Mosher: Who's on first?

What those boys need is a good hot bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Catastrophic Soup.

Funny video clips!
But the hockeyguys are hilarious at realclimate. Every comment is stand up comedy!!!

This is the way the hockey stick breaks,
This is the way the hockey team folds,
This is the way the hockey game ends;
Not with a goal, with a giggle.
===============

Ah, but you see “2 + 2 = 5” is actually true, for sufficiently large values of “2”.
It is also true that “2 + 2 = 3” for sufficiently small values of “2”.
Given random real numbers that are, to one digit of precision, “2”, their sum will be “4” three quarters of the time, “3” and “5” each one eighth of the time.

This is really a remarkable development. As discussed here:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/01/the-no-dendro-illusion/
and here:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/08/04/gavins-perspective/
…Gavin and Tamino are unable to defend Mann’s hockey stick against the criticism that it relies on the presence of suspect proxies amongst the input noise.
(Tamino’s attempted defense, posted here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/ was quickly dispatched by McIntyre’s article linked above).
What’s also amazing is that hundreds or thousands of people have been watching the debunking in public.
The unprecedented warmth claim itself is now highly suspect. What will happen next? Angry recriminations or acceptance of the facts (even if the fact is uncertainty) – it will be interesting to see!

I am reminded of the problem Verizon had a few years ago admitting there is a difference between .02 dollars and .02 cents – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2isSJKntbg
AMac’s account of the Paleo Bank is hilarious too.

OT, but I came across a new word today – don’t ask me how to pronounce it: Totschweigtaktik – the Austro-German word for ”death by silence”. ”An astonishingly effective tactic for killing off creative work or fresh ideas or even news stories. You don’t criticise or engage with what’s being said or produced or expressed; instead you deprive someone and their work or opinion of the oxygen of attention”.
It sums up the MO of the official climate “community” perfectly. Dr. Spencer and others have complained about the wall of silence. The word came from an [unrelated] article here:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/democracy-weakened-by-charade-20100806-11oe7.html

