From Technology Review, a case of desperation. “Let the robot handle it”. I have to chuckle though, since the article cites John Cook’s “Skeptical Science” as an “appropriate scientific source”. Also amusing is “the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.” Well since he is in New South Wales, I’m thinking this just might be another Tim Lambert aka Deltoid production. Hacker News sums it up pretty well:
> In a way, what Leck has created is a pro-active search engine: it answers twitter users who aren’t even aware of their own ignorance.
On the one hand the idea of a reverse search engine is somewhat appealing, on the other hand; it’s Clippy for the internet.
– Anthony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.
The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question — tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun.
The database began as a simple collection of responses written by Leck himself, but these days quite a few of the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.
Like other chatbots, lots of people on the receiving end of its tweets have no idea they’re not conversing with a real human being. Some of them have arguments with the chatbot spanning dozens of tweets and many days, says Leck. That’s in part because AI_AGW is smart enough to run through a list of different canned responses when an interlocutor continues to throw the same arguments at it. Leck has even programmed it to debate such esoteric topics as religion – which is where the debates humans have with the bot often wind up.
The whole story is at Technology Review
===========================================================
Here’s Leck’s Twitter feed:
His bio on Twitter says:
“given sufficient evidence I’ll accept a claim as provisionally true.It’s a balance of probabilities,atheist,greenie & a bit of a nerd but mostly harmless:-)”
Seems like a nice enough fellow, just a bit misguided perhaps.
h/t to WUWT reader Don Penim
======================================================
UPDATE: Borepatch writes in with some news that is well worth sharing.
He writes:
I created the Clippy almost a year ago:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-happens-when-you-run-climate.html
There’s also a ClimateGate Blue Screen Of Death there, too.
I post fairly regularly on AGW issues, and am afraid that I’m one of those “deniers”. My probably two best posts on the subject are here:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/12/should-you-be-global-warming-skeptic.html (for a non-technical audience)
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/canals-of-mars-climate-research-unit.html
If you could point attribution my way, this would be some pretty big bragging rights for me here in my little corner of the ‘net.
Thanks.
– Borepatch
Happy to do so! Sometimes humor spreads like wildfire without proper attribution because people are so focused on the funny, they forget the source. Your Clippy parody has been a source of humor for thousands, and we thank you. – Anthony
Nigel Leck,
Yours is the very worst kind of spam, based entirely on duplicity. Thoroughly despicable. I’m surprised you would put your name on something so reprehensible, but if that’s your character, so be it. Most of us were raised better than that. A stand-up guy would inform readers of bot replies. That leaves you out, doesn’t it?
Whether or not I’m responding to a spambot here doesn’t matter. Thousands of others will read this post.
I only got as far as your first link, which is wrong: click
Just going by memory [I’m not wasting more time on you], Mars, Pluto, Jupiter and Triton are all warming simultaneously with the Earth. Even a spammer could look it up. Debunking the rest of your presumed authorities would no doubt be as easy.
I suggest you spend some time learning honest science instead of spamming in such a devious way. You can re-learn all the misinformation you’ve been fed by reading the WUWT archives, where both sides of the issues are debated. Or, you can continue to spread misinformation. Your choice.
**
eadler says:
“Prior to the industrial there was only climate change and there are still natural factors that are causing climate change. What has been added to the mix is human caused climate change. This was first described by Arrhenius in 1896 who made the first attempt to compute the effect of doubling CO2 concentration on global temperature.”
You are not thinking straight. The hypothesis of natural climate variability has never been falsified. It is the null hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis, CO2=CAGW, has been repeatedly falsified, not least by the planet itself: adding close to 40% more CO2 should have caused significantly more global warming. What we observe now is the tail end of the planet’s emergence from the LIA, and we are well within the parameters of past natural temperature extremes.
And it is almost becoming a cliche that alarmists cite Arrhenius’ 1896 paper, which assigns a very high climate sensitivity number to CO2. What you deliberately or ignorantly leave out is theft that Arrhenius retracted his 1896 number in his 1906 paper – which gives a substantially lower number than the current IPCC fantasy number. Check on his 1906 paper, and report back.
Next, you say, “What has been added to the mix is human caused climate change.” Whatever are you talking about? Please specifically quantify your assumed fraction of ‘human caused climate change,’ and show how it would be different from the observed natural variability.
This graph will help you figure it out. Note that we are currently right in the middle of a “Goldilocks climate”: not too cold, not too hot, but ju-u-u-st right. There is nothing unusual is occurring, except in the cognitive dissonance-afflicted minds of CAGW true believers.
