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The instrument record of the last 150 years most definitely does not back CAGW driven heat waves. Hansen is (as usual) full of it. Check out the below graph of record US temperatures by decade:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01761679905d970c-pi
intersting how the 1930's dominates temperature records, and yet on average is a bit cooler than today.

But they do have the advantage of having a good excuse to explain away a positive doping test.

Working link. It's worth reading the rendered opinion of the court here. AT&T was providing these arbitration rules:

In the event the parties proceed to arbitration, the agreement specifies that AT&T must pay all costs for nonfrivolous claims; that arbitration must take place in the county in which the customer is billed; that, for claims of $10,000 or less, the customer may choose whether the arbitration proceeds in person, by telephone, or based only on submissions; that either party may bring a claim in small claims court in lieu of arbitration; and that the arbitrator may award any form of individual relief, including injunctions and presumably punitive damages. The agreement, more over, denies AT&T any ability to seek reimbursement of its attorney’s fees, and, in the event that a customer receives an arbitration award greater than AT&T’s last written settlement offer, requires AT&T to pay a $7,500 minimum recovery and twice the amount of the claimant’s attorney’s fees.

To anyone who thinks there exists a class action lawsuit that is going to provide more compelling terms for AT&T to fix a customer issue than this, I'd say nonsense. I have a small pile of "won" class action suits, where I got $20 to $50 for abusive behavior that cost me far more than that, years after it was irrelevant. In each and every case, I would have preferred swift abritration over the option to sue if the option were available. That's the point the SCOTUS was trying to make here--that had a class action suit proceeded, people would have been far less likely to get satisfaction.

The idea of a class-action lawsuit is ridiculous, unsatisfying nonsense perpetuated by the lawyers who profit from them. If companies want to push for abritration instead, the right response isn't to say "no, we want the right to be screwed over by our lawyers". What saavy people should be thinking about is doing the same thing--punishing companies on a large scale for their mistakes--via large-scale, coordinated abitration. I'm far more confident that crowdsourcing abitration will provide a useful benefit to consumers than any of the broken legal processes for suing companies we have now.

It's too bad the supreme court overruled your state.

Ur fucked...

An anonymous coward provided this link further upthread:

My first impression when I read the subject line was, "Wow, what an odd couple selection." Who would have thunked that in the aftermath, my childhood hero (Shatner) would have such a devistating fall from grace; while, at the same time, as an adult...my contempt for the young brat (Wheaton) would turn into admiration (if not respect). What they have done with their fame/notoriety... what they model in real life, as role constructs for the impressionable, could not be more diametrically opposed.

Wheaton... models, Be honest. Be kind. Be honorable. Work hard..."

While Shatner, well... I don't have much to say that stays within the framework of, "Be kind."

If you watch the second video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_94cGye1E ) at 4x or higher speed it does resemble a snail moving about and eating stuff.

See also:
http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/06/life-and-art-sand-and-glass-the-wonders-of-difflugia.html

When it grows to a certain size, the cell then reproduces by dividing its body equally into two. One of these inherits the ancestral home; the other is left the bundle of building material. These stones, we know not how, are then moved to the body surface and arranged to create the distinctive architecture of this species. Just enough particles of the right sizes, big and small, have been picked up to accomplish this.

(I understand the above to mean that the amoeba collects enough suitable particles to make a new second home before splitting - in my opinion this requires a fair bit of intelligence).

And: http://www.brianjford.com/a-ISR_Ford.pdf

Just because you can't make a normal gun in no way means that I can't.

I bring the Maadi Griffin to your attention. http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/airborne_combat_engineer/2005/01/the_maadi_griff.html

start walking around outside with a bag over their head to avoid security cameras capturing images of them. Yet 'face recognition allows for covert, remote and mass capture and identification of images — and the photos that may

You mean like the Muzzies do

No! Auto accidents are ALL Ted Kennedy's fault!

http://tommcmahon.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834515db069e20115714e8332970b-800wi

> I am paying for the product I have asked you to build.

Wouldn't you rather want to see what you are going to get and change it, before you get what you didn't want?

http://johngushue.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451f25369e20120a513810c970b-pi

wouldn't all matter collapse into a common gravitational center?

Yes, assuming it's not ripped apart by the expansion of space and assuming there is enough mass in the cloud for gravity to eventually dominate the other forces. Note that some of these filiments are long enough that the two ends are not gavitationally bound (due to the exansion of space).

