watts

More trash from Watts

stoat — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:42:27 +0000

More trash from Watts

Well, so what's new with that, I hear you say? And indeed, not much is the answer. But its a saturday night so some knock-about fun is in order.

So, Watts, along with most of the septic blogosphere, was all over An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula by Zunli Lua et al.. Not because they care about the science, but because the abstract says This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula. In septic-world, it is very important that the MWP and LIA be global, so that instantly turned into a headline of "Yes, I know, I covered it first: The Medieval Warm Period was Global" in Watts-world. Actually, I have reservations as to whether their figures support even their text (it is yet another "we found some warm bits and we found some cold bits, and since the MWP and LIA time-spans are so vague, we called the warm bits MWP and the cold bits LIA").

But all this misrepresentation, although obvious enough, has clearly annoyed the authors, who now say

"It is unfortunate that my research, "An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula," recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets.

Several of these media articles assert that our study claims the entire Earth heated up during medieval times without human CO2 emissions. We clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula. The results should not be extrapolated to make assumptions about climate conditions across the entire globe. Other statements, such as the study "throws doubt on orthodoxies around global warming," completely misrepresent our conclusions. Our study does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend."

Watts has been obliged to update his post, but is still in denial, errm, which is exactly where he is supposed to be so that is all right then, best beloved.

And in other news

* General Motors pulls funding from climate sceptic thinktank Heartland. As they say The funding cut - just $15,000 a year - is small beer for the institute, which has a multi-million dollar turnover, largely from a single anonymous donor, so this isn't as exciting as it might seem.
* BA has a nice pic of an underwater volcano errupting, visible from its plume in the water.

stoat Sat, 03/31/2012 - 10:42

Tags

generic stupidity

lia

mwp

peninsula

watts

I found it all quite funny that they latched onto this single new proxy (ikaite) while discounting or bashing pretty much every other proxy because it "disagrees" with them.

Ah yes, I was attacked at my blog for this same reason that I did not know that "climate changed rapidly and globaly in the past", and "Michael Mann was wrong"... and "we should study factors behind the warming further" etc. ...

Nevermind that shouting high (global) climate variability in the past (whatever the reason) implies also high climate variability into the future making the GHGs reduction even more urgent... but why care about it?

Alex

But you have to say that the choice of words in the abstract is just asking for trouble. Why say "extended to" unless you mean to imply an area stretching from the north all the way to Antarctica?

[People can be fairly careless such things. People don't - and shouldn't - write papers defensively so they can't possibly be misinterpreted by wackos. The results are clear enough -W]

he's a pretty young prof (just did a postdoc at Oxford recently) so I imagine he didn't realize the zeal with which innocuous phrases such as "MWP extended from Europe to Antarctica" would be latched on and published in the right-wing blogosphere ad-nauseum and used to beat Michael Mann to death etc. Of course he should have been following climate blogs and have known about this sort of thing! ;-)

[Probably, though I find it a touch surprising that anyone working in this area coul be so unaware. Perhaps more likely he spiced up his paper a little -W]

As one of the people who brought about Watts' 'correction', FW[atts!]IW - and who was called an 'anonymous coward' by the man himself in the process - I still find this whole episode both annoying and exemplary.

[Its rather obvious that Watts will happily accept anonymous people who support his trash; you're only a "coward" if you oppose him -W]

How could anyone have claimed a study based solely on the Antarctic Peninsula could hope to prove the MWP (whatever this rather messy entity might be) extended as a single entity across the globe to the Antarctic? Least of all its authors.

'Extend' was clearly meant in the weak 'was associated with' rather than strong 'universally embraced all intervening territory' sense from the off.

I don't blame the authors, I blame people who scour genuine research looking for opportunities like these to cut and run with.

Watts' gloating triumphalism - 'Yes, I know, the Medieval Warm Period was Global' - and pasting of a link to the dreadful Daily Mail article directly below this banner (without a qualification in sight) sure looks like crowing 'mission accomplished' to me.

And to many, many others.

While he provides a link he still simply will not publish Zunli Lu's own statement in either of his pieces, hiding behind the excuse that a Syracuse press officer didn't tell him his interpretation was wrong at the start!

I think the press officer may be a little bit more wary when dealing with Mr.Watts in the future, don't you?

[He's doing his level best to avoid admitting his error; but then, as you say, the error was obvious from the start; no surprises there.

But, well done for venturing in with some truth -W]

Apparently the folks at the "Best Sciencey Blog" don't understand the meaning of the words "negative feedback":

In discussing a new paper about positive feedbacks in the Arctic, Watts gives it the headline "Negative feedback? Declining sea ice to lead to cloudier Arctic"

The ensuing commentary is absurd, of course. A few people do try to point out that this seems like a positive feedback, not a negative one, but they're shouted down by the yahoos who insist that positive feedbacks can't exist in nature, e.g. this:

When are people like âanonâ going to have even the most basic understanding of nature?
Nature ABHORS positive feedback loops (think of your earsâ reaction to feedback from a microphone/amplifier, your ears donât like that at all, now do they?). Positive feedback loops in nature would cause natural systems to spiral out of control, thus eventually causing the natural system in question to self-destruct. We have had over 4 billion years of climate change on Earth, and the system has yet to self-destruct, in spite of extreme changes in the system from time to time.

or this:

Can climate have a positive feedback mechanism?
This is one question that climate scientist have always avoided addressing. If there was a positive feedback mechanism no matter how tiny, then a higher level of CO2 in the past has to have resulted in temperatures rising to the high limit condition before falling again. Since we know this is not the case the dominant variables must have a negative feedback characteristic which either means CO2 is a trivial variable and irrelevant or that the models have been based on an abnormal period and are fundamentally unsound.

Someone should point them to that article about positive feedbacks vs. runaway warming at SkepticalScience.

[To be fair, it took a fair while to get this even vaguely right at Wikipedia, and the terminology is all confusing. Having a mini-system with positive feedback embedded in a larger system with overall negative feedback is hard for some people to understand, if it isn't explained carefully -W]

Well, there's still the bit about Watts not understanding the difference between a *positive* feedback and a *negative* feedback.

As for the other ... I just find it amusing when people are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN about something that is ... actually ... wrong.

Like this: 'When are people like âanonâ going to have even the most basic understanding of nature? Nature ABHORS positive feedback loops [...] Positive feedback loops in nature would cause natural systems to spiral out of control, thus eventually causing the natural system in question to self-destruct.'

All well and good. Except that there are, in fact, positive feedbacks in the global climate system, despite the fact that the Earth has so far failed to self-destruct as ordered.

