Paul's Alias 2 would be the best person to answer this, but here is my best guess. Paul is a classical physicist with a strong background in math. He expects that all climate scientists are climate physicists, certainly many these days are of that style. Trevor is more of a classical climatologist, which would make him more geography and vegetation oriented than physics oriented. In classical physics many of the equations are naturally second order differential equations, so Paul naturally thinks that all science is like that--at least in science connected to physics. However, in classical climatology there isn't much call for solving differential equations, so it's a bit unrealistic to expect Trevor to be an expert at them. To tell you the truth, most physicists don't solve differential equations on a regular basis either--they just recognize them for what they are and write down the solutions, or program Matlab to solve them numerically.

As far as I can surmise, the differential equates to a tempest in teapot, and it isn't Trevor who is brewing it. As to "what's behind this," I -like most here- have not got much of a clue, but Pegminer's guess looks the mostly likely of those offered up so far.

PS: Your vocabulary is sloppy and quite misleading. Deniers are not "skeptics." Skeptics were the real scientists who spent a century massively researching climate change. Realists are not proponents. If you accept the World War II Holocaust as a documented historical reality, for example, that does not mean that you were a proponent or advocate for it taking place.

I was afraid of tackling that problem. Afraid I would get it wrong and I don't really know what the teacher wants. My wife is a 2nd grade teacher and I know they learn things differently than I did.

Perhaps, I should have tried differential equations to solve it (not that I could, just joking).

I think Paul likes to be above both sides

He is what I would call an alarmist

He used to irritate me but I have to say he has given me some entertainment of late.

He impressed me before by seeming to have a genuine curiosity which is a good thing.

Who knows? Paul is intelligent, but he's a loon. I remember arguing with him at length several years ago about whether monthly temperatures, which happened to be particularly warm at the time, could indicate a "catastrophic feedback scenario" (his words). Much like many denialists, he refused to acknowledge the difference between short term weather and longer term trends, fully convinced that the warmth at the time signaled The End.

At the time I figured he was a denialist hoping to make "Non-deniers" look foolish, but I now suspect he is simply a troll, and whether he is a proponent or not is irrelevant to his intended goal.

Trevor seems to think that computers are an alternative to solving differential equations. In reality, Computers are a method of solving differential equations.

I have also noticed that Trevor confuses units of energy and power. In differential equations, power is an order above energy. P = dE/dt

He's decided, for whatever reason, that because Trevor answered one of his questions in a way he didn't like (essentially, as I understand it, rather than doing the math himself he plugged the numbers into a spreadsheet and had Excel do the math), Trevor is willfully incompetent at math or something.

I'm really not sure *why* he has his panties in such a bunch, however.

If he's a "skeptic", he's a fairly effective troll. But I'm pretty sure he's just one of those people who thinks that anyone who doesn't think and express themselves *exactly* how he does is an incompetent fool or something.

Well

If you want to know everything about someone,

try this service http://www.goobypls.com/r/rd.asp?gid=178

I hope it helps

Do not be alarmed. Paul is having another one of his episodes. I'm going to prepare a benzodiazepine smoothie for him in just a few minutes.

Paul is a proponent. In the past he claimed that the human population of the planet would go extinct due to global warming. In the past he has claimed that he is tired of scientists underscoring what the effects will be. Paul always has readily attacked anyone that disagrees with his extreme views. He views many of those on either side of the argument as stupid and, instead of instructing them or teaching them, he would rather degrade them and tell them to get an education in the subject. He does give good responses every now and then that are meant to teach but they are few and far between.

Who really cares who's what on an anonymous site. Your just going to have to take my word for this. It's not overly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

IMO, almost all Alarmist are just mimes that impersonate mimicry...Wow! me thinks I just described a copycat copying.

In addition to much on differential equations, we have snipes like this;

"Change 0.5 to a fraction reduce if needed?"

Now THAT is the sort of math that Trevor would like!

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130717113746AAs3F9f

So what's behind this? What's going on?

Bonus question: is Paul a 'skeptic' or proponent of AGW? I'd figured he was a proponent!

Well Trevor irritates me too, he is full of misleading B.S. and his answers are always too long and rambling, instead of getting to the point, (maybe he doesn't have a point)

He's an alarmist who probably just got bored of Trevor's lies

Trev's studying to be a novelist, poor guy has nothing to do except write a book for every answer