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Let's see, you linked: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html ...ostensibly purporting it to be factual. It contains such blatant untruths as: Which is not only a baldfaced lie: But one you subsequently embellished as: (of course, ignoring La Nina, which explains the only substantial downslope in 2007, which lasted 1 year) You are actively spreading disinformation. Sorry, I think you've lost the right to call yourself a skeptic. The only skeptics here are the ones questioning the lies you purport to be truthful, lies that fly in the face of established science.

Where to begin... Let's start with: 2009 - 2000 = 9, not 11 If we were to plot a trend line between 2000 and the present it would still be positive. The only significant "down slope" is in the year 2007 and is explained by the La Nina oscillation. And I am likewise skeptical about your arguments against the mainstream scientific consensus. I am also skeptical about your abilities as a skeptic, considering the article you linked contains some pretty blatant inaccuracies and embellishments. If you were a true skeptic you might point out what parts of the article are worthwhile and what parts of the article you think are wrong or you disagree with. Perhaps as an exercise in skepticism you can take a cold hard look at that article and note some things you disagree with or feel are in error.

This article reminds me an awful lot of the movie Expelled. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt abound. So there are 700 scientists (are they even in a related field? what are their credentials?) that "disagree with the U.N." total that this particular Senator was able to locate. Note that Wikipedia's list is far less substantive. This number is compared to the number of scientists who authored a summary of the IPCC assessment report aimed at policymakers, never mind the IPCC's 4th assessment report was authored by 620 scientists (and it was reviewed by even more). Can you say apples and oranges? Wow, the author of this article knows so much about what she's discussing she actually typed C Zero 2 instead of CO2. And "flat-lined"? Hey look at that... not very flat there. Sad to see the WSJ going downhill like this. It used to be a respectable publication. I think you'll find this is an extremely skeptical crowd, particularly about disinformation being propagated by non-scientists. You seem to equate skepticism with climate change denial. That's a diction error. Phrasing like "dissent with the mainstream scientific assessment" is more apt. I hope you can understand why when the mainstream scientific assessment is challenged the community here is skeptical of such challenges.

The fact someone like Palin can get elected to any public office in the first place, not to mention governor of the state or a vice presidential candidate, is a bit of a sorry statement on American democracy.

iirc I was voted most interesting member of 2008

Welcome back there AP, this place wasn't the same without you

This article in the Huffington Post reads like it's straight out of the Onion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanham/palin-holds-press-confere_b_226638.html This interview is just surreal: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8016906&page=1

I want to live until I decide I'm ready to die

This gets into the devilish p-zombie problem. That said you are unlikely to be deceived by a Markovian chatbot. Markov bots often output total gibberish: There are a number of questions you can ask any of these chatbots which will trip them up, like: - What were we just talking about a little while ago? will defeat most of the chatbots out there as they aren't stateful. The Turing Test isn't rigorously defined in that regard, and if it were, the people writing the chatbots could simply account for that part of the rigorous definition in the design of their chatbots. Leaving it open-ended is nice in that regard, and if you end up being deceived into thinking a chatbot is a real person (or if you yourself fail the turing test) I think that says a lot about you as a person

That's not different at all. Many chatbots have been written using Markov chains. Note that this algorithm is the same one Google uses as part of its PageRank algorithm. What's pretty cool about Markov-based chatbots is they can start out as a blank slate and learn whatever language you throw at them. Such systems may be able to distill collective intelligence from other agents, but aren't intelligent themselves.

It's possible, although I haven't seen any scientist claim that as the cause of the excessive rainfall here.

Yes, it was a hotbutton political issue in my hometown with lots of disinformation from both sides.

pioneer: We're going through something similar, with extreme excesses of rain. It feels like we're living in Seattle. It's raining something like 6 days a week. We got more rain this June than the past 10 combined.

Honestly I don't give a crap about NOAA... I just cited it as an example. NASA GISS is the one to pay attention to.

Can you provide a case instance of comparably drastic climate change in the historical record? And I'm not talking about wild swings due to feedback loops which came from forcings manifesting over several centuries/millenia. I'm talking about when the earth was practically in an ice age and then swung into a rapid warming trend such as the one we're seeing in the course of a few hundred years. I don't know what you mean by "internal forcings" I'll check it out

Twitter is something you have to use to really get, I think. I could ramble off a number of the different use cases I've seen, but that'd probably be boring. If you can find ways to integrate it into your life it's a very powerful tool.

James Burke's Connections and The Day the Universe Changed are both excellent, as is Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. That said, I'm also a big fan of many of the other BBC series that have been listed here, such as Planet Earth. And Carl Sagan's Cosmos is also excellent.

Fox Noise seems to think that Palin just threw the left a brilliant curveball! Didn't see that one coming, did you lefties? (Huh?) I think this is far more likely a preemptive response to a scandal than it is some "brilliant" political maneuvering. Not that I have any evidence of a scandal, but as Talking Points Memo pointed out this happened so abruptly she didn't have a coherent story for the reasons of her resignation. I've seen a lot of speculation about her resignation being tied to the "Iceberg Scandal", in which Palin allegedly used materials purchased for the Wasilla Sports Complex in the construction of her own home. However, it could just simply be she's tired of ongoing negative publicity and wants to get out of the public eye.

I can understand areas with high rates of tooth decay fluoridating their water but I'm not sure why any city I ever lived in fluoridated theirs. My teeth are marred by dental fluorosis.

Population has also been increasing exponentially thanks to technology. We could not abandon our modern way of life without billions of people dying. There wouldn't be enough food or water or ways of transporting it. What? The Meiji period brought with it the industrialization of Japan. You're talking about the time when Japan started getting its first railroads, something that has certainly remained an essential part of their lifestyle ever since.

You then go on to cite Steven Milloy... *facepalm* What? No, he's citing a case instance, and the same one you're trying to use to make a point. Sorry, these graphs just suck, and I have to bring this up every time you post them. There is no legitimate reason not to include a five year mean, other than you want the noise to make the graph harder to read. I don't know whether to attribute this to incompetence or a malicious intent to deceive. How about a freaking trend line? Could I get that? Seriously, there's no excuse. Here, about about you smooth the data out and provide a trend line: Much better. In terms of what? Human history? Sure.

You're talking about this graph: and JohnB's associated comments: Well, let's see what a scientist has to say in response to the same graph: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/Sect16_2a.html This paper implicates CO2 as the forcing responsible for "Earth's only recorded icehouse-to-greenhouse transition" during the late Paleozoic, and the forcing responsible for "turnover to a permanent ice-free world".

What specific time in the past are you talking about when "CO2 levels greatly exceeded todays levels"?

Okay, I've changed my mind on all this. Politicians private lives should be their private lives. If this guy deserves indignation, it's for deserting his post as governor.

Do you really think getting rid of guns will stop murders? There is more than one way to kill a man, you know. The alternative is what the UK has done: ban all "offensive weapons". I'm sure it's great to be a diminutive woman wandering the streets of London at night, unable to legally carry a can of pepper spray or mace.