Unless it isn't happening. There's always another choice to such scenarios. It's easy to concoct a disaster scenario today on flismy or no evidence.
While if it really happens, then a 10 foot rise in sea level is a bit hard to deny or hide. So I'm willing to wait to see what happens, especially given that this is claimed to be inevitable.
I can't solve these problems without a dyson sphere; and only a society with a dyson sphere can sustain the economic weight of building a dyson sphere.
The Earth already is a billionth of a Dyson sphere. You can use that to bootstrap up to full coverage. Good thing Slashdot is here to solve your weightiest problems.
Your feelings don't matter. What matters is proof.
Which as I see it, is on the side of Watts. Really though, what proof do you have? All the sexy stuff is in one document which has very different characteristics than the others, including being scanned rather than a generated PDF.
By his own admission he received $40 000 from the Heartland institute to conduct this "research" which was contradicted by an actual science project by Richard Muller some time later - Muller's results led him to abandon his previously skeptical beliefs, much to the dismay of leading denialists, including Watts himself.
Your reasoning here is remarkably confused. There is not a single thing in climate change so that research automatically supports or undermines this single thing. Muller's results aren't that relevant to Watts's work which is more or less to do with climate data collecting methodology and interpretation.
Because she claimed that AR5 would halve the rate of measured sensitivity and said she knew this because she had seen a draft. In fact, the sensitivity did not change under AR5. Her remarks were part of a coordinated effort to discredit AR5 prior to publication.
And what was your evidence that she lied here or even was factually incorrect? A draft is by its nature not the final product. And the IPCC did lower its low end estimate for CO2 temperature sensitivity which IMHO is as close as they will ever get to admitting that their estimates of temperature sensitivity were too high. I consider them an adversarial agent here, much like a lawyer in a trial. What they admit to their disadvantage, such as an even lower bound on temperature sensitivity is probably close the truth. What they aggressive promote to their advantage (such as the upper bound on the same quantity) probably is not.
Leaked internal documents from Heartand say differently.
Incidentally, both Heartland Institute and Watts say with considerable evidence support, that the above linked document (which is the only document of the "leaked documents" to make these claims) was fake. I agree with that assessment.
Your sourcewatch link fails to note this defense except in passing (Heartland apparently issued take-down notices to several blogs which were hosting the allegedly defamatory work) which is quite dishonest.
Also Watts is not a scientist.
Which is incorrect. He has for example been a coauthor on several research papers, organized the "Surface Stations Project" (a volunteer effort to document the condition of US weather stations) in 2007, and of course, commented on the state of climatology research since 2006.
If they were really interested in obtaining an honest, accurate appraisal of the temperature data they should have hired someone who had actual experience or qualifications.
Typical erroneous application of the argument from authority fallacy. I note that as of 2012, the time of the above document you refer to, he would have been engaging in his above efforts for around six years. That actually would have made him qualified for this imaginary role.
I find your accusations quite dishonest, hypocritical, and irrational. It is enough for you to accept a wayward bit of fraudulent documentation and of course, your own optimistic interpretation of what it says as firm evidence that Watts is "lying". But what would it take for you to accept an opponent as a "scientist"? Why he would need "actual experience or qualifications" with actual experience or qualifications not actually counting as such. One very low standard for you and one very high standard for your opponents.
Earlier, I noted a similar bit of calumny associated with Judith Curry who does meet your standards for "actual experience or qualifications" by saying:
We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication.
First, that wouldn't have been particularly difficult to achieve. She would just need a confederate with access to the AR5 report. The way the report is assembled, there are hundreds of people with access to part or all of the drafts of the document. Second, where is actual evidence that she might have said falsehoods in this case?
The way I see it, if we can tell working people that they can live on increasingly smaller paychecks and cutting of benefits, the retired can also live on increasingly smaller pensions and cutting of benefits. Street goes both ways, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, etc.
Exactly. It wasn't today's 10 year old who listened to the fabrications of the many politicians who had something to do over the past 80 years with Social Security's current and future problems. It was the people who are pulling Social Security benefits right now.
Sure, I'm not interested in just agreeing for terrible reasons. But that doesn't mean I'm not interested. Continuing to carry on the conversation when I don't have to, indicates interest.
Of course, I am. That is the essence of Social Security.
The government controls its currency, and with a flip of the same switch that took that money out, they can put it back.
