America's competitive future is dependent, at least in part, in these folks losing.

Not really. We've always had gigantic wage disparity, an educational gap between vast populations, et al. And yet, despite Jim Crow, evolution LONG being against the law to teach and all those things which should have hurt our "competitive future", the fact remains we are too big, too diverse and too wealthy to "lose". We might find a lower rung, but even that's not clear cut as "good" or "bad".

I will add, however, that while economically, we're always going to be OK even while weighed down by superstitious idiots -- existentially, we, along with most other nation-states, are in grave danger because of these people. But that's different than "competitive future".

Those of us in the skeptic community have known about the crossover for some time. It's called "crank magnetism", and it's a fairly serious problem; sometimes when dealing with one type of loon, you might analogize to another subject hoping to draw them out, only for it to backfire when you find they're also cranky about something else.

I'm waiting for the Astrology crowd to demand equal time. If it is good enough for Nancy Reagan, it's good enough for the future cannon fodder of America.

Got an iPhone? Use Skeptical Science's iPhone app to debunk climate science rejectionist talking points!

Find it at Skeptical Science:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

What's interesting is that I live in Kentucky. I saw this article the other day, and that's the first I'd heard about the bill they mentioned in the article. I still haven't seen it in the local media.

Jay B: as recently as the 1980s, a lot of people thought that the USSR was too big and too militarily powerful to "lose", that nothing short of a nuclear war could end their control of a good chunk of the world.

Look just over 4000 years ago before the flood that killed the last dinosaur God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden because he didn't want them to eat from the tree of knowledge. I know nothing because that is the will of God.

Scientific laws should be subject to interpretation by the courts just like other laws. The people should get to vote on the laws we want to allow to govern our universe. This is too important to leave under the control of scientists alone.

There is great irony in the fact that the free-nmarket fundies and the religious fundies are allied...and in some cases inhabit (possess a la "The Exorcist"?) the same person. The latter would ban Darwinism in the classroom (and the lab, I suppose) while the former extol it in the marketplace.

But then, consistency or even coherence has never been of much weight over there.

The tide is turning in Texas. Last week, the defeat of two members of the anti-evolution faction of the State Board of Education swung the majority to those that believe in science and reason. With the decision of purchase of new textbooks on science and history upcoming in the Fall, this is good news.

I'm tired of this nonsense. They can just have some sort of intellectual opt-out. However we should then have some system where you can identify and refuse medical treatment from doctors from OK and KA. The fed gov should then be required to not hire anyone for federal jobs which require some sort of scientific technical background from those states as well. Needless to say I don't have the whole thing figured, but I simply do not want a doctor who rejects evolution treating me for anything.

All anti-science folks need to rethink their beliefs.

Without science..... (heck I don't know where to start!).

How do you explain red-shift of light to idiots who think, no believe, that the Earth is only 6K or so years old?

Umm. Ya see that star, it's 2.5 million light years' away. That means the light you see now was just starting out from the star just when humans started to stand upright. Oops. I forgot...you don't believe the earth is as old as science now postulates.

Crikey.

The anti-science nuts actually diminish the miracle of our existence by denying the age of it all!

Creationism is a hold-over from man's superstitious past.

America must reject fundamentalism in all of it's forms.

Science is our future. It must not be circumvented or derided. It bears scrutiny, but so does everything.

I understand trying to connect evolution and global warming.

However, one is virtually settled science (as much as anything can be) and the other is just very very likely.

I am no expert but the odds of our current view of evolution being correct is something like 99.9999999%. Just a guess so don't kill me.

I doubt the odds of our current view of global warming is correct is above 99%. I think there is a reasonable chance that some factor we are missing could significantly change our view of global warming. Maybe a new kind of plant will grow that will eat all the CO2? I honestly have no idea and don't claim to be an expert. However, I have looked at enough of the models to realize they are absurdly complex and could be missing something.

having said all this, I do find it amazing that a huge portion of the people of this country believe in both evolution and global warming or don't believe in either. Of course, there is a significant correlation between support for the estate tax and belief in global warming too.

Yea Neil there also seems to be a large percentage of people who beleive in gravity that also beleive in the estate tax.

I am certainly sold on evolution, but have a lot of questions about global warming--not that it has not occurred and not that increased atmospheric could explain it, but whether other factors are at work, whether we can do anything about it and whether the absurdly complex models are not missing things along the way. Personally, I would be more interested in the correlation between people who believe in ghosts and those who think we need to balance the budget in the face of a 9.7% unemployment rate

Jay B: as recently as the 1980s, a lot of people thought that the USSR was too big and too militarily powerful to "lose", that nothing short of a nuclear war could end their control of a good chunk of the world.