And yet more trash... Read at your own risk, although the paper they are trashing seems pretty interesting.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/04/a-new-paper-in-nature-suggests-co…

[Thanks for the link. Yes, the paper itself looks worth reading. I guess Watts feels the need to report on it, beacuse otherwise his folks are going to get their ideas from elsewhere, so needs to prepare people with the idea that the paper has "problems". really, though... it just not that important. It never has been. Eric Wolff gives the best summary that I know of: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/yet_more_tco2_lags.php Working out exactly how the lags or leads work is hard, and an interesting problem in itself, but says essentially nothing about present-day change. Side note: I've seen septics so primed with the "T leads CO2 nonsense" that they will tell you, with a perfectly straight face, that you can *see* the lag/lead relationship on a graph covering the last 4 or more ice age cycles; said graph being 400 pixels wide. When I point out to them that at 400 pixels wide each pixel is 1000 years or more and so they cannot possibly see the lags they claim they usually resort to bluster, or to silence, but I've never seen them admit to error -W]

"And in other news
* General Motors pulls funding from climate sceptic thinktank Heartland."

And in other, other news
* Coke Pulls the Plug on Anti-Climate Change ALEC Lobby

Both headed up by Bast. Poor scamp.

The Shakun, et. al. paper seems to have spawned a cottage industry over there attempting to disprove it. That must mean it is the final nail in the coffin of global warming denial!

BEST is fun

stoat — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:02:50 +0000

BEST is fun

When I said BEST is boring I was primarily thinking of the science. I'm not too surprised to find that many other people aren't. For such folk, there is much fun to be had, so I suppose I'll join in too.

I was going to take the piss out of Watts (h/t KK) for Nature pans BEST and Muller PR antics, prints letter from Dr. Singer, which he wrote in response to a Nature editorial that said

Global warming is really happening -- really. There was no conspiracy or cover-up. Peer review did not fail and the scientists who have spent decades working out the best way to handle and process data turned out to know how to handle and process data after all.

but Watts is dull, so lets take the piss out of Curry instead.

The next bit is really wacky, and apparently evolving as we speak. So its a good idea to start off with some science - Tamino has an analysis of the analysis of the last 10 years of the BEST data. Since that data is essentially the same as everyone else's (as I thought we had now agreed we all knew from the beginning :-) so inevitably it shows the same upward trend (once you remove the obvious broken data; and really, it is obvious, and Tamino even finds the error stats to show it).

Proceeding, again h/t to KK for his A Climate Soap Opera. Which is what it is, so don't read on if you want edification. The Mail on Sunday, which is full of lies, and David Rose, who is full of lies [see end - W], run a story claiming the familiar GW-has-stopped meme can be seen in the BEST data - and they quote the GWPF, who are also full of lies. The GW-has-stopped meme has been around for a while, has been debunked many a time, and the Tamino link above debunks it once again. All very dull, but then Rose gets Curry to say some dumb things, or possibly he just says "wouldn't you say X", and Curry says "yes" (apparently this is the way journos get people to give them the quotes they want). We could do Kremlinology over who really said what, but happily Curry says on her blog "In David Rose's article, the direct quotes attributed to me are correct". Which is nice, so we know that 'There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn't stopped,' she said. 'To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.' is direct from her. As is As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: 'This is "hide the decline" stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.. And as you've all read Taminos article, above, we know that Curry is talking drivel.

Why is Curry doing this? Because the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about. And Curry, despite being a BEST team member, was invisible. She is direct about this: "I was contacted by a few journos last week, I made my points, but they were interested in the implications for trend analysis, UHI effect, station quality. I made the point that these were complicated issues, and that I regarded the BEST papers (which were as yet unpublished) to be the first of many analyses on these topics using the new data set. This wasn't what the journos found interesting, and I don't think any of my quotes on this made it into print." And I think she got bored and lonely on the sidelines, and decided she had to say something outrageous in order to get her piece of the action.

[Update: Curry has now resorted to redefining the language in a doomed attempt to rewrite her past nonsense into a favourable light. Tamino in understandably unimpressed]

[2013 update: the link I put in to "http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/rosegate_1/" no longer works (I hate it that ScienceBlogs broke a pile of old links, they should know better). The internet archive tells me that the state when I wrote it was: http://web.archive.org/web/20111030054310/http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/rosegate_1/ so you can see what I intended.]

Refs

* Nick Stokes noticed that the "bad" month only has Antarctic stations in it.
* Quark Soup

stoat Sun, 10/30/2011 - 14:02

Tags

What a shame you censor any attempt to discuss facts. I suppose that is acknowlegdgement you know "catastrophic warming" is a total frauid that cannot survive factual examonation.

I think it was Gavin who once cracked up and bluntly said, "What part of 'short trends are not significant' is too hard to understand?" (or something like that).

Maybe Judy's problem (in addition to being sucked into a conspiracy fringe) is simply a lack of intuitive familiarity with the strange and confusing world of statistics.

Nick Stokes adds a little more to the story http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/10/gwpf-is-wrong-warming-has-not-stopped…

Gone emerita.

Sad, really.

Boring as Watts latest piece may be, its Nature ' prints letter from Dr. Singer' headline is bogus.

Early rising Fred posted the first online comment on last week's Nature editorial, but not even Daedalus or Dreadco could manage the superluminal peer review needed to publish a reply to a leader in the same issue in which it appears.

[Agreed. I talked about that in the original version of my post, but then decided that "Watts lies about something" wasn't notable, and focussed on Curry instead :-) -W]

There's something funky about your second link. It goes to a not found, probably because it ends many characters too late.

[Oops yes, thanks. Fixed -W]

Instead of talking about Judy Judy Judy, which is too easy and goes nowhere, why is nobody talking about Muller's characterization of CRU as being an outlier? Has that just become a given?

[I don't think anyone expects Muller to talk much sense. And everyone is bored by the differences, now, since it is clear there aren't really any of any great interest -W]

What is interesting is seeing Curry being subjected to the same bull***** and harrassment that people such as Phil Jones have been. I hope she enjoys it, acts super professionally, doesn't get annoyed or angry at anyone, realises that it's just normal and expected treatment for scientists, they are, after all, in what is known as a field of endevour noted for it's argy bargy and poor treatment of those who speak out on the science. She should just show good humour, be gracious, not get pissed at anyone. Any deviation from such expected behaviour will be a sign of being secretive, furtive, cowardly, dishonest, conspiratorial, evil, and truly worthy of much more intense attacks, suspicion, and, if I had a say in it, some FOI requests.

"Rose gets Curry to say some dumb things, or possibly he just says "wouldn't you say X", and Curry says "yes" (apparently this is the way journos get people to give them the quotes they want)."

I've experienced this, and it's usually not good reporting. Okay if a reporter is just trying to establish non-controversial background facts, but otherwise the reporter's taking over the story. OTOH, I did actually agree with the reporter and it made it so I didn't have to think of something intelligent to say.

