Continuation of the open thread. Please use these threads to bring up things that are creating ‘buzz’ rather than having news items get buried in comment threads on more specific topics. We’ll promote the best responses to the head post.
Knorr (2009): Case in point, Knorr (GRL, 2009) is a study about how much of the human emissions are staying the atmosphere (around 40%) and whether that is detectably changing over time. It does not undermine the fact that CO2 is rising. The confusion in the denialosphere is based on a misunderstanding between ‘airborne fraction of CO2 emissions’ (not changing very much) and ‘CO2 fraction in the air’ (changing very rapidly), led in no small part by a misleading headline (subsequently fixed) on the ScienceDaily news item Update: MT/AH point out the headline came from an AGU press release (Sigh…). SkepticalScience has a good discussion of the details including some other recent work by Le Quéré and colleagues.
Update: Some comments on the John Coleman/KUSI/Joe D’Aleo/E. M. Smith accusations about the temperature records. Their claim is apparently that coastal station absolute temperatures are being used to estimate the current absolute temperatures in mountain regions and that the anomalies there are warm because the coast is warmer than the mountain. This is simply wrong. What is actually done is that temperature anomalies are calculated locally from local baselines, and these anomalies can be interpolated over quite large distances. This is perfectly fine and checkable by looking at the pairwise correlations at the monthly stations between different stations (London-Paris or New York-Cleveland or LA-San Francisco). The second thread in their ‘accusation’ is that the agencies are deleting records, but this just underscores their lack of understanding of where the GHCN data set actually comes from. This is thoroughly discussed in Peterson and Vose (1997) which indicates where the data came from and which data streams give real time updates. The principle one is the CLIMAT updates of monthly mean temperature via the WMO network of reports. These are distributed by the Nat. Met. Services who have decided which stations they choose to produce monthly mean data for (and how it is calculated) and is absolutely nothing to do with NCDC or NASA.
Further Update: NCDC has a good description of their procedures now available, and Zeke Hausfather has a very good explanation of the real issues on the Yale Forum.
septic #843:
Eh, ENSO goes up… and then it goes down. Volcanoes push temperatures down… and then they come up again, as the stuff washes out. It’s variability.
CO2 goes up… and up… and up. And up. (Did I say: up?) at 0.2 degrees a decade. It’s trend. Just give it 30 years and it’s dominant. And that’s for starters. Even a prolonged Solar quiet at -0.2K (which we seem not to be getting) would be eaten up in a decade.
As I say to my students: please confirm that you understood this before continuing.
Septic swings and misses: “ENSO and volcanoes are recurrent — if they are as powerful as you say, then CO2 isn’t really dominant.”
Except we don’t get “volcano accumulation”.
They stop.
CO2, meanwhile, accumulates.
[edit]
FCH: “Perhaps if the message was a bit less rigid and absolute people would have fewer problems. ”
Doesn’t work.
If you say “maybe this, maybe that”, then the denialosphere say “SEE! they don’t KNOW what’s going on, and this will KILL the economy (please don’t ask us why we know that)”.
If you simplify, they say “SEE! They lie to you by leaving out (some small thing like, say PDO or squid farts releasing methane)”.
If you explain fully, they say “SEE! They’re BSing you with complex science!”.
People *can* think, it’s just that so many prefer not to. So they get their ideas from newspapers who love a controversy, so big it up as much as possible.
PS when it comes to stating the uncertainties, what’s the point when the denialists post like Gary Winter, Strathmiglo does in the closing remarks of this BBC HYS:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=7393&edition=1&ttl=20100112094413
“”It would be very easy for scientists to devise experiments to disprove the manmade CO2 link to CC.
Schrodinger ( no cat!)”
They have done ! No statistical correlation between co2 and climate change; no physical sign of any in troposphere; clear and unambiguous link – with 11-13 year lag of solar activity variation and global temperature.
Gary Winter, Strathmiglo ”
When such a bald-faced lie is promoted, what’s the point?
” Septic Matthew says:
11 January 2010 at 6:39 PM
How is Latif’s expectation of 2 or more decades w/o warming”
You didn’t quote him, you quoted the misquotes (from a rightwingnut radio talkshow host).
See
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#p/u/6/khikoh3sJg8
And anyone thinking Matt here is thinking for himself, check the fact against his fantasy.
