Monckton submits this rebuttal argument to the piece in the New Scientist Stamp out anti-science in US politics here. He doesn’t expect his rebuttal to be published.
Background: Paul Nurse is a Nobel prizewinner and Royal Society president.
Stamp out anti-science in UK science
By Christopher Monckton
It is time to reject UK political movements that masquerade as scientific societies while turning their backs on science, says former adviser to Margaret Thatcher FRS Christopher Monckton
IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions.
On climate: true science may be found in “the consensus opinions of experts” [1], we can “say with assurance that human activities cause weather changes” [1], recent variations are not “natural, cyclical environmental trends” [1], the manmade CO2’s contribution to the annual carbon cycle is not the 3% imagined by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, but 86% [2], “anthropogenic climate change is already affecting every aspect of our lives” [3],
On freedom of information requests asking publicly-funded scientists for their data: the requests are “a tool to intimidate some scientists” [4].
On a sceptical interviewer: the force of Sir Paul’s replies had left him “tongue-tied” and had compelled him to stop the cameras on several occasions, when the interviewer had in fact told Sir Paul he suffered from hypoglycaemia and needed to take regular breaks to maintain his glucose intake [5].
On US politics: voters should not choose Republicans [1].
You would probably be even more disturbed to be told that these are the opinions expressed not by some climate scientist or politician but by Sir Paul Nurse, the geneticist who heads the world’s oldest taxpayer-funded lobby-group, the grandly-named and lavishly-grant-aided Royal Society.
It’s alarming that a country which leads the world in science – the home of Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell – might be turning its back on science. How can this be happening? What can be done?
One problem is treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate. When some scientists try to sway public opinion, they employ the tricks of the debating chamber: cherry-picking data, ignoring the consensus opinions of experts (who, in the peer-reviewed economic literature, are near-unanimous that it is cheaper to pay for the damage arising from any global warming that may occur than to spend anything now on attempted mitigation), adept use of a sneer or a misplaced comparison, reliance on the power of rhetoric rather than argument. They can often get away with this because the media rely too much on confrontational debate in place of reasoned discussion.
It is essential, in public issues, to separate science from politics and ideology. Get the science right first, then discuss the political implications. Scientists also need to work harder at discussing the issues better and more fully in the public arena, clearly identifying what they know and admitting what they don’t know.
Another concern is science teaching in schools. Is it good enough to produce citizens able to cope with public discussions about science? We have to ensure that science is being taught in schools – not pseudoscience such as a one-sided belief in the more luridly fanciful claims of climate extremists. With the rise of politicized science in the UK, measures need to be put in place to safeguard science classes. This has been difficult to maintain particularly in the US.
We need to emphasise why the scientific process is such a reliable generator of knowledge – with its respect for evidence, for scepticism, for consistency of approach, for the constant testing of ideas. Everyone should know and understand why the processes that lead to astronomy are more reliable than those that lead to astrology, or the wilder conclusions of the environmental propagandists adopted as though they were science by the IPCC and naively but profitably parroted by the likes of Nurse.
Finally, scientific leaders have a responsibility to expose the bunkum, not to perpetuate it. Scientists have not always been proactive about this. They need to be vigilant about what is being said in the public arena. They need to be vigilant about what scientific societies are publicising about science in their name, as four Fellows of the Royal Society did recently in forcing a complete and now largely sensible rewrite of the Society’s previously extremist statement about climate science. They take on the Paul Nurses when necessary. At elections, scientists should ensure that science is on the agenda and nonsense is exposed. If that nonsense is extreme enough – as Sir Paul’s ill-informed statements on climate science have been – then the response should be very public.
If scientists and scientific societies in the UK are anti-science and are allowed to carry the day it will ultimately hurt the British economy. The best scientists will head for the established leaders of science, such as the emerging powerhouses of China and India, whose leaders have realized that the climate scare has been more than somewhat oversold. But beyond that, the Royal Society’s present leadership will damage the UK’s standing in the world. Who will be able to take those leaders seriously? Scientists may not care, but they should.
Science is worth fighting for. It helps us understand the world and ourselves better and will benefit all humanity.
We have to hope that the people of the UK will see through some of the nonsense being foisted on them by vocal minorities. It is time to reject – and to de-fund – political movements that pose as scientific societies while rejecting science and taking us back into the dark rather than forward into a more enlightened future.
Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.
References
- Nurse, P, 2011, Stamp out science in US politics, New Scientist, November 14, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128302.900-stamp-out-antiscience-in-us-politics.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
- Booker, C, 2011, How BBC warmists abuse the science, Sunday Telegraph, January 29, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8290469/How-BBC-warmists-abuse-the-science.html#dsq-content.
- Motl, L., 2011, BBC Horizon: president of Royal Society defends AGW ideology, The Reference Frame, January 25, http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/bbc-horizon-president-of-royal-society.html
- Jha, A., 2011, Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, The Guardian, May 25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists.
- Delingpole, J., 2011, Sir Paul Nurse’s big boo-boo, climaterealists.com, January 30, http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7127.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Indeed…….. Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time.
————-
So I guess you are going for a plateau from now on as being evidence of a disproof of a AGW. That’s fine it would also work.
I think Gates was referring to a downturn in temperature also being a disproof of AGW.
Considering the emotional investment in cycles and the number of people who get excited about the “we have finally reached the peak of the temperature/ice melt/whatever” I think that would both be a reasonable disproof of AGW and makes cycles more plausible.
But it would take a sizable fraction of a cycle to prove that.
When the history of the period is written, the readers of the future will be astonished by how the anti-science/engineering elite managed to con the population into accepting serfdom and the early deaths of tens of millions by the CO2-AGW scam. What’s more it’s the first time in History the hard left have linked with the hard right to shaft the population.
It was planned in 1988 by Bernie Lay of Enron with Al Gore. The idea was to push the crackpot ideas of a few scientific zealots eager to boost their careers and who had previously been claiming we were heading into a new ice age. So it was a Faustian pact was forged: bias all climate research to support the fictitious CO2 mantra and the early investors in carbon trading.
Think Obama think Goldman Sachs. Think Malcolm Turnbull think Goldman Sachs. Think Blair, think Deutsche bank.
So, the science was false from the start; highly plausible but false. There is no ‘back radiation’. There is no significant ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling to hide it. The supposed 33K present greenhouse heating against which CO2-AGW it is calibrated is about a third of that level.
A properly run science should have self-corrected. This one didn’t. Thus we have a Trotskyite as president of the Royal Society currently persuading scientists to act politically not scientifically..
Our scientific community has been complicit in this fraud. It goes to the top. Green jobs are low technology designed as a sop to the serfs.
“This is exactly the kind of reaction you would expect in an age of anti-reason (aka “dark age”).”
Exactly. When ‘scientists’ stop performing science and start pushing politics, the people lose any trust in science; we are already living in a ‘dark age’ of politically-motivated ‘anti-reason’ science.
Today we see governments giving taxes to scientists to produce results that support political agendas. If the government doesn’t end it, then the backlash against ‘anti-reason’ in science will.
It’s no better than the fake charities in the UK, where the government gives million of pounds of tax money to charities which have little to no other income so the ‘charities’ will demand that the government does what they wanted to do in the first place.
“You can be certain however, that the Chinese don’t have such feelings about funding their “scientific-technological” elite, as they know quite well this is what has propelled them to the modern world power they are.”
I still remember when Japan was going to take over the world, back in the 90s. By now we were all supposed to be speaking Japanese and working for Japanese companies which would have beaten all their competitors. One thing we should have learned from history is that doomsayers are usually wrong.
Cheap labour has temporarily given China a rich middle class by third world standards. It will be lucky to become a ‘world power’ before manufacturing moves to cheaper nations and the economy collapses; the vast majority of people are poor and unskilled and nothing else is likely to replace those jobs any time soon.
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 8:53 pm
1. “useful information” hide behind constraints is not useful.
2. “but the volume of information out here is beyond one’s ability to assimilate it”
JS, you states platitudes. The same refers to libraries. You are artificially glorifying Internet. First I thought you wrote about “the kind of information one needs” but it appeared you generalized which led you astray. I do not like people using expressions of the kind like “information at your fingertips” which from practical point of view is a downright lie.
3. “Which, was my point in that we haven’t properly taught people to discern truth. The truth is here on the internet, but it is mixed with as much untruths. So, in that case we stated essentially the same thing.”
