Ken Fabos, if you are looking for a meaningful trend, I do not think taking a trend with a commencing date as we come out of a mini ice age to show warming is of any use.

If we take the Medieval Warm period as a starting point, then we have a significant cooling trend which is still with us.

This explains why the AGW pushers have desperately fought to conceal the MWP and pretend it did not exist. The Climategate miscreants had a hand in this, but have now succumbed to honest science.

The warming we have experienced amounts to .7 of a degree C. Seven tenths of one degree.

The allegation of a warming trend, which has definitely paused since 2002, relies on choosing a dishonest starting point.

Again, Ken, you make no comment on the dishonesty of the politically compromised MET, in seeking to back the annual nonsense claims of the warmists of “hottest year yet”.

Nor do you give a reference to any science which shows that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate. I routinely request this of you, and you routinely ignore it, because there is no science which backs your ridiculous assertions of AGW. I request that you provide any scientific backing you think you have for your unsubstantiated AGW myth.

You always dodge the issue and come back with more nonsense, Ken. You have now stooped to complaining about “dishonest questions”? What a joke you are.

Peter Ridd: I can't find a definition of "broken" with which the word "slightly" can be used as a meaningful adjective. It's like being "slightly pregnant". Broken means busted. "Broken" is an "extreme" word. As a scientist, you would appreciate that conveying the degree of certainty about an observation is important. Science might be bent, fractured, chipped, worn, etc- words conveying the notion that useful repair or correction is possible. Broken things might be glued back together to have the form, but rarely the function of the pre-broken thing.

Your choice of the 1980s Queensland police as an example of systemic corruption does, I think, also convey "extreme" connotations. The Fitzgerald Inquiry may well have framed your perspective on life, but I don't think it's helpful to juxtapose it with the problems that scientific inquiry might have.

Please leave that kind of language for the Sara Palins.

But with regards to the substantive issue of problems with the scientific process, overstating the case for a particular position is clearly in evidence in many institutions. It would be niaive to assume that it has a single cause, but many of the causes can be put under the heading of "corporatisation". An environment in which "contract research officers" report to "contract research managers" who report to "research executives" who are rewarded by "boards" according to "key performance indicators" is often not conducive of reflection and expressions of uncertainty. Long-term issues like climate change need to be addressed by researchers whose positions are not threatened by short term fashions in politics and business.

The YouTube video below is a timely portrayal of the warmist-skeptic debate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdxaxJNs15s&feature=player_embedded

Jedimaster
I agree that the word broken was not really suitable and that in fact it does not truly indicate the article itself.

That said, do I take it that you would agree that science needs 'useful repair or correction'?

If yes, you are so near Prof Ridd as makes no difference, because that is exactly what I took his article to mean when I first read it. You presumably would differ on repair methodology.

If no, do you assume that science needs no readjusting at all?

However, although 'broken' may be the wrong word in the title of the Ridd article; there is no doubt at all that your reference to Sarah Palin is unarguably grossly inappropriate.
You have demeaned yourself, presumably in the heat of the moment. Disappointing. You should apologise.

Eyejaw

An ongoing discourse on improving the scientific system is appropriate.

No apologies for Sara(h) Palin, though. Anyone who uses the words "blood libel" in the context of the Arizona Assassinations must be condemned- along with those who wrote the words for her, as it seems improbable that she has the talent to know about such arcane without being coached.

I would go further- the core of her presentations is about extremes, hyperbole and factual misrepresentations- sold with a facade of sexuality- the very antithesis of what science is about.

Jedimaster,
We, and obviously (I think) Ridd agree that 'ongoing discourse on improving the scientific systyem is appropriate'. That is good. So you and I and Ridd would have differing views on how to achieve that aim, but aim would be common.

I'm lost over your comments re Palin. I am not arguing. Why should I, the cross hairs stuff is terrible?
But would on earth has that got to do with the Ridd article or comment? I presumed that you were implying that Ridd's thinking is like Palin's. If that is not what you meant what did you mean? If that is what you meant to imply then you are, in my opinion acting in a manner unbecoming. I repeat that you should apologise to Professor Ridd for that startlingly bad slur.