Thanks and Apologies

So you were trolling, over a matter that is nowhere near as clear-cut as you’ve decided it is, and you epect to get away with it with a “just kidding folks!” and carry on as if nothing was wrong?
Correct me if I’m wrong but, Shore was offered the opportunity to guest-post at tallbloke’s site was he not? His comments were not removed, he was prevented from making more in order to avoid taking things off topic, so giving him a guest post where he could define the topic and letting him go at that seems like a fair solution, does it not? That is not censorship.
You’ve tried to demonstrate something by constructing a strawman. AGAIN.

Neat-o!

So, a trick. Nothing wrong with a trick if the objective is the clear exposition of the science when such an exposition has not been forthcoming.
At the same time, to be a bit tribal, Tallbloke is one of the good guys. He plays at a high level and tends to be very fair indeed. So fair he gets his gear nicked by the cops.
One of the more attractive aspects of the heretic position is that there is no “heretic” orthodoxy. We hack and chop at the science and the policy and, from time to time, disagree. Annoying representatives of orthodoxy come by to challenge from time to time and sometime they are right. Banning them does, to use a Mannism, “the cause” no good at all. Tallbloke should acknowledge that. And still feel entirely free to say, and more importantly, demonstrate that he is right and you are wrong.
My suggestion: take a week or two off the gravity topic. The theory may very well violate the laws of physics; but it will still violate them in a couple of weeks if it does now. At the moment the “trick” and the back and forth are generating more heat than light.

Wow. Nefarious Plot! Dastardly Cunning! Hidden Agendas and Vested Interests!
FWIW, the only reason I would ban anybody in a blog like this is if they cannot maintain the minimum level of fuckin’ civility and get to where the ad hominem noise outweighs the possibly constructive signal by a decibel or three. I don’t even advocate banning people who are utterly incompetent in science, math, or simple reason — even though they can be annoying. How can anyone learn if they can’t be mistaken — even obnoxiously mistaken?
As for somebody like Joel — physicists are dangerous people to ignore or ban. Joel might make mistakes. I certainly do. But I imagine that both of us keep other people from making far worse mistakes, a lot more often by calling them on elementary errors and/or teaching them stuff they don’t know but should, to understand something. I don’t even think one can label a good scientist as “a warmist” any more than you can label them “a denier”, and all good scientists are skeptical, at least where being skeptical is called for.
If disagreeing with Jelbring or N&Z is a sin justifying banishment, well, banish me. I just don’t understand N&Z, and when I started to read Jelbring it certainly looked like his assertions violated the laws of thermodynamics on something like the second or third page. When Willis does something like that in a blog, there is an opportunity to discuss it and for the assertion to be clarified (or for one or the other of us to learn of our conceptual or algebraic mistake). When it is there at the very beginning of a paper (and violates things proven as exercises in elementary textbooks in thermo) it makes me doubtful. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something — I’m happy to acknowledge that I could be wrong about almost anything, or that I could be misreading something that is actually right — but in some sense the onus is on the author of a paper to state the basic physics clearly enough to be both understood and checked or agreed upon.
N&Z are in the same boat. Anybody who asserts that an atmosphere in static thermal equilibrium has a temperature gradient and that gravity “heats” the atmosphere is going to have their work cut out for them trying to convince me that they understand thermodynamics, because “thermal equilibrium” means the opposite of “has a temperature gradient”, and a homogeneous gravitational field does not heat in the specific sense that it is not a source of entropy. It’s a macroscopically, globally conservative interaction.
I actually think that Willis’ idea of needing an elevator speech version of this sort of effect is a very good one. Or to put it more “scientifically”, an abstract. A summary. An energy flow diagram. Lots and lots of mistakes in thermo can be avoided with an energy flow diagram. You can prove lots of nifty things (like the equivalence of various statements of the second law) with nothing but an equally nifty energy flow diagram. I’d still be perfectly happy for someone to provide a believable version of this for either J or N&Z.
rgb

Well done Willis. Not my favourite topic, so I didn’t comment on Jelbring or N&Z, simply because I have only a brief understanding of the theoretical background. But I know, sometimes one need to stirr up the hornest’s nest to keep rational thinking alive, as I have done with the origin of the CO2 increase, as too many still believe that it isn’t humans which cause that…

Let’s hope that temperatures rise still further as the physics of climate science is discussed.
This is because the IPCC version was based on four fundamental scientific errors in the deceptive security of the assumption that CO2 drove the World out of ice ages. However from 1997 when it was shown that CO2 followed T and CO2 climate sensitivity had to be calibrated against modern warming, the subject degenerated into systemic fraud with false hockey sticks and ‘no MWP’.
The only way to recover is to rebuild climate science from the ground upwards with correct physics [the GCMs are fine, it’s the heating terms that are fundamentally wrong].
This even goes to the basics of thermalisation of absorbed IR energy to the N2/O2 carrier: there is no physical mechanism for that. There is also ‘back radiation’ which is to confuse ‘Prevost Exchange Energy’ for the ability to do thermodynamic work. As for N&Z paper, they reinvent lapse rate hearing: there is much more to consider.
More fighting, less control by the fraudsters.

ad vivum

Snip!

