Out of each other, that is. This thread owes an obvious debt to Skiphil's excellent Hall of Fame but it differs from it in a number of ways.

1. Instead of highlighting brilliant turns of phrase of all kinds, this thread is devoted to something of which Skip has but one example. Modesty forbids me from naming the Bishop Hill regular who got it in the neck from Mike Jackson, as highlighted by Dung. Follow your own links, or your nose, whichever gets you there quicker.

2. I'm interested in anything from brutal putdowns to witty parries of those who can broadly be characterised as sceptics, lukewarmers or sympathetic BH contributors. So Richard Betts and Tamsin Edwards are in but Chandra, Stoat, Entropic Mann, his friend Michael and the like are out. Friendly fire only as the Americans call it.

3. Skip says in his intro

I prefer to keep this light and fun, so I suggest (if anyone cares ha ha) that this thread mainly be for "likes" without much debate, I.e., rather than tell someone else that they are a fool to praise some particular comment, simply nominate one's own preferred favorites in reply.

I on the other hand welcome both good and bad examples of internecine conflict and full-on debate of what is good and bad. (The 'if anyone cares ha ha' has to remain in place, however!)

4. The examples don't have to be from Bishop Hill but from any sceptic-friendly blog - a form of words deliberately crafted to include Judy Curry's Climate Etc.

To get us started, here is the first of three favourites of mine, which happen to be from the month of May in 2012, 2013 and 2014. From 9th May 2012:

RKS: If you are scynical of the position of the IPCC and wish to discuss climate, why not grow a pair instead of not wanting to look silly by challenging the CO2 hypothesis...

logicophilosophicus: If you are hell-bent on furthering the interests of the guys over at RealClimate, just let your balls-to-brain ratio take over, and challenge basic physics so they can rabbit on about scientifically illiterate deniers.

Extremely relevant to the debate we've recently had on Dung's The new heresy and Invitation to BH Regulars. Balls-to-brain ratio. Love it. Bishop Hill would be so much poorer without such honest and witty responses to and from ourselves, wouldn't it? But not all rudery is equal. Two more positive examples (from where I sit) coming up, then some less positive ones. But it's an open thread ...

I didn't think it would be long before we had another, freshly-minted example. There are no instances of my own wit or wisdom planned so it may be a novel form of vanity. Anyway, here's my second favourite moment (in the chronological sense only) from 31st May 2013:

Steven Mosher: Put another way. Keenan chose a model that fit the data better. That model says there is no warming. But looking at the data we know it has warmed. Looking at the Thames we know it isnt frozen. Looking at the sea level we know it has gone up. We know the LIA was cooler. plants know it. animals know it. ice knows it. What this means is that Keenan has chosen the wrong model.

Jonathan Jones: This is nonsense: Keenan's model does not say that no warming has occurred: all it says is that the warming which has occurred is just random noise, not driven by anything. Diffusive motion is still motion.

In this case, no wit - sorry JJ - but plain-speaking and clarity. We couldn't do without either.

Third and longer example, from Watts Up With That on 1st May 2014, with context this time from the main post:

Roy Spencer:

I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.

So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments …

9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.

Ross McKitrick:

Roy, regarding #9, are you perhaps referring to Essex et al. – and you can call me al)? I don’t know of anyone who’s argued you can’t construct an average from temperature data, and if anyone did then I would add my Duh to yours. But your example shows you haven’t grasped the real point. Your straw man should be phrased: There is no general theory of how to reduce the temperature field of a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system to a scalar in such a way that the laws governing the dynamics of the field also provide a theory governing the dynamics of the scalar. But phrased thus, it’s not a straw man. In fact I’d say it would be pretty hard to dispute. There might be examples where it is true, but it is not generally true.

You refer to bathtubs and freezers, both of which are isolated systems in equilibrium, where a single number works to represent the temperature field of the whole. But to make it relevant to the actual issue, try to define “the” temperature of the [water in your bath + the air in your freezer]? Not the average of the two, “the” one temperature of the items in the brackets. Obviously there isn’t one, there are two (or more). You and I both could write down an infinite number of ways of combining them into a single number. But that one number is not the temperature of your freezer or your bath, and it isn’t necessarily the temperature that would result if you put your bathwater in your freezer or vice versa, or came up with some other mechanism to bring them into equilibrium with each other.

There are valid grounds for saying this issue doesn’t matter much or ad hoc averages seem to do just fine for most purposes. But stock market analysts are also fond of ad hoc averages. They at least bear in mind the rule “it works until it doesn’t.” Don’t confuse an ad hoc averaging rule with a theory that the world is obliged to follow.

I loved 'you can call me al'. I also loved the way the rest of Ross's response is so clear. But then I took the tablets long ago by reading Taken by Storm by Essex and McKitrick. Inevitably a great deal of our evaluation depends on what has previously been or is now convincing to us.

I'm putting forward these three examples as positive ones. I'm very open to debate on any or all. I also have a few examples in mind of less positive ways I've seen people on BH and other blogs take lumps out of each other. But I'd like to wait and see if this thread catches on, in terms of additional examples, good or bad, or insightful debate. Thanks in advance.

Plans change.

I'd like to wait and see if this thread catches on …

After the next few posts perhaps.

Two more positive examples … coming up, then some less positive ones …

In fact I want to do two more positive ones, taking the total to five.

There are no instances of my own wit or wisdom planned …

But on waking a striking example where I was involved came unbidden to mind.

On 14th May 2014 there was this from Sensorman:

Professor Lennart Bengtsson – perhaps the first public victim of the true Climate Holocaust.

Now let THEM deny it.

Richard Drake:

Sensorman: That's way OTT sorry. Don't let's confuse direction of travel with destination.

And in this case there's a third part, within 27 minutes of the original:

Richard Drake: you're right. Retracted. But suppression of dissent is a viscerally shocking thing.

The words "Richard Drake: you're right" were also, I'm sure, for many, a viscerally shocking thing. But that's not the point. It was a delight to encounter someone so quick to change their view. I'd forgotten about that and it reminded me of something even better.

Let's skip parts one to three this time - they can easily be found on the previous page - and go straight to this from Nullius in Verba on 2nd April 2014:

Doug,

I'd like to express my great respect for your stance. To err is human, but to admit it so gracefully takes real class.

Science progresses by the correcting of errors, so the best scientists are not those who dare to make no errors, but those who correct them most willingly. Self-correction is a triumph worthy of more praise than people are wont to give it.

Thanks for setting the standard so high.

And by the way, I didn't find the issue to be at all obvious myself - I had to think quite a bit to see what was going on, and that meant I learnt something new. Thanks for that as well.

--
"Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
Jules Verne.

Wow, what an amazing forum Bishop Hill is. I'm beginning to enjoy this.