Genetic Rescue Efforts Could Help Coral Shrug Off Warmer Oceans

The Washington Post reports that research published last week in the journal Science indicates that coral reefs may be less vulnerable to ocean temperature changes than has been widely believed, especially given human intervention. A slice: Some corals already have the genes needed to adapt to higher ocean temperatures, and researchers expect those genes will naturally migrate and mix with corals under stress over time ... And that process could potentially be sped up artificially. ... Giving coral evolution a boost isn't an entirely new concept. Some scientists have already suggested genetically modifying corals through artificial breeding, or doing the same for the tiny microbes that live inside corals and are essential to reef growth.

Comments

Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

You know those islands made out dead coral? Yeah... how did those get there? The thing is that coral is really really sensitive and dies really really easily. But its a species with a survival strategy more like bacteria then barn owls.

Yes, they die... they die easily and they die in huge numbers. But there are huge numbers of them to die. And while some die, some also survive. And this means that coral actually evolves very quickly. Any adaptation tends to not make it less death prone but the new strain of coral is happy in the new ocean conditions.

Change the temperate of the water? Coral dies.
Touch the coral? The coral dies.
Change the ocean chemistry in anyway? The coral dies.

Its super sensitive. But that's okay. Because while some coral dies some lives. And the coral that survives won't die to whatever killed their sires.

This is Tuesday for coral. Nothing new.

Does that mean we should f' up the coral and not care about damage we do the environment? Of course not... that's f'ing stupid. However, we also need to be less ignorant in the way we respond to issues.

I'm seeing people freak out about tress being cut down to make paper for example and the morons complaining about this tend to not realize that the trees being cut down were literally planted like we plant corn to produce paper/lumber trees.

Paper is as renewable a resource as cucumbers. We're not running out of either.

And the coral situation is analogous in that people are not grasping that the resiliency of coral is not in that it doesn't die but that it dies and adapts.

We have this big wide open beautiful world and it is full of many diverse species that all have different survival strategies. The strategies of ground squirrels are not going to be the same as the strategies of honey bees or the strategies of pine trees or the strategies of coral.

Its the 21st century, chaps. Stop freaking out like a bunch of fucking peasants.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

The jury is more out on those matters than the progressive activists would like to have people believe.

The 98 percent consensus for example arrived at that number by collecting a big sample of published papers and citing any paper that referenced climate change as the author supporting the most extreme predictions of climate change.

This included papers that argued against climate change.

The issue with climate change is that its too political to be scientific at this point. People aren't being rational on the issue. People get angry and get invested in their tribal entanglements. And because of that they can't with integrity claim to be forming opinions based on science... especially when a great many of the supporters have made zero effort to actually research the issue. Most of them didn't get past those little cartoons with the squiggly sun rays. And then they enter discussions can claim "science"... because of the squiggly sun ray cartoon they saw.

It goes back to something Richard Feynman said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So much of it is cargo cult science. Remember that polar bear article we saw about how they are eating dolphins now... evidence? One researcher saw one dolphin getting eaten by a polar bear... the dophin in question appears to have just died and then been scavanged by the polar bear. Which is something polar bears have been eating since always. If a dead human washed up on the ice the polar bears would eat that too. Its free calories.

But these things are in the news without irony all the time. And because of that the reports have to be read with great skepticism because there is clearly a political agenda on the issue.

My opinions on climate change? I don't know. I know only that the people telling me to trust them have a track record of being wrong and don't seem to have the requisite scientific humility and integrity to be able to self correct their own errors. And for me at least, that would suggest that they're not very good scientists in the first place regardless of the issue.

I'd really prefer if a different crop of people were working on this... not people that ascribed whatever my ideology happens to be but rather people that examined the issue indifferent to the political advantage of any of the factions.

Until that happens, any report on this subject has to be taken with a grain of salt. Price of making Al Gore and Bill Nye the spokespeople of the thing.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[Iamthecheese]

You're right! Some coral will survive, and its progeny will be able to better survive.

