Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

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.

How is Mr. Felix's biography relevant to the quality of the sources he links to? I say this as someone who was likewise unimpressed with the signal/noise ratio on Ice Age Now, but argumentum ad hominem is beside the point. (All licker said was that it links to some interesting studies--although I found mostly only news stories.)

Not that your link to the guardian story wasn't interesting in its own right as a story of journalistic carelessness and/or malfeasance.

-Max

[Edi]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

How is Mr. Felix's biography relevant to the quality of the sources he links to? I say this as someone who was likewise unimpressed with the signal/noise ratio on Ice Age Now, but argumentum ad hominem is beside the point. (All licker said was that it links to some interesting studies--although I found mostly only news stories.)

Not that your link to the guardian story wasn't interesting in its own right as a story of journalistic carelessness and/or malfeasance.

-Max

It's relevant in the sense that when his numbers were checked, they all turned out to be bogus. When Mr. Felix's other work is examined, it turns out to be anti-evolution conspiracy crap that has no basis in real science at all. The man is a fraud, as simple as that. He has demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that has been independently verified. This means that if he does make some statement about something related to science as being fact, there is no obligation on anyone to believe that what he says has even a passing acquaintance with truth unless it has been independently verified.

The man is in the same category as the Moon Hoaxers, 9/11 Truthers and UFO cultists in terms of credibility. That's one of the things about integrity and credibility: Once lost, rehabilitation is very difficult if not impossible, depending on just how far you have gone. Felix may link to some interesting news articles, but he goes one step further and then presents hiw own opinions based on the articles as some sort of supposedly scientific fact, without understanding the first thing about any of it. Pointing out that he is a scientific fraud is not an ad hominem.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

It's relevant in the sense that when his numbers were checked, they all turned out to be bogus. When Mr. Felix's other work is examined, it turns out to be anti-evolution conspiracy crap that has no basis in real science at all. The man is a fraud, as simple as that. He has demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that has been independently verified. This means that if he does make some statement about something related to science as being fact, there is no obligation on anyone to believe that what he says has even a passing acquaintance with truth unless it has been independently verified.

Yes, yes, yes, but that's all beside the point. You're *supposed* to ignore his statements. All licker said was that you should follow the links. Those links are to outside sources, some of them news sites (unfortunately, since I was hoping for studies), which should stand or fall on their own merits. Mr. Felix's biography is totally irrelevant because Mr. Felix's web site was specifically disclaimed by licker.

-Max

[thejeff]

I think the claim that CO2 is more effective weight for weight was against water vapor not methane.

According to Wikipedia (Not an authoritative source, I know, but usually reliable on basic stuff), methane has 25 times the impact of the same amount of CO2 over 100 years. This appears to be a common way of measuring the effects of emissions. It is much stronger initially, which is probably where your 50x comes from, but oxidizes in the atmosphere into CO2 and Water with a half life of 7 years

[chrispedersen]

Good comments, thejeff - but when some here suggest that the problem has to be solved in 10 years - you can't use the 100 year weighted average.

As an emergency measure, the most bang for the buck effect would be for methane reductions.

[AdmiralZhao]

Man that's a lot of quote.

[Edi]

If he wants to use the stuff linked by Felix, he can then do the legwork himself and link the sources directly. It's not my job to do his arguing for him and spend hours sifting through crap in the hopes of maybe finding something worthwhile.

If we want to play that game, I can do it just as well as anyone else, but I'd rather not as it offends my sense of personal integrity. Licker would also do better by linking things directly rather than using Felix's site as some sort of link hub, because that way they do not become immediately associated with an effort to misrepresent things.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

If he wants to use the stuff linked by Felix, he can then do the legwork himself and link the sources directly. It's not my job to do his arguing for him and spend hours sifting through crap in the hopes of maybe finding something worthwhile.

No argument there. It's the same annoyance I had with you over Dutch earlier. Yes, licker was in a hurry, but it's still not a very useful set of links, and anyway it would have been better to link to the worthwhile ones directly. It still doesn't change the fact that Mr. Felix is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Edi

If we want to play that game, I can do it just as well as anyone else, but I'd rather not as it offends my sense of personal integrity. Licker would also do better by linking things directly rather than using Felix's site as some sort of link hub, because that way they do not become immediately associated with an effort to misrepresent things.

I can't disagree with any of that.

-Max

[Edi]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

No argument there. It's the same annoyance I had with you over Dutch earlier.

Point. I concede that I should have done a summary of the stuff contained on Dutch's page.

[Tifone]

Just for knowledge:

"President-elect Barack Obama has named Harvard physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to top science posts.

Obama made the announcement Saturday in his weekend radio address. Holdren will become Obama's top science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Lubchenco will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both advocate a forceful government response to global warming.

Holdren also will direct the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research."