As I understand it the reason that DM comes in filaments between galaxies rather than seperate blobs has something to do with quantum fluctuations when our observable universe was compresed into a point particle, it also appears that the bulk of the normal matter (galaxy clusters) occurs where these filaments meet (although I don't know of a explaination as to why), the rest of the normal matter (lone galaxies and primordial gas) coincides with the dark matter filaments. In simplistic terms the matter in the universe is arranged like swiss cheese but the space containing the cheese is expanding to rapidly for the cheese to sucumb to gravity and lump together at a central point. Supercomputer models of the 14Gyr evolution of the universe that include dark matter are consistent with observations, models that only use normal matter are not as skillfull in reproducing ALL the observations.

And for all the metaphysics types out there it's been pointed out a map of the universe at the largest scale looks remarkably like the nuron network in a brain

Ponca City, Oklahoma

Back in the 1950s, we used "coolers" - huge metal boxes that cooled by evaporative cooling. The walls of the cooler were filled with porous wood shavings and a pump circulated water that dripped through the shavings while a 10 horsepower motor sucked air through the shavings and into the house. My bed was right in front of the blast of air from the cooler and I remember that it seemed to cool quite well - probably lowering the inside temperature 5 to 10 degrees and making it quite comfortable during the night. I found out years later that what we called "coolers" were called "swamp coolers" in other parts of the country and in my travels I saw swamp coolers still in use in desert climates in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

One reason that coolers worked so well back then was that during the drought, the humidity in Ponca City was about zero so water evaporated readily. It seems to me that up until about 1976, when Kaw Dam was built east of town, the humidity was a lot lower in Ponca City. My mother says that having Kaw Lake so close changed the weather patterns around Ponca City and that the humidity rose a lot since its construction. If someone tried to use a swamp cooler today, I doubt if it would work at all.

Every summer I would spend a month with my grandparents in Boswell, Oklahoma. Nobody thought anything about the heat - it was just how life was. But everybody looked forward to the cool of the evening, just when the sun got low in the sky and the shadows would lengthen and the fireflies would come out. The whole family would go out on the big front porch, sit in the swing, drink ice cold ice tea, and wait for our neighbors to come around and sit down with us to talk about the events of the day. Simpler days and better perhaps - at least in memory.

Yeah, see my reply to sibling post.

My reading of irs.gov is that if you pay off your primary residence (or have a mortgage less than $1m), you can buy a "second home," say a condo in Hawaii for example, and stay there 1 month a year. Then you can rent it out the rest of the year, but still claim the interest deduction on that mortgage, up to a total mortgage value of $1m across both homes.

My memory of various tax jurisdictions may be off, but in general it doesn't really matter whether you take the deduction against rental income as part of the business expense or as a "homeowner", since they both end up as a deduction from your total income. The business expense can be used in more situations since you can use it even if you chose to use the "standard deduction" rather than itemize via Schedule A.

If you are not reporting your rental income on your second home, then of course you won't be declaring any rental business income so the business expense of the mortgage could not be used, and it would be "better" to declare it on Schedule A. But discussing the best way to break the tax laws and unethically, immorally, and illegally avoid taxes seems a bit slimy to talk about. And maybe a bit foolish in a not-completely anonymous forum, particularly in a country that gives financial rewards to people who turn in tax cheaters via Form 3949-A.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903352704576540840395329676.html
http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/dont_mess_with_taxes/2007/01/ratting_out_tax.html

Agree. The people on the doomer trip see a bottleneck event coming. I like George Mobus: http://questioneverything.typepad.com/

A more recent casualty of the same phenomenon is David Graeber, who wrote a mostly impressive anthropological study, but which included this howler, which he defended to the bitter end:

Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages...

As your post points out, it's obvious that "the Cloud" is a valuable skill. That term means many things, but although I've been hearing the same things for the last 5 years I've only had the chance to mess with running virtual machines on the public cloud for the past couple months. Why? Time didn't permit me the luxury of exploring it myself, and only recently has my employer decided to it's a priority and paid me to work on it. My bet is that a lot of technology professionals feel that way. I know this sounds cliché, but getting laid off may be the best thing that ever happened for your career. Take the skills you know and add on some pretty deep exploration of cloud technologies. Up to you, but since you mentioned Java you might start with Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk (deploy .war files on Tomcat running in the cloud), which has a 1-year free tier: http://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/#pricing

If you want to be really hip, we've used JRuby to deploy Rails applications to beanstalk, there's a "Hello World" tutorial from Amazon here: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/rack-and-the-beanstalk.html

I'm sure there are other free or low cost options out there as well. Even unemployed, your time is very valuable so use it to your advantage.

