Hey scribe # 5. I just watch the Drum - don't need no fancy e-mail alertin for there. One can always expect the usual alarmist codswallop to turn up and be regurgitated there moist days. It's like 'shooting fish in a barrel'. :-) It's like the ABC have no investigative journalists at all to rely on. Go figure ! :-)
The Manne article, A cardinal mistake on climate science, is typical of mainstream press articles on climate science, in that the comments section is immediately stuffed with denialist comments shortly after publication. I've noticed this pattern over the last year, and I know what's behind it. The paid denialists have set Google News alerts so that they get an email immediately anything containing the string "global warming" or "climate change" etc is published. Easy. It's what they do, it's a job.
Pack your bags, fellas. From the comments of the Manne article:
>It is obvious to me and many others that ever since the smoke hazed era of the hippies in the 70's to the dangerous Greem machine of today that some people will believe anything they are told. Al Gore has made a billion dollars out of his scare campaign that has been proved wrong. Tim Flannery said our reservoirs would never fill again and State Labor parties around the country built desal plants that cost a fortune and may never be used. The major problem is if you were a scientist and you were given funds to prove something, surely you would keep trying to find belief in it. There are no funds going to scientists to try and disprove climate change and therefore it is a biased argument. If the "science was in" as many are saying then why do many, many reputable scientists deny this claim. The reason is that there is a vested interest for these people to espouse there theories and make it a one sided argument. The so-called deniars, who are mostly over 40yo and haven't been subjected to Al Gores movie, have not had fear put into them by people who have a motive for their cause. GREED. They want to punish the wealthy for being successful and give it to the people who won't or don't work. Robin Hood is alive and well in the 21st century
Hey, can someone tell me - whatever happened to Lindzen & Choi's 2011 update paper, which I see got mentioned around the "skeptic" blogs in about August, but I don't recall seeing any mainstream climate blog talking about it...
My addition was "." which is used to denote a statement.
E,g,
Yes?
Yes!
Yes.
Are three different statement meanings. All because of punctuation.
Mike, of course, being illiterate, has a problem like most teabaggers that he doesn't know what punctuation is. Or capitalisation. Or, indeed, what "teabagging" was until after someone pointed it out to them after looking so smug having thought the name up for themselves...
Saw the current iteration of the jellyfish thing a couple of weeks ago, IIRC. Doesn't appear to fundamentally change the concern about AGW in any way though.
Note that the links to related stories from that article go back to at least 2006, and at least one of them cites predictions 60+ years old that biogenic mixing might prove significant - so it's not exactly a *new paradigm*. One of the others points out that some forms of biogenic C02 effect *prevent* ocean CO2 from re-entering the atmosphere by transforming it and transporting it to the deep ocean.
For those who don't drop by Hot Topic from time to time, you might just like to look in at the post about the book Evidence-Based Climate Science (D. Easterbrook (ed.). Elsevier).
The TOC is a feast of the generally "who's not" in the science world, IMHO.
How kind and thoughtful of our host to offer an open thread just as I was getting bored by the previous one. However, with equal kindness and thoughtfulness, as your AGW theories sink slowly in the west, I am now offering you an alternative controversy to argue about. Yeah, I know, generous to a fault, that's me!
It is an example of an absolutely rock-solid scientific theory which has been fortified for decades by the, er, 'scientific consensus' (which I know you hold in great admiration) but which has now, alas, just crashed dived with virtually no survivors. Shame!
Apparently, back in 1977, a young archeologist found in America an animal bone with what looks like a spear/arrow shaft stuck in it. After studying this find he declared that it indicated that hunting humans had been active back some 13,800 years ago. Unhappily for him that went against the, er, 'consensus science' which, in its usual fashion, turned as one and shat all over him and his theory. However, current aging techniques have allowed scientists to show that he was right and the, er, 'consensus' was wrong. 'Who'da thunk it?'
At this point you will all have to don your NBC protection suits whilst placing pegs on your noses because the story is over at, and here I am dropping my voice to a whisper:
The recent readjustment of the date when humans first arrived in the Americas is not as amazingly controversial as some [silly duffers](http://www.stupidtester.com/) think.
That theory has been changing for some time now and the new more accurate dating, on the back of more recently discovered and accurately dated artefacts was the non controversial nail in the coffin.
Another way of looking at this is of course to observe that this then suggests that the rapid die off of animal populations had more to do with human activities and less to do with natural climate change!
Who'd a thunk it, humans with nothing more than a few sticks, changing continental ecosystems. Imagine what we could achieve with the misapplication of industrial wastes! Oh, wait...
Now look here, SP, "silly duffers" is not permitted from you because I'm the one who does the truly third-rate jokes round here!
I am not sure exactly what you mean by "That theory has been changing for some time now". During the '90s the old theory was chipped at but the consensus held sway from way before then. As far as I can tell it was contemporary carbon-dating which finally stoned the old theory.
"Gustafson deemed the point [the sharp end of the weapon]the earliest known evidence of interaction between humans and mastodons. However, there was no consensus in the archaeological field as to whether or not this was provable,[4] because of the lack of indisputable proof that the point was made by humans.[5] This situation changed in 2011, when a new study of the remains definitively concluded that Gustafson was right as to both the age and the human origin of the point.[6]
"The announcement came as sweet vindication for the now-retired Washington State University professor.
âI was pretty bitter about the whole thing [the rubbishin gof his theory] for a long time,â Gustafson, 75, recalled last week. âI donât like saying it. I never really admitted it except to my wife. It was so frustrating. But Iâm very humbled and happy it turned out this way.â
Hmmmn! Yes, I can imagine a few other people in not too dissimilar fields feel much the same way. Imagine, a paradigm overthrown, 'who'da thunk it', er, well Popper did, but who pays attention to him these days?.
I seem to be overlooking the refutation of AGW in Duff's offerings ... it must be in there somewhere?
There's a huge difference between a scientific consensus based on overwhelming evidence, and a "paradigm" reflected in most scientists holding a certain view. Lacking any rebuttal of the evidence, idiots like Duff and Watts go "Look look! Scientists have been wrong before!", totally missing the point that the consensus that they were wrong, the shift in the view of scientists, is itself due to the accumulation of evidence. That most scientists agree about something is not per se important -- it's why they agree.
Duff, do you have anything to say about BEST (a.k.a the topic of the thread?)
Bonus points if you read the paper yourself and come up with an original argument, not copy and paste from Watts (I jest of course, you would never do this).
Apart from that, congratulations for noticing that scientific consensus can change with the accumulation of evidence and a new, coherent theory. And yours is - it was cold in England in winter in the 1600's?
> totally missing the point that the consensus *is* that they were wrong
I think you missed out that "is" I fixed.
And, yup, the consensus is that they were wrong. But if a consensus is wrong, then the consensus that they're wrong is wrong. But if there's a consensus that a consensus is wrong, then that's wrong, so they're right, they're wrong.....
Alan, my dear old thing, I haven't a clue! You are 'talking' to a man who failed maths, physics and chemistry at school, not by a smidgeon, but by such a huge margin that I was perversely proud of it at the time - schoolboys, heh!
Er, but what has that got to do with the price of fish?
Surely, you are not suggesting that non-science swots are not permitted to comment on scientific wrangles and must just sit quietly and swallow what the, er, experts tell them? If so, do not expect such quiescence from me.
I view all experts in anything with cynical suspicion for the simple reason that I have lived long enough to have experienced the scientific certainties of the 1950s overturned in the 1960s and then the certainties that replaced them overturned yet again in the 1970s, and so on ad infinitum! Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s but now I am beginning to pick up hints and suggestions that when the cooling comes (as it likely will in my view) it is all part of the, er, warming.
In the immortal words of Richard Littlejohn, 'you couldn't make it up' - well, some science swots make some things up sometimes - and they are 'very naughty boys'!
SP:
"The easist way to start a discussion about science with varied people from varied backgrounds is by mentioning Kuhn. Usually the response is positive, even enthusiastic, except from those who still want to hold 'falsifiability' as science's gold standard. These dissenters do not like Kuhn's picture of science as a collective enterprise beholden to 'paradigms'. They hark back to Karl Popper, who believed that at its best science epitomised humanity at its best. Ironically, this 'best' is simply the realisation that we can always do better. In practice, in meant that the best scientists always challenge what most people - even their fellow scientists - believe, however unpopular that may leave them."
From 'Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the soul of Science' by Steve Fuller by Steve Fuller.
Perhaps our host might like to place that last sentence at this blog's masthead!
Scientists' conclusions (and consensuses) are based on the accumulated evidence. When newer or better evidence emerges that demands scientists change their conclusions, if they are honest that is what they will do.
If the evidence regarding the Earth's climate changes, so will the conclusions and follow-up recommendations. Nothing sinister, incompetent, or dishonest about that, unlike the crap you, Watts, and other denialists spew.
I'd ask you to put up some evidence to support "Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s but now I am beginning to pick up hints and suggestions that when the cooling comes (as it likely will in my view) it is all part of the, er, warming.", but between [your admission](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php?u…) of being "a man who failed maths, physics and chemistry at school, not by a smidgeon, but by such a huge margin that I was perversely proud of it at the time" and your ongoing apparent incompetence as illustrated by your posts on this and other threads, I won't hold my breath.
Others have already pointed out that AGW has already spent its time as 'fringe science', notably since Angstrom's time, but was resuscitated after the work of Gilbert Plass and others during the Cold War.
Also, while I'm sure most would agree you're entitled to your opinion on AGW (or other sciences) and you're even entitled to express it in most fora, you're not entitled to it (or you) being taken seriously or left unchallenged when others find errors, falsehoods, or fallacies.
Now that I come to think of it, David, perhaps you can give us some actual examples of the: "scientific certainties of the 1950s overturned in the 1960s and then the certainties that replaced them overturned yet again in the 1970s, and so on ad infinitum".
Or at least, any examples that would be as significant as AGW being disproved or found to be insignificant/harmless.
As noted above, until the 1950s AGW was seemingly relegated to the scientific dustbin until new evidence came in showing that human-emitted CO2 could, indeed, continue to warm the atmosphere.
Others have already pointed out that AGW has already spent its time as 'fringe science', notably since Angstrom's time, but was resuscitated after the work of Gilbert Plass and others during the Cold War.
"When newer or better evidence emerges that demands scientists change their conclusions, if they are honest that is what they will do."
'If' is such an enormous word for only two letters, don't you think?
As to your last question, just off the top of my head:
"In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science ânever mindsâ are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesnât really help fend off Alzheimerâs disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries."
David, reliance on opinion pieces in mainstream journals and newspapers does not an informed person make.
Have you tried researching the various medical trials etc. that are implicated by your reading matter.
I am acquainted with a number of people just like you, those who confess with perverse pride, that the meaning of science lessons passed them by.
And there are many more in the media who honk on about things about which they clearly know nothing. Melanie Phillips springs to mind and I could mention others who generally inhabit the pages of The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Times as well as their weekend derivatives.
Here is a nice little quote from within the covers of 'Trick or Treatment' by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst (about the false hopes raised by and dangers of altenative medicine) that fits the bill;
There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
Which explains how you have become so ignorantly opinionated for you study only the opinion of those who are like yourself - missed the value of the sciences but fail to recognise that this disqualifies them from expecting their opinion to be valued in the context of matters of science.
"opinion pieces in mainstream journals and newspapers does not an informed person make."
So you didn't bother to read it then!
Chris O'Neil:
I didn't predict global cooling I merely suggested that it was 'likely' as opposed to 'unlikely' but neither word is definitive. And anyone who predicts the definite future in regard to global climate is either a fool or a computer modeller!
In addition:
(1) Given how recent the Atlantic article is, I'm not sure it really qualifies as showing scientific consensus getting turned over in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on. Which you personally witnessed, right?
(2) Ioannidis' findings are hardly revolutionary in medical research circles. A lot of novel research fails to pan out into meaningful clinical outcomes. Not all of it turns into any sort of scientific consensus to be subsequently overturned.
(3) Medical science research, with its messy outcomes and tight constraints on the kind of research that can be performed (for good reason) is a rather different field from climate science - especially given the rather basic premises that undergird AGW.
If you have trouble understanding any then look up David Archer's on-line Chicago University lectures (which provide meat for some of his books) there are on-line tools there to play with also. I could offer other suggestions but all in good time.
Your Atlantic article was, as I was already aware, a skewed and cherry picked article, check out Composer99's link and then dig around behind.
That is the problem with opinion pieces, written by somebody who knows little and read by those who know less and couldn't care about truth.
Are you always this obtuse or just pretending to be? Your throw away remark about climate modellers opens up another can of your ignorance. Go find a copy of 'The Warming Papers' to get a flavour of such.
I await the day that the practitioners of alternate climate theory follow Mr Duffs advice and begin the process of questioning their own assertions, pronouncements and assumptions.
Just to begin the process of becoming good scientists.
Setting aside your gruntish boorishness I do want to thank you for that link to the piece on Fuller. No time now but I have saved it for reading later. Looks very interesting.
I await the day that the practitioners of alternate climate theory...
Breaking news from CNN-CP
Date: 1/4/2637. Time: 00:17. Location: Alert, Ellesmere Island, CD, USA
Climate denialism may be dead
"Yes. Hell is possibly about to freeze over.", said new IPCC Chairbot m/c #137F from outside her office, in balmy uptown Alert.
"Just as the last swath of grass disappears from Earth -- from the small town of Hopeless Causeway, South Georgia -- and as Alert appears ready to surpass it's previous record March average monthly temperature (2.7°C), the last three denialists -- Verger Mole-Hill, Judy McIntyre and Ross Monckton -- seem ready, finally, to concede that they were wrong all along.", reports a jubilant m/c #137F.
My, er, science is validated and will soon be the basis of a consensus! Remember I warned you about this months ago:
"An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is set to pass closer to Earth than the moon - the nearest anything this big has come to our planet in 35 years."
Really? You predicted that everyone else would agree with you that an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will be is set to pass closer to the earth than the moon?
What with him being 'kill'ed, I, too, would have missed any such unimportant duff "warning" here ... and in the scientific organ that is the Daily Mail(!).
However, by keeping an eye on NASA's NEO program page you can be sure to catch the littler ones as well as the aircraft-carrier-sized ones.
Ooh, look. They reported about YU55 8 months ago. And they knew when and where it was coming some years ago now.
Time to get the dust of your 6-incher... reflector that is.
Be sure to look out for 2001 WN5 in June 2028 now.
How can that be? You have written yourself that you are not a scientist.
'An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier...'
How big an aircraft carrier are they on about, 20000 tons, 32000 tons, 52000 tons or 80000+ tons? Typical imprecision from a red-top rag of the type where they often describe a frigate or destroyer as a battleship rather than the more correct generic warship.
Don't overlook that the red-top rag in question is the source of the devious deception that kicked off the Rosegate thread here.
Now if you had worked on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier you would have had a good deal more to worry about than the bellowing of an SNCO, I guess that was National Service for you.
Not only do you read cherry picked based articles but engage in the practice yourself by ignoring many direct questions or responses to your blinkered views of the world.
Leo Tolstoy summed up why you continue to remain so proudly ignorant and known as the Tolstoy syndrome:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life.
Re-quoted from Singh & Ernst, 2009, pp. 283
There is ignorance and wilful ignorance and it is the latter which you display in spades and thus display excursions of profound stupidity.
I thought that the "er" in "My, er, science" along with the exlamation mark at the end would give you 'scientific' brain-boxes the merest hint that incoming irony was to be expected. Needless to say you all missed it and took it seriously. My God, what a po-faced bunch you are - and one of you actually quotes Tolstoy a man who reached historic levels of misery. For goodness sake, go and get yourselves a sense of humour.
Computing science legend and formidable intellect of the 1990s sci.environment gladiatorial arena, John McCarthy, died October 24 in Stanford. The NYT [obituary](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/science/26mccarthy.html) is quite good.
With Dennis Ritchie that's two giants of the modern era gone in an eyeblink. Wide-eyed greenies who won't do arithmetic will be the more relieved by McCarthy's demise :)
His ["sustainability pages"](http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/) contain a lot of great stuff, just beware that he was very much the techo-optimist with what might be called a bit of a tin ear for the nuances of global warming debate. He was very enthusiastic for nuclear power.
Vale jmc it was an honour and pleasure crossing swords with you, always gentleman and scholar.
Duff, nothing is more boorish than your intellectual dishonesty, your smug stupidity, your laughing off of your responsibility to take evidence, logic, and the arguments of others into account.
get yourselves a sense of humour
That's the same thing I hear from boors when they crack jokes about women, blacks, gays, the disabled, the obese ... in your case the butt of your jokes are science and reason.
Rather, he predicted, wrongly, that in the future everyone would have a relatively simple and inexpensive computer terminal in the home linked to a shared, centralized mainframe and use it as an electronic portal to the worlds of commerce and news and entertainment media.
Global warming can be avoided or reversed should it turn out to be a serious problem. However, there is a thorough paper Why Global Warming Would be Good for You by Tom Moore of the Hoover Institution. See (5) for a reference to some critiques - mostly ill-tempered. It is still controversial whether global warming from CO2 is occurring or whether recent warm years are a statistical fluctuation or a consequence of changes in the sun.
Here is Health and Amenity Effects of Global Warming, also by Tom Moore. It offers statistical evidence that regions of the U.S. with warmer climates have lower death rates and also are preferred to colder regions. Also death rates from most causes are greater in winter than in summer.
Two scientific skeptics about the harmful effects of global warming are Richard Lindzen of M.I.T. and Frederick Singer of an organization called SEPP. I don't give links but suggest googling them, because they have written both on their own pages and for various publications.
Warmer winters seem to have increased wheat yields in Australia.
Well, it's been over three months since the CRU released all of the raw "climategate" temperature data that deniers had accused it of hiding.
That means that the deniers have had that entire data-set in their hot little hands for quite some time now. Certainly, the folks who had been screaming so loudly for the CRU raw data-set must have jumped right on it when it was released and started working hard to cross-check the CRU's global-temperature results.
So just wondering... does anyone out there know if any of the deniers who had been demanding the CRU data have any preliminary results out yet?
Duff, if nobody understood that you were attempting some form of "humour", it would suggest to me that you aren't actually funny.
I also note that you are far less accepting of humour when the mockery is aimed at yourself. When that happens you whine and cry that everyone is "unpleasant" to you. What a precious, simpering lot you deniers are.