CO2 has done exactly nothing measurable to the climate. If you believe otherwise, then quantify exactly how much is man-made, and how much is natural. Be prepared to face the rigor of the scientific method. That means empirical, observable, testable facts showing how you arrived at your notion. No models – they are only [very inaccurate] tools; they are not evidence. Be prepared to back up the validity of all raw temperature data you use, through independent replication, and to explain why thermometers located in cities show starkly higher temperatures than thermometers in greenfields. You will be the first to provide an un-falsified hypothesis. So if you believe you can do it, then go get ’em, tiger. You will find that the scientific method is a harsh mistress – and that there is a good reason why the alarmist crowd consistently ignores it.
Take your time.
Stefan: we can show burning fossil fuels release CO2, we can show the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, we can measure that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and we also know ( from the isotopes ) this increase is coming from the burning of fossil fuels.
Smokey: maybe you should waste more time because your claim “Mars, Pluto, Jupiter and Triton are all warming simultaneously with the Earth” is wrong and misleading.
MARS_01Climate Change: Mars Attacks!!! http://is.gd/cVimMGLOBAL_WARMING_ON_MARSMars is not warming globally http://is.gd/dDRlvGLOBAL_WARMING_OTHER_PLANETS_SOLAR_SYSTEMMars & Jupiter are not warming & anyway sun has recently been cooling slightly http://is.gd/dDRfxKhwarizmi: The point about cosmic rays is that the correlation breaks down and IF they turn out to be major drivers, then this is worse as when the levels increase again there will be further warming
COSMIC_RAYS_AND_GLOBAL_WARMINGCosmic rays show no trend over last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming http://is.gd/dDRisGLOBAL_WARMING_OTHER_PLANETS_SOLAR_SYSTEMMars & Jupiter are not warming & anyway sun has recently been cooling slightly http://is.gd/dDRfxCOSMIC_RAYS_AND_GLOBAL_WARMING-ADVA detailed look at galactic cosmic rays http://is.gd/fveAFI think this is appropriate, the threat of global warming exists mainly in the “mind” of computer models, why shouldn’t all of the AGW alarmist arguments be made by computer.
Ian H says:
November 5, 2010 at 3:32 pm
However you must follow the truth wherever it is to be found. Yes it would be convenient to believe in CAGW and join all those beautiful young people as part of their `movement to save the world’. I see the attraction in it to be sure. But having looked at the evidence I simply can’t do that. I am a skeptic for the same reason I am an atheist – my beliefs are not for sale. And so I find myself hanging out here in the skeptic camp … with EnginEar.
You seem to be an intelligent enough person, so let me just ask …. Why bother arguing about the science? You should realize that both cases , for and against AGW, have at least some potential of being correct. Neither can claim proof… So with that said, why not go towards mitigation? What do we have to lose? Sure it’s expensive but so is the alternative. In addition, you surely know that we need to remove ourselves from fossil fuel use eventually anyway.. Why not take this as an opportunity to support that and help the US become a leader in alternative energy… If its because you are against the policies being proposed, then why not focus on that instead?
I note that the Leckbot posts YouTube videos as its “authority.”
No wonder it has zero credibility.
Tom T: ok, sure and so does most of the world’s trades. You can stop using these newfangled electronic devices anytime you want 🙂
[snip. Please read the site Policy re: “denialist” name-calling. ~dbs, mod.]
Robb876,
Those arguments probably get a big smile at the realclimate echo chamber, but here they’re easy to dismiss. You say:
“…both cases , for and against AGW, have at least some potential of being correct.”
Facts, me boy, we need facts. Not opinions. If you can show that AGW exists separate from natural variability in any measurable, testable way – without resorting to computer models or massaged data – have at it.
Next: “…why not go towards mitigation? What do we have to lose? Sure it’s expensive but so is the alternative.”
The alternative is, at this point, in your imagination. It is pure speculation unsupported by empirical evidence. As for the expense, why not insure yourself against being hit by a flying saucer? Sure it’s expensive, but so is the alternative: hospital bills from the accident.
Next: “…we need to remove ourselves from fossil fuel use eventually anyway.”
The free market takes care of things like that very efficiently, and without a crippling new bureaucracy that will only grow larger over time.
Finally, the world is interconnected and new technologies are adopted practically overnight. For the US to become a leader in alternative energy – without losing that leadership position – requires that the government must get out of the way, instead of over-regulating every aspect of society.
