The Blackboard

The problem might be the choice of escrow. I don”t think I’d let Anthony Watts hold the money. I’m sure they could agree on someone, though.

If I had money laying around, I’d take the bet.

Boris–
They could negotiate who holds the escrow. I propose Gavin holds $500 and Roger Pielke Jr. holds the other $500 if all four parties are agreeable.

I think you have a couple of typos near the top of the article.

‘IPCC projection of “about 0.2 C/century” is on the lw side ‘ should be 2C per century or 0.2C per decade.

Fixed. Thanks. — Lucia

Boris and Lucia both miss the point of Svempa mentioning Watts. He mentions escrow, and then states he may be dead by 2019, and therefore a caretaker (executor) would be necessary to stand in for Svempa if he shuffled off his mortal coil. He is not suggesting Watts act as the escrow agent, only his (Svempa’s) agent.

OK, TP. That makes more sense. I thought Svempa meant Watts determines who wins the bet.

From the first thread, because of the cold 2000, the bet amounts to a warming of .14C from 2009-2019.

The real problem with the bet is that it is based on the GISS dataset. The idea that GISS would show such a low increase for the next decade is completely laughable, whatever the real temperatures are.

Lucia: as Joe seems extremely reluctant to post my messages on his site, I will use yours, with your permission, to accept Joe’s bet. No restrictions, except;

The loser will present the symbolic check to the winner, wearing a dress. Preferably pink, as the money, if I win, would go to Breast Cancer Awareness.

Les–
Wow! That’s two offers he isn’t accepting?!

I just posted it. Lets see if it is “disappeared”, a fate all my other posts on his site have suffered.

Both Svempa and Les would do well to make sure that their money is invested during the the 10 year wait.

Someone who was there told me that when Willis Lamb paid off the Jaynes-Franken bet (to Franken), both Jaynes and Franken expressed faux-irritation that the return only came with bank interest.

One of the two (I want to say Franken) was known to be a shrewd business man and perhaps had visions of a return based on an IBM investment.

I had a couple of email go-rounds with Joe Romm last year on a warming bet. I suggested an average of HatCrut3v/RSS as a temperature reference. He would only accept GISS (he knows on which side his bread is buttered I think).

We never could agree on a temperature reference, but in our exchanges he did throw in comments about the north polar ice cap being gone in 5 years… wisely, he would not bet on that either.

He is a mindless, wormy troll, and not worth wasting any time on.

How would these bets handle a large volcanic eruption? I’m not sure what would be the fairest way to handle that situation, maybe if the eruption is large enough to call the bet a draw? I don’t think I would bet without some out for a rise in volcanic activity.

Svempa here’s what you should do. Make the same bet with Anthony Watts, for $1000, only take Joe’s side of the bet. Then have Anthony accept Joe’s offer, and let’s see if he accepts the big name wager.

Boris (Comment#21225)
October 4th, 2009 at 6:34 pm

How would these bets handle a large volcanic eruption?

Ah, but Boris, don’t you believe Hansen’s Scenario B either? Even with a volcanic eruption next decade, we’re supposed to be a good 0.5 degrees above where we are now in 2020.

http://img201.imageshack.us/im.....008qa4.jpg

Boris–
Well… one would have hoped Joe would have had the foresight to think of that before posting his offer. Maybe the low 0.15C was selected with volcanic eruptions in mind. Why else would he pick that value?

Aren’t volcanoes a short-term dampening? So the effect would be about .04C on the decade?

MikeN– But 0.04 C could be the difference between winning and losing!

Maybe… maybe Joe didn’t actually intend for anyone to actually take him up on the bet? Maybe it was a metaphorical device of some sort, to show that he’s a good soldier for the cause? Or maybe he just didn’t think it through? That doesn’t sound like him, though. He’s the master of reasoned debate. He should totally take that old guy’s money.

douggerel: old guy? OLD GUY?
.
you young whippersnapper…I am not old. Just highly experienced.
.
I suspect Svempa will have the same reaction, you ageist…

I guess Joe doesn’t read his own stuff…I wonder why he didn’t bet 0.6 deg F by 2020?
.
[JR: I already debunked Swanson here. The next decade will be noticeably warmer than this one, according to the serious peer-reviewed literature (see "Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014").
.
from..
.
http://climateprogress.org/200...../#comments

“Why else would he pick that value?”

