that there's a reason why farmers are farmers and scientists are scientists...
Worryingly too many people in rural industries seem to confuse "common sense" with objective analysis. This has led to the circumstance where there is an oft-enacted theatre of farmers who claim that they are "at one" with nature and therefore "know best", eventually being dragged in a reactionary display of kicking and screaming to capitulate in the face of evidence of their inappropriate practices.
Salination, over-irrigation and other flawed water managements, over-fertilisation, inappropriate tilling, over-stocking, flawed clearing of non-productive vegetation, excessive pesticide application: all are just some examples of a refusal to listen to warnings until after the problems became expensive and/or infeasible to remediate. It seems that climate change denial is another to add to that list...
I am not familiar with Sue Neale, but Michael McKenzie on Radio National frequently had me grinding my teeth in frustration in the days before I stopped listening to his brand of rural opinion.
And before anyone snipes at me for being an ivory-towered scientist-type with no clue, I come from several lines of livestock and cropping farmers, and I've worked with many others in several different professional contexts. I am intimately acquainted with the not-so-quaintly conservative and often flawed notions that a certain proportion of farmers like to clutch to their sunburned chests, and I know that can take a long time to change the mind of some of the more stubborn farming types...
On the other hand, the more switched-on farmers are some of the most astute and knowledgable people I have met. The striking difference between them and their conservative colleagues is that switched-on crowd inevitably have no innate prejudice against science, whether pure or applied.
"Care to quote his words where he gave such criteria?"
Well, since I didn't quote him, your question is misleading, but when he says...
"...so many proponents on the AGW side seem to be recognised as the sharpest minds on the planet..."
the implied criteria is that anyone winning the Nobel is of a sharp mind. My question is why that only works when you agree with the opinion of the winner. As I asked, is age the issue? Giaever won the Nobel, albeit 40 some years ago. Is he not of a sharp mind? Or has he lost it based on his opinion that "incontrovertible evidence" is a poor scientific term in his opinion with regards to AGW?
In addition...
ianam"...by the criteria of AGW sceptics, Schmidt has zero credibility, despite his Nobel, because he accepts AGW"
Evidence for this assertion? Dr. Schmidt's Nobel is for research on supernovae, and expansion of the universe, not AGW, or even atmospheric science. Why would anyone dismiss his accomplishments in his discipline because he agrees that the climate has changed? Of course the climate has changed.
Let's look at his statement, quoted form chek@29...
âScience is never absolute, thatâs the problem. You have different levels of assurity. I have won the Nobel Prize with my team today for discovering the accelerating universe. We are pretty certain thatâs correct but you are never absolutely certain. The carbon debate is centred around the science, is the science right? Well there are uncertainties in the science,â said Professor Schmidt.
âI think the evidence is quite strong that change is happening,â he said. âThe science behind climate change predicts there should be a little change right now but in future, the prediction is it will be much more."
Not exactly doom and gloom. Pretty reasonable actually. There is uncertainty. We aren't sure, but we think it might increase. But one really does not know. It's a prediction.
ianam...""it's faulty to reject the views of someone with a Nobel just because they accept AGW" is not equivalent to "it's necessary to accept the views of someone with a Nobel".
OK, first, you assert again, without evidence, that someone is rejecting Dr. Schmidt's work on his subject. Second, why should I accept Dr. Schmidt's thoughts on AGW? Because he is "sharp"? Per you, yes. And how do we know that? Won the Nobel. Otherwise, he has no other qualifications that would lead me to believe he is more knowledgeable than any other scientist outside the field. In other words, you require that it is "necessary for me to accept the views" of Dr. Schmidt because he now has a Nobel.
Lastly, ianam, I make my living in the world of science. I sometimes work with actual Nobel prize winners as I linked to above. I respect their opinions very much, but not on every issue. They respect mine as well on the things which I know that they do not. Nothing wrong with not accepting their opinions on biology when their work is physics. So your knee jerk reaction that you can "guess" how I think is laughable, though typical. All I am saying is that Dr. Schmidt's thoughts on AGW are irrelevant to the discussion and have only been trotted out because he happened to win a Nobel and is therefore "sharp", and happens to agree with AGW with the caveat that there are uncertainties.
All I am saying is that Dr. Schmidt's thoughts on AGW are irrelevant to the discussion and have only been trotted out because he happened to win a Nobel and is therefore "sharp", and happens to agree with AGW with the caveat that there are uncertainties.
Well, he "happens" to agree with AGW in much the same sense that the great majority of the rest of the world's scientists who have been widely recognised within the scientific world for their modern expertise and cutting edge research into physics also "happen" to agree with AGW.
Maybe it's just a weird and curious coincidence, as you seem to imply.
As I have said before, when the sceptical side's best efforts involve dragging out Roy Spencer as their "shining star" in the scientific world, conspicuously assisted by scientists like Dr "if you can't see it or smell it, it cannot be harmful in any way" Bob Carter, then you know they are seriously struggling with credibility problems.
Yet sceptics seem totally oblivious to all of this.
I take your point and agree that based on the quotes from Dr. Scmhidt, you've made a cogent point.
Where I disagree with deniers generally (regardless of what baggage you bring to the term, that's what they are) - as when they finally agree that AGW is real and happening now, even if they have to refer to it in diminishing terms as 'CAGW' - is with the term 'uncertainties'.
In denier terms, the word 'uncertainty' invariably means 'sometime, never'. Rather like a junkie who's been told to pay up by tomorrow or he'll lose an eye, who then fucks off home with the wrap of dope never conceiving that tomorrow will come, and there is no repayment plan. There never was.
The rational response to uncertainty on the other hand says 'the models are predicting grim conditions in a hundred years time, and we're seeing very odd confluences of extreme weather globally now as was expected. There's an equal chance that uncertainty actually means we have less than a 100 years before those grim conditions arrive'.
A major problem is that public discourse on the issue suffers from undue distortion by the PR tools of a wealthy, profiting elite who are under the illusion that their wealth makes them largely immune from events, and the nation state has become cowed by their apparent power.
This is somewhat off topic, but Pauling most certainly went full metal woo
(The following is from Wikipedia, so I guess I can just claim it as my own ;-)
In 1968 Pauling published a brief paper in Science entitled "Orthomolecular psychiatry"[58] that gave name and principle to the popular but controversial megavitamin therapy movement of the 1970s. Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" to refer to the practice of varying the concentration of substances normally present in the body to prevent and treat disease. His ideas formed the basis of orthomolecular medicine, which is not generally practiced by conventional medical professionals and has been strongly criticized.[59][60]
Pauling's work on vitamin C in his later years generated much controversy. He was first introduced to the concept of high-dose vitamin C by biochemist Irwin Stone in 1966. After becoming convinced of its worth, Pauling took 3 grams of vitamin C every day to prevent colds.[61] Excited by his own perceived results, he researched the clinical literature and published Vitamin C and the Common Cold in 1970. He began a long clinical collaboration with the British cancer surgeon Ewan Cameron in 1971 on the use of intravenous and oral vitamin C as cancer therapy for terminal patients.[62] Cameron and Pauling wrote many technical papers and a popular book, Cancer and Vitamin C, that discussed their observations. Pauling made vitamin C popular with the public and eventually published two studies of a group of one hundred allegedly terminal patients that claimed vitamin C increased survival by as much as four times compared to untreated patients.[63][64] A re-evaluation of the claims in 1982 found that the patient groups were not actually comparable, with the vitamin C group being less sick on entry to the study, and judged to be "terminal" much earlier than the comparison group.[65] Later clinical trials conducted by the Mayo Clinic also found that high-dose (10,000 mg) vitamin C was no better than placebo at treating cancer and that there was no benefit to high-dose vitamin C.[66][67][68] The failure of the clinical trials to demonstrate any benefit resulted in the conclusion that vitamin C was not effective in treating cancer; the medical establishment also concluded his claims that vitamin C could prevent colds was quackery.[61][69] Pauling denounced the conclusions of these studies and handling of the final study as "fraud and deliberate misrepresentation",[70][71] and criticized the studies for using oral, rather than intravenous vitamin C[72] (which was the dosing method used for the first ten days of Pauling's original study[69]). Pauling also criticised the Mayo clinic studies because the controls were taking vitamin C during the trial, and because the duration of the treatment with vitamin C was short; Pauling advocates continued high dose vitamin C for the rest of the cancer patient's life whereas the Mayo clinic patients in the second trial were treated with vitamin C for a median of 2.5 months.[73] The results were publicly debated at length with considerable acrimony between Pauling and Cameron, and Moertel (the lead author of the Mayo Clinic studies), with accusations of misconduct and scientific incompetence on both sides. Ultimately the negative findings of the Mayo Clinic studies ended general interest in vitamin C as a treatment for cancer.[71] Despite this, Pauling continued to promote vitamin C for treating cancer and the common cold, working with The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential to use vitamin C in the treatment of brain-injured children.[74] He later collaborated with the Canadian physician Abram Hoffer on a micronutrient regimen, including high-dose vitamin C, as adjunctive cancer therapy.[75]
With Arthur B. Robinson and another colleague, Pauling founded the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine in Menlo Park, California, in 1973, which was soon renamed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling directed research on vitamin C, but also continued his theoretical work in chemistry and physics until his death. In his last years, he became especially interested in the possible role of vitamin C in preventing atherosclerosis and published three case reports on the use of lysine and vitamin C to relieve angina pectoris. In 1996, the Linus Pauling Institute moved from Palo Alto, California, to Corvallis, Oregon, to become part of Oregon State University, where it continues to conduct research on micronutrients, phytochemicals (chemicals from plants), and other constituents of the diet in preventing and treating disease. Several researchers that had previously worked at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, including the assistant director of research, moved on to form the Genetic Information Research Institute.
There is often information about supporting grants etc in the Acknowledgements section of the paper. For example, the acknowledgements section from Lindzen and Choi (2011) is below.
"DOE" is the US Department of Energy.
Neil
Acknowledgements. This research was supported by DOE
grant DE-FG02-01ER63257, the National Research Foundation
of Korea (NRF) grant (No. 20090093464), National Institute of
Environmental Research of Korea (NIER) grant (No. 1600-1637-
303-210-13), and the Ewha Womans University Research Grant
(No. 2011-0220-1-1). The authors thank NASA Langley Research
Center and the PCMDI team for the data, and Hee-Je
Cho, Hyonho Chun, Richard Garwin, William Happer, Lubos
Motl, Roy Spencer, Jens Vogelgesang, and Tak-meng Wong for
helpful suggestions. We also wish to thank Daniel Kirk-
Davidoff for a helpful question.
Yet again we come up against the AGW sceptic credibility problem. They inevitably "claim" some gross disadvantage compared to mainstream scientists which, when you look at the facts, really doesn't exist.
The whole AGW sceptic thing - the ways and means they use to argue that they're somehow suppressed or disadvantaged - is quite exasperating.
If they would actually come up with credible original research which can't be completely torn apart within 5 minutes of being published, maybe they would have mainstream science seriously thinking about the whole sceptical side. However their track record indicates this is highly unlikely any time in the near future.
> Yet again we come up against the AGW sceptic credibility problem. They inevitably "claim" some gross disadvantage compared to mainstream scientists which, when you look at the facts, really doesn't exist.
to be fair, they *are* facing a gross disadvantage when trying to get their papers accepted. reality is being entirely unreasonable, selfishly refusing to conform to their political ideologies, however much they stamp their feet, and however long they hold their breaths.
it's just not fair that they're forced to compete on such an uneven playing field.
"Care to quote his words where he gave such criteria?"
Well, since I didn't quote him, your question is misleading
Total logic fail; the point of asking for a quote to support a claim about someone is precisely that it wasn't already done. After that incredibly idiotic intro, I won't bother reading the rest of your comment.
@elspi
You're like a climate denier who points to some article and claims it supports their position, rather than presenting an argument. But I already read that article (I cited it) and upon reading it again I find that it no more supports your claim than upon the first time.
Right. Good thing to ignore your own failure in both logic and your assertion of a point of view for which you have zero evidence--that somehow anyone, anywhere is discounting the work of Dr. Schmidt--in his field--because of his take on warming.
See you asked me to quote the criteria. I never stated that it was a direct quote, only my inference of the comment, I then explained exactly why I found the logic faulty. But I guess it's better for you to plant your head in the sand. Poor choice of words on my part, agreed, but the following explanation is clear. I answered your question. Care to answer mine? Probably not.
Funny though that you choose to go right to the "idiotic" card. Says so very much about the quality of your argument.
Otherwise, he has no other qualifications that would lead me to believe he is more knowledgeable than any other scientist outside the field.
Well that's not strictly true, Hamza.
He's an astrophysicist with a publication and research record which covers several topics that overlap with certain aspects of climate science, eg, absorption and emission spectroscopy, and quantum mechanics just to name two. So one might expect that he'd understand the evidence amassed through, say, spectroscopic analysis of longwave radiation, better than a scientist who hasn't touched that topic since high school.
So I take your point way back at the beginning regarding the "logic of the argument", though I also feel you fundamentally misunderstood the point I was making (perhaps this was my fault).
What is your "opinion" on AGW then? I would find it odd if you argued about who is or isn't relevantly qualified, then went on to cast doubt on the level of certainty, which is very high among those who actually are qualified directly in the field. I'd find that oddest of all if you did it while simultaneously arguing about the logic of a relatively trivial statement in the greater scheme of things.
Some people seem to have terrible trouble conducting the most basic bit of analysis.
If, on the one hand, you have a 82-year-old guy who won a Nobel Prize 38 years ago and has no published track-record in the field of climate science contradicting the scientific consensus on climate change;
and, on the other hand, you have a 44-year-old currently-practicing scientist and Nobel Prize-winner who supports the scientific consensus on climate change;
Then, to anybody capable of objective analysis, it's pretty clear which of the two is more likely a reputable source of opinions on climate change.
It's continental drift, all over again. And even more idiots denying the science this time around.
Anybody in any doubt just needs to read Plimer's books: when you publish transparent nonsense in support of a thesis, it pretty much guarantees that the thesis is nonsense.
Good thing to ignore your own failure in both logic
I'm "ignoring" something that doesn't exist. Even if it did, that would be a tu quoque fallacy.
your assertion of a point of view for which you have zero evidence--that somehow anyone, anywhere is discounting the work of Dr. Schmidt--in his field--because of his take on warming.
I never made any such assertion, you cretin, I only stated what Mikem said.
Funny though that you choose to go right to the "idiotic" card. Says so very much about the quality of your argument.
Not at all. You are demonstrably an idiot and I demonstrated it. To attack my argument by criticizing my accurate discription of you is ad hominem, dumbfuck.
ianam...""it's faulty to reject the views of someone with a Nobel just because they accept AGW" is not equivalent to "it's necessary to accept the views of someone with a Nobel".
OK, first, you assert again, without evidence, that someone is rejecting Dr. Schmidt's work on his subject.
Is Hamza El-Din really so stupid that he took my statement about the difference between two positions as a statement of my own position about something? Apparently so.
Superb video report on the disappearing Himalayan glaciers you linked to P. Lewis, that puts the whole manufactured fuss about the IPCC report's projected date into perspective.
It well illustrates that it's already happened in some locations, it's happening now, and it will continue to happen until there's nothing left, possibly in 300 years time.
This is interesting, particularly for Brits following the developing scandal involving Defence Secretary Liam Fox. It seems that Liam Foxâs best friend and unpaid advisor Adam Werrity was executive and sole employee of recently defunct UK âcharityâ Atlantic Bridge. Atlantic Bridge has very close links with US lobby group American Legislative Exchange Council, which itself receives shed loads of cash from the Koch Foundation and has been actively involved in AGW denial. Who funded Atlantic Bridge is unclear. Fascinating to see how lobby groups operate. Carbon Brief has more details:
Maybe this puts Atlantic Bridge's advisory council member George Osborne's reported comments at last week's Tory conference that "the UK would cut emissions no faster than others in Europe, and environmental measures would not be taken at the expense of British business" in a new light.
On the off chance that the shrieking and caterwauling from various sections of the MSM and right-wing commentariat hadn't already alereted you, the Australian House of Reps (the lower House for those not familiar) passed the Clean Energy legislative package (a total of 18 Bills, including the carbon pricing mechanism) was passed by a majority vote. The package of Bills will now go to the Senate (upper House) and, given the make-up of the Senate, is likely to be passed into legislation.
The Opposition Leader Without A Clue has made a "blood" oath to repeal the legislation, on the off chance he is still leading the Lib-Nat Coalition if it ever gets to hold power again.
If the MSM and a lot of very vocal trolls denialists Ordinary Hard Working Australians are to be believed, This Is the Worst Day in Australian History, We Have All Been Betrayed and We Are All Going to Die. And Bob Brown is Satan.
Personally I think it's a good thing (well it's a start at least), but some of my friends won't thank me for saying so.
the Australian House of Reps (the lower House for those not familiar) passed the Clean Energy legislative package (a total of 18 Bills, including the carbon pricing mechanism) was passed by a majority vote.
If the country that produces the worlds highest Carbon emissions per person (apart from much smaller countries) isn't going to attempt to reduce its Carbon emissions, why should anyone else bother?
Jeff Harvey says: "You are a complete twat, Olaus."
So, Jeff, you've called Olaus a "twat" and a "complete twat", at that.
Let's see now, Jeff, is the "twat" you have in mind, when referring to Olaus, any specific, imagined twat? Or, perhaps, you're thinking more of some sort of Platonic ideal-twat, that you've assembled in your mind, in part, through you web-surfing investigations of the subject and, in part, through your privately-handled, creep-out fantasies? (You're not dong any "scientific" research on twats on your employer's computer and on the taxpayer's dime, are you Jeff?)
Allow me to imagine the playful banter in your lab-space, Jeff: "Did you read what that twat-head, chek, wrote?" or "Ol' wow, what a twat-breath he is!" or "rhwombat--the ultimate twat-marsupial, twats-for-brains twat-greenshirt with twat-zits issues!" Perhaps you find such language good fun, Jeff?
Well, I'm very sorry, Jeff, but I don't find such language to be "good fun" at all. Indeed, I find such language to be extremely offensive. And, it pains me to say it, Jeff, but I must reluctantly conclude, on my part, that your appalling choice of language marks you as a sexist schweinhund. A sexist schweinhund, Jeff!
Any Deltoid care to join me in condemning Jeff Harvey's twat-twaddle?
This deltoid wants to tell l'ill mike to take his transparently passive-aggressive 'concern' act elsewhere.
L'll 'oooh ra mike' here being the troll who on two previous occasions has tried to link the IPCC to child prostitution solely on the grounds of conference location.
Apparently, South Africa for example has only one 'recreational' use in the travel books l'll mike's familiar with.
As to the subject of the post, how one might rightfully choose to respond to those who groundlessly disparage one's professional integrity is a mystery l'll mike will never have to concern himself with.
Behind-the-scenes panic over reports of methane blowing out of the sea-bed in the Eastern Arctic. This could dramatically increase global warming. Listen
A Rick Perry Presidency would be a tragedy for the US and for US science in particular.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has struck out all references to accelerating sea level rise and anthropogenic climate change in a report by Oceanography Professor John Anderson on Galveston Bay.
Is this the sort of censorship of science the Galileo Movement want to expose?
"Carbon dioxide is non-toxic". The fastest response to that fiction is to point to the Australian exposure standard for carbon dioxide in the workplace, which can be found on Safe Work Australia's Hazardous Substance Information System. For example, see the [documentation page](http://hsis.ascc.gov.au/DocumentationES.aspx?ID=108) .
Having lived and worked in a field camp in a wilderness study area each fall for a couple of decades, living in a backpacking tent, I never gave a second thought to the resident cougar that would vacate our camp site every year when we showed up ...
Not only is Kloor frightened by big kitties (now, a pride of lions would be a different matter altogether), he's afraid of PRAIRIE DOGS. Too funny.
Mr. Environmental Writer, who obviously edited Audubon Magazine from the comfort of a Manhattan apartment ...
Seemingly as a counterpoint Anthony Watts has, as I said in a post on Skeptical Science:
>posted some dog-whistling nonsense that plays Dunning-Kruger bingo with every possible acid chemistry cannard - including the notion that a decrease of about half a pH unit over a century and a bit constitutes "a small change in ocean pH" to which "nature" should be able to adapt.
If one has the fortitude to actually read the comments on that thread, one will be left wondering whether this is a giant parody of denialism and of sheer D-K ignorance on a staggeringly mammoth scale.
Again, to paraphrase my earlier comment on Skeptical Science, it's enough to reduce to tears anyone with tertiary training in chemistry or in biology...
Send him over down under. We don't have big cats (well, apart from some of the ferals which make up for their small size with attitude... on and the mythical black panther around the western Blue Mountains) but we more compensate with more than our fair share of snotty poisonous elapid snakes, the odd modern-day dinosaur floating about in otherwise inviting-looking creeks, a selection of stroppy and lethal spiders, ticks that make adults very sick (I can attest to that one), a myriad of biting/ stinging insect fauna, a variety of enthusiastic leeches and, to cap it all off, a breathtaking (often literally) selection of plant taxa that aren't just poisonous but some whose sting (esp. Dendrocnide spp.) lasts for decades. And that's just the terrestrial stuff...
If he survives that we'll send him back and I guarantee you'll never hear another whinge about XXL pussies :-)
For all the masochists out there or perhaps just psychology students, the ABC's 7.30 Report will be putting a half hour interview of Alan Jones by Leigh Sales on their website tomorrow. The part that was put on television (which was about 10 minutes long) started going through the list of denialist memes. But I expect half an hour is nowhere near long enough to demonstrate the depths of his derangement.
This thought-provoking article and the underlying paper on the [high cost of seven years of climate inaction](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/the-cost-of-inact…) - along with some of the comments that suggest it may be even worse than the paper indicates - ought to get much wider exposure. Heck, it's the sort of topic that any *serious* newspaper ought to be running, instead of misdirecting their readers by talking about how some old guy doesn't think there's been much sea level rise in his neighbourhood.
Good ol' Wait-awhile, as it is also known. It was thick on the ground in most of my PhD transects - if I had a dollar for every time I said to my volunteers "hang on", or "wait a moment" (or "@%$*&!"), I'd be able to retire...
Amongst the list of venomous snakes we encountered were:
Eastern brown snake
Coastal taipan
Tiger snake
Death adder
Stephens' banded snake
Rough scaled snake
Blue-bellied black snake
Red-bellied black snake
Small eyed snake
And then there were the paralysis ticks, the jack jumper ants, the various annoying mosquitoes, sandflies, March-flies ("March" indeed...), the aforementioned stinging trees - the list goes on.
With this parade of nasties, and throwing in references to blue-ringed octopus, irukandji, saltwater crocs and such, we were able to spend many hours around campfires convincing our international volunteers of the perils of bunyips, blood eagles, hoop snakes, drop bears and many other Australian 'dangers'.
Just heard Richard Muller being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 by BBC 'sceptic' Justin Webb. Muller even denied warming has stopped over the past decade. Webb's efforts to continue to cast doubt on the temperature record were absolutely risible.
Not only did they NOT find urban heat island effects, their methodology found that the reconstruction using only the "very rural" stations was warming **faster** than the reconstruction using all stations.
That'd be ANOTHER own goal by Watts, which he is once more vigorously disputing, although I'm not sure he can quite explain why anyone should believe him.
> ...their methodology found that the reconstruction using only the "very rural" stations was warming faster than the reconstruction using all stations...
Note that it has also been stated that this difference does not rise to the level of statistical significance.
I note from the Recent Posts list that Jonas N, GSW and Olaus petri are still at it on the troll thread.
Could someone who still wanders in there ask them for their (ill-considered) opinions on the fact that the BEST project, against the apparent expectations of Muller, demonstrated that the consensus of climatology had in fact analysed the global temperature records correctly, and that such analyses indicate that the planet is warming just as the IPCC says?
Also, I am very keen to know if these three amigos are prepared to enter into legally-binding contracts to solidify the informal ones that [they entered into earlier this month](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). If so, could they please forward their details to Tim Lambert to pass on, so that I can start the ball rolling on collecting a year's salary from each of them at some point in the future. If not, could they please explain why they are choosing to renege on their acceptances of my challege?
And finally, I bet GSW is still making moves on most everyone he speaks to...
Not sure if Ethical Oil (the meme, as well as the organization and blog, all inspired by Ezra Levant's 2009 book of the same name) has been covered here.
===================================
Today Iâll take a detailed look at the Ethical Oil position on the oil sands carbon footprint, as seen in former spokesperson Alykhan Velshiâs error-filled and confused post entitled Mythbusting: Are the Oilsands Major greenhouse Gas Emitters?, part of his âMyths and Liesâ series.
Iâll focus on the two most significant problems in Velshiâs piece:
* Velshiâs original premise was that not only are oil sands greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relatively insignificant, but that they are actually declining. This has been partially corrected, presumably in response to my initial commentary on this issue, but in such a way as to render his argument completely illogical. And Velshiâs conclusion still repeats the utterly mistaken assertion that oil emissions âare fallingâ, whereas in fact they are rising at a rapid rate.
* Ethical Oilâs credibility is further damaged by misleading statements concerning the supposedly tiny contribution of oil sands emissions when compared to total global human and natural emissions. This echoes barely veiled climate âskepticâ arguments in Ezra Levantâs 2009 book that started the whole âethical oilâ rebranding effort. And an examination of Levantâs previous statements on climate science would appear to confirm that a strong anti-science stance is not far from the surface, despite the efforts of Ethical Oil spokespersons to hide it.
=================================
Today is a big day for UK "sceptics" - it's Climate Fools Day. They will be gathering in the House of Commons to listen to Rev. Philip Foster (author of this [bilge](http://www.amazon.co.uk/While-Earth-Endures-Creation-Cosmology/dp/19015…)), Peter Gill of Institute of Physics Energy Group notoriety, Piers Corbyn, and some bloke with a non job at the Taxpayers Aliance.
Of interest to Aussies - the Global Warming policy Foundation has laid on a special treat in the evening with His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, delivering the Second Annual GWPF Lecture at Westminster Cathedral Hall. Attendance is by invite only.
Thanks Shinsko. "Between 1695 and 1730, the temperature in England rose by 2.2C" is a particularly egregious cherry-pick AND the Central England temperature record is known to have quality issues prior to 1730 AND Pell misrepresents the record as being for the whole of England. Just the kind of crud "educational" "charity" the GWPF laps up.
