JohnB

And that is why many American States have yet to join the civilised world. Footballers were used to show that monetary fame and lionization are forms of arbitary awards and have no relevence to the person's actual contribution to society. Firstly, if the "line in the sand" is so definite, could you define it for me? It's a lot greyer than you might think. Secondly. I can see how it might appear as a slippery slope argument. It's not, it is simply the rejection of certain answers to problems. There are a couple of reasons. One is that this sort of power (allowing the government to kill) has been abused way too often in the past. By not allowing the power, we prevent future abuse as a public policy. Another is that since it is wrong to take such action against an enemy soldier in wartime, so why should it be allowable inside the society in peacetime? It removes a contradiction. When considering the values of our society we need to see the big picture. Our laws must reflect those values, or at least try to. If we reject the idea that cold blooded murder is wrong for the individual, then we must also reject it for governments. Otherwise we are only doing it by proxy. Emotionally, there have been many people who I thought would look their best as the centrepiece at a funeral. Regardless of that, I won't kill them in cold blood. Nor am I so much of a hypocrite that I would get some other sod to do it and then say "I didn't do it, the system did." That is just passing the buck and deluding ourselves. That is why TBK isn't a hypocrite. We all accept certain limits on our freedom to act as we want. This is the price we pay for living in a civilised society. Constantly speed and your "right to drive" will be taken away. Be a constant PITA, and your "right" to associate with the general society will be taken away. But at no time will your basic rights be taken. Speaking as a non US person I find it bizarre that a nation that reveres a document that says; still has the Death Penalty. A Right to Life cannot be "secure" if the government can take it away. The rest of us actually view these things as self evident too, we might not say it in a great "Declaration", but we do. So we don't have a document, but we do believe it and argue for it and act on it. You have the document and tell the world that you do, but you don't act on it. Without the action, a great document has been reduced to mere words on paper, worth no more than a 10 cent novel. That is a sad, sad thing.

I didn't say it was better, I said there was a difference. Someone breaks into your house, you fight, he dies. These things happen. Someone breaks into your house, you capture him, tie him to a chair and then kill him, that's different. There is a difference between doing things when emotions and adrenalin running high and doing things in a cold blooded, premeditated fashion. All the counselling and training in the world will not change that fact of human behaviour. No, they are imposing an arbitary "value" on that persons contribution to the society, not a value on their life. To show the fallacy of this supposed "value", does anybody really think footbal players contribute more to a society than the Doctors and Nurses that put them back together? To decide to kill people because they don't "contribute" enough to a society, or on the basis that they are a drain in any way on a society is a very dark road to go down.

Before or after I rip his head off and nail his balls to a wall?

I'm married. And my sheep gets jealous. (I understand the Kiwis allow polygamy.) In our lives we do many things for the "first time". Sex is one of the few that occur when we are old enough to appreciate it. It's stepping into uncharted waters, with all the nerves and everything else.No matter how good or bad, anytime after that is not an "unknown". Like the first time skydiving. You really don't know what's going to happen, how it will feel to step out into the air. Every time after that you have an idea of what it will feel like. So the "first time" is special and will never come again. How many people still fondly remember their first car? It's the same thing. Once that is realised, then there is nothing wrong with trying to make any "first time" special. Because it is. I have to side with Mooeypoo 100%. Sex is a very intimate thing. It's even more intimate for a woman. (For reasons that shouldn't need to be spelt out) If Westgirl is uncomfortable, then nobody has the right to pressure her into it. If she didn't feel comfortable sunbathing topless, then nobody has the right to attempt to force her to. I fail to see why pressuring somebody to have sex is any different. I didn't get anything about religion or "one true love" from the OP. The woman doesn't feel comfortable. As far as I can see, that ends it right there. It's her choice as to when to have sex. Pressure, even from well meaning friends is wrong. It's her body and her choice. Game over.

Does anyone else find it strangely odd that the various States will let a religious whacko run roughshod over their curriculum, but if the Feds try to do something intelligent...like...I don't know, introduce meaningful Healthcare reform, so many complain? The mind boggles.

Strontidog, using your definition I don't think that knowledge neccessarily destroys faith. One could describe a belief system as a belief in how the world works. We can't actually know that it works in that way, but we believe it does. Those who believe in a "God" can say they "know" He/She/It exists, but they only have "faith" in His/Her/It's plan for the Universe. (Assuming your faith requires there to actually be a plan.) I have strong spiritual beliefs and a strong confidence in the scientific method. So far, nothing that science has discovered has refuted any part of what I believe. If anything it has confirmed it's possibility of correctness. Faith is in trouble if in part it contains the concept that something is "unknowable". This is a definitive statement and if the thing declared "unknowable" becomes "known", then the faith is misplaced. Please note that I am not Christian, so my beliefs are not required to explain their miracles. That is for them to deal with. To give a simple "Supernatural" example. I don't believe that ghosts are an "unknowable" phenomenon. I believe that they are a natural phenomenon using currently unknown energy that follows currently unknown laws. Given time we will understand this energy and the laws it follows.

