Scientific Journal Editor Resigns Over Climate Change Denier’s Paper

Dr. Roy Spencer’s paper was ‘fundamentally flawed’
Science • Views: 31,077

The editor of science journal Remote Sensing is resigning, after admitting that a recent paper by creationist climate change denier Roy Spencer should not have been published.

Spencer’s paper was another one of those “crushing blows” that was supposed to “destroy the hoax of climate change,” to quote one of the gloating right wing emails I received when it was publicized in the denialist blogosphere. Instead, it has damaged the reputation of a respected scientific journal, and caused the resignation of the editor in chief.

Yet somehow, I’m certain that the next time Roy Spencer puts out a paper (in which he’ll ignore all previous criticisms and repeat the same false conclusions from the same spurious data), the same people will run through the same cycle of idiocy again.

More information:

RealClimate: “Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedback”

The hype surrounding a new paper by Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell is impressive (see for instance Fox News); unfortunately the paper itself is not. News releases and blogs on climate denier web sites have publicized the claim from the paper’s news release that “Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming”. The paper has been published in a journal called Remote sensing which is a fine journal for geographers, but it does not deal with atmospheric and climate science, and it is evident that this paper did not get an adequate peer review. It should not have been published.

Journal editor resigns over ‘flawed’ paper co-authored by climate sceptic

John Abraham, an associate professor at the University of St Thomas’s school of engineering in Minnesota who criticised the Spencer paper upon its publication, told the Guardian: “It is remarkable that an editor-in-chief has stepped down from his role at a journal because of the publication of a flawed paper. This significant event reflects on the significance of the flaws in the paper and its review process. It is commendable that Wagner has reacted responsibly to the situation.”

He continued: “Spencer and his colleagues have a long history of minimising the effects of human-caused climate change; they also have a long history of making serious technical errors. This latest paper is only one in a decade-long track record of errors that have forced Spencer to revise his work as the errors are brought to light. Spencer is well known in the scientific community for publishing high-profile papers that initially dispute global warming and only later are found to be faulty.

“This latest article reportedly showed that the climate is not as sensitive to increases in greenhouse gases. It also called into question the cause-and-effect relationship between clouds and climate change. Wolfgang’s resignation was based on the quality of the review the paper received and the obvious technical errors which the paper contained.”

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68 comments
1 Targetpractice  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:14:05pm

I’ll take a guess and say the response to this by the deniers was he was “forced” by shadowy forces to resign, that Spencer’s paper was too close to the “truth” for those high in the government cabal’s tastes, and that it actually “proves” that the whole thing is truly a hoax.

2 Charles Johnson  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:20:38pm

re: #1 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

He’s already out there claiming that the IPCC is trying to shut him up.

3 Targetpractice  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:23:44pm

re: #2 Charles

He’s already out there claiming that the IPCC is trying to shut him up.

Every time I listen to one of these deniers, I can’t help but have flashbacks to the “Truthers.”

“We know the real truth! We have all the evidence! They’re being paid to make us look like lunatics!”

4 SanFranciscoZionist  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:27:23pm

re: #3 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

Every time I listen to one of these deniers, I can’t help but have flashbacks to the “Truthers.”

“We know the real truth! We have all the evidence! They’re being paid to make us look like lunatics!”

Easy money.

5 jaunte  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:31:44pm

Spencer seems to prefer a role as a polemicist rather than a scientist
[Link: www.amazon.com…]

6 jamesfirecat  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:32:29pm

re: #3 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

Every time I listen to one of these deniers, I can’t help but have flashbacks to the “Truthers.”

“We know the real truth! We have all the evidence! They’re being paid to make us look like lunatics!”

Liebkind: You made ze Fuehrer look like a fool!

Bialystock and Bloom: He didn’t need our help!

7 HappyWarrior  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:38:41pm

re: #6 jamesfirecat

Liebkind: You made ze Fuehrer look like a fool!

Bialystock and Bloom: He didn’t need our help!