I don’t know why he picked that specific value, though I doubt he bothered to figure in volcanic cooling.

What a person decides to bet is sometimes far more a function of their willingness to accept risk than their appraisal of the odds of a wager. Some people don’t bet much so they want an extremely large EV to counter their fears of loss. Some might even require a certain win. This holds true even for non life changing amounts of money like $1000.

Romm has endorsed 10-15 F by 2100 (for the USA) during this past year, see this:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/13/

Romm writes:
On our current emissions path we are projected to warm most of the United States 10 – 15°F by 2100, with sea level rise of 5 feet or higher, the U.S. Southwest a permanent Dust Bowl, half or more species extinct, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone.

Now conservatives, who err all the time, don’t like blunt progressives who know their science. So they are trying to shout down this soundbite by misstating the science.

Odd that he won’t even take a bet (of his own design even) that uses a fraction of what he endorses just 5 months ago. I guess the numbers are just too “blunt”.

Even if we take the “conservative” number Romm defends then, 10F (4.4C) we end up with 2100-2010 = 90 years 4.4/9 decades = .49C per decade.

So a bet of .15C per decade globally, less than a third of the lowest USA number Romm defends, should be no problem. Great odds.

We – that is “ordinary people” – can forget about a bet with mr Romm. He explains that:
“Sorry, I am adopting the Nate Silver rule and keep my bets to folks who are “a regular (at least once weekly) contributor to a political, economics or science blog with an Alexa traffic global ranking of 50,000 or lower. The reason for the latter requirement is because I want to be able to shame/humiliate you if you back out of the challenge or refuse to pay, as I’d assume you’d do the same with me.” I will, however, settle for a ranking of 100,000 or lower.”

Anthony, if I fund you, will you take this bet?

Romm has now backed out of the bet, giving the concocted excuse quoted above by Svempa.

This is in direct contradiction of Romm’s initial statement:
“I will be happy to bet anyone …”.
Well, I’d like to be the first to shame/humiliate Joe Romm for backing out.

That means I should still qualify. I contribute weekly to WUWT and The Blackboard, and Peilke Jrs.

I would also be a weekly contributor to Joe’s, but he never publishes my comments.

From Joe’s site:

#
Svempa says:
October 5, 2009 at 11:53 am

“I will be happy to bet anyone that the 2010s will be the hottest decade in the temperature record, more than 0.15°C hotter than the hottest decade so far using the NASA GISS dataset. Any takers?”

Well, well, Joe, now we know what your word is worth. Not much!

#
Les Johnson says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
October 5, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Well, I should qualify then, Joe. I am a weekly contributor to WUWT, The Blackboard and Pielke Jr.

I also occasionally slip through the censor at Real Climate. Your site, though, is a tougher nut to crack.

Speaking of shame and humiliation, the pink dress would still need to be part of the bet.

JR has deleted my last post, cited above, which of course was to be expected. But it seems he is not averse to a bet with Les Johnson, despite the “pink dress” requirement?.

On the other hand, I am hoping to set up a similar bet with Brian Schmidt of Climate Progress instead. Brian also seems a very much more likable person.

Les, I think by contributor, he is not referring to the lowly commenters.

Svempa, I was right that Joe Romm would take the bet with Anthony Watts, but there’s still the problem that the cost to Anthony would not be financial, which is why Joe is limiting his bet to prominent bloggers. So to have him cover it, you would also have to convince Anthony that he wouldn’t lose.

Oh too funny.

Romm writes:

““Sorry, I am adopting the Nate Silver rule and keep my bets to folks who are “a regular (at least once weekly) contributor to a political, economics or science blog with an Alexa traffic global ranking of 50,000 or lower. ”

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/climateprogress.org
Global 60,798 Alexa Traffic Rank

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com
Global 34,202 Alexa Traffic Rank

Svempa, I’ll think about it…I’ve never gotten into betting, and given the dodging that Romm has done so far, I figure he’d figure out a way to dodge an honest loss too.

I suspect even if folks like Anthony Watts decides to bet, if they lose, they won’t pay up, in the end insisting that the surface temperature record is unreliable, there was a big snowstorm in Nashville in February 2018, and a set of Yamal tree rings McIntyre found on the internet doesn’t show warming over that decade.

Or perhaps they will insist on using the indirect tropospheric satellite measurements, preferring the Spencer/Christy UAH data product – one where essentially the entire warming trend is a result of major errors discovered and upward corrections made to it over the last decade.