They're doing exactly what they've been told to do by the system that politics has created. To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.

Yeah, that's worked very well here in Texas, where the extremely political state board of education mandated the teaching all manner of bullshit to our children. I hear what you are saying, but "leave it to the states" is, demonstrably, not a guaranteed fix.

Yet, Texas schools still do an above average job, once you quit ignoring the elephant in the room.

Leaving it local, the outcome is "some kids may learn all manner of bullshit," compared to leaving it at the federal level where the outcome is "all kids will be educated badly, and there's nothing you can do to fix it."

Union membership correlates with better test results. Correlation does not mean causation, but still.

but exactly

"Video games give you a feeling of reward without hard work." Is this really the case, or is it the opposite? Two quotes: "We're witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments." Edward Castronova "Here's the big idea. For active online gamers real life is broken. It doesn't make any sense. Effort isn't connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there's a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure. So, why play it?" http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/03/online-games-superempowerment-and-reality.html IMHO _VERY_ interesting insights. The blog (not mine btw), is outstanding.

As far as I can tell, empirically this doesn't really happen: when FAA taxes were suspended for a bit recently, due to a Congressional screw-up when it came to reauthorizing the agency to collect the fees, airlines didn't lower their fares, they just pocketed the savings as higher profit margins.

Read about how prices go up and go down and you will find this is common. An incident will cause a price spike in oil that is soon reflected at the pump, but the prices will always "float down" and almost never spike up. The reverse can happen and prices certainly "float up" too. However, it is the nature of the beast.

In order for to have "a point", the screw-up would have to be longer term and also not a "screw-up". Since there is little way to tell how the issue will be resolved, holding the money makes sense. Also, you are incorrect or lying when you say "airlines didn't lower". Some did, some did not:

Now that the tax has been suspended, some airlines -- including Virgin America, Alaska Airlines and Frontier Airlines, according to the Associated Press -- have elected to keep their base fares the same, meaning the customer can save a bit of money. But a number of other companies -- among them Delta, JetBlue, United, Continental and US Airways -- raised their base fares instead, meaning the customer saves nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/30/faa-shutdown_n_912820.html

But I guess it is OK for you to besmirch a system you don't understand, huh?

More evidence you are full of shit:
http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/dont_mess_with_taxes/2011/08/airline-taxes-reinstated-killing-potential-passenger-tax-refunds.html

Here is the SUMMARY:
Airlines - that may have tried to keep the money - did not as the tax became retroactive. Some passengers avoid the tax and Uncle Sam decided it was not worth pursing them. What was the right course of action: collect or not collect? "not collect" worked out well for the passengers but it could have easily been a tax nightmare (e.g., if you paid less file Form XYZ or go to Federal PMITA prison).

SPLC is a hate group. And yet they don't list themselves as one, I wonder why.

http://www.cis.org/node/54
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02/local/me-cap2
http://webworks.typepad.com/lakecountyfiscalrangers/2010/06/cost-of-illegal-immigrants-from-a-california-teacher-working-in-a-title-1-school.html
http://sosguy.net/articles/264
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/investigations/122630554.html
http://capoliticalnews.com/2012/03/06/antonovich-la-county-cost-for-illegal-aliens-is-1-6-billion-per-year/

The problem with people like you, is that the moment people cite any facts that impact immigration negatively, they are labeled "hate" by the SLPC. From the SPLC own website ...

Other hate groups on the list target gays or immigrants

I bet you don't even see the problem with that. You're a "hate group" if you mention facts about illegal immigration problems. Self fulfilling much?

...thourougly debunked talking points

Dubunked? Talking points - as if that somehow means something? Do tell. What thouroughly debunked "talking points"? The scientific method? The fact that the UN is on their 5th model? The fact that CO2 is clearly behind the heat curve?
Ok, Scientific method - Go ahead and try to debunk that one.

UN's 5th model - yup, it is. More depending on how you count. How can you debunk fact? Each time it was revised down. Here's a rundown from the first one - http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/the-ipcc-1990-far-predictions-were-wrong/ .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274.html?&grcc=99999&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion . How the crazy MMGW crowd has been wrong time and time again - http://www.c3headlines.com/bad-predictions-failed.html (not for faint of heart. If you want the truth, it's there.)

