Althouse: "In a speech interrupted by repeated beeps warning that he had exceeded his time limit, Mr. Obama said..."

November 30, 2015

"In a speech interrupted by repeated beeps warning that he had exceeded his time limit, Mr. Obama said..."

"... in Le Bourget that the climate conference represented an important turning point in world history because the leaders attending the meeting now recognize the urgency of the problem. 'No nation — large or small, wealthy or poor — is immune,' he said."

The same standards apply to everyone — big or small — except that thing about the time limits as applied to me.

121 comments:

Ignorance is Bliss said...: Personally I think we should work to reduce carbon emissions. Starting with not having a bunch of people fly around the world to talk about reducing carbon emissions.

Haven't these people heard about teleconferencing?; 11/30/15, 2:22 PM
walter said...: Shh. He's sticking it to ISIS..pas interrupte!; 11/30/15, 2:22 PM
Michael K said...: When was the last leader of a major country as deluded as Obama ?

Hitler, Mao, maybe Stalin.

Any free countries ?; 11/30/15, 2:22 PM
David said...: Yep, that's our guy!; 11/30/15, 2:23 PM
Bill said...: Drudge had it right today: HOT AIR.; 11/30/15, 2:23 PM
Owen said...: Blows off the Charlie Hebdo march. Comes late to the Moment of Silence after Bataclan slaughter. Hogs the mike to lecture everyone about how important it is for him to take on the Carbon Sins of all humanity.

Textbook pathology.; 11/30/15, 2:25 PM
Nonapod said...: Holy sermons know not time limits! Yea, verily! For we are all climate sinners in the eyes of Obama! Repent ye, and believe in the Church of Anthropological Climate Change! All nations must tithe unto the Church.; 11/30/15, 2:27 PM
chuck said...: Our President is "special" in many ways.; 11/30/15, 2:27 PM
Greg Hlatky said...: How much carbon dioxide did he add to the atmosphere?; 11/30/15, 2:34 PM
traditionalguy said...: Obama finally crossed the Rubicon. We now know why Obama exists and has spent his last 7 years carefully lying to Americans. Now all is revealed. Congress is defacto dissolved.

Welcome the Advent of Obama's very own New World Government with his own New World Tax to be collected in the New World Currency by his own New World Armed Forces.

We have witnessed the Roman Empire reborn. Paris is the place to declare it.; 11/30/15, 2:37 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Obama on risk of ‘submerged countries, abandoned cities.’

He is so full of shit. Burning permafrost? Alaskan towns under water? And, he just doesn't get the reality that even if AlGore were reputable and honest, the seas are just not going to rise faster than the economic obsolescence of the buildings that he thinks will be lost. Notably, Obama slid right back and forth between global warming and climate change, without skipping a beat, not seeming to understand that the latter was posited after the models predicting the former were found to be woefully inaccurate. And, the idea that the 15 warmest years on record are the 15 of this century/millennium is a bit hard to handle, given that his employees have been actively fudging the official figures to show just warming, even when the raw data shows nothing of the sort.; 11/30/15, 2:40 PM
Sal said...: He thought the beeps were some other culture's way of applauding his greatness.; 11/30/15, 2:43 PM
eric said...: Everything in the world is like that for Mr. Obama. It applies to us, but never to him.

On a scale of things which could apply to him as well as us, but to which he is completely unaware, this is quite a small instance.; 11/30/15, 2:43 PM
Sal said...: Obama is the biggest carbon pig on the planet. His cross-country trips to attend a two-hour fundraiser or a weekend golf trip to Florida are not important presidential duties.; 11/30/15, 2:45 PM
walter said...: You give extra time to Nobel "winners".; 11/30/15, 2:46 PM
traditionalguy said...: The Emperor can just declare all proof that Global Warming is a Fake to be a Heresy and therefore a Crime Against Humanity.

No wonder the Argentine Jesuit Flash playing Pope wants in on this total power scam.; 11/30/15, 2:49 PM
MikeR said...: "And, the idea that the 15 warmest years on record are the 15 of this century/millennium is a bit hard to handle..." Eh - they probably are. But that's a silly point he's making, that everyone makes. Temperatures have been rising, but they have been rising very slowly recently. The last fifteen years of surface temperatures have been pretty much flat. So if things rise very slowly, expect the more recent temperatures to be higher than the ones before them, that's obvious.
That doesn't make it a scary problem. It's only scary if the temperatures are rising fast enough. If they continue to rise slowly, if the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 (ECS) is not very big - the world doesn't need any special steps at all to keep the temperature rise under 2 degrees. It would be no problem.
The IPCC gave a range of ECS between 1.5 and 4.5. The smaller values would take all the urgency out of AGW. And several recent studies have shown that the smaller values are much more likely.; 11/30/15, 2:50 PM
damikesc said...: Funny how the solution to "pollution/climate change/etc" is ALWAYS more government control --- yet the places with the most government control are, always, the worst offenders.

Personally I think we should work to reduce carbon emissions. Starting with not having a bunch of people fly around the world to talk about reducing carbon emissions.

Haven't these people heard about teleconferencing?

This is one of the big complaints I've seen from Instapundit for years in his "I'll treat it like a crisis when they act like it's a crisis" series. They pollute more to attend this conference than I will in my life and they want ME to tone it down?

And people STILL think he is more than a dunce? The man has never said anything I found terribly erudite (Bush's "soft bigotry of low expectations" is more profound an observation than anything Obama has vomited out) and plenty that are mind-bogglingly stupid.; 11/30/15, 2:51 PM
Dan Hossley said...: I think you've captured the essence of Obama perfectly.; 11/30/15, 2:54 PM
Mark said...: Apparently none of these commenters watched the Republican Presidential debate where candidates repeatedly ignored the time limits as well.

Then again, Michael K was just claiming the Colorado shooter identified as a woman on Saturday, so his grasp on reality should be accepted as tenuous already.; 11/30/15, 2:56 PM
Matt said...: Unless he was speaking off the cuff, Obama knew about the time limit beforehand and deliberately gave a speech that would go over the time limit. Doesn't that say something about him as a person?