Mann: 2+2=5
McIntyre: No, 2+2=4
Mann: thats bizarre
Mc: 2+2=4, just say it Mike
Mann: it doesnt matter, look over here we say 3+3=6
Mc: 2+2=4
Mann: it doesnt matter, ask gavin
Amac: ya 2+2=4
Mann: it doesnt matter
Mosher: Can anybody besides steve just say that 2+2=4
Dehog: You said Piltdown Mann once.
Mc: 2+2=4
Gavin: it doesnt matter:
Tiljander: 2+2=4
Arthur Smith: I”ll look into it.
Amac; 2+2=4
Gavin: Can we change the subject, we said it doesnt matter.
Mosher: can you say 2+2=4
Lambert: Fuller is full of it.
Bishop: Mike said 2+2=5, but 2+2=4
Tamino: Bishop said 2+2=5
Mc: Bishop was explaining Mann.
Amac: 2+2=4
Kloor: why can’t we reason together?
Gavin: we try, but they wont read our answers.
Amac: 2+2=4
Gavin: There he goes again, please shut him up.
Mc; 2+2=4
RC commenter: Do your own science Mcintyre
Mc: 2+2=4 is not publishable. Mann needs to correct this.
Mann: its all in the SI
Amac: hey mann website now says 2+2=4
Gavin: The exact value of 2+2 is uninteresting. move along
RC commenter: Hey McIntyre said 2+2=5
Mc: no I didnt
RC commenter: oops, my bad, but I’m right in spirit
Gavin: discussion over, lets talk about the black list.
Kloor: all you people who think 2+2=4, can discuss this further.
Scientist: Tiljander’s paper wasn’t perfect, lets pressure test her.
Amac: but 2+2=4
Scientist: Can you give me a reading list?
Bender: read the whole blog.
Amac: in summary 2+2=4
Deltoid Commenter: tw pls tw eqls fr
Lambert: You’ve been disemvoweled
Amac: 2+2=4
Hank Roberts: I can’t find Amac on google scholar
Jim Praul: Good I’ll put him on the list.
Shell Oil: 2+2 =4
Deep Climate: that proves McIntyre’s Oil connection.
Briffa: I got 2+2=3
Harry: I didnt write that code.
Mann: Keith, hide that decline, here borrow 2 from me.
Jones: Keith, we match Mann now 2+2=5
Obsborn: Somebody email Amman and see what he thinks.
RyanO: good luck with that, Amman never answers mail
Palmer: Perfect, ask him if our mail is confidential.
Amman:
Jones: I think Amman would agree,deny the FOIA
Briffa (CONFIDENTIAL) gene, McItyre says 2+2=4. Can you help.
Wahl: We replicated his work, 2+2=5
Holland: I heard that.
Amac: 2+2=4
Amman: Oh MAN! will this crap ever end?? (http://eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=887)
RyanO: Hey, how’d you get Amman to answer mail?
YAD061: 2+2=5 (+-6sigma)
Amac:2+2=4
Brian Angliss: Lots of mails you havent read might say 2+2=4
Santer: Amac, you and me in the alley.
Dehog: Christy Believes in God.
Spencer: wrong skeptic, dehog.
God: 2+2=4
Jones: Dear God, delete your mail
Overpeck: Keith we need something more compelling than the Hockey stick
Briffa: 2+2=4.1?
Overpeck: MORE compelling keith
Wigley: McIntyre may have a point on this 2+2=4 thing.
Mann: “Who knows what trickery has been pulled or selective use of data made.”
Eli rabbet: Spencer made a mistake, therefore, 2+2=5
Amac: 2+2=4
Briffa: I got it, Peck, 2+2=5
Mann: I said that first.
Gavin: In a massive waste of time and money Independent researchers have investigated this uninteresting thing.
Moshpit:{ slaps forehead}
Amman: http://www.naturesongs.com/cricket1.wav
Shell Oil: Hulme we gave you 2 million last month and you want another 2 million?
Hulme: Ya, 5 should be enough. Pachauri, promised us 6, so that makes 12.
Shell oil: Who is your accountant?
Hulme: Wei-Chyung Wang, at Suny
Jones: He keeps great records ask Keenan.
Amac: 2+2=4.
Deltoid commenter: can I buy a vowel?
Lambert: buy 2 get 2 free
Mann: He doesnt need 5, Tim, sheesh.
Judith Curry: can you boys please stop this nonsense
Mann: They started it
Mc: did not
Gavin: did too
Amac: did somebody say 2? 2+2=4

OMG! Brilliant Mr. Mosher!!
wtfLOLbbq!!!!11

I don’t think Steve Mc is being fair. If you take into account the ERROR BARS, then 2+2=5 is perfectly correct. With error bars of +/-42.

Thanks Mosh, hilarious :-))
Reminds me of the Bolb tribe, descended from the Incas of South America. The Bolbs counted by tying knots in ropes. They quickly realized that when a 2-knot rope is put together with another 2-knot rope, a 5-knot rope results.
Most of the descendants of the Bolbs tribe now work for the Soros Foundation or the IPCC. What goes round comes round!