But I don't care about that, because that's going to take thousands of years. What I'm worried about NOW is whether the ecosystem in 20 years will be able to support another 500 million people. You didn't address that at all. And stop thinking your opinions make you better than others. It's arrogant and creates ignorance.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

No, it doesn't take thousands of years. As I said, they have a survival strategy more akin to bacteria or algae. They die easily but they adapt very quickly.

You've seen the bacteria become resistant to anti bionics. it is a similar situation.

You kill 98 percent of the bacteria... and what remains is resistant. Eventually if you keep dosing the same bacteria with the same anti biotics... it will become immune.

Which doesn't mean you can't kill 98 percent of it again with something else. And of course, if you stop hitting it with those anti biotics, it will actually lose the resistance.

  Point being... it dies easily and adapts quickly.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be curious to know how well they deal with pH changes. We already know, from observing coral bleaching during short term warm periods, that they are touchy and somewhat feeble; but the survivors are capable of recolonizing, or building atop depending on the details, the skeletons of their fallen.

If those structures come under attack, or if wringing calcium ions out of the water becomes more difficult and energy intensive, they may have larger problems. As might, unfortunately, a surprisingly large number of other ecologically important aquatic organisms. That could really be a downer.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Saving the corals might actually be the easy part: It wouldn't be a fun job, unless you are a real saltwater aquarium masochist; but taking 'cuttings' and propagating them in captivity is reasonably well understood, at least for the ones that have historically merited the attention. Even if you can't modify them to make them more durable, there is lots of ocean currently too cold for a given coral ecosystem that, if warmed, will become a viable location for transplants from the areas that are becoming too warm(the current cold-water reefs, which do exist; but don't get the attention of the tropical ones, may be pretty screwed, Rost reef, in the frigid waters off Norway, will be pining for the fjords).

However, much of the charm of coral reefs is the amount of ecosystem that they support. All sorts of weird stuff, the stuff that eats it, and so on to the top of the food chain. Transporting that, or convincing it to swim in the right direction, will be a much greater challenge. Plus, unlike the fecund swarms of tiny organisms, where 'genetic diversity' fits in a medium fish tank, and could probably re-mutate from a monoclonal strain in a matter of decades; larger organisms lose genetic diversity much more easily as individuals die, and don't recover nearly as easily. Some of the larger fish, say, will be will be a pretty inbred and sorry lot(exquisitely vulnerable to disease, as monocultures always are), if most of them die and a new population is seeded from a few transplants.

If there were some sort of payoff in it, we could probably have 'coral farms' up and running in short order; but they'd have roughly the same resemblance to natural reefs that tree farms producing papermill feedstock do to mature forests, or alfalfa fields do to prairies.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Attila Dimedici]

You really need to learn a bit more about how the real world works, because greenhouses do not use CO2 to capture heat. They use CO2 to stimulate plant growth. A greenhouse works because the translucent walls (whether glass, plastic, or some other material) allows light to pass through. When that light strikes an opaque surface some of it becomes heat. The walls do not readily allow that heat to escape.

As a matter of fact, CO2 does not work to capture heat in a greenhouse, there is just not enough room for CO2 to pay a significant role in capturing heat on the scale to which a greenhouse is built.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

If I were some paid shill, wouldn't I be posting as an AC like you? After all, your account type is perfect for sock puppeting and trolling.

Where as I actually logged in.

AC's have no grounds to criticize the posting history or conduct of people that ACTUALLY log in.

If you have something to say about the issue. Fine. But you don't get to talk about me or anyone else that logs in. For all anyone knows you're advocating pedophilia in other threads. No one would know because you're too chicken shit scared to post under even a fake name. And with this you still presume to judge me?

Fuck off, shit stain.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

Oh this should be good... *gets more popcorn and lube*

No, coral has adapted to extreme changes in the past. Coral is killed very easily by almost any tiny change. A small change in temperature kills coral. Introducing almost any chemical that it isn't familiar with will kill it. Any kind of abrasion by anything but water will often kill it.... Really it just goes on and on.

And yet it is one of the most ancient species on this planet. Why don't you actually think about that for a change? How has such an ancient species survived so long despite being killed by nearly anything?

Because dying like that is part of its survival strategy. It isn't a barn owl or a ferret or a dolphin. Its survival strategies are very very different. The islands of the Caribbean are BUILT out of dead coral. A fair amount of the sand is pulverized coral.

The oceans are fucking teeming with the leavings of dead coral. And we're talking about dead coral from way back when. This isn't new.

As to paper mill trees taking up space that used to host a native forest... you could say the same thing about the field we planted wheat in or the field we planted soy beans in or the place we put your house on.

Yet I don't see you morons saying we shouldn't eat food because all the farm land should be returned to prairie land. Why is that? Why are you bitching about the tree farms which are relatively more in harmony with nature but you don't complain about wheat fields?

There is a tendency amongst people like you to respond with childish feelings rather than cold rationality. And it doesn't serve you well when it comes to discussions about ecology.

Nature doesn't give a flying fuck what you feel about anything. Mother nature is a cold blooded cunt. Yeah, I used the C word. She's utterly heartless. She deals in survival. You either adapt or you die. And she sheds not a fucking tear for anything that doesn't make the cut. What you're cute and cuddlingly and make cute cooing noises when your belly is rubbed? Her only question is "did you survive?" No? Then enjoy oblivion.

If you have a rational ecological point, I'd love to hear it.

But note this, the trees we harvest are not immortal in the first case. You do know trees die right? They're not highlander trees. And on top of that, if you just let them all fall on top of each other in the forest... in most cases that means the forest is going to burn.

Which is further funny because people like you don't like forests to burn. Never mind that the native americans burned the forests and the fields all the time. It was something they actively did to control their environment. Whenever the undergrowth started to get thick, the native americans burned it.

And I cite them not because I think they're better ecologists than us, but because people like you tend to think of them as pure unreprochable guardians of the earth. So perhaps pointing out they intentionally burned the forests with some regularity might cause you to pull your head out of your ass for a moment.

As to what I'm able to look beyond... your perceptions are so limited and scripted that you can't even be credited with having real opinions. Everything you believe is what someone else told you to believe. You're more a puppet than a man. And you presume to judge me?

Prove to me you're not just a robot. Break with the script for a moment. Show me that you're able to have an original thought. Something YOU came up with on your own.

You might not like what I have to say... but at least what I say came out of my own mind which is more than you can claim.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[fyngyrz]

"Adds heat" is a woefully inadequate simplification of whether or not it's an issue to be concerned with. When temperature goes up, other things change as a result of the relevant phsyics. For instance, the evap/precip cycle accelerates, carrying more warm air and moisture up, and more cool air and moisture down. CO2 in the upper atmosphere reduces radiation by a factor, but more heat up there, more often, increases radiation. More CO2 almost universally implies conditions better for plants. More and healthier plants means more of all sorts of things and less of others.

Dire predictions: Warming moves the zone(s) within which plants and animals flourish north. There's plenty of room to go, a great deal of northern area is frozen wasteland at this point. More CO2 is good for plants. People might have to move. They do that all the tiime. Coastlines may change and infrastructure may need to maintained, adapted, moved or replaced. That happens all the time. Currently estimated timescale for sea level changes: inches per year. Totally yawn-worthy.

In short, the issue is complex beyond any possible "on noes, warming" assessment -- hysteria is entirely uncalled for.

Science is a method. When facing something new, it involves formulating a hypothesis, testing that to validate or disprove it, and then drawing conclusions. We have not seen and do not know what happens when CO2 increases by large amounts due to our production of it. In the historical record, CO2 increases trail warming, not lead it -- which is another way of saying that historically speaking, CO2 increases herald cooling, so that is not any kind of adequate confirmation of the idea that human-caused CO2 increases will lead to significant climactic warming. Doesn't mean it won't -- it just means that this is a new thing and that drawing conclusions either requires flawless modeling that takes everything significant to the process into account (which we don't have... not only in re natural processes, but in re unanticipated technology), or actually seeing what happens. Without one of those - which again, we don't have -- it's not settled science. It is unvalidated hypothesis.

o Yes, we should be trying to figure this out.
o No, we have not figured it out.

When will we know when we have figured this out? When we have a model that accurately predicts climate change as known to have occurred in the historical record.

PS: coral does not "die when you touch it." I have multiple coral reef tanks. I touch my corals (hard ones and soft ones) all the time to move them around, frag (subdivide and transplant) them, brush them when I'm reaching for something else. I cut colonies of soft corals with a razor in order to divide them into more than one instance and place them in multiple places and/or share them with other coral reef owners. Certainly doesn't kill them (doesn't even seem to hurt them.) For hard corals, you break them into separate instances (frag them) with tools that are basically smallish hammers and chisels. You even do this out of the water. Again, doesn't kill them. They don't die because they were bothered or touched. I've never, ever seen that happen. Some of them don't react at all or very much, but the most I've ever seen them do is pull away or retract, dependably to return to their original extension and condition within minutes of the disturbance that caused it ending. Fish touch them all the time as well. Doesn't hurt a thing.

The things that I have seen be directly and immediately detrimental to corals are Ph changes, temperature changes, salinity changes, very large and sudden changes in lighting, and the actions they engage WRT each other (chemical warfare among corals has to be seen to be believed. They are nasty to each other at times.)

Climate change panic bores me. Climate change dismissal bores me. But, like a lot of other induced hysteria, it's a major component of pop culture and the media's slavish devotion to fanning same, so I have to actually work to avoid both. :)

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

The atmospheric studies used to make this argument are based on the planet Venus where CO2 is not a trace gas but is actually one of the dominant gases in the Venusian atmosphere. On earth, CO2 is a trace gas.

Its impact on climate heat trapping is unlikely to be relevant beyond its relative atmospheric concentrations which are tiny.

As to CO2 being a green house gas... Every gas is a green house gas in that every gas absorbs certain spectrums of light.

CO2's distinct absorption specturm is also very small. Nearly all of the spectrum that CO2 absorbs is already absorbed by water vapor and there is far more water vapor in the air than there is CO2.

Thus you're talking about a trace gas with a sliver of the EM spectrum.

The argument that a relatively small change in the percentage of the atmosphere that is made up of CO2 will lead to run away global warming is asinine.

And to further back up my position, the climate models that keep being heralded as proving the theory keep failing to predict anything accurately requiring them to be retroactively altered and past mistakes white washed.

Listening to the climate change lobby reminds me of listening to the old Soviet Politburo in that "the future is always the same... it is the past that keeps changing". That is a bit of dark humor from the Cold War. That is, the future prediction always remains the same... but you have to keep changing what you said in the past and white washing out of the bogus predictions.

Behold the bright communist future... never mind that we said we'd already be living in paradise by now 30 years ago. Keep working comrades for the brave new world.

And your point is "beware climate change, the world is going to go through these changes... never mind that we said New York City would already be under water by 2015."

This whole AGW argument has been going on long enough that your far out predictions are catching up with present time. And without exception they're all wrong.

I mean... you've been wrong about EVERYTHING. And yet you presume to claim you can predict a future you've thus far utterly failed to predict with any accuracy... even in gross terms. I'm not asking you to predict what temperature it will be on any given day. But you can't even get your graphs straight.

A little humility would go a long way from you people. You don't have the track record to justify this arrogance.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

And yet it happened:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Also this notion that peer review catches all frauds is laughable:
http://www.nature.com/news/pub...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://articles.mercola.com/si...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://www.the-scientist.com/?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04...

As to your point about reading the abstracts. That's not enough. You need to actually have the study itself vetted. And peer review does not do that.

These studies are getting busted all the time for making things up or using really sloppy methodology that could be "interpreted" to mean anything... often transparently the author had a conclusion they wanted before even starting the study.

That isn't real science. That's what creationists do. You have to do your study with an open mind and accept whatever the study might say. No forming your theory before the data comes in and no shaping the data to fit your theory. It is FINE to have a hypothesis before you start the study. But it can't go beyond that until you've actually got the data in... and then you base the theory on the data... you do not shape the data to equal your hypothesis.

And that is frequently what is going on.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

Coral is one of the oldest life forms in the world. It has seen worse than a minor temperature change.

The reefs survived the ice ages.

The coral is is only fragile in the sense that one of your skin cells is fragile while you as a larger organism are not as fragile. The coral can survive having large amounts of it killed by environmental changes... and that sort of thing is part of its normal life cycle. Coral goes through this all the time.

Your notion that all the coral will die or too much of it will die is not supported by any sound understanding of what is going on. The speed with which the coral dies and recolonizes means that it does adapt very quickly to changes. Part of this adaptation is dying. But it adapts in the process.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

http://link.springer.com/artic...

And your phase 2 point only got to that number by citing any credence to the notion of AGW even marginally as being evidence of 100 percent approval of the IPCC position.

Never mind that only about .3 percent actually held that actual view.

All the other positions were more nuanced. And by that definition most 'deniers' are supporters of your position because most "deniers"... a sad attempt to equate people that question your premise with holocaust deniers... but the thing is that most of the "deniers" believe in some amount of AGW... they just don't think it is as big a deal. But using Cook's methodology, they'd all be AGW supporters.

Your paper is bullshit.

And not only was it bullshit but Cook TRIED to publish another paper after this one to correct mistakes in the first one... and because people were actually paying attention... his paper didn't even pass peer review. That's how full of shit it was.

So no. Try harder. You don't impress me.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[RockDoctor]

Using the wrong word for the wrong concept is a tactic that Humpty Dumpty discussed in 1870-odd. It's reputation hasn't improved.

... that's more than a little pedantic.

If you want a scientific discussion, then get used to pedantry, and saying precisely what you mean using precisely the technical terminology of the field, unless you want people to think that you mean what you say, instead of what you mean.

For example, you say Change the temperate of the water? Coral dies. / Touch the coral? The coral dies. / Change the ocean chemistry in anyway? The coral dies. I suspect that you mean "Change the temperature of the water too much and too fast and the coral dies" (and appropriate other changes). Because if that isn't what you meant, then you are implying that every single day then every coral on the planet dies as the thermonuclear radiation of the rising Sun sears the water. (The deep water corals would die on a less predictable time scale. I see about 0.16 centigrade variation on the well I'm just writing reports on, though that's isolated from the global deep water circulation. But that's an easily measurable change, which you imply is fatal. If only the seabed wasn't lethal, so that there could be corals to die.)

You seem to be thinking that all species of corals are interchangeable. Which I find incredible, having to spend some parts of my working life writing reports on corals at the bottom of the North Atlantic (well, 2km below surface ; below the photic zone by over a km, and in water temperatures of 1-2 centigrade) and other parts of my life monitoring for contamination of coral reefs in the intertidal zone and 25-30 centigrade water. Somehow, I don't think that one of those species is going to be able to colonise an empty niche left by the other.

Rate of change is very important. The global temperature rise in the Lower Cretaceous didn't lead to a significant extinction event. That temperature change took place over several millions of years. A similar magnitude of temperature change in the Late Eocene (the PETM "blast in the past" as we call it at work, using it as a geosteering datum) took place over about 6000 years and led to one of the largest mass extinctions outside the "big five".

The effect of humans on the seas is significant, important, and growing. But personally, I'm slightly more concerned about the pH changes than the temperature changes. Not because I think corals are robust to temperature changes, but because the symbiont algae are probably more amenable to rapid evolution (human directed, if necessary) and experimental recharge of the corals. Which is work-in-progress. But that won't be by the sort of mechanisms that you seem to think will happen.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[RockDoctor]

. the first point being that this is an internet chat forum and a certain amount of latitude is expected in this context

Wrong.

read what the site's sub-title is : News for Nerds.

I don't see any reason to lower the expectations I've placed on other users for the last 17 or so years (I've forgotten when I signed up. I know I was still on dial-up ; Slashdot was one of the things that persuaded me to get an automatic dial up account instead of manually dialling up). If you're a nerd (which you self-identify as, because you're here) then you should be able to handle a level of technical discussion far higher than the jock in the stadium.

Nonetheless you do seem to have some severely distant-from-reality ideas about the biology of corals. That's a general point. Perhaps you'd like to explain how long it takes a coral to die due to increasing water temperatures, and then reflect on what windows that leaves for remedial work? In general of course. The impression you give (obtained by, uh, reading your words ; I may be under the misapprehension that you chose your words with more consideration than a "normal" person. Because you're, like, generally here, man.) is that you think that it is an instantaneous reaction, for all corals in an area in a very short period of time?

In general, how long do you think it would take a new coral growth to spread from a thermally resistant survivor to at least partly replace the corals lost in a bleaching event? It's quite an important question because, in general, it affects things like shore line stability for considerable areas, and so affects how much expenditure will be needed for protecting harbours, approach channels etc for shipping?

Just to put things into context - the last time that the planet had this level of ocean acidification and greenhouse gas dumping, it was done over a period of about (+/- 50%) 6 thousand years (compared to the couple of hundred years that we've done it), and it took about 120 thousand years (compared to the 10 thousand years we've had agriculture) for the effects to be absorbed back to something approaching normality. That's one of the reasons that it's geological marks are a useful signpost. The question is less one of whether or not corals will survive, but more of whether human civilisation will survive to ask the question of the corals.

Re:Coral dies all the time

[RockDoctor]

First, eat every last dick. All of them.

Projecting your daydreams, eh? Whatever - that's your your hearts desire.

I went over and talked to the reef aquarium people and I asked them how fast coral grew in their tanks.

You need to go and get some experience in dealing with the complexities and variabilities of the natural world, not the sterile and extraordinarily delicate artificial systems that live in human-friendly environments.

Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

http://www.populartechnology.n...

You're linking to a site that doesn't list the names of it's publisher, editors, writers, or contributors. The listed editor of the site, one "Andrew K" is a "Computer Analyst" sporting a Gmail address - and he appears to have written ALL of the content on the site. I could not find one single article written by anyone other than "Andrew" on populartechnology.com. But I suppose these things don't represent red flags for you.

Many of the scientists cited as being in support of AGW by such papers have openly objected.

The objections range from saying they are opposed to it, to saying their support is over stated because they think there needs to be additional qualifications, to saying that their paper actually made no relevant reference to AGW and they don't understand how the paper was used to arrive at that conclusion.

Popular Technology lists seven scientists who have objected to the classification of their papers. Seven authors, seven papers. Out of almost 12,000 papers and hundreds of authors in the scope of the study. "Andrew" claims to have "emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper." "Andrew" gives no indication of how many researchers he contacted, or of the nature of their responses. "Andrew" provides no methodology or supporting data of his supposed survey. "Andrew" simply lists SEVEN of the scientists, and surprise, ALL of them objected. Surprise 2 electric boogaloo: ALL of the scientists mentioned in "Andrew's" analysis are climate skeptics, one of whom is a crackpot who claims to have paranormal abilities and can find water by dowsing.

But, apparently, you see nothing problematic here either.

Further analysis of the methodology of the statistical studies show that they had a graduate student review roughly 800 papers a day.

LOL, did you just pull that out of thin air? Making things up and stating them as fact doesn't help your credibility.

So many of your "sources" are easily debunked when subjected to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Maybe you should challenge yourself and your sources just a tiny little bit harder before offer up these supposed "sources" in support of your claims.

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

You keep attacking the source as if there was only one source that verified the problem.

If there was another source challenging the validity of the Cook et al paper, you didn't provide one. If you did provide one, I would've taken a hard look at the source and made a judgement as to it's trustworthiness. But since the only source you provided was populartechnology.com, I took a hard look at the quality of the information there and found it lacking.

BTW, I've made no claims about the validity of the Cook et al paper. To be honest, I've always been highly skeptical that there could be anything close to a 100% consensus on the subject. Be that as it may, the only thing I'm attacking here is your contention that citing a sketchy site like populartechnology.com provides authoritative support for ANY argument.

Since you're addicted to ad hominem...

Popular Technology puts itself up as a publication with editors and writers. Pointing out that there is but a single author for all their articles, pointing out the complete lack of methodology/data regarding "Andrew's" survey (which on the face of it is blatant cherry-picking) certainly speaks to their credibility or lack thereof. Sorry, providing facts about Popular Technology in order to support my contention that the site isn't trustworthy doesn't qualify as an ad hominem attack.

I'll shift sources and we'll see if you're able to form a coherent thought without resorting to fallacious logic again: http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

That cites a peer reviewed audit of the study that showed Cook's methodology and conclusions to be in error.

Other than your little "fallacious logic" falsehood, you may actually have something here. It would've been a helluva lot better for you to cite the paper directly, instead of wrapping it in the rampant hyperbole of wattsupwiththat.com. Do you have a link to the full papery?

*gets out lube*

Bend over. I'm jamming your pretensions right back up the slimy hole they came out of... :-)

You're not helping yourself. Juvenile comments like that don't speak very well about your level of maturity.

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9

There you go, peer reviewed paper refuting cook's paper.

Yeah, I was able to find the abstract on my own. What I asked you for was a link to the full paper.

What you didn't understand because you were so biased against the source was that there was actually a valid argument being made.

Hardly. Like I said, my problem is with you citing opinion pieces in financial magazines as having some kind of scientific authority.

The argument has been made by multiple sources in and out of academia.

...yet it's taken you so very very long to find ONE legitimate rebuttal of the Cook paper. Christ, the thing was published in 2013. Yet you, a self-proclaimed authority on the subject, only became aware of the rebuttal within the last few hours.

You cannot simply dismiss all criticism this way.

I don't dismiss all criticism. I do however dismiss poorly supported claims by cranks with obvious agendas. Critical thinking demands being skeptical of "sources" in popular media, and when your source is an opinion piece penned by a non scientist citing dubious websites, well... you're just not doing a convincing job of supporting your arguments.

It is a prerequisite that you have to have some intellectual curiosity and integrity in matters such as these. Simply being mulish and tribalistically political is not acceptable.

WOW! Your complete lack of self awareness is truly impressive.

If you want to be scientific then you need to put all that baggage down for a moment and just address the issue tabula rasa.

The only baggage I'm carrying is a requirement for critical thinking when it comes to accepting claims - especially ones that aren't supported by legitimate scientific authority. The little turd of a Forbes article you cited doesn't even come close to be convincing anyone with a critical mind. The fact that you kept trying to feed that turd to people in this discussion isn't a sign of strong critical thinking skills.

Be that as it may, you did (finally) manage to provide a cite with some legitimacy, so congratulations - perhaps you are beginning to be competent enough to have a discussion of this nature.

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

I didn't just cite one source, half wit.

I cited a lot of things. And mostly recently I cited a peer reviewed paper.

Choke on it.

Did you say check on it? OK! Here's a complete list (as of this writing) of your citations in this thread in chronological order:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvfAtIJbatg (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.populartechnology.n... (Site is a one man operation that doesn't identify the operator or his alleged "staff". Attempts to debunk Cook paper by cherry-picking results from a nebulous survey.)
http://www.nature.com/news/pub... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://articles.mercola.com/si... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://arstechnica.com/science... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.the-scientist.com/?... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... (opinion piece written by a lawyer (who doesn't appear to have ever practiced law) who claims to be a "trained scientist". The article relies exclusively on research done by unnamed "investigative journalists" at populartechnology.com - a blog that by all appearances is operated by a single unidentified individual.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... (first mention of a legitimate source rebutting the Cook paper)
http://link.springer.com/artic... (legitimate source debunking Cook)

So what have we got here...looks like a bunch of citations that have nothing to do with the Cook paper, one citation from a clearly bogus website, One citation written by a hack lawyer relying exclusively on the aforementioned bogus website, one citation from a pop-sci website alluding to an authoritative source, and (finally) a citation pointing to a legitimate source. And guess what? I've recognized your final source's potential legitimacy multiple times. You should probably take that as a win and call it a day.

In any event, don't you think you could've saved yourself a lot of time, effort, aggravation and ridicule if you'd have just kept your mouth shut until you actually come across a legitimate source? Instead, your process (if you can call it that) of supporting your arguments is to link to sources that you haven't subjected to any scrutiny whatsoever. It's a textbook example of a lack of critical thinking skills.

As to your claim that there is only one peer reviewed paper refuting your peer reviewed paper...

You're making things up again. I made no such claim. And for the last time, Cook's paper isn't MY paper. The only time I addressed it's validity I expressed skepticism of it's conclusions. Since you're having trouble remembering, here, let me help you:

"To be honest, I

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

So... more ad hominem?

Ugh. I'm not in an argument with "Andrew" of Popular Technology. I'm in an argument with YOU, and I'm claiming that your citation of such an untrustworthy source demonstrates a lack of critical thinking on your part. I've bolstered my contention that Popular Technology is untrustworthy by stating FACTS about the nature of the site, and FACTS about the weaknesses of "Andrew's" supposed debunking of the Cook et al paper. You are deluding yourself if you think I've made any ad hominem attacks in this discussion.

Anyone who spends ten minutes looking at populartechnology.com with any degree of skepticism will see what it is - a crank site run by ONE guy who won't identify himself. Anyone who cites populartechnology.com in support of their positions needs to take a hard look at the quality of their critical thinking skills.

Respond to the peer reviewed paper...

I have responded to the peer reviewed paper:

"Other than your little "fallacious logic" falsehood, you may actually have something here."
"Be that as it may, you did (finally) manage to provide a cite with some legitimacy"
"I've recognized your final source's potential legitimacy multiple times."

How many more responses do you need?

I have no patience or respect for this notion that a valid point can be dismissed on the grounds that you don't respect the person making it. It is a textbook logical fallacy.

You're still stuck with the notion that I'm making an argument I'm not. The only thing I'm arguing is that your citation of populartechnology.com represents a lack of critical thinking on your part. Christ, I even put my position in the title of my post. Apparently you didn't notice that.

If you can't... then you have nothing constructive to offer this discussion and I'll kindly ask you to stop wasting my time.

LOL, since I'm not forcing you to respond to my posts, no one's wasting your time but you. Given the number of your responses to ACs, I can only surmise that you *enjoy* wasting time.

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

quote where I said I was trying to win over AC trolls?

Doesn't matter whether you said it or not. The amount of time and effort you've spent on ACs in this thread speaks for itself.

Kill yourself. Slowly and painfully.

My my, aren't we testy today. Oh wait, judging by the frequency of insults, profanity and homoerotic imagery in your posts, you're testy *every* day. Maybe you should consider working with a therapist.

Re:Critical Thinking FAIL

[SMTB1963]

LOL! Which position of yours do you think I've misrepresented?

Since you don't know what constitutes an ad hominen attack, it comes as no surprise that you don't know what forms a strawman argument. So let's add "false accusations of logical fallacies" to the list of your testy behaviors.

Keep posting. I look forward to another public demonstration of your ignorance.