JohnB

John, part of this is the difference between nations.

It has indeed.

Can we please chuck all the religious nutters out of politics please.

Down here it isn't the religious nutters, it's the political left demanding that the "Merry Christmas" and Easter things get dumped "in case" they offend somebody. The thing is that every time I've heard a Muslim or anybody else actually being asked about it they just don't care.

It is, of course, where right wing organisations recruit too- but presumably that doesn't trouble you.

I can only presume that both you and Moontanman are being deliberately obtuse. I have no problem with any organisation recruiting in Universities, unless their purpose is traitorous. We were talking about left wing organisations that recruited in Universities and recieved funding and direction from a foreign power. Why you both are trying to muddy the water by bringing other groups in I have no idea.

Also, please don't quote bits from conservapedia which cite dead links if you want to be taken seriously.

That was one link out of three, which I chose just to save you some time. However since you asked for it;

http://www.nsa.gov/applications/search/index.cfm?q=venona

Knock yourself out reading God knows how many documents to get all the names. Unless the NSA isn't a good enough reference for you. Sheesh.

Moontanman;

I notice that you didn't term white supremacy as traitors...

AFAIK they weren't in the pay of foreign powers. If they were, then they were traitors, if not then they are just idiots. You really can't be this stupid, so I really can't see what you are trying to do. Unless it's just to avoid the reality of what or who was behind many left wing groups.

Being progressive and communist are not synonymous no matter how much you want them to be...

Again trying to put words into my mouth. Today we can truthfully say that the majority of terrorists are Muslim, but that does not make the majority of Muslims terrorists. While not all of the left (or progressives, or even communists) are traitors, the vast majority of the traitors were from the left. Deal with that reality. I cannot say it more clearly than this.

Most Progressives are traitors? Most Conservatives are not? come on...

See above. Most traitors were progressives, not the other way around.

You really have yet to demonstrate that is true, traitors seems to be mostly defined by the right, the right cries traitors when someone farts in front of them... by definition any one who disagrees with the right are traitors...

Bullshit. a traitor is defined by the dictionary;

One who violates his allegiance and betrays his country; one guilty of treason; one who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to an enemy, or yields up any fort or place intrusted to his defense, or surrenders an army or body of troops to the enemy, unless when vanquished; also, one who takes arms and levies war against his country; or one who aids an enemy in conquering his country. See Treason.

So cut it with the "defined by the right" crap. At the height of the Cold War people who were in the pay of a foreign power were active in attempts to undermine the US government. That act makes them traitors. If you disagree then what freaking definition do you want to use?

All except for those secrete ones?

You were the one who claimed that there were no secret ones. I find it enlightening that even after being shown that this is incorrect you can't admit to being wrong.

it's called freedom, it matters no matter who is pushing an agenda...

Sorry, what? I don't understand what you mean here.

I think they are all batshitcrazy...

On this we are agreed.

When was polygamy brought into this?

They can push it all they want but it's not the way our constitution works and I would fight it tooth and toe nail... rule of law only works if everyone is subject to the same law...

That's why parsing sentences isn't a great idea. It was just an example of how things can slide, nothing more. Again there is a difference between nations. In Oz it is the political left that wants different laws for different groups. It came up in connection with the Aboriginal people at first. We have a too high percentage of Aboriginals in jail and the idea was put forward to give them the choice between "Traditional" law or "White Mans" law to make justice more culturally relevent. From there it isn't a large step for other groups to start wanting "culturally relevent" justice for themselves. Strangely enough the right wing didn't back these ideas and was immediately attacked as "White Supremacist" and "Racist".

Our Constitution works differently to yours and our batshit crazy left really are batshit crazy.

The best current example I can think of is that areas of the left down here want two changes made to our Constitution. Firstly they want all powers granted to Parliament to make laws for "racial" groups removed. (This was put in so that Parliament had the power to make laws especially for the Aboriginal population) So they want that bit removed because anything else is so obviously "racist".

Secondly they want a bit added that acknowledges the original inhabitants and grants Parliament the power to make laws especially for Aboriginals.

And we on the right are left scratching our heads and going "But, but......". And then getting called racist because we don't support the changes.

Damn I am right wing in Australia... wow!

Pretty much, yes. I'm a slightly to the right of moderate right winger down here and that makes me roughly a "slightly right of moderate" Democrat in American terms.

We are Americans, lower your self respect and surrender your culture, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated...

I know that you're joking, TYT wasn't. I first came across them in an argument about a KFC ad that aired in Oz. Yes, they quite literally expected us to make our ads conform to American sensibilities. What an arrogant POS. F*ck him and the horse he rode in on.

I see, so right wing is good left wing is bad? We can have right wing organizations but left wing cannot be allowed to exist... yes that sounds about right...

Don't put words into my mouth. The simple fact is that left wing ideology is more prevelent on campus. this is actually quite logical since that is where students are (or should be) being taught to question and challenge the "old regime". That automatically puts you on the "progressive" side. Certain persons in academia used this fact to introduce people to communist front organisations and to instill particular "ways of thought" that would make them useful or compliant later. White supremacy groups probably did the same thing for those on the right.

The point that you are trying to avoid is that many of the left wing organisations were funded and controlled by Moscow at a time that it was ultimately opposed to everything the USA stood for. Many who worked and organised those left wing groups were traitors, there is no other word for it. They were in the pay of and doing the bidding of a foreign power during a "Cold" war. And most of those traitors came from the left.

McCarthyism was witch hunt, I am quite sure there were communists present at that time, some were operating openly and under our constitution they should have had that right.

The problem with trying to defend a false history is that you get caught up in the lies. At the time of McCarthy, if "some" of the communist were operating openly then at least "some" were not. Yet you said earlier WRT "Reds under the bed"

No there weren't... that is why McCarthyism is derided to this day...

So some were in the open and some weren't, but none of them were hidden. Riiiiiight. As I said above, the tactics McCarthy used were wrong and he became as bad as those he sought to expose. But just because it was a witch hunt doesn't mean that there weren't witches that needed hunting. What I find interesting about that period of history is that people from the political left just can't grasp the reality that many of those they admired were working to destroy their own people. It sucks to realise that you had most of the traitors, but honesty demands that this simple fact be faced and accepted.