Didn't Bill Clinton have a similar problem?; 11/30/15, 3:01 PM
Sebastian said...: Limits? Since when do narcissistic psychopaths abide by "limits"? [line break goes here] The world revolves around them. The only relevant limits are the ones they impose on others -- in this case, limits on American growth, American power, and American prestige.; 11/30/15, 3:01 PM
Bob Ellison said...: No country is immune. We're all susceptible to leftist idiocy, especially when it's driven by power-hungry atheists. That was the political lesson of the 20th century.; 11/30/15, 3:06 PM
pm317 said...: What is in it for Obama (the Soros puppet)? That is the question we need to answer. In that "Hot Air" picture on Drudge, do you recognize any of those faces? They must be the impoverished countries that would get submerged if we don't do something like right now, right? Who is bribing them?; 11/30/15, 3:08 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Beeps, beeps? We don't need no stinkin' beeps!; 11/30/15, 3:16 PM
Anonymous said...: He is the one he has been waiting for....He is the all important Obama...in his own head.; 11/30/15, 3:16 PM
n.n said...: Mr. Pro-choice in Chief, backed by a social consensus, real and JournoListic, proclaims that the prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming poses an imminent threat to humanity.

Surely he can think of other ways to save a few million lives annually today. So damn selective. Do it for the planned babies... excised Posterity, Obama.; 11/30/15, 3:29 PM
bleh said...: Yes, of course our government "embraces the opportunity to do something" about climate change. It's a fantastic way to raise revenue and effectively transfer wealth from the bottom 98% to wealthy cronies who pretend to be "doing something" about climate change.; 11/30/15, 3:35 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Mayve he thought the beeps were coming from Ahmed's clock.; 11/30/15, 3:42 PM
The BubFather said...: Pretty sure the ISIS gang was shitting in their pants when Obama uttered this last week......."Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference. What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children."

Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of a terrorist like a speech about global warming.; 11/30/15, 3:43 PM
MadisonMan said...: As a session chair at innumerable scientific meetings, I have little tolerance for people who go over their allotted time. There is nothing that is ruder to the people who follow you.; 11/30/15, 3:44 PM
David Begley said...: 1. From Barack's Paris address:

"This summer, I saw the effects of climate change firsthand in our northernmost state, Alaska, where the sea is already swallowing villages and eroding shorelines; where permafrost thaws and the tundra burns; where glaciers are melting at a pace unprecedented in modern times. And it was a preview of one possible future -- a glimpse of our children’s fate if the climate keeps changing faster than our efforts to address it. Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own."

Where are the fact checkers of these claims? Can we see this stuff? What about the parts of Alaska he didn't see? And what about Alaska before accurate temp measurements? History did not start the day Barack was born.

How could a rational and serious person not burst out laughing at such garbage?

Love the time limit on Obama. He is insufferable.; 11/30/15, 3:45 PM
walter said...: "Apparently none of these commenters watched the Republican Presidential debate where candidates repeatedly ignored the time limits as well."

Ah..but that was a presidential debate.

We've been told that here "the debate is over".; 11/30/15, 3:46 PM
Original Mike said...: He's got nothing to say, yet he can't stop saying it.; 11/30/15, 3:46 PM
Anonymous said...: I'll believe it's a real problem when no one flies to an opulent conference on "Fighting Climate Change." You all stay at home, teleconference on small screens (big screens use more energy), and eat nothing but vegetables while having your negotiations.

Then I'll believe you believe it's a real issue.; 11/30/15, 3:49 PM
walter said...: So true Gregg, if there ever was a time to be "phoning it in", this is it.; 11/30/15, 3:51 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: The press in India was mightily disappointed in The Lightworker's rhetoric on his "historic" visit to India. They complained that they thought they would hear a "trained orator" --due to Obama's reputation in the sycophantic press in the USA. Instead they found Obama's speechifying to be distinctly third rate.

That said, a "trained orator" can bring a speech to a conclusion within 5 seconds or so plus or minus from the time allotted. Doing so takes a bit of practice and work, neither of which is likely to occur with this lazy so and so. But it can be done. Good speakers do it all the time--and they do it without a teleprompter. I expect that whatever worthwhile Obama might have to say on the topic of climate change or global warming could be spoken in 15 seconds tops--and written on the top of a pencil eraser.; 11/30/15, 3:51 PM
M Jordan said...: World leaders at the Paris climate conference while a skeptical world watches: the blind leading the sighted.; 11/30/15, 3:55 PM
AlbertAnonymous said...: As long as I get to be the one handing out "Carbon Credits" to the polluting companies that pay me money for their sin offerings (and taking my commission each time), I don't much care what any of these people do or say with respect to global cooling... I mean warming... I mean climate change.

Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia, Winston....; 11/30/15, 3:58 PM
damikesc said...: Temperatures have been rising, but they have been rising very slowly recently. The last fifteen years of surface temperatures have been pretty much flat.

Ironically, for no explained reason (and they have been asked by Congress and they told Congress to go fuck themselves), NOAA revised temperatures for the last 15 years upwards.

If they cannot the temperature correct for, say, 2 or 3 years ago --- what good is their entire "science"? I mean, if climate science should be able to do one thing well, it is get the fucking temperature right from a time when they were closely fucking monitoring temperatures.

Apparently none of these commenters watched the Republican Presidential debate where candidates repeatedly ignored the time limits as well.

You're comparing a debate to a fucking moronic global climate change conference?

And it's simple decorum. He's fucking over the later speakers to give his usual terrible speech.; 11/30/15, 3:58 PM
Roughcoat said...: Genuine question: wouldn't climate warming result in vast new regions being brought under cultivation, thus increasing food production? And thus opening up those theretofore unlivable regions to human habitation?

If this is the case it seems to me that climate warming could be highly beneficial, as it was during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), or "Alti-thermal," which produced very high crop yields and a population boom.

Can anyone enlighten me on this subject? Has anyone written about it?; 11/30/15, 4:00 PM
damikesc said...: Yes, of course our government "embraces the opportunity to do something" about climate change. It's a fantastic way to raise revenue and effectively transfer wealth from the bottom 98% to wealthy cronies who pretend to be "doing something" about climate change.

Why ISN'T this mentioned more? Is there a more purely "corporate welfare" scam out there than "fighting climate change"? It robs the poor AND then proceeds to fuck them over by having them basically freeze to death unless they can beg the government enough to not let them freeze tonight. Until the summer hits and they can die of heat stroke.