First, we have a waaaaaay more diversified economy than the Soviet Union ever did.

Second, it's possible to be wrong, but the example of the Soviet Union is a particularly poor one. They went from a command economy to a shock/free market one almost overnight -- even as crony and corrupt our system is, we still have a gigantic middle class, a well-developed global network of goods and services, valued capital and a streamlined, productive workforce, among other things the Soviets never had.

I would think the US would have more in common with the UK/Western Europe if we ever ceased to be the global economic engine. Which makes it kind of fuzzy to think in terms of "good" and "bad".

Please, please, please do not tie the progressive agenda to global warming. Computer models are not science.

As I see this, the anti-reason population in the US simply guarantees that my pro-reason children will grow up and garner the better jobs---while the anti-reason children get to staff the fast food restaurants, the summer flea markets at the drive-in theaters, and the deep-discount retail big boxes....

I doubt the odds of our current view of global warming is correct is above 99%. I think there is a reasonable chance that some factor we are missing could significantly change our view of global warming. Maybe a new kind of plant will grow that will eat all the CO2

Are you going to start crying again if we call you fucking stupid again?

Because we're going to. Better get the waterworks warmed up.

Dateline 2500 AD, Capital Antartic Federation

Today the Federation celebrated the inability of Homo Sapians Sapians to plan for the future future. "Their demise was the start of a new era for the Earth," said the Chairman. "Our ability to eat the lush plants of this once frigid land while the rest of the world boiled in its own steam gave us the kick we needed to evolve into a thinking species. Let us all clap our flippers in celebration."

Can't find the article, but it was recently reported that scientific consensus states a 95% certainty that Global Climate Change is induced by human activity. The article was printed last week...if someone has the link, please post.

We really need to get these guys to admit that gravity doesn't exist either because it's a flawed theory (or because Newton and Einstein were liberals)

When do you think they'll get around to commenting on super string theory;-)

I say fine, Let's teach the controversies. But lets's do it rationally -- not in he said she said terms that assume both sides are equally valid. Let's present the facts that show that global warming deniers are a timy minority among scientists. Let's allow the evolutionists to destroy the anti-evolution arguments in a setting in which the anti-evolutionists can't get away with producing phony evidence and relying on sheer rhetoric.

The wingnuts have become way overconfident. They're so brainwashed they don't realize how their views crumble under close examination.

But most of all, since the wingers want to inject reliigon into the schools under the guise of critical thinking, let's take them up on that offer. Let's have every kid read selections from J.L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell on the lack of evidence and shitty quality of the arguments for the existence of god.

You got a deal wingnuts.

Bill K, is that really true?! How wonderful!! Who were they? McElroy, I hope, was one but knowing my brethren, probably not.

Mr. Fool, there is a reason that none of the laws and regulations about "teaching the strengths and weaknesses" or "teaching critical thinking" ever even suggest that creationism should be held to the same standard. The creationists are not so stupid that they don't realize that their position would never hold up to scrutiny so they do everything they can to avoid having any real debate about the merits of creationism. All they can do is try to find some phony problem with evolution.

In a similar vein all the deniers can do to tear down the whole IPCC report is point out that there is one place where they predict the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035. The vast majority of it is so well documented that they can't allow people to take notice of the rest so they jump up and down about some insignificant trivia.

Steve, where you been? The dichotomy you mention between the creationists and the global warming denialists might have been true 18 months ago, but we are in the Age of the New Irrationalism -- where people swap paranoias the way I used to swap baseball cards. (Keep the originals and trade the duplicates for ones you need to fill out the set.)

Almost the entire Religious Right has gotten behind the GW denialism idea, and as usual with their own unique spin. "Libertarian" GWDs tend to argue simply that it isn't true, that the science is flawed or there are better computer models, or just that 'computer models aren't science.'

But for the RRs, global warming can't be true, because that would imply that God is not in control of the planet he constructed for human existence. Or that the implication that man could -- without God's interaction -- affect something as vital as the climate -- and almost all gods started as weather gods -- exalts man and diminishes God in a way that proves global warming is just another Satanic plot by atheistic scientists to discredit 'God's Word.'

