Chandra, you're not Millie are you. You sound like here you see.

maestro2014. I would recommend you visit Tamino, Skeptical Science and Realclimate, just keep in mind the reverence shown by Feynman for observations and compare how much of their stuff is based on observations. Try putting a cogent sceptical question on any of them. Skeptical Science will publish it then withdraw it if receives support, RC just won't publish it. If you do get into discussion stick to empirical stuff, preferably from the IPCC reports and recent papers on sensitivity otherwise they'll run rings round you with gobbledygook.

If you find them persuasive, and surprisingly the clisci community does given that there are no cliscis on Skeptical Science or Tamino, then so be it you can stick with alarmism. RC is contemptuous of what Gavin Schmitt calls "citizen scientists" but oddly Kevin Trenberth has just released a paper with the - well schoolboys I assume - over at Skeptical Science. Very odd.

It is notable that the BH regulars went to some lengths to explain the issues, while Chandra dismissed them and all sceptics as ideologues and told us we must believe the warmists. So much projection.

A point which I don't think has been mentioned is that there are quotes out there from some major players in the warmist game where they explicitly admit their ultimate goals and the need to invent and exaggerate the catastrophist stuff in order to achieve them. I don't have links to hand but someone hopefully will.

Also, "follow the money" and "who benefits?" are always interesting.

Maestra2014

You have started, as we all did, with questions. That is already further than most do. Enjoy the ride should you decide to continue but be prepared to be insulted, astonished, indignant, bemused and exasperated. Just take it at your own pace for this will be a long-haul. But now is a good time as I believe the best bits are yet to come.

Geronimo complains about his experience with submitting "cogent skeptical questions" to the sites I suggested. I have not seen his questions and so cannot know for sure, but I expect what he thinks cogent (clear, logical, and convincing) is in fact anything but, except to him and maybe some others here. Many science sites have little patience with people making unsupported assertions of scientific "fact" that are really just ignorant, opinionated, rants. They usually expect extraordinary statements to be backed by evidence, which Geronimo is unlikely to be able to present. That he finds people run rings round him with "gobbledygook" is his way of saying that he doesn't understand the responses that his "questions" provoke.

There are many ways of asking a question and the manner in which you ask and your responses to the answers offered says a lot about your intentions and preconceptions. Loaded questions will provoke a hostile response. I'd be surprised if sites would respond badly to honest, non-loaded, questions - give us some examples of such behaviour.

I actually stumbled upon many of the above-suggested blogs/websites when I began this little journey of mine. I have read and re-read and read some more. Here's what I know: based on my experience, I have yet to find another blog where the frequent posters were as patient with a "newbie" such as myself --- and who took the time to answer my questions, regardless of how simplistic they must have appeared upon first asking --- than here. I'm slightly better than novice these days, and have a firm enough grasp of the prevailing concepts that I can see now how elementary my first questions were. This makes me appreciate that much more how kind and thorough the posters are here. It would have been easy to dismiss me. That was certainly not my experience.

I'm not sure why Chandra is so adamant about getting me to challenge the posters here --- for that with which I don't agree, I simply let go. I find no need to be belligerent or confrontational, as my original intention for coming here was to learn about a viewpoint to which I had not previously been exposed in such depth. And, wouldn't you know it? I've learned a ton.

Hi Chandra, I won’t berate you for your ignorance because I’ve always felt making snide remarks about someone you don’t know puts one in the class of a poison pen letter writer, and I don’t have an image of myself as such a person. A very small number of points, the first being if you’re going to take away someone’s character it’s good manners, not to say prudent because people might be confused, to spell their pseudonym the way they do, it’s “geronimo” with a deliberate small “g”.

I am delighted that you looked up the meaning of “cogent” presumably a word new to you, and as ever with people you’d assumed it would be new to the denizens of this blog so explained it for them. Thank you for your efforts but I’m pretty sure the rest of the blog knows its meaning being a fairly well educated bunch of women and men.

As you don’t appear to have read what I said, I explained the missing heat to Masstra2014 as best I understand it, and told him so. I invited the more intelligent blog members to correct me if I was wrong. I am, rightly, modest in my understanding of the issues and always willing to be corrected. You didn’t correct me, so I’m assuming you haven’t had chance to see what the correction would be over on SkS yet. Or, most probably there isn’t one because what I gave was a simple narrative of the situation, and of course, those who keep up with events would know that Dr. Trenberth has recently begun to back away from this rather strange theory of a Dr. No of heat sitting somewhere in a deep oceanic cavern waiting to bring havoc on the human race. Although I wouldn’t expect you to know that.

I also advised Masstra2014 to ask simple cogent (there’s that word again, don’t you get a thrill of excitement now you know what it means) purely around the science and the IPCC. I explained that to do anything else would result in him/her being barraged with gobbledygook. You have helpfully supplied the reasons I think the responses as gobbledygook as being my not being able to understand them. Which has reasonable merit because I don’t understand what “hundreds of independent lines of evidence” means in the absence of citations, nor do I understand what “mainstream science” is, can you point to any other scientific discipline that has the notion of “mainstream science”? Nor do I understand why anybody would take a scientific paper that used “interpolation” of real world data seriously (“interpolation” in this context means making up data where there isn’t any). I would have though this a most dangerous form of scientific endeavour, wouldn’t you? Nor do I understand why there is a single human being on the planet who believes that models are anything other than the output of the beliefs of the people who constructed them. So all that stuff is gobbledygook to me.

As for understanding climate science the maths isn’t much more, as Martin A says than a first year Engineering undergraduate would need to know, except of course for the statistics, where, I have to say the climate scientists themselves seem woefully ignorant. Well according to statisticians that is.

You are a naughty girl Chandra, and I know a similarly naughty girl called Banerjee, are you by any chance related?

I am not going to further respond to the troll who is working hard at derailing the thread as always.

Thanks for the links Mike, those were the ones I was thinking of.

Martin, yes, the Climategate emails are also useful to show the politicisation of the science and also the sheer incompetence of it. There are many archived threads on various sites where sceptics pick out the highlights.
"Out of Context" was one of the main rebuttals chosen by the warmist community, ignoring the fact that there was no context which could justify any of it.

So much of the underlying "science" turns out to be not science at all, but statistical manipulation of Other Peoples Data (we are not allowed to know which people and what data, partly because the information has been lost) by so called climate scientists who have no statistical qualifications and evidently inadequate knowledge of the field.

Maestra2014, you have made remarkably quick progress in assimilating a huge body of work. I am impressed. Seriously! I wish I shared your mental acuity. Would you care to share with us your analysis of the questions you posed earlier?

Little-g-geronimo, You confuse me and I think you are confused yourself. Do you believe that CO2 causes an energy imbalance or not? If you do, then do you really doubt that most of the resulting accumulated energy goes into the oceans? You won't have trouble finding graphs that show increasing OHC but you claim there has been no increase. As by your own admission, you are not that knowledgable, you are presumably relying on someone else to tell you that OHC is not increasing. Do your sources have any more idea on the subject than you?

You object to being told that there are "hundreds of independent lines of evidence" without being spoon-fed one to read and deny (using your superior knowledge); you object to climate science being referred to as "mainstream science" seemingly ignorant of there being "skeptical" branches of the subject where Pattern Recognition in Physics, or Principia Scientifica, or even the dog astrology journal favoured by our host, are thought to present serious work; and as the icing on the cake you're now dissing interpolation. Seriously? Assuming you are referring to C&W13, do you really think that HadCRUT4 gives a more accurate global temperature by effectively assuming that the Arctic is at global average temperatures raher than by using interpolated temperatures of areas around/in the Arctic? Not even a self respecting skeptic can seriously believe that. And your hatred of models is predictable but as someone said, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Martin A

> Well sorry chandra, can't be bothered.

In that case it is difficult for me to believe you, but I guess that will not worry you :-) I have seen your questions and their polite answers on SoD but can't find any on RealClimate. Did you use a different name there? I cannot imagine little-g formulating a bias free, non-loaded, question, but I have trouble thinking that questions such as those you posted on SoD would be rudley treated elsewhere - they did seem unbiased (although their context might change that, I guess).

Both sides of the climate debate have got quite tetchy of late. Sceptics are bored of being ignored, insulted or patronised with the same limited proof. The consensus supporters are aware of how time is slipping by and how they’re making no progress. Because they refuse to face the inherent weakness in the science and the solutions, they place the blame on us. Unfairly, we are a symptom not the disease.

There has been at least one report suggesting the authorities focus their attentions on those who agree AGW is a problem and ignore sceptics as an anomaly. I agree up to a point. If they can’t get those who say they believe in the problem to act, they’re never going to be successful with those who say they don’t. Unfortunately most sceptics are believers who, having realised how hard it would be to cut CO2, thought it would be a good idea to look at the science again.

If you give consensus sites a good look through you won’t find much discussion about how to cut CO2. Sure, you’ll get government sites glibly advising you to change your light bulbs and not leave things on standby. But what if you’ve done all the easy stuff and it’s barely dented your energy bills? Governments like the UK have picked all the low hanging energy fruit. We’ve got nuclear, all the hydro we can make room for and half of the remaining fossil fuels is gas. From here it starts to get hard and expensive. Making things like solar panels cheaper by taking money from someone in rented accommodation and giving it to someone who owns their own home is… well… evil. I’m not much of a believer in all people being equal but I’d never endorse robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

If there’s one problem that CO2 emissions could be compared to it’s obesity. Something most people accept is a problem but can’t control. The difference is, while people might fail at reducing weight, they often think about it. Many try to lose weight. Where are the CO2 reduction forums? The emissions self help groups? When did you ever hear people brag about how small their footprint was?

Would Chandra be more productive discussing how to act on CO2 at Real Climate or staying here and whinging?

PS Maestra2014, in case you were wondering, yes it is the attentions of people like Chandra that meant you got a frosty welcome at the start.

Chandra: "I wish I shared your mental acuity." Don't we all, but you don't, which is unfortunate because you clearly think you have a greater mental accuity than normal. And you haven't. Sorry.

Dennis Thatcher a man of considerably more mental accuity than either of us said it best. "Better to keep you mouth shut and have people believe you're a blithering idiot than to speak out and remove all possible doubt."

TTFN

In fact I stole it from Mark Twain. The exact words I used were "Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".

DT

Thanks Dennis, almost everything that's not Shakespeare can be traced back to Twain. Either way it's something that people with strong, uninformed, prejudiced views should take on board, no matter how much they approve of their own mental acuity.

Little-g

> Either way it's something that people with strong, uninformed,
> prejudiced views should take on board

You probably don't see the irony in your stating that. I'm sure everyone else does.

I think the current incarnation of the resident troll has just about outstayed its welcome.