Well you didn’t fool me, and I can now say that I suspected it all along, which is why I didn’t post on that thread as I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.
Of course there is one thing I would have done differently Willis, I would have typed up this post in advance (sans observed results naturally) and emailed it to Anthony as a proof, because you know some people are going to be (or perhaps act) skeptical, pardon the pun.
Personally I am less enthralled by Joel Shore than you, I don’t think he is that bright a person to begin with. He is a true believer. He trolls a lot, sometimes incessantly and has a knack for verbalizing some very idiotic views. I remember one time he was spouting off how we should all accept the extraordinary expenditures on AGW mitigation as a kind of fire insurance. Never mind the fact that fire is a bonafide real danger here and now, and is killing someone right this very moment somewhere on our planet. That is the kind of lunacy that drives me mad, their intentional association of the dreamed up danger of a degree or two of ~average~ temperature warming, with the horrific killer of fire which has been destroying lives, materials, and lost knowledge for Millennia. If Tallbloke had banned him for being plain stoopid I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.
This bit about violating 1st law is ridiculous for a whole different reason anyway. To presuppose that any model or real observations can capture the energy budget of a non-dead planet like the Earth is insane. I can assure everyone that if you have missing heat or surplus heat, you have simply made a mistake somewhere. More energy exiting the planet than coming in simply proves deficient observing skills and a lack of imagination. And a chunk of arrogance.
Earth is generating its own heat by way of radioactive decay. We exist on the microscopic thin cool crust of a molten (use your Dr. Evil voice here) liquid hot magma ball. That hellacious inferno is not locked up in a neat impervious container. If it was, given geologic timescales, we would be sitting on a plasma timebomb that Algore could correctly call millions of degrees. But it’s not, the thermal buildup vents all over the place in the thousands (probably millions) of volcanoes mostly underwater. And certainly some of the heat is wicked away through the ground itself and ultimately heatsinked away in the atmosphere. Earth has both internal and external inputs to the ‘energy budget’, and the sun, while the major external input, is not the only one. Matter == Energy, and Earth is collecting matter over Geologic time.
There is no 1st law violation, and there is no sane reason to entertain a discussion about it. So, those theories that seem to violate basic thermodynamics, and those folks that critique those theories, are just sparring over nothing in the same way two ancient Mesopotamians might have been arguing over the meaning of an eclipse or a shooting star.

tallbloke says:

I’m seriously thinking of posting the email conversation Willis and I had offline

This is none of my business but I love the both of ya. Don’t do it unless Willis agrees Tally.

Oh Willis, you are so wicked! You are going straight to hell!
Congrats on a cool stunt. I wonder if any of my fellow warmists would be up for something like that….

Wow Willis. Never has so little been said in so many repetitious words and phrases in such a long post and the point was? And exactly how does all this help to derail the CO2 driven CAGW scam? A sad little episode best forgotten for me and others who have admired many of your contributions as well as those of Tall Bloke. Let all of us not lose sigt of the end game!

Amazing stuff! Willis for World President and Roger for running-mate!

I tried to discuss science on Tallbloke’s blog.
He accused me of dishonesty – claiming on his blog that people posting comments on Science of Doom: “..may find your posts being edited without explanation after you submit them...”
This is inaccurate. And, of course, insulting.
So as a result of this insult I no longer post comments (or read) Tallbloke’s blog. I assume this was the intention of Tallbloke’s false claim.
When he later posted comment on my blog I asked: “..I wonder why tallbloke is commenting on this blog, after accusing me of dishonesty..“.
I didn’t get a response, an apology, or a proof of his claim about said dishonesty.
So it doesn’t surprise me to read Willis’ story.

I am reminded of Richard Feynman’s story. He and other Caltech physics professors were arguing over some esoteric point of subatomic physics and Feynman said something like “Let me go and work it up as a lecture even an undergraduate can follow.”. A couple of weeks later he came back and said “I tried but I couldn’t do it. That means we don’t understand it.”

Willis, I read most of that previous thread, and found througout that your treatment of commenters was rude, arrogant, tendatious, overbearing, and, well, quite frankly, I loved every minute of it!
However, whatever your real motive for the post, it was quite extraordinary how the same misconceptions were endlessly repeated by some individuals, and no amount of logic or reason or appeal to basic physics could dent their ignorance.

This has all been a pathetic waste of time. I think we have way too much influence from guest authors on WUWT and would be happier with less content. There seems to be a subtle background push to elevate AGW type views in my opinion, which would appear to go against the original concept of this fine site.

Willis,
I have long respected you for your intelligent discussion wit and original thought that you bring to the sometimes dower subject of climate science. However on this present topic and dispute, I think you have handled it entirely wrongly.
You may be right to challenge Tallbloke on his decision to ban Joel Shore, but the way you have gone about it does nothing but harm to you, to Tallbloke and to the sceptical climate science movement.
Reading your text above is like reading the plot of a fantastical whodunit novel where reality is suspended and the author takes liberties with our beliefs as to what is both possible and probable in his attempts to direct the rather poorly thought out plot to emerge with a blockbuster ending. This is what I think of your version of events here. I just don’t believe them. They are fantastical. Only in a novel could this over complicated plot that you espouse possibly hope to achieve its planned outcome. I think what has really happened is that in your annoyance, you have gone off half cocked and produced your own post with all kinds of restrictions in it, which has then backfired. In your attempts to salvage the post, you have then concocted this fantastic plot, saying this is what was intended all the time.
Whichever version of events is the truth, I think you come out of it very badly. If your account is truthful to what actually happened, that makes you a schemer of extraordinary proportions, making your actions no better than those of the ultimate schemer, as evidenced by the Climategate emails, Michael Mann. If my version is correct, that means that you have told something of a whopper, in which case your actions are no better than ultimate fantasy story teller, Michael Mann. Which ever it is, your conduct is unacceptable and is what I would expect of the alarmist faction. There is no place for manipulation and deceit on the sceptical side. It is not necessary, because when you have truth on your side, there is no need to manipulate or to lie. And there is certainly no need to air our dirty washing in public over what is a very minor dispute.
The alarmist blogs will be having a field day.

Willis,
You and Joel have been wrong in the past. You both insisted that LWIR re-emitted by CO2 has an equal effect over water and land. A simple empirical experiment showed this to be incorrect.
You and Joel both insist that Nicolov and Zeller are wrong. I conducted an initial experiment that showed that in two identical containers with internal black target surfaces which were exposed to identical amounts of sunlight, the container with the higher air pressure heated to a greater temperature. Further to this I posted a clear description of a more thorough experiment that could be conducted cheaply. Anthony, the owner of this blogsite took the time to replicate an experiment shown by Al Gore and prove it false. You however, appear only interested “thought experiments” based physics that only apply to spherical chickens in a vacuum.
I have no idea what the purpose of this thread is but if it is intended to recover some respect I would suggest two options.
1. A proper apology for your behaviour (not the venal, revisionist tripe you typed above)
2. Conduct an actual empirical experiment (maybe ask Stephen Wilde for some pointers)

A very childish episode! Just my opinion so snip away! Now, can we get back to what the site des best?

Willis,
I did not call you a liar. I gave you the choice. Only you know what is the truth of your actions, but whichever scenario is the correct one, neither are becoming of you. Like others who have commented here, your own self importance now seems to be transcending the objective of this site, which is to advance the cause of climate scepticism in an unerringly honest and objective way.

The warmists will be laughing at this pointless and childish bickering between two people who are basically on the same side.

Bruce says: (January 17, 2012 at 1:06 am) “You’re a very, very clever man, Willis. Sadly, and your intellect notwithstanding, I don’t think I’ll ever believe another word you say or write.”

Agreed, Bruce; Willis has played a dangerous game, and whilst I am a huge admirer of the cowboy I think he may yet come to regret spooking the mob.
He has let me (at least) down, and I feel regretful that he has. He could have done this another way, and lost no respect at all — and probably gained his goal.

Willis, you’ve asserted, repeatedly and stridently, that “if you can’t explain it in an elevator speech, you don’t understand it.”
Please justify this arbitrary assertion in iambic pentameter, because after all, if you can’t justify it in iambic pentameter, it isn’t valid.
Can we agree that it’s not what is taught that matters, but rather what is learned? I fear that much of what was learned here is that Willis is a bit of a prick. Sorry.

You asked for elevator explanations. I gave a rather good one. You responded by pretending to take offense in order to contrive an excuse to ignore what I said. I see no point in repeating myself to someone with his fingers stuffed in his ears. The thread was dominated by yammering idiots at that point anyway. Now you tell us the whole thing was merely some kind of ploy to provoke a reaction at another blog. I am … unimpressed.

Well I took a lot of unnecessary abuse but mostly didn’t rise to it because I want to establish the truth rather than participate in emotional grandstanding.
In the process I formed the view that Willis wouldn’t recognise a valid elevator speech in favour of N & Z if he was hit over the head with it.
I’m pretty sure I got pretty darn close in a step by step process but in my view he blinked at the last minute and refused to entertain the idea that even in a non GHG world the conductive energy exchange at the surface/atmosphere interface would be dynamic and not static so if one allocates numbers to that conductive energy exchange then one can see a warmer surface than that anticipated from the usual radiation only equations.
Only if the conductive surface/atmosphere energy exchange is static does Willis’s own proposition hold. I cannot believe that it is static due to the energy already stored in the atmosphere and on the surface with plenty of the resultant kinetic energy bouncing around.
The odd thing is that this whole kerfuffle seems bizarre to me because I have a clear recollection from my schooldays that planets with atmospheres have to be treated differently to those without. The S – B numbers are fine for a planet with no atmosphere but they fail to apply as soon as an atmosphere with any mass is present because it interferes with the radiative energy flows by interpolating non radiative means of energy transfer.
Even in Willis’s own thread someone made the point that an atmosphere decouples the surface from space.
Well of course it does and it makes the S – B equations invalid in the process.

Some many years ago before BBC science reporting was subverted and world government was just something the Rothschild’s talked about over the port there was a BBC radio programme featuring Richard Feynman.
At some point the BBC presenter attempted (with some skill) to provoke Feynman in to giving an ‘elevataria’ explaining quantum electro dynamics for the benefit of the Radio 4 listeners.
As I recall Feynman did actually apologise (a first perhaps) but he said that he wouldn’t lie to us and the only way that he could explain things was by using mathematics and that it would take some time. He said that there was no easy way to explain these things without lying and if we wanted some cute analogy we could go elsewhere.
The point that he rammed home was that QED was such a successful theory because it had been tested in so many ways and still gave correct predictions – the theory didn’t stop working when you looked at it closely.
So Mr Watts, if the bongo man had just declined to post a QED elevator speech on this blog would he get the same snide opprobrium that you offered Mr Jelbring?
All the Best

Willis,
Your replies to many comments have been extremely arrogant, cocky, childish and rude. Unfortunately your recent posts and especially the way you have moderated/answered many comments is taking the quality of WUWT down.
Anyway, it is my own choice whether to read your posts or not. After this episode I do not have to bother with your’s anymore. This last post of yours must be the worst of any posts I have read here.

Although I am a sceptic, I realise that Joel Shore is one of the most knowledgeable contributors to this site. Tallbloke on the other had favours what I consider to be pseudo-science – such as Claes Johnson, Nicolov and Teller, Sky Dragon nonsense etc. Maybe this is because Tallbloke lacks scientific understanding and is thus swayed by those works which are appeal to the scientific illiterate. I have no doubt that this is why Tallbloke refuses to present his ‘elevator’ speech. To do so would expose his lack of understanding.
The problem is that this sort of nonsense does not help the sceptic cause. On the contrary, it simply reinforces the impression that sceptics range from the scientifically uninformed to the barking mad.
As Richard Lindzen says, there are some things that all scientists will agree on. For example, they all agree that the greenhouse effect is real, whether they are sceptics or not. If someone has a new theory to disprove that, then the onus is on them to offer cogent evidence to support it, not just a rambling rant of disinformation and misunderstandings.
The experience of the ‘ A Mater of Some Gravity’ postings was not good. The overwhelming comments on that post were what I class as uninformed. No matter how many times that Willis re-iterated that non-radiative gases in the atmosphere don’t radiate someone, without any evidence, would say that they did. Lucy Skywalker says the same thing here today. How can people learn and advance if they cannot distinguish between information and disinformation and the disinformation swamps the true information? I understand Willis’s frustration but – Willis – what you did was not right. It smacks of Tamino , Real Climate and even Tallbloke.
Best of luck in the future Willis.

Willis Eschenbach says:
January 17, 2012 at 3:43 am
“ It reminded me of the maoist terminology, like “running dog venal capitalist revisionists” …:
I believe the old Pravda approved phrases would be “lick-spittle lackeys of the capitalist running dogs” or “back-sliding revisionists who will be purged”
Sadly RT (Russia Today) is no substitute for Pravda. So someone has to keep the language alive. Try http://thepeoplescube.com/ where you will read that Laika the space dog has been beaming signals into into liberal tinfoil hats since 1957…
Or try the experiment….

Tallbloke, I agree that Willis can take a hike and we will all be better for it. He plays games and disturbs the ether with them as opposed to being someone who helps science move forward. So Willis , goodbye on your own doing. Play games with your buddy and spare us your comments. Your game is up, for all to see, you are not worthy to be a commenter at wuwt or Tallblokes site. Bill

Wow. How petty….

My elevator speech is pretty basic, and covers Willis’ proof and my assertion:
– First, Willis proof of the breaking of thermodynamic law isn’t compelling as he had to invent a fictitious atmosphere to achieve broken law. I could likewise prove refrigerators don’t exist by imagining a perfect insulator.
– Second, on the N&Z theory: We know that CO2 in a closed system heats faster than CO2 in an open system… many debunks of the Al Gore video exist. Gravity “warms” the planet assuming two things: 1) there is an energy input and 2) There is an atmosphere. In a planetary system the gravitational warming happens when gravity acts as an elastic container against which the atmosphere expands.
This doesn’t violate any laws of thermodynamics as the planet, devoid of solar input, would cool, and the N&Z proof does not show more energy in the system than is put into the system originally.

Who is the proprietor of this blog? Anthony! Have you nothing to say? Perhaps at some stage you might attempt to but this family row to bed?

(Psst – in case it wasn’t obvious, my post about herding cats that are on PCP vs herding cats while on PCP was a demonstration of the point at which I lost interest. And it wasn’t just interest that I lost, there was also a measure of respect.)

Dear Willis,
FWIW:
One read of your constraints and naturally fictitious hypothetical planet setup in your last post was all it took for me to know that fish had a hook in it, a troll. An ill advised one it now seems, and at the time fraught full with potentially sad and unintended consequences, as these things usually tend to be.
I started my comment in said post with this:
“I have no dog in this fight, I’m just a bystander. But you obviously do, and it seems so in a bad way. I don’t know or care who bit you on the ass, but by the timbre of your responses they struck a nerve…….”
I attempted to shine a discrete light on your mirror by asking that you snip my post and treat it as a personal message, to which you responded with a rationalization of your self-perceived character flaws. Yes, we all have them, but flaws are still flaws, not virtues. Striving to eliminate and overcome them is noble and good. Rationalizing them is not.
I’m afraid that the unintended consequences of taking your personal vendetta out in the open were the public lambasting and humiliation of a lot of good, well intended people innocent of your machinations, and the lowering of the bar by which others will treat you in the future. High standards are now irretrievably out the window. Onwards your megaphone might also fall on more deaf ears than you’d like. I for one certainly hope this is not the case, but Karma is a female dog.
Worst of all in my view, you also damaged the reputation of your humble host Anthony’s site.
All the best,
J.

