Riverwind

DDT. Environmentalists have long insisted that the chemical be banned completely despite its usefulness as a disease control. People who opposed the outright ban usually did not have a problem with some restrictions on its usage since overuse would reduce its effectiveness for disease control yet that does not stop environmentalists from labelling them 'people out to poison the planet'. From wikipedia:

1) The concept of a tablet computer has been around for years. No one has 'rights' to that concept.2) Apple copied the iPhone so resemblance to other tablets could only occur if those makers copied the iPhone concept. 3) It takes a lot of chutzpah for a chinese company to demand that their IP be respected considering the fact that IP theft is a standard business practice in China.

The pattern I see here is environmentalists misrepresenting science in order to lobby for policy changes they would like to see happen anyways. The science is the excuse - not the reason.To illustrate: almost no one questions whether 'greenhouse gases cause global warming'. What people do question is whether global warming is actually a problem that needs solving and if it does need solving people ask whether it is technically possible to do so. By trying to characterize the debate as a one about whether 'greenhouse gases cause global warming' you create a strawman. I don't have the time to go back a research all of your other examples but it is reasonable to assume you completely misrepresent the debate in each of them as well. What environmentalist forget is these debates are a waste of time without a cost/benefit analysis. No government will act on environmental issues unless social costs of action are less the social costs of not acting. Perhaps the best example is over population. There is no doubt that over population is a huge problem and the science could be used to justify some pretty abhorent policies in order to control human population. However, governments will not do that because of the social costs of such policies - even if we will be all worse off in the long run. The same thing is true of carbon control. The social costs of the controlling carbon far exceed any likely benefit.

Your are playing with semantics. Markets work if there is healthy competition between suppliers. If there is no competition there are no markets. The only thing you need for healthy competition is a set of rules and a way to punish violators. Again semantics. Sports competitions are good for the consumer that derives entertainment from them. With no competetion there would be no entertainment value. They are also good for the atheletes that seek fame and money by winning them. Market competition is much more than a matter of price. Companies use service, quality, branding and other things to sell their products.

So do I - especially since the winners are largely a function of each country's willingness to fund the infrastructure that produces these athletes. Why? That is just as bad. If you want to change something then identify the athletes by name without reference origin at all. More importantly, stop playing the national anthems and raising the nation flags at the medal ceremonies. During the opening ceremonies have athletes enter according to the sports they complete in - not by the country they are from. Lastly, the IOC should stop publishing medal counts by country (although one can't stop third parties from doing that).That said, that would never happen because none of those atheletes would be there if their respective governments did not spend a lot of money to make it possible and, like any other corporate sponser, governments want to get something in return for their spending. That's life in a capitalist society. I have no issue with it. GW and Toyota don't cooperate - if anything they are out to completely eliminate the other. Competition is what pushes humans to succeed. Cooperation leads to stagnation and the preservation of the status quo. That said, there is a difference between healthy and unheathy competition. War is extremely unhealthy - sports without drugs is fairly healthy.

I realize that you depend on other people to tell you what your opinion should be but others do not have your limitations. When I say the methods are crap it is because I have looked at the methods used and based on my knowledge I think they are crap. IOW, I collect information from many sources - including RC and other alarmists blogs. I then compare it to information I get from sceptical blogs and by reading the actual papers. Based on those inputs I form my opinion and in quite a few cases I end up concluding that the sceptic view is wrong. I am happy to debate the scientitic basis for my opinions, however, such a debate is impossible with someone who takes the position that all non-peer reviewed sources of information must be ignored.Bottom line. You can harp as much as you want about peer reviewed literature but it is painfully obvious that it is a argument made from weakness because if the science really supported what you believe you would not insist on exluding sources.

Truth is truth no matter where is it published. And those published papers used methods which I consider to be crap. Frankly, peer review is a next to useless criterion in climate science because so much crap gets through peer review in the name of 'promoting the cause'. 2001 is perfectly appropriate start date based on the publication date of the SRES scenarios. I am not waste time with your nonsense about short trends - cooling is cooling even if you think you can wish it would go away. It is politically motivated science because1) more models means more spread so it harder for people to realize the models are crap. 2) The IPCC does not want to exclude obviously bad models for fear of upsetting the governments that paid for them. And each time they change the models we have to wait 10-15 years to see if they are any good. If AR5 comes out in 2014 it will be 2025 before we could possibly justify any policies based on them.

Increase the retirement age and reduce benefits.

Here is a different analysis that includes all of the hindcast data back to the 50s.http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/multi-model-mean-projection-rejects-gisstemp-start-dates-50-60-70-80/ You will find that with 60s years of data the models overpredict the amount of warming but the shorter trends are not statistically significant. This is another analysis that shows all possible start dates http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/adding-apples-and-oranges-to-cherry-picking/ What it shows that the alarmists preferred start date of 1990 is actually a cherry pick that takes advantage of the cooling caused by Pinatubo which inflates the trends. All of these different views illustrate that it is wrong to claim that the climate models have accurately predicted the changes in temperatures.

All economies will eventually have stop using population growth to create the illusion of economic growth. The sooner we make the transition to a slow growth economy with a stable population - the better.

Unlike you, I don't blindly depend on people to tell me what is right or wrong. I read the arguments and make my own decision on which have merit. i.e. I know enough about statistical analysis to know that is there is no such thing as a period of time which is too short compare models to reality - the only issue is how wide the uncertainty intervals are and for shorter periods they are much wider. Obviously, there is room for discussion on the best way to calculate those uncertainty intervals but anyone who says that it is impossible to test models against reality over a period of a few years is either an idiot or a liar.I also know that using ensemble envelope to calculate uncertainty is the way to go if you have many runs from the *same* model but combining runs from different models into a single envelope is an extremely dubious approach since all you need are a couple bogus models to expand the envelope and make every possible outcome 'consistent' with the models. That is why I ignore any attempt to justify the models based on the ensemble envelope. IOW, it really does not make a difference what you think of the background of people I reference. The only thing that matters is if the argument has merit. And if the only counter argument you can come up with is 'its wrong cause RC says so' then you don't have much of an argument.

These same people would likely say that middle class blacks from the US are okay too because they share similar cultural values. Race is not the issue.I have no interest in pandering to political correctness when it comes to immigration rules which are, by definition, arbitrary and discrimatory. Selecting people based on how existing immigrants from their culture faired is probably a better criteria than their ability to speak english.

It is not race - it is culture. People from some cultural backgrounds are better equipped to integrate into Canadian society than people from other cultural backgrounds. It should be be perfectly reasonable to discuss this as one criteria among many for choosing immigrants.

Here is here explaination and some graphs illustrating the effect.http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/how-does-the-start-date-affect-the-hypothesis-test/ Which makes 2001 a suitable mid-point when dealing with ensembles. The solar cycle is predictable. We should see evidence of that in the ensemble average. We don't see that because the solar effect is believed to be insignificant. That means it cannot be used to excuse the models for overpredicting warming now. The IPCC presents ensembles. It makes no attempt to seperate the good models from the bad models. More importantly, the alarmists insist on using all of the models whenever they want to show the observations are 'consistent' with the models.I personally think taking the average of an ensemble of different models is a meanlingless excercise and that each model must be judged on its own. But doing that will make it much tougher to make the 'consistency' argument.

Articals like this:"Two billion face water famine as Himalayan glaciers melt" http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2008/feb/06/two_billion_face_water_famine_himalayan_glaciers_melt.html Have been a primary staple of alarmist propoganda for years.

Unsubstantiated? Hardly. The photographic evidence shows it is incredibly unreliable and it pathetic that government paid scientists would expect anyone to trust data from such a network. The question on whether it introduces a net bias into the record is not that relevant because the data is so heavily adjusted it may be impossible to seperate the bias from the siting from the fictitous adjustments.

Yet the error remained for 3 years and scientists who questioned were labelled as dabblers in 'voodoo', Whatever action was taken was obviously ineffective. Whether you want to admit it or not the error was likely not corrected because it was a convenient propaganda tool.

Anthony stated that he wanted to wait until 90% of stations were surveyed. That was a completely reasonable thing to do but it took time because he was depending on *volunteers*. Once it was complete he put out a call for volunteers to start helping him with the data processing. Once that was done he started on the peer reviewed papers.The only people who a problem with the timeframe are whinging alarmists like yourself.

Whether notification was given is irrelevant. The fact that a scientist admits he had reservations about reporting this error shows that there is a big problem in climate science.

For years Watts has avoided publishing any concrete analysis with an incomplete dataset. The only claims he has made is the photos make it pretty obvious the data is suspect but the magnitude of the error would not be known until he had information from 90% stations.

You got it.Look at the 'explanation' for why the screwup over glaciers occurred. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/explanation-offered-for-error-in-un-climate-report/ Think about that for second. A published scientist is aware of a gross error in the IPCC report which is being highlighted in media coverage and he makes no serious attempt in 3 years to correct it for fear of 'criticizing other colleagues’ findings'.Of course, it is not simply a matter of 'criticizing other colleagues’ findings' because scientists have no problem criticizing research that is sceptical of AGW. He felt he had to tread carefully hear because he was criticizing 'pro-alarmist' science and doing that is a career killer. There many many other examples of the pro-alarmist bais in climate science that pressures scientists to keep objections to themselves or find another field to do research in.

Watts should have been asked to review the paper since it was his data being used. They also refused Pieke's offer for a co-authorship - something that would have produced a balanced paper. Currently Watts has two papers submitted to journals. It takes time to publish papers sceptical papers because the climate mafia do whatever they can to suppress them. The fact track given Menne's paper is a typical unprofessional alarmist tactic: publish smoke screen papers that "rebutt" sceptical claims before or shortly after the sceptical papers are published.

Perhaps you should look again. Many of the errors in the IPCC report that are now being publicized deal with the alleged effects of climate change. The revelation of these gross exagerrations make the Lomborg's 'its cheaper to deal with climate change later' argument much more compelling.

I am hopeless because I point out you have zero evidence to support your assertions? Your factless mantra that 'warming is bad' is indistiguishable from the mantra that 'jesus saves'. It is an assertion of your religious beliefs. Nothing else. is a fun take on economic theory.

None of you observations support anything other than the claim that it is getting warmer. You have no evidence that getting warmer is a bad thing and that species cannot adapt. A few starving bears says nothing about the ability of the species to adapt. Memories of weather are the most useless source of information. Even more useless than an IPCC report. To justify your claim you first need to quantify what 'extreme' weather means and then measure it.