It would be wonderful if it worked and could be commercialised to produce cheap clean power - but at the moment the hype and certain aspects of the tests I've read about set off my sounds-like-bullshit detectors.
Does anyone here get AcresUSA magazine? There's an opinion piece by Anthony R Lupo against AGW (about what I'd expect based on his sourcewatch info).
Some of his claims:
the Middle Ages were warmer because the Vikings colonized Greenland and there was a thriving wine industry in England.
The LIA corresponds to lower solar activity. Even within the last three years, sunspot activity has been lower and the climate has shown no significant change since around 2000.
[haven't 9 out of the top ten hottest years on record occurred since then? while solar activity is lower? -me]
There are literally thousands of publications out there that support his points and If you ask any skeptic who is derided as a "climate denier," but who has done their own homework, they would agree with his arguments.
A skeptic is anyone who basically questions the idea that human activity plays a major role in changing the climate.
He starts his article with the obligatory reference to ClimateGate.
Interesting the way Curry seems to running from an attributed quote with its built in incendiary dogwhistle to her now preferred audience: "As for the graph disseminated to the media", she said: "This is 'hide the decline' stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. [Muller is hiding the decline".](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-…)
I suspect her revisionist revisiting of it on her own website: "I did not say that âthe affair had to be compared to the notorious Climategate scandal two years ago,â this is indirectly attributed to me. When asked specifically about the graph that apparently uses a 10 year running mean and ends in 2006, we discussed 'hide the decline,' but I honestly canât recall if Rose or I said it first". is sufficiently weaseling to suggest that Rose (no friend of science himself) has recorded Curry saying her piece and she was too stupid to make her own recording.
Some of his claims: the Middle Ages were warmer because the Vikings colonized Greenland and there was a thriving wine industry in England.
I'll just point out that wine is an important part of church ceremony and imported wines would have been expensive. There are currently literally hundreds of commercial vinyards in England.
climate has shown no significant change since around 2000.
As a matter of interest, how often has there been a 10-year period that has shown a significant change in global temperature? Given the variability of climate, I suspect very few.
Just a trivial question... has Steve Mosher being walking to Damascus? Some of his recent postings on WUWT seem to be uncharacteristically supporting of mainstream science.
.
I've observed a lot of "tu quoque" infrastructure being constructed recently: crafting situations with the apparent intent of eliciting general statements-of-condemnation against action BIG-X, for later wielding against those who'd engaged in action small-x. (Or alternatively, the Xs are the same but the contexts are different, in a way that matters; or alternatively, the original x was a set-up - bait - in the first place.)
Another way of putting it - think about the condemnations you've made, and consider if someone could take your "I abhor" general statement and apply it to molehills as well as mountains.
Is anyone else perceiving this effort going on? (I'm 99% sure it's happening, but don't know if it's just aimed at one target.)
In comparison with the court finding vs Bolt, note how this turned out:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/unforced-variatio…
#4 caerbannog says:
1 Oct 2011 at 11:57 AM
Dr. Mann has just responded to a particularly pernicious denier hit-piece in the Vail Daily â it deserves wider exposure, so Iâm putting up the link to it here: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20111001/EDITS/110939988/1021&ParentPr…
And hereâs a link to the hit-piece that prompted Mannâs response: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20110930/EDITS/110929829/1021&ParentPr…
Interestingly enough, all you will see there is this: âThis is an invalid article or has been removed from our site.â
/quote
======
But another hit piece pops right up:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replicat…
@ no 1
And I quote: "."
I dunno, Bernard J, I mean, like, I'm not really into all that zen koan business and all, but my vote is for one-half of an infected umlaut. Left half.
But, mike, it was possibly the longest exchange on Deltoid!
That umlaut sounds sinister. I'd recommend penicillin.
Ugh, I note that the J thread is still appearing to the left on the "Recent Comments" list. Can someone who is still wandering around that especially seedy corner of Knockturn Alley let the trolls in there know of a challenge that I have for them. To wit...
"Jonas N", "Olaus Petri", "Ingvar Engelbrecht", "Pehr Bjornbom" and "GSW" are all quite firm in their pronouncement that "catastrophic" global warming will not occur as a consequence of human emissions of CO2 sourced from fossil carbon. Fine. I would like them to agree to this proposition:
@ no. 6
Hey, BJ, I don't want to get into your personal business--but it needs an umlaut.
I dunno, Bernard J, I mean, like, I'm not really into all that zen koan business and all, but my vote is for one-half of an infected umlaut. Left half. That umlaut sounds sinister. I'd recommend penicillin. heyyy thank good admin blog akmerkez...
I am so glad our host has offered us another 'Open Thread' because I have been waiting eagerly to give you all an example of absolutely top class scientific behaviour - no, no, please don't thank me, just the usual 'readies' in a plain envelope. These are the words of the scientist in charge of those naughty little nutrinos who shot down the tunnel at CERN apparently faster than the speed of light:
"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News.
"When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"
Good job he's not a climate scientist, he wouldn't last long!
I don't want to step on Dave Duff's comment since I think he's getting something really good going with his comment no. 9, above. Unfortunately, I can only comment on open threads and did want to add a little something to the Jonas thread. So, sorry, Dave, gotta post here.
For the Jonas thread:
I see Jonas, Olaus, GSW that you're best by a flash-mob of Deltoid's attack-chihuahuas. Like you, I was initially astonished by the pack-attack's ankle-nipping, leg-humping, and nervous-energy yapping. But, if you haven't found out already, you'll soon discover that the lil' nippers are a harmless, albeit annoying bunch. All just dog-breath and bow-wows.
Incidentally, the characteristics of the greenshirt, attack-chihuahua breed include: always attack in packs, can dish it out but can't take it, are sore-losers, are obedience-trained by their masters, are prone to making "messes" when over-excited, produce really gross hair-balls due to their excessive and compulsive fur-licking, and draw their parasite nourishment exclusively from the taxpayer tit.
I hope this helps put things in perspective for you.
@mike
lol! Had your say here though didn't you!
Thanks
;)
@David
The guys at CERN were faced with a "Career Ending" result. I think they just made the best they could out of it. Nothing too brave about how they handled it I'm afraid - other than the fact they did strike a blow for Openness and Transparency, which I think is the point you are making.
;)
@mike
I think the ankle nipping has started.
;)
@ GSW
I have no idea what their motivation was but it struck me as somewhat similar to dear old Albert's in that when he produced a theory which was, to say the least, 'gobsmacking', he published along with all the maths that supported it. The lads (and lasses?) at CERN having stumbled on something revolutionary did what proper scientists should do - they published and invited criticism. How unlike our own dear University of East Anglia, and sundry similar outfits in America, where the first thing you need to know is how to delete e-mails!
Climate science isn't proposing anything that overturns the laws of physics.
The CERN group is.
Some of us understand the difference between orthodoxy and tossing relativity into the toilet. Orthodoxy is easy to defend. Overturning relativity ... not so much.
The CERN group is smart enough to understand that odds are extremely high that there's an error somewhere in their experimental results, as they made clear at the conference where they presented their results, inviting others to pitch in and help find out what's wrong ... or to substantiate that there's no known error.
Nothing in climate science requires such scrutiny. The basic physics has been around since Tyndall.
Openness and transparency eh, GSW?
Not much of that around back at your own HQ when enquiries are made into Montford's shadowy financial backers at GWPF. It appears openness and transparency is only for others, not for them. Weapons-grade hypocrisy, as usual.
And it's always interesting to see your little conversations with your fellow trolls to see for example how the excitable view science as something to stuff into their own spin machine. Be sure to let us all know when CERN confirms what your vivid imaginations told you.
You don't get out and read scientific journals much do you, David?
@#12
Eh? You'd just been wittering among yourselves at that point. Talk about obsessive attention seeking!
@ no. 17
bill, I can see you've misunderstood the situation. In particular, my comment no. 10 and GSW's comment no. 12 referred to the Jonas thread. In that regard, the "ankle-nipping" to which GSW alludes is chek's prissy comment no. 1052 on the Jonas thread (which preceded GSW's comment no. 12). And chek's comment was indeed just the "beginning", as GSW so presciently anticipated, since shortly thereafter, two unusually energetic comments were received (Jonas nos. 1053/1054) from Jeff Harvey--Deltoid's alpha leg-humper.
A bit complicated, I know, but the root of the complication is that I am forbidden to comment directly on the Jonas thread, hence all the cross-referencing.
Finally, I'm surprised you could detect the faint, attention-seeking "signal" in GSW's comment amidst the general, weener-dork, exhibitionists-on-parade "noise" of this blog. And so very nice of you to provide the sought-for attention--you're one of the "good" Deltoids, bill.
Err...wee mike, remember what happened last time you stopped taking your medications and released your inner Grunt here at deltoid? You need to ease up on the testosterone supplements, or actually finish that course on anger management and surviving paedophilia, or whatever it is that prevents you from actually interacting reasonably with people whom you suspect are brighter and more successful than you are. That you side with the simpering scandinavians (and the petit-fascist "physicist" who signs himself GSW "; )") is boringly predictable. You never could play well with others, could you?
Mike, when are you going to condemn the buggery of climatology and of physics by deniers of human-caused global warming?
> As we left off last time, I had asked you for the umpteenth time to condemn pedophilia
Look, just because you feel guilty about your feelings on the subject of children, there's no need to do a public self-flagellation on the subject.
Just avoid temptation and let your feelings slide and they'll go away in time.
Thanks for the reminder rhwombat.
I do believe it was li'll mike here who was - in his own words - the "one sick f*ck" who accused the UN or IPCC or both of choosing certain cities he'd somehow classified as 'paedophile friendly' (maybe he gets some 'special interest' brochures?) as their preferred choice of venue.
Just by way of friendly, casual, unevidenced slander of the worst kind, you understand.
Thanks for the reminder rhwombat.
I do believe it was li'll mike here who was - in his own words - the "one sick f*ck" who accused the UN or IPCC or both of choosing certain cities he'd classified as 'paedophile friendly' or somesuch (maybe he gets some 'special interest' brochures?) as their preferred choice of venue.
Just by way of friendly, casual, unevidenced slander of the worst kind, you understand.
Aw, heck, one cannot resist...
This, [from the troll](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5396482) with his own thread:
>Early on, you tried proclaiming that I never read any scientific literature (what an utterly moronic claim to make, even more so after the opposite was obvious). And when even simpler details what it said in the literature were discussed (by others) you totally bailed. You had absolutely nothing to contribute to the topic. Only your stupid rants of 'defending your colleagues'
>[My emboldened emphases]
and then:
>You use a lot of words, like:
>idiot, moron, stupid, lunatic ..
>and none of these words have any tangible meaning here.
>[And again, my emboldened emphases]
It seems that consistency of logical argument isn't one of the troll's finer points...
For those without the background, mike, like all the denialist trolls here, refused to condemn threats of violence (death) and sexual assault on the children of scientists investigating the role of humans in climate change.
Mike "forgets" that he wouldn't condemn these people and now wants to pretend that he was the one asking for condemnation.
> Myself and others were then tasked by certain Deltoids to provide this blog with public condemnations of child-rape (which we readily provided).
Pop along to the thread and see for yourself.
Mike ought to have managed to give you a link to where he and other denialist trolls were readily providing their condemnation.
mike, do you condemn those who make threats of murder and rape against children?
You never have before.
And, yes, unlike you, I do condemn child rape.
Memo to host: it's not the tragedy of the open thread; it's the tragedy of the _unmanaged_ open thread. Rather like any commons.
@Tim
Agree with Hank, this sort of stuff should go straight into the bin.
@ 26 and 28
Before we get started, wow,--I don't think you answered the question previously posed. Let me try again:
Do you condemn pedophilia? Yes or No.
Wow, before I get started on my factual reply, I want you to know that I recognize the drill--you launch a fib-booger that takes you no more than a few seconds to flick and then I must spend an hour or so exposing your lack of goober-ethics. But, I'll play the game this time.
In it's most succinct formulation, you say:
"mike, do you condemn those who make threats of murder and rape against children? You never have before [October 3, 2011]."
OK, Wow, let's see if I can find some of those condemnations prior to October 3, 2011, you maintain don't exist:
"I condemn child-rape without qualification to include the rape of climate scientist's families" (comment 200, Deltoid's "Australian Climate Scientists Get Death Threats" post June 6, 2011) Comments 201 and 203 offer further condemnation of child-rape.
The remaining quotes are from Deltoid's "Another Day Another Death Threat" post June 21, 2001:
Expressing my concern over reports that the Australian police were not aggressively pursuing death threats directed at Australian climate scientists, I said:
"For the record, I certainly want police forces, everywhere, to take action to protect those who have been subjected to threats of rape and murder of themselves and their family." Comment 19
A Deltoid named frank, challenged me: "Your condemnation of rape has been anything but unqualified." Comment 34.
I then responded to frank's no. 34 as follows: "frank, I am more than happy to advise you that I condemn child-rape morning, noon, and night; 24/7; without qualification; IPCC or no IPCC; and in any clime or place." Comment 38
frank then described my comment no 38 condemnation of child-rape with one word--"Good." comment 47
Finally, I asked you, wow, and another Deltoid, john: "If you can find any wiggle-room in my condemnation [at comment 38], John and wow, please let me know, because I want to make it water-tight." Comment 45
Subsequently, I never heard squat from either John or wow.