I’ve run a business for most of my adult life. I can tell you’ve never had to meet a payroll. Neither have most in Congress, nor those in this Administration. They assume they understand how the real world works. But they haven’t a clue.
Ian H: I’m not taking the easy route and I’m quite happy to go against the consensus view point when I can’t see the evidence.
Why BOTHER?!!! You don’t care what the truth is? You just want people to do what you want and this is a convenient excuse? You are happy to lie about it and sell the message that global warming is a serious problem when you’ve just admitted there is no evidence of that?
If you want to become a leader in alternative energy – go right ahead. Nothing is stopping you, except perhaps the laws of physics. I wish you well. But don’t lie to the world and sell a message of fear in order to do it. Don’t destroy the belief that people have in rationality and science.
What do we have to lose? Don’t you think you should know the negative effects of the policies you are advocating? Cutting CO_2 is far from painless. You are talking about making a very significant cut to the standard of living of most of the worlds population! You are talking about massive distortions to the world economy – an economic disruption of the livelihood of billions. You are talking about blocking the development of the underdeveloped, taxing the developed world into poverty, and possibly killing millions of people with artificially induced famines as food producing agricultural land is diverted to the production of fuel and energy. And you want to do this on a whim based on a lie?
Mitigate what? OK – the world has gotten warmer. I’ll agree with that. It is also gotten greener and wetter. Now where is the damage that this has caused. Point to it. Surely if warming was such a problem we’d at least see SOME negative effects by now. Show me the beginnings of this massive problem that we must take such DRASTIC measures to avoid? The sahara … oops … no that has gotten a lot greener. Agricultural production … opps no – that has gone up considerably as the climate becomes more benign and increased CO_2 levels have encouraged faster plant growth. Where is the problem? The world has been warmer than this in the past – a lot warmer. And no disasters followed. Indeed a warmer world is more hospitable for life.
The only disasters I foresee in the future are those caused by efforts to `mitigate’ a non-existent problem. You want the world to take seriously dangerous medicine for an illness it doesn’t have. So no – I’ll not join your crusade, because it is wrong and it is a lie.
Ian H says:
November 5, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Wow, where should I start with this one… First of all I never said there wasnt any “evidence” of AGW, what i said was that neither side had proof, meaning that neither could show 100% proof. I believe there is plenty of evidence for AGW, and i also believe there is evidence to suggest it might not be as bad as some claim or that maybe its not man made. I guess you could say im not convinced of the dangers.
Anyway, secondly.. How are the laws of physics stopping alternative energy? And we wont get into the acusations of lies, because we both know that lies apply to both sides…
(By this point im starting to wonder if your post really applies to my post)…. You should take note that I have not supported any policy for implementing energy policies. In fact i tried to lead the argument into policy, and away from the science. And where does this “death and destruction” to the world if alternative energy is implemented come from? Ive heard this many times skeptics and i just dont get it. Surely you realize that moving to alternative energy sources dosent mean that one day we just shut down coal, etc without a suitable energy replacement already in place. And if that were in fact some sick policy, im surely not in favor of it and i doubt you will find someone who is. And to to prevent you from mentioning it, the article posted here the other day regarding coal plants being shut down in the UK, dosent mean they are going to leave people in the dark, regardless of what was implied. Obviously they will either tax or have back up energy before that happens… And no i dont support this method either.
We shouldnt necessarily be seeing negative effects by now… You need to understand that we are just entering this “warming phase” and we have only seen a very small rise in temps. I would expect to see minor or no changes at this point. If GW is a problem, and please note that i said “if”, I wouldnt expect it to get bad for many decades. Probably not in your lifetime… So your point on crops…. Sure some may do better, and some will do worse. There are already reports on crop yields reducing due to warming, just as there are for them gaining.. Which way is it going to go overall? Again, dont look at todays findings, because they dont mean much.
Ok, sure the world was warmer than this in the past, but how does that argument apply when “in the past” there wasnt 6 billion people to feed? How does that argument make sense, please explain that one to me because again, its mentioned a lot..
So at any rate, the “medicine” being bad, is just your perspective on what is in store and definately not a fact. Which brings me back to my original point… If its the fix that has you scared, argure that and not if global warming is good or bad fo rpeople… because you surely dont have any proof of that it is, except for what might be happening today. But then again, we dont look at just today when we talk about climate impacts, do we?