You know what would've been the best news possible? A series of really bad plane crashes in Paris.; 11/30/15, 4:01 PM
walter said...: Theme song..lyrics need a slight rewrite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGF_0AcHaGs; 11/30/15, 4:03 PM
Just asking questions (Jaq) said...: Who would have thought that Obama would turn out to be a classic bore who thinks that the "bully pulpit" is where you bully people from.; 11/30/15, 4:06 PM
David Begley said...: NYT writer-activist probably thought the beeps we rude to our President. He is, after all, historic.; 11/30/15, 4:08 PM
Quaestor said...: If "climate change" or "global warming" (pick your shibboleth) were half the threat the power-wielders claim it is then nuclear generation would be universally hailed as THE SOLUTION! Instead they drone on and on about solar energy... Let's be clear, solar energy is practical if (1) one lives somewhere with 320 or more sunny days per year (2) one enjoys an income that allows one to spend 250% more per KWH then the global average without sacrifice. The flies in the ointment are (1) a place with 320 days of sun is called a desert (2) only the 1% can spend nearly three times as much for energy without sacrifice. It no accident that the largest and most efficient solar energy project in the USA is located in Tonopah, NV (population 2,478).

MikeR wrote: The IPCC gave a range of ECS between 1.5 and 4.5. The smaller values would take all the urgency out of AGW. And several recent studies have shown that the smaller values are much more likely.

And if raw data is used instead of "corrected observation" the problem disappears completely.; 11/30/15, 4:19 PM
Biff said...: Louis XIV famously said, "L'Etat, c'est moi." Surely, Obama surpasses "the State," so one cannot expect him to behave as a mere peer to (most of) the assembled Heads of State.; 11/30/15, 4:22 PM
pm317 said...: He is robot reading the teleprompter and has no idea what he is saying.. so how can he be aware that he has to bring his thing to a logical conclusion short of abruptly stopping?; 11/30/15, 4:24 PM
The Godfather said...: But, but, but, didn't he stop the rising seas back in 2008?; 11/30/15, 4:30 PM
PB said...: arrogant, narcissistic, blowhard.; 11/30/15, 4:31 PM
Unknown said...: Mongolia?; 11/30/15, 4:53 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: Roughcoat at 4 pm had it right. I'm looking forward to the reopening of the vineyards on Greenland's east coast. I understand that the Vikings made some killer cabernet sauvignons there and that the 1402 vintage was particularly good. When the vineyards reopen Roughcoat, you and I can share a bottle of the new stuff.; 11/30/15, 4:57 PM
Original Mike said...: "As a session chair at innumerable scientific meetings, I have little tolerance for people who go over their allotted time. There is nothing that is ruder to the people who follow you."

They always think what they have to say is unprecedented. It never is.; 11/30/15, 5:01 PM
Curious George said...: "...that this is the moment that we finally decided to save our planet."

Where did I hear that before?; 11/30/15, 5:11 PM
MikeR said...: 'And if raw data is used instead of "corrected observation" the problem disappears completely.' I don't think that's right. You can get corrected or straight raw data from the BEST website (BerkeleyEarth.org). According to Steve Mosher it makes no difference to the trend.
There's a lot of bad science out there, but I see it on both sides. Everyone quotes the ones where they like the answer.; 11/30/15, 5:11 PM
pm317 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/30/15, 5:24 PM
garage mahal said...: Congrats Republicans, you're the only major political party in the world that denies climate change. I'm sure you and Exxon are right, and the rest of the world is wrong, and there is a comforting link from Drudge that affirms that your interests and the interests of billionaire polluter align perfectly. How embarrassing.

Do Republicans ever tire of being Republicans? The mental gymnastics and outright denial of reality must be tiresome.; 11/30/15, 5:28 PM
Chris N said...: I think it's time to get some cash 4 this clunker.

Maybe private citizens can raise a few hundred million for an early retirement library with a big mirror.; 11/30/15, 5:30 PM
SteveR said...: "How can we sleep when our tundras' burning"; 11/30/15, 5:35 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Garage,
Why the lies? Are you that afraid of defending your position on the merits? (Sorry, rhetorical questions.)

Republicans don't deny climate change; what they do is question what is causing it, how severe it is, whether or not it will be beneficial overall, and how accurate the "models" are. And none of those questions are anywhere close to being accurately answered.

But you don't see that - all you see is the ass of the sheep in front of you.; 11/30/15, 6:01 PM
M Jordan said...: Hey, garage, wanna debate global warming? You should, we ignorant Repubs are attacking your faith. All we have is facts to work with.

Take me up on my challenge. But advance warning: no cut-and-paste allowed. Facts. Just facts.; 11/30/15, 6:03 PM
Roughcoat said...: Skeptical re Roughcoat at 4 pm had it right.

I don't know if I'm right or wrong. I'm just curious to know whether there has been anything written on the possible beneficial aspects climate warming, particularly with respect to the expansion of agriculture and increased food production. In other words, would climate warming result in more land being brought under cultivation and being open to human habitation? That what happened during the Medieval Warm Period, and also, crucially for the development of civilization, during the Late Neolithic "Altithermal."; 11/30/15, 6:04 PM
walter said...: 14 minutes in a 3 minute slot. Talk about "privilege". Taker.; 11/30/15, 6:10 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Congrats Republicans, you're the only major political party in the world that denies climate change

I'm actually somewhat proud of this. Who wants to be another sheep in the herd?; 11/30/15, 6:22 PM
MadisonMan said...: Ironically, for no explained reason (and they have been asked by Congress and they told Congress to go fuck themselves), NOAA revised temperatures for the last 15 years upwards.

It was my understanding that the paper didn't do that -- it reinterpreted the temperatures from the past 15 years with better statistical methods.

The accuracy with which you can describe a point on a line series increases as more and more points (years, in this case) surround the point both fore and aft. So the so-called 'pause' of 1998 is now finally better understood as not a pause at all, and temperatures were not really revised -- simply the interpretation of them.

In other words, a better averaging period when you're talking about climate is not one year, but 5 years or a decade or 20 or 30. Look at 5-year averages, or 10-year averages plotted over the past 150 or so years. No pause is there.

But fear not, though, champions of the pause! 2015 is super-warm, and it can be the new pause-holder until about 2030 or so when the statistics catch up.; 11/30/15, 6:31 PM
Wince said...: Obama thought he earned and deserved the extra time since he was selling out his own country on the other countries' behalf.