But let's all go back to laughing at the dribbling idiot who believes a city being cold in winter 400 years ago is proof that AGW is all a scam, and that any day now it's going to begin cooling again. The fool who admits he knows nothing but certain the scientists are lying. What a clown!
Good to see that double standards are maintained on a site which applies them across the board, not just on science. Thus, Ian can freely liken me to:
"boors when they crack jokes about women, blacks, gays, the disabled, the obese
but when I return the compliment using the same, perfectly respectable categories but with alternate words which mean exactly the same (redacted lest anyone faint):
"f*t, b***k, qu********ic, les***ns"
my comment is censored. Good thinking, Lambert, that's the sort of thing which has maintained your deserved reputation where it is!
Duffy Duck, AGAIN with the conspiracy thinking, huh?
Read what appears under comment #63 and then repeat with me:
"No, David Duff has NOT been censored; it's just that swear words put David Duff's comment in moderation, which entails a modicum of delay. Oh, and by the way, David Duff's comment was caught by the swear filter because, unlike the other comment David Duff referred to, David Duff's comment used derogatory terms instead of neutral terms."
I can because you are like them in a way, as I explained; are you really too stupid to understand such a simple analogy?
double standards ... my comment is censored
You are such a retarded dolt, Duff ... and a Luddite. See, there are these things called filters, and they automatically block posts with certain words, regardless of who posts them --- what, you thought Tim was hovering over his keyboard and caught and deleted your message a fraction of second after you hit Post? Do you think that none of us has ever had posts blocked or held? That's the implication of "double standards" but, as you are clueless about the application of evidence, you reach totally unwarranted conclusions ... now that your post has been released from the hold (a number of mine have never been released from a hold ... does that mean that Tim has double standards that he exercises against me?), will you retract your whine and admit what a boorish idiot you are? That would be the civilized thing to do.
Oh, and your reposting the same words with asterisks suggests that you do understand automatic filtering, and so you are displaying the primary common trait of deniers -- dishonesty. Although it is possible, though difficult to fathom, that your streak of their second most common trait, stupidity, runs so deep that you actually believe that Tim censors (only) deniers when they use those words but not if they obscure them with asterisks.
But in any case it seems clear that you really are so stupid that you don't understand analogies; that you think that when I liken you to people who tell such jokes I am suggesting that you are a racist, homophobe, etc. (not that it would be at all surprising if you are). Of course I am doing no such thing ... the way you are like them is in your boorish, cowardly avoidance of legitimate criticism of your offensive garbage by saying it was just a joke and accusing people of lacking of a sense of humor.
And here's another question for David Dumb as Dirt Duff: If Tim applies a double standard, treating the words in my posts differently than in yours, then why is it that he let through both my post #59 and your post #67 that quoted the words of #59 that you think received special treatment just because it was me and not you who posted them? How about explaining exactly what this double standard of Tim's is and how he applied it to the posts here -- how you adduced this double standard from the evidence. To fail to either do so or to admit that you are a clueless idiot and apologize for your trolling here would be quite boorish.
A 'holding bay', you mean like those pens where you screen immigrants before deciding what do with them. Gosh, how have I managed over the last six years without one? I just publish anything that comes unless, as on one or two occasions, the stream of obscenities is too, too, boring. And what happens to the ones who are not allowed out of the 'filter shed', the "unknown unknowns", as it were? Sent to that 'great gulag in the ether', I suppose.
By the way, Ianam (sorry, you Lordship, if I misconstrued your famous name), did you hear or read that apparently we have all been spewing forth even greater amounts of CO2 than ever before! Yes, I know, I know, shockin', shockin'! Still, given that, and presumably you don't argue with it, then it's a bit surprising that the climate swots can't agree whether or not global temperatures have increased or not over the last ten years. I mean, with all that extra carbon (President Hu Jintao, you are a very naughty boy!) there really shouldn't be any argument, should there?
David le Duff said: "I mean, with all that extra carbon (President Hu Jintao, you are a very naughty boy!) there really shouldn't be any argument, should there"?
Only in the simplistic minds of the most simplistic of simpletons who can only conceive of simple concepts, which is of course who Denier Central targets with exactly the kind of pap reasoning you just displayed.
Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC, or is your opinion (inasmuch as it's really second hand) all spoon-fed to you from think tank PR web outlets specifically designed to keep your well-upholstered arse politically onside?
Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC, or is your opinion (inasmuch as it's really second hand) all spoon-fed to you from think tank PR web outlets specifically designed to keep your well-upholstered arse politically onside?
Duff the old buffer has already avoiding answering that point put by myself (see #43) and seems to prefer to remain an opinionated self confessed science ignoramus. Duff is a serial question avoider.
Interesting how he keeps using the rope we pay out.
I'll take your failure to withdraw your BS about a "double standard" as an admission that you are a cowardly boor ... a dishonest sack of garbage who does not admit to mistakes or take into account the arguments of others, a smug smear of excrement not worth anyone's time.
I will respond to one more thing from the dishonest dolt Davd Duff:
Still, given that, and presumably you don't argue with it, then it's a bit surprising that the climate swots can't agree whether or not global temperatures have increased or not over the last ten years.
a) The report is about the about of CO2 released in 2010, which would affect future temperatures (like, those of the next 100 years, due to the persistence of C02 in the atmosphere), not those of the previous decade. b) There are other factors that temporarily affect global temperatures, dimwit. What is not surprising is that every argument put up by dumbass deniers such as yourself has well known rebuttals that you are not aware of or simply ignore ... the hallmark of a boor.
I am still waiting for David Duff to show there is no such thing as scientific consensus by demonstrating it with respect to gravity.
All of the above comments are just distracting Davy boy and I would ask everyone to desist until Davy boy has demonstrated how there is no such thing as scientific consensus.
Davy boy I will pay for the venue where you can demonstrate your belief.
Jeremy, apologies, I didn't forget about you, I was just a bit embarrassed by your question, er, not for me but for you! At least one can hold a reasonable conversation with you and I had no wish to spoil a budding, beautiful friendship by pointing out that what I was saying was that scientific consensus does exist which is precisely why Kuhn and Popper disagreed about it and the manner in which it is constantly ruptered. And that is the whole history of science since Ptolemy's cosmological consensus was blown apart.
By the way, I gather that gravity has not yet been reconciled with quantum theory. Also, like a 'hanging chad' we still have the potentially embarrassing problem of those naughty nutrinos exceeding the speed limit!
I worry for you, Ianam, you are beginning to resemble those choleric figures in a Bateman cartoon. Indeed, I was drawing attention to the 2010 carbon emission increase because I thought that you, and everyone else on this thread, will know (because none of you ever stop prating on about it) that carbon emissions are constantly increasing and have been doing so for decades and yet all we have (as a rough estimate) is a paltry rise in global temperatures which has been entirely beneficial, leading to an increase of several billion in human population, not least because in warmer climes more things grow.
Anyway, at least Chek has sent me to bed with a chuckle:
"Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC".
Oh, my giddy aunt, what a hoot! Chek, I sleep quite well, thank you for asking (er, you were asking, weren't you?) and have no need for a non-narcotic equivalent to sleeping pills.
"Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC".
Duff:"I ... have no need".
As long as you're clear on how it came to be that it's your own ignorance that makes you an easy mark and a willing receptacle for the stupidity you believe.
> Indeed, I was drawing attention to the 2010 carbon emission increase because ... carbon emissions are constantly increasing and have been doing so for decades and yet all we have (as a rough estimate) is a paltry rise in global temperatures which has been entirely beneficial,...
Good grief - one of *those* idiots!
All the while *proudly* acknowledging his complete lack of scientific acumen whilst loudly proclaiming certain positions on certain scientific questions by appealing to carefully selected "evidence" and pseudo-logic. No doubt the inconsistency between the two has not yet penetrated his consciousness.
Seems to me like he's jealous of Curtin's thread and he wants one of his own. He's certainly demonstrated that he can limbo under the intellectual bar with ease, and that he's got the never-acknowledge-error-just-redirect feint down pat.
David Duff believes the deniers have shot enough holes in scientists arguments that he doesn't even have to read the scientific evidence. He just knows they've dismantled it, even though he doesn't know what it is they'be dismantled.
>...Well I've got the mother of all trend lines - it's called a Loess line - and no I haven't a clue what it means, but if you go here you will see a pretty picture of several of them for the same 20 year period and guess what, it shows either temperatures holding steady or cooling slightly...
>...but the consensus of satellite measurements (generally considered to be the most reliable instruments) shows that at best the global temperature is in a state of hiatus but at worst (from his point of view) it has actually cooled slightly.
When does this cooling begin Duff? Do you have any evidence, or do you base your scientific views on your political beliefs that controlling Co2 emissions is wrong?
I await another hilarious, irony-filled comment with bated breath. Maybe you'll blame global warming on Irish women! Minorities! Ha ha!
I think it's the spectacles. Unable to observe that people who use a perfectly constructed set of steps don't always take the same amount of time to get from the bottom to the top.
No, no, no they cry. She can't possibly have taken a whole minute to get up here ... I once measured it as taking exactly 17 seconds. When you explain that she tripped on the pen that some thoughtless clown had dropped on one of the steps .... That's not possible, I didn't see it happen.
And the next person who takes more (or less) time, didn't hesitate when someone called his name .... or go up two steps at a time . .... or ... or
It's the spectacles. Can't see what's in front of them. Can't see through walls or round corners so can't observe directly what someone else tells them.
At last, a gleam of common and scientific sense from Chris O'Neill:
"Climate swots have a concept called uncertainty which prevents them from saying for sure that underlying warming has occured in the past 10 years or whether its just due to random variation."
I couldn't have put it better myself. Quelle courage, mon ami, but standby for incoming. To paraphrase the immortal Cpl. Jones, 'They don't like uncertainty up 'em, Capt. Mainwaring' - especially around here! Oh dear, I think that thud was Ianam fainting away at the thought of 'uncertainty' - smelling salts anyone?
Anyway, I think this particular dead horse has been flogged enough so I will depart - for now - leaving you with this quote from some swot called Dr. Pat Michaels:
"âThe last ten years of the BEST data indeed show no statistically significant warming trend, no matter how you slice and dice themâ. He adds: âBoth records are in reasonable agreement about the length of time without a significant warming trend. In the CRU record it is 15.0 years. In the University of Alabama MSU it is 13.9, and in the Remote Sensing Systems version of the MSU it is 15.6 years.â"
Yeah, yeah, I know, he's the wrong sort of swot for you but, hey, you pick your swots and I'll pick mine! Ttfn.
Duff, how long a period do we need using the data to show statistical significance? Whether that be warming, cooling or stable?
Hint: Pat Michaels doesn't disclose this vital information, while on the other hand, truly inquisitive scientist seek out the answer to such questions.
I note that you have been spraying a lot around here, but without actually putting anything on the table. As a rusted-on denialist of anthropogenic global warming, and thus of the attendant consequences, you should therefore feel the courage of your convictions and be prepared to accept the challenge that I have put to others, as [outlined here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…).
I will take the next posting on Deltoid by you, that does not explicitly decline the challenge, as being an explicit acceptance of the same challenge. That will please me greatly, and I am sure that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW will welcome you to their little fraternity.
Oo, and should you find yourself posting on the same thread as those personages, could you draw their attention to [the third paragraph of this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). I am keen to establish a fund to mitigate in a small way some of the impacts that will occur concurrently with the fulfillment of my challenge, and their cooperation in enabling me to recover moneys owed would be most helpful.
And frankly, given that their anti-science stances on the matter are contributing to global delay on emissions action, it is only right and fair that they should compensate for the damage that they are helping to inflict...
I note that you have been spraying a lot around here, but without actually putting anything on the table. As a rusted-on denialist of anthropogenic global warming, and thus of the attendant consequences, you should therefore feel the courage of your convictions and be prepared to accept the challenge that I have put to others, as [outlined here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…).
I will take the next posting on Deltoid by you, that does not explicitly decline the challenge, as being an explicit acceptance of the same challenge. That will please me greatly, and I am sure that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW will welcome you to their little fraternity.
Oo, and should you find yourself posting on the same thread as those personages, could you draw their attention to [the third paragraph of this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). I am keen to establish a fund to mitigate in a small way some of the impacts that will occur concurrently with the fulfillment of my challenge, and their cooperation in enabling me to recover moneys owed would be most helpful.
And frankly, given that their anti-science stances on the matter are contributing to global delay on emissions action, it is only right and fair that they should compensate for the damage that they are helping to inflict...
Anyway, I think this particular dead horse has been flogged enough so I will depart - for now - leaving you with this quote from some swot called Dr. Pat Michaels:
The only dead horse around here is you Duff, it would seem that you have died of thirst for although one can lead a horse to water making him drink thereof is another matter if he has decided that the water poses a danger to his twisted world view.
Yet another proof of that cognitive distortion is displayed by citing an FFFC (fossil fuel fund corrupted - think Western Fuels for starters and this) one time scientist as an expert for your arguments.
As for no statistically significant warming - do you understand the context and how that now after a further lapse of time the statistical significance has increased to become statistically significant at the 95% level? Would you take a flight if the chances of the aircraft crashing were only 94.something % certain rather than 95%? The above provides a big contextual hint that even a self confessed science ignoramus should be able to grasp if they are truly 'reasonably intelligent' as the claim.
Now as for that silly no warming claim that has been debunked so many times Tamino has put more flesh on the answer to that beast, pay particular attention to graph number four in that article. Clear enough for you?
As for the TTFN - getting to hot for you? Is your cognitive dissonance beginning to break down as the truth dawns?
Just in case the above was not enough there is more on my Tamino based point here.
Small typo un-noticed first time around in #93 corrected here:
The above provides a big contextual hint that even a self confessed science ignoramus should be able to grasp if they are truly 'reasonably intelligent' as they claim.
Interesting. Duff's gone (in his usual incoherent, "irony" laden and bitterly unfunny way) from "it's cooling" to "there's no significant warming trend".
You'd think he'd just have the guts to admit that his acceptance of science is based on his political ideology, but he's every bit the gormless coward we've come to expect.
Guys, there's no point trying to explain science to Duff. He's already admitted he didn't want to accept AGW so he just shopped around until he found some reasons to doubt it.
No arguing with him is going to change the fact he's a right-wing twerp who can never accept anything that might challenge his inflexible and delusional political ideology. Remember - you're arguing with someone who believes the fact it was cold in winter 400 years ago (and even then couldn't get his basic facts right) is proof that AGW is wrong.
He's already admitted he didn't want to accept AGW so he just shopped around until he found some reasons to doubt it.
As he reiterates with
you pick your swots and I'll pick mine!
But, being not just utterly dishonest but dumber than a doorknob, he can't grasp that all the "swot"'s agree with the statement but that it's no more relevant than someone looking at waves of water traveling up a ramp and claiming that there's no upward motion because, if you pick a distance less than a wavelength and the right starting point, it appears that the water is descending. You can show an idiot like Duff a picture of the water going up the ramp and they will still point you to a ramp-denial website with a graph of the tail of the wave and a negative trendline.
Dishonest Duff is more than just a right wing twerp. He is a crypto-creationist twerp. Just look at the way he admires arch-creationist Steve Fuller.
There is a large strain of Christian conservatism, including creationists, fundamentalists and evangelicals, that finds theological justification for denying AGW: humans cannot threaten global catastrophe; only God can destroy the planet, as he did in the past with Noah's flood. Climatologist Roy Spencer is one of these.
At first, Spencer set out to disprove that global warming was happening at all. Spencer published false satellite data that allegedly showed tropospheric cooling, but when these data were proven false, Spencer changed tack. Now adopting the mantle of a free market advocate - and he is in receipt of money from oil companies like Exxon-Mobil - Spencer claims that climate change is occurring, but is not human-caused. (On his blog, he states "Climate change â it happens, with or without our help.")
He does the rounds claiming "climate is self-stabilizing due to large negative feedbacks," but this hides his real belief that God is behind the changing climate.
Spencer lays out some of his his AGW-creationist theology here:
Although it's mainly an anti-Green diatribe, his opposition to environmentalism is largely theological, which he hints at here:
For most people, either you believe that the world has been created for mankind's use, with a certain resiliency and stability, or you believe it is just a cosmic accident, fragile, and overly sensitive to our meddling.
The theology behind that statement is not clear, but it is spelled out in the first article of faith of the Cornwall Alliance, of which Spencer is a member of the board of advisors:
We believe Earth and its ecosystems â created by Godâs intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence â are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earthâs climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
The Cornwall Alliance's "evangelical declaration on global-warming" raises an interesting question, to wit: when the Arctic sea ice eventually melts completely in summer, is the existence of God thus disproved by the Alliance's own criteria?
And if there is back-pedalling on the eventual occurrence of such melting, will there be an admission of the non-existence of God when the global anomaly exceeds 3C? 4C? 5C?
What about when global sea level increases by 1 metre? 2 metres? 5? 10?
At some point humans will change the ecology and the climate of the planet to such an extent that no reasonable person could claim that God is "sustain[ing the planet] by His faithful providence". It would seem to me that the Cornwall Alliance has a priori written the obituary for Christianity's God, as perceived by modern Fundamentalists.
I find it ironic that many creationists who refuse to accept AGW and instead support the confusion sown by Oil companies. Oil companies, of course, supply "fossil" fuels.
> ...will there be an admission of the non-existence of God when the global anomaly exceeds 3C? 4C? 5C?
Of course not!
The first rule of fundamentalist religion is that *all* evidence *always* demonstrates that your religion is correct (even if this requires refuting your own earlier claims that you (say) understood God's will on a particular matter, preferably not noticing the contradiction).
The second rule of fundamentalist religion is that you don't mention the first rule - not even to yourself.
The Cornwall Alliance is a response to the gathering awareness amongst conservative evangelical groups that trashing the environment is not consistent with God's idea of stewardship. A number of evangelical leaders were put wise to the science behind AGW and the ideology of deniers by John Houghton who is also an evangelical christian.
So obviously the deniers have to stop that taking hold.
I find the language used by the Cornwall Alliance on their website very clever. They fill it with the sort of words and phrases certain types of evangelicals quite often respond to. You can't overestimate how cunning deniers can be when they target specific groups.
@103
"I find it ironic that many creationists who refuse to accept AGW and instead support the confusion sown by Oil companies. Oil companies, of course, supply "fossil" fuels."