So you deride McCarthy and do the same thing to Bachman, anything but face the fact that McCarthy was right and there were traitors and they were from the left. It's just so much easier to deride and make fun of the other side than to face the ugly truth of the dark past of your own side.

BTW we had a referendum on whether the Communist Party should be outlawed in Australia in 1951. The law was defeated as it was viewed that Communists had the same right to have stupid ideas as everybody else did.

This simply has no bearing on this subject and is a highly conflated version of reality...

Actually it does have a bearing. Every person who doesn't think the mores and customs of his homeland are worth getting excited about and defending is one less person to oppose an agenda. This is how "subversion" works, its purpose is to lessen resistance to the agenda being pushed.

I am just as concerened that fundamentalist Christianity has "deeply penetrated" our government, they are doing their best to destroy us from with in, turn our secular government into a theocracy, make religion law, take away the basic rights of anyone who is not following Jesus the way they think he should be followed, they are the clear and present danger and Michele Bachmann is one of them. Crying wolf while she tears down the gates to let the hoards in to destroy us from with in...

Almost Bingo. Bachman might be right or could be wrong. Possibly to early to tell, but you're on the right track. The problem isn't the Muslim Brotherhood or the YEC Christians. The problem is primitive religious fanatics attempting to gain control over the State. Whether Muslims or Christians succeed, the sh*t will be very deep. Just don't be so busy watching the Christians that somebody else slips in the back door. Maybe since "marriage" isn't owned by religion the definition should be expanded and polygamy allowed. Maybe the courts should show more understanding for cultural differences and "culturally appropriate" punishments be given rather than just the usual ones. These "cultural" punishments would of course be vetted by and with the advice of, a representative of the community involved. Blow it, let's just have Sharia courts for the Muslim communities.

Don't laugh, there are Muslim groups in Australia pushing for exactly that.

There is also an added impetus for the Muslim groups and it was spelt out in the vid you linked to. The only reason that Islam exists at all is because the West allows it to so exist. If it came to all out religious war, Islam would be a memory and they know it. The only way they can even pretend to be on some sort of par with the West is for them to get some very big bombs as well. But once they do, it's an odds on bet that they would use them, at least once. We did.

BTW, I realise your question about the vid was tongue in cheek, but from an Aussie perspective it is right wing. Our left wing would be way too busy explaining why it was all our fault that these primitives were killing cartoonists and if we just stopped antagonising them then there would be peace. You guys got the religious right and we got the bat sh*t crazy looney left. As I understand it even European socialists view our very left wing as "extreme".

As an importer I see a lot of different products, but these ones from China are just the bees knees.

I don't know just how much fun you could have with these little darlings hidden in the greenery.

http://animal-maker.com/Product.asp?big=86&page=1

A range of 183 animatronic dinosaurs, many if not most are life sized with movements and sound. They even have a Plesiosaur for the pool.

They have a variety of creatures from other periods as well, from the pre dinosaur, bowel loosening Gorgonopsid to the relatively recent Mammoth and associated big cats.

Oh for a large property, some solar panels to keep the critters charged and a bunch of Boy Scouts on holiday.

John, I never said it was only Americans.

Dr Jim Cairns Deputy head of the Australian Labour Party.

Katharine Susannah Prichard, Judah Waten, Frank Hardy, Eric Lambert and Alan Marshall. Novellists

Any officeholder of the "World Peace Council"

Office holders of a number of these front organisations.

We could look at the Venona files and intercepts from the 1940s onward.

Some 200 individual Americans are named.

Over 200 named or covernamed persons found in the VENONA translations, persons then present in the U.S., are claimed by the KGB and the GRU in their messages as their clandestine assets or contacts.

That should do as a start.

The Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy released its report on March 3rd 1997 and found

But for every accusation there was a denial. ... For all who could agree there were Communists in government, there were as many who saw the Government as contriving fantastic accusations against innocent persons. A balanced history of this period is now beginning to appear; the VENONA messages will surely supply a great cache of facts to bring the matter to some closure....

The first fact is that a significant Communist conspiracy was in place in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, but in the main those involved systematically denied their involvement.

Hayden Peake, curator of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Historical Intelligence Collection has a page of book reviews that might enlighten you. (Or at least be interesting reading.)

I hate to break it to you, but Mc Carthy had it sort of right, but his methods in following the idea made him as bad as those he sought to find. All it took was the opening of the KGB files. And the Venona decrypts.

To again quote Peake; "Breaking the Codes should put a full stop to the efforts of the professional-historian doubters from Down Under to vindicate their communist colleagues from charges of espionage. It can no longer be denied; the Venona decrypts exist, and they are hard evidence." Many of those colleagues of course worked in Universities which by an absolutely amazing coincidence is where most left wing organisations have done their recruiting. Can you join the dots yet? Or shall I get a crayon?

Moontanman, it depends how it's done "from within" does it not? The idea has been pushed that people have some sort of right to "not be offended". How many people are cancelling things and not saying things just in case they offend someone? These attitudes have "deeply penetrated" both our nations have they not?

If you read the links above you'll find that the communists had infact been penetrating your government since about 1942. By your logic of waiting the fact of this penetration shouldn't have been released until 1997 with the Moynihan report? If not then, when should someone sound an alarm if they think something is wrong?

Note also that in the interview played she is asking for a Justice Dept investigation to see if the claims are true. Why is this a problem?

"she" not he...

Dopey from TYT looks like a male to me. My point was that 40 years ago if somebody was warning about communism he would have been deriding them for it and claiming it was all a fantasy.

No there weren't... that is why McCarthyism is derided to this day...

Well lucky you, but I'll bet you are wrong. We found out after the fall of communism that yes there were. Organisations and people, quite often influential university lecturers, were in the direct pay of Moscow. University student Unions were recieving monies and I' just so certain that the Russians were doing it out of the pure goodness of their hearts and wanted nothing in return. Groups were passably well funded and very well organised. It would be rather odd if Moscow was funding Australians and not some American groups as well.

It is not proof that they are under every rock either...

No it's not. But only a fool would think that they don't mean what they say.

I wonder about the watcher, come on JohnB, does being a conservative really mean you have to agree with every batshit crazy conservative that stands up and shouts nonsense? I damn sure do not agree with all progressive ideas and neither does the guy who you seem to deride so much, maybe you should watch a few more TYT reports and see they don't worship and the alter of every liberal idea that comes down the pike....

I don't have to agree with every batshit crazy idea, but is she batshit crazy? Is there no part of the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to do exactly what she says? If there is no part then she's crazy, if there is then she is at least partly correct and therefore not crazy. That was the only point I was getting at.

As to TYT themselves, they are possibly the worst example of American culture I've ever seen. They expect and openly state that the rest of the world should live their lives in such a way as to not offend American sensibilities. With a complete lack of understanding about cultural differences they will label entire nations with the offensive tag of "racist" even after things have been explained to them. The guy is an opinionated, self absorbed moron with delusions of adequacy.

It has nothing to do with them being progressive either, Beck is just as monumentally stupid. I simply dislike the pundits with their overwhelming belief in their own rightousness and thank the universe every day that Americans have had more luck exporting "The Daily Show" than your rediculous pundits. They're the political version of the televangelist and do nothing but make my fists itch. (Except for the chick that used to be on TYT as cohost. Firstly a man never hits a woman and secondly even though she was quite braindead she was decorative. )

PS. I kind of liked the rant. Inventive insults are always fun to read. I admit I've always preferred the one "Couldn't find their arse if they were sitting on their hands" and "Couldn't find reality with a Ouija board and a Star Map".

@John. They didn't have to be prominent, just influential. And ignoring someones stated goal until they well on the way to achieving it is probably folly at best. If their stated goal is opposed to what you want, then isn't it better to stop it well before that point? I'm always mindful that my copy of "Mein Kampf" was published in New York in 1936 by a group of Americans who tried to warn their countrymen about what was happening in Europe. Nobody believed them either.

40 years ago he would have been saying the same thing about communists in the West.

The funny thing is that the Liberals were wrong back then, there really were "Reds under the bed", weren't there?

I mean just because an organisations stated goal is to undermine and destroy something is obviously no proof that they intend to do it.

He asked if you could find 5 dumber Americans......No, but I was watching one.

Zapatos, I think that there are many reasons involved. One problem in the climate debate is that people are constantly trying to reduce it to one factor or another while in truth the debate, like the climate is extremely complex.

What scientists "generally believe" depends on their field. Unless you check the actual figures (and most don't have time to) then you believe what the people in the field tell you. In the same way you "take the word" of the aero engineer that the plane will fly or the structural engineer that the building will stand up. So what scientists generally believe is worth no more than what joe bloggs in the street believes. Unless you have looked at the data and methodology involved to see for yourself then you are just echoing the opinion of others.

An often quoted figure is that "97% of scientists believe" but this is a lie. By now, anybody using that argument is perpetrating a known falsehood and is lieing. A bit blunt perhaps, but I'm tired of being polite about people with poor moral compasses. The figure comes from a 2009 internet survey that was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. Of that number only 3,146 bothered to answer the two question survey. This gets further cut down to the money shot of;

In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.

(Emphasis mine.)

75 out of 77 agree out of 3,146. What is actually saddening is that the two questions were;

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

And only 90% said that temps had risen. Since "more than 90%" of respondents had PhDs, this is not a good figure, it should have been 100%. The thing here is that most sceptics, including myself would answer "Risen" to Question 1 and probably answer "Yes" to Question 2, depending on your definition of "significant". If you think man is responsible for 10% of the rise, then that may be a "significant" percentage to some but not others. An absolute garbage of a survey. For those interested the survey itself is here.

A similar stunt was pulled in 2010 by Anderegg et. al. who starts with 1,372 people and pares it down to get the result desired. I especially like that "expertise" is judged by the number of papers written and nothing about cites or actual quality of research.

Another reason for the apparent widespread acceptance is funding. Sorry, but if the political money is on a topic then you get funding if your research is deemed "relevent". From acne to shark attacks, link it to "Global Warming" or "Climate change" and you're on a winner. Numberwatch from the UK has a great Warmlist of things linked to "Global Warming". Yes even "Witchcraft Executions" are on the rise due to "Global Warming". I was quite pleased that the harder sciences had managed to keep some modicum of decorum but in May this year came the classic paper; "X-ray emission from high-redshift miniquasars: self-regulating the population of massive black holes through global warming." They even manage to get the term "Climate Change" into the abstract. And so we have another paper and group of authors for Naomi to add to her list of "believers".

The rule of government funding is to get it you need to find a problem. Then to continue to get it you need to find that the problem is worse than you thought and is likely to get bigger over time and so will require much more research. Ignore climate for a minute. Let's say a researcher is asked by a government dept to investigate the problem of juvenile graffiti in the central city. He gets funding for a year. If at the end of the year he comes back and says "There is no problem" he's out of work, but if he comes back with "There is a problem and more research is needed to identify the causes" then he has a job for life. This isn't to denigrate anybody, it's just how the system is set up and how the game is played. In a similar fashion pay rates in government jobs are generally rated by how many people work under you. So the bigger you find the problem to be, the more researchers are needed to investigate it and the higher the pay grade you get as the "Boss". And the money is not small potatoes either. 15 years ago there was little money for the climate modellers to buy new toys with, last year (IIRC) in the USA they got some $600 million. Paleo-climatologist Michael Mann picked up some $2 million to study "mosquito bourne disease vectors" which isn't bad for a bloke whose expertise is in tree rings.

We'd all like to believe in the wonderful independent scientist doing his job for the sheer joy of discovery, but like Joe Bloggs the factory hand, there are bills to pay and a family to keep housed and fed. Reality bites.

You're also given the impression by the recurring use of the meme that "thousands" are responsible for an IPCC report. The number is actually much lower. It should also be remembered that the number of reviewers etc is actually irrelevent as the Lead author does not have to modify the text to respond to reviewers comments and can simply "reject" the reviewers complaint without explanation. The supposed "mistake" of Himalyan glaciers disappearing by 2035 was actually noted as wrong by reviewers in all drafts and the comments were ignored.

