Dear, oh dear Richard,

When in trouble dissimulate and render meanings obscure. You concede you made a mistake but you don't concede you misled? Is there something I'm missing? If a mistake is unintentional it's not misleading? So if I mistakingly say that the road is clear and you get hit by a bus, I haven't misled you?

Here are the repeated false allegations you make against me:
"Spikey...deceptively omitting Graham’s words 'at the moment' to suggest some sort of inconsistency." Sunday, 6 July 2008 12:08:31 PM

"Deleting 'at the moment' clearly changes the meaning enough for you to allege an inconsistency which is not there, especially as the statements are two years apart. Monday, 7 July 2008 2:03:53 AM

"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." Tuesday, 8 July 2008 6:43:26 PM

However, the problem is that, every time I look at what I wrote, the three words "at the moment" are included. You made a mistake in claiming I omitted them. Now you cannot bear to concede that you were wrong. So you keep repeating your mistake presumably in the hope that if you keep repeating yourself, your untruth will turn into truth. It doesn't work like that, old chap.

You say: "Confucius say, person who points finger has three pointing back at self...Recognizing your own distortion might help clear things up for you." Now on that we are in furious agreement Richard!

Enjoy your cuppa! You need it.

Dear Elizabeth,

I can sense you are furious and wishing that I was hit by a bus.

I shall try one last tack. If, as you say, your problem is that everytime you look, you do see these words (that is, your perception is: “Which is it, Graham? Agreeing a lot [AT THE MOMENT]? Or rarely agree with him?", then you should be able to see that there is no contradiction in them. I think I have adequately illustrated this.

Allow me to remind you of one of your own perceived flaws in OLO from

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7580#117508

"5. More than enough OLO respondents are inarticulate ranters unable to follow an argument or have any appreciation of the fact that opinions are better if they are logically presented and supported with some relevant evidence."

In another post, you call Graham Young on his "ample silence", while others criticise him for commenting at all. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, it seems.

I'll be sure to look both ways crossing the street today.

Q&A,

Correction: [2] Please notice the title of the article, "Walker Ciculations". [Quote] Should read "Walker Circulation." Posting policy did not allow me to collect.

The is only one "Walker Circulation". There are three cells caused by geophyscial phenomenon, other than Walker circulation.

One might driving a Holden into a brick Holden circulation. I would not call such an event a Holden cell or a Brick cell. Say the dependent variable is speed given accelerator pedal pressure [I.V.].

The interference [lakes, mountains, topography generally] with Walker circulation are mitigating variables, if temperature(s) is/are the dependent variable(s). These "obstacles" are not part of the "Walker" phenonmena, rather separate variables acting on Walker circulation, from outside it. Else put, not variations within a Walker system, but three cases where, there are agents creating an abrogation of the THE Walker system. Calling the cells, "Walker" cells disguises this matter.

Without the mitigating variables, perhaps (?), Walker circulation is a linear system. External interfering variables surely create a clear non-linear system.

The lake example, I provided, before, had to do the exchange of CO2. This lake case is a separate phenomenon, an acting separate agent. Similarly, say, deforestation caused a change of a weather pattern, the case is x + y creating z, not x becoming x1. The separate cell is non-linear, not a variation of linear x.

Forget the nomenclenture, draw it.

Yours in my ignorance,

O.

Dear Richard,

I have no wish for you to be hit by a bus. Being hit by some logic would be much healthier. Although a very gentle nudge by a bus might shake your ocular senses a little.

I, like you, (observe the commas) shall try one last tack.

Today, you write: "If, as you say, your problem is that everytime you look, you do see these words (that is, your perception is: “Which is it, Graham? Agreeing a lot [AT THE MOMENT]? Or rarely agree with him?", then you should be able to see that there is no contradiction in them. I think I have adequately illustrated this."

On Saturday, 5 July 2008 at 3:00:48 PM, (it's easily checked) I wrote: "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.)

"That confession sits uneasily with this current comment from Graham: "...his positions have a place on OLO, even though I rarely agree with them." Which is it, Graham? Agreeing a lot? Or rarely agree with him?"

Ah so that's it? Having quoted the offending words "at the moment" in my very first paragraph, I had the temerity to think that I need not repeat the quotation in full in my second paragraph? So you quote my second, but not my first paragraph to accuse me of selective quoting?

And on that flimsy basis you find me 'deceptively omitting Graham’s words “at the moment” to suggest some sort of inconsistency'? And that I'm 'either logically wrong or ethically wrong'?

Well! Well! Pardon me for thinking OLO readers can hold an idea from one short paragraph to the next.

Thank you for doing me the honour of quoting from one of my earlier posts on logic and evidence. Perhaps had you read that a little sooner, we'd both have saved a lot of time.

Graham, you declare that “No contributor has special privileges on OLO… it is not our place to tell others what to think. Consenting adults can come to this site and see opposing arguments laid out before them and make-up their own minds. Clive is under-estimating the ability of our average reader.” This is difficult to reconcile with your later statement that you would not publish "Larouche delusions about the Royal Family being in cahoots with global Jewry to run drugs", because you “do have an editorial stance on what is publishable, and the test is that it must be arguable, not that it must necessarily be true”. Just how wacky does an idea have to be for you to publish it? I invite readers to read Chapman’s “ice age cometh” article (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7295), and find out just how good OLO’s quality control is.

Having said all of this, I would like to clarify that I do think OLO is a worthwhile enterprise, and I appreciate that it provides a forum for members of the general public such as myself to express their opinions. I just think it could do with some improvement in some areas such as this one.

To be continued…

Perhaps the strangest aspect of your response to Hamilton is your accusation that he’s arguing from the position that “truth is relative”, in contrast to OLO’s position “that there is such a thing as the truth, and that it is out there, even if none of us will ever perceive it more than dimly… that while there is such a thing as the truth it demands constant mining and refining for it to be discerned”. While I am a staunch proponent of the scientific method and wholeheartedly agree with your statements about truth and objective reality, I see no reason to believe that Clive Hamilton does not agree with these principles also, let alone that he comes from the school of “postmodernism, theory and forms of Marxist analysis”. (Indeed, your own site quotes him (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5680) as saying the “error of post-modernism” is that it has no foundation for ethics, because “any moral stance must be relative and therefore… lacking in conviction”.) You seem to have just plucked your accusation out of thin air to create, as I said above, a straw man – so much for “An ethical approach to argument avoids ad hominem attacks and concentrates on facts and arguments.”

You claim that “I'm an empiricist. Looking at the facts and theories, and seeing how predictive or not they were, has led me to hold the political beliefs that I hold. When the facts show me to be wrong, I change my mind.” The facts have long since shown that global warming is a fact. So why do you provide a forum for those who still deny the science of global warming? Certainly, let’s allow people to have a forum for their opinions, but also make sure the facts in their articles are true.