What is notable is that Curry is disagreeing with papers that she is a listed author of, specifically whether BEST shows an arrest in the temperature rise or not. This is a key finding. If this comes to the attention of the editors and reviewers interesting things may happen.

Re. 8 Brian Schmidt

That's the same journo commenting at McIntyre's.

Deep Climate: David Rose.

Re #6

CRU is an outlier because, probably an honest error (lets not spawn a whole new family of conspiracy theories here please), for all the other datsets they are showing land averages. But the "CRU" data are HadCRUT which are land and ocean combined. So, of course they are an outlier in the same way a pineapple is distinct from a pink lady, granny smith and golden delicious. Its in no sense a like-for-like comparison and because the heat capacity of the ocean is orders of magnitude greater HadCRUT naturally shows less warming than land only estimates. If that doesn't work think about your toast and your coffee at breakfast.

Anyone who has the time to download the four global land series (all available) and plot even *shudder* in excel can easily verify this. When you change from HadCRUT (pineapple) to CRUTEM3 (pippin) you are suddenly going to be comparing four very similar fruits. Annd CRU will no longer be an outlier.

Daily Express: GLOBAL WARMING IS OVER, SAYS EXPERT

"But is it? Not according to Prof Judith Curry, a member of Prof Mullerâs team, who claims the same findings have shown that global warming has stopped â plunging the rest of us into a quandary of what and who to believe."

Job done, or is she getting a taste of the Phil Jones treatment? It's anybody's guess.

JB: job done.

It's the certainty of the uncertainty monster. I.E. she's certain that climate science is all hooey, so it's certain there's no warming, because of unknown unknowns which clearly must all fall one way (even though, being unknown, they're unknown, of course!)

Peter Thorne - i do not doubt you are right, but what is this:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem3vgl

JCH,

that is CRUTEM3V, which has gridbox adjustments for variances, discussed in the CRUTEM literature of I believe late 1990s vintage. HadCRUT3 uses CRUTEM3 (without such adjustments).

The site that you refer to also has BEST analyses that you can overlay. My hunch is that they are not renormalizing to a common climatology so CRUTEM is offset lower but otherwise the two series are in substantial agreement post roughly 1900. For another exercise I am currently plotting the various land series up as global averages and can assure you that the series HadCRUT in the graph Economist et al. have used is not the land dataset. If you renormalize GISS, NCDC, CRUTEM and BEST to a common climatology (1901-2000 say to avoid some sense of artificial agreement over a shorter climatology period) then they basically overplot each other pretty much all the way back to at least the late 19th century.

[Do you have any comment about BEST's decision to start at 1800? From what I've read elsewhere, they don't appear to have extra data to support this. Or can it be defended as a semi-arbitrary decision? -W]

As I stated in the Economist article I think they will need to do a lot of convincing. In much of the early 1800s period the data consists of 30-40 stations in Europe, 2 in New England and 1 or 2 in India. Even if the krigging was yielding a globally complete field estimate I'd have significant doubts about the inferred Southern Hemisphere variations. But its not - the influence is cut off at 1500Km. That also means that much of the apparent field coverage is statistical inference - not real data.

So, the 'global' estimate misses out all our friends in Canada, on the US West coast, in S. America, Australasia, most of Asia etc. etc. I leave whether that makes a viable estimate up to you.

Of course, compounding that is that when you have a really sparse network your probability of detecting any artefacts using a neighbour based approach (which they do) is effectively zero so the data themselves may be substantially biased in this early period.

Probably the most defensible start point choice given current data availability is roughly 1880 when there is sufficient continuous Southern Hemisphere data to both infer SH trends and also have a shot at finding at least blindingly obvious large non-climatic breaks across most of the network.

BUT data rescue and data provision holds out the promise of being able to go back further. You can play around in the surface databank prototype sandpit if you wish where there are pretty pictures aplenty and where you can get an idea of what a significant int'l effort is producing to be released next year. I'd look at the by decade plots in the monthly MAPS directory.

Sandpit here

[Ah yes. ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/globaldatabank/monthly/stage2/MAPS/ and contents? Moyhu has a nice tool at http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/10/world-coverage-by-decade-of-best-ghcn… though that doesn't offer enough time res in the early decades. But it does show the sparsity nicely -W]

Of course if any of your readers have leads to data not in there (one station or thousands) then we'd appreciate hearing from you. Data submission guidelines are available from here. The only way we are going to get a truly global databank is having multiple people contribute.

Apology to WC who is bored with this.

[Don't worry, I'll let you know when I am -W]

Peter -yes, I originally had them together on the graph and it is basically what you describe. I took BEST off the graph before leaving the link as I do not know how to properly compare them with a graph.

Note that WfTs does not have a land only for GisTemp.

What I think they are describing in the news is the BEST group did an apples-to-apples comparison of the three temperature series with BEST to date. At the beginning GisTemp was the problem, but they figured out how to make it an apple for comparison purposes, and at that point GisTemp came out closest to BEST, and Muller describes the CRU apple as an outlier.

Once they finish the oceans and have a global BEST, then they will all be apples?

JCH,

its just a mistake on their part. They could easily make a like for like comparison by going to ...

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land.90S.90N.df_1901…

And I would assume the Berkeley group know where their own data is. Its simply a mistake that could be rectified very quickly, and probably will be. The 'outlier' (to the extent that any outlier exists), by the way, is GISS which exhibits less centennial scale warming than the remaining three land products.

Reheated Curried Muller

...

With regards to the BEST data itself and what it shows. He showed me an interesting graph this is updated from the Rohde article, whereby the BEST data shows good agreement with the GISS data for the recent part of the record. Apparently the original discrepancy was associated with definition of land; this was sorted out and when they compared apples to apples, then the agreement is pretty good. This leaves CRU as an outlier.

Speaking of CRU, Muller related an interesting anecdote about Phil Jones that was apparently related to him by a reporter. When Jones was asked to comment on the BEST papers, he said he no comment until after the papers were published. Maybe Muller was correct in worrying about making sure the IPCC pays attention.

We also discussed problems with the IPCC, Climategate issues, etc., and we tend to mostly agree on all this.

The one disagreement of the evening was over interpreting hurricane data, but that is not something to bother with here.

So all in all, I am ok with what is going on in the BEST project. The PR situation is still a problem, but the media arenât helping here. In any event alot of people are now looking at the data. The BEST team is taking seriously the more serious critiques and are sorting through them. Progress is being made!
...

Sheesh! Pass me the sick bag, quick.

Peter - thanks for the help. Nobody seems to disagree with you, so I accept that they may have made a mistake.