POST POST-NORMAL SCIENCE?
a.n.ditchfield
______________________________________________________________________________
Post-normal Science is claimed to be the key to understanding complexity in nature. It is invoked to promote a new world order with sustainable progress on a limited planet.
What is progress? To most minds it comes from the increasingly efficient use of energy and materials, capital and labour, that translates into lower costs, better income for all, freedom from want and ultimately to more means for care of the environment.
Not all agree. The bitterness of Green extremists that swept with gale strength at the Copenhagen 2009 conference on climate pointed to the opposite direction: to limiting world economic activity and even casting away the fruits of two centuries of the Industrial Revolution that they blame for a global warming bound to render the planet uninhabitable. This is a controversial meaning of progress.
Green scare-mongering is too puny to be compared to the 20th century ideologies of Fascism and Communism. Although Green activists are prone to alarmism, the damage they cause is still trifling when compared to the havoc brought about by two world wars and the waste of a long cold war.
Totalitarians had weapons for their mischief while Green extremists can only brandish words that suggest they would have already capsized the planet, were it not for the ballast of common sense possessed by ordinary folk. They promote public policies too reactionary to be tolerated if implemented. The political reality is that the West resists being rolled back to an idealised Green agrarian past. Forget China and India.
Again, the world is divided into two camps. One side of the climate issue is epitomised by MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, who sees global warming as a political and journalistic phenomenon, not a physical one. He expects future generations to look back in wonder at the turn of the century hysteria about climate. On the other side stands Jerome Ravetz, theorist of the fashionable Post-normal Science, who contributed to the uncritical acceptance of anthropogenic global warming as settled science. It is not.
Ravetz is no common-or-garden Leftist; he holds a Cambridge PhD degree in mathematics. Steeped in Marxism at the Philadelphia home of his Russian/Jewish parents, his US passport was withdrawn during the McCarthy era, although later restored. He then adopted UK citizenship. A disgruntled Ravetz is the kind of articulate intellectual that Oxford likes to keep for a while to enliven debate, and certainly fits the role with his Post-normal Science. He admits that the scientific method cannot be surpassed in its realm of simple phenomena; he argues that there is another realm, of complex matters such as climate, in which the stakes are high and scientific certainties low, requiring a new approach. Enter the Precautionary Principle: if the cause is just and the science unsettled, uncertainties should not stand in the way of acts of government promoted by official propaganda. Enter the Ministry of Truth…
The truth is that we don’t know – and may never know – how much of global climate change comes by hand of man or by hand of nature, to what degree and when. We do know that hiding uncertainties is fraud, when contrived to deceive public policymakers; e.g. IPPC reports and Lysenko’s Marxist biology.
The uncertainties of complexity are not new; they been around since the time of the philosophers of Ancient Greece. After them, Hegel and Marx believed they had the instruments to navigate on uncharted and turbulent waters of history, politics and economics. Others argue that questions concerning human nature will always remain in the domain of the intuition of statesmen, of the religious, of the mystics, poets and artists who have the feel, not the thought, to discern in matters beyond the reach of reason – and therefore of science. Their intuition cannot be generalised into a soulless ideological system.
With Post-normal Science, Marxists try to bring back, as serious, their Alice in Wonderland thought. Their tactics have changed. They now follow the book of Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s. As an exile in Moscow, Gramsci saw the brutal realities of Stalin’s regime and realised the futility of seizing power with revolution and holding onto power with armed force. It led to oppression, not liberty. Christianity is the strongest foe of Marxism; a revolutionary assault on Christian societies entrenched behind a rampart of values upheld for two thousand years is doomed to failure. Gramsci proposed an alternative approach: evolution, not revolution, is the way to the ideal classless society, in a long but sure process. Marxism should spread in concentric circles until it grows into a consensus. First win over the opinion formers; then the university professors, the intellectuals they educate, the journalists, teachers, leaders of civic and religious organisations, political parties. Finally, with the leadership in the fold, the masses would follow. Marxism would rule with no compulsion, in place of societies based on religious values.
After Communist regimes collapsed into universal discredit Gramsci’s suave approach gained favour, and in now under way. This was perceived by Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, who collected clippings of amusing things written by post-modernists (mainly Marxists) about hard science, especially those who use abstruse mathematical terms to make their text incomprehensible, so as to pass as profound. He grew weary of nonsense written about physics, held by social “scientists” to be white, male and euro-centric. He came to the conclusion that there is no such thing called a social science, because anything goes. He submitted his opinion to experimental proof.
PROPOSITION
That a prestigious sociology journal would publish an essay full of absurd statements, provided it was:
· Well written, of scholarly appearance;
· Cloaked as incomprehensible physics;
· Attuned with prejudices of the editor.
Sokal’s essay announced his discovery of Quantum Gravity, the synthesis of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, on a superior plane that supersedes both. He suggests he had done it with the methods of social sciences, in a feat that did away with the outworn formal logic and systematic experiment, still in use and unduly so. The implications were so revolutionary that the essay had been rejected for publication in peer-reviewed journals of physics, and this was the reason to seek its publication in Social Text, known for a mind open to innovation.
The essay contains nonsense galore immediately perceptible as a hoax by an engineering student. The essay favoured mathematics freed from the shackles of the rules of arithmetic and stood against the teaching of the outworn geometry of Euclid, a tool for oppression of the working class. There was anti-feminist prejudice in fluid mechanics. Truth is relative. Constants such as the speed of light, (299 792 km/s), universal gravitational constant G (6.67438×10-11N(m/kg)2), and the number pi (3.1416) have values set by the current social context but such values may change in a different future social context.
No absurdity was contrived by Sokal; all were extracted from what was stated by post-modern thinkers about hard science and he supports it with more than one hundred references to published articles.
PROOF
Sokal’s essay, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity was indeed published as submitted, with no comment, although Sokal repeatedly asked whether there were any questions to be clarified.
“Social Text” #46/47, pp. 217-252 (1996).
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM
In another journal, at the time of publication, Sokal explained what he had done at Social Text and regretted that a silent tide of irrationality threatened institutions of higher learning to dictate, from a blind and intolerant pulpit, what is right to do, say and think.
An inquiring mind shuns Gospel according to St. Marx. Reviewers at Social Text could have asked: if a future society decrees that pi = 4 will circles be squares and heavenly bodies cubes? None asked.
With its pretence of a short cut to deal with complexity, Post-normal Science amounts to sophistry of the kind ridiculed by Sokal. Its previous failure was in economics and the new one in climate. It is a grab for power to ration use of energy worldwide and thus control the lives of every human being. Its followers are not above deceit to exploit emotions of a guilt-ridden West.
A confident West had worked wonders. French contributions to mathematics are found in the work of Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, D’Alembert, Delambre, Fourier, Lagrange, Monge, Poisson, Laplace, Cauchy, Galois, Poincaré, Benoit Mandelbrot. Then came Post-normal Science with Humpty Dumpty scruple: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”. It is Mock Science with Mock Turtle arithmetic of: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision.
No Post Post-normal Science is needed to dialectically supplant Post-normal Science; a return to Science would do.
Sokal’s essay is available on Internet at: http://www.sablesys.com/sokal.html.
Also see:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/