They may have different rationale, but GWdenialism has become, literally, an 'article of faith' for the RR crowd. (See WND, Janet Folger Porter among others.)

Texas Aggie, You will be glad to hear that Don McLeroy lost his primary to Thomas Ratliff. Cynthia Dunbar is not running this year, but there is a good chance that her seat will flip to to a Democrat.

What an inane article and what an embarrasingly high collection of irrational commenters thinking of themselves as elite rationalists who understand science.

Skepticism about AGW is not "anti-science," or comparable to Creationism. In fact AGW has been dealt a death blow by two sources; by the fraudulent methods, hubris and sloppiness of the UN-sponsored climatologists on one hand, and by hundreds of independent and ethical scientists from many disciplines on the other. The fact that billions in subsidies and the slickest PR backed by the UN, governments, media and industry can no longer sustain this fraud is a good sign that reason and a respect for scientific methodology prevail.

The AGW fraud is not science, and in fact its proponents and defenders resemble Creationists and astrology buffs in the emotional and aggressive way they defend it, even as it's crashing around their heads.

Here's a prediction ...no wait, a "projection" ... in the none too distant future AGW will take its place of shame beside other costly pseudoscientific frauds such as Lysenkoism, "scientific" racism and eugenics, and everyone who got suckered by it will claim to have always been a skeptic.

As I see this, the anti-reason population in the US simply guarantees that my pro-reason children will grow up and garner the better jobs---while the anti-reason children get to staff the fast food restaurants, the summer flea markets at the drive-in theaters, and the deep-discount retail big boxes....

. . . the Senate and House seats of southern and midwestern states . . .

The fact that billions in subsidies and the slickest PR backed by the UN, governments, media and industry can no longer sustain this fraud is a good sign that reason and a respect for scientific methodology prevail.

Well, except that the science behind AGW is not a campaign, is validated by many different disciplines reaching the same conclusions independently, and is anything but collapsing as the oceans and atmosphere continue to warm.

Yes, scientific methodology will prevail, despite weak attempts like yours to smear it with claims of "death blows" and a conspiracy of "sponsors."

What a great example of baseless agitprop. In lieu of an actual scientific rebuttal -- be it based on climatology, earth science, or oceanology -- you instead appeal to the "everybody knows" argument with a slapdash of the usual UN-bashing and an angry little raspberry with the eugenics reference.

You must really hate leftists to have felt the need to post something that transparent.

Avi Barzel: "In fact AGW has been dealt a death blow by two sources; by the fraudulent methods, hubris and sloppiness of the UN-sponsored climatologists on one hand, and by hundreds of independent and ethical scientists from many disciplines on the other."

This is incorrect. Some things got corrected, and that is just the process of science. But these things were just a few minor facts among thousands, and they have amounted to nothing of significance yet. The overall findings and concerns of climatology haven't changed at all. AGW is reality, unfortunately.

There is almost a resonance of the Creationist/Global warming denialist mindset on the Left regarding vaccines and GMOs (genetically modified organisms). An overwhelming amount of peer-reviewd, time-tested science ignored or impugned based soley on psuedo-science hackery...

Sounds like we need to join forces with those types of deniers and advocate for dissenting religious views to also be taught in schools.

After all, Christianity may not be God's religion.

Lee Arnold: Thank you for your uncharacteristic (for this forum) civility and your sticking to the point.

Alas, I'm afraid what is factually incorrect is the assumption that only a few minor and insignificant errors have popped up. The UN-IPCC reports relied on the now-infamous East Anglia CRU, which "lost" the raw temperature data, demonstrably fudged and cherry picked worldwide temperature readings, employed secretive and problematic computer modelling algorithms, ignored long-term (in terms of 100s of thousands and millions of years) climate history, tried to hide past warm periods such as the well-documented Roman and Medieval Optimals and literally inverted data sets to be able to come up with such howlers as Mann's "hockey stick" graph. That's just scratching the surface. Such errors, most of them quite significant if not crucial, currently number in the dozens and the review is just beginning...thanks to challenges and legal requirements for the reluctant realease of information. And the peculiar thing about these errors is that they invariably err on the side of the AGW argument.

The idea that there is inter-disciplinary consensus also flew out of the window. The vaunted peer review process was at best dishonest, with threats to journal editors and suppression of critical studies, and if you follow the ongoing saga, you will note that an increasing number of individual researchers and even university departments are becoming more open with their critiques and dissent. Simply put, there is, and clearly never was, a scientific consensus.

