HotWhoppers: Double Doozy from Denmor

The other day when the HC deniers were kindly promoting this blog as part of their daily science and medicine S&M antics, I got the feeling that poor old denmor was a bit miffed that I hadn't paid him more attention.  So here's a double doozy from denmor.  

Not that long ago denmor graduated from simpleton cartoons and crude name-calling. Now he's learning the art of 'copy and paste', usually of long slabs of senseless rants against science from insignificant little denier blogs.  This time he comes up with two pieces of idiocy in the same short post.  Both from "the world's most viewed" anti-science blog - WUWT.

1. Are engineers and geo-scientists who work in the oil sector less likely to accept climate science?

Um - yeah?  No?  Not quite the point of the research? And if it were true, what did you expect?

A recent study reported that 36% of geoscientists and engineers surveyed, most of whom are reliant on or whose work relates to the Alberta tar sands or petroleum sector in general, are adamant that humans are causing global warming and we need to take decisive action. (They "view the Kyoto Protocol and additional regulation as the solution").

That can be seen as equivalent to: thirty years ago 36% of engineers (not medical researchers) who develop the packaging for cigarettes being adamant that smoking is a health hazard and urging international agreements be put into effect to force people to quit.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum


The anti-science illiterati give a decent round of applause.  (HC rids itself of educated people as fast as they stray into their corner of cyberspace.  Often without a mod having to press a keystroke.)

The Lie

Poor denmor (probably all unknowing given that deniers rarely read let alone absorb scientific papers) quotes from a  blog article that quotes from another article that refers to a research paper in the social sciences/management journal "Organization Studies". (No respectable denier - except Brad - would go straight to the source.) Let's be generous and say, because he was too lazy or incompetent to read the paper in question, denmor wasn't aware that he was spreading a lie.  He also seems blissfully unaware that very few oil engineers and geo-scientists would be involved in climate research.  All scientists and engineers probably look the same to him.

Looking at the categories ('Frames') in the paper, there were 'only' 24% (Frame 2) who "believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth".  All other groupings (68% of respondents) included people who knew that humans are at least a partial cause of global warming, with a full 36% being adamant that "humans are the main or central cause" of global warming.  (Eight per cent were unable to be categorised.  One group, the 'economic responsibility' frame (10%), included rampant deniers as well as people who thought that climate change is both natural and human caused.)

Beknownst (or unbeknownst) to denmor, the researchers deliberately targeted an industry (petroleum) and locale (Alberta Canada) that  is economically tied to CO2 pollution so they could get a big enough cohort across the full spectrum (including deniers).  They were keen to find out more about how people of different viewpoints frame/rationalise their thinking within the context of organisational management.

HotWhopper Petrol Award

Before leaving the topic, let's award an honourable mention to the resident anti-vaxxer jantimot (who by now is probably also feeling left out).

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Jantimot probably thinks he's in the majority of the general population.  Instead he would be aligning himself with the majority of petrol heads who work in the pollution sector of whom only 24% chant the 'it's all natural' refrain.  (I'm not sure how or if aligning himself with ecological vandalism of tar sands fits with his homeopathic purity.)

Goodness knows why jantimot implies climate scientists are extrovert compared to petroleum engineers and geo-scientists.  (You need go no further than Ian Plimer to find a geo-scientist who loudly contradicts himself pontificates on topics way beyond his expertise.)

Not everyone jumps at the chance to work in tar sands, especially not people who understand the ramifications of CO2 pollution.

2. Bombshell!!!! The Arctic froze this winter!!!!

denmor 'blown away' again;

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Who'd have thought.  A record low ice in summer followed by a record ice gain in winter!

(Imagine a litre flask half full of water.  How much extra water does it take to fill it?  Now imagine an empty litre flask.  How much extra water does it take to fill it?)

There were too many climate bloggers to count who accurately predicted that deniers would fall for the 'amazing winter recovery' after last summer's record low ice cover.  (So much for deniers who say you can't predict the future!)

As 'proud to be a denier' Dr Inferno pointed out way back in  way back in September last year:

Arctic Sea Ice Increases Past FOUR MILLION Square Kilometers For The First Time Since Records Began!

It took another four and a half months before Anthony Watts of WUWT woke up to the fact of this startling turnaround.  But as denmor reported, Tony has finally picked up the message and heralded it to the world, writing:

...Arctic sea ice has made a stunning rebound since the record low recorded in the late summer of 2012...