"Speaking of CRU, Muller related an interesting anecdote about Phil Jones that was apparently related to him by a reporter. When Jones was asked to comment on the BEST papers, he said he no comment until after the papers were published."

Old news, reported in Ghana News Now over a week ago (BBC original). Just an example of Phil Jones practising what he preaches.

"Prof Phil Jones, the CRU scientist who came in for the most personal criticism during âClimategateâ, was cautious about interpreting the Berkeley results because they have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

âI look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published,â he said.

âThese initial findings are very encouraging, and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal.â"

A question for Peter Thorne, if he's still around.

I downloaded both the CRUTEM nh+sh/2 and the simple average series. The first gives 0.22C/decade for 1980-2009, and also appears to be the one used in the BEST comparison. The simple average gives a higher trend for that period, 0.26C/dec, only a little lower than BEST and NOAA (both at 0.28C/dec). Intuitively, the simple average makes more sense to me for a "land only" comparison, since it would weight the hemispheres by land area.

Is it possible that BEST did use nh+sh/2 (which is the only one available at CRU), but should have used simple_average?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/diagnostics/global/simple_av…

(Credit where credit is due - this issue was pointed out by at Doskanale Szare at Moyhu:

http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/10/gwpf-is-wrong-warming-has-not-stopped…
)

I have a comment about GISS too, but one thing at a time.

Deep Climate,

there was a paper back in 2005, little cited, by Vose et al in GRL looking at what explains the differences between the different surface records. Most relates to the various different ways that spatial averaging (interpolation) and weighting to form a global mean is undertaken. When stripped down to the lowest common denominator approach they were found to be much more similar.

Sadly, there exists no how to guide (if there was we'd be doing something more interesting and this thread would not exist) so there is no definitive right way. Even the choice of spatial averaging can have a large impact and that's ignoring the units of red noise that result from the very real biases that pervade the raw records from a network never designed or managed for climate and which constitute the elephant in the room with regards to trends. If these aren't quasi-random across the network or through time then getting them properly matters even for the global mean (getting them right matters for regional / local regardless).

Of course, with no how to its impossible to in an absolute sense know how well anybody is doing which is where the idea of benchmarking against a consistent set of analogs (answer known a priori) starts to become appealing. At least then you can ascertain how well algorithms work in a 'tame' environment before releasing to the wild hinterlands of the real-world problem-set. That gives you a fighting chance of interpreting the observational ensemble of opportunity at least. It isn't animal farm and not all datasets can be equal.

There's more on the whole end to end process we (look at the site to work out who 'we' are) think we need to do this properly and unambiguosly at www.surfacetemperatures.org and in the BAMS piece linked from there.

Even more fun is the result of Mann's petition to intervene in the UVa v. ATI case. All can be found in the head post at Eli's. Do read the two links I provided there. Most interesting.

But for those who can't be bothered, Schnare (the lawyer for the ATI) is a liar.

Peter,

Thanks for the Vose et al ref. As for your project at surfacetemperatures.org, I did look at it quickly (I always like clicking on posters' names). I was aware of this initiative before, but am impressed with the progress made on an ambitious undertaking.

For what it's worth here is my Berkeley-style "land" comparison for 1950-2009. This corresponds more or less to Fig. 7 in the Berkely averaging method paper (although they use 12-month running average). I've added CRUTEM "simple average" as well (dotted line).

http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/best-comparison-annual-1…

Despite the misleading "HadCRU" label, it does appear that CRUTEM nhsh was used (and so was GISS Ts "meteorological stations"). As expected, though, CRUTEM savg shows better agreement, as the area weighting is closer to the others.

Here is the decadal comparison.

deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/best-comparison-decadal-1950-2009.jpg

This corresponds to the decadal version of the revised comparison at the Berkeley Earth website.

http://berkeleyearth.org/images/Updated_Comparison_10.jpg

My emulation matches up very well for BEST, NOAA and CRUTEM. However, GISS Ts has now been replaced with a more appropriate GISS "land mask" version that matches BEST and NOAA, as explained in the notes.

http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis.php

Well that's no good. The BEST links are clickable, but not my emulation of the decadal comparison (Wordpress ate my home work, um, I mean the "http://" prefix).

So here it is, all clickable (for JCH and others):

http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/best-comparison-decadal-…

Watts the Denialist

stoat — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:01:57 +0000

Watts the Denialist

We interrupt your diet of rowing (briefly) to point out that David Appell has found Watts to be rather less than open to inconvenient information - despite Watts having asked for that very information. This is nothing new or interesting, of course. Trolls, please form an orderly queue.

Refs

* The fun continues

stoat Sat, 07/23/2011 - 04:01

Tags

climate communication

Ok I guess I'm a troll. The actual emails listed are abusive, uncalled for, rude and nasty. But I didn't see any that were death threats. I have to admit that I didn't go exhaustively through every article linked. Given his core argument I would have thought he would put those front and center. Perhaps just bad evidence presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWVFHJUYVcE&feature=share

Nutters

Dorlomin, Yes nutters is right, and rude and stupid, but hardly a death threat. Their argument is that green policies are suicidal. Not that they are going to lynch the guy.

"noose" = "death threat".

It doesn't matter if the guy holding the noose claims he meant something else.

As we know so called climate scien-tits are involved in so called cons - piracy, we could ask the man if he believes on the existence of climate scientists and name a few. As the mans attention span is shorted like an inverted Tiljander proxy there might even be an answer!

and rude and stupid, but hardly a death threat.

Brandishing a noose is not a death threat?

Thats beyond desperation.

It seems to me that, as with all threats, the person receiving it is the one who decides if it is a legitimate "threat" or not. It's easy for anyone else to stand back and make judgement, but it's something else entirely when the abuse is directed squarely at you.

"shorted like an inverted Tiljander proxy"

... and so the chunterings of McI's li'll star chamber of self-proclaimed 'experts' becomes a would-be justification for actions half a world away.
Never mind Rupe'n'Becky's'n'Jimmy's "Duh, whut?" performances last week, now that's what you could call 'plausible deniability', if you were so minded.

It's amazing how all the pieces come together.

While I think it was stupid theater. In my opinion it was meant as an offer for him to hang himself. But I can see how making a gift of a noose could be viewed as a death threat by someone else. But Dorlomin it is not cut and dried. I still don't really see how this makes David Appell's case. If he wanted to focus on this one example and say that Watt's should cover it, I guess that would be ok. But none of the articles or emails really point to a pattern of death threats.

[But I can see how making a gift of a noose could be viewed as a death threat - this is pretty pathetic stuff. I'm sure you could excuse away "I'm going to kill you" if you contorted yourself hard enough, too.