All that currently remains of this latest scare (remember Global Cooling of the 70s?), I'm afraid, is a mauled and twisted AGW religion pushed largely by bureacratic momentum and by the parties which sunk billions into it, or which hoped to gain from this painfully obvious scam. That and a pathetic tactic of repeating the same mantra of the "settled science," flavoured by desperate ad hominem attacks wonderfully summarized for us by the trex character, in the post just above yours. This is not the first time scientific communities failed us by serving political, commercial or religious interests and it probably won't be the last. Hopefully, though, next time around we'll be wiser...but hope's cheap and often useless, as we all know.

If you deny the physics that underlies global warming, molecular spectroscopy, then you deny the physics that underlies the laser, for example. Pretty soon you are in a fantasy world.

Bob h,

A familiar fallacy you present: If you deny that witches can and do physically fly (the denial was a punishable offense for several centuries), you deny the peer-reviewed consensus of top theologians from top universities of Western Europe, the election of the Holy Church, the veracity of the Bible, the supremacy of God, and the legitimacy of anointed kings and their worldly governments. Pretty soon you are in a chaotic and demonic world.

Avi Barzel, You appear to believe that the East Anglia CRU has more importance for the "consensus" than it really does, and you don't know that the hockeystick has been arrived at by independent studies. All of this will become more apparent in the months and years ahead.

Meanwhile, here is what happened in the western two-thirds of the United States during the Medieval warming period, from the book, SIX DEGREES by Mark Lynas. His six chapters take it a degree at a time, and all around the world:

From Chapter 1, "One Degree" (i.e., only one degree Celsius hotter than present):

"...between A.D. 1000 and 1300...[when] the old trees in Walker River and Mono Lake were growing. Wildfires had raged in both national parks twice as frequently as before... The area we now call California had in medieval times been hit by a megadrought, lasting at different periods for several decades... ...how geographically widespread was this event? Evidence from another lake, far away on the Great Plains of North Dakota... ...scientists have now reconstructed long-term records...from old lake sediments. ...before A.D. 1200, a series of epic droughts had swept the Great Plains..." (pp. 26-27)

"...the evidence is now overwhelming that what the western United States suffered during this [Medieval] period was not a short-term rainfall deficit but a full-scale mega-drought lasting many decades at least. ...the [Colorado] river lost 15 percent of its water during a major drought during the mid-1100s. For 60 years at a time, the river saw nothing but low flows... ...the remarkable coincidence of dates with evidence from New Mexico suggests that this was the very same drought that finished off the Chaco Canyon Indians." (pp.28-29)

"...an immense system of sand dunes that spread across thousands of miles of the Great Plains, from Texas and Oklahoma in the south, right through Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, to as far north as the Canadian prairie states of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. These sand dune systems are currently "stabilized": by a protective layer of vegtetation, so not even the strongest winds can shift them. But during the Medieval Warm Period...these deserts came alive... People who remember the 1930's Dust Bowl think they have seen the worst drought nature can offer... In a world that is less than a degree warmer overall, the western United States could once again be plagued by perennial droughts... Although heavier irrigation might stave off the worst for a while, many of the largest aquifers of fossil water are already overexploited..." (pp.29-30)

Some of Lynas' references over these 5 pages:

Stine, S. (1994) "Extreme and Persistent Drought in California and Patagonia during Medieval Time," NATURE 369: 546-9.

Swetnam, T. (1993) "Fire History and Climate Change in Giant Sequoia Groves," SCIENCE 262: 885-9.

Laird, K. et.al. (1996) "Greater Drought Frequency and Intensity Before A.D. 1200 in the Northern Great Plains, U.S.A.," NATURE 384: 552-4.

Meko, D. et al. (2007) "Medieval Drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin," GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 34: L10705.

Wolfe, S. et al. (2006) "Holocene Dune Activity and Environmental Change in the Prairie Parkland and Boreal Forest, Central Saskatchewan, Canada," THE HOLOCENE 16.1: 17-29.