...With a few weeks of growth still to occur, the Arctic has blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter. This is only the third winter in history when more than 10 million km² of new ice has formed. 

Duh!

Now some readers may be wondering where in the Arctic all this extra ice can have formed.  Does it mean that the ice is starting to extend down to near the equator?  After all, there's only so many square kilometers available in the Arctic.

If you are one of these readers, check how the ice cover has changed from 13 February thirty, twenty and ten years ago compared to 13 Feb 2013 - from The Cryosphere Today.

Umm - there's less ice this year? How can that be?

Still think denmor's onto something?  Click here and look at this interactive chart and follow the 2012 (dark pink) and 2013 (yellow) lines before making as big an idiot of yourself as denmor and Anthony Watts.

Here's a snapshot - you might just be able to make out the yellow line for 2013, in among the lower quarter of the records to the left of the image.  The dark pink line for 2012 is fairly clear.

For more fun and enlightenment, read Tamino's take on all this - and see what his readers think about Anthony's bombshell!

John Cook Uncloaks Fake 'Skeptics' of Climate Science

This article has been republished on numerous sites. It deserves to be.  Here it is again in case you missed it elsewhere.  (Republished with permission from The Conversation.)  - MobyT

---

There is no such thing as climate change denial

By John Cook, University of Queensland

In a sense, there is no such thing as climate change denial. No one denies that climate changes (in fact, the most common climate myth is the argument that past climate change is evidence that current global warming is also natural). Then what is being denied? Quite simply, the scientific consensus that humans are disrupting the climate. A more appropriate term would be “consensus denial”.

There are two aspects to scientific consensus. Most importantly, you need a consensus of evidence – many different measurements pointing to a single, consistent conclusion. As the evidence piles up, you inevitably end up with near-unanimous agreement among actively researching scientists: a consensus of scientists.

A number of surveys of the climate science community since the early 1990s have measured the level of scientific consensus that humans were causing global warming. Over time, the percentage of climate scientists agreeing that humans are causing global warming has steadily increased. As the body of evidence grows, the consensus is getting stronger.

Two recent studies adopting different approaches have arrived at strikingly consistent results. A survey of over 3000 Earth scientists found that as the climate expertise increased, so did agreement about human-caused global warming. For climate scientists actively publishing climate research (79 scientists in total), there was 97% agreement.

This result was confirmed in a separate analysis compiling a list of scientists who had made public declarations on climate change, both supporting and rejecting the consensus. Among scientists who had published peer-reviewed climate papers (908 scientists in total), the same result: 97% agreement.

While individual scientists have their personal views on climate change, they must back up their opinions with evidence-based research that withstands the scrutiny of the peer-reviewed process. An analysis of peer-reviewed climate papers published from 1993 to 2003 found that out of 928 papers, none rejected the consensus.

Despite these and many other indicators of consensus (I could go on), there is a gaping chasm between reality and the perceived consensus among the general public. Polls from 1997 to 2007 found that around 60% of Americans believe there is significant disagreement among scientists about whether global warming was happening. A 2012 Pew poll found less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed humans were causing global warming.

The gap between perception and reality has real-world consequences. People who believe that scientists disagree on global warming show less support for climate policy. Consequently, a key strategy of opponents of climate action for over 20 years has been to cast doubt on the scientific consensus and maintain the consensus gap.

How have they achieved this? Hang around and you’ll witness first hand the attack on consensus in the comment threads of this article. The techniques of consensus denial are easily identifiable. In fact, if one rejects an overwhelming scientific consensus, it’s inevitable that they end up exhibiting some of the following characteristics.

Expect to see reference to dissenting non-experts who appear to be highly qualified while not having published any actual climate research. Fake expert campaigns are launched with disturbing regularity.

Recently, a group of NASA retirees issued a press release rejecting the consensus. While possessing no actual climate expertise, they evidently hoped to cash in on the NASA brand.
A prominent Australian fake expert is Ian Plimer, the go-to guy for political leaders and fossil fuel billionaires. He hasn’t published a single peer-reviewed paper on climate change.

There should be many cases of cherry picking but how do you identify a genuine cherry pick? When a conclusion from a small selection of data differs from the conclusion from the full body of evidence, that’s cherry picking. For example, a common cherry pick of late is the myth that global warming stopped over the last 16 years. This focus on short periods of temperature data ignores the long-term warming trend. Importantly, it also ignores the fact that over the last 16 years, our planet has been building up heat at a rate of over three Hiroshima bombs worth of energy every second. To deny global warming is to deny the basic fact that our planet is building up heat at an extraordinary rate.

One way of avoiding consensus is to engage in logical fallacies. The most common fallacy employed to deny the human influence on climate change is the non sequitur, Latin for “it does not follow”. The onslaught of Australian extreme weather in 2013 has led to a surge in the fallacy “extreme weather events have happened before therefore humans are not having an influence on current extreme weather”. This is the logical equivalent to arguing that people have died from natural causes in the past so no one ever gets murdered now.

Finally, with consensus denial comes the inevitable conspiracy theories. If you disagree with an entire scientific community, you have to believe they’re all conspiring to deceive you. A conspiracy theorist displays two identifying characteristics. They believe exaggerated claims about the power of the conspirators. The scientific consensus on climate change is endorsed by tens of thousands of climate scientists in countries all over the world. A conspiracy of that magnitude makes the moon landing hoax tame in comparison.

Conspiracy theorists are also immune to new evidence. When climate scientists were accused of falsifying data, nine independent investigations by universities and governments in two countries found no evidence of wrongdoing. How did conspiracy theorists react? By claiming that each investigation was a whitewash and part of the conspiracy! With each new claim of whitewash, the conspiracy grew larger, encompassing more universities and governments.

A key element to meaningful climate action is closing the consensus gap. This means identifying and rebutting the many rhetorical techniques employed to deny the scientific consensus.

This article was adapted from Understanding Climate Change Denial.
John Cook does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Basketballs, Franklin water and saving the world from Climate Change

A Sunday arvo video for all the Ben Pobjie fans out there.

Enjoy!

Some Real Mineral Magic from Opaline

Buried Treasure: Finding the World's Largest Known Uranium Deposit

Guest post by Opaline, a semi-retired geologist

"The Olympic Dam Story" is a self publication by science writer, David Upton. It is a chronology of one of the last century's most extraordinary applications of the scientific method to exploration geology. I bought my copy when I was in Roxby Downs a few years ago but you can go to http://theolympicdamstory.com/. and buy online.

I found the book a really fascinating read. It's a real inside story of how Western Mining chose to drill at Olympic Dam. It gives a picture of the dogged persistence the company showed in their search.

The first drill core at Olympic Dam was called "RD1". It was completed at 411m on July 30 1975. The bottom 76m were in a dark coloured rock that was wrongly identified at the time as altered basalt. When the core from this drill hole was logged and assayed, there was a 38m intersection grading 1.05% copper. This was an uneconomic grade at the time but very encouraging all the same.

The next three holes were barren but RD5 intersected 92m@1.01% copper. It was not until RD10 was drilled several million $$$ later that high copper ore grade mineralisation was discovered. The uranium, gold and silver in the ore are all sub economic by themselves but the ore deposit is so huge it has multiplied the tiny concentrations of uranium into the World's largest known deposit.

Author's Note:
Any of my material may be reposted on that other site provided this acknowledgement is included:
"Reposted with permission from Opaline, a geologist indefinitely suspended from HotCopyrighted name for acknowledging the reality of Climate Change."

Downside of the Conservative Brain

Ends and Means - Is Morality Dependent upon World View?

On one of my rare visits to the blog of Judith Curry, I came across a conundrum.  She had an article discussing whether the ends justify the means. 

In it she had a paragraph about Peter Gleick who, by pretending to be someone else, obtained revealing documents from the Heartland Institute.  She implied that she believes the ends did not justify the means in that case.  Her very next paragraph was about the stolen emails from CRU, and the way she referred to them it's clear she believes that when it comes to stealing thousands of emails, the ends did justify the means.

However in the latter case, the use to which the stolen emails were put was for nefarious purposes (to misrepresent science and scientists and thereby try to delay action to mitigate global warming).  On the other hand, the use to which the Heartland Institute documents were put was to expose nefarious goings on.  They showed, among other things, the depths to which the Heartland Institute would stoop to prevent any action to ameliorate global warming.

Now I'm not one to see the world in black and white, but Prof Curry's position does strike me as very perplexing from a moral standpoint. 

(Coby posted an article recently on the Heartland affair, in which he discusses how ethical ends vs means issues are not always black and white.  Scott Mandia expresses the view that what Dr Gleick did was wrong, but that despite this error, he continues to contribute a heap of good to the world, while the Heartland Institute continues to only do bad.  He provides scorecards as evidence.)

Logical fallacies and flawed assumptions

Curry bases her article on a post by Roger Pielke Jr, which in my opinion has logical fallacies and flawed assumptions. 

He argues that people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is akin to companies pretending horse meat is beef.  What he refers to is people wanting to mitigate global warming because they believe that it will cost relatively less to act sooner rather than later.  (Yes, his argument is more about cost in dollar terms in the relatively short term (decades) rather than loss of human life, biological diversity, and general ecological destruction over the medium to longer term (centuries to millenia.))

As well as disregarding medium to longer term impacts of global warming, there are (at least) two other flaws in Pielke Jr's argument:

Firstly, he says that the science is not 'strong' in regard to increasing costs associated with extreme events (hotter, longer droughts; bigger floods etc), as a proportion of GDP, even if we do nothing to limit global warming.  The jump from the science not being 'strong' to 'there will not be increasing costs/GDP associated with extreme events' as the world heats up, is a leap much to big to take IMO.  For one thing it's not a scientific point - the science is quite clear that we will get more and more often events that today are considered extreme.  The point he is putting forward is an economic one (not a scientific one) - that GDP will rise faster than costs associated with extreme events. IMO the science is at least grounded in evidence.  The economics has a lot more ifs and buts and assumptions (and in any case, he doesn't point directly to any cost/GDP projections to support his position.  He merely makes a passing mention of the Stern Review and the IPCC).

Secondly he seems to imply that even if people overly attribute an extreme event (today) to global warming then it is because someone (knowledgeable) has deliberately deceived them, rather than because they are ignorant or were mislead by another ignorant person.  There is nothing to support that assumption.

To sum up Roger Pielke Jr's position, he seems to be saying let's pay for extreme events as they happen.  Don't plan for them or take any preventative action now because the world will have more money in the future to deal with the increase in weather disasters.

To sum up Prof Curry's position, she seems to be saying:

1. Let the world heat up and do it's worst.  Let future generations deal with the consequences.

2. Deception is bad (even if you have good intentions) but stealing is good though you have bad intentions.

The Conservative Brain

I guess these positions are manifestations of the drawbacks of having a conservative brain. (Having a conservative brain is not inherently 'good' or 'bad'.  It has benefits as well as disadvantages.  There are upsides and downsides to having a liberal brain too.) 

This article gives some insight into the conservative brain. Put simply, scientific evidence indicates that people having a 'conservative brain' are more fearful (eg saying climate scientists are 'alarmists'); while people having a 'liberal brain' are more tolerant of uncertainty (more easily make decisions when there is inherent ambiguity). 

Then there is the finding that conservatives have a greater tendency to avoid self-harm ("I don't accept science because I don't want to pay tax"), whereas liberals avoid collective group harm ("I want to save the world and everyone and everything in it").

Combine those two tendencies of the conservative brain and you are part way towards explaining the difficulty many conservatives have when it comes to accepting, let alone acting upon, unpalatable facts that affect the whole world.

More of my musings on the conservative brain can be found here.

What makes fake skeptics tell such Whoppers?

A body of research is building to try to determine what it is that motivates some people to make stuff up, particularly about topics like climate science.

A lie is different to a mistake.  Mistakes can be corrected.  When people deliberately tell lies they generally have to dig deeper holes for themselves as aspects of the lie are revealed. (In a similar vein, later in this post I make reference to a paper that deals with attempts to construct fantasy conspiracy theories, and how the theories are altered as facts become too obvious or contradictory.)

For example, what drives someone to tell a whopper as blatantly false as this, referring to global surface temperatures and claiming they aren't rising :



Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Does he even know he is telling fibs or is he lying to himself as well as to everyone else?  It can't be called a simple mistake.  The youngster has to be aware that the science shows that global temperatures are rising.  Even though he has often boasted (on a science forum!) that he refuses to read science from scientific sources (eg Nature, CSIRO etc), he can't help but have seen one of the dozens of global temperature charts posted on HotCopper similar to this one from NASA (with my markings showing the temperatures of 100 years ago).

Incidentally the lad's promise to not post as much in the future may or may not be a lie.  It might be classed as a broken promise or might even be true.  He still seems to be posting an awful (sic) lot, but the posts are not worth counting (or reading, except for entertainment value.  They are of similar caliber to the above (and these).)

Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues have been doing some related research, particularly on how some people have a tendency to lie to themselves; and how they find comfort and support in building on each other's lies - a group approach to fabricating Whoppers.  This paper on motivated reasoning drew considerable attention from fake skeptics, many of whom manufactured complex conspiracy theories in an attempt to reject the findings.  In doing so they helped prove them.  So much so that it spawned a follow-up paper (by Lewandowsky and different colleagues), which has just been accepted for publication.

There are some revealing comments on related articles on Shaping Tomorrow's World and elsewhere.  (Unfortunately many of the silliest responses to those articles were removed.)

The recent Lewandowsky paper proposes conspiracist ideation may go some way to explaining how people kid themselves and others and includes some interesting analyses, using the examples in the blogosphere to break down the processes involved in developing conspiracies.  It reveals how those conspiracies change shape (or not) when irrefutable contradictory evidence emerges.  The authors also include some provisos, such as:

Although there appears to be ample evidence to classify the response to LOG12 at least in part as conspiracist, one must guard against overextending this conclusion: There are other streams of science denial that are detectable in the response to LOG12. For example, the repeated re-analysis of data, involving the elimination of \inconvenient" subsets of data points based on fairly fluid criteria, has a long-standing history in other contentious arenas.

Fake skeptics often lack self awareness.  Ironically, a blogger called Watts last week posted an article about the Lewandowsky follow up paper on conspiracy ideation immediately after posting an article about the attempts by ATI to uncover what they believe to be a fantastic conspiracy (which they 'believe' will be uncovered in scientists' emails).

Watts is not quite as bad a conspiracist as Jo Nova and her partner David Evans, who subscribe to anti-semitic conspiracies involving gold and fiat money among other weird ideas.  Or the peer Monckton, who is a self-confessed 'birther' (and who has such 'batshit crazy' ideas that even the hard-boiled science denier, Andrew Bolt, distances himself).  However Watts continues to publish articles by the mad monk and supports Jo Nova.

Many people who reject climate science will try to tell you about the giant world-wide conspiracy that presumably began about 200 years ago.  According to them, scientists are perpetrating a 'hoax'.  This 'hoax' must involve not only thousands of scientists throughout the world, past and present, but engineers, manufacturers and all humankind who make use of or benefit from the knowledge that CO2 absorbs radiation of particular wavelengths.

Humans as a species are quirky.

(To whom it may concern - that is, anyone who might have been too scared to post a comment: I expect to rarely have to resort to deleting comments from this blog. Nor would I expect to ever 'disappear' entire threads, especially not ones in my honour :D. The blog doesn't attract many comments.  It's mainly just a bit of fun.  So far some comments have been remarkably revealing, others comical, others informative, others correcting my errors (both real and imagined) and some - thanks people - personally supportive; and some all of the above.)

Another scientist banned from HotCopper: Younglogga

HotCopper is going great guns in its ongoing efforts to stifle discussion of science.  It’s banned another poster who tried to make the HotCopper Science and Medicine S&M forum about science instead of remaining a troll-infested meeting ground for the anti-science illiterati.

True to form, mods seem to be deleting any posts commenting on his disappearance.  This is in keeping with the HotCopper Omertà (selectively applied), so we’ll probably never know why he was banned.  (Evidence suggests that on HotCopper freedom of speech is a prerogative of redneck males only – see here.  Mods would probably all quit if HotCopper introduced a more open moderation policy.)

Younglogga was always polite, made fact-filled posts and would have been considered a treasured asset of any healthy discussion board.  His posts were very rarely moderated, except when the mods took sides with the trolls who make incessant complaints that some people post about real science instead of anti-science on the science and medicine forum.

Fare thee well, Younglogga.  You brought clarity and science if briefly to brighten the gloominess of that arid block of cyberspace.

This old Irish blessing is for you, though we’ve never met. (I’m not religious but I’ve always liked it.)

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

No more floods because CO2 is pressing on the walls of the sky ...

Deniers will often go on ad nauseum with the wrong notion that there isn't enough CO2 in the air to make the slightest bit of difference to climate.  To prove not all deniers are alike all of the time, here is a comment on Anthony Watt's science denying website, replying to a comment by Steven Mosher (as quoted).

According to ferd berple, the amount of CO2 we're adding to the air is so humungous it's pressing on the sky's floor, walls and ceiling to such an extent that less water will evaporate!  (Try to tell that to the Queenslanders.)

I know, there are so many people who have fun with the deniers on Tony's site it's hard to tell the fake comments from the real ones.  Poe's Law applies on WUWT as on no other anti-climate science website.

What do you reckon - is ferd berple a fake denier or a real one?

HotWhopper Classic: Misogyny and Sexism

As anyone who's done any work in organisational development knows, the norms and values are established by those in charge.  If an organisation is broken it's extremely hard to fix without changing the leadership.  New brooms sweep the cleanest.

If you run a discussion board it's easy to make sure the subscriber base reflects your own values, if that's what you want.  Select moderators who are as sexist as yourself and they'll get the message across loud and clear.  If an errant subscriber doesn't conform and makes the mistake of standing up for women (or science), you can rely on your pet moderators to gang up and ban them forever. (Bricks and mortar businesses have to be a bit more discrete about their misogyny and sexism.  If they are small enough they can usually get around this problem by making sure they don't hire women in the first place, except to make the coffee, 'man' (yes, 'man') the front desk and answer the phone.)

Judge for yourself - compare the votes in the examples below!

Woman - how dare you intrude on the 'Domain of Men'!

Here are some posts from a classic sexist thread (subs req'd) on the HotCopper discussion board.  You can see for yourselves the type of people the operators aim to attract and, unsurprisingly, succeed.  Golfzoner starts a lively discussion with this:

Golfzoner was was roundly applauded by HotCopper-ites for telling it like it is.  So much so that thirty one more people agreed with him than disagreed!  Full-blooded male HotCopper-ites believe the world would be so much better if women weren't such brazen hussies.  A woman's place is barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.  She should be subservient to her 'man'.   Woman's sole purpose in life is to slave over a hot stove and keep her master comfortable.

Battle-Hardened, Command-Barking, Brick Out-Houses with a Vagina

The discussion thread was very long.  Here are a few more snippets:  No battle hardened, command-barking, brick out-houses with a vagina for Sonpa:

The 50kg Clubber

One can only marvel at the sort of mentality of HotCopper moderators who unanimously agree that writing about climate science research is far too 'outspoken' to be tolerated on HotCopper, but seem happy enough for someone to write about their suspect sexual proclivities - from Linebacker (yes, really!).  You couldn't make this up.  Although it was buried in the discussion it still attracted six more 'thumbs up' than 'thumbs down':

The Men Pile On

The discussion went on and on for more than two weeks. I could show you any of dozens of other misogynistic or sexist comments from different HotCopper subscribers.  Men who didn't pile on with outright sexism indicated they thought women who objected were over-reacting and should 'lighten up'.  

But not all men agreed.  A few were as disgusted as we women were.

Too "outspoken"

Here's a comment from Dogby that most subscribers didn't like.  Unlike golfzoner and linebacker, it looks as if dogby must have been too 'outspoken' for HotCopper - he's been banned:

What about the women?

Yes, some women are bold enough to venture into the Men's Playground. Kate dismissed the thread with this sharp comment:

And Oxy came straight to the point:

In fact I made a few comments myself and this must have been about the only time that Oxy and I agreed. (IIRC she has libertarian leanings, which forbid her from accepting climate science.)

Get off your soap box!

HotCopper moderators tell people who protest sexism to 'get off their soap box'.  Interesting to be reminded of the sort of soap boxes they prefer.

PostScript: This article and subsequent comments may help explain why so many people with twisted views are attracted to HotCopper and why so many ordinary people find it repugnant. Not merely unnaturally prudish or sexist but arguably bordering on intimidation of women.

HotWhopper of the Week - A Gutful of Brainless!

If you've ever wondered how climate science deniers can keep getting it so wrong, this might give a clue.

           Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Caution: Going by the number of 'thumbs up', most amateur share traders on HotCopper agree the gut is their organ of choice for intellectual exercise.  Pays to treat any discussion on HotCopper with a big pinch of (epsom) salt.

Unfortunately high school physics doesn't cut it when it comes to anatomy.  Now if astrayalien (who is currently leading the pack when it comes to hot whoppers) had also studied biology he might have learnt that the gut is used for digestion of food, not digestion of science.  (You've got to wonder how astrayalien went in his physics class!)

If he had thought to exercise his brain instead of his bowel, he might have questioned some of those 'predictions' he talks about.

If he'd used his eyes as well, he would have seen that earth's temperature keeps rising.  Note: The original video I had here has since disappeared so here's something else instead. Sou 27 Jan 2014: