Cartoons aside, my impression is that sceptics rely heavily, sometimes exclusively, on ad-hom attacks. If I could be bothered I'd give some examples, but however many I provided, I doubt it would make an impression. So why bother.

William,

Some people want to have their lives run by collective actions based on flimsy evidence promoted by the pessimists in our midst. It makes them feel as though someone is watching out for them and that they are safe: its a placebo for reality which they fear may be harsh.

Some people embrace reality and constantly check that they are living in it.

Understand that and you will find that you have no reason to become as upset as you are.

Is it correlation or causation that Phil Clarke posts this thread, quoting aTTP, as Mann proves he lies?

If Phil Clarke, William and aTTP would like to challenge Mann and post any responses here, along with their own assessment of Mann, his Hockey Stick, and his lies captured on video, they might retain some credibility.

Why do Climate Scientists and their collaborators expect to be treated better than they have treated others? They have never found any of their own mistakes, and are abusive towards those that have.

The sooner Taxpayers are allowed to divest from Climate Science, the better. Climate Science can depend on gullible private fund holders.

How many risible cartoons by Josh unkindly depicting Michael Mann or other scientists have you objected to because they don't attack the argument?

Apr 4, 2017 at 8:04 PM | William

Mann gets paid, creates arguments, lies, and demonstrates no science. What do you recommend he should receive? A Nobel Prize for Science, an Oscar for his performance AND even more taxpayer funding?

What has cartoonist John Cook contributed towards Climate Science to justify President Obama's praise?

So why bother.

Apr 4, 2017 at 9:45 PM | William

Do you stand by your Mann?

My impression is that Climate Science has never been honest about Mann's Hockey Stick, and that is what has led to so much dishonesty by Climate Scientists, in a series of Taxpayer funded failures to prove Mann correct. Planet Earth shows no respect for Mann's credentials, so why should anyone else?

If Climate Science had some proof, they should have produced it by now. Instead, they depend on Gergis and Cook's 97% Fabrication.

Why should anyone bother about Climate Science? We only have to pay for it.

Why did Taxpayers have to pay so many Climate Scientists to prove Mann was correct, if the Science was settled anyway?

No Taxpayers should bother paying Climate Scientists. Why are we forced to?

As you say, why bother?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4380990/COMMENT-Diesel-drivers-pay-price-green-zealotry.html

"As confessions of incompetence go, Sir David King’s admission that he was absolutely wrong to advocate diesel cars could hardly be more damning.
In his role as the former chief scientific adviser to the government – and until last month, special representative for climate change – this is a man on whom the public were entitled to rely for scrupulously impartial judgment [sic], based on facts.
Yet now this fervent campaigner against carbon emissions admits he let himself be duped by carmakers who claimed they had solved the more toxic problem of nitrogen oxides spewed out by diesel engines.
His confession comes too late for millions who tried to do the environmentally friendly thing by switching from petrol after Labour cut diesel fuel duty in 2001.
Nor can it help those whose health has suffered from diesel pollutants, which are linked to dementia and childhood breathing problems and, most chilling of all, are said to contribute to thousands of deaths.
So will it be the carmakers – still fiddling emissions tests on an industry-wide scale – who are punished for their deceit? Or government advisers and politicians such as Lord Prescott, Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown, who banged the drum for diesel?
No, with depressing predictability, those footing the bill for this huge blunder will be the families who did as they were advised.
They now face crippling charges for driving diesels in low-emission zones, while the resale value of their cars – the second-biggest purchase of their lives, after their homes – is sure to plummet. As for King, he gets a knighthood!
Listening to the likes of London mayor Sadiq Khan, anyone would think diesel owners were the villains. Yet aren’t they owed a massive apology by the politicians and advisers who misled them?
How many other crimes against the environment, health – and our wallets –have been committed in the name of green zealotry?"

Standards indeed.

Mark Hodgson & Radical Rodent

All agreed, yet still no evidence that bus and taxi drivers who spent their working lives stuck behind the busses and taxis in front of them have suffered.

This fresh evidence may be valid, but how was it missed before? Further evidence of evidence selection and manipulation.

Sir David King should be congratulated for admitting he was gullible, and is no longer in denial about Green Blob lies and propaganda. He seems to have been rewarded for his gullibility, as everyone else continues to be punished.