Mangan, J. et al. (2004) "Response of Nebraska Sand Hills Natural Vegetation to Drought, Fire, Grazing, and Functional Type Shifts as Simulated by the Century Model," CLIMATIC CHANGE 63: 49-90

In his new book WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE, Stewart Brand writes about SIX DEGREES by Mark Lynas:

"Lynas succeeds where most others fail in making inescapably clear how increasingly inhospitable the world will be with each increase of global temperature from 1 degree to 6 degrees C. The book is a cure for an incrementalist approach to climate change. You don't think "We can handle a 2-degree rise" after you learn what that will mean."

flavoured by desperate ad hominem attacks wonderfully summarized for us by the trex character

It is not ad hominem to note that instead of a scientific rebuttal to AGW you've collected a greatest hits of the smears against it and the tens of thousands of scientists who work in related fields. Nor is it ad hominem to note, as an aside, that you hate leftists. You really do hate leftists.

THIS is ad hominem. Recognize it Peter?

Neither is it our fault that the most prominent young bloods, the bright new stars of liberalism and other varieties of leftist ideologies are turning out to be rabid little hitlerjugend types in cool threads who’ve made their bed with the world’s vilest neo-fascists, like the Ba’athists, the jihadists, the Wah’habis, the “palestinianists” and the Holocaust-deniers. And since you brought up the psychological model of political analysis with the reference to “post-traumatic stress reaction,” I wonder what your take is on the curious phenomenon of mainstream feminist, gay and leftist groups declaring their solidarity with folks who treat their mothers and sisters worse than we treat our stray dogs, who castrate homosexuals and who stone atheists to death.

Mmmm, Hitlerjugend, feel the love. That's your schtick. You hate leftists and you suck at science so you're left creating wordy tirades against global warming based on the crumbs of rhetoric that have fallen from Mark Steyn's table.

Why reinvent the wheel? You can't argue this issue, all you can do is impugn the character of scientists you've never met and create a conspiracy around them. Let's just repost the following thread where people gently tried to take you through the science and be done with it:

http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=99594&bheaders=1

Lee Arnold,

I appreciate your effort in compiling some of Mark Lynas' references, but with apologies for my lack of training and knowledge in this area, I'm not in a position to evaluate their quality, relevance or applicability.

The observation I can make, though, is that Lynas is a historian by training and an environmental activist by conviction; in other words, no more of an expert in physical sciences than you and I. There is nothing wrong in that, but let's aknowledge that what he has done is to redefine history as a function of climate, as opposed to, let's say, a script by God or a class struggle, and to collect material which appears to support his pre-existing axioms that global warming is happening, that it's human-caused and that it will be detrimental to humanity. I would go even further, in saying that Lynas presents us with an elegant, self-referencing model which is far closer to theological scholasticism than hard, materialist science.

The AGW hypothesis is in deep trouble precisely because its underlying socio-economic-political origins lack sufficient empirical support. If you remove politics, economics and emotion from this issue and treat AGW as another hypothesis, you have to prove that 1)global warming is in fact happening; 2)global warming is anthropogenic, 3)global warming is harmful and 4)global warming can be prevented by human action. These are numerous and strong presumptons, all of which are being legitimately questioned, reviewed and challenged by serious researchers, a process that began in earnest and moved to the open public and scientific arenas only a few short months ago.

Is it possible that global warmists are correct? Of course it is, but the fact that the hypothesis emerged and gained momentum and financial fuel before the data -- such as it is -- was in, makes this highly unlikely. In any case, given the infancy of climatology as a disipline, the serious errors and misbehaviours of the key scientists and instituions involved, the emerging dissent by peers and the history of political and financial coersion behind the hypothesis, I would argue that the science is not settled and that the debate is far from over.

If prestigious colleges reject science credits from these districts, forcing parents to pay for private tutoring in order to get their kids into college, the backlash will begin. Follow the money.

Trex,

Cool. Thanks a million for digging up my first wading into the AGW debate...back in 2006! I never thought to look for it, assuming it deleted by HNN. When years from now someone doubts my being always a skeptic on this issue, I can use it as evidence.

As for your impressive research into my epistolary history and "English" name, Peter Kovachev, and my views on leftists, very nice, "trex," but what is your point exactly? That political opinion and lack of training in physical sciences disqualifies one from having a position on AGW? If that's the case, then it would seem that none here can rightfully comment one way or another.

In any case, pointing out the strong political and financial interests behind AGW, the documented corruption and ineptitude of some of the lead players such as Phil Jones, Thomas Mann, IPCC's Pachauri and the currently very quiet "father of the Internet," Al Gore, is not an ad hominem attack. Incompetence, vested interests and corruption are legitimate disqualifiers whenever credibility is at issue. The ad hominem strategy appears to be your sole specialty so far, as you have yet to attempt an on-topic response.