And I'm being completely serious here.; 11/30/15, 6:34 PM
MountainMan said...: Garage said: "Congrats Republicans, you're the only major political party in the world that denies climate change."

It's because we're not stupid. This is nothing more than a major power grab by the global elites and their enablers to take more power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. There is no evidence right now that during the era in which we live - the Holocene Inter-glacial - of the Quaternary Period that the climate of the earth is behaving any differently that it has for the past 2.8M years, with alternating periods of glaciation and de-glaciation, with frequency of about 100,000 years. The Vostok and EPICA data from Antarctic ice cores, widely available, provide a good history of temperature, CO2, and dust concentration, at least of the last 400-500,000 years. We are living in an ice age now, just fortunate to be in the pause between one cycle and the next for the last 10-12,000 years, which encompasses all of the development of human civilization. I have no idea if man is causing the earth to warm or not; so far there is little evidence of it and none of the models that have been developed that supposedly are telling us that temperature will rise 0.2C, or 0.4C, or 1.4C, or whatever the number is this week, by 2100, can even predict today's climate based on past history. Which means, of course, they are useless. Even ft man is causing climate change, and the temperature were to rise a degree or so, that would only put us back in the same temperature range as previous warm periods during the Holocene, such as the Medieval, the Roman, or the Minoan, which were great periods in human history. What we really should fear is it getting colder, not warmer. There are many benefits to a warmer climate and civilization thrived during the prior warm periods; not so much during the colder periods of the Holocene, such as the Little Ice Age. At its beginning Europe suffered devastating famines followed by the Black Death, wiping out 1/3 of the population. We have many other things we could be focusing our efforts on that would make a difference NOW, not trying to solve some theoretical problem 100 years from now. The biggest problem for mankind right now is that millions of people around the world still do not have clean water and sanitation and die from water borne illnesses. That could be solved. We have potential devastating natural events that could occur, like a meteorite impact, or another Carrington event. Who is thinking about those? These aren't just theoretical; sooner or later, they will happen. Climate change destroying the world? I don't think so. It hasn't for the past 2.8M years.

BTW, your hero Al Gore predicted in 2006 the world would end on January 27, 2016 if we didn't solve the global warming problem. Why don' you let us all know how that comes out.; 11/30/15, 7:07 PM
Anonymous said...: In sheep-fucking, garage is a 'bottom'.; 11/30/15, 7:14 PM
Big Mike said...: I'm sure you and Exxon are right, and the rest of the world is wrong, and there is a comforting link from Drudge that affirms that your interests and the interests of billionaire polluter align perfectly.

Well, certainly it's true that I'm right so that must make you wrong. Let me explain in short words. The mathematical models make things called "predictions." You can look the word up using Webster's or Google, but basically what it means is that one plugs numbers, like last year's temperatures (the temperature is that little red line in a mercury thermometer) and the estimated amount of CO2 that has been released, and anything else the model calls for, and perform the calculations. The results of the calculations are called a prediction.

Now here's the part that so many climate scientists (alleged scientists) get wrong. One is expected to "validate" that model by matching the predictions against what really happened. It's okay for the predictions to be a little off for a year or two, but on the whole the model's predictions are expected to match what one sees for real.

And the models don't. They consistently overestimate the amount of observed warming, which right now is measured in hundredths of degree per annum. In other words, do not plan to try to sell your ski equipment or even your warm galoshes.

So, four questions for you:

(1) Is anthropogenic global warming happening? Answer: not to any great degree. We don't really know precisely how much, if any, warming is happening because the scientists who measure these things refuse to release their raw data. From a scientific perspective this is unethical. From a practical perspective one is allowed (actually encouraged) to assume that if the raw data were released, it would refute their theories in whole or in part. This is sort of akin to legal doctrines about what a jury can infer if evidence could have been presented by a defendant but wasn't.

(2) Is there really a scientific consensus? Nope. More and more scientists are standing up and saying that the observed evidence does not support the theory.

(3) Is global warming bad? Answer: Every time I try to get to the root of why people think global warming is bad, it comes down to either they've been told it's bad, or Michael Mann's hockey stick. But the hockey stick was refuted almost immediately after it was published. Will it be bad if we have longer growing periods in high latitudes? Will it be bad if a true Northwest Passage opens up reliably every summer so that things can be shipped from China, Korea, and Japan to the US east coast without going through the Panama Canal or being off-loaded onto trains and trucks on the west coast?

FWIW, circa 1000 - 1400 AD the temperatures in Greenland supported two Viking colonies for hundreds of year using nothing more than ordinary medieval farming technology. Let me know if you'd care to try that today. I knew instantly that Michael Mann's hockey stick had to be wrong because we know about the Viking colonies from the historical record, just as we know about the Little Ice Age of the eighteenth century from the historical record.

(4) If global warming is happening, is cap and trade the best way to deal with it? Or are there cheaper ways to lower global temperatures that do not offer such open opportunities for graft and corruption? I think the answer must be obvious.; 11/30/15, 7:19 PM
Original Mike said...: "14 minutes in a 3 minute slot. Talk about "privilege". Taker."

Most people run over because they didn't practice the talk and thus don't know it's 20% too long. But over 4x too long? That's just arrogance.; 11/30/15, 7:30 PM
Dad said...: MountainMan, that may be the best 500 words or less encapsulation of climate change I've read. Thanks.

Warmth is life. Cold is death. Compare the abundance of life at the equator with the dearth of it at the poles, and then worry about what will happen when the earth cools, and celebrate when it warms.; 11/30/15, 7:34 PM
Roughcoat said...: MountainMan,

Excellent post, very informative. Could you provide titles of reliable books that discuss this topic?; 11/30/15, 7:54 PM
chickelit said...: I'm only interested in Trump's reaction to all this.; 11/30/15, 8:04 PM
David said...: Mark said...
Apparently none of these commenters watched the Republican Presidential debate where candidates repeatedly ignored the time limits as well.

Uh, Mike, do you see a slightly different context. Or several.

1. Not a major international event with supposedly co-equal sovereigns.
2. That is expected conduct in a debate.
3. Not the president representing the country.
4. Not in the middle of a speech saying everyone should be view as equals at the event.
5 Not in front of the leaders of the entire world. Not to mention the people.; 11/30/15, 8:12 PM
Drago said...: Oh great.

