For years, ER, RL, hank and others have posted a great deal of hard science related to climate change. I can’t help but notice that you hide from that. No one needs to ink the waters, tb, because when actual climate science is the matter at hand, you’re a no-show.

All you seem to be able to cough up anymore is a greasy hairball of political spin, questioned motives and conspiracy theories. Crap like that won’t even fly on the Moonbats of the Multiverse board.

As for your whining about “debate,” well that’s just laughable. No one here has ever tried to stifle debate like you used to.

Debate? You have added nothing to the debate. You have not questioned the data, or presented any of your own. You have not criticized its interpretation or significance. You have not quoted any of the data sources critically, or introduced new ones that contradict them. If you actually took the time to study the sources and authorities who believe in AGW you would see there is plenty of disagreement there, and debate, and different schools of thought, as you would expect in any rapidly evolving scientific enterprise working at the frontiers of knowledge. These people are NOT marching in lock step. They are doing real science, not playing at lawyers litigating a case. There is plenty of ammunition there you could have brought up to help argue your cause.

You haven’t even referred us to the denialist literature, of which there is an enormous amount of scattered about. (Perhaps because even you can’t bring yourself to take in their lies seriously.) Hell, even SDAI has challenged us on the facts and brought in his own theories, although I suspect you don’t derive much comfort from his latest magnetospheric magma manifestations.

All you have done is obsess about our deluded psychological and ideological biases, conspiracies, hidden agendas and evil statist villains desperate to bring down western civilization to promote their sinister environmental enterprises and bureaucracies. I give you graphs and satellites, you give us black helicopters and freedom of speech complaints. You’ve combed the internet looking for minor errors in second and third hand press reports, overly pessimistic predictions from researchers, split hairs, picked cherries and chased shadows. But the last actual substantive fact you’ve brought for our inspection was your infamous Scandinavian bog fossil proxy monograph last year. And you saw how well that stood up to scrutiny.

No, TB. You persist in this pointless enterprise because you have somehow convinced yourself that if you are proven even slightly wrong, your whole religion of noble capitalism and evil socialists collapses. Well, let me reassure you. This has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism and their relative merits. The ice is melting, and it doesn’t care if Karl Marx or Ayn Rand was right. Or neither. Or both.

This isn’t about ideology, its about thermodynamics and its about you. You’re terrified everyone’s going to know you were wrong about something. And that means you’re terrified they’ll think you are wrong about everything. They won’t, of course, but you can’t see that, you have too much emotionally invested in being right, all the time, and all of us being wrong about everything. Remember, you were going to come here and ‘rub our noses’ in facts and reason, and geometrical logic….

You’re a fanatic, TB. And I told you that would someday bring you down.

700 words of ferocious, random rhetoric, with not one word coming within a mile of addressing any specific point in my post.

And this is why “debate” isn’t really possible here. Stop pretending it’s what anybody here wants.

Sharyl Attkisson, former CBS investigative reporter, covers it all very well now.

http://sharylattkisson.com/

Her breaking ground piece on fake science and the fraud of peer review is worth the time.

If your science makes someone a lot of money you will find peer review very friendly. If not, or if threatens an industry, your work is assailed non-stop and your credibility and motives vilified.

The Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” playbook never goes out of date. Several folks here are textbook examples, based on the way they deal with all they oppose.

Go figure.

Earth-based measurements of sea-level rise- not as reliable as satellite measurements, but covers a much longer time period.

“Are the regulations that prevent you from poisoning me and my children cutting into the millions you want to give your CEO? I am so sorry! I will fight to my last polluted breath to ensure you are freed from those evil regulations”

“You want to make sure my family will be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions because we are burdens on your profit margin? That sounds fair, where do we sign up?!”

“My wages need to remain stagnant while the CEO class sees theirs skyrocket? Well it must be because this generation of CEOs are so noble and brilliant that they deserve that wealth at my expense!”

“Actions to mitigate Global Warming would cut into the profits of multinational corporations that have covered up global warming for decades? How can I help with the coverup? Surely the entrenched power of the oil companies and their staggering wealth is worth more than the future of my children and grandchildren!”

A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox’s table,
a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with
large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have
been an ingratiating smile on its lips.

‘Good evening’, it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches,
‘I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts
of my body?’

It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters in
to a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from
Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and
naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

‘Something off the shoulder perhaps?’ suggested the animal,
‘Braised in a white wine sauce?’

‘Er, your shoulder?’ said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

‘But naturally my shoulder, sir,’ mooed the animal contentedly,
‘nobody else’s is mine to offer.’

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling
the animal’s shoulder appreciatively.

‘Or the rump is very good,’ murmured the animal. ‘I’ve been
exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there’s a lot
of good meat there.’

It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew
the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

‘Or a casserole of me perhaps?’ it added.

‘You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?’ whispered
Trillian to Ford.

‘Me?’ said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, ‘I don’t mean
anything.’

‘That’s absolutely horrible,’ exclaimed Arthur, ‘the most revolting
thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘What’s the problem Earth-man?’ said Zaphod, now transferring his
attention to the animal’s enormous rump.

‘I just don’t want to eat an animal that’s standing there
inviting me to,’ said Arthur, ‘It’s heartless.’

‘Better than eating an animal that doesn’t want to be
eaten,’ said Zaphod.

‘That’s not the point,’ Arthur protested. Then he thought about it
for a moment. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘maybe it is the point. I don’t
care, I’m not going to think about it now. I’ll just … er … I
think I’ll just have a green salad,’ he muttered.

‘May I urge you to consider my liver?’ asked the animal,
‘it must be very rich and tender by now, I’ve been force-feeding
myself for months.’

‘A green salad,’ said Arthur emphatically.

‘A green salad?’ said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly
at Arthur.

‘Are you going to tell me,’ said Arthur, ‘that I shouldn’t have
green salad?’

‘Well,’ said the animal, ‘I know many vegetables that are
very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually
decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed
an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of
saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.’

It managed a very slight bow.

‘Glass of water please,’ said Arthur.

‘Look,’ said Zaphod, ‘we want to eat, we don’t want to make
a meal of the issues. Four rare stakes please, and hurry.
We haven’t eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand
million years.’

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.
‘A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,’ it
said, ‘I’ll just nip off and shoot myself.’

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ll be very humane.’

It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen.

-Douglas Adams
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Come back, SDAI. we really do miss you. At least your nonsense is clever and amusing and good-natured (if you dig down far enough). The other reactionaries here are just so goddamn RIGHTEOUS. They are such crashing bores.

And lets face it. So are some of their noble opponents.