I’m all for a raucous honest debate and I’ll do my best not to let myself descend to just a stream of ad hominems (with substantiating links.) I don’t wish to prudishly eliminate waggish sallies and riposte, on the contrary.

All I am saying is that we owe our host the courtesy of not creating an environment that appears hostile to new eyes and voices, just as we might at a house party. After all this isn’t Saturday night on KIng’s Cross, it’s a blog devoted to rational discussion. Again my apologies for mistaking you for a troll.

And my apologies to everyone for going all OT on ya.

I’ll chill now…

Can we get on with it?”

Can’t handle the science? Rather just rant on?

Yes but we do need to make decisions about drought policy, Murray Darling infrastructure, farm investment, supporting drought relief etc. Just because droughts have happened before doesn’t help. New progress is being demanded now. So ya hafta make some calculations – on what basis and why? You could use the last 120 years of rainfall record – but is that right. Are there other factors. So when you get some good research that says Antarctica phenomenon like SAM is causing recent droughts – why would you be dismissive without even a look? They haven’t just pulled this stuff out of thin air ! There are no perfect answers but it is rational to review all we know. Looking at this sort of information doesn’t mean you have to suddenly run around the house changing every light bulb and sell the car. But just dumping shit on the research as it sounds a bit AGWish is illogical. Like telling your physician they’re ugly coz you don’t like their diagnosis. Doesn’t help. Might make you feel good but isn’t rational.

How do I feel about Gore – winced at some of the Inconvenient Truth movie, nodded at some. His lifestyle can’t be reconciled with what he’s preaching. So he’s become a liability. But people either seem to adore him or hate him. Movie could have been bloody brilliant with some better help. But he cut corners coz he believes so strongly. Hansen is a bit of an alarmist but still knows his shit – so you have to read his work. ABC obviously partisan – who cares. We all know. And they still have Duffy. Face it – you love to hate them.

The Mann issue turned into a Star Chamber exercise. If it was butterfly taxonomy it would have quietly handled in the literature and he would have been shown to not have enough support for his hypothesis. And subsequent efforts would have pushed his work aside or he himself would have revised it. But politicising the issue to House Inquiries has made it all or nothing. It shouldn’t be that grim. So we are actualy left with “really don’t know” on MWP.

But Wes – you really need to push beyond all this gunk – it’s like listening to too much talk back radio or commercial Current Affairs – gets you all revved up and anxious and makes you think that’s all there is. And it’s ALL bad. All corrupt. Everyone is a crook.

Mainstream science doesn’t really care about these guys really – it’s here – check this stuff out – http://www.ecmwf.int/newsevents/meetings/workshops/2008/ModellingSummit/presentations/index.html – like OMG. I don’t know what to think. Head spin.

The real scientists are all sorts of people you haven’t heard of. Not celebs – not famous. That’s where the real action is at.

Peeves ….

My peeve is that it’s harder to get the science pitch precise. Just right. Straight. The IPCC guys sometimes tone conclusions down as being seen to be “moderate” somehow equals sensible. It may not be.

Not having proper representation of decadal effects and El Nino/La Nina is a major limitation on medium term projections.

Not having a proper debate on nuclear is an issue. Kerry Emmanuel of hurricane fame actually laments that AGW has become a left wing thing. That green politics have suppressed nuclear energy. He suggests that with different circumstances we’d be on the way to solving this potential issue by now.

But conversely – a lack of willingness to see how far we could push solar with some serious economies of scale.

Clouds in climate models remain problematic.

Regional downscaling is difficult.

Climate sensitivity has a long way to go.

Too much focus on AGW temperature trends and not rainfall by blogs and the media.

Biogeochemical impacts and feedbacks are relatively unresearched.

It’s poor that our governments have annexed clearing rights to comply with Kyoto and yet those landholders don’t get to recognise that value. i.e. urban Australia gets a free ride on that.

The press runs hot and cold on the issue and revs up the controversy. Where’s a decent side by side comparison. Where’s an attempt to work it through as an issue.

I think if carbon taxes are introduced governments will lose office on the issue. People won’t cop it. So adaptation, research and new forms of energy are the most likely courses of action.

Back to ice cubes and boiling water!