This results in a benefits cut via inflation.
But right now they are just handing it over to Wall Street.
They have been, for about 80 years, giving away that money to a lot of people. There's no obligation on those other parties's parts to return money.
The money is being stolen from right under our nose
Ever since the beginning of Social Security and it's been rather obvious as you say. Some responsibility for that should stick with the nose, not just the people who will be left holding the bag in a few decades.
It takes only a modest level of reasoning to see that you're just plain wrong. What happened in 1980 with Social Security revenue? A significant portion went into paying out to existing beneficiaries. The rest went into purchasing US bonds. That money in turn went into the general fund and vanished as the money got spent that year. So what we have at that point is a bunch of imaginary bonds and a distorted US economy that probably grows slower as a result than if Social Security didn't exist in the first place. It just lost us future wealth.
So sure, you can say "the money" is somewhere, but it's no longer Social Security's money.
Cut benefits. For example, 25% cut in Social Security benefits makes the program a lot more stable over that 20 year period and beyond. A much greater 50-75% cut in Medicare would be about right to put benefits in line with payments into the system.
That's what pisses me off about people attacking social security and medicare, that problem will solve itself over time.
With substantial benefits cuts.
Expenses will climb to a peak and then level off as the population declines.
In the case of Medicare, it'll plateau at a level that can't be supported by the entirety of federal government funding. One could take all government revenue in around 2040 and still not cover present-day Medicare promises made for that year.
Focus on cost control and the actuarial tables will take care of the rest.
It's more tractable than it was in 1950. There are a lot more wealth in those areas and a lot more opportunity for those people than there was in the past. And it's worth noting that the developed world has much better slums than the third world does with less of their population in those slums.
And if society's rules say you go to the glue factory, then we just have to shoulder that burden and turn ourselves into glue. Sometimes you can't live in a society, if you play by its rules.
They can't squeeze money from someone who chooses to just not work. The system only works, if someone is producing enough to cover the costs. Else, it's benefits cuts no matter how much flailing is done.
it's just another attempt to sow doubt on a model that is just as predictive as Evolution.
In what way? First, when actual predictions are made for AGW or other "climate change", they end up substantially off in an economically significant way. The models need to be better than they are for the decisions that being made.
Second, evolution is not all that predictive either. It says certain things will happen, such as adaption, but it doesn't tell us how evolution will manifest, given a known selection pressure, or over what time frame.
and realize that man-made climate change is radically different than natural variation
My problem here is that you give a false veneer of certainty to whatever the theory you're speaking of is. I haven't seen any indication that climate researchers can distinguish between natural variation and man-made change from greenhouse gases emissions especially when they routinely downplay other human causes of climate change (habitat destruction, mismanagement of natural resources, etc).
I think the original poster was just trolling. I agree that it is foolish to just pretend that cause of climate change doesn't matter. But if we really are going to care about the causes and effects of AGW and other forms of climate change, we need to understand what we know and don't know.
It matters what caused it, because that influences how you fix it - for instance, if it's man-made, moving off coal power plants to solar, nuclear, wind, etc, is a huge help.
Unless that makes the problem worse. A massive energy move which plunges most of the world into greater poverty is going to be more counterproductive in the long run because it makes most of the world poorer and far less inclined to participate in greenhouse gas reduction. Note that China is currently responsible for about half the new growth in CO2 emissions. They aren't going to change that activity till they're wealthy and powerful enough to care about global warming.
If your time was worth anything, you would have taken a 10 hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and not a week long train ride via Siberia and Alaska.
There's that. It's not much of a case for high speed rail.
I'm not sure that this case is a good example for the parable of the broken window, in fact it could be considered a counter example.
In what way? They aren't doing anything for the county except providing telephone service and keeping people out of the job market.
Speaking as someone who used to have to travel a large territory in a rural state, I saw the consequences over the last few decades this kind of decision, of letting money flow out of the local small city/county area. Everyone suffers except for a few at the top who leave because they don't want to live in a depressed area.
The problem is that you need to have money flow into the area. If that's not happening, then you don't really have an economic case for that small city or county. Alternately, you can create a local currency which can't by definition flow out of the area.
Personally traveling to and through Boston is a 100x better than it used to be because of the Big Dig.
