Here’s another open thread, for discussion of anything not covered in recent posts. In response to a few requests, I have ditched the Intense Debate comment service, and reverted to the WordPress built-in system. I’ve installed a couple of plug-ins to allow comment editing and rating (which caused some weirdness with the blog theme and a late night for me until I worked out a temporary fix). I’ve also switched off comment nesting/threading, so your comments will appear in the order they’re posted. If you’re replying to a particular comment, please use the comment number or link to it (the link is under the number). As before, you’ll need to register and log-in to make a comment. If anyone has any problems with their log-ins contact me (gareth@ the site domain) and I’ll see what can be done.
A note on the comment rating scheme: four positive votes or three negative votes, or more than eight votes in total will give comments distinctive styles. Please try it out — I want to see what they look like! I could change this to make unpopular comments invisible, but only with tweaking. Let me know if it’s something you really want. Feedback on other aspects of the blog would also be welcome.
I never liked making comments invisible (e.g. at Kiwiblog) due to the tendency for particular blogs to have a large-ish majority of commenters who think the same way, which led to people who disagreed with this majority getting drowned regardless of how stupid/offensive the comment was. Would hope you make the threshold for invisible comments quite high, if this system happens.
Noted, Stephen, thanks. Readers only get one vote though, so with HT’s traffic, a “high bar” might not be that high. If you see what I mean…
Everything’s relative!
Gareth
Instead of popularity, my suggestion to making posts invisible is for continued abusive behavior after a warning by you.
As you want your blog not to be a forum for misinformation, you may require posters to back up their claim.
Yes, Girma, that’s always an option. I don’t like to use my moderation powers too much, but I will if pushed.
Thanks for going back to the old system. Works better in my opinion. Hope it does not cause too much extra work for you.
D.
In reply to a comment, commentators shall have to get back to referring to each numbered comment as it now stands – which isn’t a big deal in a thread with a small number of comments, or will you be able to nest them?
“Disappearing” comments can have the benefit of making commentators engage their brain before committing ill-thought-out verbiage for the purpose of distracting from the discussion. In the case where someone takes a contrary position that may have not been considered by other commentators; in my (admittedly limited) experience – that has not resulted in them being voted down, particularly if the comment is pertinent to the discussion. Where comments are voted down, is where the comment is clearly a ruse to distract or way off-topic. I don’t visit kiwiblog – its opinions hold no interest to me – but the scheme works well on frogblog and commentators there have learned now to keep mostly on topic, and it has cut down the trolls significantly. It was getting to a point where no sooner had a post been made than the trolls were about attempting to spin everything off the topic in hand.
Hey Girma, analyse this…
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/531849/
I should’ve said that Kiwiblog doesn’t use that system any more – DPF trialled it and it really didn’t ‘work’ I guess. Still don’t like it, have seen it on Frogblog and – though i don’t read it as much as i used to – people who consistently argued against ‘Green’ positions were eventually labelled ‘trolls’. Some were but some weren’t. Bah!
The Climate War (thread)
Eric Pooley’s book The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth sheds a good deal of light on why it is that America, in spite of all the scientific evidence that demonstrates the threatening reality of climate change, is still unable, and often unwilling, to mobilise itself to address the danger.
What is the “the scientific evidence that demonstrates the threatening reality of climate change�
IPCC Statment: For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
IPCC graph:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-3-1-figure-1.html
What is the actual observation of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia?
CRU graph (observation):
Rate of global warming reduced from 0.25 deg C per decade two decades ago to 0.03 deg C per decade in the last decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/to:2000/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2010/trend
There is no “scientific evidence†for accelerated global warming. There is none!
Girma, I suggest you go away. You are repeating yourself ad nauseam. You are also quite wrong. It is utterly absurd to hitch the same thing you have been saying over and over again to any mention of global warming you come across on this site.
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2000/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2000/trend
No change in rate of global warming after human emission of CO2 for 60 years between the two periods from 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 2000. Also zero rate of global warming since 1998.
Bryan
I am commenting only in the open thread.
Are you going to ban me?
I can not resist to respond when people talk of “scientific evidence” of man made global warming, when I know there is NONE.
Girma, it’s not for me to ban you, though I won’t complain if Gareth does. I realise you are only commentng in the open thread, but I didn’t think the open thread was set up so that you could go on repeating yourself.
Girma: At some point, your monomaniacal insistence that your graphs somehow trump the vast body of evidence that has led to our present understanding of climate change is going to wear out my patience. This is not the Monty Python argument sketch. If you want to engage and debate with the people who comment here, you’re going to have to read what they say, and try to understand it.
Why does the AGW side repeat its claim of “scientific evidence†when there is NONE?
If there is no repetition of this claim, the repetition of showing the data that falsify the claim is not required.
Very simple, Girma. Your “data” doesn’t show that there is no scientific evidence.
Now, please, move on to discuss other issues, or I will have no option to put your comments on moderation. If that happens, I will only pass those that add to the discussion.
Gareth
Thank you. Will do.
Girma, here again is some evidence I would like you to read and try to understand…
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/531849/
Rob Taylor
My only interest in the relationship between increase in human emission of CO2 and rate of change of global mean temperature.
Is the rate of change of global mean temperature natural or is it man made?
Just wanted to say “cheerio”. For health reasons, I won’t be posting here again for the foreseeable future.
Keep up the good work, Gareth and Bryan. Here’s hoping we get to Peak Stupid some time soon, eh?
Ah, the line of questions begins. The troll starts asking questions, which they will then use to build into their argument. Girma, why don’t you just make your argument instead of painfully drawing it out with bogus questions?
For a start, the question doesn’t even make sense. Rates of change manifest in nature, are observed or affected by natural and man-made influences. They manifest in the observable world around us, and then man turns those into statistics.
It’s obvious where the question is leading. That because it is a phenomenon observed in the natural world, that man cannot have anything to do with it. But that is an easily falsifiable position; Oil washing on the coast of the US is observed in the natural world, but caused by man.
Clearly, the question that the poster would have posed if they possessed the capability to pose an intelligent question would have been a false dilemma; because there is a third option, that the rate of change in global mean temperatures has a range of contributing factors, some natural and some man-made in origin. The mere existence of this argument is already enough to undermine the false dilemma. It’s a question asking: is that black, or white? And the next person is saying, “or could it be gray…”
Surrounding the post you are replying to with <blockquote> and </blockquote> will make it appear as the above. This makes the conversation easy to follow; quoting the portion of the conversation you are responding to was established as a netiquette convention in the early days of the internet, when most people didn’t even know what it was but those who did found it amazing to be able to talk, and argue, with people from all over the world.
As a bonus, quoting without specifically saying who you are quoting tends to take the argument away from battling egos, and more onto intelligent discourse.
Get well soon. Your presence will be missed. I’m very afraid that “peak stupid”, unlike peak oil, is still a long way off…
‘Peak stupid’? What a great concept! If only…
Get well, we’re pressed enough dealing with the hard-of-thinking as it is!
ctg, we’ll miss your constructive and good-humoured contributions. As for peak stupid, it would be nice if it could be represented by your “top two inches of Gerry Brownlee”, which I still chuckle over. But I fear there’s a lot more yet. Best wishes on the health front.