This is simply a misnomer as all funtementalists know. Oil actually comes from deep within the earth's mantle and is constantly oozing upward. No "fossil" involved. I have actually heard this from a fundie a couple of years ago as he denied that there was any change of Peak Oil.
See "Abiogenic petroleum origin" for more on this. To be fair, the generally respected 20th C scientist, Thomas Gold, espoused this theory.
Abiotic oil, yes I have come across this silly meme too (look up Oil is Mastery if you have some time to waste), one frequently associated with the idea that the Earth is expanding with the near fit of the Eastern coastline of South America with the West coast of Africa being the proof - an expanding jig-saw puzzle.
And hopefully our descendants will see the climate change denialists, and the politicians and vested interests who are trying to resist appropriately pricing carbon, for the selfish, planet- and future-damaging vandals that they are.
As part of a TV news item on the passing of the Carbon tax by the Australian Senate, I noticed the most ironically named position in Australian politics that is held by Geoff Hunt. It is: Opposition spokesman for climate action.
Kinda special occasion here in Deltoid-land that deserves comment, I think.
The Jonas thread has postively blown through the 2,000 comment mark and now registers 2,020 comments and climbing.
Curiously, the very first comment in the Jonas thread boasted, "Deltoid, the place where trolls come to die."
Perhaps you Deltoids might find it interesting that all of the other Deltoid posts since 12 Sept, the date Jonas was banished to his ghetto-thread, have attracted, in total, a mere 965 comments. Yep, less than half the number appearing on the Jonas thread.
I dunno, guys, but it looks like Jonas didn't "die" after all. Rather, he and his thread appear to be the only signs of vitality in the whole of the Deltoid bad-lands. Indeed, it might be said that the Jonas thread has swallowed the Deltoid blog whole.
So let me get this straight, Deltoids. You lefties can't even construct a decent memory-hole anymore? And that used to be one of your supreme specialties. What a bunch of useless-eaters!
> Rather, he and his thread appear to be the only signs of vitality in the whole of the Deltoid bad-lands.
Yep, indeed, just a mass of crawling cockroaches and maggots in mountain of garbage is a sign of "vitality" compared to those lifeless plates of food being served up in those restaurants.
> Indeed, it might be said that the Jonas thread has swallowed the Deltoid blog whole.
Yeah, I agree that if you keep paying attention to the cockroaches and maggots, you can get that impression...
So the Jonas thread is crawling with "cockroaches and maggots", is it? Well, let's just pick out some of those creepy-critters:
Wow
Jeff Harvey
John Mashey
Eli Rabett
chek
Bernard J (incidentally, BJ, seems to be using the Jonas thread to set up some sort of inter-net gambling operation--is that legal?)
Neven
And a whole bunch of other guys you'd know, frank.
"Cockroaches and maggots"--I dunno, frank, that's a little harsh. I mean it works and all, I'm not disputing that, but let me just say, non-judgementally, that I wouldn't have called them that.
"Janitors"? No, frank, janitors perform honest labor--a noble, if under-appreciated, craft. So that nomenclature doesn't work, frank. The more I think about it, your original "cockroaches and maggots" is the best terminology after all. Add "useless-eaters" and I'll got with it, frank.
So, frank, maybe I misunderstood, but you seemed to make out in your last comment that you and your greenshirt soul-mates here on Deltoid are superior to janitors. Did I get something wrong there? So do you and your pals, frank, think you're superior to janitors and their honest labors?
You know, when you keep shifting your 'arguments' just to attack other people with no regard for consistency, it makes you look stupid. And more importantly, it makes you become stupid.
Either you think that the "Jonas thread" is a supreme model of "life" and "vitality" unlike the surrounding "badlands", or you think it's a mountain of garbage filled with cockroaches and maggots. If you try to think both at the same time, your brain will explode (or maybe it already has).
You say, Wow, "...you're [moi]...without the courage to put your money where your mouth is." Or, just possibly, I'm smart enough not to place any bets with a welcher like you, Wow. Actually, it's the latter, Wow.
And then, I don't wager as a matter of principle. Get involved with that nasty vice and you end up in the unsavory company of people like you, Wow, and BJ. Not my kind of people.
frank, you are good. I gotta admit it. Can't get over on you. O. K. you've forced me to it--the guys mentioned by name in comment no. 115, above, are a bunch of "cockroaches and maggots" just like you say. Happy now, frank?
>And then, I don't wager as a matter of principle. Get involved with that nasty vice and you end up in the unsavory company of people like you, Wow, and BJ. Not my kind of people.
I've never placed a bet in my life. I'm more than willing to start though, if it means taking Jonas N and his mates to the meat of their contradictions of professional science. It is extremely interesting that the intellectual exercise of attempting to make Jonas N and his cronies stand by their claims, completely escapes you.
Oh, and mike... if you find "unsavoury" the company of people who trust heavily peer-reviewed, and heavily tested and re-tested, science, then you'll probably find that the company that you do keep is most undesirable indeed...
O. K. you've forced me to it--the guys mentioned by name in comment no. 115, above, are a bunch of "cockroaches and maggots" just like you say. Happy now, frank?
But didn't you say the "Jonas thread" is a sterling example of "life" and "vitality" earlier? So how can it also be infested with cockroaches and maggots?
That's the problem with you denialists -- you don't care a damn about finding the truth. The thing is, there's a truth about the world, and we know that this truth has to abide by certain rules -- you know, simple things such as 'a single person can't be physically be in two places at the same time'. So those of us who care about the truth also care about abiding by these rules.
You, on the other hand, are just throwing out random bullshit to attack other people, and you don't care if the random bullshit doesn't make sense when put together. You hate the idea of truth-seeking.
And that, my friend, is why your global warming "skepticism" is bullshit.
Steve McIntyre is dog-whistling to his readers, linking Mike Mann to the paedophile football coach, which his readers picked up on by the first comment with this gem:
"First the Hockey Team, now the Football Team!"
Could the deniers really stoop any lower? What sort of character assassination is it to try and link climate scientists to a child molester on the basis that they both worked at the same university?
>Steve McIntyre is dog-whistling to his readers, linking Mike Mann to the paedophile football coach, which his readers picked up on by the first comment with this gem:
>"First the Hockey Team, now the Football Team!"
And picked up by the odious Aynsley Kellow, no less.
Personally, I think people who try to confabulate Person A with Person B, simply because both people work at the same (very large) institution, and because it serves the confabulators' ideological purposes to so do, are really not much better (and perhaps not any better at all), than the kiddy-fiddlers they use for the shit-smearing.
And in case it doesn't click for any dog-whistler sympathisers reading, I did not confabulate...
Well, I see my latest foray into Deltoid-land has yielded, in reply, a rich crop of those literal-minded, dreadfully serious, can't-take-a-joke, aren't-I-a-smarty-pants, I'm-so-much-better-than-janitors, self-important, wonder-why-I-can't-get-a-date, sanctimonious,idiot comments for which you Deltoids are famous. BJ was the only disappointment in that his response, by Deltoid standards, was almost that of a normal human being. But frank more than compensated for BJ's lapse.
But unlike the other comments I received, ianam's bold bid (comment no. 129) to break into the inner-circle of Deltoid's atomic-brain trust is worth a few individualized moments of my precious time.
You say, ianam, "The last sentence makes a lie of the one that preceded it." (again, comment no. 129). Well, I hate to break to you ianam, since I can see you're really straining to make a good impression on your fellow useless-eaters here in Deltoid-land, but the last sentence does not make a lie of the one that preceded it. Sorry, guy--it is possible to both not wager, as a matter of principle, and to be smart enough not to make a bet with a welcher like wow.
Let me put it in this form, ianam, since I can see that beneath your big-brain pretensions you're actually a rather slow-witted wannabe: I don't wager as a matter of principle, but if I ever chose to place a bet then I'm smart enough not to bet with a welcher like wow. Get it?
You know, guys, I've come to expect your usual dork-ball, hyper-excited, booger-flicks in my direction, but ianam's doofus, look-like-a-real-weener-head screw-up was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Thanks ianam--you made my day.
OK, so to mike, the "Jonas thread" is both a sterling example of "life" and "vitality", and a mountain of garbage infested with cockroaches and maggots, and the rest of Deltoid is nothing but "bad-lands" and a bunch of people who are "sanctimonious" and also prone to "hyper-excited booger-flicks".
You need to try and stop mixing so many metaphors together, because they're turning your brain into mush.
What you have to remember Frank, is that that little brain-wank was the closest li'll mike will get to an orgasm this year. Or next.
I also notice he's desperately trying to enhance his non-existent, tough, militaristic self-image with a third hand Alex Jonesism, so be careful not to mess with such an intellect.
Just as Roger Pielke Snr. might like to slip into a cocktail dress and be called 'Muriel' on a Saturday night, it's not inconceivable that RP Jnr. might like to slip into a moron costume and call himself 'mike' sometimes.
Very funny Roger, and btw, you're still a disgrace to academia.
> EVERY now and then in governments around the world, when issues arise in things such as the purity of water and the safety or otherwise of drinking it, we see politicians and administrators take up a glass of said water and - always smilingly - drink deep as the cameras roll. It restores public confidence and demonstrates that the politicians actually mean what they say and their word can be counted on. Right now, the issue before us is the purity or otherwise of the air. Around the world, tens of thousands of reputable climate scientists are united in their view that our air has too much carbon dioxide, which is doing terrible damage to the planet. People such as Senator Barnaby Joyce and Alan Jones, however, contend that it is all a nonsense and because carbon dioxide is ''a colourless, odourless gas'', there is no problem with it. Does it not stand to reason, therefore, that both men should be encouraged to sit outside Parliament House for an hour in a glass box filled with CO2 to demonstrate to us all that because it is colourless and odourless, there is no problem with it? And be encouraged to take into that box all other commentators who put forward that brain-dead line of argument?
mike is stupid and envious that we aren't. And if someone doesn't bet on principle, then they are simply lying if they say that on a specific occasion the reason they didn't bet is because they are smart enough not to bet with a welcher. And of course in all that verbal diarrhea mike spewed, nowhere did he justify the claim that Wow is a welcher. mike, you're a lying asshole and you will never get anyone here to think otherwise of you so you might as well stop trolling.
OK people. Lets just remind ourselves who and what the mike troll is: a marginally self-aware sociopathic loser, lost in the intellectual wasteland of the US Wingnutopia, desperately trying to be noticed by those he envies and fears. The repetitive puerile taunting stuff looks a lot like developmental arrest (as per lb's spousal analysis - in fact I think he (mike) once claimed to have discussed his trolling to his therapist!) possibly at the age he developed his horror of paedophilia. Draw your own conclusions.
I suspect his incursions into the Open Threads at chez Lambert is a form of self treatment. Anyone who is awestruck by the Jonastrolls (Ooh! Ooh! Can I join your gang? Pleeeease!), and measures impact by comment numbers should probably be pitied and ignored. Perhaps we should be gentler and more tolerant of his foibles?...Nah...lets pile on!
Yes Mike, we know you have a deep seated and visceral hatred of anybody you perceive to be smarter than yourself. We know you like to deal with this by hurling juvenile abuse around to garner reactions and prove to yourself that you are superior to the "intellectuals". We know you are a sad little man and I pity that you choose to waste your twilight years trying to protest that you aren't a paedophile in vain on a science website.
I notice Mike's delivery style is identical to Duff's - what is it with right-wing anti-intellectual trolls trying to prove that they're actually intelligent with empty verbosity?
I'm sure there's a YouTube comments thread out there that's just right for you Mike.
Just as a coda to mike@137, and as a case study in psychopathology for those who don't like paddling in the troll-tank, mike posted this after being confined in the Jonas oubliette:
@ 2239
Hey rhwombat, get your ginzu-samurai butt over to the dictionary and look up "Pyrrhic Victory."
Yeah, I suspected that you were taking the discussion on the November 2011 Open Thread in a direction that you hoped would lead to my further marginalization. After all, your tactic had previously gotten me confined to the Open Threads, so it wasn't as if I were unaware of the potential for more of the same.
So you might wonder why I so recklessly "took your bait." Well, to understand that, rhwombat you have to consider the curious history of my engagement with this so-called "science" blog.
In my earliest visits with my dear Deltoids, I just randomly dropped troll-bombs intended to maliciously screw with my good buddies' heavy-petting group-think. And, for the most part, my earliest comments were either quickly deleted or dis-emvowelled (although, most usually, their loss was immediately preceded by a flurry of awkward, undergarment adjustments by Deltoids in the organ loft). But to my astonishment a few of my "Deltoids are Dorks with Zits" comments survived--despite frantic calls by the Deltoid laity and lesser clergy to excommunicate me from the blog altogether.
That earliest experience helped me to work up my troll-act so that more and more of my good stuff survived--either altogether or, if deleted, lost only after the comment had remained up for most of the day. Indeed, in one remarkable instance, I lost all of my October 2011 Open Thread comments to moderation. But, then, suddenly and miraculously they re-appeared as if raised from the dead (even the one where I called Bernard J. a "pompous ass blowhard"). That, if nothing else, convinced me of my "value" to this blog.
For a while there, I was puzzled by the forbearance of the blog-master for my "juvenile" jibes aimed at Deltoid's up-tight rectors and parvenu, front-pew burghers and their greenshirt pieties and status-anxiety. But ultimately I discovered the solution to the puzzle. In a catty little comment on Eli's blog, the Rabbet, himself, disparaged Deltoid's "troll parade", indulged for the sake of running up page-view and comment counts.
As you can imagine, rhwombat, Eli's slip was a liberating revelation for me. I suddently realized I couldn't loose. As long as I kept my troll-work entertaining, I estimated I could probably get in a good long run of free-wheeling Deltoid baiting before the blog-master judged the risk of losing the congregation out-weighed the benefits of a fuller collection-plate. So throwing all caution to the wind, I just had a good time, secure in the notion that when the curtain at last and inevitably closed on me, I'd have the final satisfaction of taking my not-inconsequential page-view and comment counts with me. A win either way, as I both saw and see it.
I mean, think about it rhwombat, why would anyone choose this blog for the spectacle of a bunch of weener-head pricks, like you, rhwombat, groping up their goobers and swallowing them whole when they can get the same thing, but with better quality, at Eli's blog? Or even at the hen-house--if you have a taste for its kinky blend of old-biddies, useless-pecker capons, and shewonk's cutesy-wutsey chickenshit.
No, rhwombat, sorry to burst your bubble. Deltoid's blog-traffic in not driven by the likes of you, but by trolls like me. And us trolls win either way.
Posted by: mike | November 14, 2011 12:16 PM
He's really quite interesting...a totally self-absorbed sociopath, but quite interesting in an American gothic sort of way. I don't think he gets the bit about qualitative communication with peers - or playing well with others, I pity his therapist.
He admittedly comes here to troll yet sooks like a child and invents conspiratorial stories about being silenced when his posts are routinely moderated (as many of our posts are). He also expends a lot more energy than we do but thinks he's gained some kind of victory.
So far the Scancinavian Massive have used - amongst the paucity of references requested for their claims, Delingpole, 'Goddard', Monckton and 'Nova' as their "primary sources".
The OO runs a piece by Bjorn Lomborg who was in Oz recently.
Lomborg predictably says the carbon price (or "carbon tax" as Lomborg calls it) adopted here won't do anything to fix climate change (well derr...), nor have the Euro carbon pricing schmes made any impact. This is as sensible as pointing out that it's pointless running the first 100 yards of a marathon because there's still 26 miles 285 yards to go.
Nonetheless his point that $100bn/ year (0.2% of global GDP) spent on funding renewable energy sources could make a significant dent in current GHG emissions is a lot more helpful than a lot of what he's said in the past.
To all the climatologists (or do you prefer the term "climate scientists" now?) working on understanding the Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO as I prefer to call "global Warming") that may, hopefully, be reading this :
I just want to let you all know that you have my respect and my admiration and my thanks.
I know you face death threats from the gibbering idiots out there just for doing your jobs and doing them well. I know you have had your patience tested and your words and integrity rudely, unjustly and tediously questioned by ignorami driven by ideology who wouldn't know good science and reality if it kicked them in the groin.
I think the way you've been treated in the (non-scientific) "debate" over the reality of HIRGO has been an inexcusable disgrace and that its long since time people gave as much respect to NASA's (& other institutions) top climatologists they do to NASA's top rocket scientists and flight surgeons. Plus, naturally this applies to the non-NASA climatologists from other research instititions, universities and miscellaneous other bodies around the world.
If any climate scientists are reading this comment - please pass on my thanks and appreciation to your colleagues and reassure them all that there's a truckload of people out there willing to listen and cheering you on. I'm just one of them.
Thankyou again, please keep up your good work & best regards :
BTW. Don't know if this news has been mentioned yet but just in case it hasn't been :
Mann to receive Hans Oeschger Medal from European Geosciences Union
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Michael Mann, professor of meteorology and geosciences and director, Earth System Science Center, Penn State, was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. The medal was established in 2001 in recognition of the scientific achievements of Hans Oeschger to honor outstanding scientists whose work is related to climate: past, present and future.
Nonetheless his point that $100bn/ year (0.2% of global GDP) spent on funding renewable energy sources could make a significant dent in current GHG emissions is a lot more helpful than a lot of what he's said in the past.
I'm not sure thst it is. It's as impressive as saying we'd be better off spending it on preventing malaria. He has no interest in the things he says. It's mere eyewash to cover the fact that he is calling for the biosphere to be treated as a free industrial sewer and for the burden of this remedy to the damage caused by the polluters to the commons to be borne almost entirely by ... the commons.
Yes ... congrats to Michael Mann. He has done us all a great service, and not merely as a consequence of good science. That hockey stick has annoyed the deniers for years. Fabulous stuff.
Whenever I get a real crank, I point them to the hockey stick.
What sort of character assassination is it to try and link climate scientists to a child molester on the basis that they both worked at the same university?
I don't know, but I will say that breathing from the same pool of air as the deniers does leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm also not sure that enemies of action on climate change stand ethically higher than child m*lesters. In the case of the latter, the scope of their potential harm is far smaller than the former, and it seems that a good many of them were victims of abuse themselves. Unless someone can show that some form of abuse addled the minds of those ranged against this critical area of public policy, I'd say the latter can indeed look down on the former.
Here is the correct Michael Mann link. (Tim, you should change the configuration for the comment box; Hardly anyone knows Markdown or pays attention to the explanation of how to make links with it.)
"I view all experts in anything with cynical suspicion for the simple reason that I have lived long enough to have experienced the scientific certainties of the 1950s overturned in the 1960s and then the certainties that replaced them overturned yet again in the 1970s, and so on ad infinitum!"