Now "beeps" are racist.

This will result in a lot of machinery/mechanism redesign but at least we won't have to worry about attaching "trigger warnings" to these myriad devices.; 11/30/15, 8:17 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Throwing in my Thanks to MountainMan.

I am Laslo.; 11/30/15, 8:17 PM
JackWayne said...: Madman, don't put yourself on the side of garage. You beclown yourself. As to your defense of NOAA. Just remember, it's models, like Potemkin villages, all the way down.; 11/30/15, 8:20 PM
Drago said...: MountainMan, you lost our resident WI middle school drop out garagie at "era".

And, lets face it, he probably wasn't following much of what you posted before that word either.

But garage knows that if he mouths the party line, his betters (basically everyone) will let him pretend to be part of the "smart" set.

Again, this beats the heck out of learning something for himself and applying it. That's actual work baby! And it's clear that has never been a priority for one garage mahal of WI middle school athletic fame.

To garages credit however, he did once, for a very very short while, have a token "blacky" friend.; 11/30/15, 8:20 PM
MadisonMan said...: Is there really a scientific consensus? Nope. More and more scientists are standing up and saying that the observed evidence does not support the theory.

It's my impression that, at least in my field, the opposite is true. Fewer are contesting the observations that the Earth is warming. I think maybe 5 or 10 years that may not have been the case, but it is now.; 11/30/15, 8:21 PM
MountainMan said...: Garage said: "Congrats Republicans, you're the only major political party in the world that denies climate change."

It's because we're not stupid. This is nothing more than a major power grab by the global elites and their enablers to take more power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. There is no evidence right now that during the era in which we live - the Holocene Inter-glacial - of the Quaternary Period that the climate of the earth is behaving any differently that it has for the past 2.8M years, with alternating periods of glaciation and de-glaciation, with frequency of about 100,000 years. The Vostok and EPICA data from Antarctic ice cores, widely available, provide a good history of temperature, CO2, and dust concentration, at least of the last 400-500,000 years. We are living in an ice age now, just fortunate to be in the pause between one cycle and the next for the last 10-12,000 years, which encompasses all of the development of human civilization. I have no idea if man is causing the earth to warm or not; so far there is little evidence of it and none of the models that have been developed that supposedly are telling us that temperature will rise 0.2C, or 0.4C, or 1.4C, or whatever the number is this week, by 2100, can even predict today's climate based on past history. Which means, of course, they are useless. Even ft man is causing climate change, and the temperature were to rise a degree or so, that would only put us back in the same temperature range as previous warm periods during the Holocene, such as the Medieval, the Roman, or the Minoan, which were great periods in human history. What we really should fear is it getting colder, not warmer. There are many benefits to a warmer climate and civilization thrived during the prior warm periods; not so much during the colder periods of the Holocene, such as the Little Ice Age. At its beginning Europe suffered devastating famines followed by the Black Death, wiping out 1/3 of the population. We have many other things we could be focusing our efforts on that would make a difference NOW, not trying to solve some theoretical problem 100 years from now. The biggest problem for mankind right now is that millions of people around the world still do not have clean water and sanitation and die from water borne illnesses. That could be solved. We have potential devastating natural events that could occur, like a meteorite impact, or another Carrington event. Who is thinking about those? These aren't just theoretical; sooner or later, they will happen. Climate change destroying the world? I don't think so. It hasn't for the past 2.8M years.

BTW, your hero Al Gore predicted in 2006 the world would end on January 27, 2016 if we didn't solve the global warming problem. Why don' you let us all know how that comes out.; 11/30/15, 8:23 PM
n.n said...: Statistical analysis of chaotic systems and processes is only valid in limited frames of reference (i.e. scientific frame), and then only with progressive margins of error proportional to time/space offsets. The catastrophic anthropogenic global warming pseudo-science is established in a variable frame of reference with incomplete and, in fact, insufficient characterization of the system and processes. The unwieldy nature of the system only ensures the reduced accuracy of estimates... Estimates of estimates, really. Produced by the various models.

This is not to say that humans are not influencing the system, locally, but that the prognosticators are making claims that cannot be substantiated in the scientific domain.

Perhaps they could moderate their ambitions, and reduce the scope to something realistic. A global statistic is meaningless without an overwhelming driver or confluence of processes. Their sparse, inaccurate observations and estimates (e.g. models) in both time and space only guarantee the illegitimacy of their guess.

That said, they could start scientific reform with rejection of the pro-choice doctrine rationalized by a scientifically naive understanding of human evolution that is the leading cause of catastrophic anthropogenic global abortions.; 11/30/15, 8:26 PM
JackWayne said...: Roughcoat, just read website wattsupwiththat.; 11/30/15, 8:26 PM
Quaestor said...: I'm looking forward to the reopening of the vineyards on Greenland's east coast.

Greenland has probably never supported viniculture. Also, the Medieval Norse settlements in Greenland were all on the west coast of that island. Confusingly they are known as the Western, Middle, and Eastern Settlements, but they're actual geographic relationship is much more a matter of a north/south axis, the Western Settlement being almost 10 degrees of Latitude more north of the Eastern Settlement, but only 2 degrees of Longitude west.

The Greenland Norse did raise some barley so beer might have been produced, and during the flush of summer there millions of acres of wildflowers so mead might also have been possible, though I doubt it.; 11/30/15, 8:28 PM
traditionalguy said...: All Global warming has been falsified by actual data showing global cooling is happening.

So it's Con-men morphed it into climate change with lots of stormy weather. That passes the superficial test since that is real evidence of the very real Global Cooling.

The really dumb thing is that the totally disproved theory that a CO2 Feedback of trapped heat is the still the reason asserted for an emergency UN Government Decrees to steal everybody's carbon based cheap fuels.

But no one can think that hard.; 11/30/15, 8:30 PM
Quaestor said...: To garages credit however, he did once, for a very very short while, have a token "blacky" friend.