Now, if only they could have spent an order of magnitude less to provide you with that experience. I'm sure that the US government could make me a really amazing sundae for a billion dollars. But would it be worth that billion dollars? I'll let you think about that.
My point here is that just because there is benefit, doesn't mean that the costs are justified. There are huge opportunity costs with expensive government projects and they tend to be quite invisible. You can point to the modest benefits of the Big Dig money pit, but you can't point to the many things that didn't happen because so much of Massachusetts's wealth was squandered on that project.
They aren't going to build a high speed rail for containers. It'll be for much more valuable goods like people.
So no it isn't cheaper. Shipping by sea is cheaper for time-insensitive goods like what travels in container ships and more expensive for time-sensitive goods like people. If you're getting off a train, slowly inching across the Bering Strait, and then loading on a train again, that's a considerable waste of your life that could have been spent doing other things, like working a job that requires a physical presence or sight-seeing.
Kudos to you, but you do not sound representative of most corporations' CEO so your response is irrelevant.
Rather the problem sounds like you need to change your misconceptions.
Most people in CEO positions come from a business management background and do not come from the production side of the business.
So that statement is true of companies worldwide? Or just true of US publicly traded corporations? My take is that Far East and European companies, for example, don't tend to have that sort of management. And founder/family businesses are a huge section of business - I would say a majority of businesses in any country in the world - to just dismiss.
Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.
He also claims that he isn't actually paid by Heartland Institute.
Right, so you think choosing subjective opinion over objective fact is scientific?
The taxonomy case is not unique in having subjective opinion generally be the more scientific route. A similar example is organic chemistry. Deoxyribonucleic acid versus the subjective, but far more widely adopted DNA. Adenosine triphosphate versus ATP. High density polyethylene versus HDPE.
On the other hand, you have crap like ringwoodite for a high pressure polymorph of olivine. Geology really doesn't fare well here.
The problem of taxonomy is that it is intended for people who want to use it to label and classify. I mean, you could just assign everything a number meaning that all species under the method would have something like an IP address with the same sort of scale resolution as one goes from the broadest categories to the species. But who's going to remember what species 2.5.13.3.1.5.2 is?
For me, the problem is simply that the structure in the article doesn't take advantage of carbon fiber's characteristics. You could replace it with aluminum and probably strengthen the structure in the process. Buildings in general just don't have a lot of ways to exploit the special light weight/relatively high strength properties of carbon fiber.
Ignoring cost, I could see doors and other things that need to move getting some advantage by being made from carbon fiber. I suppose one could make a facade out of it. You could have a lot of dangling bits and be somewhat architecturally adventurous with that. Or maybe an partially enclosed balcony that can jut out really far (like 10 or 20 meters from a building). The balcony would, say, be mostly carbon fiber/light-weight resin with a steel structure as the structural support.
Sure, I'd be up for it. I'm currently in the midst of a long stretch of work that will continue for the entire summer, so I'm not sure how much effort I can give to a serious conversation (yes, unfortunately these Slashdot flame wars don't require as much thought as they should), but I'll give it an honest try.
I will warn you, I give strong weight to economics which is heavily abused, but a key factor and dynamic of any decisions of how to devote scarce resources to get what we want. I also strongly favor the theory that climate research is currently heavily biased by some combination of public hysteria, dogmatic thinking, and outright fraud. But we can discuss that in email.
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation. But in this thread, you have shown that merely asserting something is good enough for you. Normally, we would consider that libel.
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
He probably doesn't even personally [believe] the lies he posts on his blog.
If he does believe what he writes, then they aren't lies. Lies are the deliberate uttering of falsehoods. If you spread falsehoods that you believe, then you aren't lying. So we see that your assertion is already false in one possibly minor area due to your misunderstanding of what it means to lie.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion. Who was actually measuring climate back then? Nobody. So much of what we think we know depends on our perceptions of things we can't observe directly.
If it isn't from malice, then it's from negligence or reckless disregard of others.
Anonymous cowards hypocritically demanding that people be held accountable for their words just because those people happen to disagree? And now yet another one is whining that I'm not caring enough about the platform? Your "feedback" wasn't worth the few seconds of my life it took to read and write out this reply.
Either get an account and play by your rules or fuck off.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get it. This is happening.
Unless it isn't happening. There's always another choice to such scenarios. It's easy to concoct a disaster scenario today on flismy or no evidence.