No, JS, we didn’t. Which “we” (in the first line) and what a “truth”? It seems to me your “truth” is in opposition to my “truth”.
4. “Thanks, I find it refreshing to see that someone understands the nature of democracy without proper constraints.”
Wow! Handy Hayek! Let it be. Anyway you wrote about market liberties, in the meantime I saw contradiction in “liberty” and “democracy”. So we touched two subjects, intertwined but not the same. Let me specify my former statement on democracy vs. liberty as I see it.
Democracy has become New American Idol but democracy is bad from its inception – any bunch of people may and can vote to cut my throat via referendum for example. Casting a vote is a tenet, THE foundation of democracy. Imposing constraints on democracy in that point means you will get rid of it (democracy).
5. “I’ve no intention in getting into an abortion debate. ”
Lier. You put that issue plain if not intentionally (to provoke a discussion in the field you feel strong in your view).
6. “My perspective, boils down to the question of what makes a person a person. ”
“Person” in the meaning of “living human being” is defined by SCIENCE whatever you think of it or pen down about. The rest of your paragraph on the subject is simply pathetic without a pinch of logic in it.
Your adherence to wisdom (“I turned toward Wisdom”) is an empty banner which confirms my earlier premonitions that you like to hide behind words like wisdom, truth, science, logic, philosophy, knowledge, etc.
But both issues – abortion and sort of hubris in dealing with opponents – create your own picture better than I would do it.
7. “I do love your absolutism in your convictions.”
Last but not least. Fine you noticed that. The Truth can be grasped only in the context of the Absolute not the Relativity where a LIFE is concerned. (see point 3)
8. “Perhaps, if we continue to exchange thoughts and ideas about actions and other things, we can come to a better understanding of one another.”
I beg your pardon but I think just contrary.
Regards
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 4:56 pm
The current crop of republicans in the us seem to have gone right wing radical and have become obsessed with the left wing. Any thing that they can categorise as left wing seems to be gut reaction rejected.
Anything they can “categorise” as left wing? You don’t think high taxes and redistribution of wealth are left-wing policies? You think rejecting these things makes someone a “right wing radical?” Hahaha! Remembering my teens, I guess to a teenager it would do!
Friends:
I have been amused by this thread and the various excuses and nonsense presented by trolls who have used any irrelevant distraction they could imagine to deflect from the subject then – when that failed – have been forced to consider the science of AGW. And the so-called science of AGW fails.
The best that can be said for AGW so-called science’ was summarised by R. Gates at September 17, 2011 at 10:36 pm who responded to MarkG having pointed out that:
“Anthropogenic Global Climate Warming Change’ is not science precisely because nothing can disprove it…”.
R Gates replied by asserting;
“Incorrect. If, over the next 30 years:
1) Global temperatures decline for the period
2) Ocean heat content returns to where it was in the late 1970′s
3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s
4) The stratosphere begins to warm back up
5) Greenland and Anarctica slowly return to growing in mass again
6) Permafrost stops melting”
But each of his points is plain wrong. I explain this as follows.
“1) Global temperatures decline for the period.”
The “period” is not relevant. Either AGW overwhelms natural variation or it does not. AGW could be said to be happening but not discernible from natural variation. Indeed, global temperature has not risen significantly this century despite the “committed warming” of 0.2 deg. C per decade that AGW says must occur over the first two decades of this century (ref. IPCC AR4 Chapter 9).
“2) Ocean heat content returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
There is nothing special about ocean heat content in “the late 1970’s”. Either AGW is heating the oceans to increase “ocean heat content” or it is not, and it is not.
“3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
This is simply wrong. AGW says polar (n.b. polar and not “Arctic”) ice cover will reduce. But polar ice cover is not discernibly reducing. Arctic ice reduced to year 2007 but Antarctic ice has continued its increase. The existing polar ice cover is now misrepresented by pretending that only Arctic ice should be compared and, therefore, the state of polar ice 30 years in the future can be misrepresented. Anyway, Arctic ice varies for natural reasons so its variation proves nothing about AGW because its variation cannot be attributed as proof of an effect of human activity .
“4) The stratosphere begins to warm back up”
That stratospheric warming started years ago.