Besides which, you miss the point - which is Watts refusal to allow the comments to be posted. Appell has the evidence, but for some reason Watts doesn't want his readers to see it - that rather suggests that he agrees with Appell as to its validity, no? If, as you suggest, it was all innocent fun, Watts would be happy for his ditto heads to be allowed to look at it -W]

You are all missing the best part. Watts is playing wounded elephant. It looks like David Ball has shown up and more.

BTW, go over to Curry's. Eschenbach and friends are dumping on your global cooling pages

[Gosh, there is an awful lot of trash there. 179 comments and precious little of any value. The only one worth anything was yours, which Curry responded to. I found some WE stuff saying "Connolley is a bad person" but I didn't see any attempt at all to engage with the argument, presumably because they can't -W]

Ok I guess I'm a troll. The actual emails listed are abusive, uncalled for, rude and nasty. But I didn't see any that were death threats. I have to admit that I didn't go exhaustively through every article linked. Given his core argument I would have thought he would put those front and center. Perhaps just bad evidence presentation.

The first sentence of the first article Appell links to in support of his claims (emphasis mine):

The death threats received by Australian climate scientists such as Will Steffen, Andy Pitman and David Karoly havenât come out of the blue.

MartinM, That is just a claim. Where are the actual death threats? This is third hand.

Here is the question on the noose. If someone handed Monckton a noose at one of his stupid speeches would you consider that a death threat? Or just telling him to shut up?

Nicolas,

Perhaps this item reported at Deltoid might convince you that rather serious incidents are taking place in Oz.

And the truly ironic thing is (although Appell did choose some bad examples) that a couple of weeks ago Watts posted a complaint about an op ed in an Australian paper in which the author invited deniers who claimed to be unable to understand how an odorless, colorless gas in low concentrations could have such a profound effect. She suggested that they try an experiment in a closed room containing 0.1% CO and see what happens. He claimed that this was a death threat. Why shouldn't a much more direct threat from a person representing a group which was aggressively picketing a presentation also be taken as a death threat also?

He claimed that this was a death threat.

Watts is quite happy to allow statements to the effect that anybody who thinks the AGW "unconvinced" might be irrational is on the point of violence. (Although reading the quote below left me with the feeling that the author is projecting.)

If you believe your opponents are irrational, then at some point you contemplate using force to get them to agree. Iâm not shocked to find this in a teacher. The urge to commit violence on those who refuse to learn is an occupational hazard. I taught, I know.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/16/craven-attention/

Deltoid:

... or the researcher who received an email, with a marksman's target superimposed on his photo.

Surely Nico would have it to mean a compliment to the researcher, telling his work is right on the mark...

> a marksman's target superimposed

It's a plus sign.
That's positive.
Positive feedback is always good.
QED, no threat.

Oh, wait.
Were we talking about climate change or about death threats?
How do we tell them apart?

Martin,

This conversation is about evidence. Who was the researcher? When did the this take place? Where is the photo. It sounds suspiciously like an urban legend copied from the political discussion in the U.S.

Sorry Rattus, still all second or third hand. Where is the news story with the actual incidents being described. What University? What were the actual threats? Whose office has added security recently because of these issues?

Look at it this way. Could I prove there had been death threats by referring to David Appells posting which "proves it."

I have already said that many of these statements are idiotic and rude. I'm certainly not ruling out the possibility that there have been multiple death threats. I am simply pointing out that remarkably in all of this writing there is almost no actual evidence. The noose video is the closest and it is, to me, ambiguous. Dozens of emails are quoted. Not a single one is really a threat of any kind.

[But you're still missing the point. Why won't Watts let his readers judge this for themselves? Why are DA's posts there removed, though voluminous pointless rubbish is let through? -W]

"Second hand or third hand blah blah"

FFS, don't be lazy and click on the news links on Lambert's blog post. The answers are there.

"I am simply pointing out that remarkably in all of this writing there is almost no actual evidence. The noose video is the closest and it is, to me, ambiguous. Dozens of emails are quoted. Not a single one is really a threat of any kind."

Are you the type of person who needs to see the actual email threat, or be present at the lecture where the noose was displayed to actually admit that these are valid threats to people?

FWIW, I agree with WC - your verbal contortions are pathetic.

Nicholas Nierenberg:

I have already said that many of these statements are idiotic and rude. [...] The noose video is the closest [to evidence] and it is, to me, ambiguous.

Yeah, I understand, Nicholas. Holding up a noose isn't a death threat, it's merely an advertising strategy, which of course is totally not a reflection of the actual high moral integrity of the climate 'skeptics' -- ooh.

So by your 'standard', of course there aren't any death threats (or rape threats for that matter), there are only failed advertising strategies!

I wonder what you think of this tidbit:

Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents socialist beliefs and actions?

Burn in hell. Or in the main street, when the Australian public finally lynchs you.

Nicholas, do you think this is merely a bad choice advertising strategy by a climate 'skeptic' with a high degree of moral integrity -- and somehow not actually a rape threat?

-- frank

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/homegrown-terrorism-us-0811?page=all

For Nicolas Nierenberg:

âDid you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parentsâ socialist beliefs and actions?â

Clive Hamilton has the details.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/22/2826417.htm

Something else to note is that the details of many of the emails are part of ongoing investigations by the likes of the FBI, so are not publicly available. Yet.

Silencing the scientists: the rise of right-wing populism
by Clive Hamilton

Are you the type of person who needs to see the actual email threat

I'm getting the impression that NN is the type of person who needs to see the bodies before he'll believe the threat was made ...

I get some annoying popup login screen on this page, probably from some of your ads... (or maybe if you hotlinked some photo...)

wpt101.com is the offending domain

Well, here's a thought question:
rank the following in terms of threat:

N: Noose at talk.

E: Random threats by Email.

B:Blog posts, like: Sean Peake's fix bayonets towards Ray Bradley for showing up at WUWT and politely answering a question.

R: Find an eviscerated rat on your doorstep, as a guy in yellow Hummer drives away shouting insults, unsurprising as Ben was under continuous attack from TAR time, starting with Seitz & Singer in the WSJ.

(Google: ben santer dead rat)
Sorry, I am unable to display the rat... guess this doesn't count.

Well, here's a thought question:
rank the following in terms of threat level:

N: Noose at talk.

E: Random threats by Email.

B:Blog posts, like: Sean Peake's fix bayonets towards Ray Bradley for showing up at WUWT and politely answering a question.

(Google: ben santer dead rat)
Sorry, I am unable to display the rat... guess this doesn't count.

Nicolas,

Try following the links in the Deltoid post. They point the the full articles.

William,

Ok, let's be absolutely clear. I'm not defending these people OK. They are garbage. What I'm saying is that I haven't seen a single credible story in all these links about an actual death threat against a climate scientist. (Unless we go with making a gift of a noose.)