While if it really happens, then a 10 foot rise in sea level is a bit hard to deny or hide. So I'm willing to wait to see what happens, especially given that this is claimed to be inevitable.
I can't solve these problems without a dyson sphere; and only a society with a dyson sphere can sustain the economic weight of building a dyson sphere.
The Earth already is a billionth of a Dyson sphere. You can use that to bootstrap up to full coverage. Good thing Slashdot is here to solve your weightiest problems.
Your feelings don't matter. What matters is proof.
Which as I see it, is on the side of Watts. Really though, what proof do you have? All the sexy stuff is in one document which has very different characteristics than the others, including being scanned rather than a generated PDF.
By his own admission he received $40 000 from the Heartland institute to conduct this "research" which was contradicted by an actual science project by Richard Muller some time later - Muller's results led him to abandon his previously skeptical beliefs, much to the dismay of leading denialists, including Watts himself.
Your reasoning here is remarkably confused. There is not a single thing in climate change so that research automatically supports or undermines this single thing. Muller's results aren't that relevant to Watts's work which is more or less to do with climate data collecting methodology and interpretation.
Because she claimed that AR5 would halve the rate of measured sensitivity and said she knew this because she had seen a draft. In fact, the sensitivity did not change under AR5. Her remarks were part of a coordinated effort to discredit AR5 prior to publication.
And what was your evidence that she lied here or even was factually incorrect? A draft is by its nature not the final product. And the IPCC did lower its low end estimate for CO2 temperature sensitivity which IMHO is as close as they will ever get to admitting that their estimates of temperature sensitivity were too high. I consider them an adversarial agent here, much like a lawyer in a trial. What they admit to their disadvantage, such as an even lower bound on temperature sensitivity is probably close the truth. What they aggressive promote to their advantage (such as the upper bound on the same quantity) probably is not.
Leaked internal documents from Heartand say differently.
Incidentally, both Heartland Institute and Watts say with considerable evidence support, that the above linked document (which is the only document of the "leaked documents" to make these claims) was fake. I agree with that assessment.
Your sourcewatch link fails to note this defense except in passing (Heartland apparently issued take-down notices to several blogs which were hosting the allegedly defamatory work) which is quite dishonest.
Also Watts is not a scientist.
Which is incorrect. He has for example been a coauthor on several research papers, organized the "Surface Stations Project" (a volunteer effort to document the condition of US weather stations) in 2007, and of course, commented on the state of climatology research since 2006.
If they were really interested in obtaining an honest, accurate appraisal of the temperature data they should have hired someone who had actual experience or qualifications.
Typical erroneous application of the argument from authority fallacy. I note that as of 2012, the time of the above document you refer to, he would have been engaging in his above efforts for around six years. That actually would have made him qualified for this imaginary role.
I find your accusations quite dishonest, hypocritical, and irrational. It is enough for you to accept a wayward bit of fraudulent documentation and of course, your own optimistic interpretation of what it says as firm evidence that Watts is "lying". But what would it take for you to accept an opponent as a "scientist"? Why he would need "actual experience or qualifications" with actual experience or qualifications not actually counting as such. One very low standard for you and one very high standard for your opponents.
Earlier, I noted a similar bit of calumny associated with Judith Curry who does meet your standards for "actual experience or qualifications" by saying:
We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication.
First, that wouldn't have been particularly difficult to achieve. She would just need a confederate with access to the AR5 report. The way the report is assembled, there are hundreds of people with access to part or all of the drafts of the document. Second, where is actual evidence that she might have said falsehoods in this case?
The way I see it, if we can tell working people that they can live on increasingly smaller paychecks and cutting of benefits, the retired can also live on increasingly smaller pensions and cutting of benefits. Street goes both ways, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, etc.
Exactly. It wasn't today's 10 year old who listened to the fabrications of the many politicians who had something to do over the past 80 years with Social Security's current and future problems. It was the people who are pulling Social Security benefits right now.
Sure, I'm not interested in just agreeing for terrible reasons. But that doesn't mean I'm not interested. Continuing to carry on the conversation when I don't have to, indicates interest.
You're playing a shell game.
Of course, I am. That is the essence of Social Security.
The government controls its currency, and with a flip of the same switch that took that money out, they can put it back.
This results in a benefits cut via inflation.