Wow, we've dealt with one another from time to time for a while now. And during that time I've come know you as a puke-bucket weasel lacking character and moral compass (actually we both know that about you). So let me anticipate a little "trick" you've got up that sleeve of yours with the snot-stains on the cuff.
In particular, the comments quoted above did not exactly "condemn those who make threats of murder and rape against children." And perhaps that's the little joke and I fell for it. However, in the world of reasonable and fair-minded men and women a forceful commendation of child-rape and a declaration that police should protect those in receipt of death-threats and rape-threats both to themselves and families allows a reasonable inference that I condemn the act, the threat of the same, and the perpetrator of the act and/or threat. But that kind of reasonable inference only works among reasonable men and women of good-faith so I'm not urging it on you, wow. Have your little laugh, if that's your game.
Hank, GSW: concur. This thread has gone stupid! Starting to remind me of 10:10 conspiracies with "warmists" blowing up children! But as time goes by, it becomes pretty much all they have left to play with....
Cheers - John
@ no. 32
Snide innuendos of pedophilia (comments 19 & 23)directed at me survive the cull. My comment in the same vein did not. But it's not my blog and not my moderation policy. On the other hand, I also noticed, John, that the thread went "stupid" or maybe even STOOPID! when I asked a few Deltoids to condemn pedophilia--just as I had been asked on this blog to condemn child rape (see my commment 31, above). I don't get it. And I'm also not getting any answers to my simple questions. Curious.
And as far as your comment that conspiracies "...become pretty much all they have to play with..." Well, the whole pedophile business was first brought up on this thread, not by "they" or "me", but by rhwombat. And he's one of your guys, if you care to claim him.
Let's get to the heart of the matter, mike. It wasn't only that you were demanding condemnation of child prostitution in general, but demanding condemnation of the IPCC for holding conferences in cities and countries that had highly publicized problems with child sex-trafficking.
This was your lame attempt to make a false equivalence argument to the reported fact of climate change deniers making specific direct and explicit, violent and sexually abusive threats to a woman and her children, for no other reason than she was giving a public lecture on the risks of climate change.
We then showed evidence of both wholesale and retail, economic, familial and institutional sexual abuse of children in far flung places including Utah, which you had suggested might be a more wholesome venue for such conferences.
I would further suggest that condemnation of child abuse should be extended to ordinary labor exploitation of children, since in many ways forcing children to work in fields, orchards and sweatshops for less than poverty wages and in dangerous and unhealthy conditions is, in many aspects, even more harmful than the sex trade, and is even more widespread, including in the [United States.](http://www.iearn.org.au/clp/archive/write64.htm)
Do you affirm such condemnation, understanding that by failing to affirm you are, by your own logic, admitting to being, yourself, guilty of such abuse?
Additionally, mike, in order for you to maintain logical consistency relative to what you would ask of others:
Do you condemn specifically the United States and the State of Utah; and anyone who does legitimate economic, cultural, social or scientific business within the geographical borders of these regions or, in general, any and all other regions of the world where these abhorrent practices are taking place; anyone and everyone who buys produce in a super market or socks in a Walmart at low everyday prices, or any and all other businesses, economic, social, cultural, or scientific institutions, persons or other entities that economically, culturally or socially benefit, directly or indirectly, from any and all of these abhorrent practices?
Furthermore:
Do you personally vow to abstain from any and all economic, cultural, social or scientific interactions with and actively boycott any and all businesses, economic, social, cultural, or scientific institutions, persons or other entities that economically, culturally, socially or scientifically benefit, directly or indirectly, from any and all of these abhorrent practices?
Do it for the children, mike.
A simple yes or no will do, mike.
LB,
I'm certainly not going to wade through all your preposterous, tedious, leaden, lackluster, cant-laden BS.
But let me ask you some simple questions, LB:
Do you condemn pedophilia? Yes or No
Do you condemn child sex tourism? Yes or No
Do you think it appropriate for the IPCC to hold its annual meetings in venues notorious for their child sex industry and favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists? Yes or No.
But you can't answer these questions can you, LB? Let's make a deal you. You answer the questions and I'll do my best to tackle your little-Ms.-smarty-panties last comment.
And if you, LB, or anyone else doesn't like my take on pedophilia then they just might want to avoid bringing the matter up in the first place--I never bring it up in the first place.
@mike
I'd walk away mike. You seem to be out numbered by a gang of angry perverts.
;)
Your feeble whining victimhood in comment 33 notwithstanding, you still make unsubstantiated allegations about the IPCC.
You probably don't understand how ridiculous you appear claiming that South Africa - a country five times larger than the UK with a history probably longer than whatever snotspit US state you hail from - can only possibly be a child sex tourist magnet? And that a regional capital like Cancun probably has a lot more going for it than your own ignorance and reading material allows you to perceive?
And claiming your reference as 'Google' is as stupid and ill-informed as that other inept denier Peter Wood at NAS.
Tell you what brainbox - just google
child sex tourist +mike if you want to even begin comprehending your own depths of inadequacy. As John Mason points out at #32, you people really have little left but attempted smears.
Chek - that's all they had left before the CRU email hack - and their silly nonsensical spin on those emails says it all in terms of what their grasp of science was in the first place. They had zero science in the first place so dirty tricks had to be devised.
They are flailing around, like an agricultural muck-spreader which actually does something practically useful - it recycles shit to return it down to the soil. In this case, it differs: they recycle shit into the fair blue sky in the hope that bits of it might just stick when they land, the main thing being that in the post-2009 world, we have woken up to their bullshit and their utter selfishness.
Cheers - John
Chek - that's all they had left before the CRU email hack - and their silly nonsensical spin on those emails says it all in terms of what their grasp of science was in the first place. They had zero science in the first place so dirty tricks had to be devised.
They are flailing around, like an agricultural muck-spreader which actually does something practically useful - it recycles shit to return it down to the soil. In this case, it differs: they recycle shit into the fair blue sky in the hope that bits of it might just stick when they land, the main thing being that in the post-2009 world, we have woken up to their bullshit and their utter selfishness.
Cheers - John
Let's see now, there are now four comments on this thread that direct snide innuendos of pedophilia at me (Comments 19, 22, 23, and 34). My one comment of that sort, I merely note in passing, was deleted. It vaguely seems to me ironic that the authors of the four surviving "pedo-innuendo" comments on this blog have all refused to condemn pedophilia. And piling vague irony upon vague irony, the same four pedo-innuendo comments are all directed at one of the rare commenters on this blog (me) that has condemned pedophilia. And, oh by the way, I'm not a pedophile either. The curiosities of Deltoid-land.
@ no. 36
I think you're right, GSW. Time to disengage (with the right to change my mind). Though I don't really think I'm dealing with a gang of angry perverts. Rather, I'm sure it's nothing more than the rutting-season heebie-jeebies on display here in Deltoid-land.
Hey, Deltoids, I'll make you an offer. You don't mention pedophilia and I won't. I've said pretty much all I have to say. So if you want to crank up the Victrola again, be prepared for another spin of the same old song.
mike,
>Do you condemn pedophilia? Yes or No
Yes.
>Do you condemn child sex tourism? Yes or No
Yes.
>Do you think it appropriate for the IPCC to hold its annual meetings in venues notorious for their child sex industry and favored destinations of pedophile sex tourists? Yes or No.
No. At least I see no reason to think it especially inappropriate. Though climate change and the child sex industry aren't directly related, it isn't too difficult a stretch to imagine that the presence of a global institutional conference dedicated to the effort to improve the condition of the world's physical state, could ostensibly inspire local residents to improve local physical and social conditions that might alleviate child poverty and thence affect the sex trade. For a personal example; I regularly visit neighborhoods notorious for gang violence and prostitution, juvenile and otherwise, for the purpose of counseling drug abusers. Is that inappropriate?
The ball is in your court.
And now for something completely different:
A top ten list of climate science abuses, well balanced and on point.
http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=11293
Yeah yeah OK. I think we can stop the tit-for-tat exchanges over paedophilia. Mike knows he was the one who first brought it up way, way back with the IPCC comment for whatever bizarre reason, and I'm sure he can happily survive with it on his conscience.
We can just get on with it, and get mike, David Duff, GSW, etc, to espouse:
a) their alternative theories on what is causing the observed warming of the planet if it's not CO2 (the theory will of course vary quite dramatically depending on which sceptic you follow), or
b) if it isn't warming at all (which again depends on which sceptic you follow), they can explain the errors they've found in all the temperature datasets and why exactly the datasets should actually show a cooling trend, or
c) how if it's both warming and due to CO2, which scientific processes show that it's only natural CO2 and nothing to do with us (again, depends on which sceptic you follow), or
d) if it's warming, and due to CO2, and it's our fault, what evidence they have which shows that it's actually nothing to be concerned about and it'll all be quite inconsequential or even a great benefit for humankind (which yet again, depends entirely which sceptic you follow)
Looking forward to learning some new science here..........Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
So, Mike, by your silence on the matter am I to take it that you do not condemn the buggery of climatology and of physics by deniers of human-caused global warming?
And mike, pay attention. This is a blog dedicated to Tim Lambert's interest in "areas of science with political implications such as global warming, the relationship between guns and crime and the use of DDT against malaria." I'm sure that Tim isn't interested in your fetish area - your focus on it is simply intended to garner support for a strawman argument, but you won't go to the meat of the focus of Deltoid...
@ 42
LB, I'm trying to get out of this "stupid" (John Mason's term) thread. But I owe you and as you say, the "ball is in [my] court."
Thanks, LB, for the response. The first two answers speak for themselves and are the answers I would, of course, expect from you. The last response is a reasonable one and, indeed, actually makes the case, it seems to me, that the IPCC should, under the conditions you propose, seek out locales where kids are most exploited. Hopefully, the IPCC will unveil (if they haven't already) their plan to accomplish the sort of beneficial community-impact goals you've laid out for them.
And, yes, it is altogether appropriate for you, IHMO, to help needy individuals through personal contact, while noting a probable personal risk to you in doing so (please be careful) and that you receive little or no compensation for your humanitarian good works (I believe you said your work with the needy is pro-bono). Indeed, let me thank you for your warm-heart and the care you so generously extend to your fellow man--my respects, admiration, and gratitude. I think I once told you that if all lefties were like you, LB, I'd probably still be one myself. And I mean it.
@ 34
LB, I've worked up two long responses to your comment no. 34 and have deleted both. Once I penetrated the cheap debating tricks; lapidary five-year-plan prose; and gotcha-snark of your comment I found myself confronting an old heard-breaker. How to make the world a better place and world's stubborn resistance to betterment. I wish I had the answers, but I don't--just a few notions:
*Lefty dystopias don't work and are, most often, rapacious killing machines.
*Crony capitalism is not the answer either, despite its sometimes spiffy exterior.
*Kids have no business growing up in brothels or doing any other work that is comparably bad. We should just do without the "fruits" of such labor. But I know you're right that some measure of onerous child labor is probably a necessary evil in a nation's earliest stage of industrial development, at least.
Beyond that I can't do any better, LB. Truly, I wish I could do better by your post.
@ 45
Bernard J,
I keep trying to get out of here but you make it hard. Let me say, BJ, that I'm sure Tim Lambert can speak for himself. Further, I have every confidence that Tim Lambert will not hesitate to criticize, modify, or eliminate my contributions to this blog as he sees fit without any of your self-appointed, busy-body assistance. And, for sure, if Tim Lambert needed a mouth-piece he would not choose you because no one in their right mind would choose a pompous ass, blowhard like you for such a responsible duty.
And twice you've brought up that "buggery" remark of
yours. It's a stupid comment Bernard J. Just a stupid comment.
Science, anybody? Science?
Anyways.....I was, just for a good bellicose laugh, recently reading up on AGW-sceptic Ken Ring's view that CO2 sinks down to ground level by virtue of its density, and therefore cannot possibly cause global warming.
I was actually thinking of compiling a list of the all time funniest AGW sceptic "theories" which dispute AGW, but I wonder whether people wouldn't get far through it before being overwhelmed by fits of giggling. Because honestly, some of it is quite funny (and a little scary that they thought of it in the first place, yet still consider themselves educated people).
This is the fundamental issue sceptical groups have - a lot of their stuff is so inanely stupid that they have a real serious image and reputation problem within the scientific world. If they want to correct this, then they need to actually come up with something which vaguely makes sense and reign in the countless complete nutters out there who are on their side.
re: 14
heavy CO2.
See SSWR, p.61
"DR. WEGMAN. Again, it is the connection between carbon dioxide and temperature increase. Now, Mr. Inslee pointed out that he thinks there is a physical explanation based on a blanket of carbon dioxide in the reflection. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I am not an atmospheric scientist to know that but presumably if the atmospheric--if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the Earth, it is not reflecting a lot of infrared back."
@15
Bwahahahaha! :)
This goes to the heart of many sceptical arguments: sheer stupidity and complete detachment from reality. Yet simultaneously they demand to be taken seriously on this blog and many others.
They're going to be continually disappointed, irritated, and bitter towards the entire scientific world if they keep coming up with stuff like this.
I just saw someone at Huffington Post offer [the Wikipedia List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream…) in support of his claim that "the science isn't settled". Very convincing of that, eh? Still, a handy reference of "notable" deniers.
re: 17
As for that list ask them:
Their mother has heart problems. At least 97 working cardiologists / heart surgeons tell them she'd better have an operation. One cardiac surgeon who has lost almost every patient in last decade says NO OPERATION, NO PROBLEM and is joined by a retired brain surgeon and a petroleum geophysicist who publishes in a dog astrology journal, i.e., JSE.