Updinging for the Producers ref, my favorite Brooks.

8 HappyWarrior  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:42:56pm

These are the same people fwiw that called Galileo and equate Darwin with satanism. I’ll take the scientists who actually pay attention to this stuff in school over a bunch of hacks who think they know science.

9 Kronocide  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:49:39pm

I was hoping Charles would post this. Big news that will be ignored by those who crowed the loudest about this ‘study’ meaning anything credible.

10 thedopefishlives  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:53:13pm

I bet the climate change deniers will make the same big deal out of this paper as the Twoofers do with Professor Jones’s “peer-reviewed” paper. They think that just because they got a paper published in SOME journal, SOMEwhere, that lends it legitimacy that cannot be denied. I’m afraid not, folks.

11 Kronocide  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:53:25pm

re: #5 jaunte

Spencer seems to prefer a role as a polemicist rather than a scientist
[Link: www.amazon.com…]

Mr Spencer is wrote a book about economics.

Best-selling author Roy W. Spencer looks at the fundamental driving force that propels a society to ever higher levels of prosperity, generation after generation: People having the freedom to provide as much stuff as possible to each other that is needed and wanted…no matter what that stuff happens to be. Everything else in economics is details.

Hoo boy. You Betchianism.

12 jaunte  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 1:56:08pm

re: #11 BigPapa

no matter what that stuff happens to be

Human-and drug-traffickers agree.

13 wrenchwench  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:22:50pm

Spencer’s biggest fan is Rush Limbaugh. That says something.

14 ProBosniaLiberal  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:22:51pm

Are we going to have an open thread later today? I would like one.

15 wrenchwench  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:25:39pm

re: #14 ProLifeLiberal

Are we going to have an open thread later today? I would like one.

When it’s quiet like this, you can consider any thread to be open.

16 ProBosniaLiberal  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:31:12pm

re: #15 wrenchwench

Heh, I’ll be running the flag at OU, so I’ll be leaving for a bit (won’t stay for game this time: Already have headache, and the noise around me would make it worse).

However, I was talking to one of the girls who had their break-up incident last week. Close friend from High School.

Was talking about hanging out and and doing stuff over winter break. Watching movies, eating, music, the usual stuff. However I also mentioned that I liked swimming (I lived in Florida for 7 years, so duh)

She said quote unquote

Sounds like you’ll have fun.

I think the Catholic High School Girl I remember has relaxed alot.

17 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:32:50pm

re: #2 Charles

He’s already out there claiming that the IPCC is trying to shut him up.

“HELP, HELP!! I’M BEING REPRESSED!”

18 ProBosniaLiberal  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:33:30pm

re: #17 Dark_Falcon

Please put the clip there next time.

19 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:35:22pm

re: #18 ProLifeLiberal

Please put the clip there next time.

20 ProBosniaLiberal  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:35:56pm

re: #19 Dark_Falcon

I approve! :D

21 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:37:19pm

re: #2 Charles

Yeah, and his blog is certainly a place for him to rant about it. But even there I found a comment by one of his supporters that laments that Spencer doesn’t allow his (Spencer’s) own critics to freely comment at Spencer’s blog. OTOH, I’ll note that the IPCC takes comments on their reports from anyone and even if they reject them they don’t deny that they exist.

22 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:49:16pm

Many people misunderstand what the IPCC is or what it does.

It doesn’t do research of its own - it’s not a research institution.

The IPCC primarily does two important things:
1) Summarizes climate research worldwide into documents for consumption by non-specialists in governments and lay people;
2) Coordinates independent researchers worldwide who want to share data and terminology freely.

The IPCC is the stepchild of the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization. If the Tea Party types had their way and got rid of the IPCC not only would climate research not go away, but the exact same functions would just be picked up by other organizations.

23 Political Atheist  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 2:56:42pm

Just saw tornado warnings on TWC for Lake Charles and Lafayette La. Look out La lizards.