Unfortunately Willis you have form. I well remember your reaction to Judith Curry coming on to a sceptic blog seeking dialogue. Your reaction was extreme. Not only did you rant, you screamed insults at her. You do the sceptic cause no good at all. I rarely read any comments you make and from now on I will read absolutely none.
All sceptics should try to be dispassionate, avoid ad homs and maintain a professional manner despite provocation. No, it’s not easy to do when you read something utterly outrageous on a blog. But please remember these blogs – particularly sceptic blogs- are read by people who matter i.e. those who will eventually stop the AGW bandwagon, by changes in policy or simply stopping the money. Lurkers far exceed contributors.
They will not comment ever, but they are looking at the weight of evidence and will conclude that at best AGW has been grossly exaggerated. At worst lies and possibly crimes have been committed. Keeping our cool will hasten that day. The antics of WE will then be irrelevant.

re:
steven mosher says:
Nice Willis.
when I saw the first snip It was easy to see what you were up to.
doubtless some will be offended at being schooled by a crystal clear object lesson.
Or, maybe, some will be offended at being schooled about censorship by someone who holds the power to snip.
If Willis only wanted an elevator speech on the point in question , well that is fine.
But… he also chose to bring in the point of censorship…why?
If Willis only wanted discussion on his science then I would have no worries.
He did not do that.
Willis chose to bring the point of censorship into a post he fully intended to censor.
And it would seem he did censor (rather strongly?)
If you dont want comments to be about your censorship…then either don’t censor comments…or don’t whinge about censorship in your posting.
Is this nothing more than a ‘crystal clear object lesson’ on the value of censorship?

Well about that experiment of Konrads- well can we do it?
And can we add ongoing input as to day night tempatures? Also volcanic outgassing.
Konrad says:
in two identical containers with internal black target surfaces which were exposed to identical amounts of sunlight, the container with the higher air pressure heated to a greater temperature.
Scienceofdoom says:
Pump up a tire and it gets hot due to the pumping (work done), but after a while the temperature returns to where it was, even though the pressure is still high. Does high pressure by itself cause high temperature? No. Energy in and energy out of the system determine the temperature.
Waiting waiting waiting waiting.

Willis and Tallbloke,
Two weeks from now no one will be able to give an “elevator speech” on what you two are bickering about, much less will anyone remember any details. All anyone will know is that two prominent skeptics are mudwrestling over what to most of are petty ego issues and pedantic gobledeygook. You’re embarrasing us, really. No more “but, but, he…”; get your butts up off the ground, shake hands and use your mega-noggins to resolve this somehow; it ain’t rocket science, as they say.

I’ve often tried to correct some of the more extreme fallacies that Joel supports, although it must be stated that these are common mistakes that are accepted in equal measure by some parts of the side that reach a different hypothesis on “global warming” and radiative physics generally.
It seems that the method is galling, put-down, and persuasion as opposed to scientific argument, whether that be induction or formal proposition (given the existence of A and B, one infers the hitherto unsuspected existence of C)
I don’t think there is much veracity from the consensus, who don’t attempt to provide the necessary calculations for the hypothesis of AGW (Such vital calculation of all relevant factors are even missing from the IPCC AR4). I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that when crucial details of thermal properties (including the mathematics) of aerial gases are questioned in detail, the consensus employs these reactive methods of gall and browbeating, though the pointers go in that direction.

So, essentially, I won on sentence length and about it being about density and therefor ought to get a gold star so I can truly shine for fifteen minutes. :p

This thread reads like something over at Deltoid, full of immature and thin-skinned people claiming “he did it to me first” “didn’t-did-didn’t-did….” and whining about their “rights”.
It is the most unedifying thread I have seen on a skeptic site for several years, But no doubt Willis will turn up tomorrow and claim it was another of his fabled practical jokes; in which case, it is a colossal failure.
Nul points.

Willis,
Maybe I missed a follow up, or maybe it got snipped 😉
I thought you disproved your own proof in the thread. First you say that there is no way that a transparent gas can warm the surface past the S-B temp. Then you claim that lapse rate is equal to -g/Cp, then you note that the potential energy of gas at the top of the atmosphere is equal the the kinetic energy of the gas at the bottom (owtte).
Engineers like to take things to their limits to see if they break down. As you keep doubling the mass of the atmosphere, in order to keep the temperature of the surface constant, the upper atmosphere quickly must cool to degrees below zero kelvin. Note that as we gain in altitude, Cp also drops (it should be Cm). This makes the proof break down even faster as we add mass. Several people pointed this out, but I never saw your reply.

