Sooner or later a point has to be reached where the distortions must be removed before progress can be made to alleviate any problems that need to be faced. There will always be people that will say humans exhale CO2 and so there can be no real negatives concerning CO2. What they do not say is that humans exhale CO2 because the body sees it as a toxic waste and must dispose of it, or else the body dies. The distortions of the truth must be removed before people begin to believe that CO2 is actually good for the body and the ill informed begin to breath in more CO2 because they now believe that it must be good for the human body.

Ottawa Mike, where do you keep coming up with all of your bovine excrement? The Kübler-Ross model deals with a person's knowledge that they face an imminent death usually due to a disease they have been diagnosed with. There are 5 stages that people will normally go through, as you know. There is some logic in your bringing up the Kübler-Ross, but only as it pertains to those that deny what is happening to our global climate and its by far most likely cause, anthropogenic. Let us know when you have reached the acceptance stage. I do believe that you already have reached this stage. You just feel that you are too self important to contribute to doing anything that would likely make the chance of the survivability of our future generations more likely. A sense of self worth over all others has a clinical name.

BTW, should anyone wish to leave their comment at Anthony Watt's website he clearly states that he will delete any posts and for any reason that he wishes to do so. Read the last rule concerning comments - http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/po...

How about this: There is no such a thing as CO2. This phantom substance was made up by the 'liberals' who want to raise your taxes to fund their 'government schools' where your kids will be taught to be gay commie Muslims.

Even though none of the above makes any sense it's still a valid 'theory', if you don't bother to look up the word 'theory' in a standard dictionary. Of course 'the dictionary' may have been written by 'warmist liberals' so you'll need to be careful. Be certain you have a decent 'conservative' dictionary... the Limbaugh/Beck/Levine Dictionary is recommended!

I think, to a certain extent, all we can really do is drown out the idiocy with truth. Volunteer moderation, of whatever sort, can help reduce the "noise", without increasing the workload of news sources too badly.

I think a report-and-appeal system, a bit like what Y!A has, can be the best way to make sure that one person isn't just being a petty dictator, though it can be wise to greatly restrict who you give "report" powers to, so that *sane* voices can't get reported into oblivion by the reality-challenged.

In fact, I suspect you could set up a volunteer report-and-appeal system, as long as you built in some safeguards to keep anyone from reviewing appeals they're "associated with", or ones from particular enemies. Also, I think you have to be more careful about handing out "review appeals" powers than "report" powers, especially if something needs multiple reports before it can be removed.

edit:

and, by the way, freedom does not in any way require that places like Popular Science provide a forum for the reality-challenged, just that nobody stop such people from creating their own fora, should they have the means to do so.

son of edit:

CR, thank you for the compliment!

Unfortunately we wont have to worry about this for long given the speed AGW is progressing at, temperature rise is near the top of of the mid line estimates (not below all of them, as deniers claim).

The Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate that could see it gone in Summer by 2030, 70 years earlier than the original estimates of scientists back in the 90's. It was also thought back then that permafrost would not start to melt to any great extent until late this century, it is being observed as happening now.

With all this happening it is bizarre that deniers think they can invent stories that we are cooling.

The tactics described are used in many forums by deniers they attack other comment with hostility, intentional post dozens of pointless comments to push real comment off the screen, what is it they are afraid of, the truth. Something they are sadly lacking in. The denial movement can only get so far making claims about conspiracies and plots, for which they are yet to provide any backing for.

Another warm year will likely push 98' even lower with the net 2-3 years and then I think claims of cooling will start to look even more absurd.

Look at this year and the Arctic sea ice, deniers crowed about a 'so called' recovery yet it was the 6th lowest level recorded, the only recovery was against 2012 the new lowest year on record, no real recover if you compare 2013 to the 4 years before 2012.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/...

Batman

Depends on your perspective. Reality? Not in your corner.

Every culture has its lunatic fringe. Every school has its amoral ignoramus delinquents who hate learning, hate their teachers, and hate the large majority of fellow students that are much more intelligent and better informed and socially accepted than they. What is new lately is that the pathologically lying nitwit misfits, traditionally shunned or banned or finally shamed into a modicum of common sense and basic morality, are instead handed a huge worldwide soap box on which to parade their truth-hating nonsense 24-7 and globally. Yahoo Answers is one of many sites that are, in many practical senses, tailor-made to help these anti-intellectual hoodlums sabotage civilized discourse, democratic institutions, and interests of ordinary honest and well-behaved members of society.

Addictive lying about the science of long term global climate change is almost a perfect bandwagon onto which such renegade peanut-brain sheep can herd:

1) The science is new, it would not have been covered at all in the modicum of science to which most of the geezer anti-science ringleaders of climate-change deniers would have been exposed.

2) The science is relatively complicated. One needs to know something about mathematical scale, about fractions and percentages, about the difference between stocks and flows, between short-term fluctuations and long-term trends, about probabilities and insurance.

3) The science is counterintuitive. Why should a trace gas effect global temperature, how can a few degree average long term global temperature affect global climate, and how can a changing climate radically change almost every ecosystem and nearly every sector of the global economy, and in profound and mostly but certainly not always, seriously negative ways?

4) The effects of anthropogenic global climate chance are diffuse, long-term, and have multiple other causes.

5) One of the biggest and most powerful set of economic institutions, the global fossil fuel industry stands to lose TRILLIONS of dollars in future revenues if serious action is taken to reduce a century-long economic addiction to their products. For farthings on the dollar, those companies have invested in setting up a self-replicating anti-science machine to bamboozle the public and corrupt its political leadership.

6. All that is required, for this anti-science machine to have significant effect, is for nitwit misfits, and the politicians catering to those truth-hating moral outcasts and funded by the fossil fuel firms, to systematically deny a century of massive science, the conclusions of every major science academy worldwide for decades, the teachings of every significant science textbook, and university science department, the findings endorsed by nearly every Nobel laureate in science, the conclusions of every major global insurance company, and the overwhelming majority of well-educated people everywhere in the world for many years. But, being stupid and lying like blazes has never much bothered expellees from public schools, inmates at asylums and criminal detention facilities, or crooked con artists and politicians.

U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...

“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...

“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”

http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/

“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Revie...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_o...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

http://www.newsweek.com/2007/08/13/the-t...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckib...

One thing you forget, Gary (and all you other alarmists) is that the science of global warming means nothing. It is how the science shapes public policy that is important. In the public policy forum, us "inmates" have won. Once people figured out that reducing carbon emissions was going to be really expensive, the whole scheme- carbon credits, Kyoto, etc- collapsed. The "tipping point" for public policy was July, 2011. That was when the European carbon credit market collapsed. The U.S. market was already gone.

People- like the Australians- understand that the "solution" to AGW will destroy their economies.

Popular Science has discontinued its Comments section because it does not have the resources to moderate the ignorance, deliberate lies, and thuggish behavior of creationists and climate science Deniers.

>>The magazine said that vicious, insulting or ignorant comments can pollute otherwise intelligent online discussions and undermine public understanding and appreciation of science itself. “Trolls and spambots,” it said, sometimes hijacked the conversation, particularly on divisive issues like climate change and evolution.<<

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/science/comment-ban-sets-off-debate.html?ref=science&_r=0

It is unfortunate that informed adult public discourse and debate have been co-opted by the cesspool of lies orchestrated by anti-science political activists. In a sane world, they would be irrelevant – but, clearly, these are not sane times.

The problem is: How do we protect 21st century civilization from the destructive influence of ascientific medieval beliefs without sacrificing the humanistic values of liberty and freedom that got us here?



In other words, it was losing the argument. Ha! Ha!

<>>The magazine said that vicious, insulting or ignorant comments can pollute otherwise intelligent online discussions and undermine public understanding and appreciation of science itself>

Vicious and insulting? That is the definite behavior of the greenies on this site. Just look at the Grifter. His icon is giving us the finger. The Dork is the epitome of insults and stupidity. He is so bad that he cannot have an open discussion and has to block everybody. Just look at Dork's latest question about the Valdez. You yourself have called me a liar without any proof. CR has lost his arguments so bad that he now is blocking anyone with intelligence. Popular Science chose to go down the wrong road and lost its readership. They will never get their credibility back.

Just look in the mirror and at your comments when you see that the AGW argument is failing.

All of the original data is recorded – on paper - in original government and national documents dating back to their earliest publication are available in thousands of libraries throughout the world.

Rubbish, where is the record for Tomsk Oblast?

Or 北北线穿越?

Or South Sandwich Islands?

Or The South Pole? (Not many libraries there!)

Or just about the whole of the interiors of Canada and Australia?

As I said, rubbish.

Have you heard of the Kübler-Ross model? I really hope you guys get to the bargaining phase soon because the anger phase is really hard to watch.

I have a test for you. Sit at home alone in a quiet room and think about AGW and say to yourself: "It's not as bad as we thought". Record your emotions and report back to us. We can help.

_______________________________________...

@Some1Has: " all of your bovine excrement"

Ouch. By the way, Kübler-Ross can be applied to many different scenarios. The one I was thinking was the impending breakup between alarmists and science (although the relationship has been rocky from the start): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler...

"A sense of self worth over all others has a clinical name."

I don't know. Narcissism? Confidence? Moral superiority? Smokin' hot wife?

Did you do my test?

It's a cop out, They are losing the argument, so just like Hey Dook, they are blocking comments, it is censorship, they are abolishing free speech, and they are not the only ones doing it, also others, every time they print a GAGW article, the comments make them look stupid.

Other journals or news that are not so biased, do not block and seem to have very little problems, it's the AGW supporters that more often get insulting (like Hey Dook again).

And it is the same reason these AGW scientists refuse to debate in public, against other scientists,

http://ph.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A2oKmK...

they lose when ever they try.

http://ph.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A2oKmK...

Criminal Records Database : http://CriminalRecords.InfoSearchDetecti...

The constant manipulation of data to support the man made global warming theory by climatologists is indeed troubling. I think one way to fight this destructive influence is to criminally charge scientists who knowingly commit fraud.