IPCC WG1 Chapter 2 which deals with changes in radiative forcings has an impressive list of authors, contributing authors etc and is responsible for the idea that solar variance is very low and modern warming cannot be attributed to solar influences. But how many of those august personages are actually qualified to judge solar forcings? One actually,the Lead Author Dr. Judith Lean. I'm not suggesting impropriety here, but it certainly does seem strange that the only person qualified to comment on solar forcings happens to choose the value given by the paper that she co-wrote. Hers is the only paper BTW, that is remotely near the low value of .5W/M-2 for an increase in solar forcing, all others put it at between 3 and 10 W/M-2. Out in the real world we have things called "Conflict of Inerest Policies", the IPCC has them too but has decided that it will be too hard to actually impliment them before, say, maybe, AR6 in about 2018.

We have to remember that each area depends on other areas getting their bit right. If the solar forcing people don't give the correct numbers to the modellers, then the modellers models won't work properly or will give very wrong answers. But would the modeller know it was wrong? Possibly not as they would be reasonably sure that their model was correct and are trusting that the figures given to them by others are also correct. So if an area is gven the wrong data it is easy for them to wander down the wrong path, after all they are only following where the data leads them.

Climatology also makes a number of assumptions and there is no way to prove that these are true. Like cloud cover changes only being a response to temperature changes. Those outside the field are neither told or know that this assumption istenuous at best and totally unproven.

Bluntly, scientists outside the field believe that scientists inside the field are playing by the rules of normal science. This simply isn't true. Have a look at the "Denizens" list over at Judith Currys site and see the various fields that people are from and why they became sceptics. Maybe, not being a scientist myself my view is too black and white but I can only go with what I know. Science follows the rules and ideas of Popper and Feynmann, pseudoscience does not. Climate science does not follow the rules of Popper and Feynmann, data is not open and shared. Should it really require legal action to find out which temperature stations were used as the data for a paper? Data is cut, modified and hidden. They aren't playing by the rules.

And there are advocates. These are "scientists" who will falsify data and do anything else they can to "help the cause". And before anybody gets on their high horse demanding "proof" I will remind them that to deny my comment is to claim that scientists as a group are incorruptable. A percentage of all people are corruptable, scientists are a group and therefore a percentage will be corrupt. Deal with that. It's rather interesting reading the papers on curruption in science. Something over 1% of scientists admit to falsifying data themselves but more than 17% claim to know somebody else who has done it. Somebody is telling porkies.

If the advocate is in a position to supply data to others........

We also have confirmation bias and plain old peer pressure. Try to publish against the "Consensus" and be prepared to cop a flogging.

There is also the propensity in climate science to mistake a model for reality. Models are important in most fields of science this is true but reality is the ultimate arbiter. But in climate science they call model runs "experiments" and treat the outcome as data as real as that collected by physical instruments. Quite often if the models disagree with the instruments it is used as an argument that the instruments need "recalibrating". This gave us the Sherwood paper a couple of years ago that claimed that the groundspeed of a weather balloon was a more accurate measure of temperature than the thermometer carried by the weather baloon.

But people outside the field who haven't read the literature don't know that, do they?

I think that there is also a political component. Before the fall of communism there were plenty of communists around, holding rallies and complaining about American Imperialism and demanding global financial restructuring, rich nations giving to the poor, that sort of thing. where are all those people now? When communism fell did they all change their minds and go "Gee, I guess capitalism is pretty good" and started businesses? Nope, many joined and now quite control the Green movement. We are talking about people who took lessons in journalism from Pravda. Their goals have not changed, just the words. Now it's the evil CO2 that must be destroyed not the Great Satan America. If people think I'm wrong in this then do tell, where did they go? Is it just an accident that the language and aims of the environmental movement are so similar to the old style communists?

America seems to be very easily split on political lines so it wouldn't surprise me if quite a number of people either believe or disbelieve simply because Al Gore pushes the idea. He's an ex Democrat VP and so must be telling the truth for some and will be viewed automatically as a liar by others.

I should include the statements by august bodies somewhere about now. Frankly, so what? That this body or that agrees is nothing more than "Appeal to Authority" or "Appeal to Popularity" and is also untrue. Those bodies did not put it to a vote of their members, the Board made the statement. Assuming a standard quorum it wasn't the 6,000 or whatever members of the American Meteorological Association that made the statement, it was 4 members of the Board. Note that people have resigned from organisations in protest and others have demanded a vote.

Also there is ego. Anyone who reads history will see a common theme running through our societies. We don't want to be victims of the mindless forces of nature, we want to believe that we are in control somehow. From early pagan rites for harvest fertility to rain dances to praying in a church or temple for rain, we want to believe that we are in control and are not insignificant little specks that can be wiped out in an instant. Note the words being used today "If we don't do something the climate change will become uncontrollable and....". Since when was it actually "controllable"? When did we learn to control the climate? I must have missed that memo.

So there are many reasons for accepting the "Consensus" and I think high on that list is people simply accepting what is said and not looking at the nitty gritty themselves and ego.

Luiz Goltran. (Spanish Shepherd)

They are weather balloons or misidentified aircraft.

Any other option will get you labelled as a conspiracy freak (if you think we made them secretly) or a fool (if you think that somebody else made them).

For some unknown reason, basic two value logical deduction scares the bejeezus out of some people.

At some point in human history time travel will be possible.

There was a rather good short story about this idea and Stonehenge. A camera on a tripod is sent back to see why Stonehenge was built but every photo seemed to show people bowing to something behind the camera. By turning the camera around they realised that the people were bowing to the camera. Also a series of trips were needed to work out exactly when Stonehenge was built.

So the answer was quite simple. Stonehenge was built to commemorate the magical device that appeared and disappeared over a long period of time.

Chicken, meet Egg.

There were far more influential people than Hitler throughout history.

I don't understand how something like this SHOULDN'T be public.The government is not a for-profit corporation. It's supposed to be working inthe best interests of the people that elected it. If they do things under the cloak of secrecy, how can the people hold them accountable?

Sorry, I wasn't clear. While it should be out in the open, it should also be done through channels. In the example I gave of forest clearing it should be released, but by an official spokesperson and not by any Joe who wants to sound off. Basically anybody who isn't specifically employed in an "announcing" position is expected to keep their trap shut.

The other simple fact is that governments sometimes do things that are not legal. It's not nice, it sure ain't pretty but it is how the world works. The general public are much happier if they don't know all the gory details of what their government does. Allowing general commentary from general public servants gets in the way of this and could compromise ongoing operations.

Hi SeekingLeviatan. It looks like you registered just to ask that, so I'm pretty chuffed. Welcome to SFN and I hope you enjoy it here.

Your questions are fair and reasonable but slightly over state the case. (In the case of volcanoes, you're very wide of the mark.)

So let's get the volcano thing out of the way. Even though recent research has virtually tripled the estimate for volcanic output of CO2 this makes little difference. The output of human CO2 emissions are far greater. The major effect of volcanoes on the climate is probably more from ash and dust cooling the planet rather than the CO2 emissions warming it.

Compared to the actual annual flux both natural and man made emissions are quite small. For example a change of less than 1% in the flux would result in the increase in CO2 that we have seen since 1850 or so. We also know from the long term records that CO2 increases lag behind warming by about 1,000 years and the last warming period was 1,000 years ago. It is possible that some of the increase in CO2 since 1850 is natural. The vast majority however should come from the burning of fossil fuels.

The reason for kicking off with volcanoes is simple. Excepting for periods of prolonged and well above average volcanic activity, they pretty much don't do anything to the climate. So it's not a case of believing that natural factors "such as volcanic activity" have an effect and man does not. Except for their cooling effect, volcanoes aren't worth considering.

However, a shift in cloud cover of less than 1% would explain all the warming since 1850. Can you show that cloud cover has not changed by less than 1% in the last century and a half? Of course not. The natural forcings aren't as small as you think, the energies in nature dwarf the best efforts of mankind.

The question is about attribution. Since 1850 or so there has been warming of about .7-.8 degrees globally and this roughly equates to about a 2.4 W/M-2 change in radiative forcing. How much of this increase is from CO2 and how much from land use changes, solar influence, cloud cover, etc? This is the question. It's a vital question because if there is a problem then we should be spending money in the right areas to actually do something about solving the problem. Money is limited and should be spent where it will have an effect beyond giving somebody a warm fuzzy.

Attribution is also part of the answer about sea levels etc. When it warms, sea levels go up, when it cools they go down. (Generally speaking) SEa levels going up and ice melting are symptoms of a warming world regardless of the cause. Just because they happen does not in any way go to prove the actions of man are responsible. Forest fires start from both natural and human causes. The existence of a fire is not proof that there was an arsonist. Far too often in this debate "proof of warming" is put forward as "proof of attribution". A ssoon as someone mentions ice, sea levels or bloody polar bears then they are conflating the two.

To illustrate let's assume that there are only three factors involved; Natural forcings, CO2 and Land use. If natural forcings are responsible for .7 of the .8 degrees of warming, then spending money on CO2 reduction will have no real long term benefit will it? Similarly if it is land use changes then messing with the CO2 emissions will not have a useful effect. Only if CO2 is the major driver and it is going to be a problem, do we need to do anything at all.

So is warming a problem? We have had some .8 degrees in the last 150 years or so. The growing season is longer, people don't get to skate on the Thames any more, winters are milder. Despite what you may have read in the MSM there is no documented increase in any form of extreme weather. Big storms, cyclones and tornadoes are down. Frankly I'm not seeing any problems here, what ones do you see?

Will warming be a problem in the future? So far the only reason to say yes are the predictions of the models and they are not properly tested and verified. As I noted in another thread the climate models are about as accurate as having a monkey throwing darts. This level of accuracy leaves me very underwhelmed and with little inclination for concern. The doomsday predictions come from the fact that models consider water vapour to be an amplifier, changing the direct increase caused by a doubling of CO2 from about 1.1 degrees to around 2.4. This amplifying effect has not been observed in either the lab or nature and except for the model assumptions there is no reason to believe it exists at all. If the amplification idea was correct, then we should have seen about 1.6 degrees by now, so where is it? We are on track for slightly less than the basic figure of 1.1 degrees for a doubling of CO2 and as I pointed out above this has come pretty much without a downside.

In a way this answers your final question;

I just don't understand why you are willing to accept that these "natural" factors (such as volcanic activity) can account for climate change, but the irresponsible activities of 6,894,594,844 primates (with guns) cannot.

Because the natural forcings are so vast and powerful that they can easily change the climate but for the anthropogenic theory to work you need to have magical, invisible amplification factors that nobody has ever seen and energy has to be ably to "hide" in the system for decades without being detected so that future warming can be "in the pipeline". For climate, I believe in science not magic. Do you realise that everybody has been running around like headless chooks over .8 degrees in a century and a half when nature could plummet us into near ice age conditions in under 30 years? Each winter colder than the one before, the snow coming earlier and staying longer until it doesn't melt at all. and you know what? If it happens then the period 2000-2010 will still be the "warmest on record".

I've posted this graph before in an attempt to get people to understand a bit of perspective on this.

Even if man was responsible for all the warming since 1850, his bit is the little uptick on the very right hand end. Compare that to what nature can do all on it's own without any help from us at all. Extreme or unprecedented aren't the right adjectives here, small, tiny and boring are.

Does that help? Or clear things up a bit?

Frankly, if I have a nightmare on climate it is this. That the apocalyptic predictions are right and the cause is land use changes. If this were the case then the only way to change the future would be to exterminate about 3/4 of the planetary population. This is not a pleasant prospect.

Does this happen in other "democratic" countries? Should it?

In answer to the first part, yes it does. It is in fact pretty standard. And to the second part, also yes.

People who work for the gov are often in possession of privileged inside information and this information can have economic consequences if released. Think of it like "Insider Trading", if a parks officer knew that 100 square miles of forest was about to be cut down to allow for a huge solar plant and the information got out then various groups would be vying for opportunities to make a killing.

Similarly it is the tradition in Westminster based Parliments that public servants be free to give "Full, frank, fair and fearless" advice to government Ministers and to do that they must remain neutral. As soon as they become associated with one side or the other then their advice is no longer "fair" as it is automatically biased. Yes it's a trade off, but a good one. The public servant promises to give the most honest and unbiased advice s/he can and the government promises not to sack him/her for giving that advice. Give compromised or biased advice and you deserve to be sacked.

There is also the difficulty of separating the person from their position. A good example here is the head of the GISS, Dr James Hansen. While he might be speaking as an individual he is always announced as a department head from NASA. So when he speaks, is it as "James Hansen" or is he speaking for "NASA"?

Oh no! Can't let the data/reality set our agendas and dictate policy decisions instead of our opinions now, can we?

Both sides of politics are guilty of this and good government relies on the independence of the public service. The people of Victoria learned a couple of years ago what happens when you let the green advocates be the major advisors on policy. The insanity is that after a death toll in the hundreds the greens still think that their policies are right.

Moontanman, it ain't just the Texas GOP.

As a nation you are against corporal punishment but places like Texas have an "Express Lane" for executions. So you don't officially condone striking a person to punish them, but killing them instead is fine.

Then when you do kill the poor sap, you sterilize the needle first. Why? Are you scared he'll catch some horrible disfiguring disease in the last 5 minutes of his life?

There is a lot of "non thinking" going on over there. There's a lot of it happening elsewhere too, but some of yours are silliest.

P.S. TYT are a great example self righteous, self opinionated moronism being given a voice.

A very interesting video. I notice that he makes the point early on that I often see, ie that many progressives simply view the conservative as "blinded by religion" or "stupid" and therefore ignore those opinions.

I did find it very interesting that he takes the idea that progressives are less about "authority" and I'm not sure I agree. Traditional forms of authority perhaps, but progressives tend to substitute new authorities for the old ones. He makes the example of religion and food which is fair enough. You don't have to bow to the authority of the church becomes bowing to the authority of the "Health" industry. (or whatever)

I think that there is also a bit of a dicotomy in that progressives (leftists) are more likely to prefer a collectivist approach or answer and are more willing to give the collective authority than a conservative is. So the difference isn't about attitude to authority per se, but more about the types of authority accepted by the two sides. Conservatives obviously would prefer traditional types of authority whereas progressives prefer any type of authority except traditional ones.

Oh, rubbish, John.

Which part? Are the models not compared to the historical record? Articles from your own link say so.

Second one down Pincus et al 2008 says;

Unlike weather forecasts, the climate models used to make long-term projections have not been subject to uniform assessment over time. Climate model evaluation is, in some ways, more difficult than assessing the skill of short-term weather forecasts because climate models solve a boundary value problem as opposed to the initial value problem posed in weather forecasting. This blurs the association between time in the model and time in nature, so model forecasts can’t be compared with observations on a day-to-day or month-to-month basis. Furthermore, climate models are primarily used to make projections over very long timescales (decades to centuries), and these projections cannot be directly assessed until that time has passed.

[5] In lieu of direct assessment of long-term trends, climate models are evaluated according to their ability to simulate present-day conditions and the historical record.

Emphasis mine.

Attempts to identify which aspects (if any) of the current climate are the best predictors of climate sensitivity or related quantities have so far been unsuccessful, so a model’s skill in simulating the presentday climate may not reflect accuracy in long-term projections. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that a model that does a poor job simulating the current climate will somehow produce credible long-term projections.

Which was my point.

As to forcings;

The above graph shows the forcings used by the GISS-E climate model. Note the Solar forcing is .3W/M-2. This is not the value used by the IPCC which uses .5W/M-2. So there are two differing values for Solar forcings. Now if we look at the CMIP5 dataset source found here, we find that they use the Solaris data and Solaris say,

It is recommended to use the TSI time series with varying background (second column in ascii files) for the CMIP5 runs and if desired perform additional sensitivity experiments without the varying background.

A comparison between the values involced is found also on the Solaris site here. Note that the two values differ by more than .5W/M-2.

But wait, there's more. Let's look at the "Climate Forcing Data" over at NOAA, found here. A nice selection of Solar data sets. What does Lean et al 1995 say?

Gee, looks like a low in 1700 of 1364.2209 W/M-2 and a high in 1989 of 1368.2017 W/M-2. Of course I'm not a climate scientist, but I can do simple subtraction. Subtracting the 1700 value from the 1989 value gives a difference of 3.9808 W/M-2. In your world this might match the .3W/M-2 that the GISS model uses, but in my world 4 is more than ten times larger than .3.

Maybe you didn't like what I said about the mistakes cancelling out. Going back to Pincus et al, from your own link it says;

No individual model excels in all scores though the ‘‘IPCC mean model,’’ constructed by averaging the fields produced by all the CMIP models, performs particularly well across the board. This skill is due primarily to the individual model errors being distributed on both sides of the observations, and to a lesser degree to the models having greater skill at simulating largescale features than those near the grid scale.

Which is exactly what I said with the difference that I don't think the average "performs particularly well across the board".

It should also be noted that Pincus makes this point;

Clouds strongly modulate the long-term evolution of the atmosphere, and cloud feedbacks on the climate system have remained the single largest source of uncertainty in climate projections since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; see http://www.ipcc.ch) began issuing Assessment Reports in 1990

and

There are, however, no standard metrics for judging model skill in simulating presentday cloudiness or related quantities such as rainfall and radiation.

So if clouds are important and there is no way of measuring the accuracy of the model WRT to clouds, then how does a hindcast work and get the right answer? Magic? Or fudge factors?

We could look at climate sensitivity values, most of those coming from Forest et al 2006. Just so you know, he's the guy who figured out that the temp rise for a doubling of CO2 would be about 3 degrees due to amplification rather than the simple 1 degree that physics says. It's an important paper and has been cited more than 100 times. Nicholas Lewis (a coauthor of O'Donnell et al 2010 and one of the guys that shredded Eric Stieg and his compatriots over at realclimate) has been looking at the data used in Forest and the methodology involved. Well, he would look at the data, but that dog has been rather hungry again and the original data has been "lost", but it took Forest over a year to admit it. While some data is available the two sets differ remarkably and provide sensitivity values of 3 degrees or 1 degree depending on which one is used.

Hop over to Judith Currys and read all about it. There are only 680 comments so far, so make a coffee first. Although I'll bet that actually reading the thing is too much trouble and you'll grab a post from Skeptical Science or Realclimate instead. Why read and think when you can let cartoonists do it for you?

iNow, look again at the OP;

Does anyone know of a clear articulation of the verification or validation procedures undertaken in weather or climate simulations? I know V+V is heavily relied upon in the engineering sciences

No, climate models do not have a clear V & V process as the term is understood in any other field.

Now if you think I've been talking rubbish then you should be able to come up with a paper that provides that "clear articulation". Find that and you can say "rubbish", all you provided was a Google list of papers that had the word "verification" somewhere in the text.

Put up or shut up. Either give a reasoned argument or don't bother wasting my time. And don't call a post "rubbish" unless you are willing and able to provide some sort of evidence. And Gish Galloping won't work.

As to the accuracy of the models themselves a recent paper by Ross McKitrick has a look at this topic.

To be blunt the findings were;

In only 3 of 22 cases do we reject leaving out the climate model data, but in one of those cases the correlation is negative, so only 2 count--that is, in 20 of 22 cases we find the climate models are either no better than or worse than random numbers.

So 20 out of 22 IPCC climate models are roughly as accurate as having a monkey throw darts.

The short answer is "No". In general V & V procedures are not done.

What is done is "Hindcasting", a process where the climate model is run with a variety of forcing values and the results compared to the historical record since 1850 or so. Once the output roughly matches the record, the model is deemed verified and useful for forecasting the next 300 or 3,000 years.

Given the number and values of the various tuneable parameters in a climate model it would be very unusual if you couldn't get it to match the historical record. The varying models use different values for climate sensitivity, forcings, etc but do have one thing in common, they all use a value for negative forcings due to aerosol particulates that is exactly right to balance the other forcings and make the output match the record. Isn't that handy?

It's like having a ballistics program where you can vary the gravity, wind speed, air viscosity, etc and you tune these factors until the output matches a known ballistic curve. You then use this to make predictions.

This "tunability" means that models are generally good in one area and poor in others. This is why we use an ensemble of models, the theory being that by using the average of the models the mistakes will cancel out. Personally I view this as saying that if I have 4 cars, one has no motor, one has no wheels, one has no doors and the last has no seats, that on average, I have a good car.

Although I understand now that cold fusion is completely theoretical with no hard evidence, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Not quite. I look at this occasionally and my best impression is that it is maddeningly confused. Some people get results and others can't replicate them and there is a distinct lack of actual theory.

An effect was noted by accident in the original experiments. Since then some have had similar results and some haven't and everybody is trying to work out a theory as to what is going on. There are enough unusual results to keep the interest going but not enough positive results, either in theory or practice to break into the wider world yet.

There is also the possibility that it does work quite well but the evil empire of "Big Oil" is keeping it a secret so that they can continue to rape the planet and make obscene profits. A "Big Somebody" always seems to be responsible for something, so I thought I'd throw it in now.

John, I'd like to agree, but considering some of the other suggestions that have come out of the mouths of our "Intelligensia" over the years, I wouldn't bet on it.

One of the problems with being a young nation that was granted independence and a workable system of governance is that we avoided all the things that can go wrong. We've never had a civil war or revolution so there are many down here that believe we are somehow "different", that the excesses that other nations have seen simply "couldn't happen here".

A good example was the Republic debate where the preferred option for the republicans was one like the Weimar Republic, Germany 1930s. When you asked them if they didn't think a system that allowed Hitler to gain power might not have some problems it was always, "But we're Australians, that couldn't happen here."

We've had serious suggestions from the PC crowd that judges should be sent to "Re-education Camps" where they could be schooled in making the "right" decisions. (And yes, that was the term they used.)

Because we haven't had these really bad things happen in our history, there is the belief by some that they never could. This can be quite scary.

iNow, a very impressive piece of scripting. Right up there with the final speech from "The American President".

I missed this one the first time around and having read it I find one thing rahter interesting, the continued emphasis on "Corporations" and their influence. Corporations are always business and business is always aligned with the right. The problem isn't "Corporations", the problem is "rich and powerful special interest groups". The World Wildlife Fund stands to make some $60 Billion if a world carbon market can be brought into being, are they protecting the environment or making a profit? If Exxon stodd to make a tenth of that we all know what the answer would be, don't we? Greenpeace own "Renewable Energy" power generating companies in Europe, is their desire for continued subsidies for "renewables" out of a desire to save the planet or to increase the bottom line? If they were a coal company there would be no doubt as to the answer.

I don't know the situation in the USA, but in Oz we have "Industry Superannuation Funds" these are often controlled by Unions, hardly a bastion of right wing thinking. Picking CBUS, because few industries are as heavily unionised as the building industry we see they have some $17 Billion in assets under management. As the owning unions get a percentage as "Management Fees", where do their loyalties really lie?

Continued emphasis on "Banks" and "Corporations", always thought of as being right wing aligned and quite often with the word "greedy" added in front ignores half the problem. Organisations on the left are doing exactly the same thing. Moreover they are doing it without scrutiny because those most opposed to their agendas are only looking over the fence and aren't seeing what is going on behind them. As I said above, the problem isn't Corporations, it's well funded special interest groups.

I believe that good governance of a nation is about the effective balance of three forces; Government, Capital and Labour (or Unions if we are talking groups). Previously when one group started getting uppity the other two could knock it down a peg, however in recent years with investing etc, too many of "Labour" are also now part of "Capital" which hamstrings the governments ability to regulate. Those Union funds flowing freely to a political party are a great inducement to do as you are told.