As to the accusation that Watt's won't publish stuff. He did, in the same thread that all this is about Appell linked many of the articles you guys are talking about. Including this one.

http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-scientists-the-target-in-culture-…

Just read through it.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/bizarre-nyt-follow-aaas-lead-on-f…

[I don't think you are defending these folk. But I don't see you saying a word against Watts for deleting Appell's posts, and that is hard to understand -W]

[I don't think you are defending these folk. But I don't see you saying a word against Watts for deleting Appell's posts, and that is hard to understand -W]

W, perhaps that's because NN is doing the same thing with words that Watts is doing with technology: ignore, ignore, ignore all the evidence of death threats and rape threats so that he can claim that they don't exist.

Why would NN say a word against Watts's methodology if NN's using it himself?

-- frank

[I can't agree with you. I think NN is being "sceptical" to an unreasonable degree, but that isn't comparable to Watts. NN isn't censoring anyone's posts. And he has a good record in the past of picking up mistakes from people like Oreskes -W]

Watts wants a list current death threats. Watts also wants an apology from Appel, as death threats from up to five years ago don't seem to count as death threats in his book, using that as an excuse to mod away Appel's comments.

"We are still waiting for you to point out the valid death threats. Sorry, the repackaged ones from 5 years ago donât count."

Spat my coffee out.

[I can't agree with you. I think NN is being "sceptical" to an unreasonable degree,

W, what NN is doing is simply summarily blow away all the mentions of nooses, dead rats, bayonets, and gang rapes with a generic "THERE IS NO DEATHS THREATS!!!!" Sounds more like someone ignoring evidence than someone who's 'unreasonably skeptical'. But then again, I'm not exactly known for charitable interpretations of people's words.

-- frank

Appell has a follow-up post.

Remember, too, that this is the same Watts who, after a middle-aged woman who posts at source watch visited his business's office to ask him some questions, squealed loudly and widely that he'd been personally threatened with violence by a global warming fanatic blah blah blah ...

William,

Ok I agree I didn't really follow Watt's logic for starting to delete the posts in that thread. I had understood Appell's point to be that Watts didn't allow any of this evidence in. Appell was clearly able to post at least some of the links that were referred to here. I don't think more of the same would probably have made any difference.

I guess they got tired of him posting a bunch more, but that whole thread is so stupid I'm not sure why they drew the line other than a fit of pique. I would suggest that he let Appell post whatever he wants within reason.

Frank and others,

I certainly never said there are no death threats. That would be stupid and I'm not. I said that his article did not document any death threats. Mostly what I am seeing is a big echo chamber.

As I keep saying. Where is the actual professor? Where is the actual time frame? What was the actual email etc? A dead rat is not a death threat. It is crude but it isn't. (Even if I go with the noose. By the way I didn't say it was an "advertising strategy.") Saying "eat shit and die." Is not a death threat. The "rape" thing was second hand in an unknown time frame to someone unidentified except as a climate campaigner.

Maybe I am being excessively skeptical on this. But I think you guys are lending credibility to every accusation and rumor. Perhaps there is a middle ground.

[I think at this point we've all said what we're going to. Please please can we not have a round of comments attacking NN for the above, if all you're doing is repeating previous points? Of course, if you have something new to say, do, but trivial variations will be frowned on and (ironically, ha ha) deleted -W]

The guy with the noose was a LaRouchie whose only connection to denialism is their belief that climate science is part of the Queen of England's evil plot to addict everybody to heroin.

NN -- "I guess they got tired of him posting a bunch more, but that whole thread is so stupid I'm not sure why they drew the line other than a fit of pique."

Watts has a devout readership, and what Appel was posting contradicted Watts's narrative. It's similar to Lucia's, where she doesn't go as far as banning or redacting, but she jumps on those who upset her more critically challenged readers when they fail to effectively challenge the dissenters themselves.

Paul Kelly, what are you trying to say? Does it matter what the reason of the denialism is?

I think some people are failing to realize the cultural connotations of a noose. Nooses are often left hanging form trees in the US to intimidate African Americans. This is an implied threat.

In any case, using a noose as a prop in a political argument is unheard of, while using a noose to intimidate has a long history. It's pretty clear what you mean to say when you introduce an implement whose primary use is to asphyxiate human beings until the die. Threats do not have to be direct.

A person is crazy enough and hates you enough to catch a rat, eviscerate it, find your house, drive there and leave it on your doorstep, such that your son fears for his safety in his own house.
No worries.

This discussion has emphasised the intentions of the emailers and the interpretations of the recipients. But what about the risk of 'unintended' * consequences?

I have just been watching BBC2's Newsnight in which a leader of the EDL was trying to distance himself from Breivik in Norway. B is not the only violent psychopath around. The emails, discussed above, are part of a kind of collective insanity which has been stirred up without regard to the side effects. If anything very nasty happens, there will be a rush of people trying to disclaim all responsibility.
---------
* Perhaps I am being charitable there?

On a Dutch blog for climate pseudo-skeptics it was actually spun in such a manner that Breivik is in reality a leftist, just like the Nazis were. 'Everyone's a Nazi, except me', is a way of thinking characteristic of Nazis, I guess. The right conservatives are the true Herrenvolk, but crazy leftist Breivik said the exact same thing?

These dog whistlers just don't know what they are unleashing.

Frank, John,

I'm assuming William is asleep at this point. But you are both being ridiculous. I just said it wasn't a death threat. It was a horrible, nasty, brutish stupid thing to do. But you guys are kind of doing a drive by on me now.

[Agreed - I've deleted some comments (response here snipped). You were warned -W]

Come on, Nicolas, Frank only wants to give you a present.

/downplay mode off

If Pinch of the Times can brandish a moose,
Who can object to a lynching Larouche?

W, I don't see what's wrong with my proposed deal

[ Sorry, but the mood between you and NN isn't such that you can use humour, it will only offend. This stuff is polarised enough already, you shouldn't be trying to drive further wedges -W]

-- frank

Is anyone surprised by Nicholas' comments?

W, I'm not using humour. I'm asking NN to put his life where his mouth is.

-- frank

And there you have it. Frank wasn't being funny it was an actual threat.

Okay, humour break:

"As I read the Wegman Report, I must say I was impressed by how well this statistician had grasped the intricacies of paleoclimatology, and in particular, high-resolution studies of tree rings, ice cores, and corals. His section on the problems of using tree rings, and of the important points that one must take into account, struck me as quite brilliant â lucid and clear. It was only later that I realized that large sections of his report had been lifted verbatim from my own 1999 book on the subject, âPaleoclimatologyâ."
-- Ray Bradley from his new book.

H/T caerbannog the anonybunny

Also noted was that Watts took David's 'Watts denies his own mother' metaphor, informed us that his mother was deceased and that therefore this was somehow David striking a low by bringing personal family type issues into an Internet debate. Which is surely entirely muddled logic.