Mosh – priceless, absolutely priceless!
:-)))

DUCK season !!
WABBIT season !!
DUCK season !!
WABBIT season !!
DUCK season !!
WABBIT season !!

Mosh,
Thanks for the laugh I got after reading your script based on the CA postings – I had to go get a paper towel and clean out my eyes from the tears of laughter.
I fell under the spell of the discussion over at CA; what is it about those kinds of around and around arguments like the comedy skit videos provided here that so fascinates? It’s like watching the motions of a complex mechanism; or staring at a nice fireplace blaze; or looking at flowing water…sometimes you just can’t look away.
Reading the postings at CA as they were coming in was surreal. How could grown adults be defending Mann’s (mis) use of the Tiljander proxies? Back and forth and back and forth; fascinating.

Algorithms of Mannian transformation, of the type 2+2=5: look in the mirror and have a gentle laugh

Absolutely yes, Abbot & Costello must have been coaching the lecturers at the CRU and elsewhere. It all makes perfect sense now. We can see that kind of logic where statements are made that hardly anyone disagrees with, yet they are used to vilify empirical scientists in an inappropriate fashion. This is a function of a kind of Orwellian Doublespeak, where green means brown, and truth becomes lies.
The temptation to bluff and bluster, instead of simply stating “I don’t really know”, is overwhelming for most junior administrators and scientists, because they don’t want to lose their jobs, because they couldn’t be bothered to do the research necessary. Then this hokum gets passed ever upwards in a kind of “chinese whispers game”, until the President Himself is saying these things. Of course the POTUS may have another agenda, because as he stated “under my plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket”.
We are so very very far from Kansas now !
please see the videos at my website, click my name and do yourself a favour.
– Axel

Axel @ 3:12 PM.
Thank you for allowing me to do myself a favor.
=========================

The second Abbott and Costello clip reminds me of a Ma and Pa Kettle clip where 5×14=25.

We have spent 90 trillion dollars on 2+2=5, so it must be true