“5) Greenland and Anarctica slowly return to growing in mass again”
Antarctic ice is increasing. There is no reason to conflate “Greenland and Anarctica” except as a device to obscure the fact that there is no significant change in polar (i.e. Arctic and Antarctic) ice.
“6) Permafrost stops melting”
Melting permafrost is induced by rising temperature. It is evidence of rising temperature. It is not an indication of AGW.
Climate realists know global temperature varies: it always has and always will.
AGW advocates deny that global temperature varies except when the variation is caused by humans (as is clearly demonstrated by R Gates’ point 6).
AGW so-called science is pseudoscience used as justification for political goals. People, including me and Chris Monckton, who support science have, do and will oppose AGW so-called science for the same reason our forbears opposed the so-called science of eugenics. And people at opposite ends of the political spectrum – such as me and Chris Monckton – are united in our support of science by opposing AGW pseudoscience.
Richard
Given that the previous UK government was in favour of, and adept at, dumbing down the British education system, and that they spiritually and financially supported the practice of trendy bunkum such as homoeopathy (including within the NHS at taxpayers’ expense), it is no wonder that the current UK government is still devoutly kneeling at the altar of AGW.
But it’s worse than that. Unlike the US and Australia, here in Britain we are constrained by the same political pseudoscience, plus money-laundering carbon taxation, imposed on us by the EU.
If only the changes currently being made to the education system, which I hope will result in a new generation with better knowledge of science and with a healthy questioning and rational approach and with better ethics, could be applied to today’s crop of gullible and corrupt politicians.
LazyTeenager says:
September 17, 2011 at 11:39 pm
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Indeed…….. Gates why would you think returning to the climate of the 70s would be significant of anything? I think the ice was abnormally large at the time.
————-
So I guess you are going for a plateau from now on as being evidence of a disproof of a AGW. That’s fine it would also work.
================================================
Yeh, I was just needling a little. While I am of the belief things of nature are cyclic, the timescales aren’t nailed down, nor do I expect them to be any time soon. I usually argue the about the “C” of CAGW. If it wasn’t for the alarmism of all of this, I wouldn’t engage. I really don’t care if the ice melts on the arctic or if the temps rise a degree. I think it would be healthy for humanity. Sadly, because of such alarm and such extreme measures proposed, I’m obliged to study this stuff.
You guys have a good morning.
Response to Mac The Knife: I have never seen an entire paper reproduced by someone else without specific attribution, until I read Monckton’s post. Maybe, Monckton would like to write with the same style and focus as Sir Paul, but certainly I have to agree with Sir Paul, and Monckton, that scientific positions should not be politicized. For Monckton, however, this is a profoundly disingenuous position.
Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Miss this bit did you Hugh?
“Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.”
Dick.
>>Robert E. Phelan says: September 17, 2011 at 3:44 pm
>>My argument is essentially that until a society can afford to mechanize
>>its agriculture and develop a robust distribution infrastructure (and thus
>>set in motion the forces that reduce population) it needs a large enough
>>population to build that infrastructure and afford the means to mechanize
>>agriculture. It needs people.
The problem in the Third World is not population, the problem is political.
The Third World has been given enough foreign aid to mechanise its agriculture 10x over, but they prefer to spend that money on kalashnikovs, whiskey, and Swiss bank accounts. Population is not a cure for Third World poverty – good government is.
Apologies if I jumped the gun on religion, but I have heard this population increase argument ad-nausium from the religious Right.
.
The always-correct low edge of the lowest band of the UN Population Projection has the peak at under 8 bn around 2030. Thereafter, the danger of population implosion will be the cri du jour.
>>James
>>Heck, if I had my way, we’d all be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles by now.
Except that hydrogen is not a fuel – it is only a ‘battery’, an energy storage medium. The real question, is what fuel would you use to power that ‘battery’. And if Germany really does close down its nuclear industry, well that is one more potential fuel down the drain.
.
Dayday says: September 17, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Further to your most excellent comment –
Eubathes:- ‘… and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only to disappear. The great object of the hundred triflers in the science appeared to be to destroy the reputation of three or four great men whose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity. And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments to fill the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied by some crude theories or speculations of unknown persons, or by ill-judged censure or partial praise of the editor.’