So David Duff, you do all your own electrical wiring and plumbing and brain surgery then!? If you or someone else in your family is sick you treat the illness just on your own instead of going to a medical expert a.k.a. a doctor? I don't think so!
There's a reason experts are called experts and why they're the ones who get called on for specific purposes when great expertise is needed in specific fields - like rocket engineering, neurosurgery and climatology.
Also are you saying that as our scientific understanding of things improves, as we change and refine our ideas and applications based on those ideas, as we learn more and know better, science becomes *less* rather than *more* worthy of our trust and respect?! Really?
"Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s but now I am beginning to pick up hints and suggestions that when the cooling comes (as it likely will in my view) it is all part of the, er, warming."
You know there never was much scientific talk of gobal cooling even back in the 1970s. The popular press wrote a few stories about it and that was all. Most of the climatologists even back then were well aware of Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) and its likely problems to our way of life.
When do you expect to see your "global cooling" occur or become clearly apparent exactly?
How long must temperatures continue to climb, how many hottest years or decades do you need before youadmit you might have got thinsg a smidgin wrong?
In the immortal words of Richard Littlejohn, 'you couldn't make it up' - well, some science swots make some things up sometimes - and they are 'very naughty boys'!
Citations and specifics needed. What precisely have the scientists you refer to (which are who exactly btw?) made up, why haven't these errors been exposed by peer review and what EVIDENCE do you actually offer to support your rather slanderous albeit exceptionally vague allegations there?
If the link is working right this time. (Or cut'n'paste :
"In the 70s, They said there'd be an Ice Age" Greenman3610
into the Youtube search box. Do we have a special different procedural thing with posting links here or something?)
I guess most of the folks here have heard of /seen Peter "Greenman3610" Sinclair's "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" series on Youtube already, right? If not, I'd strongly recommend it.
Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s
How dare those 'Warmers' stamp on global cooling before it started warming up. What did they think they were doing? Making testable predictions? How dare they.
My, er, science is validated and will soon be the basis of a consensus! Remember I warned you about this months ago: "An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is set to pass closer to Earth than the moon - the nearest anything this big has come to our planet in 35 years."
Read more:(link cut for brevity.) So don't worry about losing your 'end-of-the-world-is-nigh' scenario because there are always plenty more to follow!
Actually astronomers such as Phil Plait the astronomer who runs the execellnt 'Bad Astronomy' blog have been well aware of that - and have debunked the non-scientific scare-mongers for instance here :
(Worth scrolling down for some of the questions and answers there.)
In a nutshell, such rocks and icy dirtballs fly past the Earth all the time, no big deal although often provide a chance to do some interesting science on them. There is a small risk of bolide (collective term for impacting bodies inclusive of comets and asteroids alike) impacts causing massive destrcution but its really not something to lose any sleep over and any astronomer will tell you as much.
Oh, and Ian, have you heard the one about the fat, black, quadraplegic lesbian . . . ?
No?
Well, go on then, lets hear it!
It doesn't sound like a overly promising joke to me but I guess you'll surprise us with your clever, er, humour and you've got me curious now. So .. what's the punchline please tell?
Er ... that is Duff's punchline, StevoR. There's no more to come from that particular source.
Allow [genius comedian Stewart Lee](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0i0RXMvzMs) to explain - starting at about the 6 minute mark if you're pushed for time, or never bother with foreplay...
And I'm pretty sure this is due to a bug in the parser. There doesn't seem to be any fundamental reason why it couldn't disable italics & bold detection within the context of a detected URL.
It's not a bug in the parser -- it's a misfeature in Markdown. Unfortunately John Gruber isn't interested in fixing it (or the other really annoying one where the numbered lists get renumbered).
I'm currently discussing the IPCC draft report that was released today and was wondering if anyone could help me in finding anything the IPCC might have said in the AR4 about climate signals and variability noise over the next 2 -3 decades?
Something that confirms this isn't some shocking new revelation:
Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame.
Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain. For projected changes by the end of the 21st century, either model uncertainty or uncertainties associated with emissions scenarios used becomes dominant, depending on the extreme. Low-probability high-impact changes associated with the crossing of poorly understood climate thresholds cannot be excluded, given the transient and complex nature of the climate system.
This Auditor took allegations of child molestation against a Yale academic and somehow attempted to link this to Michael Mann. Apparently the comments at this Auditor's site are something else again, and comments at Deep Climate's Open Thread suggest Watts and his cronies have risen to the chum that a certain Auditor spread on the waters.
IMO another appalling example of why certain Auditors and award-winning blogs deserve all the flak they get.
News Corp is a huge company, but it is not a normal company. However, it does not know that it's not a normal company. In fact, it denies this observation. In this sense denial is constitutive of the company and its culture. To work there, you have to share in this pervasive atmosphere of denial...
And Rosen on the News Corpse's brand of climate change denial:
The Australian is a force for climate change denialism. But it does not know this about itself. Outsiders do know it, and they regularly point it out. The Australian reacts not by defending its actual stance on climate change but by trying to destroy those who accurately perceive it. The attempt at destruction is typically rhetorical but sometimes other methods are used, like threatening a lawsuit. The impression given is of a bully or thug. But that's really an after-effect of denial. Denial, I think, is the key to understanding the company.
Rosen goes on to mention other aspects of its corporate thuggery, including Julie Posetti (remember Mitchell's threat of a lawsuit against her, simply because she accurately reported what he said in a public speech? As a refresher, see Chris MitchellGate).
But for me, the money quote is this:
Strangely, I do not think that News Corp people like Rebekah Brooks, James Murdoch and Chris Mitchell are being insincere when they pledge allegiance to the values of serious journalism. On the contrary, they believe that this is what their newspapers are all about. And this is the sense in which denial is constitutive of the company, a built-in feature that cannot be acknowledged by any of the major players because self-annihilation would be the result.
(emphasis added)
That last analysis by Rosen fits - it is certainly a basis for its extraordinary and consistent stance on climate change.
on Lateline t'other night & there was something I half-caught on the radio news (891 - Radio national?) this morning about a report on the rapidly closing window we've got to keep temp rise under the critical 2 degrees before I had to rush off the work. Broadcast circa 8.15~30 am approx. in Adelaide, SA. Anyone else here hear the full thing?
It is clearly a deliberate campaign to discredit, to the advantage of vested interests, action to curb harmful carbon pollution. I wonder how many laws aroundthe world have been broken by the players in this action?
Having checked over at Watt's, McinTyre's and Bishop Dill's and a selection of the usual suspects, it goes without saying that they're all wetting themselves with excitement, although some it has to be said, with more reserve than others. But the trusty ol' hygrometer would be overloading in all cases.
Interestingly, those who normally like to style themselves as such prim sticklers for propriety, seem to have overlooked that they're handling stolen goods. The stench of astounding if unsurprising hypocrisy is almost tangible. Again.
It's good to see that reason is strapping its laces quickly this time.
I'll make a prediction though...
>"Climategate III - this time it's really real. Really. It's the actual real stuff, how those nasty Scientists are trying to scam us with Really Nasty Climatology, and look, we found some words, 'the probability...', which just goes to show that they don't really know what they're talking about. Really."
Speaking of hysterical denialati who see scientific monsters hiding under the bed of The Public Good, the ABC's PM program reported today that ACMA has smacked Alan Jones and 2GB around for biased commentary on several matters, and it noted that Jones is being scrutinised on his pronouncements on issues relating to human-caused global warming.
> seem to have overlooked that they're handling stolen goods.
It's also amusing (in a not very amusing, but rather scary way), that this is also when PFC Bradley Manning is getting after a year and a half of torture, his court date for handing over stolen goods to Wikileaks.
Great headline - "Climate forecasts 'exaggerated': Science journal".
Notice the quote marks around exaggerated.
So what do the authors actually say when they aren't being verballed in the headline?
"Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out....Professor Schmittner said it had been very difficult to rule out these extreme "high-sensitivity" scenarios....we are pretty confident that these high climate sensitivities can [now]be ruled out....the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought"
Australia's former conservative Prime Minister John Howard has outed himself as an ongoing denier of science. So much so that he wrote this for McKitrick's latest screed, as reported (in edited form) [by WUWT](http://backupurl.com/o2rn1r):
>I am an agnostic when it comes to global warming. That is why I had no difficulty in proposing in 2007, when I was Prime Minister of Australia, an emissions trading system, predicated on the rest of the world acting in a similar fashion, and designed to protect Australiaâs trade-exposed industries.
>Since then two events have intervened to reinforce the caution which should be exercised by my country in this area. The collapse of the Copenhagen Summit means that actions by major emitting nations is, to say the least,
highly unlikely. Moreover, the global financial plunge has highlighted the folly of any nation taking action which harms its own comparative economic advantage.
>Professor McKitrickâs report focuses on the reporting procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The intellectual bullying, which has been a feature of the behaviour of some global warming zealots, makes this report necessary reading if there is to be an objective assessment of all of the arguments. The attempt of many to close down the debate is disgraceful, and must be resisted.
>Ross McKitrick has written a well-researched and articulate critique of the IPCCâs methods. It deserves careful study, especially by those who remain in an agnostic state on this issue.
Remember, this is the man who is a mentor to Tony Abbott. Howard speaks of disgracefulness: he should consider how disgraceful it is for a former politician - with no scientific training - to use rhetoric in order to obscure scientific truth, and especially scientific truth that has profound implications for the survival of future generations.
Howard was always a master at stirring the lizard brains of unthinking lay folk. If only he was as skilled in realising that his fundamentalist ideologies, and not the conduct of a whole discipline of science, are the problem in this matter.
Future Fund chairman [David Murray doubts the scientific evidence for climate change](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3378644.htm), and in the process completely mangles logic on a number of other topics. Watch and weep.
>DAVID MURRAY: I don't think there is sufficient evidence to take the sort of risks that are being taken around the world.
I.e. we should take action only when we have a spare planet to run a control experiment on. And the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence without such is just not enough.
>DAVID MURRAY:I've always thought that with the global population growing as fast as it is, that there would be real pressure on energy prices and people would correct automatically by using energy much more sparingly and that would start to self-correct - if there's a problem.
I.e. the population would switch from oil back to coal as oil is depleted (then crash when that is depleted).
ALI MOORE: What evidence do you look at to counter the other evidence that there is climate change? Is there something in particular that you focus on?
>DAVID MURRAY: Well, the extremeness of the claims is one thing. For example, people talked about the ocean rising by seven metres, which is just an astounding level.
>DAVID MURRAY: And when scientists start arguing amongst themselves, as we've seen with some of these reports, that is not good. Science is meant to be above all of that with true scientific method. So that really bothers me. And the claims are unreal and ...
Unless all the scientist are not arguing then it is not science? Not allowed to argue about anything David? So 3% disagreeing on the fundamental cause means that 3% wins?
ALI MOORE: Are all the claims unreal?
>DAVID MURRAY: Well, it's not clear to me which comes first: temperature or carbon - carbon dioxide. I'm not sure which does come first. There is much evidence to say one way or the other. So, when I look at all this, I become extremely concerned and I become concerned at the cost of mistakes.
So David you think the rising temperatures might have made us burn and emit 29,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year?
185 comments in, I suspect this question wont get much of a look in. But, I can cross my fingers: could someone please recommend to me a christmas present book for my father, who watches the Bolt Report and thinks climate change is probably a bit dodgy.
I'm happy to wind him up a bit (beats arguing with him), but I don't want to buy him The Weathermakers, or An Inconvenient Truth. What else is highly accessible, credible but not patronising?
thanks dexitroboper. Probably too dense and scientific for him. He's a retired lawyer, doesn't mind some complex ideas, but hasn't read anything technical in a while.
Spencer Weart's book is also available as print. Or Merchants of Doubt that goes into other elements, so it won't look like you're trying to beat him up over Climate change: he'll see that the same problems existed for years about the Tobacco industry. By going in to other examples of the same deceit it will be harder to ignore as just another element of the orchestrated "climate scam".
Hansen's _Storms of my Grandchildren_ fits your requirements - does not talk down to the reader, but not to densely sciency. OTOH, Hansen may be seen as just another fellow traveller. I thought it was a good read, except that Hansen gets a bit preachy about some of the policy options; very "these are the only things that will work" where there are other options and his own preferences are not without problems.
Chris Mooney's _Storm World_ is a pretty good read, although it lacks the authority of Hansen. Its rather more limited in its scope, and has some niggly errors that the hard-core rejectionist is likely to fixate on.
Thanks folks. I was thinking the Hansen book (I'd support his work financially) but you've guessed right, it probably is too much 'fellow traveller'. I'll look at all of those suggestions.
>It seems my 'propaganda' and 'espionage' comment rather hit a raw nerve, judging by some of the vitriolic comments that people have typed up.
Eh? What's "vitriolic" about my question?
>The UEA isn't a private institution, it's a public one, so there should be full public disclosure of the emails.
So why aren't all university emails immediately uploaded to the respective institutional web pages? Why can't Joe Public just walk in off the street and demand access to every computer and hard drive on campus?
The rest of Andy's spiel is just froth and bubble - a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Speaking of... from where did the current gloop of numpties emanate? And if they're so convinced that the 20th century temperature rise is nonexistent, what physics do they rely on to explain such nonexistence? And what of the non-dendrological 'hockey sticks'? Are the numpties aware of just how many 'hockey sticks' there are? And how do they explain the 'blade' in each 'hockey stick'?
Hey scribe # 5. I just watch the Drum - don't need no fancy e-mail alertin for there. One can always expect the usual alarmist codswallop to turn up and be regurgitated there moist days. It's like 'shooting fish in a barrel'. :-) It's like the ABC have no investigative journalists at all to rely on. Go figure ! :-)
No, you're not getting up to speed, mike. You're failing to move at all.
Have I won the internet yet ?
Given the continuing censorship - I declare that I must have won the internet !
Yay ! :-)
And who said little ole Billy Bob Hall would never amount to anything ? :-)
P.S. Speaking if Tims, where is the 'prince of precaution' Tim Flannery these days ? Cat got his tongue too ?
?
!
See Curious Coincidences at George Mason University: Ed Wegman, Milton Johns and Ken Cuccinelli.
[http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3611206.html]
Robert Manne: A Cardinal Mistake
â
The Manne article, A cardinal mistake on climate science, is typical of mainstream press articles on climate science, in that the comments section is immediately stuffed with denialist comments shortly after publication. I've noticed this pattern over the last year, and I know what's behind it. The paid denialists have set Google News alerts so that they get an email immediately anything containing the string "global warming" or "climate change" etc is published. Easy. It's what they do, it's a job.
â
.
@5 Paid sock puppets...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Media_Strategies
Pack your bags, fellas. From the comments of the Manne article:
>It is obvious to me and many others that ever since the smoke hazed era of the hippies in the 70's to the dangerous Greem machine of today that some people will believe anything they are told. Al Gore has made a billion dollars out of his scare campaign that has been proved wrong. Tim Flannery said our reservoirs would never fill again and State Labor parties around the country built desal plants that cost a fortune and may never be used. The major problem is if you were a scientist and you were given funds to prove something, surely you would keep trying to find belief in it. There are no funds going to scientists to try and disprove climate change and therefore it is a biased argument. If the "science was in" as many are saying then why do many, many reputable scientists deny this claim. The reason is that there is a vested interest for these people to espouse there theories and make it a one sided argument. The so-called deniars, who are mostly over 40yo and haven't been subjected to Al Gores movie, have not had fear put into them by people who have a motive for their cause. GREED. They want to punish the wealthy for being successful and give it to the people who won't or don't work. Robin Hood is alive and well in the 21st century
Hey, can someone tell me - whatever happened to Lindzen & Choi's 2011 update paper, which I see got mentioned around the "skeptic" blogs in about August, but I don't recall seeing any mainstream climate blog talking about it...
[And for the historically illiterate](http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/what-was-the-shortest-letter-ever-…)
My addition was "." which is used to denote a statement.
E,g,
Yes?
Yes!
Yes.
Are three different statement meanings. All because of punctuation.
Mike, of course, being illiterate, has a problem like most teabaggers that he doesn't know what punctuation is. Or capitalisation. Or, indeed, what "teabagging" was until after someone pointed it out to them after looking so smug having thought the name up for themselves...
Any news from the Santa Fe meeting?
For fun, see Weird Anti-Science - Donna Bethell, SEPP, and Sandia.
Sandia National Laboratories is a major US lab organization, and lawyer Donna Bethell is on its Board ... and also on that of Fred Singer's SEPP.
If NAS had a Board of Directors, imagine if a Board member was an astrologer and denier of moon landings.
Sorry fellas, posted in the wrong thread. A new paradigm coming up? Gentlemen, the Jellyfish-hypothesis:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-jellyfish-global-climate.html
Saw the current iteration of the jellyfish thing a couple of weeks ago, IIRC. Doesn't appear to fundamentally change the concern about AGW in any way though.
Note that the links to related stories from that article go back to at least 2006, and at least one of them cites predictions 60+ years old that biogenic mixing might prove significant - so it's not exactly a *new paradigm*. One of the others points out that some forms of biogenic C02 effect *prevent* ocean CO2 from re-entering the atmosphere by transforming it and transporting it to the deep ocean.
For those who don't drop by Hot Topic from time to time, you might just like to look in at the post about the book Evidence-Based Climate Science (D. Easterbrook (ed.). Elsevier).
The TOC is a feast of the generally "who's not" in the science world, IMHO.
How kind and thoughtful of our host to offer an open thread just as I was getting bored by the previous one. However, with equal kindness and thoughtfulness, as your AGW theories sink slowly in the west, I am now offering you an alternative controversy to argue about. Yeah, I know, generous to a fault, that's me!
It is an example of an absolutely rock-solid scientific theory which has been fortified for decades by the, er, 'scientific consensus' (which I know you hold in great admiration) but which has now, alas, just crashed dived with virtually no survivors. Shame!
Apparently, back in 1977, a young archeologist found in America an animal bone with what looks like a spear/arrow shaft stuck in it. After studying this find he declared that it indicated that hunting humans had been active back some 13,800 years ago. Unhappily for him that went against the, er, 'consensus science' which, in its usual fashion, turned as one and shat all over him and his theory. However, current aging techniques have allowed scientists to show that he was right and the, er, 'consensus' was wrong. 'Who'da thunk it?'
At this point you will all have to don your NBC protection suits whilst placing pegs on your noses because the story is over at, and here I am dropping my voice to a whisper:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/02/scientific-consensus-fails-again-…
No, no, don't thank me . . .
And in 1856, the consensus was that CO2 levels could not cause global warming.
That consensus was wrong, just like that one about the hunting arrows.
The recent readjustment of the date when humans first arrived in the Americas is not as amazingly controversial as some [silly duffers](http://www.stupidtester.com/) think.
That theory has been changing for some time now and the new more accurate dating, on the back of more recently discovered and accurately dated artefacts was the non controversial nail in the coffin.
Another way of looking at this is of course to observe that this then suggests that the rapid die off of animal populations had more to do with human activities and less to do with natural climate change!
Who'd a thunk it, humans with nothing more than a few sticks, changing continental ecosystems. Imagine what we could achieve with the misapplication of industrial wastes! Oh, wait...
Now look here, SP, "silly duffers" is not permitted from you because I'm the one who does the truly third-rate jokes round here!
I am not sure exactly what you mean by "That theory has been changing for some time now". During the '90s the old theory was chipped at but the consensus held sway from way before then. As far as I can tell it was contemporary carbon-dating which finally stoned the old theory.
"Gustafson deemed the point [the sharp end of the weapon]the earliest known evidence of interaction between humans and mastodons. However, there was no consensus in the archaeological field as to whether or not this was provable,[4] because of the lack of indisputable proof that the point was made by humans.[5] This situation changed in 2011, when a new study of the remains definitively concluded that Gustafson was right as to both the age and the human origin of the point.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manis_Mastodon_Site
"The announcement came as sweet vindication for the now-retired Washington State University professor.
âI was pretty bitter about the whole thing [the rubbishin gof his theory] for a long time,â Gustafson, 75, recalled last week. âI donât like saying it. I never really admitted it except to my wife. It was so frustrating. But Iâm very humbled and happy it turned out this way.â
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/02/scientific-consensus-fails-again-…
Hmmmn! Yes, I can imagine a few other people in not too dissimilar fields feel much the same way. Imagine, a paradigm overthrown, 'who'da thunk it', er, well Popper did, but who pays attention to him these days?.
I seem to be overlooking the refutation of AGW in Duff's offerings ... it must be in there somewhere?
There's a huge difference between a scientific consensus based on overwhelming evidence, and a "paradigm" reflected in most scientists holding a certain view. Lacking any rebuttal of the evidence, idiots like Duff and Watts go "Look look! Scientists have been wrong before!", totally missing the point that the consensus that they were wrong, the shift in the view of scientists, is itself due to the accumulation of evidence. That most scientists agree about something is not per se important -- it's why they agree.
Slow, as in 187 years and counting. Any slower and it would be as slow as David Duff. Hope you're looking forward to dying before AGW theories do.
Check out the difference in the headline :
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/afp-chief-tony-negus-tells-of-pro…
and
http://www.smh.com.au/national/editors-bargain-with-police-20111102-1mv…
Duff thinker.
On consensus: this is mentioned, in Dr Richard Miln's excellent lecture
Please watch this and stop embarrassing yourself. There is much there from which you could learn. Do it.
Duff, do you have anything to say about BEST (a.k.a the topic of the thread?)
Bonus points if you read the paper yourself and come up with an original argument, not copy and paste from Watts (I jest of course, you would never do this).
Apart from that, congratulations for noticing that scientific consensus can change with the accumulation of evidence and a new, coherent theory. And yours is - it was cold in England in winter in the 1600's?
Questions for David Duff:
- When rain from high level clouds reaches ground level, does the RH in a Stevenson screen go up, down or remain the same?
- Why does CO2 absorb radiation in the near IR more than does O2?
- Why is there usually more frost on the roof of a car than on the doors?
- When the temperature falls after sunset, where does the heat go?
> totally missing the point that the consensus *is* that they were wrong
I think you missed out that "is" I fixed.
And, yup, the consensus is that they were wrong. But if a consensus is wrong, then the consensus that they're wrong is wrong. But if there's a consensus that a consensus is wrong, then that's wrong, so they're right, they're wrong.....
Gaaaaaahhhhh!!!!
Ah, [Olaus Petri](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…), so you're here now eh?
I'd like to [draw your attention to this](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). Perhaps you could notify Jonas N and GSW as well.
Alan, my dear old thing, I haven't a clue! You are 'talking' to a man who failed maths, physics and chemistry at school, not by a smidgeon, but by such a huge margin that I was perversely proud of it at the time - schoolboys, heh!
Er, but what has that got to do with the price of fish?
Surely, you are not suggesting that non-science swots are not permitted to comment on scientific wrangles and must just sit quietly and swallow what the, er, experts tell them? If so, do not expect such quiescence from me.
I view all experts in anything with cynical suspicion for the simple reason that I have lived long enough to have experienced the scientific certainties of the 1950s overturned in the 1960s and then the certainties that replaced them overturned yet again in the 1970s, and so on ad infinitum! Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s but now I am beginning to pick up hints and suggestions that when the cooling comes (as it likely will in my view) it is all part of the, er, warming.
In the immortal words of Richard Littlejohn, 'you couldn't make it up' - well, some science swots make some things up sometimes - and they are 'very naughty boys'!
> Er, but what has that got to do with the price of fish?
Nothing.
What does your complete and proud incompetence at science have to do with assessing the validity of the science?
A hell of a lot.
It may be a third rate joke, but you can only work with the material you're given.
[Pre-Clovis Mastodon Hunting 13,800 Years Ago at the Manis Site, Washington](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6054/351.abstract)
[Old American theory is 'speared'](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15391388)
[Mastodons were hunted in North America 800 years earlier than thought](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/20/mastodon-hunted-north-ame…)
Oh and it was [Kuhn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions) not [Popper](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper), that paradigm shift stuff.
All the power of the internet at your fingertips...
SP:
"The easist way to start a discussion about science with varied people from varied backgrounds is by mentioning Kuhn. Usually the response is positive, even enthusiastic, except from those who still want to hold 'falsifiability' as science's gold standard. These dissenters do not like Kuhn's picture of science as a collective enterprise beholden to 'paradigms'. They hark back to Karl Popper, who believed that at its best science epitomised humanity at its best. Ironically, this 'best' is simply the realisation that we can always do better. In practice, in meant that the best scientists always challenge what most people - even their fellow scientists - believe, however unpopular that may leave them."
From 'Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the soul of Science' by Steve Fuller by Steve Fuller.
Perhaps our host might like to place that last sentence at this blog's masthead!
David Duff:
Scientists' conclusions (and consensuses) are based on the accumulated evidence. When newer or better evidence emerges that demands scientists change their conclusions, if they are honest that is what they will do.
If the evidence regarding the Earth's climate changes, so will the conclusions and follow-up recommendations. Nothing sinister, incompetent, or dishonest about that, unlike the crap you, Watts, and other denialists spew.
I'd ask you to put up some evidence to support "Global cooling was stamped on by the 'Warmers' in the 1980s but now I am beginning to pick up hints and suggestions that when the cooling comes (as it likely will in my view) it is all part of the, er, warming.", but between [your admission](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php?u…) of being "a man who failed maths, physics and chemistry at school, not by a smidgeon, but by such a huge margin that I was perversely proud of it at the time" and your ongoing apparent incompetence as illustrated by your posts on this and other threads, I won't hold my breath.
Others have already pointed out that AGW has already spent its time as 'fringe science', notably since Angstrom's time, but was resuscitated after the work of Gilbert Plass and others during the Cold War.
Also, while I'm sure most would agree you're entitled to your opinion on AGW (or other sciences) and you're even entitled to express it in most fora, you're not entitled to it (or you) being taken seriously or left unchallenged when others find errors, falsehoods, or fallacies.
Self-professed ignoramus predicts global cooling.
Now that I come to think of it, David, perhaps you can give us some actual examples of the: "scientific certainties of the 1950s overturned in the 1960s and then the certainties that replaced them overturned yet again in the 1970s, and so on ad infinitum".
Or at least, any examples that would be as significant as AGW being disproved or found to be insignificant/harmless.
As noted above, until the 1950s AGW was seemingly relegated to the scientific dustbin until new evidence came in showing that human-emitted CO2 could, indeed, continue to warm the atmosphere.
Words such as the above are wasted on morons.
Composer99:
"When newer or better evidence emerges that demands scientists change their conclusions, if they are honest that is what they will do."
'If' is such an enormous word for only two letters, don't you think?
As to your last question, just off the top of my head:
"In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science ânever mindsâ are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesnât really help fend off Alzheimerâs disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries."
Extract from an article entitled with great accuracy:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-…
I guess you'd better get to showing why the current science is wrong, then, Dai.
Chop chop.
David, reliance on opinion pieces in mainstream journals and newspapers does not an informed person make.
Have you tried researching the various medical trials etc. that are implicated by your reading matter.
I am acquainted with a number of people just like you, those who confess with perverse pride, that the meaning of science lessons passed them by.
And there are many more in the media who honk on about things about which they clearly know nothing. Melanie Phillips springs to mind and I could mention others who generally inhabit the pages of The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Times as well as their weekend derivatives.
Here is a nice little quote from within the covers of 'Trick or Treatment' by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst (about the false hopes raised by and dangers of altenative medicine) that fits the bill;
Which explains how you have become so ignorantly opinionated for you study only the opinion of those who are like yourself - missed the value of the sciences but fail to recognise that this disqualifies them from expecting their opinion to be valued in the context of matters of science.
Lionel:
"opinion pieces in mainstream journals and newspapers does not an informed person make."
So you didn't bother to read it then!
Chris O'Neil:
I didn't predict global cooling I merely suggested that it was 'likely' as opposed to 'unlikely' but neither word is definitive. And anyone who predicts the definite future in regard to global climate is either a fool or a computer modeller!
[David Duff](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php?u…):
Dr Gorski over at Science-Based Medicine is way ahead of you with his [counter](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/lies-damned-lies-and-scie…) to that particular piece of work.
In addition:
(1) Given how recent the Atlantic article is, I'm not sure it really qualifies as showing scientific consensus getting turned over in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on. Which you personally witnessed, right?
(2) Ioannidis' findings are hardly revolutionary in medical research circles. A lot of novel research fails to pan out into meaningful clinical outcomes. Not all of it turns into any sort of scientific consensus to be subsequently overturned.
(3) Medical science research, with its messy outcomes and tight constraints on the kind of research that can be performed (for good reason) is a rather different field from climate science - especially given the rather basic premises that undergird AGW.
I am waiting for David Duff to show me the scientific consensus around gravity is wrong.
David
That is your assumption, and incorrect, not mine.
Have you read the IPCC First Assesment Report or the three that have followed it?
Are you even aware how many parts the later ones are in let alone chapters?
Further try reading the books listed here:
Books of Interest.
If you have trouble understanding any then look up David Archer's on-line Chicago University lectures (which provide meat for some of his books) there are on-line tools there to play with also. I could offer other suggestions but all in good time.
Your Atlantic article was, as I was already aware, a skewed and cherry picked article, check out Composer99's link and then dig around behind.
That is the problem with opinion pieces, written by somebody who knows little and read by those who know less and couldn't care about truth.
Are you always this obtuse or just pretending to be? Your throw away remark about climate modellers opens up another can of your ignorance. Go find a copy of 'The Warming Papers' to get a flavour of such.
PS. Duff
This is your grammatical train crash not mine:
If you are going to quote somebody at least do it correctly, but then mangling the words of others is how you and your heroes operate isn't it>
Self-professed ignoramus thinks "predicts" means "certainty".
What a surprise a self-professed ignoramus would think that.
Steve Fuller and David Duff are a fine pair of idiots and ignoramuses.
You are permitted to display your ignorance, stupidity, and intellectual dishonesty.
@31
I await the day that the practitioners of alternate climate theory follow Mr Duffs advice and begin the process of questioning their own assertions, pronouncements and assumptions.
Just to begin the process of becoming good scientists.
Ianam:
Setting aside your gruntish boorishness I do want to thank you for that link to the piece on Fuller. No time now but I have saved it for reading later. Looks very interesting.
Re SP @47
Breaking news from CNN-CP
Date: 1/4/2637. Time: 00:17. Location: Alert, Ellesmere Island, CD, USA
Climate denialism may be dead
"Yes. Hell is possibly about to freeze over.", said new IPCC Chairbot m/c #137F from outside her office, in balmy uptown Alert.
"Just as the last swath of grass disappears from Earth -- from the small town of Hopeless Causeway, South Georgia -- and as Alert appears ready to surpass it's previous record March average monthly temperature (2.7°C), the last three denialists -- Verger Mole-Hill, Judy McIntyre and Ross Monckton -- seem ready, finally, to concede that they were wrong all along.", reports a jubilant m/c #137F.
.
.
.
.
Ha, ha, ha! Fooled you. April fool you.
My, er, science is validated and will soon be the basis of a consensus! Remember I warned you about this months ago:
"An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is set to pass closer to Earth than the moon - the nearest anything this big has come to our planet in 35 years."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057502/Giant-asteroid-p…
So don't worry about losing your 'end-of-the-world-is-nigh' scenario because there are always plenty more to follow!
> Remember I warned you about this months ago:
Really? You predicted that everyone else would agree with you that an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will be is set to pass closer to the earth than the moon?
Where did you make that prediction?
The Daily Mail!?
What with him being 'kill'ed, I, too, would have missed any such unimportant duff "warning" here ... and in the scientific organ that is the Daily Mail(!).
However, by keeping an eye on NASA's NEO program page you can be sure to catch the littler ones as well as the aircraft-carrier-sized ones.
Ooh, look. They reported about YU55 8 months ago. And they knew when and where it was coming some years ago now.
Time to get the dust of your 6-incher... reflector that is.
Be sure to look out for 2001 WN5 in June 2028 now.
Duff
How can that be? You have written yourself that you are not a scientist.
How big an aircraft carrier are they on about, 20000 tons, 32000 tons, 52000 tons or 80000+ tons? Typical imprecision from a red-top rag of the type where they often describe a frigate or destroyer as a battleship rather than the more correct generic warship.
Don't overlook that the red-top rag in question is the source of the devious deception that kicked off the Rosegate thread here.
Now if you had worked on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier you would have had a good deal more to worry about than the bellowing of an SNCO, I guess that was National Service for you.
Not only do you read cherry picked based articles but engage in the practice yourself by ignoring many direct questions or responses to your blinkered views of the world.
Leo Tolstoy summed up why you continue to remain so proudly ignorant and known as the Tolstoy syndrome:
Re-quoted from Singh & Ernst, 2009, pp. 283
There is ignorance and wilful ignorance and it is the latter which you display in spades and thus display excursions of profound stupidity.
I thought that the "er" in "My, er, science" along with the exlamation mark at the end would give you 'scientific' brain-boxes the merest hint that incoming irony was to be expected. Needless to say you all missed it and took it seriously. My God, what a po-faced bunch you are - and one of you actually quotes Tolstoy a man who reached historic levels of misery. For goodness sake, go and get yourselves a sense of humour.
What, precisely, was supposed to have been funny about it?
The only amusing thing I can find is your scrabbling about for some reason for that post.
You certainly haven't given any prediction of yours.
Since when did passive-aggressive, snide smears become irony?
Now if you want irony, consider the astounding lack of it in [Alanis Morisette's song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc&ob=av2e) on the subject.
Computing science legend and formidable intellect of the 1990s sci.environment gladiatorial arena, John McCarthy, died October 24 in Stanford. The NYT [obituary](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/science/26mccarthy.html) is quite good.
With Dennis Ritchie that's two giants of the modern era gone in an eyeblink. Wide-eyed greenies who won't do arithmetic will be the more relieved by McCarthy's demise :)
His ["sustainability pages"](http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/) contain a lot of great stuff, just beware that he was very much the techo-optimist with what might be called a bit of a tin ear for the nuances of global warming debate. He was very enthusiastic for nuclear power.
Vale jmc it was an honour and pleasure crossing swords with you, always gentleman and scholar.
Duff, nothing is more boorish than your intellectual dishonesty, your smug stupidity, your laughing off of your responsibility to take evidence, logic, and the arguments of others into account.
That's the same thing I hear from boors when they crack jokes about women, blacks, gays, the disabled, the obese ... in your case the butt of your jokes are science and reason.
McCarthy was a huge influence on Computer Science. He was also quite a political reactionary.
From the NYT Obit:
In the long run he'll be more right than wrong.
Not so on global warming, however. From http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ideology.html is remarkable for how blind McCarthy was to his being an utter crank on global warming, capped by
Sounds like a first class fella', that John McCarthy. Mind you, the other McCarthy wasn't all bad!
Oh, and Ian, have you heard the one about the fat, black, quadraplegic lesbian . . . ?
Well, it's been over three months since the CRU released all of the raw "climategate" temperature data that deniers had accused it of hiding.
That means that the deniers have had that entire data-set in their hot little hands for quite some time now. Certainly, the folks who had been screaming so loudly for the CRU raw data-set must have jumped right on it when it was released and started working hard to cross-check the CRU's global-temperature results.
So just wondering... does anyone out there know if any of the deniers who had been demanding the CRU data have any preliminary results out yet?
Just
@62 caerbannog
"does anyone out there know if any of the deniers who had been demanding the CRU data have any preliminary results out yet?"
Most farming activities are very time-consuming. I imagine cherry picking is just as time-consuming as haying.
My, er, sides are, er, splitting.
Duff, if nobody understood that you were attempting some form of "humour", it would suggest to me that you aren't actually funny.
I also note that you are far less accepting of humour when the mockery is aimed at yourself. When that happens you whine and cry that everyone is "unpleasant" to you. What a precious, simpering lot you deniers are.
But let's all go back to laughing at the dribbling idiot who believes a city being cold in winter 400 years ago is proof that AGW is all a scam, and that any day now it's going to begin cooling again. The fool who admits he knows nothing but certain the scientists are lying. What a clown!
Good to see that double standards are maintained on a site which applies them across the board, not just on science. Thus, Ian can freely liken me to:
"boors when they crack jokes about women, blacks, gays, the disabled, the obese
but when I return the compliment using the same, perfectly respectable categories but with alternate words which mean exactly the same (redacted lest anyone faint):
"f*t, b***k, qu********ic, les***ns"
my comment is censored. Good thinking, Lambert, that's the sort of thing which has maintained your deserved reputation where it is!
Duffy Duck, AGAIN with the conspiracy thinking, huh?
Read what appears under comment #63 and then repeat with me:
"No, David Duff has NOT been censored; it's just that swear words put David Duff's comment in moderation, which entails a modicum of delay. Oh, and by the way, David Duff's comment was caught by the swear filter because, unlike the other comment David Duff referred to, David Duff's comment used derogatory terms instead of neutral terms."
Why don't you do like a tree, David?
I can because you are like them in a way, as I explained; are you really too stupid to understand such a simple analogy?
You are such a retarded dolt, Duff ... and a Luddite. See, there are these things called filters, and they automatically block posts with certain words, regardless of who posts them --- what, you thought Tim was hovering over his keyboard and caught and deleted your message a fraction of second after you hit Post? Do you think that none of us has ever had posts blocked or held? That's the implication of "double standards" but, as you are clueless about the application of evidence, you reach totally unwarranted conclusions ... now that your post has been released from the hold (a number of mine have never been released from a hold ... does that mean that Tim has double standards that he exercises against me?), will you retract your whine and admit what a boorish idiot you are? That would be the civilized thing to do.
Oh, and my name is not Ian, you moron.
I'm re-opening my Decoding SwiftHack blog.
-- frank
Oh, and your reposting the same words with asterisks suggests that you do understand automatic filtering, and so you are displaying the primary common trait of deniers -- dishonesty. Although it is possible, though difficult to fathom, that your streak of their second most common trait, stupidity, runs so deep that you actually believe that Tim censors (only) deniers when they use those words but not if they obscure them with asterisks.
But in any case it seems clear that you really are so stupid that you don't understand analogies; that you think that when I liken you to people who tell such jokes I am suggesting that you are a racist, homophobe, etc. (not that it would be at all surprising if you are). Of course I am doing no such thing ... the way you are like them is in your boorish, cowardly avoidance of legitimate criticism of your offensive garbage by saying it was just a joke and accusing people of lacking of a sense of humor.
And here's another question for David Dumb as Dirt Duff: If Tim applies a double standard, treating the words in my posts differently than in yours, then why is it that he let through both my post #59 and your post #67 that quoted the words of #59 that you think received special treatment just because it was me and not you who posted them? How about explaining exactly what this double standard of Tim's is and how he applied it to the posts here -- how you adduced this double standard from the evidence. To fail to either do so or to admit that you are a clueless idiot and apologize for your trolling here would be quite boorish.
A 'holding bay', you mean like those pens where you screen immigrants before deciding what do with them. Gosh, how have I managed over the last six years without one? I just publish anything that comes unless, as on one or two occasions, the stream of obscenities is too, too, boring. And what happens to the ones who are not allowed out of the 'filter shed', the "unknown unknowns", as it were? Sent to that 'great gulag in the ether', I suppose.
By the way, Ianam (sorry, you Lordship, if I misconstrued your famous name), did you hear or read that apparently we have all been spewing forth even greater amounts of CO2 than ever before! Yes, I know, I know, shockin', shockin'! Still, given that, and presumably you don't argue with it, then it's a bit surprising that the climate swots can't agree whether or not global temperatures have increased or not over the last ten years. I mean, with all that extra carbon (President Hu Jintao, you are a very naughty boy!) there really shouldn't be any argument, should there?
David le Duff said: "I mean, with all that extra carbon (President Hu Jintao, you are a very naughty boy!) there really shouldn't be any argument, should there"?
Only in the simplistic minds of the most simplistic of simpletons who can only conceive of simple concepts, which is of course who Denier Central targets with exactly the kind of pap reasoning you just displayed.
Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC, or is your opinion (inasmuch as it's really second hand) all spoon-fed to you from think tank PR web outlets specifically designed to keep your well-upholstered arse politically onside?
Chek @ 73
Duff the old buffer has already avoiding answering that point put by myself (see #43) and seems to prefer to remain an opinionated self confessed science ignoramus. Duff is a serial question avoider.
Interesting how he keeps using the rope we pay out.
I'll take your failure to withdraw your BS about a "double standard" as an admission that you are a cowardly boor ... a dishonest sack of garbage who does not admit to mistakes or take into account the arguments of others, a smug smear of excrement not worth anyone's time.
I will respond to one more thing from the dishonest dolt Davd Duff:
a) The report is about the about of CO2 released in 2010, which would affect future temperatures (like, those of the next 100 years, due to the persistence of C02 in the atmosphere), not those of the previous decade. b) There are other factors that temporarily affect global temperatures, dimwit. What is not surprising is that every argument put up by dumbass deniers such as yourself has well known rebuttals that you are not aware of or simply ignore ... the hallmark of a boor.
I am still waiting for David Duff to show there is no such thing as scientific consensus by demonstrating it with respect to gravity.
All of the above comments are just distracting Davy boy and I would ask everyone to desist until Davy boy has demonstrated how there is no such thing as scientific consensus.
Davy boy I will pay for the venue where you can demonstrate your belief.
Jeremy, apologies, I didn't forget about you, I was just a bit embarrassed by your question, er, not for me but for you! At least one can hold a reasonable conversation with you and I had no wish to spoil a budding, beautiful friendship by pointing out that what I was saying was that scientific consensus does exist which is precisely why Kuhn and Popper disagreed about it and the manner in which it is constantly ruptered. And that is the whole history of science since Ptolemy's cosmological consensus was blown apart.
By the way, I gather that gravity has not yet been reconciled with quantum theory. Also, like a 'hanging chad' we still have the potentially embarrassing problem of those naughty nutrinos exceeding the speed limit!
I worry for you, Ianam, you are beginning to resemble those choleric figures in a Bateman cartoon. Indeed, I was drawing attention to the 2010 carbon emission increase because I thought that you, and everyone else on this thread, will know (because none of you ever stop prating on about it) that carbon emissions are constantly increasing and have been doing so for decades and yet all we have (as a rough estimate) is a paltry rise in global temperatures which has been entirely beneficial, leading to an increase of several billion in human population, not least because in warmer climes more things grow.
Anyway, at least Chek has sent me to bed with a chuckle:
"Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC".
Oh, my giddy aunt, what a hoot! Chek, I sleep quite well, thank you for asking (er, you were asking, weren't you?) and have no need for a non-narcotic equivalent to sleeping pills.
"Have you ever actually read even a summary report by the IPCC".
Duff:"I ... have no need".
As long as you're clear on how it came to be that it's your own ignorance that makes you an easy mark and a willing receptacle for the stupidity you believe.
[Bingo!](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php?u…)
> Indeed, I was drawing attention to the 2010 carbon emission increase because ... carbon emissions are constantly increasing and have been doing so for decades and yet all we have (as a rough estimate) is a paltry rise in global temperatures which has been entirely beneficial,...
Good grief - one of *those* idiots!
All the while *proudly* acknowledging his complete lack of scientific acumen whilst loudly proclaiming certain positions on certain scientific questions by appealing to carefully selected "evidence" and pseudo-logic. No doubt the inconsistency between the two has not yet penetrated his consciousness.
Seems to me like he's jealous of Curtin's thread and he wants one of his own. He's certainly demonstrated that he can limbo under the intellectual bar with ease, and that he's got the never-acknowledge-error-just-redirect feint down pat.
David Duff believes the deniers have shot enough holes in scientists arguments that he doesn't even have to read the scientific evidence. He just knows they've dismantled it, even though he doesn't know what it is they'be dismantled.
Also it's cooling:
>Incidentally, âLittle Willyâ, whatâs happened to all that global warming in the last 10 years?
>...Well I've got the mother of all trend lines - it's called a Loess line - and no I haven't a clue what it means, but if you go here you will see a pretty picture of several of them for the same 20 year period and guess what, it shows either temperatures holding steady or cooling slightly...
>...but the consensus of satellite measurements (generally considered to be the most reliable instruments) shows that at best the global temperature is in a state of hiatus but at worst (from his point of view) it has actually cooled slightly.
When does this cooling begin Duff? Do you have any evidence, or do you base your scientific views on your political beliefs that controlling Co2 emissions is wrong?
I await another hilarious, irony-filled comment with bated breath. Maybe you'll blame global warming on Irish women! Minorities! Ha ha!
Self-professed ignoramus Duff:
Climate swots have a concept called uncertainty which prevents them from saying for sure that underlying warming has occured in the past 10 years or whether its just due to random variation. But scientific ignoramuses, especially self-professed one like Duff, probably have difficulty with the concept of uncertainty. This is not surprising considering that uncertainty was a relatively recent concept to be developed in mathematics and is a difficult concept for a lot of people to understand, as we can see from the number of people who are sucked in by gambling.
So it's not surprising that a scientific ignoramus like Duff just doesn't get it.
I will be happy to because, as I noted, the dishonest and willfully ignorant sack of feces simply isn't worth any effort.
"Good grief - one of those idiots!"
I think it's the spectacles. Unable to observe that people who use a perfectly constructed set of steps don't always take the same amount of time to get from the bottom to the top.
No, no, no they cry. She can't possibly have taken a whole minute to get up here ... I once measured it as taking exactly 17 seconds. When you explain that she tripped on the pen that some thoughtless clown had dropped on one of the steps .... That's not possible, I didn't see it happen.
And the next person who takes more (or less) time, didn't hesitate when someone called his name .... or go up two steps at a time . .... or ... or
It's the spectacles. Can't see what's in front of them. Can't see through walls or round corners so can't observe directly what someone else tells them.
Just for fun: Denial Tango by the Men with Day Jobs ...
Bummer; I was hoping this would be a usable thread.
At last, a gleam of common and scientific sense from Chris O'Neill:
"Climate swots have a concept called uncertainty which prevents them from saying for sure that underlying warming has occured in the past 10 years or whether its just due to random variation."
I couldn't have put it better myself. Quelle courage, mon ami, but standby for incoming. To paraphrase the immortal Cpl. Jones, 'They don't like uncertainty up 'em, Capt. Mainwaring' - especially around here! Oh dear, I think that thud was Ianam fainting away at the thought of 'uncertainty' - smelling salts anyone?
Anyway, I think this particular dead horse has been flogged enough so I will depart - for now - leaving you with this quote from some swot called Dr. Pat Michaels:
"âThe last ten years of the BEST data indeed show no statistically significant warming trend, no matter how you slice and dice themâ. He adds: âBoth records are in reasonable agreement about the length of time without a significant warming trend. In the CRU record it is 15.0 years. In the University of Alabama MSU it is 13.9, and in the Remote Sensing Systems version of the MSU it is 15.6 years.â"
Yeah, yeah, I know, he's the wrong sort of swot for you but, hey, you pick your swots and I'll pick mine! Ttfn.
Duff, how long a period do we need using the data to show statistical significance? Whether that be warming, cooling or stable?
Hint: Pat Michaels doesn't disclose this vital information, while on the other hand, truly inquisitive scientist seek out the answer to such questions.
David Duff.
I note that you have been spraying a lot around here, but without actually putting anything on the table. As a rusted-on denialist of anthropogenic global warming, and thus of the attendant consequences, you should therefore feel the courage of your convictions and be prepared to accept the challenge that I have put to others, as [outlined here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…).
I will take the next posting on Deltoid by you, that does not explicitly decline the challenge, as being an explicit acceptance of the same challenge. That will please me greatly, and I am sure that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW will welcome you to their little fraternity.
Oo, and should you find yourself posting on the same thread as those personages, could you draw their attention to [the third paragraph of this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). I am keen to establish a fund to mitigate in a small way some of the impacts that will occur concurrently with the fulfillment of my challenge, and their cooperation in enabling me to recover moneys owed would be most helpful.
And frankly, given that their anti-science stances on the matter are contributing to global delay on emissions action, it is only right and fair that they should compensate for the damage that they are helping to inflict...
David Duff.
I note that you have been spraying a lot around here, but without actually putting anything on the table. As a rusted-on denialist of anthropogenic global warming, and thus of the attendant consequences, you should therefore feel the courage of your convictions and be prepared to accept the challenge that I have put to others, as [outlined here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…).
I will take the next posting on Deltoid by you, that does not explicitly decline the challenge, as being an explicit acceptance of the same challenge. That will please me greatly, and I am sure that Jonas N, Olaus Petri, and GSW will welcome you to their little fraternity.
Oo, and should you find yourself posting on the same thread as those personages, could you draw their attention to [the third paragraph of this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/10/october_2011_open_thread.php#co…). I am keen to establish a fund to mitigate in a small way some of the impacts that will occur concurrently with the fulfillment of my challenge, and their cooperation in enabling me to recover moneys owed would be most helpful.
And frankly, given that their anti-science stances on the matter are contributing to global delay on emissions action, it is only right and fair that they should compensate for the damage that they are helping to inflict...
Duff
The only dead horse around here is you Duff, it would seem that you have died of thirst for although one can lead a horse to water making him drink thereof is another matter if he has decided that the water poses a danger to his twisted world view.
Yet another proof of that cognitive distortion is displayed by citing an FFFC (fossil fuel fund corrupted - think Western Fuels for starters and this) one time scientist as an expert for your arguments.
As for no statistically significant warming - do you understand the context and how that now after a further lapse of time the statistical significance has increased to become statistically significant at the 95% level? Would you take a flight if the chances of the aircraft crashing were only 94.something % certain rather than 95%? The above provides a big contextual hint that even a self confessed science ignoramus should be able to grasp if they are truly 'reasonably intelligent' as the claim.
Now as for that silly no warming claim that has been debunked so many times Tamino has put more flesh on the answer to that beast, pay particular attention to graph number four in that article. Clear enough for you?
As for the TTFN - getting to hot for you? Is your cognitive dissonance beginning to break down as the truth dawns?
PS. Duff
Just in case the above was not enough there is more on my Tamino based point here.
Small typo un-noticed first time around in #93 corrected here:
The above provides a big contextual hint that even a self confessed science ignoramus should be able to grasp if they are truly 'reasonably intelligent' as they claim.
Interesting. Duff's gone (in his usual incoherent, "irony" laden and bitterly unfunny way) from "it's cooling" to "there's no significant warming trend".
You'd think he'd just have the guts to admit that his acceptance of science is based on his political ideology, but he's every bit the gormless coward we've come to expect.
Guys, there's no point trying to explain science to Duff. He's already admitted he didn't want to accept AGW so he just shopped around until he found some reasons to doubt it.
No arguing with him is going to change the fact he's a right-wing twerp who can never accept anything that might challenge his inflexible and delusional political ideology. Remember - you're arguing with someone who believes the fact it was cold in winter 400 years ago (and even then couldn't get his basic facts right) is proof that AGW is wrong.
#88
Appalling stupidity, not worth further comment.
Self-professed ignoramus Duff:
Still waiting.
As he reiterates with
But, being not just utterly dishonest but dumber than a doorknob, he can't grasp that all the "swot"'s agree with the statement but that it's no more relevant than someone looking at waves of water traveling up a ramp and claiming that there's no upward motion because, if you pick a distance less than a wavelength and the right starting point, it appears that the water is descending. You can show an idiot like Duff a picture of the water going up the ramp and they will still point you to a ramp-denial website with a graph of the tail of the wave and a negative trendline.
Dishonest Duff is more than just a right wing twerp. He is a crypto-creationist twerp. Just look at the way he admires arch-creationist Steve Fuller.
There is a large strain of Christian conservatism, including creationists, fundamentalists and evangelicals, that finds theological justification for denying AGW: humans cannot threaten global catastrophe; only God can destroy the planet, as he did in the past with Noah's flood. Climatologist Roy Spencer is one of these.
At first, Spencer set out to disprove that global warming was happening at all. Spencer published false satellite data that allegedly showed tropospheric cooling, but when these data were proven false, Spencer changed tack. Now adopting the mantle of a free market advocate - and he is in receipt of money from oil companies like Exxon-Mobil - Spencer claims that climate change is occurring, but is not human-caused. (On his blog, he states "Climate change â it happens, with or without our help.")
He does the rounds claiming "climate is self-stabilizing due to large negative feedbacks," but this hides his real belief that God is behind the changing climate.
Spencer lays out some of his his AGW-creationist theology here:
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2004/07/gaia-or-god.html
Although it's mainly an anti-Green diatribe, his opposition to environmentalism is largely theological, which he hints at here:
The theology behind that statement is not clear, but it is spelled out in the first article of faith of the Cornwall Alliance, of which Spencer is a member of the board of advisors:
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaratio…
The Cornwall Alliance quote makes it quite plain that the Earth's climate systems are an Intelligent Design issue.
Silkworm.
The Cornwall Alliance's "evangelical declaration on global-warming" raises an interesting question, to wit: when the Arctic sea ice eventually melts completely in summer, is the existence of God thus disproved by the Alliance's own criteria?
And if there is back-pedalling on the eventual occurrence of such melting, will there be an admission of the non-existence of God when the global anomaly exceeds 3C? 4C? 5C?
What about when global sea level increases by 1 metre? 2 metres? 5? 10?
At some point humans will change the ecology and the climate of the planet to such an extent that no reasonable person could claim that God is "sustain[ing the planet] by His faithful providence". It would seem to me that the Cornwall Alliance has a priori written the obituary for Christianity's God, as perceived by modern Fundamentalists.
I find it ironic that many creationists who refuse to accept AGW and instead support the confusion sown by Oil companies. Oil companies, of course, supply "fossil" fuels.
> ...will there be an admission of the non-existence of God when the global anomaly exceeds 3C? 4C? 5C?
Of course not!
The first rule of fundamentalist religion is that *all* evidence *always* demonstrates that your religion is correct (even if this requires refuting your own earlier claims that you (say) understood God's will on a particular matter, preferably not noticing the contradiction).
The second rule of fundamentalist religion is that you don't mention the first rule - not even to yourself.
Silkworm,
The Cornwall Alliance is a response to the gathering awareness amongst conservative evangelical groups that trashing the environment is not consistent with God's idea of stewardship. A number of evangelical leaders were put wise to the science behind AGW and the ideology of deniers by John Houghton who is also an evangelical christian.
So obviously the deniers have to stop that taking hold.
I find the language used by the Cornwall Alliance on their website very clever. They fill it with the sort of words and phrases certain types of evangelicals quite often respond to. You can't overestimate how cunning deniers can be when they target specific groups.
@103
"I find it ironic that many creationists who refuse to accept AGW and instead support the confusion sown by Oil companies. Oil companies, of course, supply "fossil" fuels."
This is simply a misnomer as all funtementalists know. Oil actually comes from deep within the earth's mantle and is constantly oozing upward. No "fossil" involved. I have actually heard this from a fundie a couple of years ago as he denied that there was any change of Peak Oil.
See "Abiogenic petroleum origin" for more on this. To be fair, the generally respected 20th C scientist, Thomas Gold, espoused this theory.
Abiotic oil, yes I have come across this silly meme too (look up Oil is Mastery if you have some time to waste), one frequently associated with the idea that the Earth is expanding with the near fit of the Eastern coastline of South America with the West coast of Africa being the proof - an expanding jig-saw puzzle.
The carbon tax, the prelude to a greenhosue gas emissions cap and trade scheme, was just passed by the Australian Senate and so will now become law.
Maybe now our descendants will not judge us quite so harshly.
[Gaz](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…).
Hopefully so.
And hopefully our descendants will see the climate change denialists, and the politicians and vested interests who are trying to resist appropriately pricing carbon, for the selfish, planet- and future-damaging vandals that they are.
Don't hold back, now, Bernard - tell us what you *really* think!
As part of a TV news item on the passing of the Carbon tax by the Australian Senate, I noticed the most ironically named position in Australian politics that is held by Geoff Hunt. It is: Opposition spokesman for climate action.
SwiftHacker sighting: http://ijish.livejournal.com/38158.html
Hey Deltoids!
Kinda special occasion here in Deltoid-land that deserves comment, I think.
The Jonas thread has postively blown through the 2,000 comment mark and now registers 2,020 comments and climbing.
Curiously, the very first comment in the Jonas thread boasted, "Deltoid, the place where trolls come to die."
Perhaps you Deltoids might find it interesting that all of the other Deltoid posts since 12 Sept, the date Jonas was banished to his ghetto-thread, have attracted, in total, a mere 965 comments. Yep, less than half the number appearing on the Jonas thread.
I dunno, guys, but it looks like Jonas didn't "die" after all. Rather, he and his thread appear to be the only signs of vitality in the whole of the Deltoid bad-lands. Indeed, it might be said that the Jonas thread has swallowed the Deltoid blog whole.
So let me get this straight, Deltoids. You lefties can't even construct a decent memory-hole anymore? And that used to be one of your supreme specialties. What a bunch of useless-eaters!
mike:
> Rather, he and his thread appear to be the only signs of vitality in the whole of the Deltoid bad-lands.
Yep, indeed, just a mass of crawling cockroaches and maggots in mountain of garbage is a sign of "vitality" compared to those lifeless plates of food being served up in those restaurants.
> Indeed, it might be said that the Jonas thread has swallowed the Deltoid blog whole.
Yeah, I agree that if you keep paying attention to the cockroaches and maggots, you can get that impression...
-- frank
@ no. 114
So the Jonas thread is crawling with "cockroaches and maggots", is it? Well, let's just pick out some of those creepy-critters:
Wow
Jeff Harvey
John Mashey
Eli Rabett
chek
Bernard J (incidentally, BJ, seems to be using the Jonas thread to set up some sort of inter-net gambling operation--is that legal?)
Neven
And a whole bunch of other guys you'd know, frank.
"Cockroaches and maggots"--I dunno, frank, that's a little harsh. I mean it works and all, I'm not disputing that, but let me just say, non-judgementally, that I wouldn't have called them that.
Oh, them. They're doing the work of janitors. Beneath them, I'd say.
So what's next? A blog thread taken over by spammers is also a sign of "vitality"?
-- frank
> to set up some sort of inter-net gambling operation--is that legal
Only if you ascribe to government interference in the private actions of individuals and the free market necessary, mike.
Then again you're a greedy coward without the courage to put your money where your mouth is.
@ no. 116
"Janitors"? No, frank, janitors perform honest labor--a noble, if under-appreciated, craft. So that nomenclature doesn't work, frank. The more I think about it, your original "cockroaches and maggots" is the best terminology after all. Add "useless-eaters" and I'll got with it, frank.
So, frank, maybe I misunderstood, but you seemed to make out in your last comment that you and your greenshirt soul-mates here on Deltoid are superior to janitors. Did I get something wrong there? So do you and your pals, frank, think you're superior to janitors and their honest labors?
Yes, mike, honest work is something you can't recognise, since you've never done an honest days work in your life.
Just trolled and rolled.
mike:
You know, when you keep shifting your 'arguments' just to attack other people with no regard for consistency, it makes you look stupid. And more importantly, it makes you become stupid.
Either you think that the "Jonas thread" is a supreme model of "life" and "vitality" unlike the surrounding "badlands", or you think it's a mountain of garbage filled with cockroaches and maggots. If you try to think both at the same time, your brain will explode (or maybe it already has).
-- frank
@ no. 117
You say, Wow, "...you're [moi]...without the courage to put your money where your mouth is." Or, just possibly, I'm smart enough not to place any bets with a welcher like you, Wow. Actually, it's the latter, Wow.
And then, I don't wager as a matter of principle. Get involved with that nasty vice and you end up in the unsavory company of people like you, Wow, and BJ. Not my kind of people.
@ no. 120
frank, you are good. I gotta admit it. Can't get over on you. O. K. you've forced me to it--the guys mentioned by name in comment no. 115, above, are a bunch of "cockroaches and maggots" just like you say. Happy now, frank?
> Or, just possibly, I'm smart enough not to place any bets with a welcher like you
Thereby showing how little you read, since it was Bernard J who proposed it.
Given your howler here, who believes you've read anything before coming to your "conclusions" earlier..!
re #111 : 'Opposition spokesman for climate action.'
That's what we call a carbondioxymoron.
[Mike](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…):
>I dunno, guys, but it looks like Jonas didn't "die" after all.
[Wanna bet](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5784133)?
>And then, I don't wager as a matter of principle. Get involved with that nasty vice and you end up in the unsavory company of people like you, Wow, and BJ. Not my kind of people.
I've never placed a bet in my life. I'm more than willing to start though, if it means taking Jonas N and his mates to the meat of their contradictions of professional science. It is extremely interesting that the intellectual exercise of attempting to make Jonas N and his cronies stand by their claims, completely escapes you.
Oh, and mike... if you find "unsavoury" the company of people who trust heavily peer-reviewed, and heavily tested and re-tested, science, then you'll probably find that the company that you do keep is most undesirable indeed...
mike:
But didn't you say the "Jonas thread" is a sterling example of "life" and "vitality" earlier? So how can it also be infested with cockroaches and maggots?
That's the problem with you denialists -- you don't care a damn about finding the truth. The thing is, there's a truth about the world, and we know that this truth has to abide by certain rules -- you know, simple things such as 'a single person can't be physically be in two places at the same time'. So those of us who care about the truth also care about abiding by these rules.
You, on the other hand, are just throwing out random bullshit to attack other people, and you don't care if the random bullshit doesn't make sense when put together. You hate the idea of truth-seeking.
And that, my friend, is why your global warming "skepticism" is bullshit.
-- frank
Steve McIntyre is dog-whistling to his readers, linking Mike Mann to the paedophile football coach, which his readers picked up on by the first comment with this gem:
"First the Hockey Team, now the Football Team!"
Could the deniers really stoop any lower? What sort of character assassination is it to try and link climate scientists to a child molester on the basis that they both worked at the same university?
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/10/penn-state-president-fired/#comments
>Steve McIntyre is dog-whistling to his readers, linking Mike Mann to the paedophile football coach, which his readers picked up on by the first comment with this gem:
>"First the Hockey Team, now the Football Team!"
And picked up by the odious Aynsley Kellow, no less.
Personally, I think people who try to confabulate Person A with Person B, simply because both people work at the same (very large) institution, and because it serves the confabulators' ideological purposes to so do, are really not much better (and perhaps not any better at all), than the kiddy-fiddlers they use for the shit-smearing.
And in case it doesn't click for any dog-whistler sympathisers reading, I did not confabulate...
The last sentence makes a lie of the one that preceded it.
Hey Deltoids!
Well, I see my latest foray into Deltoid-land has yielded, in reply, a rich crop of those literal-minded, dreadfully serious, can't-take-a-joke, aren't-I-a-smarty-pants, I'm-so-much-better-than-janitors, self-important, wonder-why-I-can't-get-a-date, sanctimonious,idiot comments for which you Deltoids are famous. BJ was the only disappointment in that his response, by Deltoid standards, was almost that of a normal human being. But frank more than compensated for BJ's lapse.
But unlike the other comments I received, ianam's bold bid (comment no. 129) to break into the inner-circle of Deltoid's atomic-brain trust is worth a few individualized moments of my precious time.
You say, ianam, "The last sentence makes a lie of the one that preceded it." (again, comment no. 129). Well, I hate to break to you ianam, since I can see you're really straining to make a good impression on your fellow useless-eaters here in Deltoid-land, but the last sentence does not make a lie of the one that preceded it. Sorry, guy--it is possible to both not wager, as a matter of principle, and to be smart enough not to make a bet with a welcher like wow.
Let me put it in this form, ianam, since I can see that beneath your big-brain pretensions you're actually a rather slow-witted wannabe: I don't wager as a matter of principle, but if I ever chose to place a bet then I'm smart enough not to bet with a welcher like wow. Get it?
You know, guys, I've come to expect your usual dork-ball, hyper-excited, booger-flicks in my direction, but ianam's doofus, look-like-a-real-weener-head screw-up was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Thanks ianam--you made my day.
OK, so to mike, the "Jonas thread" is both a sterling example of "life" and "vitality", and a mountain of garbage infested with cockroaches and maggots, and the rest of Deltoid is nothing but "bad-lands" and a bunch of people who are "sanctimonious" and also prone to "hyper-excited booger-flicks".
You need to try and stop mixing so many metaphors together, because they're turning your brain into mush.
-- frank
What you have to remember Frank, is that that little brain-wank was the closest li'll mike will get to an orgasm this year. Or next.
I also notice he's desperately trying to enhance his non-existent, tough, militaristic self-image with a third hand Alex Jonesism, so be careful not to mess with such an intellect.
OK, I've reconsidered. Ha ha, great joke.
Just as Roger Pielke Snr. might like to slip into a cocktail dress and be called 'Muriel' on a Saturday night, it's not inconceivable that RP Jnr. might like to slip into a moron costume and call himself 'mike' sometimes.
Very funny Roger, and btw, you're still a disgrace to academia.
Too good not to share. Peter Fitzsimmons [writes](http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/no-airs-or-graces-for…):
> EVERY now and then in governments around the world, when issues arise in things such as the purity of water and the safety or otherwise of drinking it, we see politicians and administrators take up a glass of said water and - always smilingly - drink deep as the cameras roll. It restores public confidence and demonstrates that the politicians actually mean what they say and their word can be counted on. Right now, the issue before us is the purity or otherwise of the air. Around the world, tens of thousands of reputable climate scientists are united in their view that our air has too much carbon dioxide, which is doing terrible damage to the planet. People such as Senator Barnaby Joyce and Alan Jones, however, contend that it is all a nonsense and because carbon dioxide is ''a colourless, odourless gas'', there is no problem with it. Does it not stand to reason, therefore, that both men should be encouraged to sit outside Parliament House for an hour in a glass box filled with CO2 to demonstrate to us all that because it is colourless and odourless, there is no problem with it? And be encouraged to take into that box all other commentators who put forward that brain-dead line of argument?
mike is stupid and envious that we aren't. And if someone doesn't bet on principle, then they are simply lying if they say that on a specific occasion the reason they didn't bet is because they are smart enough not to bet with a welcher. And of course in all that verbal diarrhea mike spewed, nowhere did he justify the claim that Wow is a welcher. mike, you're a lying asshole and you will never get anyone here to think otherwise of you so you might as well stop trolling.
OK people. Lets just remind ourselves who and what the mike troll is: a marginally self-aware sociopathic loser, lost in the intellectual wasteland of the US Wingnutopia, desperately trying to be noticed by those he envies and fears. The repetitive puerile taunting stuff looks a lot like developmental arrest (as per lb's spousal analysis - in fact I think he (mike) once claimed to have discussed his trolling to his therapist!) possibly at the age he developed his horror of paedophilia. Draw your own conclusions.
I suspect his incursions into the Open Threads at chez Lambert is a form of self treatment. Anyone who is awestruck by the Jonastrolls (Ooh! Ooh! Can I join your gang? Pleeeease!), and measures impact by comment numbers should probably be pitied and ignored. Perhaps we should be gentler and more tolerant of his foibles?...Nah...lets pile on!
@ 136
*[Comment deleted. Mike, from now on please post only to the Jonas thread. Thank you.]*
Yes Mike, we know you have a deep seated and visceral hatred of anybody you perceive to be smarter than yourself. We know you like to deal with this by hurling juvenile abuse around to garner reactions and prove to yourself that you are superior to the "intellectuals". We know you are a sad little man and I pity that you choose to waste your twilight years trying to protest that you aren't a paedophile in vain on a science website.
I notice Mike's delivery style is identical to Duff's - what is it with right-wing anti-intellectual trolls trying to prove that they're actually intelligent with empty verbosity?
I'm sure there's a YouTube comments thread out there that's just right for you Mike.
Just as a coda to mike@137, and as a case study in psychopathology for those who don't like paddling in the troll-tank, mike posted this after being confined in the Jonas oubliette:
@ 2239
Hey rhwombat, get your ginzu-samurai butt over to the dictionary and look up "Pyrrhic Victory."
Yeah, I suspected that you were taking the discussion on the November 2011 Open Thread in a direction that you hoped would lead to my further marginalization. After all, your tactic had previously gotten me confined to the Open Threads, so it wasn't as if I were unaware of the potential for more of the same.
So you might wonder why I so recklessly "took your bait." Well, to understand that, rhwombat you have to consider the curious history of my engagement with this so-called "science" blog.
In my earliest visits with my dear Deltoids, I just randomly dropped troll-bombs intended to maliciously screw with my good buddies' heavy-petting group-think. And, for the most part, my earliest comments were either quickly deleted or dis-emvowelled (although, most usually, their loss was immediately preceded by a flurry of awkward, undergarment adjustments by Deltoids in the organ loft). But to my astonishment a few of my "Deltoids are Dorks with Zits" comments survived--despite frantic calls by the Deltoid laity and lesser clergy to excommunicate me from the blog altogether.
That earliest experience helped me to work up my troll-act so that more and more of my good stuff survived--either altogether or, if deleted, lost only after the comment had remained up for most of the day. Indeed, in one remarkable instance, I lost all of my October 2011 Open Thread comments to moderation. But, then, suddenly and miraculously they re-appeared as if raised from the dead (even the one where I called Bernard J. a "pompous ass blowhard"). That, if nothing else, convinced me of my "value" to this blog.
For a while there, I was puzzled by the forbearance of the blog-master for my "juvenile" jibes aimed at Deltoid's up-tight rectors and parvenu, front-pew burghers and their greenshirt pieties and status-anxiety. But ultimately I discovered the solution to the puzzle. In a catty little comment on Eli's blog, the Rabbet, himself, disparaged Deltoid's "troll parade", indulged for the sake of running up page-view and comment counts.
As you can imagine, rhwombat, Eli's slip was a liberating revelation for me. I suddently realized I couldn't loose. As long as I kept my troll-work entertaining, I estimated I could probably get in a good long run of free-wheeling Deltoid baiting before the blog-master judged the risk of losing the congregation out-weighed the benefits of a fuller collection-plate. So throwing all caution to the wind, I just had a good time, secure in the notion that when the curtain at last and inevitably closed on me, I'd have the final satisfaction of taking my not-inconsequential page-view and comment counts with me. A win either way, as I both saw and see it.
I mean, think about it rhwombat, why would anyone choose this blog for the spectacle of a bunch of weener-head pricks, like you, rhwombat, groping up their goobers and swallowing them whole when they can get the same thing, but with better quality, at Eli's blog? Or even at the hen-house--if you have a taste for its kinky blend of old-biddies, useless-pecker capons, and shewonk's cutesy-wutsey chickenshit.
No, rhwombat, sorry to burst your bubble. Deltoid's blog-traffic in not driven by the likes of you, but by trolls like me. And us trolls win either way.
Posted by: mike | November 14, 2011 12:16 PM
He's really quite interesting...a totally self-absorbed sociopath, but quite interesting in an American gothic sort of way. I don't think he gets the bit about qualitative communication with peers - or playing well with others, I pity his therapist.
Mikey fails to even question why he'd want to increase the hits and traffic at deltoid.
I'm sure he can fabricate some post-hoc rationale for this.
He admittedly comes here to troll yet sooks like a child and invents conspiratorial stories about being silenced when his posts are routinely moderated (as many of our posts are). He also expends a lot more energy than we do but thinks he's gained some kind of victory.
Draw your own conclusions on this nutcase.
(PentaxZ says](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5844200):
>And so, what is then 1+1, stupid?
and [also says](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/jonas_thread.php#comment-5844130) (of the proportion of scientists who accept the human-caused global warming model):
>It's most certanly isn't woting [sic], or as you call it, consensus, allthough [sic] 0.0024% really isn't that much.
[My emboldened emphasis]
Astounding irony, coupled with a profound lack of self-awareness.
Oops, that last was supposed to be a comment about Lomborg landing in Australia to unspruik the price on carbon.
Somehow I copied an unedited version of my post on another thread.
Doh.
Can't be bothered to rewrite the Lomberg comment. Just know that he's here.
You also have to place it in context Bernard.
So far the Scancinavian Massive have used - amongst the paucity of references requested for their claims, Delingpole, 'Goddard', Monckton and 'Nova' as their "primary sources".
'Nuff said.
The OO runs a piece by Bjorn Lomborg who was in Oz recently.
Lomborg predictably says the carbon price (or "carbon tax" as Lomborg calls it) adopted here won't do anything to fix climate change (well derr...), nor have the Euro carbon pricing schmes made any impact. This is as sensible as pointing out that it's pointless running the first 100 yards of a marathon because there's still 26 miles 285 yards to go.
Nonetheless his point that $100bn/ year (0.2% of global GDP) spent on funding renewable energy sources could make a significant dent in current GHG emissions is a lot more helpful than a lot of what he's said in the past.
Open letter to the Climatologists
To all the climatologists (or do you prefer the term "climate scientists" now?) working on understanding the Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO as I prefer to call "global Warming") that may, hopefully, be reading this :
I just want to let you all know that you have my respect and my admiration and my thanks.