So, who do they believe?
re: 17
As for that list ask them:
Their mother has heart problems. At least 97 working cardiologists / heart surgeons tell them she'd better have an operation. One cardiac surgeon who has lost almost every patient in last decade says NO OPERATION, NO PROBLEM and is joined by a retired brain surgeon and a petroleum geophysicist who publishes in a dog astrology journal, i.e., JSE.
So, who do they believe?
John, the Wikipedia page has several better arguments than that against denialism right on it, which is why it is so ludicrous for denialists to cite it, and why your argument will have no effect on their closed minds.
It may be, but I have at least occasionally found the heart surgeon / brain surgeon example to work in person.
I'm still here observing ! How's 'the climate debate going for ya'all now gentle persons ? :-)
I wonder if I've 'won the internet yet'. I wonder indeed ! :-)
Here's another vote for deleting this God-awful, turgid thread.
Oops, I should have reloaded the page. Good job. Please strike this and my previous.
In their new paper (full text paywalled) "[Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy](http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649)" Muller, Mendelsohn and Nordhaus give the USA some of the hard analytical grounds it would need to justify a raising of its carbon tax - if only it had one.
M,M &N use standard economic data from a variety of impeccable sources to quantify the dollar cost of some of the negative externalities of activities ranging from electricity generation to stone quarrying, while leaving in the too-hard basket the externality of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions. Even so they find the value of coal-fired electricity to the economy is more than outweighed by its cost.
Without even specifically addressing it this analysis also illuminates the way in which, in the context of anthropogenic climate change, an emissions offsets scheme that doesn't prevent the burning of a fossil fuel does not actually address the non-CO2e costs. The canonical example of an offset that fails in this regard might be tree planting or forest conservation wherein only the CO2e emissions costs are addressed. Of course it hardly need be said that tree planting and conservation are nonetheless desirable for any number of good reasons - just not as justification for burning fossil fuels.
Anyway, according to MM&N the USA could simultaneously improve economic, environmental and health outcomes by weaning itself from fossil fuels, and might do so without even needing to defend climate science from attack by lobbyists, ideologues, and useful idiots. Good result.
[Also posted at John Quiggin's]
I am pleased to see that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW have each agreed to accept [my challenge](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…) and forfeit to me, by the end of the first year during which the Arctic sea ice either dips to a minimum extent below 250,000 square kilometres or where it disappears entirely (whichever comes first), the equivalent of their respective salaries for the preceding financial year.
Receiving these sums for my discretionary dispersement to mitigation actions will, to a small extent, assauge my distress when that catastrophic climate change landmark is reached.
I am sure that each of the aforementioned personages fully intends to honour their contract.
*the equivalent of their respective salaries for the preceding financial year*
Bernard, given the nonsense they collectively spew over on the Jonas thread, my bet is that the total sum of their salaries isn't very much... on the other hand, perhaps stupidity is a pre-requisite for a big salary somehwere...
Spyder,
Interesting link. Its nice to see grad students running a blog in which they reflect the strong evidence for AGW yet provide their views in an open, transparent way. I was a bit disheartened, however, by some of the trolls who responded.
re: 20 and "better arguments".
Which ones?
BRIAN SCHMIDT - CONGRATULATIONS
A hearty congratulations goes to Australian astrophysicist Brian Schmidt for sharing the Nobel Prize for Physics last night.
Of course, Brian has zero credibility in the eyes of AGW sceptics because he is notable for being of the opinion that global warming is a real and very serious planetary problem which humans are causing and must deal with.
So I'm guessing the sceptics will continue to be puzzled as to why so many proponents on the AGW side seem to be recognised as the sharpest minds on the planet and so many of their own sceptical crowd miss out. All part of the scientific conspiracy I suppose.
Have I 'won the internet' yet ?
@mikem
I think you may be mixing up two different "Brian Schmidt", the Nobel laureate is 'properly' a little more cautious on the issue than the "Brian Schmidt" you are confusing him with.
You think a lot of things, GSW, but almost every single one has been unsupported projection or just plain wrong.
So why should we believe you right this time?
[Professor Brian P.Schmidt the Nobel Laureate says](http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-debate-diminished-standing-of-sci…) âScience is never absolute, thatâs the problem. You have different levels of assurity. I have won the Nobel Prize with my team today for discovering the accelerating universe. We are pretty certain thatâs correct but you are never absolutely certain. The carbon debate is centred around the science, is the science right? Well there are uncertainties in the science,â said Professor Schmidt.
âI think the evidence is quite strong that change is happening,â he said. âThe science behind climate change predicts there should be a little change right now but in future, the prediction is it will be much more.
Are there no limits to what depths this konspiracy will sink to, GSW?
GSW,
Let's see what Brian Schmidt has to say in his own words about the [subject,](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-05/winemaker-wins-nobel-prize/331095…) beginning at about 5:48.
I'll make a prediction: GSW is only going to hear what he wants to hear and completely miss the general thrust of Schmidt's remarks.
@mikem
Apologies mike, there are two Brian Schmidts that I am aware of.
Brian 1) Self styled Environmental Advocate and Blogger. Recently moved to Eli's I believe? Notable for challenging high Profile sceptics (Lindzen etc) to a series of wagers on temperature increases over the next 10-15-20 years.
Brian 2) Astrophysicist, Nobel laureate.
It is probably true to say that Brian 1) (Environmental Advocate) has zero credibility in the eyes of sceptics, but to make the same assertion about Brian 2) (Astrophysicist), I'm pretty sure is not true.
So it just occurred to me that maybe you had muddled them up at some point?
@Mikem
Does this mean the only difference between Ivar Giaever...
http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2011/09/nobel-prize-winning-phy…
And Brian Schmidt is...age?
Because that seems a bit discriminatory. Or biased.
I applaud the work of scientists in general, and most particularly those awarded Nobel prizes. I have met and worked with a few myself in Boulder--see here...http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/2005_nobel_prize_hall.cfm.
But I have read that Dr. Giaever is lost his marbles or such. Since we are to, given your criteria, accept the opinions of people based on their awards, in this case the Nobel, why are people so quick to simply dismiss one, but not the other.
Young(er) and toes the party line? Must be right. Old(Emeritus) and disagrees. Must be a kook?
Please keep in mind I am not opining on the subject of AGW, just the apparent conflict in the logic.
Hamza
I looked for Ivar Giaever on Google scolar. He hasn't done any science in almost 40 years.
Brian Schmidt on the other hand, is still publishing.
Linus Paling also won a nobel prize, but then he left science and joined woo,
(No Linus, vitamin C doesn't cure Aids/cancer/ED) and became fit only for mocking.
Ivar Giaever has gone the Paling route
elspi, I think Giaever has joined a few other eminent Nobel Prize winners in an unfortunate professional category.
Rip Van Physicist.
@Hamza
I think you have your answer, they've decided to go with
"Young(er) and toes the party line? Must be right. Old(Emeritus) and disagrees. Must be a kook?"
Wow, GSW is so stunningly dishonest, maybe he needs his very own thread.
Just for the record, among people who actually do research (me for instance) the word is dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-man.html
As in: Giaever died in the 70s. He was a physicist in 1970, but now he is dead. (The word for physical death is "leaving")
The correct statement is: Giaever died in the 70s but unfortunately still hasn't left.
Brian Schmidt on the other hand is alive and kicking.
The point is that brain death follows death very quickly, so you shouldn't listen to the dead.
@32
Hamza, I think others have answered it adequately. There is quite a big difference between the modern, up to date, currently publishing physicists winning Nobel prizes, and someone who won a Nobel 50 (or whatever) years ago and hasn't published a paper or done any significant research ever since.
So you don't actually think that keeping up with discoveries and developments in science might be somehow linked to the scientific excellence that is rewarded by a Nobel, and that corresponding views in fairly modern fields such as planetary warming and climate might also be vaguely linked to this?
GSW, no actually they don't "have" to be a kook just because they're old and they disagree. It's just that when you examine some of the other opinions that members of that category (not all of them though, to be fair) have publicly expressed in their retirement, you do actually find a few kooks among them, Paling being an excellent quoted example.
> Since we are to, given your criteria, accept the opinions of people based on their awards, ...
What an odd interpretation of Mike! He appears to me to be making an entirely orthogonal statement - that "skeptics" impute **non**-credibility to people regardless of their awards but instead based on *their opinions about certain scientific matters*.
> ...why are people so quick to simply dismiss one, but not the other.
Perhaps because Schmidt can point to the overwhelming weight of evidence supporting his position, whereas Giaever fails to even note the basic logical and scientific errors in his own "I resign from APS" e-mail, let alone provide any plausible reason why one should believe that the weight of evidence supports his "conclusions".
Lotharsson I have long given up on the concept that I can successfully draw their own attention to the gratuitous lack of reasoning which torments AGW sceptics' minds. ;)
But still I try........
It's frustrating not being able to get a single consistent argument from them though. It's like they're reading from a script:
Try out newest argument "A". If "A" is not working, proceed to argument "B". If "B" doesn't get you anywhere, fallback to our old faithful argument "C". If "C" is not winning it for you, try argument "D", which totally contradicts "C", but we think it's not a bad one anyway. If you're still not succeeding with "D", say that Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite who earns millions on the talk circuit. If Al Gore doesn't win the debate for you, we recommend invoking the Nazi persecution of the Jews and comparing it to what is happening to sceptical scientists (WARNING - do not be drawn into what the sceptical scientists are actually saying, otherwise you'll need to start right back at "A").
One troll says "Jeffie" whilst [having a tanty](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5420665). Another troll, similarly spitting his dummy, also says "Jeffie" [ten minutes later](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5420741).
It's just so difficult to keep the correct arms up the backsides of the right socks, isn't it...?
If they aren't in fact a love-in tag-team of Denialati I just hope that the puppeteer can afford to [forfeit two years worth of income](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…).
Dear Bernie, don't be such a peeping Tom and gossip hag. Please join in and share the fruits of your important climate discoveries in the proper thread. I almost missed this earth shattering conclusion of yours. We can't have that can we?
.
Bob Carter spews lies and distortions in response to Douglas Fischer.
What a champ!
Tim: would it be possible to limit the infestation of all the Scandinavian denialist trolls, including the Oily Rock (and their insufferably twee fanboi GSW;)), to Jonas' oubliette?
rhwombat #43. I second that. Hopefully Bernie pay attention.
@42.
Illustrious Scientist Professor Bob Carter also says:
Yep. Carter talks about "relevance", and almost in the same paragraph talks about a gas being colourless, odourless, and tasteless as if that is relevant to its ability to have detrimental effects on a system. Radon should, by Carter's logic, be completely benign.
Carter talks about something being "essential for life", as if that same something can't ever be harmful in other ways. Like "essential" trace elements in the body which are harmful - possibly even fatal - if they nudge above a certain tiny concentration, or drop below another certain tiny concentration.
Methinks Carter has been whiffing too much colourless, odourless, and tasteless (and therefore clearly harmless) carbon monoxide and is fading off into a sleepy fairy world devoid of simple sense and reasoning. And the most amazing thing is that he peddles these same lines all the time! It is definitive proof that on the odd occasion you can have a PhD in science, and be an irrational nut at the same time.
Oh dear...
Bob Carter is past his use-by date.
Oily Rock @44: Thanks for your enthusiasm...but perhaps you might like to check what you're seconding with someone who comprehends English.
rh(esus)rodent #47. Well I support your ambition not having Bernie stalking around with scandinavian gossip in every thread.
@Bernard
That's an impressive list of claims. Can you back them up with references, or is it just your opinion?
Would you accept just one? Or do you need all 31 done?
After all, if Bernard can find merely one to cite proof, Carter has demonstrably shown wrong. Citing the proof for all 31 merely proves how consistently wrong he is.
And since you won't stop believing what Carter says because he, like you, is a climate denier, and you will NEVER turn on "one of your own", there's very little reason to cite all 31.
In which case, just point out one you'd consider incorrect and needing citation.
@48: Impressive. 17 words - all orthogonal to reality, humour or persuasion: wombats are marsupials, my ambition is to confine your blathering to the Jonas hole, and Bernard @46 demonstrates the reason why whiney feral deniers ( like you and "IPA Fellow" Carter) end up as punchlines to jokes about furniture.
OK, GSW.
Bernard's points 14, 15, and 16 are demonstrably factual. Ergo, Carter's claims otherwise are demonstrably false and in one or two cases, just totally ridiculous.
I only briefly glanced at the list. This is just a small selection of the really easy ones any half intelligent person would know straight off the top of their head. They don't need citations. A high school education in chemistry is more than sufficient. As stated @50, do you need all of them done?
That Carter cites them is disturbing enough. That the anti-AGW crowd profess themselves to be well educated yet blindly supports them is simply astounding and makes me wonder what is seeping into your drinking water.
Excellent points raised by Bernard.
