Fractelle, I'd be interested where I have been ad hominem on this thread. Can you provide me with a reference?

I'd also be interested in a rebuttal of Singer's view of the EPA's report on environmental cigarette smoke. All the people who point to his "involvement" with tobacco fail to point out that he was being paid as a scientist, and that his science was good. It's like labelling a solicitor criminal for giving good advice to a housebreaker. That is ad hominem.

Eclipse, my links on peer review papers showing the MWP were a check on your claim that they didn't exist. Now for some more fact-checking. Q&A posts a link which purports to say that Mojib Latif did not say that it is likely to cool for the next 20 years. We are told by you that it is the rate of increase in temperature that is predicted to decrease, not temperature itself.

But if you look at the figures in the link rather than the spin you find a table that lists the HadCru projections versus his projections (or that's what it appears to be saying, happy to be corrected). You find that the average anomaly between 1990 and 2000 was 0.19C, and that for this decade it is projected to be 0.10C, and for the next decade 0.18C. As both these figures are less than the 1990 anomaly, unless I am reading something wrong, those decades would be cooler in absolute terms than the preceding decade.

You also claimed that increase in sea levels was accelerating. So another fact check leads to http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg which shows that increase in sea level is below trend at the moment.

You've also missed the whole point of the issue of ocean heat. It doesn't get it from the atmosphere. It gets it from the sun. It heats the atmosphere, not vice-versa.

Fractelle,

Graham is of course right, I don't see him engaging ad hominems very often, if at all.

But I was not complaining about ad hominems, I was voicing an opinion of what I percieve as him engaging in capricious and selective "moderation" by wielding the 'defamation' clause. This thread is a great example. I agree with you Graham, defamation is not a nice thing to do, so why do you let your mate Mark get away with it? Why is he not hit with the banhammer? Not only does he engage in defamation, of a potentially worse kind than protagoras', he runs multiple accounts. Am I allowed multiple accounts Graham? I would like to know, just for the record.

Eclipse,

I don't have much time to waste on you, especially after that post.

In context, Latif is a still a problem, at least for you "ol' pal", and shows what a proverbial dog's breakfast climate science has become. You have belittled anyone who has been curious about the, at most, plateauing of temps in last decade and argued against it with much sarcasm! Now that Latif is backing a decline, instead of acknowledging that it validates those who've read the graphs in this way, and you admitting you were wrong, we discover that we should not be looking at actual temperature (T1) at all, but some imaginary temp (T2) that is being masked. Well, pardon us for looking at actual temps - that is what you've been going on about all this time isn't it? - only to discover you've moved the goalposts. (Doctor: You're obese. Patient: But I'm not fat at all. Doctor: No, but your healthy eating and exercising is masking your obesity.) Along with the dubious splicing of different proxy data, we now have something called T2 - some estimate of TRUE temp, different from real temp. Well, when did we start measuring T2? How is it defined? You can't just jump between the two as it suits - it ain't science

Eclipsed Now,

Re : (Does "Cherrypicking, Horus and the Media" sound like a B-grade rock band to anyone else, or is it just me?)

It’s just you Eclipsed!
You’ve been sniffing too many green house gasses.

On my part it took me a while to settle on what your band might be called, I first thought of –Cool Change– but that was too timid.
Then,by Jove I got it –the perfect name : The H2Ss ,you and Q&A could be called the H2Ss!It says it all, it has an uber-cool sound and it encapsulates all your qualities in a nutshell.

Now from hard rock to hard questions Eclipse:
Q&As link doesn’t get you off the hook, the “interview” can be summarized in one sentence : “Mojib, old chap, yyyyour still one of us… aaaaaren’t you?”

The issue is not whether Mojib Latif believes in AGW . The issue is whether of not he indicated there would/could be a cooling period.
And to quote from Q&As censored ,smoothed out “interview” : “ I made this very clear, there is quite some uncertainty about the short-term evolution”

But, we all know there is no uncertain for you Eclipsed.
see no cooling,, hear no cooling, speak no cooling [full stop]
You are truly man of science and reason!

fractelle, i'm not sure graham's silly whack at me is really ad hominem. it's just very speculative and, at least by graham-the-scientist standards, wrong. however, i do love graham's fluid notion of defamation. and i really, really love graham's image of himself as the honest science investigator, the objective evaluator of the experts. the truly hilarious aspect is when he wishes to use biblical cherrypicking as the comparison. he seems genuinely oblivious to the fact that he himself is doing exactly that kind of cherrypicking.

Bugsy and GrahamY

GY & ad hominems, true Graham is far too canny to indulge in obvious personal attacks, it is his snide little comments that rankle, comments liberally sprinkled through this thread like:

<< Bushbasher, if you don't understand the science enough to argue about it, then you have no place in the argument. You're not even qualified enough to work out which "experts" to believe. Ditto Eclipse. >>

Ironic considering that Graham is no more scientifically qualified than any of the above he denigrates. Dear Graham can't even grasp the basics of ecology:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2207&page=0#47389

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2207&page=0#47474

Given Graham's understanding of human intrusion and impact on previously uninhabited (by contemporary human development) ecosystems, I happen to think it is a bit rich when Graham questions the reasoning abilities of those with whom he disagrees.

Now, I hope that I have made my reasoning for my objections clear.

As for evidence Fred Singer being paid for his erroneous opinions on passive smoking, thus far, there is none for payment for comment by the tobacco lobby. That Singer has associations with the vested interests of the business-as-usual crowd (GE, Ford, GM, Exxon, Shell, Sun Oil, Lockheed Martin and IBM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer), as I have referenced previously, is on public record. The conclusion I left for others to draw from my earlier post:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9484&page=0#153284

Additional information regarding Singer's associations are succinctly reiterated by George Monbiot in his book, "Heat"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2

"Singer's article, entitled Junk Science at the EPA, claimed that "the latest 'crisis' - environmental tobacco smoke - has been widely criticised as the most shocking distortion of scientific evidence yet". He alleged that the Environmental Protection Agency had had to "rig the numbers" in its report on passive smoking. This was the report that Philip Morris and APCO had set out to discredit a month before Singer wrote his article.

I have no evidence that Fred Singer or his organisation have taken money from Philip Morris. But many of the other bodies that have been sponsored by Exxon and have sought to repudiate climate change were also funded by the tobacco company..."