Politicians from ALL UK parties (apart from UKIP?) have been implicated in the scandal. I don't think Jeremy Corbyn has ever been entirely convinced by man made Global Warming, and his brother Piers remains somewhat controversial on the subject.

The UK Climate Change Act, and a mass of legislation in the US, have created the mass deportation of manufacturing to Asia. The Unemployed workforces left behind have led to BREXIT and Trump. The Conservative Govt seems to be reining back "progressively" on Global Warming, the Liberals are stuck in a muddy Green ruts, and Labour are too busy arguing about how and when their next Leader will emerge

"As the saying goes, the truth hurts, indeed..."

Truth illuminates - if David King is reading this: please post the detailed reference-able health evidence behind your assertions on the Drs Against Diesel thread.

So far Dr Jonathan Grigg who started the lobby group has been unable (or unwilling) to engage with anything more than rhetoric.

Zero

Apr 5, 2017 at 10:30 AM | Radical Rodent

In the UK, MPs should be forced to declare the Lobbyists they have met, and Lobbyists should be compelled to list the MPs they have wined, dined and Lobbied.

I am not aware of any Code of Practice that exists for Lobbyists, especially those provided with access to the Houses of Parliament.

The Green Blob have lobbied extensively, frequently paid for by Taxpayers, yet Taxpayers have suffered the consequences.

Why don't Taxpayers have access to info about the activities of Lobbyists, when Lobbyists have access to info about Taxpayers?

Climate Scientists, Collaborators, Green Blob Lobbyists etc, have zero standards, as Phil Clarke states, but Phil Clarke believes standards should apply to others. This sets a new low standard for hypocrisy

"It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate. , accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes."

That's evidence of warming - nothing else. It assumes that there is a stable, beneficial climate that humans are disrupting. And there isn't.

Let's take his points one at a time:

1. ""It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate." The fatuity of this statement is breathtaking. I don't doubt that like all things on the planet we interact with and affect the climate, but who changed the Earth's climate when humans weren't around?

2. "The atmosphere and oceans have warmed". We know this, and they were both warming before CO2 in the atmosphere was significantly increasing.

3. "a strong decline in Arctic sea ice". A decline in Arctic sea ice is not evidence of man made global warming. We have have no idea about changes in the Arctic prior to 1979, although there are documents extant that would suggest there have been times in the past when it has waxed and waned.

4. "and other climate-related changes." I don't doubt for one minute that there have been climate related changes before, but what is he referring to? There's no evidence in this statement.

Don't know why PC put that up, but Paul Nurse speaking ex-cathedra doesn't do it for me.

Correction it was Sir Mark Walport speaking ex-cathedra.

Don't know why PC put that up, but Paul Nurse speaking ex-cathedra doesn't do it for me.

Apr 5, 2017 at 4:06 PM | geronimo

Possibly because there is still no evidence to support the claims made by Climate Science, just allegations and smear.

It's this Sir David King:

Andrei Illarionov, former chief science adviser to President Putin:

… in respect to the presentation made by representatives of the so-called official team of the British government and the official British climate science, or at least how they introduced themselves at the seminar. I personally was surprised by the exceptionally poor content of the papers presented…

Simultaneously, they revealed an absolute—and I stress, absolute inability to answer questions concerning the alleged professional activities of the authors of these papers. Not only the ten questions that were published nine months ago, but not a single question asked during this two-day seminar by participants in the seminar, both Russian and foreign, were answered.

When it became clear that they could not provide a substantive answer to a question, three devices were used… The British participants insisted on introducing censorship during the holding of this seminar. The chief science adviser to the British government, Mr. King, demanded in the form of an ultimatum at the beginning of yesterday that the program of the seminar be changed and he presented an ultimatum demanding that about two-third of the participants not be given the floor. The participants in the seminar who had been invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences, they have been invited by the president of the Academy of Sciences Yuri Sergeyevich Osipov. Mr. King spoke about “undesirable” scientists and undesirable participants in the seminar. He declared that if the old program is preserved, he would not take part in the seminar and walk out taking along with him all the other British participants.

He has prepared his own program which he proposed, it is available here and my colleagues can simply distribute Mr. King’s hand-written program to change the program prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences and sent out in advance to all the participants in the seminar.

A comparison of the real program prepared by the Academy of Science and the program proposed as an ultimatum by Mr. King will give us an idea of what scientists, from the viewpoint of the chief scientific adviser to the British government, are undesirable. In the course of negotiations on this issue Mr. King said that he had contacted the British Foreign Secretary Mr. Straw who was in Moscow at the time and with the office of the British Prime Minister, Blair, so that the corresponding executives in Britain should contact the corresponding officials in Russia to bring pressure on the Russian Academy of Sciences and the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences to change the seminar’s program. When the attempt to introduce censorship at the Russian Academy of Sciences failed, other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems.

During these events Mr. King cited his conversations with the office of the British Prime Minister and had got clearance for such actions.

And thirdly, when the more or less normal work of the seminar was restored and when the opportunity for discussion presented itself, when questions on professional topics were asked, and being unable to answer these questions, Mr. King and other members of the delegation, turned to flight, as happened this morning when Mr. King, in an unprecedented incident, cut short his answer to a question in mid sentence realizing that he was unable to answer it and left the seminar room. It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.

Makes you proud to be British.

Who would have thought Blair's Team could dictate the programme for Climate Science seminars to Russians?

What was Blair's motive or incentive?

tomo, I don't know!

I did wonder whether watching the Telletubbies might have influenced his concerns about a sunnier and hotter climate. They never made much sense either.

If Catholic doctrine influenced Blair, then Cherie was setting UK Climate Policy?

That is almost as ridiculous as Samantha Cameron dictating the Green-ness of Blue, and continuing the deceit and deception.

So far, Mr May has been an excellent influence on Climate Science. Climate Scientists are overheating, and the Climate has nothing to do with it.

Radical Rodent: "William: if you could provide one or two examples, ..."

Try these recent ones from CliScep.com:

"Unsurprisingly, notorious climate charlatans Mann and Rahmstorf are involved,..."

"Have Mann and Rahmstorf ever produced a graph that stood up to the scrutiny of a toddler? "

The first is from Paul Matthews who was so upset at my suggestion that he gets information from WUWT, which he links to, reads and comments on, that he put me on "moderation" (effectively a ban, it seems).

Oh William. Spinning like a turbo-drill. Noticeably silent over at clisep since you were warned (not moderated nor banned). Join Mann in truthfulness.

Do try some logic, your second example is not an ad hom attack, it disparages their graphs.

In fairness, Supertroll, I believe William WAS put into moderation at cliscep, after first having received a warning (I could be wrong about the latter point, though I'm sure moderation was mentioned). It happened after a number of events, one of which was my finally losing patience with him after he repeatedly on one discussion thread misunderstood, misconstrued, and - worst of all - misrepresented what I wrote there. It was all the more annoying, as I (and others) had tried very hard to engage politely with him for quite a while. Some said he was a troll. I resisted that suggestion for a long time. At the moment, I'm not sure, though I fight hard the unwholesome impulse to label as a troll someone with whom I disagree. Still, being put into moderation on the extremely tolerant cliscep site is quite an achievement - even aTTP can't manage that!

There is, of course, a huge irony in William's attack on sceptics as being the makers of ad hominem attacks, given that sceptics have long had to put up with the insult of being "climate deniers", or "climate change deniers" or "climate science deniers". Most of us are none of those things. By and large the climate change deniers are those who seem to deny things like the MWP or LIA, by reference to a magic hockey stick...Also, most of the ad hom attacks I see on discussion blogs about climate are made by alarmists. Here at BH Phil Clarke does it regularly. Still, I suppose what is or is not an acceptable ad hom attack is in the eye of the beholder.

The other irony, of course, is that this thread started with our own Phil Clarke indulging on an ad hom attack on Dr David Whitehouse and the GWPF. I've followed the link to aTTP's piece and read it, and it's rather more balanced and nuanced than Phil's completely untrue and inaccurate "Official GWPF policy is confirmed as 'misleading the public by making factually inaccurate statements.'"

As the full quote made available by "not banned yet" makes clear, the quote in question has been lifted out of context and edited to make it look worse than it is. Now, I have to say that I think Dr Whitehouse was rather unwise to give such a hostage to fortune to his opponents (and yes, they've made a meal out of it). I also think it is wrong to argue that one should be free to lie deliberately, because that's what freedom of speech suggests - it doesn't. But then that's not what Dr Whitehouse said. However, it doesn't stop alarmists like Phil drawing more extreme inferences that are not justified by the words used. Alarmists are good at that, though, as I know from William's misrepresentations of what I wrote at cliscep.