Sadly, the interview with Bob Carter is full of other drivel. For instance:
*That carbon dioxide is not toxic, nor a pollutant, but rather a colorless, odourless and tasteless gas essential for life on earth*
Response: Excess carbon in plant tissues can have all kinds of deleterious effects that harm food webs: first, it can alter plant stoichiomety in terms of foliar ratios of C:N:P. This in turn can lead to suboptimal amounts of N, a limiting nutrient in the growth of many animals, forcing them to feed compensatorily in order to make up the deficit (this has already been demonstrated in both lab and field studies). A reduction in foliar P would have similar effects of the development and fitness of associated consumers. Second, secondary plant metabolities are N or C-based; a reduction of N as C concentrations increase could make plants more (or less) toxic defending on the specifics of their defense chemistry. Thus, as levels of C are increased in plant tissues, plants with C-based allaleochemistry would likely become more toxic whilst the opposite is true of plants with N-based allelochemistry. Given the rate of atmospheric increase in C is unprecedented in perhaps tens of thousands of years or more, the ability of consumers up the food chain to adapt to rapidly chaing concentrations of plant defense levels is hihgly problematic. There will almost certainly be strong ecological and physiological consequences.
> One troll says "Jeffie" whilst having a tanty. Another troll, similarly spitting his dummy, also says "Jeffie" ten minutes later.
In idle curiosity I clicked one of your links and came across some discussion of what appears to be Jonas' major misunderstandings of "negative feedback"...but I thought that I really have better things to do with my time than gawk at what appears to be yet another train wreck ;-)
The citation I liked the most was the Heartland Institute (there were other laughables of course). Fabulous!
rhesus #48. Your ambitions are indeed grand. As I said, inform Bernie asap. This work of yours is important.
Apologies if this is off-topic.
The pattern for the last few decades has been for the "skeptics" to attack the hypothesis that CO2 is causing warming beyond natural variation.
They attack, we defend. It is like a crazy cricket match where the skeptics have an infinite number of balls which they throw from the direction and timing of their choice. The scientists have done well to keep the stumps in the ground, but surely it is time now for the sceptics to go in to defend their wicket?
The skeptics have an hypothesis, namely that CO2 does not cause significant warming. They put a figure to it - Climate Sensitivity (2xCO2) is 0.5*C.
This hypothesis is testable and refutable. It is inadequate to explain various temperature events such as the interglacial warming, volcanoes and the other evidence for CS of ~3*C.
Spencer and Lindzen have been trying very hard to find evidence for low CS, and failing just as hard.
So my question is this: Is it not time for climate scientists to mount a major assault on the "skeptic" hypothesis, showing that it is refutable in classic scientific fashion, so that media and policy makers can understand that there is no real scientific substance to the controversy that the skeptic community generates, since their hypothesis has no validity?
I fully appreciate that refutation will not cause the skeptics to convert. They will continue to believe what they want to believe, just as creationists do. But clear refutation can reasonably be expected to help decent journalists and policy makers who are justifiably confused by the "controversy".
Dunno about anyone else, but I'm still waiting for a sceptic to explain Bob Carter's views on gas properties. C'mon sceptics, help me out here!
Carter states implicitly that a colourless, odourless gas cannot cause environmental harm or pollution. I'm still struggling back through all my memories of chemistry in a fruitless attempt to figure out whether this is actually true, contrary to what I have learned in science, contrary to many practical everyday examples, and contrary to what I think is logical. There must be something I missed on fundamental gas properties - a sort of "if you can't smell it or see it, it's quite benign" chemical principle which my hapless chemistry teacher failed to explain.
Bob Carter must be onto something. We are clearly failing to understand what it is that he's discovered in the chemical world which makes it so, and he's laughing at us for our lack of knowledge.
Anybody? I just want to understand how he arrives at this principle (let's call it the "Carter Noxious Gas Principle"), that's all.
1) MSM journalists are paid shills for one political/economic camp or another. They don't give a tinker's cuss about what's true. Monbiot may be a rare exception. "Decent journalists" exist only on the web, independently.
2) "Policy makers" are the best that money can buy, especially in the US.
His audience is not scientists, clearly. It's a political statement aimed at the angry lumpenproleteriat, to enrage them further at the manifest injustice of "a great big tax on everything", know alternatively as "a tax on the air we breathe". For these people, it seems intuitively correct that a gas that can be neither seen nor smelled cannot be harmful. It shows that Carter has long ago thrown away any pretence at practising science.
It's been done (by doing what climate scientists do, namely science, not mounting assaults). If it hadn't been, then we would be rejecting a hypothesis for insufficient cause.
You're assuming that media and policy makers are scientific thinkers, but if they were then they would already know this.
How would you convince them that it was a clear refutation when the denialistas exclaim that it isn't? Again, you are assuming scientific thinkers, but they wouldn't be confused if they were.
Pauling.
Two actually, one in Chemistry and one in Peace. And he might well have won a third for discovering the structure of DNA had he not been blocked by the U.S. State Department from traveling to England (because he was suspected of having Communist sympathies -- he had circulated a petition calling for a ban on nuclear arms that was signed by 8000 scientists, a position that the USSR supported at the time) where he could have seen Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images of DNA.
No he didn't, he had a scientific dispute with other scientists (and a lot of people in the medical profession who weren't scientists).
From http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/MM/p-nid/57 (that's the U.S. National Library of Medicine, of the National Institutes of Health):
"in more recent years, re-evaluations of Pauling's work have shown that dietary supplementation with antioxidants such as vitamin C can have significant beneficial effects on health. Pauling's ideas about molecular balance and health are increasingly important to a health-conscious public, as well as to a growing number of health professionals."
You should read the rest; you'll learn something.
No he didn't, but wooheads did adopt him.
Only by ignorant lunkheads. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Legacy
Pauling. And there's no comparison ... Pauling's claims, right or wrong, were based on his own scientific research, and he was completely aware of the prevailing scientific evidence, quite unlike Giaever.
Care to quote his words where he gave such criteria? What he actually said was that, by the criteria of AGW sceptics, Schmidt has zero credibility, despite his Nobel, because he accepts AGW. "it's faulty to reject the views of someone with a Nobel just because they accept AGW" is not equivalent to "it's necessary to accept the views of someone with a Nobel".
How ironic that you commit such a blatant logical fallacy and then blame it on the other guy.
We can guess.
A new editorial in The Australian from Brendan O'Neill for you: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/climate-sceptics-are-today…
Take home quotes:
"In line with authoritarian regimes throughout history, many of which had a tendency to write off alternative views as the products of unstable minds, greens refuse to treat scepticism as a legitimate way of thinking."
"Wait: green thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That's a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It's the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society."
According to O'Neill, working to overturn the fossil-fuel dominated energy production paradigm is "conservative" and fighting to keep the world addicted to GHG-emitting energy sources is "radical."
Riiiiiiight....
Ianam @ 61:
If you know of a full, systematic refutation of the skeptics' hypothesis that CS~3*C, written in language that an intelligent layperson can understand, please give us the URL.
If there has been no such systematic refutation, then it is up to the climate scientist community to produce one - and make sure it is spread widely to all media outlets.
I am not assuming that media and policy makers are scientific thinkers, but if they were then they would already know this. All they need to understand is (a) that the scientific method is to refute hypotheses, and (b) that the low CS hypothesis can be comprehensively refuted.
The key point is that up to now, they have attacked, we have defended. It is now time to turn the tables.
OK, well I take it that there is actually no rational explanation forthcoming from sceptics of Bob Carter's bizarre views on the gas properties.
What a surprise.
And for the umpteenth time, they show no insight into why they suffer a credibility problem within the world of science.
Thanks Brian. This distortion of the climate change debate by O'Neil verges again into the bizarre.
As usual, The Australian doesn't stop with just one opinion piece denigrating climate science. There is also a [letter](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/triumph-of-scepticism/stor…) from Michael Asten titled 'The Triumph of Scepticism' with an interesting twist on the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brian Schmidt and Dan Shechtman:
>There can be no higher-level demonstration than these awards of the value of scepticism in science, and of the role of observation and deduction free of the confines of conventional wisdom.
>I look forward to the day when such elevated scientific method replaces the bitter and personalised arguments over settled science which today characterises earth-scale climate studies.
Aargh, I *really* should avoid going to WUWT, but every now and then morbid curiosity gets the better of me.
Witness Watts [signing up his dog](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/07/friday-funny-the-newest-member-of…) as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists to show that, haha, they don't even check if you're a scientist before you join, the greedy lying leftie scum, pretending to be scientists lolololol.
Except that its a charity. They're asking for a donation. The page explains how they have hundreds of thousands of private citizens in their membership.
Watts links to a Guardian article as some sort of "proof" that UCS is misrepresenting itself as experts - except if you scroll down a *few extra pixels* from the screengrab Watts included in his article you'll see that the UCS organised a *letter signed by 100 scientists*. That being the kind of thing they do, and all.
Facepalm.
I knew there had to be more than one opinion article and one letter, it is the Weekend Australian after all. And [here](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/at-last-dams-are-deep-…) it is, the true blue radical sceptic - incidentally old, white and male.
>JOHN Scales refused to believe the doomsayers when they predicted there would never again be enough rain to fill the Dartmouth Dam in northeast Victoria.
>...."I'm not a believer in global warming, despite some people saying it wouldn't ever rain here like it used to because the climate had changed," he said yesterday.
It's true, [what they say](http://throbgoblins.blogspot.com/2007/03/pig-wrestling.html), isn't it...
@#65
I'm not about to chase your goalposts. Scientists have attacked the "'skeptic' hypothesis, showing that it is refutable in classic scientific fashion". If you want a URL to a discussion satisfying your new criteria, try www.skepticalscience.com . If that's not enough for you, set up your own damn site.
The key point is that this is nonsense, if you're talking about science. If you were talking about PR then you would have a point, but that's not what scientists do for a living.
Tim, time for another in your great series of The Australian's War on Science.
The SMH just did a story on Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt supporting climate science:http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nobel-winner-seeks-calm-i… (hat-tip Eli).
Contrast that with the story splashed on the front page of this weekend's OZ about a third generation mountain farmer who "refused to believe the doomsayers" and is "not a believer in global warming": http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/at-last-dams-are-deep-…
Brian (@61 above) points out the accompanying editorial in the Oz. There is a nice contrast in the way the SMH and Oz operate.
Myles Allen has a piece out in the UK's Guardian entitled,
"Al Gore is doing a disservice to science by overplaying the link between climate change and weather"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/al-gore-science-clima…
"To claim that we are causing meteorological events that would not have occurred without human influence is just plain wrong"
"Enthusiasm for doing anything about climate change seems to have given way to resignation that we will simply have to adapt."
For those of you unaware of him; Myles Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics department. He is the principal investigator of Climateprediction.net
Quite a 'cautious' article from Myles I think.
There's something about many of the rural reporters from all media stables in Australia. They seem especially prone to the "good ol' Farmer Joe is a wise and experienced disbeliever of fancy-pants scientific mumbo-jumbo" line of story telling - it seems to escape both the reporters and the subjects of their stories that there's a reason why farmers are farmers and scientists are scientists...
Worryingly too many people in rural industries seem to confuse "common sense" with objective analysis. This has led to the circumstance where there is an oft-enacted theatre of farmers who claim that they are "at one" with nature and therefore "know best", eventually being dragged in a reactionary display of kicking and screaming to capitulate in the face of evidence of their inappropriate practices.
Salination, over-irrigation and other flawed water managements, over-fertilisation, inappropriate tilling, over-stocking, flawed clearing of non-productive vegetation, excessive pesticide application: all are just some examples of a refusal to listen to warnings until after the problems became expensive and/or infeasible to remediate. It seems that climate change denial is another to add to that list...
I am not familiar with Sue Neale, but Michael McKenzie on Radio National frequently had me grinding my teeth in frustration in the days before I stopped listening to his brand of rural opinion.
And before anyone snipes at me for being an ivory-towered scientist-type with no clue, I come from several lines of livestock and cropping farmers, and I've worked with many others in several different professional contexts. I am intimately acquainted with the not-so-quaintly conservative and often flawed notions that a certain proportion of farmers like to clutch to their sunburned chests, and I know that can take a long time to change the mind of some of the more stubborn farming types...
On the other hand, the more switched-on farmers are some of the most astute and knowledgable people I have met. The striking difference between them and their conservative colleagues is that switched-on crowd inevitably have no innate prejudice against science, whether pure or applied.
@ianam
"Care to quote his words where he gave such criteria?"
Well, since I didn't quote him, your question is misleading, but when he says...
"...so many proponents on the AGW side seem to be recognised as the sharpest minds on the planet..."
the implied criteria is that anyone winning the Nobel is of a sharp mind. My question is why that only works when you agree with the opinion of the winner. As I asked, is age the issue? Giaever won the Nobel, albeit 40 some years ago. Is he not of a sharp mind? Or has he lost it based on his opinion that "incontrovertible evidence" is a poor scientific term in his opinion with regards to AGW?
In addition...
ianam"...by the criteria of AGW sceptics, Schmidt has zero credibility, despite his Nobel, because he accepts AGW"
Evidence for this assertion? Dr. Schmidt's Nobel is for research on supernovae, and expansion of the universe, not AGW, or even atmospheric science. Why would anyone dismiss his accomplishments in his discipline because he agrees that the climate has changed? Of course the climate has changed.
Let's look at his statement, quoted form chek@29...
âScience is never absolute, thatâs the problem. You have different levels of assurity. I have won the Nobel Prize with my team today for discovering the accelerating universe. We are pretty certain thatâs correct but you are never absolutely certain. The carbon debate is centred around the science, is the science right? Well there are uncertainties in the science,â said Professor Schmidt.
âI think the evidence is quite strong that change is happening,â he said. âThe science behind climate change predicts there should be a little change right now but in future, the prediction is it will be much more."
