Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[Tichy]

Edi's being extremely patient with you, licker.

He's not saying it, so I will. The way you're responding to him is impertinent.

You cite an article on a website affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute as if it's an unbiased source. Edi responds very carefully, with arguments directed to specific claims in that article. You then fail to respond to his substantive points and accuse him of unspecified "misconceptions." When he responds to that with a clarification, you make an end run around the substantive points *again* by falling back on hand-waving about the lack of a consensus.

Edi is clearly a more patient man than I.

I don't understand climate science -- I stopped responding to this thread because I realized I was out of my depth there -- but I do understand basically how arguments work (and standard tactics used to conceal when they're not working). If you want to be taken seriously, you're going to have to do better than this.

[licker]

Originally Posted by Tichy

Edi's being extremely patient with you, licker.

He's not saying it, so I will. The way you're responding to him is impertinent.

You cite an article on a website affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute as if it's an unbiased source. Edi responds very carefully, with arguments directed to specific claims in that article. You then fail to respond to his substantive points and accuse him of unspecified "misconceptions." When he responds to that with a clarification, you make an end run around the substantive points *again* by falling back on hand-waving about the lack of a consensus.

Edi is clearly a more patient man than I.

I don't understand climate science -- I stopped responding to this thread because I realized I was out of my depth there -- but I do understand basically how arguments work (and standard tactics used to conceal when they're not working). If you want to be taken seriously, you're going to have to do better than this.

Or perhaps he's not out of his depth as you admit to being.

Impertinent?

*chuckle*

Well when I have the time I will be happy to address his misconceptions, but as I said, I don't have the time right now to do it in detail, and so I'm not going to bother as I'm going to be away for 2 weeks anyway.

As to the article itself, perhaps people should be less concerned with the sources and more concerned with the actual data therein.

Tim Patterson is no oil company shill, do your own damn homework instead of just assuming everyone on the 'other side' is somehow a corrupt purveyor of lies.

Look at the other news I've posted about glaciers gaining mass and issues with the modeling of the famous hockey stick. Attack the data, not the source, though if you don't understand anything about climate science then I suppose you cannot attack the data, so while your opinion is certainly welcome, it's also rather meaningless no?

In anycase, I doubt edi needs anyones support to make his argument, if you agree with him good for you, even better if you actually can formulate technical reasons why you agree with him. This is part of the issue I have with the way the 'science' of AGW is presented. It is not done honestly by the IPCC, and most people are unable to access the real studies let alone have a background to interpret them.

So sure, we have to rely on scientists to make difficult things somewhat understandable, but that's not what we always get (with regard to the IPCC, its politicians, not scientists writing the summary report).

Anyway, I hope everyone has happy holidays and good travels (if you are traveling as I am).

[Edi]

Originally Posted by licker

Or perhaps he's not out of his depth as you admit to being.

Impertinent?

*chuckle*

Well when I have the time I will be happy to address his misconceptions, but as I said, I don't have the time right now to do it in detail, and so I'm not going to bother as I'm going to be away for 2 weeks anyway.

I look forward to seeing the reply in two weeks then.

Originally Posted by licker

Look at the other news I've posted about glaciers gaining mass and issues with the modeling of the famous hockey stick.

You posted these where? I just went through the entire thread and these links you suuposedly posted were nowhere to be found. MaxWilson may have posted them, but if he did, don't claim credit for somebody else's posts.

If you really have any articles that can point to solid evidence of glacial mass increase in the past ten years, I would like to see it. Globally glaciers have been shrinking for the past 30 years.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

You posted these where? I just went through the entire thread and these links you suuposedly posted were nowhere to be found. MaxWilson may have posted them, but if he did, don't claim credit for somebody else's posts.

If you really have any articles that can point to solid evidence of glacial mass increase in the past ten years, I would like to see it. Globally glaciers have been shrinking for the past 30 years.

Post #255. I quoted it in my post #256, but I didn't originate the links.

-Max

[Tichy]

Thank you for all of the assumptions, and the cuss words. Object lessons taste like butterscotch.

I was taking issue with your method of arguing with Edi. The fact that that produced an death-rattle of insults and assumptions about my biases from you confirms my impression of your methods. When in doubt, yell louder and call names. The thing is, you sound like an angry ideologue, whereas Max, who I disagree with, actually sounds like he's trying to engage the issue.

Did you miss the fact that I *stopped* responding to the thread because I was afraid that I was arguing from bias, and didn't have time to "do my damn homework" as you so quaintly put it?

I responded now, because something came up that I *do* know something about -- reasoning and rhetoric -- and you kindly backed me up on it by responding with such delicious fervor to my critique.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Tichy

When in doubt, yell louder and call names. The thing is, you sound like an angry ideologue, whereas Max, who I disagree with, actually sounds like he's trying to engage the issue.

Yeah, well. Maybe we won't always disagree. Edi's response has given me some new directions to take my homework. (I realized that I need to be as critical of my own skepticism as I wish AGW advocates would be of their theories, which probably means asking my so-called "hard questions" on realclimate.org forums instead of just wishing that AGW advocates would magically address them on their own--maybe the questions *are* well-known and well-answered.) I may be wrong, I frequently am, and when I am I like to think I can change my mind.

-Max

P.S. Obviously what I'll really be hoping for is that someone on realclimate.org will say, "Oh yeah, that's called XYZZY in the literature. A good starting place is FredBob's 2001 paper on it." That's infinitely better than someone's ad hoc response on a forum, but at the same time it's unfair to expect AGW advocates outside the field itself to be able to point out papers like that.

[licker]

Globally glaciers have been shrinking for the past 200 years...

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Sorry for that link, I cannot vouch for it's authenticity as I haven't looked at it, but it seems to link to quite a few studies which you may find interesting.

And again, stop insulting me. Look at post #255.

Tichy-

Seriously this isn't some debate camp, its a freaking internet forum. And what cuss words did I use anyway? Or assumptions?

For what it's worth I'm not even arguing with Edi, though some people here seem to think that any kind of disagreement or posing of questions must be an argument. Honestly, the tone I respond in is the tone I receive, and I have been nothing other than polite towards Edi as that is the same tone he uses (mostly...).

But now I really must be going, my ride called 5 minutes ago telling me his is running 5 minutes late...

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by licker

But now I really must be going, my ride called 5 minutes ago telling me his is running 5 minutes late...

Have a nice trip. I hope your weather is nicer than ours in Washington--my building at work is like a ghost town because of snow on the roads and there's a five-city-bus-pileup on the corner. (Apparently a new one would come along its route every few minutes and be unable to avoid the ones that were already there.)

Let's hear it for local cooling.

-Max

[Tichy]

Ok, I'm sorry if my annoyance with licker may have derailed the discussion...and I'll admit to taking some pleasure in prodding him once I realized it produced such entertaining responses.

But, licker, are you saying that no one involved in a discussion on an internet forum should be held to minimal standards of reasoning, or be called out when he or she violates them? If so, that's great, but no one needs to take anything you say on this forum seriously after that.

One thing that I like about the Dom3 forum is that this game seems to select for smart people who like to argue about things.

But debating and arguing are different. Debate is about trying to defeat your opponent; it's basically a sport. An argument is an attempt to show that an opinion is correct, with the expectation that others will carefully look at the reasons you offer for your opinion, and cry foul when it appears you are appealing to debaters' tricks instead of offering reasons in good faith.

I apologize if you thought I was using "argument" in the colloquial sense of an angry exchange.

Oh, and, enjoy your trip!

[Edi]

Sorry, licker. I had managed to miss those links.

The news article on the Alaskan glaciers was interesting. I also took a look at the Ice Age Now website and I was less than impressed. So I did some digging on the reliability of that source, and came up with this. A further look on the biography, claims and accomplishments of Mr. Felix expose him as a complete fraud who doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Try again, licker.