CO2 is clearly behind the curve? Just look at the graph. How can you debunk what you can see with the naked eye? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg . That's the plot they don't like to show you. Ok, say you don't understand that, it's related. Then look at this real life plot with temperatures and CO2 - http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0168e65ad371970c-pi . Tough to be a true believer in mmgw if you know the facts.

Lastly, I have yet to read or hear anyone that was able to explain how from 1992 to 1993 Global warming went from something that is happening to Man is doing it? No scientific note, not even a foot note. It was just inserted in by Mr. Strong. If you want to even pretend that you have a point, explain how we get a conclusion like that without any scientific fact? Try as you might, you won't find why in that report.

Clearly not what I expected as a response from you. As I said and still say - if I'm wrong explain why. You don't have to do it directly. Just show me where they show that CO2 actually "traps" as they call it - Heat. Keep in mind "It's obvious" isn't scientific. Neither is anecdotal evidence. Science demands reproduceable, definitive results from an experiment. All doubt would go away at that point. Good luck with that, you'll need it.

From TFA:

“The sample sizes for these tests are generally somewhat small to make any real sense out of them,” county Superintendent William Habermehl said. “Also, most of these students tested in California come from large urban districts, so it’s not always an accurate representation.”

If you want to see something that is a fairer guide to academic achievement, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is a much better guide. Iowahawk used it to take down a weak argument about ACT/SAT scores during the public kerfluffle about the efficacy of union vs. non-union teachers.

With 14k California tested there is not a by any means a sampling size problem.

From TFA:

“The sample sizes for these tests are generally somewhat small to make any real sense out of them,” county Superintendent William Habermehl said. “Also, most of these students tested in California come from large urban districts, so it’s not always an accurate representation.”

If you want to see something that is a fairer guide to academic achievement, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is a much better guide. Iowahawk used it to take down a weak argument about ACT/SAT scores during the public kerfluffle about the efficacy of union vs. non-union teachers.

Apple reports a worldwide effective tax rate of 24.2 percent. A lower effective tax rate increases a company’s reported book profits. Apple would have a lower reported effective tax rate and higher profits if it recorded its tax expense the way most other companies do. Under generally accepted accounting principles, U.S. companies do not have to book tax expense on foreign profits if the company deems them to be permanently invested overseas. To lower their reported effective tax rates and boost their reported after-tax profits, most companies assume all of their unrepatriated foreign profits are permanently reinvested offshore. If Apple asserted that all of its foreign earnings were permanently invested outside the United States, it would have booked an estimated $3.6 billion less in tax expense, and its effective tax rate would be 12.8 percent. (See the table.) When assessing Apple’s tax situation relative to that of most other companies, this adjusted rate is probably more relevant than the reported 24.2 percent rate.

Why doesn’t Apple maximize reported profit like most other companies? We can only speculate. Perhaps because it is breaking all records for profitability now, it is saving some profits for less fortunate times in the future. As the Joint Committee on Taxation recently wrote: ‘‘If the company accrues the tax expense in the year the profits are earned, it may later decide that those funds will not be repatriated after all. At that later time it may then reverse the tax expense and shift financial statement income from the prior period into the current period.’’ (See ‘‘Present Law and Background Relating to the Interaction of Federal Income Tax Rules and Financial Accounting Rules,’’ JCX-13-12, Feb. 7, 2012, Doc 2012-2443 or 2012 TNT 26-15.)

An alternative explanation is that perhaps Apple — with its young, socioeconomically elite customer base — does not want the negative publicity that a low effective tax rate could generate with groups like Citizens for Tax Justice and US Uncut.

As far as we know, modern inkjet prints can be extremely long-lasting, based on accelerated testing. If you pop for a high-end printer, e.g. Epson 3880, you can make really good prints that will (probably) last decades. High-dollar printers, in my experience, don't have the problems that cheap inkjets do. They're much more durable even if you don't use them that often, but you probably should use them regularly.

But then you're off in the rabbit hole of display/printer calibration (non-trivial), ICC profiles, $500 to refill the inks, etc. Each print will probably cost several dollars. It's probably not worth it for most people. But if you're going to buy your own, save yourself a lot of frustration and get a really good printer (and IPS monitor).

I've had good luck with MPix for making high quality prints. Others are probably good also.

I have no idea how long photo books last, but there are a lot of them out there. I've had good luck with MyPublisher and Blurb for prints that look like what I sent them.

So, aside from keeping multiple digital backups, verifying them regularly, off-site storage of backups, and updating formats over years, which presumably you would do anyway, do this:

Print the photos you like best on archival inkjet paper and put them into an archival box. Take notes of who, what, where, when. Reference the original digital file. That has as good a chance as anything of lasting a few decades.

A good discussion is here at TOP, and read the comments too.

I have a G+ account whether I want it or not, I never signed up for it, I only have a gmail account. If I delete the account, my relationship with other services are hampered. I would say there is some manipulation with me to keep the account. Also don't take my account, read this little story by Wil Weaton: http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2012/05/google-is-making-a-huge-and-annoying-mistake.html

The two-party system has the entire country locked into the Prisoner's Dilemma. We don't vote for the candidate we want, we vote for the opposite of the candidate we don't want, just as those two prisoners will fuck each other even though cooperation would result in freedom for them both.

For the record, some don't even believe Bush won the election in 2000 at all. Regardless of what you believe there, I'm betting most people in this country would agree we need some serious election reform in this country (and especially campaign finance reform) but that's just not going to happen as long as the people that make the laws benefit from the way the laws are currently set up. We'd probably be better off if we selected our representatives at random via lottery, but that's obviously never going to happen.

For comparison here's the statue of liberty and here's a campground in South Dakota.

The parks service could turn the badlands into a parking lot and far fewer people would be upset about that than if they sold the statue of liberty for scrap metal, but there are other people, myself included, who are far more impressed with natural beauty than a statue. Better to save both than to cut one for something as stupid as "Congress wants to cut the budget and the parks service's lobbyists were the least effective."

Turning back to the situation at UF, sure they could have taken the cuts and eliminated the theater department and scaled back some construction of new labs or dorms, and maybe fewer people would have objected. Then Rick Scott could get back to cutting taxes in peace and easily get re-elected. It might be that lowered corporate taxes ($458 million from the budget last year) will do more good than the theater department would have, but as a crazy liberal, I'd rather take a chance on students.

1) How accurate can we judge the entire planet's average temperature in the year 1800? The graph shows swings from year to year in the 0.2 C range. Can we really judge the average surface temperature of the planet with 0.2 degrees Celsius?

Take a look at the grey band - it's more obvious in the second graph, the 10 year moving average. The grey band is the 95% uncertainty interval for Berkeley's calculation of the average temperature - statistically on each data point there is a 5% chance that the real average temperature lies outside the grey band. You will see that in the year 1800, the grey band is massive: +/- 0.5 degrees. But over time, as there are more measurements around the world, and those measurements have less randomness in them (i.e. get more accurate), the uncertainty shrinks pretty slowly.

2) Also, the chart shows 200 years. This is a blip on the scale of climate science. If you look at the climate history on a much, much larger scale, you'll find that 200 years means nothing. For example, the chart on this page shows that we are much cooler than the average. An sharp increase in average temps would help put us "right".

This is true - no matter how much we heat up the earth, life will survive. But if the climate changes too much from our current conditions, then there will be massive changes. Lots of creatures will become extinct (eventually new ones will evolve, taking advantage of the abundance of food/lack of predators but that happens very slowly) and we will probably have to totally rethink our farming practices. We should move our cities too given that many would no longer be well-situated, but what would probably happen is that we turn up our air-conditioners and burn even more coal. I concede that the effects of climate change are less well understood (at least by me!) than that it is happening.

Or this chart which goes back 4500 years, shows that we just came out of an ice age, so a temperature increase would be expected, and also negates your Berkely graph.

Seriously? I give you the Berkeley graphs, which appear to have used a pretty rigourous method, where you can download their temperature data and source code, and is being peer-reviewed, and you rebut this with a graph that does not have a labelled y-axis and appears to have been drawn with a bezier tool? If you want to convince me that there is no scientific consensus, i.e. that researchers who know what they're doing and are doing it properly, disagree that global warming is happening/is a problem, then please stop using graphs like that. Especially when they disagree with the graph I provided, which gives its sources (IIRC, every temperature measurement they could get their hands on), and includes three other groups' sets of numbers on the same axes - none of which agree with the graph you provided.

Or, finally, this page which shows a whole slew of charts, most of which show that we are in a cold period of climate history, and an increase in average temperature would get the earth back to the "normal" range.