Not exactly doom and gloom. Pretty reasonable actually. There is uncertainty. We aren't sure, but we think it might increase. But one really does not know. It's a prediction.
ianam...""it's faulty to reject the views of someone with a Nobel just because they accept AGW" is not equivalent to "it's necessary to accept the views of someone with a Nobel".
OK, first, you assert again, without evidence, that someone is rejecting Dr. Schmidt's work on his subject. Second, why should I accept Dr. Schmidt's thoughts on AGW? Because he is "sharp"? Per you, yes. And how do we know that? Won the Nobel. Otherwise, he has no other qualifications that would lead me to believe he is more knowledgeable than any other scientist outside the field. In other words, you require that it is "necessary for me to accept the views" of Dr. Schmidt because he now has a Nobel.
Lastly, ianam, I make my living in the world of science. I sometimes work with actual Nobel prize winners as I linked to above. I respect their opinions very much, but not on every issue. They respect mine as well on the things which I know that they do not. Nothing wrong with not accepting their opinions on biology when their work is physics. So your knee jerk reaction that you can "guess" how I think is laughable, though typical. All I am saying is that Dr. Schmidt's thoughts on AGW are irrelevant to the discussion and have only been trotted out because he happened to win a Nobel and is therefore "sharp", and happens to agree with AGW with the caveat that there are uncertainties.
Well, he "happens" to agree with AGW in much the same sense that the great majority of the rest of the world's scientists who have been widely recognised within the scientific world for their modern expertise and cutting edge research into physics also "happen" to agree with AGW.
Maybe it's just a weird and curious coincidence, as you seem to imply.
As I have said before, when the sceptical side's best efforts involve dragging out Roy Spencer as their "shining star" in the scientific world, conspicuously assisted by scientists like Dr "if you can't see it or smell it, it cannot be harmful in any way" Bob Carter, then you know they are seriously struggling with credibility problems.
Yet sceptics seem totally oblivious to all of this.
Why?
I take your point and agree that based on the quotes from Dr. Scmhidt, you've made a cogent point.
Where I disagree with deniers generally (regardless of what baggage you bring to the term, that's what they are) - as when they finally agree that AGW is real and happening now, even if they have to refer to it in diminishing terms as 'CAGW' - is with the term 'uncertainties'.
In denier terms, the word 'uncertainty' invariably means 'sometime, never'. Rather like a junkie who's been told to pay up by tomorrow or he'll lose an eye, who then fucks off home with the wrap of dope never conceiving that tomorrow will come, and there is no repayment plan. There never was.
The rational response to uncertainty on the other hand says 'the models are predicting grim conditions in a hundred years time, and we're seeing very odd confluences of extreme weather globally now as was expected. There's an equal chance that uncertainty actually means we have less than a 100 years before those grim conditions arrive'.
A major problem is that public discourse on the issue suffers from undue distortion by the PR tools of a wealthy, profiting elite who are under the illusion that their wealth makes them largely immune from events, and the nation state has become cowed by their apparent power.
Have I won the internNAT yet ?
I think Bob Carter is.
This is somewhat off topic, but Pauling most certainly went full metal woo
(The following is from Wikipedia, so I guess I can just claim it as my own ;-)
In 1968 Pauling published a brief paper in Science entitled "Orthomolecular psychiatry"[58] that gave name and principle to the popular but controversial megavitamin therapy movement of the 1970s. Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" to refer to the practice of varying the concentration of substances normally present in the body to prevent and treat disease. His ideas formed the basis of orthomolecular medicine, which is not generally practiced by conventional medical professionals and has been strongly criticized.[59][60]
Pauling's work on vitamin C in his later years generated much controversy. He was first introduced to the concept of high-dose vitamin C by biochemist Irwin Stone in 1966. After becoming convinced of its worth, Pauling took 3 grams of vitamin C every day to prevent colds.[61] Excited by his own perceived results, he researched the clinical literature and published Vitamin C and the Common Cold in 1970. He began a long clinical collaboration with the British cancer surgeon Ewan Cameron in 1971 on the use of intravenous and oral vitamin C as cancer therapy for terminal patients.[62] Cameron and Pauling wrote many technical papers and a popular book, Cancer and Vitamin C, that discussed their observations. Pauling made vitamin C popular with the public and eventually published two studies of a group of one hundred allegedly terminal patients that claimed vitamin C increased survival by as much as four times compared to untreated patients.[63][64] A re-evaluation of the claims in 1982 found that the patient groups were not actually comparable, with the vitamin C group being less sick on entry to the study, and judged to be "terminal" much earlier than the comparison group.[65] Later clinical trials conducted by the Mayo Clinic also found that high-dose (10,000 mg) vitamin C was no better than placebo at treating cancer and that there was no benefit to high-dose vitamin C.[66][67][68] The failure of the clinical trials to demonstrate any benefit resulted in the conclusion that vitamin C was not effective in treating cancer; the medical establishment also concluded his claims that vitamin C could prevent colds was quackery.[61][69] Pauling denounced the conclusions of these studies and handling of the final study as "fraud and deliberate misrepresentation",[70][71] and criticized the studies for using oral, rather than intravenous vitamin C[72] (which was the dosing method used for the first ten days of Pauling's original study[69]). Pauling also criticised the Mayo clinic studies because the controls were taking vitamin C during the trial, and because the duration of the treatment with vitamin C was short; Pauling advocates continued high dose vitamin C for the rest of the cancer patient's life whereas the Mayo clinic patients in the second trial were treated with vitamin C for a median of 2.5 months.[73] The results were publicly debated at length with considerable acrimony between Pauling and Cameron, and Moertel (the lead author of the Mayo Clinic studies), with accusations of misconduct and scientific incompetence on both sides. Ultimately the negative findings of the Mayo Clinic studies ended general interest in vitamin C as a treatment for cancer.[71] Despite this, Pauling continued to promote vitamin C for treating cancer and the common cold, working with The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential to use vitamin C in the treatment of brain-injured children.[74] He later collaborated with the Canadian physician Abram Hoffer on a micronutrient regimen, including high-dose vitamin C, as adjunctive cancer therapy.[75]
With Arthur B. Robinson and another colleague, Pauling founded the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine in Menlo Park, California, in 1973, which was soon renamed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling directed research on vitamin C, but also continued his theoretical work in chemistry and physics until his death. In his last years, he became especially interested in the possible role of vitamin C in preventing atherosclerosis and published three case reports on the use of lysine and vitamin C to relieve angina pectoris. In 1996, the Linus Pauling Institute moved from Palo Alto, California, to Corvallis, Oregon, to become part of Oregon State University, where it continues to conduct research on micronutrients, phytochemicals (chemicals from plants), and other constituents of the diet in preventing and treating disease. Several researchers that had previously worked at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, including the assistant director of research, moved on to form the Genetic Information Research Institute.
I'm currently having an argument about public funding, up against the old canard that "sceptical" scientists don't get public funding.
Does anyone know of a good source that shows 'sceptical' climate papers have been funded by the public purse?
I'm pretty sure Spencer and Linzden get public funding through UAH and MIT, I just need a source to prove it.
ConnorJ (#79)
There is often information about supporting grants etc in the Acknowledgements section of the paper. For example, the acknowledgements section from Lindzen and Choi (2011) is below.
"DOE" is the US Department of Energy.
Neil
@79 and 80.
Yet again we come up against the AGW sceptic credibility problem. They inevitably "claim" some gross disadvantage compared to mainstream scientists which, when you look at the facts, really doesn't exist.
The whole AGW sceptic thing - the ways and means they use to argue that they're somehow suppressed or disadvantaged - is quite exasperating.
If they would actually come up with credible original research which can't be completely torn apart within 5 minutes of being published, maybe they would have mainstream science seriously thinking about the whole sceptical side. However their track record indicates this is highly unlikely any time in the near future.
> Yet again we come up against the AGW sceptic credibility problem. They inevitably "claim" some gross disadvantage compared to mainstream scientists which, when you look at the facts, really doesn't exist.
to be fair, they *are* facing a gross disadvantage when trying to get their papers accepted. reality is being entirely unreasonable, selfishly refusing to conform to their political ideologies, however much they stamp their feet, and however long they hold their breaths.
it's just not fair that they're forced to compete on such an uneven playing field.
Total logic fail; the point of asking for a quote to support a claim about someone is precisely that it wasn't already done. After that incredibly idiotic intro, I won't bother reading the rest of your comment.
@elspi
You're like a climate denier who points to some article and claims it supports their position, rather than presenting an argument. But I already read that article (I cited it) and upon reading it again I find that it no more supports your claim than upon the first time.
@ianam,
Right. Good thing to ignore your own failure in both logic and your assertion of a point of view for which you have zero evidence--that somehow anyone, anywhere is discounting the work of Dr. Schmidt--in his field--because of his take on warming.
See you asked me to quote the criteria. I never stated that it was a direct quote, only my inference of the comment, I then explained exactly why I found the logic faulty. But I guess it's better for you to plant your head in the sand. Poor choice of words on my part, agreed, but the following explanation is clear. I answered your question. Care to answer mine? Probably not.
Funny though that you choose to go right to the "idiotic" card. Says so very much about the quality of your argument.
Well that's not strictly true, Hamza.
He's an astrophysicist with a publication and research record which covers several topics that overlap with certain aspects of climate science, eg, absorption and emission spectroscopy, and quantum mechanics just to name two. So one might expect that he'd understand the evidence amassed through, say, spectroscopic analysis of longwave radiation, better than a scientist who hasn't touched that topic since high school.
So I take your point way back at the beginning regarding the "logic of the argument", though I also feel you fundamentally misunderstood the point I was making (perhaps this was my fault).
What is your "opinion" on AGW then? I would find it odd if you argued about who is or isn't relevantly qualified, then went on to cast doubt on the level of certainty, which is very high among those who actually are qualified directly in the field. I'd find that oddest of all if you did it while simultaneously arguing about the logic of a relatively trivial statement in the greater scheme of things.
Some people seem to have terrible trouble conducting the most basic bit of analysis.
If, on the one hand, you have a 82-year-old guy who won a Nobel Prize 38 years ago and has no published track-record in the field of climate science contradicting the scientific consensus on climate change;
and, on the other hand, you have a 44-year-old currently-practicing scientist and Nobel Prize-winner who supports the scientific consensus on climate change;
Then, to anybody capable of objective analysis, it's pretty clear which of the two is more likely a reputable source of opinions on climate change.
It's continental drift, all over again. And even more idiots denying the science this time around.
Anybody in any doubt just needs to read Plimer's books: when you publish transparent nonsense in support of a thesis, it pretty much guarantees that the thesis is nonsense.
I'm "ignoring" something that doesn't exist. Even if it did, that would be a tu quoque fallacy.
I never made any such assertion, you cretin, I only stated what Mikem said.
Not at all. You are demonstrably an idiot and I demonstrated it. To attack my argument by criticizing my accurate discription of you is ad hominem, dumbfuck.
Is Hamza El-Din really so stupid that he took my statement about the difference between two positions as a statement of my own position about something? Apparently so.
Vanishing rivers of ice.
Superb video report on the disappearing Himalayan glaciers you linked to P. Lewis, that puts the whole manufactured fuss about the IPCC report's projected date into perspective.
It well illustrates that it's already happened in some locations, it's happening now, and it will continue to happen until there's nothing left, possibly in 300 years time.
Hey Tim, I am winning the internet ! =8-)
This is interesting, particularly for Brits following the developing scandal involving Defence Secretary Liam Fox. It seems that Liam Foxâs best friend and unpaid advisor Adam Werrity was executive and sole employee of recently defunct UK âcharityâ Atlantic Bridge. Atlantic Bridge has very close links with US lobby group American Legislative Exchange Council, which itself receives shed loads of cash from the Koch Foundation and has been actively involved in AGW denial. Who funded Atlantic Bridge is unclear. Fascinating to see how lobby groups operate. Carbon Brief has more details:
[Atlantic Bridge and the climate skeptic connection](http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/10/atlantic-bridge-and-the-climate…)
Maybe this puts Atlantic Bridge's advisory council member George Osborne's reported comments at last week's Tory conference that "the UK would cut emissions no faster than others in Europe, and environmental measures would not be taken at the expense of British business" in a new light.
On the off chance that the shrieking and caterwauling from various sections of the MSM and right-wing commentariat hadn't already alereted you, the Australian House of Reps (the lower House for those not familiar) passed the Clean Energy legislative package (a total of 18 Bills, including the carbon pricing mechanism) was passed by a majority vote. The package of Bills will now go to the Senate (upper House) and, given the make-up of the Senate, is likely to be passed into legislation.
The Opposition Leader Without A Clue has made a "blood" oath to repeal the legislation, on the off chance he is still leading the Lib-Nat Coalition if it ever gets to hold power again.
If the MSM and a lot of very vocal trolls denialists Ordinary Hard Working Australians are to be believed, This Is the Worst Day in Australian History, We Have All Been Betrayed and We Are All Going to Die. And Bob Brown is Satan.
Personally I think it's a good thing (well it's a start at least), but some of my friends won't thank me for saying so.
If the country that produces the worlds highest Carbon emissions per person (apart from much smaller countries) isn't going to attempt to reduce its Carbon emissions, why should anyone else bother?
@ comment 1320 on the Jonas thread.
Jeff Harvey says: "You are a complete twat, Olaus."