Deep Climate, thanks for the shout-out. In the 14 minutes of “fame” I have left, I will try to claim prior art on the Scooby theme as well. ;-)
Matthew, OK. Let’s take it slow. Let’s say I have a space heater in a room. At time t=0, I bring in a big block of ice, which cools the temperature of the room. Over time, though, the ice melts, but the space heater stays on. In the long term, will the room warm or cool?
Come on, Dude. Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Furry, you’re kidding me, right?
We’re hearing from these folks by the truckload just now.
And not just 11 days, but just selected areas of the globe.
Is it ridiculous? Of course it is, but it remains important to say so–repeatedly. Else the BIg Lie prevails.
Matthew, Let’s look at it another way. Start with the physics. Earth at equilibrium and now greenhouse gasses. Energy_in=Energy_out. Now add greenhouse gasses, Energy_in stays the same, but the ghgs take a big bite out of Energy_out, so the temperature must increase.
As the temperature increases, the energy radiated increases. We are still taking a big bite out of the energy in the wavelengths where ghgs absorb, but the energy around these wavelengths that escapes is still increaseng. We reach equilibrium when the area under this energy curve (with the bites taken out) again equals Energy_in, or the area of the curve at the lower temperature without the bites taken out. Got that?
So as long as Energy_in doesn’t change, the only way we reach equilibrium again is by reaching a certain higher temperature. In otherwords, increasing greenhouse gasses sets the world’s thermostat higher. Volcanos and ENSO can make big changes in Energy_in, but only for a short time. Afterwards, we go right back to the temperature climbing back toward the new equilibrium point. Does that make sense?
847, Hank Roberts: Learn the meaning the word has acquired. It’s not likely one you want to adopt, I bet.
“Tar Heels”, “Hoosiers”, “Yankees” were initially insults taken as names by the people at whom the insults were thrown. Despite its other associations, “septic” is still a good pun on “skeptic”, so I think I’ll keep it. There are ogres named “Matthew”, and I am not dropping that name either.
I see, Latif and Keenlyside are misquoted:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/02/nature-article-on-cooling-confuses-revkin-media-deniers-next-decade-may-see-rapid-warming/
They expect noticeable warming to resume by 2015, and they speak/write in overlapping decades: 2000-2010, 2005-2015.
857, Ray Ladbury: Come on, Dude. Are you being deliberately obtuse?
What does the ice block represent (reduced solar activity?), does it recur? Are you saying that there are known reasons why the earth temperature has remained stable since about 1997, and that those reasons will not recur?
“What does the ice block represent (reduced solar activity?)”
It represents a new source (or in this case, sink) of heat energy.
“does it recur”
No, it melts. Rather like volcanic dust gets rained out.
“Are you saying that there are known reasons why the earth temperature has remained stable since about 1997”
Are you saying that the solar minimum has had no effect? Are you saying that the El Nino has no effect? Are you saying that cherry picking 98 had no effect?
PS it’s warmed from 1998 to 2005. Unless you figure that the CRU data is correct.
Septic Matthew wrote: “the earth temperature has remained stable since about 1997”
False.
You are posting repeated false assertions and ignoring the commenters who correct you.
I call Rumplestiltskin.
Ray Ladbury wrote in 857:
… then further elaborates in 859:
Matthew responds in 861:
Matthew has a point, Ray. If ten volcanoes the size of Pinatubo started erupting continuously those would be just about sufficient to cancel out a doubling of carbon dioxide. Then every time carbon dioxide doubles there could be more volcanoes.
Can you honestly say that you know for sure this sort of thing isn’t in the deck? After all, volcanoes erupt, and there is no law that I know of that puts a cap on the number of volcanoes that can erupt at the same time. Ergo.
*
Matthew wrote in 860:
Matthew, to distinguish yourself from the first Matthew you could have just gone “Matthew II,” you know, like holding up two fingers. Others might find this easier to understand.
Matthew, comparing ‘septic’ to ‘tarheel’ is self-glorification.
Do you cast yourself as a barefoot revolutionary fighter warring against oppression?
Gee, and a few days ago you were coming on as a sincere, new reader wanting to learn.