Again, the really-long-range graphs don't have much to do with the current debate, because I'd like life to survive in its current form as much as possible. When large-scale, seemingly-irreversible (on the scale of centuries) changes are made to the only planet we live on, I get nervous about the potential for things to go wrong.

There are too many graphs on that page to go through them individually, but it doesn't give that site any credibility to include graphs like this one, which show very suspicious behaviour - local temperature swings around wildly and then the music st

Almost nobody copies patents. It's a common misconception, and is usually not even alleged in patent cases.

http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2009/02/copying-in-patent-law.html

"But Americans tend to believe that patent lawsuits are about copying—and they believe there's a whole lot of copying going on. These beliefs persist, even though most defendants aren't copying—and aren't even accused of copying—and often have never heard of the patent-holder or his alleged inventions."

Lots of people believe they are trolls.The appellation is generally applied to non-practicing holders who sue infringers, especially if they try to get a permanent injunction to cease practicing the invention, or if the patent covers an implementation standard.

In this case CSIRO is suing people who implement IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g and go after permanent injunctions. This is poor behavior.

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-amp-wireless/58796/court-puts-csiro-wi-fi-injunction-hold

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/australian-government-patent-troll-collects-from-wi-fi-vendors/2187

http://apcmag.com/wi-fi-patent-has-turned-csiro-money-mad.htm

http://legalpad.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/patent-troll-throws-party-to-celebrate-its-huge-pots-of-money.html

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=900005557448&slreturn=1

http://www.ipfrontline.com/depts/article.aspx?id=15866&deptid=7

Of course Climate change is a fact, and that humans are the primary instigators is also a fact.

Well, you're half right :)

Natural climate change is a fact. Given that climate has always changed, long before significant human CO2 emissions (or even significant humans existed), we can all stipulate to that.

Now, taking the bold step of asserting that humans are the primary driver of global average temperature (much less that an increase in global average temperature is bad), is a much larger speculation. But, if we're going to speculate, let's ask the question - what observations would convince you that your central conceit (humans are the primary instigators of climate change since say, 1950, whereas before climate change was natural) was wrong?

Here are two 50 year periods of the climate record. One comes from a time of low CO2 emissions. The other comes from a time with high CO2 emissions. Can you discern which one is which?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

Of course Climate change is a fact, and that humans are the primary instigators is also a fact.

Well, you're half right :)

Natural climate change is a fact. Given that climate has always changed, long before significant human CO2 emissions (or even significant humans existed), we can all stipulate to that.

Now, taking the bold step of asserting that humans are the primary driver of global average temperature (much less that an increase in global average temperature is bad), is a much larger speculation. But, if we're going to speculate, let's ask the question - what observations would convince you that your central conceit (humans are the primary instigators of climate change since say, 1950, whereas before climate change was natural) was wrong?

Here are two 50 year periods of the climate record. One comes from a time of low CO2 emissions. The other comes from a time with high CO2 emissions. Can you discern which one is which?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

Bingo.

The Self-Refuting Expert Witness The Orlando Sentinel Is Touting

You don't have this one right.

The Self-Refuting Expert Witness The Orlando Sentinel Is Touting

Mann and Hansen have endured FAR more scrutiny and critique

Endured? Mann's work was thoroughly refuted, and Hansen's either has error bars so big you can predict *anything*, or has also been refuted :)

Didn't Mann produce an updated reconstruction that was essentially still the same even after the McIntyre / Mckitrick criticism?

http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/13/ar5-and-mikes-pnas-trick/

"Thousands of blog readers are aware that the “similar findingswithout tree-ring data” were obtained only by including upside-down contaminated data. It’s disquieting that IPCC coauthors are unaware of this. The failure of Mann and his coauthors to retract or correct the PNAS 2008 article lingers on."

While the events in the ice cores indicate there's still much to be learned that doesn't mean that we are somehow not at all responsible for the last century.

Here are two 50 year periods of the climate record. One comes from a time of low CO2 emissions. The other comes from a time with high CO2 emissions. Can you discern which one is which?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

Mann and Hansen have endured FAR more scrutiny and critique

Endured? Mann's work was thoroughly refuted, and Hansen's either has error bars so big you can predict *anything*, or has also been refuted :)

Didn't Mann produce an updated reconstruction that was essentially still the same even after the McIntyre / Mckitrick criticism?

http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/13/ar5-and-mikes-pnas-trick/

"Thousands of blog readers are aware that the “similar findingswithout tree-ring data” were obtained only by including upside-down contaminated data. It’s disquieting that IPCC coauthors are unaware of this. The failure of Mann and his coauthors to retract or correct the PNAS 2008 article lingers on."