“…if the threshold is 0.15C, which just so happens to be well below the temperature increase projected by the IPCC ”

0.15 C isn’t exactly “well below” 0.20 C. It’s well within the decadal range of the average GCM. I would say the person choosing the over on 0.15 C would have the advantage, but not by all that much.

http://www.realclimate.org/ind.....eally-say/

But if the net impact of human activities on global mean temperature is barely significant, as many “skeptics” claim, and we are moving towards all these negative ocean phases and a Maunder Minimum, one has to wonder why any “skeptic” wouldn’t take the 0.15 C bet. Why not make it 0 C, or at least 0.05 C, if they are truly willing to put their money where your mouths are. Or can we conclude that “skeptics” don’t really believe their own rhetoric?

Just out of curiosity, do you have a link to a post where Romm predicts 0.3 C next decade?

Oh, and have you seen the RSS MSU anomalies for last month? 0.476 C. A Spencer-style high-order polynomial regression indicates rapid warming. Any bets that Spencer will switch back to a linear regression soon (if he hasn’t already done so)? Talk amongst yourselves.

NewYorkJ, you never did answer the last time you came in with a drive-by.

When Gavin quoted Steve saying the following,
“In my opinion, the uniformly high age of the CRU12 relative to the Schweingruber population is suggestive of selection”,

do you feel he properly represented Steve’s statement?
“In my opinion, the uniformly high age of the CRU12 relative to the Schweingruber population is suggestive of selection – in this respect, perhaps and even probably by the Russians.”

You repeated this quote. Do you feel you have properly represented Steve’s statement?

NewYorkJ

A man offers to make a bet, someone offers to accept the bet, then he doesn’t accept the bet. And of course this is all proof of the skeptics not living up to their rhetoric.

MikeN writes:

“do you feel he properly represented Steve’s statement?”

Yep. Someone had claimed that McIntyre didn’t suggest cherry-picking. Schmidt’s response, highlighting a few quotes, indicates otherwise. The 2nd part of McIntyre’s quote doesn’t change the context. It only adds “the Russians” to his list.

You’ve reminded me to post Lambert’s excellent summary of the rhetoric coming from this crowd.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoi.....omehow.php

Here is one of McIntyre’s statements:

“The [image above] is, in my opinion, one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit. …

I hardly know where to begin in terms of commentary on this difference.

it’s very hard to think up a valid reason for excluding Khadyta River, while including the Taimyr supplement.”

I love the hype of his first sentence. That’s quite an attention-grabber! But McIntyre later “backtracks”.

“Briffa’s comment leads off with the accusation that I had implied that the recent data had in this chronology had been “purposely selected” by Briffa “specifically because they exhibited recent growth increases”. I want to dispense with this up front. While I expressed surprise that there were so few cores, not only did I not imply that Briffa did any sub-selecting, but I specifically said the opposite.”

Well that settles it. How could anyone (including that mean accusatory Dr. Briffa) possibly misinterpret McIntyre’s earlier gracious comments?

As for Alexa, here’s one site that has Watts beat:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nationalenquirer.com

While I understand that Watts appears to be proud of how popular he is, popularity isn’t always indicative of quality and reliability. One could argue that Romm should be a bit more stringent.

OK, NewYorkJ, now when JoeR has backed down perhaps you are willing to honor his bet? In that case say so. I really think the terms of the bet, as originally described by JoeR, are acceptable to both sides (even if what “the house” bets on is far from what JoeR and other “warmers” have stridently insisted is about to happen with the climate) which is why I was willing to take it. If you feel that it favors us “sceptics” I would certainly like to know why.

I must say I am somewhat disappointed, even if the outcome is not surprising in any way considering the type of arguments JoeR has used in the past. After all the main point of JoeR:s argument against honoring his bet was :”I want to be able to shame/humiliate you if you back out of the challenge or refuse to pay” and I actually did suggest putting the betting money in escrow. So what with “refuse to pay”? And who is “backing out of the challenge”? It’s not me…

Hey I didn’t bring up Alexa traffic ranks, Romm did, and without apparently checking to see if his site was in the top 50,000, he automatically excluded himself. That’s what is funny.

And actually, the surface temperature record is unreliable, particularly with GISS retroactive adjustments to the record, which have been well documented time and again.

NYJ: You seem to under the misconception that so called skeptics believe there will be NO warming.

I am willing to take Romm’s bet, even though I am a “luke warmer”. I believe that temperatures will rise approx 1.0 to 1.5 deg C in the next century.

Why would I bet 0.15/decade? Because we are entering an el Nino. Its warm now, but it will probably cool next year, at the start of the bet. I am gambling there will be a volcanic eruption in the next decade. There is also a good chance that a lack of solar activity may cool the climate through the first 1/2 of the decade. (god forbid it gets too cold, though, for too long.)

As for Joe predicting much more warming? There are 2 references on this page regarding that. One from me, and one from Anthony.

I am willing to bet against what I think the actual warming will be, at least on the centennial scale. Why does Joe want to bet on warming that is 1/2 to 1/4 less than what he has publicly stated?

Who is hedging their bets?

Anthony, I apologize, I should not have asked you for help – obviously JoeR is not a reliable person and it is likely he would try to weasel out of any bet he actually makes. By the way, it would not surprise me to find that surface temperatures were “doctored” (by UHI effects or otherwise) in the late seventies to show perhaps as much as 0.2 C too high temperatures.
Les, It is a little surprising to find that your thinking is almost exactly like my own. Only I am not counting on a volcanic eruption.

James Annan has no guarantees on his bet with the Russians, just some e-mail confirming a bet – straight cooling vs warming. It would be horrible if he had a ‘top down’ of his pension.

Regarding unreliable temperature record, GISS adjustments are ongoing, so even if it overstates now by .2C, we can expect later adjustments to revise this downward, and revise Romm’s decade upward. So just lock in the temperature level, and you get to benefit from the upward adjustment.

#
Les Johnson says:
October 5, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Well, I should qualify then, Joe. I am a weekly contributor to WUWT, The Blackboard and Pielke Jr.

I also occasionally slip through the censor at Real Climate. Your site, though, is a tougher nut to crack.

Speaking of shame and humiliation, the pink dress would still need to be part of the bet.

[JR: We try to keep as free from long-debunked disinformation as possible, like RC, but unlike WUWT and Pielke Jr.

So you accept the terms of the bet?]
#
Les Johnson says:
October 5, 2009 at 6:03 pm

Joe: Disinformation? I quoted only peer reviewed studies in postings on your site.

I repeat; I accept the terms of your bet. E-mail the escrow details.

But the pink dress needs to stay….

“he automatically excluded himself. That’s what is funny.”

I agree with Anthony on something. That was funny.

I understand Lucia is out of town and not able to respond, but can someone link to a Romm quote that indicates he specifically believes next decade will see 0.3 C of warming? The only thing I can find is the following link which covers a model that predicts rapid warming to mid-decade (due to an expected solar cycle recovery and the anthropogenic effect), but 0.17 C per decade for the next 2 decades. He quotes the study here:

“our empirical model predicts that global surface temperatures will increase at an average rate of 0.17 ±0.03 °C per decade in the next two decades….”

Aside from the obvious point that writing a post about a study does not necessarily imply that the person agrees 100% with that study, it seems to me Romm is quoting a study that projects about 0.17 C per decade. Why would a skeptic chicken out and up the bet to 0.3 C when there appears to be no basis for it? And wait a minute…I thought Dr. Romm was an “alarmist” and that “alarmists” don’t think the Sun affects climate.

http://climateprogress.org/200.....f-by-2014/

There is one assumption worth mentioning. The proposed bet seems to be something like “average global mean temperature for the 2010-2020 period” compared to the same for 2000-2010. Warming projections could arguably be “5-year mean centered around 2010″ vs the same for 2020. Such details would have to be worked out.

I think the correction to the demostrated cool SST buoy bias apparent in the surface record will be in place within the next year. It’s not huge but it’s become more noticeable in recent years as buoys have gradually replaced ship measurements. That shouldn’t have much effect on any bets.

Don’t hold your breath about the Watts Heartland Institute project. One could say it was always a “house of cards”. Still gets certain crowds riled up, though.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf

Les Johnson,

Ironically, I just read your comment #21251 which references the same link I referenced above. Looks like you misrepresented Romm’s post or did not read far enough (see above quote). Anthony’s comment (#21269) is more entertaining. First, he quotes Romm’s projection of 10-15 F for the United States only. As I understand, projections for the United States (and most land masses) are somewhat higher than global projections, which of course, includes oceans. Then, he takes 10 F (botching the conversion to Celsius I might add…how does a weather broadcaster mess that up?) and makes a false assumption that the rate of warming over the next century is projected to be the same for every decade, when GCMs tend to show a gradual acceleration, depending on emissions scenarios, with high-end emissions scenarios resulting in the largest acceleration. In other words, the rate of warming for the next decade or two is expected to be substantially less than the decadal average for the century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....ctions.png

It looks like Anthony is a bit too confused to considering betting with, Alexa traffic or not.