I have a mental image for ‘septic’ — nothing like a tarheel.
http://www.scandalist.com/files/2008/07/fatty_arbuckle.jpg
A few, intermittent point source volcanos–more particulates, temporary cooling
But large scale flood basalt vulcanism–more CO2, longterm warming
http://www.google.com/search?q=deccan+traps+carbon+dioxide
Timothy and Septic,
Volcanic eruptions tend to occur with some mean frequency, and even if we have a fluctuation upward, the influence is still finite in time–on order of a couple of years. CO2 persists for centuries. CO2 wins.
La Nina typically cools temperatures a few degrees for a few months to a year and a half at most. It then goes neutral or to El Nino which warms things. CO2 persists for centuries. CO2 wins.
Grand Solar Minima can cool things for up to a few decades. Insolation then returns to roughly the pre-Minimum means. CO2 persists for centuries. CO2 wins.
Now, the chorus, Everybody!!! CO2 persists for centuries. CO2 wins.
This is a fun development:
Police extremist unit helps climate change e-mail probe
Timothy: “Matthew has a point, Ray. If ten volcanoes the size of Pinatubo started erupting continuously those would be just about sufficient to cancel out a doubling of carbon dioxide.”
But only if they run continuously.
(And nothing makes it more than a doubling. Like, for example, volcanic CO2.)
The problem is that Matt’s point only exists under situations where it exists. I.e. begs the question: do volcanoes never die?
We know they do, but for short periods (even centuries are short), they can last.
But what conditions will pertain to make this happen? A catastrophic epoch of increased vulcanism.
We can’t hope for that, and we can’t engineer it.
So why make the point?
Completely Fed Up wrote in 869:
To let the novices know what sort of context would be required in order to have the problem raised by Matthew make sense, and preferably in order to do so with some humour. As he raised it this might not be obvious to them.
Incidentally, it is possible to write things in a way in which — given their different contexts — you will be saying some to for one audience but something different/more to others. He does it.
People are invoking the possibility of ten Pinatubos continuously going off?
I think over long time scales there can be shifts in the mean level of volcanic activity, but is this level of hypothetical relevant in any way?
I wonder if the odds of a major asteroid or meteor impact are higher. Anybody have a stab at the odds? That would also have a climate impact, but we don’t bother basing our climate policy around it.
In any case I am finding Matthew’s particular thread mind-numbing so I believe I will seek my entertainment elsewhere.
Septic Matthew (843) — On the centennai scale, CO2 is dominant. Plase do read David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”.
OK you guys, time to go home, the riddle has been answered!
Gavin et al, just want to thank-you for your time here, enjoy your lives back in society.
To all the others who post here, “so long, and thanks for all the fish!”
http://translate.google.no/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fnyheter%2Furiks%2Farticle3460872.ece&sl=no&tl=en
:)
I have a question.
What is the net vector of photons released in the upper atmosphere, above the highest volume of greenhouse gases?
I contend that the net flow is outward, since a photon travelling inward is likely to be intercepted by a molecule in the denser atmosphere. Travelling outward, it is less likely to encounter an absorbing molecule. The result is a net outward flow, right?
This relates to heat carried aloft by convection.
Do climate models account for the dynamic (seemingly immeasurable) energy transport process of convection, and if so, how?
David Wright, Of course photons have to escape from the atmosphere–just far fewer of them in the wavelengths absorbed by greenhouse gasses. Also, in the troposphere, far more CO2 molecules relax via collision with other molecules than via radiation.
Heat conduction via convection is not that tough to model.
RE:871
“I think over long time scales there can be shifts in the mean level of volcanic activity, but is this level of hypothetical relevant in any way?:
Of course it depends on how the volcanoes erupt, but if ten Pinatubo or Krakatoa type volcanoes erupted continually for years the ensuing volcanic winter would precipitate a worldwide extinction. Clouds of volcanic ash and sulfate aerosols could absorb and reflect away solar radiation. CO2 warming would be the least of our problems.
But it could be more complex than this. See: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Volcano/
Volcanic activity like the Siberian Traps or the Deccan Traps in India where eruptions lasted for thousands of years yielded flood basalts instead of ash clouds. The release of CO2 aggravated global warming. There is a body of thought that the Deccan Traps eruptions contributed to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction.
The Permian Extinction due to the Siberian Traps was also a global warming event where volcanism released CO2, caused warming which in turn triggered the release of methane from clathrates.