And if you want to use analogies to discuss this… How about if 1000 astronomers told you a meterorite was going to hit your house soon, and 1000 journalists and engineers said it wasnt, or that if it did it wasnt going to be bad… What would you do? Spend the money to move your family, or risk losing them because of what a bunch of unqualified people said…
Smokey says:
November 5, 2010 at 8:59 pm
OK, yours is much easier Smokey… I agree, lets let the free market take over alternative energy.. I dont support the cap and trade effort, etc but i would rather see that than an effort to kill alternative energy (which im not implying you support).
As far as evidence… Heres the way i look at it.
1) The earth is getting warmer
2) Man is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, which we all know is a GHG. And we all know that a GHG will in fact cause some element of warming (we might not admit that, but we all know if will to some level).
3) Its late and im done with this… but you know the rest…. Bottom line is we are completely throwing the carbon cycle off balance… if you want to wait for proof, your probably going to wait forever becasue someone will always complain.
Ah well Smokey as you once observed, Do Not Feed the Trolls.
Mind you the ones we get here are reasonably polite if verbose.
But think on. If a chatbot on side could engage with a chatbot on the other side and Twitter endlessly between themselves, and the twittering grows as further chatbots appear and become engaged, talk about the battle of the machines, is it not possible to direct the trolls to engage in that wonderfully meaningless debate. Where they will be perfectly at home.
I find it a hugely entertaining idea, all those mechanicals forever quoting and citing to each other about nothing at all.
And leaving serious people to talk freely amongst themselves and have a genuine debate.
A pipe dream I suppose. Ah well time to put another log on the fire and refill the glass. And ponder some more.
Kindest Regards.
When people lie, they try to make the lie as true as possible. They tell a lie that is 95% true. That way the lie can always be denied. Children tell outright lies. When we grow up we learn to make them subtle, having discovered as children that the ouright lies are easily found out. Adults tell subtle lies that are hard to detect, but which still confer an advantage. That’s life. So one has to be on the lookout for subtle lies.
“That was an error, it was admitted and corrects are made. That’s how science works.” is one of those sorts of lies. As a statement it suggest and gives a certain impression of honesty and transparency. But what does this leave out? What subtle thing does it leave out which would alter the impression?
“Pachauri calls Indian govt. report on melting Himalayan glaciers as “voodoo science””
source
Why was Pachauri’s reaction so strong? Why did he attack, rather than have things checked? Can the bot answer that?
Also, the subtle lying implied with the statement, “1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report”. So if I told an untruth to someone, I could later defend it by saying, “I spoke 25,000 words that day to 50 people over 16 hours, and in that I spoke only one sentence that was in error, a mere 25 words out of 25,000”
Somebody should get Judge Judy or anyone who pays attention to what they hear, onto this.
We know lying and spin and damage control when we hear it. The question is, why can’t you hear it? People are so eager to spin skeptical questioning as “big oil shills, crackpots and outsiders”, and yet they pay so little attention to their own spin.
The hilarious part is when there people doing this spinning, “1 error in a 1000 page report” then claim they are being very objective and rational. They don’t even know themselves that they are lying and spinning and distorting things. Ha ha ha.
Why should we have to come up with new arguments. The bot never does:) If I answer its more for the readers of the hash tags I post under. And sorry.. they dont buy what the bot sells. So again.. is the bot really doing the creator a service? I think not.
robb876 says:
November 5, 2010 at 10:43 pm
“2) Man is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, which we all know is a GHG. And we all know that a GHG will in fact cause some element of warming (we might not admit that, but we all know if will to some level).”
No, i don’t *know* that. The natural long term atmosphere temperature oscillations seem to be driven by the oceans, and the oceans seem to be driven by short wave solar radiation, not IR or LWIR.
So the atmosphere is the end of the chain. Like the tail of a dog. When you add a little CO2 to the atmosphere, it will just make it oscillate in a slightly different way. And there are negative feedbacks – albedo, SB law, maybe Miskolczi’s constant optical thickness – so it is very very far from “known” that adding CO2 will have a warming effect at current concentrations.
Personally, i think the alleged CO2 warming signal is not detectable in the weather noise.
@Nigel
Regarding a few of the “Sun xxxx warming/cooling” answers – those seem all to be about TSI. Feel free to hang out here (and maybe on the solarcycle24 forum) for a while and you’ll find references to all the papers about TSI not being the only way the sun affects (indeed effects) the earth 😉
regards,
Troed
DirkH says:
Fancy…. Much better than “but it was warmer in the past”.
Anyway, maybe your right. Co2 might be too insignificant in relation to the other drivers. But ocean currents, while surely more powerful than co2, cannot explain today’s warming. The oscillations you refer to are not new and they would be driven by the sun in terms of their warming potential… The sun, as far as I know, has been factored out. Now I understand that the oscillations are causing changes, warming trends, etc… But only to the extent that they always have. Along with those routine oscillations, we are seeing a lot of record temps beginning to pile in a short time frame leading me to believe something else is at work as well.
Smokey Says,
“eadler says:
“Prior to the industrial there was only climate change and there are still natural factors that are causing climate change. What has been added to the mix is human caused climate change. This was first described by Arrhenius in 1896 who made the first attempt to compute the effect of doubling CO2 concentration on global temperature.
“You are not thinking straight. The hypothesis of natural climate variability has never been falsified. It is the null hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis, CO2=CAGW, has been repeatedly falsified, not least by the planet itself: adding close to 40% more CO2 should have caused significantly more global warming. What we observe now is the tail end of the planet’s emergence from the LIA, and we are well within the parameters of past natural temperature extremes.”
The only way to determine the effect of CO2 against the background of natural variability is to use model simulations. The only simulations I am familiar with show that the behavior of global temperatures cannot be accounted for without CO2, and that CO2 accounts for most of the temperature increase we have seen in the past 30 years.
“And it is almost becoming a cliche that alarmists cite Arrhenius’ 1896 paper, which assigns a very high climate sensitivity number to CO2. What you deliberately or ignorantly leave out is theft that Arrhenius retracted his 1896 number in his 1906 paper – which gives a substantially lower number than the current IPCC fantasy number. Check on his 1906 paper, and report back.”
The value that Arrhenius found for sensitivity in various papers is not relevant to my point. If there is a paper written in 1906 that shows a smaller climate sensitivity than his 1896 paper, I haven’t seen it. If you have a link to a reliable source, then you can back up your statement, but it proves nothing.
“Next, you say, “What has been added to the mix is human caused climate change.” Whatever are you talking about? Please specifically quantify your assumed fraction of ‘human caused climate change,’ and show how it would be different from the observed natural variability.
“This graph will help you figure it out. Note that we are currently right in the middle of a “Goldilocks climate”: not too cold, not too hot, but ju-u-u-st right. There is nothing unusual is occurring, except in the cognitive dissonance-afflicted minds of CAGW true believers.
“CO2 has done exactly nothing measurable to the climate. If you believe otherwise, then quantify exactly how much is man-made, and how much is natural. Be prepared to face the rigor of the scientific method. That means empirical, observable, testable facts showing how you arrived at your notion. No models – they are only [very inaccurate] tools; they are not evidence. Be prepared to back up the validity of all raw temperature data you use, through independent replication, and to explain why thermometers located in cities show starkly higher temperatures than thermometers in greenfields. You will be the first to provide an un-falsified hypothesis. So if you believe you can do it, then go get ‘em, tiger. You will find that the scientific method is a harsh mistress – and that there is a good reason why the alarmist crowd consistently ignores it.
Take your time.”
Here is the link which answers the nonsense you have spouted above once more.
http://wwwskepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
Your Vostok graph of temperature in recent times is in error. It doesn’t even show the increase in temperature we have observed in the last century, which is 0.7C. It should be visible on the scale of the graph. It may be that the ice cores cannot show this level of detail, or that the correct data was omitted . Can you explain this obvious problem?
The fact that we like our climate today doesn’t show that the increase in CO2 and other GHG’s is not going to make the earth get warmer, on average, and create more extreme climate events in the future due to increases in average global temperature.
Your attempts to show that there is no valid evidence in favor of AGW have utterly failed.
DirkH says:
November 6, 2010 at 3:11 am
“robb876 says:
November 5, 2010 at 10:43 pm
“2) Man is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, which we all know is a GHG. And we all know that a GHG will in fact cause some element of warming (we might not admit that, but we all know if will to some level).”
No, i don’t *know* that. The natural long term atmosphere temperature oscillations seem to be driven by the oceans, and the oceans seem to be driven by short wave solar radiation, not IR or LWIR.
So the atmosphere is the end of the chain. Like the tail of a dog. When you add a little CO2 to the atmosphere, it will just make it oscillate in a slightly different way. And there are negative feedbacks – albedo, SB law, maybe Miskolczi’s constant optical thickness – so it is very very far from “known” that adding CO2 will have a warming effect at current concentrations.
