The deniers can't be expected to listen to science and reason, you know.

FFS... on the 15oth f*cking submission, it went green

Oh hey look ... another one of these.

I work in/on computers. But you should totally listen to my advice on the economy. After all, people who work on Wall Street use computers!

The term "useful idiot" just popped into my head for some reason.

J. Frank Parnell: The term "useful idiot" just popped into my head for some reason.

I'm sticking with the useful idiots. The useless idiots are just annoying.

If you want to see just how deep the bullshiat runs, and what an organized effort this is, google "polar bears global warming", check out a few, rather dramatic articles, then read these ones, dealing with people actually living near these places, and not just taking peoples word for it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2007/04/25/arviat-bears.htm l

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/endangered-polar-bear-p o pulations-booming/

And finally, the most recent and irrefutable:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/healthy-polar-bear-count - confounds-doomsayers/article2392523/

And just because i like science so much, i'll post this again:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c27_1327015448

You'll see no change in annual ice melt, at all. Maybe the satellite is in on the conspiracy to disprove AGW?

For some reason spaces were added in some of those links. Just remove them.

thespindrifter: Because astronomers are climatologists... not.

Seriously, we're talking about a guy who not only sold out, but continues to have the word "astronomy" in his blog, despite 4/5 of his posts being about anything but. Just another idiot that thinks a degree in one subject somehow makes their mere opinions on every other subject worth listening to.

Nice try Phil. People and actual scientists who don't make their livings based on pure conjecture are starting to wake up to the lies about human-made global warming.

You don't have to have a degree in anything to recognize an appeal to authority fallacy, and that is what a bunch of engineers and military pilots are when you cite them as authorities on climate change. Only climate scientists are authorities on climate change. Not retired nuclear scientists (Fred Singer), not retired political wonks with degrees in Classics (Lord Moncton), not NASA janitors, and not Astronauts.

The Bad Astronomer is a rational and well-informed critic of science with genuine scientific credentials without the authority of a climatologist, but that's like saying he's a restaurant critic and not a chef. He is entitled to an informed and logical argument against bad cooking just as you don't need a Cordon Bleu certificat to tell that the fish is off.

Any scientist has more real authority than an engineer or an astronaut or a right wing think tank specializing in PR for industry and lobbying against science that inconveniences industry.

You do not have to be an authority on any subject to recognize an informal logical fallacy or a formal error in logic.

Speaking of logical fallacies you have committed several in a couple of sentences.

Ad hominem "he's a sell-out"; asserting that he's a sell-out without any proof, thus begging the question (which as you may know does NOT mean "raising the question"); complaining that he uses the word "astronomy" in his blog, an absurdity since he is an astronomer and might well allude to the fact in a blog title and is entitled to talk about any damn thing he wants to discuss--it's a blog, not a scientific paper; and most ironically and absurdly, charging HIM with an appeal to authority fallacy while defending a real appeal to authority fallacy by the NASA non-scientists: "Just another idiot that thinks a degree in one subject somehow makes their mere opinions on every other subject worth listening to."

Only one of the names on that letter is from a climatologist. The 36,000 signature Oregon Petition has only a handful of climatogists or even meteorologists larded with thousands of signatures from students, engineers, medical researchers and other conservatives with no qualifications to speak scientifically or with authority on anything related to climate science.

You might as well defend a letter written by Hollywood actors claiming that vaccines cause autism by pointing out that the guy who is criticizing the letter is not a medical researcher. He doesn't have to be because he is not claiming to be an authority on climate science any more than I am. He is just using logic, argument and the facts established by climatologists to critique the ludicrous political manoeuvres of people who are not climatologists. They have no business writing a letter telling their employer's climatologists not to do climatology because climatology is bunk unless they themselves have sufficiently authority, arguments, facts and logic to back up their claims. It's just a political stunt by non-authorities attempting to use and abuse the good name of NASA against NASA.

It's as absurd as that creationist nutter who was a sub-contractor at NASA in the 1970s making bogus claims about NASA covering up a "missing day" in a computer simulation which he claimed was the day that Josuah stopped the Sun from setting so the Israelites could win a battle against the Canaanites. How the Hell does that work? That was a bare-faced lie (i.e. an urban legend, a rumour) and perfectly absurd since a computer programme simply can't prove such a thing--if it is out of whack by a day it was clearly an error in programming--you can't "uncover" an error in chronology with a simulation any more than you can find a missing person with a video game.

It's a pity if right wing ideologues are employed by NASA, but it doesn't do a damn thing to strengthen or enfeeble a poltical parti pris against science to quote the stupid feckers. There's a vicious circle involved if you make manifestos by partisans the proof of the correctness of the claims of manifests by partisans. And begging of even more questions than the correctness of the claims.