Humphry Davy (1947) Consolations in travel (chapter: Dialogue V The Chemical Philosopher)
Further dialogue continues where Eubathes states requirement of claim in the accuracy of detail. Some minute information, some proofs of what [you] assert. ‘..what you attribute to the chemical and mechanical arts, we might with the same propriety attribute to the fine arts, to letters, to political improvements, and to those inventions to which Minerva and Apollo, and not Vulcan are the patrons.’,
The Unknown: ….’I will be more minute. You will allow that the rendering skins insoluble in water, by combining with them the astringent principle of certain vegetables, is a chemical invention, and that without leather our shoes, our carriages, our equipages would be very ill made; you will permit me to say, that the bleaching and …..”
Gold Rush 😉
I thnk that scientists are sometimes to blame, sometimes they find themselves cuaght in an imperfect situation.
Take predicting earthquakes in Italy. Sceintists are now on trial for being honest about the uncertainties in their predictive powers, which I think led the authorities to say: ‘no imminent danger’. Those scientists might think: ‘better to cry wolf than to risk perdition.’
Take funding translational research. This is that applied research necessary to underpin basic discoveries as a prelude to commercial applications. In the 1990s, Britain neither acknowledged its necessity nor had adequate funding streams dedicated to it. do you give up, emigrate or sell a story to the City? Tough call….
IN my judgement the failures lie in Western Governments, Establishments, Bureaucracies and Parliaments. They have been housed by scientific illiterates, largtely. They have not been, in the main, able to challenge robustly the assertions of scientists pitching for cash. Or they have used them for political purposes (carbon dioxide as the scare to justify nuclear power, for example). They have become slaves to computer modellers (foot and mouth diseas management may be less well known in that regard globally, but it was a shameful piece of government), realsiing little the uncertainties and assumptions underpinning such scenario modelling (for that is all that it is…)..
As for astrology, it is probably a religion which grew out of a few perhaps correct assumptions:
1. The gestation of a foetus through the winter may be different to that during the summer.
2. The experience of warmth before cold or vice versa in the first year of life may affect how the brain develops.
3. The quality of milk produced in the winter may, in antiquity, have been different to that produced in summer, thus affecting early newborn experiences on the planet.
Whether anyone could possibly do any really scientific stuides on astrology without invoking a ‘placebo effect’ (subjects aware of astrological predictions may be more likely to conform to them than if unaware etc etc) is perhaps the most difficult challenge when trying to determine whether there is any scientific validity to astrology.
But population studies on cohorts inh the 1960s and late 1980s, when great ‘large planet conjunctions’ took place, is probably the best place to look. If you think it worthwhile in the first place.
Lazy Teenager,
Yep ! I guess that was in school.
Earlier in 2011, I had a short discussion with Lord Monkton about Graves’ Disease, as I had a difficult year with hyperthyroidism. He told me that he was essentially in the clear, but that his treatment could not prevent his eye bulge (ophthalmopathy). It has certainly not affected his brain. At the time, he was wearing a tie with the elements of the periodic table. I asked him if that meant that he had heard the Tom Lehrer song from 1969 of “The Elements”. Without a pause, Lord Monkton sang the song, with each one of the (then known) 102 elements perfectly in place, no stammer, no stutter, no calls to stop filming (though there were no cameras, just the 2 of us).
A person with that capability has to be shown credibility.
ben says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:07 pm
“the Stern review bunkum”.
—————————————–
And how many times did we hve that rammed down our psychological throats by the MSM. Just before the ‘credit crunch’, IIRC.
Sometimes I think they play us like a bunch of children at a birthday party: the hired magician. The figures are all frigged, the books are all cooked (climate and ‘economy’).
Gates wants to wait until they start arresting scientists.
By then it is too late.
History, lessons, not learn, repeat…….
Ralph says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:54 am
>>James
>>Heck, if I had my way, we’d all be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles by now.
Except that hydrogen is not a fuel – it is only a ‘battery’, an energy storage medium. The real question, is what fuel would you use to power that ‘battery’. And if Germany really does close down its nuclear industry, well that is one more potential fuel down the drain.
==================================================
Sorry, I may not have been clear, I was refrerring to vehicles run by hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines, where, the fuel is indeed, hydrogen. My point was, how much further down the road could we have been on this if we hadn’t thrown all of our money at ethanol, windmills and solar panels?
