Like its illustrious forebears comments elsewhere and part II. However, rather differently like, in that I want to point to some positives before falling back into snarking.
I've commented at wottsupwiththatblog and hotwhopper about Li et al.. It is, I think, a flawed paper but not as badly flawed as the denialists reporting of it which is, as you'd expect, very badly flawed. More of that anon.
Also at wotts was a discussion of the "green surcharge" on UK energy bills. Some useful references and clarifications make their way into the comments; VB has some nice refs.
Over at ScottishSceptic: sceptics vs. academics I talked, mostly politely, to "sceptics"; I found the post via ClimateEtc. You'll see at first sight self-delusion there and an almost touching naivety about the Great Debate. But we did manage to talk somewhat. I tried to point out that (1) insisting that you were really sceptic-types who liked hard facts, but then (2) arbitrarily knocking 0.2 oC off the temperature record because you don't like its face, really can't be reconciled. And indeed they didn't reconcile it, or even somehow that I couldn't understand even consider it a problem. But at least some of them haven't been hardened in the fires of WUWT or wherever, so are capable of talking. The blog owner has gone into purdah for a bit, but perhaps the conversation will pick up later.
Dr Spencer put up a post entitled The Danger of Hanging Your Hat on No Future Warming. In it, he's trying to point out to the nutters the dangers of going too far overboard; naturally, they aren't listening. I can only assume he put up the fake pic I've inlined here (except I've added the word "fake" to prevent confusion; he presents it as genuine) in order to "balance" his post by pushing the 1970's cooling meme. It destroys any claim he can make to honesty; several commentators have pointed out to him that its fake, but he hasn't updated it or added any acknowledgement. I too tried to add a comment but it looks like I'm banned there; comments simply don't appear; I got in a couple at the Woy vs Willis spat before the iron curtain descended.
In other news: Scientific American faces firestorm after removing blog post about scientist being called a whore.
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Banned?? Surely a mistake or misunderstanding. Sceptics don't ban people.
I've run afoul of Willis over at Judith Curry's blog. I've chimed in over at Woy's. Haven't been banned yet.
banned? how? just change your username slightly
[I could, but that would be dishonest. If they don't want me, I'll go elsewhere -W]
The conversation at ScottishSeptic is remarkably polite -- actually it's quite a helpful for elucidating the point that politeness and competence have little to do with each other.
[Ha, a very good point. Wikipedia is sadly confused on the same point -W]
The "conversation" at ScottishSceptic is mostly between members of a mutual affirmation society. All desirable characteristics are attributed to themselves, in contrast to "warmists". I'm reminded of the bandar-log, the Monkey People in Kipling's The Jungle Book (which I read over and over again before the age of 12):
Well, sure, but one gets that attitude equally well pretty much everywhere. For example, in my experience the comment threads at RealClimate often have a similar aspect to them. The big difference is that at RC that sort of nonsense accompanies interesting ideas shared by actual experts, instead of accompanying other nonsense.