*Cue spooky music and go for close up on crones face*

"Beware the corporation that does not look like one!!! Beware!!!"

*Sound and camera fade as we zoom in on the crones twitching left eye*

Don't you hate it when a long and detailed post gets deleted when you hit the wrong key? Sorry if the next bit seems a bit abrupt, but I lost about an hour with the delete and I don't have time to do it all again in detail.

Before anybody gets too excited over that 70% who suffer from 2 or more diorders the full report is here.

They count "Anti social" as a personality disorder and "Excess drinking" as a disorder, so the 70% is made up mostly of antisocial drunks and antisocial drug addicts. Those with what most of us would call an illness make up about 7%. The relevent sections are 5, 9 and 12. By all means help the sick, but druggies and boozers have to take responsibility for their actions. The choice to drink was theirs, so the responsibility for the results are also theirs. This might sound harsh, but if the individual is not responsible for their own actions, then who is?

The other thing to consider when considering this sort of survey is that the very first thing inmate are taught is what to tell the social worker/psychiatrist. If you can get them onside with drugs or alcohol as "mitigating circumstances" there is a good chance at a reduced sentence. Be polite, act contrite and promise to get help for your drinking/drug "problem" and you can quite often walk free. In short, prisoners lie.

iNow, so long a good discussion comes from the OP, who really cares? I asked the question because I thought that if people really believed that the punishment "paid the debt" then they would act differently. So if punishment doesn't "pay the debt", then what would? It's like we both believe in the "presumption of innocence", but if we're watching the news and see somebody arrested for a crime and think "They got the bloke that did so and so" then do we really? Haven't we just convicted the person in our mind?

Your comment about dog training was very Heinleinian, ever read "Starship Troopers"? He uses the example of training a dog to show why punishment is required as well as reward. I personally think that corporal punishment, direct and short is preferable to incarceration. Put bluntly, punishment only works if it effects the offender, so if the offender doesn't care about spending 6 months inside for his 23rd drink driving offence then there is no punishment or deterrent effect. I think an escalating scale of number of lashes would have a far more immediate effect.

Much is often made that we concentrate more on punishment than reward, but that makes sense. How do reward a drink driver for not drink driving any more? Buy him a new car? I think a lot of people that are incarcerated on minor offences would be far better off with corporal punishment and release. At the very least they will be thinking "Sh*t that hurt. I don't think I'll do that again."

A comment by Phi in another thread got me thinking.

A couple of years ago, Florida greatly increased the distance registered sex offenders could live from a school. Sounded great, sounded right, but it effectively meant that RSOs couldn't live in ANY populated area, since the overlap of school districts cancelled out available homes and apartments. RSOs (which included those who'd been caught urinating in public and charged with indecent exposure) had to join the ranks of the homeless (iirc, they couldn't leave the state either), living under bridges at the city outskirts. These were people who had already gone to prison and been released, with their debt to society supposedly paid up.

(Emphasis mine.)

I admit to being on the fence a bit with this one. On the one hand I have to say that once the term is served, then yes the debt is paid and the person should get a new start with a clean slate, otherwise what was the point of prison anyway? On the other hand, if I was a parent I'd want to know if serial sex offenders were moving close to my kids school as well.

This isn't meant as a thread as to whether jail is a good option or not, but regardless of the punishment chosen, when does it end? When does the person stop paying for their crime?

Americans do seem to have their own particular brand of stupidity.

So do our nations. Unfortunately none of them are experimenting with stupidity "Lite", it's always the full strength stuff.

Lifenews was just the first link I grabbed. Remember I wasn't out to show the right or wrong of the proposition. I think that most people would find it very wrong indeed, however very well educated people have found it right as well. It was only meant as a topic to illustrate that right and wrong are subjective and not objective, nothing more.

I could have linked to the Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun or the The Telegraph. They're all pretty much the same story, probably all taken from the same AAP feed.

What is post abortion? How it is relevant to this issue?

I only brought it up to demonstrate that the line between right and wrong is not clear. I view it as clearly wrong, but this places me on the opposite side to apparently "great" thinkers who feel it is okay. What it is is killing the baby after birth if it deemed to adversely interfere with the familys life and lifestyle. Since the child is only just born, they can't really be thought of as "human" and won't be aware of what they are missing out on, so what is the problem? "Merely being a human being is not enough to warrant a respect for a person’s right to life."

Read about it here if you want. This has been around for a few months down here and is one of the reasons that I choke when "progressives" expound on their "values". You'd never get a conservative to take their stance.

You under estimate the effectiveness of this tactic.

No, I think it is very effective. It works doesn't it? So it needs to be neutralised. The fundies get to define the terms and pick the battleground, which puts all the advantage in their hands. By giving them the word "marriage" to use as they see fit removes the advantage IMO. They can't campaign against gay marriage because it isn't about to exist, gays aren't getting married, they're having civil unions. It also gives the moderates a face saving way out as they might be against gay marriage but civil unions are a secular matter.

By changing the battleground from "marriage" to "unions" we bring these people and their motives out into the open and redefine the terms to our advantage. They're no longer "defending church marriage" they are against "Civil Unions in a Registry office" and interfering with personal liberty is a strong motivator in the US.

It is hard to understand some of the quirks of the American psyche from the outside. We don't have the very strong evangelical movement that you do and the bizarre claims of some of the televangelists over the years have left us scratching our heads and thinking "Someone believed that BS?". From the outside, if we were asked which States would be most likely to be strongly Bible belt with strong fundy in fluence we would go for the Southern ones and Alabama would be up at or near the top of the list. Yet Alabama has the largest percentage of same sex couples raising children in the USA which is a surprise as we wouldn't think of States like that as being too "gay family friendly".

I don't know what the final answer will be and I suspect that it will be different for each nation in the short term. It would be great if sex wasn't a determinant in the marriage equation, but it is. Politics has been described as "The art of the possible" and we need to take the possible wins we can now, while keeping our eye on the final target.

NASA didn't get to the moon in the three man Apollo capsule in isolation, they built on the earlier, smaller wins of the Mercury and Gemini missions. Take the small wins when you can, but never forget that are only stepping stones on the longer path.