But right now they are just handing it over to Wall Street.
They have been, for about 80 years, giving away that money to a lot of people. There's no obligation on those other parties's parts to return money.
The money is being stolen from right under our nose
Ever since the beginning of Social Security and it's been rather obvious as you say. Some responsibility for that should stick with the nose, not just the people who will be left holding the bag in a few decades.
No, the money is/was there
It takes only a modest level of reasoning to see that you're just plain wrong. What happened in 1980 with Social Security revenue? A significant portion went into paying out to existing beneficiaries. The rest went into purchasing US bonds. That money in turn went into the general fund and vanished as the money got spent that year. So what we have at that point is a bunch of imaginary bonds and a distorted US economy that probably grows slower as a result than if Social Security didn't exist in the first place. It just lost us future wealth.
So sure, you can say "the money" is somewhere, but it's no longer Social Security's money.
Cut benefits. For example, 25% cut in Social Security benefits makes the program a lot more stable over that 20 year period and beyond. A much greater 50-75% cut in Medicare would be about right to put benefits in line with payments into the system.
That's what pisses me off about people attacking social security and medicare, that problem will solve itself over time.
With substantial benefits cuts.
Expenses will climb to a peak and then level off as the population declines.
In the case of Medicare, it'll plateau at a level that can't be supported by the entirety of federal government funding. One could take all government revenue in around 2040 and still not cover present-day Medicare promises made for that year.
Focus on cost control and the actuarial tables will take care of the rest.
Again, substantial benefits cuts.
It's more tractable than it was in 1950. There are a lot more wealth in those areas and a lot more opportunity for those people than there was in the past. And it's worth noting that the developed world has much better slums than the third world does with less of their population in those slums.
And if society's rules say you go to the glue factory, then we just have to shoulder that burden and turn ourselves into glue. Sometimes you can't live in a society, if you play by its rules.
They can't squeeze money from someone who chooses to just not work. The system only works, if someone is producing enough to cover the costs. Else, it's benefits cuts no matter how much flailing is done.
it's just another attempt to sow doubt on a model that is just as predictive as Evolution.
In what way? First, when actual predictions are made for AGW or other "climate change", they end up substantially off in an economically significant way. The models need to be better than they are for the decisions that being made.
Second, evolution is not all that predictive either. It says certain things will happen, such as adaption, but it doesn't tell us how evolution will manifest, given a known selection pressure, or over what time frame.
and realize that man-made climate change is radically different than natural variation
My problem here is that you give a false veneer of certainty to whatever the theory you're speaking of is. I haven't seen any indication that climate researchers can distinguish between natural variation and man-made change from greenhouse gases emissions especially when they routinely downplay other human causes of climate change (habitat destruction, mismanagement of natural resources, etc).
I think the original poster was just trolling. I agree that it is foolish to just pretend that cause of climate change doesn't matter. But if we really are going to care about the causes and effects of AGW and other forms of climate change, we need to understand what we know and don't know.
It matters what caused it, because that influences how you fix it - for instance, if it's man-made, moving off coal power plants to solar, nuclear, wind, etc, is a huge help.
Unless that makes the problem worse. A massive energy move which plunges most of the world into greater poverty is going to be more counterproductive in the long run because it makes most of the world poorer and far less inclined to participate in greenhouse gas reduction. Note that China is currently responsible for about half the new growth in CO2 emissions. They aren't going to change that activity till they're wealthy and powerful enough to care about global warming.
If your time was worth anything, you would have taken a 10 hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and not a week long train ride via Siberia and Alaska.
There's that. It's not much of a case for high speed rail.
I'm not sure that this case is a good example for the parable of the broken window, in fact it could be considered a counter example.
In what way? They aren't doing anything for the county except providing telephone service and keeping people out of the job market.
Speaking as someone who used to have to travel a large territory in a rural state, I saw the consequences over the last few decades this kind of decision, of letting money flow out of the local small city/county area. Everyone suffers except for a few at the top who leave because they don't want to live in a depressed area.
The problem is that you need to have money flow into the area. If that's not happening, then you don't really have an economic case for that small city or county. Alternately, you can create a local currency which can't by definition flow out of the area.
Personally traveling to and through Boston is a 100x better than it used to be because of the Big Dig.