I stand by what I wrote back in 06, and here's an example:

Peter Kovachev on October 16, 2006 at 10:19 PM (to E. Simon on History News Network)

Dont't trouble yourself with giving me links to charts and tables on gases, Mr. Simon. You might as well throw astrological charts at me or your grandmother's recipe for bread pudding; I flunked science in grade nine and never took it again.

That doesn't mean that I'm totally stupid, or that hundreds of scientists who are not falling in line behind what reeks of a politicised hysteria constitute a "few eccentrics outside their field." That seems to be a pretty common refrain among the "anthropogenetic global warmists," it seems. Curious...or not so curious.

If you think of yourself as a scientist, rather than the angry quack you are coming across as, why are you not "demolishing" the skeptics? Have some guts, big boy, take on scientists. Go after Steve Milloy, John McCarthy, Kevin McFarlane, Patrick J. Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, Kenneth Green, and many others.

While you are at it, think about what science actually is. It's not politics stirred-in with alchemy and padded with feel-good gobledeygook. That road leads to "scientists" calculating flight patterns of medieval witches, or measuring craniums with precise calipers to fill up file cabinets full of charts "documenting" Jewish ancestry and "predicting" criminality. Science is a methodology, a way of knowing, arguably the best way of knowing, provided cold, hard facts are examined and radicalized monomaniacs, careerists and brown-nosers get out of the way.

I hope you appreciate my courtesy. I could have said, for example, something like "piss-off, you pompous idiot," but while direct and accurate, such a response would have been against the spirit of civilized scientific discourse. You see, it's not all about graphs and charts and such.

what is your point exactly? That political opinion and lack of training in physical sciences disqualifies one from having a position on AGW?

No, my point is that your visceral hatred of leftists combined with a lack of training in physical sciences not only explains psychologically your acrimony toward science and your unwillingness to accept the conclusions of climate and earth sciences - championed as they are by lefty tree-hugging environmentalists who happens to loves them some Palestinians - it also describes your unique inability to understand it, having flunked basic high school science.

If you understood the science and had something to say about it while being a spittle-flecked right-wing rager, that would be one thing. You don't. So there's no point in arguing with someone who doesn't understand the issues, is historically resistant to entertaining the facts around the issues or trying to understand the mechanisms involved, and who relies instead on ad hominem attacks toward entire disciplines and categories of people.

You're a sad demagogue who uses diction to disguise ignorance and argue issues hot-button on blogs because he doesn't like liberals. By pointing this out up front I'm moving the argument to where it would have inexorably ended and cutting out all the wasted time and bullshit. The end.

Trex,

Since you single-handedly declared victory and removed yourself from the discussion, your "point"...i.e., your emotionally charged collection of fallacies and rabid accusations ...I'll forego a specific response, as your post is still of no value to the discussion, other than providing evidence of the emotional and political components behind some of the pro-AGW activists. Once again, thank you for your digging up of my old posting and now for supplying me with the emotional evidence, and I hope your day will get calmer than it's been so far.

Thanks trex

Avi Barzel, None of what you say will stand up to scrutiny.

You appear to believe that a nearly universal secret decision was made among climatologists to promote the hypothesis of AGW because they could make a ton of money; that facts and data were twisted to support it; and that the really honest scientists were suppressed.

Your apparent evidence is the recent web of misinterpretations about the bunch of hacked emails, including the misinterpretation that these are somehow evidence of corruption; plus the arguments of a small bunch of denialists, more than a few of whom are paid industry hacks and/or demonstrably crazy; plus your assertions (without evidence) that hundreds of other scientists are now lining-up to tell the real truth of the matter.

Now you insist I "acknowledge" that Mark Lynas only collects material which "appears to support his pre-existing axioms;" and that the "AGW hypothesis is in deep trouble" because it lacks "sufficient empirical support." Sorry, no -- you are wrong, in both cases.

I think you are the one practicing theological scholasticism. You don't have a single fact to support your case, certainly no fact that withstands scrutiny.

But that's okay, because you are "not in a position to evaluate their quality, relevance or applicability." How convenient for your argument!

Yet you have been holding forth on AGW for four years now? How did you manage to avoid learning anything during this time?

Do you also believe (wrongly) that climate mitigation will necessarily be economically costly? Because that is another falsehood promulgated by several of the "scientists" you named above.