I don't think I was quite clear in my previous post. I was trying to point out that "revisionism" has been going on for hundreds of years. King John, rather than being the defender of the people, became the bad guy. There will always be people who wish to rewrite history to suit their own agenda. They have always been there. It would appear that in this case they are winning. If not in enough numbers to control the board, then at least by yelling loudly enough to make the others cower. As I said earlier, the problem is not that "right wing" nutjobs can unduly influence the board. The problem is that "nutjobs" can unduly influence the board. Fix that fault in the system and the problem goes away. It never ceases to amaze me how much influence a vocal minority seem to have in the US. I would have thought that they'd have been ignored ages ago. We have the same types down here, it's just that we ignore them.

Just quick point on the Magna Carta and revisionism. The rights granted by that great document were not at the behest of the Nobles. They were put there by the much maligned King John. (of Robin Hood fame) The legal system of the time was that even a peasant could appeal the "Lord's Justice" to the King. This is why the King and his "court" travelled around. It was a legal court and the King had to find in accord with Roman Law. This is where the concept of "Low" and "High" justice came from. The nobles were against this system and wanted the power to use and abuse their peasants as they saw fit without Royal intervention. It's much easier to find in favour of your friends if their opponent doesn't have recourse to the King's court. This led to the civil war which was pretty much a draw. The agreement at Runnymeade, while it limited the power of the King in certain areas (a win for the nobles) also enshrined certain principles and rights for the people. (a win for King John) Most of the basic principles and even some of the actual conditions still apply in modern nations. This section alone is why rules of evidence evolved and is why police officers normally travel in pairs. The full text is here. It is an amazing document and well worth the read.

In another thread the word "perfect" was being thrown around a lot and it led to a thought. I'll make it clear from the start that this is not attempting to push or validate in any way, any religion or way of thought. I am however postulating a rather amorphous "designer". What I find interesting is that many declare the Universe, or humans to be "bad" design. How do we define a design as bad if we don't know what it was designed to do? A Jumbo jet is a reasonably good design if we want to move hundreds of people and some tons of cargo long distances, it is a very poor design if we want to move 500,000 tons of crude oil. So, if the Universe had a "designer", what was it designed to do? To me, only by answering that question can we begin to understand whether it is a "good" design or not. Intent defines good or bad design. If the Universe was designed so that at least one planet would evolve sentient life, then it is a rip roaring success, if it was designed so that all planets have life, then it is a failure. Human life is the same. (Bearing in mind that there is no particular reason that we should look the way we do.) If the intent was to evolve a form capable of supporting a brain complex enough to consider itself, then the design is good. If other targets were intended, then it may not be that great. So perhaps a philosophical question rather than a "religious" one. If the Universe was designed, what was it designed to do?

For me it has nothing to do with my religion/spirituality. My philosophical reasons I've explained in other threads. I think the rejection of the Death Penalty in civilised societies is based on two principles. (In many ways) 1. The acceptance of the concept that there is a difference between "in the heat of the moment" and "in cold blood". Taking humans out of it for the moment. If a bear came into your house and you shot it dead, then nobody (except loony greenies) would complain. However, if the bear was instead captured and put in a zoo and you then went and shot it, you would be wrong for doing so. The same principle applies for criminals. 2. The rejection of the concept that a government can mandate that one persons life is worth less than anothers. You either value life or you don't. To say in effect "We value life and will kill anyone who doesn't" is morally, philosophically and logically wrong.

Sorry swansont and bascule, terminology mismatch. I was differentiating GISSTEMP (interpolating the past) from "Climate Models" (predicting the future).

Interesting how we go from; "the board’s far-right faction", presumably 2 or 3 people to "So Texas conservatives". The problem is not conservatives or liberals on the board. The problem is a small (very small) group pushing their agenda in education. As soon as you say "right wing" whatever you polarise the debate. Any answer you find will be politically motivated. Reform the board by all means, but if you really want to improve education in your nation, do so in a way that prevents any extremist faction from gaining power. I will add that this is not a "new" thing in any way. I have a 20 year old book that speaks of how the curriculum was being modified by extremists even way back then.

