This means that you, by arguing the contrary position, aren’t just arguing against them–you’re arguing against fact, against logic, against the very concept of human reason. Why should they treat you well? To them, it’s like telling them that they shouldn’t laugh at a dog because they’ll hurt the dog’s feelings.

They don’t consider this a debate. To them, the debate is over. You, by saying that it’s still an open question, are on the same level to them as a Flat Earther, or someone who believes in Lamarckian evolution or spontaneous generation. You’re wrong–and what’s worse, they see you wallowing in your wrongness, and gleefully consuming its filth, and trying to fling your erroneous excrement onto others–the plush-bottom brainless Public who don’t know their arses from their elbows, whose brains are poisoned by freedom to the point where they think your fecal wrongness smells right.

Indeed, not only are you wrong, but if you can convince enough people that you’re right then THE WORLD WILL END. So you aren’t just wrong–you’re dangerously wrong, because if you win the argument then they will die. You bastard. You probably hate gay people, too.

It has been amusing since the time series can be deconstructed into several cycles with periods that correspond to known cycles such as the PDO. The short version is that i can’t find any evidence of a linear warming trend since the late 19th century to the present. However, it’s pretty clear that the shorter 11 or so year sunspot also influences average local temperature. You can click on the website link to see the data.

I appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in taking another look at the data, as mentioned in other posts. I hope y’all find these results useful in the ongoing debates.

I have been posting a few of this “How not to measure temperature” series at my forum.Thank you for your hard work in making these faulty weather reporting stations known.

It is worth the effort I think because “The Hockey Stick” and the strange GISS temperature measurements among other suspect science proclamations. Depend on the now exposed shoddy instrumentation and data gathering process.

GISS thanks to Stephen McIntyre has to relegate 1998 to 2nd place in their still suspect hottest years on record list.By posting 1934 as #1 damaged the hockey stick papers argument that it was the 1990′s with 1998 at the peak. The proof of CO2 emission driven global warming.

Because of your effort and Steve’s and others.We are FORCED to re-examine the data and see how they relate to reality and quality of the observed climate we live in.

The Canadian AGW hysteric, David Suzuki, recently, in a public speech, demanded that politicians who are deniers should be put in jail. Imagine: a two-bit TV science hack demanded the president of the Czeck Republic to be put in jail. Can it get more surreal?

Apart from rhetoric, I can only stand back and cheer on the efforts of SM and Watts.

That may be, Jeff, but it is the kind of intellectual dishonesty we’ve come to expect from the glass-half-full crowd.

As to the “followup bet”, never made, I noticed the bet that the “gap between rich and poor” would be greater. Well, I should hope so! Show me a time in history when life got worse for the poor when the gap between rich/poor widened [The Rise of Rome, the Christian Era, The Rennaisance, the Enlightenment, The Industrial Revlution (for all it's problems), the Postindustrial Revolution, the Information Age]. Show me a time when the gap between rich/poor narrowed where life did not get horribly worse for the poor [The sack of Rome, the Mongol Hordes, the 100 years' War, the 30 years' War, The Credit Mobilier, World War I, The Great Depression]. (The olnly exception I know of is the Haitian Slave Revolt.)

Philip: Thanks; I like to think there are honest men on both sides. But the personal venom is getting very severe. And I wish more of the the AGW advocates would recognize that skepticism and due diligence is a vital part of the process, to be encouraged, not avoided, even if they turn out to be mainly right.

Paulus: I will try. We all need reminding that once this controversy is resolved one way or another (or in between), that all parties need to work together to build a better world. I’d hate to see the current bad feelings between the two sides get in the way of that in the future. (Can’t we all just be content with calling each other foolish and move on? Why do they have to think of us as criminals?)

Although I’d add that the ‘intellectual war’ is between intellectuals and anti-intellectuals. The former being sceptics and the latter being AGW believers.

Go hang out at a few non-overtly scientific forums and see the dismal ignorance and their virulent anti-intellectual tone. I’d characterize it as ‘How dare you question my right to my ignorance.’