Lee Arnold,

Your critiques suddenly call for factual details, which neither you or I have engaged in up to this point. Calling me out to supply footnotes on everything, while you just repeat familiar warmist points is not really cricket. All of this is currently debated by scientists, and no small number of "scientists," on both sides as well. I presume you have online access to such. If not, may I recommend two sites, which seem to be the busiest, each promoting one of the each sides: http://wattsupwiththat.com, for the skeptic side; and http://www.realclimate.org, for the warmist. Both list other sites as well and they all make for good reading. How you asses their position will be your business, but at least you will see that issue is ongoing and is very lively for sure.

ClimateGate, as you imply, is not just an insignificant misinterpretation of a few hacked emails. Go through the raw material yourself and read some of the responsible critiques, if you doubt. Neither is it the end of it, as FOI requests are being finally complied with by data sources and agencies (most recently by NASA), while official and discrete investigations are starting up. My reading of the whole affair is that it is worse than it looks so far, and that the AGW scare is essentially over, leaving officialdom at a loss how to power the monster down.

On the topic of conspiracies and funding, if you follow the money, again from open sources, you will note the huge disparity between funding for AGW research and PR (in the billions), funding which specifically requires its acceptance, and a near lack thereof for skeptics or even un-committed researchers. That there are nuts and mercenaries in the skeptic camp is true, but this is the case for the warmists as well, two of whom actually shared the Nobel prize and both of whom stand a good chance of facing racketeering charges.

Still none of this challenges my initial and central arguments I satred with, namely that the skeptic camp is not anti-science, that the majority of warmers are not "more scientific" and that the obvious for all to see political push behind AGW has tainted, if not destroyed climate science as a credible science. I don't think you have realized how few climate scientists there actually are, and how few of the chief proponents at the IPCC are actually scientists. And yes, I not only think that the cleverly concocted attempt to make a buck out of thin air (or CO2, a trace inert gas, to be exact), the so-called "climate mitigation," will cost too much, but that it is unaffordable and would devastate industrial economies of the North, while temporarily enriching Third World dictators. I base the latter on the claims, requests and estimates by the UN-IPCC and various governments. Do the search, see the facts.

Well, I'm glad to go "on the record" again after 4 years, as I'm even more certain that the AGW hypothesis (cleverly re-dubbed "climate change") is and always was a sham and that it is in the process of coming apart at the seams...thanks to open information sharing and rigorous application of scientific methods. I did, with the ClimateGate scandal's erruption, think that it will implode and die overnight, but given its momentum and investments by governments, industries, speculators and institutions, it will be most likely a slow, painful and embarrassing death.

Well boys, we've been bested. Rhetoric will always win over facts. Better tell Al Gore to turn off the secret underground heat rays, the jig is up. Time to slink away until we can come up with another planet-wide crisis to foist upon an unsuspecting public and somehow not profit from it politically or financially.

Meanwhile, January was the warmest on record - in addition to thousands of other indicators. How long before we can put everything back to the way it was?

Avi Barzel: "Your critiques suddenly call for factual details, which neither you or I have engaged in up to this point."

This is incorrect. I quoted at length from a compilation of paleoecological findings about the Medieval warming period, WITH the bibliography from the major science journals.

And indeed now we find out that you wrote in that old HNN thread, "I'd like to hear more about surface temperature measurement issues, long-term climatic studies or the studiously ignored, but intense and dramatic warming cycles of the past, most recently between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries."

But you don't want to hear. You have had a pre-set narrative for years, and scientific research facts are of no interest to you.

Instead, we read your false smear, in this thread:

"...East Anglia CRU, which "lost" the raw temperature data, demonstrably fudged and cherry picked worldwide temperature readings, employed secretive and problematic computer modelling algorithms, ignored long-term (in terms of 100s of thousands and millions of years) climate history, tried to hide past warm periods such as the well-documented Roman and Medieval Optimals and literally inverted data sets to be able to come up with such howlers as Mann's "hockey stick" graph."

A lot of misleading nonsense and outright lies.

But the goofiest thing is that you preface that quote with the following: "Alas, I'm afraid what is factually incorrect is the assumption that only a few minor and insignificant errors have popped up."

If so, you might at least show where, how and why any one of these supposed "errors" has made a significant difference in the AGW consensus. Yet we hear nothing at all. There is nothing of significance. From you, wattsup, or anybody else. Is there any time in the future when we may expect you to defend your opinions?

I would like to see something more about this. You captured my attention and hope I will see more from you here.

- Roselyn AMMONS

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