Westgirl, there are a few things that come to mind. Firstly your friend seems to have convinced you that three separate things are one and the same. 1. Dating. 2. Boyfriend. 3. Sex. Going on a date does not mean that the male involved expects you to be his girlfriend, nor does it mean he intends sex. (Although your friend may have led him to believe so.) Even if you continue to date that person, it doesn't mean he expects sex. It is quite permissable and normal to have a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship without sex. I will add that if he were to put any pressure on you at all, then walk away. He's carving notches on his bed head and doesn't give a rats **** about you and your values or feelings. The bottom line is that you don't need "logical" arguments for not going on a blind date, any more than you need them for not going to a movie. It's your life, your body and your choice. The people here have given great advice and I hope you listen to them. I'll add one last observation. The "First time" is a thing that will never come again. It is very special and personal and should be valued on that basis. If you make the wrong choice, you can't take it back, you can't make it "not count". Your virginity is important to you and losing it would be a big thing. The only man worthy of that is the one who is willing to wait with patience and caring. If he is not willing to take the time, effort and above all care to ensure that something so special to you remains a special and wonderful memory, then he is not worthy of the honour you offer him. I know too many women who finished up quite sour on sex by their mid twenties because they dived in too soon with guys that didn't know enough to make their experience memorable. Don't make the same mistake.

No idea. They apparently lost the data. swansont, AFAIK GISSTEMP is not a "model" as such, in that it has no predictive power. It is a method of combining global station readings into a coherent whole. On that basis, I see little reason not to use it to validate the NASA models. However, it strikes me as a good idea to use someone elses temp series to prevent possible conflicts of interest. Conflict of interest is a major concern in the business world but is unfortunately given little thought in the climate community.

Don't the Rockefellers have major banking interests? Banking interests seem to be heavily involved with the Carbon Trading market. As a logical point. If the foundation pushed things that were not advantagous to the business interests of the family, then the family would lose money and eventually have none left for "Philanthropic" foundations. Somehow I can't really see that happening, can anybody else?

foodchain, I said Greepeace et al to include the other groups. If they wish to stand for election, then I have no problem with them. I also have no problem with them being lobbyists. I do have a problem with any advocacy group gaining too much power as advisors though. That would mean no accountability and would be dangerous to a democratic society. Any group that is certain that they know what is best for everybody else is a danger in that situation. However, this would be a better discussion in another thread.

True, but return on investment is not always measured in money. Greenpeace et al stand to gain a significant dividend in terms of political power.

In keeping with the OP. (And I must admit I got a different message from the one swansont did.) Blackhole, the person who wrote the article isn't a "denier", he is however misinformed and is, as you said, looking at things rather simplisticly. I think that this is a good example where the argument goes wrong on both sides. If you look at the majority of diagrams and explanations available to the general populace, then you see the argument is generally stated as the heat being "reflected back". If you don't believe me, then do a Google search for "Greenhouse Effect" images. Virtually all show a little arrow going out and bouncing back, in effect stating that the energy is reflected. This is, of course, wrong. So the author is refuting the idea that heat is reflected back in some way. His argument is correct in that respect only. However, as swansont pointed out, it's not about reflection but about insulation. So the authors argument is also wrong in as much as it tries to comment on Greenhouse theory. So in this case, Greenhouse Theory is right, but how it is presented (in most cases) to the general public is wrong and the authors refutation of that presentation is right, but his conclusion on Greenhouse Theory is wrong. The author is not a "denier", but he is somebody who should do quite a bit more reading about the actual theory before offering his misguided opinion. His argument is sort of sound but has nothing whatsoever to do with how the atmosphere (and GHGs) really work and so is easily refuted. To a great degree it is a "strawman" argument with the unusual aspect of the strawman being set up by his opponents. *Brought to you by one of SFNs resident AGW sceptics.*

Thanks for that swansont. I think that most who aren't convinced by the arguments could be more properly described as unconvinced by the "certainty" that many arguments are couched in. "The models are correct, we've accounted for everything" leads one to wonder if they include things like the recent findings of Susan Soloman that perhaps 30% of the most recent warming came from a reduction in water in the stratosphere? It's doubtful they do since the findings were onlt released a month ago. Someone early in the debate spoke of "unknown unknowns", the certainty of the predictions implies that there are no more unknowns unknowns left in this field. A highly dubious state of affairs. I would think that Tremberths "travesty" comment would say to any reasonable person that we don't know as much about energy transport within the climate system as we thought we did. If we did, we would know where the warming has gone. Frankly, I see the argument as being about the size of the "A" in AGW. Nobody in their right mind doubts that the world has warmed in the last 130 years or so. (Anybody with more that two functioning brain cells would think that this is a good thing btw, unless they prefer ice ages and the attendant ills they bring.) The thing is that the climate is always changing, always has and always will, with or without the help of humans. So how much of the warming is due to CO2? If it is a lot, then mitigation is a great idea and should be done. If it's not a lot, then any mitigation attempts won't make much difference in the long run and we would be better off spending the money on dealing with the consequences of climate change. Physics tells us that for a doubling of CO2 from the preindustrial levels, we should get a warming of .5 degrees. That's the starting point. Anything above that is due to other factors which include both forcings and feedbacks. How well do we know those other factors? From above it is clear the answer is "Not as well as we thought". Anybody who wants to claim a 95% confidence in their predictions when recent papers show them to out by at least 30% is pulling your leg. On a purely human side. Some of us just find it extremely suspicious that virtually all adjustments made to data lead to greater warming. Really, what are the odds on that? This might come across as "Appeal to Emotion", but if each time someone corrects a "mistake" with the result strengthening their argument, and alarm bells don't go off, then I have a selection of really nice bridges I'd like you to see. Blackhole, the bottom line is that not everybody who disagrees with AGW is a "denier". Also, since from it's inception, the term was meant to be derogatory and insulting, I would suggest that the best way to talk to someone is to not start by insulting them. It might be productive to follow the lead of the UKs Guardian in this. I difficulty is that there are ideologues on both sides. FRom the loon that you linked to in the OP (who presumably is on "my side") to Paul Ehrlich who seems to believe any climate/eco disaster that comes along (who is on your side). I personally think that anybody who advocates putting chemicals in drinking water to prevent people breeding is a dangerous personality who should be kept somewhere safe. Quite often it seems, something comes up that might be avalid argument (either for or against) which immediately gets blown out of proportion and the response is to argue against the exreme view and not the original idea. Steering between the two extreme camps is sometimes like sailing the North West Passage at full speed in a paper mache Titanic.

Darwinism in action. "We've been warned a tsunami might hit the coast where we live. Let's go down to the beach and film it." As Rickdog said, even a couple of feet with speed and mass behind it, they would have been gone. People think of them like a large surfer type wave, but watch the vids from SE Asia a few years ago, it's a tremendous surge. Rickdog, my condolences for what has happened in your nation.

Just an update. I'm going to try to create a gridded data set for the nation and see how that compares. It would appear that standard practice is to average each grid cell and then average the grid cells. I'll give this a go first and will advise the papers used for the process. Bascule, I won't ask NASA just yet as it would be comparing gridded to non gridded data. (Which I think is a flaw in the previous method) I would also like to make it clear that nobody should expect GHCN or anybody else to datascrape websites for the station data. It's just too time consuming. My personal opinion is that international standards for data storage, modification and reporting should be agreed on. Thor only knows how you would do it, but ATM you can't guarantee that a stations baseline average is worked out the same way in two different nations. This is an appalling state of affairs and only serves to make the raw data all the more valuable for future reference.

Virtually certain. I was able to highlight the dates, mins and maxes as a block. When pasted into excel the format stayed the same. IOW, everything lined up into the cells unexpectedly well. I then checked the pasted format against the webpage and the values matched in each case. I then repeated the exercise for each station. Since there were no apparent irregularities, I expect them all to be correct. I'll check though, just to be sure. Thanks for the Mechanize suggestion. Any comments on the methods?

There will always be an anomaly compared to the baseline. I don't know if extra data can be loaded into the CCC as, AFAIK, it draws it's data directly from the GHCN database. You would need to d/load the GHCN and add the new data to the file and then change the pointers in the CCC to get the data from the new file. It might be possible. It would be an interesting exercise to compare two maps, one with and one without the Bolivia data in the initial file. It would be another way of checking the interpolation code. I mentioned the CCC project because it is a worthwhile endeavour in it's own right for models to have clear and consistent code. It does however have one basic flaw. If I were to write a ballistics model in Fortran with the value g= 8.9 m/s2 and then port it to Python, the model would still be wrong as the initial values are wrong. In this respect, the CCC project is not a confirmation of the accuracy of the GISS code. Mistaken assumptions simply get ported with the code. The purpose of this exercise was to test the accuracy of what the GISS code actually does in one particular area. Where there is no data, as shown in grey in the 250 km map, the code infills the areas as demonstrated in the 1200 km map. There is no new data, the extra colour is generated by the code. What I have attempted to find out by this exercise is whether or not the interpolation is accurate when compared to the real world values. I think it is reasonable to call the GISS interpolation a "prediction". In this case the prediction is that the average temps in Bolivia were between 1 and 2 degrees warmer than the baseline in January 2010. While it is admittedly rough and dirty, my exercise came up with the answer of .15 degrees compared to the baseline. This is an order of magnitude lower than the prediction. Either I am way off or the GISS code is. (I'm reasonable sure it should be me, but I can't see how I could be that wrong. That's why I would like criticism.)