24 Interesting Times  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:00:22pm

re: #22 freetoken

BreakingNews Breaking News
Lightning, heavy rain spur stadium evacuation at Notre Dame game in South Bend, Ind. - NBC News

BreakingNews Breaking News
More football weather woes: Lightning delays Western Mich-U of M game in 3rd quarter

…not to mention how hellish and impractical high school football practice must have been in Texas due to heat wave/drought.

Think the American public might *finally* begin to care about climate change when it messes with *gasp* football?

25 Killgore Trout  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:01:12pm

re: #23 Rightwingconspirator

Just saw tornado warnings on TWC for Lake Charles and Lafayette La. Look out La lizards.

I didn’t know they got tornadoes down there.

26 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:02:01pm

Surprised to see my recent Page promoted to the front.

Anyway, in the CSPAN write up on the Tea Orgy early today I couldn’t help but notice:

[…]

With the President set to talk about his jobs plan to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, many of the Republican presidential candidates are weighing in with their jobs ideas.

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman unveiled his plan in New Hampshire this week.[…]

Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer chose the Chinese Embassy in Washington as the place to release his plan for jobs. […]

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will unveil his jobs plan this Tuesday in Nevada. […]

If Plans were nickels we’d all be rich by now…

27 Political Atheist  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:02:37pm

re: #25 Killgore Trout

And now they say parts of Jefferson parish are being evacuated. I wonder if Reine has electricity.

28 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:02:59pm

re: #22 freetoken

Many people misunderstand what the IPCC is or what it does.

It doesn’t do research of its own - it’s not a research institution.

The IPCC primarily does two important things:
1) Summarizes climate research worldwide into documents for consumption by non-specialists in governments and lay people;
2) Coordinates independent researchers worldwide who want to share data and terminology freely.

The IPCC is the stepchild of the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization. If the Tea Party types had their way and got rid of the IPCC not only would climate research not go away, but the exact same functions would just be picked up by other organizations.

They wouldn’t care. They want it gone as a symbolic victory against the “lying scientists”.

29 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:04:08pm

re: #25 Killgore Trout

TS Lee is doing the job down there.

30 Kronocide  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:05:13pm

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

I hope Charles posts this, it’s really good. As an ex GOP voter this column really resonated with me.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

31 Surabaya Stew  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:06:54pm

re: #25 Killgore Trout

I didn’t know they got tornadoes down there.

Seems as if every US state is capiable of having tornados. I read something a while ago stating the the South gets nearly as many as the Great Plains do.

32 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:07:50pm

re: #31 Surabaya Stew

Seems as if every US state is capiable of having tornados. I read something a while ago stating the the South gets nearly as many as the Great Plains do.

The only places without them are those with lots of mountains.

33 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:08:16pm

re: #28 Dark_Falcon

Yeah, it’s just a lynch-mob mentality.

34 Targetpractice  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:16:43pm

re: #26 freetoken

Surprised to see my recent Page promoted to the front.

Anyway, in the CSPAN write up on the Tea Orgy early today I couldn’t help but notice:

If Plans were nickels we’d all be rich by now…

Yeah, they’ve all got “plans,” but none of them can give us the details beyond the talking points. 10 gets you 20 that every one of those plans calls for taxes to remain either whether they are or be cut even further.

35 Killgore Trout  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:19:20pm

Radical Islam
Image: DUUwH.jpg

36 austin_blue  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:19:57pm

re: #29 freetoken

TS Lee is doing the job down there.

Yes it is. Mean as a honey badger, and really not moving much at all. Torrential rain, greater than 8” already in NO.

(A_B breaks into uncontrollable sobs.)

37 Talking Point Detective  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:26:15pm

re: #1 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

I’ll take a guess and say the response to this by the deniers was he was “forced” by shadowy forces to resign, that Spencer’s paper was too close to the “truth” for those high in the government cabal’s tastes, and that it actually “proves” that the whole thing is truly a hoax.

From Jeff Id, at AirVent:

The point here is, that for a senior editor to resign over an issue of disagreement indicates what is likely a huge amount of behind the scenes pressure on the editors to prevent publication.

Just one of many examples.

The editor gave his reasons for his resignation. They don’t fit with the preconceptions of “skeptics,” so, therefore, someone who published a paper by a leading “skeptical” scientist (i.e., obviously not a “warmist”), is lying through is teeth to protect the eco-Nazi/socialist/climate scientist cabal to kill millions of third world people by preventing them from burning fossil fuels.

38 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:31:18pm

re: #34 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

Yeah, they’ve all got “plans,” but none of them can give us the details beyond the talking points. 10 gets you 20 that every one of those plans calls for taxes to remain either whether they are or be cut even further.

Well, my point is that we really don’t need any more “plans”.

Anyway, yes, Huntsman wants to reduce taxes all over the place (mostly on people with money.) Roemer going hard core nativist (blaming the Chinese).

39 Talking Point Detective  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:31:27pm

re: #5 jaunte

Spencer seems to prefer a role as a polemicist rather than a scientist
[Link: www.amazon.com…]

Btw -

Spencer wrote in July, “I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.”

Also, he’s a creationist:

Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as “fact,” I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism.

40 Fat Bastard Vegetarian  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:32:46pm

If I were braver, I’d do this.

90 seconds gives a bit of speed perspective.

41 freetoken  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:34:06pm

re: #39 Talking Point Detective

Spencer is doing the whole victim-routine, like his friends the creationists often do.

42 Kronocide  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:36:30pm

re: #30 BigPapa

It’s not that I wasn’t culpable at all: there may have been some nuttiness there and I just didn’t notice it because I wasn’t listening.

I gave Limbaugh a pass for a long time, listening to him in 91-92 then tapering off after becoming bored of the same old Clinton bashing. For the next 15 years I didn’t pay attention or laughed when he got into a kerfuffle. I listen to him now and am embarrassed to admit giving him any credence even back then. Maybe he changed, maybe I did too, maybe both.

Listening to Fox and believing some of the bullshit, I now realize I wanted it to be true, felt safe in detesting liberals and celebrating the Faux brand of patriotism. Now I’m embarrassed by that too, though not as much.

My GOP allegiance pretty much crashed after realizing how shallow a candidate Palin was, at the same time going through the process of taking the time to study AGW and thinking through DADT and gay marriage. LGF was instrumental in that process: once Charles spent the time study AGW then came out as accepting it (and explaining why), I took it more seriously and studied it, the cracks became fissures. I am deeply grateful for that.

Maybe I changed, or merely took the time to think through all my ideas, or the world changed around me. Maybe all of those things. Either way you shake it, that column resonated deeply, confirming thoughts I had about my previous political leanings and disposition and the party I thought best exemplified those values. In the last few months the thought that I was in a cult and am now in the process of deprogramming keeps popping into my head.

43 Talking Point Detective  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:39:27pm

re: #41 freetoken

Spencer is doing the whole victim-routine, like his friends the creationists often do.

If there are any “skeptics,” as opposed to deniers, this issue is a very good litmus test. People who are trying to rationalize this whole process with Spencer mark themselves as caring not one wit about scientific validity.

44 TedStriker  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:50:49pm

re: #39 Talking Point Detective

Btw -

Also, he’s a creationist:

To me, if a “scientist” puts more stock in the Bible as a reference for anything related to science than the actual scientific method/process/record, they’re No True Scientist, just an evangelical with some science knowledge.

It’s possible to reconcile one’s faith with the pursuit of science and learning, but not if that faith excludes objective observation and study in favor of rigid adherence to religious dogma.

45 blueraven  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:52:40pm

re: #30 BigPapa

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

I hope Charles posts this, it’s really good. As an ex GOP voter this column really resonated with me.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

Also from that article:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

I mean, I knew this in my heart and head, but to see one of them admit it outright…It is Cringe worthy.

46 Hal_10000  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:56:27pm

The thing about Roy Spencer is that he’s mainly disputing the degree of climate change, not it’s existence. So even if everything he said were right — and it’s not — that would still mean global warming is happening. The RW echosphere can’t even get their denial straight.

47 albusteve  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 3:56:49pm

re: #45 blueraven

Also from that article:

I mean, I knew this in my heart and head, but to see one of them admit it outright…It is Cringe worthy.

“obstruction and disruption”….is antithetical to our system….used for accumulating power rather than governing….in other words it’s an abuse of the spirit of serving

48 Targetpractice  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:01:02pm

re: #45 blueraven

Also from that article:

I mean, I knew this in my heart and head, but to see one of them admit it outright…It is Cringe worthy.

You have one party that sees the problem as a difference in ideology, looking to find a favorable middle that both sides can agree upon in order to keep government running.

And have the opposite party, which believes that its job is to throw as many monkey wrenches into the works as it can, because it can then run on government being “broken” and thus the source of all the country’s problems.

But hey, they’re both wrong, so vote the bums out!//

49 Killgore Trout  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:11:37pm

re: #48 Targetpractice, Worst of Both Worlds

I skimmed that article earlier. I’m not crazy about the Truth Out site, mostly because I’m unfamiliar with it. Did anyone google the author to see if he’s on the level? I’d take it with a grain of salt.

50 Targetpractice  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:16:18pm

re: #49 Killgore Trout

I skimmed that article earlier. I’m not crazy about the Truth Out site, mostly because I’m unfamiliar with it. Did anyone google the author to see if he’s on the level? I’d take it with a grain of salt.

Based upon what I’ve been able to Google, he was indeed a Congressional staffer who just retired this year. Whether or not the conversation as passed on actually happened, I can’t say for certain.

51 Killgore Trout  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:17:13pm

Canadians’ attitude toward U.S. shifts from envy to sympathy, poll shows

When Canadians look at their American neighbours, they no longer gaze with envy at a powerful greenback, a low unemployment rate or deep pools of capital sloshing around an entrepreneurial paradise.

Canadians now look south with something closer to pity.

52 blueraven  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:22:36pm

re: #49 Killgore Trout

I skimmed that article earlier. I’m not crazy about the Truth Out site, mostly because I’m unfamiliar with it. Did anyone google the author to see if he’s on the level? I’d take it with a grain of salt.

He was a republican congressional staffer for 16 years, not much else that I can see out there. Nothing that would cast any doubt on his story.

53 elizajane  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:23:09pm

re: #49 Killgore Trout

I skimmed that article earlier. I’m not crazy about the Truth Out site, mostly because I’m unfamiliar with it. Did anyone google the author to see if he’s on the level? I’d take it with a grain of salt.

He’s a real person. Retired in June after 30 years as a budget analyst for Congress. Had an op-ed in the LA times in June, criticizing the Republican position in the budget standoff

[Link: articles.latimes.com…]

Also from the new article:

It is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed dissection of failed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce Bartlett.

I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country’s future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and “shareholder value,” the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP’s decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be “forced” to make “hard choices” - and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.


And this is coming from a Republican budget analyst. The entire article is, from that perspective, absolutely terrifying.

54 albusteve  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:25:19pm

re: #51 Killgore Trout

Canadians’ attitude toward U.S. shifts from envy to sympathy, poll shows

I do to…we’ve glamorized politics to the point where your haircut is more important than your voting record…we’ve allowed governing to become entertainment, face time…it’s sickening….America is self absorbed in fantasy…the newest video game is more important than the pressing matters at hand….we are escapists, doped up on the media

55 Decatur Deb  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:27:19pm

re: #53 elizajane

Republican Staffer In Name Only.

56 Killgore Trout  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:33:54pm

re: #53 elizajane

Ok, as long as it checks out.

57 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:47:37pm

re: #51 Killgore Trout

Canadians’ attitude toward U.S. shifts from envy to sympathy, poll shows

One of these days, perhaps Canada will put together a sort of “Live Aid”-style multinational concert to benefit the US, who by that time will be the cultural equivalent of Syd Barrett — wandering the streets in a schizophrenic haze with no friends and no family to speak of. They could dedicate “Wish You Were Here” to us.

58 blueraven  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:48:32pm

re: #56 Killgore Trout

Ok, as long as it checks out.

Honestly, I dont see how one could doubt what he is saying. There really is no other explanation for all the filibusters, the holds on appointments, the voting down or huge battles of every bit of legislation that previously has been a routine matter…McConnells statement that the Senate Republicans main goal is to make sure Obama is a one term President. It just goes on an on.

59 Decatur Deb  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:55:08pm

re: #58 blueraven

Honestly, I dont see how one could doubt what he is saying. There really is no other explanation for all the filibusters, the holds on appointments, the voting down or huge battles of every bit of legislation that previously has been a routine matter…McConnells statement that the Senate Republicans main goal is to make sure Obama is a one term President. It just goes on an on.

Waterloo.

60 Varek Raith  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:55:39pm

re: #59 Decatur Deb

Waterloo.

How ya doin?

61 Decatur Deb  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 4:57:24pm

re: #60 Varek Raith

How ya doin?

Just browsing through the phenomenal kinds and numbers of painkillers a urologist will give you. So far the best of them makes my skin crawl only a little.

62 Varek Raith  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 5:02:20pm

re: #61 Decatur Deb

Just browsing through the phenomenal kinds and numbers of painkillers a urologist will give you. So far the best of them makes my skin crawl only a little.

I was prescribed Imitrex some years ago for my migraines. Took one dose. The freaking side effects were worse than the migraine.
WTF?
Sigh.

63 Pythagoras  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 5:24:10pm

re: #46 Hal_10000

The thing about Roy Spencer is that he’s mainly disputing the degree of climate change, not it’s existence. So even if everything he said were right — and it’s not — that would still mean global warming is happening.

That’s Richard Lindzen’s position too (and mine). It’s not that rare, but I know of no polls that show what percentage believes what.

64 wrenchwench  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 5:40:43pm

re: #63 Pythagoras

That’s Richard Lindzen’s position too (and mine). It’s not that rare, but I know of no polls that show what percentage believes what.

The number of people who hold that position has no effect on its correctness. I’d look at who those people are. Lindzen and Spencer are not known for their scientific acuity. Check their financial sources, too.

*cough* ExxonMobile *cough*

65 Kronocide  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 5:43:27pm

re: #63 Pythagoras

That’s Richard Lindzen’s position too (and mine). It’s not that rare, but I know of no polls that show what percentage believes what.

It’s pretty rare among actual scientists who’s study is that field.

66 b_sharp  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 6:27:17pm

re: #63 Pythagoras

That’s Richard Lindzen’s position too (and mine). It’s not that rare, but I know of no polls that show what percentage believes what.

Their claim boils down to climate sensitivity. They do not believe a doubling of CO2 will result in ~3°C increase and point to models, but have no specific arguments against them. Sensitivity is based not just on models but on climate history.

67 Pythagoras  Sat, Sep 3, 2011 7:10:34pm

re: #66 b_sharp

Their claim boils down to climate sensitivity. They do not believe a doubling of CO2 will result in ~3°C increase and point to models, but have no specific arguments against them. Sensitivity is based not just on models but on climate history.

I agree, except for the no arguments part. The paper at the center of this controversy definitely made specific arguments, even if you think those arguments suck. Wolfgang’s criticism was that they didn’t sufficiently consider other papers and models.

This flap is just getting started. Keep an eye on the future back-and-forth over whether the paper should be withdrawn. It’ll be interesting to see who the new editor is and how he/she handles it.

68 WINDUPBIRD DISEASE [S.K.U.M.M.]  Sun, Sep 4, 2011 1:34:11am

re: #45 blueraven

Also from that article:

I mean, I knew this in my heart and head, but to see one of them admit it outright…It is Cringe worthy.

America! Filled with cannibals :D


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