I am getting fed up with this crap!
I hardly post in this blog.I also skim the blog entries here.To see if there is a shift away from the increasigly boring arguments over measly energy increase changes.That CO2 is alleged to have imposed on the vast dynamic climate system that the planet has.
Partly because the divergent opinions are that.Divergent.They are full of noise and in the end.The skeptic herd are as confused as ever.The endless nitpicking is driving me nuts.You are now going in circles with the same crap over and over.
The public babbling going on between Willis and Tallbloke is self defeating.You have been reduced to petty carping over how to run a blog.If you want to stop visiting Tallblokes place.Fine! But to devise a whole blog in the attempt to “stab him in the back”. I am unhappy about it.
I Find that any post by Bob Tisdale to be so much more relevant.Than what we have been getting elsewhere.Why? BECAUSE HE FOCUSES ON THE REAL WORLD.As opposed to the nail biting blackboard arguments we have been subjected to these days.I am wondering if the skeptic community is losing sight on what is important and relevant?
To show EMPIRICALLY that the AGW conjecture is unsupported and a failure.That is the primary mission in my opinion.To educate the layman public on the basics of our skepticism.To help them see beyond the misleading media commentary and the deliberate lies they inject.To expose the blatant attempt to the FAUX science they peddle.The Hockey Stick is a primary example..AGW believers have a habit of making them.Because the real world does NOT agree with them.Since they have a cause to support.They are going to publish the pseudoscience crap.As part of herding the layman to believing that we are doomed unless………………..
Meanwhile a whole climate cycle is being profoundly neglected by just about everybody.The one that is most fatal to the AGW hypothesis.I am gobsmacked that none of you are aware of it.
Well I am going to have to make a choice on how much I have to tolerate.Before I stop visiting places like this.The backstabbing.The pettiness over small details.The cries of censorship.It is all so useless to the public at large.The layman who are being fed a steady dies of distortion and lies.The barrage of half truths of the daily weather events that goes on around us.
I try in my small way to help the layman in my forum.They are the ones we should be helping.To counter the barrage of baloney.The media and environmentalist groups spew out.The deliberate attempt to con the confused public into supporting legislation.That is so helpful to the few and useless to the many.
I wish you people would stop this infighting and get back on track.To inform the public about what is really happening.That I believe is what is most important.
To help the layman with clear presentations.The comments we post.Clarifying what needs to be considered.To help them keep their cool in the face of unending media cries of doom over weather events.

I have found this whole debacle to be depressing. This is the kind of behaviour I have come to expect of Warmists, not skeptical scientists.
My read of the exchange is that Willis has concocted a “clever” explanation of his behaviour after the fact in order to justify his bad behaviour. My guess is that he had no such intent in mind when he started all this.

“Maybe when we’ve exausted the insults, we’ll get over it”
Sounds good to me.
I am neither a scientist nor an academic but what what it is worth, I am upset to read that the relationship between these two gentlemen has deteriorated to the extent that it appears to have.
I think that all that can be achieved, has been achieved and that now might be a good time to move on so as not to put WUWT in a difficult (catch 22) position.

As they say tl;dr
Sometimes you guys really need to take a holiday and lighten up a bit. There is nothing worse than taking yourself too seriously.

Childish ego trip. Take your blog back Anthony.

Meltdowns like this episode tarnish credibility and risk driving some world-class contributors away from the site. I suspect this one may constitute “a bell that cannot easily un-rung”.

Willis,
Recently, Anthony gave us a detailed post regarding the censorship and self-serving snipping that occurs at warmist sites such as SkS. Anthony stressed that he would not allow such behavior to occur at WUWT. I believe that you have overstepped your obligations as a guess author and have broken Anthony’s pledge. (At least this is how it appears to me.)
I understand that you feel that your opinions at Tallbloke’s site has been stifled. I know that must irk you. (I do not like it when others with opinions similar to mine are muzzled.) However, if we want to have any chance to persuade others, we keep the conversation going and we must learn to express our disagreements without being disagreeable.
BTW, I am a skeptic and have not completely made up my mind regarding the work of Jelbring or N&Z. As an aerospace engineer, I understand that the adiabatic atmospheric lapse rate is a real phenomenon. However, I do not know if it: (1) is caused directly as a result of the gravity field or (2) is a result of convective forces self-organizing due to differences in buoyancy due to relative heat content. I suspect the later might be a more correct statement of the situation.
Best regards,
wermet

BarryW (6:52 am) – sorry, wrong again.
“gas heats and radiates a percentage back to the earth which heats (same argument as used for GHG)”
No it doesn’t – a GHG can radiate, a non-GHG cannot – by definition. That’s the difference between GHG and non-GHG at Earth-like temperatures.

All of the “anti-censorship” comments would have a lot more meaning if Willis had not stated up front he was going to censor. At a slight modification to the original text, RTFA! Quit jumping to conclusions, READ!
Shouting at Willis for doing what he said he was going to do doesn’t make sense. I for one am sorry that any Sceptical site has resorted to censorship. WE DON’T NEED CENSORSHIP! Snipping off topic rants, snipping ad hominum attacks, snipping rude behavior, isn’t censorship, it doesn’t impinge on the central argument. If someone thinks it does, then they need to take an elementary course in logic. As far as Willis’ snipping of science, then apologies are in order, the rest of it gets a pass in my book.