Now, if only they could have spent an order of magnitude less to provide you with that experience. I'm sure that the US government could make me a really amazing sundae for a billion dollars. But would it be worth that billion dollars? I'll let you think about that.
My point here is that just because there is benefit, doesn't mean that the costs are justified. There are huge opportunity costs with expensive government projects and they tend to be quite invisible. You can point to the modest benefits of the Big Dig money pit, but you can't point to the many things that didn't happen because so much of Massachusetts's wealth was squandered on that project.
Shipping by sea is cheaper than rail.
They aren't going to build a high speed rail for containers. It'll be for much more valuable goods like people.
So no it isn't cheaper. Shipping by sea is cheaper for time-insensitive goods like what travels in container ships and more expensive for time-sensitive goods like people. If you're getting off a train, slowly inching across the Bering Strait, and then loading on a train again, that's a considerable waste of your life that could have been spent doing other things, like working a job that requires a physical presence or sight-seeing.
Kudos to you, but you do not sound representative of most corporations' CEO so your response is irrelevant.
Rather the problem sounds like you need to change your misconceptions.
Most people in CEO positions come from a business management background and do not come from the production side of the business.
So that statement is true of companies worldwide? Or just true of US publicly traded corporations? My take is that Far East and European companies, for example, don't tend to have that sort of management. And founder/family businesses are a huge section of business - I would say a majority of businesses in any country in the world - to just dismiss.
If he is not being paid to represent their postion then what, in your fevered imagination, are they paying him to do?
Let's listen to his side of the story:
Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.
He also claims that he isn't actually paid by Heartland Institute.
Right, so you think choosing subjective opinion over objective fact is scientific?
The taxonomy case is not unique in having subjective opinion generally be the more scientific route. A similar example is organic chemistry. Deoxyribonucleic acid versus the subjective, but far more widely adopted DNA. Adenosine triphosphate versus ATP. High density polyethylene versus HDPE.
On the other hand, you have crap like ringwoodite for a high pressure polymorph of olivine. Geology really doesn't fare well here.
The problem of taxonomy is that it is intended for people who want to use it to label and classify. I mean, you could just assign everything a number meaning that all species under the method would have something like an IP address with the same sort of scale resolution as one goes from the broadest categories to the species. But who's going to remember what species 2.5.13.3.1.5.2 is?
For me, the problem is simply that the structure in the article doesn't take advantage of carbon fiber's characteristics. You could replace it with aluminum and probably strengthen the structure in the process. Buildings in general just don't have a lot of ways to exploit the special light weight/relatively high strength properties of carbon fiber.
Ignoring cost, I could see doors and other things that need to move getting some advantage by being made from carbon fiber. I suppose one could make a facade out of it. You could have a lot of dangling bits and be somewhat architecturally adventurous with that. Or maybe an partially enclosed balcony that can jut out really far (like 10 or 20 meters from a building). The balcony would, say, be mostly carbon fiber/light-weight resin with a steel structure as the structural support.
Sure, I'd be up for it. I'm currently in the midst of a long stretch of work that will continue for the entire summer, so I'm not sure how much effort I can give to a serious conversation (yes, unfortunately these Slashdot flame wars don't require as much thought as they should), but I'll give it an honest try.
I will warn you, I give strong weight to economics which is heavily abused, but a key factor and dynamic of any decisions of how to devote scarce resources to get what we want. I also strongly favor the theory that climate research is currently heavily biased by some combination of public hysteria, dogmatic thinking, and outright fraud. But we can discuss that in email.
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation. But in this thread, you have shown that merely asserting something is good enough for you. Normally, we would consider that libel.
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
He probably doesn't even personally [believe] the lies he posts on his blog.
If he does believe what he writes, then they aren't lies. Lies are the deliberate uttering of falsehoods. If you spread falsehoods that you believe, then you aren't lying. So we see that your assertion is already false in one possibly minor area due to your misunderstanding of what it means to lie.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion. Who was actually measuring climate back then? Nobody. So much of what we think we know depends on our perceptions of things we can't observe directly.
If it isn't from malice, then it's from negligence or reckless disregard of others.
Anonymous cowards hypocritically demanding that people be held accountable for their words just because those people happen to disagree? And now yet another one is whining that I'm not caring enough about the platform? Your "feedback" wasn't worth the few seconds of my life it took to read and write out this reply.
Either get an account and play by your rules or fuck off.