I know you face death threats from the gibbering idiots out there just for doing your jobs and doing them well. I know you have had your patience tested and your words and integrity rudely, unjustly and tediously questioned by ignorami driven by ideology who wouldn't know good science and reality if it kicked them in the groin.
I think the way you've been treated in the (non-scientific) "debate" over the reality of HIRGO has been an inexcusable disgrace and that its long since time people gave as much respect to NASA's (& other institutions) top climatologists they do to NASA's top rocket scientists and flight surgeons. Plus, naturally this applies to the non-NASA climatologists from other research instititions, universities and miscellaneous other bodies around the world.
If any climate scientists are reading this comment - please pass on my thanks and appreciation to your colleagues and reassure them all that there's a truckload of people out there willing to listen and cheering you on. I'm just one of them.
Thankyou again, please keep up your good work & best regards :
- Stevo Raine
BTW. Don't know if this news has been mentioned yet but just in case it hasn't been :
See :
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/11/michael_mann_gets_hans_oeschg…
For the full (?) press release & more via Greg laden's blog.
Congrats to Mike Mann. :-)
SteveC said:
I'm not sure thst it is. It's as impressive as saying we'd be better off spending it on preventing malaria. He has no interest in the things he says. It's mere eyewash to cover the fact that he is calling for the biosphere to be treated as a free industrial sewer and for the burden of this remedy to the damage caused by the polluters to the commons to be borne almost entirely by ... the commons.
Yes ... congrats to Michael Mann. He has done us all a great service, and not merely as a consequence of good science. That hockey stick has annoyed the deniers for years. Fabulous stuff.
Whenever I get a real crank, I point them to the hockey stick.
I don't know, but I will say that breathing from the same pool of air as the deniers does leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm also not sure that enemies of action on climate change stand ethically higher than child m*lesters. In the case of the latter, the scope of their potential harm is far smaller than the former, and it seems that a good many of them were victims of abuse themselves. Unless someone can show that some form of abuse addled the minds of those ranged against this critical area of public policy, I'd say the latter can indeed look down on the former.
Here is the correct Michael Mann link. (Tim, you should change the configuration for the comment box; Hardly anyone knows Markdown or pays attention to the explanation of how to make links with it.)
David Duff | November 3, 2011 7:53 AM :
So David Duff, you do all your own electrical wiring and plumbing and brain surgery then!? If you or someone else in your family is sick you treat the illness just on your own instead of going to a medical expert a.k.a. a doctor? I don't think so!
There's a reason experts are called experts and why they're the ones who get called on for specific purposes when great expertise is needed in specific fields - like rocket engineering, neurosurgery and climatology.
Also are you saying that as our scientific understanding of things improves, as we change and refine our ideas and applications based on those ideas, as we learn more and know better, science becomes *less* rather than *more* worthy of our trust and respect?! Really?
You know there never was much scientific talk of gobal cooling even back in the 1970s. The popular press wrote a few stories about it and that was all. Most of the climatologists even back then were well aware of Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) and its likely problems to our way of life.
When do you expect to see your "global cooling" occur or become clearly apparent exactly?
How long must temperatures continue to climb, how many hottest years or decades do you need before youadmit you might have got thinsg a smidgin wrong?
Citations and specifics needed. What precisely have the scientists you refer to (which are who exactly btw?) made up, why haven't these errors been exposed by peer review and what EVIDENCE do you actually offer to support your rather slanderous albeit exceptionally vague allegations there?
@151. ianam | November 18, 2011 3:17 AM :
Thanks for that. I tried to fix that a few times but couldn't get the link to work via cut'n'paste. Cheers.
A goofd, informative and enteratining source for more about the whole "they thought it was cooling in the 1970's" myth can be found here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M&list=PL029130BFDC78FA33&inde…
If the link is working right this time. (Or cut'n'paste :
"In the 70s, They said there'd be an Ice Age" Greenman3610
into the Youtube search box. Do we have a special different procedural thing with posting links here or something?)
I guess most of the folks here have heard of /seen Peter "Greenman3610" Sinclair's "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" series on Youtube already, right? If not, I'd strongly recommend it.
Duff and dumber:
How dare those 'Warmers' stamp on global cooling before it started warming up. What did they think they were doing? Making testable predictions? How dare they.
For climatologist Ben Santers good five minute takedown of the "Global Cooling" myth see :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5D7P2qbKCs
@51. David Duff | November 4, 2011 7:06 AM :
Actually astronomers such as Phil Plait the astronomer who runs the execellnt 'Bad Astronomy' blog have been well aware of that - and have debunked the non-scientific scare-mongers for instance here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/07/just-to-be-cl…
NASA has also done some debunking of various psuedo-science internet nonsense fears over Comet Elenin, eg. see :
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/comet_elenin.html
(Worth scrolling down for some of the questions and answers there.)
In a nutshell, such rocks and icy dirtballs fly past the Earth all the time, no big deal although often provide a chance to do some interesting science on them. There is a small risk of bolide (collective term for impacting bodies inclusive of comets and asteroids alike) impacts causing massive destrcution but its really not something to lose any sleep over and any astronomer will tell you as much.
@63 David Duff | November 5, 2011 7:22 AM :
No?
Well, go on then, lets hear it!
It doesn't sound like a overly promising joke to me but I guess you'll surprise us with your clever, er, humour and you've got me curious now. So .. what's the punchline please tell?
Two more tidbits of information on the 2009 cyber-attack on CRU:
http://ijish.livejournal.com/39025.html
-- frank
Er ... that is Duff's punchline, StevoR. There's no more to come from that particular source.
Allow [genius comedian Stewart Lee](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0i0RXMvzMs) to explain - starting at about the 6 minute mark if you're pushed for time, or never bother with foreplay...
Look at the instructions just above the edit box. it accepts "markdown" syntax, which turns _stuff_ into _stuff_, so URLs containing underscores don't work. You can use markdown to enter URLs, but the most reliable way is with html; e.g., for http://www.scienceblogs.com/deltoid, enter <a href="http://www.scienceblogs.com/deltoid">http://www.scienceblogs.com/deltoid</a>
> ...so URLs containing underscores don't work.
And I'm pretty sure this is due to a bug in the parser. There doesn't seem to be any fundamental reason why it couldn't disable italics & bold detection within the context of a detected URL.
But it's been that way for years...
It's not a bug in the parser -- it's a misfeature in Markdown. Unfortunately John Gruber isn't interested in fixing it (or the other really annoying one where the numbered lists get renumbered).
I'm currently discussing the IPCC draft report that was released today and was wondering if anyone could help me in finding anything the IPCC might have said in the AR4 about climate signals and variability noise over the next 2 -3 decades?
Something that confirms this isn't some shocking new revelation:
Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame.
Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain. For projected changes by the end of the 21st century, either model uncertainty or uncertainties associated with emissions scenarios used becomes dominant, depending on the extreme. Low-probability high-impact changes associated with the crossing of poorly understood climate thresholds cannot be excluded, given the transient and complex nature of the climate system.
Misfeature sounds like a good word for it. It craps on the user experience, and should not exist.
This post by SheWonk (Policy Lass) on a certain Auditor's despicable recent behaviour is well worth the read:
http://metaclimate.org/2011/11/15/denialist-porn-chum-a-new-low/
This Auditor took allegations of child molestation against a Yale academic and somehow attempted to link this to Michael Mann. Apparently the comments at this Auditor's site are something else again, and comments at Deep Climate's Open Thread suggest Watts and his cronies have risen to the chum that a certain Auditor spread on the waters.
IMO another appalling example of why certain Auditors and award-winning blogs deserve all the flak they get.
Posting this in the Open Thread, but should really belong to Tim's TAWoS series.
Jay Rosen over at ABC's The Drum on why News Corp Is Bad News.
And Rosen on the News Corpse's brand of climate change denial:
Rosen goes on to mention other aspects of its corporate thuggery, including Julie Posetti (remember Mitchell's threat of a lawsuit against her, simply because she accurately reported what he said in a public speech? As a refresher, see Chris MitchellGate).
But for me, the money quote is this:
(emphasis added)
That last analysis by Rosen fits - it is certainly a basis for its extraordinary and consistent stance on climate change.
@159. chek | November 18, 2011 5:40 PM : Thanks for that.
& thanks to ianam | November 19, 2011 12:59 AM too. See those instructions now.
Incidentally, I did think of one (& only one) possible punchline that makes that "joke" maybe sorta funny~ish :
Qu. : Heard the one about the fat, black, quadraplegic lesbian?
A. Turns out it was Osama bin laden / Jerry Falwell / Pat Robertson / Andrew Bolt / Rupert Murdoch /etc .. in a past life!
In case its of interest saw this :
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3370857.htm
on Lateline t'other night & there was something I half-caught on the radio news (891 - Radio national?) this morning about a report on the rapidly closing window we've got to keep temp rise under the critical 2 degrees before I had to rush off the work. Broadcast circa 8.15~30 am approx. in Adelaide, SA. Anyone else here hear the full thing?
[SteveoR](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…).
Skeptical Science [commented about this last week](http://www.skepticalscience.com/WEO2011.html).
Breaking news - a clear attempt at derailing the upcoming climate summit (as if that were necessary):
['New release' of climate emails](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15840562)
This [second release](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15840562) completely blows out of the water the 'whilstleblower' canard.
It is clearly a deliberate campaign to discredit, to the advantage of vested interests, action to curb harmful carbon pollution. I wonder how many laws aroundthe world have been broken by the players in this action?
Having checked over at Watt's, McinTyre's and Bishop Dill's and a selection of the usual suspects, it goes without saying that they're all wetting themselves with excitement, although some it has to be said, with more reserve than others. But the trusty ol' hygrometer would be overloading in all cases.
Interestingly, those who normally like to style themselves as such prim sticklers for propriety, seem to have overlooked that they're handling stolen goods. The stench of astounding if unsurprising hypocrisy is almost tangible. Again.
@169. Bernard J. | November 21, 2011 3:22 AM :
Okay, thanks.
Btw. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a good post up on his blog here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/22/climategate-2…
taking down the "Climategate" reheat which could be worth a look.
[StevoR](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…).
It's good to see that reason is strapping its laces quickly this time.
I'll make a prediction though...
>"Climategate III - this time it's really real. Really. It's the actual real stuff, how those nasty Scientists are trying to scam us with Really Nasty Climatology, and look, we found some words, 'the probability...', which just goes to show that they don't really know what they're talking about. Really."
Speaking of hysterical denialati who see scientific monsters hiding under the bed of The Public Good, the ABC's PM program reported today that ACMA has smacked Alan Jones and 2GB around for biased commentary on several matters, and it noted that Jones is being scrutinised on his pronouncements on issues relating to human-caused global warming.
About bloody time.
> seem to have overlooked that they're handling stolen goods.
It's also amusing (in a not very amusing, but rather scary way), that this is also when PFC Bradley Manning is getting after a year and a half of torture, his court date for handing over stolen goods to Wikileaks.
Heh.
I didn't even have time for the ink to dry on [my prediction](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…) before I saw that WTFUWT had about a gazillion updates on the Climatgate 2.0 emails - "[[t]heyâre real and theyâre spectacular!](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/)".
The Oz hasn't disappeared enough behind the paywall.
Just look at this latest tripe;
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/climate-forecasts-e…
Great headline - "Climate forecasts 'exaggerated': Science journal".
Notice the quote marks around exaggerated.
So what do the authors actually say when they aren't being verballed in the headline?
"Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out....Professor Schmittner said it had been very difficult to rule out these extreme "high-sensitivity" scenarios....we are pretty confident that these high climate sensitivities can [now]be ruled out....the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought"
Australia's former conservative Prime Minister John Howard has outed himself as an ongoing denier of science. So much so that he wrote this for McKitrick's latest screed, as reported (in edited form) [by WUWT](http://backupurl.com/o2rn1r):
>I am an agnostic when it comes to global warming. That is why I had no difficulty in proposing in 2007, when I was Prime Minister of Australia, an emissions trading system, predicated on the rest of the world acting in a similar fashion, and designed to protect Australiaâs trade-exposed industries.
>Since then two events have intervened to reinforce the caution which should be exercised by my country in this area. The collapse of the Copenhagen Summit means that actions by major emitting nations is, to say the least,
highly unlikely. Moreover, the global financial plunge has highlighted the folly of any nation taking action which harms its own comparative economic advantage.
>Professor McKitrickâs report focuses on the reporting procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The intellectual bullying, which has been a feature of the behaviour of some global warming zealots, makes this report necessary reading if there is to be an objective assessment of all of the arguments. The attempt of many to close down the debate is disgraceful, and must be resisted.
>Ross McKitrick has written a well-researched and articulate critique of the IPCCâs methods. It deserves careful study, especially by those who remain in an agnostic state on this issue.
Remember, this is the man who is a mentor to Tony Abbott. Howard speaks of disgracefulness: he should consider how disgraceful it is for a former politician - with no scientific training - to use rhetoric in order to obscure scientific truth, and especially scientific truth that has profound implications for the survival of future generations.
Howard was always a master at stirring the lizard brains of unthinking lay folk. If only he was as skilled in realising that his fundamentalist ideologies, and not the conduct of a whole discipline of science, are the problem in this matter.
I know Tim C. and his socks have kept trying to get back into your good graces here, but I wonder if anyone's looked at http://ace2011.org.au/ACE2011/Documents/Abstract_Timothy_Curtin.pdf
Future Fund chairman [David Murray doubts the scientific evidence for climate change](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3378644.htm), and in the process completely mangles logic on a number of other topics. Watch and weep.
Albert Bartlett would, most assuredly...
Yes, he gets sucked in by the old denialist meme (they're all getting old these days):
Sucked in by total bullshit:
>DAVID MURRAY: I don't think there is sufficient evidence to take the sort of risks that are being taken around the world.
I.e. we should take action only when we have a spare planet to run a control experiment on. And the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence without such is just not enough.
>DAVID MURRAY:I've always thought that with the global population growing as fast as it is, that there would be real pressure on energy prices and people would correct automatically by using energy much more sparingly and that would start to self-correct - if there's a problem.
I.e. the population would switch from oil back to coal as oil is depleted (then crash when that is depleted).
ALI MOORE: What evidence do you look at to counter the other evidence that there is climate change? Is there something in particular that you focus on?
>DAVID MURRAY: Well, the extremeness of the claims is one thing. For example, people talked about the ocean rising by seven metres, which is just an astounding level.
I.e. 7m is extreme thus it can't be [true](http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/resear…).
>DAVID MURRAY: The science talks about 20 to 30 centimetres. So these exaggerated claims.
Time frame David, over what time frame? Or Post 2100 means never?
>DAVID MURRAY: When people make a movie and get on a ladder to get to the top of the chart, that's Hollywood, it's not science.
So [BAU emission growth](http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html) isn't projected to push the CO2 concentration to 550ppm by 2050 [because of ladder used in presenting the science?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tkDK2mZlOo)
>DAVID MURRAY: And when scientists start arguing amongst themselves, as we've seen with some of these reports, that is not good. Science is meant to be above all of that with true scientific method. So that really bothers me. And the claims are unreal and ...
Unless all the scientist are not arguing then it is not science? Not allowed to argue about anything David? So 3% disagreeing on the fundamental cause means that 3% wins?
ALI MOORE: Are all the claims unreal?
>DAVID MURRAY: Well, it's not clear to me which comes first: temperature or carbon - carbon dioxide. I'm not sure which does come first. There is much evidence to say one way or the other. So, when I look at all this, I become extremely concerned and I become concerned at the cost of mistakes.
So David you think the rising temperatures might have made us burn and emit 29,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year?
Maybe we need to get one person to disagree with the "3%" (actually, it's 1%, 2% are undecided, but not against the proposition).
That means that the minority of one who says that the minority 3% is wrong, being even more of a minority, is right.
Then, since it's impossible to get less than one person, they're impossible to refute.
Teh stupid can be used for good as well as evil.
185 comments in, I suspect this question wont get much of a look in. But, I can cross my fingers: could someone please recommend to me a christmas present book for my father, who watches the Bolt Report and thinks climate change is probably a bit dodgy.
I'm happy to wind him up a bit (beats arguing with him), but I don't want to buy him The Weathermakers, or An Inconvenient Truth. What else is highly accessible, credible but not patronising?
[Barrie Pittock's book](http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6010.htm)
thanks dexitroboper. Probably too dense and scientific for him. He's a retired lawyer, doesn't mind some complex ideas, but hasn't read anything technical in a while.
@wilful,
How about _What's The Worst That Could Happen?_ by Greg Craven. (Critical review [here](http://planet3.org/2011/07/27/book-review-whats-the-worst-thing-by-greg…)).
Spencer Weart's book is also available as print. Or Merchants of Doubt that goes into other elements, so it won't look like you're trying to beat him up over Climate change: he'll see that the same problems existed for years about the Tobacco industry. By going in to other examples of the same deceit it will be harder to ignore as just another element of the orchestrated "climate scam".
Wilful,
Hansen's _Storms of my Grandchildren_ fits your requirements - does not talk down to the reader, but not to densely sciency. OTOH, Hansen may be seen as just another fellow traveller. I thought it was a good read, except that Hansen gets a bit preachy about some of the policy options; very "these are the only things that will work" where there are other options and his own preferences are not without problems.
Chris Mooney's _Storm World_ is a pretty good read, although it lacks the authority of Hansen. Its rather more limited in its scope, and has some niggly errors that the hard-core rejectionist is likely to fixate on.
Thanks folks. I was thinking the Hansen book (I'd support his work financially) but you've guessed right, it probably is too much 'fellow traveller'. I'll look at all of those suggestions.
>It seems my 'propaganda' and 'espionage' comment rather hit a raw nerve, judging by some of the vitriolic comments that people have typed up.
Eh? What's "vitriolic" about my question?
>The UEA isn't a private institution, it's a public one, so there should be full public disclosure of the emails.
So why aren't all university emails immediately uploaded to the respective institutional web pages? Why can't Joe Public just walk in off the street and demand access to every computer and hard drive on campus?
The rest of Andy's spiel is just froth and bubble - a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Speaking of... from where did the current gloop of numpties emanate? And if they're so convinced that the 20th century temperature rise is nonexistent, what physics do they rely on to explain such nonexistence? And what of the non-dendrological 'hockey sticks'? Are the numpties aware of just how many 'hockey sticks' there are? And how do they explain the 'blade' in each 'hockey stick'?
Hn.
[This](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/11/november_2011_open_thread.php#c…) was supposed to go [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php#c…).