Creationists, zero point energy cranks, UFOlogists and all sorts of cranks, loonies, paranoids, conspiracy theorists resort to this sort of thing all the time. One of their number is employed by the US Government or NASA or some other organization and they claim that is proof they are right and that there is a government cover up. As far as I know, you don't have to reveal your crank opinions before you are hired by the US government. In fact, the US government has put its imprimatur on all sorts of crankery, such as homeopathic medicine and climate change denialism. It has also supported allopathic medicine and climat change science. In fact, it has done both simulataneously, paying scientists like those at NASA to study and provide evidence of global warming while denying, twisting and covering up their conclusions at the political level.

This is Fred S. Singer's job description for the last fifty years, in fact. He has been employed by right wing Republican governments to produce reports that betray the science and the government scientists that provide the science. He's a rapidly conservative Cold Warrior who thinks most scientists are a bunch of Commies. He has fought the facts on acid rain, airplane contrails, ozone layer depletion, and now global warming. He's a gun for hire with no credentials in any of these areas but he has one idea--to kill incovenient truths for industry and right wing government. And that is all he needs to be put in charge of damage control by writing the politicized summing ups of the science your tax dollars pay for.

You are entitled to your money's worth on government science, but not to the answer you or your political masters and owners want.

Read Merchants of Doubt. It'll give you a very good idea of how that works.

I'm not sure why the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is considered an authority on climate change. Apart from supporting other agencies (like, say, NOAA, whose task it actually is to be an authority on such matters) with satellite and aircraft support, NASA should leave climate science to climate agencies.

IOW, put the climate scientists in NOAA where they belong, and quit sullying up my nice aviation agency.

I'd like to correct an error in my previous post.

I said ONE climatologist. That was hasty and based on a quick glance at the qualifications of the 49 signatories as reported by climate denialists some days ago.

A more skeptical eye turned on the list says NOT ONE climatologist:

Based on the job titles listed in the letter signatures, by my count they include 23 administrators, 8 astronauts, 7 engineers, 5 technicians, and 4 scientists/mathematicians of one sort or another (none of those sorts having the slightest relation to climate science). Amongst the signatories and their 1,000 years of combined professional experience, that appears to include a grand total of zero hours of climate research experience, and zero peer-reviewed climate science papers. You can review the signatories for yourself here.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/12/463683/nasa-climate-skept i cs-respond-with-science-just-kidding/?mobile=nc

The janitors at NASA are up in arms against the scientists again! Woo-woo!

I'm just kidding. But I am making a valid point at the same time.

The actual list can be reviewed on a denialist site. It is more accurate it seems:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss - under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to- look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

Here's the guy who mislead me to say that one climatologist signed the list:

/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller - JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years

As you can see, he is not a climatologist. He is a meteorologist. A meteorologist is a person who thinks they know something about science. Like an engineer, only stupider. They make the error of supposing that climatology is like meteorology--chaotic and unpredictable. Actually, the law of large numbers smooths out many of the chaotic elements in meteorology.

I always use the analogy of an astromer trying to predict two things: the position of the planet Jupiter in it's orbit 10,000 years from know, and the position of a space pebble the size of the palm of your hand in a year. Clearly the gravity of every body tugs on every other body. As we know, there is a problem predicting a gravitational system with three or more bodies.

But it is easier, much easier to know exactly where Jupiter will be in 10,000 years than to know where a random speck of dust will be in ten minutes. Jupiter is so large that it is somewhat predictable--basically the three body problem collapses to a two body problem, which can be solved. At least you don't have to predict where Jupiter wil be to the nearest millimeter. It is so big that getting it off by a few million miles may not be considered an unacceptible margin of error over a 10,000 year period. No so with pebbles and dust. If you mis-predict the locatio of a golf ball by a mile, let alone several million miles, you are not going to find the golf ball and you'll have to take a penalty.

Meteorologists are best at predicting the position of golf balls. They are lousy at predicting the weather over a four day window. Cosmetologists are looking for galaxies, astronomers for stars and planets. No problem. Well, a lot of problems sometimes, but at least we know where our gas giants are with a reasonable degree of certitude, as far as scientists are certain about anything.

Oh, noes! The NASA janitors have been joined by the Channel Six weather girl! We're dooooooooomed!

Now that's sarcasm! Well, maybe satire or irony as well.

It's a lot harder to explain why there WOULDN'T be man-made climate change than to accept that all the facts indicate it almost certainly is.

But that's ok, the deniers have made up their minds it's all a big worldwide scientific conspiracy to make the climatologists rich and to destroy America, isn't that right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Climate change deniers are no better than creationists. No amount of education or knowledge will move them from their ignorance.