“I believe that temperatures will rise approx 1.0 to 1.5 deg C in the next century.”

With a substantial emissions reduction scheme and a climate sensitivity that falls on the low end of the likely range, that might be pretty close. Or perhaps we can wait for a major meteor collision.

James Annan has been involved in proposed bets. The most amusing was his dealings with Richard Lindzen. As a Guardian article states:

“Professor Lindzen had been willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the next 20 years.

No bet was agreed on that; Dr Annan said Prof Lindzen wanted odds of 50-1 against falling temperatures, so would win $10,000 if the Earth cooled but pay out only £200 if it warmed. ”

It’s kind of like some fool confidently predicting that the Lakers will lose in the first round (against an 8th seed) and when it comes time to bet, demand 50 to 1 odds. “Skeptics” are quite often filled with unlimited hot air. Perhaps that’s one forcing the IPCC forgot about.

NewYorkJ what about his own Hell and High Water (sic) webpage:
http://climateprogress.org/200.....igh-water/ where he quotes Hadley’s figure “temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5 °C and could rise as high as 7 °C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century” Maybe you and Joe think the industrial age started in 1740 ha ha ha ha ’causee that’s the only way 0.15/dec is an average.

John M (#21228),

Actually, where we are now (extrapolating the rest of 2009) is about 0.2 C higher than 2008. It’s naive to use single year anomalies as a baseline, since you get radically different value depending on where you start. Scenario B did overestimate emissions a little (5 or 10 percent). All things considered, pretty remarkable accuracy for a first-generation GCM, wouldn’t you agree? But as Hansen noted in his study:

“Close agreement of observed temperature change with simulations for the most realistic climate forcing (scenario B) is accidental, given the large unforced variability in both model and real world. Indeed, moderate overestimate of global warming is likely because the sensitivity of the model used (12), 4.2°C for doubled CO2, is larger than our current estimate for actual climate sensitivity, which is 31°C for doubledCO2, based mainly on paleoclimate data (17). More complete analyses should include other climate forcings and cover longer periods.”

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs.....etal_1.pdf

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Makes you wonder why “skeptics” are so hung up on Hansen 1988. Even Hansen seemed to acknowledge in 2006 that a non-negligible model overestimate is likely given the model’s climate sensitivity value (note “likely” doesn’t mean guaranteed).

Note the higher climate sensitivity value used in the model. One could speculate that the accuracy of the GCM compared with observations, even with real-world emissions scenarios trailing the model a bit (methane’s levelled off for instance) and solar activity generally lower than the constant forcing used, indicates that a 4.2 C climate senstivity is an accurate value (if anything, a bit of an underestimate), although as Hansen notes, it’s too premature to evaluate the model yet. One might also say that 4.2 C is too high, and that the last couple of cooler years trailing the model is evidence. Too hard to tell based on a few years of data. We’re also coming off a la Nina episode. 1998 put global mean temperature well above model projections. It seems a la Nina would do the opposite. We’re also dealing with lower solar activity at the moment than projected, which is probably shaving at a few hundredths off the global mean temperature value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F....._model.gif

NewYorkJ,
So at last a denier believes that it isn’t all CO2 “We’re also dealing with lower solar activity at the moment than projected, which is probably shaving at a few hundredths off the global mean temperature value” thanks NewYorkJ you’ve got something right

Andrew Kennett (#21308),

Show me a scientist who does believe “it’s all CO2″. Even the ones “skeptics” are particularly obsessed with seem to not fit your image of them.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/

“It’s all CO2″ is a not-so-clever strawman.

Annan himself though there was a 10% chance of lower temperatures in 20 years.

Well NewYorkJ these last couple of comments are the first time you’ve conceded this point so congratulations, now you just need to convince Boris, Simon and bugs and we might be making some progress. My strawman is much the same as your ‘skeptics’ strawman.