Ralph, I really don’t expect Germany to close down their nuclear industry. But, if they do, be sure that they will be burning coal instead.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/avta/light_duty/hicev/index.html
Today’s headline at the BBC
Again! Decreasing technology perceived as a social advancement. Not only is infrastructure being lost, but an important expertise is gone for nuclear development and design. It will be much more difficult to undo. The 21st century seems to be quickly sliding back into the 20th. GK
Przemysław Pawełczyk says:
September 18, 2011 at 12:18 am
James Sexton says:
September 17, 2011 at 8:53 pm
1.&2 Sigh, just because you find no use for it only proves my point about discernment. Yes, like a library, except, the library isn’t literally at our fingertips. I don’t care if you like that term or not, it is very literal description of the use of the internet. If you have to pay people to tell you how to interpret information, so be it. But that isn’t a requirement for all of us. I’m sorry about your hindrance to understanding. Do you think the requirements of information is the same for all of us? You seem to be suggesting the internet can think for us. Can you not infer things from the basic physics laws that are adequately presented on the internet?
3. “No, JS, we didn’t.”…… As to what truth, I was more generally discussing the nature of things we see here and other places, where some of it is true and some of it is not. As to the “We” I was speaking towards society in general, I thought that clear, but perhaps it wouldn’t be for one that must pay to have someone give him the information he needs. I do appreciate your agreement, even though I didn’t charge you for it. You didn’t run to a pay site to confirm this did you?
4. You didn’t come away from the quote with what I wished to convey. Perhaps a simpler one would suffice. Here’s one I’ve used several times here on WUWT. “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”———- oft attributed to Ben Franklin.
5. Uhmm, no sis, I wasn’t the first to mention it here, as my statement reflected. And, what one could infer from my earlier statement, I don’t feel strongly about it. (There are reasons for the use of parentheses.) And, you’ve made it clear, your feelings regarding the issue are much stronger than mine. If you’d bother to take off those hate filled glasses and read what I was saying, you could probably come to the reasonable conclusion that I advocate ending such practices. But, I didn’t offer to charge you for that information, so you probably ignored what I was trying to communicate.
6. Ok, I’ll bite, show me where science has settled the question of when and how a person becomes a person. I’m really on the edge of my seat here, because I’d had always thought we’d have to wait until the bye and bye to get a proper answer. Once you post it here, be sure to send it on to the Pres and the Surgeon General, we can all rejoice that science has settled the question! Now we can all move on to other issues. I wasn’t hiding behind any words, I chose them carefully as to no illicit an emotive response. I see I’ve failed in that attempt. BTW, I didn’t then, nor do I now, consider you an opponent. If and when I regard you in that manner, you’ll see a clear difference in the way I converse with you.
7. I’m left wondering why you inserted the caveat to your statement? “The Truth can be grasped only in the context of the Absolute not the Relativity where a LIFE is concerned.” Absolutism is relatively applied? I believe you need to refine your thoughts on this. Perhaps one of your subscription sites can provide some insight towards this dichotomous application of absolute and relative. What of the poor rocks and other inanimate objects? Does absolutism cease to apply when regarding them?
8. Perhaps you are correct. Exchanging thoughts and ideas is a two-way street. Further, it requires an effort to attempt to do such for both parties. I see your are more interested in making illogical assumptions and then arguing against them rather than ask for a clarification.
Best wishes,
James
James Sexton says:
September 18, 2011 at 6:18 am
Ralph, I really don’t expect Germany to close down their nuclear industry. But, if they do, be sure that they will be burning coal instead.
============================================================
They are going back to coal because coal is cheaper.
They signed contracts with African coal mines…………..
“3) Arctic Sea Ice extent, area, volume returns to where it was in the late 1970′s”
==============================================================
The early satellite versions had a higher ice bias…………………….
They have been constantly “tuning” the results, reading melt ponds, etc………………….
Jessie says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:54 am
You forgot to turn off your italics!
REPLY: I fixed that now, Anthony
Latitude says:
September 18, 2011 at 8:07 am
They are going back to coal because coal is cheaper.
They signed contracts with African coal mines…………..
======================================================
lol, well Merkel said they would. I just don’t see how they’re going to pull this off. This should be very interesting.
Mods, is there any reason why everything is in italics? I thought I was just me for a moment. 🙂