So, Jeff, you've called Olaus a "twat" and a "complete twat", at that.
Let's see now, Jeff, is the "twat" you have in mind, when referring to Olaus, any specific, imagined twat? Or, perhaps, you're thinking more of some sort of Platonic ideal-twat, that you've assembled in your mind, in part, through you web-surfing investigations of the subject and, in part, through your privately-handled, creep-out fantasies? (You're not dong any "scientific" research on twats on your employer's computer and on the taxpayer's dime, are you Jeff?)
Allow me to imagine the playful banter in your lab-space, Jeff: "Did you read what that twat-head, chek, wrote?" or "Ol' wow, what a twat-breath he is!" or "rhwombat--the ultimate twat-marsupial, twats-for-brains twat-greenshirt with twat-zits issues!" Perhaps you find such language good fun, Jeff?
Well, I'm very sorry, Jeff, but I don't find such language to be "good fun" at all. Indeed, I find such language to be extremely offensive. And, it pains me to say it, Jeff, but I must reluctantly conclude, on my part, that your appalling choice of language marks you as a sexist schweinhund. A sexist schweinhund, Jeff!
Any Deltoid care to join me in condemning Jeff Harvey's twat-twaddle?
Monbiot vs Plimer
Professional Denialist gets spanked
This deltoid wants to tell l'ill mike to take his transparently passive-aggressive 'concern' act elsewhere.
L'll 'oooh ra mike' here being the troll who on two previous occasions has tried to link the IPCC to child prostitution solely on the grounds of conference location.
Apparently, South Africa for example has only one 'recreational' use in the travel books l'll mike's familiar with.
As to the subject of the post, how one might rightfully choose to respond to those who groundlessly disparage one's professional integrity is a mystery l'll mike will never have to concern himself with.
Behind-the-scenes panic over reports of methane blowing out of the sea-bed in the Eastern Arctic. This could dramatically increase global warming. Listen
.
A Rick Perry Presidency would be a tragedy for the US and for US science in particular.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has struck out all references to accelerating sea level rise and anthropogenic climate change in a report by Oceanography Professor John Anderson on Galveston Bay.
Is this the sort of censorship of science the Galileo Movement want to expose?
"Carbon dioxide is non-toxic". The fastest response to that fiction is to point to the Australian exposure standard for carbon dioxide in the workplace, which can be found on Safe Work Australia's Hazardous Substance Information System. For example, see the [documentation page](http://hsis.ascc.gov.au/DocumentationES.aspx?ID=108) .
Keith Kloor, a man totally at home in the great outdoors ...
Having lived and worked in a field camp in a wilderness study area each fall for a couple of decades, living in a backpacking tent, I never gave a second thought to the resident cougar that would vacate our camp site every year when we showed up ...
Not only is Kloor frightened by big kitties (now, a pride of lions would be a different matter altogether), he's afraid of PRAIRIE DOGS. Too funny.
Mr. Environmental Writer, who obviously edited Audubon Magazine from the comfort of a Manhattan apartment ...
RIP, Dennis Ritchie:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/innovation/dennis-ritchie-obit-bell-…
Skeptical Science has recently completed [a detailed consideration of ocean acidification](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_part_20.html).
Seemingly as a counterpoint Anthony Watts has, as I said in a post on Skeptical Science:
>posted some dog-whistling nonsense that plays Dunning-Kruger bingo with every possible acid chemistry cannard - including the notion that a decrease of about half a pH unit over a century and a bit constitutes "a small change in ocean pH" to which "nature" should be able to adapt.
If one has the fortitude to actually read the comments on that thread, one will be left wondering whether this is a giant parody of denialism and of sheer D-K ignorance on a staggeringly mammoth scale.
Again, to paraphrase my earlier comment on Skeptical Science, it's enough to reduce to tears anyone with tertiary training in chemistry or in biology...
@ dhogaza re Keith Kloor
Send him over down under. We don't have big cats (well, apart from some of the ferals which make up for their small size with attitude... on and the mythical black panther around the western Blue Mountains) but we more compensate with more than our fair share of snotty poisonous elapid snakes, the odd modern-day dinosaur floating about in otherwise inviting-looking creeks, a selection of stroppy and lethal spiders, ticks that make adults very sick (I can attest to that one), a myriad of biting/ stinging insect fauna, a variety of enthusiastic leeches and, to cap it all off, a breathtaking (often literally) selection of plant taxa that aren't just poisonous but some whose sting (esp. Dendrocnide spp.) lasts for decades. And that's just the terrestrial stuff...
If he survives that we'll send him back and I guarantee you'll never hear another whinge about XXL pussies :-)
For all the masochists out there or perhaps just psychology students, the ABC's 7.30 Report will be putting a half hour interview of Alan Jones by Leigh Sales on their website tomorrow. The part that was put on television (which was about 10 minutes long) started going through the list of denialist memes. But I expect half an hour is nowhere near long enough to demonstrate the depths of his derangement.
This thought-provoking article and the underlying paper on the [high cost of seven years of climate inaction](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/the-cost-of-inact…) - along with some of the comments that suggest it may be even worse than the paper indicates - ought to get much wider exposure. Heck, it's the sort of topic that any *serious* newspaper ought to be running, instead of misdirecting their readers by talking about how some old guy doesn't think there's been much sea level rise in his neighbourhood.
When I went to oz to bird and explore many years ago, I took care to learn about the snakes.
But no one told me about the Lawyer Vine ... damn near sawed my leg off when dashing through the bush one day!
[The Monckton interview](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w833cAs9EN0) that had him demanding the ABC be defunded.
Strangely enough, that interview reminded me of Borat interviewing someone.
>But no one told me about the Lawyer Vine...
Good ol' Wait-awhile, as it is also known. It was thick on the ground in most of my PhD transects - if I had a dollar for every time I said to my volunteers "hang on", or "wait a moment" (or "@%$*&!"), I'd be able to retire...
Amongst the list of venomous snakes we encountered were:
And then there were the paralysis ticks, the jack jumper ants, the various annoying mosquitoes, sandflies, March-flies ("March" indeed...), the aforementioned stinging trees - the list goes on.
With this parade of nasties, and throwing in references to blue-ringed octopus, irukandji, saltwater crocs and such, we were able to spend many hours around campfires convincing our international volunteers of the perils of bunyips, blood eagles, hoop snakes, drop bears and many other Australian 'dangers'.
Ah, good times...
Update from Richard Muller's group at Berkeley:
"No grounds for climate scepticism"
Cue backlash from WTFIUWT in 5...4...3...
Just heard Richard Muller being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 by BBC 'sceptic' Justin Webb. Muller even denied warming has stopped over the past decade. Webb's efforts to continue to cast doubt on the temperature record were absolutely risible.
The BBC interview with Richard Muller is now available [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9621000/9621049.stm).
Tamino on [the BEST analysis](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/berkeley-team-says-global-warmin…).
Not only did they NOT find urban heat island effects, their methodology found that the reconstruction using only the "very rural" stations was warming **faster** than the reconstruction using all stations.
That'd be ANOTHER own goal by Watts, which he is once more vigorously disputing, although I'm not sure he can quite explain why anyone should believe him.
And read [some of the comments](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/berkeley-team-says-global-warmin…) calling Watts out for his double standards on the "waaaaaah, they haven't yet been peer reviewed" stuff.
> ...their methodology found that the reconstruction using only the "very rural" stations was warming faster than the reconstruction using all stations...
Note that it has also been stated that this difference does not rise to the level of statistical significance.
I note from the Recent Posts list that Jonas N, GSW and Olaus petri are still at it on the troll thread.
Could someone who still wanders in there ask them for their (ill-considered) opinions on the fact that the BEST project, against the apparent expectations of Muller, demonstrated that the consensus of climatology had in fact analysed the global temperature records correctly, and that such analyses indicate that the planet is warming just as the IPCC says?
Also, I am very keen to know if these three amigos are prepared to enter into legally-binding contracts to solidify the informal ones that [they entered into earlier this month](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). If so, could they please forward their details to Tim Lambert to pass on, so that I can start the ball rolling on collecting a year's salary from each of them at some point in the future. If not, could they please explain why they are choosing to renege on their acceptances of my challege?
And finally, I bet GSW is still making moves on most everyone he speaks to...
Not sure if Ethical Oil (the meme, as well as the organization and blog, all inspired by Ezra Levant's 2009 book of the same name) has been covered here.
===================================
The Ethical Institute on oil sands emissions
http://deepclimate.org/2011/10/25/the-ethical-oil-institute-on-oil-sand…
Today Iâll take a detailed look at the Ethical Oil position on the oil sands carbon footprint, as seen in former spokesperson Alykhan Velshiâs error-filled and confused post entitled Mythbusting: Are the Oilsands Major greenhouse Gas Emitters?, part of his âMyths and Liesâ series.
Iâll focus on the two most significant problems in Velshiâs piece:
* Velshiâs original premise was that not only are oil sands greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relatively insignificant, but that they are actually declining. This has been partially corrected, presumably in response to my initial commentary on this issue, but in such a way as to render his argument completely illogical. And Velshiâs conclusion still repeats the utterly mistaken assertion that oil emissions âare fallingâ, whereas in fact they are rising at a rapid rate.
* Ethical Oilâs credibility is further damaged by misleading statements concerning the supposedly tiny contribution of oil sands emissions when compared to total global human and natural emissions. This echoes barely veiled climate âskepticâ arguments in Ezra Levantâs 2009 book that started the whole âethical oilâ rebranding effort. And an examination of Levantâs previous statements on climate science would appear to confirm that a strong anti-science stance is not far from the surface, despite the efforts of Ethical Oil spokespersons to hide it.
=================================
Also see:
http://deepclimate.org/2011/09/01/the-institute/
http://deepclimate.org/2011/01/12/ethical-oil/
Today is a big day for UK "sceptics" - it's Climate Fools Day. They will be gathering in the House of Commons to listen to Rev. Philip Foster (author of this [bilge](http://www.amazon.co.uk/While-Earth-Endures-Creation-Cosmology/dp/19015…)), Peter Gill of Institute of Physics Energy Group notoriety, Piers Corbyn, and some bloke with a non job at the Taxpayers Aliance.
Of interest to Aussies - the Global Warming policy Foundation has laid on a special treat in the evening with His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, delivering the Second Annual GWPF Lecture at Westminster Cathedral Hall. Attendance is by invite only.
lord_sidcup - and on cue The Australian has published an edited extract of [Pell's speech](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/be-prudent-wit…).
He really is a prize twit.
Thanks Shinsko. "Between 1695 and 1730, the temperature in England rose by 2.2C" is a particularly egregious cherry-pick AND the Central England temperature record is known to have quality issues prior to 1730 AND Pell misrepresents the record as being for the whole of England. Just the kind of crud "educational" "charity" the GWPF laps up.
You can get a copy of Pell's full "lecture" (yes, that is what they are calling it) via the GWPF website.
Hn.
[Cold fusion](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/28/test-of-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-fusion-…) is Watts' latest big news.
Meanwhile, Peter Sinclair [succintly summarises the BEST results](http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#p/p).
I doubt that either Muller or Watts will be amused.
Yep, that eCat thing has been doing the rounds.
It would be wonderful if it worked and could be commercialised to produce cheap clean power - but at the moment the hype and certain aspects of the tests I've read about set off my sounds-like-bullshit detectors.
Does anyone here get AcresUSA magazine? There's an opinion piece by Anthony R Lupo against AGW (about what I'd expect based on his sourcewatch info).
Some of his claims:
the Middle Ages were warmer because the Vikings colonized Greenland and there was a thriving wine industry in England.
The LIA corresponds to lower solar activity. Even within the last three years, sunspot activity has been lower and the climate has shown no significant change since around 2000.
[haven't 9 out of the top ten hottest years on record occurred since then? while solar activity is lower? -me]
There are literally thousands of publications out there that support his points and If you ask any skeptic who is derided as a "climate denier," but who has done their own homework, they would agree with his arguments.
A skeptic is anyone who basically questions the idea that human activity plays a major role in changing the climate.
He starts his article with the obligatory reference to ClimateGate.
Tim, you can add a chapter to Rosegate:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-…
Curry complains about the framing AND claims Rose made up something:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/30/mail-on-best/
Interesting the way Curry seems to running from an attributed quote with its built in incendiary dogwhistle to her now preferred audience:
"As for the graph disseminated to the media", she said: "This is 'hide the decline' stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. [Muller is hiding the decline".](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-…)
I suspect her revisionist revisiting of it on her own website: "I did not say that âthe affair had to be compared to the notorious Climategate scandal two years ago,â this is indirectly attributed to me. When asked specifically about the graph that apparently uses a 10 year running mean and ends in 2006, we discussed 'hide the decline,' but I honestly canât recall if Rose or I said it first". is sufficiently weaseling to suggest that Rose (no friend of science himself) has recorded Curry saying her piece and she was too stupid to make her own recording.
I'll just point out that wine is an important part of church ceremony and imported wines would have been expensive. There are currently literally hundreds of commercial vinyards in England.
As a matter of interest, how often has there been a 10-year period that has shown a significant change in global temperature? Given the variability of climate, I suspect very few.
Just a trivial question... has Steve Mosher being walking to Damascus? Some of his recent postings on WUWT seem to be uncharacteristically supporting of mainstream science.
Next it'll be cats sleeping with dogs.