I think garage used to refer to him as "my saucy blackamoor," or was that Titus?; 11/30/15, 8:30 PM
Hagar said...: It's amazing, but what Big Mike and even Mountain Man say was known before East Anglia University was ever heard of outside East Anglia, U.K.
You do not find "the topic discussed" because it was not thought of as a "topic," but the history of the Old Norse (no "Vikings," except one perhaps with Leif Eirikson, and he was a German) was fairly well known, plus occasional mentions of cairns with runes and other traces way up north in Davis Strait indicating it must have been passable for hunting trips at the time.
Otherwise, geology texts, archeology reports, papers on the human genus and migrations, etc., and so on.

And if the publication dates are before the "hockey stick," the papers are not involved in the present brouhaha.; 11/30/15, 8:32 PM
MadisonMan said...: And an interesting sub-group of those people: Devout Christians who discuss Earth Stewardship as a responsibility for protecting future generations. I've read a lot more from them in the past 2-4 years. (Someone like Greg Fishel in Raleigh, for example).

(Apologies if this double posts -- wonky internet); 11/30/15, 8:35 PM
eric said...: Ironically, for no explained reason (and they have been asked by Congress and they told Congress to go fuck themselves), NOAA revised temperatures for the last 15 years upwards.

It was my understanding that the paper didn't do that -- it reinterpreted the temperatures from the past 15 years with better statistical methods.

The accuracy with which you can describe a point on a line series increases as more and more points (years, in this case) surround the point both fore and aft. So the so-called 'pause' of 1998 is now finally better understood as not a pause at all, and temperatures were not really revised -- simply the interpretation of them.

In other words, a better averaging period when you're talking about climate is not one year, but 5 years or a decade or 20 or 30. Look at 5-year averages, or 10-year averages plotted over the past 150 or so years. No pause is there.

But fear not, though, champions of the pause! 2015 is super-warm, and it can be the new pause-holder until about 2030 or so when the statistics catch up.

You understand wrong. They revise the numbers downward each year. Next year, they'll continue to revise the numbers down to continue making the current year hotter.

This isn't something they started this year.; 11/30/15, 8:41 PM
garage mahal said...: It's because we're not stupid. This is nothing more than a major power grab by the global elites and their enablers to take more power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

It just happens that your worldview and the interests of multi-national corporations magically align in their ability to pollute and be free of any regulations to maximize profits? You have to got to be a world class sucker to believe that. Not everyone is as dumb as Drago, I suspect it's more of a tribal, shirts vs skins type of thing.

WE CAN'T LET LIBERALS WIN! I'LL DENY ANYTHING!; 11/30/15, 9:06 PM
Big Mike said...: @MadMan, I worded myself very carefully. I don't dispute that the data since 1998 shows a tiny upwards trend. However the AGW theory predicts a much, much larger upwards trend. To my knowledge every mathematical model overstates the amount of warming, some by a whole degree centigrade.

And there is a secondary effect going on, which is that scientists, no matter how reputable, have been and are being ostracized by their peers -- what Judith Curry called the "tribal nature" of climatology. At any time it takes serious gonads to stand up to that sort of pressure.

I am what you, personally, might call a "denier" because back before I retired I developed -- and validated! -- stochastic models to predict performance of computer systems I was designing and for which I served as the architect. My models had to be right because millions of dollars of government equipment purchases hinged on their being right. And I got pretty good at it. Consequently I am appalled at what I see with respect to climate modeling.

Things you and I might discuss between ourselves include whether Navier-Stokes equations are being properly applied in these models. Ph.D. mathematicians tell me that Navier-Stokes existence isn't confirmed, and some are livid that climate scientists think they can simply program Navier-Stokes into their computers and turn a crank and get valid numbers.

Secondly, the models of which I am aware predict that CO2 will lead to greater atmospheric water vapor, which is important since IR absorption by the H2O molecule is much greater than that of the CO2 molecule. But water vapor forms into clouds which are highly reflective on their upper surface, as anyone who has flown above a thick cloud layer is aware (the albedo effect, for those of you listening in on this). So the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is lower than it might be due to cloud cover, lowering temperatures. Meanwhile the formation of clouds is due to evaporation, which is endothermic, except clouds release water in the form of rainfall, and precipitation is exothermic. How well do your equations handle that part of the energy balance?

And the earliest models relied on constant average solar output, which is a terrible assumption no matter how it simplifies the mathematics. In fact, there are Russian scientists who are looking a solar cycles and predicting that we're in for global climate cooling due to a lowering of the solar output. Their arguments look very plausible, though I recognize that the connection between the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age are the focus of disputation.

At any rate it pleases me to be on the same side as Freeman Dyson.; 11/30/15, 9:20 PM
n.n said...: And the [social] consensus. Really? Who invited the flat-earth society?; 11/30/15, 10:02 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: The question is not whetehr the earth is warming, if you go back over 50 to 100 year period. The question is why the earth is warming. It's pretty clear there's more than one reason. Even more important, where is the cost benefit analysis of limiting carbon emissions? And aren't there other possibilities, if you think the earth is too warm, like spewing sulfer dioxide over the arctic or fertilizing the ocean with iron?

Now a lot of thse thinbgs have been taken off the table. They can be put back on. The only worthwhile thing that could happen at a climate conference is legalizing these interventions.

If you say we don't know enough to do geo-engineering, even reversible, short-term geo=engineering, then how can you say we know enough to lower carbon emissions? Lowering carbon emissions is also geo-engineering - only it is geo-ngineering that's guarenteed not to work!

Because even according to the calculations of the climate alarmists, it won't do very much.

And, no, it is not a first step. It's the absolute maximum that's remotely practicable.

There couldn't be a more stupid idea, on many levels, than limiting carbon emissions.

Sometimes these proposals get knocked down, but they keep coming back.

