Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 4:20pm

Clearly there's political motivation in your uncritical acceptance of this misleading nonsense and the way you title your agreement with it. I'd expect a naturalist to be as much a 'true scientist' as any other; so you've evidently just proved your title wrong.

Scientists seem able to believe just about any absurdity if they're strongly enough motivated, including financial incentives, political loyalties, and straight prejudice. The examples have been most striking when they wander outside their own fields of expertise -- especially with people who go from physical and/or biological sciences into social science subjects, or people who voyage from any science into theology.

There were misleading reassurances back in my late high school days, denying that the greenhouse effect was going to significantly change the climate. One was in an excellent popular astronomy book, by an astronomer used to measuring planetary atmospheres from outside. He reasoned plausibly from the fact that the Earth's CO2 adsorption bands in the infrared spectrum were already saturated -- but unfortunately neglected to consider that an atmosphere more dense with CO2 would trap significantly more heat closer to the surface before scattering it. (I don't think the guy was intentionally distorting matters; he simply wasn't used to thinking about planetary atmospheres from inside them.)

realclimate.org offers a great deal of material on climate modelling, the complications of it, and the distortions of results we get from people well-funded to pretend that we haven't (perhaps irreparably) thrown the Earth's climate off a very steep slope. Since you are a naturalist who's somehow failed to notice changes in timing of migrations, growth of plants in the spring, seasonal appearance of insects at various latitudes, etc perhaps you should read up on the matter.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 4:27pm

Forrest. What specifically is misleading nonsense? The people in the article!make their case. Now tell us specifically, with documented support, what are the misleading things in this article?

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 4:51pm

"Since you are a naturalist who's somehow failed to notice changes in timing of migrations, growth of plants in the spring, seasonal appearance of insects at various latitudes, etc perhaps you should read up on the matter."

Forrest. You are exemplifying a person so caught up in his own political agenda, that he sets out to make statements and accusations about other people (me in this case) that are completely false. You are suggesting I have failed to notice changes in the timing of migrations!!!!!??? I have spent a seasons upon seasons in the Great Lakes studying the nesting habitats of wild birds. Please document this failure of mine? I have studied the changes in breeding ranges of wild birds specifically for most of my life. Forrest, you do not have a clue what I think about climate change. Is it commonly of your nature to set out to impune people who you misjudge? Forrest you should be ashamed of yourself for such a response.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 5:36pm

http://theworldlink.com/mobile/article_6b0310e8-f2e4-11e2-8a63-001a...

https://www.oregon.gov/oprd/docs/BSNA-Disturbance-Assessment-final-...

Here is just a little recent documentation of what I do in my life relative to the natural world.

I participated in the work to save a natural area that was set aside specifically for the scientific study which could include the effects of climate change on rare and endangered plant and animal species. Eventually, I became a lead in the project to save the natural area because I observed some troubling disturbances in the natural area that was about to be turned into a golf course and made that disturbance public by working with a local environmental group, which, in part, resulted in the developer withdrawing from his attempt to build a golf course there.

Search for my name in both documents.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 6:16pm

I am quite accustomed to tendacious statements from you on political matters and not at all ashamed of ascribing them to your evident political biases.

When I assumed you'd failed to notice the effects of climate change on places you like to study, that was because you've apparently been unwilling to draw the obvious conclusion as to what's going on, and as to who's been tweaking the science, in what direction.

I don't know that you should be ashamed of that; shame doesn't seem to improve human thinking or behavior nearly as much as it leads to people covering their butts.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 6:24pm

Talk about calling the kettle black ... Lord have mercy.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 6:39pm

I appreciate your admission that your false insinuations about me and my stance on global warming is based on assumption drawn fron unsupported conclusions.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 2nd mo. 6, 2017 at 9:48pm

Regarding "climate change" I'm highly suspicious of this word "climate" which gets peoples attention off the biosphere as a whole, and thinking about something like "weather" but longer term. Now it's all about ice and temperature, not about toxins in water and food, environmental problems more generally. That's not what matters, goes the unconscious reasoning, just whether humans might be blamed for something called "climate change" -- that's all we need care about, and be right about. Funny. Puerile. Somewhat Anglophone. In Russian it's more the "biosphere" that we think about, not that I think in Russian, just the lineage behind that word tends to have Cyrillic-using authors in some cases, Lynn Margulis its champion in this country (yes, another one of my "prophets" right up there with Richard Stallman and Muhammad Ali).

I've officially shared these views with my Quaker meeting, long ago, so it's common knowledge among those keeping track of such things among local Friends, that this is my standard (as in canned) dharma on the matter. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2014/10/biosphere-is-better.html

Comment by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 7, 2017 at 8:21am

One the most troublesome things the article presents is that the data supporting the NOAA paper used by politicians to help determine policy, and the use of taxpayers funds to implement that policy, was not made available. This is not disputed by NOAA officials. It is simply the truth. This means the NOAA officials, by their own admission, published a paper, the results of which, could not be reproduced using the data that is the foundation of the paper. Whether or no the results of the paper are valid is not the issue here. It is that NOAA published a "scientific" finding that simply could not be independently 'verified' or 'replicated using the same data NOAA used.' The act of publishing such a paper under the pretense of science and not also making available the underlying data means it cannot be peer reviewed and reproduced independently. That act in itself is not real science.

That is what I find personally troublesome.

Whether the conclusions of the papers are valid or not, the paper should not have been published until the underlying data supporting the paper were made available. Not only for the sake of science but for the sake of those politicians who made policy and funding decisions based on the paper.

Again, that NOAA published a paper and failed to make their underlying raw data available is not disputed. NOAA admits this is the case. I quote from the article:

Dr Bates revealed that the failure to archive and make available fully documented data not only violated NOAA rules, but also those set down by Science. Before he retired last year, he continued to raise the issue internally. Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: ‘I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.’

The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 7, 2017 at 11:09am

The subject you're trying to raise, I think, Kirby, is habitat destruction.

When you destroy the environmental qualities that make it possible for human beings to collect sufficient water and grow/catch sufficient food, people die in vast numbers.

There is a wildly-successful effort being made to prevent the people of the United States from recognizing and acting upon the more-than-sufficient data (from multiple sources in significant agreement) showing that business-as-usual has set us squarely on the path to catastrophic habitat destruction.

Why people are eager to support that most irresponsible and dangerous of lies on whatever procedural and personal failures they wish to allege against anyone calling attention to the danger, I might ascribe all sorts of character flaws -- but that is hardly the point.

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