Fryingham says:
“My read of the exchange is that Willis has concocted a “clever” explanation of his behaviour after the fact in order to justify his bad behaviour. My guess is that he had no such intent in mind when he started all this.”
Well, you can interpret all you want, and naysayers can swing from trees, but one clear fact that can not be avoided is that the issue with conservation of energy and this paper has been thrust into the cold hard light of day.
I am a strong believer in equal treatment of equal behavior. Rules should not be relative at all. I have to admit that due to this exchange I am less supportive of Tallbloke, like my support really means anything. But I have learned a lot from reading Willis’ previous posts, so for me it’s a wash.
Sometimes you have to take a circuitous route to get past the obstinate and make your point.

Stephen Wilde (7:21 am) says “S – B applies to a body in a vacuum”.
Really? Where did vacuum come into this?
The word doesn’t even appear here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law

Just as a point of definition, as one who works in the industry that invented the elevator pitch, the goal is not to explain everything quickly or succinctly as possible; it is to a pitch an idea in order to get a meeting where we can explain it in full at a later time. It is a teaser—you never give your idea away for free. Now, after reading your post I have to wonder just how tall that building is in which your elevators rides because if you have to explain a joke or make an apology in 3,500+ words, it wasn’t a joke or a heartfelt apology. It was a long, long, look at your watch, justification of petulance.

I don’t have dog in this fight but Willis, but you were NOT banned by Tallbloke.
You chose that yourself.
Adults are allowed to be a juvenile as they choose, but I am very disappointed that this is here on the best climate science website.
Poor behavior and decisions and actions Willis.

Konrad says:
January 17, 2012 at 2:48 am
“You both insisted that LWIR re-emitted by CO2 has an equal effect over water and land. A simple empirical experiment showed this to be incorrect.”
“I conducted an initial experiment that showed that in two identical containers with internal black target surfaces which were exposed to identical amounts of sunlight, the container with the higher air pressure heated to a greater temperature.”
You’re batting 500. The first is correct. The second led you to an erroneous conclusion.
The higher temperature in the second experiment is due to the heat causing the gas to expand and because you have a fixed volume container the volume cannot increase hence the temperature must increase instead. This does not happen in gravitational confinement as the container volume is not fixed. The higher starting pressure of the gas in one container means you have better conductive coupling to the black target which can be considered a heating element. The better conductive coupling allows the denser gas to absorb more energy energy from the heating element and thus generate a greater pressure increase which in turn raises the gas temperature. In a planetary atmosphere this better coupling still happens but instead of the temperature of the gas going up from increased pressure the atmosphere simply expands in volume and the temperature does not increase.

You are boring and anoying. You sound like an adolescent attempting to get even for being rejected. You need to grow up.

Thanks for your posting, however it was so repetitive and verbose in your constant references to an “the elevator” speech that I feel a bit dumber having read the whole screed. You could have probably got your point across in about 15% of the space and been much clearer as a result.
Please refer to a paperback copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to win Friends and Influence People” to get some understanding of how “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”. There is not going to be a “winner” in the argument between yourself and Tallbloke, therefore I look at the way you both are behaving as childish.
Please take there types of exercises to your own personal blog as it it my personal preference that WUWT not be cluttered up with these type of sophist exercises.
Thanks

Stephen Wilde (7:21 am) says “S – B applies to a body in a vacuum”.
Really? Where did vacuum come into this?
I’ve asked my source for clarification on that but in the mean time your link does define c as the speed of light in a vacuum and that is an integral part of the equation.

What a long winded blathering piece of self promotion and faux justification for aberrant behavior. This is precisely why I don’t bother reading your madness. You had my curiosity piqued with the title. I almost made it 1/2 way through……. egos are bad enough, unjustified egos are something else.
What’s worse, is you brought your petty self-invented squabble to WUWT.
I haven’t bothered to read the comments above, and, I’m not going to. But, here’s a news flash. Most people don’t give a damn about how you feel about how Joel is treated by Roger. Here’s another news flash, that’s TB’s blog. He can damn well do as he pleases with it.
Find somewhere else to play out your juvenile and petty squabbles.
Willis, you don’t even know how to apologize properly. What’s wrong with you? Your mother over-protect?

I regret the breakdown in “civility”. I think everyone should give “it” a rest. Unpardonable for Willis to use Anthony’s blog for a ruse. (Fine to use it to further a scientific discussion, but if you think “everything” can be explained in elevator terms, I think you are mistaken). If you make a stipulation in a post, then it is fair game to snip when you believe your standards are not being followed. It is not fair game to enagage in pissing contests.
I read — and feel from the vehemence and sniping partisanship of many comments, unfortunately — that passionate dislike of proponents of one “scientific” (yes, don’t all scientists have a value judgement on what is “scientific”) theory is being fobbed off on us as science. Oh, woe, this catfight is appearing too much like the Republican primary, or perhaps denominational break-ups of protestant religion. Wherever indiviualism and freedom is valued, we seem to come to this point. Everyone that I value here because you educate me about science — and you bedevil me because you disagree so vehemently on what is seems should be “basic” — please go to your corners for a rest. Then resume vigorous scientific debates.
Willis, use your own blog for nefarious purposes, please. Keep after “your science”, however. Blogs have personal signatures. This is a most, most, most important axiom for the preservation and development of freedom.

