CapitalistImperialistPig

I'm not one of those centrists so despised by Paul Krugman who thinks that the truth always lies in the middle, even though the Central Limit Theorem suggests that it usually does. I did find it interesting that the short excerpt from Michael L. Bender's Paleoclimate drew attacks from a horde of denialists (mostly not on this site) and at least one "climate alarmist" as the deniers like to style us. One whom I greatly respect, by the way. If an article is despised by both sides it might just mean that the author is an ignorant asshole. That's not the case with Bender. He is a giant of Paleoclimatology, with a forest of papers and many thousands of citations for directly related work. He has a perspective based on a deep study of past climate change. It appears to me that those paragraphs drew scorn from the denier crowd because he asserts that human emission of CO2 can have large consequences for our climate. Eli was outraged, I guess, because Bender wasn...

I guess I've been bored, because I've been arguing with the climate change denialists again. Most of those I talk to are actually quite well-informed. They know a great deal. The only problem is that much of what they know isn't so. One of the things that always strikes me is their reaction to evidence. Any contrary evidence, even or perhaps especially if it's published in a major journal is dismissed as part of the conspiracy. Argument or evidence fitting their prejudices, on the other hand, is accepted as gold even if it comes from a teen-aged half-wit with a blog (poetic exaggeration, maybe). Anosognosia - "lack of insight" or "lack of awareness" - is believed to be the single largest reason why individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not take their medications. A result of anatomical damage to the brain, it affects approximately 50% of individuals with schizophrenia and 40% of individuals with bipolar disorder. Dealing with...

In a series of email exchanges, denialist Mr. X. challenged me with a number of aggressive questions, responded to me with some links to essentially irrelevant data (claiming, for example, that CO2 levels in the atmosphere had plateaued on the basis of the fluctuations of the rate of increase of CO2), took exception to my pointing out that in fact CO2 had increased every year since the Mauna Loa measurements began, and did not appreciate my pointing out that he had confused first and second derivatives or that he needed to understand some physics to comprehend how CO2 warms the surface. He got offended and pronounced that he didn't want to hear any more of my lectures. Darn! And he was such a promising student! Well, he did ask.