Gee, Creepy, chill out, It’s, well, something, to have you back. After all what’s a debate without a self-righteous troll or two? I actually thought you might have a life and wouldn’t be home on a Friday night. My mistake.

You’ve spilt more of your guts in the last post then in the last month. That’s good. And in complete sentences too. Well done, mate.

Where to start? Turns out we have a lot in common…

“Note this (AGW?) does not translate to turning off all electricity and motor cars or any mitigation policy at all. Would make no difference for Australia to act unilaterally. Am I advocating turning off the Australian economy and walking around in hair shirts. No.”

Rock on! I totally agree with that, mate. Of course, this somewhat dampens the argument that you make a great foil to keep us all from dancing around like a conga line of fancy suckholes. You could be expelled from the Greens for the above statement.

“Ender would be appalled and will make me march up the back on demos for this but I’d go a nuclear reactor.”

No comment, mate. That is just too over the top. I’m blushing. Stop it! Me ears are burning.

“Your generalist comments are not relevant on this thread. You have not addressed any climate points I have raised – (with further substantiating links)”

Wrong. I have addressed your comment, you dispatched it with such mindless panache that I was simple left speechless, for about 2 seconds. More later. And are there special creepy rules to play by? Please tell.

As for generalist, contextualizing comments. Expect more, I intend to drag you screaming out off your dung-filled pigeonhole and show you the light of day. Edwin Lazlo liked to say that we had way too much head in the sand over specialisation in the sciences. Experts on details so tiny that they were blind as bat as to how it all might fit together, all fighting to defend their “turf” from other disciplines. And you have shown that you have little talent for putting facts together to form a logical whole, haven’t you? If you like, think of me as specializing in the big picture. I’m sure your style is tit-for-tat data chats as they spiral downward, digressing towards oblivion. As you point out, chances of making a convert here is minimal, so don’t even pretend that your selection of “points” aren’t any more meaningful than the burnt end of a stick, however pointy.

“But in this country we have major issues with water, floods, and droughts. These are multi-billion dollar climate related issues.”

Is that one of those points of fact? Since time immemorial, tis always be so in this red land. I suspect you don’t know much about this country’s bush from direct observation, or you wouldn’t think our three seasons, flood, drought and bush fire were much of a worry other than for German tourists.

“I figure the majority of people here are utterly appalled by all aspects of AGW science and policy. Perhaps I may not be 100% happy either if you took some time to ask.”

Ya reckon? Actually I did ask you some time ago. No reply. Suppose it wasn’t pointy enough a question.

So I’m asking again what part of AGW science don’t you like? Is it the lies, is it the destruction of unseemly code and hiding of methodology by Hansen, Mann, et al? Is it the misinformation and fear mongering on the telly? Is it the groupthink of Al Gore or the ABC? Is it the self-righteous twits that presciently know which facts matter and which don’t? Or is the fact that AGW science is looking more like a political tool for a particular socio-economic agenda with each passing day? Or maybe you got your own list of pet peeves?

And you’re in the end right, creepy. As always. There is a topic here and it is Antarctic in nature.

So on with ya now.

“Snowfall accumulation is from the RACMO2/ANT regional
atmospheric climate model, at 55 km resolution, averaged for
1980–2004 (refs 17–19). Lateral forcings are taken from European
Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting reanalyses
(ERA-40) for the period 1980–2002, supplemented with European
Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting operational
analyses after August 2002. Comparisons with 1,900 independent
field data show excellent agreement (R = 0.82) with the model18.
The model predicts higher coastal precipitation and wetter
conditions in West Antarctica and the western Peninsula17 than
older maps obtained by interpolating limited field data using
meteorological variables20 or satellite passive microwave data21.
Few reliable in situ coastal accumulation data exist for comparison,
but in the high-accumulation sector of the Getz Ice Shelf (basin
F0G), the model predicts precipitation levels consistent with a
2,030mmyr−1 record at Russkaya station (74460 S, 136520 W)
for 1981–1989.”

That’s 1900 points, R=0.82 – there’s no satisfying you is there? That’s pretty good.

It’s solid work. You’ve have to be pretty good to think you’d take on Rignot and win !

Can we get on with it?