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Essays/wipeout/default.html
Thus volcanism can cause either global warming or cooling depending on the nature of the eruptions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=convection+in+climate+models
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=convection+in+climate+models%3F&btnG=Search&lr=&as_sdt=2001&as_ylo=&as_vis=1
Re:875
see: Figure 1.2
The Energy Budget of the Atmosphere
http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/resources/gcc/1-2-4.html
865, Hank Roberts: Matthew, comparing ’septic’ to ‘tarheel’ is self-glorification.
Do you cast yourself as a barefoot revolutionary fighter warring against oppression?
My understanding was that “tarheels” were run out of South Carolina for suspected near-criminal activity (which was why they were about to be tarred and feathered.) If they were fighting against oppression, that is news to me.
864, Timothy Chase: Matthew has a point, Ray. If ten volcanoes the size of Pinatubo started erupting continuously those would be just about sufficient to cancel out a doubling of carbon dioxide.
Ray Ladbury did not say exactly what was analogous to the ice block. I suggested solar activity decline, and someone else mentioned volcanic activity (which I retained as another possibility.) If it was volcanic activity that blunted the effect of CO2, then I agree that is unlikely to double every time that CO2 doubles. However, if it was the solar activity (which I believe is not reliably known to be quantitatively related to climate except for extreme changes over tens of millenia), then it could happen that the effect of solar decline more than matches CO2 increase.
If, as SecularAnimist maintains, temperatures have continued to increase since 1997 at the same rate as 1977-1997, then there is no reason to wonder whether the CO2 effect was offset by some combination of volcanic activities and ENSO.
Tim: ” if ten Pinatubo or Krakatoa type volcanoes erupted continually for years the ensuing volcanic winter would precipitate a worldwide extinction.”
And if a 10km asteroid hit the earth, the ensuing impact would precipitate the same thing.
So therefore the models are incorrect: they don’t include 10km asteroid strikes!
“Do climate models account for the dynamic (seemingly immeasurable) energy transport process of convection, and if so, how?”
Convection is a physical process.
It depends on buoyancy and where other airmasses are going. And is therefore open to physical modelling.
Septic says, “However, if it was the solar activity (which I believe is not reliably known to be quantitatively related to climate except for extreme changes over tens of millenia), then it could happen that the effect of solar decline more than matches CO2 increase.”
Uh, Dude, you are so missing the point! First, Sol is a pretty typical, middle-aged star. They tend to get brighter on average at this stage. Second, we can look at frigging data on this:
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/7704.pdf
Second, the current rise in temperatures is more than the fall of the last several minima.
Third, the longest Grand solar minima last less than a couple of hundred years. The effects of CO2 last centuries longer.
What’s the chorus? CO2 wins.
Septic, Please, please, please. Look at the Usoskin manuscript. It is quite good.
> Septic Matthew says: 13 January 2010 at 2:02 AM ‘my understanding’ about ‘tarheels’
Try looking it up; at least compare what you think you know to what anyone can find by looking.
Insurance Group Says Stolen E-Mails Show Risk in Accepting Climate Science
Maybe Mr. Detlefsen should have a few words with Munich Re.
Jim Galasyn,
Jesus, these people are idiots. All they want is a security blanket to pull over their heads so they can be alone with their wishful thinking and complacency.
Recently, there’s been a rather surprising flowering of AGW-scepticism on the Institute of Physics Public Policy forum (see here, for example).
A little browsing of the peer-reviewed literature enabled me to convince myself that most of the sceptics’ points of detail were mistaken, and to say so in the forums, but two have proved less tractable.
Firstly, there’s the idea that there exists an ISO standard for estimating confidence intervals (part of ISO 17025, apparently – who knew?), and that the IPCC’s confidence intervals on 20th century trends may not be constructed in compliance with the standard. Any information on whether this idea is true, and if so, whether it’s important, would be welcome.
[Response: Never heard of it. But the idea that there is a standard that would work with all sorts of data and for all purposes is somewhat surprising. If anyone knows any more, they should post a link. – gavin]
Secondly, there’s the suggestion, based on doi:10.1260/095830507780682147 and possibly also doi:10.1007/BF02986939, that pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were much higher than the consensus view suggests. I know there’s a RealClimate critique of the first of these papers under the title “Beck to the future”. Has that critique appeared anywhere peer-reviewed? What about the second paper?