As the saying goes: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.; 11/30/15, 10:06 PM
walter said...: You have to wonder how many have kept any dissent at all under wraps...if even engaging non-party line concepts is risky to career.

http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/i-was-tossed-out-of-the-tribe-climate-scientist-judith-curry-interviewed/

"There’s no way I would have done this if I hadn’t been a tenured professor, fairly near the end of my career. If I were seeking a new job in the US academy, I’d be pretty much unemployable. I can still publish in the peer-reviewed journals. But there’s no way I could get a government research grant .."
This is the bit that's almost impossible to get through to many...that it's not just the private sector that has financial incentives involved. In her case, tenure protected her. But those seeking tenure will likely have to adhere strictly to the party line to make it.
Reminds me of a casual gathering among botany grad students years ago. Walking by, I overheard one of them saying the best way to keep your lab funded is to tie your research to global warming. Yeah..it was back when that was the phrase.; 11/30/15, 10:07 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: @Big Mike

Right. (1) It's not a big deal (2) The climate models, which try to attribute everything to carbon dioxide levels, don't fit reality (3) Indeed, it's not been demonstrated, or even argued deeply, that global warming is bad and not good, but just assumed, and never do we see anyone citing any good effects and (4) cutting emissions is the stupidest thing you could do - it doesn't work even according to their own projections. Statements llike 'we're almost out of time' and "this is not enough but it's a first step" are not only nonsense but contradict each other.; 11/30/15, 10:12 PM
Mark said...: MadisonMan, the trouble I have with AGW is simply that I don't trust the data that supposedly supports the science. Too many incidents of questionable revisions of historic data, too much ostracizing of anyone who questions even the extent of the effects of carbon emissions, too much deviation of observed current conditions compared to what the "settled science" said they'd be ten years ago.

In any less politicized field Michael Mann would have been busted back to teaching JuCo physics for the way he's conducted himself. Instead his supporters, including scientists who should know better, cover for him and treat him like some kind of martyr.

I'll start taking Climate Science seriously when scientists can start saying things that challenge the establishment without being burned at the stake. Until then there really isn't a science to talk about. (And I'm sorry if that hits close to where you live, but in your heart you know it's true.); 11/30/15, 10:15 PM
effinayright said...: Wanna humiliate a Global Warming Weenie?

Ask any to rank the top gases in the atmosphere, in order of percentage.

Let them give their response.

Then ask what the estimate is for the human contribution to that CO2 percentage.

I have asked many such fucktards those questions, anf they have ALL got it wrong, most putting O2 over N2, and ** every one** thinking CO2 represents roughly 10%, when in fact it's only 0.04 PERCENT, with humans purportedly contribution only 5% of that.

p.s. to MadisonMan: the Earth has been in a warming trend since the end of the last Ice Age, with numerous ups and downs along the way. Even "deniers" understand that. In fact, no "denier" denies that.

The issue is, are humans causing warming experienced over the last 120 years or so.

The answer is, NO. Correlation does not equal causality.

So if you think you're offering some counter with your fuzzy "impressions", you're just full of shit. Just what is your field, quilting?; 11/30/15, 10:41 PM
Michael K said...: " Fewer are contesting the observations that the Earth is warming. I think maybe 5 or 10 years that may not have been the case, but it is now."

You are in a strange field where 15 years of flat temperatures are ignored. I think we saw warming, as expected, after 1850 as the world recovered from the "Little Ice Age." that stopped about 1980 or so.

The solar radiation is probably the principle driver of climate along with the changes in the earth's orbit that drive ice ages.

CO2 continues to rise but not the temperature. Plankton is increasing, possible as a result of CO2 levels.; 11/30/15, 11:00 PM
rcommal said...: Smart is as smart does. President Obama fools himself if he thinks otherwise (and he surely is not alone in that conceit, make no mistake about it).; 12/1/15, 12:36 AM
MountainMan said...: Roughcoat said: "Excellent post, very informative. Could you provide titles of reliable books that discuss this topic?"

Not really. I've not read any books on climate change. I just spend a lot of time on the internet reading articles and looking at data, which is somewhat aligned with my soon-to-end 41-year career in IT and my educational background in statistics, data analysis, and optimization. Two sites I follow are the "Watts Up With That" blog that aggregates lots of climate science articles and data and also the blog of Georgia Tech climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry, who seems to be an honest and reliable source who doesn't let the climate bullies push her around.

For a really good source on how climate affected the spread of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century, at the start of the Little Ice Age, I can highly recommend John Kelly's "The Great Mortality", from about 10 years ago. He spends much of the early part of the book talking about the change in climate that preceded the arrival of the plague by 25 years or so, a colder, wetter Europe which led to failed crops, starvation, poorer health, and people living out their miserable existence huddled in their little hovels with their domesticated animals - and rats with their fleas - setting the stage for what would happen when the first plague bearing ships arrived in Sicily from Asia in the 1340's. Grim but very entertaining.

Also, "Dad", nice observation: Warmth = life; cold = death.; 12/1/15, 5:00 AM
Dr Weevil said...: Yes, "Warmth = life; cold = death", which makes Al Gore's name even more wonderfully appropriate. I wish I'd thought of this myself, but someone else did a few years ago. Just as 'rigor mortis' is the medical-Latin term for the 'stiffness of death', so 'algor mortis' is the medical-Latin term for the 'chill of death', the drop in body temperature that comes with death. "AL GORe" is the sort of name a clever and Latin-educated novelist would give to a villain trying to freeze us all to death.; 12/1/15, 6:56 AM
MountainMan said...: Here's a nice post on WUWT that was just put up that provides a good summary of recent climate data and its relationship to historical events. All summarized in a nice big PDF poster. This is excellent. "Read the whole thing."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/29/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years-2/; 12/1/15, 6:58 AM
damikesc said...: Congrats Republicans, you're the only major political party in the world that denies climate change.

When it was a relevant issue, most of the world supported the Holocaust. "The world" can be idiotic.

The mental gymnastics and outright denial of reality must be tiresome.

OK, I'll bite.

Is Caitlyn Jenner a woman?

It was my understanding that the paper didn't do that -- it reinterpreted the temperatures from the past 15 years with better statistical methods.

Except it didn't do that. It ALSO lowered the temperatures from before the hiatus. They then "extrapolate" climate data to cover areas with poor coverage or to simply invent numbers where they need them (i.e Paris warming significantly when no evidence exists that it has)

Again, this is a time where they CLOSELY measured this shit and they STILL couldn't get it "right". So they changed it. With no viable explanation. And when Congress asked for information to explain the rather substantial change, NOAA refused to comply. This isn't science to me. This is a religion. Little more.

There is no scientific justification for blatant political changes of data.; 12/1/15, 7:02 AM
Quaestor said...: I suppose garage mahal thinks stuff like this is cool; 12/1/15, 7:32 AM
Drago said...: garage: "It just happens that your worldview and the interests of multi-national corporations magically align in their ability to pollute and be free of any regulations to maximize profits? You have to got to be a world class sucker to believe that. Not everyone is as dumb as Drago, I suspect it's more of a tribal, shirts vs skins type of thing."