Congratulations. You got discussions of censorship going at Tallbloke’s Talkshop.
Now see if you can get the same discussions going at RealClimate, OpenMind, SkS, RabbitRun – pick one.
Heck, I’d be happy to see any one of them seriously discuss the failings of a Team Paper. They can go into great detail about errors in any non-team paper – just think how much they could find inside one of their own.

In an attempt to help the WUWT junkies from wasting any more time on this thread, I’m involking Godwins law. I hereby categorically state that the discussion has reached a point where all further comments are of no more value than ranting Nazis.
There. Now we can go on to the next WUWT article as no comment after this one can, by Godwins law, be worth reading.

We know where the beef is…or do we?

jlc says:
January 17, 2012 at 7:35 am
Pathetic nonsense, Willis.
Your apologies are smug, sanctimoniuos, self-serving garbage.
You have done untold damage to WUWT.
I’ll be sticking to MacIntire and Curry in the future
________________________________________
I don’t know. maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I think there’s a time and place to play “hardball”

Willis, the other thing you need to apologize for is writing such long posts.

Argh, this post and thread is just childish. I wish you all could stop the ‘sniping’, banning each other, calling each other dishonest etc, and get back to discussing science.
I enjoy coming to these type of sites (WUWT, science of doom, Roy spencer, Air Vent, solarcycle24, and even masochistically: politics.ie) to educate myself and try to learn. About the only good thing that comes out of this thread is a link to yet another site I can go check out, tallbloke’s site (I didnt know he had one)

Welcome, author, to the banned-critic club, of which I am a proud member, having been banned two years ago from further commentary on Huffington Post pieces. It’s truly a badge of honor. There are hundreds of other outlets for our opinions, thank goodness. And if you notice that HuffPo’s reactors are mostly pro-author, there is a reason. Contrary views are squelched. Surprised?

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
The root of this squabble should be obvious to all. Willis is miffed that Roger got to be the first skeptic hauled in on suspicion of the big climategate email hack and go on the telly.

That was not all as brief as promised and maybe even a bit “off topic” but then I would rather reserve my critical points for “catastrophical warmists” than sceptics who may or may not upset me. – By the way, nobody in this GW discussion has, so far, upset me – not yet.

Chris B says:
January 17, 2012 at 8:33 am
“This means air is denser at low altitudes, and that means more molecules are having collisions more often, thermalising energy.”
The diatribe goes off the rails with the above statement. Temperature is a mode of motion. Density is not. In fact the title of the seminal work in this area of theoretical and experimental physics is John Tyndall’s 1859 work “Heat: A Mode of Motion”. It’s free on google books in its entirety. No one here will be harmed by reading it and a great many would benefit.

Bomber_the_Cat, I think this comment from anna v answers you. However, I do concede it’s possible this effect is too small magnitude to counter Willis’ argument totally.
Still, I am now taking the gravity-heat theses more and more seriously, as I find confirmation in the behaviour of other gas planets that also don’t follow S-B, as well as observations under my nose like Jericho several degrees warmer than Jerusalem.
Sadly, too much length, sharpshooting and belittling here is exhausting – like WP. I now strongly suspect Willis’ science to be mistaken, for all that it may be orthodox. But I would rather sharpen my understanding amongst more like-minded folk for a bit, and simply dip back here to ensure I grasp the key challenges that need answers. I also await the responses of Jellbring and N&Z.
However, Willis, I still love your thesis of the climate governor in the tropical thunderstorm scenario.

I have been a follower of Tall bloke for a while, and I would say I generally read more of him than Willis. But I agree with Willis that he has stepped over the line in deciding to ban someone based on their ideas. Sorry Roger but there is no real defense. All you are doing now is showing intolerence. Your making it worse.
Perhaps you missed the fact the the skeptical community is sick to death of people declaring the correct answer and trying to stop people who disagree from commenting. I think you missed the point entirely. Let them have their say, your not the gatekeeper of the “correct” any more than Mann. We can all see you over-reacted and just don’t want to admit it. But how far will you go to avoid admitting the obvious?
If you won’t prove your the better man in the fight……then your not.

I have to say I am losing track completely now. There are posts pro-Willis and post pro-Rog; there are posts that challenge the very Greenhouse Effect itself, this despite Monckton clearing it up for you all just the other day. Who am I to believe any more on here? It seems like a random mosh-pit, a scattergun mess. I think I’ll just go and listen to Motorhead instead! That usually does the job!

O H Dahlsveen says:
January 17, 2012 at 9:16 am
Actually Tyndall was well aware that what he was studying was electromagnetic radiation. They just didn’t call it short and long wave EMR back then they called it luminous and calorific waves respectively. EMR’s wave-particle duality was yet to be discovered at that time which I believe came along when Einstein explained the photoelectric effect shortly after the turn of the century.

willis has a beautiful mind. it was part of his plan. just ask parcher.
diagnostic stuff, willis.
what terrifying impotence provokes desperately deluded fantasies of being puppet master?
i’m leaving this behind with a sneer, there being no tenderness in my heart for the psychotic.

I prescribe 20 Hail Marys and 20 Our Fathers for Willis to avoid smoking a turd in purgatory over this one.