Personally, i think the alleged CO2 warming signal is not detectable in the weather noise.”
Your personal opinion is not based on fact. Climate models can detect the CO2 warming signal very clearly. Look at the three graphs on this web page.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
I may not be a bot, but it took very little work to reply to your post.
REPLY: You may not be a bot, but your do appear to have a terminal case of this. – Anthony
#
#
“Troed Sångberg says:
November 6, 2010 at 3:41 am
@Nigel
Regarding a few of the “Sun xxxx warming/cooling” answers – those seem all to be about TSI. Feel free to hang out here (and maybe on the solarcycle24 forum) for a while and you’ll find references to all the papers about TSI not being the only way the sun affects (indeed effects) the earth 😉
regards,
Troed”
Since you are familiar with this, could you be more specific about the other solar mechanisms that could be related to global warming? Why should Leck have to waste his time fishing around in the solar cycle 24 web site?
Variations in Cosmic rays have been eliminated as a factor, since they have simply oscillated, and could not be causing an increase in global warming. In addition, if cosmic rays impacted cloudiness, this would show up more in the high latitudes than in the low latitudes. This is not observed.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-detailed-look-at-galactic-cosmic-rays.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Do-cosmic-rays-cause-clouds.html
REPLY: Why not put some effort into this instead of link-regurgitating the SS website? That site has a strong bias, if you want to be effective, reference studies. – Anthony
Smokey says:
“Facts, me boy, we need facts. Not opinions. If you can show that AGW exists separate from natural variability in any measurable, testable way – without resorting to computer models or massaged data – have at it.”
Why are computers, and correction of errors in temperature data a no-no? Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate. They are a great tool and the only way to study weather and climate. Also it is clear that temperature data needs correction due to changes in instruments and modifications in the structures around the location of the equipment.
Your demand that such practices are illegitimate, when they are endorsed by climate scientists, would appear to be a way to rationalize you bias against the idea, and wave away the evidence that it exists and has been caused by GHG’s. It is a pretty transparent ruse. That way you don’t have to deal with any of the data and arguments that 97% of climate scientists accept.
It seems like a cop out to avoid cognitive dissonance.
a jones,
Thanks for your comment. eadler’s upside down world view is evidenced by his infatuated belief that the disingenuously named “skeptical” science blog is anything but climate alarmism written by a cartoonist. It is a waste of time reading that crap, and I have better uses for my time – like keeping up to date on reality by reading WUWT.
What eadler clearly does not ‘get’ is the scientific method. No matter how many times it is pointed out that skeptics have nothing to prove, alarmists always demand that skeptics must prove a negative. In eadler’s topsy-turvy world, our normal climate is something portending imminent disaster. That belief is not based on evidence, because there is zero evidence showing that the current climate is unusual. It is simply a belief system, no different than Mrs Keech’s followers believing in flying saucers because of her psychic visions.
The onus is completely on the alarmist contingent to support their CO2=CAGW hypothesis by showing that today’s temperatures are anything out of the ordinary. But eadler fails to show anything of the sort, and falls back on the impotent tactic of trying to put the burden on scientific skeptics – the only honest type of scientist. The planet’s temperature is completely within its past parameters, and there is no empirical evidence showing runaway anything. So his belief in impending doom takes the place of rational science.
A hypothesis has been proposed: that increased CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. That hypothesis has been repeatedly debunked. There is zero evidence showing that the planet’s temperature is outside of its past parameters. The temperature is completely normal. The onus is upon the alarmist crowd to show that is not the case, and as we know they have consistently failed.
One of the central tests of AGW is the prediction of a tropospheric hot spot — which never appeared, once again falsifying the AGW scare. As Albert Einstein noted, all it takes is one fact to falsify a hypothesis. But hey, who needs the scientific method, when true belief is so much more comfortable?
As Craig Loehle pointed out, Mann ’08 is the only one showing a huge temperature spike in recent decades — which goes away if you drop the upside-down Tiljander sediment proxies and the stripbark trees. Because Mann [deliberately] used an upside-down proxy to support his Hokey Stick, he has become the laughingstock of the alarmist crowd; quite a feat. The amazing fact that acolytes like eadler still believe in the fantasy that a tiny trace gas controls the world’s climate makes them part of the entertainment. Some folks will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous. It’s cognitive dissonance, and it is apparently incurable short of an epiphany.