Oh and then there was this.
http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-yo…

One might also add that if one's website is full of people singularly misinformed about the very subject matter of your website...

[Aiee. Will no-one listen? I've deleted some comments here, and will probably go back and kill some earlier ones, too -W]

Murderous weasel

[We have sharp teeth, and are known for biting lagomorphs and others. Ha, you can always post up the comments on your blog with a big notice about me censoring stuff -W]

So you really are Keith Kloor in drag. . . .

I have been banned from commenting at Watts web site for correcting him on the facts too often.
I am sure I am not alone. Here is one of the reasons I was banned:

Last March, after Professor Muller had testfied before Congress, that a sample of the new Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data set had been analysed, and the results looked just like the GISS and Hadcrut global average temperature graphs, Watts protested that the 2% sample only represented Japan and therefore we could conclude nothing from it.

In a comment, I quoted that Muller's written report, which said it was a random sample of global data, and judging by that it couldn't have come only from Japan.

Watts castigated me severely as follows:

"Ah I see you are immediately back to wasting everyoneâs time here, so Iâll waste some of yours with some sarcasm. Iâm not going to give you any additional information, as youâve proven yourself to be a hostile commenter who will just run over to the Rommulans and rant about it there, followed by more ranting from the Rommulan general. Comical, they canât even wait for the science, they MUST STERILIZE it before it reaches Earth. Canât have anything that might threaten the Rommulans now can we? /sarc â Anthony"

Oops! - On March 28 after being corrected by Muller himself, Watts admitted :

"I made a mistake regarding the 2% figure, I misheard what was being presented during my visit with the BEST team at Berkeley. As many of you may know Iâm about 80% hearing impaired and the presentation made to me was entirely verbal with some printed graphs. Based on the confidentiality I agreed to, I did not get to come back with any of those graphs, notes, or data so I had to rely on what I heard. I simply misheard and thought the 2% were the Japan station analysis graphs that they showed me."

That is really a lame excuse. I think there is more than hearing impairment going on here. It seems he can't read either. Muller's written report, which I quoted, said it was a random global sample.

He denies the existence of facts which prove his opinions are incorrect, and invents a conspiracy theory to cover it up. He needs to ban people who dissent in order to feed his self image of himself as an astute scientist.

[Anybody sane cannot possibly believe that Muller would have released results based only on Japan. Presumably, Watts is projecting his own techniques onto others -W]

Isn't there a psychological condition with some of these affects, inflated sense of self worth/ego, failure to admit or accept responsibility for errors/mistakes, enjoyment from manipulating people. Gee, I bet there may even be superficial charm in there somewhere.

Well, for a pretty actual death threat, there is always Anna-Maria Arabia having received an email saying she would be âstrung-up by the neckâ:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/scientists-are-receivi…

Clive Hamilton mentioned several others aimed at CSIRO scientists with beautiful verbous prose like: âyou will end up collateral damageâ, âyou will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f**king neck, until you are dead, dead, deadâ, âYour head will be on a stakeâ.

These statements are pretty unequivocal (and explicit) death threats. One could argue that all these could be just steam being let out by frustrated rednecks who are otherwise nice to children and animals (no doubt that 99,9% of such threats are just hot air), but that argument surely will not cut it. Try shouting out aloud in an airport "Watch out, infidels - IÂ´m a terrorist armed with dynamite!" and try to explain to the police afterwards that it wasnÂ´t seriously meant. I remember at least 5 bomb threats against my primary school in the most peaceful corner of provincial Scandinavia, which were, of course, all completely hollow and probably made by bored pupils in the older classes, but the police and the teachers were still forced to take them all damn seriously.
And certainly, some death threats are everything but hollow - learning that Anders Breivik spent several pages of his manifesto raving echoing the rantings of Monckton and the exact same things that has angered the people making the above threats against the climate scientists is hardly reassuring after the UtÃ¸ya massacre.

People who are not at the receiving end of such threats should be very, VERY careful not to trivialise them or offer up kind excuses.

@Eric Adler #55

...or to paraphrase Jon Stewart, 'hearing impairment isn't even in my Top 20 of things wrong with Watts'.

> he would not live to see further global warming.

But, but -- that's exactly what Tim Ball says himself!

He doesn't expect to live to see further global warming.

Regardless of whether he speaks out or not.

How could he?

Global Cooling: Dr Tim Ball - Climate Gate
climatecooling.blogspot.com/2009/11/dr-tim-ball-climate-gate.html Nov 25, 2009

Eli,

That is indeed a death threat. If that had been presented in the original discussion then I would have simply agreed. I didn't doubt that death threats had been made, I just said that the things being listed weren't death threats. That, in fact, is how the whole discussion began.

Is this the point where NN praises himself for attaining the "middle ground" wherein "[you Ms. Arabia will be] strung-up by the neck" is a death threat, while dead rats at the doorstep aren't a death threat (except when directed at NN himself)?

Or perhaps this is the point where NN claims that the death threats are all the fault of scientists because they're not communicating the actual severity of the death threats clearly enough?

Or the point where NN agrees there's an actual death threat against a climate scientist, and then decides that it's he who's being victimized?

I await NN's (and W's) response...

[This all seems a bit pointless and going-round-in-circles-y. But NN has already admitted one death threat -W]

* * *

Meanwhile, from the Australian article linked by CBH:

> More than 200 scientists will converge on Parliament House today to call on politicians to help stop misinformation in the climate debate.

> But it's not certain the scientists will be able to personally deliver their message to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

> "Look, I've got a pretty busy schedule today," he told ABC Radio.

Well, it does seem Abbott is too busy a man to concern himself with such grubby tasks as protecting his country's citizens.

-- frank

This all seems a bit pointless and going-round-in-circles-y.

Repetition can be useful at times (in this case, to remind everyone that NN is nowhere as "reasonable" as he makes himself out to be). Not everything in life is an academic conference where all presented content must be original...

-- frank

Weasels, of course, miss the point which is to exhaust everyone proving the obvious and it was obvious, and it took what 62 posts and two weeks. Now extrapolate to understand what is going on.

Obama reveals long form birth certificate

illconsidered — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 04:56:38 +0000

Obama reveals long form birth certificate

Barak Obama has finally released his long form birth certificate. Will it satisfy the Birthers?

(Yes, there is a climate connection. Check the links!)

illconsidered Fri, 04/29/2011 - 00:56

Tags

Coby

You must have read my post at the HTTTACS Open Thread!

That article in wattsupmybutt was freaky wasn't it? Do these guys really believe the shit they write, or is it all woo? They better be careful, the climate change cabal is arranging 'secret meetings' and publishing all the details on the web.