Okay, what happened, when I did the figures? So out of 39 stations there was sufficient daily data that could be compared to the 1961-1990 baseline for only 28. I don't know what happened to the figures, but in the quote they don't come out separated like I formatted them. So values are separated by semicolons. This gives a total anomaly for Bolivia (all stations) of +4.2 degrees compared to the 1961-1990 baseline. When we divide by the number of stations to get the average anomaly it comes out as .150 compared to the baseline. This does not look good for the GISS interpolation method. So the bottom line is that if my methods are even remotely correct, then the GISS methods for "smoothing" are very wrong. I have great difficulty believing that I could show GISS "wrong" with one days work. I'm think it's far more likely that I'm wrong. But I can't see how I can be so far out. Hence, I will rework the figures based on criticisms of the methods. If anybody wants to check the data, etc it's in Excel format and I'll happily give to anyone who wants it. It also means that nobody else has to go to the trouble of getting the station data. It's not in directly downloadable format, so it was a copy/paste for each station. Very time consuming.

I apologise in advance for the long post, but full explanation is needed. The Clear Climate Code project is a great concept to port the old FORTRAN GISS code into Python and make it more useable. The project has succeeded and only found minor code problems in the GISS code. IOW, it does what it says it does. I have no problem with this. The question to me is "Is what the code does correct?" and "How could it be tested?" One of the functions of the GISS code that I've always been concerned about the extraction of "data" using stations from up to 1200 km away. Frankly it's so counter-intuitive to appear just plain silly. The problem is, of course, that being counter intuitive doesn't make it wrong. I believe that I have come up with a way that the GISS code performance can be tested against real world values. A recent cheifio article gave me the idea. It concerned what he called the "Bolivia Effect". Basically he noticed that the GHCN contains no data on Bolivia since 1990. This means that the "Land Only" data produced by GISS is from the interpolation of data from outside Bolivia. It was also noted that the interpolated region showed quite a marked warming trend. "Yada, yada, yada...rant at GISS, blah, blah, blah." My thought was that chiefio didn't go far enough in his experiment. We have the GISS maps for January 2010 showing the temperature anomaly compared to the 1961-1990 baseline. We also know that stations in Bolivia are not being used because if we plot with 250 km smoothing the nation turns grey showing no input. Compare with As can be seen, Bolivia is missing from the 250km map, but the values have been "filled in" in the 1200 km map. Now I state again, I have no problem with this, if it is done right. So is it right? Rather than bitching about GISS filling in and being wrong, blah, blah, I thought "What if I looked at the actual Bolivia data and compared it to the GISS map? So I looked. Just because the GHCN can't find Bolivia for 20 years and NASA GISS can't find it for 20 years doesn't mean I shouldn't try. Strangely enough I found that they have quite a complete record available from their SERVICIO NACIONAL DE METEOROLOGIA E HIDROLOGIA. The individual station records are available here, and the baseline averages are available here. So, I could get the daily station data for January 2010 and I could get the baseline averages for each station. I adopted the following methodology for what can only be called a "rough and dirty" test. I wish it noted that the methodology was decided on before I downloaded any data. I want that to be very clear. This will give me the stations that can be compared to a 1961-1990 baseline. This allows for the infilling of data if there is a day or two missing. Next is arriving at an "average" temperature. (As far as I can tell, this is pretty much how it is done by the big boys.) I'm not going to defend this exercise as in any way "rigorous" and I hope for criticism to improve things. My first concern is obviously that the method is flawed. Obviously there are no corrections for UHI or station siting moves. Concerning UHI: As this would only add to the warming at a station, and the question was about "too much" warming, it would only act in the favour of the GISS projection. Concerning station moves, etc. : Since the GISS map shows between 1 and 2 degrees of warming, any minor changes in siting could be ignored. Major changes would show up when comparing the months data with the baseline. No such major discrepancies were noted in the data. I also have no way of telling if this is how the Bolivian service arrives at their monthly averages. However, this method does yield figures that are very close to the Bolivian ones, so it shouldn't be too far out. (Hopefully) I'm operating on the idea that since the GISS map shows at least a 1 degree anomaly, then an occasional .1 degree inaccuracy won't kill the main concept. I have done the figures and they will follow in the next post. This sort of thing is very new to me, so I welcome any constructive criticism. Please make comments on the methods before reading the results.