The under-educated child speaks as if it matters.

Do carry on. The intensity of your beliefs correlate precisely with the degree of your ignorance.; 12/1/15, 8:01 AM
MadisonMan said...: And when Congress asked for information to explain the rather substantial change, NOAA refused to comply.

Well, that's one way to put it. I would say that a Congressman wanted to score points with his constituency in a cheap and easy way. He apparently couldn't read and understand the paper, so he wanted everything that went into it.

Typically when I have something published, by the time it's published I've moved onto something else, and the thought of going back to old work is a thought most onerous. I would be grateful for a boss who ran interference for such a request.; 12/1/15, 8:14 AM
Mrs Whatsit said...: "Typically when I have something published, by the time it's published I've moved onto something else, and the thought of going back to old work is a thought most onerous."

Are you a scientist? I devoutly hope not, because that kind of attitude about furnishing the data on which your conclusions were based so that others can do the replication work that is essential to testing the conclusions shows a complete lack of understanding of how science is supposed to work.; 12/1/15, 8:36 AM
MadisonMan said...: "Methods" is usually a separate section in any published paper of mine. Right after the Introduction, normally.

Do I have time to explain them, slowly, to non-scientists? Sometimes.; 12/1/15, 9:05 AM
walter said...: "Typically when I have something published, by the time it's published I've moved onto something else, and the thought of going back to old work is a thought most onerous. I would be grateful for a boss who ran interference for such a request."

Someone to disseminate the powerpoint an dsay something like 'The debate is over"; 12/1/15, 9:10 AM
damikesc said...: Well, that's one way to put it. I would say that a Congressman wanted to score points with his constituency in a cheap and easy way. He apparently couldn't read and understand the paper, so he wanted everything that went into it.

Why would a scientist closely guard the data for their paper? Seems like it should be something they'd openly publicize. When a branch of "science" requires FOIA requests for raw data, again, you're not dealing with a science.

Typically when I have something published, by the time it's published I've moved onto something else, and the thought of going back to old work is a thought most onerous. I would be grateful for a boss who ran interference for such a request.

So, you'd happily not turn over data when asked for anybody attempting to replicate your work? Sounds like exceptionally poor science. Or would you only do it for somebody who agreed with you beforehand?

No offense, but you sound like a God awful scientist.; 12/1/15, 9:13 AM
Drago said...: MadisonMan: "Well, that's one way to put it. I would say that a Congressman wanted to score points with his constituency in a cheap and easy way. He apparently couldn't read and understand the paper, so he wanted everything that went into it."

Yes, the possibility that someone might disagrees with you politically means you should never have to "show your work".

Because that would be onerous.; 12/1/15, 9:30 AM
MadisonMan said...: So, you'd happily not turn over data when asked for anybody attempting to replicate your work?

See above. Any data I use is described in my papers.

Happily isn't quite the right word. I'd willingly look over the results of someone who replicated my work, and make suggestions if I thought they'd got it wrong.; 12/1/15, 9:37 AM
JAORE said...: "No offense, but you sound like a God awful scientist."

Not only that, but the guys you favor stiff-arming FUND (by law) your freaking laboratory.; 12/1/15, 9:54 AM
Hagar said...: What I tried to say is that we know a lot about how climate has varied in the past from sciences for which establishing the climatic conditions at a certain location at a certain time has been important, but ancillary to the prime objective of the investigations. Put it all together, and we know a lot about what happened, but not why.

The AGW, etc., seem to be all based on temperature readings over the last couple of centuries - I guess started systematically by the British Admiralty - and then cranked into computer simulations along with a whole lot of assumptions about chemical reactions, etc., and on top of that, they have "tweaked" the actual temperature readings, so that the computer simulations would give the results they thought they ought to show for our future prospects.

And they still have no explanations for the past variations we know occurred from the actual scientific studies referred to in my first paragraph.; 12/1/15, 10:03 AM
MadisonMan said...: Because that would be onerous.

Drago, yes, I'd rather spend my time doing something other than helping someone figure out what's wrong with something published. (With the assumption being that peer review would largely remove known errors). That's a little bit different from your statement that I never have to show my work. Work is available in the published paper. You have only to read it. How much hand-holding of politician hands is required of a scientist?

As noted above, if it's someone trying to replicate work, and not finding the same answer, then it's more of a scientific problem that's going to interest me. Why are these things different?; 12/1/15, 10:11 AM
Drago said...: MadisonMan: "See above. Any data I use is described in my papers"

Given the actions of much of today's AGW hysterics, your willingness to publish your data (I'm assuming raw and other) along with your conclusions now qualifies as a "radical" departure from the norm.

Which should cause you, a scientist, much dismay and actually requires of you the willingness to call out scientific colleagues who are clearly and unambiguously "hiding the decline".; 12/1/15, 10:27 AM
Drago said...: MadisonMan: " I'd willingly look over the results of someone who replicated my work, and make suggestions if I thought they'd got it wrong."

Well, there's the rub.

Many of these AGW hysterics are refusing to allow anyone to even attempt to replicate their work.

I wonder if that means anything.....; 12/1/15, 10:29 AM
damikesc said...: Madison, any thoughts on the belief that peer review is overrated and not terribly useful?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientific-peer-reviews-are-a-sacred-cow-ready-to-be-slaughtered-says-former-editor-of-bmj-10196077.html; 12/1/15, 11:43 AM
Big Mike said...: @Madman, I wouldn't mind having a go at some of your recent papers, particulary the Methods section. But how can you give me a link without giving away your true identity?; 12/1/15, 12:48 PM
Milwaukie guy said...: Skipping to the bottom to answer Roughcoat...

Read "The Long Summer" by Brian Fagan which talks about a number of the warm periods. He also wrote "The Little Ice Age."; 12/1/15, 2:28 PM
Milwaukie guy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/1/15, 2:30 PM
Kirk Parker said...: MadMan,

"(With the assumption being that peer review would largely remove known errors). "

Whoa. Hopefully that's not your assumption. The whole peer-review process is coming under justified attack recently, as signifying and guaranteeing nothing; but even for the best of its years I will repeat my assertion that its true purpose never really went beyond "will we be embarrassed if we publish this?"; 12/2/15, 1:01 AM