There is indeed an interesting lesson to be drawn from this episode, and it has nothing to do with the circumstances of the president's birth. The real story is the extraordinary feebleness and timidity of the North American press. How astonishing that it took a rich self-publicist such as Trump to persuade Obama to produce the long form birth certificate after years of staunch refusal.

A British politician who displayed similar evasiveness and dithering would have been torn to shreds by the newspapers. Yet North American journalists seem to think it is their job to help prevent the evidence from being shown. Even now, they react with fastidious distaste. 'How dare these vulgarians demand a birth certificate from the sainted Barack,' they seem to be saying.

Anyone from the UK who attends an official function in the United States or Canada is amazed by the clubbiness that exists between journalists and those they should be holding to account. The recent fuss over Canada's Sun News Network illustrated the point. Commentators were lining up to demand that this upstart be strangled at birth, and to insist pompously that they and they alone were the arbiters of what is fit to publish or broadcast.

Self-censorship has become the defining characteristic of US journalism, aided and abetted by universities that preach journalistic ethics. Driven by a toxic mix of political correctness and a woeful failure to understand the role of the press in a democracy, these institutions are quite unable to see that they are actually advocating restrictions on free speech. With one or two exceptions, the Canadian press is even worse: it has become an unreadable farrago of pious self righteousness, whose overriding aim is to offend no one.

I suppose I should make it plain that I have the greatest fondness and admiration for both the United States and Canada. And goodness knows we have many faults in the UK. But when it comes to journalism, I am bound to say that I believe we do it better.

For years Canadians have been sleep walking into a state of affairs where free speech is threatened. Now the same thing is happening in America, the land of the First Amendment. It is all rather depressing.

God, Snowman.

What a Fox News drone you are.

Statements like this, along with your admission that you have no interest in facts and that your agenda is set by a half-wit meteorologist with no secondary education, just illustrate your intellectual depravity.

The epic fool Donald Trump said he had the goods on Obama and pushed this issue to make good with the illiterate, ignorant right (i.e., your kind of people, Snowman.) Now that the egg is on his face, he and his supporters are trying to spin an embarrassment as a triumph.

Obama ignored this stupidity for as long as he could because *nothing* satisfies conspiracy freaks. Nothing. There are already people now claiming to be "experts" who are "refuting" the document even though the *Republican* governor of Hawaii had long ago attested to Obama's citizenship.

The failure of journalism was in not more thoroughly exposing the *stupidity of the claim*.

What a comment on the caliber of your comprehension that you regard ignorant demands for satisfaction of an ignorant, ideological claim a journalistic obligation.

Perhaps I haven't made myself clear, Skip. I hold no brief for Donald Trump nor Obama's flakier critics. I have no interest in Fox News, which I have rarely seen. I rather like the the president, and if I had been an American would probably have voted for him. But all that is beside the point.

My assertion is that the press should have been demanding that the White House either put up or shut up. A previous generation of US journalists - consider Watergate - would have done just that. The extraordinary deference to Obama, and the lack of combative instincts in the media, is a sorry business. Mainstream American newspapers are almost all insolvent. Most will be gone within ten years. I think it is rather tragic, but they have only themselves to blame. As the product of US journalism schools, they are increasingly unable to distinguish between news and PR puffery. And, of course, they are iredeemably dull - the one cardinal sin of journalism.

The fact that you cannot see that, Skip, just shows how deeply ingrained the problem has become. You genuinely think the press is doing a good job by being such a pushover. Emasculated and unchallenging newspapers strike you as quite normal.

Yeah, those 2 Hawaiian newspapers could have helped avoid this mess if they had added 'We watched as Obama was born' to their birth announcements.....Then again, they were probably far-left liberals who wanted to impose a world wide socialist (or communist, or fascist, or 'buzzword of the day') government on everybody.

As you seem determined to miss the point, jerryg, I won't bother replying, particularly as it's only half-time in the encounter between Manchester United and Arsenal and the game is soon to resume - a vital battle as the season nears its end. (By the way, Skip, this is a reference to the sport you call soccer.)

Watergate . . . birther bullshit . . . making the President "put up or shut up"?

We're talking about high crimes being committed by the nation's supposed first law enforcement officer compared to the question of whether to respond to conspiracy theory bullshit. These aren't even the same universe let alone journalistic responsibility. Its a junk point, Snowman.

I hope you're a Man U fan.

Snowman is right.

Skip is right, but topic is irrelevant here.

My assertion is that the press should have been demanding that the White House either put up or shut up.

Obama 'put up' before he was even elected, you daft sod.

Actually Skip I'm a fan of neither Man U nor Arsenal, although that was one of your better quips, if I may say so. But I am a Chelsea fan, and Man U's defeat was very much to our advantage.

snowman

".....And goodness knows we have many faults in the UK. But when it comes to journalism, I am bound to say that I believe we do it better...."

Yeah - I always get my news from those paragons of the media, the Telegraph and the Sun.

Fox news reporting UBL dead.
Probably not true.

But I am a Chelsea fan, and Man U's defeat was very much to our advantage.

Ok then fine. I hope Torres contracts the clap in a Soho fancy house.

There's nothing but bile for you here, Snowman. I'll see to it.

I just read that our SEALS finally got to bin Laden. I wonder if he iced himself at the end rather than risk live capture. I suppose we'll know in a few days. It probably doesn't mean much of anything at this point except the symbolism of it; I doubt Osama really had much to do with practical Al Qada operations anymore. In any event, fuck'm.

But it makes you wonder: Why would the non-US citizen/closet Muslim/secret America-hating Barak Obama have authorized a hit that George Bush didn't have the balls to ok?

Also brace yourselves in Europe and any other place abroad that radical faux-Muslim freaks think they can find an American and exact their vengeance. This won't cool off for a while.

Seals, you mean the rubber ones on the drone missile?

Apparently this is the second time OBL has died, he also died in 2001 from kidney failure the only other person to pull off a trick like this was Jesus of Nazareth.

But you are right we should brace ourselves as OBL was much more valuable to the American government alive than dead as we have no reason now to stay in Afghanistan God only knows what the American government is planning but what ever it is it can only end in tears. Good luck Skip.

It was Clinton who didn't do it to UBL

Skip,
I shouldn't have posted that last one.
I wouldn't second guess anyone in that position.

Americans have every right to take pride in the courage and resourcefulness of their special forces. But Skip, following our conversation yesterday, I bring you information about Osama Bin Laden that I suspect few of your countrymen know.

Bin Laden is (or was) an Arsenal fan. It is perfectly true. When he lived in obscurity in London in the early 1990s, he was a regular at Highbury, Arsenal's old stadium. He bought an Arsenal shirt for one of his sons.

For supporting Arsenal, as well as for his lesser crimes, he deserved everything he got.