I see that JoeR has modified his bet offer (of course without noting that it has been edited). It now reads: “I will be happy to bet anyone [using the Nate Silver rule] that the 2010s will be the hottest decade in the temperature record, more than 0.15°C hotter than the hottest decade so far using the NASA GISS dataset. ”

But Les Johnson still seems to qualify for a bet, will be very interesting if this actually happens.

NewYorkJ,
Let’s see now, the first decade of this century had a warming of 0.18 C compared to the 90:ies. The warming is accelerating strongly, according to warmists, but even so we cannot expect more than 0.15 C warming in the next decade according to you. That means 0.33 C for two decades, in addition to the 0.6 C we warmed in the previous century from pre-industrial times. Let’s be generous and call that 1 C in total. To reach 4.2 C at the end of the century or earlier (according to all “warmist” arguments I have read we will achieve a CO2 doubling well before century end) we need to warm 3,2 C over at most 80 years or at least 0.4 C/decade average.
Somehow I do not see this scenario as believable – a warming of “only” 0.15 C during the next decade should actually invalidate the calculations of a 4.2 C climate sensitivity. And what if there is no warming at all the next decade – will you then give up the farfetched hypothesis of a high climate senstitivity and rather embrace the Christy/Douglass figure of approximately 0.7 C climate sensitivity which I believe rests on sound science and observed data?

http://climateprogress.org/200.....e-melting/

This one, I would go against Joe Romm.

Funny how all the warmistas are embracing good ol Christys and Spencer UHA temps cause its rising so much lately hahaha.. I though they were considered heathens

NewYorkJ (Comment#21305)

Gee NYJ, I can’t imagine why skeptics are so “hung up” about Hansen.

I think this applies to your comment as well.

From http://wattsupwiththat.com/200...../#comments

John M (16:22:35) :

Joel Shore (08:41:46) :

Hey, nice fall-back positions.

If an old model doesn’t look so good, call it out-dated and crude.

If a new model doesn’t look so good, just say that not enough time has passed to adequately evaluate it.

If temperatures stop rising, just say they have been rising and are near record territory, even though the near constant drumbeat has been that AGW is accelerating and “it’s worse than we thought”.

And then you can always fall back on “uncertainty” and error bars, even though those phrases are carefully hidden when talking to the media.

You know, throwing Hansen’s 1988 model under the bus may not look so bad if AGW proponents weren’t saying how well it was standing up only a couple of years ago.

In other words, the forcings scenario of Line B in this graph was remarkably similar to what actually came to pass. It also just so happens that the observed temperature trend has matched very closely with the prediction represented by Line B. James Hansen was right on the money and the models he used proved successful.

http://scienceblogs.com/illcon.....before.php

…the 1988 paper estimated the forcings slightly on the low side. The result was a pretty good prediction. Definitely in the class of useful models.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/200.....sense.html

You guys all seem to have the same talking points.

That funny ol’ sun
http://science.nasa.gov/headli.....?list55751

Ugh. Apparently NYJ’s Intelligence=0. No wonder I can hardly stand discussing these subjects with so many warmers. You’re all so damn snippy and have impenetrably thick skulls.

In case anyone is wondering why anybody would be “hung up” on Hansen, how about the obvious be stated? The famous testimony that started it all, the years of advocacy, the perennial warmest year on record declarations, the adoration, the 20 foot sea level rise, the smoking gun…Where in god’s name have you been for all the stuff Hansen has done to become the go to guru of anyone interested in climate from your general perspective. So how exactly have his models fared? Not so well, actually. But to be fair, he overestimated every or nearly every non CO2 greenhouse gas. Nevertheless, it still remains the case that making predictions are very hard, and yet Hansen has always been out there, making predictions and saying “This looks bad, better do something-but not Cap and Trade”-Okay, that thread is new, but nevertheless, a modeler and activist-and astronomer-he remains.

“Ugh. Apparently NYJ’s Intelligence=0. No wonder I can hardly stand discussing these subjects with so many warmers. You’re all so damn snippy and have impenetrably thick skulls.”

It’s almost as if the Warmers have some kind of political agenda that’s impenetrable to reason.

Oh, wait…

I haven’t done *this* in awhile… quote some Rush!

“Don’t change that station
It’s a Gangsta Nation
Now crime’s in syndication on TV” -Test For Echo, Rush

Andrew

[...] readers know, two people, Les Johnson and Svempa, stepped forward to accept Joe Romm’s bet. Both were willing to take [...]