TimG

It is. See this link. There is a huge difference between science, as it is properly practiced, and science as it is perceived/used by the public at large. For most people science is simply the culture framework that explains the unknown. There is no evidence that the 'authorities' did not believe it themselves. The 'witches and demons' were a crude attempt to explain the world around and every human culture had variations on the theme. It is obviously flawed from our perspective today but that does not make it any less sincere and real. No "we" don't. We rely on self annointed priests to tell us that they counted the teeth and priests who disagree with the 'consensus tooth count' are vilified and condemned as evil.

It is and it is not. We live in a society where nothing bad can happen without it someone blaming it on climate change. I think the better question is: why are the people that insist on blaming everything on climate change any more rational than those that blamed bad things on witches and demons? After all, the 'scientific consensus' 1000 years ago was that witches and demons existed and they could cause bad things to happen. If we are really as rational as we claim to be we would stop trying to find causes for eveny random event and just accept that 's**t happens'.

Oh Joy. Another alarmist money quote from the IPCC that leaves out critical context. For starters, the IPCC makes it clear as the average increases there will be more hot days (no kidding!). It does not provide any evidence to support the claim that excursions from the rising mean (i.e. heat waves) are increasing. Just a bunch of excuses about how the data is not good enough to show any such trend.From the same document: At this point, If you were intersted in the scientific facts you would agree with me that eyeball's claim of 'colder cold snaps' is pure nonsense.Now if we wander over here we find: Gee, it looks like there is no conclusive evidence of a trend in extreme temperature events and UHI is part of the problem.As for the poster boy of heat waves: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/37/2/309 In other words, people adapt. Get over it. What we call a heat wave today will be nothing to remark about in 50 years.

The Proclaimation also makes it clear that the British had sovereignty: The law does not allow people to pick and choose the provisions that they like. If they wish to assert that they have legal rights because of this proclaimation they must also accept that sovereignty belongs to the crown.

I will make it very simple because you seem always miss the point:- A claim that more CO2 leads gradually higher temps is well founded on science. - A claim that more CO2 leads to stronger extremes is nothing but a medieval superstition. It worth nothing that a heat wave/cold snaps is relative to a normal climate. So if Vancouver climate changes to become like LA then what we call a 'heat wave' today will be normal. This means it is completely irrational to claim that a warming climate will lead to more heat waves because the definition of heat wave will change as the climate warms. The problem with AGW is not the science when properly stated with all of the uncertains and caveats. The problem are political activists that seek to make unfounded claims in order to support a political agenda.

As usual you don't bother to read what was written and insert some irrelevant strawman. If you look at the post that I responded to you will find an assertion that: "It stands to reason that an atmosphere with more energy in it will result in both hotter heat waves and colder cold snaps". This assertion has nothing to with the presumed causal link between CO2 and warming. It is pure speculation about the likely effects of that warming. It particular, he made the assertion that 'more energy' = 'colder cold snaps'. One quick way to examine the plausibility of such speculation is to do a back of the envelope calculation. In this case, the argument was CO2 causes energy to increase which causes more cold snaps. I pointed out that every 11 years the amount of energy being received by the earth increases by about the same amount. If the assertion had any merit one would expect 'colder cold snaps' whenever the solar cycle was at its peak. I am not aware of any such connection in the historical record. Now none of this this argues against the theory that more CO2 means warmer temperatures on average. What is does argue against long established human tradition of attributing causes to what are random events. In less enlightened times the supernatural would be the cause - today it is pseudo science.

In the past weather was blamed on witches and demons. Today we have CO2. Nothing has changed except the superstitious have learned how to use pseudo scientific lingo to give their superstitions a veneer of respectability.To illustrate why I think your claim is dubious I suggest you look at the radiative forcing of CO2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas It has increase by 1.46 W/m2 since 1750. The daily energy from the sun is 1366 W/m2 Solar radiation varies between about 1365.5 and 1366.5 over the solar cycle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation This means the CO2 effect on the 'energy in the atmosphere' is the same order of magnitude as natural changes in solar output. It therefore follows that we should see increase heat waves/cool spells during every solar maximum. We don't which suggests your argument is something which was made up to suit a political argument .

You want to promote good science yet you make a declaration like 'you believe in AGW'? Plenty, if not most, skeptics agree that humans affect climate. The debate is how much and whether there is anything we can/should do about it. The fact that people see the need to summarize complex scientific topics with meaningless statements of belief is a bigger problem than confusing weather and climate.

This is true but geographically limited. It also depends on whether the hydro dam has the excess capacity (if the resevoir is full the hydro cannot be dialed back - it has to let water through). What this means is hydro is not suffucient to make wind more than a niche player in the energy game.

Here is presentation that provides support for my claim that climate is not a boundary value problem:http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/is-climate-really-predictable-on-10-50-year-time-scales-by-william-r-cotton/

This could have been thread on how a system was supposed to a genuine effort to help those in need has been twisted into an entitlement that insults the people that are expected to pay for it. Instead it has been side tracked by the race issue.

A great mind is more than an IQ score.

Even if we changed the rules to all independent MPs we would simply create a system like the US where MPs trade votes in return for pork that benefits their riding.

The words attributed to Phil Willis came from the BBC audio clip and those are the only words that matter in the quote. The fact that you cannot distiguish between the substance of an argument and irrelevant noise makes any discussion with you extremely tedious.

You are a piece of work. I provide a link to the orginal source of the quote and since you can't ad hom the BBC you google around and find Soloman also used the quote and then attempt an ad hom based on that.It is truely pathetic and I am starting to see why other posters put you on their ignore list.

There are many other dams which have been financed privately.In fact, many the original hydro dams were built by private companies. The government only got into the business because they wanted the control and profit. That is only a problem if there is no competition. If a government opened competition for a suitable site you would find plenty of groups taht would jump at the opportunity.In fact, wireless spectrum auction in the states which generated 10 billion proves that the private sector can no probles raising cash for a valuable asset if the government chooses to sell it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spectrum_auction

The river was not going anywhere. If the government did not do it in the 30s a private corporation would have in the 50s. .http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/b/Boeing_787.htm If Boeing can come up $12 billion for a new plane a private company could generate that kind of capital to build a dam provided there was a legal system in the country that protected their investment. The Bell Canada takeover required $50 billion in debt all raised from private sources. Your argument that the private sector cannot build dams does not hold up to most rudimentary scrutiny.

Actually, one example does completely refute your claim that private corporations could not afford to build the dams. Alcan could in the 50s. It really does make a difference why they built it. The fact is they could access the capital they needed. The only one who is wrong is you. I would need to hear Alcan's side of the story before I take that claim seriously.

I have explained it enough times to make it clear to any reader that there are serious issues with the inquiries. Your semantics over who was the chair are irrelevant noise. Especially when the chair agrees with Stringer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8795000/8795643.stm

Then why did Alcan pay to build its own dam on the Nechako in 1950s?http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6685/is_n4_v22/ai_n28673732/ Why did Alcan in 1990s want to pay for large expansion of the dam?Hydro projects are hugely profitable. Governments build them because they want 100% control of the wealth they produce.

And Stringer is now saying they were misled by UEA on those points. IOW, Stringer is now repudiating parts of his own report.In any case, the onus was really on the panels to ensure they completely understood the complaints of McIntyre, Holland and the others involved in the FOIs. Interviewing them directly and asking them to respond to specific excuses offered by Jones et. al. would be the proper way to conduct an inquiry interested in finding the truth. They did not do that which tells us that the truth was not a particular concern to these panels. What McIntyre could have added to his written submissions is quite irrelevant.

What we have a situation where the majority has the power strip all rights aways from natives at any time by changing the constitution. Fortunately, (for natives at least), the majority does not wish to resort this option and is willing to live with the various petty injustices created by these historical agreements. That complacency would disappear if the burden of these agreements got too high for the majority to bear. My hope is we will never have to deal with a nasty constitutional battle like that and I suspect the SCC will be careful with its rulings because of that risk.That is why I say the contract-is-a-contract argument is largely nonsense as far a natives are concerned. What we have are never ending political negotiations between native and the non-native citizens.

If a corporation has a contract to get a 'medicine bag' then that is all the corporation will ever get. The courts do not reinterpret the contract and claim that a 'medicine bag' now means 'full healthcare benefits'. If the natives insist on reinterpreting these contracts to suit modern times then it perfectly fine for the rest of us to do the same.

Who gets to pick the questions? There are many issues where the facts are disputed so people would fail a quiz because they reject the government's version of the facts. Climate change is a good example where many in the electorate dispute the facts as claimed by the government/bureaucracy.

Quebec Hydro is a cash cow for the Quebec government. Governments insist on building hydro dams themselves because they are so profitable. If the government allowed the private sector to bid on a public resource the private sector would have no problems raising the cash.