The Blackboard

Immediately after I clicked “publish”, I wondered if I could discover more details about getting tickets to the Tim Lambert/ Lord Monckton debate.

Tim Lambert told is blog audience he will be debating Christopher Monckton (The Viscount); the title of the debate will be, “Does Anthropogenic Global Warming Endanger Mankind?”

In an article criticizing Monckton, Australian journalist Mike Carlton says some things I would not contradict. However, he also says something thing rather puzzling to my American ears.

Yesterday, I relayed the Guardian.co.UK story reporting Paul Dennis of UEA had been interviewed by the Police during their investigation of the unauthorized disclosure of CRU emails called climategate. Dennis himself left a mroe detailed account in comments; I’m taking the liberty of posting it above the fold.

An interesting Guardian UK story starts:

Roy Spencer posted the UAH January Anomaly for the lower troposphere: +0.72 Deg! Chicago was cold, but the globe was hot, hot, hot!

Penn States inquiry into possible misconduct by Mann moves forward. They considered 4 possible charges, and find one warrants further investigation. From Penn state

The past two posts have discussed Tobis’s poor response to Simac’s post at Pajamas Media and shown the invitation to the debate itself. My major point is that, given Michael Tobis’s claimed goals, his post went beyond “ill-advised”. It may have been the worst possible response to Simac’s post at Pajamas Medea.

It turns out the invitation to the debate discussed in How NOT to respond to skeptics was previously posted on Michael Tobis’s google groups. The
planet 3.0 thread dated Jan 5, 2010 is here. The invitation appears to have been polite,

Every blogger has a role in how to explain science; this week Michael Tobis embraces the role of the bad example. Take a look at his response to Kimberly Jo Simac who invited climate activists and climate skeptics to a public debate on climate change.

The debate was, evidently, to take place in a small town in Northern Wisconsin during January. (I shiver just thinking of it.) Climate activist turned down the invitation, and according to Kimberly Jo Simac, treated her rudely. She characterized responses by climate activist as “insulting, mocking, sarcastic replies”. Evidently, one scientist “claimed our high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies.”

(If it’s true highschool kids can’t understand information on climate change, one wonders why NASA bothers with their NASA kids web page.)

Anyway, Kimberly Jo Simac has a gripe. The climate activist scientists she invited not only turned down her invitation to debate, but took the extra step to treat her rudely; one appeared to denigrate the intellectual capacity of high school students in Northern Wisconsin. She is now airing these gripes at Pajama’s Media, where they are bound to get some exposure. There she wonders aloud what activists who behave turn down invitations to debate and treat her rudely might be hiding.

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