Oliver, read my lips … There is one Walker Circulation; there are three Walker Circulation cells.
Now … which part do you not understand?

Or are you deliberately trying to distort what I say too?

You read Nature … that’s great, I read it too.
I also extend myself to other journals (goes with the territory) but mainly I share my work with other scientists at the ‘coal face’ (pun intended).

Contrary to your snarky remark, I don’t ‘do’ wiki.

Oliver, did you actually read the paper I cited?
Your comments suggest not … maybe you didn’t 'understand' it?
Graham obviously did not want to.

Try again:

http://www.geosc.psu.edu/Courses/Geosc320/Lau.pdf

Take your time to read. I suggest you talk to Lau or Yang if you want to argue the point (my expertise lies in other areas) - besides, I went through it all with Young.
Cheers.

Spikey (Elizabeth I see now),

your words, as cut & pasted from your post, are: “Which is it, Graham? Agreeing a lot? Or rarely agree with him?" By omitting the words “at the moment” from the original quote, you are inferring a self-contradiction or inconsistency which is not there.

In the following sequence of one hundred ‘Opinion events’, A = Agree, D = Disagree.

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD(AAAADAADAA)DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

It can be reasonably said that this person rarely agrees (just 8%). But in the period which I have bracketed, which is an arbitrary temporal space set by the commentator that could be named “at the moment”, he agrees quite a lot (80%). No contradiction.

Regarding the word count, I accept your figure and acknowledge my error. Lazy? Perhaps. Mischievous distortion? Absolutely not. An indicator of the dangers of relying on computers? Apparently. I simply used the word count function on my PC and that is the figure that came back. I must have missed a line, and it’s an embarrassing mistake.

I’m guessing your ears are quite open now with this admission, so perhaps you can keep them that way a bit longer. This has no bearing on the crucial point I was trying to make, which is that you distorted someone’s words to make a false accusation. Arguing word limits is no excuse, and any good university lecturer would call you to account in an undergraduate essay. And are you now trying to suggest that you omitted these three particular words because they were the ones that would have taken you over 350?

It makes me suspect this has all served a secondary purpose, which is to divert, obfuscate and make more mess, in the hope it will hide your little fib. But it was spotted, spikey, at least by me.

I think that’s enough. I’ve argued my case. If there is anyone else on the planet following this mind-numbing exchange, they can be the jury.

PS. The only Spikes I can think of off the top of my head are Jonze, Lee, Milligan and Fonzie’s nephew from Happy Days

Dear Richard

So pleased to see that you are making a little progress, albeit slowly. Although I’m sorry you think “that’s enough” and that you have argued your case – because you’re still repeating one last falsehood.

Thank you for agreeing that you misled us when you claimed that my post was 333 words when in fact it was 348. So that advances the human condition an infinitesimal incremental step. And everyone on OLO cheered.

But even making allowances for your computer missing lines, I am now getting totally puzzled by your repeated insistence that I omitted the three little words, “at the moment”.

I have shown you again that I did not omit those words by quoting verbatim the actual sentence I wrote – and at the risk of boring everyone else who got it ages ago – I’ll cut and paste it again:

“Thank you, rstuart, for reminding us that it's not so long ago that Graham Young was making flattering remarks about Clive Hamilton ("(I seem to be agreeing with Clive Hamilton's Australia Institute a lot at the moment" - OLO 17 October 2006.)

Now what’s the problem? How else can I say it? I did NOT omit the three words “at the moment”. They were there. And still are. Can’t you see them at the end of the quotation?

So in answer to your bizarre question: “And are you now trying to suggest that you omitted these three particular words because they were the ones that would have taken you over 350?”, my only answer must be a resounding “No, because I did NOT omit them.

Perhaps you mistook me for another man? Spike Milligan perhaps? He’d appreciate this goofy goonery.

(288 words, errors and omissions excepted)

Dear Q&A,

Such passion. I will try to be more detatched.

[1]"Some meteorologists consider these circulations part of the family of 'Walker cells'... "cells". [Quote]

[2] Please notice the title of the article, "Walker Ciculations". [Qoute]

[3] Two circulations [plural] are mentioned "Walker" and "Hadley"

[4] Re [3] above, on another post, I mention north-south inversions vis-a-vis east-west. Moreover, wind from a convection has a cooling effect against the Sun from Earth's wobble.

[5] Please note, the authors use of a definite article, "The", in the summary:

"The Walker Circulation [~singular~] comprises east–west atmospheric
circulation cells [~plural~] along the equatorial belt. The Pacific branch [~singualar~] of the Walker Circulation [~singualar~] consists of easterly winds at the lower troposphere, westerly winds at the upper troposphere, rising motion over the western Pacific, and subsidence over the eastern
Pacific.

[6] My interpretation, you would have it illiterate interpretation, is; that there is, 'The' Walker Circulation" affecting weathers [plural]. Said weathers plural are cells within the phenomenon, or, as I in relation to my case,lakes;

"Walker Circulation and associated overturnings [I states this, look above] in the equatorial plane should refer only to the divergent component of the wind. Figure 2A shows the annual climatology (the mean state of all months) of the overturning circulations along the equatorial plane as streamlines constructed from the divergent zonal and vertical winds."

One is One. One becomes an "underlying" three, owing to mitigating variables.

[6] To be fair to you, I will re-read, including the Journal of Climate. But, I think you are calling a branch a tree?

Dear, oh dear spikey,

What a tangled web we weave...

I am writing again to address your latest distortion. Nowhere did I agree I had misled. I admitted I had made a mistake in haste. It was unintentional and I promptly corrected it. You could learn from this, but instead try to humiliate with some childish fantasy about "everyone" cheering and "everyone else" getting it. It might hurt if it weren't such impotent hyperbole.

Meanwhile, you continue to mislead, to wit, in the quote you claim to repeat again, the phrases to which I have drawn attention have now magically disappeared altogether! And it is only by ignoring the three words I have named that you were able to make your false accusation of contradiction, which I think I have adequately demonstrated. You seem quite unable to look at this.

The major point I am trying to make here, as it relates to the exchange between Clive and Graham, and the allegations being made, is that those who accuse others of bias, distortion and hypocrisy should be willing to hold the mirror up to themselves. One of the benefits of an online forum like OLO is that others have an opportunity to do it for them.

Confucius say, person who points finger has three pointing back at self.

I have called attention to your perhaps unintentional deception, but rather than look at it, you dig yourself in deeper with defensive evasiveness. No wonder you are puzzled. Recognizing your own distortion might help clear things up for you.

Alas, as the self-appointed guardian of editorial integrity at OLO, you have amply revealed your own standards (there are other examples I could provide), and I won't be expecting much different. So if your next accusation isn't on the stumps, it will be going through to the keeper.

That's tea.

Graham, I believe your portrayal of Clive Hamilton is largely a straw man. You accuse him of arguments from authority and ad hominem attacks. I do not think this is what Hamilton meant. Of course there are some people who are less honest or have less expertise than others. The people who are most likely to be trustworthy are those who have no vested interest in scientific results, who have run the gauntlet of criticism that is the peer review process, and who are experts in their field. Furthermore, after saying that he “had to decide not what to believe but whom to believe”, Hamilton went on to argue against Don Aitkin’s claims (http://onlineopinion.com.au/documents/articles/A_Cool_Look_5-4-08.pdf), not Aitkin himself. (I won’t repeat everything Hamilton says – see http://www.newmatilda.com/2008/05/19/death-rattles-climate-change-skeptics). Aitkin’s arguments have also been rebutted by Geoff Davies in two other OLO articles: A Cool Look at Professor Aitkin’s global warming skepticism (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7381) and Why Listen to Scientists? (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7418)
In a previous piece (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7373) you accused ABC’s Robyn Williams and other scientists of “bullying” Aitkin by critically examining his claims. But this is precisely how science is supposed to work! Scientific theories need to be routinely subjected to scrutiny, otherwise science can never move on. The word “bullying” was not invented to apply to intellectual argument. Imagine if Copernicus hadn’t “bullied” the geocentrics, or if Darwin hadn’t “bullied” the creationists.
The irony is that this is precisely the kind of debate that you claim to be in favour of in your response to Clive Hamilton – but apparently you only apply this principle when it is convenient for you. I’m all for scientific skepticism and debate, but I think that OLO sometimes goes further than that by publishing articles with a view of climate science that is laughable – eg. Phil Chapman’s nonsensical assertion (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7295) that 2007’s temperature trend indicates an imminent ice age (his claims are debunked by David Karoly in a subsequent OLO article, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7320). This is something I think could be compared with the prescientific view that the Earth is flat, or paranoid delusions regarding global conspiracies.
To be continued…