While the events in the ice cores indicate there's still much to be learned that doesn't mean that we are somehow not at all responsible for the last century.

Here are two 50 year periods of the climate record. One comes from a time of low CO2 emissions. The other comes from a time with high CO2 emissions. Can you discern which one is which?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

You think?

http://futurelawyer.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345170df69e20120a5cbcb64970c-popup

Apple's Immoral Support Network

The first step in establishing whether there is a causal connection between two variables is excluding the null hypothesis of no correlation.

Okay, say for a moment we stipulate to that, and agree that there is a correlation between CO2 and global average temperature. Doesn't causality require that CO2 change first *then* temperature? Doesn't the ice core record show the opposite...doesn't it *always* show the opposite over any significant timescale?

Actually, real climate scientists have tested models with different cloud feedbacks

And they're not even sure of the *sign* of this feedback, much less the magnitude. That's a hole you can drive 100 years of warming right through.

But think about this: clearly, global climate has been warming. So if this is due to some "natural" mechanism involving cloud feedbacks, that implies that cloud feedbacks have been changing.

No, it doesn't at all. The problem with the modeled cloud feedbacks (where they don't even know what *direction* it goes in), is that it essentially leads to error bars an order of magnitude larger than the effect we're trying to observe.

Clearly, global climate has been warming. Clearly, global climate has warmed in the past. We assume that in the past, before CO2 emissions by humanity increased dramatically, this was due to natural causes. Can you tell from these two graphs, which one is the "natural" warming and which one is the anthropogenic CO2 warming?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

So according to you, if the interaction between temperature and atmospheric CO2 displays the well understood dynamics of a positive feedback (i.e. if you increase one, the other will follow, and you can get it to go either way depending upon where you start), that means that it explains everything?

Listen to yourself carefully here - you're asserting that the dynamics of CO2 both lead and lag temperature changes. The ice core record shows that it lags, and has consistently lagged for hundreds of thousands of years.

Now, what you're asserting now is that historical, present, and future observations of either a lag, or a lead, supports your hypothesis. So, no matter what we observe, you're asserting you're correct. The entire universe of observations is consistent with your hypothesis.

We call this astrology :)

The first step in establishing whether there is a causal connection between two variables is excluding the null hypothesis of no correlation.

Okay, say for a moment we stipulate to that, and agree that there is a correlation between CO2 and global average temperature. Doesn't causality require that CO2 change first *then* temperature? Doesn't the ice core record show the opposite...doesn't it *always* show the opposite over any significant timescale?

Actually, real climate scientists have tested models with different cloud feedbacks

And they're not even sure of the *sign* of this feedback, much less the magnitude. That's a hole you can drive 100 years of warming right through.

But think about this: clearly, global climate has been warming. So if this is due to some "natural" mechanism involving cloud feedbacks, that implies that cloud feedbacks have been changing.

No, it doesn't at all. The problem with the modeled cloud feedbacks (where they don't even know what *direction* it goes in), is that it essentially leads to error bars an order of magnitude larger than the effect we're trying to observe.

Clearly, global climate has been warming. Clearly, global climate has warmed in the past. We assume that in the past, before CO2 emissions by humanity increased dramatically, this was due to natural causes. Can you tell from these two graphs, which one is the "natural" warming and which one is the anthropogenic CO2 warming?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

So according to you, if the interaction between temperature and atmospheric CO2 displays the well understood dynamics of a positive feedback (i.e. if you increase one, the other will follow, and you can get it to go either way depending upon where you start), that means that it explains everything?

Listen to yourself carefully here - you're asserting that the dynamics of CO2 both lead and lag temperature changes. The ice core record shows that it lags, and has consistently lagged for hundreds of thousands of years.

Now, what you're asserting now is that historical, present, and future observations of either a lag, or a lead, supports your hypothesis. So, no matter what we observe, you're asserting you're correct. The entire universe of observations is consistent with your hypothesis.

We call this astrology :)

Church of Global Warming mods are apparently on the loose - simply question how one would exclude natural climate change as the reason for our modern observations, and it's a troll? Really?

Imagine, for a moment, that all observed climate change is simply natural variability. We'll call this the null hypothesis. Now how would you exclude our observations from natural variability?

Here's a quick quiz:

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

Which 50 year period is "natural" (since humans weren't pumping out vast amounts of CO2 then), and which 50 year period is "unnatural"?

Church of Global Warming mods are apparently on the loose - simply question how one would exclude natural climate change as the reason for our modern observations, and it's a troll? Really?

Imagine, for a moment, that all observed climate change is simply natural variability. We'll call this the null hypothesis. Now how would you exclude our observations from natural variability?

Here's a quick quiz:

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

Which 50 year period is "natural" (since humans weren't pumping out vast amounts of CO2 then), and which 50 year period is "unnatural"?

All models are wrong. The question is whether it is wrong in a way that matters.

Well, cite any GCM that can properly model clouds, hind cast PDO/ENSO, or establish any regional predictions of any accuracy. Surely clouds and ocean oscillations matter in significant ways, right?

Global average temperature affects nobody. Regional weather does.

which is, of course, why every major elite scientific society in the world, and something like 97% of scientists with any kind of published track record in a relevant field, accept climate theory and its predictions regarding CO2 and climate change.

They said that about geocentrism, alchemy, creationism, and even the flat earth. Argument from unnamed authorities is a big red flag - show me your falsifiable hypothesis statement (or set of falsifiable hypothesis statements), or you're simply pushing astrology.

Zero correlation means that on average, when one variable changes, the other does not. Neither of your series shows statistically significant correlation

Neither of my series shows statistically significant correlation, yet *both* of them change. So the null hypothesis of natural climate change is clearly still the null hypothesis (we know climate naturally *changes*, and doesn't have to remain static compared to CO2 levels). In fact, the observed historical record shows a time lagged correlation, with CO2 *following* temperature. If we were going to propose a causality based on the majority of the data, it would go *from* temperature *to* CO2.

So how are you now going to exclude our modern industrial age observations from natural climate change?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

One is 1957-present. The other is 1895-1946. One of them is clearly "natural" (since our CO2 emissions were minimal during the 1895-1946 period), and the other is proposed to be "anthropogenic" (since our CO2 emissions were incredibly huge from 1957 to present).

Can you pick the "natural" one?

All models are wrong. The question is whether it is wrong in a way that matters.

Well, cite any GCM that can properly model clouds, hind cast PDO/ENSO, or establish any regional predictions of any accuracy. Surely clouds and ocean oscillations matter in significant ways, right?

Global average temperature affects nobody. Regional weather does.

which is, of course, why every major elite scientific society in the world, and something like 97% of scientists with any kind of published track record in a relevant field, accept climate theory and its predictions regarding CO2 and climate change.

They said that about geocentrism, alchemy, creationism, and even the flat earth. Argument from unnamed authorities is a big red flag - show me your falsifiable hypothesis statement (or set of falsifiable hypothesis statements), or you're simply pushing astrology.

Zero correlation means that on average, when one variable changes, the other does not. Neither of your series shows statistically significant correlation

Neither of my series shows statistically significant correlation, yet *both* of them change. So the null hypothesis of natural climate change is clearly still the null hypothesis (we know climate naturally *changes*, and doesn't have to remain static compared to CO2 levels). In fact, the observed historical record shows a time lagged correlation, with CO2 *following* temperature. If we were going to propose a causality based on the majority of the data, it would go *from* temperature *to* CO2.

So how are you now going to exclude our modern industrial age observations from natural climate change?

http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/periodb.gif
http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/26/perioda_3.gif

One is 1957-present. The other is 1895-1946. One of them is clearly "natural" (since our CO2 emissions were minimal during the 1895-1946 period), and the other is proposed to be "anthropogenic" (since our CO2 emissions were incredibly huge from 1957 to present).

Can you pick the "natural" one?

This blog discusses the case and its ramifications briefly

Significance: Under this Supreme Court ruling, consumer contracts that require binding arbitration and prohibit participation in classwide arbitration are allowable.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/banking/2011/05/us-supreme-court-okays-binding-arbitration-clauses-prohibiting-consumers-from-joining-class-actions.html

Even though my family owned a full set of Encyclopedia Brittanica and Comptons, I don't feel too bad for them. EB later turned out to be a Patent Troll. I used to work for one of the Defendants in their bizzare lawsuits on GPS manufacturers. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/11/encyclopaedia-britannica-patent-lawsuit.html Apparently, if you search a CD you are stealing their IP or something.

Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'

http://johngushue.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/angela_merkel.jpg