[Response: Can’t find any references to the second doi (did you get it right?), but the first is indeed nonsense. It was specifically rebutted here and has been commented to death in other parts of the blogosphere. – gavin]
Your comments welcome
Thanks
DanH
Jim Galasyn says: 13 January 2010 at 11:30 AM
Now those seem like actionable words. Crackpots sieving dusty emails on self-published blogs are one thing, this is on a different level. Plus it’s coming from a source that presumably has insurance to help pay for defending a lawsuit.
Jim Galasyn says: 13 January 2010 at 11:30 AM
Actually, now that I think of it, where else could “actively colluded to subvert the peer-review process” have come from, other than Steve McIntyre’s bizarre conjectures?
Maybe McIntyre’s not so funny after all. He’s certainly got a patina of respectability, enough to get folks to let down their guard. Maybe nobody’s really noticed what a strange path he’s taken of late.
Apparently the trade group did not a close look at his train of thought before rushing to spread the word about the conspiracy. I don’t frequent McIntyre’s site, so when I happened to collide with his strikingly odd email parsing thread it immediately struck me as amazing that he’s got so much pull. Leaving aside all the emotional and intellectual baggage attached to this topic, I think most reasonable people viewing the email “analysis” on McIntyre’s site would conclude that his elevator does not go all the way to the roof.
Re: 881 Completely Fed Up says:
“Tim: ” if ten Pinatubo or Krakatoa type volcanoes erupted continually for years the ensuing volcanic winter would precipitate a worldwide extinction.”
“And if a 10km asteroid hit the earth, the ensuing impact would precipitate the same thing.
So therefore the models are incorrect: they don’t include 10km asteroid strikes!”
Yeah, and if dogs ate trees and birds drank beer, penguins would take vacations in the tropics.
A 10 KM asteroid strike would NOT do the same thing, Not by any stretch of the imagination. The impact of an object that large would literally fry the planet.
Your logic here leaves a lot to be desired. I wrote nothing implying the models were incorrect!
My thought when I followed with, “CO2 warming would be the least of our problems,” was that 10 simultaneous Pinatubo type eruptions for years at a time are so unlikely that it’s quite improbably that a climate model would need to include such an eventuality. If it did however, I would venture to guess that the ensuing volcanic winter would be so extreme that CO2 warming would be completely overridden by a huge degree of reflection of incoming sunlight.
In the unlikely occurrence of a climate model including the possibility of the 10 Pinatubos I’m sure it would reflect extreme global cooling.
I don’t quite see why you take sentences out of context to create a strawman to win a point. It seems we’re strongly objecting to such tactics when it comes to stolen emails. Are we no better than they are?
“In the unlikely occurrence of a climate model including the possibility of the 10 Pinatubos I’m sure it would reflect extreme global cooling.”
Briefly, then as particulates settle and S02 reacts out the C02 will predominate for vastly longer than either of the former. But this is a pointless argument, isn’t it? We can’t manage asteroids and volcanoes, we can manage ourselves at least a little bit.
884, Hank Roberts: here is something that I looked up instead, another forecast for cooling (till 2030), followed by warming, followed by cooling.
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
[Response: That paper contains no such forecast. As far as I can tell, the only future simulations they discuss use the standard GCMs which were part of the IPCC AR4 ensemble, and they do not show ‘cooling to 2030’! – gavin]
Re: 891
Actually, there’s some thinking about how to manage asteroids out there.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=136
Otherwise I’m simply recognizing natural influences for what they are and sorting out the real warming culprit.
The lynchpin of the AGW deniers point of view is an emphasis on natural variability. Volcanoes have a real influence on climate, to the extent of causing mass extinctions via CO2 warming. Pointing out that such occurrences are not in the cards at this time helps substantiate the fact that these aspects of natural variability haven’t been much of an influence on climate in recent years.
But they could have been in the past. Were cooler temperatures in previous centuries due to volcanic activity?
Are we now warm because cooler back then was due to volcanoes? (I don’t think so, not for more than a short period of time.)
As to extreme cooling, the premiss includes years of volcanic action. No particulate settling for years. No growing plants for years. It wouldn’t take too long for a mass extinction to ensue, less than half a decade. Later warming due to natural increases in CO2 might be irrelevant.
But we don’t have examples of volcanic cooling at this time. We have had a drop in the rate of warming. Why? La Niña. Low ebb in solar cycle. This is the sort of natural variability we have in the context of our times. And these influences are very variable, but to what extent are they a long term forcing?
Nothing special with the sun, nothing special with volcanoes. Nothing special with Milancovitch Cycles. La Niña has turned into El Niño. The only forcings that count long term are the relentless increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gasses.
The argument is with the Farm Bureau. (Etc) We get it. Apparently they don’t. Whether or not we manage anything in a meaningful way gets to the point of counting votes. We need to have a handle on the volcanoes, too.
Re #885 and #886.
it’s coming from a source that presumably has insurance to help pay for defending a lawsuit.
Does that mean that we shall see the insurance industry employing the great email hype before and during these lawsuits in several decades from now? Its bad eneough with the fossil fuel industry and the media.
Anyway can we trust the insurance companies to do their main job properly i.e to intelligently assess risk? Detlefsen’s letter throws even more doubt on this shaky proposition.
The attitude of insurance companies to climate change may be different in the UK but I am not at all sure.
“Septic” Matthew wrote in 880:
No more reason to expect solar activity to match our carbon emissions than the volcanic activity. And betting that it will just so that we can continue to emit carbon dioxide is either dumb or insane. And after my explaining the bit about ten volcanoes with new volcanoes popping up every time our carbon emissions increase I am hopeful that most kindergarteners would see the fallacy in it. And if they can you can and now everybody here knows it.
Matthew, I have argued with Young Earth Creationists who go out of their way to play stupid. They try to get the science types to explain to them in one syllable terms each and every step, each and every detail — and then explain it to them again in two weeks. Its not that they don’t want to learn. Its their way of pulling one over on the science types and thereby proving to themselves how much brighter they are than the science types by getting the science types to believe that the creationists are less bright than they actually are and thereby getting those science types to waste their time explaining the obvious.
You have been doing the same right here. Except earlier on you played it a little to bright — and more recently while trying to f**k with us along these lines you played it a little to obvious with the “Septic.” Basically a “f**k you” while trying your mindf**k.
When I said that your thread is mind-numbing I was refering to your game. And it is mind numbing because it distracts — it gets in the way because it forces people to belabor the obvious rather than move forward and both learn and teach more. It dumbs down the conversation and even thought itself.
This isn’t in our interest — and as a matter of fact it isn’t in your interest. I refuse to play your game — and I strongly recommend that others refuse to as well. In fact they might just want to do an “RE Septic Matthew #880” (or whatever your post number is) then a “Please see ” with a hyperlink to this post number. Although not every time. For the most part they should just ignore you.
Enough wasted time.
892, Gavin, you are right. It (Fig 4c plus text) only shows that the CO2 forcing through 2030 (2C per century) is nearly offset by the natural dynamism. So it’s “reduced warming through 2030)”, followed by “enhanced warming”, followed by “reduced warming.”
Do AGW proponents generally propose that the CO2 effect is roughly linear (2C per century, 0.2C per century) because CO2 increases approximately exponentially unless action is taken? Put differently, is the CO2 effect nearly deterministic with the random variability due to everything else?
CORRECTION to my most recent post. Third paragraph second sentence “to” should have been “too” in two places. I was writing the piece as I heard it in my own mind — in something resembling stream-of-consciousness where I wasn’t being self-conscious regarding my spelling.
My apologies.
> Septic Matthew says: 13 January 2010 at 4:26 PM
> Do AGW proponents generally propose that the CO2 effect is
See 13 January 2010 at 3:45 PM
Timothy Chase says: 13 January 2010 at 3:45 PM
“When I said that your thread is mind-numbing I was refering to your game. And it is mind numbing because it distracts — it gets in the way because it forces people to belabor the obvious rather than move forward and both learn and teach more. It dumbs down the conversation and even thought itself.”
And that’s the whole point: keep the conversation at a stupid level on all metrics.
There’s a lot of that going around.
This site in particular is substantially degraded as an educational facility because the few serious requests for information or elaboration are drowned out in malicious noise and misguided attempts to reason with noisemakers.
Perhaps worse, the patience of regulars and even for that matter maintainers able to do a good job with explanations seems completely exhausted.
A real win for the Dark Ages.
Geoff asks, Anyway can we trust the insurance companies to do their main job properly i.e to intelligently assess risk?
Some seem to be fully cognizant of the risk, e.g., Munich Re: